Real Estate #906515
1990
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
chromogenic print
Dimensions
image: 15.24 × 22.86 cm (6 × 9 in.) sheet: 20.32 × 25.4 cm (8 × 10 in.)
Classification
Photograph
Department
CPH
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of David Knaus, in Honor of the 25th Anniversary of Photography at the National Gallery of Art
Accession Number
2014.159.1.5
Art Historical Context
Henry Wessel's *Real Estate #906515* (1990) captures the everyday poetry of the American landscape through a chromogenic print, a color photographic process that yields vibrant, stable images from negatives or transparencies. This intimate 6 × 9-inch image, printed on an 8 × 10-inch sheet, exemplifies Wessel's mastery of color photography in the late 20th century, a time when artists increasingly embraced the medium to document suburban sprawl and urban edges with unflinching clarity. The title hints at Wessel's fascination with real estate signage and vacant properties, a recurring motif in ...
About the Artist
Henry Wessel
Henry Wessel (1942–2018) was an American photographer celebrated for his spare, clear-eyed photographs of everyday life in the American West and beyond. Born in Teaneck, New Jersey, he studied at Pennsylvania State University and later at the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he worked with the influential photographer Minor White. White's emphasis on photography as a medium of carefu...