Gallery Report

1. Photographer: Matthew Pillsbury, Exhibit: City Stages, Gallery: Aperture Foundation

City Stages is an exhibition with black and white photographs shot with long exposures – anything moving in the frame becomes blurry. Pillsbury captures urban environments from big cities like New York, Paris, London and Las Vegas. And the images are mostly taken from happenings like Occupy Wall Street, Year of the Dragon Carnival and the 9/11 Anniversary.  These photographs offers a great sense of movement and motion, and the style makes the feeling almost ghostlike and emotional. Pillsbury are mainly taking long shots with wide depth of field.

2. Photographer: Wijnandoo Deroo, Exhibit: Rijksmuseum, Gallery: Robert Mann

Rijksmuseum offers photographs shot from the inside of museums. The images are like an invitation to the viewer to come and see whats behind the scenes of exhibitions. The photographs show unfinished environments often shot either with a symmetrical balance or according to the rule of thirds. The photographs are in color, but the colors are subtle almost in pastels. My first impression of this exhibition is that the images makes me feel calm, and a sense of organized chaos due to the symmetry in the photographs.

3. Photographer: Nancy Burson, Exhibit: Composites, Gallery: Clamp Art

Composites is an exhibition with black and white portraits from the 80s and early 90s. Each photograph are made out of many pictures. One portrait could, for example, be a mix of world leaders, races, men and women, or actresses. In a way, Burson was probably one of the first persons to manipulate images. At first glance you would never guess that these pictures was composites, but when you read about them and look closer, it’s really fascinating to see how early manipulation could look like. Burson keeps me curious through her subtleness in her composites, it’s not obvious, and that makes me want to guess what is in each portrait.

4. Photographer: Todd Hido, Exhibit: Excerpts from Silver Meadows, Gallery: Bruce Silverstein

This exhibition offers photographs with diffused light and soft shadows. They are mainly capturing isolated and rural areas, or abandoned houses. The framing of the images are mostly medium to long shots. Most of the photographs are in a grey color, although a few were in color. The overall feeling of these images are loneliness, isolation and misery. These are not places you want to go to, however, looking at them makes you feel calm, and they make you wonder where they were shot.

5. Photographer: Reiner Gerritsen, Adam Magyar and David Molader, Exhibit: Metro, Gallery: Julie Saul

Metro is an exhibition including three different photographers. The overall feeling of all photographs is motion and movement. Three of the photographs were taken from a birds-eye view down on a square or street with people moving in different directions. These images were interesting because of the angle they’re taken. The photographer are not revealing where he took the photograph, and how he took it, that makes me curious. The second group of photographs were composites, repetitions of different angles of the same street from a medium to long shot, with vibrant colors in yellow and orange. You would not know were one shot started and when it stopped, the photographer combined the images so well that he almost fooled me to think that it was only one continuos image. The third group of photographs were capturing people in a crowded New York train in the subway. Looking at these images I got a feeling of seriousness and concentration, maybe even boredom. No one wants to stand in a packed subway train, the photographer probably knows that this is something we all hate, and he knew it would be recognizable to his viewers.