Mark Chester's Twosomes touring exhibit and companion book from Un-Gyve Press represents images culled from his forty years of traveling with a camera, presented in pairings related by subject matter, graphic interest or, as the photographer puts it, “a stretch of the imagination.” — a wide-reaching body-of-work that connects architectural icons with sidewalk signage; Japan with Iowa; 1979 with 2002; celebrity with passerby in a manner that reveals, as novelist Paul Theroux describes, “tremendous humanity and humor....In this juxtaposition of matching moods and paraphernalia, Mark Chester shows us in an ingenious way how the world is related and how we matter to each other.”
Published in 2011 by Un-Gyve Press the 218 page hardcover book Twosomes features 202 plates, 101 image pairs representing forty years of photography by Mark Chester. The 11" x 13" hardcover book with dustjacket retails for $75. ISBN: 9780982919804. Designed by Un-Gyve Limited. Introduction by Julia Courtney, Curator of Art for the Springfield Museums, Springfield, Massachusetts. Twosomes is a 2012 PDN Photo Annual winner in the Book Category.
MARK CHESTER has been a professional photographer since nineteen & seventy two.
He was Director of Photography and staff photographer at ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), in New York City. His photographs are in the permanent collections of Baltimore, Brooklyn, American University Corcoran Legacy Collection Washington DC, Denver, Portland (Maine), and San Francisco museums, among others.
National museum and gallery exhibitions of his work, solo and group, include OK Harris and SoHo Photo (NYC); Camera Obscura (CO); the San Francisco Airport, and other venues. Chester is a Copley Artist of the Copley Society of Art in Boston.
His photographs also accompany his own travel articles as published by the L.A. Times, Boston Globe, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, and Christian Science Monitor among other newspapers and special interest magazines.
His 1987 traveling exhibition and catalogue "Shanghai in Black and White" commemorated San Francisco's Sister City as part of a cultural exchange program displayed at the Fort Lauderdale, FL, Museum of Art; The Sidwell Friends School, Washington, DC; and the San Francisco Main Library.
2023
Springfield Museums, Twosomes, Springfield, MA
2016
The Gauvin Gallery, Twosomes, Mt. Auburn Hospital, Cambridge, MA
2015
The Gauvin Gallery, Twosomes, Mt. Auburn Hospital, Cambridge, MA
The Wellesley Free Library, Twosomes, Wellesley, MA
2014
Harbor Gallery, Twosomes, Boston, MA
Reykjavík Museum of Photography, Twosomes, Reykjavík, Iceland
Parish Center for the Arts, Twosomes, Westford, MA
TJCC Gallery, Twosomes | Chiaroscuros, with Ben Golden, Tucson, AZ
2013
Scandinavian Cultural Center, Twosomes, Newton, MA
Busboys & Poets, Twosomes, Washington, DC
2012
Mashpee Public Library, Twosomes, Mashpee, MA
FJC, Twosomes, Falmouth, MA
Panopticon Gallery, Twosomes, Boston, MA
URI Feinstein Gallery, Twosomes | Urban Extensions, with Ofill Echevarria, Providence, RI
O.K. Harris Gallery, Twosomes, New York, NY
Balance, Twosomes, Baltimore, MD
2011
Alliance Française, Twosomes: Reportage, Washington, D.C.
Highfield Hall, Clark Gallery, Twosomes, Falmouth, MA
The Cape Cod Museum of Art, Twosomes, Dennis, MA
2009
French Library Alliance Française, Reportage, Boston, MA
2007
Isole Gallery, The NO Show, Boston, MA