Art & Photography: Ray K. Metzker, 1931

Ray K. Metzker, Philadelphia, 1963

Ray K. Metzker, photographer, died on 9 October 2014.
Ray Metzker was an original and stylish Modernist photographer. He was trained at the Institute of Design, Chicago - originally founded as the New Bauhaus - where he studied under Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. He consistently experimented with the formal possibilities of black and white photography in single images as well as 'composites' of multiple exposures. His pictures are bold, dramatic, high contrast images pushed to the edge of, and into, abstraction. He seems to have had a bit of a thing about cars - and, since I do too, my selection of his work here is exclusively from those featuring cars. This may not be fully representative of the breadth of his work - but they are all great images!
Read an obituary in The New York Times; see more images at Laurence Miller Gallery.
Click on images to enlarge.