Bill Travis - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Bill Travis is an American photographer known for his cityscapes and the sensual male figure.

His discovery of photography came through art history—he earned a Ph.D. in medieval art and taught at the university level for several years—and this background has influenced his creative work. From 1995 to 2002, his photography of medieval sculpture and architecture appeared in print in prestigious journals, ranging from Arte medievale (Italy) to Artibus et Historiae
Artibus et Historiae
Artibus et Historiae is a semi-annual publication of art historical research published by IRSA since 1980...

(Poland), Gazette des Beaux-Arts
Gazette des Beaux-Arts
The Gazette des Beaux-Arts was a French art review, found in 1859 by Édouard Houssaye, with Charles Blanc as its first chief editor. It was a world reference work on art history for nearly 100 years - one other editor in chief, from 1955 to 1987, was Jean Adhémar...

(France), Konsthistorisk Tidskrift
Konsthistorisk tidskrift
Konsthistorisk tidskrift is a quarterly peer-reviewed Swedish academic journal on art history that was established in 1932 by Konsthistoriska sällskapet in Stockholm. The journal was published until 1967 under the full title Konsthistorisk tidskrift: revy för konst och konstforskning...

(Sweden), and Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte (Germany).

Beginning in 2003, he expanded his subject matter to the male nude and took to experimenting with photographic transfers on gilt boards, using a technique of his invention that let the gold shine through to the surface. The result is something close in spirit to the Byzantine icon

Icon

An icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and in certain Eastern Catholic churches...

. More recently, Travis has developed other techniques that explore the frontier between painting and photography, such as transfers on glass and tinfoil. The cities he has photographed most extensively are New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

, and Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

.

A Manhattan-based photographer, Travis has shown his work internationally and has had three museum exhibitions, in Rafaela (Argentina), Berlin, and Castelgandolfo (near Rome). He was interviewed for Italian television on RomaUno in June 2005 and has lectured on his art at Columbia University. His works belong to several public and private collections around the world.
Portfolios in print media include Pref (2009), David Leddick's The Nude Male: 21st Century Visions (2008), Gab (2008) and Mein schwules Auge 3 (2006). Brian Paul Clamp, author of an essay in Travis’s recent monograph, Along the Appian Way (2007), writes of an “otherworld [in this body of work] where the real and the imaginary intersect.” A second monograph, Parks and Gardens in Lazio: A Meditation, appeared in 2008. Writing in the exhibition catalogue to the show in Castelgandolfo, Stefano Abbadessa Mercanti finds in his art “an unusual character that recalls the great works of the past, while also addressing contemporary issues.”
Images can be seen on his website, www.billtravisphoto.com

General references

Pref, February 2009. (two pages)

David Leddick, The Nude Male: 21st Century Visions, New York: Universe, 2008. (portfolio)

Bill Travis, Parks and Gardens in Lazio: A Meditation, Grottaferrata (Italy): Mercanti, 2008. (monograph with 50 full-color illustrations)

“Romantik verspricht mehr: Unter Wasser mit Bill Travis,” Gab Magazin, February 2008, pp. 24–25. (portfolio)

Krystyna Lemanowicz, Z miloscia ku swiatlu Pila (Poland), 2007. (sample photographs, including bookcover)

Bill Travis, Along the Appian Way, with an essay by Brian Paul Clamp, Grottaferrata (Italy): Mercanti, 2007. (monograph with 51 full-color illustrations)

Rinaldo Hopf and Axel Shock, Mein schwules Auge 3, Tübingen (Germany), 2006. (portfolio)

The Intimate Portrait/Ritratto Intimo: Bill Travis, Chiara Abbaticchio, exh. cat., Grottaferrata (Italy), 2005. (two-person show)

Public collections

Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.

Société française de photographie

Société française de photographie

The Société française de photographie is an association, founded in 1854, devoted to the history of photography. It has a large collection of photographs and old cameras...

, Paris.

Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, DC.

Yale University, New Haven, CT.

Portuguese Center of Photography, Porto.

Photography Collection, New York Public Library.

Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts, Hokuto (Japan).

Museo de la Fotografía, Rafaela (Argentina).

Schwules Museum, Berlin.

The Kinsey Institute, Indiana University, Bloomington.

New York University, New York City.

External links

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