Rob Amory, previously known for his work as a sculptor—his kinetic sculpture "Helion" was a landmark in downtown Boston for over twenty years—began to explore digital technology and inkjet printing ten years ago. Since then, his focus is on human relationships and the distilled silence of the interior presence of his subjects.
Paraphrasing Richard Brilliant's catalog essay, Amory, who takes striking, immediate, highly detailed photographic portraits, is the dispassionate recorder of the existence of others who caught his eye. Rob Amory's first New York exhibition consists of a series of 40 x 30 prints, in which the enlargements of the actual physical size—coupled with reiterated close-up—serve as a vehicle for a powerful suggestion of intimacy.
The seriously composed expressions reveal a mind-at-work within the facial envelope, responding to the fact that having a portrait taken, and made, is serious business because it establishes a permanent record of one's existence, separate from oneself. There exists an over-riding sense of sympathetic detachment, common to all of Amory's portrait photographs. Altogether, they constitute the artist's mark, as a photographer-portraitist, and result in his and our recognition of the common humanity of his subjects.