David Seidner, YSL/Cynthia Antonio (mosaic), 1987. (cropped) © International Center of Photography, David Seidner Archive; courtesy of ICP, New York, and Luhring Augustine, New York.
Gabi Vidal-Irizarry explores the art of distortion and the limits of photographic truth in a group show at Luhring Augustine.
settle for a good fantasy, a photography show at Luhring Augustine is about portraiture, more or less. Through patchwork, collage, cropping, zooming, and a blurring of registers and tones, artists Janice Guy, Shaun Pierson, David Seidner, and Joe Mama-Nitzberg strip away markers that might otherwise anchor an image to a specific person, place, or moment. What’s left is room for whimsy and fun. In the late ’70s, Janice Guy photographed herself over and over again, almost compulsively. The result is Untitled (1977), 35 black-and-white self-portraits pinned unframed in rows of seven. She appears chin up, chin down, head turned left, then right, her blunt black bob and bangs falling differently each time. Together, the frames recall Eadweard Muybridge’s motion studies, digital test shots, and also, weirdly, Beyoncé’s “Countdown” music video. The subtle choreography from shot to shot feels prescient, a precursor to the micro-movements anyone now makes hunting for their best angle in a selfie.
In Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes searched for what he called “the air,” the quality that makes a picture true to its subject. A portrait invites the viewer to imagine a life behind a face, filling in the gaps with assumptions, projections, or empathy. Guy multiplies that invitation 35 times over, until the effect begins to reverse itself. The subject, who happens to be the artist herself, becomes less knowable with each image, until she’s almost specimen-like, anonymous, and inscrutable.
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