Exhibition information
Lucinda Devlin | 40 Years! Surveys with the Camera since 1977
From September 7 to January 27, 2018, Galerie m Bochum will host a larger selection of photographs from all eight series by US photographer Lucinda Devlin (b. 1947 in Ann Arbor, MI). For the first time in Germany the show will feature the complete spectrum of her work from the Pleasure Grounds (1977-1990) to the Lake Pictures (2010-2015). This year the artist’s first museum retrospective Lucinda Devlin: Sightlines took place in the USA at the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro and the George Eastman Museum in Rochester (till December 2017).
Lucinda Devlin's photographs serve as social commentaries on timely and socially relevant issues such as personal rights, the death penalty, and agribusiness. An internationally recognized American photographer, Devlin began her career in the 1970s during the genesis of color photography in America. At the time, she took up not only color photography, but also the artistic approach that she continues to this day, one that emphasizes an objective or neutral point of view.
Devlin also discovered her preferred subject matter: psychologically charged spaces absent of any human figures yet nonetheless signaling contemporary public and private life. Her earliest series, Pleasure Ground, featured droll images of thematic hotel rooms. Subsequent series (Habitats, Subterranea, Corporal Arenas, Field Culture, and Lake Pictures) have continued to probe the meaning of place at such sites as zoos and amusement parks, tanning salons and health spas, hospitals and funeral homes, agricultural facilities and open fields, and lastly, Lake Huron's shoreline. Her most provocative and best known series, The Omega Suites (so named after the final letter of the Greek alphabet), proffered emotive images of sterile execution chambers and the apparatuses associated with them.
(Press Release Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, 2017)
Lucinda Devlin's photographs serve as social commentaries on timely and socially relevant issues such as personal rights, the death penalty, and agribusiness. An internationally recognized American photographer, Devlin began her career in the 1970s during the genesis of color photography in America. At the time, she took up not only color photography, but also the artistic approach that she continues to this day, one that emphasizes an objective or neutral point of view.
Devlin also discovered her preferred subject matter: psychologically charged spaces absent of any human figures yet nonetheless signaling contemporary public and private life. Her earliest series, Pleasure Ground, featured droll images of thematic hotel rooms. Subsequent series (Habitats, Subterranea, Corporal Arenas, Field Culture, and Lake Pictures) have continued to probe the meaning of place at such sites as zoos and amusement parks, tanning salons and health spas, hospitals and funeral homes, agricultural facilities and open fields, and lastly, Lake Huron's shoreline. Her most provocative and best known series, The Omega Suites (so named after the final letter of the Greek alphabet), proffered emotive images of sterile execution chambers and the apparatuses associated with them.
(Press Release Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, 2017)
Lethal Injection Chamber, Nevada State Prison, Carson City, Nevada, 1991
from the series The Omega Suites
from the series The Omega Suites
Fish Environment, Sea World, Orlando, Florida, 1987 from the series Habitats
Lake Huron, 5-10-11 8-43 pm from the series Lake Pictures