Bruce Cratsley at Wessel + O'Connor Gallery
By: Rothbart
NY Arts - February 1998. Page 49.
Bruce Cratsley, through February 14th. This retrospective of work by Bruce Cratsley presents forty five photographs taken between the years 1976 and 1995. Cratsley photographed New York City and despite the hardness of his subject, attained a feeling of spatial ambiguity and abstraction that is intriguing and at times quite beautiful. In Grand Central Shadows, an oblique line of men waiting to purchase tickets is presented. Only their legs are visible in the upper register of the photograph and below is a line of shadows cast by people waiting in a parallel line, invisible to the camera. These shadows are cast by the the upper body so, in a curious way, they complete the figures of the waiting legs. The shadows also generate abstract forms that only grudgingly share the composition with concrete particulars of the gentlemen in line. The exhibition presents subtle imagery of a metropolis where men and women cohabit with mannequins and shadows in such a way was to suggest Cocteau's poetic space.