Picture This is proud to exhibit a collection of platinum photographic prints by Robin Moyer, mostly taken in the US in the early 1970’s. The exhibition will open on Tuesday 31st May and run until Saturday 18th June at Picture This Gallery, 13/F Nine Queen’s Road Central Hong Kong. Many of the photographs in this exhibition were taken in the US in the early 1970’s, most with a large format 10”x 8” camera and the bulk of the work was first exhibited at a major one man exhibition at The Washington Gallery of Photography in Washington DC in 1974. Advances in digital image technology have once more allowed the photographer to produce this series as platinum prints – for him the most natural and preferred process with its unsurpassed tonal quality and rich creamy colour.
Inspired by Robert Frank, Mark Riboud and Philip Hyde and drawing on the long and rich legacy of classical photography from the greatest of American 20th century photographers, among them Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, Robin Moyer set out on the road in the early 70’s as a young man recently graduated from film school and imbued with all the enthusiasm of that post 60’s era. With his VW van packed with cameras, from Leicas to wooden 8x10s, he crisscrossed the country travelling as far afield as Florida and the Dakotas, and from California to Alaska, seeking out the stunning beauty of the countryside, the quirky reality of life in rural America and the classical iconography of nature-as-form and always filling his photographs with that one ingredient the photographer craves – wonderful light. Moyer’s photographs demonstrate a masterful use of light in its various guises: intense, moody, soft, calming and powerful. It is this interplay of light and imagery which raises Moyer’s photographs above the ordinary and his choice of presenting them as platinum prints which creates something truly rare and special.
Platinum printing was invented in the 1870’s and has qualities never surpassed by later methods. Certainly silver prints and today digital prints can be very good, but neither can duplicate the tone, surface or colour of a well made platinum print. In the early part of the 20th century the process became essentially extinct as the materials had strategic military applications and thus were not available for photographic printing. By the 1970’s a revival began among a select group of fine art photographers looking to recapture the unsurpassed tonal richness of platinum. A leader among this group was Robin Moyer’s friend and mentor Steve Szabo, and Moyer recognised the potential platinum offered as a superior medium to print the large format negatives from his journeys around the US.
At the same time, Moyer was establishing and running Photoworks at Glen Echo Park in Washington, the photography department at the First National Park for Creative Education in the US. This placed him at the nexus of the platinum printing revival and brought him into close working contact with George Tice and Szabo, two leaders of this movement. The result was Moyer’s landmark 1974 Washington exhibition and most significantly his Mud Room at Glen Echo Park image being included in the Masters of Photography collection at the Library of Congress in Washington DC.
In 1975 Moyer relocated to Taiwan and the following year he published his first monograph, As American a Picture, thus bringing the work from his US travels to a wider audience.
At this juncture, Moyer changed direction to focus on other aspects of his career; moved to Hong Kong and became a leading Asia-based photojournalist. He spent much of the 1980’s and 1990’s as chief photographer for Time in Asia, and worked on assignment for many other publications including Life, Fortune, People, Newsweek, The Far Eastern Economic Review, The London Sunday Times Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine and New York Magazine. He covered many of the biggest Asian news stories from the Soviet Occupation of Afghanistan in 1984 to the fall of Marcos in 1986 and the visit of Gorbachev to Beijing in 1989 which led to the Tiananmen incident. He was recipient of the prestigious World Press Photo of the Year award and the Robert Capa Gold Medal Citation in 1982 for his work during the Lebanon War. He has also made special portraits of many leading Asian political and business figures including Lee Kwan Yew, Aung San Suu Kyi, Li Ka-shing. Kim Dae Jung, Kim Young Sam and Deng Xiao Ping.
Throughout this period, Moyer’s early 1970’s work lay untouched and the ravages of time and climate dulled the sharpness and intensity of many of his large negatives. But 21st century advances in digital technology enables a digital capture and enhancement of the original negatives and the creation of a set of new negatives. And so once more we can enjoy the beauty and richness of the wonderful legacy of platinum prints.
Out of Time will open with a cocktail reception on Tuesday 31st May 2011 at Picture This Gallery, 13th floor, 9 Queen’s Road Central, Hong Kong. The photographer will attend the opening event and the exhibition will run until Saturday 18th June.
