Arlene Gottfried's "Young & Old" debuts at CLAMP

CLAMP is presenting “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