"Abbe Creek Clouds" by Robert Campagna. (Robert Campagna)

Photographer Robert Campagna working in his dark room. (Robert Campagna)

"Bear Lake Reeds" by Robert Campagna. (Robert Campagna)

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Long-time Mount Vernon photographer Robert Campagna will be the featured artist in the Abbe Creek Gallery with his exhibit, “Thin Places,” from Oct. 1 to Nov. 15, 2025.

The public is invited to an artist reception and talk at 6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 9.

Campagna’s 25-image exhibit is based on the Celtic tradition that “thin places” are spots where the separation between the physical world and the spiritual world seems tenuous. They are places where the veil between Heaven and Earth, between the holy and the everyday, are so thin that when we are near them, we intuitively sense the timeless, boundless spiritual world.

Exhibit images stem from Campagna’s travel throughout the United States and Scotland, including New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska and Iowa.

“As a photographer, I engage in more than the mechanics of shooting an image. Rather, I incorporate an inner sense that my photo transcends my physical reality and holds some deeper connection to a spiritual world,” Campagna said. “Sometimes I just know a photograph when I see it, and the result is beyond simple explanation. My photos in this exhibit try to interpret that sense of feeling and place.”

Campagna began purposefully photographing in 1976. He has since amassed more than a million negatives, which include photojournalism assignments and fine art pursuits. Coupled with that, he has engaged in a 45-year career as a teaching photographer, a time in which he created over 600 workshops and reached approximately 13,000 students in eight states, Nicaragua and Scotland.

“When I began, I solely used film and printed in a darkroom. While occasional darkroom production still happens, I also have morphed into using digital imagery, creating books and other printed materials,” Campagna said. “It’s all part of the same inner creativity.”

He presently is co-owner of the Abbe Creek Gallery, a fine art business that opened in September 2024 at 105 1st St. W, Mount Vernon.

During 2007-2020, Campagna left Mount Vernon to live in Colorado before returning to Iowa. There, he was a founding member of the Artworks Center for Contemporary Art in Loveland, Colorado, a collective of 30 diverse artists.

“My experience within Artworks strongly fashioned my capability to create a gallery in Mount Vernon,” he said.

Since 1983, Campagna has often been sponsored by the Iowa Arts Council or Think360 Arts in Colorado.

“Photography both documents and interprets my life experience. I seek to know the moment of serendipity. Black and white photography brings forth form, texture, shadow, reflection and feeling. It is always magic to see images unfold in the darkroom. It touches immortality. It is the dance of my mind’s eye,” Campagna said.