Lynn Saville: Dark City - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 8862084110 ISBN 13: 9788862084116

Publisher: Damiani, 2015

Synopsis

Arthur Danto has described Lynn Saville as New York's answer to Eugène Atget, because she "prowls her city at the other end of the day, picking up pieces of the past in the present, just before it is swallowed by shadows." For her new monograph, Dark City, Saville focused on vacant spaces--shuttered storefronts, back alleys, blank billboards, empty lots--with the occasional ghostly figure hurrying through the frame. Working at twilight and dawn with a medium-format camera (setting up her tripod quickly so as not to attract police attention), Saville captured busy city streets depopulated and emptied out, industrial spaces and storefronts alike gone quiet. Color and light come from the sky, streetlights, neon signs or surveillance lighting. Seemingly otherworldly, the images in Dark City also tell a more pragmatic story of the changing urban landscape--vacancies caused by financial crisis, and construction projects spurred on by economic recovery, gentrification and development.
Dark City includes an introduction by acclaimed author Geoff Dyer and photographs taken across the US, including in Columbus, Ohio; Portland, Maine; Lowell, Massachusetts; Jersey City and the Meadowlands, as well as around New York City.
Lynn Saville is a New York-based photographer who specializes in photographs taken at twilight and dawn--"the boundary times between night and day," as she calls them. Saville studied at the Pratt Institute and Duke University and is represented by Yancey Richardson in New York.

About this title

About the Author:

Fine-art photographer Lynn Saville was educated at Duke University and Pratt Institute. She specialises in photographing cities at twilight and dawn, or, as she describes them, "the boundary times between night and day." Her photographs have been widely exhibited in the U.S. and abroad. Dark City (Damiani, 2015), with an introduction by the well-known British critic Geoff Dyer, is her third book. Her two previous monographs are Acquainted With the Night (Rizzoli, 1997) and Night/Shift (Random House/Monacelli, 2009), with an introduction by Arthur C. Danto. Saville has won a number of awards, including fellowships from The New York Foundation for the Arts and The New York State Council for the Arts; a Premio in the Scanno, Italy, Festival of Photography; and First Place in the Architecture category, Women in Photography International. Her work is represented by the Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York and is in the permanent art collections of major museums, corporations, and individuals. She lives in New York City with her husband, the poet Philip Fried.

Review:

...the artist takes no moral stance on the issues of development, gentrification and displacement, but is concerned with the outward signs and symbols of economic change. She wears her social engagement lightly, not allowing it to encumber her feeling for color and light, her sense of composition, or her curiosity about the "invisible hand" of the real estate market and its visible effect on the fabric of everyday urban life. In so doing, she turns the ordinary inside out and opens up its imaginary depths. (Stephen Maine Hyperallergic)

Lynn’s skill is that of a super-hero or an owl, defying standard human biology, which limits our ability to ascertain color after dark. In Dark City, the most recent of her nocturnal investigations, Lynn continues to define herself as an optical alchemist who transforms leaden dross into shimmering, revelatory gold. (George Slade Photo-Eye)

"luminous and revelatory" (Artdaily)

About this edition

• Publisher: Damiani
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 8862084110
• ISBN 13: 9788862084116
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 128