Snapshots
Andres Serrano (Stux, dates tk) / New Photography 6: Paul D'Amato, Carl Pope, JoAnn Verburg (MoMA, October 18, 1990–January 8, 1991) / Sasha Waters (SVA Student Galleries, November 7–27, 1990) / Todd Weinstein (Union Square Gallery, November 3–December 22, 1990) / Colette Alvarez-Urbajtel (Witkin, dates TK) / Sheila Metzner (James Danziger, dates TK) / Louis Faurer (Photofind, dates TK) / Ray K. Metzker (Laurence Miller, dates TK)Is beauty an outmoded, romantic ideal? The range of photography shows around town makes refuge in a canon impossible. The new work demands approaches to familiar concepts of beauty.
Context is persuasive at the Stux Gallery where Andres Serrano's large portraits give the art veneer to some KKK creeps in one room and "Nomads" [homeless] in two others. His utter realism is enhanced with the formal elements of good lighting and clean backdrops. This allows the poise to reverberate on its way to nobility. The larger than life-size upper body and head shots are not so much statements about these folks' troubled condition, but a document that announces their humanness in the midst of their condition. They say the fringe element are the same as us. Eyes may be more bloodshot and clothes more tattered, but Serrano engages us with the subjects' personalities.
At MoMA, I've almost always been disappointed with photography director John Szarkowki's taste in choosing the current. Too often his is an aesthetic of lingo. The pictures need the baggage of commentary. His latest offering, "New Photography 6," contains a gem in Paul D'Amato and two lesser lights in Carl Pope and JoAnn Verburg
There's a lot going on in D'Amato's color shots. In this work, the effects embellish the subject matter, they don't become the point. The crystal clear focus and squeaky clean colors, enhanced by wet clothes or times of day, add a flair to his street snaps. More important is the artist's non-exploitative interaction with his subjects. Structured with a sense of the dramatic they choose a moment of action that explains an entire sequence, laying the mood over us like a blanket.
Pope's somber close-up portraits blown up onto large sheets of paper stapled to the wall with edges wrinkled and ripped, are supposed to shock us with casualness. The rawness is appealing and the subject matter of homelessness is commendable for these hallowed halls, but that doesn't add up to a startling artistic achievement. Varburg's intense color and large format dazzle but there's little feeling beyond that initial jolt.
Sasha Waters, showing at the School of Visual Arts, pokes fun with a bravura that establishes a Helen Levitt-like joy of curb confessions in the graffiteed barrio. A student's dependence on available details and a fascination with effects rein in a chance at transcendence, but she goes after the real with a raw and risk-taking involvement and an eye open to the marvelous.
At the Union Square Gallery, director and driving force Todd Weinstein celebrates the gallery's 10th anniversary by rewarding himself and us with a show of his own work. Aptly coined "Personal Journalism," the work reverberates with the photographer's caring regard for his subjects—mostly pedestrians frozen in moments that relay their inner feelings to the viewer. The fanfare of street activity bleating around his subjects contrasts with the delicacy emoted from a soft gesture and toothpick-in-teeth curbside pause.
At Witkin, Colette Alvarez-Urbajtel's quiet, fragmentary glimpses announce their silence. This is safe art letting the subjects and landscapes have their say with only the slightest interpretation. Some are pretty, even in their derivative aftertaste.
Sheila Metzner's glamorous portraits at James Danziger have a similar phoniness but here there's a sense of fun and fantasy. There's a romantic prejudice with all those limitations to the ideal and fashionable. The Fresson prints (a secret French technique) enhance the soft-focus magic. Strongest are the portraits but she ranges past to a series of cliffs and a few "western" tableaux. Indulgent and narcissistic, the work is saved by the comforting fantasy—like Zelig—of fitting into social and art-historical precedents.
Stepping back a few decades, a knockout of a show of Louis Faurer at Photofind. Faurer defines the character of an era: New York City at its Times Square dandiest. He demonstrates how dazzle and contemplative stillness can exist simultaneously in a shot. These works transcend the ordinary action they document by composing in a way that accentuates his subjects' destinies. The shiny veneer and clean grillwork of cars create the magical sheen and the double exposure-like collage effect of images reflected onto store windows gives a sense of animation. It's not the gentle nature of these people which stars in the images but the poetry of their encounter with their surroundings. I see the heaven of acceptance in many of these shots.
Arrangement is the subject, not action, in Ray K. Metzker's pieces at Laurence Miller. Personalities mean little in these mainly geometric abstractions made out of a minimalism gone haywire. With images arrayed in stripes or grids, Metzker's Bauhaus background, with its constructivist and design passions, is in full evidence. As far as the human element, he seems more interested in the shadows that streak across a line of faces. His black-and-white images sweep with the hushed mystery of a quiet invasion.
(Cover, January 1991)
Photos: Todd Weinstein