Thursday September 4 will see Bay Area photographer Djinn né Carl Lewis’ historic work in, ‘Reflections in Black: A Reframing’, a group exhibition opening at NYU’s Tisch School of the Art, Center for Black Visual Culture’s Cooper Square Gallery.
An autodidactic visual artist for over 4 decades Mr. Lewis is referenced in Dr. Deb Willis’, ‘Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present’, and has work in the collections of the Amon Carter Museum, Anacostia Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Fine Art Houston, and New York City Public Library’s Schomburg Collection.
Beginning his photographic career in 1979 capturing light-oriented imagery on still film, molten glass and 20×40 foot dynamic laser illusions, Carl’s art imagery bridged the traditional and post-modern worlds of photography traversing the boundaries of materials and processes. The ‘Jinnagraph’ images presented in ‘Reflections in Black’ are vintage process-driven and image manipulated dye-destruction Cibachrome prints a technique he created similar to the iconic Sabbatier Effect (solarization) of Man Ray for black and whites. The image selected for the ‘Reflections in Black: A Reframing’ exhibition is a limited edition archival print of the one-of-a-kind vintage, ‘Who’s the Alien?’ produced by San Francisco’s iconic print house, Dickerman Prints, on Hahnemühle Metallic paper.
For the book, ‘Reflections in Black: A Reframing’, Dr. Willis’ chose one of the Mr. Lewis’ newer works from 2023, ‘J-H and the Dreaddie’ which combines elements of the Lumière Captureé, 20×40 foot laser images ‘captured’ with an analogue camera and slow film in 1980, with an ‘iTrait’ of Wailers’ guitarist, Owen ‘Dreaddie’ Reid.
“I am so honored to be in this group of luminaries. This is extremely exciting, it’s the first major exhibition of in my 45 year career, and amazing that my images from the ’80s are still ‘contemporary’. When I started out in photography it was Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray’s light-oriented imagery and ‘experimentation’ that caused me to pause.“, states Carl, “After manipulating the black and white chemical and photographic processes, I thought to take my ‘curiosity’ into the medium of color, no one had done it yet as far as I could find, so I went there.“
Photographic legends the likes of Gordon Parks, Chester Higgins, Hank Willis Thomas, Ming Smith works will also be exhibited in ‘Reflections in Black: A Reframing’ from September 4 to October 15 at the Cooper Square Gallery, 20 Cooper Square, New York, NY 10003.
For more information on current and future events, art sales, lecturing opportunities please contact the Yanasa Creative Group marketing team, Lydia Clark [email protected] or JyJimmie Gabiola [email protected].
