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Gideon Barnett: After Edith Light Work Gallery
Price: Free Light Work Gallery
316 Waverly Ave., Syracuse University,
Syracuse
Gideon Barnett's exhibition "After Edith" brings together a collection of images that he produced by documenting vandalized photography books found in public libraries. The project began in Miami, FL, with the discovery of a copy of Emmet Gowin's Photographs in which the iconic nude portraits of Gowin's wife Edith had been defaced by prurient library visitors. Parts of the images had been cut with a razor blade and, in some instances, entirely torn out of the book. This deliberate removal of "provocative" imagery and the psychology of what may have sparked such an act fascinated Barnett, and prompted a closer look at the visual byproducts—the way in which the cuts open through to another image, for example, or how the tearing of a page can create a compelling juxtaposition of photographs. The vandalized images are unquestionably elegant and beautiful when taken out of context and framed on the wall, yet all together Barnett's photographs also point to a disconcerting fearful, destructive, or even violent intention behind them.
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