The photograph and Australia, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney

The photograph and Australia
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
21 March - 8 June 2015 
Queensland Art Gallery
June - September 2015

DAVID MOORE

Migrants arriving in Sydney 1966 

Gelatin silver photograph 

Art Gallery of New South Wales, gift of the artist 1997 

© Lisa, Karen, Michael and Matthew Moore

The photograph and Australia at the Art Gallery of NSW is the largest exhibition of Australian photography held since 1988 that borrows from collections nationwide and looks at the history of the medium.

Reflecting an evolving image of Australia from the 1840s until today, The photograph and Australia presents more than 400 photographs by more than 120 artists, including Morton Allport, Richard Daintree, Paul Foelsche, Samuel Sweet, JJ Dwyer, Charles Bayliss, Frank Hurley, Harold Cazneaux, Olive Cotton, Max Dupain, Sue Ford, Carol Jerrems, Tracey Moffatt, Robyn Stacey, Ricky Maynard, Anne Ferran and Patrick Pound.

The works of renowned artists and those considered to be national icons are shown alongside those by unknown photographers and everyday material, such as domestic albums and postcards. The photographs in this exhibition tell people’s stories, illustrate where and how they lived, and communicate official public narratives. Scientific photography such as the earliest Australian X-rays and astronomical photographs appear alongside contemporary representations of people and place.

Sourced from more than 35 private and public collections across Australia, England and New Zealand, including the National Gallery of Australia, the National Library of Australia and the State Library of Victoria, The photograph and Australia uncovers hidden gems dating from 1845 until now.

From mass media’s evolution in the 19th century to today’s digital revolution, The photograph and Australia investigates how photography has been harnessed to create the idea of a nation and reveals how our view of the world, ourselves and each other has been changed by the advent of photography.

It also explores how photography operates aesthetically, technically, politically and in terms of distribution and proliferation, in the Australian context. Highlights include works by Australia’s first professional photographer, George Goodman and recent works by Simryn Gill.

Curated from a contemporary perspective, the exhibition takes a thematic rather than a chronological approach looking at four interrelated areas: Aboriginal and settler relations; exploration: mining, landscape and stars; portraiture and engagement; collecting and distributing photography.

Exhibition curator, Judy Annear, senior curator, photographs, Art Gallery of NSW, said: ‘We are proud to present The photograph and Australia, an exhibition that considers how the photograph invented modern Australia.

Audiences are invited to experience the richness of Australian photography, past and present, and the sense of wonder the photograph can still induce through its ability to capture both things of the world and the imagination.’

Director Michael Brand stated: ‘We hope that The photograph and Australia will contribute to an understanding of the richness and complexity of the medium and provide impetus for further explorations of the photograph’s production, function and dissemination in this country. We trust that in doing so, it will also help place Australian photography in a broader international context.’

A richly illustrated publication will accompany the exhibition, reflecting the exhibition themes and investigating how Australia itself has been shaped by photography.

There will be related education programs, digital resources, a substantial film program and live events. A major symposium will also be held at the Art Gallery of NSW on 18 April addressing the proliferation and distribution of photographic images.

The photograph and Australia will be open to the public at the Art Gallery of NSW in the major exhibition gallery from 21 March to 8 June 2015, before travelling to the Queensland Art Gallery, where it will be open to the public from June to September 2015.

Art Gallery of NSW - Sydney - Australia
www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au

Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris at The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris 
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 
January 29 - May 4, 2014 

Widely acknowledged as one of the most talented photographers of the 19th century, CHARLES MARVILLE (French, 1813–1879) was commissioned by the city of Paris to document both the picturesque, medieval streets of old Paris and the broad boulevards and grand public structures that Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann built in their place for Emperor Napoleon III. Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris at The Metropolitan Museum of Art presents a selection of around 100 of his photographs.

Charles Marville (French, 1813–1879)

Sky Study, Paris, 1856-1857

Albumen print from collodion negative

16.7 x 20.6 cm (6 9/16 x 8 1/8 in.)

Gilman Collection, Purchase, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Gift, 2005 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2005.100.353)

Charles Marville achieved moderate success as an illustrator of books and magazines early in his career. It was not until 1850 that he shifted course and took up photography—a medium that had been introduced just 11 years earlier. His poetic urban views, detailed architectural studies, and picturesque landscapes quickly garnered praise. Although he made photographs throughout France, Germany, and Italy, it was his native city— especially its monuments, churches, bridges, and gardens—that provided the artist with his greatest and most enduring source of inspiration.

By the end of the 1850s, Marville had established a reputation as an accomplished and versatile photographer. From 1862, as official photographer for the city of Paris, he documented aspects of the radical modernization program that had been launched by Emperor Napoleon III and his chief urban planner, Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann. In this capacity, Marville photographed the city’s oldest quarters, and especially the narrow, winding streets slated for demolition. Even as he recorded the disappearance of Old Paris, Charles Marville turned his camera on the new city that had begun to emerge. Many of his photographs celebrate its glamour and comforts, while other views of the city’s desolate outskirts attest to the unsettling social and physical changes wrought by rapid modernization. 

Charles Marville (French, 1813–1879)

Cour Saint-Guillaume, ca. 1865

Albumen silver print from glass negative

34.2 x 27.2 cm (13 7/16 x 10 11/16 in.) Classification:

Gilman Collection, Purchase, Alfred Stieglitz Society Gifts, 2005

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2005.100.378)

Haussmann not only redrew the map of Paris, he transformed the urban experience by commissioning and installing tens of thousands of pieces of street furniture, kiosks, Morris columns for posting advertisements, pissoirs, garden gates, and, above all, some twenty thousand gas lamps. By the time he stepped down as prefect in 1870, Paris was no longer a place where residents dared to go out at night only if accompanied by armed men carrying lanterns. Taken as a whole, Marville’s photographs of Paris stand as one of the earliest and most powerful explorations of urban transformation on a grand scale.

By the time of his death, Marville had fallen into relative obscurity, with much of his work stored in municipal or state archives. This exhibition, which marks the bicentennial of Marville’s birth, explores the full trajectory of the artist’s photographic career and brings to light the extraordinary beauty and historical significance of his art. 

Charles Marville (French, 1813–1879)

Rue de Constantine (fourth arrondissement), 1866

Albumen silver print from glass negative

27.3 x 36.8 cm (10 3/4 x 14 1/2 in.)

The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Fund, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1986

The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1986.1141)

Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris was organized by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in association with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The exhibition is curated by Sarah Kennel, Associate Curator of Photographs at the National Gallery of Art. The presentation of the exhibition in New York is organized by Jeff L. Rosenheim, Curator in Charge, and Doug Eklund, Curator, based on a curatorial program established by Malcolm Daniel, former Senior Curator, of the Metropolitan Museum’s Department of Photographs. The exhibition is made possible in part by Jennifer S. and Philip F. Maritz. 

Paris as Muse: Photography, 1840s-1930s 

William Henry Fox Talbot (British, 1800–1877)

View of the Boulevards of Paris, 1843

Salted paper print from paper negative

6 5/16 × 8 1/2 in. (16.1 × 21.6 cm)

Bequest of Maurice B. Sendak, 2013

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2013.159.57)

Nadar (French, 1820–1910)

Catacombs, Paris, April 1862

Albumen silver print from glass negative

23.7 x 18.6 cm (9 5/16 x 7 5/16 in.) 

Gilman Collection, Purchase, Denise and Andrew Saul Gift, 2005

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2005.100.813)

Concurrent with Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris, a related installation in the adjacent Howard Gilman Gallery will be on view at the Metropolitan Museum. Paris as Muse: Photography, 1840s-1930s (January 27 - May 4, 2014) celebrates the first 100 years of photography in Paris and features some 40 photographs, all drawn from the Museum’s collection. The installation focuses primarily on architectural views, street scenes, and interiors. It explores the physical shape and texture of Paris and how artists have found poetic ways to record through the camera its essential qualities. The curator for Paris as Muse: Photography, 1840s–1930s, is Jeff L. Rosenheim. 

Eugène Atget (French, 1857–1927)

Boulevard de Strasbourg, Corsets, Paris, 1912 

Gelatin silver print from glass negative 

22.4 x 17.5 cm (8 13/16 x 6 7/8 in.) 

Gilman Collection, Purchase, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Gift, 2005 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2005.100.511)

Ilse Bing (German, 1899–1998)

Lamp Post, rue de la Chaise, Paris, 1934 

Gelatin silver print 

22.3 x 28.2 cm (8 3/4 x 11 1/8 in.) 

Bequest of Ilse Bing Wolff, 1998 

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2003.151.11)

© Estate of Ilse Bing, Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery

The Metropolitan Museum of Art 
www.metmuseum.org

Candida Höfer, Düsseldorf Exhibition, Museum Kunstpalast

Candida Höfer: Düsseldorf
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf
Through 9 February 2014 

For the first time, Museum Kunstpalast is showing an overview exhibition of CANDIDA HOFER, comprising approximately 70 works created exclusively in Dusseldorf in the course of 40 years. The presentation includes large-scale individual works, work groups, projections and an early film by the artist, which she shot jointly with Tony Morgan in the Düsseldorf ice cream parlour Da Forno in 1975. Most of the works have never been shown to the public.

Candida Höfer work is closely linked with the city of Düsseldorf. It was here where her first solo exhibition was staged in a gallery, and here she came across new and very different motifs time and again ever since she began to study with Bernd Becher at the Academy of Art. 

"Düsseldorf" stands for beginnings. But it is not only about the work of that time, "Düsseldorf" also shows th ways in which I work today. So it is about work back then and work today. It is about change -- Candida Höfer.

Candida Höfer’s oeuvre is characterised by cool objectivity, a keen interest in structures and order in public spaces, and by a precise grasp of details. Apart from large-scale interiors, such as the Düsseldorf Opera Deutsche Oper am Rhein and Schauspielhaus theatre, or the photographs of the interiors of a number of art institutions, such as Museum Kunstpalast or the Julia Stoschek Collection, the exhibition also shows pictures from her first photographic series Turks in Germany. 

As regards the development of Candida Höfer’s work, some of her recent works are illuminating, such as the pictures of the Neue Stahlhof, which point towards a new, more abstract direction. While in the past the artist most frequently revealed correlations in her pictures, she today concentrates on an individual object, such as a staircase, on which she put a spotlight.

While Candida Höfer initially chose a hand camera and accepted that blurring occurred, she today uses a digital large-format caméra, which requires long exposure times, but offers a wealth of image editing options. She takes décisions regarding the work's size, colours and choses whether it remains an individual picture or is integrated into a series.

Like Andreas Gursky, Axel Hütte, Tata Ronkholz or Thomas Struth, Candida Höfer is part of the internationally renowned "Dusseldorf School of Photography". Candida Höfer's large-format architectural photographs have been widely shown, including the documenta in Kassel, the Venice Biennial, and in numerous solo exhibitions in Europe, Asia and the USA.

Candida Höfer, who lives and works in Cologne, completed a traineeship in the renowned photographie studio Schmölz-Huth from 1963 until 1964 and subsequently studied artistic photography with Arno Jansen at the Kölner Werkschule until 1968. Having worked in Werner Bokelberg's photographie studio, she resumed studies in 1973 with Ole John in the film class of the Dusseldörf Academy of Art. Here, she subsequently studied with Bernd Becher from 1976 until 1982.

From 1997 until 2000 Candida Höfer was Professor of Photography at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe. She is member of the Freie Akademie der Künste Hamburg and of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts in Düsseldorf. 

Catalogue 

Accompagnying the exhibition, a comprehensive 192 pages catalogue in German and English is published by Richter|Fey Verlag, with contributions by Lothar Baumgarten, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Fanni Fetzer, Friedrich Wolfram Heubach, Candida Höfer, Gabriele Hofer-Hagenauer, Erika Krugel, Gunda Luyken, Michael Oppitz and Friedemann von Stockhausen. 

Special edition 

On occasion of the exhibition two photographs dated 2011 are released as a special edition: Benrather Schloss IV 2011 and Dreischeibenhaus Düsseldorf IV 2011. 

Stiftung Museum Kunstpalast 
Kulturzentrum Ehrenhof, Ehrenhof 4-5, 40479 Düsseldorf, Germany
www.smkp.de

Related Post: Candida Höfer at Galleria Borghese, Rome

A Different Kind of Order: The ICP Triennial 2013, International Center of Photography, NYC

A Different Kind of Order: The ICP Triennial 2013, International Center of Photography, New York, USA
Through September 8, 2013

A Different Kind of Order: The ICP Triennial 2013, a global survey of contemporary photography and video, is on view at the International Center of Photography (1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street, NYC) since May 17 through September 8, 2013. Filling ICP’s entire gallery space as well as its exterior windows, the exhibition features 28 emerging and established artists from 14 countries whose works speak to and illuminate the new visual and social territory in which image making operates today. Artists include Nayland Blake, A.K. Burns, Thomas Hirschhorn, Elliott Hundley, Gideon Mendel, Wangechi Mutu, Sohei Nishino, Lisa Oppenheim, and Nica Ross. A complete list is below.

Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse 

Windows, Ponte City 212.857.0045 (detail), 2008-2010. 

Photo © Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse

Courtesy Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg.

Starting from the premise that most photography is now produced, processed, and distributed in digital form, A Different Kind of Order explores the sometimes unanticipated consequences of this shift as revealed in the work of a wide range of international artists. For the younger artists in the Triennial, the digital revolution is something that happened during their childhood, and dealing with its ramifications has occupied most of their creative lives. For artists of this generation (such as Sam Falls, Andrea Longacre-White, and Oliver Laric), mixing the new idioms of digital imagemaking with the existing visual language of painting, sculpture, and collage is almost second nature. Other Triennial artists, wary of the advent of “screen culture,” emphasize the handmade qualities of their work, yet even they recognize that their efforts are situated within the space of a fully digitized, networked world.

“The ICP Triennial, the only recurring exhibition in the U.S. to focus on international contemporary photography and video, provides an unparalleled opportunity for visitors to encounter new works by established artists and to discover emerging artists,” said Mark Robbins, Executive Director of ICP. “A Different Kind of Order reflects our present moment of a new kind of order shaped by social, political, and technological changes.”

The exhibition sketches the contours of the new visual and social territory in which photography finds itself today. A number of key themes serve as guidelines that link the works in the exhibition:

• Artist as aggregator identifies one of the main aesthetic offshoots of the digital image environment: the present-day descendants of the “image scavengers” of the 1980s who are now busy plundering and reorganizing found, online photographs into highly personal, web-based archives.

• The resurgence of collage is evident in works that combine photographic fragments, digital images, paint, three-dimensional objects, and audio and video material to blast open and reconfigure the space of the photograph in unprecedented ways.

• At a time when all manner of power structures are being called into question, mapping has become a renewed subject of artistic inquiry—part of a wider fascination with the power of ordering systems that has emerged in response to the dematerialized disorder of the Internet’s environment.

• The Internet’s dissolution of geographic distance has spurred the development of new forms of community, allowing artists to explore new forms of connection, collaboration, and multiple authorship that do not depend on physical proximity.

• In cooperation with ICP Associate Librarian Matthew Carson, the exhibition will also include an installation of approximately 100 recent photo books, which testifies to the extraordinary boom in selfpublished and small-press photo books now occurring around the world.

A Different Kind of Order: The ICP Triennial was organized by ICP curators Kristen Lubben, Christopher Phillips, Carol Squiers, and Joanna Lehan. See below for curator biographies.

ICP TRIENNIAL 2013 EXHIBITION ARTISTS

Roy Arden b. 1957, Vancouver; lives and works in Vancouver

Huma Bhabha b. 1962, Karachi, Pakistan; lives and works in Poughkeepsie, New York

Nayland Blake b. 1960, New York City; lives and works in New York City

A.K. Burns b. 1975, Capitola, California; lives and works in New York City

Aleksandra Domanovic b. 1981, Novi Sad, former Yugoslavia; lives and works in Berlin

Nir Evron b. 1974, Herzliya, Israel; lives and works in Tel Aviv

Sam Falls b. 1984, San Diego; lives and works in Los Angeles

Lucas Foglia b. 1983, New York City; lives and works in San Francisco

Jim Goldberg b. 1953, New Haven; lives and works in San Francisco

Mishka Henner b. 1976, Brussels; lives and works in Manchester, England

Thomas Hirschhorn b. 1957, Bern, Switzerland; lives and works in Paris

Elliott Hundley b. 1975, Greensboro, North Carolina; lives and works in Los Angeles

Oliver Laric b. 1981, Innsbruck, Austria; lives and works in Berlin

Andrea Longacre-White b. 1980, Radnor, Pennsylvania; lives and works in Los Angeles

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer b. 1967, Mexico City; lives and works in Montreal

Gideon Mendel b. 1959, Johannesburg; lives and works in London

Luis Molina-Pantin b. 1969, Geneva, Switzerland; lives and works in Caracas, Venezuela

Rabih Mroué b. 1967, Beirut; lives and works in Beirut

Wangechi Mutu b. 1972, Nairobi, Kenya; lives and works in New York City

Sohei Nishino b. 1982, Hyogo, Japan; lives and works in Tokyo

Lisa Oppenheim b. 1975, New York City; lives and works in New York City and Berlin

Trevor Paglen b. 1974, Camp Springs, Maryland; lives and works in New York City

Walid Raad b. 1967, Beirut; lives and works in New York City

Nica Ross b. 1983, Tempe, Arizona; lives and works in New York City

Michael Schmelling b. 1973, Pittsburgh; lives and works in New York City

Hito Steyerl b. 1966, Munich; lives and works in Berlin

Mikhael Subotzky / Patrick Waterhouse b. 1981, Cape Town, South Africa; lives and works in Johannesburg / b. 1981 Bath, England; lives and works in Italy, England, and South Africa

Shimpei Takeda b. 1982, Sukagawa, Fukushima, Japan; lives and works in New York City

ICP TRIENNIAL 2013 EXHIBITION CURATORS

Kristen Lubben, Curator and Associate Director of Exhibitions at ICP, has been a member of the curatorial staff since 1998. She has organized many exhibitions focusing on documentary practice, gender, and politics, including Susan Meiselas: In History, Magnum Contacts, Gerda Taro, Amelia Earhart: Image and Icon, and El Salvador: Work of Thirty Photographers. Kristen Lubben is the author and editor of several publications, including Magnum Contact Sheets (Thames & Hudson) and the catalogue for the exhibition In History.

Christopher Phillips, ICP Curator, organizes exhibitions of historic and contemporary photography. In 2004, he and Wu Hung of the University of Chicago organized the first major U.S. exhibition of Chinese contemporary photography, Between Past and Future: New Photography and Video from China. He has curated exhibitions including Atta Kim: On-Air (2006), Heavy Light: Recent Photography and Video from Japan (2008), and Wang Qingsong: When Worlds Collide (2011). He is an adjunct faculty member at New York University and Barnard College, where he teaches classes in the history and criticism of photography.

Carol Squiers, ICP Curator, has organized exhibitions on a range of subjects, includ¬ing contemporary art, fashion photography, and the intersection of science, technology, and photography. She has published extensively in periodicals, books, and catalogues, and is the editor of the collections Over Exposed: Essays on Contemporary Photography (2000) and The Critical Image (1990), co-author with Vince Aletti of Avedon Fashion: 1944–2000 (2009), and author of The Body at Risk: Photography of Disorder, Illness, and Healing (2005).

Joanna Lehan, Assistant Curator at ICP, co-organized Strangers: the First ICP Triennial of Photography and Video in 2003 and the second Triennial, Ecotopia, in 2006. As a book editor for Aperture Foundation, she organized monographs by artists Thomas Ruff, Susan Meiselas, Zwelethu Mthethwa, and Hank Willis Thomas, among others. She has contributed essays to several photographic monographs, has served as a consultant to The Walther Collection, a private photographic collection and museum in Germany and New York, and has worked as a photo editor, researcher, and columnist.

ICP TRIENNIAL 2013 CATALOGUE

A fully illustrated catalogue, produced by ICP in partnership with DelMonico Books • Prestel, accompanies the exhibition. It includes sections dedicated to individual artists and contributions by ICP curators.

A Different Kind of Order: The ICP Triennial, ICP/DelMonico Books • Prestel 2013, 8 x 10 inches, Hardcover; US $49.95

Guillermo Srodek-Hart, Dina Mitrani Gallery, Miami

Photography: Guillermo Srodek-Hart:  Short Stories
Dina Mitrani Gallery, Miami FL
Through March 30, 2012

Short Stories by photographer Guillermo Srodek-Hart at Dina Mitrani Gallery in Miami includes images taken during the artist’s travels to remote rural towns outside of Buenos Aires. With his large format, 4x5 film camera, he captures cluttered old shops and bars that have been frozen in time.  His complex compositions deliver rich color images with densely overflowing content, giving the viewer's eye an innumerable amount of detailed information to  observe.Accompanying the photographs in the show are texts that glimpse further into the lives of those people that the artist encounters in these isolated towns.

Guillermo Srodek-Hart
Bar Fradejas, 2007
Archival pigment print, 30 x 38 inches
Courtesy of the artist and Dina Mitrani Gallery, Miami

“My photographs are filled with traces of human presence: objects, furniture, stuff hanging from the walls, accumulations on display. They speak to me of the invisible, that which can't be seen but is there, stories to be imagined, and, ultimately, the acknowledgement of our own transience in this world." – Guillermo Strodek-Hart

GUILLERMO SRODEK-HART (1977) studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Tufts University, Boston, and received his MFA from Mass College of Art. He was awarded the Klemm Prize in 2005 and the Petrobrás Award 2006, both in Argentina. In 2008, he was among the 30 artists chosen to be part of the book Contemporary Argentine Art, Artista X Artista. His work is included in the North Dakota Museum of Art, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the Kiyosato Museum of Photographic Arts in Japan. Guillermo Srodek-Hart's website: www.srodekhart.com

Dina Mitrani Gallery
Wynwood Art District
Miami, Florida 33127 USA
www.dinamitranigallery.com

Rencontres Photo Bamako 2011 – Bamako 2011 Encounters

Les rencontres photographiques de Bamako 2011 pour un monde durable
2011 Bamako Encounters for a sustainable world

Thème de Bamako 2011 et biographie des commissaires en français et en anglais -- 2011 Bamako Photo Show overview and curators’ biography in english and french

Le développement durable est un thème fort de réflexion proposé cette année aux Rencontres de Bamako. Ce développement durable concerne l'aspect écologique. Mais il a aussi une dimension sociale et économique. Une plus juste répartition des richesses est au coeur du développement durable car c'est elle qui peut permettre d'avancer vers un meilleur développement humain, en particulier en terme de santé et d'éducation.

Les directrices artistiques des Rencontres de Bamako 2011,  Michket Krifa et Laura Serani, notent que : « Les préoccupations écologiques, jadis limitées à un cercle restreint de visionnaires alertes, font désormais partie de notre quotidien et sont au cœur de tous les débats. Le réchauffement climatique, le tarissement des ressources minières et alimentaires, le déboisement des forêts, la pénurie d’eau, sont aujourd’hui au centre de tous les enjeux et équilibres planétaires ». Et les directrices artistiques des Rencontres constatent que : « Si le libéralisme économique basé sur la société de consommation a généré l’amélioration de la productivité et le développement, il a également et surtout renforcé les profts et les inégalités au détriment du respect fondamental des hommes et de leurs environnements. »

« Pour ces Rencontres, nous avons invité les photographes et vidéastes à témoigner, à dénoncer, mais aussi à identifer des axes d’action, des signes de résistance ou de prévention pour la construction d’un monde durable. Les différentes œuvres présentées approchent la thématique à travers des démarches documentaires et journalistiques ou des récits métaphoriques et fctionnels.
La variété des thématiques et des langages choisis par les artistes, permet ainsi de faire le point sur la production artistique aujourd’hui sur le continent et dans la diaspora. Elle donne la mesure de l’effervescence et du renouveau permanent de la scène photographique africaine, avec notamment l’émergence d’une nouvelle génération qui invente ses propres codes expressifs. »
Pour un monde durable, extrait du texte de présentation des Rencontres de Bamako, Biennale africaine de la Photographie par Michket Krifa et Laura Serani, directrices artistiques de cette édition 2011.

“For these Encounters, we have invited photographers and videographers to testify, to expose, but also to identify approaches for action, signs of resistance and prevention for the construction of a sustainable world. The various works presented take a documentary and journalistic approach to the theme, with metaphorical or fctional narratives.
The variety of themes and languages chosen by the artists provide an overview of artistic production today, on the continent and in the diaspora. It measures the effervescence and ongoing renewal of the African photographic scene, with, in particular, the emergence of a new generation that is inventing its own codes of expression” -- For a sustainable world, text by Michket Krifa and Laura Serani, artistic directors of the 2011 edition of Bamako Encounters – African Photography Biennial.

MICHKET KRIFA

Co-directrice artistique des 8éme et 9ème Rencontres de Bamako, Michket Krifa, d’origine tunisienne, vit et travaille à Paris. Commissaire indépendante en arts visuels au Moyen Orient et en Afrique, sa sensibilité lui a permis à plusieurs reprises d’organiser des expositions thématiques sur l’Iran, la Tunisie, l’Algérie et plusieurs expositions sur la question de la femme et de la représentation. Michket Krifa a également été chargée d’expositions collectives et monographiques, notamment autour des œuvres de Youssef Nabil, Zineb Sedira, Abbas, Jellel Gastelli, Jananne Al Ani et Shadi Ghadirian. Elle est l’auteur de divers articles, essais et ouvrages sur la photographie et les arts visuels, et collabore avec de nombreuses institutions et manifestations reconnues en Europe et dans le monde. Michket Krifa est directrice éditoriale et artistique de livres sur la photographie.

Michket Krifa, artistic co-director of the 8th and 9th Bamako Encounters, from Tunisia, lives and works in Paris. An independent visual-arts curator in the Middle East and Africa, her sensitivity led her on several occasions to organise themed exhibitions on Iran, Tunisia and Algeria, including many exhibitions on representation and women issues. Michket Krifa has also been responsible for collective and monographic exhibitions, in particular featuring the works of Youssef Nabil, Zineb Sedira, Abbas, Jellel Gastelli, Jananne Al Ani and Shadi Ghadirian. She is the author of several articles, essays and works on photography and the visual arts; she collaborates with many well-known institutions and events in Europe and around the World. Michket Krifa is the editorial and artistic director of books on photography.

LAURA SERANI

Co-directrice artistique des 8éme et 9éme Rencontres de Bamako, Laura Serani, Italienne, vit à Paris. Commissaire d’expositions et de projets audiovisuels et éditoriaux à niveau international avec un parcours riche en collaborations (Les Rencontres d’Arles, PhotoEspaña, la Biennale de Moscou, la Maison européenne de la photographie), Laura Serani a été déléguée artistique du Mois de la Photo à Paris en 2008 et directrice du SiFest en Italie en 2007 et 2008. Elle a dirigé de 1985 à 2006 la Collection et les Galeries Photo de la Fnac en France et à l’international. Elle collabore avec diverses maisons d’éditions et a réalisé de nombreux ouvrages, parmi lesquels : « La photographie entre histoire et poésie », « Istanbul » d’Ara Güler, « La vie en rose » de Malick Sidibé.

Laura Serani, Italian artistic co-director of the 8th and 9th Bamako Encounters, lives in Paris. An international exhibit, audiovisual and editorial-writing projects curator with a career flled with collaborations (Arles Encounters, PhotoEspaña, the Moscow Biennial, Maison européenne de la photographie), Laura Serani was the artistic delegate of Photo Month in Paris in 2008, and director of the SiFest in Italy in 2007 and 2008. Between 1985 and 2006, she was Head of the Photography Collection of Fnac and Fnac Photo Galleries in France and internationally. She works with several publishing houses and writes numerous publications along with “La photographie entre histoire et poésie”, “Istanbul” d’Ara Güler, “La vie en rose” de Malick Sidibé.

CATALOGUE BAMAKO 2011

Le catalogue de la 9e édition des Rencontres de Bamako, coédité par l’Institut français, le Ministère de la Culture du Mali et Actes Sud, est disponible en éditions française et anglaise. Ce catalogue donne la mesure de cette manifestation et témoigne de ses apports à l’art, à la photographie contemporaine, à la photographie africaine. Format 19,5 x 25,5 cm.

The catalogue of the 9th Bamako Encounters, co-published by the Institut français (previously CulturesFrance), the Ministry of Culture of Mali and Actes Sud, is available in French and English editions. A catalogue that reveals the scope of this event and demonstrates its contributions to art, contemporary photography, African photography. Format: 19.5x25.5cm.

BAMAKO 2011 WEBSITE: www.rencontres-bamako.com

Chen Jiagang: Abandoned Fable. A retrospective exhibition at Han Art Gallery, Montreal, Québec

Chen Jiagang Retrospective: Abandoned Fable, Han Art Gallery, Montreal (Westmount), Québec, November 4 - December 3, 2011
 

CHEN JIAGANG was born in 1962 in Chongqing, Sichuan, China. The artist lives and works in Beijing. Han Art Gallery in Westmount (Québec) presents a retrospective exhibition featuring fifteen photographic works by Chen Jiagang. As one of today’s most renowned Chinese contemporary artists, Chen Jiagang is featured at the 12th Annual Toronto International Art Fair (TIAF 2011) through October 31, 2011 before his debut at Han Art Gallery.  Abandoned Fable opens on November 4th and concludes on December 3rd, 2011 

CHEN JIAGANG, Bridges, 2008. Photograph from The Great Third Front series. Courtesy and ©2008 Chen Jiagang. Courtesy  Han Art Gallery, Montreal

Chen Jiagang is a distinctive contemporary artist who consistently weaves a phenomenal historical analogue into his imagery.  In allowing time itself to disappear from space, Chen Jiagang composes a visual language full of complexity and contradiction that adds to this historical contemporary fable - a spatial narratology and an art form that relies on the cultural inheritance. His works narrate the impact of power and politics on environment, human inhabitation, gender balance and family development - all social perspectives that are systematically disseminated into the peoples’ spiritual realm of senses.  The artist utilizes language between certainty and uncertainty to rebel against dogmatic mainstream perspectives in a society where images are becoming increasingly standardized, to discard with the trend of commercialization in art, and to obtain independence with direction.   

In the past few years, the artist made many trips to the factories, mines and small villages in the mountains and in the valleys of Yuanan, Guizhou and Sichuan.  These provinces in particular, which once served as a strategic epicenter of industry in the 1960s determined by Chinese national politics, now find themselves in a vastly different circumstance. 

Trained as an architectural designer, Chen Jiagang regards memories as the most authentic source in human life and believes that images act to preserve these memories.  Aside from bringing to attention intensely social and political issues, his works explore these issues from various perspectives, taking a distanced standpoint to explain history, enabling him to express his aesthetic need on the basis of an intensely personal experience.     

In regards to technique, Chen Jiagang often chooses to capture his images when the sun has just set, immediately after the clouds have emitted the last rays of light and warmth over the deserted and abandoned space.  It is common for him to portray a powerful contrast between subject and space, as demonstrated in his depiction of young women dwarfed by industrial ruins from the past. For example, in one of his works, a woman is portrayed pacing back and forth, seeming reluctant to leave the place she finds herself. Sinking into the darkness and disappearing into her surroundings, the woman is a subtle sign and yet a vibrant creature who breathes life into the remaining walls and majestic ruins filled with traces of the past. The corner store is now deserted, and the path leading towards the space serves only as a football field. These oft-frequented places of the past now remain abandoned and forlorn. Chen Jiagang uses this imagery to compose the bitter sound of a mournful elegy without emitting a single sound. A period which would otherwise be forgotten as history is captured in a moment where people and space observe one another silently with indignation. 

In a country that is presently experiencing one of the highest rates of development in the world, it is not surprising that the works of Chen Jiagang prompts the viewer to question the usefulness and absurdity of this mad race towards development that humanity has been pursuing for decades. His works are deeply entrenched in the new preoccupation of Contemporary Chinese artists, preoccupations that are social, political, and environmental.  As a successful architect and contemporary art collector from the start, Chen Jiagang now exhibits his most recent accomplishments - a monumental photographic product that is entrenched in a powerful aesthetic and conceptually loaded with meaning and inquiry. 

The works of Chen Jiagang have been exhibited in renowned museums and galleries across the globe—including The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal, and the Art Gallery of Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing.  His works have been consistently purchased by private collectors throughout his career.  Most recently, Chen Jiagang’s works were featured in the Red Flag exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Montreal. A landmark exhibition, Red Flag served as the first show to bring Contemporary Chinese Art and Quebecois aesthetic together under one roof.  During this exhibition, Chen Jiagang’s works were featured alongside some of the most well-known Contemporary Chinese artists, including Gu Wenda, Ai Weiwei, Zhang Huan, Xu Bing, Wang Tiande and the Gao brothers.  

In this retrospective solo exhibition at the Han Art Gallery in Québec, fifteen major works have been selected to showcase the essential and integral value of Chen Jiagang’s creativity in the first several chapters of his career. 

HAN ART GALLERY
Westmount, Québec, Canada  H3Z 1P6www.hanartgallery.com

Christian Gieraths' photos of Mumbay at Baukunst Galerie, Cologne

Photography exhibition : Christian Gieraths - Salaam Bombay, Baukunst Galerie, Cologne

This post presents the exhibition of photographs by the artist Christian Gieraths at Baukunst Galerie in Cologne. It give you informations about the recent work of the german photographer in India. You can also read above a short biography of Christian Gieraths.

CHRISTIAN GIERATHS

Christian Gieraths, R. R. Roy Marg, 2010

150 x 225 cm, pigment print on Epson matt on Diaplex/Dibond

from the series: Beautiful Hell - Mumbai

signed, dated and inscribed verso, edition of 4 (+ 1 A.P.)

© & Courtesy Christian Gieraths / Baukunst Galerie, Cologne, Germany

CHRISTIAN GIERATHS is a flaneur who is interested in the hustle and bustle of a society which develops itself in the pulse of technological progress and which, therefore, is in an ongoing condition of change. He is continuously searching for places where he can find these changes manifested in its historical, political or aesthetic forms. Sotchi, Havanna, Tokyo, Hollywood and Las Vegas have been previous settings of earlier series´ which show a similar picture language: They show deserted places, streets and interiors as well as facades. His focal point of the compositions is always identical. Hence, the viewpoint of the observer as well as the restricted image section remains Gieraths´ criteria for composition. His photographies are comprised by a certain silence that derives from his composition and reminds of film stills. Colour and atmosphere as well as the artist´s viewpoint are most significant. By depicting his compositions in a short span of time he enables the past to become present. Through dealing with these locations and its surroundings, as well as thoughtful observations of the sensual reality and the atmospheric moods, Christian Gieraths transforms his visual experience into photography.

In his latest series Beautiful Hell - Mumbai, Christian Gieraths was confronted with one of the most populated cities in the world. This experience lead him to an unavoidable change of his perspective. His photographies show new tendencies and they still remind of film sets and film stills. Unaware of his picture making, people are starting to become part of his compositions and the choice of his perspective frees. His primary concern to create a composition of colour and atmosphere remains. Gieraths´ photographies seem to remind of documentary in an objective way. But there are no traces of noise, chaos or smells of putridity and spices. Neither is there a vision of luxury or poverty that everyone who travels to India is confronted with. His works impress in an unspectacular and calm way and show a pictorial quality derives from his studies in the class of Prof. Ulrich Erben. It is the result of precise observation and sensible artistic aim that can only be reached through the medium of photography. 

Christian Gieraths was curious about the dream factory Bollywood which he considered a place of new symbolic importance and afflicted with myths for new stories. With a skilled eye of a painter he observes Mumbai known as Bombay until 1996. This city, which became independent in 1947, is shaped by modern buildings and historic architecture of the British colonial style. In Mumbai, nowadays a typical Indian city, Gieraths´ hunted for magic places such as cityscapes, urban corners, streets and buildings that were, or could be used as film sets. Besides exteriors there are sceneries such as foyers, corridors, cinemas, concert halls and projection rooms that become subjects of his compositions. The exhibition´s title Salaam Bombay derives from a film title of the 1980s which reflects Christian Gieraths´ interest in locations for the Hindi film industry, located in Mumbai.

CHRISTIAN GIERATHS - BIOGRAPHY

Christian Gieraths was born in Cologne in 1976. He studied history of art, cultural studies and philosophy before studying fine arts with Ulrich Erben at the Kunstakademie Münster from 1999 to 2005. In 2001 he began to study in the photography class of Thomas Ruff at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. In 2006 he completed his master year overseen by Daniel Buetti. In the same year he was awarded with the first prize of the GWK Subsidy Award of Fine Art by the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Westfälischen Kulturarbeit and exhibited together with Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Jürgen Klauke and Boris Becker in the touring exhibition Fotokunst aus 60 Jahren. Kunst aus NRW. In 2008 a great solo exhibition followed by a catalogue release in the RWE Tower in Dortmund, and in 2010 Gieraths received a traveling grant of the Kunststiftung NRW for Mumbai, India. The photographer's latest works, produced in Mumbai, India, in 2010 have been made possible through this grant. The Fuhrwerkswaage, Cologne, showed Christian Gieraths´ works, in the exhibition Beautiful Hell - Mumbai from June 26th to July 17th, 2011.

Christian Gieraths' Exhibition dates: 30 June - 2 September 2011

Upcoming: Meta Isaeus-Berlin, Moon Dreams 

BAUKUNST GALERIE 

D - 50668 COLOGNE 

Website: www.baukunst-galerie.de

Brian Griffin Exhibition Black Country at The New Art Gallery Walsall, UK

Exhibition: Brian Griffin         
The Black Country                       
The New Art Gallery Walsall       
8 April - 19 June 2011

‘Growing up in the Black Country was the best thing that ever happened to me’. Brian Griffin, 2010

BRIAN GRIFFIN

Brian Griffin, Woman Chainmaker, 2010. 

Archival pigment print, Courtesy of the artist.

The New Art Gallery Walsall presents the first UK showing of THE BLACK COUNTRY, a new body of work by renowned photographer Brian Griffin.

BRIAN GRIFFIN was born in Birmingham in 1948 but spent his childhood in Lye, in the Black Country before departing for Manchester College of Art in 1969 to study photography. He has since gone on to become one of the UK’s most established photographers and is renowned for his portraits of musicians, actors, political figures and the business community. However, growing up in the 50s and 60s in the Black Country, surrounded by industry, has left an indelible impression on the artist, to such an extent, that a new body of work restages his childhood memories of living amongst the factories on Stocking Street, Lye. 

‘’Factories were everywhere, even surrounding my school. I was determined not to end up in one but in 1964 I did. Forced out of school by my parents, being an only child, the family needed money and I was a source.  I never realised at the time – wanting to stay on at school to do my A levels – but working in a factory would turn out to be my salvation.’’

The photographic series predominantly focuses on the factory worker, a role he played himself after leaving school at 16, and one both his parents occupied throughout their working lives. Other works depict the Black Country as seen through a child’s eyes. The photographs reveal how the factories, its workers, the surrounding landscape and local traditions, spurred Griffin’s imagination from an early age.

‘’If I opened my bedroom net curtains, sometimes the night sky would be glowing red from the furnaces of Round Oak Steelworks in Brierley Hill. Beyond the steelworks was Dudley Castle the former home of the Earls of Dudley.  Mom and Dad used to say that everything was the Earl of Dudley’s.’’

The Earl of Dudley, Black Country Food, Speedway racing, The Lone Ranger, Davy Crockett, the local pub, the family cat and his early years as a choir boy are also celebrated in the series. Family photographs and Brian Griffin’s written accounts of childhood also accompany the photographs.

Each of the images within The Black Country brings together a careful composition of nostalgia, tenderness and absurdity. Inspired by a range of influences including Caravaggio, Stanley Spencer, Joseph Wright of Derby and religious art, his theatrical scenarios place his life story on centre stage.  

Griffin’s artistic influences will also be explored through a display of works from The New Art Gallery Walsall’s collection. The accompanying exhibition curated by Griffin, will include works by Jacob Epstein, Odilon Redon and Georges Rouault.

Also showing: Toby Ziegler, The Alienation of Objects, 8 April - 19 June 2011

THE NEW ART GALLERY WALSALL
Floor 3, Gallery 1
Admission is free

www.thenewartgallerywalsall.org.uk

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

Henry Leutwyler Photographs of Michael Jackson’s items at Foley Gallery, NYC

Exhibition: Henry Leutwyler
Neverland Lost: A Portrait of Michael Jackson
Foley Gallery, New York
Through April 2, 2011

Neverland Lost: A Portrait of Michael Jackson, on view at Foley Gallery in New York, is an exhibition of color photographs by HENRY LEUTWYLER featuring the personal belongings of the late Michael Jackson.

As a portrait photographer, Leutwyler has always been interested in investigating the stories told by the artifacts that make up people’s lives. In 2009, Neverland Ranch was packed and crated in preparation for a public auction of Michael Jackson’s possessions. Leutwyler was sent to California to photograph the iconic studded white glove and spent three days sifting through more than a thousand items. In the end it took a second trip back to the warehouse in April 2009 to complete the entire story.

The photographs, many of which are staged on a simple black background, range from bejeweled costumes to a storage box lid filled with small Wizard of Oz figurines. It’s the simplicity of his artifacts that capture the life of the King of Pop the public never saw. As Leutwyler puts it: "It is said that the Pharaohs built tombs to reveal their lives to future generations. Michael Jackson sacrificed his childhood to the calling of his musical gift. Neverland was the pyramid he constructed to a lost childhood."

Swiss born, HENRY LEUTWYLER is an internationally acclaimed and award winning photographer. A creative force in Paris for a decade, he moved to New York City in 1996, where he lives with his wife and two children. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Vanity Fair and Esquire.

 

 

HENRY LEUTWYLER
NEVERLAND LOST:
A PORTRAIT OF MICHAEL JACKSON
Published by Steidl, 2010
Hardcover, 8 x 11 inches, 96 pages

FOLEY GALLERY
548 W 28th Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10001

2011 Season at Foley Gallery

Brian Ormond, IIIII, January 11 - February 19, 2011
Henry Leutwyler, Neverland Lost:  A Portrait of Michael Jackson, Feb 24 - April 2, 2011
Hikari Shimoda, April 7 - May 7, 2011
Edward Mapplethorpe, May 12 - June 18, 2011

www.foleygallery.com

MoMA New Photography 2010: Roe Ethridge, Elad Lassry, Alex Prager, Amanda Ross-Ho

New Photography 2010
Roe Ethridge, Elad Lassry, Alex Prager, Amanda Ross-Ho
MoMA, New York
Through January 10, 2011 

 

ALEX PRAGER (American, born 1979)
Crowd #1 (Stan Douglas). 2010
W, November 2010
Chromogenic color print - 48 x 80 1/2" (121,9 x 204,5 cm)
Courtesy the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York
© 2010 Alex Prager

For New Photography 2010, The Museum of Modern Art highlights four artists in its annual showcase of significant recent work in contemporary photography, with the 2010 edition marking the 25th anniversary of the series. The exhibition features the work of Roe Ethridge, Elad Lassry, Alex Prager, and Amanda Ross-Ho, all of whom engage photography as a medium with fluid borders between editorial work, film, and art. Their pictures—shot in the real world, posed in the studio, or culled from pop culture and the movie industry—constantly shift contexts, often circulating from the magazine page to the wall. New Photography 2010 is organized by Roxana Marcoci, Curator, Department of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art.

Since its inception in 1985, the New Photography series has introduced the work of over 70 artists from 16 countries. The Museum continues this tradition of highlighting significant accomplishments in contemporary photography with this year’s edition featuring four artists and 36 works of photography and film. 

“These artists engage in a kind of post-appropriative practice,” explains Roxana Marcoci. “If in the 1970s Richard Prince questioned notions of originality by rephotographing advertising images and presenting them as his own, this younger group of artists reinvest in photographic authorship, creating pictures that often exist simultaneously as commercial assignment and artwork. They recognize photography to be a fluid medium.”

 

 

ROE ETHRIDGE (American, born 1969)
Comme des Garçons Scarf with Glass Plate. 2010
Chromogenic color print - 72 x 60" (182,9 x 152,4 cm)
Courtesy the artist and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York
© 2010 Roe Ethridge

 ROE ETHRIDGE (American, b. 1969), who studied photography at The College of Art in Atlanta, takes his shoots in “editorial mode,” directly borrowing images already in circulation, including outtakes from his own commercial work. Drawing upon the traditions of descriptive photography and photography as a resource of mass imagery to be duplicated and recombined, the artist orchestrates visual fugues: a plain white plate grabbed from Bed Bath & Beyond’s website is superimposed on a checkered Comme des Garçons scarf; a model dressed in an Alexander McQueen shirt poses against a tripod at Pier 59; two filmic pictures of a Juilliard ballet student were initially published in Vice magazine; a model from the Chanel Spring ’09 fashion show is culled from The New York Times; a pumpkin sticker is shot in close-up view and magnified; a red bag is featured in a corner of the artist’s studio; and a still life displays moldy fruit. Abandoning conventional photographic aesthetics in favor of intentionally inconsistent modes of representation, Ethridge’s pictures acquire their distinct meaning from the salient way they are reshuffled, sequenced, and laid out.

 

 

ELAD LASSRY (Israeli, born 1977), Woman (Camera), 2010. Chromogenic color print, 8 1/2 x 10 1/2" (21,6 x 26,7 cm) The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Fund for the Twenty-First Century © 2010 Elad Lassry, courtesy David Kordansky Gallery.

 ELAD LASSRY (Israeli, b. 1977) defines his practice as one consumed with pictures, meaning with generic images culled from vintage picture magazines or film archives. After attending CalArts as a film student, the artist earned an MFA from the University of Southern California. Tapping into the visual culture of still and motion pictures, Lassry’s practice is as much engaged with the history of building stories with images as with the ghosts of history that persist long after images have been lifted out of their original context. Lassry demands viewers to rethink what it means to arrive at a point visually. His vibrantly colored pictures—studio portraits of friends and celebrities, still life compositions, and photocollages—never exceed the format of a magazine spread and are displayed in matching frames that derive their color from the dominant hues in the photographs. In their deadpan objecthood and Pop subject matter, Lassry’s images mimic the condition of non-art; yet his most direct shots are upended by an occasional blur, double-exposure, or the sandwiching of multiple negatives. Lassry often places his photographs beside 16-mm film projections. Untitled (2009), featuring Eric Stoltz in the role of choreographer teaching steps to a dancer dressed in red bodysuit, heightens the tension between stillness within the moving image and the temporality of the static image. A deft explorer of the relationship between image and picture, Lassry perks up the seductive language of film and advertising with a touch of subversive conceptualism.

 

 ALEX PRAGER (American, born 1979), Susie and Friends from the series The Big Valley. 2008. Chromogenic color print, 48 x 73 1/2" (121,9 x 186,7 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the generosity of the Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art © 2010 Alex Prager, courtesy Yancey Richardson Gallery

A self-taught photographer, ALEX PRAGER (American, b. 1979) takes her cues from pulp fiction, the cinematic conventions of movie directors such as Douglas Sirk and Alfred Hitchcock, and the stylized fashion works of Guy Bourdin to construct images that are intentionally loaded, not unlike silent movies. Her unnerving narratives feature women disguised in synthetic wigs, dramatic makeup, and retro polyester attires. Shot from unexpected angles and dramatically lit, her crisp, boldly colored photographs offer a feeling of disquiet. Crowd #1 (Stan Douglas), one in a series of pictures shot for the November 2010 issue of W magazine, makes its debut here. It draws from Stan Douglas’s Hastings Park, 16 July 1955 (2008), among other sources, but Prager has enlisted a new cast of characters, dressed in 1970s outfits (which she selected), and shot the scene in her own signature style. The exhibition also presents the U.S. premiere of Prager’s debut film, Despair (2010). This four-minute film starring the actress Bryce Dallas Howard is, according to the artist, a “full-sensory version” of her photographs. Set in 1960s Los Angeles to a score by composer Ali Helnwein, this short is inspired by the 1948 film The Red Shoes, about a prima ballerina whose obsession with dance conflicts with her need for love, ultimately leading to her suicide. Focusing on the actress’s face to capture one intense emotion, Prager’s construction of images is intentionally loaded, reflecting her fascination with, and understanding of, cinematic melodrama. 

 

AMANDA ROSS-HO (American, born 1975), Irreconcilable Indifferences, 2010
Chromogenic color print - 44 x 34 3/16" (111.8 x 86.8 cm)
Courtesy the artist, Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York   © 2010 Amanda Ross-Ho

AMANDA ROSS-HO (American, b. 1975) received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the University of Southern California. Nodding to various stages of the creative process, her distinctive installations typically include a mix of collages, assemblages, mural-scale inkjet prints of studio residues, and hand-drilled Sheetrock panels propped against the wall that function like architectural backdrops. The Sheetrock panel in this exhibition is lined up with found images scanned from the pages of craft manuals and photography textbooks, but also includes pictures that have familial significance, such as a gelatin silver print portrait taken by the artist’s mother in the 1970s, and a reprint from a large color transparency of a composition with glasses, originally taken by her father in the context of his work as a commercial photographer. Ross-Ho grew up in a family of photographers, both commercial and artistic. As a child she spent time with her mother while she worked in the darkroom, and often stood as a model for test shots taken by her uncle and father. Within this framework of relationships, Ross-Ho renegotiates the definition of craft processe and commercial photography in contemporary practice.

The exhibition is made possible by the Carl Jacobs Foundation.

MoMA - The Museum of Modern Art, NY
The Robert and Joyce Menschel Gallery, third floor
September 29, 2010 - January 10, 2011 

Website: www.moma.org

Rita Bernstein and Martine Fougeron at Gallery 339, Philadelphia

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

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

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

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

GALLERY 339
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

November 12, 2010 - January 29, 2011

http://www.gallery339.com

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