July 29, 2006 - September 15, 2006
Soldier is located in the Passageway Gallery on the 2nd floor of the historic Market Arcade Building in Downtown Buffalo. The exhibition can be viewed whenever the building is open 7:00 am – 9:30pm M-F, 8:30am-5:00pm Saturday, and 10:00am – 3:00pm Sunday. [Click here for directions to CEPA]

In the Passageway Gallery CEPA will present Soldier by New York photographer Suzanne Opton. This exhibition takes an unusual and intimate look at soldiers who recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan. www.suzanneopton.com

The series includes a mixture of black-and-white and color photographs that range in style from timeless studio portraits to intimate close-up views of the heads of the soldiers lying on a flat surface. The exhibition features large-format color photographs of the faces of soldiers, evoking a sense of dreaming but also hinting at the transformative experiences of war. Opton has taken the otherwise loaded idea of soldiers and warfare out of a political context and placed it into a silent dialogue from one human being to the next. She says of the images, "We all experience strategic moments when we feel most alive. These are the moments we will always remember, be they transcendent or horrific. Afterall, what are we if not our collection of memories? In making these portraits of soldiers, I simply wanted to look in the face of someone who’d seen something unforgettable.”

Her work has been exhibited internationally, and is featured in the permanent collections of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris; the Musée de’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland; and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. She has received grants from the Vermont Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Opton’s work has appeared in a variety of publications including Orion, The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, and Fortune. Opton teaches at the International Center of Photography and the Cooper Union.