Bruce Cratsley at Yancey Richardson Gallery
By: Charles Hagen
The New York Times - February 23, 1996. Page C32
A charged lightness characterizes the best of Bruce Cratsley's black-and-white photographs, presented here in a 20 year retrospective. Whether depicting grand events or quiet ones, Mr. Cratsley often achieves a delicate emotional balance. A shot of fireworks blossoming over a Venetian canal and one of a hand holding the corner of a white piece of paper both take on an almost meditative equanimity.
Mannequins, the staple of much Surrealist photography, are a favorite motif. In one picture, a headless model wrapped in what look like bandages hovers in a SoHo store window; in another a row of these anonymous figures, unclothed, turn away from the camera. Some pictures have an eerie sense of life arrested. In a photo taken in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a fragment of an Egyptian statue of a face floats in front of a blurred background; in Paris, a mime in whiteface, wearing a white raincoat and carrying a white umbrella, poses expressionless in a shaft of sunlight.
The passage of time and photography's ability to step outside it are key elements in these echoing images. Mr. Cratsley's deceptively simple works resonate with sad beauty.