Park Avenue Garage, New York City, 1950
Gelatin silver print, printed later
Image size: 8½ × 12⅜ inches
Sheet size: 11 × 14 inches
Signed, titled, and dated 1981 in ink on recto
Inscribed as a gift from Mikhail Baryshnikov on overmat verso: "To Howard, Love Misha, Shura, and Billiy"
September 23, 2024
There was hardly a subject better suited for mid-century modernist photography than the automobiles of the era. The aerodynamic shapes and chrome accents embraced by industrial designers were a gift to a photographer like Louis Faurer, who was pursuing a sleek and stylized vision of night in the city. In this photograph, Faurer uses the light reflecting on a row of parked cars to create a seductively glinting image.
Faurer moved to New York City in 1947, and in the following years he photographed nearly every day, creating a body of street photography that is celebrated as his best work. Faurer was a technically innovative photographer and printer, often experimenting in the darkroom that he shared at the time with Robert Frank. In this print he pushes the shadows towards the deep blacks offered by gelatin silver printing. The resulting image is a fascinating marriage of his moody urban photography with the elegant lines of the fashion photography he produced for magazines like Vogue which sustained him.
This print is inscribed by Mikhail Baryshnikov, the extraordinarily gifted 20th Century ballet dancer, who defected from the Soviet Union in order to pursue the artistic freedom offered by modern dance in New York City. It is easy to imagine that Baryshnikov found a great deal to admire in Faurer's photograph, where the reflections are rendered as strong but sensual lines that dance lyrically in space.
