Biographical Brief

 

CY LEHRER

  

e-mail:  click here to e-mail Cy Lehrer

web site:  www.cylehrerphotography.net



Cy Lehrer has been photographing since 1957 and has shown his work publicly since 1983, with more than 115 solo and major exhibits to his credit as well as participation in numerous invitational group shows.


Working for many years in the "fine print" black‑and‑white mode, Lehrer has recently been employing digital color imagery. His photographic interests have ranged across the social documentary essay form, traditional landscapes, satirical aspects of the urban and suburban landscape, monumental ancient ruins and the contemporary street life surrounding them, and candid environmental/situational portraits conveying a range of feelings from irony and humor to solitude and isolation.  A recurring theme of his work addresses in various ways issues of mortality, impermanence and the brevity of life.


Since transitioning to digital color, Lehrer's projects have included "Vanitas," an ongoing still-life series of decaying  fruits and vegetables, satirical street photography and urban landscape, and a large body of work made in China in late 2005.  He most recently photographed extensively in both Argentina and Louisiana in 2008 and 2010, Alaska in 2009, Israel in 2009 and 2010, and is continually adding to a new, substantial body of candid street and other off-beat images provisionally entitled “Mishigoss/Pasticcio.”  Lehrer has also created a collection of abstract and non-objective photographs in a move away from the literal and hyper-realism that more typically characterized his work.


In December 2010 Lehrer returned to Texas Canyon to re-photograph in color many of the scenes he depicted 25 years earlier in black-and-white; and a year later he produced a group of experimental images distorting the natural colors of this landscape, adding bands of manufactured color, converting portions of images to monochrome, etc.  Late in 2011 he added a group of images to his satirical Las Vegas collection, and also developed a series of photos presenting swirls, curls and waves of hair, close-up and in high-contrast monochromatic tones.


From 2011 through 2014 he added substantially to his collections of street and candid photographs “(Medley” groups), produced several series of dark and contemplative images (“Noir” and “Equa” groups, and is now creating a whimsical group of pictures highlighting red objects seen in parking lots.  His recent work, drawn from four projects, was shown at the Tucson International Airport from September through the end of 2013.


Lehrer has had one‑person showings of his work in many notable venues, including: the Tucson, AZ, Museum of Art; the Temple of Music and Art Gallery in Tucson (retrospective exhibit in 2007); the Dayton, OH, Art Institute; the Cedar Rapids, IA, Museum of Art; the Springfield, MA, Museum of Fine Arts; the Lafayette, IN, Museum of Art; the Appleton Museum of Art, Ocala, FL; the U. S. Air Force Museum, Dayton, OH; the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago; the San Diego Museum of Man; the Milwaukee Public Museum; the Riverside Museum of the Louisiana Arts and Science Center, Baton Rouge; the Roswell, NM, Museum of Art; the Yeshiva University Museum in New York; the International Photography Museum, Oklahoma City; the University of Nebraska Great Plains Art Museum, Lincoln, NE; and, the Maine Center for the Arts, Orono, ME. In addition, he has shown in many other universities, public and private museums, galleries and art centers.  His work has appeared several times in group shows at the renowned Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ.


Lehrer has been a participant in the United States Department of State's Art in Embassies program; his photographs have been displayed in U. S. embassies in Kuwait, Bolivia and Madagascar. Lehrer's photo essay "Maya ... of Earth, the Heavens, the Gods" was juried into the Touring Exhibit Program (1991) of the Mid‑America Arts Alliance (ExhibitsUSA), Kansas City, MO, and his project "Bypassed Places: Route 66" was traveled for three years by the Arizona Commission on the Arts (1988‑90).


A book of his landscapes, "Texas Canyon, AZ: An Eloquence of Stone," was published in 1987 by the Amerind Foundation, Dragoon, AZ. His photographs are in numerous private and institutional collections, including the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ, the Tucson Museum of Art, the Albuquerque Museum, and many of the museums cited above.  Lehrer's series of images made in various Holocaust sites in Germany and Eastern Europe are on permanent exhibition at the U. S. Air Force Museum, Wright-Patterson AFB, Dayton, OH.



See also the “Resume of Selected Exhibits, Collections and Art Reviews” following the print portfolios.   A complete, comprehensive Resume is also available upon request.