Will Steacy Exhibition, Silver Eye Center for Photography , Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

No Job No Home No Peace No Rest: An Installation by Will Steacy - Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh, PA - Through December 15, 2012

Will Steacy, Portrait of the artist with "The Beast," 2012. 

Courtesy of the artist, Michael Mazzeo Projects, New York, and Christophe Guye Galerie, Zurich.

Presented against the backdrop of the 2012 election season, Will Steacy's new installation is both a chronicle and a critique of a nation where a once-attainable "American Dream" has been replaced, for so many, by a desperate effort to survive.

At the heart of the exhibition is Will Steacy's 170-foot collage, which he dubs "The Beast." A systematic, often eviscerating dissection of American policies and politics, the collage is made up of thousands of clippings from newspapers collected over the years, his own photographs and writings, and found objects. Thirty-two photographs from earlier and ongoing projects accompany the exhibition at the Silver Eye Center for Photography in Pittsburg, a nonprofit organization dedicated exclusively to presenting contemporary photography.

Will Steacy, Condos, Chicago, 2008. Archival pigment print. 

Courtesy of the artist, Michael Mazzeo Projects, New York, and Christophe Guye Galerie, Zurich.

WILL STEACY is one of the most exciting and influential young photographers working today. Raised in Philadelphia, he comes from five generations of newspaper men and worked as a union laborer before becoming a photographer. The artist received his B.F.A. from New York University in 2003 and was named one of the Photo District News' 30 Emerging Photographers To Watch in 2011. He is also the recipient of prestigious awards such as The Tierney Fellowship and The Aperture Foundation-Illumination Fund Green Cart Photography Commission.

Will Steacy's work has been widely exhibited, collected, and featured on CNN, NPR, and BBC, and in The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Harper's, Time, Newsweek, and The Guardian, amongst others. His books include The Monstropolous Beast (Christophe Guy Gallerie, 2010), Photographs Not Taken (Daylight, 2012), and the forthcoming Down These Mean Streets (B. Frank Books, 2012). The artist is represented by Michael Mazzeo Projects in New York and Christophe Guy Gallerie in Zurich.

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On October 27, Silver Eye is cleaning out its attic, storage, and closets and having a good old-fashioned garage sale in the courtyard. They've got old iMacs, printers, cameras (including a vintage large format Calumet), framed and unframed art, art books, posters, magazines, and much more. There will also be a BBQ, brews, and local DJs spinning vinyl. Admission is free to the public.

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Silver Eye Center for Photography 

1015 East Carson Street, Southside, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Gallery's website: www.silvereye.org

Paul Strand Photographs Collection in Philadelphia: The Philadelphia Museum of Arts will be the most important repository for the study of Paul Strand work

Philadelphia Museum of Art, 08/1973
Photograph by DICK SWANSON
From the US National Archives
412-DA-7495
Created by The Environmental
Protection Agency

The Philadelphia Museum of Art acquired 3,000 Works by the photographer Paul Strand

THE PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ARTS: THE WORLD's MOST IMPORTANT REPOSITORY for THE STUDY of PAUL STRAND WORK

The Philadelphia Museum of Art announced (last month) that it has acquired, through several gifts and a purchase agreement with the APERTURE FOUDATION, the core collection of photographs by PAUL STRAND, one of the pre-eminent photographers of the 20th century. Through the generosity of philanthropists Lynne and Harold Honickman, Marjorie and Jeffrey Honickman, and H.F. “Gerry” and Marguerite Lenfest, the Museum has received as partial and promised gifts 1422 images from The Paul Strand Archive at the Aperture Foundation, as well as 566 master prints from Strand’s negatives by the artist Richard Benson.  The Museum has also entered into an agreement with the Aperture Foundation to purchase an additional 1276 photographs.  As a whole, this acquisition comprises more than 3000 prints and lantern slides, including the finest examples of every image in the Archive. Together with other photographs by Strand already owned by the Museum, this acquisition makes the Philadelphia Museum of Art the world’s most important repository for the study of his work.

PAUL STRAND RETROSPECTIVE EXHBITION SCHEDULED FOR 2014

All of the photographs and lantern slides are now housed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art where they are being studied in preparation for a major retrospective devoted to the artist that is scheduled for 2014. 

Timothy Rub, the George D. Widener Director and Chief Executive Officer, stated: “The Paul Strand Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art will rank among the finest and most significant groups of works by key figures in the history of photography held by any museum in this country. As the definitive collection of one of the 20th century’s greatest photographers, it will also be a critical component of the Museum’s internationally distinguished holdings of modern art, which include the renowned Louise and Walter Arensberg and A. E. Gallatin collections. Given the significance of Strand’s achievement as an artist it will, I believe, become a cornerstone of the Museum’s collections, much like our extensive holdings of works by Marcel Duchamp and Thomas Eakins.

“This is a major achievement,” Mr. Rub went on to say. “We are exceptionally grateful to the dedicated support of our enlightened donors, the Honickmans and the Lenfests, who recognized the value of their gifts to the Museum’s mission and to the study of the history of photography and worked together to help us strengthen the Museum’s collection. Our longstanding relationship with the Aperture Foundation, in particular through the work of the late Michael E. Hoffman, who formed the Strand archive at Aperture and served for many years as the Museum’s Adjunct Curator of Photographs, has enabled us to create a repository of the work of this artist that will chronicle his seminal contributions to the development of modern art and will advance the study of his remarkable body of work and prominent place in the history of photography.”

Celso Gonzalez-Falla, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Aperture Foundation, commented on the placement of this extraordinary collection.  “Given Aperture’s long association with Strand and the commitment that the Philadelphia Museum of Art has made to the development of its world-renowned holdings of photography, it is an ideal place for these works.  This is true not simply because  of the Museum’s long association with Aperture, but also because this gift and purchase, when added to the Museum’s existing collection of more than 600 exceptional works by Strand, provides a full picture of his remarkable achievement, adding strength to strength and creating a true and enduring public benefit. We salute the vision and perspicacity of Peter MacGill of Pace/MacGill Gallery, who has worked closely with Aperture to ensure that this important collection would find a permanent home in a great museum.”

The portion of The Paul Strand Archive that the Museum has made a commitment to purchase from the Aperture Foundation includes many remarkable photographs. Among them are two of Strand’s rare gum bichromate prints, which date to the earliest years of his career. Also included are masterpiece platinum and silver portraits of his first wife, Rebecca Salsbury, and several other key portraits of his circle in the 1910s and 1920s, including his father Jacob, painter John Marin, and fellow photographer Kurt Baasch; unique prints such as a 1922 image of Constantin Brancusi’s sculpture Mlle. Pogany and a solarized portrait of the architect Henry Churchill (1922); major examples of his nature and machine abstractions, including the unique Rock, Georgetown, Maine (1927) and a rare pair of vintage platinum and silver prints of Fern, New England (1928); and superb prints from his early sojourns to the Gaspé Peninsula, the Southwest, and Mexico.

“Combined with the Museum’s existing holdings, this acquisition will give the Museum an unrivaled collection of Strand’s critical early work and his photographs of the Southwest and Mexico, all recognized as high points of his career,” commented Peter Barberie, the Museum’s Brodsky Curator of Photographs. “Added to the recent gifts to the Museum from the Honickmans and Lenfests, the acquisition will also enable us to assemble nearly complete sets of vintage prints from all of Strand’s later projects, beginning with his prized New England photographs of the 1940s and running through the final series he made in the garden of his home in Orgeval, France.”

PAUL STRAND CATALOGUE RAISONNE

The Paul Strand Collection will permit the study of Strand’s career with prints from the majority of his negatives, including most known variants and croppings of individual images. It will, moreover, enable the Museum to keep together several prints made from a single negative using different processes, at different times, and with different papers. As such, The Paul Strand Collection will be an essential resource for any scholar of 20th-century photography. In addition to 2,768 prints and lantern slides by Strand himself, the acquisition includes the gift of 566 gelatin silver and platinum prints from Strand’s negatives by the eminent American photographer Richard Benson, made for Aperture in the 1980s. Benson has printed Strand’s negatives since the early 1970s, when he worked closely with the artist. As part of its ongoing publishing initiatives, the Aperture Foundation will prepare a Paul Strand catalogue raisonne in cooperation with the Philadelphia Museum of Art. 

PAUL STRAND - BIOGRAPHY

Paul Strand (American, 1890 - 1976) is widely recognized as one of the most significant artists in the history of photography. He first studied with the social documentary photographer Lewis Hine at New York’s Ethical Culture School from 1907-1909, and subsequently became close to the pioneering photographer Alfred Stieglitz, America’s greatest champion of modern art at the beginning of the 20th century. Strand fused these powerful influences and explored the modernist possibilities of the camera more fully than any other photographer before 1920, producing a celebrated series of abstractions that reduced still life and architectural elements to simple arrangements of shapes, while at the same time creating some of the earliest “street photographs” of people he caught unawares in urban New York settings. These diverse experiments produced iconic masterpieces such as Wall Street (1915) and Blind Woman (1916) and are now acknowledged as major contributions to modernist art, having introduced subjects that influenced leading photographers of the twentieth century such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Robert Frank.

In the 1920s, Strand explored the camera’s potential to exceed human vision, making intimate, detailed portraits, and recording the nuances of machine and natural forms. He also created portraits, landscapes, and architectural studies on various travels to the Southwest, Canada’s Gaspé Peninsula, and Mexico. The groups of pictures of these regions, in tandem with his documentary work as a filmmaker in the 1930s, convinced Strand that the medium’s great purpose lay in broad and richly detailed photographs of specific places and communities. For the rest of his career he pursued such projects in New England, France, Italy, the Hebrides, Morocco, Romania, Ghana, and other locales, producing celebrated books including Time in New England (1950), and Un Paese (1955), about the village of Luzzara, Italy. Together, these later series form one of the great photographic statements about modern experience.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art has had a special relationship with Paul Strand’s work since 1971, when Adjunct Curator of Photographs Michael E. Hoffman organized for the Museum Strand’s first major retrospective since 1945. Paul Strand: A Retrospective, 1971, debuted in Philadelphia and traveled to St. Louis, Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. In 1972, Strand gave the Museum one of his most important early platinum prints, City Hall Park, New York (1915), along with six other works, and the Museum purchased 10 prints including The Family, Luzzara, Italy (1953). These acquisitions were followed by further purchases in 1974 and gifts from Strand’s widow, Hazel, in 1977 and 1978. In 1980, the artist’s estate gave the Museum the entire contents of his retrospective exhibition, which numbered 497 prints and included an unparalleled group of seven of his early exhibition platinum prints, among them the masterpieces Wall Street (1915), Man in a Derby (1916), and Telegraph Poles, Texas (1915).

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE ACQUISITION OF PAUL STRAND PHOTOGRAPHS

Railroad Sidings, New York, Platinum print, 1915. Promised gift of Lynne and Harold Honickman

The Museum already owns an unparalleled group of masterpiece platinum prints of Strand’s breakthrough photographs of 1915-16. Railroad Sidings is one of the last such prints still in private hands. Alfred Stieglitz included it in Strand’s first exhibition at 291, in March of 1916. It shows Strand moving from the Pictorialist example set by Stieglitz (as in his iconic 1902 picture The Hand of Man, possibly made in the same rail yards), towards the abstraction that he would explore most fully in his still life photographs of the same moment. When Strand, together with Charles Sheeler, made the 1922 film Manhatta, about New York City, he returned to the sites of two of his photographs—Railroad Sidings and Wall Street—to include them in the film.

Blind Woman, New York, Gelatin silver print, c. 1920s (negative 1916). Partial and promised gift of Marguerite and H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest

This early gelatin silver print of one of Strand’s iconic images will join seven other versions—including his 1916 lantern slide, a 1916 photogravure from the journal Camera Work, and five variant gelatin silver prints Strand made at various times after the 1940s, permitting comprehensive study of how he presented and thought about the picture throughout his career. The Museum will have similar groupings for a number of other important works, including Wall Street, Man in a Derby, and The White Fence, Port Kent, New York.

Georgia O’Keeffe, Texas, Platinum print, c. 1917. Promised gift of Marjorie and Jeffrey Honickman

This sensitive portrait of the painter is a very personal document of Strand’s visit to Texas in 1917 and the blossoming of what became a lifelong friendship. It is the only portrait Strand made of O’Keeffe, and perhaps the only print he made of the image. The Paul Strand Collection will include masterful portraits of other figures in Strand’s circle, including painters John Marin and Marsden Hartley, sculptor Gaston Lachaise, photographer Kurt Baasch, and critic Waldo Frank.

Rebecca, New York, Platinum print, c. 1921. Purchase from the Aperture Foundation

Strand photographed his first wife, Rebecca Salsbury, in many sittings between 1919 and 1933, exploring the camera’s ability to record details of the human visage and emotions. This introspective platinum print is among the most riveting portraits he made of her. The Paul Strand Collection will include 24 vintage portraits of Rebecca Salsbury, including seven platinum prints.

Mlle. Pogany, New York (Brancusi), Platinum print, 1922. Purchase from the Aperture Foundation

The acquisition includes many unique works by Strand, which together greatly enrich the depth and complexity of The Paul Strand Collection. Aside from individual works such as this photograph of sculptures by Constantin Brancusi, a remarkable document of Strand’s commitment to modernist art, the collection will include all 70 of Strand’s extant lantern slides, which are critical for studying his practice between 1909 and 1917; 34 small platinum prints made on his first, formative trip to Europe in 1911; three of his gum bichromate prints, of which he made very few; two experiments with a Rectoflex camera, made in Italy in 1952; and the maquette for his 1950 book La France de profil, which includes 44 gelatin silver prints.

Fern, New England, Platinum print, 1928. Purchase from the Aperture Foundation

Fern, New England, Gelatin silver print, 1940s. Purchase from the Aperture Foundation

Strand’s exploration of the camera’s objectivity in his nature and machine studies of the 1920s included his thoughtful analysis of the differences between platinum and gelatin silver prints, each of which he preferred for certain subjects. This pair of prints from the same negative shows the nuances Strand sought in his photographic prints. Altogether, the Paul Strand Collection will include more than 50 vintage or early prints of Strand’s key photographs of plants, driftwood, rocks, and machine forms in the 1920s.

Hacienda, Saltillo, Mexico, Platinum print, 1932. Purchase from the Aperture Foundation

This subtle platinum print shows Strand’s sensitivity to architectural motifs. In its emphasis on geometries and worn surfaces, it relates both to his contemporaneous work in the Southwest, and to the masterful architectural views he would make in New England in the 1940s. Strand’s 1932-33 Mexico photographs, which comprise portraits, landscapes, and views of art and architecture, are widely considered to be one of his greatest bodies of work. The Paul Strand Collection will include 28 vintage platinum prints and twelve vintage or early gelatin silver prints of his Mexican subjects.

Man Carving Chair II, Mr. Bolster, Vermont Gelatin silver print, 1943. Purchase from the Aperture Foundation

Strand’s 1943-46 New England photographs mark a turning point in his career: his decision to methodically document specific regions through a mix of landscapes, artifacts, and portraits, and his endeavor to produce books of his pictures, the first of which would be the 1950 publication Time in New England. Strand’s choice to focus on the hardy culture of New England during the difficult years of World War II contributes to the great power of these photographs, as seen in this riveting portrait of Mr. Bolster, an 83-year-old man crafting a chair outside his barn. Strand would go on to produce groups of photographs comparable to his New England series in France, Italy, the Hebrides Islands, Egypt, Morocco, Roumania, and Ghana. The Paul Strand Collection will include nearly-complete sets of vintage prints of all these projects, beginning with the New England pictures.

Place to Meet, Luzzara, Italy, Gelatin silver print, 1953. Purchase from the Aperture Foundation

In 1953 Strand travelled to the village of Luzzara, where he made an incredible group of photographs including portraits of many individuals who are identified simply by their role in the community—the mayor, the cheese maker, the baker’s wife. He also made group portraits such as this one of elders gathered in a small piazza. Strand was drawn to candid portraiture throughout his career, and he was also attuned to the ways public social gatherings—however informal—can reveal volumes about a time and place. This is one of many superb pictures he made of similar subjects throughout his career.

PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART

Philadelphia, PA, USA

www.philamuseum.org

Fleeting Glimpse Photography exhibition at Roanoke and Richmond, Virginia: Eleanor D. Wilson Museum and Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Photography exhibition - The Fleeting Glimpse:
Selections in Modern and Contemporary Photography
from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, Roanoke, VA
Through December 4, 2010

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA
January 15 - April 3, 2011

LEE FRIEDLANDER, Shadow - New York City, 1968. Silver Print, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. The John Barton Payne Fund. Photo: Travis Fullerton, © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Image © Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco. Recent photographs of Lee Friedlander from America from Car is on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. And a retrospective of Lee Frielandler work from 1960 to 2010 will be on view at the Fraenkel Gallery.

The Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University in partnership with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts presents The Fleeting Glimpse: Selections in Modern and Contemporary Photography from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts featuring 35 works by 27 artists using the photographic medium to transform common found occurrences in nature and humanity into unusual encounters and strange juxtapositions.

The Fleeting Glimpse is the first major focus on the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA)’s renowned photography collection and marks the first partnership collection-sharing program with the largest museum in the commonwealth. The Fleeting Glimpse is co-curated by Christine Carr, artist and assistant professor of art at Hollins University and Wilson Museum Director Amy Moorefield. The exhibition roster encompasses a group of provocative legends of the camera, both modern and contemporary, and features the work of artists including Berenice Abbott, Diane Arbus, Blythe Bohnen, Judy Dater, Jen Davis, John Divola, Robert Doisneau, Martin Dorbaum, David A. Douglas, Roy DeCarava, Lee Friedlander, Ralph Gibson, Emmet William Gowin, John N. Heroy Jr., Richard Kent Hough, Connie Imboden, Alen MacWeeney, Sally Mann, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Ray K. Metzker, Joseph Mills, Brian H. Peterson, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Ruth Thorne-Thomsen, Jerry N. Uelsmann, Garry Winogrand, and Willie Anne Wright. 

HIROSHI SUGIMOTO, Byrd Theatre, 1993. Gelatin Silver Print, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. Gift of the Collector’s Circle. Photo: Travis Fullerton, ©  Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Image © Hiroshi Sugimoto, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

Through exploitation of a variety of photographic techniques including digital (Dorbaum), straightforward (Arbus), long exposure (Divola), vignette (Gowin) and pinhole process (Wright), the artists all share commonalities in the pursuit of a visually fragmented narrative in highly experimental work. The viewer has a “fleeting glimpse” of an implied alternative reality through the artists’ deliberate and sometimes happenstance staging and organization of chance elements. Using the camera, a number of the artists (Sugimoto, Dorbaum) create illusionary portals in their compositions psychologically pulling the viewer into their realms. Other works (Arbus, Doiseau, Imboden) propel the viewer away through the sitters’ carefully staged gazes controlled by the artist’s surface manipulations transforming their features into fractured and dissociated objects.  All entice the viewer with implied psychosomatic drama through bizarre subject matter and compositions inviting further examination.

The approachable medium of photography allows visitors to the exhibition the first “glimpse” of never before seen significant works by extremely well known leading photographers.

The exhibition is accompanied by a full color CATALOGUE with essays by both curators as well as Emily Smith, VMFA Curatorial Fellow.

Organized by the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum  at Hollins University in partnership with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. After its inaugural viewing at the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University, The Fleeting Glimpse will be on view at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Funding for The Fleeting Glimpse comes in part from the City of Roanoke through the Roanoke Arts Commission as well as support from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, Hollins University, Roanoke, Virginia 
09/16 – 12/4, 2010
www.hollins.edu/museum

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia
www.vmfa.museum

Len Jenshel and Diane Cook Photographs On View at Joseph Bellows Gallery

 

ON ICE

PHOTOGRAPHS BY LEN JENSHEL AND DIANE COOK

at Joseph Bellows Gallery, La Jolla, CA

" Suddenly I saw the cold and rook-delighting heaven
That seemed as though ice burned and was but
more ice,
And thereupon imagination and heart were driven
So wild that every casual thought of this and that
Vanished."
                       W.B. Yeats, from The Cold Heaven

 

" In 1997, on a flight home from Europe, the clouds parted and from 35,00 feet we saw Greenland for the first time. This immense frozen island that we saw from on high was mesmerizing. A few months later we made our way back to Greenland and began photographing in an unfamiliar and treacherous landscape, but one, nonetheless, possessed with a disarming beauty.

One of the threads that runs through our various projects is photographing places of astonishment and wonder. We returned many times to the polar regions to work amongst the ice - in all its forms, from imposing cathedrals of ice to their shattered remains. Sadly, over the years, each successive trip has revealed an accelerated rate of melting. For us, this project is a meditation on beauty and impermanence, in the age of global warming. " -- Len Jenshel and Diane Cook.

 

Joseph Bellows Gallery presents ON ICE: Photographs by Len Jenshel and Diane Cook. The exhibition will be on view through February 13, 2010.

Diane Cook and Len Jenshel are two of America's foremost landscape photographers, interpreting culture and environment for over twenty-five years. They met in 1979, were married in 1983, and began collaborating in 1991 using a unique style of pairing black and white prints by Cook with color images by Jenshel. The photographers are drawn to photographing places of astonishment and wonder, and their series On Ice is a sumptuous look at Greenland's glaciers and icebergs.

In 1997, on a flight home from Europe, the clouds parted and from 35,000 feet Diane Cook and Len Jenshel saw Greenland for the first time. The immense frozen island that they saw from on high was mesmerizing. A few months later the photographers traveled to Greenland and began photographing in an unfamiliar and treacherous landscape, but one, nonetheless, possessed with a disarming beauty. Over the next few years they returned many times to the polar regions to photograph the icy landscape in all its forms, from imposing cathedrals of ice to their shattered remains. Each successive trip has revealed an accelerated rate of melting. The series On Ice is a meditation on beauty and impermanence in the age of climate change.

 

LEN JENSHEL  is one of the pioneers of "The New Color," photographing landscape and culture since 1974. His books include Travels in the American West (Smithsonian, 1992), and Charmed Places (Abrams, 1988). He has received numerous grants including the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, the National Endowment for the Arts, two from the New York State Council on the Arts, the Graham Foundation, and the Design Trust for Public Space.

DIANE COOK had been photographing the complexity of landscape since her graduation from Rutgers University in 1976. Ms. Cook has been a recipient of two New York State Council on the Arts grants and a Photo Urbanism grant from the Design Trust for Public Space in 2002. Diane Cook and Len Jenshel have collaborated on two books - Hot Spots: America's Volcanic Landscape (Bulfinch Press, 1996) and Aquarium (Aperture, 2003 – Aquarium exhibition at the Kopeikin Gallery, West Hollywood, January 10 -  February 8, 2004). Their work is in numerous public and private collections worldwide. They currently live and work in New York City.

 

ON ICE: PHOTOGRAPHS BY LEN JENSHEL AND DIANE COOK
December 12, 2009 - February 13, 2010

Joseph Bellows Gallery
7661 Girard Avenue
La Jolla, CA 92037

josephbellows.com

Museum of Photographic Arts - San Diego

1649 El Prado - San Diego, California The Museum of Photographic Arts (MoPA) is one of the few museums in the United States devoted to photography, film and video. Since its founding in 1983, MoPA has been dedicated to collecting, preserving and exhibiting the entire spectrum of the photographic medium. The museum’s endeavors consistently address cultural, historical and social issues through its exhibitions and public programs. Upcoming Exhibition: Fazal Sheikh, Beloved Daughters, Photographs - October 10, 2009 - January 31, 2010 The Museum of Photographic Arts is accredited by the American Association of Museums and is a member-supported, private, non-profit institution. Additional support for museum programs is provided in part by the City of San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture, the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Fund of the Jewish Community Foundation, the Weingart-Price Fund, the San Diego Foundation, Patrons of the Prado, and the National Endowment for the Arts. • Hours: Tuesday - Sunday 10 am-5 pm. Closed Mondays. • Gallery admission: $6 adults; $4 students, seniors and military; FREE to members and children under 12. Admission is free to San Diego County residents and active military members on the second Tuesday of the month. • Docent Tours for student groups (elementary through college) are available free of charge with advance reservations. Tours for non-students are also available, with advance reservations, at a discounted admission rate. Visit: http://www.mopa.org/ for information about exhibitions, programs and special events. MoPA

MUSEUM OF PHOTOGRAPHIC ARTS 1649 El Prado - San Diego, CA 92101

Tod Papageorge, American Sports, 1970 at Pace/MacGill Gallery

Over forty 11 x 14 and 16 x 20 inch gelatin silver prints from TOD PAPAGEORGE 's series American Sports, 1970 are exhibited at Pace/MacGill Gallery, in New York. Shortly before the Kent State shootings in the spring of 1970, TOD PAPAGEORGE received a Guggenheim Fellowship to "document as clearly and as completely as possible the phenomenon of professional sport in America." Eight months later, having traveled throughout the country to photograph such classic sporting events as the World Series, the Cotton Bowl, the Preakness Stakes, and the Indianapolis 500, Papageorge returned to New York with a body of work that can now be seen to comprise an incisive portrait of a nation reeling from the impact of the myriad political, sexual, and racial struggles created by the conflicting pressures of the war in Vietnam. TOD PAPAGEORGE 's ability to distill concise and coherent images from the dense visual weave of passing events -- a skill he honed during the late 1960s by photographing nearly every day on the streets of Manhattan -- is particularly evident in this body of work. With his wide-angle lens, he not only documents where and how a series of archetypal games was played out, but also reveals their compelling relationship to the world-at-large in images that, subtly but palpably, expose the unsettled American spirit at a critical moment in its history. TOD PAPAGEORGE (b. 1940, Portsmouth, New Hampshire) began to photograph during his last term at the University of New Hampshire, where he graduated in 1962 with a B.A. in English literature. In 1970, he received the first of two Guggenheim Fellowships in photography and, at about the same time, began his teaching career in New York City. His work has been widely exhibited in the United States and in Europe, and is represented in more than thirty major public collections, including those of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. Two collections of his photographs, Passing through Eden: Photographs of Central Park and American Sports, 1970, or How We Spent the War in Vietnam, were published in 2007 and 2008, respectively. He was recently shortlisted for the 2009 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. In 1979, TOD PAPAGEORGE was appointed the Walker Evans Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Photography at the Yale School of Art, where he has taught many of the leading photographers of the past thirty years, including Gregory Crewdson, Tim Davis, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Katy Grannan, An-My Lê, and Abelardo Morell. TOD PAPAGEORGE is the author of Public Relations: The Photographs of Garry Winogrand and Walker Evans and Robert Frank: An Essay on Influence, prepared in conjunction with exhibitions that he curated for the Museum of Modern Art in 1977 and the Yale University Art Gallery in 1981. In 2001, the YUAG also published his seminal essay on the work of Robert Adams. TOD PAPAGEORGE: American Sports, 1970 or, How We Spent the War in Vietnam Pace/MacGill Gallery June 11 - August 28, 2009 Hours through June 20: Tuesday – Friday, 9:30-5:30, Saturday, 10:00-6:00 Beginning June 23: Monday – Thursday, 9:30-5:30, Friday, 9:30-4:00 PACE/MACGILL GALLERY 32 East 57th Street New York - NY 10022

Spencer Finch: Light,Time, Chemistry exhibit at Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago

Spencer Finch: Light,Time, Chemistry
Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago
March 27 - May 2, 2009

Rhona Hoffman Gallery in Chicago presents Light, Time, Chemistry, an exhibition of photo-based work by SPENCER FINCH. In this exhibition, Spencer Finch references both phenomenology and the psychology of perception, capturing and re-contextualizing fleeting and ephemeral elements from our surroundings. Among the many works exhibited is Periscope, a photographic device composed of mirrors and ventilation ducts that extends from inside the gallery to the outside and allows visitors to view the changing sky. The periscope was used to expose a cyanotype directly on the wall of the gallery, creating a hazy blue image from a two-day exposure of the Chicago sky. 

Also on display is Spencer Finch’s installation Shadow, Sculpture of Centaur, Tuileries (after Atget), a component of a larger body of work entitled Shadows (After Atget). In this work, Spencer Finch captures the ephemeral phenomenon of shadows, focusing specifically on re-creating light from locations of Eugene Atget’s photographs of Paris. Employing a fluorescent tube lamp covered with colored filters of Isaac Newton’s spectrum, the light functions as a reverse prism, emitting the very polychrome grey light of the Parisian shadows photographed by Eugène Atget almost one hundred years ago.

Fog is a re-occurring subject in Finch’s practice, and Thank You, Fog reflects his interest in the ‘anti-image.’ Executed by Spencer Finch in Sonoma County California, Thank You, Fog is comprised of 60 photographs that were shot from a static camera at one minute intervals as a fog moved over the densely wooded landscape. Like a veil drawn across the landscape, the fog both reveals and conceals, frustrating our desire to capture an accurate image. The title of this artwork is borrowed from poet W.H. Auden’s final book.

Rhona Hoffman Gallery previously presented two exhibitions of Spencer Finch art work: Spencer Finch: H2O (2006) and Spencer Finch: Here and There (2001).

RHONA HOFFMAN GALLERY, CHICAGO, IL, USA
Gallery's website: www.rhoffmangallery.com

Elliott Erwitt Six Decades

© Elliott Erwitt - All rights reserved

"Elliott has to my mind achieved a miracle working on a chain-gang of commercial campaigns and still offering a bouquet of stolen photos with a flavor, a smile from his deeper self."

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Andrew Smith Gallery opens an important exhibit titled Six Decades by internationally renowned photographer Elliott Erwitt, with an opening reception and booksigning for the artist on Friday, October 13, 2006 from 5-7 p.m. Erwitt's photographs of ordinary life, beach scenes, celebrities, children and dogs have delighted viewers for decades. At age 78 he has culled through sixty years of work and chosen what he considers to be his very best photographs. Many have never been published before. These ebullient images reflect the vast scope of the wittiest photographer of our time.

Andrew Smith Gallery will have approximately 25 of Erwitt's classic photographs representing many phases of his long career. During the opening Elliott Erwitt will be signing copies of his newest book, Personal Best (teNeues, 2006). The exhibit continues through November 20, 2006.

Erwitt's superb sense of humor coupled with a deceptively casual photographic technique inspired the eminent photography critic, John Szarkowski, to remark that Erwitt is "one of the few photographers whose work is also identified by extraordinary wit." Traveling around the world on magazine assignments, Erwitt always found time to take the wry and timeless photographs of ordinary people and dogs that have made him famous. His photographs of Hollywood legends like Marlene Dietrich and Marilyn Monroe, and political figures like Nikita Khrushchev and Richard Nixon are equally penetrating and insightful.

According to writer, Sean Callahan, survival seems to be built into Erwitt's nature, along with the ability "to be an astute observer of others, highly sensitive to the vicissitudes of life and, when necessary, utterly charming and disarming." Erwitt was born in Paris in 1928, the only child of displaced Russian parents who raised him in Milan. When he was 11 the family fled Europe on the last boat out of free France. For several years he and his parents lived in New York City before moving to California. At age 16, after his parents split up, Erwitt was on his own in Los Angeles, attending Hollywood High while living in a rented bungalow with friends. After Edward Steichen arranged his first commercial job he established himself in New York the 40s and 50s as a leading magazine photographer. His friendship with Robert Capa resulted in his joining the prestigious Magnum Agency in 1953 after he got out of the army.

In his long and successful career as a magazine and advertising photographer Erwitt has used an arsenal of cameras. But the images he shot for himself were usually made with a classic Leica rangefinder and in black and white. He has remarked, "The most important advice to photographers is f:8 and be there." In his most poetic images something wordless and magical happens in a fleeting instant. In Orleans, France, 1952 Erwitt snapped the shutter just as a pigeon fluttered down to a deserted cobblestone street illuminated by a triangular shaft of sunlight.

Erwitt has shot annual reports of Fortune 500 companies, worked on six-figure advertising campaigns for Madison Avenue, and on breaking news for Paris Match. An assignment shooting women's shoes inspired him to take a closer look at dogs as subjects. New York City, 1974, one of Erwitt's most famous photographs, was taken with the camera near sidewalk level of a bug-eyed, rat-sized dog dressed in a knitted sweater and hat standing next to two gigantic pairs of legs, one wearing boots, the other belonging to another dog. The humor lies in the somewhat idiotic expression of the tiny dog which suggests it is the dwarfed product of a canine/human marriage.

In Erwitt's classic image, California, 1955, the reflection of a couple kissing in a parked car's side mirror is like a joyful bubble against a Pacific ocean sunset.

In 1960, on the set of the movie The Misfits, Erwitt photographed a team that included Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift, Arthur Miller, John Huston, and Eli Wallach. The cast looks a little haggard, and even Monroe struggles to play her diva role. It was the last film either Gable or Monroe would make before their deaths. Erwitt said of Monroe, "Physically she was surprisingly unattractive; the beauty was manufactured. But she was extremely intelligent and sensitive. And likeable."

In 2006 several touring exhibitions of Erwitt's photographs were shown at New York's International Center for Photography, in Paris, at Japan's Mitsukoshi, and in Barcelona, Spain. Additionally, a major exhibition in Australia is being planned. His photographs have been collected and exhibited at museums including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Smithsonian Institution, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, and the Kunsthaus in Zurich. His photographic books include the comprehensive monograph Personal Exposures/Elliott Erwitt (Norton, 1988); On the Beach (Norton, 1991), and Elliott Erwitt: To the Dogs (Norton, 1992). Elliot Erwitt currently lives in New York City.

Liz Kay

Andrew Smith Gallery - 203 W. San Francisco St. Santa Fe, NM 87501

www.andrewsmithgallery.com

Rhona Bitner Photographs Stage

In the series called Stage, Rhona Bitner goes further in her observation of the live show and transcends the interface between photography and theatricality. After working on circus and its actors in the Circus (1991-2001) and Clown (2001-2002) series the artist moves from the sandy circus ring to the worn-out stage floor. Now she no longer focuses on the people who make the show but instead on the very place where the show takes place: the stage. When empty, it is the very essence of theatre as a space for representation unfolding its own vocabulary: a unique decorum made of drapes, crimson velvet curtains, choreographed bunches of spotlights, colossal centre lights, a deep, heavy, silent and unsettling darkness.

. Rhona Bitner focuses on both the few moments opening the show and the seconds closing it. The lights in the room have been turned off, the stage is bathed in the light of the spots, the members of the audience are holding their breath and the actors are about to appear on the stage.

. In this big format series, the artist unveils the poetic and intense dimension to theatre as a space for experiences in view of the various human perceptions that photography tries to capture.

. Rhona Bitner lives and works in New York. In Paris she is represented by Galerie Xippas, in Boston by Howard Yezerski Gallery and in New York par CRG Gallery. Her photographs appear in the collections of the New York Whitney Museum of American Art, of the Fonds National d'Art Contemporain in Paris, of the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris.

. BFAS Blondeau Fine Arts Services will present 14 photographs by Rhona Bitner during the upcoming common opening with the “quARTier des Bains” galleries group in Geneva on September 14, 2006.

. A catalogue will be published before the end of the year in collaboration with Galerie Xippas, Paris, who presented this series in May-June 2006.

. BFAS - Blondeau Fine Art Services - 5, rue de la Muse - CH-1205 Genève Exhibition: THU-FRI 14h-18h30 and SAT 11h-17h

Acquisition of Ed Ruscha Photographs by the Whitney Museum

Acquisition of Ed Ruscha Photographs by the Whitney Museum of American Art

Adam D. Weinberg, Alice Pratt Brown Director, today announced that the Whitney Museum of American Art has acquired a major body of original photographic works from American artist Ed Ruscha through the generosity of The Leonard and Evelyn Lauder Foundation, with additional support from Tom and Diane Tuft, and through a significant gift of unique early works from the artist. This acquisition of 456 objects makes the Whitney the principal repository of Ruscha’s photographic works and an essential resource for the study and appreciation of the art of Ruscha, a key figure in American Conceptual art and a significant influence on international artists in all media for over forty years.

Sylvia Wolf, Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography, who initiated the acquisition, remarked, “Ed Ruscha’s books are among the most original achievements in the art of the 1960s and 1970s, and are the photographic works he is most known for. There have, however, been pictures tucked away in boxes in his studio and photographs that are unpublished or rarely seen, which shed light on Ruscha’s career as a whole.”

The Acquisition - The Whitney acquisition of 456 objects represents all facets of Ruscha’s photographic work. Mr. Weinberg remarked, “In the scope and rarity of the material, this acquisition is unparalleled. It exemplifies the Whitney’s goal to acquire defining works by contemporary American artists.” Included are original prints from his photographic books Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963); Various Small Fires and Milk (1964); Some Los Angeles Apartments (1965); Thirty-Four Parking Lots in Los Angeles (1967); Royal Road Test (1967); Babycakes with Weights (1970) and Real Estate Opportunities (1970). Also in this acquisition are several photographs Ruscha never published, in particular 16 images from Twentysix Gasoline Stations (1963) that were not included in the book.

In addition, the acquisition contains over 300 unique vintage photographs from a seven-month tour of Europe in 1961. Photographs from Austria, England, France, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Yugoslavia feature many motifs and stylistic elements that have marked Ruscha’s work over the past 40 years, in particular his interest in typography and signage, and his strong graphic sensibility. They also show him experimenting with the camera. Ms. Wolf observes, “The lack of self-consciousness and intense curiosity reflected in these early photographs makes them both refreshing and revelatory of a fertile time in a young artist’s career. Ruscha’s use of photography would later develop into a systematic inquiry with clarity of purpose, but during his months in Europe his pictures suggest spontaneity, playfulness, and a pure delight in seeing.”

The Whitney is planning a publication of works from this acquisition and an exhibition to open on June 24, 2004, concurrent with a landmark exhibition of Ruscha’s drawings that is being organized by the Whitney. The acquisition is a partial purchase from and partial donation by the artist.

ED RUSCHA - Born in 1937 in Omaha, Nebraska, and raised in Oklahoma City, Ruscha moved to Los Angeles when he was 18. He attended the Chouinard Art Institute until 1960, before working briefly in commercial advertising. In 1961, Ruscha embarked on a career as an artist and produced enigmatic paintings, drawings, and photographic books of gasoline stations, apartment buildings, palm trees, vacant lots, and Los Angeles’s famous “Hollywood” sign. His works were often drawn from photographs of mundane subjects shot from a distance. The irony and objective stance of his works from this period placed him in the context of Pop art and Conceptualism, but Ruscha consistently defies categorization. Now 66, Ruscha is recognized as one of our most important and influential contemporary American artists.

Ruscha’s photographic books of the 1960s and 1970s have come to embody the Conceptualists’s embrace of serial imaging and photographic documentation. The books have also had an impact on the art and careers of many American artists, including Lewis Baltz, Dan Graham, and Robert Venturi. German photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher enthusiastically presented Ruscha’s work to their students, including Thomas Struth and Andreas Gursky, whose own work incorporates a similar dry documentary aesthetic. And Canadian artist Jeff Wall has called Ruscha the “American Everyman.” Ruscha, in turn, identifies photographers Walker Evans and Robert Frank as influential to his art.

Whitney Holdings and Exhibitions - The Whitney first exhibited Ed Ruscha’s work in the 1967 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Painting. It has since collected his art and exhibited it in several group exhibitions. In 1982, the Whitney was the New York venue for an SFMoMA retrospective. Among the Whitney’s holdings are two master paintings, Large Trademark with Eight Spotlights (1962) and Hollywood to Pico (1998), two portfolios of prints, eight individual prints, and three drawings. This initiative extends a vigorous program of acquisitions in contemporary photography that began with the formation of the Photography Collection Committee in 1991.

WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART

99 Gansevoort Street, New York, NY 10014

whitney.org