NEW YORK, NY.- The photographer John Goodman is infatuated with the human body, its contradictions, and how it moves. Goodman states "I explore the contest between light and dark, power and grace, grit and tenderness. Boxers + Ballerinas, his long awaited first solo exhibition in New York, demonstrates the extremes of what bodies can endure. In this evocative show, Goodman pairs his boxing photographs from the acclaimed monograph, The Times Square Gym (Introduction by Pete Hamill, Evan Publishing, 1997) with a 2004 backstage photo essay of dancers of the Boston Ballet. No greater contrast in purpose exists in human locomotion.

Goodman avoids the brutal confrontation of boxers in the ring, but rather wisely creates a character of The Times Square Gym itself, a legendary New York institution where boxers both known and unknown have trained side by side for decades. Now defunct, (the offices of Condé Nast would rise from its ashes) the gym was managed by the tireless and compassionate Jimmy Glenn who rode it through twenty years of daily training regimens. Goodman photographed the gym during the last 18 months of its existence. He treats the exterior like a portrait. Its grimy New York-worn concrete skin seems to bear the bruises and battered cheeks of its occupants. It is the face of Job, while the gym's interior circulates crusaders throughout its halls and on its mats like blood, pumping and giving it life.

The Boston Ballet dancers that Goodman photographed backstage as they prepare for their performance exude their own contradictions. At once corporeal and otherworldly, they share in the sweat and exertion of the fighters and sometimes they too appear like warriors in battle. Mostly, however, their expected grace in motility is conveyed in the gritty and graphic manner of Goodman's monochrome printing. These ballerinas are magical - as all ballerinas should be - formed by the photographer's eye and his belief that angels can't be photographed but their halos can.

Both bodies of work are shadowgraphs: pictures of fleeting figures that confirm our desired voyeurism of talent, our need to witness greatness beyond the everyday, to examine without the distraction of speed, skill or amazement. Boxers rarely reach the level of public recognition (thousands fight, few shine); most ballerinas are merely pawns in a choreographer's plan for an art that exists for milliseconds. In both cases, Goodman salvages them, rectifies them from their instant demise. These are photographs of mortals fortifying life.

A student of Minor White, John Goodman is a photographer of great range and capability. Whether documenting the dark underbelly of Boston's infamous Combat Zone or the streets of Havana, he conveys certitude of purpose and effect resulting in photographs that transcend the impact of reality. Goodman's work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions, among them Naked Before the Camera at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2012), Exposed at the Tate Modern, London (2010), and Echo at the Howard Yezerski Gallery in Boston (2012). His photographs are in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His work has appeared in New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and Goodman has shot advertising campaigns for Gucci, the Gap, Converse and Reebok. He is on the faculty of Lesley University College of Art and Design, and is an instructor at the Maine Media Workshops in Rockport, Maine.

Since 2008, Rick Wester Fine Art (RWFA) has presented primarily photographic works, however with its move in April 2013 to quarters three times its previous size the gallery's scope has expanded. Concentrating on mid-career and emerging artists, the critically acclaimed exhibition program has brought greater attention to the gallery's artists. With over 30 years of experience in the field, Rick Wester founded RWFA in 2004 as an art services company specializing in artist representation, consulting to private collectors and corporations, secondary market sales and appraisals. RWFA is located at 526 West 26th Street in the heart of New York City's Chelsea art district. Rick Wester Fine Art is a member of AIPAD, the Association of International Photography Art Dealers.