Or real life pix of W Va reality? How is it that a Madison Avenue Gallery like Higher Pictures has the knack of discovering revolutionary traditionally trained photographers? Opening after opening have taught me to expect the extraordinary and the unexpected at this niche crowded onto the third floor of 980 Mad Ave.
But nothing prepared me for the raw raunchy real photographs of Susan Lipper. How these were ever shown in London in 1994 is beyond my wildest imaginings. How this Yale trained photographer’s photographer insinuated herself into this miniscule sliver of W Va during a five year period is beyond belief.
What she has brought back from her time travels is all too believable. Our worst nightmare of life lived in the raw. Guns, knives, women as cattle, children as chattel. This is the Amerika that elected Trump. Higher Pictures has shown us why Trump won. And Susan has revealed to us what to expect next.
What she reveals is truly frightening, for is this what many of us secretly desire, what many of us innately expect, what all of us may encounter some day – soon?
How did you do this I asked her: Yale was tough she answered. Yes she bought them beer – but no yachts of photography like this ever floated in on a tide of beer like this. And she kept going back over a 4-5 year period – not just catching them in the act, but showing them her work – and capturing their rehearsals of it. What she’s given us is rural Amerika – and we’d better get used to it. And these are the people who brought us Trumped Up Amerika.
I advise you to google Susan Lipper, a NY based artist, with a ’83 Yale MFA and her monographs, Bed and Breakfast (2000), trip (1999), and of course GRAPEVINE (1994). She’s had no trouble being acquired by the world’s major museums, and received at Guggenheim Fellowship in 2015. It’s time to pay a trip to 980 Madison Avenue and its marvelously crowded third floor.
Per On Art 