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Poetter Hall was purchased by the SCAD founders in March 1979. Classes began in September of that year.  
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The Arts

Bliss documents sons’ development in photography exhibition

Bliss photo

His sons serve as the models and inspiration for Steve Bliss’ new solo exhibition, “Boys: Captured and Positioned.”

By Monique Bos
Published: Friday, September 29, 2006

As a photographer and as a parent, Steve Bliss, dean of the School of Communication Arts at the Savannah College of Art and Design, is well qualified to document various phases in the lives of his sons, who were born in 1996 and 1999, respectively.

In his new exhibition, “Boys: Captured and Positioned,” Bliss combines posed images of his sons, Aidan Paul and Griffin Jay, with candid moments caught on film. Using a variety of cameras, film types, formats and resolutions, he has chronicled the boys’ growth “as they progressed from crawling to walking to running to Game Boy,” according to his artist’s statement. “To document that sequence, but to document with an informed, lyric component that may transform the specific to the universal, is the apparent thrust behind these images.”

Bliss deliberately includes posed images, in which he placed his sons within a manufactured narrative setting, with shots of them going about their daily lives. “There is a (planned) schism to the work,” said the artist’s statement. “Bliss has embraced his own indecision by seizing the image opportunity no matter what recording instrument is at hand.”

Bliss, who also has served as a photography professor and as chair of the SCAD photography department, earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in studio art from the University of New Hampshire and a Master of Fine Arts degree in photography from Ohio University. He is a national board member of the Society for Photographic Education, has chaired several national conferences, and has taught at Western Connecticut State University, the State University of New York, Hartwick College, the Maine Photographic Workshops and the Kansas City Art Institute, in addition to SCAD.

“Boys: Captured and Positioned” runs Oct. 4-31 at Pinnacle Gallery, 320 E. Liberty St. The exhibition also will be featured on the SCAD gallery hop Oct. 6, 5-7 p.m.