ANAMORPHOSIS/ FINGER PRINTS
	Haut de la page

Alvin Booth

EXPOSITION “PHOTOGRAPHIES” du 14 novembre 2006 au 6 janvier 2007

EXPOSITION "ANAMORPHOSIS/FINGER PRINTS" à partir du 20 novembre 2009

 

Alvin Booth

Alvin Booth was born in Hull, an industrial city in the Northeast of England. He left school at the age of seventeen and trained to become a hairdresser. After working in Hull he later moved to Oxford where his interest in photography grew. In 1989 he gave up hairdressing and moved to New York City. He divides his time between New York and the southwest of France.

More recently Booth completed a film commission, “Le Beau Est Toujours Bizarre”, for the Princess Grace Foundation. He is looking forward to the publication of his third book Triptych in the Fall of 2009.


Alvin Booth is represented by the following galleries.

Paris: Acte2 Galerie
London: Hamiltons Gallery
Antwerp: Fifty One Fine Art Photography
Los Angeles: Fahey/Klein Gallery

 

Expositions /

2009 Acte 2, Paris, France*
Aarhus Film Festival, Denmark
Fifity-one Fine Art - Antwerp
ADF Dancing for the Camera: International Festival
of Film and Video, Durham, USA

2008 Hamiltons Gallery, London, England
Etherton Gallery, Tuscon, Arizona*
Galerie Forster, Berlin, Germany *
OMC Gallerie, California

2007 In Focus Gallerie Cologne, Germany*
Etherton Gallery, Tuscon, Arizona
OMC Gallerie, California

2006 Acte2 Galerie Paris, France*
Galerie Le Confort Des Etranges Toulouse, France*

2005 Galerie Mainberg Mainberg, Germany*
Kamera und Fotmuseum Leipzig, Germany
Fahey/Klein Gallery Los Angeles, USA*
In Focus Gallerie Cologne, Germany
Lincoln Center Dance on Camera Festival New York, USA
Dance Camera West International Festival in Los Angeles, USA

2004 Leica Gallery New York, USA
Aero Plastics Brussels, Belgium
Stadtische Museum of Heilbronn, Germany
Arte Fino Zurich, Switzerland
Stamford Art Gallery Stamford, Connecticut USA
OMC Gallerie Dusseldorf, Germany
Yancey Richardson Gallery New York, USA
Jackson Fine Art Atlanta, Georgia USA*

2003 De Beyerd Contemporary Art Museum Breda, Holland
OMC Gallerie Dusseldorf, Germany*
Arte Fino Zurich, Switzerland*
Fifty One Fine Art Photography Antwerp, Belgium*

2002 Prague House of Photography Czech Republic*
Kamera und Fotomuseum Leipzig, Germany

2001 In Focus Gallerie Cologne, Germany*
Fahey/Klein Gallery Los Angeles, USA
Yancey Richardson Gallery New York, USA2000 Jackson Fine Art Atlanta, Georgia USA*
Robert Klein Gallery Boston, USA
Yancey Richardson Gallery New York, USA
The Museum of the City of New York, USA
The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology
(Corset 2000) New York, USA1999 Yancey Richardson Gallery New York, USA*
Stephen Daiter Gallery Chicago, USA*
Fahey/Klein Gallery Los Angeles, USA*
Robert Klein Gallery Boston, USA*

1997 Hamiltons London, England
Jackson Fine Art Atlanta, Georgia USA
Sarah Morthland Gallery New York, USA
Throckmorton Fine Art New York, USA
Yancey Richardson Gallery New York, USA
Galleria Carla Sozzani Milan, Italy

1996 Hamiltons London, England
Yancey Richardson Gallery New York, USA*
1995 Hamiltons London, England

* ( Solo Show)Publications:
2009 - 'Triptych' - Edition Gallerie Vevais ISBN 978-3-936-165-51-7
2009 - Le Beau est toujours Bizarre - (collection of short films)
2006 - Osmosis - Edition Gallerie Vevais ISBN 3-936-165-46-7
2006- Film Booth - (collection of short films)- Edition Gallerie Vevais ISBN 3-936-165-45-9
1999 - Corpus - Edition Stemmle ISBN 3-908-161-94-0

 

 

 

ANAMORPHOSIS / FINGER PRINTS

FINGER PRINTS
« Finger Prints » explore la question des liens entre photographie et réalité.
Dans notre culture saturée d’images, l’œil finit par ne plus voir.
Alvin Booth, nous livre ici un travail photographique « à toucher » du bout des doigts, comparable au Braille
La vue donne souvent des envies aux autres sens, particulièrement à celui du toucher et parvient à recomposer une réalité mise en valeur par ces deux informations.
Afin de mieux saisir cette intention voulue, Booth, nous invite à découvrir cette série de nus, le yeux fermés.

 

ANAMORPHOSIS
Dans sa dernière série, « Anamorphosis », Alvin Booth dissimule le corps nu en le démultipliant, donnant ainsi à sa nature concrète une dimension abstraite.
Le corps étiré, tendu, tordu ou détaillé disparaît, perd son caractère charnel, et donne naissance à de nouvelles formes fantasques.
Par une anamorphose d’image, ces explosions visuelles créent une dynamique d’un nouvel ordre, que l’on peut comparer au travaux d’Edward Muybridge. A l’inverse.
Dans ces photographies, les nus disparaissent au fur et à mesure pour se métamorphoser sous l’effet kaléidoscopique en formes géométriques.
Comme des tessellations d’Escher abstraites et surréalistes, vont naître des figures organiques végétales et érotiques.

 

Photographs capture the real and then improve upon it. We over-know this; too used to this easy visual alchemy. In our image-saturated culture eyes die of boredom, they see but cannot touch. When we look at something we do want to touch, our eyes saccade over the surface the way a finger or hand would, betraying our longing for a secret, extra-long controllable eyelash.

Here Alvin Booth shows us that we can still be surprised by both the photographic medium and by the human body. With “Fingerprints”, he offers us photographs that consent to being touched – we are provided with body Braille. Studies have shown that the visual cortex is activated when the blind read Braille with their fingertips. Here we can imagine the opposite – our sensory cortex being activated as we look at haptically enhanced images of nudes. The images suggest evolution’s next stage, coolly engineered epithelium as information. Booth asks us to contemplate his photographs with our eyes closed – a perverse request that we gladly grant.

In “Anamorphosis”, Booth plays another game; he hides the naked body by multiplying it. The concrete body becomes an abstract pattern, it disappears and loses individuality but in doing so limbs and genitalia become strange and brand new, in the way that words do when they are repeated over and over again. The camera creates dynamics out of stillness, frozen explosions that can be seen as inversions of Edward Muybridge’s motion capture. In these photographs, the nudes vanish in recursion; turning into giant kaleidoscopic flesh flowers, into organic visigothic zig zags, into eroticized Escher tessellations. Welcome to Alvin Booth’s deep surfaces.

John W. Krakauer
Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience
Columbia University
New York

 

PHOTOGRAPHIES
	Haut de la page