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Have you seen the February issue of Condé Nast Traveler? The venerable magazine is featuring David Drebin’s latest monograph, The Morning After (teNeues), as a must-have, describing it as “a book of dreamy cinematic images.” (To read more, go here.)
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David Drebin's monograph "The Morning After" (left) is featured in the February 2011 issue of Condé Nast Traveler (right).
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The February issue of ARTnews also features David’s photography. In an interview with him titled “Voyeurs, Flashers, and Ice-Hockey Players,” the magazine’s photo editor, Rebecca Robertson, praises David’s work for its “narrative mixture of grit, humor, and glamour,” as well as its ambiguity.
Here’s an excerpt:
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In his cinematic world, beautiful women in very short skirts run up and down stairs, lean dangerously over balconies, or look out windows. The heart of his drama is often the tension of sexualized, occasionally hostile looking, with the camera peeking at a partially obscured woman. Sometimes Drebin records both the voyeur and his target, as in a 2001 Jeff Wall–like street scene set outside the Apollo Theater in Harlem. In it, a startled-looking woman wearing a midriff-baring shirt and holding her child is coolly appraised by a man walking behind her. Stalker (2007) suggests a more explicit threat—it shows a pair of bare female legs in short black boots standing on asphalt, framed by a dark slit as if seen through closed blinds.
For all the mystery in some of Drebin’s tableaux, many share a sense of mischievousness. In Flasher (2002), one of his most popular images, a woman on an overpass lifts her shirt to oncoming traffic. Ice Hockey (2002) shows a woman in leopard-print boots in a locker room arguing with a man wearing only black boxer briefs, while his underdressed teammates snicker.
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"Apollo," 2001, by David Drebin.
"Flasher," 2002, by David Drebin.
"Champion," 2009, by David Drebin.
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Sometimes Drebin’s locations are so evocative that he forgoes models. Yellow Pool (2001) is an empty swimming pool deck aglow in a wash of artificial light. Central Park (2006) looks north at night from high above the park—a dark trapezoid crisscrossed by strings of lighted paths and surrounded by the orange glow of the city. Drebin took the five-minute exposure from a friend’s office on the 57th floor of Carnegie Hall Tower.
“I like to go places people have photographed before and shoot them in a new way,” he says.
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