Rita Bernstein and Martine Fougeron at Gallery 339, Philadelphia

Martine Fougeron: After Prom - from the Tête-à-Tête Project
Rita Bernstein: Ghost of Summer    
Gallery 339, Fine Art Photography, Philadelphia
Through January 29, 2011

Gallery 339 in Philadelphia presents two solo exhibitions through January 29, 2011.

After Prom, the latest chapter in MARTINE FOUGERON’s Tête-à- Tête Project.  In 2005, Fougeron began photographing her sons, presenting the subtle, beautiful details of daily life through informal portraits of these young teenagers.  As the project broadened to consider the relationships between the sons and among their circle of friends, Fougeron observed that most photography about teenage boys has portrayed dysfunction rather than the routine angst, exuberance, and rebelliousness that characterize adolescence.  Continuing to focus on day-to-day moments and seeming non-events, Fougeron chose to present what she saw as a more representative portrait of teenage life—filled not with despair, but with the rich and complex drama of growing up.  With After Prom, Martine Fougeron closes the adolescent phase of Tête- à-Tête, examining a key rite of passage—the post-prom party. Fougeron captures the abandon and the ambivalence of this moment when the comfort of what is familiar begins to slip away.

Ghost of Summer is an exhibition of recent images by photographer RITA BERNSTEIN. The scale and intimacy of these remarkable photographs belie the complexity and daring of Bernstein’s work.  Her images walk a delicate tightrope; they evoke a sense of memory and of keenly felt private thoughts, yet their poignancy is controlled and perfectly modulated by their austerity and ambiguity.  They are tender and mysterious, yet never stray into the sentimental. Bernstein further explores this dichotomy of heart versus mind through her print-making process, which demands a high level of skill yet remains uncertain and serendipitous. The process involves liquid silver emulsion applied to delicate Japanese Gampi paper.  With the fragility of the paper, it is impossible to produce a flawless print or make a print that is identical to an earlier one. Rita Bernstein accepts and even embraces this inability to wholly control the process.  It imparts individuality and subtle imperfections that are in accord with the vulnerability and humanity of her images.

GALLERY 339
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

November 12, 2010 - January 29, 2011

http://www.gallery339.com

Phillip and Edward Toledano Photography exhibition at Gallery 339 in Philadephia

Phillip and Edward Toledano: Days with My Father
Gallery 339, Fine Art Photography, Philadelphia
Through November 6, 2010

Days with My Father on view at Gallery 339 in Philadelphia is an exhibition of works by Phillip and Edward Toledano which accompanies the recent release of “Days with My Father”, Phillip Toledano’s photo journal of caring for his aging father, Edward.

After Edward Toledano’s wife died in 2006, Phillip Toledano realized that his mother had been shielding him from his father’s mental deterioration. While he did not have Alzheimer’s, and was often quite lucid and sharp, he no longer had any short-term memory, which led him to be easily confused and lost. Phillip Toledano found himself suddenly charged with the care of his 96-year-old father. While challenged by this responsibility, and unsettled by his father’s condition, Phillip Toledano found that the time together allowed him to see things about his father that he had forgotten or never known. During the three years that he cared for Edward, Phillip began to take photographs of his father and to post these photographs on a blog. He would write about the frustrations and happy revelations of assisting an elderly parent.  He did this as a personal exercise, expecting little or no interest in his particular situation, but to his surprise, the blog received hundreds of thousands of hits and many thousands of comments. The blog ultimately led to the publication of Days with My Father in June 2010 from Chronicle Books. 

EDWARD TOLEDANO, who died in March 2009 at the age of 99, was a remarkable man who pursued a series of careers over his long life.  During the 1930s, he was a stage and screen actor; later in life, he was a successful business man, and by the time Phillip was born (1968), Edward was pursuing a full-time career as an artist. His work is in the collections of the Smithsonian and the Tate.

PHILLIP TOLEDANO is a successful commercial and fine art photographer.  His first book, Bankrupt (photographs of recently vacated offices) was published by Twin Palms in 2005.  His second book, Phonesex, was published (again by Twin Palms) in December of 2008.  Toledano’s commercial work has appeared in a broad range of publications, including Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, Wallpaper, The London Times, The Independent Magazine, Le Monde, and Interview.  His fine-art work has appeared in Aperture, Eyemazing, Raw, IdeaFixa, Ojodepez, Harpers, The British Journal of Photography, and La Republica.

GALLERY 339
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

September 15 - November 6, 2010

http://www.gallery339.com

Andrea Modica: Minor League at Gallery 339 in Philadelphia

Andrea Modica: Minor League
Gallery 339, Fine Art Photography, Philadelphia
Through June 12, 2010

Minor League is an exhibition by Andrea Modica on view at the Gallery 339 in Philadelphia.  The images in Minor League are from the early 1990s, a time when Modica was living in a small town in upstate New York.  Modica says that while not previously a baseball fan, she had the opportunity to attend a game featuring the local team, the Oneonta Yankees, a “Short Season A” affiliate of the New York Yankees. This initial summer ball game led to a two-year project to photograph the players of the “O” Yankees.  Like many of her projects, Modica was drawn to this one by a desire to understand a world that she found puzzling and somewhat intimidating.  On the surface, baseball seemed frivolous to her, merely a game; why would grown men do this, she wondered.  Concurrently, she found the strident masculinity of the sport and its ambiguous set of rules and codes unsettling. Ultimately, she recognized that something which offered such interesting questions and made her a bit uncomfortable must be worth investigating. Over time, the project opened up to Modica the fascinating human level of minor league sports: its hard work, fierce ambition, and the essential but slim hope of making it to the major leagues.  Her picture-taking revealed to her the complex issues of success and failure with which the players must grapple on a daily basis.  Her pictures also offered an understanding of the multifaceted relationships among the players, who exhibited both a tight-knit camaraderie and a determined competitiveness. Modica eventually found that as an artist, who must contend with similar issues around success and self motivation, she had more in common with these players than she could have imagined.  As part of the Minor League exhibition, Gallery 339 will host an artist talk and book signing with Andrea Modica on Saturday, May 1.

ANDREA MODICA received her BFA in Visual Arts and Art History from the State University of New York College at Purchase (1982) and her MFA in Photography from Yale University (1985). Among her many accomplishments, Modica has received a Guggenheim Arts Fellowship (1994) and a Fulbright-Hays Research Grant (1990). Her photographs have been published in numerous magazines including Harper's, Newsweek, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and The New York Times Magazine. Her books include Treadwell (Chronicle Books, 1995) and Minor League (The Smithsonian Institution, 1993).  Modica’s work has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world and has been collected by institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the George Eastman House in Rochester, NY, The National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C. and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

GALLERY 339
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

April 16, 2010 - June 12, 2010

http://www.gallery339.com

Previous exhibitions at Gallery 339:

Stuart Rome: Drawn From Nature, January 29, 2010 - April 3, 2010
Henry Horenstein: SHOW, January 29, 2010 - April 3, 2010