Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava (except *)
Freemont Street, Las Vegas. Nevada, USA., 1982. From West in the two-volume set East/West. *Photo by Harry Gruyaert, Magnum Photos.
Harry Gruyaert is one of any number of very fine European Photographers who are much better known at home than they are here. A good many of them have had long, accomplished, careers, and achieved substantial recognition on the other side of the pond. Here, in the USA, not so much. Last year, when I published my conversation with Harry Gruyaert, I was shocked to receive emails that said, “Thanks for introducing me to him.”
In 2017, 174 Harry Gruyaert Photographs were on view in eleven stations of the Paris Metro at the invitation of RATP, the Paris public transport operator. *Seen here in a still from the Harry Gruyaert: Photographer Documentary. Both of these Photographs may be seen in his recent book, Edges.
Really? Harry Gruyaert, who was born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1941, is one of the Photographers responsible for bringing color Photography to the mainstream Fine Art world, along with William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, Constantine Manos and others, after the early, pioneering though not as well known color work of Edward Steichen (going back to 1909!), Keld Helmer-Petersen, (in the 1940s), Saul Leiter and Fred Herzog (from the 1950s, on), and others. Harry was the subject of the recent Harry Gruyaert – Retrospective at FOMU Foto Museum in Antwerp, and the documentary film Harry Gruyaert: Photographer. He’s an Artist who’s work has appeared in eleven Paris Metro Stations and intriguing crops of his work have appeared on the cover of 68 Penguin Books Inspector Maigret detective novels by Georges Simenon. All of this is over and above the fact that he’s been a member of Magnum Photos since 1981 and is a former Vice President of the world’s foremost collective of Photographers.
What’s it going to take for some of these very accomplished Photographers to gain similar acclaim and following here?
The show’s entrance with Antwerp, Belgium, 1988, 13 1/8 x 19 3/4 inches. All prints in the show are Archival pigment prints; printed later.
Perhaps, in his case at least, the tide is beginning to change. Part of the reason Mr. Gruyaert hasn’t been better known here to this point may be that almost all of the PhotoBooks he released earlier in his career are long out of print making it very hard for anyone new to him to discover his work. Though I have had an interest in Mr. Gruyaert’s work, I’ve never seen any of his older books, like the legendary Morocco– even in rare book stores.
Blue, yellow and red- the colors of the covers of three of the most recent Harry Gruyaert monographs.
More recently, Thames & Hudson has released 4 new books over the past 5 years (Harry Gruyaert, 2015, a retrospective with the red cover, and best place to start exploring his work, the also excellent two-volume set East/West, 2107, Edges, 2019, and the just released Last Call, 2020), which are helping to bring his work back to the eyes of the PhotoBook world.
Harry Gruyaert at the Howard Greenberg Gallery, installation view. On the wall or in a book, Harry Gruyaert’s work tends to grab viewers at first sight.
With Harry Gruyaert at the Howard Greenberg Gallery, his first show in the USA in decades, the next step has been taken. After our conversation last year from Paris, I finally had the chance to meet Harry at the opening. There he was, with Roger Szmulewicz, Director of Gallery51, his European dealer, on January 23rd. Harry told me this was his first USA show since the release of Morocco, which was published in 1990! Then, in keeping with the spirit of Last Call, which he shot in airports, Mr. Gruyaert, still a frequent traveler, told me he was off to Japan in two days.
Harry Gruyaert, left, chatting with Roger Szmulewicz, Director of Gallery51 at the opening.
As I learned in our conversation last year, Mr. Gruyaert is a fascinating, multi-dimensional, man, who has had a remarkable career and life, which has been characterized by being in the right place at the right time, in the right light, as was to be seen in spades on the walls of Howard Greenberg.
Gao, Mali, 1988, 13 1/8 x 19 5/8 inches, left and the haunting Quarzata, Morocco, 1986, 13 1/8 x 19 3/4 inches, right.
Here and now, in the moment, a good many of Harry Gruyaert’s most familiar, and beautiful, pieces were on view.
Province of Brabant, near Wavre, Belgium, 1981, 13 1/8 x 19 5/8 inches
For me, the show felt like reuniting with old friends. Province of Brabant, near Wavre, Belgium, 1981, in particular has long been among my favorites. There’s so many levels to this composition- the colors and their interaction, the distant landscape, the play of geometric shapes and shadows, the jarring angle the VW Beetle sits at, and then you get to the woman sitting in the car. It’s like a still from a movie, an outtake from a Michelangelo Antonioni Film he never made. Mr. Gruyaert, a long-time fan of Michelangelo Antonioni, and a former TV Director early in his career, produced a film that showed clips from Antonioni Films interspersed with some of his Photographs in the show The Image to Come at Cinémathèque Française in 2009.
Installation view. To the right of center works from his East/West series hang next to each other. LA, USA, 1982, the larger piece and Ostend, Belgium, 1982, to its left.
A little known chapter in his distinguished career also saw him in the right place to document the work of the legendary Artist Gordon Matta-Clark during some of the semial years of that Artist’s career. Most of those shots, which are seen frequently when Mr. Matta-Clark’s work is discussed, don’t bear his name, since they now belong to Mr. Matta-Clark’s estate, but the fact that Harry was there at the right time, taking remarkable (black & white) Photos are yet another part of his legend.
National Road #1, Boom, Province of Antwerp, Belgium, 1988, 20 7/8 x 31 1/2 inches
With such a long and distinguished career to dip into to mount shows from, here’s hoping there will be cause for many more Harry Gruyaert sightings on this side of Planet Earth.
Harry Gruyaert, far right, at the opening.
In person, in living color.
*- Soundtrack for this Post is “East West” by Morrissey from Kill Uncle.
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Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
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