Rolston’s exhibition references both the ‘pictorialist’ movement adhered to by Laguna photographers of the 1930s, such as William Mortensen and George Hurrell (and later, the works of Laguna-based photographer Paul Outerbridge Jr.), and the opposing aesthetics of the Carmel group, which featured the so-called ‘purist’ photographers of f/64, such as Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, and Imogen Cunningham. Rolston’s series Art People, a contemporary work, is situated between and informed by these two opposing aesthetics.

Paul Martineau is Curator of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Center, and is preparing the forthcoming exhibition and accompanying catalogue Imogen Cunningham: A Retrospective, opening at the Seattle Art Museum in November 2021, traveling to the Getty Center in March 2022.

Lindsay Preston Zappas is an L.A.-based artist, writer, and founder and editor-in-chief of Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles (Carla), a quarterly L.A.-based critical art publication. Preston Zappas is an arts correspondent for KCRW, where she contributes regular on-air segments and produces a weekly newsletter called Art Insider.

Matthew Russell Rolston is an American artist, photographer, and director known for his signature lighting techniques and detailed approach to art direction and design. He has been repeatedly identified throughout his career with the revival and modern expression of Hollywood glamour.

Born in Los Angeles, Rolston studied drawing and painting in his hometown at the Chouinard Art Institute and Otis College of Art & Design, as well as in the Bay Area at the San Francisco Art Institute. He also studied illustration, photography, imaging, and film at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, where in 2006, he received an Honorary Doctorate.

While still a student at ArtCenter, Rolston was “discovered” by Andy Warhol, for Warhol’s celebrity focused Interview magazine, where he began a successful career in photography.

Rolston’s photographs have been exhibited at museums and institutions. Selected group shows include Beauty CULTure (with Lauren Greenfield, Herb Ritts, Andres Serrano, and Carrie Mae Weems, 2011), The Annenberg Space for Photography, Los Angeles, California; The Warhol Look: Glamour, Style, Fashion (curated by Mark Francis and Margery King), The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1997); and Fashion and Surrealism, FIT Gallery, New York, 1987 (traveled to the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK, 1988).

Rolston’s photographs are in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the National Portrait Gallery (Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture at The Smithsonian, Washington D.C.).