City stills

by Ray K. Metzker

Admirers have called Metzker "an innovator who knows no rules." City Stills confirms this, with Metzker using progressive darkroom techniques and daring collage compositions to suspend concepts of time and place. Whether spliced negatives juxtaposing day anti night, or rapid-fire sequences of objects and people, Metzker's shots transform his subjects into visual patterns: a crowd of wary policemen becomes a study in texture and contrast -- shiny, black leather uniform jackets against smooth, white helmets. Other photographs ... Read More

Admirers have called Metzker "an innovator who knows no rules." City Stills confirms this, with Metzker using progressive darkroom techniques and daring collage compositions to suspend concepts of time and place. Whether spliced negatives juxtaposing day anti night, or rapid-fire sequences of objects and people, Metzker's shots transform his subjects into visual patterns: a crowd of wary policemen becomes a study in texture and contrast -- shiny, black leather uniform jackets against smooth, white helmets. Other photographs demonstrate Metzker's magnificent command of light and shade: four figures wait pensively at a bus stop, as though caged in glass, staring boldly into a wedge of bright light; a lone woman stands outside a train station, engulfed in an ominous stripe of inky shadow, with only the white of her necklace and a folded newspaper as talismans to ward off the darkness. Whether the photographs capture people waiting to take action, or people already in motion, Metzker's technique estranges them from the lockstep rhythm of mundane activity and makes them stand still-just for a moment. The result is a series of photographs that demands a reinterpretation of the city, its streetlife, and its inhabitants. Read Less