Night Visions: The Photography of Lynn Saville
Submitted by: Julie Cassen, docent
Lynn Saville, 2008
Durham North Carolina native Lynn Saville was born in 1950. She graduated from Duke with a degree in art history, then moved to Brooklyn, New York to study photography at Pratt Institute, where she received her M.F.A in 1976. At Pratt she was encouraged to have her camera with her constantly to record a visual diary of every moment of her life and to go out after class and shoot whatever she found interesting. She found black and white photos of the nighttime city the most compelling. Lynn Saville had found her passion.
“From an early age I was captivated by the night,” says Saville. “ I found it fascinating. Things looked more mysterious, scary, but intriguing at night. I didn’t put it together with photography until later.” 1
“Walking at night with my camera, I am awakened by the darkness,” she says. “It seems to harbor secrets that hint of pleasure and mystery, ... I stop, look … and what I see is a play of light and shadow whose power I cannot explain.” Utilizing the subtle play of moonlight and starlight, combined with the artificial illumination of street lights, window lights, neon signs and security lights, Saville creates images with a radiance all their own. For Saville, light is the most fundamental tool utilized to perfect her craft. “Light is to the photographer as oil is to the painter,” she explains. 2
Acquainted with the Night, published in 1997, features 102 of Saville’s black and white images. Scattered throughout the book are 35 classic and contemporary poems selected by her husband, poet Phillip Fried that enhance the photographs by creating a dialogue with the image. The publication of her book was followed by several solo shows in Atlanta, Los Angeles, London, Paris, and at the Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York, the gallery that handles her work. 3 After receiving this recognition for her black and white work, Saville started experimenting with color. For her color images she is in search of twilight, that transition time when daylight moves into night. The sun is setting, but traces of its light paint the sky in shades of pink, blues and purple. This is a variation from the darkness of night that she pursued in her earlier black and white work. 4
1. Giannetti, Charlene. “Women Around Town…” p.1
2. Henkin, Stephen. “A Shot in the Dark” p.1
3. Roas, Joseph. “Acquainted with the Night” Introduction
4. Dabto, Arthur. “Night/Shift” Introduction p. 5
Although she makes quick sketches with a small pocket digital camera, she continues to use film for her gallery work. She tries to work quickly and does not walk around with her camera on a tripod. When she likes what she sees in a digital sketch, she takes out her tripod and camera and sets to work. She prefers to print her own work. She has a black and white darkroom in her apartment and prints her color photographs at the International Center for Photography, where she teaches. Saville considers her work “straight” unmanipulated photography. “This simply means that when I photograph what I see in front of my camera, it is very similar to what people looking at my photographs in an exhibition will see,” she says.5
Saville has photographed in many areas of the United States and many countries of the world, but she continually returns to the city she knows so well, New York. Her book, Night/Shift, with an introduction by Arthur C. Danto, was published in 2009. It portrays a unique picture of Greater New York at twilight in different seasons of the year. Saville is not attracted to the areas of the city frequented by tourists. Instead, she seeks to capture the forgotten areas that have a run down feeling: back alleys, rusting metal fire escapes, abandoned warehouses and the understructure of urban bridges. Captured in twilight, “…when shadows work like makeup to erase a city’s blemishes”, Saville is drawn to these hidden areas of the city.6
Lynn Saville’s work has been widely exhibited in the United States and internationally. The Mint Museum of Art in Charlotte N.C. had an exhibit of her work in 2007 and four of her images are part of the Mint’s permanent collection. Saville received a fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a grant from the New York State Council of the Arts. She is a member of the teaching faculty at the International Center of Photo-graphy in New York and at New York University. She currently lives in Manhattan.7
Sample of Saville’s Work in the Mint’s Permanent Collection
Fulton Landing Warehouse, 2002
5. Henkin, Stephen. “A Shot in the Dark”. p. 5
6. Danto, Ginger. “Acquainted with the Hour…” p.1
7. Danto, Arthur. “Night/Shift” Introduction p. 5
Chartres, 2002
Bethesda Fountain, Central Park, 2004
Bibliography
1. Acquainted with the Night: Photographs by Lynn Saville, Poetry selected by Philip Fried, Introduction by Joseph Rosa, Forward by Bill Moyers . Rizzoli International Pub. N.Y. 1997
2. Danto, Ginger. “Aquainted With the Hour That Falls Before the Night”. The New York Times Arts & Leisure (January 5, 2003)
3. Giannetti, Charlene. “Woman Around Town: Lynn Saville – Photographing the Night” www.womanaroundtown.com/locations/new-york/women. 2009
4. Henkin, Stephen. “A Shot in the Dark ” World & I, Vol. 10, no.1 (January 1995)
5. Night/Shift, Photographs by Lynn Saville, Introduction by Arthur Danto. The Monacelli Press, New York. 2009
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