ARMAN, MEL BOCHNER, SOL LEWITT, ROBERT MANGOLD, SYLVIA MANGOLD, HOWARDENA PINDELL, DOROTHEA ROCKBURNE, GEORGE SEGAL, ROBERT SMITHSON, TOM WESSELMANN et al. — Photonotations. Rosa Esman Gallery, New York, 1976

Rosa Esman Gallery, 29 West 57th Street, New York, 4–28 May 1976. Original exhibition invitation. Offset-printed card, 14 × 9 cm. Colour photograph to recto; exhibition information to verso. Photograph by George Segal.

Condition: Good. General age toning, scattered spotting, minor corner and edge wear, and light surface marks consistent with circulation.

Photonotations assembled photographs by artists working across sculpture, painting, Minimalism and Conceptual art, including Arman, Bochner, LeWitt, the Mangolds, Pindell, Rockburne, Segal and Smithson. The exhibition belongs to a period in which the camera was increasingly used by artists not simply to produce photographs, but to document temporary actions, stage propositions and carry broader artistic ideas. Rosa Esman Gallery returned to the subject with Photonotations II the following year.

Segal’s image already performs the title: a figure works across an illuminated theatre marquee, interrupting its letters and leaving the message temporarily unreadable. On the reverse, the participating artists are converted into another notation — a tightly printed roster concluding simply with “and others.”

The photograph becomes announcement, the artists become a list, and the exhibition travels as a card.

Ships flat, securely card-backed and tracked from the UK.