The exhibition will run through March 3, 2024
Rochester, N.Y., September 7, 2023—The George Eastman Museum will present the works of photographer Gregory Halpern (American, b. 1977). The exhibition, 19 winters / 7 springs, will open at the museum on Saturday, September 16, 2023, and will run through Sunday, March 3, 2024.
The exhibition features approximately 30 photographs and photo-sculptures from Halpern’s latest project, 19 winters / 7 springs. Over the past two decades Halpern has received international recognition for an influential body of work that has forged new directions for photography rooted in the documentary tradition.
19 winters / 7 springs contends with the idea of Halpern’s hometown of Buffalo, New York, and the features that give it definition—its human and animal life, its architecture and landscape, its weather, and its light. Halpern, born and raised in Buffalo, has lived in Rochester since 2009. This exhibition plots the cyclical nature of time and the passage of seasons, but Halpern’s photographs also register both the visual evidence of history and the particularity of life in the present. Although these different temporalities pulse through the work, what it means to dwell in a particular place is its central concern, and portraiture anchors the project: portraits of houses, young adults, animals, and objects that seem to face a world arranged and deranged by the camera.
The photographs in 19 winters / 7 springs were made throughout Western New York and beyond during the past two decades. Halpern’s practice emerges from careful, extended observation of the world and a sensitive engagement with the people he photographs. The pictures and the relationships forged between them also approach the surreal, the dreamlike, the enigmatic. Through Halpern’s photography, the appearance of everyday reality becomes both volatile and marvelous.
For Halpern, no hard-and-fast boundary separates photographic objectivity from a more elastic idea of representational truth. This installation invites consideration of interior worlds, but also speaks to the limits of photographs to describe their subjects beyond their surfaces. In addition to presenting pictures on the gallery’s walls, Halpern has created a group of photo-sculptures, called Eclipse Houses, uniting inner with outer space. These features speak to the limits of photographs to describe their subjects beyond their surfaces. The exteriors display the facades of residential architecture, while their exposed interiors are lined with photographs of total solar eclipses. These alignments of celestial bodies resonate with the fleeting encounters pictured in Halpern’s photographs of people and places: something is inevitably obscured, while another vision becomes possible.
In conjunction with the exhibition, Halpern will present an artist's talk at the George Eastman Museum's Dryden Theatre on Thursday, January 25, 2024 at 6 p.m. Following his talk, visitors are welcome to visit his exhibition in the Project Gallery. Galleries will be open until 8 p.m.
The 19 winters / 7 springs exhibition was originally organized by the Bidwell Foundation for Transformer Station, Cleveland, Ohio. The exhibition is generously sponsored by Tim Wilson. For details, visit eastman.org/halpern.
About Gregory Halpern
Gregory Halpern is an acclaimed photographer who has focused his career on an exploration of the elusive, nascent notion of American life. He is celebrated for his pioneering photobooks, which exemplify the artist’s lyrical and poetic explorations of place. Born in Buffalo, he gained a BA in history and literature from Harvard University, and an MFA from California College of the Arts, San Francisco. Halpern’s books include Harvard Works Because We Do (2003); A (2011); East of the Sun, West of the Moon (with Ahndraya Parlato, 2014); ZZYZX (2016); Confederate Moons (2018), Omaha Sketchbook (2009/2019); and Let the Sun Beheaded Be (2020). He also edited, with Jason Fulford, The Photographer’s Playbook: Over 250 Assignment and Ideas in 2014. Halpern was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship that same year. ZZYZX was awarded PhotoBook of the Year at the Paris Photo/Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards in 2016. Halpern became a nominee member of Magnum Photos in 2018 and a full member in 2023. He is currently a professor of photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology, in Rochester, New York.
About the George Eastman Museum
Founded in 1947, the George Eastman Museum is the world’s oldest photography museum and one of the largest film archives in the United States, located on the historic Rochester estate of entrepreneur and philanthropist George Eastman, the pioneer of popular photography. Its holdings comprise more than 400,000 photographs, 28,000 motion picture films, the world’s preeminent collection of photographic and cinematographic technology, one of the leading libraries of books related to photography and cinema, and extensive holdings of documents and other objects related to George Eastman. As a research and teaching institution, the Eastman Museum has an active publishing program and, through its two joint master’s degree programs with the University of Rochester, makes critical contributions to film preservation and to photographic preservation and collections management. For more information, visit eastman.org.
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ATTN. Media: High-res images for 19 winters / 7 springs can be downloaded here: https://eastmanmuseum.box.com/v/halpern19winters7springs.