15/12/96

Harold E. Edgerton Photography Exhibition

 

A Gallery For Fine Photography, presents

 

Stopping Time,

the original photographs of

Dr. Harold E. Edgerton

 

Harold E. Edgerton (1903, Fremont, Nebrasca – 1990, Boston), professor at MIT, is the inventor of the electronic flash. He was also a photographer. Harold Edgerton devoted his career to recording what the unaided eye cannot see. His photographs illustrate such moments as: a bullet seen the instant it explodes through an apple or a perfect coronet formed by a milk-drop splash. These photographs have become classics of modern art and science.

Dr. Harold Edgerton was the first to take high-speed color photographs and was a pioneer of multiflash and microsecond imagery, which he used to take detailed photographs of humming birds in motion, as well as the progression of athletes' movements. These wondrous images have shown nobody was never able to see before in photographs that are as remarkable for their precision as for their beauty.

December 26, 1996 - January 31, 1997

 

A GALLERY FOR FINE PHOTOGRAPHY

322 Royal Street

New Orleans, LA 70117

www.agallery.com

08/12/96

Arman et l’Art Africain, Exposition au Musée National des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie, Paris

Arman et l’Art Africain
Musée National des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie, Paris
4 décembre 1996 - 17 février 1997

Cette exposition, réalisée par le Musée d'Arts Africains, Océaniens, Amérindiens de Marseille, est organisée à Paris par la Réunion des Musées Nationaux et le musée national des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie.

Le sculpteur Arman (Armand Fernandez, né en 1928) s’intéresse aux arts dits “primitifs” depuis les années 50, au moment où il les découvre dans deux expositions, à Paris et à Cannes ; c’est à cette époque qu’il achète, aux Puces à Nice, son premier objet africain, un masque dan. Il commence alors sa collection, qui compte aujourd’hui quelques centaines de pièces, une collection composée, dit Arman, “de plusieurs parties : des coups de coeur, c’est-à-dire des pièces qui m’ont intéressé esthétiquement, dont j’ai eu envie ; mais aussi des sortes de gestes systématiques, d’accumulations, avec l’idée de mettre des choses du même type ensemble, en suivant toujours ce dessein, qui est le mien dans beaucoup de mes oeuvres, celui de l’accumulation”.

Arman collectionne également des oeuvres d’art océanien et divers objets : des armures japonaises, des radios des années cinquante, des voitures anciennes, des couteaux, des stylos... On voit ainsi que, chez lui, la notion de collection rejoint bien celle d’accumulation, pour autant que l’on accorde à cette dernière une fonction qualitative et esthétique, et pas seulement quantitative. La collection-accumulation révèle à la fois le regard toujours plus aigu de l’amateur et celui de l’artiste en quête d’une approche nouvelle de l’oeuvre d’art, où la notion de série joue un rôle important.

La collection d’art africain d’Arman réunit plusieurs ensembles exceptionnels :

- une série de pièces du Gabon, que l’artiste dit être celles qu’il préfère : des masques fang et des figures de reliquaire kota ;
- des fétiches à clous kongo (provenant de la région de l’embouchure du fleuve Zaïre) qui évoquent, d’une certaine façon, le travail du sculpteur français ; 
- des masques-heaumes mendé (Sierra Leone et Liberia) dont l’intérêt n’est sans doute pas assez reconnu aujourd’hui.

A ces ensembles s’ajoutent de nombreuses et remarquables pièces isolées : masque kuba-kété (Zaïre), statue dogon (Mali), statue mumuyé (Nigéria)... 

En tout l’exposition présente 183 oeuvres, avec 63 ethnies représentées : Anang, Baga, Bamana, Bamiléké, Baoulé, Basikasingo, Beembé, Bété, Bijogo, Bobo, Bwa, Dan, Dogon, Fang, Guro, Hemba, Ibibio, Idoma, Igbo, Kongo, Konso, Kota, Kota-Mahongwé, Kuba, Kulango, Kuyu, Kwélé, Lobi, Luba, Lulua, Makonbé, Mama, Mambila, Mau, Mayombé, Mbala, Mbembé, Mbolé, Mboyé, Mendé, Mossi, Mumuyé, Nuna, Ovimbundu, Owé, Pendé, Pounou, Sakalava, Salampasu, Sénoufo, Songyé, Tabwa, Téké, Tetela, Toma, Tshokwé, Tsogho, Urhobo, Wongo, Yaka, Yaouré, Yoruba, Zulu.
“Quand j’ai découvert les chefs-d’oeuvre d’autres cultures, des cultures dites “primitives”, j’ai été soulagé d’avoir la confirmation de cette idée que l’homme est partout le même : un bébé né dans une certaine culture mais élevé dans une autre l’absorbe comme une éponge, il appartient à la nouvelle culture dans laquelle il est élevé. Nous avons donc tous à peu près le même matériel de base, que ce soit dans la peinture ou dans la statuaire [...]” (Arman, entretien avec Monique Barbier-Mueller, dans le catalogue de l’exposition).
L'exposition a d’abord été présentée à Marseille, au musée d'Arts Africains, Océaniens et Amérindiens (Chapelle de la Vieille Charité) du 23 juin au 30 octobre 1996. Après Paris, la prochaine étape sera Cologne du 13 mars au 15 juin 1997.

Commissaires à Marseille : Alain Nicolas, directeur du Musée d’Arts Africains, Océaniens, Amérindiens, Marianne Sourrieu, attachée de conservation
Commissaires à Paris : Etienne Féau, conservateur au musée des Arts d’Afrique et d’Océanie, chef de la section Afrique, Hélène Joubert, section Afrique

Arman et l'Art Africain
ARMAN ET L’ART AFRICAIN
Catalogue de l’exposition
Coédition RMN/Musées de Marseille
279 pages, 264 illustrations noir et blanc, 180 illustrations couleur

Sommaire du catalogue

• Alain Nicolas, L'art Africain et la manière
• Jean-Hubert Martin, La sagacité de l'artiste
• Jacques Kerchache, Amateur, accumulateur, collectionneur, connaisseur
• Interview : Arman / Alain Nicolas
• Une rencontre : Monique Barbier-Mueller / Arman
• Catalogue des oeuvres : Photos de Gérard Bonnet
• Notices : Textes de Anne-Marie Bouttiaux-Ndiaye, Luc de Heusch, Els De Palmenaer, Hélène Joubert, Jacques Lombard, Alain Nicolas, Louis Perrois, Christopher Roy, Gustaaf Verswijver. Historique et bibliographie des objets par Marianne Sourrieu
• Bibliographie des auteurs
• Biographie d’Arman
• Liste des oeuvres exposées

CD-Rom : Arman, Collection d'Art Africain

Un CD-Rom a également été réalisé à l'occasion de l'exposition. Ce CD-Rom présente les 300 pièces de la collection d’art africain d’Arman. Accessible interactivement, chacune de ces pièces peut être admirée et étudiée à partir d’images fixes et de vidéos, accompagnés de notices en hypertexte. Un module spécifique est consacré aux réflexions d’Arman sur les relations qu’il entretient, dans son travail, avec l’art africain, et sur son parcours de collectionneur. Le programme inclut aussi un historique du primitivisme dû à Alain Nicolas, conservateur en chef au musée d’Arts Africains, Océaniens et Amérindiens de Marseille : on y apprend que Dürer fut le premier amateur d’arts dits “primitifs”, on y découvre le cabinet de curiosités de François 1er et les grandes collections d’artistes et d’écrivains du XXème siècle (Braque, Derain, Léger, Breton, Tzara, Eluard)...

Composition du CD-Rom 
• plus de 10 000 photographies 
• plus de 2 heures de commentaires d’Arman 
• 10 minutes d’extraits de films ethnographiques en vidéo
• plus de 2000 pages de texte
Coédition ARTE Editions / Hypervision
Coproduction Hypervision / ARTE Editions / Musée d’Arts Africains, Océaniens et Amérindiens de Marseille / Office Régional de la Culture-Région Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur / avec le soutien de la Traditional Art Foundation de New York, du Centre Européen de Recherche et Développement Multimédia de Marseille, de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales et de la Ville de Marseille
Distribution : Réunion des musées nationaux
Format : MacIPC
Langues : Français, anglais et allemand sur le même CD-Rom

MUSÉE NATIONAL DES ARTS D’AFRIQUE ET D’OCÉANIE
293 avenue Daumesnil, 75012 Paris

24/11/96

Joe Fafard : les années de bronze, Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal

Joe Fafard : les années de bronze
Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal
21 novembre 1996 - 16 février 1997

Près d'une centaine de sculptures figuratives de l'artiste canadien Joe Fafard sont présentées dans le pavillon Jean-Noël Desmarais du Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal. Ces oeuvres, réalisées entre 1981 et 1995, montrent l'évolution de l'artiste après qu'il ait délaissé la céramique pour le bronze, de même que sa grande maîtrise des patines. Cette exposition majeure, Joe Fafard : les années de bronze, est née d'une rencontre entre Pierre Théberge, directeur du Musée, et l'artiste en 1992. Les Montréalais avaient pu contempler quelques oeuvres de Joe Fafard qui figuraient, parmi d'autres sculptures d'artistes contemporains, sur le site du Vieux-Port de Montréal au cours de l'été 1995.

L'exposition est centrée sur trois groupes de sculptures dans l'oeuvre de Joe Fafard : bétail et chevaux, visions familières de l'environnement de son enfance, dans lesquels l'artiste explore les formes; les artistes, où se déploie son talent pour dégager l'essence des personnages; les tables, qui reflètent son sens de l'humour. Quelques sculptures antérieures en céramique, dont d'immenses têtes de Van Gogh et de Cézanne, ainsi qu'un petit Picasso assis, souligneront la continuité en même temps que le contraste offerts par les oeuvres en bronze.

JOE FAFARD
Né en 1942, à Sainte-Marthe, Saskatchewan, Joe Fafard est l'un des artistes les plus célèbres au Canada, mais relativement moins connu au Québec, où se trouvent ses racines. L'artiste a exposé à plusieurs reprises aux États-Unis. S'il crée des sculptures cinétiques au début de sa carrière, dès 1968 il réalise des portraits satiriques de personnalités du milieu artistique. À cette époque, il enseigne la sculpture à l'Université de la Saskatchewan à Regina, ce jusqu'en 1974. Il utilise la céramique à partir de 1972 et élargit son champ de représentation à la vie de sa communauté de Pense. Ses portraits et animaux lui valent un succès immense dans le pays. En 1984, il reçoit du Toronto Dominion Centre, à Toronto, une commande pour la réalisation d'une installation extérieure qui comprend sept vaches couchées, Le Pâturage. En 1985, il ouvre sa fonderie, Julienne Atelier Inc., à Pense, Saskatchewan. La même année Le Pâturage -- qui sera prêtée à l'occasion de l'exposition à Montréal -- est exposée de façon permanente au centre-ville de Toronto. Joe Fafard est titulaire de nombreux prix et a été nommé Officier de l'Ordre du Canada en 1981. Depuis 1987, l'artiste vit et travaille à Regina.

L'exposition Joe Fafard : les années de bronze est organisée par le Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, sous la direction de madame Mayo Graham, conservatrice en chef du Musée, avec la collaboration de Nancy Tousley, critique d'art et écrivain. 

Un important catalogue en versions française et anglaise est publié à l'occasion de cette présentation.

MUSÉE DES BEAUX-ARTS DE MONTRÉAL
Pavillon Jean-Noël Desmarais, 1380 rue Sherbrooke ouest, Montréal
www.mmfa.qc.ca

13/11/96

Sherrie Levine at Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles - New Works

Sherrie Levine: New Works
Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles
13 November - 21 December 1996

The Margo Leavin Gallery presents an exhibition of recent works by Sherrie Levine. The exhibition, which marks Levine’s second one-person show at Margo Leavin Gallery, includes sculpture and works on paper. 

Sherrie Levine’s work has consistently questioned the notions of authorship and originality in the production of art. Taking from the concepts developed by Marcel Duchamp, who used found and “ready-made” objects, Sherrie Levine uses repetition and appropriation of signature works of modern art and design to create a sense of ambiguity within her work and her role as an artist. Sherrie Levine’s images are recognizable and already known, having been re-cast, re-photographed, re-painted, or re-drawn. In her work using the ready-made, Sherrie Levine lifts a found object from its original context and transfers it to one of her own construct.

This exhibition includes a series of bronze castings after Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 porcelain urinal ready-made, Fountain. Sherrie Levine’s work, titled Buddha, was cast from a urinal very similar to Duchamp’s original ready-made. By presenting this work in a series of six, Sherrie Levine focuses on the serial nature and repetition inherent to Duchamp’s concept of the ready-made.

Also included are six wood sculptures after a 1934 side table by seminal modernist architect and designer, Gerrit Reitveld. Titled Small Krate Table, Sherrie Levine’s sculpture increases by 50% the scale of Reitveld’s side table—one of the first pieces of furniture sold as kit to be assembled by the buyer—highlighting its sculptural form.

In addition, the exhibition is included a group of ready-mades titled Chimera: After a Broken Leg. The reference to titles of works by Max Ernst and Marcel Duchamp alludes to the mask-like appearance of these works, which consist of plywood leg splints designed by Charles Eames in 1941 for use by the U.S. Navy. The last body of work in the exhibition is nine Iris print images after Claude Monet’s studies of the Rouen Cathedral. These computer-generated images suggest the underlying compositional, color and light qualities of Claude Monet’s works in wholly abstracted form.

MARGO LEAVIN GALLERY
812 North Robertson Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90069

04/11/96

Camilo José Vergara at Getty Research Institute, Santa Monica - "They saw a very great future here": Photographs from Central Los Angeles

"They saw a very great future here": Photographs from Central Los Angeles by Camilo José Vergara
Getty Research Institute, Santa Monica
November 4, 1996 - May 2, 1997

In 1992, the Greater Holy Light Missionary Baptist Church, at 7316 Broadway in South Central Los Angeles, was serving a dwindling African-American congregation. Four years later, the same building now houses the Iglesia Cristiana Jesucristo es el Camino, and the pastor, a Salvadoran woman, would like to add a second story. This is just one example of Los Angeles' changing urban landscape as seen in a new exhibition of photographs at the Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities. 

For 20 years, photographer and sociologist Camilo José Vergara has documented the physical transformation of low-income urban communities in New York, Detroit, Chicago, Newark and, most recently, Los Angeles. While the poor and homeless have long served as poignant subject matter for photographers, Camilo José Vergara focuses on the urban environment of ghettoes, how they change over time, and how they reflect the lives of the people who inhabit them. By photographing the same sites over a period of several years, Camilo José Vergara documents how a movie theater is converted into a church by the addition of a sign, some crosses, and a bible; how a storefront is abandoned and later remodeled into a drug treatment center; and how an apartment building is closed, boarded up, covered with graffiti, and ultimately torn down.

"They saw a very great future here," co-curated by Camilo José Vergara and Research Institute Deputy Director Thomas Reese, includes photographs, taken primarily from 1992 to 1996, of East Los Angeles, Pacoima, Skid Row, and South Central Los Angeles. Through his photographs and interviews with neighborhood residents, Camilo José Vergara captures the physical evidence of people coping with the effects of chronic poverty--from boarded-up and abandoned buildings to security fencing, barred Windows, and colorful murals that disguise a disintegrating infrastructure.

"Central Los Angeles is a port of entry," says Camilo José Vergara, "teeming with poor people struggling to find a place to live, work, and raise children--people who want to speak their language, eat the foods they are accustomed to, and share in the city's prosperity. Here, openness coexists with closure. Fortresses surrounded by spiky fences sit next to colorful vernacular structures."

In his photographs of Los Angeles, Camilo José Vergara captures the ongoing impact of the 1992 riots on buildings in South Central, the complex economy of downtown's Skid Row, and the transformation of traditionally African-American communities by the recent influx of new inhabitants of Latino descent. Among the photographs are: a city block, destroyed in the 1992 riots and now surrounded by fencing used by plumbers, carpet cleaners, and hair dressers to advertise their services; a portrait of Martin Luther King on one storefront commissioned by a Latino business owner from a Latino artist in order to attract African American customers and discourage graffiti taggers; an anonymous storefront whose crosses and faded praying hands indicate that it was once a church.

Camilo José Vergara, born and raised in Chile, came to the United States in 1965 to study at the University of Notre Dame. He received a master's degree in sociology from Columbia University and the Revson Fellowship at Columbia University's School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. His photographs have been exhibited at the National Building Museum, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, the Queens Museum of Art and elsewhere. He has written about urban issues for several publications, most notably The Nation. He is the author of The New American Ghetto (Rutgers University Press, 1995). Vergara is currently a visiting scholar at the Getty Research Institute. This is the first west coast exhibition of his work.

"They saw a very great future here" is part of a year-long series of events and activities relating to Los Angeles organized by the Getty Research Institute. These events include: · The 1996-97 scholar year, Perspectives on Los Angeles: Narratives, Images, History, in which 28 writers, artists, and academics are studying the people, historical events, and economic forces that have shaped Los Angeles ·"L.A. as Subject," a project to inventory local historical resources on the cultural heritage and evolution of Los Angeles ·"L.A. Culture Net," a unique, collaborative initiative under the leadership of the Getty Information Institute which is creating a local, on-line cultural community.

The activities will culminate in late 1997 with the public opening of the Getty Center, a cultural complex dedicated to the visual arts and the humanities, now under construction in the Sepulveda Pass alongside the San Diego (405) freeway.

Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities
401 Wilshire Boulevard, Santa Monica, California
www.getty.edu

03/11/96

Hasselblad 503CW Medium Format Camera at VISCOMM Photo Exhibition in New York

Hasselblad 503CW Medium Format Camera at VISCOMM Photo Exhibition in New York

At the VISCOMM photo exhibition in New York Victor Hasselblad AB presents the Hasselblad 503CW, the latest addition to the extensive Hasselblad medium format camera line. This newly designed camera body has been re-developed from the workhorse model, the 503CXi. The new camera features an ingeneous development in the GMS (Gliding Mirror System) which gives a full image in the viewfinder regardless of focal length of lens or extension.

The 503CW is the next evolution of the timeless design of the Hasselblad camera which is one of the most respected cameras in the world. It is compatible with the entire line of leaf shutter lenses from 30mm to 500mm. There are also two tele converters available; 2X and 1.4X.

Hasselblad 503CW
Hasselblad 503CW
© Victor Hasselblad AB

As with the 503CXi, flash synchronization can be made up to 1/500th of a second and the cameras OTF/TTL dedicated flash feature assures users of superb exposure control on the film plane where the actual image is formed.

In addition to the new camera, Hasselblad also has broken ground with the new Winder CW. This new product has been developed for use with the 503CW and the 503CXi camera bodies. Its ergonomically designed hand grip is comfortable in all possitions and the winder fits tightly against the camera body offering stability and balance, while maintaining easy access to all of the cameras functions. The Winder CW has four firing modes plus on/off lock. Single exposure, continuous exposure, multiple exposure, and infrared remote control.

Hasselblad 503CW
Hasselblad 503CW with the Winder CW
© Victor Hasselblad AB

Another exciting new accessory, an IR Remote Control for the winder, allows the photographer the option of working away from the camera, in the studio or on location. The transmitter resembles an auto alarm transmitter in size and can be individually programmed for a specific camera or multiple camera setups making it a perfect solution for sporting events or industrial uses. The IR remote control is also ideally suited for studio work with children, groups, etc.

Hasselblad 503CW
Hasselblad 503CW with the IR Remote Control for the winder
© Victor Hasselblad AB

Another quality that the Winder CW features is SAI (Self-Adjusting Interface) which not only senses the subtle characteristics of each camera, but also adjusts itself to their specific tolerances for perfect compatibility. In other words, it adjusts itself to minimize the potential for unneccessary wear and tear on the camera and/or the motor.

Hasselblad 503CW Technical Specifications

Camera body: One-piece, cast aluminium alloy shell with 3/8 and 1/4 socket threads and tripod plate for rapid mounting with the Hasselblad tripod quick-coupling accessory.
Film format: 6x6 cm (2 1/4" x 2 1/4") or 6x4.5 cm (2 1/4" x 1 5/8") resp. 6x3 cm (2 1/4" x 1 1/5") with format masks. 6x4.5 cm (2 1/4" x 1 5/8") with accessory magazine.

Film choice: 120 and 220 rollfilm, 70 mm perforated film and Polaroid film with accessory magazines.

Film advance: Manual or motor driven with Winder CW.

Lenses: Interchangeable Carl Zeiss CF- and C-lenses with focal lengths of 30, 40, 50, 60, 80, 100, 120, 135, 150, 180, 250, 250SA, 350 and 500 mm. Converter 2XE, PC-Mutar 1.4X Shift Converter and the new Teleconverter 1.4XE.

Shutter: Between-lens shutter with speeds from 1 sec. to 1/500 sec. and B.

Flash sync: The between-lens shutter provides flash synchronization up to 1/500 sec.

Flash Control: TTL centre-weighted dedicated system with OTF metering. Controls flash duration automatically. Film speed range from ISO 16 to ISO 1000.

Exposure metering: Meter Prism Viewfinder available as accessories. Centre weighted TTL flash metering.

Viewfinders: Fitted with GMS, Gliding Mirror System, which always provides an entire image in the viewfinder. Interchangeable focusing screens for different applications. Folding focusing hood that can be exchanged for prism viewfinders with 45° and 90° viewing angles as well as correction eyepieces.

Compatibility: All CF- and C- lenses. All magazines manufactured from 1957 and onwards. All viewfinders and most other accessories.

Dimensions: With focusing hood, Planar CF 2.8/80 mm, film magazine A12: width 114 mm (4.5"), height 110 mm (4.3"), length 180 mm (7").

Weight: With focusing hood, Planar CF 2.8/80 mm, film magazine A12: 1.5 kg. (3.3lbs.) Camera body only: 0.6 kg. (1.3lbs)

HASSELBLAD

Updated 18.01.2022

02/11/96

Roy DeCarava: A Retrospective, LACMA - Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Roy DeCarava: A Retrospective
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
November 14, 1996 - January 26, 1997

The largest and most comprehensive survey ever devoted to the works of Roy DeCarava, one of the central figures in postwar American photography, opens at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on November 14, 1996. Roy DeCarava: A Retrospective spans DeCarava's oeuvre, from his groundbreaking pictures of everyday life in Harlem, through the civil rights protests of the early 1960s, to recent lyrical studies of nature. The exhibition includes a generous selection of Roy DeCarava's landmark photographs of jazz legends Billie Holiday, Milt Jackson, John Coltrane, and many others.

Born in New York City in 1919, DeCarava is known as one of the leading American photographers of his generation. Roy DeCarava: A Retrospective spans nearly half a century of the artist's work through some 200 black-and-white photographs made from the late 1940s through the mid-1990s. Presented in chronological order, the exhibition will also explore continuities of style and theme by juxtaposing works that span decades.

On the occasion of the exhibition, Roy DeCarava stated, "Images and the making of images have been and are still central to me as a person and to my growth as an artist. Photography is the best way I know of to express my concerns and my values. Exhibiting and publishing the work are ways of sharing and confirm my belief in the power of art to illuminate and transform our lives."

Tim Wride, LACMA's assistant curator of photography, said, "The museum is very committed to collecting and exhibiting photography, and this exhibition is important because it shows the broadest possible range of an artist's trajectory through his personal discovery of photography and what is photographic through his use of that medium to evoke the emotions and passions that are so much a part of his life."

Roy DeCarava's gentle, intimate pictures of domestic life in Harlem were first published in 1955 in The Sweet Flypaper of Life, with text by poet Langston Hughes. Roy DeCarava made many of the pictures after winning a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1951--the first awarded to an African-American photographer--which allowed him to spend a full year photographing daily life in Harlem. The pictures brought a new gentleness and intimacy to photography, creating an image of everyday experience that is at once tender and unsentimental.

Trained as a painter and printmaker, Roy DeCarava turned to photography in the late 1940s and quickly mastered the vocabulary of the small, hand-held camera, which was rapidly becoming the hallmark of advanced American work.

Organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, the exhibition is arranged by recurrent theme and motif (as well as chronologically), and will include a number of pictures that have not been shown previously.

Exhibition Highlights In Man coming up subway stairs (1952), one of several subway pictures in the exhibition, an exhausted worker stands for all working men at the end of the day. Also exemplary of Roy DeCarava's metaphoric bent is Hallway (1953), in which an inhumanly narrow passage is described both as a haunting instance of "the economics of building for poor people" and as a thing of beauty.

In 1956 he embarked on an extensive series of jazz musicians. Many of the jazz pictures, such as Coltrane on soprano (1963), show individuals absorbed in the act of creation. Others, such as Billie Holiday and Hazel Scott at party (1957), are warm and affecting portraits. Together with photographs of Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, Norman Lewis, and others, these portraits form an important body within Roy DeCarava's work.

In the early 1960s, Roy DeCarava's work grew more tough-minded in its response to racial discrimination, notably in pictures of laborers in New York's garment district and of civil rights protests. Mississippi freedom marcher, Washington, D.C. (1963), made at the historic March on Washington, exemplifies the photographer's instinct for isolating essential detail. Instead of attempting to encompass the vast event, Roy DeCarava's picture enters into the spirit of the March, distilling a collective determination and hope in the expression of a single face.

A life-long New Yorker, Roy DeCarava has tended to photograph close to home, making from his immediate environment the expansive world of his art. Within these parameters, his art has continued to evolve, as a group of pictures from the mid-1980s attests. Roy DeCarava's hand-camera style rejects artificial light as an intrusion upon experience and thus accepts deep shadow and blur as marks of authenticity. Beginning in 1985, Roy DeCarava elaborated this principle in pictures whose long exposures make the blur of motion an active stylistic device. In these photographs, the sensuousness that Roy DeCarava earlier had accorded to individual figures is transported to the overall field of the image.

LACMA coordinating curator: Tim B. Wride, assistant curator of photography.

Catalogue: Roy DeCarava: a Retrospective, by Peter Galassi, with an essay by Sherry Turner DeCarava; published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York; 280 pp., 237 photo reproductions; hardbound $60, softbound $29.95.

This exhibition, organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and its accompanying publication were supported by a grant from Metropolitan Life Foundation. Additional funding was provided by Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

LACMA
lacma.org

31/10/96

Mamiya 645 Series 200mm f/2.8 APO Lens

New Mamiya 645 Series 200mm f/2.8 APO Lens 

Mamiya announces its latest addition to the 645 APO lens Series, the new 200mm f/2.8 APO High Speed Telephoto. With the use of ultra-low dispersion glass, the 200mm f/2.8 APO achieves fully corrected color reproduction, high resolution and high speed performance. Optical distortion ratio is only 0.24%. The new high speed telephoto is ideal for sports, photojournalists, fashion and advertising photography. 

Mamiya 200mm f/2.8 APO Lens Specifications 
Optical Construction: 7 elements in 5 groups
Angle of View: 20°
Minimum Aperture: f/22
Diaphragm: Automatic
Focusing: Helicoid
Minimum Focusing Distance: 8 feet = 2.44m
Maximum Magnification Ratio: 0.098 X
Area Covered: 23.2 x 17.2 inches = 589.5mm x 436.8mm
Equivalent Focal Length to 35mm: 124mm
Filter Size: 77mm
Hood: Built-in plus Extension Hood
Dimension (L x W): 5.7 x 3.6 inches = 143.5mm x 91mm
Weight: 38.8 oz. = 1,100g

30/10/96

Mamiya Aluminum Compartment Cases

New Mamiya Aluminum Compartment Cases

Mamiya announces three new compartment cases for all Mamiya medium format cameras. The cases feature fully adjustable urethane covered dividers, plastic protected exterior comers, and attractive styling with golden beige aluminum exterior finish. The interior top foam removes to allow access to accessory pockets. Includes carry strap and adjustable dividers. Ideal for carrying and storage of Mamiya equipment. 

Mamiya Compartment Cases Specifications

Mamiya Aluminum Case KM705
Outer dimension: 18 x 13.5 x 6.3 inches = W460 x D344 x H160mm
Inner dimension: 17.3 x 12.8 x4.3 inches = W440 x D325 x H110mm
Weight: 8.1 Lbs. = 3.7kg 

Mamiya Aluminum Case KM706
Outer dimension: 19.8 x14.6 x 7.2 inches = W502 x D371 x H183mm
Inner dimension: 18.5 x 13.8 x 4.5 inches = W470 x D350 x H115mm
Weight; 10.8 Lbs. = 4.9kg 

Mamiya Aluminum Case KM707
Outer dimension: 24.2 x 14.6 x 7.2 inches = W615 x D371 x H183mm
Inner dimension: 22.8 x 13.8 x 4.5 inches = W580 x D350 x H115mm
Weight: 12.6 Lbs. = 5.7kg

29/10/96

Mamiya Quick Shoe Tripod Adapter AQ701

Mamiya Quick Shoe Tripod Adapter AQ701 

Mamiya introduces a new Quick Shoe tripod mount for Mamiya RZ and 645 series cameras. It allows fast and secure attachment and removal of camera from any tripod head. The RZ adapter plate features anti-rotation pins matched to Mamiya RZ, RB, 645 and twin lens camera bottoms. Utilizes standard 1/4" tripod socket.

20/10/96

Robert Frank: Hasselblad Photography Award 1996

Robert Frank is awarded the Hasselblad Foundation International Photography Award for 1996

The Erna and Victor Hasselblad Foundation International Photography Award for 1996 has been awarded to Robert Frank, USA. The prize will be presented to Robert Frank at a ceremony in Göteborg, Sweden, on 8 March 1997, coinciding with the opening of an exhibition of his work at the Hasselblad Center, adjoining the Göteborg Museum of Art.

The Foundation motivates its choice of prizewinner as follows: "Robert Frank is one of today's leading visual artists. He has contributed to a renewal in the fields of both documentary and fine art photography and within 'independent American film art'. Having as his starting point the objective realism of the art of the thirties, Frank has pursued his distinctive search for truth, whatever the medium, with determination and consistency. His pictures have had decisive influence on generations of photographers, painters, film makers, critics and writers."

This is the sixteenth time the Hasselblad prize has been awarded. Previous prize-winners have been: Lennart Nilsson, Sweden; Ansel Adams, USA; Henri Cartier-Bresson, France; Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Mexico; Irving Penn, USA; Ernst Haas, USA; Hiroshi Hamaya, Japan; Edouard Boubat, France; Sebastião Salgado, Bra-zil/France; William Klein, USA/France; Richard Avedon, USA; Josef Koudelka, Czechoslovakia/France, Sune Jonsson, Sweden; Susan Meiselas, USA; and Robert Häusser, Germany.

Robert Frank was born in 1924 in Zürich, Switzerland, where he started his photographic career. He was influenced by the standards of perfection in graphics and photography. Gotthard Shuh and Jacob Tuggener had a strong influence. He also got inspiration from mountain-climbing and skiing. Magazines like Du and Graphics replaced art school.

After the second World War, Frank immigrated to the United States. When he arrived he showed his work to Alexey Brodovitch, the art director of the magazine Harper's Bazaar. Brodovitch hired Frank in April 1947, but in time Frank found that he made fashion photographs with little enthusiasm and left the employ of Harper's Bazaar in October of that same year.

Between 1949 and 1953 Frank made several trips to South America and Europe. In collaboration with Werner Zryd, he produced three copies of a hand-bound book, Black White and Things. Rebelling against his pragmatic and ordered upbringing, Frank had come to believe that truth, or a fundamental understanding of the nature of things, could be obtained only through intuition or the "heart." In working with Black White and Things Frank discovered that a carefully sequenced series of thirty-four original photographs could recreate feelings of the heart, and in so doing established a challenge that would dominate his work for many years.

In 1955 Frank was the first European to be awarded a Guggenheim fellowship. He criss-crossed the nation in order to document "the kind of civilization born here and spreading elsewhere." The fellowship was renewed in 1956. Frank tried to publish a book, but no New York publisher was willing to accept his view of America. The first edition, Les Américains, was published in 1958 in Paris with Robert Delpire and the second edition, The Americans, in New York 1959 with an introduction by Jack Kerouac. The Americans is a "vision, not an idea." In the years following its publication, the book was accepted as one of the most important in the history of photography.

Following The Americans Frank began to photograph anonymous people on the streets of New York through the windows of city buses. The cinematic quality of his bus series portends his transition to filmmaking. In the summer of 1958 he borrowed an 8 mm movie camera from a friend and made a short film. It proved to be the first of more than twenty-five films and videos that he would direct, write or photograph. Early in 1959 he began the film, Pull My Daisy, a poetic parable based on The Beat Generation, a manuscript by Jack Kerouac. The film helped to validate independent cinema in the United States and to define the beat generation. It won considerable attention and has served as model for many aspiring film makers.

Frank went on to perfect his technique of marrying documentary footage, improvised scenes and scripted performances in his films. His first openly autobiographical film was the 1969 Conversations in Vermont. Of this film Frank commented: "this film is about the past. The present comes back in actual film footage. Maybe this film is about growing older. It is some kind of family album." About Me, completed in 1971, was the second of Frank's autobiographical films.

In the early 1970s Frank began to work on a retrospective, autobiographical book of photographs, The Lines of My Hand. This book includes still photographs from throughout his career as well as photographs that he created from multiple strips of movie film printed together. He also began to add words to these images. He started to use a Polaroid camera in Nova Scotia where he had moved in the early 1970s and where he lacked a darkroom. "I think this is a way that brought me back to being more of a still photographer." The structure of The Lines of My Hand is cinematic and clearly illustrates Frank's transition from still photography to film.

While his move to Nova Scotia prompted a reevaluation of his still photography, Frank continued to make films, combining the autobiographical, everyday sentiments conveyed in his Polaroids with a concern for both documentary and fabricated methodologies. In 1972 Frank made Cocksucker Blues, a controversial documentary about the Rolling Stones' North American tour. Keep Busy, perhaps his most abstract and cerebral project, was shot in Nova Scotia in 1975, a film about interpersonal politics, isolation, and survival. Between 1980 and 1985 Frank completed the film Life Dances On..., a meditation of his own life and destiny and on the inability of film to document his true feelings.

Since 1958, Frank's art has pursued its inward spiral, reflecting his own life and personal experiences. He continues to make innovations in autobiographical method. In his recent photographic triptychs like Moving Out, 1994, and Yellow Flower - Like a Dog, 1992, Frank brings multiple still images to life with words.

Franks moving pictures and his still photographs are interdependent. As an autobiographical vision emerged in his photography, he began to reinterpret his world through cinema. As his films became increasingly personal he returned to still photography, creating narrative images with the illusion of movement and of time passing, breaking down barriers between his art and personal life to reveal an interior vision and to create a tension that became itself the subject of his work.

In addition to the books mentioned above the following deserve notice; Robert Frank New York to Nova Scotia (1986) and Moving Out (1994), the latter linked to a large retrospective exhibition of his work assembled by Sarah Greenough and Philip Brookman for the National Gallery of Art, Washington, which bears the same title and has toured in the United States, Japan and Europe for the last two years.

ERNA AND VICTOR HASSELBLAD FOUNDATION

13/10/96

A History of Women Photographers at The New York Public Library

A History of Women Photographers 
The New York Public Library
October 19, 1996 - January 4, 1997

The New York Public Library is the premier venue for A History of Women Photographers, the first comprehensive international exhibition surveying women's contributions to photography. Organized by the Akron Art Museum and curated by its chief curator, Barbara Tannenbaum, and photographic historian Naomi Rosenblum, the exhibition reexamines the field of photography. It brings to light the contributions of unknown or forgotten women and establishes a context for them among the women photographers who have already achieved lasting fame. A History of Women Photographers opens in the D. Samuel and Jeane H. Gottesman Exhibition Hall at the Library's Center for the Humanities at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.

Women have been making photographs since the invention was announced in 1839, and by the early 20th century they had made a significant contribution to the growing photographic movements of the time. "While there has been a tremendous increase, both in numbers and prominence, of women working in the field over the last two decades," said Dr. Naomi Rosenblum, "the aim of this exhibition is to recover, and present to a wide public, the work of those who preceded them -- a great many of whom have been overlooked in historical and critical studies of the past."

The exhibition is historical in focus and includes approximately 234 vintage prints and publications made between 1850 and 1975 in Europe, the Americas, and parts of Asia. These works, representing over 200 photographers, have come to New York from 134 museums, libraries, galleries, and private collections (including that of The New York Public Library) on four continents. In conjunction with the exhibition, additional historical works, as well as contemporary (post-1975) work, will be on view at approximately 30 museums, art galleries, and alternative art spaces in New York City as part of a citywide Festival of Women Photographers.

A History of Women Photographers is divided into eight thematic sections that demonstrate the range of women's participation in photography as a pastime, a professional occupation, and a means of personal expression. Their involvement with depicting the real world is visible in Jessie Tarbox Beals's (1870-1942) image of New York's Flatiron Building, in the section on "Landscape and the Urban Scene," while their attraction to the world of the symbolic is apparent in Anne W. Brigman's (1869-1950) Incantation -- from the section devoted to "Narrative and Allegorical Photographs." In its simple yet powerful composition, Brigman's image of a woman standing on a cliff, arms raised, suggests the possibility of women's freedom and intimate relationship with nature.

Women's professionalism in the commercial realm can be seen in images made for magazines and advertisements, such as Elizabeth Buehrmann's (1886-1962) elegant rendering of a man's hands lighting a cigar and Yva's (1900-1942) sensuous depiction of hands wearing bejeweled bracelets, both from the "Fashion, Advertising, and Theatrical Photography" section. Images by Olga Ignatovich (1905-1984) and Nair Benedicto (b. 1940) in the section on "Documentary Photography" are evidence of women's interest in all aspects of life, from the horrors of war to the pleasures of daily activities, while those by Hisae Imai (b. 1931) and Emily Medkova (1928-1985) in the section on "Experimental Photography" attest to their creative involvement with the medium. Other sections are "The Nude," "Portraiture," and "Still Life."
"In addition to the historical significance and psychological power of the images in the exhibition," Dr. Barbara Tannenbaum said, "there is the importance of the photographs as fine art objects." Most of the work is in black and white. "Within what we call black-and-white," said Babara Tannenbaum, "there is an enormous variety of processes, papers, surfaces, and printing styles. The 'colors' in this exhibition range from the chocolatey-plum of the pristine albumen prints of earlier days and the soft, rich grays of early 20th-century prints to the bolder contrasts of the more modern gelatin silver prints. This exhibition, with over 200 fine vintage photographs spanning almost the entire history of the medium, is not just about history and images -- it is also about the pleasure of looking."
Introductory Videotape
A short videotape introducing and dramatizing the history of women in photography will play continuously inside the exhibition. It was produced and directed by Nina Rosenblum, an award-winning documentary filmmaker.

A Festival of Women Photographers
The Festival is a citywide event in which approximately 30 museums, galleries, and nonprofit spaces around New York will feature the work of women photographers in exhibitions to be held between October 1996 and January 1997. The Festival will allow visitors to see not only other examples of work by artists included in A History of Women Photographers, but also work by artists active since 1975.

National Tour
After A History of Women Photographers closes at the Library on January 4, 1997, it will travel to The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. (February 13 - May 4, 1997); the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, Calif. (June 7 - August 17, 1997); and finally to the Akron Art Museum, Akron, Ohio (September 6 - November 2, 1997).

Publication
A History of Women Photographers, written by Naomi Rosenblum, co-curator of the exhibition, and published by Abbeville Press in 1994, fully explores the history and the contexts of the photographers' lives and their work. Hardcover; 356 pages; 263 illustrations; $60. 

THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

06/10/96

Helmut Newton, Polaroids, Galleria Carla Sozzani, Milan

HELMUT NEWTON
Impressions
Polaroids

Galleria Carla Sozzani, Milan
3 October - 10 November 1996

Polaroids. Helmut Newton exhibits his unseen Polaroids to the public for the first time. Taken during a number of sessions since 1989, these are quick snapshots that strike us with immediacy. The polaroid is a technical medium quite congenial to the artist because, as he says, “I’m impatient to see what my photo will look like: I grab the camera […] and simply press the button.” The speed of this photographic process allows him to capture a situation, an expression, a momentary sensation that would lose its spontaneity and freshness with a slower technique, at the same speed as the human eye.

Impressions. 30 ink prints measuring 1.20 m long or high, depending whether the image is horizontal or vertical. None of them has ever been published or exhibited before. They were printed by Helmut Newton by putting together various works of his from different times in his archives in Monte Carlo. Newton says that this project, which began on August 19 and was completed on September 20, 1996, is his most innovative work. They are “impressions” inspired by the quick-fire language of the sexy and sometimes pornographic writing in magazines such as “True Crime” and “True Detective”, or the novels of Chandler and Spillane, whom Helmut Newton admires greatly.

Torsos 1994, 6 silver gelatine prints measuring 1.20 x 1.20 m, exhibited for the first time in Italy. They are imposing nudes inspired by the classical statuary of antiquity and Delamare’s sculptures of the Thirties, full-scale black and white photographs taken in the Nineties featuring bold angles and rigorously white backgrounds that emphasise the clear chiaroscuro of the bodies. In the same room we may admire 2 nude portraits of Kristen McMenamy measuring 1.50 x 1.20 m, which Helmut Newton printed for the first time for this exhibition in Milan.

HELMUT NEWTON

Helmut Newton was born in Berlin in 1920. At the age of 16 he was apprenticed to famous Berlin photographer Yva, renowned for his fashion photos, portraits and nudes. In 1938 he left Germany to live in Singapore, where he worked for the Singapore Straits Times. He then moved to Australia, where he met June Brown: wife, friend, lover, inseparable advisor. They settled in Paris in 1957. In the Sixties and Seventies Newton worked for Nova, Queen and Stern as well as for the French, American, Italian and British editions of Vogue magazine. He held his first solo show in Paris in 1975. He has been presented with numerous awards: the 1976 Art Directors Club of Tokyo award for best photograph of the year and, in 1977-1978, the American Institute of Graphic Arts award for his first book, White Women. In 1978-1979 he was presented with a gold medal by the Art Directors Club of Germany for best news photograph. In 1981 he moved to Monte Carlo. In 1989 he was appointed “Knight of arts and letters” by the French Minister of Culture Jack Lang. In the same year he also received the “Photographers’ Award for Outstanding Achievements and Contributions to Photography During the Sixties and Seventies” from the Photographic Society of Japan. French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac presented him with the “Gran Prix National de la Ville de Paris.” In 1991 he was awarded the “World Image Award” in New York for best photographic portrait, and the following year the German government presented him with a prize and he was appointed “Knight of arts, letters and sciences” by Princess Caroline of Monaco. He has held exhibitions all over the world. He now lives and works in Monte Carlo and Los Angeles. Few famous people today have not been immortalised by his ironic, talented lens: from Catherine Deneuve to Elisabeth Taylor, from Mick Jagger to Jack Nicholson, from Paloma Picasso to Charlotte Rampling. But it is above all his monumental black and white nudes that strike the collective imagination and present a new image of woman that has emerged since the Eighties: cold and confident, dedicated to the cult of the body and aware of her erotic impact. In these shocking images of athletes and amazons we find both the expressive power of the cinema and a decadent opulence bounding upon fetishism, an aggressive and transgressive imagination, a surprising and unmatched elegance. His most famous photographs are marked by the most explicit and the most ambiguous sexuality. Galleria Carla Sozzani presented a series of his portraits of women in 1993 (January 14 to February 27).

Galleria Carla Sozzani
Corso Como 10 - 20154 Milano, Italia
www.galleriacarlasozzani.org

27/09/96

Beverly Semmes at Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin - New and Recent Sculpture

Beverly Semmes: New and Recent Sculpture
Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
2 October 1996 - 16 February 1997

The first one-person exhibition in Ireland of the work of the American sculptor Beverly Semmes opens to the public at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 2 October. Beverly Semmes: New and Recent Sculpture comprises 10 of Semmes’s characteristically large, dramatic clothing pieces, all created in the last four years, and 10 earlier photoworks of smaller wearable garments. 

Beverly Semmes’s monumental sculptures and her smaller fabric creations are a delightful and provocative fusion of personal fantasy and social commentary. They explore the power of clothing and its ability to influence, and even define the self - who we think we are, how we choose to represent ourselves, and how we are seen and defined. The strangely distorted bodices and elongated arms of Semmes’s dresses, with their profusion of colours and fabrics, present rich psychological terrain. Her exaggeration of clothing forms to surreal extremes, result in sculptural creations that reflect a concern, shared by many contemporary artists, with the politics and psychology of identity. 

Scarlett, 1994 is a typically striking work, a 71/2 foot long ‘dress’ of scarlet crushed velvet with skirt and arms flowing down the gallery wall and spilling luxuriantly onto the floor. In Green Braided Dress, 1992 the collar and shoulders are of a normal, though greatly enlarged, dress, which is then contorted into three pairs of plaits stretching to the ground. Two new works have been made especially for this exhibition. One, Twister, 1996 is one of the first works in which a kinetic element is introduced. In all of the larger, more recent works the human figure is absent - but made all the more visible by its very invisibility. This ‘presence of absence’ resonates throughout Beverly Semmes’s work with both dramatic and telling effect. 

In contrast, the small scale photoworks and film stills each depict a costumed figure, frequently in a landscape with the shapes and textures of their costumes mimicking their surroundings. Figure in the Purple Velvet Bathrobe and Cloud Hat, 1991 depicts a figure standing on a sandy point overlooking the ocean. Her voluminous, purple robe falls in thick folds, like a waterfall or a stream that will lead to the ocean below, while her cloudlike hat is barely distinguishable from the sky. 

Born in Washington, DC, Beverly Semmes lives and works in New York City. Solo exhibitions include shows at the Sculpture Centre, New York, ICA, Philadelphia, Camden Arts Centre, London, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, DC, She has shown in many group exhibitions in the US and in Dusseldorf, London, Nova Scotia and Ontario. Her Four Purple Velvet Bathroles was one of the most memorable works in IMMA’s From Beyond the Pale season in 1994-95. 

Irish Museum of Modern Art
Royal Hospital, Military Road, Kilmainham, Dublin 8
www.modernart.ie

22/09/96

David Rabinowitch, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge - Sculptures and Templates, 1968

David Rabinowitch: Sculptures and Templates, 1968
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge
September 14, 1996 - January 12, 1997

The special exhibition David Rabinowitch: Sculptures and Templates, 1968, which is a rare presentation of this important sculptor's work in a United States museum, was conceived by David Rabinowitch and James Cuno, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director, and is presented in conjunction with the publication of Pacing the World: Construction in the Sculpture of David Rabinowitch, by Whitney Davis, professor of art history and director of the Alice Berline Kaplan Center for the Humanities at Northwestern University. 
"We are very pleased to be showing the work of David Rabinowitch and to be publishing the first book-length study to investigate its significance within the history of modern sculpture," James Cuno said. "For reasons I do not quite understand David Rabinowtch's work is very much better known in Europe, especially Germany and Eastern Europe, than it is in this country. It has been collected by most major European contemporary museums, exhibited widely from Prague to Paris, and published frequently in European journals and catalogues. But of course, until fairly recently, the same has been true of the work of his peers, Richard Serra, Carl Andre, and Donald Judd. It may have to do with a European predilection for tough-minded and radically experimental art, especially of a materialist kind. We, in this country, have preferred painting to sculpture and optical to materialist art," noted James Cuno.
David Rabinowitch was born in Toronto in 1943 and has been working in New York since 1972. His work can be characterized by an intensity of thought and material and simplicity of form, and it is representative of certain concerns of minimalist sculpture. The works to be exhibited at the Fogg, which include nine solid hot-rolled steel sculptures and seventeen drawings, or templates, have been chosen from a series done in 1968 which were formative in Rabinowitch's subsequent work.Ñ"My work from 1968 was a watershed for me," stated the artist, "in the sense that after that all of my sculptures were conceived in terms of operations in extended planes of mass and their relation to vision. It was the first time I worked in terms of template construction, which just means a one-to-one plan for a sculpture. Before, I used only plans and sketches. After this period I was able to make a certain percentage of templates as drawings in their own right and was stimulated to begin to make drawings independent of sculpture.
"It is significant to note," David Rabinowitch continued, "that this is the first time that these templates, which were selected from some 500, and sculptures will be exhibited as two orders of work that make up an enterprise."
The exhibition is the first of an informal series of exhibitions to be planned for the Fogg which will explore the relationship of recent sculpture to the floor. "Sculpture has always been concerned with its base," Cuno pointed out. "That is, how sculpture relates to our world and the space in which it is experienced by us is determined in great part by whether or not it is placed on a pedestal or directly on the floor. A pedestal tends to isolate sculpture and idealize it; as if were an object of an order different from objects in our world. As early as 1932, Giacometti placed a sculpture directly on the floor. Radical at the time, this has become commonplace since the 1960s. Over the next few years, we intend to offer exhibitions which highlight and examine this relationship.
"Such concentrated exhibitions are typical of our approach to the presentation of contemporary art," Cuno explained. "We hope to offer our visitors access to works of art and issues in contemporary art that have been overlooked or left unexamined by our colleague institutions in the greater Boston area. We don't want to duplicate what is already being done so well elsewhere. Equally, we want to publish serious and scholarly publications on contemporary art. Whitney Davis's is the first such publication. A distinguished scholar of Egyptian art, and a formidable critic of contemporary art theory, Professor Davis brings a powerful mind and extraordinary insights to the examination of Rabinowitch's work. And yet, like the work, it is accessible to anyone interested in contemporary art. It is not only a scholar's work."
FOGG ART MUSEUM
Harvard University Art Museums
32 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA
www.artmuseums.harvard.edu

20/09/96

Agnes Mongan (1905-1996)

AGNES MONGAN, IN MEMORIAM

Agnes Mongan, a pioneer in the study of drawings and curator emerita of drawings at the Fogg , and the first female director of the Fogg Art Museum, died on Sunday, September 15, at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge. She was 91 and a resident of Cambridge.

During her extraordinary career which spanned six decades, Agnes Mongan had a profound influence on her peers and colleagues, as well as on generations of fine arts students, many of whom went on to become curators in major national museums.

"Agnes Mongan was one of those individuals whose rare qualities and values embody the deepest purposes of an institution," Neil Rudenstine, President of Harvard University, said in a statement. "She was inimitable. She was the soul of intellectual scrupulousness, with the most penetrating sense of absolute standards. She was, in addition, a sympathetic spirit -- gracious, encouraging, and generous. She fixed her keen eye on works of art as objects to be understood in all their detail -- as well as in terms of their vital human and aesthetic effects. She was a scholar, curator, director, connoisseur, teacher, counselor and friend to countless people over the course of many decades in the life of the Fogg Art Museum, the Department of Fine Arts, and the University. We already feel her loss as profoundly as we were -- for so long -- aware of her vital presence."

James Cuno, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard University Art Museums, said in a statement, "Agnes was that rare individual who could combine a high regard for tradition with a love of the new and the exciting. An acknowledged expert on old master drawings and a friend of the new art of her time, especially that of Alexander Calder and Virgil Thompson, she was, in a way, not unlike the work of the artist she most admired and for her scholarly work is best known, the French painter and draughtsman, Jean-August-Dominique Ingres. Like Ingres's work, she offered us a twist on the traditional that was, in the end, more modern than old fashioned. She was, in her tastes, habits, and courage, in no way conventional."

Born in Somerville, Massachusetts in 1905, Agnes Mongan knew at an early age that she loved works of art and that she longed to know more about them. Mongan's father, a family doctor, was determined that she receive the finest education possible and sent her to Bryn Mawr College, where she studied art history and English literature. Upon Agnes' graduation from Bryn Mawr in 1927, Dr. Mongan insisted that she, like his other children, spend a year abroad. Agnes chose to spend her year studying Italian art with a Smith College Seminar; her studies took her to Florence and Paris, and then to points beyond in Northern Italy and Central Europe, affording her opportunities to examine closely works of art in the original, with a particular emphasis not only on their history, but also on their present condition.

Following this remarkable year abroad, Mongan returned to Cambridge where she completed the requirements to receive her Master's Degree from Smith College. In 1929, she also accepted her first position at the Fogg Art Museum as a research assistant under Paul Sachs, cataloguing his collection of drawings. Indeed, Mongan has stated that she owes the development of her career and interest in drawings primarily to Sachs, a 1900 graduate of Harvard College, former banker, and longtime associate director of the Fogg Museum. Under Sachs' supervision, Mongan developed a network of professional and social contacts during her early years at the Fogg and she was granted access to some of the most important private collections in the world. In the following decades, Agnes Mongan became one of the leading connoisseurs of Old Master drawings, and she went on to play a principal role in the history of connoisseurship in this country.

In the 1930s the Fogg collection contained more drawings from France than from any other country, and, perhaps as a result, Mongan's interest in French drawings flourished. Mongan devoted herself to the writing of the catalogue Drawings in the Fogg Museum of Art throughout the '30s; however, she also published numerous articles on individual drawings in the museum's collection, always basing her reporting on accurate scholarship. In addition to her full-time pursuits at the Fogg, Agnes Mongan also spent considerable time exploring her interest in contemporary art. In the 1930s she was one of the founding members of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and she later became involved with the activities of the Museum of Modern Art.

William Robinson, Ian Woodner Curator of Drawings at the Fogg Art Museum, said in a statement, "Agnes Mongan was one of the twentieth century's outstanding scholars in the field of European old master and nineteenth-century drawings. Drawings in the Fogg Museum of Art (1940), written by Miss Mongan and the Fogg's Associate Director Paul J. Sachs, is a work characterized by meticulous description, thorough research, incisive analysis and concise prose, which established a new standard for museum catalogues of drawings.

"As curator of drawings for nearly fifty years, she oversaw the development of the Fogg's holdings from a miscellany of no more than local significance to a comprehensive collection of international renown," Robinson continued. "Several thousand drawings entered the collection during her tenure. They included works acquired in the major gifts and bequests that form the core of the collections as well as drawings she was able to secure with a modest purchase fund that, she liked to recall, usually amounted to about $80 per year. An inspiring teacher, Miss Mongan was also a tireless advocate outside the classroom for her subject. She organized innumerable exhibitions of works from private collections and solo shows of drawings by artists ranging from Ingres to Andrew Wyeth. Her most important exhibition, French Drawings from American Collections: Clouet to Matisse, was seen in Rotterdam, Paris and New York in 1958-1959."

When Grenville Winthrop bequeathed his enormous collection of art to the Fogg Art Museum in 1943, Mongan embarked upon its catalogue. The Winthrop bequest opened a new era in scholarship of French art for Mongan; her area of specialty, originally Italian and French drawings of the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, was now extended to include French drawings of the nineteenth century. Cataloguing the Winthrop collection enabled her to devote years to the research of works by French artists other than Degas or Daumier. Specifically it presented an extraordinary opportunity to study the work of Ingres; 35 drawings by Ingres entered the Fogg via the Winthrop bequest. The grace, delicacy, elegance, and precision she admired in French art were strikingly embodied in the drawings by Ingres. In recognition of her growing expertise in French art, she was asked to assist in the cataloguing of the French paintings in the Frick Collection in New York, and it was while she was working on the French paintings at the Frick that Mongan states that she became an "Ingriste."

Agnes Mongan became the first female curator at the Fogg Art Museum in 1947 when Harvard University finally lifted its policy banning women from being appointed curators (until that time, she held the title "Keeper of Drawings"). In 1951, Miss Mongan was appointed assistant director of the Fogg, thereby assuming administrative responsibilities in addition to her established career as a scholar and curator in the drawing department.

Although Miss Mongan taught classes for many years, it wasn't until 1960 that her role in the Department of Fine Arts was acknowledged officially. Her appointment as the Martin A. Ryerson Lecturer in Fine Arts gave formal recognition to her long-standing teaching situation. Mongan always maintained that although the Fogg is open to the public, its primary function is the development of scholars and museum professionals. To this end, she gave freely of her time to all students who displayed a serious interest in drawings, encouraging them, helping them in their projects, and editing and promoting their publications.

Margaret Morgan Grasselli, curator of Old Master drawings, National Gallery of Art, said in a statement, "Miss Mongan's seminars on drawings were legendary and served as the instructional cradle for several generations of curators, connoisseurs, and collectors. Those of us who were fortunate enough to take one of her courses remember fondly her infectious passion for the drawings, the delightful anecdotes she would relate about each one, and especially the traditional trip to New York to visit dealers, exhibitions and private collections. For the students who shared her passion for drawings and were deemed to have an 'eye,' Miss Mongan used her considerable prestige and influence to open doors to life-shaping opportunities."

In 1964 Agnes Mongan's title was changed to associate director, and then in 1968 when John Coolidge retired as director of the Fogg, Miss Mongan was named Acting Director. In 1969, she was appointed director of the museum, placing her among the first female directors of a major museum in the United States. When she took on the job of running the Fogg, times were not favorable for American museums. Private funding was at a minimum, many of the old donors were gone, and the country and the university were preoccupied with the escalating conflict in Viet Nam. In spite of these difficulties, Miss Mongan carried on the museum administration according to traditional practice. As assistant, associate, and then director of the Fogg, Mongan always maintained an active role in the Museum, working on numerous committees and boards, organizing and overseeing social functions of openings and dinners at the Fogg, and traveling abroad to museum meetings and functions.

When Agnes Mongan retired as director of the Fogg in 1971, she retained her title as curator of drawings and continued in that position until 1975. Throughout the 1970s, she received numerous awards, honorary degrees, and accolades including the Merito della Republica Italiana by the Italian government for "her help with the restoration of art following the floods of Florence and her years of work fostering Italian culture." Miss Mongan was also awarded numerous visiting professorships including a visiting directorship of the Timken Art Gallery in San Diego, Edith Kreeger Wolf Distinguished Professor at Northwestern University, Bingham Professor at the University of Louisville, visiting professor at the University of Texas, Kress Professor at the National Gallery of Art (the first woman to hold that position), and visiting professor of fine arts at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Well into the 1980s, Miss Mongan maintained an extremely active schedule of new projects, including presenting lectures nationally and internationally, and writing and editing numerous articles and contributions to Art Museum publications.

In 1994, Ms. Mongan was once again honored at the Harvard University Art Museums, when the Agnes Mongan Center for the Study of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs opened at the Fogg Art Museum. She is the author of the recently published catalogue, David to Corot: French Drawings in the Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, Harvard University Press), 1996.

 HARVARD UNIVERSITY ART MUSEUMS

September 17, 1996

www.artmuseums.harvard.edu

19/09/96

Agfa ePhoto 307 Color Digital Camera

Agfa ePhoto 307 color digital camera

Logo photokina 1996
Agfa introduces the ePhoto 307 color digital camera, which offers high quality and an affordable price to the home and office computer user. With a lightweight body, the ease of a point-and-shoot camera, Adobe's PhotoDeluxe and Agfa's PhotoWise software, ePhoto is a quick and flexible tool for digitally capturing, editing and managing images.


Designed For Both Business And Personal Applications.

Agfa ePhoto allows PC and Apple Macintosh users to instantly capture images for a wide variety of purposes. Its two resolution settings of 640 x 480 or 320 x 240 pixels provides users with the option of using the lower resolution setting for on-screen applications such as web pages, electronic presentations and email, or the higher resolution setting for printed documents. In combination with high quality 24-bit imaging, this results in sharp pictures for home and business uses. Agfa ePhoto stores 36 high-resolution and 72 standard-resolution digital photographs. Whether for Web site construction, business documents, photo manipulation, or output to a printer, Agfa ePhoto provides businesses with an easy and affordable digital camera option. Every workplace, from real estate to advertising to design organizations can take advantage of its quality and efficiency.

As a tool for business, educational or personal use, Agfa ePhoto offers users an immediate way to capture images and bring them into their computer. It eliminates the steps of film processing and scanning. "With the widespread use of color-capable personal computers, color inkjet printers, and affordable image processing software, PC users can now make the simple next step of capturing their images with the ePhoto camera," said Etienne Van Damme, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Sales for the Agfa Business Unit Electronic Prepress Systems. "We believe the immediacy of capturing photographs economically and the advantage of using images to communicate will make ePhoto a new creative tool for business and personal use."

Added Value Software Included.

Included with the Agfa ePhoto are Agfa PhotoWise and Adobe PhotoDeluxe software. Agfa PhotoWise moves the images quickly and easily from the camera into the computer. The pictures can then be organized and enhanced. PhotoWise also gives users easy access to images stored in the camera with the PhotoWise Quicklink browser, which provides drag-and-drop support into other OLE2 applications such as those in Microsoft Office. Adobe PhotoDeluxe is an image editing package that easily modifies and personalizes digital photos. Suited for home use, this software has over 25 guided activities to help you improve and manipulate images, as well as many tools for merging pictures into documents, postcards, greeting cards, or other desired formats. Both programmes are Windows 95 and Macintosh compatible. PhotoWise also operates with Windows NT.

Portable, Easy And Fun To Use.

The Agfa ePhoto 307 is as simple to use as a traditional point-and-shoot camera. A user operates a shutter button and can choose between several flash settings, including auto flash mode or red eye reduction. There is a "delete files" button and a button to choose high or low resolution. The Agfa ePhoto is light and compact, making it easy to carry in a briefcase, backpack or pocketbook. Most of all, the ePhoto puts creativity and control with the user, allowing home and office users to immediately capture and work with photos to make their own slide shows, reports, newsletters, advertisements, web pages, greeting cards and more.

In addition to the software, Agfa ePhoto also comes with serial cables for connection to both PC and Macintosh computers; 4 AA alkaline batteries; built in auto flash and self-timer features; and 2MB of internal flash memory. ePhoto is the newest addition to Agfa's line of digital cameras, including the StudioCam and ActionCam. Agfa ePhoto has a suggested list price of US $599 (US).

AGFA-GEVAERT AG
www.agfaphoto.com

18/09/96

Hasselblad at Photokina 1996

Hasselblad at Photokina
Köln 18-23 September 1996


Hasselblad is showing is Multi image show Aqua every 30 minutes. The program, which is presented using 20 Hasselblad PCP80 projectors, consists of 630 different individual images often surrounded by a panoramic image. The final version features the work of 92 photographers.

At the seminars arranged by the Hasselblad University the following lectures will appear Judy Holmes, Christopher Springmann, Walter Schels, Ernst Wildi and Tony Corbell. The seminars are about 45 min and free tickets from Hasselblad's reception desk are required.

Judy Holmes "Wildlife - Outdoor Photography"
21 Sept. 11 a.m., 22 Sept. 2 p.m., 23 Sept. 2 p.m.

Judy Holmes is an exceptionally talented and dedicated outdoor photographer with a MBA from the Dartmouth College. Her incredible images have been featured in countless L.L. Bean catalogues and dozens of magazines, posters and gallery prints. She has been an artist in residence at the Disney Institute and taught for Hasselblad USA Inc. in 24 cities over the past two years. She recently published "Eye On Nature" which is an elegant little guide to outdoor and wildlife photography covering everything from exposure, composition to lab selection and image filing systems.

Judy Holmes has spent a great deal of time working on remote locations and she has accumulated a wealth of helpful information which you will benefit from in this clear, down-to-earth educational photokina Seminar.

Christopher Springmann "Commercial Photography"
21 Sept. 2 p.m., 22 Sept. 4 p.m., 23 Sept. 11 a.m.

Christopher Springmann is an American freelance advertising and fashion photographer from San Francisco, who has specialized in location portraiture for advertising and in trade publications covers and consumer magazines. He long ago abandoned the comfort and security of the studio for the opportunity and ultimate rewards of working on location with an equipment-filled van. His very dynamic photography has given him a clientele of many of the best known companies in the U.S. such as ATT, General Electric, IBM, National Geographic and many more.

Christopher Springmann also teaches photography at the prestigious Santa Fe Photographic Workshops, where he shows in step-by-step fashion, how studio-quality lighting is created on location by combining electronic flash and quartz lighting with the existing daylight to produce a "new reality".

During this Photokina Seminar Christopher Springmann will show and lecture on his innovative lighting control techniques, which in combination with the FlexBody have created the most memorable images.

Walter Schels "Portraits - People and Animals"
18 Sept. 11 a.m., 19 Sept. 4 p.m., 20 Sept. 2 p.m.

Walter Schels worked abroad as a decorator until 1965. In New York the dedication to photography became his profession and years of fashion, advertising and reportage photography followed, like for instance the covering of more than 50 births. The face of the new born baby, which many times is suggestive of an old man's face, created an interest in faces and portrait photography. A great number of portraits of artists, musicians, politicians, philosophers, scientists and others, even of blind people, followed.

The same interest was also turned to animals. It even served as models to the human portraits, because animals have no complex in regard to appearance or originality. Babies and very often also old people share this with the animals.

Since 1990 Walter Schels lives and works in Hamburg. In addition to exhibitions in Germany and abroad, also the publishing of works like "The open secret" in 1995 with physiognomic reflections on the new born baby and the old man's face.

Ernst Wildi "Light metering and successful photography"
18 Sept. 2 p.m., 19 Sept. 11 a.m., 20 Sept. 4 p.m., 22 Sept. 11 a.m.

Ernst Wildi has distinguished himself as a photographer, speaker and writer with the capability of explaining and illustrating photographic ideas and techniques in a way that is easily understood and remembered. He has written over 200 articles for amateur and professional photography magazines and is the author of "The Hasselblad Manual" now in its fourth edition, and "Medium Format Photography manual", now in its second edition published by Focal Press.

Ernst Wildi, a craftsman in the Professional Photographers Association and fellow in the photographic Society of America, is the recipient of the 1990 Bill Stockwell Memorial Award from the Wedding Photographers international and the Professional Photographer's 1991 Gerhard Bakker Award for distinguished contribution in Visual Education.

He holds the degrees of Honorary Master of Science in Professional Photography from Brooks Institute of Photography, and Honorary Professor of Photography at East Texas State University and Sam Houston University in Huntsville, Texas.

Tony Corbell "Lighting Control"
18 Sept. 4 p.m., 19 Sept. 2 p.m., 20 Sept. 11 a.m., 23 Sept. 4 p.m.

Tony L. Corbell, photographer, educator, technical lighting specialist and Manager of Corporate Communications from Hasselblad USA Inc. will give you a thorough understanding of quality-of-light and illustrate how to apply that understanding for more effective lighting control.

Tony L. Corbell has taught lighting at the internationally renowned Brooks Institute of Photography and produced the Finelight series of books and tapes by Dean Collins, and will in this Photokina Seminar also explain his theories on photographing people and products the same way in his approach to utilizing various types of lighting to create shape, depth and roundness in the images.

Related Post:

HASSELBLAD
www.hasselblad.se

15/09/96

Peter Saul: New Paintings, George Adams Gallery, NYC

Peter Saul: New Paintings
George Adams Gallery, New York
September 20 – October 31, 1996

George Adams Gallery presents an exhibition of new paintings by Peter Saul. 

The paintings in the exhibition, all completed in 1996, cover a wide range of subject matter, including current affairs (OJ Simpson and Newt Gingerich), art history (the Mona Lisa, Dali and Duchamp), and even art criticism (a double portrait of Hilton Kramer and Peter Schjeldahl committing suicide). 

The exhibition also features Peter Saul's first still-life painting, one of his most animated compositions to date.

GEORGE ADAMS GALLERY
50 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019
www.georgeadamsgallery.com