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Extended through June 30, 2018

About Photography

April 24–June 30, 2018
San Francisco

Installation view Artwork, left to right: © Piero Golia, © Adam McEwen, © Florian Maier-Aichen. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork, left to right: © Piero Golia, © Adam McEwen, © Florian Maier-Aichen. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork, left to right: © Ed Ruscha, © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, © Studio lost but found/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork, left to right: © Ed Ruscha, © Robert Rauschenberg Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, © Studio lost but found/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork, left to right: © Dike Blair, © Sally Mann, © Nicola Del Roscio Foundation. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork, left to right: © Dike Blair, © Sally Mann, © Nicola Del Roscio Foundation. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork, left to right: © 2018 Cindy Sherman, © Taryn Simon. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork, left to right: © 2018 Cindy Sherman, © Taryn Simon. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork © Studio lost but found/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork © Studio lost but found/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view Artwork © 2018 Chris Burden/Licensed by The Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view

Artwork © 2018 Chris Burden/Licensed by The Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view with Andy Warhol, Screen Tests, 1964–66 (1964–66) Artwork © 2018 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view with Andy Warhol, Screen Tests, 1964–66 (1964–66)

Artwork © 2018 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view with Andy Warhol, Screen Tests, 1964–66 (1964–66) Artwork © 2018 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view with Andy Warhol, Screen Tests, 1964–66 (1964–66)

Artwork © 2018 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view with Andy Warhol, Screen Tests, 1964–66 (1964–66) Artwork © 2018 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Installation view with Andy Warhol, Screen Tests, 1964–66 (1964–66)

Artwork © 2018 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved. Photo: Johnna Arnold

Works Exhibited

Douglas Gordon, Monster Reborn, 2002 Transmounted chromogenic print, 32 × 48 inches (81.3 × 121.9 cm), edition of 11 + 3 AP© Studio lost but found/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018

Douglas Gordon, Monster Reborn, 2002

Transmounted chromogenic print, 32 × 48 inches (81.3 × 121.9 cm), edition of 11 + 3 AP
© Studio lost but found/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2018

Duane Hanson, Man with Camera, 1991–92 Polychromed bronze and mixed media, 49 × 38 × 34 inches (124.5 × 96.5 × 86.4 cm), 1 of 3 unique versions© Duane Hanson. Photo: Rob McKeever

Duane Hanson, Man with Camera, 1991–92

Polychromed bronze and mixed media, 49 × 38 × 34 inches (124.5 × 96.5 × 86.4 cm), 1 of 3 unique versions
© Duane Hanson. Photo: Rob McKeever

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #60, 1980 Gelatin silver print, 40 × 30 inches (101.6 × 76.2 cm)© 2018 Cindy Sherman. Photo: courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #60, 1980

Gelatin silver print, 40 × 30 inches (101.6 × 76.2 cm)
© 2018 Cindy Sherman. Photo: courtesy the artist and Metro Pictures, New York

Chris Burden, Deluxe Photo Book 1971–73, 1974 Gelatin silver prints, chromogenic prints, and typewritten note in loose-leaf binder with hand-painted cover, 12 x 12 x 3 inches (30.5 x 30.5 x 7.6 cm), edition of 50© Chris Burden/Licensed by The Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Chris Burden, Deluxe Photo Book 1971–73, 1974

Gelatin silver prints, chromogenic prints, and typewritten note in loose-leaf binder with hand-painted cover, 12 x 12 x 3 inches (30.5 x 30.5 x 7.6 cm), edition of 50
© Chris Burden/Licensed by The Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Adam McEwen, Untitled (Bret), 2011 Chromogenic print, 40 × 28 inches (101.6 × 71.1 cm), edition of 3 + 2 AP© Adam McEwen

Adam McEwen, Untitled (Bret), 2011

Chromogenic print, 40 × 28 inches (101.6 × 71.1 cm), edition of 3 + 2 AP
© Adam McEwen

About

Gagosian is pleased to present About Photography, an exhibition by artists, modern and contemporary, who have exhibited with the gallery over the past four decades.

About Photography explores the ways in which artists use photography as a medium, a means to an end, and a catalyst for other art forms. From Andy Warhol to Richard Prince, these artists open up the question of what it means to utilize the photographic medium for representation, as well as in the creation of form. As intellectual challenges continue to unfold, photography pervades not only all other artistic genres, but our every moment as well, a phenomenon that has irrevocably changed the nature of art itself.

The exhibition’s only sculpture, Duane Hanson’s Man with Camera (1991–92), takes center stage: a figure perched on a folding chair poises his camera to take a photograph. Celebrated for their startling realism, Hanson’s figures and the “snapshot of America” that they constitute take on new meaning in a photographic context. Nearby, Andy Warhol’s Screen Test of Edie Sedgwick (1965) is projected on the entrance wall. Richard Avedon’s portraits of Louis Armstrong (1955), Bob Dylan (1963), Malcolm X (1963), and members of Warhol’s Factory (1969–75) create an interlocking narrative about photography and society, contrasting with both the aesthetics and implications of Hanson’s figure.

Fifty years after Diane Arbus began shooting her unsettling black-and-white portraits of ordinary Americans on a medium-format Rolleiflex, producing distinctive, square photographs, Richard Prince’s Untitled (portrait) (2015) borrows the characteristic text and cropping of an Instagram post. An avid documenter and collector of American subcultures, Prince uses mass-media images to redefine concepts of ownership and authorship. Here, his examination of the contemporary channels and distribution of the photograph stands in stark contrast to Arbus’s iconic portraits, including Identical Twins, Roselle, N.J. (1966).

While Ed Ruscha’s deadpan series Vacant Lots (1970–2003) memorializes Los Angeles’s vernacular architecture, now largely overbuilt, the dissonance between nature and the incursion of commerce and popular culture is made evident in Andreas Gursky’s SH II (2014), in which a superhero sits alone in a desolate landscape.

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Deluxe Photo Book

Deluxe Photo Book

Sydney Stutterheim discusses Chris Burden’s Deluxe Photo Book 1971–73 on the occasion of its inclusion in About Photography at Gagosian San Francisco.

Inkjet print of Jeff Wall's "In the Legion" (2022)

Jeff Wall: In the Domain of Likeness

The Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, has staged a comprehensive Jeff Wall exhibition including more than fifty works spanning five decades. Here, Barry Schwabsky reflects on the enduring power of and mystery in Wall’s photography.

Installation view with Douglas Gordon, Pretty much every film and video work from about 1992 until now... (1999–)

Douglas Gordon: To Sing

On the occasion of Douglas Gordon: All I need is a little bit of everything, an exhibition in London, curator Adam Szymczyk recounts his experiences with Gordon’s work across nearly three decades, noting the continuities and evolutions.

Black-and-white photograph of two women having breakfast in bed and reading newspapers with a tapestry of an abstracted face hanging on the wall behind them

A Flat on Rue Victor-Considerant

Lee Miller and Tanja Ramm’s friendship took them from New York to Paris and back, in front of and behind many cameras, and into the Surrealist avant-garde. Here, Gagosian director Richard Calvocoressi speaks with Ramm’s daughter, art historian Margit Rowell, about discovering her mother’s early life, her memories of Miller, and the collaborative work of photographers and models.

Elisa Gonzalez and Terrance Hayes

to light, and then return—: A Night of Poetry with Edmund de Waal, Elisa Gonzalez, Terrance Hayes, and Sally Mann

Gagosian presented an evening of poetry inside to light, and then return—, an exhibition of new works by Edmund de Waal and Sally Mann, inspired by each other’s practices, at Gagosian, New York. In this video—taking the artists’ shared love of poetry, fragments, and metamorphosis as a point of departure—poets Elisa Gonzalez and Terrance Hayes read a selection of their recent works that resonate with the themes of elegy and historical reckoning in the show. The evening was moderated by Jonathan Galassi, chairman and executive editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Urs Fischer: Wave

Urs Fischer: Wave

In this video, Urs Fischer elaborates on the creative process behind his public installation Wave, at Place Vendôme, Paris.