Joseph Lawton at OK Harris

Art in America, Nov, 2004 by Edward Leffingwell

On the streets of Luxor, St. Petersburg, Benares, Daytona Beach and Syracuse, Joseph Lawton approaches the urban landscape with a highly developed sense of place. As a result, the 18 black-and-white photographs taken between 1985 and 1999 included in this exhibition evidence an understanding of the relationship of people to each other and to the places they occupy. The 16-by-20-inch prints in editions of 12 catch the arrested moments associated with photojournalism.

The photograph of a smiling worker in Leshan, China (1991) suggests a photographer at ease with a witting subject. The man is seated before a masonry wall near a sidewalk, his meal set out on a folding table. Leaning back in his chair, he lifts a bowl in salutation with one hand and a cigarette with the other. Close at hand, his bicycle identifies him as a man of modest means, and he seems content with the simple luxury of dining in the road. The cinematic moment of a crowd scene occupies Benares, India (1989), as the faithful seek the waters of the Ganges. Lawton positions himself between the river and bathers ascending the embankment steps. Closest to the camera, one young man turns toward another with an electric sense of movement, seemingly oblivious to Lawton's presence.

Elsewhere, a determined woman, shawled and barefoot, stands at the prow of a ship in En Route to Kalimantan, Indonesia (1990), peering toward a horizon of water and sky, as a little boy lies sleeping at her feet. The figures of Yangzhou, China (1991) rehearse another distribution of the many on ancient steps. Resembling the street scenes of Turandot, the steps are animated by people who smoke, gesture, talk and form a community in a moment. Photographs taken in Moscow and St. Petersburg in 1993 reflect Lawton's palpable empathy for his shopworn subjects, two years after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Boys wear military uniforms, and grown men, standing in a narrow masonry stairwell, hold each other's hands and weep.

Lawton annually returns to upstate New York to photograph the state fair. In Syracuse, NY (1985) a tight phalanx of three young men, cigarettes in hand, approaches the photographer, looking directly into his camera and hoping to seem dangerous. The tousled blond wears tight bib overalls and is flanked by dark-eyed boys with blown-dry hair; they look like twins. In Daytona Beach, FL (1999), two grizzled bikers ogle the thonged butt of a woman laced into leather chaps selling beers from a cooler. As different as these subjects seem in affect and culture, they are joined by a sense of shared and vulnerable humanity.