March 1 – May 5, 2012

This exhibition of color photographs by Adam Bartos includes work he made in North and East Africa, Mexico and the United States. The photographs made abroad were taken during 1980-1981 and the American pictures in 2007-2010.

Bartos's interest in the 19th century travel work of Samuel Bourne, Robert MacPherson, and others, led him to Egypt, Kenya, and Mexico with a large format camera and color film. Bartos's images are thoroughly modern, yet their energy is inspired by the lucid depiction of form and light that the earlier photographers achieved. The same impulse is present in his recent work, although the subject matter is found much closer to home, in Long Island, New York. These images have been printed using a four color carbon transfer process that, with its tonal range and description of fine detail, emphasizes Bartos’s subtle color palette and formal compositions. His attention to the picture plane creates a tension that resonates between the photograph as both his expression of a place and an object in and of itself. None of the photographs are constructed wholly from incident or narrative. As Geoff Dyer notes in the introduction to Bartos's book Boulevard: "his pictures are like self-portraits of the things in them."

Adam Bartos was born in New York City in 1953. He attended NYU film school with the intention of becoming a cinematographer. Bartos’s work has been exhibited widely and he is known for his books, including: International Territory (Verso, 1994), which looks at the aging modern architecture of the United Nations’ headquarters and, implicitly, the ideals which created it; Kosmos (Princeton Architectural Press, 2001), a then inconceivable look into the Russian space program; Boulevard (Steidldangin, 2005), a dialogue between Paris and Los Angeles; Yard Sale Photographs (Damiani Editore 2009) and Darkroom (Steidldangin, 2012), which examines the analog darkroom. His work has been collected by the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and others.




BOOKS AVAILABLE:

Angier, Roswell. Train Your Gaze.
(AVA Books, 2007) $49.95

Botman, Machiel. One Tree.
(Nazraeli Press, 2011) $65 signed

Botman, Machiel. Rainchild.
(Schaden, 2004) $70 signed

Breitenbach, Josef. Manifesto.
(Nazraeli Press, 2008) $60

Caffery, Debbie Fleming.  The Spirit & The Flesh.
(Radius Books, 2009)  $60 signed
Limited edition $1200

Caffery, Debbie Fleming. The Shadows.
(Twin Palms, 2002) $60 signed

Catherineau, Roger. L'image improbable.
(Editions Musee de la Ville de Rennes, 1992) $40

Frame, Allen. Detour.
(Kehrer Verlag, 2001) $50 signed

Moral, Jean. L’Oeil Capteur.
(Marvel, 1999) $45

Noble, Laura. The Art of Collecting Photography.
(AVA Books, 2006) $60

Szabo, Joseph. Jones Beach. 
(Abrams Image, 2010) $35 signed

Traub, Charles H.
(Gitterman Gallery, 2006) $25 signed

Traub, Charles H. In the Still Life.
(Quantuck Lane Press, 2004) $20 signed

Traub, Charles H. Object of My Creation
(Gitterman Gallery, 2011) $25 signed

Traub, Charles H. et al. The Education of a Photographer.
(Allworth Press & S.V.A., 2006) $20

Yemchuk, Yelena. Gidropark (Daminani, 2010) $45 signed