Photography is a collection of 140 of Kenneth Van Sickle‘s favorite black and white photographs taken in various places around the world from 1952 to the present. Van Sickle’s evanescent photographs fulfill the time-traveling brief of all great photography, granting onlookers intimate, keyhole access to Paris in the fifties, the New York Beat scene, and Andy Warhol’s Factory. You can almost smell the cigarette smoke in that Greenwich Village club. You can feel the sunlight on that sleeping cat’s back. Echoing the light of Irving Penn pictures and the compositions of images of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Van Sickle’s street photographs make their first appearance in this exhaustive monograph nearly seventy years after their production.
Kenneth Van Sickle was born in 1932 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He learned the basics of drawing, painting and composition from his grandfather and later studied under George Grosz at the Art Students League and cubist painter André Lhote in Paris. Van Sickle came early to photography, assisted Robert Frank, and is known for his atmospheric images of New York and Paris. His travels to France heavily influenced his work, manifesting a pastoral and salon style appeal. Although decades have passed since Van sickle’s photography work has been exhibited, in the past his works have been shown in prestigious museums and galleries including Limelight Gallery, the very first photography exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Witkin Gallery, Soho Photo Gallery, and Galerie Thierry Marlat in a six artists show that included Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, and Dolores Marat.
Kenneth Van Sickle: Photography
Published by Damiani
Introduction by Jim Wintner
Clothbound, 11 1/2 x 11 1/2 in. / 160 pgs / 140 bw
ISBN 9788862086271 / $50 US
Distributed by ARTBOOK | D.A.P. | www.artbook.com
