The Art of Sleep and Expectations of Waking Up

Chester Higgins' photo of Chu Yun's installation at the New Museum

I posted about this show earlier today and then discovered Kevin Bubriski’s photo from Uzbekistan below:

The Chester Higgins photo for the New York Times review of The Generational: Younger than Jesus exhibition features a medicated woman sleeping in the center of one of the New Museum’s galleries. Kevin Bubriski’s view of “local residents sleeping outside in Khiva, Uzbekistan” echoes similar sentiments without the drugs. Kevin’s Central Asian portfolio has recently been added to SDN.

Last weekend I went to the wonderful opening of photographs by Stan Sherer and Blake Fitch at the Hallmark Museum of Contemporary Photography. The museum has been around for four or more years now and has consistently presented work from all quarters of the photography spectrum. At the opening I talked with museum director and curator Paul Turnbull. In this age of “bigger than life” art administrators with BTL egos, it is a pleasure to hear Paul’s philosophy of museum directing/curating. He says that it’s not about what he likes in pictures. It’s about waking viewers up to the many possibilities of the still image. His exhibition record speaks for itself. He has shown artists and photographers from the full spectrum of photographic practice. He’s exhibited color innovators like Jay Maisel, legends like Paul Caponigro, the greatest photographer of the New England Landscape, and his son John Paul Caponigro, who is totally entrenched in the digital domain. I mentioned the Colin Finlay tough-on-your-emotions exhibit in an earlier post.

Currently, Hallmark is featuring Stan Sherer, who is a prime example of the strength of documentary and fine art photography in Western Mass. Stan spent a career documenting the world, especially Africa, Russia and Albania. He has, more recently, embarked on an inner visual journey incorporating scientific lantern slides, landscape and his unique personal intelligence. See my earlier post about his color abstractions. The picture below, not in the Hallmark show, illustrates his interweaving of documentary work with fine printmaking.

Stan Sherer, Chess, St. Petersburg, Russia

I’ve known Stan for decades so the real surprise of the show was Blake Fitch’s decade long narrative of her younger sibling and friend growing up in the affluent Northeast. My first walk through of the gallery brought up the image of a more focussed Tina Barney. Then, the intensity of her singular study of two girls over time registered their impact. These girls are like Sally Mann’s daughters only photographed with less sexual tension and a New England-based, rather than Southern, grace.

Blake Fitch - Expectations of Adolescence