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Amy Arbus
Trees
Schoolhouse Gallery
July 1- 20

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Tags: Amy Arbus, Archival Pigment Printing (Inkjet), Exhibitions

Tub Pictures
Amy Arbus
Schoolhouse Gallery
July 20 – August 8

Amy Arbus: Tub #28 from Tub Pictures, Schoolhouse Gallery, 2018
22 x 32 archival pigment print

The significance of this body of work was somewhat lost on us when Amy Arbus presented it as a scanning and printing project. In fact, this isn’t all that unusual here as we are, after all, service providers and are expected to be focused on the technical aspects of producing artwork and less on the conceptual foundations of the work itself. Often last to know, as it were — we then found ourselves touched to have been asked to handle these pieces at all, particularly considering their deep personal relevance, which, is best described in Amy’s  own words:

t wasn’t until my toe hit the water that it dawned on me why I was there. The process itself was so awkward and challenging. I was completely distracted by the logistics of mounting the camera and tripod on the bathroom sink, pre-setting the focus, exposure, and camera angle that I wasn’t thinking about the significance of what I was doing. It was 1992 and I was there revisiting a scene I’d never witnessed. 

I thought about what it must have looked like almost obsessively at first, but then it had been twenty-one years since it happened. When I was seventeen and away at school, my mother, Diane Arbus, took her own life in the bathtub. Her death was such a shock that I don’t remember much about the next ten years. I had taken many baths since she died, but this one with my camera perched above me was significant.

When I developed the one roll of film, I realized how little I knew about how the pictures would look. I used a cable release to trip the shutter and the camera was set to a ten second delay so I could get back in the water each time to make another exposure. Even though the camera never moved, I had no way of predicting how much or how little of me was in the frame.       

These photographs taught me that pictures are never the same as the experience of making them, that they fail if they are merely what you intended, and that mistakes can lead to discoveries. But more importantly, they convinced me that thoughts and feelings register on film (or pixels) which changed the way I worked and the way I look at photographs.

When I saw the photographs I was surprised and embarrassed because they were so unflattering. They weren’t like nudes, they were naked and raw. But I came to realize that they were full of stark contrasts: fitful yet lifeless, violent yet sexual, and maternal yet innocent. They were unlike anything I had ever done.

-Amy Arbus

Amy Arbus: Tub Series
Left to right / top to bottom: Tub #11, Tub #17, Tub #15, Tub #Tub #23
22 x 32 individual archival pigment prints

Amy Arbus: Tub #8 from Tub Pictures, Schoolhouse Gallery, 2018
22 x 32 archival pigment print

 LTI-Lightside has been working with Amy Arbus since 2012. You can see more of her work here

Tags: Amy Arbus, Archival Pigment Printing (Inkjet), Exhibitions, Imaging, Scanning

After Image
Amy Arbus

Exhibition
1stdibs Gallery at the New York Design Center
April 2013

Exhibition
Griffin Museum of Photography
April 9 – June 2, 2013

Book
After Image
Available April, 2013.
Shiffer Publishing

Amy Arbus has has a busy spring! She’s opened two shows of her After Images portrait series and published a 64 page hard cover book of the work. These exhibitions actually count as numbers two and three for this project… you can see our original post detailing After Images by clicking here.

Amy Arbus: Sam, After Arms Crossed, 2012
1st Dibs Gallery, at the New York Design Center
30 x 40 digital c-print

The scene from After Images at the 1stdibs Gallery, NY NY

Amy Arbus: Owen after Peasant, 2012
30 x 40 digital-c print

Tags: Amy Arbus, Digital-C Printing, Exhibitions, Griffin Museum of Photography, Mounting

Ah summer … we hope you’re enjoying yours. We were lucky enough to have helped three of our fabulous clients prep shows for this laziest of seasons. The works are so nice we couldn’t help but post them here (click on the individual images to view a longer selection of each series):

Eyes
Sebastiaan Bremer
Houk Zurich,
June 9 – July 28, 2012

Sebastiaan Bremer stated the summer off with an amazing opportunity presented to him through the Edwynn Houk Gallery. Somehow, he was giving the blessing to rework with his own hand a series of iconic images of artists eyes originally shot by the British master, Bill Brandt. Brandt’s super close up images of Max Ernst, Henry Moore and Alberto Giacometti among others become the jumping-off point for Bremer’s signature approach of applied dots of ink and paint.

As Gregory Volk wrote in The more you look, the more you see (2004)  “Bremer’s technique is novel and utterly hybrid. Using various inks, he draws directly on slightly blurry c-print enlargements of photographs, and often adds splotches and streaks of photographic dye.

So yeah, the “slightly blurry c-print” part is what we contributed to this one …

Sex Cells
Natasha Gornik
Emanuel Fremin Gallery
June 28 – July 28, 2012

Emmanuel Fremin presents Sex Cells, a group show curated by Asli Unal.

 
Natasha Gornik: Sienna

From the press release: In Sex Cells, eight contemporary photographers explore how we direct sex appeal, both consciously and unconsciously, as a means of empowerment and manipulation. From the provocative to the grotesque, the featured artists combine familiar props and subjects in an original manner as they tackle themes of seduction, bondage, religion and bestiality.”

Here we produced four pieces for Natasha and I have to say, they are total knock outs. From the compelling imagery to the slickly conceived framing presentation; this represents a benchmark for Gornik’s work and portends of great things to come from her.

After Images
Amy Arbus
School House Gallery, Provincetown, MA.
June 20 – July 18, 2012

Amy Arbus: After Raven, 2012

We got to work on these tricky portraits by Amy Arbus this summer as well. Sometimes we’ll start work on a project and have no idea what we’re being presented with (conceptually) … and really, that’s not such a stretch ’cause I mean, we are the technicians after all and somewhat removed from the “intellectual” side of the process … it’s actually kind of fun, trying to figure what’s going on in a project beyond the technical perimeters. So as you can imagine, this is one of those projects that had us scratching our heads for a bit …

From the gallery’s press release:  Arbus is no stranger to portraiture, but this latest series is perhaps her most visually arresting to date: After Images is a daring and vivid evocation of classic paintings by Picasso, Modigliani, Schiele, and Ingres to which the photographer brings her own style and originality.

And in her words: In emulating these paintings, the challenge for me has been to use much softer lighting than I have in the past and to figure out how to represent the sloped shoulders, elongated necks and fingers that don’t exist in real life. The more I make these images the more involved I become in how they differ from the originals.

That’s it for now so … go outside and enjoy!

Tags: Amy Arbus, Digital-C Printing, Exhibitions, Natasha Gornik, Sebastiaan Bremer

After Image
Amy Arbus
School House Gallery Provincetown, MA.
June 29 – July 18, 2012

Sometimes we’ll start work on a project and have no idea what we’re being presented with (conceptually) … and really, that’s not such so unusual if you think about it ’cause, I mean, we are just the technicians after all and somewhat removed from the “intellectual” side of the process …but it’s actually kind of fun, trying to figure what’s going on in a project beyond the technical perimeters. So as you can imagine, this is one of those projects that had us scratching our heads for a bit …

Anyway, for some clarity, read on:

From the gallery’s press release:  Arbus is no stranger to portraiture, but this latest series is perhaps her most visually arresting to date: After Images is a daring and vivid evocation of classic paintings by Picasso, Modigliani, Schiele, and Ingres to which the photographer brings her own style and originality.

And in her words: In emulating these paintings, the challenge for me has been to use much softer lighting than I have in the past and to figure out how to represent the sloped shoulders, elongated necks and fingers that don’t exist in real life. The more I make these images the more involved I become in how they differ from the originals.

Amy Arbus: Nina After Jeanne, 2012 from After Image
digital -c print

Amy Arbus: Manuel After Patroclus, 2012 from After Image
digital -c print

Amy Arbus: Nina After Melancholy, 2012 from After Image
digital -c print

Amy Arbus: Qwen After Peasant, 2012 from After Image
digital -c print

Amy Arbus: Nina After Raven, 2012 from After Image
digital -c print

Tags: Amy Arbus, Digital-C Printing, Exhibitions, Mounting