Petah Coyne, Untitled #735, 1992
"The 'Monk' pictures are some of the most overtly figurative photographs Coyne has made. And still, it's not the figures but their movement--and Coyne's as she followed alongside--that animates and transforms their character. In these processional images, motion and pace are key. So is abstraction, which isn't surprising considering Coyne's sculpture. Motion signifies change, transition, a world in flux. The camera taps this flux and registers its momentum. The real challenge is to remain in the subject, to move with it, to be of its pulse. To lose the pulse is to lose the image, to lose the poetry and return to the documentary."
-Doug Dreishpoon
From his introduction Serene and Unsettling Motion: Petah Coyne's Photographs, published in the 1996 Laurence Miller Gallery exhibition catalog: Petah Coyne PHOTOGRAPHS.
