Shimon Attie: Photos from "Night Watch" on the San Francisco Bay"

Shimon Attie Fine Art Photographs from Night Watch 2021 on the San Francisco Bay

NIGHT WATCH (2018 - 2021) First presented in New York in 2018 and again in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021, Night Watch features video portraits on a 20ft-wide, high-resolution LED screen, which traveled along the San Francisco Bay and Oakland Estuary aboard a large, slow-moving barge to allow for on-shore public viewing. Displayed on the screen are silent, close-up video portraits of twelve refugees who were granted political asylum in the United States. The images largely feature members of international LGBTQI communities, as well as unaccompanied minors, who fled tremendous violence and discrimination in their homelands of Colombia, Honduras, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Peru, and Russia.

The floating installation combines contemporary LED technology with an anachronistic mode of transport – a barge – to create a complex and layered artistic and sculptural tableau. Night Watch activated and animated the San Francisco Bay as both a literal and metaphoric site and landscape for escape, rescue, safe-passage, and the offering of safe-harbor for those most vulnerable.

The creation of the Night Watch portraits was made possible through the artist’s relationship with the New Yorkbased Moreart.org, who made introductions to refugees and asylees with whom Attie’s project aligned. During the process of shooting the portraits, Attie was privileged to hear personal stories, conversations of home and the uncertainty of futures, fear of political reprisals, sensitivities to trauma, homesickness, and individual hopes and dreams. “Night Watch,” Shimon Attie states, “is for the millions who have been forced to flee their homelands to escape violence and discrimination. For the fortunate few who have been granted political asylum in the United States.”

Shimon Attie and the Night Watch project were featured on PBS NewsHour on December 22, 2021. The segment can be viewed here: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/artist-shimon-attie-uses-urbancontemporary-inspiration-to-tell-refugee-stories Learn more about Night Watch 2021, at this link: https://cclarkgallery.com/artists/bios/night-watch-2021

“Oakland is first and foremost a sanctuary city, offering community and a sense of belonging to immigrants from around the world. It makes profound and poetic sense that Shimon Attie’s art installation, Night Watch, will travel by Oakland’s shores,” said Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf. “What a beautiful way to celebrate the diversity of Oakland, and the refugees that call our city home.”

“No other state has taken in more refugees than California,” states Eleni Kounalakis, Lieutenant Governor of California. “As a former Ambassador and the daughter of an immigrant who started out in California as a farmworker, I deeply understand the value of immigrant and asylee communities.

The compelling nature of Shimon Attie’s Night Watch accentuates a social issue of great importance – that of seeing ourselves in the other. Through a dignified artistic portrayal of refugees and asylees to the United States, Night Watch is a civic art experience that invites us to celebrate our strength in diversity.”

“Our capacity to ignore the suffering of the 80 million forcibly displaced people in the world depends on their invisibility. Shimon Attie's Night Watch demands that we see their faces, and by seeing, acknowledge both their pain and our responsibility. It is a work that does more than humanize the crisis, it transforms the viewer,” comments Ayelet Waldman, Novelist and Screenwriter.

“San Francisco is a city of immigrants that continues to be defined today by our diverse communities,” said Mayor London N. Breed. “That diversity not only shapes the values that we hold as a city, it’s also reflected in the art and culture we produce. We’re excited to welcome Night Watch to San Francisco as a continuation of that expression of our values.”

Shimon Attie, Night Watch (Niurka with Golden Gate Bridge), 20’ wide LED screen on barge, San Francisco Bay, 2022. Lambda Photograph. Edition of 6 + 2AP at 16 x 24 inches; $2,000 unframed. Edition of 3 + 1AP at 20 x 30 inches; $3,250 unframed.

Shimon Attie, Night Watch (Max with Alcatraz), 20’ wide LED screen on barge, San Francisco Bay, 2022. Lambda Photograph. Edition of 6 + 2AP at 16 x 24 inches; $2,000 unframed. Edition of 3 + 1AP at 20 x 30 inches; $3,250 unframed.

Shimon Attie, Night Watch (Norris in Bay), 20’ wide LED screen on barge, San Francisco Bay, 2022. Lambda Photograph. Edition of 6 + 2AP at 16 x 24 inches; $2,000 unframed. Edition of 3 + 1AP at 20 x 30 inches; $3,250 unframed.

Shimon Attie, Night Watch (Niurka with Bay Bridge), 20’ wide LED screen on barge, San Francisco Bay, 2022.

Lambda Photograph. Edition of 6 + 2AP at 16 x 24 inches; $2,000 unframed. Edition of 3 + 1AP at 20 x 30 inches; $3,250 unframed.

Shimon Attie, Night Watch (Victor at Dusk), 20’ wide LED screen on barge, San Francisco Bay, 2022. Lambda Photograph. Edition of 6 + 2AP at 16 x 24 inches; $2,000 unframed. Edition of 3 + 1AP at 20 x 30 inches; $3,250 unframed.

Shimon Attie, Night Watch (Edafe with Onlookers), 20’ wide LED screen on barge, San Francisco Bay, 2022.

Lambda Photograph. Edition of 6 + 2AP at 16 x 24 inches; $2,000 unframed. Edition of 3 + 1AP at 20 x 30 inches; $3,250 unframed.

Shimon Attie, Night Watch (Marlon in Bay), 20’ wide LED screen on barge, San Francisco Bay, 2022. Lambda Photograph. Edition of 6 + 2AP at 16 x 24 inches; $2,000 unframed. Edition of 3 + 1AP at 20 x 30 inches; $3,250 unframed.

Shimon Attie, Night Watch (Edafe with Moon), 20’ wide LED screen on barge, San Francisco Bay, 2022. Lambda Photograph. Edition of 6 + 2AP at 16 x 24 inches; $2,000 unframed. Edition of 3 + 1AP at 20 x 30 inches; $3,250 unframed.

Shimon Attie, Night Watch (Edafe with Alcatraz), 20’ wide LED screen on barge, San Francisco Bay, 2022. Lambda Photograph. Photo credit Nadim Badiee. Edition of 6 + 2AP at 16 x 24 inches; $2,000 unframed. Edition of 3 + 1AP at 20 x 30 inches; $3,250 unframed.

Shimon Attie, Night Watch (Victor under Bay Bridge i), 20’ wide LED screen on barge, San Francisco Bay, 2022.

Lambda Photograph. Edition of 6 + 2AP at 16 x 24 inches; $2,000 unframed. Edition of 3 + 1AP at 20 x 30 inches; $3,250 unframed.

Shimon Attie, Night Watch (Niurka with Moon), 20’ wide LED screen on barge, San Francisco Bay, 2022. Lambda Photograph. Edition of 6 + 2AP at 16 x 24 inches; $2,000 unframed. Edition of 3 + 1AP at 20 x 30 inches; $3,250 unframed.

Shimon Attie Night Watch (Victor under Bay Bridge ii), 20’ wide LED screen on barge, San Francisco Bay, 2022 Lambda Photograph Edition of 6 + 2AP 24 x 16 inches $2,000 unframed Edition of 3 + 1AP 30 x 20 inches $3,250 unframed

Shimon Attie, Night Watch (Norris with Wharf and Bridge), 20’ wide LED screen on barge, San Francisco Bay, 2022.

Lambda Photograph. Edition of 6 + 2AP at 16 x 24 inches; $2,000 unframed. Edition of 3 + 1AP at 20 x 30 inches; $3,250 unframed.

Shimon Attie, Night Watch (Niurka with Onlookers), 20’ wide LED screen on barge, San Francisco Bay, 2022.

Lambda Photograph. Edition of 6 + 2AP at 16 x 24 inches; $2,000 unframed. Edition of 3 + 1AP at 20 x 30 inches; $3,250 unframed.

Shimon Attie, Night Watch (Edafe with Bay Bridge), 20’ wide LED screen on barge, San Francisco Bay, 2022.

Lambda Photograph. Edition of 6 + 2AP at 16 x 24 inches; $2,000 unframed. Edition of 3 + 1AP at 20 x 30 inches; $3,250 unframed.

Shimon Attie, Night Watch (Mikaela with Wharf), 20’ wide LED screen on barge, San Francisco Bay, 2022. Lambda Photograph. Edition of 6 + 2AP at 16 x 24 inches; $2,000 unframed. Edition of 3 + 1AP at 20 x 30 inches; $3,250 unframed.

Shimon Attie, Night Watch (Tatiana with Moon), 20’ wide LED screen on barge, San Francisco Bay, 2022. Lambda Photograph. Edition of 6 + 2AP at 16 x 24 inches; $2,000 unframed. Edition of 3 + 1AP at 20 x 30 inches; $3,250 unframed.

BIOGRAPHY Shimon Attie is a visual artist whose practice includes photography, video, immersive mixed-media installations, site specific works in public places, and new media pieces. In many of his projects, Attie employs a variety of media to animate sites with images that reference their lost histories or speculative futures. This has included introducing the histories and narratives of marginalized and/or forgotten communities into the physical landscape of the present. In other, often video works, Attie engages local communities in finding new ways of representing their history, memory, and potential futures. Ultimately, Attie’s work explores how contemporary media may be used to re-imagine new relationships between space, time, place, and identity.

Shimon Attie's work has been exhibited and collected by numerous museums around the world, including by New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, The National Gallery in Washington DC, the ICA in Boston, and the Perez Art Museum Miami, among many others. In addition, he has received numerous visual artist fellowships and awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize, artist grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and a Visual Artist Fellowship from Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute and from the National Endowment for the Arts, among many others.

Five monographs have been published on Attie's work, which has also been the subject of a number of films that have aired on PBS, BBC, and ARD. Since receiving his MFA Degree in 1991, he has realized approximately 30 major projects in ten countries around the world. In 2013/19, Attie was awarded the Lee Krasner Achievement Award and in 2018, was inducted as a National Academician into the National Academy of Design. In 2020, Shimon Attie was appointed as the inaugural Charles C. Bergman Endowed Visiting Professor of Studio Art at Stony Brook University and in 2021 as the Horger Artist-in-Residence at Lehigh University. Here, not Here was Attie’s debut solo exhibition with Catharine Clark Gallery and was the first comprehensive survey exhibition of his work on the West Coast.