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Gary Lee Boas Sentimental Journey
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COUNTRY CLUB / CINCINNATI
MAY 14–JULY 3, 2010
RECEPTION: FRIDAY MAY 14, 2010 | 7–9PM
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Country Club is pleased to present Gary Lee Boas | Sentimental Journey.
Before the paparazzi, there were just fans. Gary Lee Boas was a super fan. In those moments before tracking celebrities became a mega-industry, Boas gathered candid images of fashion and film icons, musicians and politicians, athletes, artists and beauty queens. His photographs from the late 1960s through 1980 document a time when the relationship between the fan and the celebrity was less complicated, less fraught with anxiety. After John Lennon was shot in 1980 by obsessed fan Mark David Chapman, that relationship changed. Boas has continued to exhaustively capture images of stars and other public figures, though he does so now from unique position. He is not a paparazzo, he is not the prototypical artist photographer, and he is not ordinarily an assignment photographer. What Boas does is construct a far more human world where we can see the compelling moments between guarded and unguarded.
Gary Lee Boas grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and from an early age spent much time daydreaming about TV and movie stars. As a devoted fan, Boas began photographing famous people with his Brownie camera at age 14. Never considering himself an artist, or even a photographer early on, Boas’ obsession grew, uninterrupted, for nearly 45 years, into what has become a massive archive of over 80,000 photographs, autographs and personal letters from movie stars and famous people. Country Club is pleased to present a selection of photographs spanning Boas’s entire career.
Prominent writer/critic Carlo McCormick writes:
The stars populating Boas’s pictures take on the practiced poses and coded gestures of the public personae as they navigate social space. Running a media gauntlet or trapped in unsuspecting confrontations, these disembodied icons of celebrity perform acts of retreat, surrender, glamour, largesse, and even hostility as they face the fate of recognition. This mass archive of images, correspondence and autographs, meticulously catalogued by Gary Boas over the past four decades, constitutes a lexicon of popular culture.
Since the release of his book Starstruck: Photographs From A Fan, Dilettante Press, 2000, Boas has become internationally recognized for the snapshots he took of famous people in the 60s and 70s as an unknown fan. His images have been exhibited in numerous galleries and museums throughout the United States and Europe including Deitch Projects, New York and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. Today, Boas continues to photograph celebrities, as well as documenting the many other interesting characters in his life. He spends time between residences in Lancaster, Los Angeles, New York and Paris. Gary Lee Boas: Sentimental Journey is co-organized by Country Club with Andrew Van Sickle.
Gallery hours: Monday – Saturday | 10–5pm
For additional information please contact:
Melanie E. Derrick / Gallery Manager
gallery@countryclubprojects.com
COUNTRY CLUB | Cincinnati
3209 Madison Road
Cincinnati, OH 45209
www.countryclubprojects.com
information@countryclubprojects.com
t +1 513 792 9744 | f +1 513 792 9755
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