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A SHOW OF HANDS From the Collection of Henry Buhl '48

Gregory Heisler. Luis Sarria, Masseur to Muhammad Ali, Miami FL, 1987, Gelatin Silver Print, 30” x 40”

Show of Hands is an exhibition of framed photographs devoted to the subject of hands, all from Henry M. Buhl’s ‘48 collection given to Brooks School by the Cygnet Foundation. Over the past 20+ years, Buhl has gathered a vast collection of images, eclectic furnishings, sculptures, books, and myriad curiosities and objects all inspired by the hand. The Robert Lehman Arts Center at Brooks School is honored to share many of his most treasured works during this special exhibition.

September 3rd - October 15th, 2021

The Robert Lehman Arts Center Gallery at Brooks School

North Andover, Massachusetts

The Buhl Collection demonstrates the prevalence of the hand as a photographic theme, a result, in part, of photography's easy ability to capture fragments and detail, as well as ephemeral movements. The works in this exhibition are drawn from the extensive collection of Brooks alumnus and well-known philanthropist Henry M. Buhl, who, after 30 years as an investment broker, gave up his job and set up in New York's SoHo to concentrate on photography.

In October 1993, Henry M. Buhl purchased a photograph by Alfred Stieglitz of Georgia O’Keeffe’s hands. This photograph would come to be the cornerstone of a private collection that now includes over one thousand images by the medium’s foremost practitioners as well as little-known and emerging artists. Focusing on the theme of the hand, Buhl has gathered images spanning the history of photography, from a photogenic drawing negative made in 1840 by William Henry Fox Talbot to serial Polaroids made in 2002 by Cornelia Parker. Over 160 images from his collection were featured at the Guggenheim Museum in New York (2004), Bilbao (2005-2006.) This collection given to the Robert Lehman Arts Center Gallery by the Cygnet Foundation includes dozens of images encompassing a comprehensive range of photographic practices, including scientific, journalistic, and fine-art photography, with a strong component of contemporary art. The Buhl Collection’s theme of the hand illuminates the very nature of photography, as well as unique aspects of collecting photographs.

Henry Buhl has also received the highest public recognition for his social commitment as founder and leader of the Partnership organization, which works to return dropouts and the underprivileged to mainstream society through a highly successful vocational training program.

Select Images in the Exhibition:

Artist: Renée Cox (American, born 1960) Title: Derry, 1999 Medium: gelatin silver print Size: 100.3 x 74.9 cm. (39.5 x 29.5 in.)

Renee Cox is a Jamaican-American artist, photographer, lecturer, political activist and curator. Her work is considered part of the feminist art movement in the United States. Some of the best known of her provocative works are Queen Nanny of the Maroons, Raje and Yo Mama’s Last Supper, which exemplify her Black Feminist politics. In addition, her work has provoked conversations at the intersections of cultural work, activism, gender, and African Studies. As a specialist in film and digital portraiture, Cox uses light, form, digital technology, and her own signature style to capture the identities and beauty within her subjects and herself. Cox has "dedicated her career to deconstructing stereotypes and to reconfiguring the black woman's body, using her nude form as a subject." She uses herself as a primary model in order to promote an idea of “self-love” as articulated in her book Sisters of the Yam, because as Cox writes in an artist's statement, “slavery stripped black men and women of their dignity and identity and that history continues to have an adverse affect on the African American psyche.” One of Cox’s main motivations has always been to create new, positive visual representations of African Americans.

Artist: Wouter Deruytter (Belgian, born 1967) Title: Crow Warrior #007 , 1999 Medium: GSP Size: 85.6 x 85.6 cm. (33.7 x 33.7 in.)

The photographs of Wouter Deruytter offer a view into worlds not usually open to everyday people. Always on the lookout for adventure, Deruytter likes to see himself as a modern day Tintin, commemorating his experiences with photography along the way. Through his lens we get a look inside cultures such as the New York drag scene and the life of wealthy oil sheiks behind their palace walls. In his photographs Deruytter tries to find both the extreme and the intimate parts of these private communities. His photograph communicate that it is possible to exist outside the publicized world. His photographs of cowboys showcase a world thought to be long gone. Along with this, Deruytter's work showcases the clash with modernity. Through these rare peeks into the lives of eccentric people we can vicariously feel adventurous ourselves. Wouter lives and works in New York.

Artist: Marco Glaviano (Italian, born 1942) Title: Jon Faddis, Unknown Medium: Black and White Photograph Size: 16 3/4 × 22 in 42.5 × 55.9 cm

Marco Glaviano is an Italian fashion photographer known for his images of supermodels Cindy Crawford and Paulina Porizkova. Born Palermo, Italy, he studied architecture at the University of Palermo, during which time he developed an interest in photography. During the early 1960s, Glaviano worked as a set designer and played in a successful jazz band. He first began taking photographs of his band mates and in 1967, made the decision to pursue photography as a career. Moving to Rome, then to Milan, Glaviano established a studio and worked for 8 years. Around this time, his photographs began appearing in major European fashion magazines, which eventually brought him to New York. Through the 1970s he worked for Vogue, and then during the 1980s with Harper’s Bazaar. Glaviano has achieved status in the fashion industry as one of the leaders in his profession. He currently lives and works between Milan, Italy and New York.

Artist: Craigie Horsfield (British, born 1949) Title: E. HORSFIELD, WELL STREET, EAST LONDON, AUGUST 1988 Medium: Unique print, GSP Size: 73 x 33½ in. (185.4 x 85.1 cm.)

Whether monumental photographs, films, or photorealistic tapestries, the works of Craigie Horsfield are imbued with a sense of “slow time,” a dilated moment that connects the present and the past that has help shaped it. In this vein, he prints photographs years after they are taken, as an investigation of time and memory. The human element is key in Horsfield’s work, especially in the “social projects“ that document the relationships between everyday people and places. He captures crowded, claustrophobic scenes of concerts, bullfights, dance halls, and religious ceremonies with the stillness and detail of the portraits of Diego Velázquez and other Old Masters. The artist’s practice continues to evolve along with the technology around him, as he experiments with advances in film, printing, and weaving.

Artist: The Icelandic Love Corporation. Title: Cardiac Circus - The Eggs, 2004. Diasec finished print. 47.25" x 47.25".

The Icelandic Love Corporation is a group of three artists: Sigrún Hrólfsdóttir (b. 1973), Jóní Jónsdóttir (b. 1972) and Eirún Sigurðardóttir (b. 1971). They have worked together since graduating from the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts in 1996. Using nearly all possible media—including performance, video, photography, and installation—the ILC confronts the seriousness of the art world with works that blend playfulness, humor and spectacle with refreshing genuineness and subtle social critique. Their art and performance often incorporate ideas of traditional femininity, but they are always women on their own terms. The members of the ILC have lived and studied in New York, Berlin, Copenhagen, and are currently based in Reykjavík.

Artist: Gregory Heisler (American, born 1954). Luis Sarria, Masseur to Muhammad Ali, Miami FL, 1987, Gelatin Silver Print, 30” x 40”

Gregory Heisler is a professional photographer known for his portrait work often found on the cover of magazines such as Time magazine, for which he has produced a number of Man, Person, and People of the Year covers. His work has also been featured in other magazines including Life, Esquire, Fortune, GQ, Geo, Sports Illustrated, ESPN and The New York Times Magazine. Heisler once had his White House photographer privileges revoked after taking a photograph of President George H.W. Bush for Time magazine in which Heisler used in camera techniques of double exposure to show what the cover labeled the two faces of Bush. Heisler has won numerous awards including: 1986 ASMP Corporate Photographer of the Year, 1988 Leica Medal of Excellence, 1991 World Image Award, 2000 Alfred Eisenstaedt Award. In September 2009 Gregory Heisler took a position as Artist-in-Residence at the Hallmark Institute of Photography in Turners Falls, Massachusetts. Heisler has now joined the Multimedia Photography & Design program at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University as a professor of photography.

Artist: Klaus Laubmayer (German, born 1951). Title: Holding Face (Margaux Hemingway), 1991, GSP 2/10, 24 x 20 in.

Klaus Laubmayer's work has strong influences of German post-war identity, collective history, and the created silence and self-deception of society. In the early 1970s, he studied stage design and film at the Kunstakademie Duesseldorf. At the end of the 1970s, Laubmayer began to create temporary large-scale, surrealist installations into landscapes on the volcanic island of Lanzarote and Ibiza. Laubmayer's photographic works incorporate theatrical installation, conceptual art, portraiture, beauty, and fashion photography. The works have been featured in the Guggenheim Museums, NY-Times, Time Magazine, Vogue, Interview, US Magazine, Allure, Details, Stern, Newsweek, Esquire, Elle, LA Style, Playboy, Amica, Abrams Books, Ullstein, Rizzolli, Simon & Schuster, NBC, MSNBC, ARD, RTL, among others. In 2001, Laubmayer was involved in filming the terror attack of the World Trade Center which happened just a few blocks away from his studio. In the aftermath, he became anxious to explore his inner self as an artist outside the fashion world. From 2004 to 2016 Laubmayer lived and worked in Berlin, Lanzarote, Paris, Los Angeles, and London. He currently lives and works at his birthplace, Düsseldorf.

Artist: Tetsu Okuhara (American, born 1940). Title: South American Journey, 1975. GSP Collage, 60.5 x 75.5 in (in three parts).

Tetsu Okuhara style of "photographic cubism" reflects his displacement as a boy when he was forced from his home in Los Angeles to an interment camp in Colorado during World War II. The common themes throughout his work are a sense of history and time while recalling past experiences. There is a spiritual quality to his works that are influenced by Okuhara's interest in the formalism of Karate and his practice of yoga. His work is featured in collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), The Art Institute (Chicago), The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and The Museum of Modern Art (New York). Okuhara has received many awards including two N.E.A Grants and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Artist: Nancy Pajic-Wilson (American, born 1941). Title: Covering my face: My grandmother's Gesture, 1972-1973. Vintage gum prints on paper, 30.5 x 28 in.

Nancy Wilson-Pajic uses narrative forms (primarily recorded text installations, but also video, performance, photography) to make narrative, content- oriented artworks. She studied art, literature and psychology in Indiana and graduated from Cooper Union, New York in 1972 with a BFA. In the mid-1960s, Wilson-Pajic began her work in new media by installing taped texts “In Situ” in everyday environments, and recording her performance works. As one of the founders of A.I.R. Gallery in New York, the first women's cooperative gallery, Wilson-Pajic was actively implicated in alternative spaces with artworks not yet accepted in more traditional environments. In 1979, Wilson-Pajic moved to Paris and undertook research on the influence of photography on our understanding of the artworks documented, specifically the tendency of the image to transform difficult content into more conventional, pictorial form. She began experimenting with photographic printing processes, exploring the relations between techniques, subjects, sequences and text. Her first exhibition in a photography context was a solo show at the Musée National d’Art Modernein the Pompidou Center, Paris in 1983. Wilson-Pajic's work is represented in museums and other public collections throughout the world, notably the Musée National d’Art Moderne in Paris, the Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, and the Musée Réattu in Arles.

THE ROBERT LEHMAN ARTS CENTER GALLERY IS CURRENTLY OPEN BY APPOINTMENT.

TO SCHEDULE A VIEWING, PLEASE CLICK THE LINK ON THE LEHMAN ART CENTER PAGE OF BROOKSSCHOOL.ORG TO ACCESS OUR REGISTRATION FORM.

We look forward to welcoming you back!

Show of Hands digital exhibition curated by Ella Dooling '22, Advanced Open Studio Photography student at Brooks School.