Canon USA's Explorers of Light Program Presents
Ryszard Horowitz, Photocomposer: Expanding the Imagination
Chazen Museum of Art, 750 University Avenue, Room L140, Madison, WI
September 25, 7:00-9:00 PM
Appolonia
Waterbird
The images above illustrate the work of Ryszard Horowitz.
Appolonia is an analog composite but Waterbird is not. This illustrates
his work before and after the advent of computers. The fact that it is difficult to
distinguish his pre- and post-computer imaging shows how the availability of digital imaging
became a natural tool for him to continue his visual explorations.
Recognized as a pioneer of special effects photography predating digital imaging, Ryszard Horowitz will
talk about problems photographers face when working in the digital environment. In his own analog photography, he has explored various kinds
of in-camera and darkroom techniques that helped him to understand the complexity and wonders of computer technology. In order to transcend the
commonly accepted use of digital technology to borrow, crop, retouch and assemble, he likes to seek and discover some of the unique qualities
computer imaging has to offer. He searches for the impossible and improbable, stretching the new media to its limits: matter becomes liquid,
perspectives are inverted, gravity is canceled, scale means nothing … but he has never allowed technology to control and conquer his imagination.
Since Horowitz considers himself to be foremost a photographer or photo-composer, all of his images even when enhanced retain their photographic
texture rather than synthetic looks.
Ryszard Horowitz, born in 1939 in Krakow, Poland, is one of the youngest known survivors of Auschwitz. He studied art at the High School of
Fine Arts in Krakow and then went on to major in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts. In 1959, he immigrated to the United States and enrolled
at New York’s Pratt Institute. While still a student, he became an apprentice to Alexey Brodovitch, one of the most influential figures in the
world of editorial design and photography at the time. In 1967, Horowitz opened his own photography studio. In the ensuing four decades his work
has been exhibited, published and collected around the globe and he has been awarded every major accolade that can be bestowed on a photographer.
