[Houdini, Harry. (1874-1926)] Cratsley, Bruce. (1945 - 1998)
Houdini's Top Hat, Paris.
Gelatin silver print, signed, titled, dated in pencil on reverse. 14 x 14" image in 27 x 27" mat (unframed). The photograph is in excellent condition.One of Cratsley's lush black-and-white images of objects in Paris museums: Houdini's top hat and wand in a vitrine at the Louvre. Bruce Cratsley was a photographer whose subjects ranged from light-soaked still lifes and portraits of friends to celebratory documents of gay and lesbian life in New York City. He graduated from Swarthmore College and studied with the photographer Lisette Model at the New School for Social Research in the early 1970's. He had shows at numerous New York galleries, Howard Greenberg, Laurence Miller Gallery and Witkin among them, and was represented at the time of his death by Yancey Richardson Gallery in SoHo.
A retrospective of Cratsley's photographs (which he referred to as ''snapshots, really, though carefully made'') was mounted by the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1996 to critical acclaim. A monograph on the artist, titled ''White Light, Silent Shadows,'' was published by Arena Editions in 1998. (9625)
Signed Photograph Art & Design