Nighttime Series

These threes series [Daytime, In Between Time, Nighttime] are a trilogy of cityscapes, landscapes, and skyscapes going into impressionism and abstraction. They are the beginnings of Greenhaus’ study of light, flatness, and three-dimensionality in a photograph.

Sherman Drexler

Donald Greenhaus is showing 20 photographs from his Nighttime piece at the Palm Gallery in Brooklyn. These silver prints capture the essence of night in New York City – a night without people. They are an exploration of black in the same way that Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko, and Georges Seurat explored the outer limits of black as both texture and spirit.

The son of newspaper photographer Ben Greenhaus, Donald has been a photographer since he was nine years old. His path has taken him from narrative documentaries; Nursing Home Series, Junkie Series, Backstage at a Male Strip House, through The Mortician Piece: An Embalming in 21 Prints. He stopped photographing people in 1974.

After this work he embarked on his current passion: an abstracted and evocative vision of night and day. This very personal work brings to mind another uniquely obsessive artist, Albert Pinkham Ryder. Greenhaus’s Nighttime is mysterious: it hurls silence at the viewer.These photographs offer a rare experience – a confrontation with a visionary eye. Sherman Drexler April 15, 1985

About Sherman Drexler

Sherman Drexler is a prolific artist. His paintings, drawings and sculptures, have been long-lived in the New York art world. He resides in Newark, New Jersey.

CultureFront Winter 1997-1998, “Nighttime”, Photographs by Donald Greenhaus