David Benjamin Sherry
September 11 – October 25. 2014.
In association with Salon 94
Danziger Gallery is pleased to inaugurate its new space at 521 West 23rd Street with the first New York show of David Benjamin Sherry’s mono-color landscapes – a series of analog photographs taken in 2013 and 2014 as the artist traveled through the Western and Southwestern states. Seeing the world in both a heartfelt and postmodern way, Sherry turned his pictures into vividly colored renditions of the American wilderness, transforming iconic vistas and familiar panoramas into large scale color fields.
Using a traditional handmade wooden camera, and shooting with the f/64 aperture beloved by Ansel Adams and Edward Weston and their namesake f/64 group, Sherry maintained the eponymous sharpness while employing a scale barely imaginable to his predecessors. In this way, Sherry’s images invite the viewer to get lost in extreme levels of visual information while being seduced by the emotive power of color.
Blending truth and the photographer’s conservationist intent with a contemporary view of the role of the photographer/artist, Sherry’s landscapes remind us without preaching of the inherent value that exists in any natural resource – what it offers, what it represents, and ultimately, its ability to connect us to a broader experience.
“Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike… This natural beauty – hunger is made manifest … in our magnificent National Parks … Nature’s sublime wonderlands, the admiration and joy of the world.” – John Muir
David Benjamin Sherry was born in 1981 in Woodstock, NY and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. He received his BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 2003 and his MFA from Yale University in 2007. His work is part of the permanent collections at the Wexner Center of the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and the Saatchi Collection, London. His work was included in Greater New York at PS1 MoMA (2010), New York, The Anxiety of Photography at Aspen Art Museum (2011), Lost Line at LACMA (2013), and most recently in, What Is A Photograph? at the International Center for Photography, New York (2014). The artist’s latest book Earth Changes, with essay by LACMA curator Britt Salvesen, was recently published in September 2014 by Mörel Books, London.
Sherry has a simultaneous exhibition of recent photographs on view at Salon 94 from September 7th – October 25th.