Jed Fielding Figurative Photography

New York #121 Silver Gelatin print, 1980 Signed in ink below the image (see photo) Annotated verso in pencil: "New York #121 ©, New York, 1980" (see photo) Provenance: Reader's Digest Association Collection #23214 (label) Condition: Excellent Image size: 12-5/8 x 18-3/4" (32 x 47.6 cm.) Mat size: 19-1/2 x 25-1/2" Photographs by Fielding are in the collections of: Museum of Modern Art Brooklyn Museum International Center of Photography (New York) Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago) Art Institute of Chicago Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) Center for Creative Photography (Tucson) Fielding was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He attended the Rhode Island School of Design, where he studied with photographers Aaron Siskind and Harry Callahan; he received his BFA in 1975. He received his MFA in 1980 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he studied with photographer Kenneth Josephson. He has photographed in such countries as Italy, Peru, Spain, Greece, Egypt, Mexico, Portugal and the United States. His work has particularly concentrated on the Italian cities of Rome and Naples, as well as Mexico City. Of Fielding's City of Secrets, critic Vince Aletti wrote: [Naples'] citizens, from wiseass kids in diapers to weathered old men, loom into the frame like characters out of Fellini, bursting with antic, earthy energy. Fielding confronts and embraces his subjects, building up a portrait of a place that's as visceral as it is cinematic--a true theatre of the streets. Photography curator and collector W. M. Hunt wrote about the book: Jed Fielding is from the old school: a photographer with vision and technique. I've been to Naples twice in my lifetime; once by ship, and, even more lastingly, through Jed Fielding's astonishing images. At the time of a 2009 New York City exhibition of Fielding's photographs from Look at me, a New Yorker review[who?] said: Fielding's photographs of the blind children he met at schools in Mexico City are not in the tradition of photojournalistic muckraking. Like his terrific earlier series from the streets of Naples, these images are vivacious, audacious, and in your face. His subjects are not pitiable victims; they're rambunctious, apparently happy kids at play, responding to Fielding's attention with curiosity and delight. They may be cut off from the visual world, but they relish physical contact, both with one another and with the patient photographer. The best of the work was made at close range, where that connection was most tangible, and young faces fill the frames with fragile, vivid life. He has had solo exhibitions at venues including the Andrea Meislin Gallery...