Penzoil Place, Houston, Texas
In 1974 Lynn Davis moved to New York City, having graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1970. For a time, she served as apprentice to Bernice Abbott and supported herself as a freelance photojournalist. By 1979 Davis had been recognized as a major talent. That year, her nudes and portraits were featured in a two-person exhibition with her close friend Robert Mapplethorpe at the International Center of Photography. In these early works, Davis was already applying the formalist precepts that continue to serve as her hallmark. However, during the late 1980 her photographs would undergo a radical shift in subject as her fascination with the contours of the human figure was transposed onto similarly sculptural objects-the icebergs of Greenland.
Over the last decade, Davis has investigated both the natural landscape and the man-made monuments left to signify the spiritual beliefs of ancient cultures. Since the inaugural series on Greenland, she has traveled and photographed extensively, including sojourns to the New and Middle East (Cambodia, Burma, Thailand, Syria, Jordan, Turkey, Yemen, Lebanon), Africa (Egypt, Mali, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan), as well as South America, India, Nova Scotia, Australia and the Arctic. She has also made numerous trips across the United States.
Taken collectively, her studies of sacred structures and natural vistas extend beyond the 19th century s concept of the cultured traveler to c hallenge and reaffirm the sense of immutability that for centuries has inspired awe at these sites. Davis elemental compositions purify her subject into their simplest archetypal forms and transform the image itself into an enduring object of contemplation.
Davis photographs undergo meticulous toning processes individually formulated to enhance the experience of the various subjects. Whether toned in a cool gold, deep selenium, delicate sepia, or a sumptuous combination thereof, these mostly oversized prints are, in the end, stunning objects: subtle, yet rich, with unsurpassed tactility.
The photographs of Lynn Davis have been exhibited internationally and collected widely. Her work appears in the major collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The L.A. County Museum, the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Harvard University, and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. Selections of Davis African images appeared in Into Africa by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Published by Knopf in the fall of 1999.
Her second monograph, entitled Monument, was released by Arena Editions also in the fall of 1999.
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