Untitled

Jan Groover, Untitled, 1976, three chromogenic prints, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase made possible by Gustavus Goward, John E. Lodge, Miss Claire Lusby, John B. Turner and Robert O. Werlich, 1997.6A-C, © 1976, Jan Groover

Exhibition Label

Jan Groover trained as a painter and initially used the camera as a means to make conceptual art, but later became devoted to the idea of pure, straight photography. In the 1970s she became known for triptychs of traffic taken in downtown New York City with a small camera fixed on a tripod. In this untitled photograph, Groover shifted her camera to capture slight variations in the arrangement of shadows cast by the city’s architecture. A truck passing through in the second image suggests the passage of time. Each of the three images records a specific moment, but they echo each other in color and shape; together they embody Groover’s oft-quoted dictum: “Formalism is everything.”

A Democracy of Images: Photographs from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2013

Title

Untitled

Artist

Jan Groover

Date

1976

Location

Not on view

Dimensions