ABE FRAJNLICH: PENELOPE'S HUNGRY EYES
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Tregoning and Company is proud to announce our major Spring 2012 exhibition: PENELOPE'S HUNGRY EYES: Photographs by ABE FRAJNDLICH - opening on Friday, March 16th 5-9pm as part of 78th Street Studios popular "Third Friday" Series. Abe Frajndlich will be with us along with Dr. Henry Adams on Saturday afternoon March 24th 3-5p, for a gallery talk and book signing. Henry Adams is the author of the fine essay on Abe and his work, found in this latest acclaimed book of Abe's 101 images of 20th century photographer/artists, PENELOPE'S HUNGRY EYES: Portraits of Famous Photographers --just published by Schirmer/Mosel.
PENELOPE'S HUNGRY EYES: Portraits of Famous Photographers has already been hailed by French and German photography critics as one of the most significant new books on photography of the last decade. Frajndlich received an entire page in the Jan. 15th Sunday New York Times along with a dozen portraits from the book --unprecedented acclaim indeed. (read article) Catalogs available for purchase at Tregoning & Company.
"For over thirty years Abe Frajndlich has been an artist who I've admired and championed, dating back to the first Cleveland exhibition of 'infra-red" photographs of Cleveland in 1981, which I organized. Since that time, Abe and I have explored various ideas for another exhibition -looking for the right combination of images, timing, space and significance combining to bring him back into view in his home city. PENELOPE'S HUNGRY EYES is the result." ~ Bill Tregoning |
 Self Portrait [Maine Coast]
Abe Frajndlich: The portrait photographer of the photographers.
It is with "hungry eyes", but also with a tenacity and patience only equaled by Penelope's firm belief in the return of her husband Odysseus, that over the last 30 years American Abe Frajndlich has taken portraits of his famous fellow photographers. Now, a selection of over 100 pictures from the ever growing portrait collection has been published in book form for the first time under the title "Penelope's Hungry Eyes". It features grand old masters of the art and photographic artists, contemporaries of the author and younger masters from the Düsseldorf School. Abe Frajndlich has succeeded in luring the world's most famous photographers out from behind their cameras and in front of his. With extraordinary skill, he has trained his lens on people used to hiding their own eyes behind a camera. For each of his portraits (some in color, some black and white) Frajndlich has conceived an individual setup that brings into focus in diverse ways the photographer's primary organ, namely their eyes, which are as special as the voice of talented singers. Some of the photographers shy away by closing their eyes, wearing a mask or turning away (Cindy Sherman, Annie Leibovitz, Thomas Struth or Hans Namuth). Others use props such as glasses, mirrors or magnifying glasses to set their eyes in scene (Bill Brandt, Duane Michals, Andreas Feininger, Lillian Bassman) and still others draw attention to the vulnerability of their eyes using knives and scissors (Imogen Cunningham, Lucas Samaras). Yet many of the subjects respond to the unfamiliar "change of perspective" by looking directly into Frajndlich's camera (Candida Höfer, Berenice Abbott, Gordon Parks). Abe Frajndlich was born in 1946 in Frankfurt. At the age of ten he moved to the United States via Israel, France and Brazil. His role model and mentor was photographer Minor White, from whom he learnt "the art of seeing". |