High Angle Street SF

About Mitchell Funk

Vision meets nostalgia: in the New York photographer’s "Urban Abstracts" series, you can feel the heart of the big city of the 70s beating which brings each composition to life. The viewer becomes part of the pulsating metropolis whose… Read more

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BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Vision meets nostalgia: in the New York photographer’s "Urban Abstracts" series, you can feel the heart of the big city of the 70s beating which brings each composition to life. The viewer becomes part of the pulsating metropolis whose energy flows through each of the fluorescent works. Mitchell Funk, a tireless creator from the city that never sleeps, has found his inspiration in the vibrant scenery of New York - surrounded by the glow of the psychedelic youth culture that shaped a new era of creativity. The luminous urban architecture, the vibrancy and the contrasting colors in Mitchell Funk's street scenes are not only a testimony to his time but also a bold counter-movement to the prevalent black-and-white photography at that time. In the 1970s, Funk's color-explosive photographs were the first to transcend the conventional boundaries of street photography. He searched for a style that would do justice to his unique aesthetic and became a pioneer of "street photography in color". He chose to capture the streets in Kodachrome, inspired by the urban spirit and the glamorous architecture of New York and San Francisco. Participating in one of the first color photography exhibitions at the iconic Brooklyn Museum in the 1970s, the celebrated photographer's experiments with color and design began to establish him as one of the rising stars of photographic art. Soon after, some of his groundbreaking architectural abstractions were published in avant-garde illustrated books alongside greats such as Warhol and Rauschenberg. Over the decades, he has continued to refine his subject matter and develop various dramatic styles: color field, late light, negative color, multiple exposures with colored filters, anti-snapshot and more. All his techniques push the boundaries of color photography while maintaining the same wildly expressive sensibility that defines his distinctive style. With his unmistakable signature, his photographs, which almost seem painted, are at the same time reminiscent of Richard Estes' richly detailed city paintings. Some seem to glow with the soft light of Edward Hopper's urban scenes. Funk's works, a pioneering contribution to modern street photography, stand out with their innovative experimentation, modern abstraction, precise composition, and extraordinary lighting which is more likely to be found in studio photography than in the streets of the big city. Mitchell Funk's works reveal an irresistible vintage charm that blends seamlessly with a visionary spirit.