Rosalind Solomon Reinvented, Again

Rosalind Solomon hunts, shoots and captures - with her camera. Taking risks that might endanger her life or her career has never deterred her determination. She is an insatiable adventurer, eager to witness vastly diverse cultural communities. And yet she always exacts the individual - the unique person - in every glance and every gathering.

Solomon is not an ethnographic photographer. She is an artist: a revealer of truths filtered through personal interpretations. Her current exhibition Rosalind Solomon: Ritual at Bruce Silverstein Gallery makes that distinction resoundingly clear.

Curated by Bruce Silverstein and Liam Derik van Loenen, this particular show reconceptualizes over three decades of work in terms of twenty-first century globalization and values. Here basic universals reign supreme and a sense of time and space collapse into meaninglessness. Moreover, the usual exoticism of Solomon previous shows falls away to reveal her more potent power: the ability to portray humanity in all its mundane and strange dimensions. School boys in South Africa look like school boys in Brooklyn, while revelers in New Orleans during Mardi Gras look positively surreal.

Not bad for this youthful octogenarian, whose accompanying video "A Woman I Once Knew" (2009) lets us know she's just getting warmed up.

Born in Highland Park, Chicago in 1930 and married into a cushy upper middle-class situation, her husband resented careerist initiatives of any kind. She was the regional director of the Experiment in International Living in Chattanooga, Tennessee, receiving students from abroad since 1961. In 1968 she travelled alone with a few useful phrases written in book and a camera to communicate with her host family in Tokyo. This occasion catalyzed her breakthrough.

In 1969, Solomon took up photography in earnest. She continued to play out the role of dutiful wife and mother, but now she honed her photography skills on the side.

In 1984, she cut loose and established a studio living space right on the border of the funky art scene in the East Village. When asked about her decision, Solomon referenced her mentor, American photographer, Lisette Model: "Lisette had strong convictions about everything. She gave blunt personal advice. The essence of what she said is: You are an artist. You must be selfish and not give too much time to others." (Murphy)

In 1988 Thomas Sokolowski (then director of the Grey Art Gallery at New York University, currently director of the Andy Warhol Museum) curated her solo exhibition Rosalind Solomon: Portraits in the Time of AIDS. It took guts on both their parts to present this controversial body of work that spring. Today the exhibition belongs to a landmark movement that also founded the annual December 1st "Day without Art," which commemorates those lost to us from AIDS.

One photograph from that show, Memorial, Brooklyn, 1988 hangs among three other photographs in the current Ritual exhibition. This still life of candlesticks, bowls of salad, sliced Italian bread and a snapshot of a gay couple once crackled with political innuendo. Here it reinforces three other photographs that refer to the first stages of mourning.

The other three works are a procession in Untitled, Haiti, 1987 (people bearing white crosses); post-funeral gestures After a Funeral,New Orleans, 1987 (women embracing); and the viewing the deceased Five Whole Ounces/That's a Lot [a.k.a Burial], Solola, Guatamala, 1979 (Solomon's best known work, of a dead woman in a coffin). All characteristically compassionate, they speak of the need for ritual and community to get us through the pain of loss and grieving.

Although always open to meeting people here and abroad, Solomon diligently protects her privacy and work schedule. "Being in difficult places strips me down and reduces things to the essential. It keeps me completely focused on my work and the reasons why I am there. . . . I feel a productivity in isolation from my own culture." (Watson)

That productivity has resulted in hundreds of black and white prints. "My challenge is not format or color, but deepening my perception and range of ideas. I am interested in making expressive pictures. Black and white pictures work for me as poetry and metaphor in a way that color does not. I have tried color and I have tried digital. Neither gives me the sense of depth that I feel with black and white." (Murphy)

The allegiance to black and white print marks Solomon as a Model disciple, along with Diane Arbus, Larry Fink and many others. And yet, she does not cultivate a signature look. Instead she coaxes out the spirit of the content through various forms of manipulations. Sometimes she works up high contrast and sometimes she diffuses the light, obscuring the imagery in a haunting web of integral parts. In this respect, Solomon's body of work is highly original and difficult to categorize stylistically.

Neutralizing ethnography and categorization in the Ritual show reinvigorates Solomon's career after so many decades of recognition. Yes, she is Model's student and therefore participated in Lisette Model and her Successors Aperture Gallery September 7-November 1, 2007 and Mt Holyoke Museum September 1-December 13, 2009. Yes, she is also a women photographer and often appears in such shows as Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography, which is currently at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (May 7, 2010-March 21, 2011).

Ultimately, however, Solomon follows her own instincts, mapping out her life one challenge at a time. Rituals may be considered another of her departures among many.

Sources:

Michael David Murphy, “Four Questions for Rosalind Solomon,” 2point8, October, 25, 2006.

Stephen Watson, "Interview with Rosalind Solomon," May 2003.

Beth S. Gersh-Nešić, interview with Rosalind Solomon, May 15, 2010.

Thomas Sokolowski, Rosalind Solomon: Portraits in the Time of AIDS.
New York: Grey Art Gallery/NYU, 1988.

Biography and Chronology, Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York.