One on One: Elizabeth Gand on Leo Rubinfien Posted on April 13, 2009 by Suzanne
Alongside our new curator “One on One” talks, we’re doing regular ‘one on one’ blog posts, from curators, staff, and public, on a particular work or exhibition they’re interested in. Today’s post is from Elizabeth Gand, Assistant Curator of Photography.
Leo Rubinfien, Moscow, 2003, at Okhotny Ryad, from the series Wounded Cities, © Leo Rubenfien, courtesy Robert Mann Gallery, New York
When crisis or calamity strikes, what can photographs do? All four photographers in the exhibition The Face of Our Time ask that question, but each takes a different path towards an answer. For Leo Rubinfien, the question has deep personal roots. In early September of 2001, Rubinfien and his family moved into a new apartment two blocks from the World Trade Center. On September 11th of that year, he found himself face to face with “the massacre across the street,” as he calls it.
The chaos, destruction, and agony of that massacre prompted Rubinfien to embark on a five-year photographic quest. He visited cities across the world that have suffered acts of cruel violence meant to terrorize the populace. In each city, he photographed the faces of people passing by in the street. Bombay, Benares, Buenos Aires, Casablanca, Colombo, Hebron, Istanbul, Jakarta, Karahi, London, Madrid, Manila, Moscow, Nairobi, New York, Seoul, Tel Aviv, Tokyo are all represented in Rubinfien’s photographic essay. Each city is personified by individual, anonymous citizens who gaze out from the picture with searing intensity.
more after the jump (more…)
