April 2025
George Tice (American, 1938-2025)
Hudson’s Fish Market, Atlantic City, New Jersey
1973
Gelatin silver print
Joseph Bellows Gallery
Seeing beyond the moment
In the last posting on the work of Peter Hujar I was speaking of photographers that I have a particular affinity for. Another such artist is the now departed American photographer George Tice (1938-2025) with his large format black and white photographs of the urban landscape, mainly taken around the city of New Jersey where he lived for most of his life.
I have written twice before on the work of this magnificent photographer when he was alive: “An American iconography” on the exhibition George Tice: Urban Landscapes at the Joseph Bellows Gallery, September – October 2016; and text on the exhibition George Tice Lifework: A Tribute, Photographs 1953-2013 at Joseph Bellows Gallery, June – July 2022.
Précising these texts, I would say that Tice’s ongoing epic visual poem is at its strongest in his early period, from 1973-1974.
Tice, like Atget, had an innate ability to place the camera in such as position as to reveal subject matter in a new light. More intuitive, more sensitive to other ways of seeing, these great photographers look at the world from a different point of view. Tice’s recognition of subject matter that mere mortals pass by is translated into beautiful, serene, tonal and dare I say, sensual images, that belie the complexity of their previsualisation. As Sanford Schwartz in The New York Times, on December 3, 1972 noted: “Tice’s pictures… show a remarkable blend of intimacy, affection and clear-sightedness.”
Tice’s consumate control of the construction of the image plane never gets in the way of the elemental, eternal, and magical aspects of the photograph. As he observed, “The great difficulty of what I attempt is seeing beyond the moment; the everydayness of life gets in the way of the eternal.”
It is to his great credit that Tice saw beyond the moment. He felt that magical something when you have a connection to your subject and take a special photograph, revealed in the negative and then the print. He embedded that feeling in photographs that radiate his own signature.
For his are not only photographs of the phenomenal but also the noumenal, that feeling of something ineffable that we cannot put our finger on, something in this world that is close to the ineffable mysteries of the soul – a feeling, an emotional energy of connection to earth, body, spirit and soul – for the photograph has the ability to go beyond the symbolic, to approach the impossible, the real.
Through his photographs Tice reached beyond the everyday. What more does one need to say?
Travel well on your great journey my friend.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Joseph Bellows Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image
George Tice (American, 1938-2025)
Rooftops, 21st and King Street, Paterson, New Jersey
1969
Gelatin silver print
Joseph Bellows Gallery
George Tice (American, 1938-2025)
Route #440 Overpass, Perth Amboy, 1973
1973
Gelatin silver print
Joseph Bellows Gallery
George Tice (American, 1938-2025)
Tenement Rooftops, Hoboken, New Jersey
1974
Gelatin silver print
Joseph Bellows Gallery
George Tice (American, 1938-2025)
Railroad Bridge, High Bridge, New Jersey, 1974
1974
Gelatin silver print
Joseph Bellows Gallery
George Tice (American, 1938-2025)
Pulaski Skyway, Jersey City, New Jersey, 1974
1974
Gelatin silver print
Joseph Bellows Gallery
George Tice (American, 1938-2025)
Petit’s Mobil Station, Cherry Hill, New Jersey
1974
Gelatin silver print
Joseph Bellows Gallery
George Tice (American, 1938-2025)
Industrial Landscape, Kearny, New Jersey
1973
Gelatin silver print
Joseph Bellows Gallery
Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
The Hand of Man
1902
Photogravure
George Tice (American, 1938-2025)
Drawbridge, Morgan, New Jersey, 1973
1973
Gelatin silver print
Joseph Bellows Gallery
George Tice (American, 1938-2025)
Houses and Water Towers, Moorestown, New Jersey, 1973
1973
Gelatin silver print
Joseph Bellows Gallery
George Tice (American, 1938-2025)
Goldy Pharmacy, Mount Holly, New Jersey, 1974
1974
Gelatin silver print
Joseph Bellows Gallery
George Tice (American, 1938-2025)
Steve’s Diner, Route 130, North Brunswick, 1974
1974
Gelatin silver print
Joseph Bellows Gallery
George Tice (American, 1938-2025)
Lexington Avenue, Passaic, New Jersey, 1973
1973
Gelatin silver print
Joseph Bellows Gallery
George Tice (American, 1938-2025)
Dari O’ Lite, Wood Avenue, Linden, New Jersey, 1973
1973
Gelatin silver print
Joseph Bellows Gallery
George Tice (American, 1938-2025)
Palace Funhouse, Ashbury Park, New Jersey, 1995
1995
Gelatin silver print
Joseph Bellows Gallery
George Tice (American, 1938-2025)
Car For Sale, Paterson, New Jersey, 1969
1969
Gelatin silver print
Joseph Bellows Gallery
George Tice (American, 1938-2025)
Jahos Brothers Clothing Store, Trenton, NJ, 1973
1973
Gelatin silver print
Joseph Bellows Gallery
George Tice (American, 1938-2025)
Esso Station and Tenement House, Hoboken, NJ, 1972
1972
Gelatin silver print
Joseph Bellows Gallery
George Tice (American, 1938-2025)
Minnie’s Go-Go, Route 130, Merchantville, 1975
1975
Gelatin silver print
Joseph Bellows Gallery
George Tice (American, 1938-2025)
Telephone Booth, 3 am, Railway, NJ, 1974
1974
Gelatin silver print
Joseph Bellows Gallery
Joseph Bellows Gallery
7661 Girrard Avenue
La Jolla, California
Phone: 858 456 5620
Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 5pm and by appointment