Exhibition dates: 21st June – 30th July 2022
George Tice (American, b. 1938)
Petit’s Mobil Station, Cherry Hill, New Jersey
1974
Gelatin silver print
8 x 10 inches
I have always loved the work of George Tice. I have one of his photographs in my collection. I think his work is very underrated.
Tice’s consumate control of the construction of the image plane never gets in the way of the elemental, eternal, and magical aspects of the photograph.
Photographers such as Tice, and Atget, have an innate ability to place the camera in such as position as to reveal the subject matter in a new light. More intuitive, more sensitive to other ways of seeing, these great photographers look at the world from a different point of view.
In this posting, the hovering spaceship that is Petit’s Mobil Station, Cherry Hill, New Jersey (1974, above) is a superb example of this … almost hallucinatory feeling in the image. Other mesmerising photographs include the Cubist Houses and Water Towers, Moorestown, New Jersey (1973, below) and Industrial Landscape, Kearny, New Jersey (1973, below) with its acknowledgment of Alfred Stieglitz’s The Hand of Man (1902, below). Notice how Tice lowers the level of his camera when compared to Stieglitz’s photograph, thus raising the horizon line, so we now follow the bare, ascending train tracks to the massed stacks of the barren industrial landscape instead of looking down on the scene as in The Hand of Man. Here is a master of previsualisation at work.
Other photographs have already been seen in postings on Art Blart, but it is always a pleasure to look at George Tice’s work – especially his dusk and night time photographs such as New International Cinema, New Brunswick, New Jersey (1974, below), Steve’s Diner, Route 130, North Brunswick, New Jersey (1974, below) and Ideal Diner, Perth Amboy, New Jersey (1980, below). There are hints of the intimacies of Walker Evans and the clinical observations of Bernd and Hiller Becker in Tice’s work, but somehow he always makes images which possess his own signature, his own creative writing.
Following on from last week’s posting where I was banging on about the “spiritual” in contemporary photography (and by “spiritual” I mean an energy and feeling for subject matter captured in the negative and then revealed in the image), the photographs I have presented by Tice in this posting are a perfect example of this alternate perspective. As he observes, “The great difficulty of what I attempt is seeing beyond the moment; the everydayness of life gets in the way of the eternal.”
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Joseph Bellows Gallery for allowing me to publish the photograph in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“It takes the passage of 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.”
George Tice
George Tice (American, b. 1938)
Houses and Water Towers, Moorestown, New Jersey
1973
Gelatin silver print
11 x 14 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938)
Industrial Landscape, Kearny, New Jersey
1973
Gelatin silver print
8 x 10 inches
Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
The Hand of Man
1902
Photogravure
24.1 × 31.8cm (9 1/2 × 12 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
A locomotive engine steams toward the camera on its barely visible tracks, wearing a billowing black cloud of smoke like a plumed hat. The criss-crossing lines of tracks beside it snake off toward the horizon, and the telephone poles at the left appear to be making the same march. Alfred Stieglitz’s composition is a treatise on the importance of the machine in the modern Industrial Age. The title of the photograph, The Hand of Man, sets up a comparison between the machine that is depicted and the human artistic impulse that created the image. Stieglitz reproduced this photograph in the January 1903 issue of Camera Work, a journal that he both founded and edited. In the early 1930s he returned to the image and printed additional photographs.
Text from the Google Arts and Culture website
George Tice (American, b. 1938)
Railroad Bridge, High Bridge, New Jersey
1974
Gelatin silver print
8 x 10 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938)
Rooftops, 21st and King Street, Paterson, New Jersey
1969
Vintage gelatin silver print
16 x 20 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938)
Tenement Rooftops, Hoboken, New Jersey
1974
Vintage gelatin silver print
8 x 10 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938)
Pulaski Skyway, Jersey City, New Jersey
1974
Vintage gelatin silver print
8 x 10 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938)
Drawbridge, Morgan, New Jersey
1973
Vintage gelatin silver print
8 x 10 inches
The gallery’s current exhibition is a tribute to the lifework of George Tice, including many vintage prints of both famous and lesser-known images. Signed copies of his new book, Lifework, 1953-2013, are also available.
Tice is drawn to vestiges of American culture on the verge of extinction-from people in rural or small-town communities to suburban buildings and neighbourhoods that are often in decline. Although he has photographed throughout the Northwestern United States, he is best known for pictures of his native New Jersey, and the impeccable quality of his black-and-white prints.
Tice was born and raised in Newark, New Jersey – the state in which his ancestors had settled generations earlier. At fourteen, he joined a camera club. A turning point in his self-training happened two years later when a professional photographer critiquing club members’ work praised his picture of an alleyway. Tice briefly studied commercial photography at Newark Vocational and Technical High School; he then joined the Navy. A published image he made of an explosion aboard an American ship caught the eye of photographer Edward Steichen, who purchased it for The Museum of Modern Art. For about a decade, Tice worked as a portrait photographer and helped establish a gallery. That success enabled him to concentrate on personal projects.
In the 1960s, Tice shifted from smaller camera formats to larger ones, which enabled him to craft carefully toned and detailed prints. He portrayed traditional Amish and Shaker communities, as well as the hard lives of fishermen in Maine. In the 1970s, Tice began exploring his home state. Those photographs formed the beginnings of his Urban Landscapes series, which he worked on until the year 2000.
Text from the Joseph Bellows Gallery website
George Tice (American, b. 1938)
Strand Theater, Keyport, New Jersey
1973
Gelatin silver print
16 x 20 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938)
New International Cinema, New Brunswick, New Jersey
1974
Vintage gelatin silver print
8 x 10 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938)
Ideal Diner, Perth Amboy, New Jersey
1980
Gelatin silver print
11 x 14 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938)
Steve’s Diner, Route 130, North Brunswick, New Jersey
1974
Vintage gelatin silver print
16 x 20 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938)
Palace Funhouse, Ashbury Park, New Jersey
1995
Gelatin silver print
16 x 20 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938)
Lexington Avenue, Passaic, New Jersey
1973
Vintage gelatin silver print
8 x 10 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938)
Goldy Pharmacy, Mount Holly, New Jersey
1974
vintage gelatin silver print
8 x 10 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938)
Gar’s Bakery and Leisure Laundry, Newark, New Jersey
1974
Vintage gelatin silver print
8 x 10 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938)
Dari O’ Lite, Wood Avenue, Linden, New Jersey
1973
Vintage gelatin silver print
8 x 10 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938)
Jimmy’s Bar and Grill, Newark, New Jersey
1973
Gelatin silver print
8 x 10 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938)
Hudson’s Fish Market, Atlantic City, New Jersey
1973
Vintage gelatin silver print
8 x 10 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938)
Houses, Ocean Grove, New Jersey
1974
Vintage gelatin silver print
8 x 10 inches
George Tice (American, b. 1938)
Dorn’s Photoshop, Red Bank, New Jersey
1999
Gelatin silver print
16 x 20 inches
Joseph Bellows Gallery
7661 Girrard Avenue
La Jolla, California
Phone: 858 456 5620
Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 5pm and by appointment
Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive 
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