Rosalind Solomon: Selected Works at Fridman Gallery, September 10-17, 2013

Rosalind Solomon, Bananas, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, 1980

Gelatin silver print, printed c. 1980, 20 x 16 inches

Courtesy of Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York

Rosalind Solomon: Selected Works at Fridman Gallery, September 10-17, 2013

opening from 6-10; artist's lecture at 7 pm 

New York Arts Exchange will tour the exhibition on Wednesday, September 11, 1 - 3 pm.
Visit: www.nyarts-exchange.com for details

Solomon is not an ethnographic photographer.  She is a revealer of truths filtered through personal experience and interpretation. Her next exhibition Rosalind Solomon: Selected Works at Fridman Gallery opens on Tuesday, September 10th.  The evening will include a rare opportunity to hear Ms Solomon discuss her work with a slide presentation and a screening of her awarding-winning film A Woman I Once Knew, named the Best Experimental Short at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival in 2010.

Rosalind Solomon, After 9/11, Self with Frozen Turkey, 2002

Gelatin silver print, printed c. 2003, 20 x 16 inches

Courtesy of Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York

Born in Highland Park, Chicago in 1930, she followed the typical conventions of her generation: married well, had two children and perfected the roles that were required for upscale middle-class American women.  Although her husband resented any careerist moves on her part, she took up photography in earnest after a trip to Japan.  At the time, she was the regional director of the Experiment in International Living in Chattanooga, Tennessee, receiving students from abroad since 1961. In 1968 she traveled alone with a few useful phrases written in a book and a camera to communicate with her host family in Tokyo.  This occasion catalyzed her breakthrough. By 1969, she began to juggle her social and family obligations with a serious commitment to honing her skills in order to become a professional photographer. 

Then she finally cut loose in 1984 and established a studio living space right on the border of the emerging experimental art scene in the  East Village. When asked about this decision, Solomon remembers her mentor, American photographer Lisette Model's advice: “Lisette had strong convictions about everything. She gave blunt personal advice. The essence of what she said is: You are an artist. You must be selfish and not give too much time to others.”(Murphy)

An insatiable adventurer, Solomon is not adverse to taking risks that might endanger her life or her career.  She is our witness to the vast diversity of our contemporary cultural communities as she travels through India, Latin America, Israel and the deep South.  Whether photographing individuals or groups, she succeeds in capturing the essence of their humanity - that spark or spirit which connects us all.

Rosalind Solomon, Catalin Valentin's Lamb, Ancash, Peru, 1981

Gelatin silver print, printed c. 1985, 20 x 16 inches

Courtesy of Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York

When asked about her preference for black and white photography, Solomon explains: “My challenge is not format or color, but deepening my perception and range of ideas. I am interested in making expressive pictures.  Black and white pictures work for me as poetry and metaphor in a way that color does not. I have tried color and I have tried digital. Neither gives me the sense of depth that I feel with black and white.” (Murphy)

Her allegiance to black and white print marks Solomon as a Model disciple (along with Diana Arbus, Larry Fink and many others).   And yet, she does not cultivate a signature look.  Instead she expresses her feeling for the subject through manipulating light and composition.  Sometime she works up high contrast and sometimes she diffuses the light, obscuring the imagery in a haunting web of integral parts. In this respect, Solomon’s body of work is highly original and difficult to categorize stylistically.

In 1988 Thomas Sokolowski (then director of the Grey Art Gallery at New York University, currently director of the Andy Warhol Museum) curated her solo exhibition Rosalind Solomon: Portraits in the Time of AIDS.  It took guts on both their parts to present this controversial body of work that spring.  Today the exhibition belongs to a landmark movement that also founded the annual December 1st “Day without Art,” which commemorates those lost to us from the AIDS. (In June-August 2013, Bruce Silverstein Gallery exhibited this historic series as Rosalind Solomon: Portraits in the Time of AIDS, 1988.)

Rosalind Solomon: Selected Works offers an opportunity to study the artist's range and to consider her more recent self-portraits within the context of her earlier photographs.  It's an intimate show, organized to stimulate conversations as, indeed, the works seem to converse among themselves--revealing truths on their own terms.

  

Rosalind Solomon: Selected Works Press Release

Sources:

Michael David Murphy, “Four Questions for Rosalind Solomon,” 2point8, October, 25, 2006.

Stephen Watson, “ Interview with Rosalind Solomon,” May2003.

Beth S. Gersh-Nešić, interview with Rosalind Solomon, May 15, 2010.

Thomas Sokolowski  Rosalind Solomon: Portraits in the Time of AIDS, New York: Grey Art Gallery/NYU, 1988.  Chronology, Beth S. Gersh-Nešić.

Biography and Chronology, Bruce Silverstein Gallery.

Bibliography:

Polish Shadow, Steidl 2006

Americans [1940-2006], Kunsthalle Wien, Gerald Matt, Peter Weiermair.

Chapalingas, 464 pages with 204 photographs by Rosalind Solomon, includes essays by Susanne Lange, Ingrid Sischy and Gabrielle Conrath-Scholl. Co-published by Steidl, Göttingen, Germany and Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln, Germany. 2003 (English, German and French.)

Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, California, 1986, Earthrites, Arthur Ollman

The Grey Gallery and New York University Study Center, New York, 1988, Portraits in the Time of AIDS, Thomas Sokolowski

Museo de Arte de Lima, Peru, 1996, El Peru Y Otros Lugares, Peru and Other Places, Natalia Majluf and Jorge Villacorta

Bilbao Bizkaia Kutxa, Bilbao, Spain, 1993, Desconnections

Etherton Gallery, Tucson, Ariz., Rosalind Solomon, Photographs 1976-1987

Ikona Photo Gallery, Venice, Italy, 1982, Rosalind Solomon, Peru, Ljerka Mifka

The Corcoran Gallery, 1980, Rosalind Solomon: Washington, Jane Livingston

United States Information Service, 1984, Rosalind Solomon: India, Will Stapp

Rosalind Solomon: Portraits in the Time of AIDS, 1988, Bruce Silverstein Gallery, through August 2

Rosalind Solomon, New York, 1987

Courtesy of Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York

 "Because life leads inevitably to death, these pictures are about all of us." 

 --- Rosalind Solomon,"Artist's Statement," Portraits in the Time of AIDS, 1988

From May 17 through July 2, 1988, the exhibition Rosalind Solomon: Portraits in the Time of AIDS filled the rooms of New York University's Grey Art Gallery with its large 32 1/2 by 32 1/2 inch square, black and white photographs, attached to a beige fabric wall with ordinary push pins.  The installation seemed uncharacteristically stark and vulnerable for this tony Greenwich Village venue. Each photograph focused on a few anonymous people (the afflicted, their families, their friends and their lovers).  The entire experience of the images (unprotected by the glass of conventional framing) performed a visceral confrontation as well as an intimate encounter for the viewer.  

Solomon's portraits also became a visual collaborative essay produced by the sitters and artist as they decided on the settings, poses and circumstances. Sometimes at home, sometimes in a hospital, sometimes in the arms of loved ones, Solomon strove to capture the individual as simply that: a person, whose body turned into battlefield inside and out. The emotions run the gamut, from the appearance of isolation to affectionate embracing, from wistful mediation to active defiance. In each, we are forced to consider a vibrant personality tested by pain, trauma and confronting the inevitability of death. 

In 1988, the Grey Art Gallery exhibition intended to break through the vicious stigma, instigated by the media and ignorant hearsay, that had turned people with HIV into social pariah because the public feared contamination. In 2013, hopefully, we are wiser and more compassionate. Today, these portraits memorialize the victims and historicize the moment.

The Grey's director at that time, Thomas Sokolowski, had discovered Solomon's work in the fall of 1987 and asked her to complete the series for a spring opening. The experience for both artist and curator was unusual, but necessary. AIDS (Acquired Immune-Deficiency Syndrome) was on the rise, destroying scores of populations everywhere. The medical community, the arts community and the gay community - among others - felt an enormous urgency to stop this predator and cure those already afflicted with the condition. Rosalind Solomon: Portraits in the Time of AIDS (a title inspired by Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 1985 novel Love in the Time of Cholera, translated into English in 1988) attempted to enjoin this zeal through fostering a personal connection through portraiture.  

Solomon wrote in her statement for the current reprisal of the 1988 AIDS show, now at Bruce Silverstein Gallery: 

In my practice, I am interested in breaking down stereotypes.  Though I am always aware of the social and political context in which I am working, my pictures raise issues.  They do not give answers.  Wherever I am, I connect on a gut level.  I never gloss over the raw realities of life.  I do not tell people what to believe, but cause them to confront their assumptions.  I take them to the places where I have found connection with strangers and their lives.  My convictions and confusions intermingle as I meet individuals living with emotional and physical stress.  I think that viewers reminded of their own problems, find this disturbing.  They face their own mortality.

Photographing people with AIDS and those in their lives was a wrenching experience.  For a year of my life I met individuals facing the affliction.  My life was all about AIDS.  It was total immersion.  When the show opened, for the most part, it was ignored or got negative reviews.  I was accused of exploitation. Most of the people in the photographs exhibited came to the opening of the exhibit and liked it.  They knew that they were being memorialized.   After that year, I worked on other projects and tried to put the pain that I felt behind me.

Rosalind Solomon remains one of America's most important artists whose primary media is photography. This particular series in her oeuvre features individual portraits (as opposed to genre pieces) and, therefore, is unique among her other endeavors.  

In general, Solomon's photographs bear witness to the extraordinary in our times: the strong, the mysterious, the tragic and the beautiful.  Elsewhere  I have written about her photographs of rituals.  

I look forward to hosting an evening with Rosalind Solomon on September 10, 2013 at  287 Spring Gallery and Performance Space, beginning at 7 pm.  An exhibition of selected works will open as well, continuing through September 17th.   Please save the date and join us.

(Other exhibitions on AIDS in the 1980s are on view at the Whitney Museum, through September 1, and the New York Historical Society, through September 15.)

Best regards,

Beth New York

aka Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.

Director

New York Arts Exchange

www.nyarts-exchange.com