Posts by Miss Rosen

Christine Osinski: Summer Days Staten Island

Posted on July 15, 2019

Two Girls with Matching Outfits © Christine Osinski

In 1982, photographer Christine Osinski and her husband experienced the first wave of gentrification that would come to destroy New York. A real estate developer bought the downtown Manhattan building that they called home and priced them out, forcing them to move to Staten Island – a place which has long been considered the city’s “forgotten borough.”

“When you take the ferry, it’s like you are leaving the city behind,” Osinski says. “Staten Island was a place you weren’t noticed and people left you alone. There was a sense of being surrounded by water and being far away from things.”

To acclimate to her new environment, Osinski set out to take photographs of locals on the streets during the summers of 1983 and ’84. The photographs, now on view in Summer Days Staten Island, capture a chapter in New York history that has all but disappeared.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Young Man Pulling a Go-Kart © Christine Osinski

Two Girls with Big Wheels © Christine Osinski

Categories: 1980s, Art, Exhibitions, Huck, Photography

Guzman: Scenes from a Pivotal Era in Louis Vuitton History

Posted on July 10, 2019

Photo: Guzman. Louis Vuitton Centennial Collection. Helmut Lang Record Album Case. Grandmaster Flash styled by Basia Zamorska. Hair Danilo Dixo. Make Up Mathu Andersen. Art Direction Maurice Betite at Euro RSCG Paris. Art Buyer Catherine Mahe. French Photo Agent Veronique Peres Domergue.

When Tom Ford joined Gucci in 1990, a new era was born: one that brought luxury goods to the forefront of popular culture. As the return of the double Gs took the globe by storm, in 1997, LVMH’s Bernard Arnault appointed Marc Jacobs as Creative Director of Louis Vuitton to design the company’s first ready-to-wear clothing line.

To prime the public for this pivotal moment in the esteemed fashion house’s 143-year history, Vuitton’s French advertising agency, Euro RSCG Paris, hired Guzman, the American husband-and-wife photography team of Russell Peacock and Constance Hansen, to shoot the 1996 campaign for the Louis Vuitton Centennial Collection—a celebration of the iconic Monogram Canvas print featuring original clothing designs by Vivienne Westwood, Manolo Blahnik, Azzedine Alaïa, Helmut Lang, Romeo Gigli, Isaac Mizrahi, and Sybilla.

“Vuitton’s past campaigns were focused on travel. This was a big departure for them,” Peacock says. “They were conservative and traditional. Wealthy people would buy Vuitton but it wasn’t a fashion statement. They wanted to be hip.”

By the mid-90s, Guzman had achieved recognition creating unconventional advertising campaigns for companies like KOOKAÏ and Tag Heuer as well as shooting album covers artists like Janet Jackson, Jody Watley, and Total. But, as Hansen explains, “We were outside the fashion box. We weren’t reverential. We didn’t understand the respect of the couture. We were working in hip hop culture, and went with what we knew.”

Read the Full Story at Document Journal

Guzman. Louis Vuitton Damier Collection. Styled by Basia Zamorska. Hair Danilo Dixo. Make Up Mathu Andersen. Manicures by Bernadette Thompson. Art Direction Maurice Betite at Euro RSCG Paris. Art Buyer Catherine Mahe. French Photo Agent Veronique Peres Domergue.

Categories: 1990s, Art, Document Journal, Fashion, Photography

Victor Cobo: Remember When You Loved Me?

Posted on July 8, 2019

Over the past two decades, Victor Cobo has used photography to explore the dark corners of the human psyche. His work uses a compelling mix of documentary and staged scenes, addressing the primal mysteries of life and death, damnation and salvation, trauma and sex.

“I’m an emotional person that has had my bout with addiction, depression and anxiety,” Cobo says. “My biological father is mentally ill, was addicted to heroin and an acute alcoholic. I think the aspect of isolation and drama comes out in my work. I utilise to my advantage his psychosis that I most likely inherited. I try to turn these aspects of darkness into beautiful and sometimes even playful images.”

In the new exhibition Remember When You Loved Me?, Cobo uses photography to spellbinding effect. Drawing inspiration from surrealism, film noir, and German expressionism, the photographer has transformed the camera into a therapeutic medium.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Categories: Art, Huck, Photography

Sara Cwynar: Gilded Age

Posted on July 7, 2019

Photo: Sara Cwynar. Red Rose, 2017. Pigment print mounted on Dibond 30 x 24 in. Artist’s proof ½ Collection of David Madee. © Sara Cwynar. Courtesy of Cooper Cole, Toronto and Foxy Production, New York .

Like any language, photography has given birth to a series of clichés that are reductive at best. At their worst, they become a vehicle for disinformation and stereotype, fueling pathologies by reinforcing the most dangerous aspects of confirmation bias. As Jenny Holzer noted, “Clichés endure” — and may very well exist until we root them out and expose them for the perilous, short-sighted, and sloppy thinking that they are.

Canadian artist Sara Cwynar takes aim at popular photographic clichés in her new exhibition, Gilded Age, on view at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT, through November 10, 2019. Whatever medium Cwynar selects, she uses the form to explore and expose the ways in which images are constructed and recycled in an endless digital loop. Cwynar sets her sights on the preponderance of visual clichés that crowd our space, recognizing the ways in which they can be used as dog whistles to signify ulterior agendas.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: Art, Feature Shoot

Lee Stuart: Street Dreams – How Hip Hop Took Over Fashion

Posted on July 7, 2019

Jamel Shabazz. Young Boys, East Flatbush, Brooklyn, NYC 1981

“Rap is something you do! Hip hop is something you live!” KRS-One memorably said. Born in the Bronx in 1973, hip hop is not just music, dance, and art; it is a way of being in the world.

“I am a child of hip hop,” says Lee Stuart, Brand Director of Patta, a Dutch streetwear brand, who has curated the new exhibition Street Dreams: How Hip Hop Took Over Fashion. Organised chronologically, the exhibition presents the visual legacy of hip hop through a series of 30 songs and illustrates them with the art, fashion, and photography that defined the era.

“We’re not trying to be historians,” Stuart says. “We are trying to immerse people in these images, show them and make them part of this energy.”

To select the songs, Stuart did what all heads love: he gathered his team and debated the merits of each track. He then chose corresponding work by artists including Nick Cave, Kehinde Wiley, Jamel Shabazz, Janette Beckman, Dana Lixenberg, Hank Willis Thomas, Kambui Olujimi, and Earlie Hudnall.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Earlie Hudnall, Gucci Brothers, 3rd Ward, Houston, TX, 1990 Courtesy PDNB Gallery, Dallas, Texas

Jamel Shabazz. Rude Boy, Brooklyn, NYC 1981.

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Exhibitions, Fashion, Music, Photography

Fearless Fashion: Rudi Gernreich

Posted on July 1, 2019

Peggy Moffitt modeling the topless swimsuit designed by Rudi Gernreich, 1964. Photograph © William Claxton, LLC, courtesy of Demont Photo Management & Fahey/Klein Gallery Los Angeles, with permission of the Rudi Gernreich trademark.

On June 16, 1964, Rudi Gernreich’s infamous monokini went on sale in New York’s most prestigious department stores. Buyers at B. Altman & Co., Lord & Taylor, Henri Bendel, Abraham & Strauss, Splendiferous and Parisette placed orders after William Claxton’s photograph of Peggy Moffit rocked the pop culture landscape.

Moffit was Gernreich’s muse and Claxton’s wife, and together this ménage a trios was pure fire. The idea for the monokini first came to Gernreich in December 1962 and first appeared in futuristic fashion feature in a late 1963 issue of Look magazine — after LIFE refused to publish them. In The Rudy Gernreich Book, Moffit recalls the editor at LIFE shamelessly told Claxton, “This is a family magazine, and naked breasts are allowed only if the woman is an aborigine.”

LIFE’s racist policy about women’s bodies cost them one of the biggest news stories of the year. They “goofed” Moffitt politely says. The magazine ordered a reshoot, demanding Moffitt cover her breasts with her arms. Moffitt described their art direction as “dirty.”

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Peggy Moffitt modeling dress designed by Rudi Gernreich, Fall 1971 collection. Photograph © William Claxton, LLC, courtesy of Demont Photo Management & Fahey/Klein Gallery Los Angeles, with permission of the Rudi Gernreich trademark.

Categories: 1960s, Fashion, Feature Shoot, Photography

Zak Ové: Get Up, Stand Up Now

Posted on June 27, 2019

Armet Francis, ‘Fashion Shoot Brixton Market’, 1973.

Jenn Nkiru, ‘Still from Neneh Cherry, Kong’, 2018.

“I was raised by a village,” says artist Zak Ové of his upbringing in West London. “It was a very outspoken black and West Indian community, [and I was] understanding how assertive one had to be to be seen.”

As the son of an Irish Socialist mum and acclaimed black filmmaker Horace Ové, the artist was raised with strong ideals that have guided him throughout his career: “Politics within the arts has always been very integral from my father’s generation onwards. [It helps us] attain equality, honesty, and perspective towards our own history.”

Now, Ové is honouring those who laid these foundations in Get Up, Stand Up Now, a new landmark exhibition which celebrates 50 years of Black creativity in the UK. The exhibition features historic artworks, new commissions, and never-before-seen work by 100 artists working in art, film, photography, music, literature, design and fashion. This includes the Black Audio Film Collective, Chris Ofili, David Hammons, Ebony G. Patterson, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Lubaina Himid, Althea McNish, Steve McQueen, and Yinka Shonibare.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Ajamu, from ‘Circus Master Series’, 1997

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Exhibitions, Huck, Music, Painting, Photography

Collier Schorr: Stonewall at 50

Posted on June 26, 2019

Chella Man © Collier Schorr, courtesy of the Alice Austen House

In the early hours of June 28, 1969, homeless LGBTQ teens, trans women of color, lesbians, drag queens, gay men, and allies faced down the police during a raid at New York City’s Stonewall Inn – kicking off a rebellion on the streets of Greenwich Village and igniting the global Gay Liberation Movement.

Half a century after this historic uprising, American photographer Collier Schorr pays homage to 15 leading intergenerational LGBTQ activists and artists – including Eileen Myles, Zackary Drucker, and Judy Bowen – in a series of black and white portraits now on view in Stonewall at 50.

Native New Yorker Karla Jay was an early member of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF). “Stonewall came along in this age of rebellion against societal norms,” she says. “There were so many things happening in 1969: the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, and the Women’s Movement. I was a radical feminist and belonged to a group called Redstockings. We didn’t invent rebellion, but we ran with it because we were sex radicals.”

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Agosto Machado © Collier Schorr, courtesy of the Alice Austen House

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Art, Exhibitions, Huck, Photography

Urban Impulses: Latin American Photography from 1959 to 2017

Posted on June 26, 2019

Pablo Ortiz Monasterio. Flying low, Mexico City, 1989 © Pablo Ortiz Monasterio Courtesy of the artist

“I am not a liberator,” said Ernesto “Che” Guevara in 1958, just one year before the Cuban Revolution transformed the landscape of Latin America. “Liberators do not exist. It exists when people liberate themselves.”

This historic movement for independence from western imperialism marks the starting point of the new exhibition Urban Impulses: Latin American Photography from 1959 to 2017. Curated by María Wills Londoño and Alexis Fabry, the show features more than 200 works by over 70 artists; including masters of the medium Alberto Korda, Graciela Iturbide, Sergio Larrain, as well as lesser-known artists such as Enrique Zamudio, Beatriz Jaramillo, and Yolanda Andrade.

“The purpose of the show is to bring a counterpoint to Latin American photography beyond gazes that have an exoticising point of view,” says Londoño. “We want to introduce new perspectives focusing on the chaos and crisis of utopian models of modernity.”

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Álvaro Hoppe. Calle Alameda, Santiago, 1983

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Exhibitions, Huck, Latin America, Photography

Rick Castro: Glory Hole

Posted on June 26, 2019

Rick Castro. Head bondage, 1992.

In a new online exhibition titled Glory Hole, the ‘King of Fetish’ Rick Castro delves deep into his 30-year archive to unearth a selection of rarely shown photographs. Featuring intimate portrayals of the male body, the Tom of Finland Store exhibition celebrates fetish and BDSM at a time when corporate censorship openly threatens expressions of queer identity. Just this year, Facebook barred Castro from his account for 30 days to prevent him from promoting his exhibition Fetish King: Seminal Photographs 1986-2019 at the Tom of Finland Foundation.

“It’s depressingly becoming really prevalent,” Castro tells Another Man from his home in Los Angeles. “Everything is becoming G-rated. The guise of community standards has nothing to do with the insidiousness of removing a specific voice (of the LGBTQ community). It’s biased and it’s very much overkill.”

But Castro has never allowed anyone to silence his voice. In the early years of his career, he struggled to find a venue to show his work. “Up until the internet, fetish never had a huge forum,” Castro says. “But now, it’s being co-opted and gentrified just like everything else.”

With Glory Hole, Castro fights back, showing why he wears the crown and reigns supreme. Here, alongside an exclusive preview of Glory Hole, he shares memories of his encounters with Kenneth Chang, whose photograph graces the cover of the 1992 cult classic The Bondage Book Vol. 1.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

Categories: 1990s, AnOther Man, Art, Photography

Max Blagg: An Englishman in New York

Posted on June 24, 2019

Ralph Gibson. Hand of a Poet

Max Blagg arrives, apologizing for being but a few minutes late, his British accent quite debonair. He steps into the salon, sitting on the sofa, allowing Glitterati mascot Alfrieda the basset hound to snuggle on up, as he recounts the adventures of an Englishman in New York.

“I was the youngest of twelve children. We lived in a small town in the English Midlands. We were working class. There was lots of love. It was a great family. But I was the only one with the inclination to read books.

“I started writing at 15, a gift that was triggered by my sister dying of breast cancer, a slow motion event that happened at home. It was truly awful. Writing poems about her pain seemed to give me some relief. At the same time, I was becoming interested in girls. A bizarre collision of sex and death. Looking back, I wrote a lot of pretty bad poetry back then. But I also played soccer for the school team. I had a double life.

“In my house, higher learning was not encouraged. It was that working class mentality: Don’t expect to rise above your station. At 17 I passed the A level exams and qualified for college. My mother had no intention of letting me go away, but I secretly applied and got into a college in London with a very generous government grant. The poorer your parents were, the more money you got. That would never happen today.

“I wasn’t that comfortable in London, it’s under the sign of Capricorn. But after almost getting a B.A. degree I met a lovely girl at a jumble sale who gave me lots of American poetry to read. I was so entranced by Frank O’Hara that I quit my job as a bricklayer’s laborer and bought a one-way ticket to NYC. I had one address, 118 Spring Street. I want to put a little plaque on that building. I showed up there, and Ignacio and Caroline, kind folks I hardly knew, put me up for months. We’re still close friends. Soho back then was deserted, a playground for artists. I got a job in construction on 53^rd Street, Street, across from MoMA where Frank O’Hara had worked. New York, miraculous place. Instantly felt like home.”

In the years since he first arrived, Mr. Blagg has made a life for himself in the New York literary scene. Since 1979, he has published five volumes of poetry and prose, as well as collaborated with artists including James Nares, Alex Katz, Jack Pierson, Richard Prince, Donald Sultan, Billy Sullivan, Keith Sonnier, Joe Fyfe, Jerelyn Hanrahan and Nicholas Rule, creating texts and poetry inspired by their work and used in gallery and museum exhibition catalogues, and artworks. Along the way he has performed his ‘stand-up poetry’ at venues as diverse as the Kitchen, the Guggenheim Museum, the legendary club Jackie 60, as well as St Marks Church, Bowery Poetry Club, CBGB, The Gershwin Hotel, Tin Pan Alley, the Performing Garage, and many other choice locations.

“Poetry seized me by the scruff very early on. I’ve always worked at it, albeit erratically rather than methodically. It is what I do. I haven’t published as much as I would have liked, but in the last ten years, there’s been a personal renaissance. ‘In age I bloom again/and relish versing,’ as Georgie Herbert put it. Most recently, I did a collaboration with the photographer Larry Clark. It was pure poetry. He gave me the images and said, ‘Write whatever you want.’ Then he created an exquisite limited edition portfolio just so I could make money from poetry! I’ve always gravitated more towards artists than writers. I hate the starving poet cliché. It’s too old, that story.

“Recently, I’ve been working on vintage typewriter covers, stenciling text on them. It’s an object you can hang on the wall. The catalogue, Venus at the One Stop, has the poems that the stenciled fragments are taken from. It’s a new vehicle for me, and a way of putting the Word on the wall. The only drawback is that now my loft looks like a typewriter repair store.”

One of the poems featured in the catalogue is titled “Into the West” and it appears alongside a corresponding case, titled “Remington Streamliner #2.” It hangs on a white brick wall, a Duchamp readymade with but one distinction: it reveals the hand of the poet.

Into the West

On the verandah of someplace

my nerves are rocking like a chair,

looking out beyond Ohio toward the

long blonde coast of California.

A few drops of ink, midnight blue,

scattered on the orange field,

evening sun retreating, engraving

memory on the skull’s smooth shield.

Mr. Blagg reveals, “I have been reading, among other scriveners, the medieval Chinese poet Lu Yu. There is a sparseness to the writing, an elegant simplicity that evokes very human moments. I would love to do that. Good poetry is concise, compact and compressed. In the last couple of years, I’ve written an ‘embellished memoir’ Ticket Out, and it was hard for me to stretch out the prose. The more I pushed it, the more I could see the stretch marks.”

Poetry, in its essence, is the word emboldened. It is liberated from the strictures of syntax and the taxes of grammar, and as it lives upon the printed page or breathed into the ether. And so the poem becomes something else, perhaps a potion, perhaps a spell, as it conjures another world, a world of the sensations of pure literary form.

A poem may be as chic as a gown, as precisely refined and exquisitely designed, evoking that great je ne sais quoi that is what we think when we say “chic” even if we can’t exactly define it. Mr. Blagg observes, “Chic is a way certain people carry themselves. Paris is chic by definition. My idea of chic is more like New York, needs a bit of rough, an edge here and there. There is nothing deliberate about it. It’s something innate rather than acquired; you either have it or you don’t.

“Black Sparrow Press, Charles Bukowski’s former publisher, was my idea of book chic. I would buy the authors they published, just for the look and the texture of the books. Ecco Press bought the company after Bukowski died, and they started printing facsimile editions of his original works, but the covers are reproduced on shiny paper, It was a like a fake Chanel bag. It was anti-chic. You can’t fake chic.”

Categories: Art, Poetry