Snowflakes @ Davis & Langdale

I've always been a sucker for photos of microscopic phenomena of any kind; it seems that many people respond to immediacy of the art/science connection. These images elicit a child-like sense of wonder that is often dormant in our day-to-day "just the facts, 'maam" existence. I am planning to see the snowflakes in the next few days before it closes.

Davis & Langdale Company, Inc.
231 East 60th Street, New York NY 10022
telephone: 212 838 0333
hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 10am until 5pm

"Snowflake" Bentley: Vintage Photomicrographs by Wilson A. Bentley (1865-1931)
November 20 through December 18, 2004

"SNOWFLAKE" BENTLEY: VINTAGE PHOTOMICROGRAPHS BY W.A. BENTLEY (1865-1931) will consist of seventeen vintage photographs of snowflakes, taken by Wilson A. Bentley, better known as "Snowflake" Bentley. It includes two examples from the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

WILSON A. BENTLEY coined the phrase "No two snowflakes are alike." He grew up in Vermont, and developed a life-long fascination for snow. His parents indulged his interest, buying him a special camera to photograph the flakes individually. The process was difficult, made more so by the temporary nature of the subject – many snowflakes melted before BENTLEY could capture their images on film, making the photographs extremely rare.

BENTLEY's work will be featured in House & Garden magazine's December 2004 issue. He was the subject of a Caldecott Medal-winning book, Snowflake Bentley, by Jacqueline Briggs Martin (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998), and a biography by Duncan C. Blanchard, The Snowflake Man: A Biography of Wilson A. Bentley (McDonald & Woodward Publishing Company, 1998). BENTLEY himself published numerous articles about his work in magazines such as Harper's Monthly, Popular Science, and The New York Times Magazine, as well as a book, Snow Crystals, later republished as Snowflakes in Photographs (Dover Publications, 2000)."
- The Art Dealers Association of America