Gordon Fearey

Gordon Fearey photographs fabric and clothing that he places under water. His medium is richly suggestive. In many instances, the pictures evoke unearthly landscapes that recede from a familiar ripple to infinite space, complete with galaxies and black holes. In other cases, underwater pictures of stripes or plaids suggest a distortion of systems or structures in the real world.

Trained as a painter, Fearey manipulates his subjects with a long stick. The clothing changes shape and moves in and out of sunlight. Recognizable odds and ends – such as a pine needle, insect, or button – enter and exit the frame as he's working. Every painterly shot is an interplay between the surface of the water and what's underneath. “Below the surface" is a psychological reference that he takes literally.

However, Fearey avoids explicit references to the body or water burial of his earlier work and his medium is all about fabric and pattern; by taking a closeup view of his subject, he finds a way to merge human creation with a more universal landscape fabric, in many cases on a grand scale.

Born in 1950 in New York City, Fearey received his undergraduate degree in fine arts from Yale University. He lives and works outside New York City in Irvington, New York.