Hazel Larsen Archer: Elizabeth Schmidtt Jennnerjahn and Robert Raunchenberg c.1948

TI's been in summer transit and almost missed this update from reader Phil Taylor who curated a truly elegant show at the Robert Mann Gallery . My Taylor sent us this message which made us curious about exploring his show. I adore the above image. Great design idea too.

Robert Mann is located at 210 11th Avenue in NY.

I am writing to inform you about the exhibition I have curated for Robert
Mann Gallery. Of the Refrain is an exhibition of historical photography,
primarily focusing on female artists working with studio-based photography
during the first half of the 20th century. Many of these artists opened
their studios to support themselves with commercial commissions, but the
archive shows the interesting ways in which they were able to integrate
their commercial and fine art practices. The exhibition looks at three
particular genres—still life, portraiture, and dance photography—and
the ways in which formal repetitions and motifs developed between artists
across time. In addition to masters like Berenice Abbott, Ilse Bing,
Horst P. Horst, Man Ray and Josef Sudek, Of the Refrain also presents less
well-known photographers such as ringl+pit, Trude Fleischmann and Hazel
Larsen Archer.

The exhibition seeks to forgo many of the hierarchies generally associated
with historical photography exhibitions and adopts a decidedly contemporary
approach to the subject matter, preferring formal play to typological,
chronological or authorial structure. That said, the installation design
is integral to the way in which the exhibition should be evaluated.
Taking cues from Deleuze and Guattari’s A Thousand Plateaus, I have
conceived of the exhibition to present surprising relationships between
images which otherwise lack affinity. Particular lines of sight
throughout the gallery highlight formal and thematic repetitions between
images. The backbone of the exhibition is a series of photographs by the
relatively unknown Hazel Larsen Archer, taken of Merce Cunningham when
both were instructors at Black Mountain College. Spaced throughout the
exhibition, these almost abstract images function as stops, or refrains,
amidst the flow of imagery. Larsen Archer suffered from polio and was
confined to a wheelchair; as a result Cunningham was forced to leap in
close proximity to her, and the compositions are intimate records of their
interaction. Of particular interest to The Imagist might be the classic
Mainbocher Corset image by Horst, as well as early Ilse Bing works
executed for Harper’s Bazaar and Schiaparelli in the 1930s. In addition
to the dance and advertising images, photographs of Bertolt Brecht, Jean
Cocteau, Martha Graham, Willem de Kooning, and Robert Rauschenberg all
play parts here, both as autonomous works and as references outside of
each photograph. In the treatment of historical material and the mode of
display, the processes of remembering are crucial to the content of the
exhibition.

Of the Refrain will be on view at Robert Mann Gallery through August 22.
I hope you have a chance to see the exhibition in person, although it can
also be viewed at www.robertmann.com.