Robert Richfield "A Pivotal Perspective"

Alan Klotz Gallery

poster for Robert Richfield "A Pivotal Perspective"

This event has ended.

This exhibition of recent photographs consists of seventeen large-scale, multi-panel , color panoramas from Europe and North America. In conjunction with the exhibition, a limited-edition book featuring thirty color plates, as well as a 10 original-print, limited edition portfolio, will be available.

Richfield has used his distinctive multi-paneled format for decades. In the early 1990s, he began rotating his camera 360 degrees to go beyond his own visual limits and extend the viewable perspective. In doing so, he has been able to flatten out out what is actually a circular view, creating illusionary landscapes and architectural spaces that could never be seen in their entirety. As colleague Jim Dow explains, "Richfield flattens entire rooms, squares, and vistas into the visual equivalent of EKGs that chart the patterns, pulses, and rhythms of his subjects. Precision grows into gesture and angles morph into abstraction, turning descriptive accuracy on its collective head for reasons that extend and comment on more traditional uses of photography to document and inform."

The illusion prevails in A Pivotal Perspective , inviting the viewer to the Pacific Northwest, Italy, Scotland, and beyond. Richfield's photographs appear to encapsulate a single moment in time, when in reality, every panel represents a separate interval. The time elapsed between each frame varies to accommodate the movement of a person, a train, or the camera itself. Time represents the third dimension in Richfield's work, as his photographs are measurable not only by inches, but also by minutes. These unique panoramas are complex, idiosyncratic, and personal visual spaces, which exist as much in Richfield's mind as they do in a Sicilian ruin or a Scottish railway station.

Richfield (b. 1947, Covington, KY) currently resides and works in West Newton, MA. While studying photography at the Rhode Island School of Design, (BA 1969, MFA 1972) he was profoundly influenced by Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. Richfield first embraced the itinerant role of the photographer during his travels with Siskind and, over the last forty years, has worked extensively in the United Kingdom, Continental Europe, and Mexico .

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Schedule

from September 18, 2008 to October 25, 2008

Opening Reception on 2008-09-18 from 18:00 to 20:00
Book Signing during the opening reception and on September 19, noon-6pm.

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