Yuri began his career as an editorial photographer shooting feature portraits for magazine clients including GQ, HG, Vogue, and Rolling Stone. Exhibitions include solo shows at the Henry Street Settlement, Notre Dame University, Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, Robert B. Menschel Photography Gallery, NYC Arts for Transit, Grand Central Station, and Georgia State University. Awards include New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships, the Art Matters Grant, the NEA Travel Grants Pilot, and residencies at Light Work, Jamaica Arts Center and the MacDowell Colony. While he still shoots some commercial work he has found his true calling in the art world and spends the majority of his time pouring his soul into these works. He is currently working on an amazing new series which we will share with you shortly. These works are one of a kind and printed with a special process on the pages of books and documents hundreds of years old. Stay tuned…
Ellis Island Selected Works : Artists Statement
Objects of dreams and desires, I had long hoped to photograph there. When the chance came, the crumbling ruin was more daunting than I imagined, an endless maze of dank and decay, dead birds, musty smells, and asbestos dust. Yet it is beautiful, filled with strange objects, ghosts flickering in windows and on the walls. A museum of dust.
My photographic work explores issues of race, exile, and American identity. The child of European refugees, I was inspired by my family tragedies to search for universal meaning in stories that often divide more than they unite. Language and self-knowledge, patriotism and shame, timelessness and mortality; all are concurrent themes that run through my work.
PurePhoto Notes:
If it isn’t obvious what instantly drew us into the work of famed New York Artist Yuri Marder, spend a few minutes staring into the depth of these images and it should become abundantly clear. His groundbreaking work on Ellis Island earned him some of the top grants available to artists in the US. His work is the history of millions of american families, their roots, their legacy. This country was founded on the backs of those immigrant families who passed through these very same walls more than a century ago. We are honored to add Yuri to our collection and hope that this important artists will find a place in yours.
