Thomas Barrow, Peter MacGill, Sean Corcoran - An Art Book

FREE - Doors open at 5:30 p.m.

Join influential photographer Thomas Barrow in a conversation with renowned photography gallerist Peter MacGill and MCNY curator Sean Corcoran about their many shared topics of interests and their considerable contributions to contemporary photography. This event coincides with the publication of Cancellations, the first monograph to cover Barrow’s complete body of Cancellations photographic prints.

Thomas Barrow’s Cancellations is a series of photographic prints of desolate spaces—empty lots, construction sites, deserted industrial areas—that all show the presence of mankind without showing a single living human. Compiled in the 70s and 80s, Barrow’s beautiful sepia-toned images show their age in their sheer physicality. These are clearly prints, not digital files, evidence of which can be seen in their specked and aged surfaces. And they call further attention to the hands-on process of silver gelatin photography through marks, often an X across the image, carved by Barrow directly onto the negative. Widely exhibited since its compilation, Cancellations will see print for the first time in the form of a beautifully produced artist’s book.

Moonlight, Los Angeles, 1974. From Cancellations by Thomas Barrow, published by powerHouse Books.Both a mordant social commentary on the built environment of the American west, and linked to the process art movement because of the distressed and defaced nature of the prints, this work calls attention to the photographic negative and the photo print as object—and important subversion in a medium often utilized for its subtle ability to clinically remove any evidence of process from its product, and in the digital age rapidly losing its ties to the physical world.

Works: 1974-2010 a large retrospective exhibition of Thomas Barrow's work is on view at Derek Eller Gallery throught November 10, 2012.

Copies of the book are available for purchase and signing at the event.

Pile, Albuquerque, 1974. From Cancellations by Thomas Barrow, published by powerHouse Books.Thomas Barrow studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and the Institute of Design in Chicago under Aaron Siskind. After graduation Barrow began his career at the George Eastman House, becoming Assistant Director and Editor of Publications before moving to New Mexico in 1973. At the University of New Mexico he was Associate Director of the University Art Museum and taught studio photography and history of photography. In 1974 he designed the Lewis Baltz book, The New Industrial Parks near Irvine California. His photographic work has been exhibited widely and is in the permanent collections of the George Eastman House, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, National Gallery of Canada, the Center for Creative Photography—where his archive is housed—and numerous other public and private collections.

Tucson Palm, 1975. From Cancellations by Thomas Barrow, published by powerHouse Books.Peter MacGill is president of Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York which was founded in 1983 by Arnold Glimcher, president of the Pace Gallery (formerly PaceWildenstein), Richard Solomon, president of Pace Editions, and Peter MacGill. In 2005, he was listed as the 15th most important person in photography by American Photo magazine. He graduated with a BFA from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1974 and a MFA from the University of Arizona in 1977, where he was the first student to graduate from the MFA Photography program. MacGill began working in the photography world as a college intern at LIGHT Gallery in 1973. There he worked with Harold Jones and established contact with many of the artists the gallery represents today. In 2006 MacGill was the first recipient of the Harold Jones Distinguished Alumni Award at The University of Arizona. Slab, Pasadena, 1974. From Cancellations by Thomas Barrow, published by powerHouse Books.

Since 2006 Sean Corcoran has been the Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Museum of the City of New York. He previously served as Assistant Curator of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, NY and as adjunct faculty of Ryerson University’s Masters Program in Photographic Preservation and Collections Management (Toronto,Ontario). Over the years he has organized a wide range of historical and contemporary photographic exhibitions including, Site Seeing: Photographic Excursions in Tourism, Eudora Welty in New York, and Police Work: Photographs by Leonard Freed, 1972-1979.

In its fourth year the program series An Art Book, initiated and organized by Arezoo Moseni, is a celebration of the essential importance and beauty of art books. The events showcase book presentations and discussions by world renowned artists, critics, curators, historians and writers.