Dennis Feldman: Photographs

July 31–October 13, 2019

Photographs from two series, Hollywood Boulevard, 1969–1972 and American Images, demonstrate the artist’s achievements as an affecting social documentarian and explorer of what he calls “a world contained in a frame.”

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Dennis Feldman: Father and Son, from the Hollywood Boulevard series, 1969–1972 (printed 2018); black-and-white photograph mounted on aluminum; 40 x 40 in.; BAMPFA, gift of the artist.

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Friday, September 13, 12 PM
Curator’s Talk: Elaine Yau on Dennis Feldman

The curator of Dennis Feldman: Photographs places Feldman’s work in the context of the social documentary practices of his mentors Walker Evans and Robert Frank, and focuses on Feldman’s distinctive approach to mass media images of the 1970s.

BAMPFA
Wednesday, July 31, noon
Artist's Talk: Dennis Feldman

Join artist Dennis Feldman as he discusses the portrait, interior, and landscape photographs on view in the current exhibition of his work, emphasizing how the camera sees the world differently from the ways our eyes and minds model it.

BAMPFA

Dennis Feldman: Photographs

July 31–October 13, 2019

From the seedy streets of Los Angeles to empty living rooms and apartments across the United States, the photographs of Dennis Feldman (b. 1946) explore the ways popular entertainment seeps into American consciousness. Pictures from his most acclaimed series, Hollywood Boulevard, 1969–1972, invite subjects from social parade of Los Angeles’s famed sidewalk to animate their self-styled identities. His American Images series, published in 1977, pursues other disclosures, revealing tensions that have come to define the underside of the American dream. In some pictures, people relish the escape and freedom symbolized by cars and movieland, while others seem to search for more elusive horizons. Like Walker Evans, Robert Frank, and Frederick Sommer—pioneering photographers whom he considers mentors—Feldman carefully crafts compositions that do not judge their subjects. Instead, they pry apart the world of appearances to...

This exhibition presents a selection from Feldman’s celebrated series, offering a candid view of the American cultural landscape following the social revolutions of the 1960s. Also included are recent expressionistic works that survey the effects of photographing nocturnal lights. Featuring the first works by the artist to enter BAMPFA’s permanent collection, Dennis Feldman: Photographs recognizes his achievements as an affecting social documentarian and explorer of what he calls “a world contained in a frame.”

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Dennis Feldman: Photographs is curated by Elaine Y. Yau, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow.

Dennis Feldman: Photographs

July 31–October 13, 2019

Past Events

Curator’s Talk: Elaine Yau on Dennis Feldman

Artist's Talk: Dennis Feldman