Lisa Fairstein, Deep Shade @ Baxter St Camera Club of New York

I have liked what I have seen of Lisa Fairstein’s photographs in group shows, so I was excited to finally get a chance to see an entire solo show of her work. In Deep Shade, she has created a solid body of work that feels in keeping with contemporary photography or at least the vein of it that has been showing very attractive images in loosely defined bodies of work organized around a broad poetic or conceptual theme. Which is to say Fairstein is making quality contemporary photographs that look good together. My personal favorite is a rather excellent photograph of a man’s leg basking in the purple light of a sparsely attended dance club. The only issue I have with the work is I am not sure it rises above the photographs others are making in a similar vein. The press release does give a little hook that may make Fairstein’s work more compelling depending on your interest in process. As I understand it, the current body of work is the result of her finding pictures from social media and restaging small parts of those images. It is an interesting way to go about making pictures, and it certainly is taking things up a notch process-wise. I am just not sure the resulting photographs are always as compelling as I would like them to be. Fairstein is good at picking up on the odd unintentional moments from strangers’ snapshots, but they are so well done that the process is lost and the pictures end up looking like the intentional photographs of a lot of contemporary art photographers.

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Baxter St Camera Club of New York (126 Baxter St., Btw. Hester & Canal Sts.)