NEW YORK, NY.- The standing, megalithic stones that populate our Earth have attracted people from the Stone Age to the present. While we do not know who constructed the stones or why, many believe they played an integral role in the religious and spiritual life of early humans. People are aware of Stonehenge, perhaps the world's most famous example of a prehistoric monument, yet thousands of ritual stones pre-date Stonehenge by centuries.

In 2003, fine art photographer Barbara Yoshida pitched a tent next to a circle of tall standing stones called the Ring of Brodgar in the Orkney Islands in Scotland. Using a 4 x 5 film camera, she photographed the stones from evening to dawn, bathed in moonlight. This experience inspired her to embark on a project to photograph lesser-known stones that were built before Stonehenge. Over the next ten years, Yoshida traveled to fifteen countries and three continents to photograph ritual stones, many never documented on film until now.

Her exquisite images of the stones are being shown in a solo exhibition entitled: "Megaliths by Moonlight" at Umbrella Arts (317 East 19th Street, 2nd floor, New York, NY 10003) from April 2 to April 25, 2015. The exhibition is accompanied by a book entitled Moon Viewing: Megaliths by Moonlight (Marquand Books), which includes an introduction by Yoshida, a foreword by photographer Linda Connor and an essay by art critic Lucy Lippard. An artist talk and book signing is set for Saturday, April 11 at 4pm.

"Megaliths by Moonlight" is the first photographic series to reveal the broad geographical distribution of standing stones from Northern Europe to the Mediterranean, and as far south as West Africa. Yoshida traveled thousands of miles, often not knowing until she arrived whether the stones she was seeking were accessible, or had been destroyed or removed.

Lucy Lippard writes, "Yoshida's esthetic choice of nocturnal views eschews the dramatic cloud forms that have become a staple of conventional landscape photography, making it clear that what she is after is not merely the image as such, but its secrets."

Yoshida uses night photography to emphasize the relationship of standing, megalithic stones to stars, planets and the Moon. The "star trails" in her images illustrate that many of these stones were purposely aligned for astronomical observations. Photographing under a full moon, Yoshida reveals a new way to look at standing stones. She writes "The quality and character of moonlight is different than daylight -- intriguing, mysterious, and loaded with historical and artistic significance..."

Barbara Yoshida is an American visual artist. She was born in Portland, Oregon, and now lives in New York City. She started using a camera after more than twenty years as a painter, six years making sculpture, and several years making prints using a variety of techniques. She is drawn to places that are spiritual, and has traveled the world with her large-format camera to capture natural forms in spiritual locations.

Yoshida's Megaliths by Moonlight exhibition follows on the heels of another significant exhibition of Yoshida's work - the acclaimed 100 Portraits: Women Artists currently on view at the Salena Art Gallery at LIU Brooklyn through April 25, 2015. The show presents a fascinating photographic survey of women artists through portraits that reveal a key

aspect of each artist's identity. Her diverse subjects, who range from art world luminaries to artists starting their careers, work in a variety of styles with no distinction between fine art and craft. Collectively, they can be seen as a community of artists that fearlessly pushes forward the boundaries of art making. Yoshida began her Women Artists' Portrait series in the 1990s at a time when women were becoming visible in numbers in the art world, yet continued to be unseen by the general public. Her 100 Portraits exhibition debuted at the National Museum in Poland in 2010.

Yoshida was selected by Joyce Tenneson for "The View Project" at Naples Museum of Art in Florida. Her photogravures were shown at Atelier Lacourière Frélaut in Paris and seven of her ritual stones prints were featured at Southeast Museum of Photography in Florida. Yoshida is represented in various collections including Museet for Fotokunst, Denmark; Southeast Museum of Photography; Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum; The Huntington Gardens Art Collection; Polaroid Corporation; and Light Work. She received her M.A. at Hunter College, and her B.A. at University of Washington. She lives in New York City.