Kenneth Josephson

Photographs of photographs are everywhere these days; Josephson’s work from the sixties and seventies is a reminder that the strategy has a history.

His photographs of photographs, exemplified by his series, Images within Images and History of Photography, are often called up for duty when curators want to include still photographs in telling the story of Conceptual art.

Rather than highlight that heralded work alone, the present show, a core sample from the first half (1956-80) of his career, chooses to demonstrate the sterling craftsmanship that has marked Josephson’s work  even at its brainiest.

Consider Kenneth Josephson: He was a pioneer in conceptual photography and is well-regarded in the history of medium. Yet at 83 years of age, he isn’t widely known to the general public. Fortunately, he seems to be having a late-career moment, with the release of a massive monograph, "The Light of Coincidence: The Photographs of Kenneth Josephson," from the University of Texas Press, and a solo exhibition at Gitterman Gallery in New York City, which runs until June 11. 

Multiple exposures, collages, time lapses, and doctored colors: Since he began working in the late 1950s–early ’60s, Josephson has used just about every available technique to question our accepted notions of reality. Which is to say that in his best work—much of which is on display at this greatest hits–style exhibition—formal experiments are really metaphysical provocations.

Kenneth Josephson (b. 1932) studied at the Institute of Design, the Chicago school founded by László Moholy-Nagy, with teachers known for their radical experimentation, Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind.