At age 90, Louis Stettner is one of the last great surviving NYC street photographers. His current retrospective at the Bonni Benrubi Gallery is a major exhibit of his work.
The highlights of the show are definitely the black & white shots taken at the old Penn Station and elsewhere in NYC. Although a large part of the show is given over to Stettner's Paris photos, he never appears as at ease in that milieu as in NYC -- his Paris shots, while technically excellent, often seem to have been taken by an outsider looking in.
After having recently seen the Allen Ginsberg exhibit at Grey/NYU, one question that came to mind while looking at Stettner's work was whether he had been at all influenced by the Beats. Certainly, Stettner's 1954 The Great White Way is reminiscent of the Beat aesthetic and prefigures Ginsberg's 1955 Neal Cassady and his love, right down to Marlon Brando's name on the marquee. Similarly, the mood of Robert Frank's The Americans from 1958 is reflected in Stettner's Penn Station photos Six Lights and Odd Man Out, both of which date from the same year as Frank's opus.
As far as technical data, I was told that some of the prints were vintage and some not, and that none of the prints had been selenium toned for added permanence. The gallery did not have any information regarding the photographer's choice of film and paper.
I note with sadness the passing of Bonni Benrubi herself in December at only age 59. Through the years, the Benrubi Gallery was one of the very, very few in NYC to offer portfolio reviews to completely unknown photographers. Even if there were never any real hope of a show, it still meant a great deal to photographers to know that someone cared enough about discovering new talent to take the time to look at their work.
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