Imagine if you will that these pictures are six feet across, that the faces in them are life size and staring at you with intense concentration and excitement, longing and maybe love. Most of us, if we are lucky have had one or two people stare at us this way in our lifetime, a lover or a child perhaps. Lenny Kravitz had throngs of people who stared at him like that every day. So Lenny stared back. The result is a book, Flash, distributed by the publishing house teNeues, and a gallery show at Leica Gallery Los Angeles, unfortunately just closed. The book and show let us look deeply into what we look like when we adore. The results are wonderful, crowds of faces filled with rapt attention staring at Lenny and by extension staring at…you. Because that’s the effect, the photographer disappears and we see the results of his work directly. It’s reportage from a very unusual position, the photographer as demi-god. What is palpable in these pictures is the intense desire of the subjects to be noticed, to be seen and to be appreciated. Lenny, Lenny, look at meeee!
I loved looking at these pictures. They are not about “Photography”, not part of the current aesthetic conversation. Instead they are unique, pictures made from a privileged viewpoint and sharing a point of view very few ever see.
Although the show has closed in LA I understand the prints are currently on view at the Leica Gallery in Wetzlar and so perhaps they will be seen elsewhere and if they come to a place where you can experience them first hand you should.
In the meantime there is the book and if you put your nose close to the page maybe you can experience some of the sensations you get looking at the prints on the wall. But if you can see the show in person get on over there…be a rock god for a moment and imagine.
BOOK
Flash
Photographs by Lenny Kravitz
96 pp., Hardcover with jacket
c. 50 duotone photographs
Text in English
34,90 EUR
ISBN:978-3-8327-3247-9
Format:24 x 32 cm
February 2015
