Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool/ IKON Gallery, Birmingham, 1982
Signed on the reverse. Vintage Print. Printed in 1980 by Mark Trew at Trew Photographic, who did Griffin's printing in the early 1980s. This image was created with the help...
Vintage Print. Printed in 1980 by Mark Trew at Trew Photographic, who did Griffin's printing in the early 1980s.
This image was created with the help of Griffin's then wife and a friend. A search-light powered by Griffin's car battery was directed at a friend who was standing on the roof-top of his Volkswagen camper van to create the silhouette of the figure which appears on the side of the old Lloyds building.
This work suggests the fruitful stimulus of American modernism and especially that of the Institute of Design in Chicago. Photographs by Harry Callahan from the 1950s, especially those of the starkly lit streets of Chicago such as Eleanor and Barbara (1953), prefigure this image of Griffin, whilst Griffin's photograph anticipates one of Ray Metzker's greatest photographs, Chicago, 1981.
Harry Callahan had only recently been the subject at of a major exhibition at the Venice Biennale of 1978, the first time that the American Pavilion had staged a solo show of a photographer.