Neuberger Museum of Art
Purchase, New York
(914) 251-6100
Lewis Watts: Photographs
For San Francisco Bay Area-based photographer Lewis Watts, living
near the coast is essential. It speaks of unlimited horizons, of success,
of looking forward. In his art, however, Watts conveys the notion of halted
motion, of events memorialized in their moments in time. Watts' photographs
recall the past, society's interaction with its environment, the emigration
of an area's inhabitants, and social and economic displacement. Watts' work
is starkly striking. (left: 24 Street, West Oakland, 1997,
silver gelatin print, 11 1/4 x 18 1/4 inches, Courtesy of the artist)
The
Neuberger Museum of Art's exhibition of Lewis Watts' photography features
pictures of people from Harlem, the South and West Oakland, California.
It will be on view from September 10 through December 31, 2000. Watts draws
imagery for the most part from African-American neighborhoods - religious
icons, kids playing basketball, graffiti scrawls, the facades of vernacular
architecture-all are vital to his repertoire. "My central subjects
are people from the rural South and urban North. My inquiries manifest the
cultural landscape and investigate the exodus from country to city. Part
of my study investigates what has been brought from the country to the city
and the traces found generations later manifested in the cultural landscape,"
Watts says. (left: Strivers Row, 1989, silver gelatin print,
16 x 13 inches)
"Lewis Watts' photographs evidence human existence
and passage. His photographs retain, validate, and bear witness. The presence
of people in his work sometimes is implied rather than actual," says
Neuberger Museum of Arts Associate Director for Curatorial Affairs Judy
Collischan, Ph.D. who is the curator of the exhibition. "The intensity
and absolutism of Watts' presentation foster a sense of eliciting reality
and forcing it into strong relief. The result is an expression of the mystery
of human existence."
Lewis
Watts holds his BA in Political Science and his MA in Photography and Design
from the University of California, Berkeley, where he presently teaches.
His architectural preservation studies and his work as an architectural
preservation photographer have influenced his personal artistic production.
Farm Security Administration photographs and the documentary traditions
influenced his reflective references to agricultural backgrounds and makeshift
storefront churches. His parents' southern background enlightens much of
his research into the "great migration from the rural South to the
urban North. (left: Light Tree, Louisiana, 1994, silver gelatin
print, 12 1/2 x 16 1/2 inches)
Because
it affords a sense of strong relief and high black and white contrasts,
Watts' selected the gelatin-silver print for his special pursuit. Watts'
work emphasizes the medium's potential for artistic composition by calling
attention to subjects that usually might go unnoticed. His references to
the conventional still life imbue his unassuming topics with technical mastery;
relationships with the modern Dadaist focus on mundane manufactured objects.
By designating the special in opposition to the ordinary, the perfect versus
the imperfect, and the respected alongside the ignored, Watts reverses cultural
hierarchies. If an important principle of art is its ability to transform,
Watts has taken that aspect to its higher levels. (left: Luma
Kanda at the Key Bookshop, Oakland, 1995, silver gelatin print, 16 1/4
x 12 1/2 inches)
Several photographs on display in the Neuberger exhibition
were taken in New York City, a place that inspires Watts' creativity. "In
New York, everyone' s ethnicity is more intact on the surface," he
says. "There are also many more layers of history in the environment.
In the West, everything is newer and it is easier to reinvent oneself."
The photographs of Lewis Watts are part of the permanent
collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Oakland Museum
of California, Light Work of Syracuse, New York, The Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, DC, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York.
rev. 9/16/00
Read more about the Neuberger
Museum of Art in Resource Library Magazine
Please click on thumbnail images bordered by a red line
to see enlargements.
This page was originally published in Resource
Library Magazine. Please see Resource Library's Overview section for
more information. rev. 3/23/11
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For San Francisco Bay Area-based photographer Lewis Watts, living
near the coast is essential. It speaks of unlimited horizons, of success,
of looking forward. In his art, however, Watts conveys the notion of halted
motion, of events memorialized in their moments in time. Watts' photographs
recall the past, society's interaction with its environment, the emigration
of an area's inhabitants, and social and economic displacement. Watts' work
is starkly striking. (left: 24 Street, West Oakland, 1997,
silver gelatin print, 11 1/4 x 18 1/4 inches, Courtesy of the artist)
