Danziger Projects is pleased to present the debut exhibition of the photographic series “Sentry” by Andy Freeberg. This will be the artist’s first show at Danziger Projects and the first solo exhibition of a series that has received unusual advance interest.

Andy Freeberg was born in New York City and studied at University of Michigan. He began work as a photojournalist with assignments for Rolling Stone, TIME, and Fortune. Known as a consummate professional, Freeberg alternates between the fine art and assignment worlds bringing a consistently original vision to his work.

The series “Sentry” grew out of Freeberg’s interest in the intersection of art, architecture, and environment. As the human presence is so significant in Freeberg’s work—the lack of it in the New York gallery world seemed both interesting and symbolic to the artist. In 2005 he began to record his findings, blending the observant nature of the journalist with the documentary precision of a large-format architectural photographer. The resulting works are both pictorially compelling and conceptually rigorous, while at the same time humorous and luminous. They describe a specific world while asking relevant questions.

Freeberg describes the genesis of the project in this way: “It was an odd moment when I walked into that first gallery in Chelsea and saw a large white desk with a head poking up from the top edge of the computer screen. I set my camera, carefully framing and exposing the scene, and the head never moved or took notice of my gaze. As I walked around that booming Chelsea neighborhood of art galleries, I began to notice a trend: at some of the biggest galleries there are giant entry desks, where the top of the head of the desk sitter is often the only other human presence. This leads me to wonder, in this digital world of email and instant messaging that supposedly makes us more connected, are we also setting up barriers to the simple eye to eye contact that affirms our humanity?”

As the work was noticed on serious photo blogs like “Conscientious” Freeberg’s photographs have sparked a lively debate on their intent and meaning and have been championed by curators including Charlotte Cotton – the new photography director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art—who selected three of the works as the lead pictures in a show she recently curated on the nature of contemporary photography and its relationship to contemporary art.