Ray K. Metzker has quietly been making extraordinary photographs for the better part of six decades. Today, he is recognized as one of the great masters of American photography, a virtuoso who has pursued his chosen medium passionately for fifty years.
Metzker was born in 1931 in Milwaukee and attended the Institute of Design, Chicago--a renowned school that had a few years earlier been dubbed the New Bauhaus-- from 1956 to 1959. He was thus an heir to the avant-garde photography that had developed in Europe in the 1920’s. Early in his career, his work was marked by unusual intensity. Composites, multiple-exposure, superimposition of negatives, juxtapositions of two images, solarization and other formal means were part and parcel of his vocabulary. He was committed to discovering the potential of black and white photography during the shooting and the printing, and has shown consummate skill in each stage of the photographic process. Ray Metzker’s unique and continually evolving mastery of light, shadow and line transform the ordinary in the realm of pure visual delight.
Major American museums began showing an interest in Metzker’s work in the 1960’s. Cementing his reputation as a master photographer, the museum of Modern Art in New York gave him his first one-man show in 1967. Retrospectives were organized in 1978 by the International Center of Photography in New York, and in 1984 by the Museum of fine Arts in Houston. The Houston exhibit was subsequently shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, the International Museum of Photography, Rochester, and the National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC.
RAY K. METZKER, Intimations, is a selection of forty photographs from his recently concluded European retrospective LIGHT LINES, which originated in 2007 at the Musee de l'Eysee, Lausanne, then travelled to the Preus Museum, Norway and to Galleria Carla Sozzani, Milan in 2008.
A European sensibility permeates this selection. With a greater emphasis on narrative and the human spirit, the exhibition explores Metzker's delicate sense of design as he embraces the details of his surroundings while brooding over the disconnect and alienation often experienced in urban settings.
RAY K. METZKER: Intimations is our 20th one-person exhibition featuring the work of this 79 year old master photographer.
Eyes in Photography - Ray Metzker & the Laurence Miller Gallery
Ray K. Metzker has quietly been making extraordinary photographs for the better part of six decades. Today, he is recognized as one of the great masters of American photography, a virtuoso who has pursued his chosen medium passionately for fifty years.
Metzker was born in 1931 in Milwaukee and attended the Institute of Design, Chicago--a renowned school that had a few years earlier been dubbed the New Bauhaus-- from 1956 to 1959. He was thus an heir to the avant-garde photography that had developed in Europe in the 1920’s. Early in his career, his work was marked by unusual intensity. Composites, multiple-exposure, superimposition of negatives, juxtapositions of two images, solarization and other formal means were part and parcel of his vocabulary. He was committed to discovering the potential of black and white photography during the shooting and the printing, and has shown consummate skill in each stage of the photographic process. Ray Metzker’s unique and continually evolving mastery of light, shadow and line transform the ordinary in the realm of pure visual delight.
Major American museums began showing an interest in Metzker’s work in the 1960’s. Cementing his reputation as a master photographer, the museum of Modern Art in New York gave him his first one-man show in 1967. Retrospectives were organized in 1978 by the International Center of Photography in New York, and in 1984 by the Museum of fine Arts in Houston. The Houston exhibit was subsequently shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, the International Museum of Photography, Rochester, and the National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC.
RAY K. METZKER, Intimations, is a selection of forty photographs from his recently concluded European retrospective LIGHT LINES, which originated in 2007 at the Musee de l'Eysee, Lausanne, then travelled to the Preus Museum, Norway and to Galleria Carla Sozzani, Milan in 2008.
A European sensibility permeates this selection. With a greater emphasis on narrative and the human spirit, the exhibition explores Metzker's delicate sense of design as he embraces the details of his surroundings while brooding over the disconnect and alienation often experienced in urban settings.
RAY K. METZKER: Intimations is our 20th one-person exhibition featuring the work of this 79 year old master photographer.