Bruce Conner and Edmund Shea, SOUND OF TWO HAND ANGEL, 1974

1974

Medium

gelatin silver print

Dimensions

223.5 × 94 cm

Status

In Gallery Collection

Collect24 Art ID

C24-1164995

There are 28 (he made 30 and 2 have been destroyed) unique photograms in Bruce Conner’s Angels photogram series. They were all self-portraits, printed at life-size scale. Others in the series are in major museum collections including MoMA, the Walker, LACMA, the Stedelijk, Centre Pompidou, Berkeley, Denver, Carnegie, Honolulu, the Cantor at Stanford, and SFMOMA. This particular work is distinctive in the way the hands are portrayed — one covering the head, one covering the heart — and is considered the most iconic and compelling in the series, both formally and poetically. It is one of Conner's most recognizable and reproduced works.