Perfect timing! All America now stands for the equal rights of all people, at least by the ruling of the free world's highest Supreme Court. And right on time, New York's Foley Gallery presents Sage Sohier’s 'At Home With Themselves' spread of portraits taken in the homes of same-sex unions in America of the 80s.
Yes, you read right – 30 years before the Supreme Court ruling in 2015 was when Sage Sohier's photos of gays and lesbian couples in domestic relationships were created. To be exact in 1986, when the AIDS crisis cost the lives of countless victims and a large part of society was forced to live, love and ultimately, suffer in hiding.
Sage Sohier tells us: “I was interested in how as a culture, we weren’t used to looking at two men touching, and was struck by the visual novelty yet total ordinariness of these same-sex relationships.” The decisive inspiration for her project came from the extremely discreet homosexual relationship her father had to live in. She and her father were in a sense explorers of the secret world of the taboos of that time.
So it is no great surprise that it was absolutely impossible to find someone who was willing to publish the photos – the issue was just too culturally edgy; an audience for lives beyond what was considered normal still had to be born. And what does she think thirty years after the photos? “Looking at these pictures now, I realize that it took a good deal more courage to stand up and be photographed as a same-sex couple in the 1980s than it does today, and I think the photographs somehow convey that. In some, there’s a tentativeness, in others a kind of not-to-be-taken-for-granted raw tenderness. People in my father’s generation had grown up feeling that being openly gay was just not an acceptable option. In my generation, that began to change, and I was grateful to be witness to it”.
About - Sage Sohier (b. 1954) has been photographing people in their environments for more than 30 years. Her work is in several public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, The Portland Art Museum, and The Brooklyn Museum. She received her B.A. from Harvard University.
Sage Sohier - At Home With Themselves . Foley Gallery . Until 26 July, 2015 . Open Wed – Sun 12 – 6pm . 59 Orchard St . New York . NY 10002 . USA . foleygallery.com
Foley Gallery is delighted to present American Portraits 1979-1989 by photographer Leon Borensztein. Borensztein first immigrated to the United States from Israel in the late 1970s and initially worked as a traveling portrait photographer throughout the environs of San Francisco. Commercial portrait sessions would be set-up by eager salesmen, sending Borensztein across California, making up to 30 portraits a day of people in their homes. While photographing put-on smiles in color for his employer, he decided to make his own photographs in black & white, pulling far enough away from the backdrop to reveal the interior room, the domestic life of his sitter(s). With clear directions not to smile, “the masks on their faces vanished.” Eventually, he traveled across the country, meeting his customers in public spaces, economically covering more subjects at a time.
During his travels, it became clear to him that the “American Dream” he longed for himself was also a dream that he shared with his subjects. But, like his own life, the realities of these mostly working class families wore away at the possibility. A loneliness and isolation emanated from his subjects. As in the portraits of Arkansas’s Mike Disfamer and Germany’s August Sander before, Borensztein’s photographs reveal what his subjects really look like and not necessarily what they want to be.
Although his subjects didn’t know one another, they seem like they are a part of the same community, trying to present themselves in the “right” way. They are on the same social level, having the same concerns, ambitions and sharing similar living conditions as one another. Borensztein’s use of a simple and consistent backdrop equalizes their status. But, by revealing their immediate surroundings, the opportunity to be seen as something other than they are vanishes. When the backdrop gets put a way and the photographer pulls into his next town, their lives go back to normal. By subtly shifting how much is portrayed, Borensztein reinterprets the construction of the American identity.
Leon Borensztein (b. 1947) earned his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1980. He was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1987 and a grant from the California Council of the Humanities in 2003. His work has been exhibited at Pier 24 Photography in San Francisco, the Centre Nationale de la Photographie in Paris, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, and SFMOMA. His monograph, America Portraits, was published in 2011.
Leon Borenszteins - American Portraits . Foley Gallery . Until 26 July, 2015 . Open Wed – Sun 12 – 6pm . 59 Orchard St . New York . NY 10002 . USA . foleygallery.com
