The Steven Kasher gallery is presenting a selection from the Bruce Berman collection, and has transformed its severe walls into a more intimate space for the occasion. The display is dense and irregular, with up to three images stacked on top of each other to create an harmonious maze of wood, formats, colors and black and whites.
The images move from a cold architectural atmosphere to social street photography. There is no break in the rhythm of the sequence of images. A cold and abandoned building by Mitch Epstein is followed by a Christian Patterson photograph of a building with the same bricks and a large neon sign hanging over it, followed in turn by a parade of urban typographies by John Humble and Aaron Siskind, among others. One sign reads “poultry” and makes the transition with a humorous photograph by Birney Imes, with rooster pecking at a watermelon on an outdoor scale. This is a way to introduce a living presence, which is followed with a series of urban and rural portraits by Joel Sternfeld, Russell Lee and Margaret Bourke-White.
On the opposite wall of the gallery, the viewer is gradually invited inside the buildings, all the way into the intimate space of the bathroom.
The back room of the gallery is reserved for black-and-white photographs from a more distant past, but the display follows the same visual logic in its presentation of works by Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans and Gene Petersen, among others, which offer a clear and timeless portrait of the United States. The singularity of each photographer’s style guarantees that no image loses its individuality within this linear display.
Laurence Cornet
Everyday America : Photographs from the Berman Collection
Until March 23rd, 2013
Steven Kasher Gallery
521 W. 23rd St.
New York, NY 10011
USA
