Alta is pleased to present “Ray K Metzker : Film Noir”, honoring the legacy of one of the greatest black and white photographers of the 20th century.
Pancho Saula says that twenty years ago, at the Paris Photo fair, he saw for the first time a Ray Metzker (1931-2014) photograph. “I asked who the artist was, they told me his name and I didn't know him. I felt so ashamed". Perhaps to compensate, Metzker has ended up becoming one of his favorite photographers, and that's saying a lot considering that Saula is used to living surrounded by works of Vivian Maier, Joel Meyerowitz, Sarah Moon or Bruce Weber, to name just four of the photographers that have been exhibited by him in Anyós.
But it reflects the kind of ostracism in which Metzker lived and died: recognized by colleagues as one of the greats of the photography of the second half of the 20th century but always far from the limelight and universal popularity that other photographers of his generation have cultivated.
Metzker is recognized as a virtuoso and a master of light. Saula says "I would have chosen Metzker for the first exhibition of the gallery, but one has to have a slightly trained eye to enter his world”. A world that is direct heir of the Bauhaus. Metzker studied at the Chicago Institute of Design, his rationalist point of view often leads to almost abstract compositions, and a marked taste for experimenting with double and triple exposure, consecutive photography and composites.
The result is an almost existential proposal, along the lines of the treatises on loneliness that make up Hopper’s paintings. Only to discover Metzker it is worth the short trip to Anyós.
For the first time in one year and half of history, Alta presents two exhibitions at the same time, and to the monograph happily dedicated to Metzker we must add another one under the title of “Cars”, reviewing one of the most distinctive photography subject matters of the second third of the twentieth century.
A sensational excuse to bring together a handful of must-have names that maybe you hear for the first time, but it's never too late for an artistic epiphany: from William Klein to Marvin Newman and Bruce Davidson, but with special focus on Berenice Abbot, Saul Leiter and Ted Croner.
The automobile as a symbol of freedom – the horse of the 20th century – but also of encapsulation, turned into a castle from where we contemplate life passing by and with windscreens turned into imaginary view finders, look at Leiter's photo here to the side.
Abbot, pioneer of almost everything, accomplished portraitist and prophet of Eugene Atget in the USA; Louis Stettner, the French Yankee who fuses the humanism of Cartier-Bresson, Doisneau and company with the school of New York, and naturally, Ted Croner’s lab experimentation long before photoshop and digital retouching.
Saul Leiter : Untitled, Undated.Metzker and Cars are Alta’s two gifts for this spring. Another lesson in this 20th century photography intensive taught by Saula since autumn 2021 in Anyós. The next exhibition, in September will present the works of Steven Meisel, the indisputable biggest name in fashion photography of our times.
