Max Kozloff: New York Means Business, Photographs 1977-1984

Max Kozloff: New York Means Business, Photographs 1977-1984 at Higher Pictures. "...Photographs have been known to age well, after years pass. In 1979, I took a picture of a Third Avenue pawnshop in whose window the subject of time itself was displayed. It exhibited hundreds of second hand, windup watches, accompanied by decorative price tags. Previous owners were of course not mentioned and the shop is probably gone. Wandering Manhattan's streets, one could find many similar windows, loaded with toys and old clothes, drapes, zippers, or twines. They represented holdouts for small trades swamped along newly gentrified and corporate avenues. 'New York Means Business' is a pertinent title for this body of early work, involved with consumerism, but also a sardonic take because the retail described was in bad straits. What at first looked like inconsequent still lives had changed into little theaters of disused or cast off wares, begging for an afterlife. I wanted to do justice to them by means of color, which for me is tenderness. Later I turned, and still turn, to photograph my fellow creatures passing by."