Photographer: Robert Polidori
Exhibit: Fra Angelico/Opus Operantis
Gallery Paul Kasmin, 297 Tenth Avenue
The subject matter on these photos are paintings and hallways, architecture, and buildings in a church or some other religious place. The paintings include very specific religious imagery. You can tell they’re from the same era almost. The angle of the photos and the way they’re shot the photo itself seems like part of the painting. It actually took me a while to notice that it was a photograph and not a painting of a photograph. Maybe the photographer is trying to convey that God or religion is real and is present in all things. They all have religious imagery that look to be the crux of all the photos.
Photographer: Markus Brunetti
Exhibit: Yossi Milo Gallery
245 10th Ave, New York, NY 10001
Large buildings, monasteries, cathedrals, churches, and other structures taken from the front and outside are the subject matter for these pictures. The ludicrous amount of work this photographer did for these photos is still unbelievable to me. Markus Brunetti took thousands of photos from thousands of different angles of the front of the mentioned buildings to give them an overwhelming feeling of symmetry. They were so perfectly symmetrical and seamless it’s almost unnatural which isn’t a word you usually associate with symmetry. I think the photographer is try to say that looking at something from multiple perspectives can let you see things others can’t.
Photographer: Stan Douglas
Exhibit: Scenes from the Blackout
Gallery: David Zwirner, 525 W. 19th St
The photographer is this gallery took photos of a fake black out in New York City that he set up. This is probably my favorite gallery out of the entire lot. Even though the photos are staged there is so much genuineness and life in all of these photos. He had to take most of these photos with varying and inconsistent lighting I assume given that it was a black out. Some of the photos were shot from multiple angles like birds eye angles and leveled angles. Each one of these pictures happened in the same night, canonically, but tell different, unique and interesting stories. Each photo will have you asking new questions and coming up with your own theories as to what’s taking place.
the Robert Polidori pictures may seem to be about religion but in the larger context of his work, which is about architecture, he is really just interested in amazing buildings. And yes, these do look like paintings. the way they are printed the surfaces are velvety-not a word I would apply normally to photography.
I am with you about Markus Brunetti’s work. The amount of labor there is in sticking together 3,000 photos is amazing and I agree-Is it worth it?
Interesting to note, the staged photography may be more “genuine” than cnadid photography. Just something to think about.