Mt. Kisco, NY
November 22, 1995
The Candace Perich Gallery in Ridgefield is presenting “A Child’s World”, a wide-ranging exhibition including works by 20 photographers – from vintage 1930’s to the present – focusing exclusively on children and their world. Each photograph tells the viewer a little something about childhood, something unique or surprising, something that we have almost forgotten.
The photograph is particularly effective at capturing and portraying the spontaneous gesture, the graceful or clumsy movement and the ephemeral expression of the ever-changing child. The natural beauty, the uninhibited self expression and the special tenderness which many photographers have for children make childhood an ideal subject.
The photographs, ranging from vintage Brassai and Ilse Bing to contemporary Italian and American Indian photographs and including works by Harry Callahan, Robert Mapplethorpe, Nicholas Nixon and Sally Mann depict childhood in multiple forms and views. Brassai’s precious ballerinas contrast sharply with Andrea Modica’s sometimes listless but resourceful children from Treadwell, NY. The lighthearted photograph of a boy suspended on a clothesline by Joe Oppedisano, Elliott Erwitt’s young girl on a swing in Venice, CA and Fred Stein’s 1947 photo of a young girl in Harlem with her own homemade car all have individually playful qualities.
Joe Martin Cantrell, a Cherokee photographer living in Portland, OR portrays his daughter in a child’s gesture of grief, a gesture that adults have somehow lost. Mandy Vahabzadeh’s fierce young girl doing her laundry seems powerfully defiant in her tiny body.
The photographs in “A Child’s World” will stir a glimmer of recognition in the viewer, not at seeing something new as much as seeing something inside of ourselves, a shared experience not quite left behind. The photograph of the child in its ability to communicate and move us in this way is photography at its best.
An opening reception is scheduled for Nov. 25, 5-7 p.m. Gallery hours are Thursday-Saturday and Monday 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday noon-5 p.m.
The Candace Perich Gallery is located at 3 1/2 Catoonah St., Ridgefield, CT. For information, call (203)894-8830.