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Friday, February 7, 2014

South x Southeast photomagazine


I was delighted to learn this morning that our very good friend and hugely talented artist, Robert Schaefer, has a photo essay in the current issue of South v Southeast photomagazine.  His signature piece, above, is simply titled "Paris."

Robert specializes in gorgeous architectural views, often through glass or plastic, which lends a haunting distortion to the image. The production is by cyanotype.

Robert A. Schaefer, Jr. began learning about the medium while he was studying Architecture at Auburn University in Alabama, his home state, and continued to do so at the Technische Universitaet of Munich, Germany. He exhibited at the Amerika Hauses in Munich, Hamburg, Hannover and Frankfurt as well as Kulturhaus in Graz, Austria and the City Museum of Munich among others before moving to New York City in 1981 (where he still lives and works). In 1999 – 2000 he had a 25-year retrospective at the Huntsville Museum of Art in Alabama. Curator Peter Baldaia described the city images in the exhibition catalogue as “formal abstractions of the urban landscape.” Lyle Rexer, in his book Photography’s Antiquarian Avant-garde (published by Abrams in 2002), says, “The work of former architect Robert Schaefer marries the process to a Machine Age aesthetic of urban geometrics and industrial technologies." In November 2010, Schaefer had exhibitions at the Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan in Delhi and the Government Museum and Art Gallery in Chandigarh of images he took in India in 2009 and printed with the cyanotype process. Elizabeth Rogers, who also initially conceived the "Architectural Blue" exhibitions, also curated them and edited the catalogue produced for both exhibitions. Schaefer spent the entire month of June 2013 in Can Serrat, a residency outside Barcelona, Spain, producing cyanotypes of photographs taken in Barcelona and the surrounding area. He teaches photography at New York University and the Center for Alternative Photography in Manhattan, and his work is represented by the Domeischel Gallery in New York City and the DeFrog Gallery in Houston, Texas.. 

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