Denise Demong

     Denise Demong’s work–be it beachscape, night cityscape, or portrait–explores photography’s capacity to convey mood and emotion. She is passionate about making beautiful and expressive prints.

     Denise’s long-term projects include “Light and Water”–images of Fire Island that emphasize the exquisite, constantly shifting color of the light, and “Night Windows”–city views, captured after dark from her Manhattan apartment, in which humans and their habitats take center stage.

     In 2018, Denise began digitizing her black-and-white film archive. “Bellefonte Kids, 1970” is a collection of portraits of children in that then-hardscrabble Pennsylvania town. “Vintage East Village” comprises NYC street scenes from the same period. Digitizing these decades-old negatives has made the work new to the artist. She has printed many images for the first time, creating larger, more richly detailed, and more nuanced prints than she could have made in the darkroom in 1970.

     A retired journalist, author, and editor, Denise served for many years as a teaching assistant at the International Center of Photography, where she studied printing with renowned teacher Ben Gest. She also works as a private tutor helping individuals master the tools of the “digital darkroom.”

When I began shooting the body of work I came to call ‘Night Windows,’ I wasn't thinking of Edward Hopper. 

Rather, after a year of shooting the mesmerizing water towers visible from my Manhattan apartment, I longed to capture something more, and so began looking in on my neighbors.

The images I made reminded many of Hitchcock’s “Rear Window.”

But eventually I made the connection to Hopper’s ‘Night Windows,’ and, as a nod, borrowed his title for the group. Hopper looks in on a woman undressing, unaware of his gaze. His depiction is delicate. I strove for something similar. Not the shocking, but the everyday.

As a painter, Hopper could create the views he remembered seeing or wished he might see. As a photographer, I could not. I relied on serendipity, waiting for my subjects to move into the light. Sometimes the surrounding atmosphere was simultaneously striking–a moonrise, a sunset, a storm unfolding in the distance.

I left Manhattan in 2023, but I continue to hone prints of the images I made from my windows. I love exploring the intersection of natural and man-made light. Sometimes I discover a sense of shelter. Sometimes I am confronted by the urban phenomenon of proximity without intimacy. Always I feel the presence of others. To me, that is the feel of night in the city. 

Denise Demong

917 907-4880

ddemong@aol.com

www.denisedemong.com

Education

2011-2020 International Center of Photography, New York, NY (Continuing Education)

Solo Exhibitions

2022 “Bellefonte Kids, 1970” Bellefonte Museum of Art for Centre County, Bellefonte, PA, April 1 – May 31

2019 “Light and Water: Fire Island” Pisticci, New York, NY, January 19 – April 13

2018 “Fire Island: Elemental” The Living Room Gallery, Saint Peter’s Church, New York, NY, March 29 – July 26

Juried Exhibitions

2023 Juried Members Exhibit, Edward Hopper House, Nyack, NY

         American Photographic Artists 2nd Annual Juried Photography Competition and Exhibition, Soho Photo Gallery, New York, NY   

         "Quiet Landscape,” Photoplace Gallery, Middlebury, VT

2022 “The Magic of Light,” Photoplace Galllery, Middlebury, VT

2019 National Photography Competition, Soho Photo Gallery, New York, NY

2018 Semi-Finalist, 2018 International Portfolio Competition, Soho Photo Gallery, New York, NY

         B&H Event Space Portfolio Development Exhibition, Soho Photo Gallery, New York, NY

2018 Open Photography Exhibition, The Salmagundi Club, New York, NY

2017 Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society’s 16^th Annual Art Show, Fire Island Lighthouse, Fire Island National Seashore

2016 Fire Island National Seashore’s Find Your Park Exhibition, Watch Hill Ferry Terminal, Patchogue, NY

         Fire Island Lighthouse Preservation Society’s 15^th Annual Art Show, Fire Island Lighthouse, Fire Island National Seashore

2015 B&H Event Space Portfolio Development Exhibition, Soho Photo Gallery, New York, NY

Press & Digital Media

2022 Radio and print interview, “Photographer Denise Demong says her ‘Bellefonte Kids, 1970’ exhibit focuses on the well-tended children of hardscrabble Bellefonte 50 years ago,” NPR affiliate WPSU, University Park, PA

2016 Features on Fire Island National Seashore social media platforms and weeklong “takeover” of @fireislandnps Instagram feed

CT

USA