David And Ann On The Subway, N.Y., Nov. 28
Signed Print

David And Ann On The Subway, N.Y., Nov. 28 is a signed photographic print and part of a limited edition of 15. Produced in 1982, a year which saw Hockney experiment at length with photography – a medium he saw as a carrier of great artistic and representational potential – this print depicts a scene of the interior of a subway car. Mimicking the spherical perspective of the human eye, photographs are layered over one another, allowing for an in-depth view of both Hockney’s fellow passengers and the details of the train in which they are travelling. Photographs, which Hockney had often used as a reference point during the creation of his many painterly works, frustrated him: they ‘didn’t really have life in the way a drawing or painting did’. As such, Hockney wished to move away from what he once described as the ‘lifeless’ and static ‘frozen moment’ captured by single photos; bringing many of them together in order to shift the constraining boundaries of the photograph as artistic medium, here we are offered an insight into the persistent rattle of the train, screeching through the dark tunnels of subterranean New York, and the abrupt swaying of those within it.