As Never Seen Before

Large-Scale Black and White Photographs by

BURHAN DOGANÇAY

September 30th - November 27, 2011

Opening Thursday September 29th at 18.30

To celebrate the «Vespucciano» Year, Aria Art Gallery Florence presents Brooklyn Bridge - As Never Seen Before, a solo exhibition by Burhan Dogançay, featuring photographs that are acclaimed as one of the most sustained and serious artistic responses to the Brooklyn Bridge in our time.

This is the first exhibition of Dogançay’s magical images - portraits of one of the most important American icons - outside of the U.S.A. Dogançay was the only photographer permitted to shoot from the top of the Bridge, while its hundred-year-old metal structure, shrouded with safety nets, was undergoing total restoration during 1986-87.

Phillip Lopate wrote about those nets in Bridge of Dreams (Hudson Hills Press, 1999) that featured Dogançay’s images: “They appear to double the famous webbing effect of diagonal stays crisscrossed with cable wire. The Bridge, like a bride or widow, wears a veil over its face. In some of the photographs, the Bridge resembles a fishing village, its nets hung out to dry; in others, the columns look like masts on sailing boats. The nets’ overall effect is to offer some mediation: a screen between everyday life and another reality that may lie just beyond.”

Dogançay’s Brooklyn Bridge series was first introduced at the Houston Fotofest ’96. In 1997, Baldev Duggal, owner of a leading New York photo lab, made state-of-the-art oversized enlargements, printed them on various materials, including glass and copper, and exhibited them in the company’s Broadway gallery as Brooklyn Bridge As Never Seen Before. The exhibition then continued for two years more in the International Arrivals Building at New York’s JFK Airport. Finally, real estate developers of the Brooklyn waterfront, Jane and David Walentas, purchased that entire exhibition to adorn their buildings’ foyers.

Photographs from the Bridge series may be found in numerous private and public collections, including: The Cleveland Museum of Art, OH; Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; Istanbul Modern, Turkey; Museum of the City of New York, NY; The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, TX; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

For more detailed information about Burhan Dogançay, please visit: