The 3rd Rail, a site-specific installation by photo giant Clay Patrick McBride, will open at Foley Gallery this week; part of the gallery’s ongoing storefront window curatorial series. McBride sculpts and pastes his black and white 35mm photographs of people riding the NYC subway to replicate a sense of anxiety and anonymity. The work, exhibited inside the long glass corridor windows on either side of the Gallery entranceway, is meant to convey the subway rider’s dark and chaotic claustrophobia experience.
McBride’s bold portraits of top athletes and musicians have appeared in countless magazines, among them Rolling Stone and Sports Illustrated. His commercial work includes dozens of album covers for Sony and Atlantic Records, as well as print campaigns for Pontiac, Boost Mobile and Nike; and he expanded into moving pictures with a number of short film projects. But in 2013, McBride underwent a sea change, going back to the School of Visual Arts – where he had also served as an instructor for almost 10 years – into the in-depth Masters in Digital Photography program. He is currently a professor at the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology.
