Starlight: Photographer Stan Honda

Join us for the opening reception of Starlight, Friday April 6th, at the SHAPE Gallery, 19 East King Street in Shippensburg.  The exhibit will be open April 6th-27th during regular gallery hours.

Starlight is an exhibition of photographs featuring unique views of the night sky, which New York-based photographer Stan Honda documents when most people are asleep.
Stan says, “Throughout human history we have looked to the sky to navigate, create myths and stories, and dream about distant worlds. We connect to the universe through our view of the stars. In my work I strive to show the night sky in relation to the landscape because the two are joined in our imagination.”
Stan sees the night sky as a vital resource to be protected along with the land, water and air. He believes that preservation of the night sky is vital to many cultures and ultimately the human race. His goal is to show what the night sky really looks like, and to suggest that witnessing the magnificent array of stars across a truly dark sky can inspire both awe and meditation. Through his work he has gained an appreciation of the natural world, and he hopes that these photographs of the spectacular views of the universe beyond Earth allow the public to do so too.

The photographs encompass both the natural landscape and urban cityscapes. A selection comes from his work as a National Park Artist-in-Residence at five national parks: Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest and Wupatki in Arizona, Rocky Mountain in Colorado and Chaco Culture National Historic Park in New Mexico. Celestial alignments such as lunar eclipses and the recent 2017 total solar eclipse are featured as well. And even though he lives in one of the most light-polluted cities in the world, several images show what can be seen in urban settings.

The exhibition also includes images of the space shuttle taken at Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where he covered five years of the manned space program for the French news agency Agence France-Presse.