KATHY RYAN
OFFICE ROMANCE
«This began when I saw a bolt of light zigzag across the stairs one afternoon at the “New York Times Magazine”. I pulled out my iPhone and took a picture of it. Then I started seeing pictures all the time – incredible beauty and poetry in my office. (…) My corner of the office faces east and is flooded with a particular intense light first thing in the morning. (…) I didn’t really pay attention to it when we first moved into the Renzo Piano-designed building. I am a creature of habit and I loved the gritty, old Times building, in all its messiness. (…) The new building felt too new and clean and crisp. But the moment I started to take photographs was the same moment I fell in love with it.»
Kathy Ryan is not a photographer; she is the benefactor of photographers. For thirty years, she has been one of the top photo editors in her field selecting the photos for the pages of the «New York Times Magazine» where she is the director of photography. She skips from a Hollywood portrait to an earthquake, from a sports coverage to the latest fashion trend; her domain potentially covers all aspects of the news, but from the viewpoint of a weekly magazine.
She chooses the greatest conceptual photographers, the best reporters and the most recognized portrait photographers.
François Hébel
Location
Istituzione Bologna Musei
Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica
Strada Maggiore, 34
She takes these shots without the slightest pretention, simply for the fun, posting them on Instagram. The huge number of “I likes” she received boosted her confidence and now in the middle of her frenetic work day rushing from one meeting to another, finding solutions for the endless changes in the magazine’s contents, or having to find a different approach, she invents these moments of exquisite imagery.
The results, a sunbeam on the carpet, fleeting portraits of work colleagues, cast shadows, a stack of post-its, a bunch of flowers, are full of poetry, tranquillity and amazing variety, leading the viewer on a very moving stroll through the life of the office.
If Kathy Ryan trained her eye, almost without realizing it, her photos could be shot in almost any type of office block, bank, insurance company, or engineering industry… this photographic notebook, one of the first truly interesting trends of widespread phone photography diffusion promises even more surprises in the future now that almost everybody has become a photographer.
The exhibition is presented in the form of prints, projections, and a ticker recalling the «New York Times» ticker in Times Square, posting Kathy Ryan’s frantic daily schedule.
François Hébel
Location
Istituzione Bologna Musei
Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica
Strada Maggiore, 34
Housed in the fascinating 16th century Palazzo Sanguinetti, in Strada Maggiore 34. The building, donated by Eleonora Sanguinetti in 1986, underwent a long period of restoration in order to return the remarkable interior to original splendour: these frescoes painted in the 19th century are among the highest artistic achievements of the napoleonic and neoclassical period in Bologna. Rooms are decorated by Pelagio Pelagi, Serafino Barozzi, Vincenzo Martinelli, Antonio Basoli.
