NY. B&W
Burt Glinn / Magnum Photos / USA
Dennis Stock / Magnum Photos / USA
Irene Kung / Switzerland
Josef Hoflehner /Austria
+ archival images from the Getty images
1 - 20 april 2014

City of Kings

New York. Dream city. Hopes destroyer city. City of the cities. A place where life is almost never interrupted by the war, and was always full of fun and business. City, where the beauty of the world does not interfere with the career heights...

Perhaps, there is no more cinematic space in the world nowadays then New York. All the segments of society feel free living here: notables, separated from the Old World, well-off high-class and proud middle-class and the residents of Manhattan suburbs – everyone feels themselves like an owner of this rushing universe. In this city contrast is not nonsense, but a tip of its style and the stars are not just luminaries, but next-door neighbors.

Two Magnum photographers from New York are trying to keep that musical dynamics of the city, happiness, and the main thing – wonder of the image. Distance - exposition, the line that let you see something more then just a lens with set up sharpness. Dennis Stock’s images were always full frame, even if it was just a photo of Guggenheim Museum. They are always full of neat and exiting drama, like some short novels. An ordinary stranger in Stock’s photos looks like a character from Sergio Leone movie. And the former of Magnum Photos Henri Cartier-Bresson appears to be a mysterious demiurge with a camera in his hands (however wasn’t he one?). Later Dennis Stock met James Dean, who became his main model for a while. His Dean series hit with the fusion of famous movie star with any cityscape or interior. Stock makes a nice composition on any location – either in pigsty or on the graveyard or on the rainy street. Anywhere he finds unrepeatable composition, not a fussy one, but a clean and real, as the life is. By the way, “Life” will be the name of the upcoming Anton Corbijn movie, about how Stock and James Dean met.

Burt Glinn – a reporter with a capital letter, he did not limit himself to a single topic – politics or artistic world - also photographed stars. With the same degree of interest followed the summit meeting, backstage Broadway smoke breaks and city life.

Mystique of New York in its eternal symbols, such as the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building or Flat Iron, Central Park and Grand Central Station, Guggenheim or newfangled New Museum.

And not the fact, that the images of Joseph Hoflehner and Irene Kung make these sense closer and clearer. Kung’s images exude a mystical darkness of self-sufficient in its architectural charisma. Joseph Hoflehner catches moments by merging architecture with solar air-flow, achieving a special forecast - radiant -season schedules.

Vintage photos of the Getty Images collection demonstrates professional angle from the middle of the XX century. The landscape is looking up always and only a great beauty like Jayne Mansfield or Marilyn Monroe could bring that look back to the ground.

Among the photos of the exhibition there is untitled photograph taken like a cloud above the crown of the Statue of Liberty. You can see ancient wave hair Miss Liberty and a wreath of the sun's rays, similar knives ...

In the city, living under this view , is not afraid of the truth, and do not seem to hide their shortcomings.
A miracle of modern and full of luxury lifestyle , which we seem to seek nowadays, old photos of New York without regard you fall in love , in the same city, which , thank God, exists.

Marina Fedorovskaya.