New Yorker Magazine

New Yorker Magazine

MAY 14, 2007

CHIP HOOPER
Hooper’s photographs of New Zealand beaches and seascapes are classically beautiful and restrained in a style reminiscent of Richard Misrach or Joel Meyerowitz, but in rich, subtle, serene black-and-white. Although they’re the furthest thing from avant-garde, the best of these images avoid the traps that so much traditional landscape work falls into; no matter how handsome, they’re never merely pretty pictures. Hooper nods to history, notably to Gustave Le Gray, but he also acknowledges Hiroshi Sugimoto and Robert Adams without ever losing his own quietly appealing way. Through May 12. (Mann, 210 Eleventh Ave., at 24th St. 212-989-7600.)