Jerry Uelsmann & Maggie Taylor at AIPAD 2008 NYC
Apr 22nd, 2008 by Brad
The April 2008 AIPAD (April 10-13, Park Avenue Armory, NYC) Photography show brought together thousands of people to see the work of hundreds of photographers being showing in around 80 galleries. This it it gave us the opportunity to have a delightful conversation with the master photographer Jerry Uelsmann (far right) and his wife the wonderful artist Maggie Taylor (2nd from right) while hanging around their work. Wonderful!
Jeffy is truly one of the masters of photography and a hero of mine. He broke new ground in photography and continues to create amazing new work. Forty years ago he had a solo show at MoMA and has been influential with his enigmatic surreal images that touch on powerful conscious and subconscious notes for decades.
Currently too many critics and curators see to think that experimental photography skips from Man Ray right over to the ever-so-slightly-tweaked realities of Cindy Sherman. After last year’s Uelsmann retrospective at the Beijing World Art Museum, when will there be a major US or European retrospective. Jerry is also thinking about larger scale prints which would be amazing to see in the right museum or gallery setting.
I’d highly recommend to any photographer study Jerry’s work to learn powerful symbolic and intellectual combinations that convey deeper meanings and make us think and feel new things about the world around us and our perception of it. Often his compositions are totemic which often helps to convey a deeper spiritualism.
Jerry creates his work with film and darkroom techniques, but he in no way harbors any ill-thoughts on digital work. To him it is like painters who prefer to use different brushes. Maggie creates wonderful images that make heavy use of photoshop and takes layers to the extreme. Maggie also has a finely-tuned visual literacy and uses it to take allegorical narrative magic to a new level.
Maggie and Jerry also are collaborating on a variety of works.
Variety of links:
- http://www.pdngallery.com/legends/uelsmann/
- Maggie & Jerry on a Adobe Podcast George’s iDisk (see “1220 Podcast – Maggie Taylor and Jerry Uelsmann”).
- Maggie Taylor ‘s “Landscapes of Dream “Adobe Photoshop Master Class (on Amazon)
- A Gallery in New Orleans represents both of them: http://www.agallery.com/
