MUST RUN 1-11 ‘ARBUS, AVEDON, SANDER’ ON VIEW AT PACE/MACGILL avv set 1-3 #724592

NEW YORK CITY — Pace/MacGill Gallery presents “Arbus, Avedon, Sander,” an exhibition of three equally important and distinctively different bodies of work by Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon and August Sander, on view through February 16.

The exhibition addresses the visual power and conceptual foundations of the extended portrait in photography and includes nine prints from Arbus’s “Untitled” series, seven prints from Avedon’s portfolio “Jacob Israel Avedon, Sarasota, Florida” and 12 prints from Sander’s “Die Stammappe.”

As a medium, photography encourages the repeated, serial examination of a subject over time. Arbus, Avedon and Sander each chose to examine their subjects differently and their investigations yielded varied yet equally compelling results.

Working before the widespread embrace of digital technology, Sander, Avedon and Arbus understood the importance of remaining faithful to what they understood was real and dedicated their inventive efforts to representing the world around them without artifice.

The men and women Sander portrays in his pictures are similar to the idiosyncratic individuals he knew from his childhood, yet he depicts them “according to their essential archetype, with all the characteristics of mankind in general.”

Following a period of estrangement from his father, Jacob Israel Avedon, Richard Avedon sought a way to reconnect with him. The seven portraits of the elder Avedon in the exhibition poignantly convey Jacob Avedon’s struggle to survive cancer with dignity until life’s end.

In keeping with her longstanding interest in subcultures and self-contained miniature societies, Arbus (1923–1971) began making pictures around 1969 at New Jersey homes for the mentally disabled.

Pace/MacGill Gallery is at 32 East 57th Street. For information, www.pacemacgill.com or 212-759-7999.