COAST TO COAST | PRESS RELEASE

L. Parker Stephenson Photographs is pleased to present Coast to Coast, a group exhibition of photographs exploring places and themes related to the elements, uses and lures of the seaside. The images selected are by American, European, and Japanese artists and date from the last 100 years. They include vintage and later gelatin silver prints, color work, photogravure, and a contemporary tintype.

The edge between land and sea can be a tranquil landscape or threatening force, a warm weather destination or economic port, a national border or haven for refuge. It is a mutable place, vulnerable to transformation by both man and nature through invasion, pollution, development, and climate change. It is also point of transition.

The froth of pounding surf caught by Ray Mortenson’s large format camera conveys the power of oceanic turbulence, while the semi-abstract color bands from Asako Narahashi’s partially submerged camera articulate the psychological tensions of treading water with solid land reduced to a thin distant plane beyond an unstable aqueous foreground. Kikuji Kawada reflects upon natural disasters and the anxiety they produce by superimposing a glowing orange lunar eclipse over the dark skeletal form of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant after the devastating earthquake and tsunami of 2011.

In the early 1900s, New York City served as a vital port for commerce and immigration. While Alvin Langdon Coburn celebrated the landmarks of the expanding metropolis, Lewis Hine made portraits of the new arrivals to Ellis Island, among them a young Albanian woman who returns the photographer’s gaze with engaged candor. Jan Yoors’ 1960 lower Manhattan skyline seen from the Staten Island Ferry beckons across a misty distance mediated by flocks of gulls. In the 1920s and 30s, modernist designs brought the abstractions of engineering into the everyday world. Bauhaus architecture and photography student Iwao Yamawaki and New Bauhaus professor György Kepes embraced the vanguard geometric forms of passenger and cargo ships as dynamic visual subjects, while fashion and editorial photographer Martin Munkacsi utilized a bird’s eye view to celebrate the modern woman at the beach.

As a means of defense against maritime invasion during WWII, Britain placed anti-tank blocks along its eastern shores. These obsolete bodies line up like a sculptural installation in John Davies’ 1983 photograph of Druridge Bay. Further south along the same coast - one of the most densely industrialized areas in Western Europe in the early 20th century - a shell-like fragment of torn ventilation duct from coal mining sits solitary, abandoned and evocative of a deep past in Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen’s color work.

The seaside as destination for recreation, relaxation and amusement is showcased in Marketa Luskacova’s cluster of senior women on a promenade sharing laughter with a towering costumed figure dressed as a banana. A black woman in a white swimsuit stands contrapposto in ankle deep water for Jacques Sonck’s camera while two white men in the distance look towards both her and the camera. Marcia Resnick also looks at others looking, in this case seen from behind, a plaid shirted man with binoculars raised scans the distance over a low concrete wall and behind a stand of palm trees. Joni Sternbach’s 11 x 14 inch tintype of a young surfer family posed formally in front of their RV reflects ideals of the movement west to the Pacific as a spiritual quest for life in nature.

This group and other artists included in the exhibition address many of the complexities and attractions of the coast.It is here at the threshold where the anticipated and expected meet with the unknown. Where land and sea converge, the concrete is divided from the sublime.

Stay tuned over the course of the exhibition as some images will rotate out and new ones will be included.

For additional information or to request images, please contact the Gallery at +1 212 517-8700 or by email at info@lparkerstephenson.nyc