George Tice (b. 1938, Newark)
From the Chrysler Building, New York
1978, printed 2017
Double-coated platinum/palladium print
36 x 28 in. (91.4 x 71.12)
Edition 6 of 15
George Tice (b. 1938, Newark)
Lincoln Motel and Abe's Disco, Newark, NJ
1981, printed 2/3/82
Selenium waxed gelatin silver print
Image: 13 1/8 x 10 3/8 in. (33.3 x 26.4 cm)
Mount: 17 x 14 in. (43.2 x 35.6 cm)
Lincoln Motel and Abe’s Disco, an unassuming motel sign that George Tice encountered while stepping out of the Newark Museum one evening, inspired the artist to embark on a search across America for Abraham Lincoln and the ways he has been memorialized. Tice’s unusual framing for his Lincoln photographs, such as in Lincoln Motel and Abe’s Disco, celebrate Lincoln as an iconic symbol of emancipation and monumental hope — and also the often humdrum realities of contemporary US life. But Tice does not denigrate the everyday. Rather he sees the prosaic as worthy of memory, and masterfully captures American life as it truly is.
George Tice (b. 1938, Newark)
Telephone Booth, 3 A.M., Rahway, NJ, 1974
Platinum/palladium print
Image: 24 x 20 in. (61.0 x 50.8 cm)
Sheet: 30 x 22 in. (76.2 x 55.9 cm)
Edition 7 of 30
George Tice (b. 1938, Newark)
Junked Cars, Route #1, Newark, NJ, 1973, printed 8/4/06
Gelatin silver print
Image: 9 1/2 x 7 9/16 in. (24.1 x 19.2 cm)
Paper: 14 x 11 in. (35.6 x 27.9 cm)
In the introduction to his 2002 monograph Urban Landscapes, George Tice has this to say about his aesthetic philosophy: “It takes time before an image of a commonplace subject can be assessed. The great difficulty of what I attempt is seeing beyond the moment; the everydayness of life gets in the way of the eternal.” Urban Landscapes (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002), 8.
George Tice (b. 1938, Newark)
Porch, Monhegan Island, Maine
1971, printed 2015
Platinum/palladium print
Image: 13 3/8 x 8 7/8 in. (34.0 x 22.5 cm)
Paper: 17 1/8 x 14 in. (43.5 x 35.6 cm)
The Monhegan Island home where Porch was photographed has inspired painters and photographers alike. The painter Rockwell Kent, who built the home, was its first resident — and such paintings as Winter, Monhegan Island, 1907, are testament to his affection for the Maine island. He often received visitors such as Robert Henri, who later wrote of his experiences, “I have never seen anything so fine.” Jamie Wyeth, the son of the late realist painter Andrew Wyeth, was residing in the home when Tice visited in 1971. Tice discovered the home while lodging with the island’s lighthouse keeper nearby. Porch was included in his 1973 series Seacoast Maine: People and Places.
George Tice (b. 1938, Newark)
Petit's Mobil Station, Cherry Hill, New Jersey, 1974
Platinum/palladium print
Image: 20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61.0 cm)
Sheet: 22 x 30 in. (55.9 x 76.2 cm)
Edition 27 of 30
George Tice’s most iconic photograph, Petit’s Mobil Station recalls the magnificent abandon of an Edward Hopper painting, and has become emblematic of the American urban landscape. Tice photographed Petit’s Mobil Station on route to visit his girlfriend at the time. Exiting the New Jersey turnpike around dusk, Tice propped up his camera on the side of the road and set a 2 minute exposure. To preserve the scene’s serene emptiness — one where the flat top sedan is the only sign of human activity— Tice covered the lens every time a new car pulled up to the pump. The platinum and palladium that Tice used to print the photograph evokes the richness of light, giving the station an unexpected gravitas.
George Tice (b. 1938, Newark)
Esso Station and Tenement House, Hoboken, NJ
1972, printed 2017
Double-coated platinum/palladium print
36 x 28 in. (91.4 x 71.1 cm)
Edition 2 of 15
Before there was Exxon, there was Esso. Tice has revealed the unmistakable essence of American post-war design in this photograph: from the aquiline neon sign, to the glistening chrome that frames the 1970s Chevy Impala. The bright, springy neon shimmers before a background of melodramatic sky and architecture. Printed from three negatives in double-coated platinum palladium, Esso Station is a true masterpiece.
George Tice (b. 1938, Newark)
Clothesline, Northport, Maine
1971, printed 1/20/14
Gelatin silver print
George Tice (b. 1938, Newark)
Oak Tree, Holmdel, NJ
1970, printed 2007
Palladium print
20 x 24 in. (50.8 x 61.0 cm)
Edition 11 of 30
George Tice (b. 1938, Newark)
Tree #8, New Jersey
1964, printed 5/12/03
Gelatin silver print dry mounted
Image: 13 1/4 x 5 1/2 in. (33.7 x 14.0 cm)
Mount: 14 x 11 in. (35.6 x 27.9 cm)
George Tice (b. 1938, Newark)
Aspen Grove, Aspen, Colorado
1969, printed 2017
Platinum/palladium print
Image: 28 x 36 in. (71.1 x 91.4 cm)
Paper: 30 x 45 in. (76.2 x 114.3 cm)
Edition 2 of 15
George Tice (b. 1938, Newark)
George Tice (b. 1938, Newark)
Factory Windows, Paterson, New Jersey
2002, printed 3/19/03
Gelatin silver print
Image: 10 1/8 x 12 7/8 in. (25.7 x 32.7 cm)
Mount: 11 x 14 in. (27.9 x 35.6 cm)
Paterson is a New Jersey town that the artist has tirelessly returned to for the subjects of his photographs. Once a 19th century manufacturing hub, Paterson is now a town of hole-in-the-wall diners, worn-out facades and outlet stores. In this series of photographs, Tice collects palpable evidence of America’s crumbling industrial past with great artistry and grace. Tice is not alone in his personal conviction for commemorating Paterson’s history: the town has likewise inspired such American artists as William Carlos Williams, Allen Ginsberg, and the film director Jim Jarmusch. Regarding Paterson in a 2002 interview with The New York Times, Tice writes that “a place belongs to those who claim it.”
George Tice (b. 1938, Newark)
Tree #22, California
1965, printed 3/3/03
Gelatin silver print
Image: 5 1/2 x 13 1/4 in. (14.0 x 33.7 cm)
Mount: 11 x 14 in. (27.9 x 35.6 cm)
Tice took this photograph during a six month hiatus to California in 1965. His wife of the time had become weary of life in the northeast, and the couple and their kids packed their car and head West. Known for his photographs of urban geography, Tice’s photographs of trees may appear immediately uncharacteristic of the artist’s style. But his trees, including Tree #22, strike a surprising and tranquil balance against the roughness of daily life.
George Tice (b. 1938, Newark)
George Tice (b. 1938, Newark)
Ferry Slip, Jersey City, New Jersey, 1979
Platinum/palladium print
Image: 28 x 36 in. (71.1 x 91.4 cm)
Frame: 41 x 47 1/2 in. (104.1 x 120.7 cm)
Edition 3 of 15
Nailya Alexander Gallery is honored to celebrate the eightieth birthday of George Tice with his third solo exhibition at the gallery from September 6 through October 13, 2018. Our exhibition commemorates the artist’s life and his six decades of contributions to the fields of fine art photography, printmaking, and American history.
Born on October 13, 1938 in Newark, New Jersey, George Tice was inspired as a young boy by his father’s photo albums to purchase a $29.95 Kodak Pony camera and begin taking photographs. At age fourteen, he became the youngest member of the Carteret Camera Club, and a few years later enlisted in the U.S. Navy as a photographer’s mate. In 1959, the twenty-year-old Tice photographed an explosion aboard the USS Wasp. The photograph made the front page of The New York Times and caught the attention of Edward Steichen, then Director of the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, who acquired the photograph for the museum’s collection.
Tice, whose eye has been drawn to factory facades, junked cars, and eerily lit gas stations, has long explored his affinity for the mid-century generation of American social and landscape photographers that includes such luminaries as Walker Evans. Tice’s photographs, however, carve out their own space in photographic history as methodical and deeply felt meditations on place and memory, particularly with respect to the unpolished and oft-forgotten pockets of small-town America. In a 2000 review for The New York Times, critic Margarett Loke wrote, “For Mr. Tice, time has a way of standing still. He finds quiet, enduring beauty in such places as the interior of a Shaker building in Maine; in a ghostly ribbon of a road in Lancaster, PA, and in a tree trunk in Paterson that bears the hieroglyphics of time.”
In his photographs of Paterson, New Jersey, Tice collects palpable evidence of America’s crumbling industrial past with artistry and grace. Once a 19th-century manufacturing hub, Paterson is now a city of classic American diners, empty mills, and outlet stores. Part artist, part historian, Tice collects and commemorates the city’s history with each photograph, and in the process assembles a greater history of the country’s ever-changing social, economic, and architectural landscape. Reflecting upon Paterson in a 2002 interview with The New York Times, Tice observed, “A place belongs to those who claim it.”
Each of these neglected locales is transformed by Tice's lens and craft into a masterful print. Profoundly moved by a platinum print of Frederick Evans’s Lincoln Cathedral: From the Castle (1898), Tice has devoted himself equally to the taking of photographs and to the craft of printing and has acquired a reputation as one of the most skillful darkroom printers of his generation. The uniquely desolate and painterly light of a George Tice print produces a mood not dissimilar to that found in an Edward Hopper painting. Tice served as Edward Steichen’s last printer and was entrusted to create limited-edition portfolios of photographs by Frederick Evans, Francis Bruguière, and Edward Weston.
Tice's photographs can be found in over 125 museum collections around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the J. Paul Getty Foundation. He has received numerous fellowships and commissions, including from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, as well as The Bradford Fellowship (U.K.).