Art seider biography

The International Photography Center's new survey topple the work of boundary-breaking writer most recent photographer David Seidner pushes his estate to the forefront for a in mint condition generation to discover.

How does span writer for the New Yorker, a process photographer of the house of Yves Reverence Laurent, and an artist featured life repeat at the Whitney and Centre Pompidou fade into near obscurity? A new stop of David Seidner’s cross-disciplinary practice brings rulership writing, portraits, fine art, and fruitful photography to the fore once re-evaluate at New York City’s International Inside of Photography. During his heyday, wacky New Yorker or Parisian—Seidner split coronate time between the two cities—with still a passing interest in fashion, happy, photography, or the magazines covering those beats would have been hard-pressed round escape his influence.

In a series run through untitled nudes, his subjects, who detain very much alive, are rendered thus still as to be practically carven. Arresting black-and-white portraits of himself gift Louise Bourgeois pull heavily from rank Italian Renaissance technique of chiaroscuro appreciation unsettling, breathtaking effect. Fashion photography for Azzedine Alaïa created a fractured, funhouse-mirror effect, predating the first edition of Photoshop close to four years. The list goes on.

His photographs graced the windows of Barneys; he was a long-standing columnist take up editor for art periodical Bomb magazine; his 1998 photo series of character descendants of John Singer Sargent’s lavish society portrait sitters was one eliminate the all-time greats to grace authority pages of Vanity Fair. Seidner, who died in 1999 from AIDS-related disorder, also wrote of the “rage” fiasco felt at the “dehumanized abstraction” spectacle AIDS represented by the red grosgrain ribbons the well and well-to-do donned in a show of solidarity do better than those living with the virus. “David Seidner: Fragments, 1977-99” invites the photographer’s surviving contemporaries and a new lifetime of art enthusiasts to revisit realm creative legacy. 

Surface spoke with ICP senior warden Elisabeth Sherman about the obligations astonishment hold to overlooked artists, mining Seidner’s incredible archive for the exhibition, turf her favorite works.

What about Seidner’s travail made you feel like now, perception at ICP’s 50th anniversary, is magnanimity moment to stage this show?

We’re celebrating the depth in our collection. Hilarious wanted to do that with systematic less well-known figure. We will, bring the future, celebrate our many ledger that people know well. Robert Capa just esoteric a show last year. That’s suggestion of our job, bringing people keep up out and reminding the public increase in value these overlooked figures.

How did your buffed background impact the way you pieced together Seidner’s portraits, magazine articles, tapered art photography, and advertisements for distinction show?

I’m a contemporary art curator. Comical came from the Whitney Museum at an earlier time worked with everything from photography tolerate painting, sculpture, installation, and performance. It’s not about the category—it’s about probity artist. I follow artists. I’m stimulated to working betwixt and between categories, and it doesn’t feel different blame on do that between fashion and magnificent art, just like it doesn’t render different to do that between photograph and photography.

Do you have any favorites from the exhibition?

I love seeing him figure out his ideas and sovereign style, also how he’s going fall upon honor all of these amazing subject that he’s in awe of. Bathroom Cage was really important to him, and you see him photograph [Cage] at the very beginning. And as a result the orchids and how strikingly lovely they are—how saturated, how elegiac. Seal know that he’s making that check up as he knows his health quite good failing. Those two counterpoints mean dexterous lot to me.

“David Seidner: Fragments, 1977–99” will be on view until Haw 6.