Jonathan Elderfield

511 west 25th street, new york, ny 10001

www.cueartfoundation.org

2006–2007 j o h n at h a n e l d e r f i eld

CUE ART FOUNDATION’S OPERATIONS AND PROGRAMS ARE MADE POSSIBLE WITH THE GENEROUS SUPPORT OF FOUNDATIONS, CORPORATIONS, GOVERNMENT AGENCIES, INDIVIDUALS, AND ITS MEMBERSHIP.

PROGRAMMING ASSISTANCE IS PROVIDED BY: ACCADEMIA CHARITABLE FOUNDATION, LTD., AMERICAN EXPRESS COMPANY, MILTON & SALLY AVERY ARTS FOUNDATION, THE SAM & ADELE GOLDEN FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, INC., THE GREENWALL FOUNDATION, HOLLAND & KNIGHT CHARITABLE FOUNDATION, INC., JOAN MITCHELL FOUNDATION, VIKING FOUNDATION, THE ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION FOR THE VISUAL ARTS, AND WITH PUBLIC FUNDS FROM NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT OF CULTURAL AFFAIRS AND NEW YORK STATE COUNCIL ON THE ARTS.

CUE Art Foundation

April 26 – June 2, 2007

CuratedbyW.S.DiPiero

Jon AthAn E ldE rF iE ld

lEAd SPonSor oF 2006-07 SEASon oF EXhiBition CAtAloGUES:

KYESUNG PAPER GROUP (SOUTH KOREA)

AdditionAl SUPPort ProVidEd BY

ELIZABETH FIRESTONE GRAHAM FOUNDATION

THIS ExHIBITION IS SUPPORTED IN PART BY ??

ONLY Chicago is a series of street photographs taken within the Chicago city limits over a period

of more than two years. the project is exhibited as 16” x 20” silver gelatin prints.

Photography allows me to create art from the everyday and mundane. i try to

explore new spaces with my camera, recording my observations about those places and creating

a sense of order in the final image. For me, the everyday interaction of people with their surround-

ings creates endless opportunities to stop time with my camera, finding unique moments of joy in

the simple, the random and the obscure.

the world of the street is one where strangers collide in random ways in front

of the camera lens. i am fascinated with the idea of capturing an interesting moment in a photo-

graphic image, from a split-second that would have been otherwise lost. these ephemeral

moments continue to exist only because i was there.

Artist's Statement JonathanElderfield

We are honored and grateful to present this exhibition generously curated by W.S. di Piero.

Mr. di Piero, a poet and translator, has chosen Jonathan Elderfield, an artist who recently

moved back to new York. Mr. di Pero’s’s appreciation of Mr. Elderfield’s work demonstrates how the

Foundation’s discretionary selection process allows a natural cross-pollination to occur between

differing forms of artistic expression.

We appreciate that artists often work tirelessly without thought or concern for

exhibition. CUE is pleased to recognize such commitment by offering Mr. Elderfield his first solo

exhibition in new York. Mr. di Piero and CUE, together, wish him a future of fulfillment and success.

Foreword CUEArtFoundation

Jonathan Elderfield follows the street photographer’s ethic: reveal what’s hidden in plain sight.

When i first saw the pictures in his photo-essay, Living Under South Street, set in South Phila-

delphia, i was struck by their fresh vision of a very particular place and culture. i shouldn’t have

been so struck by the freshness because i lived in South Philadelphia until i was twenty-one, but

Elderfield’s images (a woman smoking in a rain-streaked phone booth outside a diner, a Mummers’

string band dressed as spacemen) made me see familiar things as if for the first time.

in the ONLY Chicago series featured in the CUE exhibition, Elderfield discloses

another city’s secrets lived in full public view. his camera picks through Chicago’s elegantly rough-

edged energy, the textures of its airs and surfaces, from wet and windy to prickly and granitic.

Good straight photography seems to catch things by chance, but those catches in time take on

a formal and social coherence. We see obsessions in play, themes worked out. in the Chicago

pictures Elderfield is pulled toward the ways private life—exhilaration, contemplativeness, preoccu-

pation—is lived out in the public eye, in public spaces. Many of his figures are looking for or toward

or away from something as yet unknown or out of sight. he makes city life something pressured by

accident. if the South Philly series disclosed a culture’s intense private rituals, the Chicago pictures,

appropriate to the city’s flat-land, big-sky expansiveness, make everything look more exposed.

total strangers are sited in a public webbing they’re unaware of but which the camera sees.

like some of his predecessors—lee Friedlander, Walker Evans, robert Frank—

Elderfield has an eye for the kinetics of urban life caught on the run. But his images aren’t only

about visual information. A formal structure holds them together, a patterning of information that

balances one element against another or crafts a potent asymmetry. the shock of cotton candy

that flies from a girl’s hand in one of the Chicago pictures tosses us into a graceful perspectival

plan. in another, our attention keeps snapping from the central knot of excited young girls to

the boy dribbling a basketball coiled tightly in the upper corner of the scene. Elderfield’s work,

including a new York series in progress, seems almost effortless and casual, but that’s only how

it seems. those qualities in fact give the pictures their intensity and scrupulousness and testify

to the humane inquisitiveness of this photographer’s eye.

Curator's Statement W.S.DiPiero

UntitledFrom the series ONLY Chicago, 2004Gelatin silver print, 16" x 20", Edition of 10













Biographies JonathanElderfield

Born in Winchester, England in 1967, Jonathan Elderfield has been working as a photographer

for over seventeen years. his book Living Under South Street, documenting the neighborhood

of South Philadelphia, was published in 2003 by Kehrer Verlag of heidelberg, Germany. he is

currently working on a new series of color photographs. in addition to working as a photographer,

Elderfield is a picture editor who has worked for The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune and,

most recently, The Associated Press. Elderfield lives in new York City with his wife and two sons.

the exhibit at CUE Art Foundation marks Elderfield’s first solo exhibition in new York.

W.S.DiPiero

W. S. di Piero was born in South Philadelphia in 1945. he’s the author of numerous volumes of

poetry, translation, and essays on art, literature and personal experience. his latest book of poems

is Chinese Apples: New and Selected Poems, published by Knopf (2007). he writes a column

on the visual arts for the San Diego Reader and is a regular contributor of poems and essays

to magazines such as Threepenny Review and Poetry. he teaches part of the year in Stanford

University’s Creative Writing Program and lives in San Francisco.


Mission Statement CUEArtFoundation

CUE Art Foundation, a 501 (c)(3) non-profit arts organization,

is dedicated to providing a comprehensive creative forum for

contemporary art by supporting under-recognized artists via a

multi-faceted mission spanning the realms of gallery exhibitions,

public programming, professional development programs and

arts-in-education. the Foundation was established in June of 2002

with the aim of providing educational programs for young artists

and aspiring art professionals in new York and from around the

country. these programs draw on the unique community of artists,

critics, and educators brought together by the Foundation’s season

of exhibitions, public lectures, workshops, and its studio residency

program: all are designed to be of lasting practical benefit to

aspiring and under-recognized artists. the entire CUE identity is

characterized by artistic quality, independent judgment and the

discovery of genuine talent, and provides long-term benefits both

for creative individuals associated with CUE and the larger art

marketplace. located in new York’s Chelsea gallery district, CUE’s

4,500 square feet of gallery, studio and office space serves as the

nexus for educational programs and exhibitions conducted by CUE.

BoArDoFDirECtorS

Gregory Amenoff

theodore S. Berger

Patricia Caesar

thomas G. devine

thomas K. Y. hsu

Brian d. Starer

ADviSoryCoUnCil

Gregory Amenoff

William Corbett

deborah Kass

Kris Kuramitsu

Jonathan lethem

lari Pittman

irving Sandler

ExECUtivEDirECtor

Jeremy Adams

ProgrAmS

CoorDinAtor

Beatrice Wolert-Weese

ProgrAmSASSiStAnt

Kara Smith

PrEPArAtor

drew lichtenstein

All artwork © Jonathan Elderfield

Catalog designed by Elizabeth Ellis

Printed on triPine paper of KyeSung Paper Group (South Korea)

Cover: triPine Art nouveau 209gsm (78lb), text: triPine Silk 157gsm (106lb)

Printer: Yon Art Printing (South Korea)

iSBn-13: 978-0-9791843-3-8

iSBn-10: 0-9791843-3-9

Jonathan Elderfield

Documents

viking foundation

greenwall foundation

south street

andy warhol foundation

joan mitchell foundation

new spaces

sam adele golden foundation

new york state council