On Thursday, May 24, the Fourth Street Photo Gallery will present "DECADE OF MADNESS: COLD TURKEY AT THE DOG RUN", a photo-projection, reading and talk by BARBARA ROSENTHAL about the physical, emotional, psychological and creative events during her struggle to rid body and brain of twelve years of psychiatric medications, and the book of that title currently in development.
The topic will include Rosenthal's thoughts about photography, and all art, as a manifestation of the artist's "soul and psyche," and her directive to "photograph in a trance-state."
The photo-projections will include many images from her "Surreal Photography" work, particularly from the portfolios "Trapped Figures", "Dangerous Locations", "Renegade Horses", "Dogs in the City", and "NYC."
Central to the recovery process was the rhythm of taking her dog, Russel, to Washington Square at daybreak after sleepless, panicked, pain-wracked nights of withdrawal, observing the small things that go on in that protected environment over the course of a summer.
Rosenthal has relentlessly chronicled her life in Journals for 50 years, and released her mind in Photography for 40. Candidly revealing her own experience in image and text, she molds plastic elements like time, repetition, structure and description, using the physical space of the dog run to explore psychological space, and to create a counterpoint between several overlapping societies: human and animal; stranger and family; group and individual; familiar boundaries and the unknown outer world.
For this extremely introspective artist, self-examination is also a vehicle for universal examination. When discussing this with her, Barbara Rosenthal said, "Ultimately, everyone faces some form of desperation, and every sensitive person faces the question of why go on living, or how to go on living, how to justify one’s own life, especially a life in the arts, when surrounded by the undeniable brutality of life beyond one’s own safe gates"
Thursday, May 24.
Reception: 8pm.
Projection, Reading & Talk: 9pm.
Alex Harsely, Director
Fourth Street Photo Gallery
67 E. 4th St.
NY, NY 10003
gallery tel: 212-673-1021
Subway: 6 to Bleeker, or F/M to 2nd Ave, or L to 1st Ave.
To contact the artist before the show, call 646-368-5623.
Gallery Website: http://
Barbara Rosenthal's Surreal Photography Website: http://www.emedialoft.org/
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