We are pleased to be exhibiting a selection of works by Frederick Sommer from a private collection. This rare collection was built by a local Atlanta collector between 1973 and 1994, he says, “Sommer, in many ways, is a cosmologist, most profound.” The collector had a close relationship with both the artist and the work, writing poetry and essays about the photographs and even travelling to Arizona to spend a weekend with Sommer and his wife. Sommer was born in Italy, grew up in Brazil, and settled in Arizona in 1931 while seeking treatment for Tuberculosis. Sommer was dedicated to the traditional idea of art as a means of creating beauty; paradoxically, he often photographed aspects of the natural world that are typically considered ugly or insignificant. The subjects of Sommer’s photographs are strikingly diverse ranging from disorienting landscapes and macabre aspects of the natural world to surreal arrangements of found objects and pure abstractions. This collection exemplifies Sommer’s many different photographic explorations, and the collector’s keen eye for selecting sharply focused, tonally lush prints that are as strikingly beautiful as they are thought provoking. “Our Fundamental empathy is to construct that which content reveals” – Frederick Sommer