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 From
November 24 through January 9 Laurence Miller Gallery celebrates
Ray K. Metzker:
AutoMagic. This exhibition features over fifty
black-and-white photographs taken by this 78-year old master
photographer over the past fifty years in which the automobile plays a
pivotal role in the contest between light and shadow.
Forty of the photographs have never been
exhibited before.
From his earliest street
pictures taken under the El in Chicago’s
Loop in the mid-Fifties, to his most recent highly abstract views of
reflections on Philadelphia
car windows, Ray K. Metzker brings an
exuberance of vision rarely found among today’s photographers. In
total control of his camera and craft, Metzker transforms the mundane
in daily urban life into intense images that sizzle, and delight the
eye.
In the darkest recesses of a
parking garage, we discover a single shimmering tail fin of a late
50's Cadillac.
In a scene more Orson Wells than Woody
Allen, we witness a menacing shadow figure approaching a parked car,
intent unknown. In a blizzard, we join the photographer and a single
figure as they look at one another wondering why each other is
standing there in the cascading snow.
The show also reveals a more tender side of Metzker,
as we peer into car windows to see folks uninhibited within their
mobile shelters, including a sleeping man with a medallion, head
resting on the door; a man reading at the wheel of his damaged white
coupe; and a man at the end of long day, hand upon his head.
Metzker’s work of the last few
years, fondly nicknamed
Autowackies,
are a brilliant extension of his earlier forays into abstraction, and
are only made possible by the contours of
our newest cars and SUV’s, which wildly
warp the architecture and cloud formations reflected on their glossy
surfaces.
The exhibition AutoMagic will be accompanied by a
new limited edition (500 copies) book of the same title. More
information
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Philadelphia, 1963 (63 DO-41)
8 x 10" vintage silver print
Edition 20
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Philadelphia, 1964 (64 CT-17)
10 x 8" vintage silver print, pr. 1973
Edition 25
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Philadelphia, 2004 (04 AO-12)
20 x 16" silver print
Edition 10 |
Philadelphia, 2009
(09 AO-37)
20 x 16" silver
print
Edition 10
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Philadelphia,
2009 (09 Q-11)
16 x 20"
silver print
Edition 10
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Philadelphia, 2009 (09 AK-18)
16 x 20" silver print
Edition 10 |
Philadelphia, 2009 (09 AK-29)
16 x 20" silver print
Edition 10
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Philadelphia, 2009 (09 AK-25)
16 x 20" silver print
Edition 10
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Philadelphia, 2009 (09 BD-19)
20 x 16" silver print
Edition 10
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Philadelphia, 2009 (09 AS-1)
20 x 16" silver print
Edition 10
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Philadelphia, 2008 (08 R-36)
16 x 20" silver print
Edition 10
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Philadelphia, 2009 (09 AZ-15)
16 x 20" silver print
Edition 10
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Philadelphia, 2009 (09 J-8)
20 x 16" silver print
Edition 10
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Philadelphia, 2009 (09 AA-32)
20 x 16" silver print
Edition 10
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New York City, 1966 (66 IS-18/19)
11 x 14" silver print, pr. 1980s
Edition 20
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Philadelphia, 1963 (63 GL-2)
8 x 10" vintage silver print
Edition 5
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Philadelphia, 1964
8 x 10" vintage silver print
Edition 5 |
Philadelphia, 1964 (64 GP-28)
8 x 10" vintage silver print
Edition 5
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Philadelphia, 1964 (64 CL-12)
8 x 10" vintage silver print
Edition 5
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Philadelphia,
1963 (63 GS-25)
8 x 10" vintage silver print
Edition 5
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Philadelphia, 1966
8 x 10" vintage silver print
Edition 5
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Philadelphia,
1964 (64 IO-11)
8 x 10" vintage silver print
Edition 5
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Philadelphia,
1964 (64 GR-40)
8 x 10" vintage silver print
Edition 5
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Chicago, 1959 (59 L-7)
11 x 14" silver print, pr. 1984
Edition 5
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Composites: Topsy Turvy, 1965-02
Four vintage silver prints, mounted 2002
Unique, Framed 18 x 24"
Signed and dated on mount recto
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