David Lancaster

The State Historical Society of Missouri (SHSMO) is a new building in the heart of Columbia, MO. David is attracted to the sharp and soft angles of the gridded smooth stone contrasted with mirrored images of clouds and trees reflected in the windows. The angles and texture of SHSMO’s siding is akin to a modern adaptation of the New Mexico adobe architecture. This series was spontaneously produced while on his way home from work. The lighting, wind, and clouds against the deep blue sky and architecture were perfect, and he took these photographs before heading home.

Dr. David Lancaster escapes into another life every time he looks through the lens.  He can feel the stress and burden of responsibility fall away as he enters into a meditative state of conversation with life through the language of emotion. Part of David's life he lives the role of a family man, part of his life he wears the responsibility of a physician, the other part of his life he tries to catch dreams. David is lucky to be here at this time living so many realities.

Prints in the portfolio are Archival Inkjet Prints, 13" X 19", 2020, $395 each.

Vita Levar

Bonsai trees are an art form. They are pampered, shaped, admired, and valued. They, however, live their lives reflecting someone else’s vision of beauty, someone else’s vision of perfection. To achieve this, the bonsai trees have been cultivated to stay small, to look a certain way, to live below their full potential.

In this series, “Bonsai Dreaming,” I explore how they might imagine themselves to be, given the opportunity to grow unhindered. In this alternate reality, I place them in a dreamscape under a vast night sky illuminated by the stars.

Vita Levar is a fine art photographer who sees wonder and magic all around her. Inspired by her imagination, intuition, and curiosity, she creates images that express her vision of the world. She is best known for her experimental and abstract images.

Growing up, Vita spent much of her free time with art, music, and dance. Vita’s careers include imports and law, however, that took her down the path of rules and regulations. Now a retired attorney, Vita has returned to art and creativity, letting her imagination lead the way.

Originally from Wisconsin, Vita now lives in the Chicago area. Her images have been exhibited in Europe, Canada, and the United States.

Prints in the portfolio are Archival Inkjet Prints 11" X 15" and various, 2025, $225 each.

FEATURE DATES - APRIL - SEPTEMBER, 2026

Portfolio Platform provides the focus of a streamlined online presence providing the opportunity for photographers to showcase a portfolio of photographic work prominently. The portfolios are available for patrons of the gallery to go online and view, learn about the photographers and their work through the images and biographies and artist statements, and have the opportunity to purchase photographs.

These highly talented photographers are featured here for the 2026 issue of Portfolio Platform.

PORTFOLIO PLATFORM 2026

FEATURED ARTISTS:

James Davis, Fairfield, IA;

Meghan Duda, Fargo, ND

Kylo-Patrick Hart, Aledo, TX;

David Lancaster, Columbia MO;

Vita Levar, Palatine, IL;

Fern Nesson, Cambridge, MA;

Richard Schramm,Carrboro, NC.

Kylo-Patrick Hart

"Creativityscapes"

Kylo-Patrick Hart/s overall approach to photography and related forms of artistic production results from the combined influences of Cubism, Expressionism, Fauvism, Impressionism, and Surrealism, all of which affect how Kylo-Patrick sees the world around him and then proceed to document it. From the moment he received his first camera as a young boy, he has been fascinated by how every individual sees the same imagery, and chooses to capture it, in remarkably different ways. Kylo-Patrick has long realized that his way of observing and documenting the world around us — from what he decides to shoot to how he actually proceeds in doing so — is unique to him as an artist, which is why he loves expressing himself through the medium of photography. With his images, he strives to demonstrate that our world is a continuously fascinating and beautiful place offering endless aesthetic pleasures to those who take the time to observe its nuances intentionally closely. His current project, from which these twenty photographs have been culled, is titled Creativityscapes. It features somewhat atypical approaches to creating and sharing unique, eye-catching cityscapes, cloudscapes, landscapes, and waterscapes with others.

Kylo-Patrick Hart is an award-winning photographer (Budapest International Foto Awards, European Photography Awards, Global Photography Awards, Golden Shot International Photography Awards, London Photography Awards, New York Photography Awards, Pollux Awards, Tokyo International Foto Awards, etc.) and chair of the Department of Film, Television and Digital Media at Texas Christian University (Fort Worth, Texas, USA). He received his formal training in digital media arts while a student at the University of Michigan and Wayne State University, with additional instruction provided by offerings of the Maine Media Workshops and Santa Fe Workshops. His photographs have been exhibited in numerous cities throughout the United States and in several countries abroad.

Prints in the portfolio are Archival Inkjet Prints, 16" X 24", 2022 - 2025, $395 each.

Fern Nesson

"Night and the City"

This portfolio takes its name from "Night and the City" — a British film noir movie which explores the seamy side of London at night. As in all film noir movies, petty theives and gangsters abound, shady deals are made and broken, promises unfulfilled, lives lost.

     So, too, in real life cities at night — mostly.

But for Fern, as a photographer, the danger and threat of city streets at night is more than offset by the extraordinary opportunity that they provide. Deserted, rain-slicked streets, pools of light in the darkness, mysterious objects reduced to geometric shapes, all of these encourage Fern to make beautiful photographs.

     Set her loose with her camera at nighttime in a city and she finds her inspiration.

Fern L. Nesson is a graduate of Harvard Law School (1971). She received an MA in American History from Brandeis and an M.F.A in Photography from the Maine Media College. She lives in Cambridge, MassachuseHs. She pracIced law in Boston for twenty years and subsequently taught American History and MathemaIcs at the Cambridge School of Weston and the Commonwealth School in Boston. She currently teaches part-Ime at the Harvard Law School. Nesson wrote Great Waters: A History of Boston’s Water Supply (1982), Signet of Eternity (2017) and Word (2020) and has published numerous books of photography. Since 2018, she has wriHen an ongoing series of photo essays, "Travels with The WPA State Guides," for the Living New Deal.com and cultural essays for France Today and Bonjour Paris. Nesson's photographs have been shown internaIonally in museums and galleries throughout the United States and Europe. She has had solo exhibiIons at the Politecnico University in Torino, Italy, Les Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles, France, Ph21 Gallery in Budapest, Hungary, The University of the West Indiesin Kingston, Jamaica, the Krom Gallery in Rome, the Valid World Hall Gallery in Barcelona, the Prague Photo FesIval, and the Barcelona Photo FesIval. In the United States, Nesson has had solo exhibiIons at the Griffin Museum of Photography, the MIT Museum, The MetaLab at Harvard, the Beacon Gallery and the PanopIcon Gallery in Boston, MassachuseHs, the Pascal Gallery in Rockport, ME, the Midwest Center for Photography in Wichita, KS and Through This Lens Gallery in Durham, NC. AddiIonally, her work has been selected for numerous juried group exhibiIons in the U.S. and Europe.

Nesson's upcoming solo shows this year are scheduled in Rome, Prague, Barcelona, Budapest, Durham, NC, Wichita, KS and Boston. Fern's photobooks, Signet of Eternity and WORD, won the 10th and the 12th Annual Photobooks Awards from the Davis-Orton Gallery. Her work is in the permanent collecIon of the Museum of Modern Art in Budapest and the University of the West Indies.

Prints in the portfolio are digital archival prints in limited edition of 24, 16" X 24" and 24" X 24", $1,800 each.

Richard Schramm

"Military Presence"

This project was inspired by  photographer Lee Friedlander’s 1976 book The American Monument. Working from the premise that nothing is more invisible than a monument, Friedlander set out to rescue from invisibility shrines to soldiers, presidents, common folks, heroes, noble causes, and grand achievements. He presents the majority of the 213 monuments pictured in the volume straightforwardly, but in his best images he puts the subject in humorous or ironic juxtaposition to its surroundings, often pushing it to the periphery of the frame or making us hunt for it by hiding it amidst ambient clutter. Thus Friedlander makes the monuments visible by emphasizing their invisibility. In so doing, he raises questions about such topics as historical memory, the purpose of monuments, the contrast between the ideal and the mundane, the story of a monument’s creation, and changing conceptions of the noble and the heroic.  

Richard Schramm set for himself a similar task, but instead of focusing on the bronze and marble of statues and obelisks, he aimed his camera at the cold steel of defanged military hardware. In our daily comings and goings we rarely notice the armored vehicles, artillery pieces, and war planes that decorate the grounds not only of places where we would expect to find them—National Guard armories and American Legion posts, for example—but also places where their presence is unexpected—parks, campuses, civic spaces, and the like.  Wherever they show up, if we notice them, we might be struck by their incongruity: a giant howitzer in a grove of trees next to a jogging path, its smaller cousin lurking in a picnic area. Such outdoor display, often unaccompanied by interpretative material, invites us to consider the weapons as public art.

Emulating Friedlander’s compositional practices, Richard has produced photographs that call attention to the once-deadly weapons that sit benignly and virtually unnoticed near our homes. He hopes to encourage viewers to ask what they mean. How does the physical, cultural, and political context of their display shape our responses to them? Are they advertisements for the military, historical artifacts, or mere curiosities? Do they celebrate peace or war? Are they symbols of security or threat?    

Richard Schramm has been taking pictures for forty years, but until his retirement he was unable to devote full attention to photography. Now he is able to put his eye to a viewfinder often, and with the help of courses at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies he has framed some interesting shots. Portfolios of his work have appeared online in the The Oxford American’s “Eyes on the South” series and in South x Southeast Photomagazine.  In 2020 his photos were part of a two-artist exhibition at the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle Park, NC. His images have been featured in exhibitions throughout the United States, including the annual Slow Exposures exhibition of Southern photography in 2020, 2021, and 2025 and a recent exhibition at the American Center for Photographers in Wilson, NC. His work has also been displayed at the Glasgow Museum of Photography in Scotland and the Loosen Art Gallery in Rome. One of his images was selected as a winner in the 2023 International Photo Competition sponsored by The Photo Review magazine. His work can be seen at his website Richard Schramm Photography.

Prints in the portfolio are digital archival prints, 12" X 16" and various, 2025, $200 each.

James Davis

The grand landscape has been a favorite subject for artists for centuries. James Davis has felt the lure of portraying the landscape since he first held a camera. In pursuit of instruction on landscape photography, he attended a workshop with Ansel Adams. One of the photographers he had the pleasure of spending time with at that workshop was Ruth Bernard. On an afternoon together, they spent hours looking at the sand and shells on the beach at Point Lobos. She showed James shells as small as the sand in which they lay. There was wonder in things so small that were out of sight to casual observation. To this day his work reflects the grand landscape shown to him by Adams and the appreciation of the “gift of the commonplace” and minuscule shown by Bernard. Whatever the perspective, his mission is that the viewer will feel the same wonder that moved him to compose the image, and as a result, will transcend to a deeper appreciation of the world.  

Prints in the portfolio are Archival Inkjet Prints, 18" X 24", 2012-2023, $400 each.

Meghan Duda

"On Tree Time"

On Tree Time offers a glimpse into the future forests of the Three Rivers Park District, in and around Minneapolis, Minnesota. These rewilded landscapes exemplify the restoration of native woodlands that were largely cleared for agriculture by the early twentieth century. Today, forestry managers at the Three Rivers Forestry Nursery at Crow-Hassan Park are working in concert with local ecology to reestablish these woodland plant communities and prepare them for a future climate.

The Three Rivers Park District has been thinking on tree time for nearly half a century. In 1976, Three Rivers founded the forestry nursery with a bold vision: to grow all the trees needed for reforestation across the district. Centered on the cultivation of genetically diverse native species, this effort reflects a long-term investment in biodiversity and climate resilience. Each tree is nurtured over many years before settling into its final home—a process measured not in seasons, but in decades. These landscapes evolve slowly, operating on tree time.

The photographs in this exhibition also operate on tree time. Each image was created with a large scale, lens-less pinhole camera, with exposures lasting anywhere from 15 minutes to 24 hours. This specialized camera captures light without mediation - patiently and deliberately - mirroring the quiet labor of ecological restoration. This is slow photography. One must sit with the images as one would sit in the forest. The values emerge out of this stillness to reveal the quiet imagery in the darkness.

The dark and romantic images are ripe with expression and mood and reminiscent of the pictorialist aesthetic of the late19th-century. This visual reference to the past is also a vision of a future landscape: obscure and fuzzy, painted with broad diffused light. The same land once wild, once cultivated, now wild again. Photographs and landscapes existing in a suspended moment where past, present, and future reside.

Fine art photographer Meghan Duda creates atmospheric recordings of space and time with a collection of handmade pinhole cameras and camera-less printing technologies. After earning her bachelor’s degree in architecture from Virginia Tech in 2005 she began traveling the country, developing a practice photographing vernacular architecture. In 2007 she moved to Fargo, ND where her photographic focus shifted to experimental landscape photography. In 2012 she earned her Master of Fine Arts at the University of North Dakota and is currently Associate Professor of Art & Design at North Dakota State University.

Prints in the portfolio are Silver Gelatin Pinhole Prints, 20" X 24" framed to 24" X 28", edition of 2 with 1 AP, $1,800 each.

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