City Square, Early Philadelphia, 1964

Ray K. Metzker quietly made extraordinary and influential photographs over the course of a five decade career. He was born in 1931 in Milwaukee and attended the Institute of Design, Chicago--a renowned school that had a few years earlier been dubbed the New Bauhaus-- from 1956 to 1959. He was thus an heir to the avant-garde photography that had developed in Europe in the 1920's. Early in his career, his work was marked by unusual intensity. Composites, multiple-exposure, superimposition of negatives, juxtapositions of two images, solarization and other formal means were part and parcel of his vocabulary. He was committed to discovering the potential of black and white photography during the shooting and the printing, and has shown consummate skill in each stage of the photographic process. Ray Metzker's unique and continually evolving mastery of light, shadow, and line transform the ordinary into a realm of pure visual delight. Major American museums began showing an interest in Metzker's work in the 1960's and he has sice exhibited all over the world. Ray Metzker died in 2014 in Philadelphia, a city he had made his home and frequent subject since 1962.