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William Larson: Figure in Motion 1966-70
Since the late1960s, William Larson has been recognized for his experimental works which push image-making technologies, and in doing so, offer a self-referential analysis and critique of his media. A product of the renowned Institute of Design in Chicago where he earned an M.S. in 1968, Larson has carried on its legacy of formal study and innovation.
The Figure in Motion series (c. 1968-75), is his earliest accomplished work and is thematically concerned with the construction of time. To make these “strip” pictures, Larson designed a complex choreography which involved the movement of subject, camera, and film. Over the course of six-to-nine minutes, as his model rotated on a platform, he exposed constantly advancing 2-1/4 inch, black and white film through a specially motorized camera. In addition, he often moved his camera backward and forward on a track. In the tradition of Marey and Muybridge, Larson’s work is an exploration of the depiction of the space-time continuum. However, rather than resulting in the discrete, broken images of Muybridge or the composites of motion produced by Marey, which are attempts to halt time, Larson is interested in continuous, relative time and space.
This work involves restructuring the visualization of the traditional subject of the nude. The photographs range from distorted, but legible, views of the body, to more highly abstracted, notational images. Some nudes conjure the work of modern masters such as Bill Brandt; however, others are better understood within the context of the 1970s when many artists questioned the normative modern subject and dealt with the idea of fragmented “selves.”
Larson’s works have been widely exhibited and are in important institutional collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Among his awards and honors are a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship Memorial Foundation Fellowship, several fellowships for the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship, an Aaron Siskind Foundation Fellowship, and two grants from Polaroid Corporation. Larson is currently Director of Graduate Photography and Digital Imaging at the Maryland Institute College of Art.