Yeah, you do.
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Coney Island, New York, Bather Standing
© Lisette Model

This past weekend was spent trying to drink in just a portion of what NYC had to offer the public in the first set of exhibitions of the Fall Season. Always meant to come out strong, and perhaps even shock.
It did not disappoint.

As a matter of fact ,this coverage of a galleries will be split in two.

So first up was a visit to the Aperture Gallery in Chelsea on 547 27th St.

Lisette Model and her Successors

“ Photography is the easiest art, which perhaps makes it the hardest ” Lisette Model

As a photographer, she approached her subjects with a straightforward honestly and presented them with generous space in the print. In other words, the characters physical presence commanded almost edge-to-edge real estate in her large, for the time, prints. Grain was her friend, and it was the head-on celebration of these people. Diana Edkins referred to it as “intractable perversity of Model’s artistic approach” Larry Fink called her “.as elegant as she was profane. She could entertain the angels in heaven while luridly looking up their skirts” Model herself described it as “investigating glamour.” “ Exploitation is not my aim, revelation is.”

As an artist and teacher she touched many lives, and perhaps how you see photographs today.

This is a Lisette Model retrospective with a twist. A huge one. Included here are not only some of the finest examples of her work with prints, the quality of which we’ve not seen before, and a perpetual DVD of the master herself discussing her work, but a further vision.

The show includes work from photographers who came under her influence either as students, or cohorts. The brilliance here is from the curators, Larry Fink and Diana Edkins. Truly, this show could have slipped into a fetid mess, but the clear eyes of these people made just the right choices and placements of all of the images. Very rich show.

What they have put together, select pieces from 13 of those she inspired: Diane Arbus, Larry Fink, Peter Hujar, Bruce Weber, Lynn Davis, Bruce Cratsley, Ruth Kaplan, Leon Levinstein, Raymond Jacobs, Eva Rubinstein, Rosalind Simon, Gary Schneider, and Elaine Ellman.

Each one of this group, has been influenced either by direct contact, or her next gen keepers of the flame.

Now we’ve given you links to explore these photographers and their work. From the description of the show, the connection will be made. you can get the separate works from these artists, but if you have the chance to be in NYC from now till November 1, you have to check this one out. The only shame of the show is that there was not a catalogue of this grouping.

BONUS!!!! It is in the Aperture space with a very comfortable area that you can sit and peruse all of the current photo books before you buy. Or just sit and enjoy the books before you check out the rest of what the Chelsea has to offer.

Maybe Elvis Costello didn’t want to go to Chelsea, but you certainly do.

Aperture
547 27th St.
4Th Floor
NYC,NY
10001
212.505.5555
Now through Nov.1st,2007

Cheers!
Damon Webster