“Still Movements”

Special Summer Photo Exhibition “Still Movements”

featuring: SUMIO INOUE / STUART LEEDS
Toru Mimura / Jun Nakanishi

August is usually a quiet month for New York art galleries. At NY Coo Gallery, however, we are having a special summer photo exhibition entitled “Still Movements,” featuring works by four photographers including Sumio Inoue and Stuart Leeds. The exhibition showcases several aspects of traditional and digital fine art photography.

Sumio Inoue, by far the most internationally-acclaimed of the four, is also the most traditional and inventive at the same time. Inoue still takes pictures with film. He develops it himself and makes own prints. What makes him inventive is that he makes his own paper − a half inch-thick rice paper − and painstakingly “hand paints” images onto the paper’s rough, uneven surface. All his pictures are black & white. The result is dreamy, almost charcoal drawing-like photography exuberating with quiet warmth.

Stuart Leeds − a highly accomplished illustrator who for over 2 decades contributed illustrations for the New Yorker Magazine and others − mixes digital photography with painting. Leeds’ utilization of lines, lights, shadows and other creative elements gives his work a distinctive geometric appearance. Surrealistic yet strangely intimate, Leeds’ pictures are both detached and alluring at the same time. 

For this exhibition, Toru Mimura worked exclusively with digital technologies − a digital camera, a PC and a laser printer − that are found in most modern households. His photography positions itself directly opposite of Inoue’s as it all together avoided employing a “manual hard labor” that underlies Inoue’s work. Mimura’s pictures represent what he calls “digi-cam artsy shots.”

In the series called “Reminiscing” and “Afternoon Scent,” Jun Nakanishi, while minimizing the use of digital technology, follows rather traditional photography techniques as he, like Inoue, takes pictures with film, develops it and makes own prints. The series called “Focus-Pocus,” on the other hand, features digitally-enhanced abstract imageries.        

During the exhibition, the gallery will be open Tuesday through Saturday (Saturday: By appointment only) from 12:00 noon till 6:00PM.

Stuart Leeds Long Brick in the Grass 17X11	Toru Mimura Affectionate Mom /� 9.5 x 11