News/Events

DATE: July 15, 2011

Review: Eye/Object at Daiter Gallery

Photographs from the Collection of Jonathan Williams

Through July 30, 2011

Photography critic, publisher, poet, essayist, and lecturer, Jonathan Williams was a substantive sole and works from his personal collection, now on view at Stephen Daiter Gallelry, reveal his sensibility.

Williams' Jargon Society Press, based out of North Carolina, brought cutting edge photography to the public eye in over 100 volumes from the 1950's to the present. Volumes pairing images by now recognized masters like Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, Frederick Sommer and Clarence John Laughlin with edgy text from cross country sources Williams pushed the envelope and cultivated appreciation for the works and the artists he believed in. His critical eye was early to spot emerging talent: Art Sinsabaugh, Doris Ulmann, and Ralph Eugene Meatyard, among others who would go onto become classic examples of masters in American modernism.

The personal collection of this pioneering champion brings you back to the brink, to the moment when these works were cutting edge and allows you to retrace history. Each work is emotionally engaging, and the range impressive. From morbid and haunting to reflexive even humerus each piece invites if not demands thought. Truth be told much of the work reveals a cutting darkness in the collector but never without a trace of beauty.

Newcity Review

Stephen Daiter Gallery

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