Ray K. Metzker, Untitled, [Woman by Parking Garage]

Since the late 1950s, Ray K. Metzker has made remarkable photographs that capture the nuances, rhythms, textures, and ironies of our urban existence. This image falls some-where between representation and abstraction; objectsare reduced to gleaming outlines and simple shapes. Lights and darks are pushed to extremes. A solitary figure clothed in white is the only recognizable form in a sea of darkness. Metzker's unique mastery of light, shadow, and line trans-form the ordinary into the realm of pure visual delight.

Metzker is recognized as one of the great masters of American photography. He completed his graduate studies in 1959 at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. In 1962, the artist moved to Philadelphia, where he lives and works today, and immediately began photographing his new urban environment.