NEW YORK.- Marlborough Gallery presents an exhibition of photographs by Robert Weingarten entitled Portraits Without People. The exhibition opened at Marlborough Chelsea and will continue through April 2.
In his recent Portraits Without People series, Robert Weingarten creates composite portraits of his subjects without using their likenesses. Images that correspond to specific passions, achievements, belongings or moments in the lives of prominent individuals are digitally combined and layered to create metaphorical portraits, which the artist calls translucent composites. These portraits reference their subjects through biographical detail rather than physical appearance.
Weingarten selected subjects whose accomplishments in the fields of art, culture, government, science and sports are enduring. At his request, the subjects compiled lists of places and things representative of their lives and achievements, which the artist has translated into striking visual images. Noted participants include Buzz Aldrin, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Chuck Close, Frank Gehry, Dennis Hopper, Joyce Carol Oates, Itzhak Perlman, Sonia Sotomayor and Alice Waters.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Weingarten devoted the first thirty years after his graduation from Baruch College to a successful career in finance. Passionate about photography from a young age, he pursued it as a hobby until he chose to commit himself fully to his passion fifteen years ago.
Weingarten is primarily a self-taught photographer, and his photography debut came in 1997 with a series of Italian landscape photographs. The 6:30 A.M. series, begun in 2003, chronicled the changing colors of sky, water and land by capturing an identical ocean view from his home in Malibu, California at the same time each day for one year. This interest in the perception of color and abstraction is equally present in the Palette Series (2004-2007), in which Weingarten produced abstract compositions from the raw materials of the greatest living painters.