Caen Noir et Blanc - An exhibit by Thomas Stoffregen
Join us at the Alliance for the opening of our new exhibit Caen Noir et Blanc featuring photographs by Thomas Stoffregen! Admission is free for all, and registration is encouraged.
“Caen is the ancient capital of the region of Normandy, bordering on the English Channel. It was the home of William the Conqueror, the remains of whose ancestral chateau still dominate the town. In 1944, the city was largely destroyed, as part of the Allied invasion of Occupied France. In rebuilding the city, much of the medieval street plan was preserved. Thus, most of the buildings, while visibly recent, are the same size and shape as their medieval predecessors. The result is a remarkable expression of resilience and renewal in the context of ancient tradition. In my photographs, I tried to capture the interplay of old and new, ancient and modern, that comprises the physical fabric of contemporary life in Caen.”
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The exhibit is open to visitors during our regular hours until May 2, 2026.
About the artist
Tom Stoffregen has been making and exhibiting photographs for over 45 years. His photography teachers include Barbara Crane, Jack D. Teemer Jr., Gay Burke, and Emin Özmen, and he has worked professionally with photographer Abelardo Morell, and sculptor David Bowen. Since 2021, his photographs have appeared in more than 25 juried shows in museums and galleries across the US, garnering multiple awards and prizes.
After beginning with a handheld 35 mm camera, in 1984 he switched to large format, first using a 4 × 5 field camera and, after the millennium, a large format digital camera. In his primary method, a camera mounted on a tripod is rotated to produce three separate exposures. In the darkroom or digitally those exposures are united to create a single photograph. His work comprises several themes, including pre-Columbian structures and sacred sites of North America, rustbelt cities of the American Midwest, the extraordinary beauty of Pike Island, which lies at the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers, the otherworldly formations of the North Dakota badlands, and two projects relating to violence and political oppression, including gun violence in America, and Nazi captures, deportations, and murders in occupied Paris.
In 2022, Stoffregen spent six weeks in Caen, the ancient capital of Normandy. The photographs in this exhibition were made during that time. They express his abiding fascination with the physical geography that we create to contain our daily lives. The photographs also reflect his deep respect for one of the greatest of all photographers, Eugène Atget.