CLAMP is pleased to present “Young & Old,” the gallery’s first solo exhibition devoted to the late New York photographer Arlene Gottfried (1950–2017). Drawn from the artist’s archive, “Young & Old” brings together portraits that treat age not as a fixed category, but something elastic—where youth can carry striking wisdom and advanced age can still be full of play.
In Gottfried’s Westbeth studio, decades of work were stored in archival portfolio boxes. One was simply labeled “Young & Old.” The photographs found inside were portraits of children and people of advanced years—sometimes together in the same frame. But they also reflected Gottfried’s curiosity about specific individuals and their embodiment of youthfulness and maturity.
Gottfried’s photographs are often described as acts of encounter—images made not from distance but proximity and trust. As she put it: “My photographs were like souvenirs; I liked to collect moments and remembrances.” Her portraits offer those “moments” as shared space: people meeting the camera head-on, asserting style, vulnerability, humor, and self-possession in equal measure.
“Young & Old” sits within the broader arc of Gottfried’s practice, increasingly recognized as essential to the visual history of late 20th-century New York. A recent solo exhibition at The New York Historical—”Picture Stories: Photographs by Arlene Gottfried”—highlighted her ability to capture the city’s communities with candor and empathy. CLAMP’s exhibition extends that legacy through a resonant theme, emphasizing the artist’s sensitivity to the ways time registers—on faces, in posture, in the friction between public performance and private interiority.
Over the course of her career, Gottfried published five books—The Eternal Light (1999), Midnight (2003), Sometimes Overwhelming (2008), Bacalaitos & Fireworks (2011), and Mommie (2015). Together the publications form a portrait of New York’s social worlds and the photographer’s own life moving through them.
The artist’s work is represented in many prestigious public collections, including the New York Historical, Brooklyn Museum, New York Public Library, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, North Carolina Museum of Art, Southeast Museum of Photography, Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Haverford College, Lehigh University, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Maison Valdôtaine de la Photographie di Aosta, Musée Arthur Batut, and Museum Folkwang, among others.