Kenneth Josephson @Gitterman

JTF (just the facts): A total of 37 black and white photographs, framed in black and matted, and hung against white walls in the jagged single room gallery space. Nearly all of the works on view are vintage gelatin silver prints, made between 1959 and 2001. No specific size or edition information was available on the checklist, but most of the prints were no larger than 11x14. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Kenneth Josephson's second show at Gitterman Gallery goes beyond the photographer's best known work and digs into the lesser known corners of his long image making career. Aside from a few recognizable gems (the car silhouette in snow, the spots of light on  pedestrians, and a handful of conceptual photographs of photographs), the works on view will be unfamiliar to most. It's a smart edit, balancing Josephson's high contrast Chicago city abstractions with more nuanced experimentation with light in nature.

The earliest nature pictures Josephson made come from the late 1950s and use changing focus in multiple exposures to create ghostly glows and auras around trees in the forest. The ethereal light seems to emanate from the trees themselves, like highlights or wispy motion. These ideas quickly evolved into pictures within pictures of sawn tree trunks or rocks on the beach, and leaves arranged as interventions against brick walls and paper backgrounds. Fast forward a decade or two, and Josephson's interest in nature has moved back into the wild, toward the light that dapples the forest, picking out groups of plants that are spotlit against the enveloping darkness. He took this idea one step further a few years later by actually painting a selection of leaves bright white to make them stand out with more force, bringing a layer of rich conceptual thinking (a little like John Pfahl's altered landscapes) back into his approach. His later landscape compositions alternate between soft subtleties of light and texture in mixed greenery and the stark lines of billowing white birch trunks against dark evergreen backgrounds.

The few city scenes in this show offer more examples of Josephson's investigations of light, albeit with the rigid geometries and patterns of built forms as subject matter. A cropped upward view of the repetitions of stone windows becomes an array of gridded dots, while the traceries of a patchwork chain link fence stand like filaments against flat whiteness offset by lush (well printed) detail in the dark area underneath. Even a shopping cart can be the fodder for a light experiment, the metal frame becoming a pattern of interlocking white lines.

The value of this show comes in its ability to make us think more broadly about Josephson's talents. We already know the Chicago ID Josephson and the witty conceptual Josephson, and this show adds the nature Josephson but in a context that allows us to see the connections and common motifs that run through all three. It proves the nature pictures have been there all along, and that they are as complex and intellectually thoughtful as his more familiar work.

Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced between $3500 and $10000, with most of the works set either at $5000 or $6000. Josephson's work has been only intermittently available in the secondary markets in recent years, withs coming up for sale in any given year. Prices have ranged from $1000 to $12000, with a few higher priced lots going unsold.

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Review: New Yorker (here)

 

Kenneth Josephson

Through March 16th

Gitterman Gallery
41 East 57th Street (new location)
New York, NY 10022

Kenneth Josephson @Gitterman

JTF (just the facts): A total of 45 black and white images, framed in black and matted, and hung throughout the gallery (including the main and front spaces on the ground floor, the hallways and staircase, and the main space on the second floor). Most of the prints on view are vintage gelatin silver prints from the period between 1959 and 1976, although there are a few recent prints mixed in as well. Only a handful have specific edition sizes (ranging from 12 to 50). (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Kenneth Josephson seems to be one of those photographers that for whatever reason never quite made it into broad mainstream of photography, and as a result, has been given a more subtle supporting role in this history of the medium. While his name is well known to photography insiders and he had a full retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago as recently as a decade ago, even his most recognizable work remains surprisingly affordable, seemingly overlooked or caught in an eddy pool off to the side of the market. This exhibit gathers together many of his most iconic vintage images from the 1960s and 1970s (along with some lesser known pictures that provide further background and depth to his work of that period) and makes a case for his continued relevance to the medium's contemporary incarnations.

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Starting with a few early prints from his master's thesis on multiple imagery at the ID in Chicago and continuing through a variety of projects and series (all with strong conceptual foundations), the show traces Josephson's consistent intellectual interest in the nature of photographic perception. His experiments with the contrasts of light and shadow on Chicago city streets are often richly dark, with spots of bright light dappled across the composition or used as highlights to catch moments of motion. His images within images use layers of pictures to construct witty trompe l'oeil optical illusions and puns - an outstretched arm holds an image of a boat just above an expanse of sea, merging the straight and the staged. His images of marks and evidence look for meaning in what has been inadvertently left behind - skid marks on an open road, depressions in the grass, scratches left on a wall by the movements of a shrub, or the outline of snow on the protected side of a car. His history of photography pictures bring clever humor to acknowledged masterpieces - an arm holds a ruler up to the Tetons, with a puzzling conceptual nod to O'Sullivan. And his archaeology pictures introduce an unexpected black and white measuring stick into his compositions, adding a layer of implied authenticity. Regardless of his subject, Josephson's works have a mind-stretching braininess, challenging the viewer to actively consider the process of seeing.

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While the arguments over truth in photography seem particularly active in our current digitally altered world, this body of work is a strong reminder that these questions are not new, and that conceptually minded photographers were playing with the puzzling realities of camera-driven perception long before it became so obvious and commonplace. These images remain fresh and original even decades later, a testament to the creativity and ingenuity Josephson has applied to pushing the edges of our visual vocabulary.
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Collector's POV: The prints in this show are priced between $3000 and $12000, with most of the works set either at $5000 or $6000. Josephson's work has been only intermittently available in the secondary markets in recent years, with prices ranging from $1000 to $12000, with most between $3000 and $5000. The artist is also represented by Stephen Daiter Gallery in Chicago (here).

Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Review: New Yorker (here)
• Essay by AD Coleman (here)

Kenneth Josephson

Through April 17th

Gitterman Gallery

170 East 75th Street
New York, NY 10021