Jonathan Elderfield: Curated by W.S. Di Piero

2006–2007

511

west 25 th street, new york, ny www.cueartfoundation.org

10001

j o h n at h a n e l d e r f i e l d

CUE ART FOUNDATION’S OPERATIONS AND PROGRAMS ARE MADE POSSIBLE WITH THE GENEROUS SUPPORT OF FOUNDATIONS, CORPORATIONS, GOVERNMENT AGENCIES, INDIVIDUALS, AND ITS MEMBERSHIP. PROGRAMMING ASSISTANCE IS PROVIDED BY: ACCADEMIA CHARITABLE FOUNDATION, LTD., AMERICAN EXPRESS COMPANY, MILTON & SALLY AVERY ARTS FOUNDATION, THE SAM & ADELE GOLDEN FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, INC., THE GREENWALL FOUNDATION, HOLLAND & KNIGHT CHARITABLE FOUNDATION, INC., JOAN MITCHELL FOUNDATION, VIKING FOUNDATION, THE ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR THE VISUAL ARTS, AND WITH PUBLIC FUNDS FROM NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS AND NEW YORK STATE COUNCIL ON THE ARTS.

j o n at h a n e l d e r f i e l d

CUE Art Foundation April 26 – June 2, 2007

Curated by W.S. Di Piero

This exhibition is supported in part by ??

LEAD SPONSOR OF 2006-07 SEASON OF EXHIBITION CATALOGUES: KYESUNG PAPER GROUP (SOUTH KOREA) ADDITIONAL SUPPORT PROVIDED BY ELIZABETH FIRESTONE GRAHAM FOUNDATION

Foreword

CUE Art Foundation

Artist's Statement

Jonathan Elderfield

We are honored and grateful to present this exhibition generously curated by W.S. Di Piero.

ONLY Chicago is a series of street photographs taken within the Chicago city limits over a period

Mr. Di Piero, a poet and translator, has chosen Jonathan Elderfield, an artist who recently

of more than two years. The project is exhibited as 16” x 20” silver gelatin prints.

moved back to New York. Mr. Di Pero’s’s appreciation of Mr. Elderfield’s work demonstrates how the

Foundation’s discretionary selection process allows a natural cross-pollination to occur between

explore new spaces with my camera, recording my observations about those places and creating

differing forms of artistic expression.

a sense of order in the final image. For me, the everyday interaction of people with their surround-

ings creates endless opportunities to stop time with my camera, finding unique moments of joy in

We appreciate that artists often work tirelessly without thought or concern for

Photography allows me to create art from the everyday and mundane. I try to

exhibition. CUE is pleased to recognize such commitment by offering Mr. Elderfield his first solo

the simple, the random and the obscure.

exhibition in New York. Mr. Di Piero and CUE, together, wish him a future of fulfillment and success.

The world of the street is one where strangers collide in random ways in front of the camera lens. I am fascinated with the idea of capturing an interesting moment in a photographic image, from a split-second that would have been otherwise lost. These ephemeral moments continue to exist only because I was there.

Curator's Statement

W. S. Di Piero

Jonathan Elderfield follows the street photographer’s ethic: reveal what’s hidden in plain sight.

When I first saw the pictures in his photo-essay, Living Under South Street, set in South Philadelphia, I was struck by their fresh vision of a very particular place and culture. I shouldn’t have been so struck by the freshness because I lived in South Philadelphia until I was twenty-one, but Elderfield’s images (a woman smoking in a rain-streaked phone booth outside a diner, a Mummers’ string band dressed as spacemen) made me see familiar things as if for the first time.

In the ONLY Chicago series featured in the CUE exhibition, Elderfield discloses another city’s secrets lived in full public view. His camera picks through Chicago’s elegantly roughedged energy, the textures of its airs and surfaces, from wet and windy to prickly and granitic.

Good straight photography seems to catch things by chance, but those catches in time take on a formal and social coherence. We see obsessions in play, themes worked out. In the Chicago pictures Elderfield is pulled toward the ways private life—exhilaration, contemplativeness, preoccupation—is lived out in the public eye, in public spaces. Many of his figures are looking for or toward or away from something as yet unknown or out of sight. He makes city life something pressured by accident. If the South Philly series disclosed a culture’s intense private rituals, the Chicago pictures, appropriate to the city’s flat-land, big-sky expansiveness, make everything look more exposed.

Total strangers are sited in a public webbing they’re unaware of but which the camera sees.

Like some of his predecessors—Lee Friedlander, Walker Evans, Robert Frank— Elderfield has an eye for the kinetics of urban life caught on the run. But his images aren’t only about visual information. A formal structure holds them together, a patterning of information that balances one element against another or crafts a potent asymmetry. The shock of cotton candy that flies from a girl’s hand in one of the Chicago pictures tosses us into a graceful perspectival plan. In another, our attention keeps snapping from the central knot of excited young girls to the boy dribbling a basketball coiled tightly in the upper corner of the scene. Elderfield’s work, including a New York series in progress, seems almost effortless and casual, but that’s only how it seems. Those qualities in fact give the pictures their intensity and scrupulousness and testify to the humane inquisitiveness of this photographer’s eye.

Untitled From the series ONLY Chicago, 2004 Gelatin silver print, 16" x 20", Edition of 10

Untitled From the series ONLY Chicago, 2004 Gelatin silver print, 16" x 20", Edition of 10

Untitled From the series ONLY Chicago, 2004 Gelatin silver print, 16" x 20", Edition of 10

Untitled From the series ONLY Chicago, 2005 Gelatin silver print, 16" x 20", Edition of 10

Untitled From the series ONLY Chicago, 2005 Gelatin silver print, 16" x 20", Edition of 10

Untitled From the series ONLY Chicago, 2005 Gelatin silver print, 16" x 20", Edition of 10

Untitled From the series ONLY Chicago, 2005 Gelatin silver print, 16" x 20", Edition of 10

Untitled From the series ONLY Chicago, 2004 Gelatin silver print, 16" x 20", Edition of 10

Untitled From the series ONLY Chicago, 2004 Gelatin silver print, 16" x 20", Edition of 10

Untitled From the series ONLY Chicago, 2005 Gelatin silver print, 16" x 20", Edition of 10

Untitled From the series ONLY Chicago, 2005 Gelatin silver print, 16" x 20", Edition of 10

Untitled From the series ONLY Chicago, 2005 Gelatin silver print, 16" x 20", Edition of 10

Untitled From the series ONLY Chicago, 2004 Gelatin silver print, 16" x 20", Edition of 10

Biographies

Jonathan Elderfield

Born in Winchester, England in 1967, Jonathan Elderfield has been working as a photographer for over seventeen years. His book Living Under South Street, documenting the neighborhood of South Philadelphia, was published in 2003 by Kehrer Verlag of Heidelberg, Germany. He is currently working on a new series of color photographs. In addition to working as a photographer, Elderfield is a picture editor who has worked for The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune and, most recently, The Associated Press. Elderfield lives in New York City with his wife and two sons.

The exhibit at CUE Art Foundation marks Elderfield’s first solo exhibition in New York.

W. S. Di Piero

W. S. Di Piero was born in South Philadelphia in 1945. He’s the author of numerous volumes of poetry, translation, and essays on art, literature and personal experience. His latest book of poems is Chinese Apples: New and Selected Poems, published by Knopf (2007). He writes a column on the visual arts for the San Diego Reader and is a regular contributor of poems and essays to magazines such as Threepenny Review and Poetry. He teaches part of the year in Stanford University’s Creative Writing Program and lives in San Francisco.

Untitled From the series ONLY Chicago, 2004 Gelatin silver print, 16" x 20", Edition of 10

Mission Statement

CUE Art Foundation

CUE Art Foundation, a 501 (c)(3) non-profit arts organization,

Board of Directors

is dedicated to providing a comprehensive creative forum for

Gregory Amenoff

contemporary art by supporting under-recognized artists via a

Theodore S. Berger

multi-faceted mission spanning the realms of gallery exhibitions,

Patricia Caesar

public programming, professional development programs and

Thomas G. Devine

arts-in-education. The Foundation was established in June of 2002

Thomas K. Y. Hsu

with the aim of providing educational programs for young artists

Brian D. Starer

and aspiring art professionals in New York and from around the country. These programs draw on the unique community of artists,

Advisory Council

critics, and educators brought together by the Foundation’s season

Gregory Amenoff

of exhibitions, public lectures, workshops, and its studio residency

William Corbett

program: all are designed to be of lasting practical benefit to

Deborah Kass

aspiring and under-recognized artists. The entire CUE identity is

Kris Kuramitsu

characterized by artistic quality, independent judgment and the

Jonathan Lethem

discovery of genuine talent, and provides long-term benefits both

Lari Pittman

for creative individuals associated with CUE and the larger art

Irving Sandler

marketplace. Located in New York’s Chelsea gallery district, CUE’s 4,500 square feet of gallery, studio and office space serves as the

executive Director

nexus for educational programs and exhibitions conducted by CUE.

Jeremy Adams

programs coordinator Beatrice Wolert-Weese

All artwork © Jonathan Elderfield

programs assistant Kara Smith

Catalog designed by Elizabeth Ellis preparator Printed on TriPine paper of KyeSung Paper Group (South Korea) Cover: TriPine Art Nouveau 209gsm (78lb), Text: TriPine Silk 157gsm (106lb) Printer: Yon Art Printing (South Korea) ISBN-13: 978-0-9791843-3-8 ISBN-10: 0-9791843-3-9

Drew Lichtenstein