Harriet Gans, Celebration Series - Untitled, 1987

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Harriet Gans, photographer who showed her work in New York galleries and museums A native of Manhattan, Ms. Gans was … Read more Harriet Gans, photographer who showed her work in New York galleries and museums A native of Manhattan, Ms. Gans was a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and held a master's in psychology from Columbia University. She was a professor of photography at Pace University. She had solo exhibitions at the Julie Saul and Pindar Galleries in New York. She contributed studies of flowers to the In Bloom Traveling Exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in 1990. an exhibition, "In Celebration of Harriet Gans: Artists of the MacDowell Colony," consisting of 56 works by 16 painters and print makers In photography, she explored nature, mythology and spirituality, producing work that was shown in solo and group exhibitions; the Museum of Modern Art included her flower studies in its 1990 traveling show, "In Bloom." Ms. Gans also contributed to The New York Times and other publications, and taught in the art department of Pace University The photographer's later work was divided into three phases, each of which is represented in the Krasdale show. These include luminous arrangements of seed pods photographed against a black background, vivid abstractions of flowers in various stages of bloom and decay and the haunting "Longing" series, in which eternal mysteries are poignantly captured. The curators have underscored the themes in Ms. Gans's life and work with paintings and graphics by artists like Benny Andrews, Heidi Fasnacht, Clare Romano, John Ross and April Vollmer. Of all the MacDowell fellows represented in the exhibition, only the Manhattan painter Susan Hambleton was at the colony when Ms. Gans was there. Her work seems most spiritually akin to the photographer's works in its depiction of glowing waters rushing out of darkness and cascading back into darkness, a metaphor for life's evanescence. Ms. Gans was also a fellow of the Yaddo Colony in Saratoga Springs See less