Jose Picayo

"Brides Magazine, Elenore", New York, NY, 1989

1989

This photograph is printed on Japanese Paper. The price is for an unframed photograph. 11" X 14" Edition of 25. The Robin Rice Gallery is pleased to announce, 25 Years of Polaroi...

This photograph is printed on Japanese Paper. The price is for an unframed photograph. 11" X 14" Edition of 25. The Robin Rice Gallery is pleased to announce, 25 Years of Polaroids, a new exhibit by Jose Picayo. The opening reception will be held Wednesday, November 7th, from 6:00pm to 8:00pm. The exhibit will run through January 6, 2019. In this exhibition, Picayo seeks to revive the concept of unadulterated beauty captured as a single moment in time. An unapologetic user of film, Picayo prides himself on his avoidance of digital processing for personal work. When asked why it remains his preferred medium, Picayo answers, “Digital is so overpoweringly real; photography is more magical to me.” For Picayo, Polaroid film is a medium where he can capture something as is – a moment in time. Just to hold the photograph in his hands is enough. 25 Years of Polaroids showcases Picayo’s most iconic work. This exhibit includes personal photographs of Cuba from 1994, Polaroid image transfers showcasing his impressive use of visual texture and his eye for fashion. Also included are his Atget-esque tree portraits from a New Jersey public arboretum in 2012. Additionally, a selection of 8” x 10” Polaroids from Mugshots 2008, will be included, exploring how a person’s soul can be captured in what appear to be basic photographs. The main questions at the heart of Picayo’s photography stem from the mystery of human perception and the precious things that are lost to time. The invitational image, Rotating Doll, 1997, features a multi-paneled display of polaroids which cover an entire length of a wall. These 20” x 24” Polaroids appear larger than life and were given much praise in Picayo’s recent exhibit Polaroids 2016 at The Erie Museum in Erie, PA. This series stems from a collection of children’s dolls Picayo has found over the years, each one with its own strange and authentic story to tell. By cultivating a deteriorated look reminiscent of antique fresco painting, Picayo examines time using the inanimate faces of broken dolls, reflecting on the objects we hold dear and how they fall apart as we try to hold onto them. Picayo speaks of his own influences, crediting photographers Eugène Atget, Walker Evans, and Edward Curtis, Michael Disfarmer, and Torkil Gudnason with impact on both his fine and commercial art. He is well known for his work in fashion, but for Picayo his personal and commercial work are interrelated, each extensions of one another. Born in Cuba, Picayo immigrated to Puerto Rico during his childhood and settled in New York City by the early 80s. After receiving his BFA from Parsons School of Design, Picayo began his professional career as a commercial photographer, shooting for magazines such as Vanity Fair, Sassy, Taxi, and Connoisseur. Picayo’s work has since appeared in Harper’s Bazaar, L.A. Style, New York Times Magazine...

This photograph is printed on Japanese Paper. The price is for an unframed photograph. 11" X 14" Edition of 25. The Robin Rice Gallery is pleased to announce, 25 Years of Polaroi...

This photograph is printed on Japanese Paper. The price is for an unframed photograph. 11" X 14" Edition of 25. The Robin Rice Gallery is pleased to announce, 25 Years of Polaroi...

Signed by the photographer.

HARRY BOWERS T E N P H O T O G R A P H S I DON'T LOOK FOR PHOTOGRAPHS I INVENT THEM I recall my first meeting with Harry Bowers in California a few years ago. As he produced his large-scale prints, I was at first flabbergasted, not only by their size, but by their seamless perfection. Technique appeared to be everything but then technique as technique simply vanished. After the first moment, tech­nique was no longer an issue, but rather a passageway to the imagery. Suffice it to say about Harry Bowers' working style that he is an obsessive man. Trained as an engineer, he has turned that discipline to art. His lenses, equipment and darkroom, much of it exactingly manu­factured by himself to answer certain needs, serve the desire of the artist to take photographic tech­nique to its ultimate perfection in invisibility and transparency. I respect obsession in art, and particularly in photography, because obsession in photography passes beyond the easy, middle ground of image making to a more demanding, more difficult, yet more rewarding end. Bowers' obsession is to eliminate "photography as technique." No grain, no decisive moments, no journalism, or, seemingly, direct auto­biographical endeavors appear in his work. Bowers is an artist of synthesis who controls his environment if only in the studio exactly to his liking. The images he creates are formal structures, saucy stories on occasion, which may offer hints of a darker, more frightening sexuality, but what you see is the end product of an experiment in which nothing save the original insight perhaps is left to chance. We seem fascinated with the idea of replication of reality in art. Popular painting frequently reproduces a scene "with the accuracy of a photograph," and photographs may "make you feel as though you were right there." The very invisibility of the photographic medium is important to Bowers, in that it allows him to maneuver his subject matter without concern for rendering it in an obvious art medium which would interfere with the nature of the materials he uses. The formal subtleties of Bowers' recent work are as delicious and ambiguous in their interrelationships as the best Cubist collages, yet while those col­lages always suggest their parts through edge and texture, these photographs present a structure through a surface purity. "I follow fashion. I have closets literally full of clothes. I am a full-blown Comme des Garçons and Prada freak. I love clothes themselves as objects, and I also love the glossies – my love of fashion is how I discovered Wallpaper magazine" Bowers' earlier works, for example, the Skirts I Have Known series, were formed of bits of clothing belong­ing to Bowers and his wife or found at local thrift shops. These works fused an elegance of pattern and texture, reminiscent of Miriam Shapiro...

Vintage Photo. The Italian Actress Lea Massari in a vintage dress.

Dreams and fantasies from the past and present are portrayed by Léa Bon’s subjects, which she uses as her own personal dolls. Léa Bon work is a profound exploration of dreams and fa...