Closing Reception and Signing
MATTE Editions HQ
1899 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, NY 11233
6 - 8 pm, Thursday July 8th 2021
www.matteeditions.com
matteeditions@gmail.com
A closing reception and book signing for Fever will be held at MATTE Editions’ new Brooklyn headquarters at 1899 Fulton Street, on Thursday, July 8th, 6-8pm. Fever is a book of 50 color photographs by Allen Frame, made in 1981 in New York City. Photographs from the book are accompanied by an exhibition curated by Frame, that includes work by artists depicted in his book, including Charles Boone, Darrel Ellis, Frank Franca, Nan Goldin, Jody Guralnick, Dan Mahoney, Kevin Teare, Ken Tisa, Coco Ugaz, Jane Warrick, David Wilson and Zamba and other works from Frame's collection by Sheyla Baykal, Frank Franca, Robert Penner, and Laurie Sagalyn, The exhibition is produced in collaboration with Gitterman Gallery which has a concurrent online exhibition of work from Fever.
The introduction to Fever is by Drew Sawyer, Phillip Leonian and Edith Rosenbaum Leonian Curator at the Brooklyn Museum. The book is published in an edition of 600 copies, 152 pages, 50 color photographs and ephemera. A deluxe edition of 25 copies priced at $200 each includes a 4x6 digital chromogenic print of the photograph Bob, George, Bill, Charlie, and Zamba at Jones Beach signed and hand numbered by the artist.
Fever is the 6th book published by Matte Editions, the Brooklyn-based publishing imprint of Matthew Leifheit. MATTE Magazine, founded in 2010 as a platform for new ideas in photography, has recently published work by emerging artists including Chanell Stone, Leor Miller, Olivia Reavey, and Hak Dixon. An upcoming issue of Matte featuring Shohei Miyachi will be launched with an exhibition of the artist's work, curated by Allen Frame, opening Thursday July 22.
Gitterman Gallery is proud to present an online exhibition of color photographs by Allen Frame from New York in 1981, in conjunction with the release of his new book, Fever (MATTE Editions, 2021).
Frame moved to New York from his home in Mississippi in 1977 and began to photograph friends he knew from his college days in Boston and others he was meeting. By 1981, he had a circle of artist friends that he photographed in his apartment, their studios, on beaches, and on the streets of New York, including the artists Charles Boone, Darrel Ellis, Frank Franca, Robert Gober, Nan Goldin, Dan Mahoney, Frank Moore, Cady Noland, Kevin Teare, Ken Tisa, Coco Ugaz, Jane Warrick, David Wilson, and Zamba.
Though Frame had previously worked mostly in black and white, in 1981, he photographed extensively with color. In an article on this work in the Winter 2021 issue of Aperture, Brendan Embser writes:
“He used available light, gentle ochres and greens, the faint shade of blue when sky is indistinguishable from water. He composed his frames with beguiling precision, with just-off symmetry and split-screen scenes demarcated by paintings or doorjambs.”
At the end of the book, Frame interviews eight of the artists who are still living about that period in New York. As he notes in his essay:
“Many of the men in these pictures died of AIDS: Bill, Charlie, Darrel, Dan, Coco, John West, Frank Moore, Tom Reeder, Bob Applegarth. It is heartbreaking to contemplate them. We were full of joy and hopefulness about our lives, about what we would accomplish creatively, about our close-knit relationships. For all of us, finding like-minded friends and lovers in a city with so many possibilities like New York was something we had yearned for. In 1981, AIDS had not yet entered our lives directly, though we had read the first reports of its appearance. Within a few years, we were all part of its devastation.”