Larry Silver American, b. 1934

A member of the Photo League, Larry Silver (b. 1934) began his career by photographing the streets and subways of New York City, and has continued to capture the lifestyles and social landscapes that surround him for more than fifty years. From his images of local weightlifters, body builders, and acrobats populating the beaches of Santa Monica, to his documentation of the isolated relationship between the inhabitants and the physical landscape of the evolving metropolitan suburb of Westport, Connecticut, Silver’s compositions are embedded with a lyricism and balance that define his trademark style. In 2003 Silver broke away from documentary work, and began to create altered landscape images through experimental dark room techniques and paper manipulation. The artist’s new direction would result in series such as From the Medium to the Message, capturing water abstractions that bear witness to the effects of people in their environment, and New Vision, featuring one-of-a-kind compositions that relate most readily to Abstract Expressionist works and experimental imagery from the Bauhaus School.

Born in 1934 in New York, Silver studied photography at the High School of Industrial Art in 1949. The school's proximity to Peerless Camera Store enabled Silver to meet numerous members of the prestigious Photo League, including W. Eugene Smith, Weegee and Lou Bernstein. In Silver's senior year, he won first prize in the Scholastic-Ansco Photography Awards, and was granted a full scholarship to the Art Center School in Los Angeles. He has had three solo exhibitions with Bruce Silverstein in 2002, 2007 and 2011.