Elliott Kaufman
Elliott Kaufman's career path is unique but has always revolved around architectural motives. When he began shooting in the mid 70's his orientation was toward the fine arts. Kaufman developed ideas for site-specific photomurals and wall art much before this concept became a mainstream art venue. He was able to work in this capacity with corporate industrial clients such as Westinghouse, General Electric, Warner Brothers and The Walt Disney Company. He then exhibited this work in such venues as in The Philadelphia Museum of Art, the American Institute of Architects, The Light Gallery in New York, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. A New York State Council on the Arts grant led to the exhibit "Murals for Astor Place and its Environs" at the Houghton Gallery of the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. He won a competition jointly sponsored by the Port Authority of New York and The New York Public Art fund, where he was awarded the commission to create a 35' x 45' public art mural outside of the Holland Tunnel.
His twenty-something years of shooting architecture and design allowed him to work with a full range of firms that have been prized for their vision and abilities and include Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, Gwathmey Siegel Architects, Davis Brody Bond Architects, FX Fowle Architects, Kohn Pederson Fox, Perkins Eastman Architects and Swanke Hayden Connell and Associates. His work has been published in virtually all of the finest design magazines both nationally and internationally including Architectural Digest, Elle Décor, Town and Country, NY Spaces, Inside/Outside (India), World Space Design (Japan), CreeArchitecture (France), and Der Speigel (Germany). Nearly 200 articles worldwide total. Kaufman also devotes significant time to personal projects. His series on the Panama Canal was published as a six page photo essay in the Architectural Record. His Broadway Walk series was featured in Architecture Magazine . A 2007 solo exhibition of new personal work of the "Abandoned" series as well as the Panama Canal series was shown at B. Thayer Associates in New York and Dennis Wedlick in Hudson, NY. The Abandoned series was also a cover feature in View Camera Magazine as well as being a feature story in the February Double Exposure Magazine. A feature article/profile on specialized lighting techniques has appeared in the international magazine Photo District News.
Abandoned 
Street Dance
Elliott Kaufman describes New York City as “a laboratory in constant movement." In his series “Street Dance,” Kaufman photographs repetitive actions of passersby – such as riding a bicycle or entering a subway station – from a single vantage point and arranges the images in a grid.
Key to his series, Kaufman explains, was calculating how changing light would affect the environment. “The bicycles had to be back-lit at the very end of the day,” he says. “The subway steps were calculated so that the light would cast perfect north/south shadows.” He also shot a varying number of exposures at each scene to relay the “staccato rhythm” he sought – as many as 225. “The camera catches the commonality of movement,” he says, “until what endures is a patter of dance and motion.”Accidental Apparitions
Water Series
Similar concepts have also been applied to his new work, Water Pictures. Here however the exact opposite technique is used to be able to capture the flow of water. High speed photography of oceans, rivers, streams and especially ponds, swamps and wetlands have contributed to these multiple exposures. Sometimes up to four “layers” of images are used to create one single photograph. One layer literally dissolving into the other and revealing it’s characteristics to the first and then the second can be surprising and very satisfying.
B&W Water Series
Time Transformations
Elliott Kaufman’s photographs on the passage of time (Time Transformations) encompass many of the same aspects as his architectural photography. Specifically the observation and the positioning of the sun and how the environment, whether built or natural, is altered by the movement of light. He anticipates exactly what the sun will do when it reaches a certain angle and how it will affect and inform his photograph. The original sources of this imagery are what we see – sky and water. Kaufman sets up a static camera shot, sometimes for 3-4 days or sometimes just a few hours at intervals of every one second to every hour, depending on the view and dynamic movement of the scene.
Resume
Elliott Kaufman’s photographs on the passage of time (Time Transformations) encompass many of the same aspects as his architectural photography. Specifically the observation and the positioning of the sun and how the environment, whether built or natural, is altered by the movement of light. He anticipates exactly what the sun will do when it reaches a certain angle and how it will affect and inform his photograph. The original sources of this imagery are what we see – sky and water. Kaufman sets up a static camera shot, sometimes for 3-4 days or sometimes just a few hours at intervals of every one second to every hour, depending on the view and dynamic movement of the scene
These concepts have also been applied to his new work, Water Pictures. Here however the exact opposite technique is used to be able to capture the flow of water. High speed photography of oceans, rivers, streams and especially ponds, swamps and wetlands have contributed to these multiple exposures. Sometimes up to four “layers” of images are used to create one single photograph. One layer literally dissolving into the other and revealing it’s characteristics to the first and then the second can be surprising and very satisfying.
For Kaufman, pursuing this type of imagery is not something he would have thought to do with the many analog camera formats he has used in the past. Certainly, the extent to which these types of images can be constructed owe much to the advent of digital photography. Although there have been many photographers who have experimented with multiple exposures over the course of the history of photography, from in camera “rewinds” to complicated overlaying darkroom techniques, few have experimented with direct layering of discordant images.
A number of artists have led him in this direction, including the Bauhaus and the collaborative media which they pioneered, the 1977 film Powers Of Ten, which depicts the relative scale of the universe in factors of ten, Mike Figgis’ experimental film Timecode, as well as the multiple sequences by photographers Harry Callahan, Ray K. Metzger, Eadweard Muybridge and Jerry Ulesman.
Exhibitions:
2018 Carrie Haddad Gallery: Photography Now: Abandoned Series
2014 Carrie Haddad Gallery: Group Show : December 18th thru January 2015.
2014 International Center of Photography, Juried Group Faculty Show: Photographs in the Social Landscape
2013 Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson, NY. Group Show: Street Dance Series
2012 Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson, NY. Group Show : Time Transformations
2012 The Hudson Studio, Hudson, NY.: Solo Show : Abandoned Architecture.
2011 Garrison Art Gallery, Juried Group Show
2010 Alan Klotz Gallery, Group Show on the 400th Anniversary of the Hudson River.
2009 Through the Eyes of Others Photographs of India, Consulate of India 4/26/09
2009 Biggs Museum of American Art, Baltimore MD. National Juried Exhibition 3/09
2009 Cepa Gallery, Buffalo, NY. National Juried Exhibition 3/09
2009 Soho Photo, National juried exhibition “Krappy Kamera” pinhole photography
2008 Center for Fine Art Photography EDGY- Stretching the Limits of Photography National juried exhibition. Purchased by the Center.
2008 International Center of Photography, Group Faculty Show 1/08
2007 Solo exhibition: Abandoned Series B.Thayer + Associates
1987 Light Gallery, New York. Group Show Interiors
1983 Houghton Gallery of the Cooper Union, Solo Show: Photomurals for Astor Place
1982 Photopia Gallery, Philadelphia Group Show : Portraits
1981 AIA Gallery, Philadelphia Solo Show :Photomurals
1980 Photopia Gallery, Philadelphia, Solo Show: American Diner
1979 Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., Artists for Environment Foundation
Books:
Author: Numbers Everywhere, 2013, Abbeville Press, NY.
Author: Alphabet Everywhere, 2012 Abbeville Press, NY.
Co-Author: Mondo Materialis, Abrams+Co, NY. 1993
Author: American Diner, Harper+Row, NY. 1979. 85 Page B+W Photo essay
Republished 2019
Teaching Queens College, Long Island University, International Center of Photography
