Summary
From portraits of men seeking shade in doorways to men crying as they grip a radio listening to the news of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, [Herbert Lotz] captures the intensity of war's downtime. One thread of images is particularly touching: Lotz stalked the camp during the day, when many people tried to get the sleep that eluded them during nights filled with rocket attacks and mortar bombardments. He snapped delicate, somewhat erotic images of men sleeping-quiet moments of peace and beauty lodged precariously in an otherwise fitful existence. There is an alarming subtext to all of these images in that Cu Chi was later discovered to be riddled with tunnels under the surface. The entire time that Lotz was stationed there, as men slept and watched strippers and cried and dispatched secret radio communication, the enemy was just a few feet away, burrowed underground, listening to everything.
Lotz has spent decades in Santa Fe earning a sterling reputation as a commercial photographer, while occasionally unveiling his fine art photography, including his notable Men Kissing series. Lotz came to Santa Fe in the wake of Vietnam. Like thousands of others, he was looking for an escape, for a sense of relief from the anxiety war had left like embers at his core. For 30 years, Lotz left his film from Vietnam largely undeveloped. The exhibition at Verve is a small, but telling, selection of images Lotz took during his tour. (He was drafted out of the Chicago. Art Institute when he let his credit hours slip a bit too much.)See the full content of this document
Extract
Anxious Shutter
ANXIOUS SHUTTER
War and much, much more.Visions of WarThree of the photographers presented in Verve Fine Arts' Amid della Galleria exhibition present gripping portraits that unveil some of the most prominent ghosts that haunt the collective American mind.I...See the full content of this document
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