Jon Naar’s Getting the Picture at Rider University
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Rider University will host a photography retrospective highlighting a half-century of work from internationally acclaimed photographer Jon Naar from September 18 through October 26 at the Rider University Art Gallery. Jon Naar: Getting the Picture 1958-2008 will detail 50 years of the Trenton-based artist’s fine arts and commercial photography, and include approximately 60 of his photographs. The Rider Art Gallery is located on the 3rd Floor of the University’s Bart Luedeke Center.
“After a lifetime of taking photographs, I still believe today, as I did 67 years ago when I photographed a building at the British Empire Exhibition in Glasgow, that photography is a magical process,” Naar explained. “However, like all magic, the process is not automatic, nor is it easy. Sometimes catching the decisive moment to take the picture requires waiting for the confluence of light, shadow and other elements to coalesce. At other times, the picture is just there for the taking.”
Jon Naar: Getting the Picture 1958-2008 is divided into five main groups: Early Work, Artists and their Environment, Design and Architecture, Graffiti and Work in Progress. Some of the artists, designers and other celebrities Naar has photographed include Josef Albers, Andy Warhol, Henry Moore, Marino Marini, Marcel Breuer and British Prime Minister Harold Wilson.
Naar has also photographed a series of artists, particularly Tom George, John Goodyear, Margaret Johnson, Carl Burger, Isaac Witkin, Nancy Hagin, Peter Stroud and Bruce Rigby, whose work has been exhibited at Rider University during the past five years and whose portraits will be included in the exhibition.
The September 18 opening of Jon Naar: Getting the Picture 1958-2008 will also feature an Artist Reception from 5 to 7 p.m., where Naar will greet visitors to the exhibition. Naar will also be on hand on Thursday, September 25, for an Artist’s Talk at 7 p.m. in the Art Gallery. There, Naar will autograph copies of his 12th book, The Birth of Graffiti, published by Prestel Press, as well.
An exhibition of Naar’s work drew a record-breaking 15,000 visitors to the Jan Cunen Museum in the Netherlands in 2005. As an accompaniment to the exhibit, he published Getting the Picture, whose title inspired the name of this fall’s exhibit at Rider University.
Naar began as a part-time, fine arts photographer in the late 1950s, displaying photographs in the Metropolitan Museum, the International Center of Photography, and other collections throughout the United States and Europe. In 1964, he became a full-time professional photographer whose reportages and portraits were published in The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Fortune, House & Garden, Domus, Elle and The Weekend Telegraph, as well as many other magazines.
Starting in the mid-1960s, Naar also began shooting photographs for corporate annual reports, brochures, and advertisements for a wide range of clients, including IBM, Merck, Knoll International, Pentagram Design, Chase Manhattan Bank, Reuters, and Air India.
Naar is also the author of 12 books, which have covered a range of topics as diverse as design and architecture, environment, ecology, portraiture, photojournalism and fine art.
In 1957, Naar won the Thomas Alva Edison award for writing The Story of America. His 1974 book, The Faith of Graffiti, which included an introduction by Norman Mailer, is now considered an iconic collector’s item in the history of street art, while Design for a Limited Planet, published in 1976, was the first popular book on solar energy, selling more than 100,000 copies. Naar also co-authored, along with Alex J. Naar, Design for a Limited Planet, which earned the American Library Association Best Book of the Year for Young Adults in 1990.
Jon Naar: Getting the Picture 1958-2008 is funded by a grant from the Mercer County Cultural and Heritage Commission, part of the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Department of State.
The Rider University Art Gallery is open every Tuesday to Thursday, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., and on Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. For more information on Jon Naar: Getting the Picture 1958-2008, please contact Harry I. Naar, director of the Rider University Art Gallery, at 609-895-5588.
