Nick Havholm "Anthony"

From: Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver
Limited Edition: 17
Exhibition: Decades of Influence: Colorado 1985 - Present
Material: Printed vinyl
Dimensions: 31" x 89" (78cm x 226cm)

Hanging Hardware Included

Summary

Contemporary art collectors and photography buffs alike will want to take a look at the work of Nick Havholm. The young artist's black and white portraits are powerful images that speak broadly of humanity from a very personal point of view. 17 banners are now available featuring Havholm's 1998 portrait, "Anthony".

Description

From the pitch black darkness, a light emerges. Within that burst of light a face is seen. These are the portraits of contemporary photographer Nick Havholm (b. 1968). Using simple black and white photography and strobe lighting, Havholm turns ordinary portraiture into something extraordinary.

Havholm's 1998 portrait, Anthony is featured on banners from the exhibition Decades of Influence: Colorado 1985 - Present. The portrait is presented in the frankest terms, with interference limited to the strobe lighting that illuminates the subject. The light simultaneously strips out any prejudice from the subject and draws attention to all the manner of detail that comprise the face with it's beauty and blemishes. The rough stubble and bulging veins of the subject are juxtaposed against his intense gaze and shining, dark eyes. In many of Havholm portraits, his subjects are captured straight on, lending a directness to the works. But, Anthony is captured in profile, his eyes seeming to scan the dark expanse beyond him, the artist, and the camera. The stark contrast of the black void and the illuminated, shimmering face hollows out the subject's identity, removing any superfluous emotion or personality to reveal an essential humanity.

Havholm himself notes:

"I photograph people I know using an 8 x 10 camera and strobe lights in an effort to distill a single metonymic view from the temporal aggregate of our interaction. In the time between my compositional decision and the final shutter trip reside the levels of my subject's self-presentation. A photograph is an object: I make these portraits to bring to light the doubling of photography's truthful exactitude with its simultaneous layer of remove."

It is true that the positive and negative are not so much at odds as at peace in his images. Like the competing yet harmonized lighting of Renaissance chiaroscuro, these images offer a contemporary twist on historical approaches to light and dark in art. In addition to the image on the banner, the museum's "MCA" logo is printed in white the museum's website address "www.mcadenver.org". Both sides of the banner are identical.

Provenance

These banners were displayed around Denver, Colorado to promote the exhibition Decades of Influence: Colorado 1985 - Present at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver from June 16 to August 27, 2006