Ted Partin

In his photographic work, Ted Partin devotes himself to the image of the human being, one of the great emotional core themes of photographic history. Partin’s view of a youthful American society is presented for the first time in a museum context. 

The Kunstmuseen Krefeld presents the photographs of the American artist Ted Partin (b. 1977, Tarrytown, New York, lives in Brooklyn, New York) – images that move us in ways both subtle and intelligent. His subject is people captured in everyday situations: in city streets, at home, in their cars and in the countryside. Using the means of analogue photography, and in a time-consuming process, he creates pictures in which the figures take up a natural pose. The scenes come across as intimate and aloof at the same time. The people show themselves on occasion naked but unashamed. The beholder is at once an intimate and a voyeur. And yet he learns next to nothing of the sitters, their social status, or their background. An irresolvable contradiction lurks in the photographs, a contradiction that has its origin in the documentary claim to reality on the one hand and the desire on the part of the photographer for a cinematic mise-en-scène on the other. The photographs  constitute an inventory of human, local, and social situations, while at the same time being sensitive impressions. 

In the Museum Haus Esters, the Kunstmuseen Krefeld presents some 50 photographic works on which Partin has been working since the end of 2009. The catalogue contains large-scale illustrations of all of the photographs, including for the first time, several in color. Articles by Klaus Honnef and Jeffrey Ladd, and an interview between Ted Partin and Sylvia Martin, lay the foundation for further theoretical discussion of the artist’s photographic work

Text in German and English.