Paul McDonough Photography

Visit the Sasha Wolfe Gallery website for a cool selection of photos by Paul McDonough of New Yorkers between 1968 and 1972. This show ran at the Sasha Wolfe Gallery from Sept. 20, 2007-Nov. 10, 2007.



Paul McDonough arrived in New York City in 1967 with a 35mm camera and an entrée, through childhood friend Tod Papageorge, into the photography workshops and social networks of street photographer Garry Winogrand. Emerging from an early career as a studio easel painter, McDonough found photographing on the streets of New York liberating: "it satisfied my sketching impulses... I learned to carry a camera everywhere, all the time, loaded with 400-speed film."

In the late 1960s the city had a feeling of `improv' theater. The social climate had changed dramatically, people were acting and dressing more outrageously, and in the streets there were frequent anti-war and anti-establishment demonstrations. For the artist, subject matter was everywhere. But, according to McDonough "...the event itself, I came to learn, didn't have to be dramatic; the drama could consist of something as simple as two people making eye contact. Whatever sense or suggestion of narrative that follows is provided, for the most part, by the viewer. The resulting photograph is a much more complex thing, more complex than what is simply observed. Continued here.