PARIS PHOTO 2011

For Paris Photo 2011, Bruce Silverstein Gallery proposes an exhibition exploring the notion of form as subject.  We will display works by André Kertész, Edward Weston, Frederick Sommer, Aaron Siskind, Alfred Stieglitz and Barbara Morgan, which examine the artists’ interest in formalism and its application via the photographic medium. 

The birth of modernism in the early 20^th century resulted in a burgeoning interest in the photographic art form.  A number of this medium’s greatest images were produced during this period when a photographic work was first recognized and presented as a realization and experience of form or forms in space on a two dimensional surface rather than as an indexical reality documenting a particular moment in time, making the subject no longer of primary importance. This enabled the photographer to become an image-maker who was free to deal with higher, universal, and abstract themes. This was a breakthrough moment and realization for artists whose primary form of self-expression was the art of photography.

This exhibition will include Kertész’s masterpiece Fork, 1928, a selection of Stieglitz’s Equivalents, 1924-35, Dunes, Oceano, 1934 by Edward Weston, From The Chrysler Building, c.1934 by Barbara Morgan, Chilmark I, 1940 by Aaron Siskind and Valise d'Adam, 1949 by Frederick Sommer.

This theme will be extended by our inclusion of contemporary art works that are based in abstraction and reveal form and shape relationships to be the primary subject.  We will include works by Shinichi Maruyama, Randy West and Zoe Strauss.