Mandy Corrado

Via Conscientious and I Like This Art.

Mandy Corrado is a 28 year old former art student who began working as a figure model in her senior year at The Art Institute of Chicago. One day she had the idea to create her own art from the process and began to bring a gilded mirror and a camera into the studios where she would snap herself and whoever was in her view during the few breaks given to the model.

The results, as you can see, are intriguing and wholly original - a sly inversion of the conventional view. That's Mandy, below, in close-up and the rest are from her series "Reflections of the Muse". You can see even more here on her own website, and read her artist's statement.

Party!

KCNA via Reuters

Clearly inspired by Monday's post, the official North Korean news agency KCNA just released a new picture - this time of a convention commemorating the late state founder and "Great Leader" Kim Il-Sung's 97th birthday. As you can see, it looks like quite a party! Or at least quite a photo-op!

Just A Year Ago ...

The cherry blossoms are now out in Central Park. Strange because the weather has been so cold. There's not even a touch of spring in the air. Looking back I saw that I first posted about cherry blossoms last April 15 and then photographed them in Central Park on May 5. Was it just
a year ago? It seem like a millennium ago - pre-recession, pre-Obama, pre-24th Street. Does it feel like more than a year to you all? Anyway, here are those posts - two of my favorites - from that long ago spring.

Post # 1 (from 4.15.08):

Following last month's post about Japanese blossom-cams, the cherry blossoms are now out in New York City. And as any dog-walker/photo person can tell you, they’re more interesting photographically at 5:30 in the morning (when I was not together enough to put a camera in my pocket) than when the sky is clear and blue as it is now at 8:55 a.m..

Nevertheless, I snapped a photo on my iPhone and sent it to The Sartorialist to let him know that Central Park would not be a bad place to shoot this week. I’ll be interested to see if he follows up.

Then I remembered Nan Goldin’s great photograph – “Honda Brothers in Cherry Blossom Storm, Tokyo, 1994”. For an artist best known for scenes of a bohemian lifestyle illuminated more by dim lightbulbs, the photograph above captures a wonderful moment of delight - delight in nature, in the power of photography to freeze motion, and in the crystalline moment that marks the approach of spring.

Post #2 (from 5.5.08):

Here's a promise: this will be the last post on cherry blossoms for at least a year! However, biking through Central Park this weekend with camera in pocket, this tree was hard to resist. To me the most resonant moment of the cherry blossom cycle is when the petals fall and the grass is carpeted in pink before the petals start to turn brown. I was initially the only person photographing here, but as the picture shows, within minutes it became a hot location and I realized that pictures of people taking pictures of other people underneath the cherry blossoms was a lot more interesting than the blossoms themselves. It helps to click and see this picture in a larger size, but I love the matched pair posing demurely in the middle with their faces obscured and the guy on his back behind them. However, I'm well aware that this is more of a "snap" than a "photograph" in the artistic sense of the word.

To see what I mean by this, you just have to go to Tod Papageorge's recently published book. Passing Through Eden, a collection of pictures he took in Central Park from the 1970s to the 1990s. It's a book that is at once documentary, sensuous, and allegorical. Revelatory both because Papageorge who heads Yale's graduate photo program has been famously absent from the exhibition world and because the pictures are so good. As well as being decisively and artfully composed every one of Papageorge's photographs hint at more complex narratives underneath and all have a certain psychological intensity and edge.

Papageorge has said, “One of my attractions to photography was that I felt it was much closer to writing and literature than any other visual art.” which helps explain why he stuck to black and white photography while his peers made the move into color. More importantly, like writing, his work seems to be where the outside world and the inner voice meet and even the most random moments are brought together into some kind of highly personal order.

From Passing Through Eden:

P.S.
After looking at all these Tod Papageorge pictures, would my picture be improved by a tighter crop?

My Brilliant Korea

Kim Jong-il (C) participates in the 12th top People's Assembly at the Mansudae assembly hall in Pyongyang April 9, 2009, in this picture released by the country's official news agency KCNA on Thursday.

Either it's just a coincidence or the North Korean government is remarkably prescient with their official photography. Many of the pictures they release of Kim Jong-Il bear echoes of the work of contemporary photographers and artists ranging from Martin Parr and Alex Webb to Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth.

Unfortunately I couldn't find a larger j-peg of the image above which appeared in the New York Times newspaper (but not the website) last week. But here's a detail, below. Please e-mail a larger file of the full frame above to info@danzigerprojects.com if you have one.

Some other echoes:

Alex Webb:

A Martin Parr book:

Early Thomas Struth:

Gerhard Richter or any number of contemporary Chinese painters:

Weekend Video

Sometimes we're ahead of the curve and sometimes we're way behind. Case in point, this video from the film "Playing For Change" - a cover of Ben E. King's "Stand By Me" recorded by street musicians from around the world. It's now been seen by nearly 9 million people on YouTube alone but somehow passed me by until I received a link from my friend Tom Adler.

Created by filmmakers Mark Johnson and Jonathan Walls, this clip comes from a longer film where the filmmakers traveled around the world, finding musicians to bring their own individual style to pre-recorded backing tracks of songs like "Stand By Me", "Don't Worry" and Bob Marley's "One Love". The purpose of the project, which led to the formation of a foundation to help impoverished people in the areas visited, is to show how music brings people together regardless of their cultural differences. Count me in.

An Open Letter to Shepard Fairey*

*Apologies in advance to all who find this issue boring.

Dear Mr. Fairey,

This week you posted a new and lengthy comment on your website about the ongoing case between you and AP. As I am referenced (although not by name) as the gallery selling Mannie Garcia’s photograph of Barack Obama and as by now my role in identifying Mannie’s photograph as the source image for your HOPE, PROGRESS, YES WE DID, and BE THE CHANGE posters is well known, there are a few points I would like to clarify.

1. I am a big fan and have great respect for your work.

2. The whole “discovery” process came about as a result of my due diligence researching work for my January 2008 exhibition “Can & Did – Graphics, Art and Photography from the Obama Campaign”. This exhibition featured numerous artists, designers, and photographers in addition to you and Mannie Garcia and the show was not in any way about that dispute.

3. As your wife can tell you based on our e-mail correspondence, I was very upfront about my interest in finding the source image and in working with you or your gallery. As you had credited David Turnley, a friend of mine, as the source photographer for your VOTE poster, I couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t credit the photographer for the justly more famous HOPE and PROGRESS posters.

4. When Mannie Garcia’s photograph was correctly identified as the source I went on record both in my blog and in my discussions with AP to say that I did feel your work was transformative and to recommend they not take an adversarial position. My issue was why Mannie wasn’t credited and why you wouldn’t feel some obligation on an ethical level to acknowledge and recompense Mannie, artist to artist.

5. What really bothered me, however, and continues to bother me is that once the correct picture was identified (Mannie’s full frame shot of Obama’s head and shoulders) you continue to insist that the picture you used was the one of Clooney and Obama. Unless it is part of your legal strategy – making your case based on using a detail of a larger picture rather than the entire picture – it makes no sense as it has been indisputably proven that the full frame head shot is the source. I guarantee this 100%.

6. To prove this once for all, rather than relying on other people’s overlays, after reading your latest post yesterday I had my assistant overlay the two Obama shots over your poster. The results are absolutely conclusive as you will see below. You can do this test yourself if you or any of your assistants care to do it using photoshop.

7. So all I’m asking is for you and your dealer to stop disparaging my and Mannie’s motives or the facts we present. Admit you made a mistake and acknowledge the correct source picture as Mannie’s headshot. As someone who has worked in photography for over 30 years as a picture editor, writer, director of Magnum Photos, and gallery owner it has been my practice to stick up for photographers. That is all this was ever about.

Respectfully,

James Danziger

Mannie Garcia's full frame headshot

+ Shepard Fairey's HOPE poster

= this composite which lines up 100% identically - head, shoulders, eyes, expression, etc..

Mannie Garcia's shot of Clooney and Garcia

+ Shepard Fairey's HOPE poster

= this composite where the lines don't match up.

A Sad Day

April 4. The casket of Air Force Staff Sgt. Phillip Myers, who was killed in Afghanistan, is carried by an honor guard off the plane in Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Photo by Evan Vucci-AP

This past Sunday marked a sad occasion – the first day photojournalists were officially allowed to photograph the unloading of a U.S. military casket from a transport plane. The photo ban was put in place in 1991 by President George Bush and with only a few exceptions, there has been no media coverage of the returning caskets of the more than 4,000 troops killed during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A few weeks after President Barack Obama took office, Defense Secretary Robert Gates signaled he was open to changing the policy, and this past Friday the Pentagon released the details of its new policy on what are euphemistically called “dignified transfers”. The very next day, Air Force Staff Sgt. Phillip Myers, 30, of Hopewell, Va., was killed when an improvised explosive device exploded while he was on duty in Afghanistan. His wife became the first military family member to consent to media coverage under the new policy.

The media agreed not to photograph Myers’s family, who also declined to be interviewed. The family stood next to a van out of sight of photographers. The photographers were restricted to a single spot at a 45 degree angle to the plane, but Evan Vucci of AP managed to get one picture which rose above all the others I have seen. Set against a jet black sky and the gleaming white plane, the most unsung participants in the event – the soldiers assigned to the transfer - balance each end of the picture, either carrying the casket or saluting. Vucci’s framing and the moment captured leave a gaping hole in the picture and in our hearts.

On Reflection

Scarlett Johansson by Annie Leibovitz. Shot in my booth at AIPAD.

There have been a few comments recently talking about the reflections in my art fair pictures. One helpful suggestion about polarizing filters, one comment saying they liked the reflections. But I have to say I also like the reflections. I hope it gives you a sense that you are there and differentiates the art fair or gallery round-up pictures from getting j-pegs from an artist or website. Not only that but they're not quite as random as they may seem. I try to make sure the key part of the picture is reflection free, check that there are no distracting figures reflected, and work on the jpegs to make them as clear as possible. They're my own little creative act.

Weekday Video

I wanted to get ahead of the curve on this one as it's just about to go viral. A brilliant mash-up of Taylor Swift's "Love Story" combined with Usher's "Love in This Club" by 99allins. And whoever 99allins is, he or she certainly has a great career ahead of them in the video business!

Weekend Video

In case you’ve been wondering what Sofia Coppola has been up to since she decamped to Paris, here’s one of her minor projects – a sweet and catchy commercial released in France last month for Miss Dior Chérie perfume.

The ad stars 21-year-old Maryna Linchuk and features Brigitte Bardot singing “Moi Je Joue”, the kind of novelty song that still gets on the charts in Europe but somehow never seems to make it stateside where whimsy is just not a quality in great demand.

Speaking of whimsy, Tom Adler sent me the Tim Walker picture below after seeing my post on Narelle Autio. And while I'm sure Narelle was completely unaware of the image (and her picture is of a found rather than created still-life) it's an interesting echo. As is the very Walkeresque image all the way below from the Miss Dior Cherie website. Could Walker be the #1 visual influencer of our time?

Narelle Autio

It’s not summer yet, but here’s a whiff of it! Narelle Autio is an Australian photographer whose work falls somewhere between editorial and fine art, encompassing the best of both. A recurring theme in her work has been exploring the human figure in relation to water. In fact her first book, “The Seventh Wave”, done with her husband Trent Parke and published 10 years ago is considered a classic of the genre. (See some of those images all the way below.)

More recently, however, Narelle has turned her attention to still life and the natural and man-made remnants of summer beach days. Shot with a large format camera against a clean white ground it’s Irving Penn down under and with a tan!

From the series "The Place In-Between":

From the series "The Seventh Wave":

Happy!

My friend Jay posted a comment in response to my assertion that the just finished AIPAD Fair “offered encouraging signs that we're on our way out of the worst as far as the economy is concerned." and asked me to elaborate. As he pointed out, it’s often useful to look for economic indicators beyond the headlines.

So to elaborate, the fair was a smash in terms of attendance. I don’t have the number but every day for five days the Armory was packed. The general consensus among dealers was that financially they were ahead of expectations particularly in terms of $ volume rather than number of prints sold. So people weren’t just buying cheap stuff, they were buying good stuff. Most importantly, after my previous two visits to the same Armory just weeks ago to the ADAA (Art Dealer’s Association of America) Show and the Works on Paper Show – two of the glummest shows I’ve been to in a long time – the energy level at AIPAD was through the roof. At the end of the fair, I thanked one of the organizers and told him “I’m very happy.” And he replied that for the first time in many years this was the exact phrase nearly every one had used. In previous years people had said “I had a great fair” or “I had a lousy fair” or “I sold a shit-load of work” but never before had people said they were happy!

Welcome to spring.

Aisle 4

After nearly a week of living in the Armory, we're now on our last day. (It runs from 11 - 6 today.) Art fairs are both energizing and exhausting, but overall this one has been great - showing not just the strength and depth of interest in photography, but also offering encouraging signs that we're on our way out of the worst as far as the economy is concerned.

Aisle 4, by coincidence, seemed to offer the most of the old favorites starting with Cartier-Bresson's "Easter Sunday. Harlem. New York. 1947" at Eric Franck (above).

Across the aisle at Robert Mann, a particularly nice early print of Ansel Adams' "Moonrise" at Robert Mann.

At Gitterman, a late 1920s photo of the Brooklyn Bridge by William D. Richardson.

At Michael Shapiro a 1968 Pirkle Jones from his Black Panther documentary series. Here a couple at a Free Huey Rally in Oakland, CA.

And providing equal opportunity to the male nude, a 1984 photograph by Edna Bullock from a series clearly responding to Edward Weston.

Lastly at Shapiro, a 1965 Jim Marshall of the Rolling Stones at the San Francisco Civic Auditorium.

At Mack Lee, Edward Weston's seminal "Tina Reciting" from 1924.

At Photology a trio of small Luigi Ghirri's anticipating Thomas Struth's museum series.

At Fetterman, a Sebastiao Salgado from his latest series of endangered landscapes.

And an Alan Grant of Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly backstage at the 1956 Academy Awards.

At Deborah Bell, Louis Faurer's classic "Bowing at the Collections"

And now truly last from AIPAD, but not least - at Edwynn Houk, Lynn Davis's new "Iguaza Falls, Brazil".