All photos © Adam Bartos. Mombasa, Kenya (park), 1980.

Adam Bartos’s current exhibition at the Gitterman Gallery includes never before exhibited color photographs that were made in North and East Africa and Mexico in the early Eighties, and recent images made in Long Island, New York, between 2007 and 2010.

Bartos’s interest in the 19th century travel work of Samuel Bourne, Robert MacPherson and others, led him to Egypt, Kenya and Mexico with a large-format camera and color film. None of the photographs are constructed wholly from incident or narrative. As Geoff Dyer notes in the introduction to Bartos’s book Boulevard: “His pictures are like self-portraits of the things in them.”

The same impulse is present in his recent work, although the subject matter is found much closer to home in Long Island. These images have been printed using a four-color carbon transfer process that, with its tonal range and description of fine detail, emphasizes Bartos’s subtle color palette and formal compositions. Bartos’s exhibition is currently on view through May 5, 2012.

– Courtesy of Gitterman Gallery

Cairo, Egypt (Ramses Hilton under construction), 1980.

Kenya (lamp and pitcher), 1980.

County Road 80, Southampton, NY, 2010.

Above: Teotihuacan, Mexico (agave plants), 1981.