New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Fairfield University presents Connecticut through the artistic lens of Larry Silver
Larry Silver is a legend in the photography world, known for his 1954 acclaimed series “Muscle Beach,” and a collection of Photo League-inspired images taken during a seven-decade career.
“I’ve been doing this close to 75 years, and started because I was fascinated with the dark room aspects of photography, and watching a print develop was just a magical thing,” Silver said. “I knew I wanted to print my own pictures.”
Born in the Bronx, Silver spent the early part of his career in New York and California. Now 87, he moved to Westport in 1973 and immediately started taking photos of the area.
“I’ve become very fond of it here, and I feel like I am a real Connecticut person,” he said. “I’ve spent a lot of time wandering around the state and shooting.”
So, when the Fairfield University Art Museum was looking to spotlight a Connecticut-based photographer in a new exhibit, Silver was an easy choice. Leslie K. Brown was brought in to serve as curator.
The exhibit, entitled “13 Ways of Looking at Landscape: Larry Silver’s Connecticut Photographs” will be shown in the museum’s Walsh Gallery from March 25 to June 18, and features more than 80 landscape-based works shot in Connecticut over the last four decades.
“When I was asked to guest curate, I had spent some time before I went to visit Larry with his website and was struck by how much landscape work he had,” Brown said. “He’s mostly known for his association with the Photo League documentary and street photography movement, and not many people have seen this landscape work. I was struck by how he portrayed a real sense of place and it emanated from all of his work in Connecticut.”
Brown spent countless hours with Silver and his wife Gloria in their Westport home, learning about them and looking through boxes upon boxes of his archived work.
“I estimate that I looked through about 6,000 prints,” Brown said. “I was drawn to the variety of different ways he looked at the landscape—a different strategy if you will. I started to see that things fell into different categories. He does a lot of framing, seeking out aperture within nature and framing someone or something. He also photographs a lot in weather, which acts as a veil that covers the landscape and creates an astoundingly mythical environment.”
Inspired by a poem from another Connecticut artist, Wallace Stevens, the curator hung the exhibit in 13 sections, as if they were stanzas in a poem.
“It’s not your typical linear hanging work,” she said. “The order in which people will see the exhibition is very determined. I want to take them on a journey and see it through Larry’s eyes.”
Though many in Westport are familiar with Silver’s work, a number of photos in the exhibit have never been seen before, and show a side of the shutterbug that many may not have seen.
“I’m trying to show something different,” Brown said. “There are some well-known hits, but they are also mixed in with some work that’s experimental, and work that’s never been shown before.”
Silver said he’s impressed with the display. If he had chosen the images, he said, the exhibit would have included many of the same ones that he’s shown in the past.
“If I’m making the selections, there are some I always favor,” he said. “But the way she worked, there’s a chance for some discoveries, as others may find they like some of the images I have rejected.”
On opening night, Brown will deliver a lecture about Silver and his place in the history of American photography.
At an event scheduled at the museum on April 20, Silver and photographer Adger Cowans, whose work is on view in the museum’s Bellarmine Hall Galleries, will speak about their work.