Alex Webb: The Suffering of Light @Aperture

JTF (just the facts): A total of 52 color photographs, framed in blond wood and matted, and hung in the main gallery space. The digital c-prints come in two sizes: 20x30 (in editions of 20) and 30x40 (in editions of 12); there are 34 of the smaller size and 18 of the larger size on view. All of the images were taken between 1978 and 2010. The display also includes one long glass case containing seven of Webb's monographs (both covers and spreads of each). A new monograph of this entire body of work was recently published by Aperture (here). (Installation shots at right.)
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Comments/Context: Alex Webb's thirty year survey at Aperture isn't so much a greatest hits or personal best kind of show, but instead more of a once-over sifting of a long and successful career with an eye for artistry in color and composition. Bringing together elements of social documentary and street photography, his images go beyond the color we think of as uniquely American (think Shore, Eggleston, and Sternfeld) and instead capture the brash vibrant hues of the warm weather tropics. From Haiti to Mexico and Grenada to Cuba, Webb finds moments where people and color come together in layered, complex ways, echoing and reverberating across carefully structured frames. His work has reminders of Cartier-Bresson for me, but with a conscious use of color (especially toasted and softened by late afternoon and early evening light) as a distinct and handy tool.
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Political issues and social realities are never far from Webb's glance, but even images with a clear narrative line are thrown off balance by saturated color. A Mexican border patrol raid takes place in a field of bright yellow flowers, shiny black coffins punctuate a Haitian rally, creamy almond colored water floods a town in Brazil, and school kids in orange gingham shirts stand against a glowing golden wall. Even more ephemeral and unknowable moments turn on seeing color as something quietly but undeniably spectacular: a circus lion in a saturated red cage, pink blobs of fluffy cotton candy against a pastel green truck, a gently purple Istanbul sky, or the jarring combination of a red headscarf and a blue dress on the drab streets of Haiti. Additional patterns and juxtaposed motifs add structure to his visual mix: seeing eye posters in a Bombay market, a welcoming red and yellow popcorn cart against the twilit night of seaside Greece, layers of geometric jungle gym bars in Cuba, and posters of Santa and Jesus with a crown of thorns put together with shapely legs in short shorts. Webb's photographic style isn't out front and obvious and has a surprisingly consistent lack of irony; instead, it sits behind the content with subtle but confident craftsmanship.

For me, the real excitement here was to get outside the intellectual ruts that surround American photographic color, and instead start to gather a sense for a broader, more inclusive international color. Sure, Webb is American, but his images connected me to photographers from Raghubir Singh to Martin Parr, and made me start to consider more fully how all these photographers fit together stylistically and in chronological time. My conclusion is that Webb is particularly adept at undermining the natural tendency to take a specific documentary point of view or opinion; his images shimmer with intense and complex photographic color, but they don't necessarily force the viewer toward a defined end point or showy artistic flourish. Instead, they offer a more indeterminate experience of somewhere far away, alternately raw and unexpectedly visually refined.
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Collector's POV: While this venue is usually a non-selling environment, for this show, prices were actually available on the checklist. The 20x30 prints are $3500 and the 30x40 prints are $5000. Webb's work has very little secondary market history, so gallery retail or purchase via Magnum are probably the best options for interested collectors.
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Rating: * (one star) GOOD (rating system described here)

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here)
• Magnum Photos page (here)
• Reviews/Features: New Yorker (here), NY Times Lens (here), Time LightBox (here)

Alex Webb: The Suffering of Light

Through January 19th
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Aperture Gallery

547 West 27th Street

New York, NY 10001

Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb, Violet Isle @Ricco Maresca

JTF (just the facts): A total of 15 color images, framed in blond wood and not matted, and hung in two adjoining gallery spaces. The show intermixes the work of the husband and wife team of Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb. There are 8 prints by Alex Webb and 7 prints by Rebecca Norris Webb on display. The images are printed in one of two sizes (or reverse): 20x30 or 30x40. For Alex Webb's work, there are 2 prints in the smaller size (in editions of 20) and 6 prints in the larger size (in editions of 12). For Rebecca Norris Webb's work, there are 3 prints in the smaller size (in editions of 10) and 4 prints in the larger size (in editions of 7). All of the images were taken in Cuba between 1993 and 2008. A monograph of this work has recently been published by Radius Books (here) and signed copies are available from the gallery for $50. (Installation shots at right.)

Comments/Context: Cuba has long been a subject of interest for photographers, going back to the street portraits and shop windows of Walker Evans and Henri Cartier-Bresson, the political portraits of Rene Burri, and more recently, the faded architectural grandeur of Robert Polidori and Michael Eastman. Something about the island's combination of vibrancy with decay, charm with melancholy, all drenched in warm Caribbean sunlight has attracted artists and photographers for decades.

Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb have spent the past decade making trips to Cuba, and their images of the island follow two separate but, in the end, interrelated paths. Alex Webb's images are fragments of Cuban street life: 1950s red car seats simmer in the sun, vacant chess tables are stacked against a dilapidated yellow wall, bored bus riders stare out the window, and hurricane tape criss-crosses plate glass shop windows. His pictures use contrasts of color and perspective to create visual excitement - a eye popping pink sky hovers above a glowing green wall, and boys playing in a gravel courtyard are seen from above, distorting their bodies into indistinct forms.

Rebecca Norris Webb's photographs center on the role of animals in everyday Cuban life: birds flash through rooms of peeling paint, fish loiter in a blue tank, roosters strut around, a stuffed ferret makes an appearance in a glass case, and a multi-colored bird wing is spread out like an elegant fan. In this world, humans and animals live together, coexisting naturally in the same urban space.

Overall, these interleaved bodies of work seem to successfully capture the feel of the culture. But while there are certainly a few eye-catching images here, I'm not sure that they show us a side of Cuba that we haven't already seen before. Even though these works are generally well crafted (albeit printed a bit too large in my opinion), the pictures get a little too caught up in the familiar stereotypes of the island, lessening their impact and eventual memorability.

Collector's POV: The prices for the works in this exhibit are as follows. For Alex Webb's work, the 20x30 prints are $3500 and the 30x40 prints are $5000; for Rebecca Norris Webb, the 20x30 prints are $2500 and the 30x40 prints are $4000. While Alex has been a member of Magnum for many years, neither he nor his wife has much secondary market history. Interested collectors will need to follow up at retail.

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

Transit Hub:

• Artist site (here) and blog (here)
• Interviews: Livebooks (here), Burn (here)

Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb, Violet Isle: A Portrait of Cuba
Through January 2nd

Ricco Maresca Gallery
529 West 20th Street
New York, NY 10011

ADMINISTRATIVE NOTE: There will be no posts on Monday, December 21st. We'll be back Tuesday.