As a child, William Christenberry, who died last November, would spend his summer holidays in Hale County, Alabama, a few miles outside his hometown of Tuscaloosa. Even after he had settled on the East Coast of the United States, he kept returning throughout his life to the region that was his main source of inspiration and a recurrent subject of his photographs. Christenberry kept photographing the same places in different seasons and sometimes years apart. The Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York is presenting an exhibition (which, in view of the artist’s recent death, has become an homage) entitled Summer / Winter, showcasing some of these photographs in the form of evocative diptychs.
Christenberry’s oeuvre is punctuated by images that return again and again; we encounter the same places as they change from season to season, distinguished by slightly different angles of view. These places gradually crumble and are slowly overtaken by vegetation, although some houses and sheds seem to resist the wear of time. With each diptych, the viewer is tempted to play the game of spot the difference: over here, the roof has been redone; over there, the siding has been fixed.
It would be reductive to limit William Christenberry’s interest to the passage of time. The title of the exhibition, Summer / Winter, offers a specific hint; Winter alone might have been enough. It seems that, unlike the summer photos, those taken in winter are more powerful, as if they were what really mattered in the exhibition. Winter is, in Christenberry’s work, a force of renunciation and denudation which shows things the way they are, without the messy summertime exuberance. A leafless tree in winter exposes the curves of its branches, and everything that was out of sight comes into view as if by magic: an abandoned house, a sliver of the sky. William Christenberry shows us the very essence of the two seasons: summer hides, winter reveals. The beauty of the exhibition lies in the simplicity of its premise and its presentation. It’s not too chatty, not too showy, and the colors are gently faded.
Hugo Fortin
Hugo Fortin is a New York based writer specializing in photography.
William Christenberry: Summer / Winter
From November 3, 2016 through February 4, 2017
Pace/MacGill Gallery
32 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022
