Hello folks!
Today I saw the exhibit, as did many others on this pleasant Sunday. This meant moving carefully around other folks, and waiting to get close enough to see the images. Slow going.
The scope of the show is more than I can assimilate in even several days. Over 250 prints! And I could stay only a couple of hours.... I loved the extent of the show! I caught his sense of composition, of his abstractions, and of his humanity that I had never experienced prior today.
I was very disappointed in the low light levels. Even after 20 minutes with these 69-year-old eyes, the white shirts were still too dark. Shadows were empty. The curators save ("preserve/conserve") the 'materials,' but with lights so low that the prints do not work as well as they can. The low light levels are a disservice to the artist and his art.
In quite a few instances the prints in the Aperture Masters of Photography ($18) and the Exhibition Catalog ($55) seemed better than the prints in the Exhibition. Part of this appreciation was due, I bet, to the much higher light levels in the gift shop. Also, for me, part of the effect was the cooler reproductions of some of his earlier work in palladium.
This show closes January 4. This is the only showing in the continent--actually, the hemisphere. In spite of my silent argument about light with the curators, I enjoyed the show. I thought the Aperture book (pictures, fewer words) was a better buy than the Catalog. My bias is that I think the Catalog should be more pictures and less commentary.
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