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Arts & Entertainment

Photos with Grace and Power at Coffee Labs

Yoram Gelman's works have poetry, elegance, and abstract underpinnings.

Seven photos, six black-and-white and one color, by Tarrytowner Yoram Gelman are on view in for the rest of April.  Well-chosen compositions, skillful use of light and shadow, and atmospheric effects make these photos particularly interesting and worthy of a good long look. 

Gelman prefers working in black and white, because he feels that color is usually distracting.  While he works he may visualize a color scene as it would look in black and white.  He has an interest in strong, isolated figures, and those figures may not always be the ones you'd expect. 

For example, in his photo “Corner Window,” which includes a part of the Tarrytown Music Hall, the isolated shape is the sky between the buildings, not either one of the buildings. 

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“Dining Car Sunset,” the one color photo in the exhibit, shows an empty dining car, with tables set for the next meal.  It is full of elegance, mood, and momentarily suspended life, and reminds me of an Edward Hopper painting or a movie still.  Gelman came upon this scene while walking through the dining car of a Sunset Limited train, going from New Orleans to Los Angeles, just before the meal was served.  The composition, with tables going back in space, and strong diagonal and vertical lines, is very geometric.  Add in the counterpoints of flowers and warm light, and it is a haunting and emotional image.

“Water/Reeds” was made on a late autumn fishing trip in Patagonia. The lake was enclosed in fog and, standing on the shore, he saw the scene and wanted to capture it, but he felt something was missing.  Fine artists have the freedom to interact with their scenes, and he asked his wife to throw something in the water.  When he saw the ripple he had created with her help come into view, the image was complete and he pressed the shutter.

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In “Tree and Ice II,” his favorite of this group, the combination of lines and curves was particularly pleasing to him.  On the right is a strong, dark, straight tree; sticking up from the ice in a few places are groups of reeds; and the stand of trees in the background is softened by white mist.  It was warm for that time of year and that created a condensation fog near the ice, adding atmosphere to the scene.

Gelman, whose background is in math, physics, and economics, used to teach at Lehman College in the Bronx.  He is self-taught as a photographer, influenced by the images of Andre Kertesz – a twentieth century master photographer from Hungary who worked in Paris and New York for many years.   He rarely photographs people, feeling that it’s too confrontational, although he sometimes includes a person facing away from the lens, possibly walking away.

Gelman's photos are real and abstract at the same time.  Rather than using brush or pen to create an abstract design, he has used photographic elements separated from their original reality.

All of the photos in this show were made in the last two-and-a-half years.  They are expected to be on display until the end of April at on Main Street near Broadway, in Tarrytown.  Gelman will also be exhibiting at the Warner Library in Tarrytown in September, and again at the Cunneen-Hackett Gallery in Poughkeepsie, in October, which he says will be a much larger show.  He was recently awarded a 2011 NYFA grant for his work.

See more of Gelman’s photographs on his website, www.ygelmanphoto.com.

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