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Exhibition prints are available for purchase (see below).


Urban Zips combines my longstanding work in street photography with my love of abstract expressionist painting. It is the work of Barnett Newman (1905-1970) that inspired this project. He created what he called “zips”: large “color field” paintings in which the entire canvas is covered with a single color, and is then bisected by one or more thin bands—or zips—of another color.

My own “zips” are single-frame, composite images where a close-up shot of an urban surface is sliced by one or more bands of my classic street photography.

Within the frame, I build formal correspondences, conflicts, and narrative layers. The result veers toward abstraction, but the reality-based source is always present. While Urban Zips hint at elements of character and narrative, they complicate principles of physical reality: scale, perspective, the relation of figure to ground, and in some cases, time.

Exhibition prints (20x30") are available for purchase (editions of 7); contact Ellen. (Other sizes available upon request.)

Big foot

Big foot

Belleville

Belleville

Excavator

Excavator

Man Walking into Curve

Man Walking into Curve

Prague School Yard

Prague School Yard

Zip Zip

Zip Zip

Red Arrow Over Step

Red Arrow Over Step

Vertigo (After Hitchcock)

Vertigo (After Hitchcock)

XXX

XXX

E_Man and Boy

E_Man and Boy

Man in Red Bars

Man in Red Bars

Duo-tone Man and Woman

Duo-tone Man and Woman

Medieval Modern

Medieval Modern

Umbrellas

Umbrellas

No Admittance

No Admittance

Smoking Area

Smoking Area

Largest Creative

Largest Creative