I begyour indulgence.
In order to presentKenneth Snelson’s full image, World Trade Center andJersey Shore here, I neededto turn it on its side.
I firstsaw this photograph in December at Gagosian Madision Avenue’s exhibition of works from Robert Rauschenberg’sart collection.
It was a remarkable show– a real journey through the artist’s mind -- his enlivened, enlightened eye and other fivesenses.
I wasplanning on writing a survey of the collection’s high points, but procrastinated; I thought it would be aboring (not to mention self-indulgent) imposition on readers planning their ownholiday highlights.
But thinking aboutthe show, I kept coming back in my mind's eye to this remarkable photograph taken bythe famous abstract sculptor and tensegrity/floating compression inventorKenneth Snelson in 1980, using a 16” Cirkut camera.
I continued returning to thepicture for its formal beauty, its "ordinary grandeur," and the 100% accurate memoriesit recalls of a world which was my world, Robert Rauschenberg's world, and theworld of millions of Manhattan and metropolitan New Jersey residents: the waythat world looked and we thought was always supposed to look.
Snelson has written: “Myart is concerned with nature in its primary aspect, the patterns of physical forcesin three dimensional space.”
His sculpture showsthat “mission statement” in real time and spaces, but it’s fascinating andsurprising to see it clearly and elegiacally revealed here in frozen time andspace.
For me, thisphotograph is so real and beautiful, I could weep. It makes Snelson’s other impressive work withthe motorized Cirkut (an Eastman Kodak camera I remember from summer campphotos when a hundred or so campers and counselors would be lined up on severalrows of risers, one sprinting kid always appearing at both ends of the toprow) seem superfluous.
Kenneth Snelson, World Trade CenterWith Jersey Shore, 1980, 15.5 " X 74 ",Silver print, 16 " Cirkut camera
Dedicated to Caroline on her birthday.
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