The Year in Pictures

Back in the Saddle Again!

2012-01-28T17:41:00.004-05:00

I have been quite rightly called out for not keeping this blog up to date. But I’ll explain. Two things. One – it takes a lot of time and the gallery has been very busy. Two – if something really interesting or fresh comes around, I’ll let you know. This month there have already been a couple good things passed on to me which I’ll now share with you.

First (courtesy of my brother) – a series of colorized photographs by Swedish artist Sanna Dullaway. While Dullaway’s main business is restoring old family photographs, she has taken to re-imagining iconic images with enough skill and verisimilitude that the issue it addresses is not colorization (of course it’s weird and disrespectful, but occasionally effective) but about the power of black and white photography. In a world of color, it’s amazing what effect black and white has. (Perhaps this why the film “The Artist” has taken such a hold on people.) Dullaway’s motive is simple. She writes on her Flickr site: "Hi. I take coloured photographs. If I stumble upon colourless photographs I colour them." If only everyone were so honest!

BOOTSY HOLLER

Second, my friend and bike coach Angela Sherry introduced me to the work of Bootsy Holler. A Los Angeles based editorial and fine art photographer, Bootsy has created her own personal time machine by inserting herself in her old family photos, but not before painstakingly costuming and making herself up in period appropriate get up.

Her series, Visitor, takes the Zelig-ian fantasy but transports it to a personal and emotional place where we can visit those we loved, or never knew.

In my gallery, people are constantly questioning the use of photoshop, which is something I don’t really pay much attention to. There aren’t many photographers these days not using that or some other kind of digital intervention in one way or another. It's just another tool and when it works it’s great and when it doesn’t it sucks.

That's Bootsy on the left.

That's Bootsy behind the screen door.

For more Bootsy click here.

Don't Miss This Show - Nan Goldin at Matthew Marks

2011-12-13T07:45:00.001-05:00

The one exhibition not to miss before Christmas is Nan Goldin's show at the Matthew Marks Gallery. Juxtaposing images from decades of her own work with her recent shots of artworks in the Louvre, the show is divided into two parts – one a display of prints, and then in the darkened almost cinema-sized screening room, one of Goldin’s trademark slide shows.

For much of 2010, The Louvre allowed Goldin access to its collections on Tuesdays, when the museum is closed to the public. Goldin wandered through the galleries, focusing on the paintings that most spoke to her, revisiting certain pieces again and again, to the point where she started to see them as human rather than historic objets d'art. The connection that developed became "one of the most sensuous experiences" of Goldin's life – which is saying something because Goldin is primarily a sensualist (secondly a colorist, and thirdly a natural born photographer).

My favorite part of the experience was the slide show where in picture after picture one can only marvel at Goldin’s ability to turn everyday moments into vibrant works of art.

DO NOT MISS!

Paris Photo

2011-11-16T03:26:00.003-05:00

The Grand Palais seen from the Pont Alexandre II.

Simply put - Paris Photo was amazing!

This year the long running French art fair moved from the basement of The Louvre to the Grand Palais and the event was transformative. 150 dealers from all over the world gathered in the turn of the century building whose original purpose was in fact to house the great artistic events of Paris. The main space - the length of two and a half football fields, was constructed with an iron, steel and glass barrel-vaulted roof (needed for large gatherings of people before the age of electricity).

The light, the scale, the space, and an incredible run of good weather seemed to put everyone in the best possible mood and from both my own personal experience and what I gather from colleagues, business was booming as collectors and curators from Brussels to Beijing made the rounds.

The fair also signaled Paris' increasing dominance in the world of photography. Once New York was where it all happened, and not to be self-promoting here - but other than New York's photography dealers (who still dominate the medium) - the interest, commitment, visibility, enthusiasm, discovery, and love for photography all seem greater in Paris. Correct me if you think I'm wrong.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the event and a few highlights. As a participant rather than an observer, I was busy all the time so there are fewer snaps than I would have liked. Sorry.

The sign says"Your waiting time is about an hour from this point" and people were lined up well past here!

The interior of the Grand Palais.

My booth.

My fantastic assistant Charlotte, and our helper Pascal.

Every year the fair celebrates the photography of one culture and this year it was Africa. Here the late Depara from Kinshasa, Congo - another revelatory discovery in the field of African photography.

James Barnor - who took fashion photographs in London for the African magazine, Drum.

Shomei Tomatsu from “Acqua” an exploration of the theme of water in photographs sponsored by Giorgio Armani - one of several non-selling booths at the fair.

An Andy Warhol "stitched" photograph. Warhol's inventiveness never ceases to amaze.

An extraordinarily vivid new super-sized Massimo Vitale at Brancolini Grimaldi.

The "Acqua" booth from outside.

And inside an interesting dialog between Garry Fabian Miller's seminal 1976 horizon pictures and Hiroshi Sugimoto's 1980s prints (recently printed large).

And to end - a beautiful Paolo Roversi of Natalia Vodianova.

See you next year?

Seen in London

2011-11-06T17:35:00.003-05:00

In London on my way to exhibiting at Paris Photo.

I was a little surprised to walk into the underground and see this poster for a painting show at The National Portrait Gallery. It certainly caught my eye, but I wonder what the conservatively inclined would make of it back home. It always perplexes me when the land of liberty is more conservative than the land of the monarchy. And will this be another "offensive and explicit" post that will keep Facebook from allowing people to link to this blog?

Karen Knorr's India Song

2011-11-01T09:39:00.000-04:00

THE JOY OF AHIMSA. TAKHAT VILAS. MEHRANGARH FORT. JODHPUR

You’re all invited. Next up at Danziger Gallery is the opening of the Karen Knorr show “India Song” – this Thursday, 6 to 8 p.m..

Knorr, who is a well known artist in England, has been working on different series since the mid 1970s – initially chronicling London’s punk scene, then moving into a combination of social observation and commentary of England’s upper class, and then being increasingly drawn to creating her own tableaux in the interior spaces of historic homes and museums. Knorr’s artistic and conceptual journey is an exemplary model of how one body of work leads to another to build a career. And to cap it off (not that the end is anywhere near) Knorr was just nominated for the 2012 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize - Europe's most prestigious award "for a living photographer who has made the most significant contribution to the medium of photography over the past year".

Much of this acclaim has centered on Knorr’s latest work – a series of Indian tableaux transposing wild animals into the opulent interiors of some of Northern India’s most beautiful private homes and palaces.

Like the pioneering early photographers who found in India a wealth of exotic subject matter, Knorr celebrates the visual richness found in the myths and stories of northern India using sacred and secular sites to highlight caste, femininity and its relationship with the animal world. She considers men's space (mardana) and women's space (zanana) in Mughal and Rajput architecture - be they in palaces, mansions, or mausoleums. These interiors are meticulously photographed with a large format analogue camera. Knorr's own photographs of live animals are then inserted into the diverse rooms and sites, fusing high resolution digital with analogue photography. The results create original and stunning images that reinvent the Panchatantra (an ancient Indian collection of animal fables) for the 21st century and further blur the boundaries between reality and illusion.

Sometimes a show we do takes on a resonance beyond the norm and Knorr’s photographs have certainly provoked this response. We’ve had inquiries (and purchases) from museums and collectors from the minute we posted the work. Come and see for yourselves.

THE QUEEN'S ROOM, ZANANA, UDAIPUR CITY PALACE.

FLIGHT TO FREEDOM, DURBAR HALL, DUNGARPUR.

THE PRIVATE AUDIENCE, AAM KHAS, JUNHA MAHAL, DUNGARPUR.

THE GATEKEEPER, ZANANA, SAMODE PALACE.

Pleasure

2011-10-30T12:20:00.003-04:00

As regular readers will know, one of my great pleasures is seeing memorable pictures in the New York Times, and this week brought some excellent ones. Above - and gracing the front page of Thursday's Arts section was this photograph by Nan Goldin (left) paired with an 1855 painting by Ary Scheffer from Goldin's new show at Matthew Marks - the result of Goldin being given free rein to browse The Louvre on the days it was closed to the public. The show is up in New York for two months. Don't miss.

Next up, from today's Sports section, this joyful victory celebration in the women's 4 x 100 meter relay captured by Mark Ralston. It's so balletic it could be a dance photograph!

On a more serious note, Magnum newcomer Mark Zachmann photographed a boat carrying 158 Libyan refugees shortly before it was stopped by the Italian coastguard. (Italy has the closest European shore to Libya.) It has the gravitas and compositional power of a great history painting.

And lastly, this week's New York Times Magazine picks up on this very blog - highlighting the Kenneth O Halloran Irish Horse Festival photographs I ran last February. Just to let you know the appreciation runs both ways!

iSad

2011-10-07T15:58:00.003-04:00

I'm not sure if there is any category of people who were more affected by Steve Jobs' innovations than photographers and the photography minded. Everything Jobs masterminded at Apple was elegant and visual. Everything Apple innovated made life easier and better for the viewing, management, and simple pleasure of working with and looking at photographs. To say he will be greatly missed is an understatement.

But in many ways, Jobs will not be gone from Apple. He consistently put the right people in to the right positions so that his creativity, insight, marketing genius, and his ability to “Think Different” can continue. Jobs put it best himself:

“My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other’s negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are not done by one person, they are done by a team of people.”

During his life, I always thought of Jobs as arrogant. Now and as we read more and more about his personal life and thoughts, and ponder his remarkable achievements, I think he was modest.

Tokyo ctd.

2011-10-01T09:18:00.001-04:00

Hisaji Hara

For me there's nothing quite like Tokyo. I love the way that form follows function in both the design sense and also in the sense of the formality and functionality of the place. I love the Tokyo subway. The museums. The stores. The enthusiasm and politeness towards strangers, and most of all the people I had the pleasure of meeting or dealing with. In three trips I don't think I've ever had a bad or rude experience.

To me Tokyo is a city of innovation. Everything seems to work and there are always new ideas of how do things. Cabs are plentiful. The airport buses are a model of efficiency. We all know about the toilets. Recently Tokyo introduced "Women Only" carriages on the subway so that women going to work didn't have to be hassled. Now why don't more places do that?

But back to photography. For my third Tokyo Photo fair, I tried to bring things that I thought would interest my hosts. A wall of work by 11 different western photographers new to art fairs. A Kate Moss selection. Sartorialist prints. Warhol polaroids. And a new Susan Derges piece. I'll show these later but for this post I'll concentrate on some of the many Japanese photographs that struck me as particularly good.

Above and below - the work of Hisaji Hara. A graphic designer and film-maker by background, over the last few years Hura has obsessively translated the work of the already obsessive painter Balthus into extraordinarily original photographs. As a concept, nothing could interest me less than copying painting but Hura's work has such a unique sensibility and the photographs have such a timeless feel that they are completely successful.

Hisaji Hara

Ken Kitano

Ken Kitano's work has consistently dealt with time and layering. Here one of his sunrise to sunset pictures wherein he literally stands by his camera for a day as it captures the passage of time and light. This one is of Ground Zero at Hiroshima.

Ikko Narahara

Also new to me was the work of Ikko Narahara. This surreal but un-manipulated shot was credited by the British photographer Chris Shaw, whose work was being shown at the fair by The Tate, with inspiring him to be a photographer. More on Chris and his work later.

Anon. by way of Fiona Tam.

These anonymous photographs of Japanese schoolgirls were found at a flea market by artist Fiona Tan and became the basis of a complex video piece. But as a refection of pure Japanese visuals and culture I think they're stunning - a study of uniformity, diversity, and seriality.

Taiji Matsue

I remember liking Taiji Matsue's work two years ago. Matsue photographs from a great distance and then blows up telling details of seemingly random incidence into little squares. This was a nice installation.

Tokihiro Sato

Tokihiro Sato creates his pictures by opening the lens and moving around with a flashlight to create mysterious and magical effects. One of the ideas I heard in Tokyo (from Yoshiko Suzuki at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography) was the idea of a post 9/11 - post 3/11 (the Japanese Tsunami) sensibility in art. This works for me in that way.

Yasuhiro Ishimoto

A Chicago picture by the great Japanese photographer Yasuhiro Ishimoto from when he was at The Art Institute. If you click into it you'll see it's a picture of cars in a parking garage. One of my favorite individual pictures in the show.

Rinko Kawauchi

A section of the fair was given to photographs specifically of the after effects of 3/1. The always reliably mystical Rinko was photographing the devastation when a black and white pigeon appeared - flying away only to return again. To her they symbolized life and death, hope and despair, light and dark, Adam and Eve.

Mika Ninagawa at Tomio Koyama gallery

And last but certainly not least - a group of Mika Ninagawa photographs in a back room at Tomio Koyama gallery. I have been wanting to meet Ms. Ninagawa - one of (if not) Japan's most popular photographers - for quite a while. I love her super-saturated pop take on flowers and fish and whatever else crosses her lens. She's sort of Nan Goldin meets Andy Warhol but in a completely original form. This trip I finally got the chance to go to her studio and home and I am pleased to say that I will now be representing and showing her in the U.S..

Tokyo

2011-09-22T22:52:00.002-04:00

After being diverted overnight to Hokkaido by Hurricane Roke, I arrived in Tokyo last night with 2 hours to hang 33 pictures in my booth at Tokyo Photo 2011! Thanks to some great help from my translator/assistants we made it, but there was not a second to check out the other booths, which I will make up for shortly.

In the meantime, I always enjoy my hotel views. This is clearly not so picturesque but looking out of my window in the Nagatacho district I feel like I'm already enveloped in a contemporary Japanese photograph.

Fashion Week

2011-09-15T11:46:00.001-04:00

As Fashion Week in New York comes to a close - a great aerial shot of the backstage preparations from London's Daily Mail. Unfortunately the photograph is only credited to Getty Images so I can't give the resourceful photographer their due credit. Please write in if you know.

Save The Date - September 15

2011-09-13T08:34:00.002-04:00

Gloria Swanson, 1924.

You're all invited to our opening show of the season. Thursday, 6 to 8 p.m..

The show features 80 iconic Edward Steichen 8x10 contact prints made by the renowned photographer George Tice who was Steichen's last printer. In addition to the Steichens we are showing 12 rarely seen George Tice photographs in our Print Room, and George - who is truly one of photography's living legends as well as an incredibly nice guy - will be there. More on George later.

Gary Cooper, 1928.

VOGUE Fashion. 1920s.

Gertrude Lawrence, 1928.

Charlie Chaplin, 1928.

9/12

2011-09-12T16:44:00.002-04:00

I have mixed feelings about the proliferation of 9/11 images that have flooded the airwaves and print media these past few days. Nearly every story and image is powerful and moving but at a certain point you can begin to feel you're being used.

I was looking for a photograph that meant something more than re-visiting the past when Len Prince sent me this picture. It's an iPhone snap of a contact sheet that he had never tried to print or publish but ten years later the picture makes a lot of sense.

It was taken on 9/12/01 near Ground Zero and is of the back window of a smashed-up police car that had been blown on top of another car. Someone had scrawled the date in the dust of 9/11 as both a record and - I like to think - a hope. 9/11 as we know changed everything, but it's what we do with 9/12 that counts.

For a moment it seemed like 9/12 had brought about an amazing togetherness and spirit in this country, but it didn't take long to disintegrate and go awry. Let's try to make this 9/12 something better.

Irene

2011-09-07T05:02:00.001-04:00

Of all the snaps I've taken, this one seems to provoke the most visceral response!

It was taken around noon on August 28th as Hurricane Irene hit the south shore of Long Island. It's the view from the living room of our house on The Great South Bay, and amazingly, the water stopped about 1/4 inch short of flooding the house. What you see in this picture is The Great South Bay, and then what little lawn we have between the house and the bay.

We were very lucky.

Weekend Video

2011-08-27T10:05:00.001-04:00

I was listening to an interview on NPR with Greg Mottola, the director of "Superbad", when they played the scene where Fogell gets his fake i.d. - one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite summer movies. Listening to it on the radio with just the sound, I was knocked out by how good the dialog was and how one sharp line follows another. So try listening to it first without watching.

I generally have pretty highbrow/artsy taste in movies, but if you haven't seen the film I can't recommend it highly enough. It may be a teen "gross-out" comedy, but it's a near perfect movie with a great narrative, a great script, and wonderful performances from a cast who if not famous at the time have nearly all gone on stardom.

What You See is Not Always What You Get...

2011-08-25T17:13:00.001-04:00

Over the last few years, New York Magazine has established itself as one of the leading exponents of great photography. Mixing photo-journalism, pick-up, and the creative commissioning of fine art photographers, the magazine can regularly be counted on to deliver eye-catching images. Under Director of Photography Jody Quon (a longtime deputy to the New York Times Magazine's Kathy Ryan) and Editor Adam Moss the art of matching subject and photographer is both astute and surprising.

A great example is last week's memorable picture of gender-bending model Andrej Pejic by the renowned French photographer Valerie Belin. Belin does not usually do editorial work so the choice was as inspired as the result. On the surface, it's a photographic Gainsborough portrait. A beautiful person beautifully rendered in a distinctive style, but when you understand that the subject is in fact a man, you can't help but be drawn back to study the picture in greater detail to see what clues, if any, you missed. It's "The Crying Game" in a single frame. A picture worth at least the thousand words that you can read here.

Weekend Video - Senna

2011-08-11T15:37:00.005-04:00

By now, those of you who are sick of the monkey picture will realize I'm on something of a summer hiatus. Officially I'm back after Labor Day.

But one last post and recommendation for the summer.

"Senna" is a documentary about about the Brazilian motor-racing champion, Ayrton Senna that is being released in the States tomorrow. It explores his arrival in Formula One in the mid 1980s, and follows his struggles both on track against his rival, French World Champion Alain Prost, and off it, against the internal politics of the sport. Directed by Asif Kapadia, it was a huge success in England and won the World Cinema Audience Award for documentaries at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival.

The film is a gripping story on many levels. There is the charisma of its subject, matters of spirituality, and glimpses into Brazilian culture. Beacause I knew so little about Senna and motor racing, the story kept me on the edge of my seat while the insight in to Formula One racing was a fascinating glimpse into another world.

Just see it.

Ciao for now.

Monkey Business

2011-07-11T18:54:00.005-04:00

If MoMA was really looking to break ground in their upcoming "New Photography" series, they couldn't do much better than this amazing self-portrait taken by an un-named Indonesian macaque. I'm pretty sure he hasn't exhibited before.

David J. Slater, a British wildlife photographer, was shooting in one of Indonesia's national parks when the black-crested macaque snatched his camera equipment and became enthralled with the reflection in the camera lens. Slater shoots wildlife with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II so his DSLR lens was large enough for a clear reflection.

The macaque shot a couple hundred pictures before Slater was able to recover the equipment. And while many of the shots were out of focus, the majority of the pictures showed the monkeys showing off their teeth as it’s likely the first time they had seen their reflections. Slater said that the group of monkeys was initially frightened by the clicking sounds of the camera, but they all eventually returned to check out the gear.

The image above is actually a cropped version of the full frame below, but I like the directness of this version, the tension between the caricature of a smile and the sadness of the eyes, and the blunt geometry of the composition. Inadvertent or not, I'd still rank it as one of the most powerful and moving photographic self-portraits I've seen.

Totally Gratuitous Weekend Video

2011-07-09T09:22:00.001-04:00

While we're in the Hamptons doing the Art Hamptons art fair (this Thursday through Sunday), a little video showing that our Kate has lost neither her good looks or her sense of humor!

And if any one would like to visit the art fair (it's in Bridgehampton) here's a link to get you a free pass for two: click here.

July 4th.

2011-07-01T11:35:00.001-04:00

We all take firework pictures but not many as successful as those by Pierre LeHors, a young American (in spite of the name) photographer I was introduced to by David Strettel of Dashwood Books.

I was looking for some unusual pictures for a client's summer house and Strettel pointed out LeHors' book "Firework Studies".

As LeHors says in his artist's statement, "By constraining nearly all tonal values to stark blacks and pure whites, the trails, explosions and clouds of debris are reduced to a series of simple repeated formal elements: arced lines, spherical bursts, and randomly dispersed particles. i made no effort to limit digital artifacts resulting from pushing the image files past their conventional range; the resulting noise becomes hard to distinguish from the texture of the fireworks themselves."

We ended up selecting a group of 8 to hang in a grid, but rather than print them photographically LeHors chose to make silkscreens of each image thereby pushing the tonal values and painterly qualities even further. Anyway, it worked out really well and if you're interested, the book can be purchased at Dashwood. Just click here.

And happy 4th!

Dog Days

2011-06-18T22:33:00.001-04:00

Growing up, one of the sweetest dogs I knew was a Pit Bull named Oliver. So I was pleased to find via Yahoo a photographic reminder that the Pit Bull was not always the feared dog it is these days. Apparently in the late 19th and early 20th Century, the Pit Bull was even known as "The Nanny Dog" because of its steadfastness and reliability.

This is a case where photographic evidence presents the most convincing proof. And the further you dig, the more supporting data you find. So here just a few images in defense of the breed.

One Thousand Pictures

2011-06-07T18:32:00.001-04:00

At 8pm tomorrow, HBO will premiere the documentary, "One Thousand Pictures" - a film by Jennifer Stoddart that tells the story of Robert Kennedy's funeral train through the stories of many of the people who waited to see it, and in particular, through the recollections and photographs of Paul Fusco who was on the train tirelessly taking pictures of the vast cross section of Americans who came to pay their respects to the assassinated Senator and hope of many.

As I never tire of saying, Fusco's pictures are to me the greatest series in American photography, so it's interesting that the film doesn't see things from a photographic perspective. But that's its strength. It simply tells a deeply moving, sometimes shocking, and improbably nostalgic story. It's a worthy companion to Fusco's masterwork and should not be missed.

The Variations

2011-06-07T08:49:00.001-04:00

Two weeks left to see the latest development in the ongoing and fascinating career of Edward Mapplethorpe at the Michael Foley Gallery in New York.

In a career now entering its third decade, Mapplethorpe (the younger brother of Robert) has continually pushed the boundaries of what constitutes a photograph - moving from classical black and white portraits and still lives (which I have to remind people were as influential to his brother as his brother was to him) to photograms, to what is essentially painting with photographic material.

In his current work, titled "The Variations", Mapplethorpe has moved into Pollockian territory dripping and pouring photographic chemicals onto black and white photo paper with a mixture of spontaneous and controlled action. The densely layered abstractions were in part inspired by the artist's fascination with the classical pianist Glenn Gould and his iconoclastic re-interpretation of J. S. Bach’s "Goldberg Variations". When you enter the room you can feel the energy and dynamism that comes with breaking barriers.

The Dance Goes On

2011-06-02T09:25:00.001-04:00

Some of you may remember this post I did a few months ago about the above Muybridge gravure. Well so did the folks at 20 x 200 - a great web business which specializes in high quality but low cost photographs and prints. Founder Jen Bekman (we're mutual admirers) read the post and asked me if they could do an edition and as: a) it's long been in the public domain, and b) I believe it's an image well worth sharing - I agreed, thus launching their first reproduction as opposed to original art edition.

20 x 200's formula is simple - they create an edition with large numbers of small prints at a super-reasonable cost, and as the print gets bigger the edition size decreases while the cost goes up. So you can get an 8 x 10" print for $20 and larger prints anywhere from $200 to above $2,000 depending on the work and size.

The Muybridge sold out immediately in the 8 x 10, is close to selling out in the 16 x 20 (at $200), but there are still a number available in the 11 x 14 size (at $50). If you're interested you can click here to view and/or buy. As I say in their text - it's now going to be my own go-to wedding present for friends embarking on married life!

Surf's up - (again) !

2011-06-01T08:31:00.007-04:00

Hey - it's that time of year! Do you want to be looking at dreary black and white urban landscapes or pictures of sun, surf, and sport?

If you feel like the latter, there's a new book coming out covering a yet un-chronicled subsection of surf culture. In the 1980s while New York was witnessing the birth of the Hip Hop movement, Newport Beach was experiencing a counter culture of its own. At a small stretch of beach nicknamed “Echo Beach” a new look and style emerged in conjunction with the more bold and aggressive direction the sport was taking. Neon colors and pattern replaced the boho look of the 1970s. The Californification of the world was beginning.

Photographer Mike Moir was there recording the scene. And now in the publishing equivalent of a super-group Quiksilver and Chronicle Books will be releasing “The Eighties at Echo Beach,” written by Jamie Brisick, and designed by none other than frequent guest contributor to this blog, surf archivist, design superstar, and my good friend Tom Adler.

The book is not coming out until later this summer, but for those who can't wait, Partners & Spade are previewing the book and have a few advance copies at their Great Jones Street office/gallery. There's an opening tonight and the space is open to the public on weekends. There will also be a sneak peak at Adler and Danziger Projects' latest collaboration - a set of four new surf related graphic works about which more later.

P.S.

As so often happens, while Googling around on the subject I came across these pictures by surf photographer Chris Sardelis. Nice work.

Happy Memorial Day!

2011-05-27T15:29:00.001-04:00

Some things come into your mailbox and make you smile. For me it's this collage announcing Duncan Hannah's forthcoming show at Half Gallery. The juxtaposition of this sexy summery profile with the stodgy Country Life - and their Christmas Number, no less - make for a funny and surreal jolt!

Duncan Hannah, who is best known as a talented realist painter, is one of those artists who I see making their way around the galleries, checking out what's on. I always think this is a good sign - someone not so locked in their garret (or studio) that they can't engage with the world.

Anyway, the show opens June 1 and I certainly plan to check it out. In the meantime, to those in The States - have a happy Memorial Day Weekend!

Richard Learoyd

2011-05-25T17:58:00.003-04:00

Exactly one month left to see the Richard Learoyd show at the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco. Try not to miss it if you're anywhere near the area. For those with good or even short memories, Learoyd was number one in my Top Ten list of 2010 - singled out for invigorating at least three genres at once – cameraless (or more accurately film-less) photography, portraiture, and still life.

Working with a self-made camera that creates highly detailed near life-size images by projecting an image directly onto photographic paper without any interposing negative, Learoyd produces unique large scale prints unlike anything seen before. There is a tactility and a detail that makes the figures (and objects) seem like they will at any moment start breathing and walk right out of the frame.

Surprisingly (to me) for many years Learoyd was a commercial photographer - an area that somehow rarely produces top notch fine art photographers. You tend to pick a lane (or the lane picks you). At least that's been my experience over a very long period of looking of photographers' work. But Learoyd is the exception and proves that there is always someone doing something not only new but new and with integrity, substance, depth and meaning. The trick is to find them!

I know it gets a little tiring to constantly single out Fraenkel's shows, but they do them beautifully and most shows, including this one, have accompanying catalogs that are collectibles in their own right and well worth the money. ($45 for the Learoyd catalog.)

If I Had A Million Dollars ...

2011-05-19T08:59:00.002-04:00

Gustave Le Gray (1820-1884) Bateaux quittant le port du Havre, 1856 or 1857.

If I had a million dollars - or more precisely $115,000 - $175,000 (or possibly more) - I would want to bid on this striking seascape by Gustave Le Gray. Coming up in the Vendôme Photo Auction in Paris on June 18, it has the rare distinction of coming directly from a collection of one of the photographer’s peers, the 19th century shipping magnate Charles Denis Labrousse.

Gustave Le Gray is an interesting figure in photography. Barely recognized until the late 1970s, a cache of Le Gray's at the Victoria and Albert Museum led to the late recognition of the quality of his work. And while Le Gray mastered many genres of photography, he is justly celebrated for his seascapes and the technical innovation of using multiple negatives to produce works where the sky was as well exposed as the sea. (Until Le Gray you rarely see skies of any note in 19th Century photographs.)

One of the pioneering practitioners of the medium, Le Gray made his first daguerreotypes by 1847. His early photographs included portraits, scenes of nature such as Fontainebleau Forest, and buildings such as châteaux of the Loire Valley. He taught photography to students including Charles Nègre, Henri Le Secq, Nadar, and Maxime Du Camp. In 1851 he helped found the Société Héliographique, the first photographic organization in the world. He also published one of the first treatises on photography.

In 1855 Le Gray opened a lavishly furnished studio in Paris, becoming a successful and noted portraitist while at the same time beginning his first seascapes. In spite of his artistic success, however, his business was a financial failure. The studio was poorly managed and ran into debt at which point Le Gray closed his studio, abandoned his wife and children, and fled France.

In 1860 he traveled around the Mediterranean with Alexandre Dumas, but they parted ways after a clash over a woman they both fancied. Le Gray moved on to Lebanon, then Syria, and Egypt. In Alexandria he photographed the future Edward VII of England. He established himself in Cairo in 1864 where he remained for about 20 years, earning a modest living as a professor of drawing while retaining a small photography shop. He sent pictures to the universal exhibition in 1867 but they failed to catch the public's attention. He died in 1884.

While the Le Gray market was slow to develop, in October 1999, Sotheby's sold a Le Gray albumen print "Beech Tree, Fontainebleau" to an anonymous buyer for £419,500, setting a world record for the most expensive single photograph sold at auction. Later that day at the same auction, an albumen print of "Grande Vague, Sète" also by Le Gray was sold for a new world record price of £507,500 or $840,370 to the same anonymous buyer. The buyer was later revealed to be Sheik Saud Al-Thani of Qatar. The record stood until May 2003 when Al-Thani purchased a daguerreotype by Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey for £565,250 or $922,488.

Over the past eight years the record has continued to climb and just last week the world record for the most expensive photograph sold at auction went to Cindy Sherman’s “Untitled #96″ from 1981, when it sold for $3.89 million at Christie’s.

So that million isn't going to get you far in the contemporary art photo game, making the Le Gray an even more appealing buy!

Cindy Sherman. Untitled #96. 1981.

You're All Invited

2011-05-10T16:44:00.005-04:00

From left to right, Kate by Bruce Weber, Annie Leibovitz, Juergen Teller, and Chuck Close. In the background, Glen Luchford.

Two views of the new gallery. We're opening Thursday evening with our long-in-the-planning collaboration with Kate Moss - "The Kate Moss Portfolio and Other Stories". Click here for more details.

The cone will be gone, the cement will be dry, and the show will be a knockout, I promise!

The opening is 6 to 8 p.m. and all blog readers are welcome.

Something to Dream About

2011-05-04T08:20:00.003-04:00

Sometimes those of us in the fine art photo world forget about the simple visceral pleasure a sunset snapshot can bring.

This one came into my e-mail box calling for applications for Guesthouse Basel - a collaboration between e-flux and Städelschule, Frankfurt - a free residency for young artists, curators, writers and gallerists. The residence will be located in close proximity to the Art Basel fair grounds and will run from June 15 through June 19, 2011.

Guest residents will be provided with basic accommodations (hammocks), shared bathrooms, common work room and breakfast. Residents will be expected to help run the guesthouse. The reception area of the guesthouse will be the site for public programming developed by the residents.

To apply, send a short bio + 500 word statement of intent to guesthouse@e-flux.com.

I'm not sure the beach is provided, but the dream is free!

Now It Can Be Told

2011-04-26T16:44:00.000-04:00

There's always a fairly legitimate reason when there's a long delay between posts. And the reason this time is that I was deep in the planning and negotiations for moving the gallery to a new space three times the size of my current gallery and one block south.

The new address is 527 West 23rd Street and we will be opening on May 12 with an exhibition based on a portfolio we created with Kate Moss featuring pictures of her by 11 of the world's leading fashion and fine art photographers. As this show was originally planned when we were going to be in our current space, in addition to the portfolio we will be showing other great photographs of Kate Moss dating from 1988 (by Gene Lemuel) to a picture taken just a couple of weeks ago by Terry Richardson. Not to be missed are pictures by Glen Luchford, Herb Ritts, Mary McCartney, and British pop artist Peter Blake.

You can preview the show here. And as always, all blog readers are welcome to come to the opening which runs from 6 to 8 p.m. on May 12.

Now please excuse me, we need to get back to packing and unpacking!

Return of The Weekend Video

2011-04-16T09:46:00.001-04:00

It's been a while since I've done a Weekend Video but the song "Price Tag" by Jessie J certainly has me boppin' and looks to be the catchy song of the summer! I particularly like the anti-materialistic lyrics - a nice antidote to the designer label references in so many hits.

Seems like everybody's got a price,
I wonder how they sleep at night.
When the sale comes first,
And the truth comes second,
Just stop, for a minute and
Smile

Why is everybody so serious
Acting so damn mysterious
Got your shades on your eyes
And your heels so high
That you can't even have a good time

Everybody look to their left (yeah)
Everybody look to their right (ha)
Can you feel that (yeah)
We're paying with love tonight
It's not about the money, money, money
We don't need your money, money, money
We just wanna make the world dance,
Forget about the Price Tag
Ain't about the (uh) Cha-Ching Cha-Ching.
Aint about the (yeah) Ba-Bling Ba-Bling
Wanna make the world dance,
Forget about the Price Tag.

Spring Reading

2011-04-08T08:06:00.001-04:00

I do apologize for the gap in posting. Travel does that as it's often difficult to blog on overseas trips and then there's all the work to catch up on when you get back. There's also a lot going on gallery-wise which I'll update on soon, but it's all good.

One thing travel does afford me is the chance to catch up on reading. Something I'm really bad it during the normal course of events. Of course the books I read are usually photography related and this trip enabled me to catch up with two of the best books I've read in a long time.

The first - The Alice Behind Wonderland - by Simon Winchester is a short book but an engrossing and highly detailed account of the backstory and creation of Lewis Carroll's famous image of Alice Liddell as a beggar girl. Winchester's prose is somewhat breathless, but intentionally so, reflecting the pent-up emotions of both the artist and his time.

Winchester paints an engrossing portrait of Charles Dodgson, his Oxford milieu, and the Liddell family - Alice in particular. He also does an excellent job describing the evolution of photography in it's early days. Carroll's famous picture was taken in 1858, not far from the first days of fixing photographic images on paper. So it's an all round illuminating read as well as breezily entertaining.

The other book, which I'm about halfway through, is Patti Smith's recollection of her friendship and relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. I've never been a big follower of Patti Smith so it has taken me a while to get to the book in spite of its winning a National Book Award. However, Smith is a natural and highly gifted writer and the book is not what you would expect. It's really an account of growing up, of being poor and struggling artists, of living in downtown New York City in the late 1960s and 1970s, of finding your voice, and it's a love story that's complicated in the way love stories are where the love is real but there's something there to stop it from ever working out.

On the Road Again

2011-03-28T04:20:00.002-04:00

As you can probably see from this picture taken out of my hotel window, I'm in Paris - to participate in a symposium at the Pernod Ricard Foundation. Then on to London to meet with some museum and gallery people.

I've just arrived but will share whatever good things I find.

Shot

2011-03-23T23:51:00.001-04:00

Photograph by Robert Beck/SI

The above photograph of Brigham Young University's Jimmer Fredette graces the cover of this week's Sports Illustrated and is justly being hailed an instant classic. Taken by SI's Robert Beck during BYU's third-round win over Gonzaga, it captures the 6' 2" leading collegiate scorer as he soars to make a three-pointer.

It has it all! The impossible height Fredette seems to achieve, the domination of the Gonzaga defender, the dramatic light that echoes the ball as it prepares to make its way to the hoop. The greatest sports photographs are always works of art.

AIPAD Reader Favorites

2011-03-21T20:30:00.002-04:00

Nobuyoshi Araki. Untitled, from the series "Mythology", 2001

Two people were kind enough to send in their AIPAD favorites. Above - from photographer Frank Schramm with this explanation:

Here is my favorite image from this years AIPAD Show 2011. The Galerie Priska Pasquer, who specializes in Japanese Photography and, who was effected not getting all the images it wanted from some of there newer artists, due to the Tsunami, I was very taken by a photograph by one of my favorite photographers, Nobuyoshi Araki. This being from his series "Mythology" 2001 - I have never seen this image before. It is not the style one would expect from Araki's - other work. It's interesting to me because of it's - classic style of a young japanese woman dressed in traditional kimono attire. I really love this image, because, I see it as Araki - "Inside - Out" in reflection of his traditional images.

Photograph by Esteban Pastorino Diaz

And these two images (above and below) from Lane Nevares without any comment.

Photograph by Rita Bernstein

AIPAD 2011

2011-03-19T09:17:00.003-04:00

It's the weekend of AIPAD (the Association of International Photographic Art Dealers show) at the Park Avenue Armory, and while it didn't work out on our gallery schedule to participate, there are plenty of great things to see. Given a busy travel schedule, I haven't able to do my usual aisle by aisle round-up, but one of the great pleasures of AIPAD is discovering that gem of a photograph by some unknown or little known photographer and this year, the always reliable David Winter came through again.

For those not in the know, David is a private dealer specializing in vernacular, press, 19th century and other great images not in the usual high-end or big name price range. It's the image that matters to him and his booth is always bursting with a hyper-salon style floor to ceiling hanging.

I caught this image there of Coretta Scott King and while I don't know the exact details, it seems to have been taken at a rally in the 1960s (that's Harry Belafonte in the back) or perhaps a funeral. It looks a little like a William Klein of the period but the composition with King's face framed by the two military helmets, the drama of the foreshortening combined with the slashing line of the gun and bayonet, and the incredible nobility of King's face make for a memorable and powerful image.

AIPAD runs through tomorrow afternoon so if you're anywhere near the city do go see it. And feel free to send me your own favorite find. (To info@danzigerprojects.com.)

Observed

2011-03-11T18:14:00.002-05:00

Lunching at The Standard Hotel today, I noticed that every single person at the tables around us was on their phone. This touching father/daughter scene was a wry comment on communication in the digital age (and made for a pretty good iPhone snap). FYI - I was not on my phone. I'm not a fan of texting while dining with others.

When Terry Met Robert

2011-03-10T07:12:00.004-05:00

The legendary art director Alexey Brodovich famously instructed his student Richard Avedon to "Astonish me!". I've always thought my mantra would be more about delight, but originality, energy, wit and sometimes shock are in there too. The bad boys of photography get this and today no-one gets it better than Terry Richardson.

I was surfing the web looking at Terry Richardson pictures when I came across these images that the photographer shot for Reebok last year. (They're pretty tame compared to a lot of his work, I know.) The brief was to revitalize the brand's "Classics Collection" with a campaign that would run in VICE Magazine but I think he did an amazing job showing what can come out of a creative and original vision. Bear in mind that all he's working with is a girl in a room, rather basic clothing, and the sneakers, but look what he brought to the job with his humor and verve.

A further example of Richardson's work can now be seen around New York on billboards of his new campaign for the skateboard and clothing company Supreme. Chelsea being Chelsea, these pictures have now been integrated into street art by an unknown artist who's been pasting up half-tone details of famous artist's portraits including the famous Robert Mapplethorpe self-portrait. It's an apt mash-up. And I'm pretty sure Robert would have approved of it all - Richardson, Lady Gaga (especially after she reportedly dissolved a deal with Target over their support of anti-gay candidates), and the street art!

The Galliano Affair

2011-03-08T07:38:00.003-05:00

I wanted to write about the John Galliano affair because as a Jew with an English accent and a posh education (St. Paul’s School and Yale) people often assume I'm not Jewish and are therefore more open (and conspiratorial) about their prejudice. I’ve stopped counting the number of times people have inadvertently confided to me about some place being “too Jewish” or “jappy”, or bemoaned the power/stinginess/grubbiness of the Jews. Most of the time I say something. Sometimes I let it pass appreciating that the person has revealed themselves.

The Galliano affair is both an old and a new type of story. Old because prejudice is as old as civilization and new because it was new technology that did Galliano in. A video recorded on a cell phone showed his anti-semitic rant was a habit, not an isolated incident and confirmed the inevitability of his firing.

After the first account of Galliano’s restaurant behavior surfaced and he was suspended but not fired, a smart friend of mine who is the p.r. for The Met Costume Institute said “there must be other things out there for them to have suspended him so quickly”. And lo and behold the next day the “I love Hitler” video surfaced and Galliano was fired. But Christian Dior and LVMH must have known about Galliano’s habit of drunken tirades - so no great credit to them. The only person to have come out with any integrity was Natalie Portman who refused to wear her planned Galliano dress to the Oscars. This was the only thing that made me deal with her Oscar for what I thought was one of the worst films of the year. (Yes – I’m afraid I’m anti-Black Swan!)

Prejudice, I believe, is an ingrained characteristic. There’s nearly always some “type” you tend to internally react against. Rich, poor, fat, skinny, gay, black, Jew, WASP, etc.. I know as many people who don’t like bankers as bankers who don’t like welfare mothers. And while we should all work to fight this feeling and respect everyone, our prejudices are part of what makes us an individual. Our dislikes define us as much as our likes.

The line to draw is when private prejudice crosses into public prejudice. A private prejudice acknowledges that there is something wrong about prejudice. A public prejudice mistakenly assumes it is acceptable. It is not.

Game Changer

2011-03-04T08:52:00.001-05:00

The entrance to Pier 24 in San Francisco.

Word has slowly been getting out about a new photography space in San Francisco that is quite literally a game changer. The result of one man’s relatively new-found passion for photography, Pier 24 is a 28,000 square foot private museum that is open to the public on a by appointment only basis. The back story is extraordinary.

In 2002, Andy Pilara, a San Francisco businessman, went to see the Diane Arbus show “Revelations” at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and was, to understate it, deeply moved. Without having ever bought a photograph, he delved into the medium – learning, looking, listening to experts and ultimately acquiring over 2,000 pictures to date. His collection became so large he began to look for a space to house it and after a fruitless search a friend suggested he contact the San Francisco Port Authority which owned a number of piers that were unused but in disrepair. Two years later, Pier 24 opened in the spring of 2010. Beautifully finished and constructed and designed to be a series of 17 interconnected spaces that flow engagingly from one gallery to another, I am sure it must be the largest space devoted exclusively to photography in the world.

The opening show was a selection of works from Pilara’s collection. The just closed second show highlighted work from the collection of Randi and Bob Fisher (of the GAP). Next up will be works relating to San Francisco - either pictures of S.F. or pictures by S.F. based photographers.

To get in you have to e-mail in advance to set up an appointment. Admission is free. The museum admits only 20 visitors per two-hour time slot from Monday through Thursday, along with a few small school or museum groups. A glass door at the entrance is unlocked after your appointment is confirmed via intercom. From then on you have the place to yourself. There are no wall labels as Pilara wants visitors to have a "quiet and contemplative" encounter with the work on view. It is in many ways a place very much for the photographic cognoscenti, but Pilara takes the justifiable point of view that too many museum visitors spend more time looking at labels than at art.

In any case, Pier 24 now firmly establishes San Francisco as a center of photography to rival anywhere in the world. Between Pier 24, SF MoMA, the Fraenkel Gallery and the numerous smaller galleries that dot the Geary Street area, as well as the recent appointment of Julian Cox (formerly of the Getty and The High Museum) as Founding Curator of Photography for the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and Chief Curator at the de Young, there is more than enough and at the highest level of quality to justify a special trip for any photography lover.

Below - a few snaps from my recent visit to Pier 24. Unfortunately, this show closed right after my visit but the new show should be opening at the end of March. And rather than show room after room, these pictures are just to give a flavor of the space.

As you walked into the Fisher Collection show at Pier 24, you were greeted by this assemblage of vintage Edward Weston's from his nude on the dune series.

A Struth "Museum" picture leads to a room of Bechers.

The Becher room.

The Eggleston room.

A corner of the Winogrand room.

Andy Pilara's office with a view of the Bay Bridge.

Totally Gratuitous Weekend Video

2011-03-04T06:33:00.002-05:00

What Artists Give Us

2011-02-25T23:27:00.003-05:00

Sze Tsung Leong. Alameda, México DF, 2009

First, please excuse the current lapse in posts. I was away on the west coast - about which more to come as soon as I get a chance.

Just before I left, however, I went to see the just opened show "Cities" by Sze Tsung Leong (at Yossi Milo) and was much taken by the craft and consistency of vision of this relatively new to the scene photographer. Leong - as you will see from his website produces vast serial bodies of landscape work sticking to a fairly rigid compositional format for each series. This in itself is nothing new, but Leong travels so far and to so many places that his encyclopedic breadth crossed with his pictorial skill combine to take us somewhere new.

A sure sign of this is that when I looked out of my hotel window in Los Angeles, I felt I was seeing a Leong picture! And as I thought about this, I realized that one of the things artists give us is a way of defining and ordering what we see. A sea horizon can be a Meyerowitz or a Sugimoto. A random gesture in a park can be a Winogrand. A tackily colored interior can be an Eggleston. And rather than taking away from the pleasure of seeing these things, for those of us who are not artists I think it actually adds pleasure. Recognizing the association is in itself a creative gesture. Thus the realization that the scene outside my window (below) was like a Leong was both a gift from the artist and a gift from and to myself.

Weekend Video

2011-02-17T22:33:00.001-05:00

This week I had the pleasure of seeing the Academy Award nominated documentary "Wasteland" and meeting its director Lucy Walker. The film follows the Brazilian photographer Vik Muniz as he sets out to create a body of work rendering portraits of the garbage pickers of Rio's Jardim Gramacho - the largest landfill in the world - out of the garbage they sift through every day. The idea was that all the money Muniz made from the sale of these pictures would be given back to the pickers and their union. However it also turned out to be a shining example of how doing the right thing can bring as much to the giver as the receiver.

For those not familiar with Muniz's work, it is largely comprised of renditions of iconic images done in unusual material like chocolate syrup or paint swatches and then photographed by the artist. You can see a lot on Muniz's own site here.

Following the unusual, dangerous, and daunting project, Walker focuses on a handful of Muniz's truly memorable subjects and by the time the film is over you not only feel you've gotten to know them, but you care deeply about them. Subtextually, the film also addresses the often complicated issue of what makes something a work of art in a refreshingly clear-headed way. It's moving, entertaining, and illuminating. It's playing here and there, but obviously if the film gets an Oscar it will be easier to access.

Whatever happens, don't miss it.

Love Lost (& found!)

2011-02-14T11:50:00.003-05:00

An occupational hazard of my profession is that given the number of prints we show, store, etc., - things go missing (although they all eventually show up). It's not like a painting gallery where an artist might drop off a dozen paintings for a show. We literally deal in hundreds of images and prints. Some are consigned, some are owned, others get dropped off and never picked up.

There's a slightly different story regarding the picture above, however. Many years ago, I was browsing in the Museum of Modern Art's bookstore and came across a French book on motion in photography with this Muybridge of a couple dancing on the cover. Muybridge is best known for his studies of animals in motion. (He was the person who proved that a horse's four legs do all leave the ground at once but not as previously assumed in the legs out rocking horse position. After Muybridge set up his cameras to settle a bet between two rich San Franciscans, his pictures revealed that the only time a horse's legs all leave the ground at once are when they are tucked under the body.) But I digress.

Muybridge also photographed the human body in motion, but I found this image particularly pleasing and very romantic. So I set out to try and buy a print. Calls to all the Muybridge specialists proved fruitless. Trips to galleries and art fairs yielded no leads. Then one day about six years ago, I was at Photo L.A. and saw a booth with Muybridges. The booth owner didn't have it but thought he had seen it in another booth. That booth didn't have it but thought he had seen it in another booth. On and on this went until the last possible booth where the dealer dug into a stack of gravures and produced the image!

I brought the print back home and eventually took it to Washington D.C. for my friend David Adamson to scan so I would always have a copy and could in fact sell reproductions if I wanted to. (Being from the late 1800s there are no copyright issues.)

After leaving it there for a few months I forgot about it. I was probably busy opening Danziger Projects. And when I finally inquired about it David thought it had been returned to me. I thought I had misplaced it. Several searches at Danziger Projects and Adamson turned up nothing. I had a horrible half-memory of taking it on the train from D.C. to N.Y.C. and leaving the package on the train.

On my last trip to Adamson a week ago, I asked David if he could at least locate the scan so I could have a copy. And then he thought he might have actually seen the print in a drawer. We opened one drawer after another and again when we got to the last drawer the original print of the dancing couple reappeared! It's now back in the gallery. After what must be a at least a seven or eight year odyssey from first seeing the image in a book, clearly the only solution is to get it framed and hang it on the wall. Things that go into boxes and shelves have a way of hiding themselves!

Hope I haven't bored you with the story. But this post is my valentine to all Year in Pictures readers. Happy Valentine's Day. As I never tire of saying - "Photography is love"!

A Matter of Time

2011-02-10T10:01:00.002-05:00

There are special moments when the art world comes together to acknowledge the impact and zeitgeist of a particular show and for New Yorkers, that moment is the current Christian Marclay exhibition at the Paula Cooper Gallery at 534 West 21st Street.

From now until Feb 19, the gallery is showing Marclay's extaordinary 24 hour video piece "The Clock" - a real time assemblage of hundreds (if not thousands) of film clips all dealing in some way with timepieces and time (and myriad other themes, sub-themes, etc.). In other words, if you come into the gallery at 3:04 p.m., the film might be showing a sequence in which, say, Cary Grant will be looking at his watch and it will say 3:04. Ten minutes later, a clip from a german expressionist film of the 30s might have a clock in the background where the time will be 3:14. It might be better explained in the video below.

If you have any opportunity to see this piece, I highly recommend it. You can, of course, dip in and out as you wish. The gallery has an enormous screening room full of very comfortable chairs and couches and the most surprising thing is how entertaining and gripping the work is. Most significantly, this weekend and next (the last two weekends of the show) the gallery will be open from Friday until Sunday 10 a.m. in order to allow the hardiest souls to watch the entire 24 hour cycle.

You can read some background here. And for those outside of New York, it's probably only a matter of time (no pun intended) until "The Clock" comes to a museum near you.

Dean Fidelman

2011-02-05T10:53:00.000-05:00

One of the many qualities of Bruce Weber is his generosity towards other photographers. As an enthusiast, collector, and publisher, Weber has brought a number of lesser known photographers to light, mostly through his self-published magazine "All-American" - now in its 10th volume.

In the most recent issue of "All-American" Weber has included a portfolio of photographs by Dean Fidelman which combine the schools of climbing photographs and the nude in a skilled and original way. I particularly like how unsalacious these pictures are. They're more about athleticism and have a kind of hippy/back to nature vibe linking them to the "Stone Master" photographers of the 70s.

My friend Tom Adler, another great discoverer of photographers, recently put together a terrific book on the Stone Masters which I somehow missed blogging about, but you can get it here.

Below, a few more pictures by Fidelman:

A View from Above

2011-02-05T09:50:00.003-05:00

We're all a little sick of the snow right now, yes? But to see exactly what a phenomenon the storms over the United States have been, this amazing satellite view courtesy NASA. It should certainly please Andreas Gursky! Click here if this reference needs further explanation.

Kenneth O'Halloran

2011-02-01T20:13:00.001-05:00

Another picture which stopped me in my tracks. This photograph from Kenneth O' Halloran's "Fair Trade" series (on Irish Fairs) is a stunner! I love its Heironymous Boschian composition, its dabs of color, and the way your eye is pulled back into the ever denser concentration of horses and figures at the back of the frame.

It's atypical of the rest of the series' Sanderesque portraits, but those are pretty strong too as you'll see below.

I'm beginning to feel that the Sander to Sartorialist composed portrait is becoming almost too prevalent these days, but what's interesting is how in the hands of someone with a distinctive vision, it still has some kick. But I'd love to see O'Halloran come up with more pictures like the top one.

Milton Rogovin 1909 - 2011

2011-01-19T22:45:00.003-05:00

Milton Rogovin passed away this week at the surprising age of 101. I was lucky enough to represent Milton and put on two shows of his work and over the last few years I wrote about him a number of times on this blog. Re-reading what I wrote, I hope that much of it bears repeating.

"Sometimes life gets in the way of the art. This is one of the few plausible explanations of why Milton Rogovin is not more widely know or celebrated than he is. I have been lucky enough to represent Milton’s work for the last few years and I hope you’ll check out all the pictures on the Danziger Projects website. (Click here to view.) Hopefully you’ll see why he’s such a photographer’s photographer – a particular favorite of Alec Soth and Tanyth Berkeley amongst many others.

Rogovin’s pictures consist almost entirely of portraits of workers and the working class. His prints are nearly all a modest 8 x 10 inches – a size that suits his commitment to activism above art world recognition and his dedication to social issues, most notably the plight of the miners around the world; the decline of the American steel industry, and the struggle of the working people of his home town of Buffalo, New York.

Deceptively straightforward, Rogovin’s photographs reveal a personal style that up-ends the usual balance between a great photographer and the subject. While most masters of photography wittingly dominate the picture, in Rogovin's work the subject commands equal strength. The photographic style is deadpan. The camera simply provides a stage for his subjects to present themselves as they see fit. Rogovin trusts them and their ability to present themselves as the unique individuals they are. Whether because of his respect and empathy for his sitters or the sincerity of his humanism and politics, this seemingly simple concept re-addresses the delicate balance of power between the observer and the observed.

My favorite example of this is his 1973 picture of Lower West Siders Johnny Lee Wines and Zeke Johnson. "It's a picture of pure happiness" said one viewer. So to spread the feeling, here are some unpublished and unseen shots of Johnny from that day."

They seem to me as fitting a tribute today as ever.

Morning Light

2011-01-15T12:30:00.001-05:00

Long Meadow North. 2005. Photograph by Joseph O. Holmes.

Jan 17, according to a recent study, has been deemed the "most depressing day of the year". This finding by social psychologists was made by calculating how long it takes for us to break our New Year's resolutions, for the holiday bills to pile up, and the effect of the weather and the dark. Not surprisingly, January is also considered the most depressing month and according to my own highly unscientific study, this January in particular is dragging along at a much slower pace than most Januaries.

There are, however, a few metaphorical (as well as actual) bright clouds and one of them for me is walking my dog in the morning when Central Park is still blanketed with white snow and before the dirt of the city turns everything to grey slush. I try to time my walk so that I get into the park just as the sun is rising and this week with its pale blue morning skies and golden red sunrises has been particularly beautiful.

Add to this that after 11 years our semi-wild collie/lab/sheperd/chow mix has finally mellowed enough to be let off the leash and not take off for parts unknown and you get a morning walk that is at once serene, invigorating, and joyful. There's nothing quite like seeing a happy dog bounding through snow!

Another bright cloud is seeing a good show by a friend and I finally got the chance this week to catch up with Joseph Holmes current exhibition “The Urban Wilderness” at the Jen Bekman gallery in Soho. It’s up until January 23 so there’s still time to catch it.

Joe’s pictures were taken in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, not Central Park, but they convey the same magical feeling of the urban metropolis transformed into a wintery Eden. And they’re nearly all about dog walking! (As well as about light, and color, and composition.) Joe values may be old-fashioned – he’s someone looking to find the sublime or the memorable in the everyday – but his pictures have a nice contemporary feel due to their color and scale. And the show is a sure cure for those January blues!

Above and below from the current show:

Nethermead

And two brand new photographs from this December:

Long Meadow North No. 2

The White Oaks.

Weekend Video

2011-01-08T17:47:00.002-05:00

Just saw Sofia Coppola's new movie "Somewhere". I loved it but I can fully understand how some people would find it aggravating. First, while the film is about connection (or the lack of), it's cast in a louche world of fame, privilege and indolence. Secondly, Coppola has a still photographic style that any one addicted action and fast cuts would have trouble sitting through. Coppola sets up the frame (beautifully), allows a scene to leisurely unfold, and then is on to the next wry vignette. What no-one could quibble with is Coppola's taste in music and how she uses it. All her movies have original song choices and I came out of this film stuck on the song "I'll Try Anything Once" by Julian Casablancas of The Strokes which is used as a something of a refrain throughout the film.

So here's the song (above) and the trailer (below). For readers of this blog (i.e. intelligent, visual, open-minded people) the film is a good bet!

Boulevard

2011-01-06T20:44:00.004-05:00

When I spoke about surprises in my recent Top Ten, I didn’t expect to be surprised so quickly and as dramatically as I was when I opened up an envelope from the Fraenkel Gallery to find a card with the image above on the cover announcing Katy Grannan’s new show (opening on Saturday in San Francisco). Do click on the image to see it in a larger size.

I’ve written admiringly about Katy Grannan before, but her new series, BOULEVARD, takes her work to a whole new level. As Fraenkel’s website describes the work, these pictures were made over the past three years in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Shooting against white stucco walls in strong midday light, the city streets became Grannan’s outdoor studio. The characters who populate Grannan’s Boulevards are a parade of down and outers and eccentrics – the lady above being (I think) an exception. But every picture is shot with mesmerizing intensity and shocking jolts of color.

What was most surprising to me, though, was that I normally HATE this type of photography. The passion for displaying photographs of low-lives and losers is so far from my aesthetic I can never understand how people could ever want to live with these kind of pictures. But to me Grannan’s photographs are about something else. First, they seem to belong more to the school of street observation in the tradition of Evans and Callahan and De Corcia than to the freak school of Arbus and more recently Robert Bergman. Note how in Grannan’s pictures no-one is making direct eye contact with the camera. The subjects are aware they are being photographed, but they are more rooted in their own world and their own reality than the photographer's. Secondly, the color and light in these pictures is just extraordinary. It must have taken some technical expertise to get it just right. Lastly, there is a humanism in these pictures that makes them extraordinarily complex. Everyone seems to contain a story. Take the woman pictured above. Is she rich? Is she poor? Is she beautiful or ugly? Is she proud of her color co-ordination, her lipstick, her hair? Is her expression the result of a life well-lived or one of regrets? Whatever the answers, the pictures are masterpieces.

(FYI – there’s a wonderful large format catalog available for $45. Only 2000 were printed and they’ll probably sell out fast so hurry!)

A Cautionary Tweet

2011-01-05T21:25:00.002-05:00

Recently sent to me, this picture posted by Russell Brand on his Twitter page shows his wife, Katy Perry, waking up without a scrap of make-up. As you can see below, this is not Ms. Perry usual look. Apparently, she was less than pleased with the posting, as it was quickly deleted from Russell's Twitter page. But as most of us hopefully know, the internet is an unforgiving environment. Once posted, never forgotten.

The 2010 Top Ten list

2010-12-31T18:40:00.002-05:00

What is December 31 without a top ten list?

It’s been an odd year. A recovery year where it seemed like there were fewer highs and lows as everyone hunkered down with fingers crossed. Photographers being the creative people they are, however, signs of life could not be kept down and so in no particular order here are my top ten visual pleasures of 2010.

1. Richard Learoyd.

Working with a self-made camera that creates highly detailed near life-size images by projecting an image directly onto photographic paper without any interposing negative – Learoyd has invigorated at least three genres at once – cameraless (or more accurately film-less) photography, portraiture, and still life.

2. Auctions.

Continuing to make inroads into what was traditionally gallery territory, the auction houses (particularly Christies and Phillips) are putting on more interesting, original, and varied sales. And for the astute collector there are always bargains. This Irving Penn self-portrait from 1948 went for what I’m sure will be seen as a buy at $45,000 at Christies in London this past spring. I'd say it's worth at least double.

3. Mickalene Thomas.

The connections between contemporary art and traditional photography continue to intertwine as seen here in Mickalene Thomas’ bad-ass tribute to Seydou Keita. Jumping between painting, appliqué, and photography, Mickalene Thomas is just one of the new breed of hyphenates making waves as the art and photography world continue to grow closer together.

4. Susan Derges.

After a relatively quiet period, Susan Derges – one of the fab four of British camera-less photography – has re-emerged with a series of new photograms based around the idea of rock pools. In this image, Jackson Pollock meets Turner as light, color, and line intersect in a glorious mixture of fresh photographic ideas.

5. Tokyo Photo.

Gaining strength and energy – Tokyo Photo is fast emerging as the go-to fair of the east. Founder Tomo Harada, pictured above, has made it his mission to make the event a must see and entering year three the mix of American and Japanese dealers is creating an ever more exciting cultural exchange.

6. Patrick Smith.

Top of the list of new(ish) names that have emerged in photography this year is French photographer Patrick Smith. While clearly working in the tradition of Vitali and Niedermayr, Smith’s pictorial eye and immaculate exposures have a purity all their own.

7. Surprises.

No matter how much you think you know about photography, there are always surprises. Going through Art Miami I came across a group of pictures of Elizabeth Taylor by Frank Worth. I don’t know how I had never seen or heard of these images before but that is what makes life so interesting. (And boy, was she a beauty!)

8. Bruce Weber.

One of the best museum shows around (and up through February 13), Bruce Weber’s photographs of the residents of Miami’s “Little Haiti” neighborhood at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami are a reflection of Weber’s outstanding skill and diversity. To those who only think of Weber as a fashion photographer, the work may be a surprise, but to any one who has followed his career closely, the humanism and warmth of the work should come only as a welcome treat.

9. Jim Krantz.

One of the few disappointments of this gallery year for me was putting off a show of Jim Krantz’s work when we couldn’t get the releases we needed. Krantz is probably the most distinguished of the Marlboro photographers whose work was appropriated by Richard Prince for his “Cowboys” series. But Krantz is back in the saddle making new images strictly for himself of which the above image shot in 2010 is just the beginning. Stay tuned.

10. Teresa Vlckova

Noted as one of the highlights of Aperture’s latest round-up of new talent - reGeneration 2 – Teresa Vlckova creates pictures that pull us into her otherworldly universe of flying girls and Brothers Grimm-like twins. Born in 1983 in Vsetín, Czech Republic, Vlčková’s work will be seen in the U.S. for the first time in January when Aperture exhibits a selection of work of the 80 photographers featured in the book "reGeneration 2". If Vlckova lives up to her early promise, she will clearly be a name to be reckoned with.

A Winter's Tale

2010-12-18T16:13:00.003-05:00

Yuji Obata. Homage to Wilson A. Bentley #1. 2005 - 2006.

My latest enthusiasm is for the work of Yuji Obata who we are now lucky enough to represent. I was introduced to Obata’s work by Yoshiko Suzuki, curator of the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, who kindly gave me a rare copy of Obata’s study of winter in the Hokkaido Province titled “Winter Tale”.

Yuji Obata was born in Japan in 1962. He attended the Nihon University College of Art and currently resides in Tokyo. In 2003, Obata was compelled to photograph winter scenes in Japan as he stood in front of Pieter Bruegel's painting "The Hunters in the Snow" in Vienna's Museum of Art History. Upon returning to Japan, he traveled to the country's northernmost island, Hokkaidō, known for its cold and snowy winters. As he worked there photographing ice skaters at a middle school rink and a local speed skating team, his enchantment with images of winter deepened. Traveling around different regions of the island in winter, he began noticing the varied qualities of the snow itself, and finally became fascinated with the unique challenge of photographing snowflakes in motion as they fell from the sky.

Obata was inspired by the story and works of W.A. Bentley, an American farmer and photographer who adapted a camera and microscope to photograph a single snow crystal for the first time in 1885. Bentley went on to photograph more than 5,000 snowflakes in his lifetime, and his technique was so successful that it continues to be used today.

Like Bentley, Obata was obsessed with the challenge of doing something no one had done before – in his case photographing snowflakes in freefall rather than on a flat surface without digital or any other manipulation. It took Obata five years to achieve but his breakthrough resulted in the capture of pictures that allow the snowflakes to relate to each other in space and size, creating dynamic compositions and scenes. Obata chose to shoot the series in the mountains of Hokkaidō, based on its extreme cold and its history as the place where Dr. Ukichiro Nakaya did research that led to his invention of artificial snow. And while Obata is properly reverent to those who inspired him in this project, his photographs stand alone as fresh and original works.

I hope you enjoy them and if I don’t get around to posting again for a while I hope you'll find these pictures seasonally cheery and appropriate. Happy Holidays!

Homage to Wilson A. Bentley #4. 2005 - 2006.

Homage to Wilson A. Bentley #10. 2005 - 2006.

Homage to Wilson A. Bentley #7. 2005 - 2006.

Homage to Wilson A. Bentley #8. 2005 - 2006.

Weekend Video - Special Thanksgiving Edition

2010-11-25T09:37:00.004-05:00

Antony and the Johnsons performing on David Letterman.

This Thanksgiving Holiday I can’t think of a more appropriate song title than Antony and The Johnsons “Thank you for your love”. I’ve been vaguely aware of the band’s songs for a while as well as their indie critical reputation but seeing Antony Hegarty perform on Letterman a few weeks ago showed me what all the fuss was about.

The song is simply about the power of love to rescue you from pain. But in a time of as much global and national distress as we’re in now, this message shouldn’t ever be considered trite or sappy.

It’s a tradition in our family for each member to make a toast at Thanksgiving dinner saying what they have to give thanks for. But this year I would like to make a toast for the blog:

Thank you to the many readers who e-mail or come up to me out of the blue to say how much they enjoy The Year in Pictures. Thank you to the photographers whose work inspires all of us. (I know the pace of my postings has slowed down after nearly three years and over a million visits but I’ll continue to keep posting anything that seems noteworthy.) Thank you to my staff (past and present) whose professionalism and positive attitude make the gallery such a happy place. Thank you to our clients who appreciate all that the gallery stands for. Thank you to my friends - especially to the ones who love to talk about photography! Thank you to my running partners (about whom more later). And finally thank you to my children Julian and Josie and my wife Lucy for their love and for the way they put at least 110 percent into everything they do.

If there’s one miracle this Thanksgiving, it’s that this past July one of my running partners was biking in Central Park when a dog ran out in front of her causing her to flip onto her head, break her pelvis, and have a quarter of her skull removed in order to allow her brain not to compress. She was in hospital for nearly for a month and came out a little wobbly but exactly the same bright and cheerful person she was before the accident. Yesterday, along with our other running partner, we ran a full loop around the reservoir. And if that wasn’t enough another friend who had been in a coma for two weeks woke up on Monday!

Light is coming out of the darkness. Life is beginning to imitate Avatar. Happy Thanksgiving!

Below, special bonus official video.

Antony and the Johnsons official video

Street Viewed

2010-11-16T06:23:00.002-05:00

Michael Wolf. A Series of Unfortunate Events #49. 2010

Across the road from us is an excellent new show at Bruce Silverstein. Covering four bodies of work by the photographer Michael Wolf, all dealing with the modern urban condition, the heart of the show is comprised of a series of large blow-ups of images Wolf has taken from Google’s “Street View”.

For those not up to speed on Google’s latest good/evil technology, "Street View" is a feature in Google Maps and Google Earth that provides panoramic views from various positions along many streets in the world. It was launched in 2007 in several cities in the United States, and has since expanded to include cities and rural areas worldwide. Google "Street View" displays images taken from a fleet of specially adapted cars. On each of these vehicles there are nine directional cameras for 360° views, GPS units for positioning, and three laser range scanners for the measuring of up to 150 feet and 180° in the front of the vehicle.

Due to an initial outpouring of privacy concerns, in 2008, Google announced that it was testing face-blurring technology on its photos of the busy streets of Manhattan. This technology uses a computer algorithm to search Google's image database for faces and blurs them. Sadly, if you visit "Street View" today you will find it much in evidence.

A quick search will also find the web full of sites where someone has scoured "Street View" for scenes a little less aesthetic and artful than Wolf - at least that's how I see it. And like Gursky's "Oceans", it's who sees the art in the everyday first that counts. But to test this theory, below you'll see four more pictures by Michael Wolf and three images from random websites having fun with "Street View". See if you can tell which are which. Answers to follow in a couple of days.

Picture 1

Picture 2

Picture 3

Picture 4

Picture 5

Picture 6

Picture 7

Lights! Color! Abstraction!

2010-11-03T10:20:00.001-04:00

It’s never easy to write about abstract photography – the impact is in the seeing. However, if the response of the viewers who have come into the gallery over the last week is anything to go by, our just opened show of new work by Garry Fabian Miller is having quite an impact. (And it’s up until December 23, so there’s plenty of time to see it.)

GFM (as we’ll refer to him from now on) is another of the artists in the Victoria and Albert’s “Shadow Catchers” show, but he has been a presence on the English art scene for quite a while. Highly intellectual and somewhat reclusive, GFM prefers to work in the relative isolation of his studio near the rocky tors of Dartmoor where his daily walks inform his sequential experiments shining light through various forms and vessels onto to cibachrome paper. Picking up where abstract painters like Albers, Rothko, and Judd left off, GFM is the rare photographer whose abstract work is created rather than observed. Added rather than reduced. Bringing the elements of light and time to photographic paper, GFM’s prints glow and shimmer in a way that only be achieved in the darkroom.

GFM’s earliest work explored the abstract possibilities of landscape in a more traditional way. His minimal sky and seascapes of 1976 in fact pre-date similar work by Hiroshi Sugimoto by several years. Following that, GFM created a beautiful and now very rare botanical series made by shining enlarger light through various translucent plants. From then on, the work became increasingly abstract and exclusively camera-less. But as Martin Barnes, curator of the V&A’s show points out, unlike most photograms, in GFM’s work, no objects touch the paper. It’s only light.

Our exhibition focuses largely on the recently created body of work titled "Year Two". Following the form of a previous body of work titled "Year One", GFM devoted himself to making 12 different monthly series, each exploring how individual elements such as color, edge, and border affect a specific geometric composition. At the end of the year, he selected the ten images from each month that worked best as a complete chapter. Taken as an autonomous body of work, we have not only a highly personal and rigorous exploration of color and shape, but also the thought and association such forms bring forth.

I’ve illustrated this post with installation shots, because in some way, it feels like less of a reduction than a j-peg of an individual piece, and it conveys something of the constant experimentation that is the core of GFM’s work. (But if you must see the individual pieces click here.)

The Shooting Gallery

2010-10-28T08:30:00.002-04:00

1973

Shooting yearly self-portraits is nothing new to photography, but a rather extraordinary series has just been discovered and published in The Netherlands in a book titled "Almost Every Picture #7". Starting in 1936, the then 16-year-old Ria van Dijk went into a shooting gallery - one of those fair booths where every time you hit the target it triggers a camera shutter and you win a portrait of yourself in firing pose.

This series documents almost every year of Van Dijk's life (there is a conspicuous pause from 1939 to 1945) up until present times. But at the age of 88, Ria van Dijk is still shooting!

1936. The picture that started it off.

1938

1949

1958

1967

1989

2006

Camera-less

2010-10-19T11:23:00.002-04:00

It can't have escaped those of you who follow the photography scene that there's a lot going on in the"camera-less" photography world. Adam Fuss at Cheim and Read, Christopher Bucklow at my gallery with Garry Fabian Miller coming up next, and the major exhibition "Shadow Catchers" which just opened at The Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

One of the lesser known artists in the V&A show, but equally worthy of attention, is the German photographer Floris Neusüss. Neusüss was one of the first contemporary artists to return to camera-less photography, one of the medium’s earliest forms. In 1978, Neusüss created a piece that paid specific homage to William Henry Fox Talbot's 1835 image of a window in Lacock Abbey and last year he re-created the piece specifically for the V&A show.

As curator Martin Barnes explains: “Talbot’s Latticed Window anticipated the notion that photographs are often perceived as windows on the world. And yet, Talbot seems to have understood that it was rather the window itself – half way between interior and exterior – that was as beguiling as any view beyond.”

“This particular subject”, adds Neusüss “was, for us, not just a window in a building but an iconic window, a window on photography. Lacock’s discovery became a window on the world. Back in 1978, when we first photographed the window, that was the first time I worked outside of the studio, on location. It was the start of our adventures in making photograms of large objects in the places we found them".

As you'll see from these pictures, the piece that Neusüss made is extraordinarily beautiful and resonant, innovative, and chock full of ideas - a description that applies equally to the other artists in the show, So if you're in London, be sure not to miss the exhibition.

(All photographs via the London Daily Telegraph. Unfortunately no photographer's credit was attached.)

In collaboration with his wife Renate Heyne, also an artist, Neususs covered the interior of the window with photographic paper at night, before exposing the paper by shining a light from outside.

Some of the test prints are laid out on the floor of the abbey.

Floris Neusüss

The finished Neusüss piece.

Photogenic drawing negative by William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877). Taken with the Camera Obscura, this photograph is the earliest camera negative in existence.

Weekend Video Face-off. Dance v.s. Story-telling.

2010-10-16T09:32:00.006-04:00

Stiff competition in the family as my brother and daughter both submit videos for the "Weekend Video". I won't say who submitted which but please vote on your favorite by posting a comment.

Above a new concept of "Dancing in the Rain" featuring dancers, No Noize (red jacket), Man (back jacket), BJ (striped shirt), and Dreal (white shirt). Video directed and edited by Yoram Savion

Below a french fairy tale by the extraordinarily imaginative Capucine:

Fore- ctd.

2010-10-08T07:03:00.001-04:00

To the astute observers who commented on one particular spectator in the background of the Tiger Woods photographs: you are not alone! While his identity is still not known, the man pictured wearing a ginger-coloured wig, fake moustache and chomping on a large Havana (in tribute to Spanish golfer Miguel Angel Jimenez) has become an internet sensation nicknamed "Cigar Guy". Below, a selection of some of the viral images that have begun to appear on the web!

Straight from the Heart

2010-10-05T08:07:00.001-04:00

A new website that's a treasure trove for those who like vernacular photography and a good story - Pictures of My Mother.com posts pictures people have submitted of their mothers along with a story or recollection of the subject.

It's surprising how moving these little vignettes can be, but that's the power of words and pictures that come from the heart. Perhaps that's something that should be added to the rules I posted about what it takes to make it as a photographer!

Fore!

2010-10-04T10:06:00.003-04:00

You can't plan these things! Photographer Mark Pain was on assignment for Britain's Daily Mail newspaper at the Ryder Cup when Tiger Woods attempted to chip his third shot on to the green. But Woods hit the ground behind the ball and duffed the shot straight at Pain who held his ground as the ball went straight for him, hit his camera, bounced on to his chest and came to rest at his feet.

Woods was furious, but neither he nor caddie Steve Williams objected to Pain's position. The shot from the rain-soaked rough, was just badly struck. Tiger and Stricker went on to win the match, but Pain got the best shot of the tournament!

For camera buffs, Pain was using a Nikon D3S camera, with a 24-70 mm lens and a shutter speed of 1/1000 of a second.

Weekend Video

2010-10-03T10:34:00.003-04:00

For the return of the Weekend Video, the music video for OK Go's new single, 'White Knuckles' , directed by Trish Sie and OK Go.

Tokyo Snaps

2010-09-30T23:05:00.001-04:00

Looking at Andy Warhol polaroids.

It should be pretty clear that I'm crazy about Tokyo. Unfortunately this last trip was nearly all work, but here a few snaps of some of the things and people who caught my eye.

Burberry baby.

Louise Bourgeois sculpture at the Mori plaza.

Yoshioka Tokujin installation at the Mori Museum. The artist uses technology to recreate natural phenomena such as the snowstorm pictured here.

Murakami dolls in the museum shop.

Mika Ninagawa books and merchandise.

The pool and whirlpool at the Grand Hyatt.

My last breakfast at the hotel.

Meet Lloyd Ziff

2010-09-30T12:31:00.003-04:00

In what is fast becoming a "Meet the Legendary Art Directors" series, tonight we are having a book signing for Lloyd Ziff. The former art director of magazines including Vanity Fair, House & Garden, and Travel & Leisure, Ziff has always been a keen snapper and his new book "Near North" presents a collection of photographs shot in Alaska and the Yukon. Not surprisingly, Ziff brings his graphic sense to the remote and vast wilderness, along with a strong sense of the strangeness and uniqueness of the place.

The book signing is from 6 to 8 p.m..

A Few Pictures That Caught My Eye

2010-09-19T01:14:00.000-04:00

Like any art fair, Tokyo Photo has a real mix. Many of the big international names are being shown - Eggleston, Friedlander,
Cartier-Bresson, Chris Bucklow - but what interests me are things that seem uniquely Japanese in an original way. And you have to hunt for those. Nevertheless, here are a few things that caught my eye. Above "Form #1" by Miwa Nishimura. Click on the image to see the wigs that have been digitally added to each seagull.

Below: From Sohei Nishino's ongoing series of dioramas done in cities all over the world. It's a painstaking process where he spends weeks photographing the city from many hundreds of different vantage points. Then back in the studio he begins to assemble the individual frames from the contact strips into a collage that takes several months to create. The collage is then photographed and editioned into three sizes.

London Diorama by Sohei Nishino.

Detail from the above diorama.

Two prints from Haruko Nakamura's 19 print series "The Gift from the Sea".

What's selling is sex. Misato Kuroda's series "Sawako".

And last but not least - an early Chicago picture by the master photographer Yasuhiro Ishimoto.

How Cool Is This?

2010-09-18T22:49:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, my new friend Mr. Masanori Hashimoto was kind enough to give me the latest version of the Ricoh GR Digital camera. It's a camera with a cult following based on it's lightness, speed, and quality. I've just started to try it out and it seems great, but the coolest thing of all (to me) is a function called "Skew Correct Mode". Turn it on to this mode, take a picture, and the camera looks for an object with four corners which it will then correct the perspective on. If you don't like the four corners it has selected press an arrow and it goes to the next option of a four cornered object. Select "O.K." and the camera instantaneously processes the image to crop and straighten the perspective. For a blogger like me this is heaven!

Here's an example, below. This photograph is on the wall of my hotel room. In "skew" mode it can pick out the whole triptych or just one part. I selected just the middle. Hit the button - and voila! I'm now saying the GR stands for "Gallery Robot". Very Japanese.

The straight shot.

What the camera did to the above shot in "skew" mode!

My new best friend, Masanori Hashimoto of Ricoh.

Tokyo Lecture - The Rules

2010-09-18T22:19:00.002-04:00

As a preface to my talk at Tokyo Photo (see below) I articulated four rules that I thought were essential for any young photographer trying to survive.

Here are the rules:

1. Have talent. (Talent is not when your friends tell you they love your work, but when people who don't like you have to admit it's good.)

2. Understand how the world works. (Not just globally, but on a macro level. Understand what people need and don't need. Understand when to approach people and when not to. Develop social skills.)

3. Choose good friends. (There's nothing like an effective network.)

4. Be modern. (Don't do anything that looks like it's someone else's work. Stay on top of technology. Engage on multiple platforms.)

Tokyo Photo - The List

2010-09-18T02:22:00.005-04:00

I have been asked by the organizers of Tokyo Photo to engage in a discussion with the famous editor and art director Masanobu Sugatsuke on the subject "How to survive as a photographer on 2010s".

As part of this, I made up a list of 10 different photographers whose careers I felt offered some guidance. Each are relatively new (or at least particularly modern and original) to the photo scene and each have developed incredibly successful careers. So for easy reference, I wanted to post a list on the blog so people could easily reference the names.

In no particular order they are:

Ryan McGinley

The Sartorialist

Massimo Vitali

Juergen Teller

Alec Soth

Richard Learoyd

Idris Khan

Tim Walker

Sze Tsung Leong

Susan Derges

Tokyo Photo 2010

2010-09-15T11:28:00.002-04:00

On my way to Tokyo to participate in the second Tokyo Photo fair where I'm sure there will be much to blog about. In the meantime, this is my favorite of the pictures I took on my visit last year. Just some unknown hipster at a little nightclub mesmerized by the light show and his own shadow. Love the purple!

Tomorrow's the Night!

2010-09-09T08:40:00.005-04:00

I'm back!

And tomorrow (Friday) we open our show of Christopher Bucklow's photographs. 6 to 8 p.m. for those who would like to attend the opening.

Bucklow's work is one of the pillars of the British "cameraless" photography movement which you'll be hearing a lot about this fall. It's at once luminous, spiritual, scientific, and metaphysical. And did I say gorgeous?

Bucklow's other-worldly photographs of radiant men and women set against grounds of color are made through a multi-step process that is both complex and laborious. Bucklow begins by projecting the shadow of his sitter on a large sheet of aluminum foil and tracing its outline. He then makes about twenty thousand small pinholes in the foil silhouette (one for each day of the average human lifespan). Using a contraption of his own device that places the foil over a large sheet of photographic paper, Bucklow wheels his homemade "camera" out into daylight and pulls the "shutter" to briefly expose the paper to direct sunlight. Thus each finished picture becomes a kind of photogram silhouette composed of thousands of pinhole photographs of the sun. The intensity of light on a given day and the length of exposure create unique color variations on how the resulting piece appears.

Following the artist's particular ground rules, and connecting Bucklow to the mystical tradition of British artists, in particular to the work of William Blake, Bucklow does not picture anyone he has not dreamed of. In this way, the works connect more deeply to both the artist's unconscious and the unknown. Part quantum physics (in particular the light bending phenomenon of the double slit experiment) and part zen philosophy, the thousands of suns not only shine out from the paper but are a window into the soul or anima of both subject and artist, and an appreciation of the individuality and preciousness of each day.

Bucklow's explorations into avoiding the negative are both literal and figurative, connecting light and art, with the Other. We may not readily associate photography and the mystical or spiritual, but Bucklow's work asks us to start by appreciating the surface and then to dig down into all the layers that lie underneath. It's a journey worth taking.

Christopher Bucklow's show mid-installation.

Celebrating the Chainsaw

2010-08-19T12:08:00.003-04:00

Sugimoto by Brown

One more show to point out before I take a real summer break. It’s a show I saw in Los Angeles a few weeks ago and was incredibly impressed with. And it’s up until the end of the month.

Showing at the Robert Berman gallery in Santa Monica, it’s the work of Hugh Brown – an artist, and as you’ll see an obsessive chainsaw collector and aficionado. The show is comprised entirely of Brown’s appropriation of famous artworks into which Brown has inserted a variety of chainsaw references from the obvious to the subtle.

So we have Brown’s version of photographs by such heavy hitters as Diane Arbus, Harold Edgerton, Walker Evans, and Robert Mapplethorpe and painters like Matisse, Ed Ruscha, Jackson Pollack and dozens more. The works are so convincing that many mistook them for authentic pieces when shown last year at the California State University Fullerton Grand Central Art Center.

While the images stand on their own, there is humor and wit and intelligence behind every image. Take Brown’s Hiroshi Sugimoto piece entitled “Vista Theater (Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2)”. For this image Brown rented out the theatre and used a large format camera and an extremely long exposure to capture the entire film, just as Sugimoto did in his photographs of old American movie palaces and drive-ins.

A photographer, printmaker and assemblage artist for over 35 years, Brown has exhibited widely on the west coast, but claims his standout achievement was his prize in the “Design a Chair for Barbie” competition – not because of the second place finish but because the entry caused a fist fight amongst the judges!

 
Ruscha by Brown

Hockney by Brown

Arbus by Brown

Edgerton by Brown

Weekend Video

2010-08-06T06:39:00.005-04:00

Sent to me by Jim Krantz, the highly talented photographer who is one of the original Marlboro photographers (and much of whose work was borrowed by Richard Prince). This ad promoting the launch of the Polaroid SX-70 reminds us of one of those magical moments when it seemed like the future had arrived and it was all good. What's particularly surprising is the degree to which the history and art of photography is referenced. And while photography is much more appreciated, studied, and written about today - it's highly unlikely that a digital camera would be promoted in this way.

Addendum

2010-08-03T22:12:00.005-04:00

An anonymous but knowledgeable tipster points out that in lighter prints of the Bill Dane image, Garry Winogrand can be seen in the background.

This can be verified by looking at the clearly recognizable figure on the right in the variant image below.

Bill Dane

2010-08-03T13:45:00.001-04:00

Also seen at the "Exposed" exhibition at the Tate Modern, this late 70s/early 80s picture by Bill Dane seems every bit as good as the picture it reminds me of, "Satiric Dancer" by Andre Kertesz.

Satiric Dancer by Andre Kertesz. 1927.

Exposed

2010-07-31T07:33:00.004-04:00

What museum exhibition would you find the above picture of Paris Hilton on her way to jail in? 10 points if you guessed "Exposed" - a show originated by SF MoMA and now at the Tate Modern in London.

The exhibition offers a fascinating and original look at pictures made without the explicit permission of the people depicted. With photographs from the late nineteenth century to present day, the show tackles its voyeuristic theme in a way that's at once serious and pleasurable.

Beginning with the idea of the 'unseen photographer', "Exposed" presents 250 works by celebrated artists and photographers including Brassaï's erotic Secret Paris of the 1930s images; Weegee's iconic photograph of Marilyn Monroe on the set of "Some Like It Hot"; and both Nick Ut's Paris Hilton picture and his more famous image of children escaping napalm attacks in the Vietnam War.

At a time where organized surveillance is dramatically increasing and reality (or faux-reality) t.v. is the mainstay of cable, the issues raised by "Exposed" are timely and provocative. So drop by if you're in London. If not, there's an excellent catalog readily available.

The Contessa Castiglione by Pierson.

Liz Taylor and Richard Burton caught by a paparazzi.

Helmut Newton's famous image of Lisa Taylor, considered to be the first image where the female gaze was allowed to appear as predatory as a man's.

Two London Shows

2010-07-26T12:51:00.001-04:00

Mick Jagger by David Bailey

On a flying visit to England I stopped in to Hamilton's Gallery to see the show of David Bailey's enlarged contact sheets. They're very large, effective, a trip down memory lane, and a reminder of his place as the English Avedon. Here are a few of my favorites:

Jean Shrimpton

John Lennon and Paul McCartney

The Rolling Stones

Catherine Deneuve

Next door to Hamilton's the Timothy Taylor Gallery had an original Diane Arbus show tucked away in the back - a selection of her most summery pictures. I guess it's not surprising that a photographer who roamed the streets would do well in the summer but Arbus is in some ways so dark one wouldn't always put the two together. Anyway, a selection of known and unknown:

Weekend Video

2010-07-23T15:54:00.001-04:00

Another weekend video courtesy of my contributing editor, Josie Danziger. In case you don't recognize the song it's Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours". But in addition to this highly original interpretation, have you noticed how good the video quality is on YouTube these days?

More on Jason to come as he's not only a great singer and songwriter but also a photographer. FYI - here's the original song below.

A Vampire Chronicle

2010-07-21T22:38:00.000-04:00

An interesting story by Lyndsey Parker from Yahoo's music blog:

While debate regarding unauthorized use of Facebook pics rages on, a photograph from the pre-digital age has gotten one indie group in some serious trouble. Former fashion model Ann Kirsten Kennis is suing buzz band Vampire Weekend for a cool $2 million, claiming a 1983 photo of her was used in their Contra album cover art without her consent.

Kennis, who currently resides in Fairfield, Connecticut, with her family, was reportedly very surprised to see her doe-in-headlights likeness in a preppy Polo shirt on the Contra cover, when her daughter showed her the disc earlier this year. "Her daughter came home one day and said, "Hi, Mom, see your picture?'" Kennis's lawyer, Alan Neigher, told Entertainment Weekly. Neigher also told EW that the photo was never intended for professional use. "It was taken by her family. It was a Polaroid, not a modeling picture," he insisted. "Her mother was a chronic Polaroid snapshot-taker, and used to sell whole archives of photographs to these shops, five bucks a hundred or whatever. Her mother may have given away to a charity bazaar a whole ream of photographs. We just really don't know...[Kennis] has no idea how that photograph got into the photographer's hands."

The photographer in question is Tod Brody, who along with Vampire Weekend's record label, XL Recordings, is also named in Kennis's $2 million misappropriation-of-identity lawsuit. See, Kennis claims Brody duped Vampire Weekend into believing he was the photographer who had shot the Polo pic, and that he forged her signature (as "Kirsten Johnson" in one spot and "Kirsten Johnsen" in another, Neigher says) on the photo's release form. Brody of course has denied this, telling EW: "Ms. Kennis's claim that I didn't take the photo is blatantly false. I took the photo in 1983. The photo was in my possession the entire time, for 26 years, until it was delivered to Vampire Weekend." (Incidentally, the photograph seems to have been removed from Brody's website, www.todbrodyphoto.com, although it was once included in the Portraits section under the file name "Kirsten.")

The band, who reportedly paid $5,000 to use the picture, have also issued their own formal statement: "As is standard practice, Vampire Weekend and XL Recordings licensed the rights to use the photo on the cover of Contra pursuant to a license agreement that contains representations and warranties authorizing this use of the photo. Now that a lawsuit has been filed, we look forward to having the matter resolved in court."

So there are several questions here. First, who took the photo--Kennis's mother or Tod Brody? And if it was the mom, then did Brody really forge Kennis's signature and claim he was the real photographer? And if so, how did he think he'd get away with such a scam, since it was inevitable that Kennis would eventually see the cover? (After all, the album did debut at number one on the Billboard album chart in January 2010, so it was hardly obscure.) Conversely, if it was Brody who took the pic, is it possible that Kennis failed to read the fine print and didn't realize she was signing away rights to the picture 27 years ago?

And finally, did Vampire Weekend have any responsibility--as Kennis alleges--to make sure the photo release form's signature was legit? It's unclear just how much the band knew about their cover model before this lawsuit; when asked about the girl in interviews at the time of Contra's release, they gave deliberately vague answers. Lead singer Ezra Koenig told MTV News: "We know where the image came from, but we're not being very specific about her. We don't know her or anything....there's just something infinitely fascinating about a nice portrait of somebody, especially when she's got this ambiguous look, and people can read a lot into it....It makes you realize how much you can imagine about somebody when you know nothing about them, based on only a few signifiers."

The mystery surrounding the enigmatic golden girl on the Contra cover continues, although not in the way Koenig may have imagined. Kennis retired from modeling years ago; additional photos of her, from either the past or present, professional or candid, are seemingly non-existent on the Web (even the profile pic on what appears to be her private Facebook page is a photo of a dog); and she's refused to speak to the press thus far (she did come to the phone when the Village Voice rang her recently, and was reportedly polite, but declined to be interviewed). Perhaps when the reclusive ex-model finally appears in court, we'll all find out the real story behind this now-infamous photograph.

Weekend Video

2010-07-16T07:49:00.002-04:00

This high testosterone video is a promo for Versus TV, a cable sports channel in the U.S and Canada (where it's known as OLN - the Outdoor Life Network).

It's so retro and un-artsy that it's artful (if you follow me), And an interesting motivational speech for me as I'm doing the Montauk Triathlon this weekend. Another slightly less aggressive but also effective Versus video below.

Noted With Pleasure

2010-07-15T15:49:00.001-04:00

Elliott Erwitt. Sicily 1965.

The Chelsea Market on West 15th Street is a block long pass through of mouth watering food shops developed within the site of the former Nabisco Factory. Over the last few years, they have been putting up free photo shows of a mixed quality, but up right now is their best show to date - a selection of Elliott Erwitt photographs shot in Italy over the last 50 years. I was particularly taken by this stylish picture taken in Sicily in 1965. I'm not sure who the gentleman is but it is definitely Sartorialissimo!

Elsewhere around town, the theme seems to be women in danger. Above from Aperture's "States of Flux" show - Jun Ahn creates a striking performance piece confronting the encroaching urban environment of Seoul.

Meanwhile on a chance visit to my neighboring gallery Fredericks & Freiser my eye caught this catalog by the front desk with this startling image by Josephine Meckseper. Meckseper is a U.S. based German contemporary multi-media artist so you can be sure this image is a comment on American culture. (Feel free to offer your own interpretation.)

This month's British VOGUE offers up these striking photographs by Josh Olins. The "Contributor's Notes" explained that the pictures were inspired by the British painter Euan Uglow - certainly not a household name but as you'll see below, it's actually an interesting source and a good example of an artist being inspired by rather than copying someone else.

Below - two Uglow paintings.

To finish off the week, a chance encounter with Lisa Atkin, who manages the advertising and design company Baron & Baron, brought up this adorable picture of her brand new puppy, Max. I forgot to ask if the composition of this iPhone photo was also inspired by Uglow.

RISD Graduate Photo Show at Danziger Projects

2010-07-08T17:20:00.002-04:00

Sonya German's video work is based in the embarrassment, confusion, and joy of our sexual lives. Her investigation into our relationship with sex and love exploits her own vulnerabilities.

When I was approached out of the blue by this year's graduating RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) photo students about showing their work, I was happy to offer them a mid-summer week. They are a diverse and interesting group, and have been a complete pleasure to work with.

Anyway, we hang the show next week and due to the abbreviated schedule (July 13 - 17) we're having a Tuesday night opening so mark this in your datebook.

Heather Johnson is inspired by the visual cues of Pop Art. She exploits the theory of post-black America by appropriating and digitally manipulating photographic images of the African American elite, with a specific focus on actors and various media moguls who have crushed the glass ceiling of race, class, and culture.

Ki Ho Park documents what is left behind in the storefronts across America. He examines vacant retail stores left in a hurry—evidence of the decline of American prosperity .

Louisa Marie Summer’s focus is on portraiture and social documentary. Through intimate images of unpolished life, Louisa’s photographs and most recent video explore issues of social inequity and survival.

Isaac Wingfield grew up in rural Western North Carolina. He is using a study of the landscape to search for a way home, from urban New England back to his roots in the rural Southeast.

Levinstein at The Met

2010-07-06T15:45:00.001-04:00

This tightly edited and excellent show recently opened at The Metropolitan Museum and runs through October 17, so no excuse for missing it if you’re in town.

Leon Levinstein is something of an insider’s choice – being much more known and appreciated by dealers and curators than collectors or even photographers. But he’s the real deal – as almost every picture in this show demonstrates.

Based on a large donation to The Met, the exhibition features 44 prints covering the range of street people Levinstein was drawn to in the ‘60s and ‘70s. “Hipsters, Hustlers, and Handball Players” is the show title, but it might be more accurately called “Fatties, Floozies, and Fashion”. However the strange thing about the images is that however outlandish Levinsteins subjects may be, there is a generosity and a vitality to his eye that makes his characters seem almost stylish!

If you look at the pictures illustrated here, I feel that Levinstein is actually celebrating rather denigrating his subjects’ individuality and how they present themselves. It’s just that his taste is much broader than most. I think, for example, he really likes the outfit below and was simply ahead of his time in appreciating 70s fashion. As it’s pretty easy to make people look freakish, I also particularly admired Levinstein’s skill and generosity.

Ken Johnson writing in The New York Times responded in totally the opposite way. For his review click here. Let me know what you think. But to me Leon was a softie playing in a hardball world.

Summer Shows

2010-07-02T09:27:00.001-04:00

Mitch Epstein. New York City. 1978

It's corny, but what else are you going to do? When summer rolls around and business slows down, galleries and museums roll out the summer snaps. This year looks like a particularly engaging crop and I noticed lots of great images advertising the shows.

This selection comes from that invaluable guide to exhibitions Photograph Magazine. Above - Mitch Epstein's polka-dotted street shot from the Princeton University Art Museum's "Starburst: Color Photography in America 1970-1980". Opens July 11.

Chelsea in the Summer. Jean-Philippe Delhomme.

On our invitation card for the first of our two summer shows, I went with Jean-Philippe Delhomme's gouache of West 24th Street which pefectly captures the mood, look, and feel of the summer. You may wonder why I would use a painting but it's easy to explain - Jean-Philippe thinks he's a photographer!

Lucile Brokaw on Long Island Beach, 1933. Martin Munkacsi.

I'm still working on the exact parameters of our second summer show but there's a good chance it will include this classic summer image by Martin Munkacsi, usually credited as being the first fashion picture employing deliberate movement. It's also the image The Met are using to illustrate their show at The Costume Institute, "American Woman".

Jeanne and Longboard. 1963. Ron Church.

Meanwhile, Scott Nichols Gallery in San Francisco goes retro-sexy with a show of summer favorites and this shot by the great surf photographer, Ron Church. For those interested in seeing more of Church's work, my friend Tom Adler has produced two books - Ron Church: California to Hawaii 1960 to 1965 , and Surf Contest. Both seminal surf photo books.

Jim Pond. Family in Convertible Somewhere in Texas. 1968

The George Eastman House in Rochester presents "Colorama" an exhibition celebrating the 60th anniversary of the first colorama. From 1950 until 1990, Kodak’s Coloramas were seen by millions of commuters passing through New York City's Grand Central Terminal. The panoramic photographs—18 feet by 60 feet—presented an idealized view of life in 20th-century America and promoted photography as an essential leisure activity. Norman Rockwell even art directed one and Ansel Adams shot another.

Smoking, Sinai, 2004. Barry Frydlender. Courtesy Andrea Meislin Gallery, New York

Also in Photograph Magazine, Phillips auction house have used this viscerally atmospheric summer image by master compositor Barry Frydlender to solicit consignments for their fall sale. (Do click on this to see it in a larger size.) It's this kind of work that shows what photoshop can do when used as a tool by someone who has an original vision and the skill to use it seamlessly.

Bruce Laurance, Woody Allen and Tamara, 57th Street, New York, 1971

And last but not least, as humor often seems to be a element in many of these summer shows, Staley Wise offer this amusing take on scale and fashion in their show, "Good Humor".

Pierson Installation

2010-06-29T16:21:00.002-04:00

So many people asked for installation shots of the new Jack Pierson show at Borotolami that I hightailed it over as soon as they opened today. I also should mention that the prints were made by David Adamson of Adamson Editions in Washington D.C.. Apart from being a good friend of mine, David happens to be considered the master printer of the digital age. The photographers he has printed for read like a Who's Who of the photo/contemporary art world (just click on the link above). And he's great at finding a solution so that everyone's prints look distinct. So much so that the prestigious Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris recently did a show based only on work Adamson had printed for different artists.

Picture of the Day!

2010-06-28T10:28:00.003-04:00

Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times

The Gay Pride Parade in New York is obviously quite a photogenic affair, but kudos to The New York Times for publishing this picture of Marlo Fisken, 27, showing off her pole dancing skills! And kudos to Redlinski for getting such a great shot. Other papers published pictures of Fisken but none from this angle and certainly none with quite the same snap!

More Pierson

2010-06-26T10:17:00.002-04:00

Eden Roc, 2010. 83 x 62 inches.

Here as promised are more Jack Pierson images from his new show. I thought I would explain why I liked these pictures so much.

Again, as with much contemporary art, or indeed any "new" art today - it's often the idea and the execution rather than the degree of technical skill that make the work interesting. Pierson's pictures are indeed nicely composed and colored, but in their large scale (up to 50 x 80 inches) and in their form as folded pigment prints the images are transformed. In the gallery, these are not just pictures to examine, they are experiences to get lost in. Photographs as sculpture. Photographs as pigment. Photographs as at once enduring and ephemeral.

It's like the Gursky "Oceans". You look at the work (and this is where seeing things online only can be limiting) and you think "I could have done that!". But the point is you didn't. It took someone with Pierson's eye, and experience, and background, and willingness to take a risk and do it.

Gold, 2010. 83 x 62 inches.

Torse d'athlete en marble. 2010. 83 x 62 inches.

Bird in Flight. 2010. 63 x 63 inches.

God is Love. 2010. 57 x 42.5 inches.

Weekend Video - World Cup edition.

2010-06-25T21:00:00.003-04:00

Watching Landon Donovan’s game winning goal on Wednesday Purdue University senior Robby Denoho and decided it merited an instant tribute which he posted to YouTube. Within hours, the video had gone viral, and as the American players headed to bed on Friday night ahead of their round-of-16 match against Ghana in Rustenburg, more than 350,000 viewers had tuned in.

It also didn’t take long for the video to get to Donovan himself. For all of the plaudits the American soccer star received after his moment of glory, it was seeing the reaction his goal provoked that touched him the most. "Not sure if you guys saw this but it brings tears to my eyes every time,” Donovan wrote on his Facebook account.

Jack Pierson

2010-06-24T19:16:00.002-04:00

Just came from the opening of Jack Pierson's new show at Bortolami Gallery on 25th Street where the ever-inventive artist has experimented with a new form - very large folded prints made on lightweight digital paper. Pinned to the wall, they have an original and effective sculptural quality, although I imagine if you bought one, you would want to house it in a nice clean box frame.

The gallery has forgotten to update their website, so this is the only image I have for now, but I'll try to post more next week

Friends with Cameras - Part 2

2010-06-23T20:59:00.001-04:00

Some of you may remember a previous post about my friend Leslie Simitch of Trunk Archive, the new powerhouse photo agency. Leslie is rarely without a camera and is something of a specialist at catching romantic couples on the fly.

Case in point, her latest snap (above) shot at some seedy club last night. Leslie, who is also an early adopter par excellence, now swears by the Canon S90 which she was turned on to by her old classmate, the great fashion photographer Pamela Hanson. That kind of recommendation is hard to ignore, so I guess we'll all have to try the camera (below) out.

And if you're in need of a refresher on Leslie's previous shots, here they are again:

You can't say the girl doesn't have talent!

Weekend Video

2010-06-20T09:40:00.003-04:00

Healthier than the smoking toddler, more authentic than the roller-skating Evian babies, for Father's Day weekend we present the Brazilian samba dancing baby!

Get High!

2010-06-17T00:07:00.004-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, this photograph by Mark Seliger in New York Magazine of actress Paz De La Huerta leapt off the page at me. I liked the attitude, the curves, and the grit of it. And it reminded me of another favorite photograph - Helmut Newton's shot of Elsa Peretti (below).. The differences are as interesting as the similarities.

Helmut Newton. Elsa Peretti in a 'Bunny' costume by Halston, New York , 1975

Newton's is high fashion, Seliger's is downtown cool, but the elevated perspective gives a fresh look to the background and brings a slight sense of danger to both pictures.

Marilyn Monroe on the balcony of the Ambassador Hotel, New York City, 1955. Photograph by Ed Feingersh.

What always happens once you take note of a particular type of picture is that they start popping up all over. And so it has been with balconies. A random e-mail about an auction of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia led me to this picture. A quick search of Magnum Photos website pulled up the two pictures below by Inge Morath - one of the most overlooked photographers to be a member of the famous photojournalist organization.

Inge Morath. Saul Steinberg. 1962.

Inge Morath. Norman Mailer. 1966.

I didn't catch the credit and now can't find it, but last but not least, this from the Styles section of The New York Times. O.K - we've caught on to the trick!

Weekend Video

2010-06-13T09:36:00.005-04:00

While all eyes are turned on South Africa for The World Cup, this video, sent my way by Josie Borain (who some of you might remember as the tomboy haired Calvin Klein "Obsession" model) reminds us of South Africa's amazing musical culture.

Speaking of Josie Borain (who along with my favorite movie - Clint Eastwood's "The Outlaw Josey Wales" inspired my daughter's name) she published a book a number of years ago called "Josie You and Me". A collection of self-portraits, portraits, and behind the scenes reportage of the modeling world - it's the best of its genre and still available if you do a bit of web searching.

Save The Dates

2010-06-09T13:23:00.004-04:00

June 17 from 6 to 8 p.m. is a book signing at my gallery for a good friend - the legendary art director Ruth Ansel. I've written about Ruth several times so just click here and here if you need to refresh your memory. But she will be signing a new monograph, a booklet that is the first in a series on great women graphic designers by the Swedish design group Hjarta Smarta. (I kid you not.) It's seminal reading for anyone interested in superlative book and magazine design and sublime art direction.

Marina Abramovic at MoMA by Jean-Philippe Delhomme.

Also:

Tomorrow (Thursday, June 10) from 6 to 8 we'll be having an opening reception for our first summer show "The Art Fair is Present".

A playful reference to the just finished Marina Abramovic retrospective at MoMA (titled "The Artist is Present") the exhibition is comprised of work exhibited by the gallery in recent art fairs mixed with new work by Jean-Philippe Delhomme that comments on the New York art world. While Jean-Philippe (who is an old friend) is an illustrator whose medium is gouache, the joke is that he thinks he's a photographer. And his work is often mistakenly credited "Photograph by Jean-Philippe Delhomme" even though it's in no way photo-realistic.

The show also includes work by Bernd & Hilda Becher , Christopher Bucklow, Paul Fusco, Ormond Gigli, Jim Krantz, , Annie Leibovitz , Robert Mapplethorpe, Ryan McGinness, Len Prince & Jessie Mann, Viviane Sassen, Ezra Stoller, and George Tice.

While on one hand a sampling of what the gallery shows, on the other hand the exhibition calls into question the practice and convention of how art is viewed in galleries, how information is provided, how commerce is conducted, and to what extent communication (or the lack of) is a part of the process.

Installed in the manner of an art fair booth with a variety of works displayed and clearly identified and priced, the installation will incorporate a table and chairs within the public gallery space at which the gallery director or a member of staff will be available at all times to talk to visitors about the work on view and the general concept of the show.

Contrary to the Chelsea convention where the visitor is often purposely ignored, our aim during the show is to invite a dialog. In this way, the exhibition will address the differing ways art is viewed in a commercial context, and by extension how presentation and communication affect the gallery going experience.

So feel free to drop by Tuesday - Friday (our summer hours) for a chat. This does not mean a portfolio review!

Brian Duffy - R.I.P.

2010-06-07T09:24:00.000-04:00

Brian Duffy, whose photographs helped define the look of London's Swinging Sixties, has died aged 76.

Along with David Bailey and Terence Donovan, Duffy was a key part of the group of young working class British photographers who revolutionized the image of the profession and became as famous as the models, musicians and film stars they worked with.

He was born in London's East End, studied dress design at St Martin's School of Art, and worked as a fashion illustrator for Harper's Bazaar before turning to photography. He was one of just a handful of photographers to shoot two Pirelli calenders, and was known for his clean and graphic approach to fashion photography.

His work also spanned reportage and advertising, and he shot three David Bowie album covers, including Aladdin Sane.

In 1979, Duffy decided to give up photography and burned many of his negatives, but he resumed taking pictures just last year.

My Pie Town

2010-06-03T18:52:00.004-04:00

Ruth Leonard Secures a Calf in Her Pasture

Continuing my look at graduating student work, from the SVA (School of Visual Art) MFA program, this provocative group of images by Debbie Grossman. Based on Farm Security Administration photographer Russell Lee's classic 1940 portrait of Pie Town, New Mexico, Grossman appropriates and photoshops Lee's photographs to re-imagine Pie Town as a homestead community populated exclusively by women.

Grossman's website is also worth checking out for a few more Pietown images and a sad but moving work that's a poignant tribute to her mother.

Jessie Evans-Whinery with Her Wife Edith and Their Baby

Community Meeting

Couple at a Square Dance

Jean and Virginia Norris, Homesteaders and Town Founders

And the Russell Lee original:

This also brings to mind this piece by Kathy Grove - a professional retoucher and artist whose conceptual work involved retouching iconic images. Here her ironic prettifying of Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother".

Emer Gillespie

2010-06-01T08:30:00.002-04:00

The Photographers' Gallery in London is currently showing a selection of student work by recent graduates of English art schools. Among the 27 entries, this one in particular caught my eye (and my heart).

"Two Homes" by Emer Gillespie documents the parallels of the two separate households in which the artist’s child lives. In a rare example of the diptych form being used to its best advantage (a form much abused by student photographers) Gillespie pairs scenes of seemingly mundane objects and routines that make up the life of a child living with separated parents.

While on one hand, the images illustrate subtle connotations of gender distinction - what's most affecting is the straightforward observation of what must be undoubtedly confusing for a young child.

The Year in Pictures

Back in the Saddle Again!

Don't Miss This Show - Nan Goldin at Matthew Marks

Paris Photo

Seen in London

Karen Knorr's India Song

Pleasure

iSad

Tokyo ctd.

Tokyo

Fashion Week

Save The Date - September 15

9/12

Irene

Weekend Video

What You See is Not Always What You Get...

Weekend Video - Senna

Monkey Business

Totally Gratuitous Weekend Video

July 4th.

Dog Days

One Thousand Pictures

The Variations

The Dance Goes On

Surf's up - (again) !

Happy Memorial Day!

Richard Learoyd

If I Had A Million Dollars ...

You're All Invited

Something to Dream About

Now It Can Be Told

Return of The Weekend Video

Spring Reading

On the Road Again

Shot

AIPAD Reader Favorites

AIPAD 2011

Observed

When Terry Met Robert

The Galliano Affair

Game Changer

Totally Gratuitous Weekend Video

What Artists Give Us

Weekend Video

Love Lost (& found!)

A Matter of Time

Dean Fidelman

A View from Above

Kenneth O'Halloran

Milton Rogovin 1909 - 2011

Morning Light

Weekend Video

Boulevard

A Cautionary Tweet

The 2010 Top Ten list

A Winter's Tale

Weekend Video - Special Thanksgiving Edition

Street Viewed

Lights! Color! Abstraction!

The Shooting Gallery

Camera-less

Weekend Video Face-off. Dance v.s. Story-telling.

Fore- ctd.

Straight from the Heart

Fore!

Weekend Video

Tokyo Snaps

Meet Lloyd Ziff

A Few Pictures That Caught My Eye

How Cool Is This?

Tokyo Lecture - The Rules

Tokyo Photo - The List

Tokyo Photo 2010

Tomorrow's the Night!

Celebrating the Chainsaw

More Video

Weekend Video

Addendum

Bill Dane

Exposed