Time Frames: City Pictures [Hardcover]

Michael Spano (Photographer), Susan Kismaric (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2002

Time Frames, Micael Spano's long-awaited first monograph, catalogues the artist's exploration of spatial and temporal dimensions in photography. The book is divided into five chapters: Panoramas, Grids, Portraits, Multi-Exposures, and Diptychs; each employs a distinctive technical process to provide a new way of looking at life in New York City. Panoramas (1977-1983) show interacting urbanites moving through elongated frames as the lens of an extremely wide field camera pans during exposure. Grids (1980-1990) captures eight moments on a single negative as Spano moves through a sequence of events, pre-determinedly exposing a portion of the grid every four seconds. Portraits (1984-1990) focus on individual inhabitants transformed and etched out from their settings through the solarization and blurring forms into an atmospheric world. Multi-Exposures (1985-1998) combine solarizations with multiple perspectives. These single-negative layered compositions orchestrate and compress selected intervals of time and space into one image. Diptychs (1998-1999) fuse two distinct moments on one negative where scale, focal planes, and perspectives shift and comprise a dual image of urban spaces.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Michael Spano, former director and curator of the non-profit Midtown Y Photography Gallery, holds and MFA from Yale University and currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence College. He is the recipient of many honors and awards, including fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, CameraWorks, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Spano has exhibited his work at The Museum of Modern Art; the Cleveland Museum of Art; Harvard University's Fogg Museum in Cambridge; The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; and the Los Angeles County Museum, among others. Represented by the Laurence Miller Gallery, Spano's work is featured in the collecitons of The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum of Art; the Cleveland Museum of Art; the Boston Museum of Fine Art; and the Art Institute of Chicago. Susan Kismaric, a Department of Photography curator at the Museum of Modern Art, has organized many exhibitions and authored numerous catalogues during her tenure, including the book, Judith Joy Ross (The Museum Of Modern Art.)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 112 pages
• Publisher: powerHouse Books (November 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1576871401
• ISBN-13: 978-1576871409
• Product Dimensions: 12.3 x 10.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,746,087 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Well Done Photography Book, July 7, 2008

By 

Samuel (CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Time Frames: City Pictures (powerHouse Classics) (Hardcover)

I bought this book not long ago, and I really enjoy it.
The photographs are both beautiful and mysterious.
It is a must for anyone with an interest in artistic photography. Each photo tells a story...gives you a hint of a life. Spano is a great photgrapher of his time. I'm very interested in his other books and work.
Buy it! It's great.

5.0 out of 5 stars urban alive, November 20, 2002

By 

Dennis L Myers (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Time Frames: City Pictures (Hardcover)

Spano's work is unique and attuned to the urban experience. Through a multiplicity of approaches, he throws himself--camera lens first--into the continual flux, ego, and uncertainty that is New York and comes away with a document that breaths city. His techniques often require him to work intuitively across a flowing landscape, yet he continually matches the certainty and eloquence of photographers who spend hours on their compositions. It is photography that is--like the city he records over fixed time and changing light--familiar and yet often disturbing round the edges.