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Perspectives 2012, on view at the International Center of Photography (1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street) January 20 – May 6, 2012, is the second installment of an exhibition series that focuses on innovative artists working in photography and video. These small group exhibitions highlight the individual ideas and achievements of an engaging and eclectic group of talented artists. The aim of the series is to stimulate conversations about contemporary art and to showcase outstanding artworks that might not otherwise come to wide attention.

Perspectives 2012 includes works by three artists—Chien-Chi Chang, Greg Girard, and Anna Shteynshleyger —who explore what happens when tight-knit cultural communities are transplanted to unfamiliar geographic locales. Each artist is represented by a group of prints selected from a much larger body of work.
“Each of the photographers in this exhibition brings a highly personal vision and sensibility to the subject they have chosen,” said ICP Curator Christopher Phillips, who organized Perspectives 2012. “It is only when we step back that we realize they are all exploring aspects of one of the most distinctive social phenomena of our times.”
Moscow-born Shteynshleyger (b. 1977), a 2001 graduate of Yale’s MFA program who currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, shows penetrating portraits, landscapes, interiors, and still lifes from her City of Destiny series. These photographs grow out of the four years that Shteynshleyger spent as a member of an Orthodox Jewish community in a placid Illinois suburb.

Greg Girard, Paper Boy (“Stars and Stripes”), Yokota Air Base, Japan, 2008. © Greg Girard, Courtesy the artist and Monte Clark Gallery, Vancouver and Toronto.

Chien-Chi Chang The Chen Family. Left: Fuzhou, China, 2004; Center: New York City, 1998; Right: Fuzhou, China, 2007. © Chien-Chi Chang/Magnum Photos, Courtesy of Chien-Chi Chang/Magnum Photos and Chi-Wen Gallery, Taipei
 

Magnum photographer Chang (b. 1961) presents a selection of photographs and videos from the China Town project that he has been working on since the 1990s. His works follow the gritty lives of a group of immigrants from southern China who have moved for economic reasons to New York City, while revealing the tensions that arise from their extended separation from their families, who have remained in China. Of the China Town project, Chang says, “I have become a messenger between these divided families.”

Canadian photographer Girard (b. 1955), who has lived and worked in Asia since 1986, shows selections from the series Half the Surface of the World. His photographs examine the physical settings of American military bases scattered across the Pacific, where soldiers and their families live in guarded residential communities that appear eerily indistinguishable from those in the U.S.

The Perspectives series continues ICP’s ongoing exploration of the most exciting projects by emerging and less familiar photographers that was initiated in its award-winning Triennial exhibitions. The inaugural exhibition in the Perspectives series, organized by ICP Chief Curator Brian Wallis, was shown in spring 2010.

This exhibition was made possible with support from the ICP Exhibitions Committee and with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Vignette : Anna Shteynshleyger, Masha, 2002. © Anna Shteynshleyger, Courtesy the artist.