Dean Fidelman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 (who admittedly was a genius) 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

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

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

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

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

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!

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.)