Mitchell-Innes & Nash in New York is currently showing two Leigh Ledare photographic collections which explore the relationship between photographer and subject in some extraordinary ways.
The most recent of the series is 2012’s An Invitation, which came about following a private commission from a high powered European woman in the fields of politics and media who wanted to be immortalised in an series of erotic shots. Redacting the woman’s identity from the images, Ledare has repositioned seven of them as a central intervention over front pages of the New York Times from each day of his one-week stay at the woman’s home. A contract between Ledare and the mysterious woman is also on display as part of the exhibition, detailing the implications of any breaches of privacy.
Double Bind began as a project in 2010, when Ledare took his former wife Meghan up to an isolated country cabin and photographed her over four days. Two months later, she repeated the trip with her new husband Adam Fedderley to repeat the process. The results of the first trip are presented on a black background, and the second on white, and the whole thing has got a pretty weird relationship communication dynamic going on. There are nearly 1,000 images in this series presented in their entirety here, as well as thousands more bits of ephemera gathered specifically for this installation. The end date for the pair of scandalous series is 26 April.