A new exhibition features documentarian RonitBez’s black-and-white portraits of the market’s visitors. Curated by riva_lehrer | ✍️ JT Newman
first walked over to the Argyle Night Market last summer, camera in hand, she didn’t know what to expect. As a documentarian for more than two decades, her ability and confidence in approaching strangers and asking them to take their picture seemed easy. That it would lead to a photography show at Everybody’s Coffee in Uptown hadn’t even entered her mind. She just followed her instinct and used her camera and her keen eye to enter the narrative worlds of her subjects.
Though Bezalel didn’t know why she felt drawn to documenting the market, she was struck by the beauty of the light and the market’s energy. “There were a few things that really impressed me about it. One was the atmosphere: the diversity and the celebratory spirit. I think it was because we were coming out of COVID, and there was a lot of joy there. And also the light. As a photographer, I saw that the light was just beautiful.
So she started shooting. “I thought, ‘I want to take portraits of people.’ So everybody who’s in the photos I asked whether I could take the portrait, and overwhelmingly, whoever I asked said yes.”Bezalel returned a number of times over six weeks in summer 2022. “I got to know people, because I went back every week. So this is Greg. He’s always there sitting and watching music. This is Pauline. She used to be a model.” She points out arresting black-and-white portraits, one after another.
Whittling down the nearly 1,000 photos was a challenge. But Lehrer, a seasoned curator, was up to the task. “I’ve been a curator on and off since the 80s. And I’m [also a] portraitist. So first, you just spread out a bunch of photos, and you just react. And then once we started, we winnowed things down. Then it was about rhythm, and it was about not having the same compositional approach.”
Lehrer explained that it can cause viewers to numb out if the work is too similar. Other curatorial concerns included pacing and size. “Some of them are going to be larger than others. So it’s about having to continue to refresh [what the viewer is seeing]. I’m looking at internal rhythm.
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