Davison Art Center Presenting Trager Retrospective

MIDDLETOWN — The Davison Art Center at Wesleyan University is celebrating the internationally renowned photographer and alumnus Philip Trager (Class of 1956) with a major retrospective exhibition. For more than 40 years, Mr Trager’s luminous and compelling photographs of architecture and dancers have revealed a distinctly personal approach to form and place.

“Philip Trager: A Retrospective” includes more than 160 published and unpublished photographs dating from the 1960s to the present. The exhibition is on view at Wesleyan University’s Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery through Sunday, May 28.

From his evocative photographs of New York City in the 1970s to the elegiac portraits of the villas of Palladio in the 1980s and the ever-changing face of Paris in the 1990s, Mr Trager has captured the subtleties of the built environment with singular nuance and skill. Ten monographs of his photographs have been published and  have received exceptional critical acclaim. Four have been selected as Editor’s Choice books by the New York Times Book Review.

In his first major project, Photographs of Architecture, 1977, Mr Trager recorded a survey of archetypal Connecticut architecture, from the Colonial past to the present. Next he focused on the rhythms of urban architecture in Philip Trager: New York, 1980.

In The Villas of Palladio (1986), Mr Trager captured the genius of place, the drama of landscape and sky in which the 16th Century villas of architect Palladio rise. Returning to the urban landscape, he traced the course of the River Seine, revealing fresh perspectives on that most photographed of cities, Paris, in Changing Paris (2000).

Other book awards include his being a finalist for the Grand Prix Award at Les Recontres Internationales de la Photographie, and winning a Book of the Year Award from the American Institute of Graphic Arts.

The Library of Congress recently accepted a comprehensive archive of his photographs and will present a retrospective exhibition in 2008.

The Wesleyan traveling exhibition was curated by Clare Rogan, curator of the Davison Art Center, and was organized by the Davison Art Center in conjunction with the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio.

The exhibition catalog, Philip Trager, was published by Steidl Publishing, the Davison Art Center, Wesleyan University, and Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College. The book contains 312 pages, 156 tritone plates, and 50 illustrations. Essays and interviews by Barbara L. Michaels, Norton Owen, Andrew Szegedy-Maszak, Stephanie Wiles and John Wood explore the photographer’s career, and choreographer Eiko Otake wrote about the collaboration between dancer and photographer.

Davison Art Center is at 301 High Street on the campus of Wesleyan University. For information, call 860-685-2500 or visit wesleyan.edu/dac.