Renowned photographer to show works at Butler

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

A mid-career exhibition of the work of Holger Keifel, one of America’s finest fine arts photographers, will open Sunday at the Butler Institute of American Art and run through April 7.

“Holger Keifel: Only in America” will be on view in the Davis Gallery on the second floor. The photographer will meet the public and give a gallery talk from 1 to 3 p.m. April 7 at the museum. Admission is free.

Keifel’s upcoming exhibit is part of the Butler’s 100th anniversary celebration schedule and is his third at the museum.

His first Butler show was “WTC Rescue Workers” in 2002, which documented first-responders after the 9/11 terror attack.

Keifel’s “A Portrait of American Boxing” was exhibited at the Butler’s Trumbull Branch in 2004 and included a portrait of Youngstown native and boxing champion Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini.

The “Only in America” show comprises 39 photographs and draws from various themes that have interested Keifel in recent years. He focuses on subjects representing aspects of life in America that he has observed since his immigration from Germany 25 years ago.

The exhibition combines several photographic series of iconic portraits and symbolic still lifes captured in the years between the mid-1990s and 2018. it includes five of the “WTC Rescue Workers” portraits, which are part of the Butler collection.

Keifel’s photographs have been featured in The New York Times Magazine, Der Spiegel, Icon magazine (Italy), Esquire and American Photography, on book and CD covers as well as in numerous book projects, and in museum and gallery shows.

His work is included in several museum collections, including the National Portrait Gallery, The Charles Schulz Museum, The Brooklyn Museum and the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

Two of his “Boxing” prints were on display from May 2015 to June 2016 at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., which were acquired by the museum in 2014.

In 2010, this collection of portraits of more than 250 people in the world of boxing were published in his book “BOX – The Face of Boxing” (PQ Blackwell/Chronicle Books).