This week’s photograph is of beautiful photography, currently on display at the American University Katzen Arts Center (@AUMuseum_Katzen).
Stranger Lives, is a photographic typology of sunbathing New Yorkers on the stretch of sand between Coney Island and Brighton Beach.
The 40 life sized images on display at the Katzen Art Center were shot from above with a Mamiya RZ 6×7 Camera and Kodak Portra film between 2008 and 2015. These sharply focused portraits encourage you to stare, to wonder and to fantasize about the lives of strangers. The scars, veins, and wrinkles on the skin, the pattern on the blanket, the style, and placement of shoes and accessories, can all be read as signifiers of identity, class, and desire within a life beyond the frame. And yet without an offered horizon, our eyes remain hovered above the flat, splayed out sunbathers, in specimen-like observation.
Caitlin Teal Price is the artist, www.caitlintealprice.com
The work has been previously featured in the New York Times.
I am personally drawn to images that showcase the human spirit, from all vantage points, which is what this work does so well.
The photographs themselves were taken with a medium format camera, which means they have exquisite resolution that is not captured here – this is one of those times that full resolution is only available in person, so it’s worth taking a look for yourself.
More images of the exhibition, and the artist herself walking us through it below. They are another demonstration of the beauty of the intersectionality of our nation’s capital 🙂 .
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