NEW YORK, NY.- Laurence Miller Gallery presents Neal Slavin – A Forty Year Chronicle of Groups and Gatherings, the artist’s first one-person show in New York City in thirty years.
Slavin, a native New Yorker, began photographing groups in 1972. He quickly realized that shooting in color yielded greater nuance and detail, placing him among the first generation of photographers, along with William Eggleston and Joel Meyerowitz, to fully embrace color.
Over the past four decades, Slavin has recorded hundreds of groups from the most obscure to the most celebrated, both in the US and abroad: Sabrett Hot Dog vendors, NYC; The Silurian Border Morris Men, Herefordshire; the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Salt Lake City; Elephant Keepers with Katie and Kumara, Bedfordshire; and the Mahayana Buddhist Service, NYC.
He has published three books: PORTUGAL, Lustrum Press, 1971; WHEN TWO OR MORE ARE GATHERED TOGETHER, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1974; and BRITONS, Aperture, 1986.
Slavin is currently working on THE PRAYER PROJECT, a book and film which embraces the gatherings of many different religious groups - a timely series in our present era of growing intolerance. In discussing his motivations, Slavin wrote: "I want my work to affirm our self identity within our public persona; to affirm the joy of being together rather than being apart. My intention is to intensely glimpse that kind of human spirit through the lens of my camera.”
Slavin is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, an NEA grant, and two CAPS grants. He has been awarded a Gold Lion in Cannes for advertising, a Silver Cube from the Art Director’s Club of New York, five Addy Awards, and a Mobius Award. His work was included in Esquire’s article on the Ten Toughest Photographs of 1975. In addition to his photography and film-making career, he also has taught at many higher education institutions.
His prints have been acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the International Center of Photography (ICP), New York; the National Portrait Gallery and the National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC; the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television (now called The National Media Museum), London, and the John Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, among many others.
