Sign Still-life Photography

The iconic Roy's Motel sign on the famous Route 66 which is the backdrop to some of the best American road trips. Photograph by Richard Heeps as part of his...

'Welcome', classic Las Vegas sign photography from Richard Heeps Dream in Color series. Primarily known as a color photographer Richard Heeps was commis...

Ian Gittler’s Motor Art series-photographs of century-old engine parts, gears, sparkplugs, and brand tags-offers respite from the digital fetishism, overexposure and one-hundred-forty-character bursts of communication that seem to define our era. Gittler is no luddite, he loves his iPhone. But these images, often obscuring the objects beyond identification, take unsentimental pleasure in elements of weight, ground, volume and permanence that are more closely associated with a bygone heyday of industrialization. These photographs are about a tangible physical experience, about moving parts. Gittler’s expert printing-his ability to see the potential in a frame and employ the techniques necessary to articulate that vision on paper-brings the work to life. There’s wit in the brand iconography and a documentary component, but Gittler resists prescribing interpretations, saying subtext isn’t the point. His use of extremely shallow depth of field, intense contrast and exploded grain is muscular and poetic. But subtext is relevant. Although Robin Rice first approached Ian Gittler about his vector-based art on photo paper, the gallerist challenged him to create a series of photographs with that kind of machismo. As a native New Yorker who was marched through the halls of MOMA as a toddler, Gittler’s inspiration-his idea of macho-has less to do with cowboys and racecar drivers than with Franz Kline brushstrokes and modernist design. For Gittler, macho means the maximum amount of black ink that can lie across a sheet of photo paper. That kind of force. He narrowed his field of view for this series-often to a centimeter or two-in order to achieve a purely visual, visceral response. Gittler titled the work Motor Art in tribute to the 1934 Museum of Modern Art exhibit, Machine Art. Upon its sixtieth anniversary, Phillip Johnson wrote of the show (and of his own essay for its original opening), “The thrust was clear: anti-handicraft, industrial methods alone satisfied our age; Platonic dreams of perfection were the ideal.” Ian Gittler photographs, draws, writes, and makes music. He has created album covers for Willie Nelson, Roy Hargrove...

During the summer of 2017 and 2018, Patrick Beaulieu realized the performative excursion EL PERDIDO. Travelling with the geographer Alexis Pernet on board a 1977 Dodge camper van, th...

During the summer of 2017 and 2018, Patrick Beaulieu realized the performative excursion EL PERDIDO. Travelling with the geographer Alexis Pernet on board a 1977 Dodge camper van, th...

During the summer of 2017 and 2018, Patrick Beaulieu realized the performative excursion EL PERDIDO. Travelling with the geographer Alexis Pernet on board a 1977 Dodge camper van, th...

Signed with edition number, titled and dated on the back of the mount. 32.5 x 40 inches, mounted on Dibond. Original negative made in 1979 with digital color added in 2015. A show w...

Signed with edition number, titled and dated on the back of the mount. 27.5 x 40 inches, mounted on Dibond. Original image made in 2014, digital color added 2015. A show with Brett...