38 West 39th Street, 3rd Floor New York, NY 10018 Contact info: Meaghan Ritchey—[email protected] | 212.944.0944

International Arts Movement is pleased to present “Occluded Witnesses”, by Ryan Stander. The show will run from November 9th through December 31.

A description from Ryan Stander about the exhibit:

“Ten years ago, the contents of a re-purposed Nike shoebox punctured something within me. Such a simple box of old photos filled with unfamiliar faces, disconnected narratives and suspended conversations that still hung invisibly in the air. With each photograph I fumbled through, grew a deeper realization of our shared humanity and mortality. Each portrait, an icon of silver, paper and light, is a certificate of someone’s life and existence. I wondered then, as I still do today, who are these people? What are they doing in this box? Will this be our fate as well?

The photograph is an impossibly thin sliver of time and space. It is an image of some captured reality suspended by light in silver crystals and gelatin. What once was, regardless of how much time has passed since its momentary exposure, endures with a profound veracity.

In our own photographs we recognize that time, that place, that event, and that face. What once was, whether birthdays and holidays, or graduations and funerals, persists and lingers often outliving the subjects of their frames. Time carries these objects through the animating hands of generations, but those once vibrant stories fade. Now disconnected, these photographic objects rest silently in a curious amnestic state. For many of us, the photographs’ essential character rests in its visual specificity or factual natures. And while the fidelity of this remnant remains, it is simultaneously betrayed by a loss of its animating identity, context and stories. Unable to speak, they are cut off from us with an insurmountable gulf of history passing between them and us.”

We hope that you can join us!