The Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery presents “The Velvet Years 1965-67: Warhol’s Factory,” photographs by Stephen Shore, on display from August 31 through December 12. These photographs depict the scene at Andy Warhol’s studio, the Factory. Shore captures a time when Warhol was emerging as a prominent visual artist and avant-garde filmmaker. The Factory that Shore depicts is populated with a diverse group of musicians, artists, actors, writers and aspiring cultural sophisticates.
The Velvet Underground was very much a part of Warhol’s scene. He is credited with galvanizing the band’s career and promoting them through his multimedia shows, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, held at the Dom, a club on St. Mark’s Place in lower Manhattan. The group was a forerunner of punk rock and their sound and style greatly influenced David Bowie, the New York Dolls, Patti Smith, Blondie, the Sex Pistols and many others.
Stephen Shore’s work has been widely published and exhibited for the past 25 years. He was the first living photographer to have a one-man show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. He has also had one-man shows at the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Art Institute of Chicago and has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. His series of exhibitions at Light Gallery in New York in the early 1970s sparked interest in color photography and led the rebirth of the use of the view camera for documentary work. Aperture has published two monographs of his photographs, Uncommon Places and The Gardens at Giverny. He currently serves as chairman of the photography department at Bard College. He is represented by Pace/MacGill in New York City.
The Gallery is open Monday through Friday from noon to 4 p.m., on Thursday until 8 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday 1-5 p.m. Admission is free. For more information, call ext. 5-2270 or visit http://www.umbc.edu/arts.
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