By Anna Carnick
Hasted Kraeutler presents famed photographer Albert Watson‘s first major gallery exhibition in the United States. Spanning nearly forty years of Watson’s career, the show is expansive, covering everything from Hitchcock with Goose, (according to Watson, “the first famous person that I shot…”) to the surreal images from Watson’s Vegas series.
As James Crump wrote in Albert Watson (Phaidon, 2007), “although Watson’s subjects may seem disparate at first, on closer inspection they plot an artistic trajectory held tightly together by a thread of perfectionism, casting objects, bodies, fashion into finely honed symbols of desire, ennui and dreamlike immersion.”
Albert Watson has created an exclusive edition of Platinum prints of some of his most iconic photographs (including Hitchcock with Goose, 1973, Christy Turlington, 1990, and Kate Moss (back), Marrakesh, Morocco, 1993), especially for this exhibition. The exhibition also coincides with the release of two new limited-edition books and archival pigment prints of 500 copies, Strip Search: Las Vegas and UFO: Unified Fashion Objectives (PQ Blackwell in association with Abrams, 2010).
Born and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland, Albert Watson studied film and television at the Royal College of Art in London before he moved to the U.S. to launch a career in photography in 1970. Last year, readers of Photo District News named Albert Watson one of the twenty most influential photographers, demonstrating that he is a “photographer’s photographer,” and has had a huge impact on his peers and photographers of future generations. Watson has received many honors, including a Lucie Award for lifetime achievement in photography, a Grammy Award for the cover of the Mason Profitt album, Come and Gone (1975), and three ANDY Awards for creativity in advertising. On September 9, 2010, the Royal Photographic Society awarded Albert Watson their Centenary Medal, which recognizes outstanding contributions to the art and science of photography.