go see Trager at the NBM
December 5, 2009 at 7:42 pmDC, National Building Museum
2009-12-05 NBM Column North, originally uploaded by m hoek.
The National Building Museum consistently has wonderfully interesting exhibits, their current offering is no exception.
Today I checked out the Philip Trager exhibit: “Form and Movement.” This show was curated by Reed Haslach Humphery and Laura Burd Schiavo. Trager has made a career of focusing intensely on individual subjects. These subjects include vernacular New England homes, modern dancers, Parisian cityscapes, and Italian villas. Humphery and Schiavo juxtaposed and grouped these seeming subjects into a cohesive and robust exhibit. One of the many examples of this is the masterful pairing of the image of statuary from Jardin Tuileries (1995) with the 1989 photograph of the Second Hand Dance Company. These subjects, one frozen in time and the other frozen in the moment, capture the same spirit and motion.
Trager’s photos exhibit his delicate control of light, reflection, and texture. From the soft look of a charcoal drawing in the sky over Birmingham, to the playful reflection of light on a solemn facade in Hartford his works take on a life of their own. The dynamic perspective of West 34th St in NYC hints at the motion that the city is so well known for. The versatility of Trager is clearly demonstrated in this exhibit.
One particularly strong component of the exhibit is a series of photos taken in a head-on, straight-forward manner. In this group, traditional Connecticut americana, Paladian villas, and posed dancer exhibit the same architectural gravity. Taken decades apart, these images were the perfect complement to one another.
In addition to showing the images, Form and Motion includes an educational component. Trager’s photograph of Palladio’s Villa Barbaro is exhibited as a Gelatin Silver, Platinum/Palladium, and Digital Ink Jet print. Each image is accompanied with a description of the process and benefits associated with each printing techniques. Further, the exhibit demonstrates Trager’s proofing and darkroom manipulations. One of Trager’s architectural shots from New Haven is shown as a marked-up test print and as a final image. The control of light and shadow demonstrated between the two versions is impressive.
I highly recommend visiting the NBM and seeing Trager’s exhibit.
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December 5th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Do you know how long the exhibit will be in place at NBM? Looks like great fun for a winter day!
December 6th, 2009 at 5:49 pm
The Trager exhibit runs until 2010-01-03….not much time left!