Looking Forward, Looking Back: An Exhibition to Honor 50 Years at The Pace Gallery. Comprised of a selection of seminal photographs by Robert Frank, Paul Graham, Irving Penn, Charles Sheeler, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand and Edward Weston, this presentation seeks to document Pace/MacGill’s contribution to the field of photography, while illustrating its vision for the future. Founded in partnership with The Pace Gallery in 1983, Pace/MacGill Gallery has had the privilege of representing such masters of photography as Harry Ca... Read more

Looking Forward, Looking Back: An Exhibition to Honor 50 Years at The Pace Gallery. Comprised of a selection of seminal photographs by Robert Frank, Paul Graham, Irving Penn, Charles Sheeler, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand and Edward Weston, this presentation seeks to document Pace/MacGill’s contribution to the field of photography, while illustrating its vision for the future.

Founded in partnership with The Pace Gallery in 1983, Pace/MacGill Gallery has had the privilege of representing such masters of photography as Harry Callahan, Robert Frank, Irving Penn, John Szarkowksi, Josef Koudelka, Frederick Sommer, Richard Benson, William Christenberry, Robert Heinecken, Emmet Gowin, Jocelyn Lee, Duane Michals, Richard Misrach, Nicholas Nixon, Tod Papageorge, Judith Joy Ross, Paolo Roversi, Fazal Sheikh, JoAnn Verburg and William Wegman, as well as the Estates of Richard Avedon and Alfred Stieglitz. The gallery’s affiliation with Pace has also created close working relationships with and representation of Chuck Close, Hai Bo, Jim Dine, Michal Rovner, Lucas Samaras, Kiki Smith and, most recently, Hiroshi Sugimoto.

Through loans from important public and private collections, Looking Forward, Looking Back assembles some of the most remarkable photographs in the medium’s history, many of which have been handled by Pace/MacGill over the years. Among the pictures on view are Edward Weston’s striking platinum print of his model, student and lover Tina Modotti, Tina Reciting (1924), as well as a selection of Paul Strand’s stunning portraits of his wife Rebecca (1920-1923). Charles Sheeler’s application of Cubist and Modernist aesthetics to the American vernacular is exemplified in Bucks County Barn (1918), and Alfred Stieglitz’s composite studies of painter and partner Georgia O’Keeffe (1918-19) present his approach to achieve a true, extended portrait of a single subject.

Other highlights include Stieglitz’s Spiritual America (1923), in which a gelded and harnessed workhorse symbolizes Stieglitz’s belief that America would do almost anything to increase worker production and focus, often at the expense of broader cultural experiences. A special selection from Robert Frank’s influential series The Americans (1955-56) and Irving Penn’s portraits of Miles Davis (1986) will also be featured.

The exhibition’s forward-looking perspective is epitomized by Paul Graham, who has taken the best and most respected traditions of 20th-century photography and translated them powerfully into the 21st. Graham’s latest body of work, a shimmer of possibility (2004-2006), comprises challenging sequences of pictures that bridge the perceived gap between still photography, cinematography and conceptual art.