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TRIO OF PHOTOGRAPHY SHOWS OPENS AT HASTED HUNT w/1 cut

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NEW YORK CITY — Hasted Hunt will open the fall season with three separate exhibitions featuring selections of black and white photographs by Lisette Model, Aaron Siskind and Gerald Slota, on view through November 1. A reception will be Thursday, September 20, from 6 to 8 pm.

The gallery presents “A Portfolio of 12 Photographs by Lisette Model,” including her most iconic 1940s images “Coney Island Bather,” the lounging Riviera gamblers and “Window Reflections, Fifth Ave.” The late dealer Harry Lunn published the set in 1976, with the printing done by Gerd Sander (of the August Sander family). These images are well known and widely disseminated, but it is rare that an intact portfolio with the original case has survived to be exhibited.

Model (1906–1983) is remembered as an artist and teacher. Aperture has republished its classic 1979 monograph and will be exhibiting “Model and Her Successors” concurrently with the Hasted Hunt show.

Also on view is a never before exhibited set of six vintage prints from Aaron Siskind’s original 1956 “Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation.” Siskind (1903–1991) was a photographer and teacher who made (and kept) for himself this group of vintage photographs, printed at 17 by 14 inches, larger than most of his other works. Initially these seem to be Rorschach inkblots, dense black on white, but on close examination the subject is revealed as a young man soaring, lighter than air, splayed against a perfect white sky.

Gerald Slota (born 1965) is a contemporary artist represented with a new series, “Found,” that comprises images based on unattributed snapshot negatives that have been “reconsidered,” scratched and drawn on, then printed on 8-by-10-inch paper, like pages from an American surrealist scrapbook. The works are Jungian with dreamlike and enigmatic scenes further fueled by social critique, contemporary yet with references to early video (Brakhage) and postware painting (Kline/ Rauschenberg).

Originally commissioned for the Prague House of Photography, “Found” comes to New York just after its United States debut at the George Eastman House. Curator Alison Nordstom writes in the catalog of Slota “combing the jetsam of our times with the passionate and intuitive mark and gestures of his hand.”

The gallery is at 529 West 20th Street, third floor. For information, 212-627-0006 or www.hastedhunt.com.