photography

The show features more than 60 photographs including gelatin silver prints plus an archival trove of personal letters, telegrams, printed magazines, and assorted ephemera documenting the artist’s career. The photographs in this exhibition span more than 50 years, from Gruber’s groundbreaking reportage of the Soviet Arctic in the 1930s and iconic images of Jewish refugees from the ship Exodus 1947, to her later photographs of Ethiopian Jews in the midst of civil war in the 1980s.

It’s easy to see Goldin as the heir apparent to Diane Arbus.  Both precocious, both raised by Jewish parents preoccupied with their own successes or obsessions, as young women they were, more often than not, left to their own devices.  Free to seek outlets to a world beyond the narrow scope of their upbringing, they chose a descent into a netherworld.  Whether through an insatiable curiosity in Arbus’ case or an obsessive dependency in Goldin’s, it was a dangerous journey.  

A decade after her untimely death by suicide in 1971 at the age of 48, a trove of never-before-seen images were unearthed, stored in a basement darkroom on Charles Street in the West Village. And two-thirds of those images on display have been generously produced by her daughters, Doon and Amy Arbus for this exhibit.   What a viewing experience it is.   

Unquestionably, this is one exhibition that gives the viewer plenty to look at.  As a walk along history’s treadmill, it divvies up a rich array of humanity—replete with all its smiles and snarls.  Samuel G. Szabo (1854-61) was an early bird who snagged shoplifters, wife beaters, pickpockets, burglars and highwaymen in his lens, then meticulously placed them in an album with oval cutout frames and descriptions in the finest calligraphy.  

Simmons made a name for herself in the ‘70s and ‘80s by constructing dollhouse rooms and photographing them. They were a subversive reflection on the Marxist notion of the fetishizing commodity and were done through a feminist lens. She was not interested so much with creating a narrative in her photographs, though her subject matter may have reflected otherwise. Rather, she refers to the early works as “doll still life work” and they became as such after she stared at the created spaces until they became void of meaning and abstract to her. 

Though the country remained under a one-party rule, Vietnam has since the late 1980s eased its once-iron grip on the economy and cultural life, moving from a socialist to a free market economy. Gone are the days when citizens were required to discuss Marxist-Leninist doctrines at weekly neighborhood sessions. Gone too are the permits needed to buy rice from state-run stores, or to move from one city to another. The drab, impoverished and immobile nation that Catherine saw when she first visited in 1990 quickly shifted under her lens. And fascinated, she kept coming back. 

While it sounds typical – Western male artist enters “exotic” land to bring stories back home – one must remember that at the time of Riboud’s creations, the metropolitan West, in the fallout of the World Wars, was just starting to gain a real appreciation for what Asia had to offer. Yet Riboud deters from juxtaposing the differences in cultures as a way to highlight both sides’ strengths. 

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Seascapes brings together Sugimoto’s iconic seascapes, on loan from important collections and on view for the first time in Southampton since Time Exposed, his 1994-95 solo exhibition at the Parrish Art Museum. Among works on view are Mediterranean Sea, Crete (1990); Yellow Sea, Cheju (1992); Lake Superior, Cascade River (1995-2003); and Tyrrhenian Sea (1990).