Lynne Cohen
Classroom in a Mortuary School, Pittsburg, 1980
Gelatin silver photo on mount
19.37 x 24.45 cms
7 10/16 x 9 10/16 ins
5142
1980 For over thirty five years Lynne Cohen has focused on unpeopled interiors. Observed, found scenes, they nevertheless appear highly constructed or artificial. This image of a classroom at a...
1980
For over thirty five years Lynne Cohen has focused on unpeopled interiors. Observed, found scenes, they nevertheless appear highly constructed or artificial.
This image of a classroom at a Mortuary School in the United States, shows the magical-circumstantial element of Surrealist thought. Cohen juxtaposes the familiarity of the interior with the notion that it is an atmosphere pervaded by death. Just as Breton once noted that every photographic preservation of the past is a reminder of the passing of time rather than its preservation, the irony of this place is that it forebodes death but remains forever static in its incantation.
The image also echoes Isidore Ducasse's famous enunciation: "beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella." In this case, the similar pairing of sculptural pieces of flesh in the context of a morgue displace the objects to create a new meaning.
Price includes the artist's Formica frame.
For over thirty five years Lynne Cohen has focused on unpeopled interiors. Observed, found scenes, they nevertheless appear highly constructed or artificial.
This image of a classroom at a Mortuary School in the United States, shows the magical-circumstantial element of Surrealist thought. Cohen juxtaposes the familiarity of the interior with the notion that it is an atmosphere pervaded by death. Just as Breton once noted that every photographic preservation of the past is a reminder of the passing of time rather than its preservation, the irony of this place is that it forebodes death but remains forever static in its incantation.
The image also echoes Isidore Ducasse's famous enunciation: "beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella." In this case, the similar pairing of sculptural pieces of flesh in the context of a morgue displace the objects to create a new meaning.
Price includes the artist's Formica frame.