Brian Ulrich at Julie Saul : Let’s hear it for small prints!

Photo By Brian Ulrich

Tonight at Brian Ulrich’s opening for his Thrift & Dark Stores exhibition at Julie Saul Gallery I was surprised to see one wall of 11 x 14 prints!!  Of course 11 x 14 might not seem that small but in comparison to the 30 x 4o’s on the other walls their size was consipicuous…and obviously a very conscious choice by Ulrich.  His subject matter, decaying big box stores and thriving thrift stores, could (and does) obviously fit into the “big print” mentality in an Andreas Gursky kind of way. The loneliness in some of the large shots is really unbearable [that is a compliment] and the scope of the size amplifies the feeling.  But his choice to include a wall of “small intent” really brings some resonance to the series.  Sure enough I find on his blog his own explanation for the small wall:

Working with the 8×10 for the last year I came to understand that the fidelity of that camera is so large that when looking at a contact print or slightly larger the reading of the image is so fundamentally unique. In contrast to the large prints which ask the view to subsume themselves into the virtual space. I like both, so many of these new pictures are available in both sizes. With making pictures whose subject is economic we decided to make these smaller prints more affordable so to encourage viewing them in groups.

These prints not only encourage this dialectic approach which he implies: a visual dialogue between the varying states of active commerce and economic turbidity but ALSO allow (or maybe even force) inspection of the prints.  I found myself leaning in (okay, so I usually lean into to see details but this was different, I was looking for narrative thread, for connections!) and trying to join together the overwhelming & busy texture of one image with the placid emptiness of another.  I would posit that their size prompted this action.  This is a fine, fine show.