VIEWFINDING #42
Sage Sohier / Eileen Perrier / Mark Cohen
Sage Sohier: Americans Seen
First published by Nazraeli Press in 2017, Sage Sohier’s Americans Seen has just been issued in newly ‘remastered’ and expanded form. Featuring images made by Sohier between 1979 and 1986 when she lived in Boston, it is predominantly a portrait of the city’s working-class communities whiling away long summer days.
In addition to the Boston-based work, the book also holds images from various road trips made by Sohier. In the summer these took in everything from mining towns in West Virginia and Mormon neighbourhoods in Utah, to run-down Newburgh, situated on the Hudson River, and French-Canadian communities in Berlin, New Hampshire. In winter, Sohier headed south to the warmth of Florida and Louisiana where she photographed families whose homes had been flooded. Together, the images create a broad picture of 1980s US working-class life.
Americans Seen is a captivating body of work that magically captures a recent, but now by-gone era. It shows people with time on their hands, some making their own entertainment, some not, in the days before attention spans shrunk with the invasion of smartphones.
“Life was lived outside in public more, and I found the kind of theatre-of-the-streets that emerged intriguing.” Sage Sohier
Sage Sohier: Americans Seen is available from UK distributor Setanta Books.
All images © Sage Sohier, courtesy of Nazraeli Press
Eileen Perrier: A Thousand Small Stories
Opening on Thursday 17th April at Autograph, in London’s Shoreditch, Eileen Perrier: A Thousand Small Stories is the artist’s first retrospective and draws on three decades of work. Perrier started making portraits in the 1990s, often resourcefully in makeshift studios, finding common themes of shared experiences and place.
In the words of the Bindi Vora, the exhibition’s curator, “Her work has evolved into a form of social engagement that powerfully visualises individuality – encouraging us to look beyond social and cultural divides. Perrier uses the tropes of 19th century European and contemporary African studio portraiture to contemplate how class, cultural identity and belonging are represented through the photographic portrait.”
Central to the show is Perrier’s Afro Hair and Beauty Show, shot between 1998 and 2003, a portrait series that focuses on the significance of hair and hairstyles as symbols of cultural pride and resistance across the African diaspora. Her Red, Gold and Green series from 1997 is also featured, a collaboration with family members – first, second and third-generation British Ghanaians living in London – all photographed in their own homes. With fabrics utilised as backdrops, the work has echoes of West African portrait studio photography of the 1960s, 70s and 80s.
Eileen Perrier: A Thousand Small Stories is free to attend, tickets and information here.
All images © Eileen Perrier, courtesy of Autograph
Mark Cohen: Tall Socks
About to be published by GOST Books, Mark Cohen: Tall Socks is a collection of images made in New York over a 50 year-period. It started in July of 1973, when Cohen was taking part in a film production workshop at New York University. Classes were short, so with time on his hands, he walked the city with his 35mm camera, often shooting candidly from the hip, giving a lower perspective to many of the shots.
New York of the 1970s was beset by problems, with street gangs prevalent and crime rates sky high. Municipal services has ceased to function properly as the Big Apple teetered on the brink of bankruptcy. It was all too much for the middle-classes, who made an en masse bolt for the suburbs, leaving the city with a dystopian vacuum. But there was still resilience, energy and playfulness, and this is what Cohen’s lens was drawn to.
“There is an undercurrent of threat in some of the images—the glare of a stranger and menacing subway stations—but also humour and joy found in a child’s tall socks, a lady with peacock feathers, an incongruous elephant, or a girl carrying a plank of wood across a cobblestoned street.” GOST Books
Mark Cohen: Tall Socks is available to pre-order now from GOST Books, shipping in April.
All images © Mark Cohen, courtesy of GOST Books
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