I visited the High Museum of Art in Atlanta in January of 2019. I was there to see the photography exhibit “Look Again: 45 Years of Collecting Photography” and an exhibit of photographs by William Christenberry, “Time and Texture“. Christenberry was a pioneer of color photography who photographed buildings and landscapes of rural Alabama annually over a period of decades beginning in the 1960s. The exhibits were excellent. I have an earlier Five Frames From The High post of hidden scenes with humorous commentary. Here I present five more frames from The High.
Guard Umbrella
I found this umbrella guarding a lower level of The High. I was struck by the contrast of the red of the canopy with the gray stone of the wall. It was early on a cloudy winter day when I snapped the shot. The shade of the umbrella was not yet needed so it stood patiently, guarding the passageway to the door that is hiding in the courtyard to the left.
Patrons d’Art
I caught these two examining Simi Valley, 2014, by Alex Prager. Simi Valley is a pigmented inkjet print. In a process she likens to painting, Prager shoots everything in camera and marries the images into a single frame. A copy of Simi Valley, edition 6/6, sold in 2017 at Sotheby’s for north of $50K. Darn, missed it.
House III
This is House III by Roy Lichtenstein. Lichtenstein was an American pop artist who’s best known work was based on comic strip panels and who helped define pop art through parody. House III is one of his later works and derives from a series of interior paintings which were inspired by advertisements culled in part from the yellow pages. House III was designed in 1997 and fabricated in 2002. Let’s move in!
Photographing the Photographers
This group of young photographers was loud, kinetic, and very, very enthusiastic. They were a group of about a dozen, all wielding identical cameras, which, for you gearheads, looked a lot like Canon Rebel T6’s with the 18-55mm kit lens. This group is standing in front of an untitled work , 2010, by Anish Kapoor. This is a stainless steel concave dish almost ten feet in diameter that is multifaceted and reflects both light and sound. These young photographers had been singing in front of it just moments before I captured this image. The young woman looked at me just as I snapped. I’d say she is having a good time.
The Photographer
I caught this fellow and the spectator watching him from above in the Stent Family Wing of the High. I love the architecture here (thank the architect, Richard Meier). I like the openings, the swooping walkways, the shadows, and the idea of the photographer and his object being observed by the watcher above while I observe them both. I think the photographer here is the leader of the group in the previous frame. You can see his hands in the top right of the picture holding the cell phone. There are four people involved in this photograph: the photographer, the watcher, me, and the object of the photographer, which turns out to be a young woman vamping in an opening on a lower floor.
Bonus Frame – The Shade
The statue is The Shade by Auguste Rodin. There is a tragedy associated with this art work. In 1962, the Atlanta Art Association organized a trip to European art capitals. The return flight from Orly Field in Paris crashed in an aborted takeoff killing all 122 members and friends aboard. The French government presented Rodin’s The Shade in memory of the crash victims.
These photos were all taken with a Canon 6DII and 24-70mm f2.8. They were processed from RAW files with Darktable, a free program and open source (FOSS) program available for the Mac, Windoze, and various flavors of Linux.
I like these High Pics too.