Muzi Quawsom photo exhibit

Press Release on Yossi Milo Gallery website:

Focusing on “outsiders”, Ms. Quawson explores the various social, financial, and political structures that define American society. With photographs that possess a cinematic style, Ms. Quawson investigates the identity of Amanda Jo Williams, a young musician and mother in Woodstock, New York. After a chance meeting in Manhattan in 2002, Ms. Quawson created Pull Back the Shade over the course of the following four years while staying with Amanda in Woodstock and traveling with her around the country. By photographing Amanda’s relationships with her partner and young twin daughters, Ms. Quawson’s photographs comment on the frustrations of young motherhood, domesticity and social alienation.

The style of the photographs recalls the cinematography of New American Cinema of the 1970s and its aggrandizement of the anti-hero. Pull Back the Shade was first shown at the Tate Britain in London where the works were displayed as a slideshow, bringing their collective effect closer to that of a film. For this exhibition, the color negatives have been developed as Duratran prints and placed in light boxes; the result is a series of illuminated photographs that resemble stills from a color film.

Yossi Milo Gallery (525 W. 25th Street)
February 21, 2008–March 29, 2008

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I saw this exhibit last weekend and just had to say that I thought it was really great. Having the photographs illuminated in light boxes was the perfect touch and really did lend to the idea of film stills. I highly recommend checking it out while it is still at Yossi Milo.