Kathy Suder is a photographer whose work has won acclaim for its sheer immediacy. Every subject, from cityscape to portraiture to boxing, has a presence that involves the viewer completely. Suder’s province is people, from all walks of life, simply doing what they do and being who they are. Whatever the scene before her camera, she catches the instant of full bloom. An almost palpable spark leaps from subject to viewer through the alchemy of the photographer’s vision.

Her magnificent studies of the world of boxing have already attracted favorable notice from critics, the museum world, and well known collectors. Several of these pieces, as well as some informal, spontaneous portraits, will accompany Suder’s upcoming exhibit, which is a series of black and white photographs of Paris, France. Suder’s lens reveals a people’s Paris, robust and modern, with only a hint of the romance associated with the City of Lights. "There is little difference for me between these photos and the boxing images," says Suder. "They are both about beauty, about the human touch and the connection between human beings."

The heartbeat of urban life is captured in a diptych that juxtaposes a live model in a snow-curtained store window with a horde of elegantly bundled-up people on a rainy sidewalk, a modern and more urgent take on Caillebotte’s fashionable boulevardiers of an earlier era. In another street scene, a woman with an umbrella moves from curb to curb on a trongly graphic crosswalk that conjures up ceremonial references to many other kinds of crossings – youth to old age, perhaps, or forbidden territory, or even the Rubicon.

Suder’s artistry is fully revealed in her black and white pieces. She has an unerring eye for light and shadow, for chiaroscuro as well as for subtle shadings. She was a painter before she was a photographer, and her skills are evident in the formal compositions and painterly quality of her work. The lens is as sensitive to her emotions as a violin. Like any medium, photography serves as a mirror, as well as a window or a clean slate. "I started taking pictures so I could see better," says Suder. "I ended up seeing more of myself."

By Suzanne Deats