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Laurence Miller Gallery will feature Ray K. Metzker’s Wanderings, a series of black and white
photographs made between 1968 and 2008, in its main exhibition space opening March 14 and running
through May 2, 2009. Wanderings emerged as pictures that did not fit into any previously categorized
body of work. They represent discoveries that were made or visions that were revisited while Metzker
was more focused on a different but singular project. Throughout his career, Ray K. Metzker has
maintained a rigorous approach to photography, both in his way of seeing and his way of making
pictures. Several “intentional” bodies of work have made him one of the premier photographic artists of
our time: early street scenes in urban Chicago; “composites” of carefully made and constructed film
strips; couplets of dual images carefully laid side-by-side, or unique photographic collage abstractions.
In these and several other series, Metzker’s intense focus as to method, material, and aesthetic has
resulted in compelling bodies of work unified by a consistent vision.
Wanderings: Atlantic City, 1971, is a street scene more akin to the urban pictures of the sixties than
the sand creatures that were shot later that day. Wanderings: Ohio, 2001, seems to belong perfectly
to the series of landscapes made from 1986 – 1999, but emerges after the crux of the landscapes were
finished. And Wanderings: Philadelphia, 2006, seems dually reminiscent of the Pictus Interruptus
series or the unique collages, but chronologically fits into the My Philadelphia series—it just looks
different. In this sense, Wanderings, most of which were made after 1980, reveal an artist who freed
himself from the self-imposed rigors of picture-making to let himself, his eye, his camera, wander
through time and space. The resultant imagery is uniquely and poetically consistent with his lifelong
vision.
Ray K. Metzker has quietly been making extraordinary photographs for the better part of six decades. A
major retrospective, Light Lines, opened at the Musee de l’Elysee, Lausanne in 2007 and traveled to
the Preus Museum, Norway and Galleria Carla Sozzani, Milan last year.
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Laurence Miller Gallery is pleased to present twenty rare vintage prints by the late Dutch artist
Sanne Sannes. This will be the first one-person exhibition of his work in the United States. Sanne
Sannes was born in 1937 in The Netherlands. His brief career, ending abruptly when he died in a
motorcycle accident at age 30, focused on his taste for the erotic and a fascination with women.
His voyeuristic style reflects the morals and atmosphere of the sixties, which provided an
inspiration for his models as well as himself. Sannes exhibited an intensely poetic eye for women.
He explored aspects of sexual passion and human nature, and described his approach as follows:
There are many men who’ll never see a woman in ecstasy. They change from one thing to
something else completely different. Human emotions are my subject matter. I photograph
people. They’re what interest me, obsess me. I want to know what pushes them to do
what they do. I don’t look for them in the street; I don’t do random photography. I direct
them and record the moment they open up and become naked. I chose the most
emotionally charged moments, the point of no return. I’m fanatically zealous!
Sannes’ work is most well-known through his publications, Sex a Gogo, published in 1969, two
years after his death, and Oog om oog (“Eye for eye”) which was published a few years prior. A
limited-edition monograph of 2000 copies was published in 1993 with extensive photographic and
bibliographic information using Sannes’ original photographs for the book’s reproductions. FOAM
Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam will mount an exhibition of his photographs in 2009.
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