Reciprocity

Demystifying the Photo Book with Joyce Tenneson

2011-04-19T12:31:00.001-05:00

Upcoming workshop at The New Orleans Photography Workshops

Demystifying the Photo Book with Joyce Tenneson, October 21-23

Many photographers have bodies of work they would like to see published, as well as interesting ideas for book projects they would like to expand. This course is intended to give students the editing, sequencing, and design skills, to take their own book project from start to finish.

Students will have one-on-one guidance with Joyce, who will help them edit and sequence their images into a strong body of work, ready for production. Other essential components of the book design process, such as effectively incorporating text with images, will be covered.

This is a dynamic workshop that familiarizes participants with design and layout possibilities, encourages them to explore the relationship between images, and gives the photographer an overview of the steps involved in producing a successful book project from a body of work.

This is Joyce's second workshop at the NOPW.

Complete information at neworleansworkshops.com/artists/joyce/photobook.html

Larry Sultan, The Valley

2011-03-22T17:04:00.002-05:00

New photobook at The New Orleans Photography Workshops library

Larry Sultan / The Valley

Published by Scalo

Since 1988, Larry Sultan has returned time and again to photograph on porn sets in Los Angeles's San Fernando Valley--the Silicon(e) Valley of the porn industry. But The Valley is by no means a documentary on porn filmmaking. Rather, it is a dense series of pictures of middle-class homes invaded by the porn industry.
Sultan's lens focuses on pedestrian details--a piece of half-eaten pie, dirty linens in a heap, "actors" taking a break--that offer clues to a bizarre other-world. The lush and intricate images adroitly play with artifice and reality, adding up to rich, elliptical narratives that circle around the concepts of "home" and "desire." These images of homes and gardens, porn actors and film crews, studio and location shootings are an ambiguous meditation on suburbia and its trappings, family and transgression, loss and desire, the utopias and dystopias of middle-class lifestyle.
The Valley and its many-layered photographs outline the complexity of domestic life at the beginning of the 21st century, opening up new perspectives for photography through its innovative combination of staged and documentary photographs.

In 1998, an English magazine asked me to go on a porn set. I flew down to Burbank Airport with my wife, and we went to the house they'd given me the address of. It was a dentist's house on Van Alden. That name had all kinds of connotations when I was in high school. Because the Valley is so haunted for me by the ghosts of childhood, all of these street names have Proustian connotations. All I have to do is to say: Havenhurst, Van Alden, Vineta, Dubois, and a flood of associations comes back to me. [...] After the first five minutes of the strangeness of it all, I started to look around, going to the bedrooms, wandering through the house. It felt like a permission to go into a house in L.A. and to imagine how someone would live their life in this house. I made the pictures for the magazine. I left and thought, "This is it, this is what I have to do." --Larry Sultan

Complete list of photobooks at the NOPW library.

Alec Soth, From Here to There: Alec Soth's America

2011-03-02T16:02:00.002-06:00

New photobook at The New Orleans Photography Workshops library

Alec Soth / From Here to There: Alec Soth's America

Published by The Walker Art Center

From Here to There: Alec Soth's America is the first exhibition catalogue to feature the full spectrum of the work of Alec Soth, one of the most interesting voices in contemporary photography, whose compelling images of everyday America form powerful narrative vignettes. Featuring more than 100 of the artist's photographs made over the past 15 years, the book includes new critical essays by exhibition curator Siri Engberg, curator and art historian Britt Salvesen and critic Barry Schwabsky, which offer context on the artist's working process, the photo-historical tradition behind his practice and reflections on his latest series of works. Novelist Geoff Dyer's "Riverrun"--a meditation on Soth's series Sleeping by the Mississippi--and August Kleinzahler's poem "Sleeping It Off in Rapid City" contribute to the thoughtful exploration of this body of work. Also included in the publication is a 48-page artist's book by Soth titled The Loneliest Man in Missouri, a photographic essay with short, diaristic texts capturing the banality and ennui of middle America's suburban fringes, with their corporate office parks, strip clubs and chain restaurants. This full-color publication includes a complete exhibition history, bibliography and interview with the artist by Bartholomew Ryan.

Alec Soth was born in 1969 and raised in Minnesota, where he continues to live and work. He has received fellowships from the McKnight Foundation (1999, 2004) and Jerome Foundation (2001), was the recipient of the 2003 Santa Fe Prize for Photography and was short-listed for the highly prestigious Deutsche Borse Photography Prize. His first monograph, Sleeping by the Mississippi, was published in 2004 to critical acclaim. Since then Soth has published Niagara (2006), Fashion Magazine (2007), Dog Days, Bogota (2007) and The Last Days of W (2008). He is a member of Magnum Photos.

Complete list of photobooks at the NOPW library.

A Beginner's Workshop on Photo Book Publishing, with Melanie McWhorter | December 12-13 2011

2011-03-01T15:56:00.001-06:00

Upcoming workshop at The New Orleans Photography Workshops

A Beginner's Workshop on Photo Book Publishing, with Melanie McWhorter

This two-day workshop covers the evolution of a photography book from its inception as an idea, to a finished product. Intended for photographers with little or no experience in publishing, A Beginner's Workshop on Photo Book Publishing is an interactive, dynamic workshop that enables participants to fine tune their ideas and become familiar with design, layout and essential publishing processes. When completed, participants will be able to make decisions about publishing their work and envision all of the steps involved in producing their project from start to finish.

The workshop begins by familiarizing with basic book design elements and book publishing vocabulary, and expands into topics including making a basic budget and conceiving ideas for fundraising, branding and marketing to your audience, contacting publishers or printers, knowing the roles and jobs involved in publishing your photobook and deciding whether to work with a publisher or self-publish, and then, traditionally or with print-on-demand.

Melanie covers the basic components of financing, as well as the essentials of distribution ranging from such easily overlooked matters as storage, to the finer points of what is required to get the book on to the dealers' shelves. This workshop is the perfect publishing overview for photographers of all levels.

Placed immediately following the 2011 PhotoNOLA portfolio review week end, the timing of this workshop is designed for photographers also interested in attending the many events and exhibitions that take place during New Orleans' annual celebration of photography.

Tuition: $395 | Materials fee: $25

Melanie McWhorter has been the manager of the photo-eye's Book Division for over 10 years and curates exhibitions of local photographers in photo-eye Bookstore. She is a regular contributor to the online magazines Fraction Magazine and photo-eye maintains her own photo-related blog, melaniephotoblog.com and is co-founder of Finite Foto which focuses on photography in New Mexico.

Melanie has been interviewed about photography in numerous print and online publications including PDN, The Picture Show, Santa Fe's THE magazine; has judged the prestigious photography competitions Women Photojournalists of Washington's Annual Exhibition and Fotografia: Fotofestival di Roma's Book Prize; and has reviewed portfolios at Fotografia, Photolucida, Review Santa Fe and PhotoNOLA.

Recently her own photography was exhibited in Sweet Escape at Morean Arts Center in St. Petersburg, FL; Through the Lens: Creating Santa Fe and in Fraction Magazine. She resides with her family in Santa Fe, NM.

Complete information at neworleansworkshops.com/artists/melanie

Robert Frank: Peru

2011-02-09T09:42:00.002-06:00

New photobook at The New Orleans Photography Workshops library

Robert Frank: Peru

Published by Steidl

In March 1949, Robert Frank mailed a birthday gift to his mother in Switzerland: A maquette of a series of photographs he had made during a visit to Peru between June and December of the previous year. Frank assembled an identical book for himself, and these two maquettes now reside in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York and the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

A few of the images are well known in Frank's oeuvre, but until now very few people have seen the entire series--which, in 1949, already displayed the hallmark of Frank's distinctive image-sequencing. Peru also exhibits an ease and flexibility that Frank himself confirms: "I was very free with the camera. I didn't think of what would be the correct thing to do; I did what I felt good doing. I was like an action painter." Using a hand-held 35mm Leica camera, Frank documented the country's massive vistas, weathered faces, manual labor and dusty roads stretching to the horizon with a spontaneity of motion that propels the viewer into the midst of the scenery. For the first time, and under the direction of Frank himself, this book presents the complete sequence of images. Peru is a work of major significance in both the artist's history and the history of photography.

Published in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington.

Complete list of photobooks at the NOPW library.

Ed Ruscha Photographer

2011-02-02T10:53:00.001-06:00

New photobook at The New Orleans Photography Workshops library

Ed Ruscha's relationship to photography is complex and ambivalent. The world-class painter--and author of a 1972 New York Times article called "I'm Not Really a Photographer"--has been known to refer to his work in this second medium as a "hobby", despite considerable, persistent critical interest. Whether he likes it or not, the small albums of plainly-shot, snapshot-sized images he produced in the 1960s and 70s, including Twenty-Six Gasoline Stations, intrigued his contemporaries and earned him an unshakable reputation. How? His subject matter was neither purely documentary nor solely artistic, in fact it was stereotypical and banal, with motifs drawn from the car-dominated western landscape. That rebellious material, along with his serial presentation, made for a mythical road-movie or photo-novel effect with Beat Generation overtones. The combination attracted artists and critics both, especially while serial logic was prominent in Pop art and Minimalism, and then retained that interest later as serial work became prominent in Conceptual art. Critics have remained attentive for decades, and Ruscha's influence remains apparent in new work in Europe and North America.

Ed Ruscha, Photographer departs from earlier collections to explore how these images--and all of Ruscha's work in disciplines including painting, drawing, printmaking and photography--are guided and shaped by a single vision.

Complete list of photobooks at the NOPW library.

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Hiroshi Sugimoto

2011-01-26T20:48:00.001-06:00

New monograph at The New Orleans Photography Workshops library

Genius of the large-format camera, the long exposure and the silverprint, New York-based photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto has made pictures that seem to contain whole aeons of time within themselves, and suggest an infinite palette of tonal wealth in blacks, grays and whites. Many of these images have now become a part of art culture's popular image bank (as U2's use of Sugimoto's "Boden Sea" for the cover of their 2009 album, No Line on the Horizon, demonstrated), while simultaneously evoking photography's earliest days: "I probably call myself a postmodern-experienced pre-postmodern modernist," he once joked to an interviewer. This absolutely exquisite retrospective is an expanded edition of Hatje Cantz's 2005 volume. It is the first to feature works from all of Sugimoto's series to date: his celebrated portraits of wax figures, his incredible seascapes that seem to suggest a person's first conscious view of the ocean, the extremely long exposures of theaters which elevate the white, luminescent cinema screen and transform it into a magical image of an altar and the fascinating dioramas of scientific display cases, which invite us to travel far into the past. Additions to the original edition are two new groups of works, "Lightning Fields" (2006) and "Photogenic Drawings" (2007).

Hiroshi Sugimoto was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan, where he studied politics and sociology at St. Paul's University, later retraining as an artist at the Art Center College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, CA. He currently lives in New York City.

Nina Berman: Purple Hearts - Back from Iraq

2011-01-25T09:24:00.001-06:00

New monograph at The New Orleans Photography Workshops library

A Purple Heart is the token honor given to soldiers for their wounds. It makes them heroes. It is the title that Nina Berman has given to her photographs of American soldiers gravely wounded in the Iraq war, who have returned home to face life away from the waving flags and heroic send-offs. The images are accompanied by first-person interviews with the soldiers, who discuss their lives, reasons for enlisting, and experience in Iraq. They provide a glimpse into the myths of warfare as glorious spectacle through the minds of young men desperate to believe in the righteousness of their actions.

One soldier explains that he always wanted to be a hero. He thought the military would be fun--he would jump out of planes. He never imagined it could be ugly until he saw Saving Private Ryan. He is now a cripple, doped up all day on pain medications, flat broke, with one kid and another on the way. Another soldier describes how he called a recruiting station after watching an MTV-style commercial for the Army on TV. An immigrant from Pakistan, he was given his citizenship following his injury. It's a fair trade in his mind: a leg for an American passport.

Berman's photographs are accompanied by essays from Verlyn Klinkenborg, a New York Times editorial page writer, and Tim Origer, a Vietnam veteran and former Marine who fought in the Tet offensive and returned at age 19, an amputee. Essays by Verlyn Klinkenborg and Tim Origer. Paperback, 8 x 8 in. / 176 pgs / 100 color.

Nina Berman: Homeland

2011-01-21T15:55:00.001-06:00

New monograph at The New Orleans Photography Workshops library

Nina Berman was one of the first photographers in the US to turn her lens towards her own country, whilst all eyes were on Iraq. She was awarded international prizes in photojournalism from World Press Photo (2005, 2007) and DAYS Japan (2005) for her work on young American veterans coming back from war, widely exhibited and published in the book Purple Hearts - Back from Iraq. In Homeland Berman is an American again looking at America. A product of seven years work, with images from across the country, Berman gives us a peek into the bizarre manifestations of the homeland security state and the ideologies that have reshaped post 9-11 America.

Released to coincide with the US Presidential election of 2008, Nina Berman in Homeland has captured further the unsettling and surreal in her own country over recent years. She has witnessed the rise of the super churches, and photographed military demos, recruitment centres and air fairs where you are never too young to have your own gun. Happy families step through suburbs clutching anti-nuke pills. Small town police train to hunt Al-Qaeda. Military goats perform in 'War On Terror' scripts. And beneath it all stands the image of a warrior Jesus inspiring megachurch millions toward the end times.

Underlying Berman's technicolour images is a sense of fear under the guise of the banal. She sees the growing elements of fanaticism and faith in guns and God, creeping through a cross-section of American society. One asks, are the scenes real, or an elaborate state-sponsored performance art, designed to amuse a public desperately seeking a superhero ending in an age of empire decline?

With an afterword by Michael Shaw, visual critic and creator of Bagnewsnotes.com

Banksy: Wall and Piece

2011-01-10T21:34:00.001-06:00

New monograph at The New Orleans Photography Workshops library

The collected works of Britain’s most wanted artist.

Artistic genius, political activist, painter and decorator, mythic legend or notorious graffiti artist? The work of Banksy is unmistakable (except maybe when it’s squatting in the New York’s Metropolitan Museum or Museum of Modern Art.) Banksy is responsible for decorating the streets, walls, bridges and zoos of towns and cites throughout the world.

Witty and subversive, his stencils show monkeys with weapons of mass destruction, policeman with smiley faces, rats with drills and umbrellas. If you look hard enough you’ll find your own. His statements, incitements, ironies and epigrams are by turns intelligent and witty comments on everything from the monarchy and capitalism to the war in Iraq and farm animals.

His identity remains unknown, but his work is prolific. And now for the first time, he’s putting together the best of his work—old and new—in a fully illustrated color volume.

Banksy, real name unknown, was born in Bristol, England.

Stanley Greene: Black Passport

2011-01-10T11:16:00.013-06:00

New monograph at The New Orleans Photography Workshops library

The archetype of the war correspondent is freighted with an outsize heroic mythos to which world-renowned conflict photographer Stanley Greene is no stranger. Black Passport is his autobiographical monograph-cum-scrapbook, and it transports the viewer behind the news as Greene reflects upon his career, oscillating between the relative safety of life in the West and the traumas of wars abroad. This glimpse of the polarities that have comprised Greene's life raises essential questions about the role of the photojournalist, as well as concerns about its repercussions: what motivates someone to willingly confront death and misery? To do work that risks one's life? Is it political engagement, or a sense of commitment to telling difficult stories? Or does being a war photographer simply satisfy a yearning for adventure? Black Passport offers an experience that is both exceptionally personal and ostensibly objective. Built around Greene's narrating monologue, the book's 26 short, nonsequential "scenes" are each illustrated by a portfolio of his work.

Mario Tama: Coming Back: New Orleans Resurgent

2011-01-10T11:16:00.011-06:00

New monograph at The New Orleans Photography Workshops library

Mario Tama's moving body of award-winning pictures documents Hurricane Katrina's shocking disaster and the resilience of recovery, hope, and change.

As a news photographer for Getty Images, Tama's powerful imagery of events like September 11th, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the funeral of Pope John Paul II, and the earthquake in Haiti have appeared in major magazines and newspapers internationally. His numerous honors include the prestigious Cliff Edom's New America Award at the NPPA Best of Photojournalism Awards, POY Year International, White House News Photographers Association, NPPA's Best of Photojournalism, UNICEF Photo of the Year, and Care International Award for Humanitarian Reportage. In 2008 Tama was nominated for an Emmy Award for his Coney Island series, and his work on Baghdad's orphans was exhibited at Visa Pour L'Image in Perpignan.

Features an introduction by Anderson Cooper, who joined CNN in 2001 and has anchored Anderson Cooper 360 since 2003. Previously a correspondent for ABC News and Channel One News, his many awards include four Emmys for his comprehensive and impassioned coverage of world events.

Anne Wilkes Tucker: Louis Faurer

2011-01-10T11:16:00.009-06:00

New monograph at The New Orleans Photography Workshops library

Louis Faurer was one of America's "quiet" photographers. Known for his raw, melancholy, psychologically charged pictures of life on the street, and in particular for evocative shots of 1940s and 1950s Times Square, Faurer frequently drew on the film noir idiom to create memorable images of moviegoers, box-office lines, ushers, and theaters advertising B movies such as Force of Evil, Edge of Doom, and Ace in the Hole.

Much of Faurer's best work, though, is of ordinary activity and people, and he frequently haunted the streets of New York, finding poetry amid the crackle of the city. In an untitled picture taken in 1937 in Philadelphia, the trousers, jacket cuffs, and cane of a seated man are in sharp focus, as are a box of pencils and a sign announcing, "I am totally blind." Hurrying past him are the blurred figures of pedestrians. Other shots such as I am Paralyzed, Daddy Warbucks, and Eddie reveal a rare social awareness.

Faurer also worked as a fashion photographer for nearly thirty years, producing work for Harper's Bazaar, Vogue, and Flair, with a particular gift for highlighting his subject's ephemeral grace. He was a lasting influence on Robert Frank and other members of the New York School of photography.

This book, the first to examine Faurer's work in depth and bring it to a modern readership, brings together a great deal of previously unpublished material, as well as images not seen since they originally appeared in magazines in the 1940s and 1950s.

Philip Toledano: Days with my Father

2011-01-10T11:16:00.007-06:00

New monograph at The New Orleans Photography Workshops library

Days With My Father is a son's photo journal of his aging father's last years. Following the death of his mother, photographer Phillip Toledano was shocked to learn of the extent of his father's severe memory loss. He started a blog on which he posted photographs and accompanying reflections on his father's changing state. Through sometimes sad, often funny, and always loving observations, we follow Toledano as he learns to reconcile the elderly man living in a twilight of half memories with the ambitious and handsome young man he occasionally still glimpses. Days With My Father is an honest and moving reflection about coming to terms with an aging parent.

Jennette Williams: The Bathers

2011-01-10T11:16:00.005-06:00

New monograph at The New Orleans Photography Workshops library

Jennette Williams's stunning platinum prints of women bathers in Budapest and Istanbul take us inside spaces intimate and public, austere and sensuous, filled with water, steam, tile, stone, ethereal sunlight, and earthly flesh. Over a period of eight years, Williams, who is based in New York City, traveled to Hungary and Turkey to photograph, without sentimentality or objectification, women daring enough to stand naked before her camera. Young and old, the women of The Bathers inhabit and display their bodies with comfort and ease--floating, showering, conversing, lost in reverie.

To create the images in The Bathers, Williams drew on gestures and poses found in iconic paintings of nude women, including tableaux of bathers by Paul Cézanne and Auguste Renoir, renderings of Venus by Giorgione and Titian, Dominique Ingres's Odalisque and Slave, and Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. By alluding to these images and others, Williams sought to reflect the religious and mythological associations of water with birth and rebirth, comfort and healing, purification and blessing. She also used copies of the paintings to communicate with her Hungarian- and Turkish-speaking subjects--homemakers, factory workers, saleswomen, secretaries, managers, teachers, and students. Working in steam-filled environments, Williams created quiet, dignified images that invoke not only canonical representations of female nudes but also early pictorial photography. At the same time, they raise contemporary questions about the gaze, the definition of documentary photography, and the representation and perception of beauty and femininity, particularly as they relate to the aging body. Above all else, her photos are sensuously evocative. They invite the viewer to feel the steam, hear the murmur of conversation, and reflect on the allure of the female form.

A CDS Book Published by Duke University Press and the Center for Documentary Photography

Danny Lyon: Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement

2011-01-10T11:16:00.003-06:00

New monograph at The New Orleans Photography Workshops library

In the summer of 1962, Danny Lyon packed a Nikon Reflex and an old Leica in an army bag and hitchhiked south. Within a week he was in jail, looking through the bars at another prisoner, Martin Luther King, Jr. Lyon soon became the first staff photographer for the Atlanta-based Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which already had a reputation as one of the most committed and confrontational groups fighting for civil rights. The photographs and text in this book capture the story of one of the most inspiring periods in America's twentieth century.

Bert Stern: Marilyn Monroe: The Complete Last Sitting

2011-01-10T11:16:00.001-06:00

New monograph at The New Orleans Photography Workshops library

Bert Stern, the famous commercial and fashion photographer of the 60s, was the last to be granted a sitting by Marilyn Monroe six weeks before her tragic death. The three-day session yielded nearly 2,600 pictures—fashion, portrait, and nude studies—of indescribable sensual and human vibrancy, of which no more than 20 were published. And yet these few photographs ineradicably shaped our image of Marilyn Monroe. This book presents the complete set of 2,571 photos. The monumental body of work by the master photographer and the Hollywood actress marks a climax in the history of star photography, both in quantity and quality. It is a unique affirmation of the erotic dimension of photography and the eroticism of taking photos, and it is the world’s finest and largest tribute to Marilyn Monroe.

Eugene Richards: Dorchester Days

2010-12-20T12:45:00.004-06:00

New monograph at The New Orleans Photography Workshops library

This is Eugene Richards' 1972 photographic essay, a social document of his home town of Dorchester, Massachusetts, previously only self-published. The book includes additional pictures and a text that speaks of racial tension, violence, poverty and crime, tackling such subjects as the Klu Klux Klan in a way that he did not feel able to at the time of the original publication. On the basis of "Dorchester Days", Richards became a member of Magnum Photos in 1978, leaving to work independently in 1994. His style has set the standard for leading photojournalists such as James Nachtwey and Gilles Peress.

Eugene Richards: War is Personal

2010-12-13T16:11:00.003-06:00

New monograph at The New Orleans Photography Workshops library

By early 2006, the war in Iraq was entering its fourth year. No weapons of mass destruction had been found. Tens of thousands of Iraqis were reported injured and dead, more than two thousand American soldiers had been killed, and rates of depression and suicide were rising among American military personnel. Yet all the while, Congress and the media debated what the conflict was costing America in image and treasure, and costing the president in popularity. Troubled by the public's growing indifference to the ongoing horrors in Iraq and critical of his own inaction, acclaimed photographer Eugene Richards began documenting the lives of Americans who had been profoundly affected by the Iraq war.

Bold and epic in scope, War Is Personal is a compilation of fifteen real-life stories that speak of what it means to go to war, to sacrifice, to wait, to hope, to mourn, to remember, to live on when those you love are gone. With heartbreaking photographs and texts, Richards records the funeral of twenty-two-year-old Army sergeant Princess Samuels and profiles veterans such as Tomas Young, who was shot in the spine and paralyzed four days into his tour in Iraq. Richards documents parents such as Carlos Arredondo, who grew so distraught upon hearing of his son's death in combat that he attacked and destroyed a Marine Corps van, severely injuring himself, and Nelida Bagley, whose massively brain-injured son requires nearly round-the-clock care.

Uncompromising and sure to be controversial, War Is Personal is a study of lives in upheaval and a chronicle of greatly differing attitudes, experiences, and understandings of what it means for Americans to go to war.

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Architecture

2010-12-13T12:51:00.002-06:00

New monograph at The New Orleans Photography Workshops library

Known for his long-exposure photographic series of empty movie theaters and drive-ins, seascapes, museum dioramas, and waxworks, Hiroshi Sugimoto has been turning his camera on international icons of 20th-century architecture since 1997.

His deliberately blurred and seemingly timeless photographs depict structures as diverse as the Empire State Building, Le Corbusier's Chapel de Nôtre Dame du Haut, and Tadao Ando's Church of Light in Osaka. The resulting black-and-white photographs, shot distinctly out of focus and from unusual angles, are not attempts at documentation but rather evocation--meant to isolate the buildings from their contexts, allowing them to exist as dreamlike, uninhabited ideals.

Among the other buildings represented in the series are Philippe Starck's Asahi Breweries, Fumihiko Maki's Fujisawa Municipal Gymnasium, the United Nations Building, the Chrysler Building, Giuseppi Terragni's Santelia Monument Como, the World Trade Center, Mies van der Rohe's Seagram Building, Antonio Gaudí's Casa Batlló II, the 1922 Schindler House, and buildings by Frank Gehry, Frank Lloyd Wright, and many others in Europe, North America, and Asia. I'm trying to recreate the imaginative visions of the architecture before the architect built the building, so I can trace back the original vision from the finished product. --Hiroshi Sugimoto

Essays by Francesco Bonami, John Yau and Marco de Michelis.
Foreword by Robert Fitzpatrick.

Hardcover ,10.75 x 12 in., 168 pages, 68 Tritone illustrations

Stanley Greene

2010-12-04T14:56:00.002-06:00

Stanley Greene discusses his work at an opening.

Herman Leonard: Jazz

2010-12-04T13:50:00.005-06:00

New monograph at the New Orleans Photography Workshops Library

Since the 1950s, Herman Leonard's photographs of jazz musicians have been crucial in shaping the image of the music and the world in which it was created. Leonard's friendships with jazz greats such as Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis gave him rare access to the innovators who made modern jazz and the places in which they made it. Leonard took his camera into the smoky clubs and after-hours sessions, to backstage parties and musicians' apartments, to build an incomparable visual record of one of the twentieth century's most significant art forms. His luminous images of Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, and many others, both in performance and "off duty," are at once supreme examples of the photographer's art and a unique record of a musical revolution. For this definitive collection of his work, Leonard has retrieved scores of previously unseen photographs, published here for the first time, alongside his most famous and widely recognized images. Accompanied by an essay exploring the stories behind the pictures, and an interview with Leonard revealing his techniques, Jazz captures and preserves the glory days of the music that has been called "the sound of surprise."

Robert Frank: London/Wales

2010-12-04T13:50:00.004-06:00

New monograph at the New Orleans Photography Workshops Library

Between 1949 and 1953, Robert Frank continually returned to Europe from his new home in New York to take photographs in France, Switzerland, Spain, and Great Britain, photographs that show the development of his uniquely humanist, poetic, and realist eye. In 1951 and early 1952, Frank visited London--"I liked the light, I liked the fog."--and set out to photograph the unique atmosphere of the city. He followed British financiers around the City, capturing them in their traditional top hats and long coats, creating images that depict them in a poetic dance with their fog-shrouded environment. He shot pictures of workers, men delivering coal, children playing on the streets, people waiting or relaxing in the parks, and images of poverty. In these photographs he juxtaposed money and work, wealth and poverty, creating a dynamic photographic project that has never been shown before in its entirety. Then, in March 1953, before the impending nationalization of the country's coal mines, Frank travelled to the town of Careau, in Wales, to photograph the coal miners whose lives revolved around their work. One miner, Ben James, and his family became the subject of a picture essay (originally published in a 1955 issue of U.S. Camera) in which Frank downplayed the classic modernist photographic moment in favor of a more provocative form that offered informal, revealing glances rather than an official document.

In Robert Frank: London/Wales, Frank returns for the first time to these old negatives. The volume explores a stylistic transformation in his work, a period of development which saw his mode of photography move from an innovative romanticism to a highly charged, metaphorical realism. These two consecutive projects, realized in London and Wales between 1951 and 1953, set the stage for his truly groundbreaking documentary, The Americans, completed just a few years later.

You got eyes. --Jack Kerouac writing about photographer Robert Frank

Julie Blackmon: Domestic Vacations

2010-12-04T13:20:00.001-06:00

New monograph at the New Orleans Photography Workshops Library
The Dutch saying "a Jan Steen household" originated in the seventeenth century and has come to refer to a home in disarray, full of rowdy children and boisterous family gatherings. The paintings of Steen, along with those of other Dutch and Flemish genre painters, are the direct inspiration behind the layered domestic scenes of Julie Blackmon's photographic work. Raised as the oldest of nine children, and the mother of three herself, Blackmon takes an approach to her work that is at once autobiographical and fictional. According to Anne Wilkes Tucker of The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Blackmon has "taken a subject that is ripe for cliche--mother photographing children--and through the subtle, digital manipulations, the use of color and highly graphic images, she's given it humor and edge and taken the subject somewhere fresh."

Philip Toledano: Phonesex

2010-12-01T18:26:00.002-06:00

New monograph at the New Orleans Photography Workshops Library

Twin Palms is pleased to offer Phillip Toledano's second book, Phonesex. Toledano has photographed nearly thirty phonesex operators in the intimate setting of their own homes, offering a seldom-seen glimpse into the reality of what otherwise is a fantasy created by the operator's voice, and caller's imagination. Accompanying every portrait is a text written by each subject touching on some aspect of his or her experience as an operator. Whether touching, humorous, or disturbing, every operator's point of view is compelling.

Eugene Richards: The Knife and Gun Club, Scenes from an Emergency Room

2010-12-01T17:46:00.003-06:00

New monograph at the New Orleans Photography Workshops Library

Award-winning photographer Eugene Richards was asked by a magazine to report on what happens inside a typical emergency room. Once inside, he took photographs, talked with doctors and nurses and made friends with paramedics. He discovered a world he never knew existed. The Knife And Gun Club is the fascinating account of his exploration of emergency room medicine. Serial in LIFE magazine.

Ken Probst: Pornegrafik

2010-11-29T16:41:00.002-06:00

New monograph at the New Orleans Photography Workshops Library

Several years ago, photographer Ken Probst was hired to photograph pornographic film actors for publicity pictures and video boxes. Once on the sets of California's most notorious industry, he began to photograph behind the scenes, revealing the absurdities, pathos, and business of the pornographic film industry. These photographs, whether they portray an elaborate sexual situation or actors waiting between takes, are remarkable documents that observe the banality of manufacturing desire.

Joel Sternfeld: Sweet Earth

2010-11-27T13:19:00.003-06:00

New monograph at the New Orleans Photography Workshops Library

As laissez-faire market forces sweep the globe and the earth's future seems endangered, the dream of living in concert with nature and with one another is increasingly essential. A common human longing throughout history, the utopian community ideal has taken root firmly in America over the past 200 years. In Sweet Earth: Experimental Utopias in America, Joel Sternfeld looks at 60 representative historic or present American utopias.

Neither a conventional history nor a conventional book of photography, Sweet Earth brings together what might otherwise seem disparate, individualized social phenomena and makes visible the community of communities. This tradition of thinking has ancient, universal precedents. When Thomas More wrote Utopia in 1516, he gave a name to an idea that had included the Epic of Gilgamesh, Plato's Republic and the Old Testament's and he started an argument. Francis Bacon (who believed in utopia through science) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (utopia through nature) soon joined the debate, but it was the harsh changes in daily life engendered by the factory systems of the early Industrial Revolution that brought an urgency to the discussion, as seen in the writings of David Owens, Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. While the early social theorists were largely European, it was in the fluid environment of young America that true utopian communities were built and utopian experimentation flourished. In the years between 1810 and 1850, hundreds of secular and religious societies bravely tried to build a "perfect" life for their members. In the 20th century, experimentation began again, reaching a fever pitch in the turbulent days of the Vietnam War. Some of the late-1960s communes still survive and continue to flourish. The 1990s and the early years of the new millennium have become yet another hotbed of social experimentation. The co-housing movement is sweeping America with at least 70 communities fully completed and occupied and numerous others planned. At the same time, the rapid global expansion of sustainable communities known as ecovillages has been widely adopted in America.

This book by one of America's foremost artists includes a photograph of each community and is accompanied by brief text that summarizes the most salient aspects of the history or organization. A book that functions both as art, as well as a hopeful guide to alternative ways of life.

Joel Sternfeld: Walking the High Line

2010-11-24T13:58:00.003-06:00

New monograph at the New Orleans Photography Workshops Library

Sometimes like a river of grass, sometimes like the wheat fields of the Canadian prairies, the High Line is a unique ruin that simultaneously permits contemplation of nature and the city. Since March 2000, photographer Joel Sternfeld has been documenting the abandoned elevated railway line which runs for 1.5 miles along the West Side of New York City, from 34th Street down along the edge of the Hudson River, through West Chelsea's tree-lined blocks and art galleries, and into the heart of the Meat Packing District. Walking the path of this real-time landscape, Sternfeld has created a suite of images in which the landscape is read as both a social and cultural indicator.

Polymer Photogravure workshop with Josephine Sacabo | May 13-15 2011

2010-11-17T12:54:00.001-06:00

Upcoming workshop at The New Orleans Photography Workshops

The New Orleans Photography Workshops will offer an extended week-end workshop on Polymer Photogravure with Josephine Sacabo on May 13-15, 2011.

Polymers are a new method of making gravures without using strong chemicals - in fact they are exposed in sunlight or a UV light and processed in water. The results are as beautiful as copper gravures.

The workshop will cover the making of polymer photogravures from film negatives or digital files.

Complete information at neworleansworkshops.com/artists/josephine/photogravure.html

Andreas Gursky: Architecture

2010-11-16T10:27:00.002-06:00

New monograph at the New Orleans Photography Workshops Library

A Japanese power plant, dilapidated slums, the patterned facades of an apartment complex in Paris--in the work of German art photographer Andreas Gursky, born in 1955 in Leipzig, both private dwellings and the domains of industrial and political power are made into sometimes awe-inspiring and always overpowering forces of urban life. Gursky's signature mix of epic sweep and extreme detail is ideally suited to the portrayal of large-scale architecture, eliciting its most salient features: The capacity to dwarf, to impress, to alienate and to daunt. Where many of us will habitually blank out architectural environments which cannot be accommodated by the naked eye, Gursky's approach is to photograph them in order to render them comprehensible: "My preference for clear structures is the result of my desire, perhaps illusory, to keep track of things and maintain my grip on the world." Architecture is a collection of breathtaking images by the world-famous photographer, taken between 1988 and the present day, and treating all aspects of architectural structure, from the inside out. Each of the 75 color photographs is accompanied by commentary by renowned German authors Aleida Assmann, Jan Assmann, Elisabeth Bronfen, Sonja Fessel, Paul Nizon, Alfred Nordmann, Mirjam Schaub, Rudolf Schmitz, Monika Schmitz-Emans, Peter Schneemann and Thomas Zaunschirm. The resulting conjunction of text and image attractively demonstrates the depth and breadth of Gursky's concept of architecture.

The Fine Art Digital Print

2010-11-09T17:35:00.001-06:00

This workshop teaches the professional skills necessary to craft exhibition-quality prints with an Epson printer.

While modern 'prosumer' printers are capable of producing high quality digital prints, they don't work optimally out of the box.
The two-day weekend course teaches participants the workflow necessary to get the prints they envisioned out of their Epson printer.
The focus is on printing with both color and black/gray pigment inks on coated and rag papers.

Topics include:
* Fine Art printing tools and color workflow
* Color management concepts, monitor calibration and paper profiling
* Black and white printing workflow
* Hardware, ink and media

December 11 & 12, 2010
Tuition: $240

Joel Sternfeld, Stranger Passing

2010-11-08T17:49:00.005-06:00

From Publishers Weekly
Photographer Joel Sternfeld turns his exacting eye to American faces, social classes, character types and stereotypes in Stranger Passing. Sternfeld who wowed critics in 1987 with American Prospects devotes a remarkable (and remarkably large) volume to 60 hard-edged, full-color studies of individuals from Manhattan to Malibu, Austin, Texas to Appalachia, in candids and portraits by turns comic, disturbing, angry, pathetic and silly. A surprised lawyer struggles with bundles of laundry; a lumberjack shows off his truck, his logs and his belly button; and "two men on vacation in Bigfoot, Montana" smile through big mustaches at their tiny dog.
Journalist Ian Frazier (On the Rez) and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art curator Douglas R. Nickel contribute short essays.

Joseph Rodríguez, Juvenile

2010-11-08T14:12:00.002-06:00

From Publishers Weekly
A former inmate himself, Rodríguez (East Side Stories: Gang Life in East L.A.) follows a variety of teenagers, judges, public defenders, district attorneys, probation officers and social workers who make up California's juvenile court system. Framed by a searing introduction by the former editor of YO! (Youth Outlook), and by a short account of Rodríguez's own experiences in jail, it's almost impossible to approach these stark and somber photos with any other emotion besides deep sadness at how much the juvenile court system has moved from minimal rehabilitation to something much worse. In this 9½"×9¾" collection (which unfortunately lacks page numbers) of 91 duotone photographs, Rodríguez slowly focuses on particular individuals-such as Lance, who escaped being prosecuted as an adult, at age 15, only a few years before Proposition 21, or Katrina, who appears both preternaturally old in full makeup, or heart-tuggingly young while playing solitaire on her bed. The restrictiveness, deprivation and uncaring bureaucracy that these teenagers face comes through in photos of the bareness of a prison cell, words scratched into the arms and legs of a self-mutilating teen or a counselor demonstrating how to make a ridiculously thin bed on top of a wooden table. As Bernstein says, "What fuels [Rodríguez's] photographs of young people behind bars and on the street is his ability to look with them," providing exactly the kind of humanizing that the present system is fast losing. Certainly one of the most moving photographs in the book is Rodríguez's own 1968 mug shot: rumpled and defiant, he is also very, very young.

Product Description
The Federal Bureau of Investigation recently reported that youth violence in inner cities is declining. However, even as violence declines, incarceration rates rise and prison terms lengthen. For his second powerHouse Books monograph, Juvenile, photographer Joseph Rodríguez spent several years following a dozen youths, from arrest, counseling, trial adjudication, and incarceration, to release, probation, house arrest, group homes, and the search for employment and meaning in their lives. Additionally, Rodríguez documented some of the people who work in the juvenile justice system: judges, public defenders, district attorneys, probation officers, and social workers. Many of these kids face great obstacles, including a criminal justice system with decreasing political interest in offering second chances for renewal. Through the power of his photographs, Rodríguez shows us how these kids struggle and how they fight to change their lives. "A couple of years ago my mother was cleaning out my old room when she came across some letters I had written back in the early 70s while I was incarcerated on Rikers Island. They were the usual prison letters of remorse and forgiveness. I look at these letters now and remember how I felt as a young man struggling to find my way. Coming out of prison was a daunting experience. I had been placed on probation for drug possession. There was little support for my transition back into society probation officer gave me was, 'Oh, you better get a job.' But I did get a second chance; I found photography. Eventually I moved out of the community where I had gotten into trouble, educated myself, and became a productive member of society. These experiences became my motivation for this documentary project."

Framing Workshop

2010-10-27T08:46:00.002-05:00

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A workshop covering the essentials of picture framing is offered at The Darkroom on Saturday November 20th, 10am-5pm.

The class is designed for visual artists with no prior framing experience and who wish to acquire the skills necessary to create professional quality frames at The Darkroom's DIY Framing Studio.

Topics covered include:
* Design options for the presentation of art on paper and canvas
* Conservation framing techniques, materials and tools
* Matting, museum-mounting, dry-mounting, fitting and much more

Tuition: $95 + Materials fee: $40

Andrei Tarkovsky, Instant Light

2010-09-29T11:53:00.002-05:00

An elegiac collection of sixty Polaroid photographs by the late Soviet film director Andrei Tarkovsky.

"Tarkovsky often reflected on the way that time flies and wanted to stop it, even with these quick Polaroid shots. The melancholy of seeing things for the last time is the highly mysterious and poetic essence that these images leave with us. It is as though Andrei wanted to transmit his own enjoyment quickly to others. And they feel like a fond farewell."—Tonino Guerra, from the Introduction

This beautifully produced book comprises sixty Polaroid photographs of Andrei Tarkovsky's friends and family, taken between 1979 and 1984 in his native Russia and in Italy, where he spent time in political exile.The size of the Polaroids is exactly as presented in the book, including the frame. The book may therefore be viewed as a facsimile edition. 60 color illustrations.

Joyce Tenneson, Intimacy

2010-09-20T16:04:00.003-05:00

With over 60 beautiful color plates, this gorgeous book of flower photographs is bound to appeal to a wide audience of anyone interested in Nature, Beauty, Meditation or Art. Tenneson explores the world of botanicals in a way that is completely unique. These photographs transcend mere documentation; they encourage the viewer to see flowers in a whole new way.

Joyce Tenneson's breathtaking photographs have graced the covers of major magazines, as well as museums and galleries. Her ethereal portraits of roses, tulips, poppies and other garden blooms also come accompanied by select quotes from authors such as Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams, and Anais Nin.

Tenneson focuses her eye and lens on the most fragile parts of flowers, irresistibly bringing us into the stamens and pistils at the core of creation. There is something very sensual to her work: she lets the flowers inner workings speak eloquently for themselves, and the magic of the life cycle.

Jeff Wall, Peter Galassi

2010-09-20T16:04:00.001-05:00

Over the past three decades, Vancouver artist Jeff Wall's large color transparencies have won international acclaim. Wall has created a unique, seductive and complex pictorial universe by drawing upon philosophy, literature, nineteenth-century painting, Neo-Realist cinema and the traditions of both Conceptual art and documentary photography. Organized by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Wall's 2007 American traveling retrospective will include all of the artist's major works to date. In addition to color plates and illuminating details, the exhibition catalogue includes an essay by Peter Galassi that explores the full range of Wall's artistic and intellectual interests and offers fresh perspectives on one of the most adventurous creative achievements of our time. The essay is followed by an interview with the artist by James Rondeau, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, where the exhibition will be on view during the Summer of 2007. Also available from The Museum of Modern Art, New York: Jeff Wall: Selected Essays and Interviews.

Diamond Matters, Kadir van Lohuizen

2010-08-31T14:16:00.003-05:00

Mirroring the progress of the diamond from the mines of Africa to the world of fashion, Diamond Matters records the lifespan of the world’s most precious stone. Starting with the mineworkers—many just children—celebrated photographer Kadir van Lohuizen tracks the sparkling ice on its socially upward journey. With interviews from those digging it from hillsides with bare hands to participants in conflicts in Zaire, Sierra Leone, and Angola; to dealers and to wearers, it is a beautiful yet deeply disturbing and thought-provoking book.

The book charts the rising awareness of the blood diamond issue, as pressure and the threat to its image grew in the diamond industry to create a certification system guaranteeing that only conflict-free diamonds came on the market. While new pacts have reduced smuggling and added more transparency, still little of the world’s enormous mineral profits flow back to the people. A fair-trade agreement with profits shared by all is the next step.
Bound in luxurious suede, with a small diamond on the front cover, and elegantly printed in tritone on five different papers, Diamond Matters is an explosive idea in a small package.

Dutch-born Kadir van Lohuizen is the recipient of numerous international awards and grants, including prizes from World Press Photo in 1997 and Foundation Vluchteling; the Dick Scherpenzeel Prize in 2000; a 2001 grant from the Foundation for Visual Arts, Design, and Architecture; and more. He is the author of five books and numerous exhibitions.

Keith Carter: Hocus Focus Master Class

2010-08-31T09:51:00.003-05:00

November 12-14 2010

This shooting/discussion master class is designed to help you discover or renew your creative spirit, and broaden the way you think about photography. Its purpose is to help serious amateur or professional photographers reconcile practical and creative lives, to re-examine your own creative process exploring the narrative, aesthetic, and emotional aspects of image making, and find new paths to creative growth. Our goals are to help each participant develop or refine a sense of personal style and to make serious amateur, fine-art, and commercial work more passionate and fulfilling.

Emphasizing simplicity, use of natural light, practical demonstrations, field-trips, individual portfolio reviews, and discussions centering on the work of both historically significant and little known photographers, we try to refine our views on producing work and balancing the various aspects of a busy life. In addition to various techniques and expressive digital printmaking, we discuss how to develop projects, exhibitions, and the publishing world.

Participants may work in black and white or color, film or digital. All camera formats welcome. Everyone is encouraged to bring a sense of humor and a sense of purpose. Wise-asses, hotdogs, and burn-outs are welcome.

Tuition & fees: $850

A Beginner's Workshop on Photobook Publishing, with Melanie McWhorter

2010-08-31T09:44:00.002-05:00

December 6 & 7, 2010

This two-day workshop covers the evolution of a photography book from its inception as an idea to a finished product.

Intended for photographers with little or no experience in publishing, A Beginner's Workshop on Photobook Publishing is an interactive, dynamic workshop that enables participants to fine tune their ideas and become familiar with design, layout and essential publishing processes. When completed, participants will be able to make decisions about publishing their work and envision all of the steps involved in producing their project from start to finish.

Placed between two weekends of PhotoNOLA, the timing of this workshop is ideal for photographers interested in attending the many events and exhibitions that take place during New Orleans' annual celebration of photography.

Topics covered include researching and developing the concept for a book and the important decisions that must be made at each step along the way. For instance, how does one determine a target audience? What publisher is right for you and how do you approach them? Is it better to work with an established publisher, or is it better to self-publish in the bold new world of the digital book?

Tuition: $395

Susan Meiselas, Nicaragua June 1978 - July 1979

2010-08-28T15:29:00.002-05:00

Originally published in 1981, Susan Meiselas' Nicaragua is a modern classic--a seminal contribution to the literature of concerned photojournalism. John Berger praised the work for its ability to, "take us right inside a revolutionary moment... Yet unlike most photographs of such material, these refuse all the rhetoric normally associated with such pictures: The rhetoric of violence, revolutionary heroism and the glorification of misery." Nicaragua forms an extraordinary narrative of a nation in turmoil. Starting with a powerful and chilling evocation of the Somoza regime during its decline in the late 1970s, the images trace the evolution of the popular resistance that led to the insurrection, culminating with the triumph of the Sandinista revolution in 1979. The 2008 edition includes Pictures from a Revolution, a DVD (NTSC, Region 1: U.S. and Canada) in which Meiselas returns to the scenes she originally photographed, tirelessly tracking down the subjects and interviewing them about the reality of post-revolution Nicaragua.

Debbie Fleming Caffery | Visual Storytelling | October 21-25, 2010

2010-07-29T14:00:00.002-05:00

This workshop invites photographers to explore a unique and challenging intersection, one that is fundamental to the nature of photography- images that document the world from a personal perspective.

Through daily morning discussions and reviews of works in progress followed by afternoon shooting sessions, participants hone their skills, capture emotional content, and create memorable images in a legendary New Orleans neighborhood. Famous for its friendly, eccentric and colorful characters, the French Quarter over its nearly 300-year history has inspired artists and writers from Edgar Degas and Walker Evans to William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams and any number of others whose creativity was sparked by its diverse and individualistic inhabitants. Mime artists and street performers, exotic dancers and drag queens, blues singers and fortunetellers all contribute to the heady mix of a neighborhood known for round the clock street life.

SnapSHOT: The bathers, by Jennette Williams

2009-11-22T14:49:00.004-06:00

The Center for Documentary Studies ant Duke University awarded Jennette Williams with its first ever Book Prize in Photography. Mary Ellen Mark selected this years prize and it couldn't have happened to a kinder person.

View some of the work here.

More info about Jennette and the book can be found here: CDS Books

Scratching at the Surface

2009-10-30T16:30:00.001-05:00

Went to visit the Met a few weeks ago to see Surface Tension, a small, concise show that put photos as objects front and center. The show is an even mix of images OF textures and depictions of terrain and photo objects that are physically manipulated.

The surface images include Miles Coolridges's Accident Investigation Site (2005), a life size (22' x 7 1/2') photograph or a strip of Los Angeles highway. Coolridge, known for his suburban landscapes and immense textural studies, brings a bit of high-tech whiz bang to the mostly lo-fi creations in the show. Digitally assembled from many images, Accident... accentuates every speck of gravel and garbage from the Highway and is all about the surface represented: cold, harsh and ignored.

At the other end of the spectrum, whith as much scale, is Christian Marclay's Memento (Soul II Soul). A lovely cyanotype made from the remnants of and old Soul II Soul Cassette tape. By far, my favorite piece in the show... but I've always been a huge admirer of Marclay's work. As a sound artist, sculptor, photographer and all around cool guy, Marclay has been instrumental in the world of music, visual arts and performance. Memento is from a large body of cyanotypes that repurpose the lowly analog cassette. It is exquisite in its delicacy and grand in its scale. Not to be missed.

There is an early photogram from Adam Fuss which was created by allowing several snakes to writhe about on a large sheet of photo paper that was dusted with talcum powder. The resultant "photo" is the most "drawn" in the exhibition and along with Marco Bruer's Spin (C-823) and Chris McCaw's Sunburned, GSP #166, Mohave/Winter Solstice truly play upon the physicality of a photograph and become less about image and more about object.

In all there are 30 works in the show which include the likes of: Eileen Quinlan, Ann Hamilton, Andrew Bush, Lee Friedlander, Tom Friedman, Pertti Kekarainen, Anselm Kiefer, Jungjin Lee, Daido Moriyama, Vik Muniz, Giuseppe Penone, Miguel Rio Branco, Lucas Samaras, Frederick Sommer, Tim davis, Wolgang Tillmans, Gerhard Richter, Anna Atkins, Robert Demachy, Walker Evans, Roger Fenton and Aaron Siskind.

Surface Tension draws entirely from the Met's own collection, so some of the work is not as contemporary as I would like, but it is a very cohesive show and is worth seeing just for the sheer variety of work. It is on view at the Metropolitan MUseum of Art in the joyce and Robert Menschel Hall for Modern Photography though May, 16 2010

Sobering new work from Chris Jordan

2009-10-19T17:02:00.004-05:00

Chris Jordan, known for his large scale assemblages of human detritus has some sobering new work from remains found at the Midway Atoll in the Pacific. Not for the faint of heart.

Terribly sorry for the long delay

2009-07-02T00:15:00.003-05:00

Many apologies to all readers of this blog. I've been away for much too long and have been drowning in work, shows, etc. Thanks to all who have been emailing me with ideas and well wishes. I will be back in full swing soon, but for now go explore some of these things:

Shorpy.com has been doing the vintage photo world great good for a while now. So with Kodachrome officially dead (and no "impossible project" to resurrect it), I thought it'd be aprropriate to share some great 4 x 5 Kodachromes like the one below.

So let's have a moment of silence for Kodachrome and check out Shorpy's great Kodachrome gallery: WWII Kodachrome

The ever intriguing William Lamson had a great show recently at Perogi Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. He's equal parts video, photo, performance and draftsman. Check out more of his stuff here: williamlamson.com

I am what I am and that's all that I am

2009-02-22T14:07:00.058-06:00

For well over a decade, Nikki S. Lee has been mashing up cultural identity with social cliques. Her two extended series: Projects (1997-2001) and Parts (2002-2005) dealt with Ms. Lee's questioning of identity, class and the power of women over men. Parts placed her in various social scenes (lesbians, gangs, senior citizens) and in Parts, Ms. Lee posed with men who were cropped out of the picture (save for an arm here or a leg there). While some of the images from Projects felt a little too "freshman college sociology classy," the Parts series on the other hand, deftly empowers Lee's "characters" in the images creating a fuller world. Both bodies of work fell deep into the realm of the snapshot aesthetic and helped to bridge the world of completely staged photo productions (Jeff Wall, Gregory Crewdosn) with the now ubiquitous world of scripted naturalism.

Lee's most recent work (exhibited at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. in New York) looks to expand Lee's definition of identity and removes any cultural context from the pictures entirely. The Show, Layers, consists of photographs made from layered street portraits of Lee from major cities throughout world. In the work, Lee is investigating her own identity through how others perceive/see her. From the press release:

I am interested in identity as it is affected or changed through social contexts, cultural categories or personal relationships. This interest began through personal experience. I realized that I changed between my surroundings in New York and Seoul, depending on whether I was with my family or friends. So before I was thinking about "who I am" I first started thinking about "where I am".

I agree with Lee's observation that current geographic location can affect our individual identities and that we all probably shift "who we are" depending upon "where we are." I feel it's a survival instinct; we have distinct selves that is in line with where we happen to be: our work-selves, parents-selves, tourist-selves, etc. Unfortunately, Lee's Layers is not giving me enough clues and in the end may be a bit too subtle.

The drawings that Lee commissioned from the dozens of street artists were all made on paper Lee provided (so that she could layer them to form the final image). There is no indication of where the drawing was made (except in the titles) and the photographs hide a bit of the nuances in the line work of the drawings themselves, further removing the portraitist from the equation. In the studio Lee places the drawings on on top of another and backlights them to reveal the different source drawings. Here is where things get a bit grey for me. I wonder how much of Lee's "studio-self" is affecting the order of the layers. Are the layers placed chronologically, aesthetically, by order of likeness or skill? I realize that Lee is not conducting a scientific inquiry into the role of perception and its affects on individualty, but whatever system she employs to arrange the drawings certainly adds another layer to the veil of indentity.

In the end, the works (beautiful large scale black and white prints), reveal more about the skill of the street artist than they do about Lee as an individual. They also display the uncanny influence of western style drawing techniques since there is a sameness to the drawings. You'd be hard pressed to pick out the drawing made in Madrid from the one made in Bangkok based on technique alone. Then again, perhaps Lee is saying more about our global identity than her individual-self. That her transformation through the perception of others thickens her skin and is another Layer that must be shed to find the true self.

Nikki S. Lee
Layers
was on view at Sikemma Jenkins and Co.

The Laconic Egalitarian (with a camera at least)

2008-12-27T11:08:00.002-06:00

For as long as I've been making photographs I've shot mostly in color; I don't think I shot a roll of black and white film until I was in college and after my requisite black and white courses I was back to color. Specifically I was working with the dye transfer process. I loved the lusciousness of the prints and how I could manipulate colors, the pureness of the colors themselves and how flexible it was. Because I was not studying art or photography at the time I took great liberties when preparing my separations and was not following the rules of the process as closely as I should have been. As a result my images were very hyper-hued and "unnatural"- just the way I liked it. My dye transfer days didn't last long; I was in college and couldn't afford the film and chemistry and refocused my studies back to architecture (which also didn't last long). All the while I remember wondering if anyone used the process for "real" work. Of course someone already was: William Eggleston.

I was given a copy of William Eggleston's Guide and was instantly hooked to the imagery: the openess of the compositions, the sheer weight of the everyday, the attention to the mundane and of course the COLOR. Eggleston's embrace of color in all of its natural and artificial forms is his trademark and has made him a powerful force in photography for over 30 years. His influence can be felt (both directly and tangentially) in film, art, photography and advertising. His deceptively casual "eye" can be seen in the photographic works of Philip Lorca Di Corcia, Catherine Opie, Katy Grannan, and countless others. Contemporary filmmakers like Gus Van Sant, Sofia Coppola and Wes Anderson certainly owe a debt of creative gratitude to Eggleston as well. Now, after 32 years since his one and only major American exhibit, Eggleston is being formally (re)introduced to the art world in an expansive exhibit at the Whitney: William Eggleston: Democratic Camera—Photographs and Video, 1961-2008. The exhibit features over 150 works of photography and video executed in both color and black and white. It has received accolades from all circles of fashion, culture, art and beyond; I'm sure it will be extremely successful when it starts touring later in 2009. Everyone should check it out. Really, if the show comes to your neighborhood, run, don't walk to be first in line.

When you do see the show, try to look beyond the images themselves and consider this: William Egglseston DOES NOT, HAS NOT and NEVER will shoot snapshots. Eggleston has never championed a "snapshot" aesthetic and in afterword of The Democratic Forest he writes:

I am afraid that there are more people than I can imagine who can go no further than appreciating a picture that is a rectangle with an object in the middle of it, which they can identify. They don't care what is around the object as long as nothing interferes with the object itself, right in the centre. Even after the lessons of Winogrand and Friedlander, they don't get it… (t)hey want something obvious. The blindness is apparent when someone lets slip the word 'snapshot'. Ignorance can always be covered by 'snapshot'. The word has never had any meaning. I am at war with the obvious.

Eggleston has always been about the quest for the sublime in the everyday and finding perfection in the commonplace. He is not looking for the truth in his images - that would be an inefficient waste of energy. Instead, Eggleston is sharing with us his bookmarks and souvenirs from his travels and experiences. Which like any collection, is carefully cataloged and considered before acquiring. There are no accidents, no snapshots, no regrets. There is only a deliberate, methodical way of seeing and photographing only the essentials; that is, everything.

William Eggleston: Democratic Camera—Photographs and Video, 1961-2008 is at the Whitney Museum of American Art until January 25, 2009.

It then travels to these fine places:

Haus der Kunst, Munich

February 20-May 17, 2009

Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

June-September 2009

Art Institute of Chicago

February 20-May 16, 2010

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles

November-January 2011

The lure of scars

2008-11-17T14:28:00.003-06:00

Making photographs has always been a scientific endeavor. While discussions of photography tend to always circle back to IMAGE, we should remember that to get to that image the photographer had to go through a rigorous process of exposure, composition, developing and printing. This process (traditionally) takes quite a bit of time and (until recently), a tremendous amount of labor. In fact, 19th century photographers had to be equal parts image-maker and chemist, since the luxury and convenience of self-contained photography had yet to be invented. These early pioneers had to drag hundreds of pounds of plates, glass and paper just to create the kind of images that most of us are accustomed making with a small 35mm film camera.

For the most part, we are isolated from the toxic fumes and chemicals of photography. We capture image, have the film processed and order some prints and frame the picture. No muss, no fuss. The process of printing is a build-to-order industrial machine that requires little input form most photographers (except for aesthetic choices). The mixing of chemicals, creation of film and paper, and disposal of said chemicals is none of our concern (unless one has a personal darkroom of course). Yes, we have the luxury of image without the tedium of photograph-making.

I'm considering these things because I just saw some work by the photographer, J. Henry Fair at MASSMOCA. His work is part of an exhibit entitled: BADLANDS: New Horizons in Landscape. The exhibit features architects, sculptors, painters, designers and photographers working with or against landscapes. Fair uses his photography as a bridge of sorts: documenting what he sees as, “ (an addiction) to petroleum and the unsustainable consumption of other natural resources.” Of course these photographs, these Industrial Scars (as he calls them) do wind up being very lush and beautiful and the commentary is sometimes lost to the gorgeousness of the print.

Take the image, Expectoration (displayed above), a photograph of an aluminum refinery in Darrow, Louisiana. It depicts the runoff from bauxite processing (bauxite is an aluminum ore that is stripped mined to process into aluminum). Fair’s photograph is filled with vibrant reds, siennas and browns there is a very painterly feel to it. It’s a joy to behold as an oversized image (about 5ft tall and 8ft wide) and draws in very quietly. In fact, Fair’s message of sustainability and ecological turmoil almost disappears into the image. Viewers are lost in the beauty and I several “Oh, that’s what it is…” faces during my visit to MASSMOCA. The revelation that the images were documents of somewhat “sinister,” events taking place did not seem to sway any of the viewers, most still found the work beautiful and alluring.

Most of Fair’s images are aerial photographs and in many more in common with a Diebenkorn painting than a traditional aerial landscape. The pictures were also not retouched and the colors were as they were found in nature (according to Fair). I found myself studying all the images intently and truly enjoyed them as images. However, once I began to consider their meaning and scope of Fair’s message, I had to wonder:” As a process, how much has photography hurt the environment?” We use copious amounts of silver, platinum, sodium sulfide, metol, acetic acid, etc, etc. Even Fair’s own work requires the use of helicopters, large trucks, and planes to reach remote destinations. In his age of the “carbon footprint,” how should photographers and other artists deal with the environmental of our planet? After all, we are makers of things that have mostly aesthetic and very little utilitarian value. We add to the discussion, but how do we add to the solution? At what point does the mass of objects that are created for sheer pleasure become scar-tissue on the planet?

I have no idea, but I certainly enjoyed Henry J. Fair’s photographs, and for now that is enough.

- S.B.

* I am not throwing digital photography/printmaking/processes in the mix here.

Michael Eastman’s Vanishing America

2008-08-15T09:38:00.002-05:00

Adding to the Clutter: Michael Eastman’s Vanishing America: The End of Main Street Diners, Drive-Ins, Donut Shops, and Other Everyday Monuments.

Michael Eastman creates some wonderfully “painted” photographs. Using mostly 4 x 5 systems, he crafts carefully composed and studied images of interiors and building-scapes. They are almost exclusively color photographs and tend to lack any sort of human interaction (save for the fact that the pictures always depict the “remains” of human endeavors). Eastman tends to look for places of solitude and emptiness; his exteriors are almost always photographed on cloudy or overcast days while the interiors are typically lush and saturated.

Take Eastman’s “Arenal” from his Cuba series. The photo is of an old theater that is heavily aged and blanketed by a looming grayness. The once lush paint job is withering away to a sort of pastel palette that sad, yet inviting. Contrast that to “Red Bathroom,” a perfectly arranged and preserved lavatory that is super-saturated in red and warm tones making for a very lively and inviting space (in spite of its perfection).

Eastman has turned his eye for alignment towards a number of subjects (landscapes, reflections, architectural spaces, and horses). With his most recent body of work, Vanishing America, Eastman handsomely captures the persistence of decay of a quickly fading America. From theaters to drugstores to shotgun houses, Eastman applies his signature vision to recording structures as they are now - in their old age - with a whisper of nostalgia and handfuls of love. he exposes the scars and remains for all to see, but not in pitiful sort of way. The buildings display a strength in their solitary compositions, not begging to be restored, but proud in their old age. Many of the images have a “Hopper-esque” feel to them, like “Cairo, Illinois,” which bears more than just a passing semblance to Edward Hoppers, “Early Sunday Morning.” Unlike Hopper’s painting, though, the buildings in “Cairo, Illinois,” are not sleeping, but are dormant and in a permanent state of hibernation; proudly awaiting vines or the wrecking ball.

Another majestic building is found in “Shotgun House, New Orleans.” Photographed from a slight worm’s eye point of view, that gives the building (which is presumably abandoned) its stateliness. The building is transformed from sad relic to a powerful but wounded foot soldier.

Eastman’s skill at containing the disorder in the world is inherent throughout his work, he finds peace in the storm and jewels in the decay. His search for the sturdy and derelict structures in the world result in such luscious imagery that it is a terrible shame that his Vanishing America series is collected in book form so poorly. Rizzoli’s,Vanishing America: The End of Main Street Diners, Drive-Ins, Donut Shops, and Other Everyday Monuments is a 180+ page mess. Beginning with the title, Vanishing America… is overflowing with poorly reproduced images. Worst than that there seems to be little to no thought as to the layout of the book. Images are not given the respect that the are do and there is no breathing room for the images. Pages are often crammed together as if the publisher wants the viewer to gorge themselves on the pictures within the book. Perhaps Rizzoli wants this introduction of Eastman’s quest to be a successful coffeee-table book and sees the market for this book as simple fast-food readers; those that flip through once and use the book as a coaster after they are done. It is a truly shameful book.

For better reproductions and better presented images please visit the artist’s website at eastmanimages.com. His work can also be found at DNJ gallery in Los Angeles

SB

ION ZUPCU: Seeing is the objective

2008-05-22T13:30:00.006-05:00

Lately I've been thinking a lot about how much we miss by not taking a breath and looking at things closely. I don't mean simply in a "beauty is everywhere" kind of way, but rather, how much do we really know about the things that surround us. The chairs, the pens, the bottles, all of the everyday things that we use and toss away casually. Are we recognizing the full potential of theses things, not as simple utilitarian objects, but as tools of meditation and study; how closely do we experience the everyday and what can we do to experience more fully?

The photographer Ion Zupcu certainly has these questions in mind. For several years, he has taken the mundane and created some lovely meditations using nothing more than paper, flowers, bottles, and light. Zupcu calls his still lives, “…a conversation with a myself.” Noting that no one ever stops to talk about their feelings for shapes (unless of course you live in Flatland). In his most recent body of work, Zupcu is both sculptor and photographer; taking small sheets of paper and folding them to form the most simplest of shapes. The paper is typically small, but the photographs make them monumental.

In Untitled, March 15 #2, the intersecting strips of paper are arranged and shot at an angle that makes them appear like a Richard Sera sculpture. The singular light source gracefully creates shadows that belies the actual size of the paper. The piece, Close, depicts two sheets of paper that are barely joined by their edges, delicately balanced and strong. This delicate strength is also evidenced in Existence, again two sheets of paper stand together mysteriously suspended and placed against a soft void. The sheets are towers and sails and feathers, ready to bend and sway with whatever forces are pushed against them.

Zupcu’s images can also be quite whimsical and decorative, several of his pieces take on recognizable forms of flowers and shells. However, the most rewarding part about viewing Zupcu’s work is how it opens your eyes to looking at the world a bit more closely and learning to really appreciate the mundane. The work can open our senses to the things that surround us and free us for the tedium of chores and work. Pick up that pen on your desk and roll it around a bit between your fingers for a few minutes; the gesture will focus your mind and your problem will ripple out.

Zupcu’s work can be viewed at his site: www.ionzupcu.ro and also at ClampArt

~Sesthasak Boonchai

Is This What You Do with a Backstage Pass?

2008-03-31T14:13:00.011-05:00

I was on trip to DC recently and spent a few hours wandering around the museums there. Some beautiful venues (albeit a tad outdated architecturally and very conservative). Imagine my surprise when walking into the National Pottrait Gallery I see a sign that screams RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture. Whoa, I thought, a survey of hip hop culture in DC at a museum more famous for an hall devoted to paintings of 42 old white men. I know that’s a bit harsh, the museum has an extensive of collection of paintings, sculptures, video art, and of course photography. Actually, The National Portrait gallery and the Smithsonian American Art Museum share the same building. So there is a wide variety of work in building.

Still, seeing the RECOGNIZE! exhibit there was refreshing and exciting, because whether you love or hate hip hop, you can’t deny it’s impact on global culture, media, advertising, speech, et cetera. So as I made my way to I was imagining what kind of work would be presented (I didn’t bother to actually READ the names of the representative artists). I suspected some graffiti, maybe posters, flyers a few paintings, but I was really expecting tons of photography. After all, hip hop boomed in the 80s and early 90s (around the same time that the 1-hour/disposable camera culture was mushrooming) and more than most other music/lifestyles hip hop was (and is) driven by IMAGE. So the photographic reproduction of hip hop starts and wanna-bees was essential to the spread of the culture. Unfortunately, I was mistaken in my assumptions that the exhibit would be a survey of Hip-Hop portraiture, instead the exhibit was a small group show representing singular approaches in the fields of photography, painting, graffiti, film, and poetry/installation.

Overall I actually enjoyed the exhibit, though. The painter featured was Kehinde Wiley, whose neon mashups of French Rococo and heroic paintings with hip-hop stars were a joy to behold (even though the ceilings were way too low for the scale of his paintings). There were also three very engaging video pieces by Jefferson Pinder. Unfortunately, the photography section of the show was a bit of a letdown. The work featured was from renowned landscape photographer David Scheinbaum, whose beautiful landscapes and panoramas are delicately composed and intriguing. The work Scheinbaum had in Recognize! is from his ongoing series documenting hip-hop performers, shows and audiences. While the idea and the heart is certainly there, the images themselves lack the verve and energy that is, well, typical of hip-hop shows. The photographs displayed were very cold and static; Scheinbaum even manged to take the zing from ROOTS drummer ?uestlove. Two images I did find nice were a shot of rapper Jean Grae:

and a nice motion shot of MF Doom.

These images do a bit to capture the sprit of these folks and the shows; they squeeze the mass of the sounds, lyrics and bravada into a concise moment and hold you.

Scheinbaum admits to being an outsider to the world of hip-hop; he approached it intially as a parent of children engulfed in the culture and not a fan (although I do get the sense that he is a big fan now). He also cites the work of Roy DeCarava for stylistic inspiration. Perhaps that’s one of the problems with these images, DeCarava was a renowned Jazz photographer and while not as well known as the venerable Herman Leonard, some of DeCarava’s images were equally powerful and in many ways more poetic and meditative. Of course, hip-hop shows leave very little time for introspection and I need more insight into the flow of the spectacle and not a glimpse of the pipes and walls of the backstage area. Which leads to me another niggle I had with Scheinbaum’s work, it felt a bit “fanboy’ish” as if he were seeing these people as celebrities and stars and no as poets and musicians. There was a sort of a Naturaist’s eye at work in some of the images and not a photographer's. It was hard for me to understand why the Gallery chose these particular works, when the likes of Jamel Shabazz and Martha Cooper are in dire need of a broader audience.

Seeing Scheinbaum’s work here actually reminded of Charles Peterson’s seminal series, “Touch Me I’m Sick.” His series documented the very early days of Seattle’s grunge scene and is a benchmark for contemporary music photography. It showcased the musicians’ and fans’ spirit, DIY attitude and really helped outsiders see waht was driving the music. I feel as if Scheinbaum's has the potential to be that, but for now is in a sort of stasis mode, like a lyric waiting to be born or a line needing to be spit.

- SB

The out of focus works of Uta Barth and Hirochi Sugimoto

2008-03-05T09:26:00.008-06:00

Most photographers pride themselves on how sharp an image is, but Uta Barth and Hiroshi Sugimoto create thought provoking bodies of work by doing the opposite.

Uta Barth’s color photographs from the series “Grounds” (Adbusters, 2003) provide numerous examples of her soft focus approach. In one of her images, the photograph just catches a glimpse of the edge of a windowsill with a curtain draped over its ledge. Blurred but clear enough to reveal the shapes and forms as identifiable, the small unframed mounted image seems to drift toward nothing in particular. It reminds one of the quite moment just before sleep when one gives up on focusing. Muted color tones reinforce the sense of calm in the image by their understated presence.

Another image from that series is a soft focus shot of a green wall with two small framed art reproductions hanging in the upper left, a fragment of a dresser in the bottom right. The prints hanging on the wall are reproductions by Vermeer, but are only generally alluded to since it becomes less identifiable in the photographic print. As the viewer stares at the soft image, a self-consciousness of “looking” is what tends to emerge.

Hiroshi Sugimoto’ architectural studies, created between 1997-2002, purposefully utilize blur. By setting his large format focal length to twice infinity (!), he searches for “…superlative architecture [which can] survive the onslaught of blurred photography”. (Sugimoto, 2006) One example of such work is an approximately four foot by five foot very blurred black and white image of the World Trade Center. Rather than irritating the viewer with a soft focus effect, Sugimoto manages to create a minimalist, engaging charcoal-like study of forms and monochromatic tones. Not a piece of Sugimoto’s compositions are wasted.

The image of Villa Savoye feels like a future Jetson-esque world yet to be realized. The hazy structure rises on its own legs into a sky of ever deepening tones of grey. The grass below becomes smudged by it’s own lack of specificity or focus. This piece, typical of Sugimoto’s work, challenges the viewer to see in an unfussy way.

Both Barth and Sugimoto’s images are compelling but for different reasons. Barth’s color images are disorientating and disquieting. One recognizes the spaces, sort of, but they seem to be the background of another subject about to step into the frame. As a result, we are somewhat self-conscious of the passing of time as we stare at her images. Her work also imparts a psychological dimension because of the vague familiarity of place. By contrast, Sugimoto’s formalist studies of monumental structures defy physics as one watches them seemingly disseminate in our midst. There is an “all-over” quality to his work that gives no more sense of importance to any other part of the composition. For instance, famous structure is equally as important as sky, as grass, as whatever is in the frame. While Barths’ work is about nowhere in particular Sugimoto’s is about the particular.

But regardless of intent or subject matter both artists manage to push us into a new place of blurred form rich in possibilities and meaning.

-Michel Varisco

Bibliography:
Uta Barth. essays by: Pamela M Lee, Matthew Higgs, Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe.New York: Phaidon Press, 2004
www.phaidon.com/Default.aspx/Web/uta-barth-9780714841533

Hiroshi Sugimoto. Designed by Takaaki Matsumoto, essays by: Kerry Brougher and David Elliott,
Washington D.C. and Tokyo: Hirshorn Museum, Sculpture garden, the Smithsonian and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2007. hirshhorn.si.edu/sugimoto/programs.htm

Image samples:

www.artsjournal.com/man/images/Chrysler.jpg

web.ncf.ca/ek867/sugimoto.wtc.jpg

www.edwardmitterrand.com

The Picture from LALA Land

2008-02-09T13:46:00.001-06:00

The world of the art fair seems to have exploded in the past ten years, with more and more specialized art fairs cropping up in all major (and many minor) cities across the globe. As the art market continues its enormous expansion, there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight to the number and spread of these fairs. There are fairs that specialize in paintings, sculpture, outsider art and of course photography. Unlike events such as FotoFest in Houston or PhotoNola in New Orleans, however, Photo Fairs (and Art Fairs in general) aren’t really set up for artists. There are no portfolio reviews, artist workshops or panel discussions. Art Fairs are solely designed for galleries, collectors and the public at large as a showcase for new work and as a preview of what the gallery will be exhibiting in the near future.

One of the oldest Art Fairs for Photography, Photo L.A., took place in Santa Monica last month and I had an opportunity to check it out. It was the 17th annual exposition and had a little over 70 exhibitors from across the United States and several International exhibitors as well. It’s a three day event, but I was only able to spend a few hours there on the first day (which was very, very tiring). The entry fee was $20 - which gives you admission to the event as well a beautiful little catalog/directory of all participating exhibitors. The catalog was very welcome and necessary to navigate the almost overwhelming maze of exhibitors. I’ve attended Photo L.A. in the past, but this is the first time (in my experience) that such a luxury was given to attendees.

The exhibit itself was mind-numbing. The crowds of people looking at work (and the occasional celebrity), the mass of gallery reps talking up artists and selling the artists’ work and of course the work itself. It was all bit too much at times and after the first 2 hours I felt fatigued and numbed. It was all I could do to make notes and jot down some observations.

First, this year’s Photo L.A. featured several prominent international galleries including Hackelbury Fine Art, from London; Galerie Esther Woerdehoff, from Paris and Galleria PaciArte Contemporary, from Brescia, Italy. My favorite showing was the contingent from the Queensland Centre for Photography, from Australia. They featured the luscious still-lifes of Marian Drew and the very literal work of Martin Smith. This strong international contingent lead me to my second observation about Photo L.A. 17, that there seemed to be more contemporary work on display than before. One gallery, Craig Krull, even used its massive booth to feature an installation by the brilliant Yamamoto Masao. His delicate installation was like an oasis in the din. There were a number of book dealers and publishers as well. Including D.A.P., Aperture and Bondi Books along with several book dealers that specialized in new, small run artbooks for photographers. One such company, ModernBook, featured the work from the venerable Jerry Uelsmann as well as the 3-D work of Claudia Kunin (who was also exhibiting with three different galleries at the expo).

There were dozens of galleries specializing in vintage prints (which appeared to be the most crowded ones). Even galleries that did not specialize in vintage prints had a few Westons and Steichens on the wall. There so many dealers of such work that, my friend Kirsten (whose sister is photographer Stefanie Schneider) posited: “There are too many old pictures.” I tried to explain to her about the sort of “anti-digital” movement afoot in photography and why vintage prints were so important to collectors, but it did make me wonder, “Why are there so many old pictures?” I do not mean old in the sense of age, but old in the sense of the status-quo. While this was the most contemporary Photo L.A. I’d attended, it was still very conservative. Yes, the pictures were all beautiful and as a collector I was overjoyed to see such a diversity of image types, but as an art maker and educator I was underwhelmed by the lack of challenging images. There was almost no video art (I saw three pieces) and even fewer photographic abstractions and almost no purely conceptual photography. LACDA did have some work by Andy Lomas, who generates fractal abstractions that are vaguely floral. Why should galleries at huge expo events promote such work? Simple, a gallery’s mission should be to not only create a venue for artists to be able to show and sell their wares, but also create an environment that nurtures a conversation between viewers, collectors and artists. This conversation should go well beyond the aesthetic or commodifying aspects of art. An event like Photo L.A. would be a great place for the exhibition of such work. Dealers can show both "old" and "new" work side by side, collectors can at once see the intellectual as well the material. It’s a win win.

Overall, Photo L.A. was satisfying (if a bit dry at times). I was glad to see that photography is alive and vibrant and continues to expand. I’m looking forward to next year as well as the smattering of art fairs that are about to start here in New York. Hopefully, there will be a few more surprises.

See the entire list of Photo L.A. participants (with links) at this site: artfairsinc.com/photola/2008/exhibitors.html

S. Boonchai

Conversion of Manners and Hagiography by Ernesto Pujol

2008-01-17T12:56:00.000-06:00

Ernesto Pujol is a conceptual artist who creates photographs, installations and sculptures around memory and masculinity. In his photographic series "Conversion of Manners" he uses himself as subject dressed in a monks robe with gestures of gentleness and humility. Some images are shot from behind,
face hidden and only the vestments and feet revealed. In other images, his face is revealed and his look is one of total submission. But the images that do not reveal his face become monolithic black abstractions of form floating on an offwhite wall. Meditative in their simplicity, the elegant shape emerges as a man of the cloth in the Roman Catholic Church. In all of these works, “What,” one wonders, “is the artist thinking? And is this work satirical or reverential?”

The artist as model is (nothing new) certainly established in postmodernism where identity is an important theme, and the shedding and morphing of identity central. Often, as in the work of Cindy Sherman, identity is a process of active creation emphasizing volition. In contemporary life, art is a realm that can allow for multiple identities to be invented along the way. In some cases, art around identity can heal somewhat discordant realities. In some of Shermans’ work, she mimics the Renaissance paintings of saints adorned in wealthy aristocratic frocks, although by legend the same saints were actually dirt poor. Sherman took on these contradictions and more using devices to mock and reflect the unevenness of what people have accepted over the ages without hesitation.

While Sherman pulls from lore and history in her series, Pujol pulls directly from his own experiences. As a child in an exiled Cuban family, he attended an elite Catholic school run by missionaries, in Puerto Rico. The nuns who taught Pujol by their example, influenced him to attend a monastery for 6 years. In a series entitled “Hagiography” he dresses as the nuns and even creates scenes of St Theresa de Liseaux levitating off of the ground based on photographs of the Saint. His unmistakeable razor stubble on his chin peeps out from beneath the female saints habit in a sequence of images, with blurrier and blurrier backgrounds indicating the miraculous lift. Performative in nature, the works are both humorous and sacred simultaneously.

Pujol’s work is nuanced, particularly because of gesture. It’s without guise. In “Uncommon threads-contemporary artist and clothing” exhibition catalogue, Pujol states: “I am extremely interested in fashioning a visual history of human body, as well as how we have been reduced to our bodies and clothing, in what I increasingly believe to be a post object society; through the rule of fashion…These photographs are as much about the language of the human body, as it has evolved historically, as about fashion, about an esthetic. An esthetic can be like a spiritual experience, particularly if it is synonomous with purity.“ (July 10, 2000).
Perhaps because Pujol is tapping his own experiences, his work has a ring of authenticity. Through the work, he reinterprets masculine body language and ideas via the wardrobes of monks and nuns. In the process, Pujol’s work succeeds in creating a contemplative tone, transcending gender and religion.

ernestopujol.org

Hunt, Barbara, curator. Bodies of Resistance.Visual Aids, N.Y.,2000
Mosquera, Grarado. Ernesto Pujol-Taxonomies, Galerie Ramis Barquet, Mexico,1993

Ulmer, Sean M., Uncommon Threads, Contemporary Artists and Clothing, Hebert F. Johnson Museum of Art

Volk, Gregory., “Ernesto Pujol at Priska C. Jushka- New York” Art in America, Nov 2002

-- “Ernesto Pujol, Conversion of Manners Contemporanea 2000” Absolute Arts.com, July 31, 2000

MV

michelvarisco.com

What’s So Funny About Paws, Claws, and Anthropomorphism?

2008-01-02T12:49:00.000-06:00

It is only when we get close to animals, and examine them with open minds, that we are likely to glimpse the being within.

-Jonathan Balcombe, Pleasurable Kingdom

From Eadweard Muybridge’s photographs of Bison and Horses to William Wegman’s endless series of his Weimaraners as actors on a stage, animals have held a storied place in photography. They have been dissected, preened, propped, posed and paraded before the camera for our entertainment and education. Three relatively recent photo books are further proof that photographers love the furry and scaly and in the end each of these books provide a small glimpse within ourselves and our relationships to the “lesser species.”

Jill Greenberg’s Monkey Portraits (Bulfinch, 2006) gives us a glimpse of our simian cousins acting out the most human of expressions: anger, fear, confusion, repulsion, et al. Of the over 70 images presented in the book, not one is a “straight shot” of a monkey or ape. Each photograph (made in Greenberg’s signature style) is carefully coaxed and manipulated so that the viewer always sees a bit of him or herself in the Monkey/Ape. The animals photographed are gorgeously groomed (in fact each animal is a trained actor ape/monkey), professionally posed and seem to be acting out very specific roles for the photographer. The range of emotions depicted by these celebrity monkeys runs the gamut and makes for some wildly entertaining viewing (Monkeys is a great book for cocktail parties). However, the sameness in the image-making and lack of creativity in the book’s layout becomes a bit distracting and I have a hard time seeing beyond the humor. The publisher’s hope that, “these monkeys in all their glory will cause you to laugh out loud and to wonder just how different we truly are,” falls just shy of the mark.

In American Cockroach (Aperture, 2005), Catherine Chalmers presents that most misunderstood of all domestic pests, the cockroach, not as stand-ins for humans, but as the sole inhabitants of a Laurie Simmons-esque world. The book is divided into three distinct chapters: Residents, Impostors and Executions; each chapter is a wonderfully absurdist study in photographic theatricality. In Residents the roaches live, work, have sex and give birth in tiny living quarters that aren’t so much miniature reproductions of human spaces as they are pop culture archetypes derived equally from art museums and DWR furniture catalogs. The Cockroach residents frolic in the light, drink out of tubs and molt next to a “Twombly.” The Chapter Impostors has the cockroaches camouflaged in a technicolor ecosystem, hidden amongst flowers and plants. The little creatures are cleverly dressed and painted to match their surroundings, hiding in plain sight rather than under refrigerators and cardboard boxes. In the final chapter, the animals are depicted being gassed, electrocuted, hanged and drowned. While many of us might relish in the idea of torturing cockroaches, the images in this chapter are very disheartening and probably the most humanizing of all the images in the book.

Andrew Zuckerman does little to manipulate the animals in his book Creature (Chronicle Books, 2007), aside of course from putting them in to a studio and blinding them with dozens of lights. From the looks of things, Zuckerman allowed the animals some controlled roaming in a large studio and he snapped away, allowing for the moments to unfold and the animals to be themselves. Of the three books, Creature is certainly the least anthropomorphic. The animals aren’t painted, they aren’t placed into “homes,” and they are not asked to act (too much) for our pleasure. No, aside from being removed from their native environment the creatures (about 170 of them) are allowed to be creatures. From the ghostly aura of a hairless cat to the powerful photos of a common dove, Zuckerman does not project humanness on the animals, his examinations allow the animals’ humanity to project upon us. The book’s layout adds to the meditative state of the images. The animals are photographed on a white background and some of the images spread across two pages. My personal favorite is the lone honeybee, printed actual size on a stark white page.

Each of the three books are worth reading and viewing, the photography is impeccable, and the images are a joy to behold. Furthermore, the books serve as a wonderful reminder that the human animal shares this planet with other equally amazing creatures and that we should be very mindful of their presence.

SB

PRODUCT PLACEMENT - The Photobooth that is Jill Greenberg

2007-12-16T10:57:00.000-06:00

My two favorite axioms from art school are: 1. Photographs don’t lie, but photographers do. 2. If you can’t make it good, make it big; if you can’t make it big, then make it shiny. Jill Greenberg’s work is all lies and glisten, but in her case it’s mostly a good thing.

While primarily known as a commercial photographer, Greenberg has been making several in-roads into the world of fine art photography in recent years. Her signature style of hyper-perfect detail, blown out highlights, and top-notch photoshop skills has graced the covers of VIBE, TIME, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY, WIRED and a host of other magazines. She has been honing her "digital dieting" skills for many years and some of her imagery slips easily into the white wall world. Her meticulousness polished in the commercial world serves her well in the fine art realm. Greenberg’s prints are painstakingly created and the photographs themselves are nuanced almost to a fault. As a photographer, what I find most intriguing about her images is that they are all essentially the same. The subject changes of course, but the lighting, background and exposure are all mechanically exact. Which renders her subjects (people, monkeys or bears) as nothing more than products. While photographers like David LaChapelle or Gregory Crewdson stage elaborate scenes or tableaus for their images, Greenberg relies on gestures, titles and her expertise as a manipulator to coax the viewer into her realm.

A recent pairing of her series Ursine and End Times at ClampArt in NYC is a prime example of how Greenberg’s homogenizing techniques work.

For the now infamous End Times series, Greenberg photographed dozens of crying babies and used them as stand-ins for her view of the current political landscape here in the United States. Her views are not at all rosy. Each image is linked with titles like, “Grand Old Party,” “Four More Years,” “The Truth,” “Deniability.” Each title refers to the George W. Bush administration and its impact on our world and the future world of the children depicted. The series caused quite an uproar when it was first exhibited last year and remains high on the list of what’s wrong with art in the blogosphere. I won’t talk about issues of child exploitation, psychological projection or abuse here (there is more than enough of that already about these images), rather I’d like to focus on whether or not these images work as photographs and commentary. There were six images on view each was 50” x 43” so every pore, tear drop and mucus flow was terribly enhanced. The proportions and scale of the heads in the frames is are almost hieratic in style and the series‘s reference to politics could reference ancient Rome, but I doubt that Greenberg was considering this when making the work. Her primary conceit that the images are a reaction to the re-election of George W. Bush fails for me because of the simple fact that without the titles the images are unbranded and become well photographed pictures of crying babies. I will say this about the babies, they were all (except for Greenberg’s daughter) professional actors. Each with managers and agents; that’s end times for you.

Speaking of professionals, the bears in Ursine were also professionals, each working for food. For these images, Greenberg headed to Canada to photographs bears of all kinds (Grizzly, Black, Polar, etc). The photographs were made outdoors (Greenberg brought her Photobooth outside). The resulting images are gorgeous. Seeing every hair here works; the bears run the gamut of emotions- as if they were acting... well okay, they were acting. There is joy, pathos, anger, ferocity and shame. All served through gestures and careful manipulations of the bears by their handlers and of course further manipulations by Greenberg and here Wacom tablet. I found Ursine more engaging and intriguing than End Times. The bears’ movements and actions are universally understood and required no footnote (the photos of the bears are all untitled). When viewing the groups side by side one could easily transpose the titles from End Times to the photos in End Times and the resulting images would be as powerful.

Greenberg’ latest offering is Performance, photographs of young girls (one her daughter and one another pro) hanging from harnesses. Says Greenberg, ”This work is an exploration of ‘Performance’ in all its meanings; the child performer, or the child performing in school; in real-world achievements; rating their beauty and behavior as well as the act of being a girl where femininity is often a performance. These photographs are also about the frisson between the innocence of little girls and the rigging and gesture of their bodies. These gestures may appear forced or mannered but they are natural and athletic. Both of these little girls—one my daughter and the other a working child model/actress—have been performing since they could smile. They are self-conscious of their body and beauty, yet their performance is rigged.” Sally Mann, watch out.

SB

Philip-Lorca diCorcia in situ

2007-12-03T11:00:00.000-06:00

Philip-Lorca di Corcia learned early on as a student at The Museum School in Boston, a "fundamental anti-romantic lesson that meaning in photography derives as much from concept and culture as from serendipitous inspiration." (Bennett Simpson, The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston) He later studied at Yale where Walker Evans, the great documentary/fine art photographer taught for decades. Both schools influenced diCorcia’s future work and ideas profoundly. diCorcia’s photographs cut across various styles of photography including staged, conceptual and documentary.

Early work was almost completely staged using family and friends as models, later moving on to, hustlers, prostitutes and nude dancers. In diCorcia’s street photography, however, documentary and staged processes are blended to create his own definitive results. In the series “Streetwork” for example, he uses the actual street scene as a stage set for his event to unfold [some images here]. Hidden strobes set to sync with his medium format camera, many feet away, are used to create the distinctive lighting. He arranged as much as he could and then waited for the moment when his subject would step across this landscape.

Photographing people on the street is nothing new and the masters are numerous. What diCorcia shares with well-known street photographers like Henri Cartier Bresson or Gary Winogrand are glimpses of unsuspecting humans found on the streets. DiCorcia’s "chosen moments", however couldn’t feel further away from the spontaneity of Bresson or even the “Uneasy Streets” of Winogrand. It’s distinct from these artists’ works because of the added artificial lighting and lack of spontaneity that’s felt in the image, reinforcing his peculiar style and content. Winogrand’s “Uneasy Streets” for example, are sprinkled with subtle mockery and humor, while Bresson ties into representing human emotional ranges in identifiable clips. What diCorcia’s work presents for us in this series are glimpses of the modern man’s dilemma -ennui, struggle, fear, blankness and the feeling of a frozen moment, the moment between the moments. In a way, his work is more reminiscent of Lee Friedlander’s reflections of himself in mirrors on the streets of New Orleans- partly staged and ambivalent in emotion.

“Heads” is another intriguing series of photographs by diCorcia, of people traveling through the city (completely unaware of being photographed) with just their heads and shoulders captured against a blackened background where the light falls off. Their expressions are usually dull, troubled (with the occasional positive thought). What is fascinating is the randomness of the heads and the privacy of their moment as diCorcia steals the image so successfully. The dramatic lighting makes each individual glow in what seems an omniscient moment. The lighting in this series is comparable to the Renaissance painter Caravaggio. The randomness of his subjects also recalls the film work of Andy Warhol who shot hours of unedited film of people walking on the sidewalks of NYC, challenging the viewer to perceive something of interest in the mundane. By contrast, diCorcia, who shot thousands of photographs for this series, consequently edited them down to 16 final prints.
Of the multitude of artists that do use the public sphere to pull from, diCorcia stands out even more substantively with his unusual point of view and obvious influence on those who follow. Through his work, we find representations of modern human’s banal existence revealed through a non-judgmental lens under perfect lighting and masterful compositions.

MV

Spirits in the Material World

2007-11-15T08:45:00.000-06:00

While most photographers are concerned with pictorial information, documentation and representation in their work, Eileen Quinlan is interested in ghosts and making pictures of nothing. Her models are smoke, mirrors, reflections, surfaces and photographic film. The resulting images are not about something, stand in for naught and tell very little. The pictures themselves have more to do with constructivist abstract painting and the process of photography than to any photographic reference.

Quinlan's ongoing series, “Smoke and Mirrors,” began in 2004 with an interest in paranormal and spirit photography. Initially, Quinlan sought a narrative bend to her photographs, attempting to manifest spirits and specters with smoke. During this process she began using mirrors, reflectors, foil and mylar in the hopes of adding volume and dimension to her unruly subject. During these experiments Quinlan began to focus less on narrative and more on the formal aspects of her subjects eventually arriving at her current body of work: non-objective photographs.

There are elements of Quinlan's that do reference a few photographers before her. Quinlan's bold colors and stark geometric shapes recall the work of Barbara Kasten and her use of reflections and foil certainly corresponds to the early work of James Welling. In the end, though, Quinlan's work only superficially parallels the work of both these artists; Kasten's work wholeheartedly references architecture and Welling's early work (while somewhat no-referential) relies heavily on form and the sculptural quality of the material. Quinlan's work, however, seldom refers to her materials or references them; her true subject-matter is the process of photography and the nature of image-making. Even though both Kasten and Welling deal with photography as a subject in their respective works, neither photographer allow their photographs to speak directly to the viewer as Quinlan does. Where Kasten and Welling's prints are beautiful, pristine wonderful photographic records they do not always break the mold of precious object. Quinlan's images, themselves lush and gorgeous, do not hide flaws, scratches and dust. The images are fully grounded in photography and its ability to record. There is no hidden flaw in Quinlan's photographs, no need to hide what is there - no misrepresentation, because the photos do not in fact represent anything. Here is where Quinlan's work is most successful, she has taken these tools of representation (the camera. and indeed photography) and created a totally non-representational response.

In our world where image is everything, truth can be veiled by pictures that totally misrepresent the facts, images can be manipulated to obfuscate and mislead and we simply cannot trust everything that we see, Eileen Quinlan's work is a visual breath of fresh air. Her “Smoke and Mirrors,” hide nothing and reveal all they have about
themselves to us. Because the images represent no ideals; mask no meanings and offer no theories they can be looked upon without being gazed. They are remarkable little spirits framed and hung for our pleasure.

Eileen Quinlan's current body of work is on view now through December 9 at Miguel Abreu gallery in New York.
You may see some of it here:
miguelabreugallery.com

You can also find more work here:
suttonlane.com/artist.php?a=eq&p=home

And an interview here:
zoozoom.com/magazine.aspx#type=story&id=414

S. Boonchai

Consciousness raising imagery? The work of Chris Jordan

2007-11-11T09:07:00.001-06:00

A seemingly simple premise... turning statistic abstractions into photographs. But incomprehensible figures that seem impossible to elucidate? That's what Chris Jordan does. He makes the invisible, unimaginable figures into visual messages that pull at our consciousness.
In some ways, ignorance is bliss. To read statistics or hear them on the radio allows for dismissal of their significance, an apathetic yawn perhaps. "How can I wrap my mind around those numbers?", we ask ourselves. So we go blank, and glaze over. But, in the back of our mind we worry that those figures are something to reckon with, that they might eventually catch up with us.

Chris Jordan started his journey in art photography appreciating trash. In hot pursuit of color and form, he traveled through dump sites jumping over fences with an 8x10 camera when no-one was around. In conversation with friends, his work read of more than color and form. Based on an image of a massive garbage pile a conversation formed around consumerism. He listened intently and realized here was something he could pursue that tied into his concerns. Enlightened, he was off shooting with a goal to entice such thoughts from viewers.
But it didn't stop at the piles of tires, bottles and discarded cell phones- it continued in every direction, with air jet streams and prison inmate uniforms and uninsured children. Imagine 9 million uninsured children which is the American tally for 2007... Now look at an endless array of 9 million toys piled up filling gallery walls from top to bottom. Now get closer and really see them and let your mind wander to the personal for a moment, a child in your own life perhaps. It's an intellectual game, and from a distance it's even an abstraction ironically like the statistics. However, one is enticed to come a little closer by the sheer beauty of the images. And then a little closer yet. The personal, aesthetic and political merge.
Here we are, one person in a sea of people.
Here's this representation- one prison uniform in a 10 foot panel of 2.3 million folded prison uniforms representing one year of America's incarceration rate, the highest in the world. And then we back up again, feeling a bit ashamed, and reemerge into the abstraction of the sea of blended forms.

M.V.

The Arles photo festival

2007-10-23T17:17:00.000-05:00

The organizers of the Arles Photo Festival humbly state that the festival is "developing and each year reflects strands of contemporary creative output across the hugely diverse field of photography." And this year's show seemed to span the hugely diverse field of photography. The theme was "India". Works by Indian artists such as Dayanita Singh in her series "Go away closer" and Jeetin Sharma stood out as Indian shows not to miss. But, a lot of the work in the India Gallery/warehouse seemed to follow the curve of traditional and already existing postmodern photography trends, so there were fewer “aha” moments.
However, a nearby warehouse in Arles featured, the Danshanzi District of China and this is where a lot of energy was. Playing on the word "China", Huang Rui, a socially committed artist coined the phrase "chai-na" which means "demo here." He is the founder of Danshanzi District in North East Bejing, which is a center for open dialogue by artists to reflect on the rapid industrial and physical changes their community is undergoing. The works by Chinese artists such as Miao Xiao Chun and the Gao Brothers stay with me, probably for reasons of aesthetics and a shared sensibility to massive change in an urban landscape.
Miao Xiaochun created a seamless billboard sized panorama of a modern Chinese cityscape so detailed in every square inch of the photograph it was both exciting and scary. One could peer into hundreds of windows in a beehive like arrangement of the modern Chinese city-overwhelming in its repetition. Is this a gigapixel image that sees space better than our unaided eye? One could study it for days and still find surprises in each window. The Gao brothers in "Another World" produced a series of poetic and haunting images that incorporated "affectionate irony" in their studies of partially demolished buildings. The large color photographs included monochromatic grey buildings that were sliced open with vividly colored humans standing singly in each opening or space. The subjects' questioning expressions could be interpreted in many ways. The pictures reminded me to not forget the human beings amidst such extreme physical changes in a city. Coming from New Orleans, with our own brand of the Dashanzi District, jokingly referred to as the "Post-destructivist movement," I related to the complex anxieties that the artists in that part of China are trying to somehow reconcile. There were many more images in this series that were thought provoking- too many to mention here. Check them out!

Michel Varisco