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BILL ARNOLD
EVERYDAY POETRY
April 1 - July 30, 2003
Contact Sheet 121
Bill Arnold believes there is poetry in prosaic everyday
occurrences and that his roll, as an artist, is to find
and fix those moments into pictures. Photographers like
Arnold helped to fuel the enthusiasm for art photography,
then like poets withdrawing, stood back as the medium
advanced to embrace new strategies, techniques and politics
to become one of the most elastic and malleable means
of expression available to artists today.
This exhibition includes photographs made from 1967-2003.
Over five thousand images were reviewed for inclusion
in the exhibition, and his tremendous production and
consistency invites further investigation. Consider
the image taken in 1976 titled, Embrace.
In subject, structure, and form it bears a close resemblance
to Alfred Eisenstaedt's celebrated photograph of a sailor
and nurse kissing in Times Square on VJ Day, 1945. The
clarity of the moment of the embrace in Eisenstaedt's
photograph is enhanced by the celebration of the circumstances
in which it was made. Just as Eisenstadt's photograph
defined a national identity for one era, so did Arnold's
for another.
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