A Sense of Place

 

Pier 24 Photography presents, A Sense of Place, an exploration of how photographs shape the perception of our environments. Together, the exhibited works shift in scale from room size installations to small, quiet photographs, transporting the viewer through a variety of locations, memories and emotive experiences.

Approaching the grand scale historically reserved for landscape paintings, photographs like Andres Gursky's F1 Pit Stop III, Thomas Demand's Grotto, and Jeff Wall's In Front of a Nightclub, immerse the viewer in an expansive environment - physically placing the viewer within the space of the photograph.

Works from Stephen Shore's Uncommon Places recall the spirit of anytown USA, while in an adjacent gallery Paul Graham's The Present captures continuous moments in the Manhattan landscape through a series of diptychs and triptychs. Similarly, Lee Friedlander's America by Car, a series documenting both the everyday and specific eccentricities in the United States from the confines of his car, shifting the viewer to a variety of places from the familiar frame of a car window. Together, these galleries examine a sense of place through collectively known American locations.

Explored through room-sized installations, Eric William Carroll's diazotypes - a form similar to blueprints - are produced at an unprecedented scale, creating an immersive experience of being in the woods. Similarly, Erik Kessels' installation 24 HRS in Photos creates a cascading room filled - floor to ceiling - with printed versions of every picture uploaded to Flickr during a 24-hour period, allowing the viewer to both visually and physically experience the overwhelming number of photographs shared online.

In three dedicated galleries, works drawn from the Sack Photographic Trust reflect one collector's sense of place. These galleries present historical photographs in contemporary installations focusing on traditional themes that are well represented in the Sack Photographic Trust.

The pictures assembled in A Sense of Place demonstrate what photography does best: engage our attention with the everyday - to what we might otherwise bypass - inspiring us to take another, closer look at the places that surround us.

EXHIBITED ARTISTS:

Robert Adams, Doug Aitken, Uta Barth, Edward Burtynsky, Eric William Carroll, John Chiara, Jan De Cock, Moyra Davey, Thomas Demand, Walker Evans, Jose Manuel Fors, Lee Friedlander, Paul Graham, Andreas Gursky, Todd Hido, Rinko Kawauchi, Veronika Kellndorfer, Erik Kessels, Lucia Koch, Richard Learoyd, Richard Misrach, Asako Narahasi, Stephen Shore, Cinthya Soto, Wolfgang Tillmans, Jeff Wall and selections from the Sack Photographic Trust.



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Featured Press

A Sense of Place - Best of 2014, by Vince Aletti
Artforum 12/01/2014

The Next Big Picture
The New York Times 01/23/2014

I Snap Therefore I Am
Wall Street Journal 12/12/2013

Pier 24 Photography: Epicenter of Photography in San Francisco
ARTE!Brasileiros 12/01/2013

Gold at the end of the bridge
British Journal of Photography 10/01/2013

Critics Pick - A Sense of Place
Art Forum 10/01/2013

Fors at Pier 24: City and Memories
Art on Cuba 04/23/2013