When you look at a photography, you are looking backwards,” says Plainsboro resident and fine arts photographer Bill Hoo. “A photograph is like a document of a fraction of a second of time.”
“Infrared Exposed: What the Human Eye Cannot See,” an exhibit featuring Hoo’s black and white photographs with a unique vision of nature, is on view through April at Plainsboro Library. The images were captured using specialty cameras that render infrared and ultraviolet spectrums. A reception will be held Sunday, April 10, 2 to 4 p.m., with an artist’s chat at 3 p.m.
Hoo’s love for the medium of photography developed when he was in high school, and he has since used the camera as his voice. Through his business, Bill Hoo Photography, he offers a full range of photographic specialties, as well as creative design and video production services. More of his photography can be viewed at https://billhoophotography.com
Hoo is the CEO, creative director, and multimedia artist with the Hoo Group, which he established in 1998. He has produced international and national television, radio, and print ads as well as brochures, posters, billboards, and film documentaries.
He was born in Detroit, Michigan, the youngest of three sons. The family moved to Cleveland and Syracuse, then settled in Bedford, Massachusetts. His father was a physical, electrical, and optical engineer with the Raytheon Company. His mother worked in human resources.
Hoo, who says he grew up with a learning disability and struggled in school, “had an epiphany in the tenth grade when I discovered arts — it was like an awakening. Reality is just our own perception. In art everything is a visualization of a thought or feeling — Dali and Picasso twisted the truth.”
Hoo’s first camera, a Nikon, was loaned to him by a friend’s father. “He had a darkroom and taught me how to develop film,” he says. “By then I knew I had dyslexia and the camera became my voice for thousands of words.”
He received a diploma in art and photography from the Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston. “I studied with some great photographers and learned the zone system, a photographic black and white technique created by our forefathers of photography in the 20th century that enables me to pre-visualize and capture how I interpret each shot,” he says. “Then I convert the images in monochromatic (black and white) prints to purposely strip out all subjectivity to color.”
“I am not impressed with color photos; that is what I see all the time,” he says. “The entire exhibit is digital and infrared — the light spectrum nobody can see. When I open the lens I am creating three times the amount of light you normally see.”
Hoo’s wife, Lynne, teaches kindergarten and first grade at a charter school in New Brunswick. The couple have two growndaughters. Jadian graduated from West Windsor-Plainsboro High School (now South), Class of 1996. She is a registered nurse in Kansas. Cassie graduated from High School South, Class of 2002. She graduated from University of the Arts in Philadelphia and, after training as a massage therapist, has opened a new business, To Have or Have Knot, in Philadelphia.
“Now that the kids are through college I’m going back to what I enjoy, and I’m peaking in my life,” Hoo says. He has exhibited at Ellarslie in Trenton, South Brunswick Library, and he was just accepted into the upcoming Phillips Mill juried group show.
“In my photographs, I capture what the human eye cannot see. By filtering out the visible light waves, I am able to create images that bring a naked, mysterious, and unsettling beauty to everything that once felt familiar. Some images can have a ghost like aura, perhaps a spiritual lightness and others a transparency to see below a surface unseen by the naked eye,” Hoo writes in his artist statement. “It is my intent to heighten the focus on the splendors in the world in the hope that people will reassess and alter their lifestyles to reconnect with nature the way that I have.”
— Lynn Miller
Art Exhibit, Plainsboro Public Library, 9 Van Doren Street. Sunday, April 10, 2 to 4 p.m. Opening reception for “Infrared Exposed: What the Human Eye Cannot See,” an exhibit of images captured by Plainsboro resident Bill Hoo using speciality cameras that render infrared and ultraviolet spectrums. Artist’s chat at 3 p.m. On view to April 30. 609-275-2897. www.lmxac.org/plainsboro.
