Joanne Leonard, “Ann Arbor, MI,” 1976-85, gelatin silver print image. Credit...via Joanne Leonard and Luhring Augustine, New York
Chelsea. Joanne Leonard/Brittany Nelson
Through Oct. 19. Luhring Augustine, 531 West 24th Street, Manhattan
How do you conjure a human presence without any humans? Consider this beautifully hung two-person photography show.
Joanne Leonard’s small, closely focused black-and-white photos include nary a human, though there is one cat and one row of uncanny doll hands. Shot and printed in the 1970s and 1980s, when Leonard was a working single mother, they show kitchen and laundry-room countertops in her home and others’.
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During a residency at the SETI Institute, Brittany Nelson used a hand-held spotlight and a medium-format camera from the early 1980s — it’s about as old as she is — to photograph the 42 dish antennas the institute uses to search the skies for alien life. Some are half hidden in shadow; others loom as large and white as some kind of cosmic egg.
Read full article at nytimes.com
