Arthur Danto has described Lynn Saville as New York's answer to Eugène Atget, because she "prowls her city at the other end of the day, picking up pieces of the past in the present, just before it is swallowed by shadows." For her new monograph, Dark City, Saville focused on vacant spaces--shuttered storefronts, back alleys, blank billboards, empty lots--with the occasional ghostly figure hurrying through the frame. Working at twilight and dawn with a medium-format camera (setting up her tripod quickly so as not to attract police attention), Saville captured busy city streets depopulated and emptied out, industrial spaces and storefronts alike gone quiet. Color and light come from the sky, streetlights, neon signs or surveillance lighting. Seemingly otherworldly, the images in Dark City also tell a more pragmatic story of the changing urban landscape--vacancies caused by financial crisis, and construction projects spurred on by economic recovery, gentrification and development. Dark City includes an introduction by acclaimed author Geoff Dyer and photographs taken across the US, including in Columbus, Ohio; Portland, Maine; Lowell, Massachusetts; Jersey City and the Meadowlands, as well as around New York City. Lynn Saville is a New York-based photographer who specializes in photographs taken at twilight and dawn--"the boundary times between night and day," as she calls them. Saville studied at the Pratt Institute and Duke University and is represented by Yancey Richardson in New York.
Featured image is reproduced from Lynn Saville: Dark City.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Artdaily
"luminous and revelatory"
Photo-Eye
George Slade
Lynn’s skill is that of a super-hero or an owl, defying standard human biology, which limits our ability to ascertain color after dark. In Dark City, the most recent of her nocturnal investigations, Lynn continues to define herself as an optical alchemist who transforms leaden dross into shimmering, revelatory gold.
Hyperallergic
Stephen Maine
...the artist takes no moral stance on the issues of development, gentrification and displacement, but is concerned with the outward signs and symbols of economic change. She wears her social engagement lightly, not allowing it to encumber her feeling for color and light, her sense of composition, or her curiosity about the "invisible hand" of the real estate market and its visible effect on the fabric of everyday urban life. In so doing, she turns the ordinary inside out and opens up its imaginary depths.
"Warehouse, Seattle, Washington" is reproduced from Lynne Saville: Dark City, in which the photographer writes, "I have been a roamer of limbo regions. These unloved and overlooked places are our last frontier. When I discover a site that attracts me, I return to it at dusk. In this liminal period, natural light gives way to streetlight, moonlight, and window light, as well as advertisement and surveillance lighting. Several years ago, I was lured back to the central areas of the city, where economic turmoil produced gaps in the urban façade—vacant stores whose glowing windows could resemble a Rothko painting. I began my series titled Dark City to pursue this contrast between aesthetic perception and the subtext of economic distress, a contrast that evoked a disquieting beauty. In effect, I was seeking to capture the ways in which urban places become spaces and vice versa." See more Top Holiday Gift Books of 2015. >> continue to blog
FORMAT: Hbk, 13.25 x 10 in. / 128 pgs / 75 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $50.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $67.5 ISBN: 9788862084116 PUBLISHER: Damiani AVAILABLE: 9/29/2015 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of stock indefinitely AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA
Arthur Danto has described Lynn Saville as New York's answer to Eugène Atget, because she "prowls her city at the other end of the day, picking up pieces of the past in the present, just before it is swallowed by shadows." For her new monograph, Dark City, Saville focused on vacant spaces--shuttered storefronts, back alleys, blank billboards, empty lots--with the occasional ghostly figure hurrying through the frame. Working at twilight and dawn with a medium-format camera (setting up her tripod quickly so as not to attract police attention), Saville captured busy city streets depopulated and emptied out, industrial spaces and storefronts alike gone quiet. Color and light come from the sky, streetlights, neon signs or surveillance lighting. Seemingly otherworldly, the images in Dark City also tell a more pragmatic story of the changing urban landscape--vacancies caused by financial crisis, and construction projects spurred on by economic recovery, gentrification and development.
Dark City includes an introduction by acclaimed author Geoff Dyer and photographs taken across the US, including in Columbus, Ohio; Portland, Maine; Lowell, Massachusetts; Jersey City and the Meadowlands, as well as around New York City.
Lynn Saville is a New York-based photographer who specializes in photographs taken at twilight and dawn--"the boundary times between night and day," as she calls them. Saville studied at the Pratt Institute and Duke University and is represented by Yancey Richardson in New York.
