Ray Mortenson
(Wilmington, Delaware, 1944 - )
American
While walking around New York City, where he lives, Ray Mortenson noticed that tourists often pointed their cameras upward, toward the tops of tall skyscrapers. He decided to do the same, to see what they were seeing. The process became an enjoyable one, and Mortenson has described how “Over the course of one year, the images seemed to simply fall from the sky.” Presented as traditional gelatin silver ferrotype prints (also known as tintypes), the pictures may look like earlier views of New York as a modern city in the 1930s. At the same time, they also include newer architectural styles and illuminated displays.
Mortenson studied sculpture at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the San Francisco Art Institute and began photographing in the 1960s. Using a variety of camera formats, photographic processes, and print sizes, Mortenson explores urban and outlying sites along the metropolitan corridor of the northeastern United States. Compelled by the natural disarray of ignored places, he has been exploring industrial zones, neglected urban neighborhoods, and isolated natural areas in this region for nearly fifty years. His work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions since the 1980s and is in the collection of institutions that include the Cleveland Museum of Art, The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona and National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC
New York, New York
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