Steven Katzman will be showing new work at Greene Contemporary in an exhibition titled: "Obsessed with the Found"- that will open with a preview on Friday March 7 from 6 to 9 PM. The exhibition will continue through Saturday March 29, 2008.
Katzman is a self-taught photographer who makes art that is about issues. Soon after he began his career he quickly gained a reputation for his exquisitely printed photographs.
He admires the work of Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine and Dorothea Lange. And like them his work is more than photojournalism. His subjects have included boxers, prisoners, boot camp detainees, cockfights, bodies in a crematorium and participants in revival meetings.
Katzman's goal is to draw the viewer to the intent of his images to raise awareness about a great variety of issues.
In his boxing photographs Katzman focused on the inner strength of his subjects. He concentrated his lens on the physical toll of the sport rather than the spectacle. After working in a meat packing plant in 1974, he created a series to explore issues related to death. Death and issues related to discarding the dead were a focus of his Cockfighting series where Katzman was attracted to the energy level of the spectators contrasted with the fate of the animals that lose the match and their lives. Katzman completed a series of photographs and a book about revival meetings that he attended in Florida and Toronto. In these images he has captured the full range of human emotions experienced by participants.
In 1991, Katzman received a $35,000 corporate grant from Eastman Kodak Professional Photography Division for - Reflections of the Spirit, a personal odyssey of a young boy struggling to become a man through the vehicle of boxing. He has received corporate grants from Ilford, Beseler Company, Polaroid, JOBO Fototechnic, Techno-Balcar, and LexJet Direct. He has exhibited his work nationally and internationally and is in numerous museum and corporate collections. Katzman recently had a portfolio of his work purchased by the George Eastman House International Center of Photography.
Katzman's The Face of Forgiveness Salvation and Redemption was published by powerHouse Books in 2005. He received a grant to document Newtown, an African American community in Sarasota, Florida.
Email or call the gallery to set up an interview with the artist about his new work.