Catherine DeLattre

Shoppers, Broadway Upper West Side, NYC, 1979-80 and other corners

Curated by Cay Sophie Rabinowitz

Oct 30 – Nov 30, 2024

Catherine DeLattre, Shoppers, Broadway, Upper West Side, NYC, 1979-80, archival digital inkjet prints on Hahnemuhle Baryta 325 GSM, appx. 38,1 x 38,1 cm. Courtesy of the artist and OSMOS
Catherine DeLattre, Shoppers, Broadway, Upper West Side, NYC, 1979-80, archival digital inkjet prints on Hahnemuhle Baryta 325 GSM, appx. 38,1 x 38,1 cm. Courtesy of the artist and OSMOS
Catherine DeLattre, Shoppers, Broadway, Upper West Side, NYC, 1979-80, archival digital inkjet prints on Hahnemuhle Baryta 325 GSM, appx. 38,1 x 38,1 cm. Courtesy of the artist and OSMOS
Catherine DeLattre, Shoppers, Broadway, Upper West Side, NYC, 1979-80, archival digital inkjet prints on Hahnemuhle Baryta 325 GSM, appx. 38,1 x 38,1 cm. Courtesy of the artist and OSMOS
Catherine DeLattre, Shoppers, Broadway, Upper West Side, NYC, 1979-80, archival digital inkjet prints on Hahnemuhle Baryta 325 GSM, appx. 38,1 x 38,1 cm. Courtesy of the artist and OSMOS
Catherine DeLattre, Shoppers, Broadway, Upper West Side, NYC, 1979-80, archival digital inkjet prints on Hahnemuhle Baryta 325 GSM, appx. 38,1 x 38,1 cm. Courtesy of the artist and OSMOS

Catherine DeLattre grew up in Monongahela, Pennsylvania, a small town near the heavily industrial area of Pittsburgh. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, she studied archaeology at Kent State where a course in basic photography was a requirement for recording in archaeological digs. That led her to the Art Photography program at Purdue where the focus was on black-and-white, but where DeLattre became more interested in color under the influence of her teacher Vern Cheek, and the then contemporary color work of photographers such as William Eggleston, Joe Maloney, Joel Meyerowitz, Jan Groover, Eve Sonneman and Joel Sternfeld. After a series of teaching gigs that took her from Rockport, Maine to Poughkeepsie, by 1979 DeLattre had saved enough money to move to New York City where she found a $200/month sublet on the Upper West Side and a part time job teaching darkroom at ICP. The colorful, eccentric, mostly elderly, women that shopped and lived in that neighborhood were her first impression of New York City. In DeLattre’s own words, “they looked so put together with makeup, outfits, and hairdos but at the same time so vulnerable. I related to that. I loved how they dressed up to go to the bank and the grocery store and run every day errands.” Almost every day from 1979 through 1980, she shot 120 Kodak color negative film with a TLR Mamiya which allowed her to remain anonymous when capturing street photographs of passersby. “It was an opportunity to photograph a passing generation. … Color was integral to my images in mood and description of the people and time. Color is still my main focus today, although in a more formal way than my street photos of the 1970s and 1980s.” Cay Sophie Rabinowitz

As part of its participation in the PhotoSaintGermain festival, which opens on October 30, 2024, Abraham & Wolff is pleased to exhibit the work of Catherine DeLattre in collaboration with OSMOS, NYC, through a selection of photographs from the series Shoppers, Broadway Upper West Side, NYC, 1979-80.