Lucien Rizos
  • home
    • work >
      • photography, documentary style projects >
        • early work. pre 1977
        • Romanian Photos 1977-1978
        • A Man Walks Out Of A Bar... 1979-1982 >
          • A Man...some contact sheets
          • some rejects from A Man Walks Out Of A Bar... 1979-1982
        • Traffic Lights 1981 >
          • some contact sheets
        • McDonald's Corner 1983 >
          • some contact sheets 1983
        • 5 minutes on street corner. Whanganui
        • LAST PHOTOS 1984
        • post last photos 1984-1986
        • telephoto from car 2002
        • unposed portraits 2014-15 >
          • more Unposed Portraits
        • memories 2016
        • Marble Art Ltd. 2017 >
          • exhibition marble art ltd exhib photos
        • remuera 2018
        • Everything. 2019-2021 >
          • A Man Of His Time Exhibition 2020
          • Lucien Rizos .Everything. exhibition.2022
      • photography related projects >
        • ANZAC day 1984
        • Blue skies. Green grass. 1984-86
        • searching for... 1984-1986
        • Silver Lining 1988
        • family album 1989
        • My Relationship with... >
          • My Relationship With Cartier Bresson 1986-1992
          • My Relationship With The Old Masters 1986
        • New Work Studio 1995
        • Analogies 2000-2001
        • My Reality The Camera 2002
        • fringes and backgrounds 2002
        • P O V 2015
      • bits and pieces (photography) in a documentary style. 2015- >
        • people from a distance
        • rural homes from a moving bus
        • random, unconnected photographs.
      • movies >
        • drive-by. pittsburgh 2005
        • to and fro. 2006 spin. 2006
        • Hi Mary... 2007
        • glide 2008
        • from the car. circa 2009-
        • from the bus. circa 2009-
        • musicians at work. 2010
        • Buskers, various. 2009-2010
        • GDBY PK P. 2012
        • reverberation 2012
        • around the perimeter 2016
        • Where's Wally? 2019
      • Rubbings. 1998-1999 >
        • rubbings. literal
        • rubbings. non literal.
    • text >
      • My Relationship With The Old Masters, review. Ian Wedde. 1986
      • A Man Walks Out Of A Bar... >
        • Essay. Ian Wedde. A Man Walks Out Of A Bar.
        • Essay. Damian Skinner. New Zealand Photographs.
        • Review. Peter Ireland. S'kite
        • Review. Peter Ireland. New Zealand Listener
        • Review. Abby Cunnane. Lumiere.net.nz
        • Review. The Landfall Review On Line. David Eggleton
        • Essay. Greg O'Brien. A Man Walks Out Of A Bar.
      • Essay. Greg O'Brien. Where I Find Myself
      • Aaron Lister. Art New Zealand. Springbok Tour Book. >
        • springbok tour book. 1 contact sheet
      • certain materialities. Damian Skinner. 2017
      • the empire strikes back.Peter Ireland 2017
      • Everything. 2019-2021 >
        • Lucien Rizos: Processing Power. Robert Leonard 2022
        • Secret life of Gerald.Eva Corlett.Guardian.
    • information >
      • biography and chronology
    • CONTACT
    • publications, books
​New Zealand Listener
Peter Ireland


A Man Walks Out of a Bar … Lucien Rizos: New Zealand photographs review By PETER IRELAND | Published on June 18, 2011 | Issue 3710 
| Tags: Review 
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Where Robert Frank’s The Americans is primarily about a place, Lucien Rizos’s photographs are about a time.

Between 1979 and 1982, while travelling around New Zealand, Lucien Rizos took 24,000 photo­graphs of ordinary people and places, seemingly randomly. Some of these austere black and white images were shown at Wellington’s PhotoForum Gallery in 1980, and there was talk of a book, but nothing more was seen or heard of them. A year or two ago, art historian Damian Skinner made it his mission to bring this work to light and now, after 30 years, 66 of these photographs appear in published form.


A man walks Out of a Bar… pays conscious tribute, in both imagery and design, to Robert Frank’s seminal 1958 book The Americans, which not only shaped the way that vast country was perceived, but also altered the course of photography’s documentary tradition. It is tempting from today’s perspective to regard the 1950s as a golden age of peace, progress and prosperity – just go through your old National Geographics – but  Swiss-born Frank’s photos redress that balance: his colourless images from US state after US state convey Cold War anxiety and the limits of materialism in the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.
  But where Frank’s book is primarily about a place, Rizos’s is about a time. Looking at his sequence, it’s not always easy to believe that between 1979 and 1982 there were blue skies and laughter or that people relaxed at the beach. The images are grainy and grim – as were Frank’s – and there’s a sense of lives lived within the confines of small places, geographically and spiritually. Rizos was documenting the sunset years of Muldoonism, years marked by the ­muffled drumbeat of events such as the Bastion Point occupation, the Erebus disaster and the ’81 Tour.
  A man walks Out of a Bar… pays an unconscious tribute to the documentary tradition of photography, which has been perceived as passé and unsexy. It fell out of art-world favour generally in the 1980s, particularly in New Zealand, where market-forces ideology promoted personal gain over community values, and anything resembling social crusading was deemed simp­listic and old-fashioned. Now, as the market-forces argument struggles for credibility, there seems to be a slight revival of respect for the documentary – even in the art world, which, of all ­sectors, seems most to have been seduced by the scent of money. This book’s ­appearance right now is no accident. It’s timely in all senses.


A MAN WALKS OUT OF A BAR … LUCIEN RIZOS: NEW ZEALAND ­PHOTOGRAPHS, 1979-1982, with essays by Damian Skinner and Ian Wedde (Rim Books/PhotoForum, $45).
Peter Ireland is an art writer specialising in photography. He was a contributor to New Zealand Post Book Awards finalist Brian Brake: Lens  on the World.

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  • home
    • work >
      • photography, documentary style projects >
        • early work. pre 1977
        • Romanian Photos 1977-1978
        • A Man Walks Out Of A Bar... 1979-1982 >
          • A Man...some contact sheets
          • some rejects from A Man Walks Out Of A Bar... 1979-1982
        • Traffic Lights 1981 >
          • some contact sheets
        • McDonald's Corner 1983 >
          • some contact sheets 1983
        • 5 minutes on street corner. Whanganui
        • LAST PHOTOS 1984
        • post last photos 1984-1986
        • telephoto from car 2002
        • unposed portraits 2014-15 >
          • more Unposed Portraits
        • memories 2016
        • Marble Art Ltd. 2017 >
          • exhibition marble art ltd exhib photos
        • remuera 2018
        • Everything. 2019-2021 >
          • A Man Of His Time Exhibition 2020
          • Lucien Rizos .Everything. exhibition.2022
      • photography related projects >
        • ANZAC day 1984
        • Blue skies. Green grass. 1984-86
        • searching for... 1984-1986
        • Silver Lining 1988
        • family album 1989
        • My Relationship with... >
          • My Relationship With Cartier Bresson 1986-1992
          • My Relationship With The Old Masters 1986
        • New Work Studio 1995
        • Analogies 2000-2001
        • My Reality The Camera 2002
        • fringes and backgrounds 2002
        • P O V 2015
      • bits and pieces (photography) in a documentary style. 2015- >
        • people from a distance
        • rural homes from a moving bus
        • random, unconnected photographs.
      • movies >
        • drive-by. pittsburgh 2005
        • to and fro. 2006 spin. 2006
        • Hi Mary... 2007
        • glide 2008
        • from the car. circa 2009-
        • from the bus. circa 2009-
        • musicians at work. 2010
        • Buskers, various. 2009-2010
        • GDBY PK P. 2012
        • reverberation 2012
        • around the perimeter 2016
        • Where's Wally? 2019
      • Rubbings. 1998-1999 >
        • rubbings. literal
        • rubbings. non literal.
    • text >
      • My Relationship With The Old Masters, review. Ian Wedde. 1986
      • A Man Walks Out Of A Bar... >
        • Essay. Ian Wedde. A Man Walks Out Of A Bar.
        • Essay. Damian Skinner. New Zealand Photographs.
        • Review. Peter Ireland. S'kite
        • Review. Peter Ireland. New Zealand Listener
        • Review. Abby Cunnane. Lumiere.net.nz
        • Review. The Landfall Review On Line. David Eggleton
        • Essay. Greg O'Brien. A Man Walks Out Of A Bar.
      • Essay. Greg O'Brien. Where I Find Myself
      • Aaron Lister. Art New Zealand. Springbok Tour Book. >
        • springbok tour book. 1 contact sheet
      • certain materialities. Damian Skinner. 2017
      • the empire strikes back.Peter Ireland 2017
      • Everything. 2019-2021 >
        • Lucien Rizos: Processing Power. Robert Leonard 2022
        • Secret life of Gerald.Eva Corlett.Guardian.
    • information >
      • biography and chronology
    • CONTACT
    • publications, books