Jill in Newburgh, 2018

Lynn Saville:
Solitude in Populous Cities

Artist Statement

Cities are usually thought of as sites for transactions, places we pass through on errands of pleasure or business. Seeking a deeper meaning, I photograph out-of-the-way places, or even iconic spots, in a city that are chronically or temporarily unpopulated, especially during twilight, the boundary time between day and night. In such places I find a refuge for meditation, a silence at the heart of the bustling metropolis. There, paradoxically recording timeless moments during a fleeting transitional time, I feel as if I have shed the city’s busy-ness, news, and clamor. I am looking outward to commune with the city’s own dreams of geometry and shadow, while also gazing deep into myself.

Sometimes a passerby walks into my picture. I used to think such interlopers threatened my communion with a place. Then I realized that these figures, serving as surrogates for me and the viewer, only emphasize the solitude of that location.

My search for moments of meditation in an urban setting has been influenced, in part, by the work of Edward Hopper.  His isolated individuals, as they sit in a restaurant or gaze out of a window, tend to deepen the sense of solitude. I have also been influenced by the 19th century French photographer Charles Marville. In one photograph, for example, he places a single person in a panorama of Paris unsettled by urban transformation, thereby suggesting both the swirl of city life and the silence at its core.

Lynn Saville

Lynn Saville is known internationally for her photographs of cityscapes at twilight or, in her words, “the boundary time between night and day.” During these fleeting moments, she captures deserted or nearly deserted streets dreaming their own dreams. For her latest project, she is exploring the theme of Solitude in Populous Cities.

Saville has published her work in three major monographs: Acquainted with the Night (Rizzoli, 1997), with an introduction by Joseph Rosa; Night/Shift (Random House/Monacelli, 2009), with an introduction by Arthur C. Danto; and Dark City (Damiani, Bologna, 2015), with an introduction by Geoff Dyer.

Represented by the Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York, Saville has won many awards, including a Pollock-Krasner Grant for 2022–2023 and fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the New York State Council for the Arts. Her public art show, “Grand Central Revealed,” a project commissioned by New York City’s MTA: ArtsDesign, appeared in Grand Central Terminal.

A review of Saville’s work in The New Yorker called it “luminous,” and Geoff Dyer included an essay on her work in his book See/Saw, Looking at Photographs (Graywolf Press, 2021).

Website: https://www.lynnsaville.com

Event Dates

Exhibition:
March 12 – April 20, 2024

In-Person Open House/Reception/Juror & Artist Talk
March 21, 2024, 6-8:30pm ET
Juror/artist talk: 7-8:00pm ET
APG Gallery at Ansley Mall