Rob Lang received his first camera at the age of five. It was the beginning of a creative life observing the world through a lens. While studying for his Master's Degree at New York University, Lisette Model, the extraordinary documentary photographer, saw one of Rob’s photographs of a woman at Coney Island beach and immediately invited him to join her Master Class. Soon after graduating he began work as both a commercial and fine-art photographer.
Rob uses the camera for the exploration of a wide range of subjects. In his portraits of individuals, he seeks to reveal their essence. In his body studies, he celebrates the sculptural aspects of the human form. In his abstracts he invites us to discover the hidden images beneath what appears to the eye, and in so doing we question if the works are those of a painter.
Whether in New Mexico, where Rob currently resides, creating his impressionistic visions of the vastness of White Sands and the sweep of the numerous mountains ranges, or his time in the Hamptons, observing the seascapes and boats in dry dock, he finds the beauty in all things natural as well as the esoteric.
LAND CURRENTS
Land Currents is a celebration of the New Mexico landscape.
The series honors the energy of the Southwest and its effect on my spirit of living in Santa Fe.
Movement is created by allowing myself to feel the energy of the landscape.
Colors and actions are made in the camera and not in post-production.
Some influences of my work include J.M.W. Turner, Jackson Pollack, Yves Klein, Georgia O'Keefe,
Robert Smithson, and Helen Frankenthaler.
THE HIDDEN VOYAGE PROJECT
Exploring dry docks, Rob Lang has scoured harbors around the world – on the eastern seaboard, in Greece,
in the post-Katrina wreckage of New Orleans-capturing the elusive beauty of the undersides of boats.
The photographs that make up his Hidden Voyage Project capture the beauty and decay of time’s effect on these mysterious hulls;
cropping all contextual visual information that anchors the hulls to their actual function,
Lang extracts phenomenal pictures from their worn surfaces. These are photographs of what lie hidden and dark in cool waters,
to emerge occasionally into the light of day, fully revealed only by Lang’s camera.
Pictorial kin to abstract expressionism, in Lang’s photographs one recognizes motifs developed
by painters Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko, or their contemporaries Aaron Siskind and Minor White.
Drawing on these photographic precedents, Lang introduces a sensitive awareness of color into their abstract vocabulary.
With Lang’s images one may be cognizant of what they actually depict, but more likely surrender to their abstract evocations.
They are on the one hand documents conveying factual information and on the other hand pictures with compelling aesthetic value.
In fact their clever simulation of paintings throws the photographic basis of these images into doubt.
And yet in the Hidden Voyage Project there is an uncanny correlation between what is represented and
the material process of photography itself.
Lang’s pictures distill a fragment of each boat’s narrative into the strange language of its own
particular patina, ignored or overlooked by most. The photographs plumb such forgotten
histories, but also enable the viewer to create their own tales. Lang remains a conveyor of unabashedly beautiful images:
of sumptuous colors, of compelling textures, of indulgent surfaces –
celebrations of the ecstatic beauty that remains hidden in the everyday, etched upon the surfaces of time.
LAND AND SEA
Rob Lang’s new photographs of seascapes are influenced by both Turner and Monet. “ In
order to get the painterly quality of my images, I have chosen to work in camera rather than in
post production of the computer. My camera is the paintbrush not the computer.”
Lang’s process is a dance with nature. He seems to be stroking the land and sea, studying the
patterns and light. If you see Lang out on the beach, his movement glides and shifts along the
shore as if he himself is stirring up the waves. “I wait for the right light the right timing and then I
get moving. Its an extraordinary spiritual and mental creative journey.