One of our favorite urban explorers, Michael Benari has a new show with several kindred spirits at the Robert Anderson Gallery in New York.
Michael is excellent at defining city street scenes using shadow and light that results in varied subtle abstractions infused with cool emotion.
June 7 – August 4
For more information: Robert Anderson
Photograph by John Myers
Roll through the NYT slide show and see seminal photography from 40 years ago, previewing the work of the next 30 years in fine art photography.
He was influenced by the photography he found in books at the local library — John Szarkowski’s “Photographer’s Eye,” for example — and the work of photographers like August Sander and Diane Arbus. “I really did object to the world of, particularly, Ansel Adams and that kind of American photography, which is highly technical — it’s almost like creation in the darkroom.” A 1972 retrospective of Arbus’s work had a particularly strong impact. “She talked about technique and she used the phrase ‘my technique is adequate,’” he said. “All of that kind of magic and darkroom messing around just kind of disappears, and you’re actually left with the real world.”
For Myers, the real world was Stourbridge, the “normal small English town” that has been his home for nearly 40 years, and where most of his pictures were taken. His subjects, shot using a 4X5 Gandolfi camera, were people he knew and their children, as well as the houses and roads around town. “There’s nothing particularly remarkable about where I actually ended up working and living and eventually marrying and settling down,” he said. “This is the world that the great majority of people live in.”
For more information: NY Times
Loomis Chaffee School, Windsor, CT
One of our favorites, Andrea Modica is back with a series of “friends” portraits in platinum.
The interaction between the friends, the physical and fashion similarities/contrasts, and the way the students reacted to Modica, provided an opportunity to look at friendship and sense of self among adolescents today, as well as how they differ between countries.
Capitalizing on the slow, interactive nature of 8×10 portraiture, Modica was able to penetrate some of the defensive masks and behaviors of the students to show fragments of who they are as friends and individuals. Beyond the obvious surface information (physical opposites drawn together; mirrored pairs who have found each other), Modica’s images let us see things like the bravado which has slipped for one boy, yet remains intact for his friend, or the defensive, protective pose one girl takes on behalf of the other. Notably, Modica is able to reveal elements of the personal, which elevate the pictures well beyond social observation. The subjects engage us as individuals, and through that connection we are briefly drawn into the complexity, anxiety and excitement of adolescent life.
Now through July 21, 2012
For more information: Gallery 339
BWGallerist: Black and White Fine Art Photography
