Cy Twombly (1928-2011) — a celebrated painter and sculptor, but photographer as well — was American-born and educated, yet affectionately bound to European culture and sensibility. Inspired by Greek mythology and Mediterranean history, his work is rooted in the link between the past and present. While his musings on the past is at times blatant, like the litany of Greek figures ("Apollo Musagetes Phoebus Smintheus Agyieus Platanistius") scrawled on canvas, his reverence for history is more subtle in his photographic work.
The photographs, although chiefly serving as ideas and models for paintings or sculptures, reflect his thoughts on the past and the complex beauty of antiquity, in their own right. The photographs — soft, ethereal, colorful celebrations of fleeting moments — are inherently poetic. The photographs here make it clear how photography informed Twombly's successful career. We invite you to take time and pleasure in what you find in them.
— Catherine Rierson
Photos courtesy of The Lambert Collection in Avignon, France.
FeatureLe Temps RetrouvéCy Twombly’s photographs, although chiefly serving as ideas and models for paintings or sculptures, reflect his thoughts on the past and the complex beauty of antiquity in their own right.View Images
Feature
Le Temps Retrouvé
Cy Twombly’s photographs, although chiefly serving as ideas and models for paintings or sculptures, reflect his thoughts on the past and the complex beauty of antiquity in their own right.
Le Temps Retrouvé
Cy Twombly’s photographs, although chiefly serving as ideas and models for paintings or sculptures, reflect his thoughts on the past and the complex beauty of antiquity in their own right.
Trending this Week
Call Me Heena: Hijra, The Third Gender
“I feel like a mermaid. My body tells me that I am a man but my soul tells me that I am a woman…” A penetrating, multi-year report on a unique group of people—who fall outside of Western notions of gender—trying to carve out a...
Announcing the 2019 Street Photography Award Winners!
Discover 39 remarkable photographers who are using photography to capture and share their unique perspective from the streets around them.
Life from a Tube: The London Underground
The world’s subway riders have inspired photographers for decades—this work stands with the best of them, capturing London’s Tube riders with humanity, humor and delight. Hear the full story behind this decades-long labor of love.
Joining Wonder
In this book about the lasting impact of war, Binh Danh and Robert Schultz create chlorophyll prints out of leaves found at historical sites in the USA.
Bond
Hiking for months on end through a remote archipelago in Finland, artist Anna Reivilä uses Japanese bonding techniques to create striking land art.
The Faithful
In her luminous black and white photographs taken over the course of five years at various pilgrimage sites, Alys Tomlinson finds a way to visualize faith and devotion.
Related
Relief
Large-scale camera-less photograms look like luscious three dimensional abstract visions of liquid color while invoking an emotional connection to the real.
Alaska Watershed Calligraphy
Intimate, temporary geographies of stream flow and seasonal rounds of freeze and thaw.
The Power of Collections: Learning From San Francisco’s Pier 24
Precious insights from Chris McCall, the director of one of America’s preeminent photographic institutions—a unique, contemplative space unlike any other.
Rememories
Surreal and fun — this young French photographer makes the impossible look real, creating landscapes of dreams made visible.
Crossing Latin America: People and the Street
During 9 months on the road across Latin America, this photographer captured unrepeatable and unpredictable moments of human existence—all the through intuitive and aesthetic prism of her own worldview.
Gentlemen’s Club
The first prize series winner of our 2017 Portrait Awards focuses on the oft-overlooked other half of the prostitution business—the clients themselves.