mountshang: 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.