Ken Schles

Ken Schles (born 1960) is an American photographer based in Brooklyn, New York. A New York Foundation for the Arts fellow, Schles has published five monographs over 25 years. In 2014, both, the New York Times and Time magazine named Invisible City, among the notable photobooks of the year.

Career

Schles earned his BFA from Cooper Union in 1982, where he studied with Len Jenshel, William Gedney and Larry Fink (photographer). After continuing his studies with renowned photographer Lisette Model at the New School for Social Research and participating in a study group run by Martha Rosler, he worked as a printer for a number of Magnum photographers, including Gilles Peress, Elliot Erwitt and Burt Glinn. In addition, since 1992, Schles has artistically contributed to over a hundred albums, CD's, and videos.

Schles is currently a foreign correspondent for the Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam which is a photography museum located at the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. His work can be seen in many private and public collections including: The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago, Museo D'Arte Contemporanea, LACMA and is held in more than 100 library and museum collections throughout the world.

Publications

1988 Invisible City: Photographs By Ken Schles, Twelvetrees Press. Schles began producing this book in 1983, when he lived in a run-down apartment in the east village of New York City. City officials made the landlord turn off the boiler in the building because it was leaking carbon monoxide, the building had become a “shooting gallery” for heroin addicts. The neighborhood was in shambles and junkies were a constant threat. So, Schles’ landlord boarded the windows to prevent break-ins, this worked to Schles’ advantage, the boarded-up space provided Schles the perfect environment to create a dark room. From his created darkroom he developed the photos of his surroundings and the general life of 1980’s New York City.

2001 The Geometry of Innocence, Hatje Cantz In The Geometry of Innocence, Ken Schles’ focus is on the shifting of social structures and spaces that mark the urban landscape. The works in The Geometry of Innocence address the immediacy and relativity of meaning in the photographic image and how they shape societies perception of the world around them. Schles's images include images from, Death Row, hospital rooms, playgrounds, militarized zones, city streets, and bars and clubs.

2008 A New History Of Photography: The World Outside And The Pictures In Our Heads, White Press. Schles uses this book to examine the influence and our relationship to the history of photography and of photo book making itself.

2011 Oculus, Noorderlicht.2011 Oculus, Noorderlicht. Schles’ monograph is an investigative textual photo book about the relationship between images, light, and their natural relationship to the minds interpretation.

2014 Night Walk: Photographs by Ken Schles, Steidl. Night Walk is a greatly expanded reprint of Schles' Invisible City. Schles explores different versions of focus to tell a photographic-narrative of 1980's life in the Lower East Side of New York City.

Collections

Public collections

• Museum of Modern Art, NYC.
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC.

Library at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA.

• Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs at The New York Public Library, NYC.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA. Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX. The Brooklyn Museum, NYC. Art Institute of Chicago, CHI. Corcoran Museum of Art, Wash. D.C. The Cleveland Museum Of Art, OH.'Permanent Collection of the US Embassy, Sana'a, Yemen. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Architecture and Design Permanent Collection, CA.'The Manfred Heiting Collection, Los Angeles, CA.