Want more images or videos?

Request additional images or videos from the seller

1 of 11

Harry Bowers
Large Harry Bowers Vintage C Print Photograph From Ten Photographs Fashion Photo
1984

Name: Large Harry Bowers Vintage C Print Photograph From Ten Photographs Fashion Photo
Brand: Harry Bowers
Rating: 4.9 (107 reviews)

$1,200List Price

About the Item

HARRY BOWERS T E N P H O T O G R A P H S I DON'T LOOK FOR PHOTOGRAPHS I INVENT THEM I recall my first meeting with Harry Bowers in California a few years ago. As he produced his large-scale prints, I was at first flabbergasted, not only by their size, but by their seamless perfection. Technique appeared to be everything but then technique as technique simply vanished. After the first moment, technique was no longer an issue, but rather a passageway to the imagery. Suffice it to say about Harry Bowers' working style that he is an obsessive man. Trained as an engineer, he has turned that discipline to art. His lenses, equipment and darkroom, much of it exactingly manufactured by himself to answer certain needs, serve the desire of the artist to take photographic technique to its ultimate perfection in invisibility and transparency. I respect obsession in art, and particularly in photography, because obsession in photography passes beyond the easy, middle ground of image making to a more demanding, more difficult, yet more rewarding end. Bowers' obsession is to eliminate "photography as technique." No grain, no decisive moments, no journalism, or, seemingly, direct autobiographical endeavors appear in his work. Bowers is an artist of synthesis who controls his environment if only in the studio exactly to his liking. The images he creates are formal structures, saucy stories on occasion, which may offer hints of a darker, more frightening sexuality, but what you see is the end product of an experiment in which nothing save the original insight perhaps is left to chance. We seem fascinated with the idea of replication of reality in art. Popular painting frequently reproduces a scene "with the accuracy of a photograph," and photographs may "make you feel as though you were right there." The very invisibility of the photographic medium is important to Bowers, in that it allows him to maneuver his subject matter without concern for rendering it in an obvious art medium which would interfere with the nature of the materials he uses. The formal subtleties of Bowers' recent work are as delicious and ambiguous in their interrelationships as the best Cubist collages, yet while those collages always suggest their parts through edge and texture, these photographs present a structure through a surface purity. Bowers' earlier works, for example, the Skirts I Have Known series, were formed of bits of clothing belonging to Bowers and his wife or found at local thrift shops. These works fused an elegance of pattern and texture, reminiscent of Miriam Shapiro's or Lucas Samaras' fabric paintings, with a sense of theater and, on occasion, high eroticism. These clothes are not simply mashed like baled rags into the glass fronted box which fronts the picture plane, but are actors in a subtle dumb show. Early on, Bowers was surprised that so few people took notice of the erotic element in his work, for it forms a distinct and important component of his images, and one which he has continued to exploit, albeit in different ways. In the last few years Bowers' work has divided into two parallel modes; one continues his fascination with patterns, textures and stuffs pressed into the transparent picture plane, while the other is more directly anthropomorphic. In this second body of work, Bowers frequently uses articulated shadow figures in black or white, carefully adjusted within the image in a provocative way that is often sexually unsettling. But for all their explicit arrangement, these works may be less suggestive than his earlier clothing tableaus. These newer works are more about space, texture, and the extensions of photography, as well as being a comment on sexuality. Bowers has always been fascinated with space, and recognizing that it cannot be rendered on a flat surface through the camera, he has set about to create an illusion of space on a shallow plane, a true trompe l'oeil achievement. Within these works, the space is still constructed upon the glass panel of the printing frame, but with elements collaged to its front surface as well as pressed within it. The forms, frequently large black and white photographs (a photographer's conceit on the use of photography), often include a seated or crouching figure dressed only in socks and cutoff dungarees, which add an element of personality. The figure and the way in which it is posed also add a quality of vulnerability to his images, not heretofore seen. One of the best of these images, HB-28-80, uses a photograph of a figure crouching in a fetal position on a chair. The figure has been cut from its background, and the background, in turn, has been taped to the front of the glass pane while the figure, in perfect register with the background, is laminated behind the glass. One of Bowers' articulated shadow figures, one hand trying to hide its genitals, has been placed on top of the figure, also under the plane of glass. The shadow figure follows the curve of the spine of the photographed figure. One cannot help but feel not only the nakedness and tense embarrassment of these two figures, one real and the other schematic, but the anomalous suggestion of a man carrying a fetus within his body. Bowers' images extend their power in several ways. They are photographs, which are so pure in their technique as to be clear as water. They deal with precise replications of reality, but a reality which has been recontextualized into episodes of both formal and visceral ambiguity. The best of them are wonderful .. contrivances" -his word-and are as frightening in their psychological implications as they are elegant in their visual form. Thomas H. Garver, Director Madison Art Center "I follow fashion. I have closets literally full of clothes. I am a full-blown Comme des Garçons and Prada freak. I love clothes themselves as objects, and I also love the glossies – my love of fashion is how I discovered Wallpaper magazine."

Creator:
Harry Bowers (1938, American)
Creation Year:
1984
Dimensions:
Height: 20 in (50.8 cm)Width: 16 in (40.64 cm)
Medium:
Photographic Paper,C Print
Movement Style:
Arte Povera
Period:
1980-1989
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Surfside, FL
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU38210688032

2010s Art Deco Still-life Prints

Materials

Photographic Film, Archival Ink, Photographic Paper, C Print, Digital, G...

Ryan Rivadeneyra
Flamingo Pink Space, Surreal Still Life Composition, Pastel Palette Giclée Print, 2013

$280 Sale Price

20% Off

H 28 in W 20 in

Pink and White Delicate Flowers, Black Background, Bright Elegant Giclée Print

By Kind of Cyan

Located in Barcelona, ES

This is an exclusive limited edition color Giclée print, printed on matte photographic paper. This exquisite still life photo, shows a classy bouquet beautifully lit with soft light...

Category

2010s Baroque Still-life Photography

Materials

Emulsion, Photographic Paper, C Print, Giclée

Kind of Cyan
Pink and White Delicate Flowers, Black Background, Bright Elegant Giclée Print, 2021

$450

H 36 in W 24 in

Male Nude from the 29 Palms, CA series

By Stefanie Schneider

Located in Morongo Valley, CA

Male Nude (29 Palms, CA) - 1999 58x56cm, Edition of 10, analog C-Print, hand-printed by the artist on Fuji Crystal Archive paper, matte surface, based on a Polaroid. Signature la...

Category

1990s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Materials

Archival Paper, Photographic Paper, C Print, Color, Polaroid

Stefanie Schneider
Male Nude from the 29 Palms, CA series, 1999

$1,644 Sale Price

Photographic Paper

Vera Simons
St Louis MO Photo Mosaic Collage Aerial Photograph, Female Aviator Feminist Art, 1981

$1,000

Still Thinking About These?

All Recently Viewed

More Ways To Browse

Black And White Photography Food

Male Nude Photography

Black Nude Women

Contemporary Male Nudes

Federico Fellini

Nude Underwater Black And White

Marilyn Monroe Portrait

Sophie Vintage

Hollywood Photographs

Poolside Party

Vintage Film Negatives

Cyanotype Photography

Bourdin Guy

Human Heart

View All Popular Photography Searches

Harry BowersLarge Harry Bowers Vintage C Print Photograph From Ten Photographs Fashion Photo1984

About the Item

You May Also Like

2010s Art Deco Still-life Prints

Ryan RivadeneyraFlamingo Pink Space, Surreal Still Life Composition, Pastel Palette Giclée Print, 2013

2010s Baroque Still-life Photography

Kind of CyanPink and White Delicate Flowers, Black Background, Bright Elegant Giclée Print, 2021

1990s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Stefanie SchneiderMale Nude from the 29 Palms, CA series, 1999

2010s Contemporary Color Photography

Stefanie SchneiderPalm Springs Palm Trees X (Californication), 2019

Early 2000s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Stefanie SchneiderIn Other Words (Oxana s 30th Birthday) - Polaroid, 2007

Early 2000s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Stefanie SchneiderUntitled 09 (Oxana s 30th Birthday) starring Radha Mitchell, 2007

1990s Contemporary Figurative Photography

Stefanie SchneiderGirl Nude at Window - Bathtime III (29 Palms, CA) based on a Polaroid, 1999

2010s Contemporary Landscape Photography

Stefanie SchneiderHome, Sweet 29 (Oxana s 30th Birthday) - Polaroid, Landscape, Contemporary, 2010

Early 2000s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Stefanie SchneiderMax - Oxana s 30th Birthday, 2007

2010s Contemporary Portrait Photography

Stefanie SchneiderRadha Mitchell on the Set of The Crazies - Polaroid, Women, expired, movies, 2009

More From This Seller

1980s Arte Povera Photography