In Praise of David Finn

Indonesia, 700 - 900 A.D.

While poking through a stack of old art magazines, the above suddenly caught my attention.

The  photograph is obviously by David Finn, the long-time  photographer for  Sculpture Review, a publication of the NSS  (National Sculpture Society)

Dedicated to  public sculpture as practiced in America,
 that organization, and its  magazine,  barely interested me
back when it was academic realist,
and even less now that it's turned  more conceptual. 

Except for David Finn's  photography of sculpture.

He seems to  realize that sculpture is primarily not about stone or  bronze or clay

 -- it's about light --

and he attends to that light in a sensitive, emotive, and powerful way.

******

As it turns out -- this edition -- dated Summer 1998 -- was the last edition that he would produce. .  He had served as  editor-in-chief since 1992 and had contributed  photography for many decades prior to that.

As he tells the reader in his farewell editorial, "For a variety of reasons this relationship has now come to an end".  Perhaps he felt too old  (he was 78 at the time) -   or wanted to work on some other projects.

I'm guessing, however, that he quit because the NSS and its editorial board were taking the magazine in a  more conceptual, confrontational, and  post-modern  direction  for which Finn's astute aesthetic was no  longer needed.


Here's a  little gallery of the photos from that final edition.  None have been credited --  but I'd be surprised if Finn didn't do them.  They project a great love for these sculptures.

Bernini, Pluto abducting Proserpina, 1621-1622

Egypt, Queen Arsinoe II, 270-246   B.C.

Egypt, 1295-1213  B.C.

Bernini, "Blessed Ludovia Albertoni", 1671-74

Bernini, angel from the Ponte Sant' Angelo, 1669

Bernini,  The River Danube from the Fountain of the Four Rivers, 1651

Japan, 19th Century ivory

Bruno Lucchesi, details from "Creativity", 1998