Ray K. Metzker

a unique oversized composition of 140 photographs, each flush-mounted and mounted together on white acrylic, framed to the photographer's specifications, 1966

Acquired by the present owner directly from the photographer, 1970

The Art Institute of Chicago, Taken by Design: Photographs from the Institute of Design, 1937-1971, March - May 2002; and traveling thereafter to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, July - October 2002; and The Philadelphia Museum of Art, December 2002 - March 2003

Lausanne, Switzerland, Musée de l'Elysée, Ray Metzker: Light Lines, November 2007 - January 2008; and traveling thereafter to Preus Museum, Horten, Norway, June - October 2008; and Galleria Carla Sozzani, Milan, October - November 2008

This unique work:

David Travis and Elizabeth Siegel, eds., Taken by Design: Photographs from the Institute of Design, 1937-1971 (The Art Institute of Chicago, 2002), pl. 185

Ray Metzker: Light Lines (Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne, and Steidl, 2008), p. 111

This unique, dramatic composition is in generally excellent condition. Each print measures 2-1/2 by 1-5/8 inches. Upon close examination, 6 tiny impressions that appear to have been retouched are visible on one print (3rd row, 13th column). On the reverse of the mount, there is a small white 'Exchange Bank' label with typed number '13090.'
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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This unique work, composed of 140 individual photographs mounted together, is from a series initiated in 1964, when Metzker began combining multiple images into the larger works he called Composites.  Viewed from afar, the photograph reads as a large-scale graphic black-and-white abstraction.  Closer inspection reveals that the subject of each photograph is a silhouetted female nude.  Each image is identical, and each is fitted to its neighbor with exacting precision.  The work embodies a kind of perfect photographic minimalism: a minimalism that, like the musical compositions of Philip Glass or Steve Reich, is built from a teeming multiplicity of elements.  Metzker himself spoke of the rhythmic quality of the Composites: 'At this time I was reaching into music and into flux . . . Percussion, the playing of one beat against the next, began to translate into the photographs' (Unknown Territories, p. 123). 

Tall Grove of Nudes was made in 1966, the year Metzker was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for his photographic work.  He wrote, 'I have found myself discontented with the single, fixed-frame image, the isolated moment that seemingly is the dominant concern of still photography today' (ibid.). Few photographers have channeled their restlessness with the single photographic image so productively.  Working solely in the gelatin-silver medium, Metzker has, over six decades, created a vastly diverse body of work that incorporates, in addition to single photographic images, the multi-image compositions comprising the series Double Frame, Couplets, and the Composites.

Metzker received a Bachelor's degree in fine art from Beloit College, Wisconsin, in 1953. After serving in the Army in Korea, he enrolled at Chicago's Institute of Design in 1956, where he studied under Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, and (briefly) Frederick Sommer.  The school's curriculum, set by its founder László Moholy-Nagy, emphasized experimentation, and this is a quality that has stamped Metzker's work ever since.  He was one of six young, iconoclastic photographers featured in the epochal 1967 exhibition, The Persistence of Vision, at the George Eastman House, along with Robert Heinecken, Jerry Uelsmann, John Wood, and Charles Gill and Donald Blumberg.  That same year, John Szarkowski presented a solo exhibition of Metzker's Composites at The Museum of Modern Art.  In 1969, the Smithsonian Institution acquired two Composites. 

As unique works, the Composites are rare on the market.  It is believed Tall Grove of Nudes is the first unique Composite to appear at auction.