© Evgenia Arbugaeva. Above: Kolyada, 2011.
“The image is from the little town Tiksi on the Arctic coast of Russia.  Tanya and Pasha participate in Kolyada – a traditional Christmas Eve ritual when children dress up in costumes and walk house to house greeting people, singing and sifting grain that denotes best wishes, and receive candy and small change in return.”  – Evgenia Arbugaeva

Evgenia Arbugaeva is one of 50 photographers in the Critical Mass 2011 exhibition Contents: Love, Anxiety, Happiness & Everything Else at Photo Center NW. This exhibition, juried by Darius Himes, will also travel to Newspace Center for Photography in Portland, and RayKo Photo Center in San Francisco, furthering the mission of all four photography organizations to bring top emerging talent to the public.

© Sarina Finkelstein.

Sarina Finkelstein’s work, The New 49ers, is an investigation of the re-emergence of gold prospectors in California during The Great Recession, while the price of gold is at an all-time high. Photographs from the series are currently on view at Newspace Center for Photography in Portland, OR.  She says, “Gold is the underlying theme and is the visual that ties the photos together, but it’s also a metaphor for something valuable we all seek, something for which we are willing to take a risk and gamble everything. What I’m interested in is a group of people living outside the social norm, united by their all-consuming quest [for gold] and the bravery inherent in the personal sacrifices they make in order to pursue it. People who—in a time of desperation—strive to be frugal and self-reliant. They enjoy the simple satisfaction of being able to pull something tangible like a gold flake or nugget from the ground with their own two hands. Every day is an adventure filled with hope and suspense, as each shovelful could become a potential moment of discovery.”

Above: “The Gold Pocket,” Ironstone Vineyards, Murphys, CA.  On December 26, 1992, excavators in the Crystalline mine of the Sonora Mining Corporation mine near Jamestown, California uncovered a “pocket” of crystalline leaf gold.  This largest piece, the Kautz specimen, weighs in at about 44 pounds of gold.  It is the largest single piece of gold mined in North America since the 1880s, the largest specimen of crystallized gold in existence today and is priceless. (more…)