The latest in a series of idiosyncratic surveys of the history of
photography
"Humans, unlike other living creatures, want to make and look at
pictures." So begins the introduction to the jaw-dropping array of
photographs in Long Story Short, the latest in Fraenkel Gallery's
idiosyncratic surveys of photography since the medium's invention 180
years ago.
A surprising and unconventional slice of photography's history, Long
Story Short is also an abbreviated tour of Fraenkel Gallery's approach
to photography. Published to mark the gallery's 40th (and still
counting) year, this sumptuously designed and printed volume presents
work by photography's masters alongside that of little-known artists and
anonymous thrift shop finds.
Among the images to be discovered here are Eadweard Muybridge's 1887
study of a contortionist performing extreme body movements; Man Ray's
1923 ghostlike rayograph of an irradiated banjo; and a female
impersonator applying her lipstick backstage, as seen by Diane Arbus in
1959.
Interwoven among these are anonymous photographs of a tornado touching
ground near Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts, in 1896; astronaut Buzz Aldrin
standing beside an American flag on the moon in 1969; and a lawn mower
flying inexplicably over a meadow in 1974. Presented in approximate
chronological order, the unconventional flow of images conveys a
profound sense of photography's infinite riches, and is a meditation on
the inexhaustible possibilities of the medium itself.
