ROCKPORT — Three photographers are holding a joint two-week exhibition at the former CMCA building, 162 Russell Ave., in Rockport.

Works of Paul Caponigro, Dirk McDonnell, Ni Rong will be on display December 22 through January 5, 2019, 12 to 5 p.m., each day except Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.

Paul Caponigro studied with Minor White and has been awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships and three grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. His best known photographs are Running White Deer and Galaxy Apple, according to a news release. 

His subject matter includes landscape and still life, taking an interest in natural forms. Best known for these landscapes and for the mystical and spiritual qualities of his work, he is often regarded as one of America's foremost landscape photographers, the release said. 

Caponigro's first one-man exhibition took place at the George Eastman House in 1958.

Caponigro's work is included in the collections of the Guggenheim, Whitney, Norton Simon Museum, New Mexico Museum of Art and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. As he has said, "Photography, like music, must be born in the unmanifest world of spirit."

Dirk McDonnell has lived in Camden for 30 years. His work, which began not long after arriving, was helped by observing the work being done at the former Maine Photographic Workshops, and, closer to home, by his father-in-law, who, having retired from photography, gave McDonnell some very fine cameras (starting with a Mamiya 645 and ending with a 4x5), all of which steadily improved his feeling about what could - and eventually would  - be done. 

Visits to Paul Caponigro’s darkroom, and watching him work, provided McDonnell with the sort of new depths that can, at times, keep one afloat. Again, to quote Caponigro, ”…the unmanifest world of spirit” is what we have to move us forward.

Ni Rong is a Rockport-based photographer, a native of Beijing, China. She came to this country in 1985 to pursue her Master’s and Doctoral’s degrees in science, which she completed in 1994.

Rong received her first camera at the age of 13, and her commitment for photography intensified when she moved to Maine in 2005. Taking pictures has become her focus in life and art.

Rong's work was paired with McDonnell’s work at the CMCA Pairing show from the Bruce Brown Collection in 2015, although the two of them never met in person until recently.

Rong has been inspired by both Caponigro’s and McDonnell’s work, by their soulful and poetic approach to photography. Their works moved her heart, and she hopes for the same in her own work.