Last week I attended Aperture Gallery’s opening for their newest exhibition: Photography featuring work by Stephen Shore, William Eggleston, Nan Goldin, Martin Parr, Terry Richardson and Ryan McGinley. All photographs in Photography were taken with  a Fujifilm X-series camera. In an age where photographic production sprawls across so many different types of processes and equipment, I think it was incredibly interesting to see these major players neutralized and to see how each utilized the same tools. It was especially exciting to see new work by Stephen Shore. His mastered eye manipulates California lifestyle through  snapshot documentation creating images that are full of complicated and subtle narrative, showing a world where everything can and should be questioned. Nan Goldin’s poetic and sad capture of memory, felt effortlessly whimsical, fleeting with heart-break. I stood in front of her work the longest just soaking in her melancholic self-reflection. Terry Richardson’s stark and blown out still lifes of bountiful bouquets of flowers, in context with Martin Parr and Ryan McGinley, seemed untrustworthy.. the perfection, deceitful. William Eggleston, whose work I was most intrigued to see, left me surprisingly disappointed. The prints, from the father of color photography are muddy, forcing me to question if they were C-Prints that were stored wrongly, causing the colors to shift. But then again, maybe his off-putting colored photographs of iconic Americana, (as the press release calls them)  are part of the greater narrative. The colors are no longer vibrant with life, rather the “Glory” promised by the construction trailer only provides a dull alternative to our failing culture. All the color has alas, faded. 

New work by William Eggleston on view currently at Aperture Gallery.  [photosource]

New work by Stephen Shore on view currently at Aperture Gallery.  [photosource]

New work by Terry Richardson on view currently at Aperture Gallery [photosource]

Photography is open at Aperture Gallery in Chelsea until Febuary 9. You can also read an interview with the curator Ken Miller Here. Go check out the work for yourself. It certainly is something seeing such powerful photographers in this intimate space.

Nan Goldin @ Aperture Gallery for exhibition Photography. 

Stephen Shore installation shot of Photography @ Aperture Gallery.