Dr. Allen Ruttenberg/Courtesy photo

MESA PUBLIC LIBRARY GALLERY NEWS

Dr. Allen Ruttenberg is exhibiting his photography in a show titled “Landscapes of the American Southwest and Photomicrographic Panoramas” at the Upstairs Gallery in Mesa Public Library from Jan. 4 – 27. An artist’s reception will be held on Saturday, Jan. 11 from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. The public is invited.  

Dr. Ruttenberg is a fine art photographer who specializes in omni-directional panoramas, a method for taking wide-angle images with telephoto lenses. The subject matter includes landscape panoramas of the four-corners states (Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah) as well as panoramic images using a light microscope. The light microscopy images include thin layers of chemical crystals laid down on microscope slides and photographed with polarized light yielding, highly abstract images. Dr. Ruttenberg makes these crystalline slides from a wide variety of chemicals that have never been prepared this way before. 

Many photographic prints in the show are very large (up to 40” x 60”). Some are printed on panels that when combined are the size of a wall mural as in “Sandia in Snow”, 4 panels each of 30” x 40” totaling a combined size of nearly 120” x 40”. 

Dr. Ruttenberg has strong ties to Los Alamos. He served as Emergency Room physician in the Los Alamos Medical Center from 1991-2006. He recalls that he and the Fire Chief were the last ones to leave Los Alamos during the evacuation caused by the Cerro Grande Fire of May 2000.

The gallery is open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday-Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Fridays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays, and 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sundays. The Mesa Public Library is located at 2400 Central Ave., Los Alamos.

‘The Cienega’ mounted on gator-board. Photo by Allen Ruttenberg, MD