Alice ATTIE

Born in 1950, Alice ATTIE devoted herself to French Literature which she graduated from Barnard College in New York City. Then, she studied poetry under June JORDAN. Alice Attie’s doctoral dissertation focused on the meeting between language and the unspeakable.  From then on, her interest for visual arts takes all its sense.

During her interview with Clare Diston she stated: “I have always been interested in looking closely at those things in our lives that are common, in some sense, but are not easily looked at”.

Visual artist, poete, photographer, Alice ATTIE freezes time. It is what writing and photography have in common, this ability to extract from time and space a moment, a thought or a feeling and to restore it to a distant viewer. The New York artist seizes this time which passes. Her photographic work reflect transformations undergone by bodies (series Coming of Age and Incision), by cities (Harlem on the Verge) or societies (Back then and Aleppo, Syria 2011). Most of the time it is immortalizing a period of transition between two states. Those turning points, Alice ATTIE offers them frontally to our gaze by expressions and poses inside her portraits. A certain frankness shows off without slipping into crudeness, no artificiality either, the subjects, when they pose, choose their attitudes.

Alice ATTIE photographs the tracks of the time

Alice ATTIE proceeds also by photographing inscriptions. In this way, for the series Harlem on the Verge the pictures testify a double recording: shop windows, graffiti and brands get involved to underline the need to keep a trace. One of the most emblematic photos is very likely Records where we can read the red eponym sign above a tagged wall of Harlem.

Museums: 

• The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York
• The Jewish Museum, New York, New York
• The Studio Museum of Harlem, New York, New York
• The Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Californie
• The Hood Museum, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire
• The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas

Books selection :

• ATTIE, Alice, Alice Attie: Harlem On the Verge, The Quantuck Lane Press, 2003