Foley Gallery is pleased to present Document, an exhibition chronicling a twelve-year project by iconic photographer Henry Leutwyler. This will be the artist’s third exhibition with the gallery.
Document will feature a variety of possessions removed from their environment and intimately photographed as artifacts or bookmarks of our own understanding of American History. Representing icons of music, sports, politics and Hollywood, these still-life portraits invite the viewer to explore and perhaps better understand the owners to which the items once belonged.
These previously owned objects directly or indirectly associate themselves to the person or to a particular time in our own history. Some are tools of the trade, others are more common and mundane; a glove worn by Michael Jackson, a guitar that once belonged to Prince, Jack Ruby’s handgun and a key that turned the lock of James Dean’s door at the Iroquois Hotel. All stoic images, now endowed with new meaning and emotion once their owners are identified. This revelation raises their status and comes to signify events or entire lives of those that we remember so well as being pioneers, great achievers or simply dark and notorious for the actions they took during their lifetime.
The Document exhibition follows Leutwyler’s third publication with Steidl. The October 2016 release of the book (bearing the same name) will include 208 pages and 123 color images that cover Leutwyler’s extensive career. The exhibition will travel to the Fine Arts Museum in Le Locle, Switzerland from June 17 – October 15, 2017.
Henry Leutwyler was born in Switzerland in 1961. He lived and worked in Paris for a decade before finding his way to New York City in 1995, where he establishes his reputation as portrait and still life photographer. Steidl published Leutwyler’s first book Neverland Lost: A Portrait of Michael Jackson, in 2010. The first edition of Ballet was published in 2012, the second edition in 2015. The images from Ballet and Neverland Lost have been exhibited in solo shows in Los Angeles, New York City, Paris, Moscow, Madrid and Zurich. His work has graced the pages of numerous magazines around the world and has earned him countless honors and awards.