David Armstrong (photographer)


David Bradley Armstrong was an American photographer based in New York, United States.
Armstrong first exhibited his work in 1977 and had one-person shows in New York City, Boston, Berlin, Paris, Rome, Zurich, Düsseldorf, Lisbon, Munich, and Amsterdam. His work was included in numerous group museum exhibitions including Visions from America: Photographs from The Whitney Museum of American Art, 1940-2001 in 2003, Emotions and Relations at the Hamburger Kunsthalle in 1998, and the 1995 Whitney Biennial.

Personal life

Armstrong was born in 1954, in Arlington, Massachusetts, one of four sons of Robert and Irma Armstrong. He graduated from the Satya Community School, an alternative high school in Lincoln, Massachusetts, where he met Nan Goldin at the age of 14. On October 26, 2014, at the age of 60, he died in Los Angeles, California due to liver cancer.

Career

Armstrong entered into the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston as a painting major, but soon switched to photography after studying alongside Goldin, with whom he shared an apartment. He attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Cooper Union from 1974–78, and he earned a B.F.A from Tufts University in 1988 and Judy Ann Goldman Fine Art in Boston.
During the late 1970s, Armstrong became associated with the "Boston School" of photography, which included artists such as Nan Goldin, Mark Morrisroe and Jack Pierson. Their aesthetic was based on intimate snapshot portraits in saturated color.
Armstrong first received critical attention for his intimate portraits of men, either lovers or friends, in sharp focus. In the nineties, he began to photograph cityscapes and landscapes in soft focus to contrast with the resolution of his portraits. Street lights, electric signs and cars are reduced to a sensual mottled blur, complementing the vividness and tactility of his portraits.
In 1981, Armstrong created a series of black-and-white portraits which he showed at PS1's New York/New Wave exhibition. In 1996, Elisabeth Sussman, curator of photographs at the Whitney Museum, enlisted Armstrong's help in composing Goldin's first retrospective. She gained such respect for Armstrong’s eye, she acquired a few of his pieces for the Whitney permanent collection and he was subsequently featured in the Whitney 1994 biennial.
Armstrong’s work has also appeared in publications such as Vogue Paris, L'Uomo Vogue, Arena Homme +, GQ, Self Service, Another Man and Japanese Vogue and he has worked on the advertising campaigns of companies such as Zegna, René Lezard, Kenneth Cole, Burberry, Puma, and Barbara Bui. He once shot editorials for Wonderland, Vogue Hommes and Purple.
Although his primary subjects include portraits of young boys and men, Armstrong also released a book of land and cityscapes in 2002, entitled All Day, Every Day.

Exhibitions

Publications by Armstrong