April 8th : Larry Racioppo - NY Photographer

Gritty Photographer of Urban Landscape to Exhibit
at ART + CAYCE

From April 8th - May 8th, New York photographer and Guggenheim Fellow Larry Racioppo will exhibit his panoramic photographs at the ART + CAYCE gallery, located at 1329 State St., Cayce. "A Photographer in the City" opens on April 8th with a public lecture at 4 pm in room 214 of the McMaster building, USC (1615 Senate St.). A reception will follow from 6-8 pm at the ART + CAYCE gallery. Racioppo’s career as the architectural photographer for the City of New York will be the subject of a brief gallery talk at 7 pm by UNC Charlotte Architecture Professor Thomas Forget.

Racioppo explores the history of buildings and their absent inhabitants. His large-scale photographs express the loss associated with urban decay, evoking lives spent in schools, churches, and theaters that are now blighted. Images of Ellis Island suggest how the dreams of immigrants lay at the end of a vanishingly long corridor, while a soaring bank lobby recalls the grandeur of the Middle Class dream. Racioppo’s images make us remember our own temporary, and sometimes accidental, gatherings. New York Times critic Ken Johnson describes Racioppo’s photographs as "sympathetic, neither satirizing nor proselytizing. You don’t have to be devout yourself to be touched by the human yearning for supernatural meaning that his photographs evoke."

 

Racioppo began capturing New York urban culture in 1970, when he shot Italian-American neighborhoods, kids playing street football, religious rituals, and apartment interiors. This early work culminated in a book called Halloween. Since that time, Racioppo’s photographs have been exhibited widely, including one-person shows at the Museum of the City of New York, The National Building Museum, Ellis Island, The Municipal Art Society (New York,) Safe-T-Gallery, and The Museum of Biblical Art (New York). Racioppo has received prestigious support from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Puffin Foundation, as well as honors from the Golden Light Awards and the Queens Council on the Arts.

As a visiting artist at USC, Racioppo will also conduct Master Classes in Photography with a photo shoot at the CMC Steel and Metal Recycling facility in Cayce.