MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS
The Black List Project: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and Elvis Mitchell
On view November 21, 2008 - March 29, 2009 at the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ portraits of the 25 subjects included in The Black List are now on a tour, organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
After sitting for Elvis Mitchell’s filmed interviews, each subject was invited to pose for a portrait. The results of these sessions became the visuals for The Black List book and the images for a multi-city museum tour.
From the moment MFA, H director Peter Marzio and his photography curator Anne Tucker viewed Greenfield-Sanders’ Black List series portraits, they wanted to exhibit the work.Credit Suisse joined in as corporate sponsor. The exhibition opened in Houston last August and can be seen, starting on November 20th, 2008, at The Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York. Additional venues will be announced once confirmed.
Timothy Greenfield-Sanders shoots on a large-format 8 x 10 Deardorff view camera. His method and setup are simple but the results, enormously powerful.
He uses a single, hi-powered light source, a plain paper backdrop and color film. His typical sessions can be as short as a few minutes and are almost never longer than a half hour. He tends to shoot relatively few frames of film, making each exposure count.
About the look of Greenfield-Sanders portraits, the legendary U.S. poet-laureate Mark Strandonce wrote, “It’s as if they were caught between realism and glamour, between the brute fact of their features and the elusive aura of their fame. The more one looks, the more complex the photos become.”
The images for The Black List exhibition were printed on Epson paper, 58 x 44 inches in size. California based, Nash Editions, made the prints and New York based, Gabe Greenberg Editions, created the gigantic digital scans.
In addition to the portraits, museum visitors will be able to see on flat-panel video screens, selections from The Black List film.
