Newark Museum Exhibit Celebrates the Legacy of Photographer George Tice

"The great difficulty of what I attempt is seeing beyond the moment; the everydayness of life gets in the way of the eternal. I contemplate how this photograph will be seen in the future when the subject matter no longer endures. Taking a picture is, indeed, stopping the world."

George Tice, 2002

The Newark Museum will mark photographer George Tice's 75th birthday, his extraordinary works and his generosity with the exhibition Seeing Beyond the Moment: The Photographic Legacy and Gifts of George Tice, which will be on display Sept. 18 through Feb. 9, 2014. The exhibition, featuring 32 photographs drawn from the Museum's permanent collection, focuses on Tice's multivalent career as a photographer, master printer and teacher and as a major donor to the Museum's photography collection. Many of the photographs in the exhibition are on view for the first time.

Seeing Beyond the Moment includes large format black and white photographs by Tice - including such iconic works as White Castle, Route 1, Rahway, N.J., 1973 - as well as his remarkable scenes of nature. Highlighting Tice's unequaled gift for photographic printing, the exhibition includes a selection of prints he made for other photographers, including Edward Steichen, Francis Joseph Brugiére and Edward Weston. His role as a teacher is demonstrated by a selection of works by his mentees, including Sally Mann, Tim Barnwell, James Perry Walker and Brian Lav, among others. Most of these works were gifted to the Museum by Tice over the past 30 years.

Exhibition support provided in part by Jennifer Johnson Duke.

Two other exhibitions celebrating Tice's work will be held in conjunction with the Newark Museum exhibition: George Tice: 60 Years Of Photography (September 18 - November 5, 2013) at Nailya Alexander Gallery, New York City; and Without Adornment: Photographs by George Tice (September 9 - December 13, 2013) at William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ.

About George Tice:

George Tice is considered one of the finest American photographers of his generation and a master printer. Tice has been fascinated with the urban landscape and its decay, a theme he explored as early as 1972, when he was honored with a solo exhibition, Paterson, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Tice's exquisite prints are masterpieces of black and white photography that have received universal praise for their clarity of detail and the richness of contrasting values. Frequently, the beauty of his prints are at odds with his subject matter that so often focuses on old and neglected buildings, tacky shops and ordinary urban types. However, in his exquisite and ravishingly beautiful views of nature, technique and theme are superbly harmonized. Insightful, Tice articulated this aspect of his work, writing, "Dispassionately, (the camera) revealed both beauty and ugliness, and I began to see each of these attributes was a function of the other."

Tice has lived most of his life in New Jersey. Born in Newark in 1938, he is intimately familiar with its depressed urban areas. While this state has been a source of continuing inspiration, his New Jersey themes transcend their specific local to resonate nationally. Tice not only captures the uniqueness of urban New Jersey, but he also presents his interpretation of these cities as an extension of the plight of America's depressed industrial areas and their inhabitants.

Recognized as a virtuoso of the fine print, Tice has made limited edition portfolios not only of his own work, but also of such major figures as Edward Weston, Francis Joseph Brugiére and Edward Steichen, for whom Tice was master printer.

Since 1980, Tice has taken an active and formative role in the enrichment and expansion of the Newark Museum's growing photography collection. He has donated 150 photographs by a wide array of artists. Some of these include photographs Tice printed for other photographers, such as Edward Weston's portfolio Six Nudes of Neil (1925); numerous gelatin silver prints by Francis Joseph Brugiére; and Edward Steichen's portfolio Steichen: The Blue Sky.

Exhibited internationally, Tice's work is represented in more than 100 museum collections, including MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Newark Museum. Tice has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Media Museum (UK), the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, as well as commissions from The Field Museum of Natural History, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Museum of Modern Art. He has published seventeen books including: Fields of Peace (1998), George Tice: Selected Photographs, 1953-999 (2001), Lincoln (1984),Hometowns, An American Pilgrimage (1988), Stone Walls, Grey Skies, A Vision of Yorkshire (1993), George Tice: Urban Landscapes (2002), Common Mementos (2005), Paterson II (2006), Ticetown (2007) and Seacoast Maine (2009). Tice has taught at the Maine Photographic Workshops since 1977.

Publication:

Published by Brilliant Press, Tice's latest book - Seldom Seen - will be released at the opening of exhibition.

Related Program:

October 13, 2013: Newark Museum hosts the world premiere of the documentary film George Tice: Seeing Beyond the Moment by Bruce Wodder, Peter Bosco and Douglas Underdahl.

Stay informed as new exhibition information emerges by following the Museum on Facebook at facebook.com/newark.museum or Twitter at twitter.com/newarkmuseum; or by visiting http://www.newarkmuseum.org.

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