Alex Prager @ Lehmann Maupin, Hong Kong

Alex Prager
Lehmann Maupin, Hong Kong
January 18 – March 17, 2018

ALEX PRAGER

Hawkins Street, 2017 

Archival pigment print, 12.97 x 24 inches (print), 32.9 x 61 cm. 

Courtesy of Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong 

Lehmann Maupin presents an  exhibition of new work by ALEX PRAGER. The Los Angeles-based artist returns to Hong Kong with her signature style of theatrical and meticulously staged photography and film, as well as her first exhibited sculpture. In her most recent series, Prager manipulates scale and dimension to challenge our understanding of the boundary between fiction and reality. 

Those familiar with Alex Prager’s work will recognize elements that recall past series, such as Face in the Crowd (2013), in which her compositions highlighted the contrast between crowded public spaces and a lone heroine. These latest works push the theatrical narrative potential of her prior series. The imagery lays bare the artifice in its creation, achieved through impossible, contrived viewpoints, layering of incongruent scenes—such as a rainy day on top of a sunny one—and other formal and technical controls that challenge the assumed naturalism of photography and film.

One such formal device is scale—a major component in the production and installation of the work—with Alex Prager varying the dimensions of the photographs according to the level of distortion she intends to achieve. In Hand Model (2017), a woman’s outstretched hand is blown up larger than life, referencing the often unrealistic scaling and cropping of images in the advertising and fashion industries, a concept reinforced by the title. The same image of the hand also appears in miniature scale as a prop advertisement in Star Shoes (2017), and unexpectedly, as a sculpture prodtrouding from the gallery wall in Hand Model (detail) (2017). In this multifold presentation of the same image, the meaning is conveyed in two radically different ways—as the emphasized subject and a trivial detail. Throughout the exhibition, Prager expertly guides the viewer to a predetermined end, using the play with proportion and form to question the assumption that a photograph faithfully represents reality.

With this new body of work, Alex Prager realizes an ambitious formal approach to achieve the dynamic tension she previously created through more traditional storytelling devices. Alex Prager removes the certainty of the omnipotent perspective of the viewer through scale, dramatic cropping, layering, and uncontextualized settings, replacing it with a disorienting awareness of the constructed nature of most “real world” imagery we encounter. Contemporary society is awash in visual information—we are presented with versions of reality in marketing, news, and social media, but we rarely pause to consider how our thoughts are guided in the process of looking. Alex Prager’s work calls this into question, and not only reveals the scene she intends to present, but makes the viewer aware of the psychological processes involved in their own observations.

ALEX PRAGER

Alex Prager (b. 1979, Los Angeles, lives and works in Los Angeles) has had solo exhibitions of her work organized at Musée des Beaux-Arts Le Locle, Switzerland (forthcoming, 2018); Des Moines Art Center, IA (2017-2018); Saint Louis Art Museum, MO (2015); Galerie des Galeries, Paris (2015); Goss Michael Foundation, Dallas (2015); National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia (2014); Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (2013); SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA (2013); and Foam Photography Museum, Amsterdam (2012). Select group exhibitions featuring her work include Telling Tales: Contemporary Narrative Photography, McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX (2016-2015); Open Rhapsody, Beirut Exhibition Center, Lebanon (2015); The Noir Effect, Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles (2014); No Fashion, Please: Photography Between Gender and Lifestyle, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna (2011); and New Photography, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2010). Her work is in numerous international public and private collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Australia; Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland, and Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden.

Alex Prager has received numerous awards, including the FOAM Paul Huf Award (2012), The Vevey International Photography Award (2009), and the London Photographic Award (2006). Her editorial work has been featured in prominent publications, including Vogue, New York Magazine, and W, and her film series Touch of Evil, commissioned by The New York Times Magazine, won a 2012 Emmy award. During the summer of 2017, her first major public commission, Applause, debuted for Times Square Arts: Midnight Moment, New York. In June 2018, a major monograph of her work, Silverlake Drive, will be published by Thames & Hudson.

LEHMANN MAUPIN HONG KONG
407 Pedder Building, 12 Pedder Street, Hong Kong
www.lehmannmaupin.com

Gina Osterloh @ Higher Pictures, New York

Gina Osterloh
Higher Pictures, New York
November 12 - December 19, 2015

Higher Pictures presents the work of Los Angeles-based artist Gina Osterloh. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York. Osterloh’s interdisciplinary practice brings together photography, drawing, film, and performance to explore the resonances between the physical form and its representational imprint, trace, or stand-in. Her work is marked by a tremulous tension between the handmade and the camera-ready. Record, mimesis, and illusion flow into one another as Osterloh’s minimally described spaces, imperfectly drawn lines, and unlikely portraits exploit and upset the conventions of mechanical reproduction.

A suite of photographs from the Copy Flat (2010) series feature Osterloh’s signature constructed set pieces. She builds three-walled rooms out of paper, paints every surface with a repetitive graphic pattern, and alternately fills the scene with flat cardboard cutouts of figures in silhouette. The silhouettes are themselves traced by the artist from the shadows of actual sitters; only shown from the torso or neck up, they nonetheless assert their personhood in different ways—some casting their own paper shadows and others turning their unpainted backs to the camera.

Osterloh’s Grid (2014) prints show wavering, hand-drawn gridlines on panels of paper that extend down a wall and onto the adjoining floor. Their scale, quivering energy, and uneasy translation of physical space give the distinct impression that the artist has just left the scene. That feeling is redoubled before the large-scale Drawing for the Camera (2014), in which the frame is filled with a freeform, meandering line drawing, again extending from wall to floor. Conflating the reproducibility and precision of photography with the unpredictable one-offs of sketching and performance, Osterloh pulls at the seams of photographic space.

While every work holds the suggestion of Osterloh’s presence, we only see her in Press and Erase (2007) and Press and Outline (2014). In Press and Erase Osterloh is seemingly disappearing up and into a void painted on the wall of one of her makeshift paper rooms. The 16mm silent film Press and Outline shows Osterloh pressing into her own shadow and then gently tracing the outline of its silhouette. A pang of longing for the impossible—a cleaving of the self, a disembodied existence—is palpable as the two figures perform their intimate mirrored choreography.

Gina Osterloh (b. 1973) earned her BA from DePaul University in 1996 and her MFA from the University of California, Irvine in 2007. Recent solo exhibitions include Nothing To See Here There Never Was (2015) at Silverlens Gallery in Manila, Philippines; Press Erase Outline Slice Strike Make An X Prick! (2014) at François Ghebaly in Los Angeles; and Anonymous Front (2012) at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. Osterloh’s work was also included in Fragments of an Unknowable Whole (2014) at the Urban Arts Space, the Ohio State University; and This Is Not America: Resistance, Protest and Poetics (2014) at the Arizona State University Art Museum. Group Dynamic, Osterloh’s first monograph, was published by LACE and distributed by RAM Publications in 2013. Osterloh teaches at California State University, Fullerton and Santa Ana College. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

Higher Pictures
980 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10075
www.higherpictures.com

Weegee: At the Movies! Bow Tie Chelsea Cinemas, NYC

Weegee: At the Movies! 

Bow Tie Chelsea Cinemas, NYC 

Through June 14, 2015 

WEEGEE, [Girls laughing at movie, New York], ca. 1943. 

with infrared film

© Weegee/ International Center of Photography.

Fourteen images by Weegee—best known for his tabloid photographs of New York City’s crime scenes, urban crowds, and nightlife in the 1930s and ’40s—are on display on the second floor of the Bow Tie Chelsea Cinemas  (260 West 23rd Street) to celebrate the theater’s reopening. The photographs are part of a series Weegee made in New York City theaters in the mid-1940s with infrared film.

From bemused children to entwined couples, lonely sleepers to exhilarated teenage girls, this gallery of portraits constitutes a powerful, unique, and moving tribute to cinema lovers. The passion conveyed in these images—their lyricism, magic, and poetry— remind us of the quintessential role played by the arts, and specifically still and moving images, in our society.

The photographs exhibited here are part of the Weegee archive, representing the largest holding of this master photographer’s work, which is housed at the International Center of Photography. The archive containing nearly 20,000 prints, negatives, tear sheets, manuscript drafts, correspondence, and other personal memorabilia.

Weegee: Biography 

Weegee was born Usher Fellig on June 12, 1899, in the town of Lemburg (now in Ukraine). He first worked as a photographer at age fourteen, three years after his family immigrated to the United States, where his first name was changed to the more American-sounding Arthur. Self-taught, he held many other photographyrelated jobs before gaining regular employment at a photography studio in lower Manhattan in 1918. This job led him to others at a variety of newspapers until, in 1935, he became a freelance news photographer. 

He centered his practice around police headquarters, and in 1938 he obtained permission to install a police radio in his car. This allowed him to take the first and most sensational photographs of news events and offer them for sale to publications such as the Herald-Tribune, Daily News, Post, the Sun, and PM Weekly, among others.

During the 1940s, Weegee’s photographs appeared outside the mainstream press and met success there as well. New York’s Photo League held an exhibition of his work in 1941, and the Museum of Modern Art began collecting his work and exhibited it in 1943. Weegee published his photographs in several books, including Naked City (1945), Weegee’s People (1946), and Naked Hollywood (1953). After moving to Hollywood in 1947, he devoted most of his energy to making 16-millimeter films and photographs for his “Distortions” series, a project that resulted in experimental portraits of celebrities and political figures. He returned to New York in 1952 and lectured and wrote about photography until his death on December 27, 1968.

Weegee’s photographic oeuvre is unusual in that it was successful in the popular media and respected by the fine-art community during his lifetime. His photographs’ ability to navigate between these two realms comes from the strong emotional connection forged between the viewer and the characters in his photographs, as well as from Weegee’s skill at choosing the most telling and significant moments of the events he photographed. ICP’s retrospective exhibition of his work in 1998 attested to Weegee’s continued popularity; his work is frequently recollected or represented in contemporary television, film, and other forms of popular entertainment.

About Bow Tie Cinemas, New York

Founded by B.S. Moss in 1900, four generations of family ownership have guided Bow Tie Cinemas from its origins in Vaudeville to its current holdings of fifty-five theaters in the eastern United States. 2015 marks the 115th anniversary of Bow Tie Cinemas and the completed renovation of its flagship Chelsea Cinemas in Manhattan. In addition to a permanent photography exhibit curated by The International Center of Photography, the all-new Chelsea Cinemas’ upgrades will include: luxury seating and reserved seating, a new lobby and interior box office, concession stands and enhanced food offerings.

About ICP, New York

The International Center of Photography (ICP) is the world’s leading institution dedicated to the practice and understanding of photography and the reproduced image in all its forms. Through our exhibitions, educational programs, and community outreach, we offer an open forum for dialogue about the role images play in our culture. Since our founding, we have presented more than 700 exhibitions and offered thousands of classes, providing instruction at every level. ICP is a center where photographers and artists, students and scholars can create and interpret the world of the image within our comprehensive educational and archival facilities. Visit www.icp.org for more information.

Bruce Gidden, Higher Pictures, New York

Bruce Gidden 
Higher Pictures, New York 
December 12, 2013 - January 18, 2014

Higher Pictures, NYC, presents new photographs by Bruce Gilden from his latest book, A Complete Examination of Middlesex, a commission he realized in London in 2011-2013. Gilden is known for his confrontational and unique approach of street photography, and his powerful images have been dividing opinions since the beginning of his career. For the first time the artist requested permission from his subjects to take a close-up portrait of their faces on the streets of London. In Gilden’s own words:

What I’m searching for when I walk the street are people I can engage with: somebody whose face, and particularly eyes, scream a story.

For this exhibition Bruce Gilden made three larger than life portraits, each is a silver gelatin print, 66 x 48 inches.

In 2013, Bruce Gilden was the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship, and has published Foreclosures, and A Complete Examination of Middlesex. Some of his previous publications include Facing New York (1992), Haiti (1999), Go (2000), Coney Island (2002) and A Beautiful Catastrophe (2005).

Born in 1946 in Brooklyn, New York, BRUCE GIDDEN studied sociology at Penn State University. He bought his first camera in 1968, and started his first two major essays photographing Mardi Gras in New Orleans and the beach in Coney Island. From photographing the street of New York City and of the major cities in the world, Bruce Gilden has worked on personal essays in England, Haiti, Ireland, India, Japan, Russia and Australia. Over the past four years, Bruce Gilden has directed his lens on America realizing a documentation of foreclosures, and participating to three segments of the collective project Postcards in America where he has been photographing in color.   

Bruce Gilden has received three National Endowments for the Arts fellowships (1980, 1984 and 1992), a Villa Medicis Hors les Murs (1995), New York State Foundation for the Arts Grant (1979, 1992 and 2000), the European Award for Photography (1996) and a Japan Foundation Fellowship (1999). His work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada, The Royal Photographic Society, Bath, England, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, England, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, Switzerland, The Chrysler Museum, Norfolk, Virginia and Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Tokyo, Japan. Gilden joined Magnum Photos in 1998. He lives in New York City. 

Previous exhibition: Herbert Matter 

HIGHER PICTURES
980 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10075
Gallery website: www.higherpictures.com

Herbert Matter, Higher Pictures, New York

Herbert Matter – Mercedes 1940
Higher Pictures, New York
October 24 - December 7, 2013 

Higher Pictures presents Mercedes 1940, by Herbert Matter. This is the first New York solo exhibition of Herbert Matter in over a decade.

The exhibition consists of eleven vintage silver gelatin photographs of Mercedes Carles by Herbert Matter, made in the summer before they married. Matter’s intimate portraits of Mercedes are the visual results of a thrilling act by an artist and lover, a dance of seduction with the camera, Mercedes’ energy and allure. Introduced in 1938 by Fernand Léger, the pair became one of the most powerful and influential art world couples of the 20th century. Throughout their sixty-year marriage, their close friends and associates included Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Fernand Léger, Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti, Charles and Ray Eames, Buckminster Fuller and fellow Swiss photographer Robert Frank.

A pioneering figure in photography, Herbert Matter came to the United States in 1935. Matter was inspired by the Russian Constructivists and Man Ray. It is noted that his light drawings anticipated Abstract Expressionism and indeed may have influenced his friend Jackson Pollock. He employed all manner of darkroom techniques to create his photographs, including collage, montage, solarization, reverse printing, retouching, cropping, and re-photographing.

Reticent but much respected, the Swiss-born New York photographer HERBERT MATTER (1907-1984) was the rare figure who bridged the commercial arts and fine arts. His wife, Mercedes Matter (1913-2001), the painter, muse and New York School maven was born into the art world. Her mother was Mercedes de Cordoba, who modeled for Edward Steichen and other members of the Photo-Secession; her father was the early American modernist painter Arthur B. Carles.

Upcoming Exhibition: Bruce Gilden 

HIGHER PICTURES
980 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10075
Gallery website: www.higherpictures.com

Photographer Dave Frieder, The Great bridges of NYC at Salmagundi

 

Dave Frieder, The Great Bridges of New York

Camera in hand, photographer DAVE FRIEDER has been scaling the Great Bridges of New York since 1993, using traditional film photography and some measure of courage to capture seldom seen details of these structures as well as historic views of New York City.

A PowerPoint Presentation on these unique giants that will take you breath away is oragnized at the Salmagundi Club (47 Fifh Ave @ 12th street, NYC 10003) on Friday, December 9. Admission is free and open to the public.

www.salmagundi.org

A Revolutionary Project: Cuba from Walker Evans to Now, an Exhibition organized by the Getty Museum, Los Angeles and a Book

A Revolutionary Project: Cuba from Walker Evans to Now 

Exhibition Marks First Showing of Getty’s WALKER EVAN’ s Cuban Photographs; Also on view are Cuban Revolutionary Photographs and Contemporary Work by  VIRGINIA BEAHAN, ALEX HARRIS, and ALEXEY TITARENKO

J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Curator: Judith Keller
May 17 - October 2, 2011 

WALKER EVANS

American, 1903-1975

Stevedore, 1933

Gelatin silver print

Image: 20.1 x 15.1 cm (7 15/16 x 5 15/16 in.)

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

84.XM.956.243

Cuba’s attempt to forge an independent state with an ambitious set of social goals, all the while moored to powerful political and economic interests, has been a source of fascination for nations, intellectuals, and artists alike. The exhibition A REVOLUTIONARY PROJECT: CUBA FROM WALKER EVANS TO NOW, looks at three critical periods in the island nation’s history as witnessed by photographers before, during, and after the country’s 1959 Revolution. 

A Revolutionary Project juxtaposes Walker Evans's 1933 images from the end of the Gerardo Machado dictatorship with views by contemporary foreign photographers Virginia Beahan (American, b. 1946), Alex Harris (American, b. 1949), and Alexey Titarenko (Russian, b. 1962), who have explored Cuba since the withdrawal of Soviet support in the 1990s. A third section bridging these two eras presents pictures by Cuban photographers who participated in the country’s 1959 Revolution, including Alberto Korda, Perfecto Romero, and Osvaldo Salas.  

“The Museum’s collection of Walker Evans prints is the largest in the U.S., but until now, we have not shown his photographs of Cuba,” explains Judith Keller, senior curator of photographs. “This exhibition allows us the opportunity to showcase this body of work, alongside newer work in the collection.” 

WALKER EVANS IN HAVANA: 1933 

Walker Evans (1903-1975) is one of the photographers most responsible for the way we now imagine American life in the 1930s. His distinctive photographic style, which he declared “transcendent documentary,” was nurtured in New York in the late 1920s and fully formed by his experience in Cuba in 1933.  In the spring of that year, Walker Evans was asked by publisher J. B. Lippincott to produce a body of work about Cuba to accompany a book by the radical journalist Carleton Beals (1893-1979). This book, The Crime of Cuba, would be a scathing indictment of the then-current regime of Cuban President Gerardo Machado. Leaving the country less than two months before Machado was forced out of office, Walker Evans was able to capture Cuba at the start of the revolutionary movement but almost 30 years before the 1959 Revolution. 

During Evans’s time in Cuba, he made substantial strides in his photographic practice. There he worked with different format cameras, large and small, one more deliberate and descriptive, the other more spontaneous and agile. He created both close-up and wide, inclusive compositions that he could then combine in intense sequences to best communicate his response to the poverty, the ferment, and the beauty of his environment. While in Havana, Evans met the American writer, Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), whose acclaimed avant-garde work he knew and admired.  Hemingway's terse narrative style, which he was then applying to his own Harry Morgan stories set in Havana and Key West, no doubt influenced Evans's approach to the subject of Cuba's current political and economic struggles. Evans's photographs also reflect the inspiration of French photographer Eugène Atget's Parisian pictures that Evans critiqued for an arts journal in 1931. The series that comprised Atget's thorough study of "Old Paris" seem to have provided additional motivation for Evans's selection of Havana subjects: the signage of urban storefronts, the abundant street offerings of fresh produce, the decorative balconies of old houses, the many studies of archaic horse-drawn wagons and carriages, and the portraits of women, some of whom appear to be prostitutes. 

1958-1966: REVOLUTION IN CUBA

Machado’s fall from rule in 1933 resulted in a long power struggle that culminated in the country’s 1959 socialist revolution to overthrow dictator Fulgencio Batista, anchoring Cuba to the Soviet bloc for the next thirty years and defining a relationship with the United States that still exists today. Fidel Castro, Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and their new government harnessed photography as a means of keeping the project of the Revolution at the forefront of Cuba’s collective consciousness. As both genuine records of popular insurrection and propagandistic documents used for political purposes, pictures of the Revolution and its aftermath have shaped how both Cubans and Americans understand the significance of that revolutionary moment. Photographs in the second section of the exhibition are drawn from the work of nine Cuban photographers who participated in recording the political context and triumphs of the emerging state in the years surrounding 1959. 

Included in the exhibition is an iconic image of the revolutionary hero Che Guevara by ALBERTO KORDA titled Guerrillero Heroico (March 5, 1960).  One of the world’s most reproduced images, it has been adopted for political causes, appearing on countless numbers of t-shirts, banners, and street art around the globe. The print on view in the exhibition is among the earliest versions of the photograph known to exist.  Made as a press print, it was used as a source to reproduce the image in media outlets a year after Korda photographed Guevara at a rally in Havana. 

Also on display in the exhibition is the well-known revolutionary photograph Patria o Muerte, Cuba (Negative, January 1959; print, 1984) by OSVALDO SALASO, one of Cuba’s most important photographers.  Salas effectively captures and conveys the populist fervor in Cuba shortly after the movement’s triumph with an image of a patriotic sign framed by a celebratory crowd. 

The photographs included in this section of the exhibition are culled from the extensive holdings of Cuban photography assembled by the Austrian collector, CHRISTIAN SKREIN , including a number of recent acquisitions by the Museum. 

CUBA: THE SPECIAL PERIOD - SINCE 1991

After Soviet troops began to withdraw from Cuba in September of 1991, the troubled Cuban economy suffered severe internal shortages, and Fidel Castro declared what is known as the “Special Period” (período especial), marked by food rationing, energy conservation, and a decline of public services.  In the nearly twenty years since the Soviet withdrawal, Cubans have managed to survive through perseverance, the forging of new political relationships, and the easing of socialist systems. This period of transition, which continues today with the recent transfer of power from Fidel Castro to his brother Raúl, has attracted the attention of photographers from around the world who are interested in exploring the relationship between Cuba’s revolutionary past and its uncertain future. 

The final section of the exhibition looks specifically at the work of three CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHERS with diverse approaches to documenting the island in recent decades: Virginia Beahan, Alex Harris, and Alexey Titarenko. 

VIRGINIA BEAHAN 's work concentrates on the landscape’s relationship to history and culture. In 2001, she began a multiyear project on Cuba, photographing its topography in search of remnants of the island’s diverse past. The work resulted in a publication in 2009 called Cuba: Singing with Bright Tears. Virginia Beahan’s Cuba is a land of contradictions, full of disappointments and hope, decay and rejuvenating beauty, simultaneously anchored to the past while looking beyond the present. 

VIRGINIA BEAHAN

American, born 1946

Post-Revolutionary “Hombre Nuevo” (New Man), Las Tunas, 2004

Chromogenic print

Sheet: 86.4 x 104.1 cm (34 x 41 in.)

Wilson Centre for Photography

© Virginia Beahan

EX.2011.4.22

Born and raised in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), Russia, ALEXEY TITARENKO became fascinated with Cuba in 2003, when he made his first trip to Havana. Titarenko’s goal was to represent the soul of the Cuban capital. In the artist’s photographs, the city is shown with little overt reference to its politics. Instead, Alexey Titarenko describes the conditions of life in the communist country, depicting people persevering amid varying states of ruin. Venturing out of the tourist zones of Havana into the network of dilapidated avenues beyond the old city walls, his images depict a gray metropolis whose inhabitants congregate on the streets to collect food rations, fix long-outmoded cars, and play baseball. 

ALEXEY TITARENKO 

Russian, born 1962

Untitled [Havana], 2006

Gelatin silver print

Image: 40.6 x 40.6 cm (16 x 16 in.)

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of Alexey Titarenko and Nailya Alexander

© Alexey Titarenko

2010.69.2

A former student of Walker Evans, ALEX HARRIS made several trips to Cuba following the collapse of the eastern bloc and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, developing a powerful body of color work that addresses the country’s cultural fabric during a period of difficult economic circumstances. His photographs focus on portraits of women whose lives are affected by the tourist-fueled sex trade, landscapes made through the windshields of refurbished 1950s American cars, and monuments to the Cuban national hero José Martí. His study was published in the form of a book, The Idea of Cuba, in 2007. Through these distinct vantage points, Harris probed the country’s propensity for ingenuity as it underwent great transition. 

ALEX HARRIS 

American, born 1949

Sol and Cuba, Old Havana, Looking North from Alberto Roja’s 1951 Plymouth, Havana, 

May 23, 1998

Chromogenic print

Image: 76.5 x 95.9 cm (30 1/8 x 37 3/4 in.)

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of Michael and Jane Wilson, 

Wilson Centre for Photography

© Alex Harris

2010.90.3

A Revolutionary Project is curated by JUDITH KELLER, senior curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum, and Brett Abbott, former associate curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum and, currently, curator of photography at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. 

WALKER EVANS VISION OF CUBA: THE BOOK

Cover of Walker Evans: Cuba, paperback edition.  

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. 

More than seventy Walker Evans photographs of Cuba are reprinted in WALKER EVANS:CUBA (Getty Publications, $24.95), available in paperback, along with a provocative essay by noted writer and commentator ANDREI CODRESCU. Together they bring to life what Codrescu has called “the eternal Cuba.” With an introduction of JUDITH KETTER, the curator of the exhibition.

Codrescu argues that what Walker Evans saw in Cuba may not have been what he was supposed to see, not what Beals and his publisher expected him to find. Assigned to lend visual support to impassioned rhetoric, the hallmark of Beals’ prose, Evans instead created beautiful portraits not distinguished by outrage or horror. As Codrescu writes, “[Evans] tried to photograph misery, but shapeliness got in the way.” From movie theaters to shantytowns, coal miners to loiterers, these “irresistibly photogenic” subjects present us with Evans’ own Cuba, not Beals’. Looking closely at individual photographs, Codrescu shows how Evans was just beginning to combine his early formalist aesthetic with the social concerns that would figure so prominently in his later work, especially his renowned images of Depression-era America. 

To capture the spirit of the imagery, Walker Evans: Cuba reproduces, without any cropping, 73 photographs at the full size Evans intended. 

Andrei Codrescu is a poet, novelist, essayist, and commentator for National Public Radio. He is the author of Ay, Cuba! (Picador, 1999) and the founder of Exquisite Corpse: A Journal of Letters and Life. 

Judith Keller is senior curator in the Department of Photographs at the Getty Museum and author of Walker Evans: The Getty Museum Collection (Getty Publications, 1995).

Walker Evans 
Cuba 
Essay by Andrei Codrescu
Introduction by Judith Keller
J. Paul Getty Museum
96 pages, 11 ½ x 10 inches, paperback
73 duotone illustrations
ISBN 978-1-60606-064-3, $24.95 [UK £16.99]
Publication Date:  May 17, 2011

J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM
GETTY CENTER
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

www.getty.edu

Photographs and Drawings from the Galleria Civica Modena Collections

THE GALLERIA CIVICA DI MODENA COLLECTION: PHOTOGRAPHS AND DRAWINGS FROM THE COLLECTIONS

3 April - 17 July 2011 

Davide Tranchina, Gorilla, 2000, 

from the series “Safari metropolitano” (Metropolitan Safari)

Donated to the Galleria Civica di Modena Photography Collection. 

Courtesy of the Galleria Civica di Modena.

On Saturday 2nd April 2011 at 6pm the Galleria Civica di Modena will inaugurate a long-term project aimed at displaying the photographs and drawings of the permanent collections in turn and on a regular basis. Until the 17th July the Sala grande and the Sale superiori of the Palazzo will in fact feature the first display of the collections, organised and co-produced by the Galleria Civica di Modena and the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Modena. 

The Sala grande will host a selection of photographs showing broad views and tiny glimpses of Modena captured throughout the second half of the 20th century by great photographers such as Olivo Barbieri, Gabriele Basilico, Luigi Ghirri and Mimmo Jodice. A number of works from a set of 50 images (part of a major photo shoot on the city in 2009) donated by Jodice to the Galleria Civica di Modena Collection will also be presented here for the first time.

The exhibition then continues with a selection from the 1200 black & white images (which also only recently became part of the Collection), part of Franco Vaccari’s project “C’ero anch’io”, presented on the occasion of the solo exhibition dedicated to the artist in 2007, held between the Palazzina dei Giardini and the Fotomuseo Giuseppe Panini. Among the artists chosen for this show there is also Franco Fontana, the donator of the main corpus of the Collection itself, and who on this particular occasion has donated four of his own personal visions of 1970’s Modena.

From the series “Safari Metropolitano”, (1998-2000), Davide Tranchina has picked out three images that offer an estranging and at the same time ironic vision of the urban outskirts, to be donated to the Gallery.

In the Sale superiori, works on paper by Modenese artists will be displayed, artists whose careers are documented within the Drawing Collection, from the early 20th century right up to the present day. The entrance chamber hosts works in the collection by artists such as Davide Benati, Carlo Cremaschi, Giuliano Della Casa, Franco Guerzoni, Giovanni Manfredini, Wainer Vaccari, right up to Andrea Chiesi and Roberto Cuoghi. The second room, instead, is dedicated to artistic figures who have acquired a historic standing, such as Nereo Annovi, Vittorio Magelli, Mario Molinari, Tino Pelloni, Enrico Prampolini, Pompeo Vecchiati and Mario Venturelli. 

The last two spaces will be given over to Lucio Riva and Gianni Valbonesi, to whom a tribute will be paid – thanks to the heritage of the Collection and the new purchases – in the light of the thorough and coherent artistic activity which he has carried out over the course of the last half century.

GALLERIA CIVICA DI MODENA

La collezione della Galleria Civica di Modena: fotografie e disegni dalle Raccolte 

Palazzo Santa Margherita 

Corso Canalgrande 103 

41121 Modena 

www.galleriacivicadimodena.it 

FLLAC: Barney, Davis, Newbegin Photo Exhibition as part of Vassar's 150th anniversary

150 Years Later: New Photography 

by Tina Barney, Tim Davis, 

and Katherine Newbegin

Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center 

FLLAC at Vassar College   

Poughkeepsie, NY

Through March 27, 2011

As part of a campus-wide celebration of Vassar’s sesquicentennial anniversary, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center commissioned three photographers to create new work to highlight different aspects of campus life. The resulting photographs in the exhibition 150 YEARS LATER: NEW PHOTOGRAPHY BY TINA BARNEY, TIM DAVIS, AND KATHERINE NEWCOMING focus on the people, environment, and the culture of Vassar today. The exhibition is curated by Mary-Kay Lombino, The Emily Hargroves Fisher ’57 and Richard B. Fisher Curator and Assistant Director for Strategic Planning at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, and is on view since January 28 through March 27, 2011.

The approximately 40 new works created for this exhibition uncover a side of Vassar that is not often seen by the average visitor to campus. “Foregoing the typical view of architectural and natural beauty for which the college is known, Barney, Davis, and Newbegin instead focused on the idiosyncratic, the ironic, and the hidden aspects of campus life that lie beneath the surface,” explained Lombino. “They have pieced together a portrait of Vassar that reveals as much about the artists’ interests as it does about their subject.”

Each photographer’s work is presented in one of three adjoining galleries. Lombino noted that each photographer chose to represent the college in different ways — Tina Barney with intimate close-up images of people, Katherine Newbegin’s focus on dark and dingy forgotten corners, and Tim Davis’s search to capture the absurdity in everyday life.  

TINA BARNEY was born in 1945 in NYC. Monographic publications of her work include: Friends and Relations: Photographs by Tina Barney (Smithsonian 1991), Tina Barney Photographs: Theater of Manners (Scalo 1997), Tina Barney: The Europeans (Steidl 2005). Barney’s last book Players, was published in 2010. Her work is in such collections as the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York; Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut; Museum of Fine Arts in Houston; and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

“Vassar is so pretty, so stately,” noted TIM DAVIS (b. 1969, Blantyre, Malawi). “I chose ‘Move Out Day’ as a subject in order to see this ideally arranged place in a state of derangement. Cameras love chaos as much as they enjoy order and I felt privileged to be able examine this campus as it folded up and began its annual bivouac home.”

Tim Davis’s publications include The New Antiquity (Damiani 2010), My Life in Politics (Aperture 2006), Permanent Collection (Nazraeli Press 2005) and Lots (Coromandel Design 2002). In addition, he has published several books of his poetry. Davis currently teaches at Bard College while living and working in New York City and Tivoli, New York.

KATHERINE NEWBEGIN (b. 1976, Portland, Oregon. Lives and works in New York and Berlin.) remarked that it took her “several visits before I stumbled upon what I felt to be the hidden world of Vassar . . . I spent so much time wandering in basements and attics, and it was through this process that I eventually felt I was able to get under the skin of Vassar. Simultaneously, I was drawn to the student life happening on the surface, and the tension that lies between these two worlds, one silent and aging, the second so full of life.” 

This commission follows a strong photographic legacy at Vassar that dates back to the early part of the 20th century. Throughout the history of the college photographers have been invited to campus to capture the architecture, people, and lifestyle. Two fine historical examples are Paul Strand who photographed several Vassar buildings in 1915 and Albert Eisenstadt who illustrated campus life for the February 1937 issue of LIFE magazine. Several of the original photographs from these earlier commissions are in the Art Center’s permanent collection and are presented in a nearby gallery to compliment the new work by Barney, Davis, and Newbegin. 

MARY-KAY LOMBINO was appointed to the position of Emily Hargroves Fisher ’57 and Richard B. Fisher Curator in 2006 and, in fall 2009, appointed as Assistant Director for Strategic Planning of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center.  During her time at Vassar, she has curated several notable exhibitions, including Off the Shelf: New Form in Contemporary Artists’ Books; Out of Shape: Stylistic Distortions of the Human Form in Art from the Logan Collection; Facebook: Image of People in Photographs from the Permanent Collection; Excerpt: Selections from the Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn Collection; Faith and Fantasy; and Harry Roseman: Hole in the Wall.  In 2009, Lombino was named a fellow of the Center for Curatorial Leadership (CCL); and in 2005, she received a Getty Curatorial Research Fellowship to study work by the late California Symbolist/Surrealist painter Dorr Bothwell. Lombino received a BA in art history from the University of Richmond and an MA in art history and museum studies from the University of Southern California in 1995. She has organized solo shows for numerous artists including Phil Collins, Ken Price, Amy Myers, Gay Outlaw, Euan Macdonald, Alice Könitz, Candida Höfer, and Mungo Thomson.

An exhibition Catalogue has been published. 

Palmer Gallery exhibition: Through the Student Lens: 1865 - 2011

James W. Palmer III Gallery

October 27 - November, 2011 (exact dates to be announced)

The James W. Palmer III Gallery in Main Building’s College Center will present the photographic exhibition titled Through the Student Lens: 1865 - 2011, curated by Hudson Valley artist Monica Church. Student photographers will chronicle various dimensions of life at Vassar and their work will be exhibited along with photographs by past students, selected from the archives.

FRANCES LEHMAN LOEB ART CENTER 

124 Raymond Ave 

Poughkeepsie, NY 12604

fllac.vassar.edu

Mapping Bo-Kaap: History, Memories and Spaces

Mapping Bo-Kaap: History, Memories and Spaces
Iziko Bo-Kaap Museum, Cape Town
On permanent display in the Museum's Community Hall
since October 14, 2010

Mapping Bo-Kaap: History, Memories and Spaces is presented by Iziko Social History Collections department. This exhibition is inspired by a mapping survey project conducted by Vidamemoria Heritage Consultants.

The Mapping Survey Project set out to establish a sense, from the residents themselves, of the nature and location of important sites in the area. Randomly selected participants were asked to identify significant spaces and cultural traditions associated with the area. Participants were also asked to share their views regarding the protection and promotion of heritage resources, as well as why they enjoyed living in the area.

A range of sites, from street corner cafés to spiritual places such as mosques, were categorised as ‘significant’ by members of the community. This exhibition summarises the main findings of the survey and includes a number of historic and contemporary photographs of Bo-Kaap, providing a glimpse into the history and evolution of the area, whose community was also affected by the Group Areas Act.

The contributors to Mapping Bo-Kaap: History, Memories and Spaces hope that the display will serve as a catalyst for an ongoing dialogue, encouraging Bo-Kaap residents to share their stories and memories with Iziko, so that the heritage and cultural life of the area can take its place in civic and national life and may be preserved and shared for many generations to come.

BO-KAAP MUSEUM
71 Wale Street
Cape Town
8000
South Africa

www.iziko.org.za

Photo Show at MoCP Chicago La Frontera: the cultural impact of Mexican migration

La Frontera: the Cultural Impact of Mexican Migration
Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago
Curator: Rod Slemmons
Through December 23, 2010

 

DAVID TAYLOR, Pedestrian Fence Construction, NM, 2007,
34×43”, Archival Inkjet Print
Courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago

 

Work by: Michael Hyatt - Andy Kropa - Yoshua Okón - Heriberto Quiroz - Juan Pacheco - Antonio Perez - David Rochkind - Marcela Taboada - David Taylor

The idea for this exhibition originated when MoCP Director Rod Slemmons served as a member of the Mexican Community Roundtable of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He realized that there were many layers and generations of migration and immigration present at the table, all with varying agendas and degrees of mutual understanding and tolerance. He felt that these multiple viewpoints were quite different from the simple, commonly held notions of immigration promulgated by the news media in the U.S. 

With experience working within arts communities in Mexico for 25 years, and familiarity with photographers dealing with these issues in both the U.S. and Mexico, Slemmons created this exhibition to explore the following layers of impact of immigration over time and in detail. 

The exhibition addresses the dynamics of the border itself as the choke point, including Minute Men, Border Patrol, and humanitarian groups. This section will primarily be drawn from the work of David Taylor from Las Cruces, New Mexico, and Michael Hyatt from Tucson, Arizona. David Taylor has just published a book titled Working the Line that records his extensive experience with the Border Patrol.

La Frontera also explores the routes to the border in Mexico collectively called El Camino Real, an ironic reference to the 17th century route from Mexico City to California. Some of these routes are illegal and exploitive of the people desperately seeking work in the north. This situation is exacerbated by the increasing volume of drug trafficking that is permanently changing the cultural parameters of Mexico forever. David Rochkind contributes a strong image essay from his project Heavy Hand, Sunken Spirit.

Transformed communities on either side of the border are a focus as well. An example is the town of West Liberty, Iowa, which has been photographed extensively by Andy Kropa. The town has been home to Mexican farm workers since the 1940s, of whom almost all hail from the town of Allende in the Mexican state of Durango. Unlike previous waves of immigrants from Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who had no desire to return, there is constant contact between the two towns.  A less-positive example of the effects of migration, especially of men looking for work, is the town of San Miguel Amatilan in the state of Oaxaca. Here women have been forced to take over traditional male occupations such as building houses of adobe, mainly because the majority of the men have moved to the U.S. in search of work and have not come back. Marcela Taboada contributes a project based on this town called Women of Clay.

La Frontera includes photographs from Chicago exploring the lives of families in different waves of immigration who are now living in Pilsen, produced by Antonio Perez and Heriberto Quiroz. The exhibition also addresses Mexican artists in the U.S. who attempt to escape the expectation that they deal only with "Mexican themes," while they still experience being foreigners in a foreign land. Juan Pacheco contributes a project called De Colores, and Yoshua Okón contributes an installation about an imaginary factory on the border that "cans" laughter. 

ROD SLEMMONS is the Director of the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago. From 1982 to 1996 he was the Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Seattle Art Museum, and from 1996 to 2002 he taught Photography, the History of Photography, and Graduate Museum Studies at the University of Washington in Seattle. He was the National Chair of the Society for Photographic Education from 1990 to 1994. He has served as a peer review panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and as a grant reader and site evaluator for the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has organized numerous exhibitions including: Diane Arbus (1986); Like a One-Eyed Cat, a 30-year retrospective of the photography of Lee Friedlander (1989); Shadowy Evidence: The Art of E. S. Curtis and His Contemporaries (1989); Persistence of Vision, a retrospective of the digital work of Paul Berger (2003); and Witness: Contemporary Mexican Journalism (2004). His essays and reviews have appeared in dozens of publications including Afterimage, Black Flash, image, and Reflex. 

La Frontera: the Cultural Impact of Mexican Migration
October 8 - December 23, 2010

MoCP – Museum of Contemporary Photography
Columbia College Chicago
Chicago IL 60605 - USA

www.mocp.org

Stanley Kubrick Photographer 1945-1950 Exhibition in Italy

Stanley Kubrick Photographer
Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere e Arti, Venice
Through 14 november 2010

STANLEY KUBRICK, Self-portrait
Courtesy Giunti Arte mostre musei / Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti / Museum of the City of New York

 

After the great success at Palazzo della Ragione di Milano, with more than 38.000 people visiting the show, the Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere e Arti - Palazzo Cavalli Franchetti in Venice is hosting the exhibition of two hundreds pictures (many of them printed from the original negatives) taken by STANLEY KUBRICK from 1945 up to 1950, when at the age of 17 he was hired by the American magazine Look.

The event's inauguration was timed to coincide with the 67th Venice International Film Festival, where Kubrick received the special Career Golden Lion Award in 1997.

The exhibition is curated by Rainer Crone and set up by Giunti Arte Mostre Musei, jointly with the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., and the Museum of the City of New York – where more than 20,000 still unknown negatives belonging to a young but already great photographer Stanley Kubrick are stored.

 

STANLEY KUBRICK, A tale of a shoe-shine boy, 1947, 16x16'
Courtesy Giunti Arte mostre musei / Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti / Museum of the City of New York

 

The pictures shown testify the ability of the artist to witness everyday life in America during the post-war period thanks to the ironical and withering shot of New York that was becoming the new world capital and of Dixieland musicians and circus’ epic.

The exhibition bring to the attention a less popular feature of the American filmmaker, conveying his way of taking pictures. Alongside with chess, photography is revealed as one of Kubrick’s main passions, activity inherited from his father and that he started as a teenager and terminated after only five years.
The first picture was published on June 26th, 1945 and portraits a newsvendor reacting to the death of Franklin D Roosevelt. A few months later, Look hired Kubrick as a photo reporter: at 17, he was the youngest photographer on the magazine's staff.

 

STANLEY KUBRICK, Personalities of the circus, march 1948
Courtesy Giunti Arte mostre musei / Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti / Museum of the City of New York

 

The Look Method, which took the form of a narrative by episodes, did not meet with the approval of leading contemporary photojournalists. The Magazine’s owners wanted a constant follow-up of the characters portrayed in every action. This intruding style was fascinating for Kubrick who loved to build up a story starting from those images. In order to obtain a natural posture, Kubrick would remain unseen hiding his camera’s wire below his jacket and pushing the shutter using a device hidden in his hand.

In the indoor shootings, he would try to use natural light as much as possible working on the exposure time and on the diaphragm opening time. Most part of his aesthetic ability shown in his films was already present in his work of those days.
Kubrick is able to give the spectator the ability to personally interpret the psychological features of those appearing in the pictures.

 

STANLEY KUBRICK, Portugal, 1948
Courtesy Giunti Arte mostre musei / Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti / Museum of the City of New York

 

“In this way, the first pictures taken by Stanley Kubrick see the light right after WW2 and they not only represent an era but they astonish for their surprising deepness. In this way, they cannot be simply considered as visual archives of the joie de vivre of a young and full of humour artist but they represent a conscious attempt to experiment the resources given by the technical mean with its ability to represent and perceive reality. This aspect will be maintained along the years in all Kubrick’s works.” -- Rainer Crone

An important step as the ambiguity of images and movies are the core of post-war cinema thus called modern and of which Kubrick is one unquestioned maestro.

 

STANLEY KUBRICK,  Untitled, 1950
Courtesy Giunti Arte mostre musei / Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti / Museum of the City of New York

 

The exhibition, divided in eight sections, will display some of the stories captured by the artist like Portugal, a post-war trip made by two Americans, or Crimes, which witnesses the arrest of two criminals, following the policemen activity, their strategy and their tricks in order to make the arrest.

Betsy Furstenberg, the main character of the section, is presented as the symbol of the elated New Yorker Lifestyle during those years and the counter part of the small shoe shine” standing on the street corners.

Furthermore, there are sections reproducing the life within the Columbia University, an elite place where the American ruling class was educated and at Campus Mooseheart, Illinois, a University dorm built up by donors aimed at forming war orphans bound to America’s future middle class. New Orleans Dixieland musicians’ epic and circus performers will close the show.

Produced and conceived by Giunti Arte mostre musei, the exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue published by Giunti Arte wich is the most complete monograph on the topic never issued before in Italy.

 

STANLEY KUBRICK Photographer
28 August - 14 November 2010

Istituto Veneto di Scienze Lettere ed Arti
Palazzo Cavalli Franchetti
Campo Santo Stefano
Venice - Italy

World largest photo globe at Photokina 2010

 

“The world’s largest photo globe,” with a remarkable diameter of six meters, presented at photokina 2010. Users from more than 80 countries have been contributing to the success of this unique world record — “The world’s largest photo globe” — by posting images online at the web site www.photoglobus.prophoto-online.de since the end of May 2010. The web site offers an unparalleled journey through images, which is continuing thanks to the efforts of the organizers. The web site will stay online and the organizers hope that its users will continue to post new images that reflect the creativity of photographers around the world. You could say: During and after photokina 2010, photokina 2012 is just around the corner — and who knows what world record we will see then. This group project has been made possible by the Photographic Industry Association and its members Adobe Systems, CeWe Color, Epson, Fujifilm Imaging Germany, Hama, Kaiser Fototechnik, Kodak, Lowepro, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic, Samsung, Felix Schoeller, Sigma, Sihl, as well as Prophoto GmbH and Koelnmesse.

Photography and Painting in Normandy, 1850-1874 at DMA

LANDMARK EXHIBITION REVEALS DEEP ARTISTIC DIALOGUE AND EXCHANGE AMONG EARLY IMPRESSIONIST PAINTERS AND PIONEERING PHOTOGRAPHERS IN 19TH-CENTURY FRANCE

The Lens of Impressionism: Photography and Painting Along the Normandy Coast, 1850-1874

Provides New Insight into Works by Courbet, Degas, Monet, and Manet, Among Others

On View at Dallas Museum of Art February 21 - May 23, 2010

Beginning February 21, 2010, the Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) will present a landmark exhibition exploring the influential and profound relationship between photographers and painters who lived and worked along the Normandy coast in France during the mid-19th century. The Lens of Impressionism: Photography and Painting Along the Normandy Coast, 1850-1874 reveals how the convergence of social, technological and commercial forces within the region affected artistic production and dramatically transformed the course of photography, impressionism and modern painting. The exhibition will feature some 100 works, including vintage prints, paintings, pastels and watercolors, by artists and photographers including Gustave Courbet, Edgar Degas, Gustave Le Gray, and Claude Monet.

On view through May 23, 2010, The Lens of Impressionism will be complemented by the presentation of Coastlines: Images of Land and Sea, a special exhibition drawn from the Museum’s collections opening in April that will explore how coastal landscapes have been portrayed by artists throughout the past century. The Lens of Impressionism has been organized by the University of Michigan Museum of Art. The Dallas presentation, which marks the final stop of this major exhibition, will feature important loans and a new section exploring early photographic techniques and technology.

“The Lens of Impressionism provides a wonderful opportunity to connect visitors with masterpieces by some of the greatest impressionist artists, including Monet and Degas, and also to offer insight and exposure to their colleagues, the pioneers of the art of photography,” said Bonnie Pitman, The Eugene McDermott Director of the Dallas Museum of Art. “The presentation at the DMA is enhanced by our forthcoming exhibition Coastlines, which will further explore the theme, as well as in our own collection of impressionist works from the Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, which this year celebrates its 25th year as part of the DMA.”

The exhibition will showcase paintings, photographs and drawings by some of the most treasured artists in the Western canon—Gustave Courbet, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet and Edgar Degas among them—as well as by pioneering photographers, such as Gustave Le Gray and Henri Le Secq. Inspired by the scenic Normandy coast of France, these works include representations of beach scenes, seascapes, fishing villages, resorts and the region’s pastoral beauty. Archival materials related to early tourism will also be included in the exhibition to provide an innovative examination of the impact of the then-new medium of photography on ideas of image making, the recording of passing time, the capacities of painting and the rise of impressionism itself.

“The Lens of Impressionism presents new insight into and scholarship on the response of impressionist painters to early photography within the context of a single geographic locale,” said Heather MacDonald, The Lillian and James H. Clark Associate Curator of European Art at the Dallas Museum of Art and the coordinating curator for the exhibition. “The work that was developed in the second half of the 19th century in the Normandy coast—a region that was intensely explored and celebrated by artists during this time—tells a revealing story about the cross-pollination of ideas between the emerging impressionist art movement and the new field of photography.”

Exclusive to the Dallas presentation is a special section that illustrates the technology and techniques of early photography through works from the Dallas Museum of Art’s collections as well as loans from the Amon Carter Museum.

After viewing The Lens of Impressionism, visitors are encouraged to explore the Museum’s Wendy and Emery Reves Collection, which is acclaimed for its impressionist and post-impressionist works by such artists as Bonnard, Cézanne, Gauguin, Manet, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec and van Gogh. Encompassing more than 1,400 works, including paintings, sculptures, works on paper and decorative arts objects, the collection is displayed at the DMA in a re-creation of the couple’s Riviera home, Villa La Pausa. This spectacular bequest, which was presented to the Museum 25 years ago, transformed the DMA’s collection of late 19th-century French art and founded the institution’s collection in European decorative arts.

Special audio tours for The Lens of Impression exhibition and the Reves Collection will highlight works in the exhibition along with select masterpieces from the Reves Collection. Additional background information and material on the exhibition and from the Reves Collection can also be accessed by visitors on Wi-Fi enabled smartphones and media players.

Catalogue

The Lens of Impressionism will be accompanied by a fully illustrated 208-page catalogue with essays by internationally recognized scholars: Sylvie Aubenas, Head, Department of Prints and Photographs at the Bibliothèque nationale de France; Dominique de Font-Réaulx, Curator, Musée du Louvre; Stephen Bann, Bristol University; Dean MacCannell, University of California at Davis; and the exhibition curator, UMMA’s Senior Curator of Western Art, Carole McNamara.

The Lens of Impressionism: Photography and Painting Along the Normandy Coast, 1850-1874 is organized by the University of Michigan Museum of Art. The Dallas presentation marks the second and final stop on the exhibition tour, and is curated by Heather MacDonald, The Lillian and James H. Clark Associate Curator of European Art at the Dallas Museum of Art.

The exhibition is made possible in part by the Florence Gould Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the University of Michigan's Office of the Provost, and other generous donors. It includes loans from private and public collections in both the United States and Europe, featuring exceptional loans from the Musée d’Orsay and a generous loan of outstanding photographs from the rich collections of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

The presentation in Dallas is made possible by Bank of America. Additional support is provided by Texas Instruments, Energy Future Holdings, and the DMA’s Junior Associates Circle with funds raised through An Affair of the Art 2010: Great Impression. Air transportation is provided by American Airlines. Promotional support provided by Kroger.

Photographers of Pathways to Housing at Soho Photo

 

  Illuminating Myself © QUEENS PHOTO GROUP
  Courtesy Soho Photo Gallery, New York

 

Portraits in Deep: the Photographers of Pathways to Housing is the Soho Photo Gallery January’s guest exhibition: January 5 – January 30, 2010. The 20 digital color images in this show are the culmination of a three-year project by the photographers under the tutelage of Pamela Parlapiano. She encouraged her students to photograph each other as the creative individuals they are rather than how people expected them to be because they were formerly homeless or dealing with mental illness.

Pamela Parlapiano says, “This project is in keeping with my life’s work of showing that just because people are challenged in one area of their life doesn’t mean they aren’t gifted in another.” She has been teaching photography at Pathways to Housing since its inception in 1989. Over the years, she has witnessed how photography can be transformative in the way her students view themselves and how others view them. Pamela Parlapiano states that Portraits in Deep is a project that explores and flaunts the creative side of her students; they have photographed each other as the unique people they are—volatile, creative and free of convention—the very same traits that contribute to great art. www.pathwaystohousing.org

This is a great project and exhibition. Congrats to the photographers from Wanafoto.

Soho Photo Gallery has been showcasing a broad spectrum of imagery by emerging and veteran photographers since 1971. The Gallery is located in New York City’s historic TriBeCa district, three blocks south of Canal Street between West Broadway and Sixth Avenue. Subways: #1 to Franklin Street or the A, C, E, W, N, R or #6 to Canal Street. Get updates on Facebook.com/ Sohophotogallery

Lou Reed, Romanticism - Photo Exhibition @ Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

New Photographs by Lou Reed

Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

December 18, 2009 - January 9, 2010

  © LOU REED / Steven Kasher Gallery

 

Steven Kasher Gallery (New York) presents an exhibition of NEW PHOTOGRAPHS BY LOU REED accompanying the publication of his book, ROMANTICISM (Edition 7L/Steidl, 2009). The book and exhibition feature stunning black and white and color images of landscapes and architectural motifs, shot on the artist’s travels to Scotland, Denmark, Big Sur and elsewhere. The photographs are taken with a specially altered digital camera, which gives them an aura of strangeness, or otherworldliness.  They have a timeless quality but are simultaneously very modern, like Reed himself. They are surprisingly small in scale, making these striking natural images personal, portable, and intimate.

First with his group, The Velvet Underground, and then as a solo artist, Lou Reed has been making innovations in music since the 1960s. His name has become synonymous with the New York avant-garde, and with the city itself.  With his photography, Reed has been moving out of New York, while his first collection featured portraits of the city, this new one focuses on more pastoral settings.

This collection of photographs takes its name from the 18th and 19th century art movement that sought a return to the emotion, beauty, and unknowability of the natural as a counterpoint to industrial era’s emphasis on technological development and the pursuit of rational knowledge. Reed’s images recall this impulse: they focus on the aesthetic and the sublime; the splendor of a single tree against a cloudy Scottish sky, suffused with light. There is, however, also something uncanny and eerie about some of the photographs; the absence of human figures, a road leading over a bridge into a dense, shadowy forest. Reed has recently adapted the poet and writer Edgar Allen Poe’s The Raven, the supernatural is a theme that underwrites much of his recent work. Perhaps, like the Romantics, Reed is commenting on another Industrial Revolution — the rapid developments of globalization are once again placing the natural into both literal and metaphoric danger — the beauty of his landscapes takes on a more urgent meaning.

Lou Reed says of his work:

          “I love photography. I love digital. I love digital. It’s what I’d always wished for. Being in the camera and experiencing the astonishing accomplishment of the creations of life sparked through the beauty of the detailed startling power of the glass lens. A new German lens brings a mist to me. The colors and light I come to see through the beauty of the camera. A love that lasts forever is the love of the lens of sharpness – of spirit warmth and depth and feeling. It makes my body pour emotion into the heartbeat of the world. A great trade and exchange. I think of the camera as my soul. Much like a guitar. My lovely Alpa has rosewood grips. What more could you need?”

Lou Reed has been working in multiple media for over thirty years. Along with his band, The Velvet Underground, he was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. He has acted in and composed music for a number of films, and is the recipient of the Chevalier Commander of Arts and Letters from the French government. He is the author of Pass thru Fire: The Collected Lyrics and the play The Raven. Reed acted as guest art director for the Winter 2008/2009 issue of Francis Coppolla’s Zeotrope Magazine. His previous books of photography, both published with Steidl, are Lou Reed’s New York and Emotion in Action. Lou Reed’s latest work The Raven, published by Le Seuil, is a reworking in play form of some works of Edgar Allan Poe, illuminated by the graphic artist Lorenzo Mattotti.

Steven Kasher Gallery is located at 521 W. 23rd St. New York, NY 10011.

Lou Reed: Romanticism one-day exhibition was on view on December 17 and continue in back gallery from December 18 through January 9, 2010.
 
Other post on Wanafoto about Steven Kasher Gallery’s Exhibitions: Tracey Moffatt, Love and Adventures

Photographic Portraiture in Philadelphia

Gallery 339 presents PERSONAL VIEWS: CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAHIC PORTRAITURE IN PHILADELPHIA. This Photo Exhibition in Philadelphia presents a range of approaches to photographic portraiture, both in style and print-making techniques. The seven artists who comprise the show are: Justyna Badach, Rita Bernstein, Jessica Todd Harper, Andrea Modica, Nadine Rovner, Sarah Stolfa and Zoe Strauss.

With Personal Views, Gallery 339 presents a sample of the outstanding photographic portraiture that is currently coming out of Philadelphia. While the city has always counted talented portrait photographers among its artistic ranks, the number of local photographers receiving national and international recognition for their portrait work has reached a notable level. Highly praised recent books by Jessica TODD HARPER, Interior Exposure, Zoe STRAUSS, America and Sarah STOLFA,The Regulars, are just one sign of this current attention. Other emerging artists in Personal Views, Justyna BADACH, Rita BERNSTEIN, and Nadine ROVNER, are similarly seeing their work recognized through local and national awards, competitions and exhibitions. And further adding to the city’s gravity in this genre is the recent arrival of renowned portrait photographer Andrea MODICA, who took a teaching position at Drexel University. Andrea Modica is already having an impact on the local photography community through her teaching activities, exhibitions, and workshops.

The exhibition also seeks to demonstrate the richness and variety that characterize Philadelphia’s photographic portraiture. These artists are not joined by a single movement or aesthetic view; their work cuts across a range of approaches to portraiture, both in style and print-making techniques. The single shared sensibility may be their inclination to combine historic and contemporary considerations into images that feel current as well as part of an artistic continuum. Some artists, like Modica and Bernstein, use early printing-making processes, which lend a sense of timelessness to their contemporary subjects. Other artists, like Badach and Todd Harper make large color prints yet allude to conventions in painting, such as in the way they handle light and the careful attention paid to the objects and environments that surround their subjects. All the artists are creating images that, while of the moment, do not seem trendy or fleeting; instead they unfold slowly and resonate deeply.

The fact that these artists are all women was incidental in the design of the show; it was a fact that emerged after the exhibition was largely planned. Yet is it is a feature that provokes a range of interesting interpretations. It could point to a greater interest among women in photographing people; the overall strengthening role of women in fine art photography; the strong position of women in the arts in Philadelphia, or a combination of these and other factors. Regardless of the reason, however, it is clear that women have prominently established themselves in Philadelphia’s photography community. With the role that many of these artists play as educators as well as leaders in other capacities, it will be interesting to see the further impact of this already substantive group.

September 16, 2009 - November 14, 2009

Gallery 339 - Fine Art Photography 339 South 21st Street Philadelphia, PA 19103 215.731.1530 www.gallery339.com

Martin H. McNamara, Principal

Hours: Tuesday- Saturday, 10:00 am-6:00 pm