San Francisco Weekly
-By Andrea Pflaumer
"Bedrooms," SF photographer Andrew McClintock's new one-man exhibit, opens May 2nd at the Bluesix Acoustic Room in the Mission. The show reveals a series of eighteen 20x20 color portraits taken in the bedrooms of people he describes as “artist/alternative youth.” Unlike similarly-themed images by (for example) photographer Adrienne Salinger, whose work has sometimes been branded as exploitative, McClintock portrays his subjects in an almost reverential light. “I give them respect and let them own the space,” he explains, “it’s more about the interaction between us...the actual shoot is an experience in itself... a conversation.”
These pictures are intriguing for the subjects alone, but also for how their 'stuff' reflects or is in contrast to the face they show the world. The first poignant portrait is of Brittney Lee Murphy, a lovely tow-headed performance artist, filmmaker and photographer - and to whom the book of the photos is dedicated - who overdosed at 21.
McClintock picked up his first camera, literally, next to a canal in Amsterdam while on a vacation with his mother at the age of nine: "I was eating a herring sandwich at the time" he says drolly. His first attempt at black and white photography, at the age of 13, were inspired by no less than Henry Cartier Bresson's joyful, kinetic black and white images. But environmental portraitist Arnold Newman and cultural recordist Richard Avedon also reverberate through his work. After a year at the Brooks School of Photography in Santa Barbara, he returned to San Francisco to complete his BFA at the SF Art Institute.
At 24, he's already hit the ground running, participating in a dizzying number of local and international festivals, including “Destroy Everything” in Brooklyn, New York and “Joy Ride” in New York, Paris and London. This year he participates again in that show, part of the Bicycle Film Festival, to be held in San Francisco, LA, Toronto and Tokyo.
“I see [photography] as a way for me to have a conversation with the medium’s roots and history” he explains. “It’s a way to figure out my human experience.”
“Bedrooms” Solo Show, by Andrew McClintock, Bluesix Acoustic Room,
3042 24th Street at Treat, San Francisco. May 2 (music and refreshments)
through June 1.
San Francisco Gaurdian
Some subjects naturally yield interesting photos, and I'd place bedrooms on or near a list of such. In the late '80s and early '90s, Adrienne Salinger trained her gaze on the nocturnal lairs of kids from Syracuse, NY, in a series straightforwardly titled Teenagers in their Bedrooms. But in general, photographers and film directors exploit or explore the inherent drama in such spaces, which often double as a form of self-expression. Not so Andrew McClintock. A West Coast answer of sorts to Salinger's youth shots, his limited edition handmade and hand-printed book Bedrooms presents portraits of SF residents between 20 and 33 years old. He signs copies of it at Foto-Grafix Books. (Huston)
Book In Collections of:
-Eric Kroll
-Mills College
-San Francisco Art Institute
-Zellerbach Family
-Brendt Barbur
-Alan Rapp
-Various Private Collectors
Juxtapoz
Andrew McClintock is a photographer with a penchant for bedroom mystique. At least that’s the conclusion we drew from the looks of his upcoming show, Bedrooms. This solo exhibit of large-scale color photography opens Friday, May 2nd at San Francisco’s Bluesix Acoustic Room. Although obviously posed, the subjects in McClintock’s photographs have a charmingly candid aura about them, as if they saw McClintock approaching while in their bedrooms and jumped up, managing to strike a pose before McClintock could catch them in their relaxed positioning. If you’d like to see more of his photos, you’ll have to settle for the old-fashioned, in-person route, as McClintock has confirmed he has no website!
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