Posts by Miss Rosen

Guzman: Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814

Posted on March 29, 2019

Janet Jackson, Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814 album cover shoot, 1989© Guzman

Sombre church bells sound as Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814 begins. An eerie, unsettled feeling unfolds as Jackson recites the “Pledge” her voice layered to suggest a group who are bound together on this journey as one: “We are a nation with no geographic boundaries, bound together through our beliefs. We are like-minded individuals, sharing a common vision, pushing toward a world rid of colour-lines.”

Then she dropped “Rhythm Nation” and the world would never be the same. On her fourth studio album, Jackson transformed from pop star into an icon.

Forever defiant and entirely her own, Jackson refused to give the record label what they wanted, a sequel to Control. But she had bigger things on her mind, and used her art to make a political statement about issues of race, bigotry, gun violence, poverty, drug abuse, illiteracy, and ignorance.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Janet Jackson, Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814 album cover shoot, 1989© Guzman

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Dazed, Music, Photography

Suzanne Donaldson: Inside the Final Years of Robert Mapplethorpe’s Studio

Posted on March 29, 2019

Robert Mapplethorpe. Marcus Leatherdale, 1978 © Robert Mapplethorpe / Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Back in 1986, at the very beginning of her career, Suzanne Donaldson was working in the art department at Vanity Fair. Just 24 years old, her dream was to be a photo editor, and she was thrilled to learn of an opening in the photo department under Elisabeth Biondi.

“My boss didn’t want me to go,” Donaldson recalls. “She very snarkily said, ‘With your interest in photography, I don’t know why you don’t go work for Mapplethorpe, Horst, or Avedon?’”

The forces of fate must have heard the crack, for not long thereafter Donaldson learned that Robert Mapplethorpe was looking for someone to manage his Manhattan studio.

“I was lucky enough to have an interview with him,” she says. “It was an epic time in New York. It was the beginning of the AIDS crisis. He was diagnosed at that point. Everybody was wary of toilet seats, shaking somebody’s hand, kissing them — it wasn’t known how it was contracted.”

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Robert Mapplethorpe. Phillip Prioleau, 1982 © Robert Mapplethorpe / Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

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

Ron Galella: Shooting Stars – The Untold Stories

Posted on March 28, 2019

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Ron Galella. Photography by Joy Smith © Ron Galella

What makes a legend most? Some say glamour, others scandal – or, in the case of Ron Galella, the ‘Godfather of Paparazzi’ who captured Hollywood’s most illustrious stars over a decades-long career, both.

The Bronx-born, first-generation Italian-American got his start in the early 1950s working as a US Air Force photographer during the Korean War, and took the lessons he learned on the frontlines straight to Hollywood. Armed with two cameras – no bag or coat – Galella would jump fences, crash parties, don disguises, and spend countless hours on stakeouts – all the while enduring threats, humiliation, and even violence for the opportunity to snap celebs.

Infamous for his legal battles with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, he was spat at and punched by Sean Penn; had his tooth knocked out by Richard Burton’s bodyguard; his tires slashed by Elvis Presley’s bodyguards; hosed down by Brigitte Bardot’s security; banned from Studio 54, twice; and caused Elizabeth Taylor to hiss, “I’m going to kill Ron Galella!”. It was all in a day’s work for the fearless paparazzo, who was willing to risk it all to get the shot.

Now 88, Galella has just published a new book Shooting Stars: The Untold Stories, a photographic memoir – including 22 tips for aspiring paparazzos from the man who knows. Here, on a call from his home in New Jersey, Galella recounts some of the most unforgettable moments of his career.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

Marlon Brando and Ron Galella, 1974 © Ron Galella

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, AnOther, Art, Books, Photography

Vincent Cianni: A Journey Through the Early Years of AIDS

Posted on March 27, 2019

Scott shaving, Ithaca, NY 1985. Photography Vincent Cianni. Courtesy of the artist

In the early 1980s, a mysterious disease began to infiltrate the LGBTQ community, leaving a trail of death and destruction in its wake. As it sped from one person to the next, a horde of horrific illnesses began to manifest as compromised immune systems made once-healthy bodies the site for devastating, often fatal conditions.

The government and the media turned a blind eye, ignoring the plight of HIV/Aids until it reached endemic levels. The speed at which the disease ravaged its victims and spread from one to the next was exacerbated by systemic, malevolent negligence. People were dying at an exponential rate because there was little to no information on the cause, treatment, and prevention of the disease.

It wasn’t until 1983 (after 1,450 cases, 558 of which ended in death) that The New York Times finally put Aids on the front page when the US government’s top health official declared an investigation of the disease was now “the number 1 priority” of the Public Health Service. Suddenly centered, it seemed Aids was everywhere – and the stigma, brought about by misinformation and malevolence, became something fierce.

“Early on it was a state of confusion, fear, and uncertainty,” remembers Italian-American photographer Vincent Cianni, whose photographs from the era are currently on view at Vincent Cianni: A Survey until April 6.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

Cassell, 1989. Photography Vincent Cianni. Courtesy of the artist

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Exhibitions, Photography

Rosalind Fox Solomon Wins 2019 ICP Lifetime Achievement Award

Posted on March 27, 2019

Rosalind Solomon (b. 1930) An East Village Painter, NYC, 1986 © Rosalind Fox Solomon, Courtesy of Bruce Silverstein, New York

American photographer Rosalind Fox Solomon is a master of precision and poise, capturing the most compelling moments in life. On April 2 – her 89th birthday –Solomon will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Centre of Photography.

Solomon came to photography later than most, picking up an Instamatic camera at the age of 38 to create a visual diary of her experiences in Japan. She was in the country doing volunteer work with the Experiment in International Living, a summer abroad program for high school students.

“I felt an intimacy with the camera and great excitement at being able to see and photograph an intriguing culture which I had not known before,” Solomon recalls. “With that point and shoot camera, I began to awaken a more contemplative part of myself. I found myself in a meditative state, looking, thinking and feeling. I had a sense of being self-sustaining, silent, and intensely connected to a new world.”

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Rosalind Solomon (b. 1930). Self-portrait with curtain, Rotterdam, Netherlands, 1987 © Rosalind Fox Solomon, Courtesy of Bruce Silverstein, New York

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Japan, Photography

Remembering the Life and Legacy of Patrick D. Pagnano, Street Photographer

Posted on March 20, 2019

On October 7, 2018, the photographer Patrick D. Pagnano died, leaving behind a treasury of classic American street photography and documentary work made over more than 50 years.

While attending Columbia College Chicago, Pagnano developed his “stream of consciousness” approach to street photography, a narrative technique inspired by Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, and Walker Evans. Pagnano strove to capture the essence of the moment while simultaneously indicating a larger story beyond the photograph, creating a dynamic exchange between the subject and the environment in each photograph.

In 2002, Pagnano published Shot on the Street, a collection of his color work made during the 1970s and ‘80s that evokes the visual poetry of Helen Leviitt and the intimacy of Joel Meyerowitz.

In the preface, Pagnano writes, “’Shot on the Street’ refers not only to the images having been taken on the street, but more importantly, to the psychological effect of the street. It is a place where races of people and social classes converge and vie for space and mobility with ever increasing urbanism. It can excite, anger, defeat, and inspire. The street’s influence and energy never ceases.”

That electric energy comes alive in Pagnano’s work, whether capturing candid scenes of daily life on the pavement or taking in the pleasures of Empire Roller Disco, his series documenting the legendary Brooklyn skating rink. Here, Kari Pagnano, his wife of 44 years, gives us a deep, heartfelt look at Pagnano’s life and legacy.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Manhattan, Photography

Araki: Impossible Love – Vintage Photographs

Posted on March 20, 2019

Photo: Ohne Titel, a.d.S. The Days We Were Happy, 1975 © Nobuyoshi Araki. Courtesy of Privatsammlung Eva Felten

For over half a century, Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki has devoted himself to plumbing the depths of that which is most intimate – the invisible, intangible spirit that animates our very flesh. In his hands, the erotic transcends the mere functionality of pornography and reveals the raw intensity of the emotional, physical, and psychological self that gives sex its power.

At 78, the prolific artist has published over 500 books, including his latest offering Araki: Impossible Love – Vintage Photographs, out today. Arranged chronologically, the book maps Araki’s oeuvre as it unfolds, transforming his photo diary into a visual autobiography of a singular, subversive life in art.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

Kinbaku, 2010, Polaroid
© Nobuyoshi Araki. Courtesy of artspace AM, Tokyo

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, AnOther, Art, Books, Japan, Photography

Laurie Simmons: Big Camera, Little Camera

Posted on March 17, 2019

Long House (Orange and Green Lounge), 2004. © Laurie Simmons

Have you ever wanted to step into a picture and live in that world? It’s a feeling American artist Laurie Simmons knows very well. “When I was a child, I had a strong desire to enter into the drawings in the storybook,” she says. “I can remember sitting on my mother’s lap and feeling this frustration. I wanted to get inside and walk around with the characters.”

As a member of The Pictures Generation (a group of American artists from the 70s who critically analysed the media), Simmons explores the subject of womanhood through enigmatic images that subvert stereotypes, forcing viewers to question their own assumptions.

40 years in the making, Laurie Simmons: Big Camera, Little Camera, is a major retrospective exhibition and book exploring the construction of gender, identity, reality, and illusion – as well as the photograph itself. Her work stages scenes that become poems, metaphors, and meditations on much larger ideas.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

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Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Huck, Photography, Women

Bruno Stettler: Als War’s Das Letze Mal

Posted on March 14, 2019

Siouxsie & the Banshees. Baden. 9. 7. 1979 © Bruno Stettler

Musical Youth. Zürich. 1983 © Bruno Stettler

On October 1, 1977, the Clash played Switzerland for the very first time. Their 15-track set at Kaufleuten in Zürich began with “London’s Burning” and “Complete Control” — and somewhere in the audience, 16-year-old Bruno Stettler was taking his very first concert photographs.

Over the next decade, Stettler would go on to take 20,000 photographs at nearly 100 rock concerts around town, capturing the raw intimacy of live shows long before they became overproduced spectacles.

In his new book, Als War’s Das Letze Mal (Sturm & Drang), Stettler takes us on a magical trip through the looking glass, back in the late 1970s and ’80s, when legends like Bob Marley, David Bowie. Iggy Pop, Debbie Harry, Patti Smith, Nina Hagen, and Kraftwerk called the shots.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Music

Gloria Oyarzabal: Woman go no’gree

Posted on March 14, 2019

The search for knowledge, wisdom, and understanding lies in the process of distilling fact from fiction, truth from lie, meaning from myth. It is the sifting through appearances where deception flourishes, in search of the source of authenticity and integrity upon which existence takes root.

“One consequence of Eurocentrism is the racialization of knowledge: Europe is represented as the source of knowledge and Europeans, therefore, as thinkers,” photographer Gloria Oyarzabal observes, recognizing the systems of power profiting off this misinformed belief.

These systems of power feed off a form of colonization that extends beyond the centuries-long rape, pillage, and enslavement of the people and the land — it is the colonization of the mind, a far more insidious programming that is more difficult to detect and eradicate, for its forms are multifarious, moving like a virus from one person to the next.

The programming runs so deep that many will fight to defend its dastardly deeds before do something so honorable as change their mind. Often times, the programming only ends when one finds it is too foolish and disgraceful to hold irrational thoughts. Then it becomes a process of decolonizing the mind of the bankrupt ideologies and logical fallacies one has been fed throughout their lives, and do the work of self-education, recognizing that blind spots will be revealed.

In her series, Woman go no’gree, Oyarzabal has done just this in a photographic exploration of gender, history, knowledge-making, stereotypes, and clichés of Africa. Using a mixture of archive colonial images mostly found in magazines, street photos taken with a digital camera, and studio photography found or made during her artist residence in Lagos in 2017, Oyarzabal employs a visual language that subverts and spellbinds in equal part, leading us into a silent realm of symbol and iconography. Here, Oyarzabal shares her journey with us.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: Africa, Art, Feature Shoot, Photography

Gail Buckland: A Life in Photography

Posted on March 5, 2019

Author. Educator. Curator. Gail Buckland’s life in photography is as vast as the medium itself, revealing a love that was born of a dream. Buckland remembers how it all began.

“I wanted to be a journalist. My first choice school was Northwestern, the Medill School of Journalism. After she was accepted, my family drove out to visit the school. We drove a thousand miles, and the first thing my parents wanted to find was the Hillel on campus. We kept walking around campus, passing blonde, blue-eyed people the entire way,” she says.

“On the drive from Evanston, Illinois, back to New York, my parents questioned my choice. ‘Why not go to a Liberal Arts school here?” So I went to the University of Rochester. I never thought about photography. I thought I wanted to be a journalist. Then, my freshman year I had a dream. I woke up and I wanted to be a photographer. And that was it.”

From that first moment of unconscious clarity, Buckland’s life has lead her along a path, one that has allowed her to pursue her passion for the medium. Like so many who dedicate themselves to the photograph. Buckland was lead to the form by a need to see more than her immediate senses would allow.

“I remember one time at AIPAD, I was leading a panel discussion with Ralph Gibson, Eva Rubenstein, Duane Michals, and a few other people. I asked them, ‘What was the one photograph you saw that changed the course of your life?’” she says.

“At the end, someone asked me to answer my own question. I remember where I was. I went to MoMA and saw Edward Weston’s photograph of a cabbage leaf. I never saw a cabbage lead look like that, and I had been eating cabbage my entire life. It was a revelation. I need a way of seeing more deeply because my own eyes aren’t doing it for me.”

It was here, in this recognition that not only her eyes but also her emotions and her own personal photography would be aided by a study of the masters of the medium. Buckland began to consider the photograph as more than a work of art and a record of the world, but a tool to help herself and others see life more clearly.

“In school I studied the the metaphysical and psychological realms of photography influenced by the teachings of Minor White and Roy Hattersley, and I was also taking photos to be like Dorothea Lange. I was idealistic. I wanted to change the world in the 1960s, like many others. I was very influenced by Cornell Capa’s ‘Concerned Photographer’ shows at Riverside Museum. Capa used that phrase to describe the position some adopted with their work, using photography as a tool for humanitarian service to educate and change the world,” Buckland explains.

“Once I latched on, I absorbed as much as I could. But I did not want to live in this country under Nixon. I was very radicalized at this time and I wanted to get out before I planted a bomb or did something I would later regret. I went to Manchester, England. I had been printing photographs I had taken the summer before on a trip to Crete with a group artists and I had no one to show them to so I looked up Bill Brandt, who was the only photographer I knew in England. He agreed to see me, saying, ‘I know what it means to be a photographer in a foreign country.’ We spent hours going over my prints. I was an undergraduate and Brandt was enormously generous.”

Brandt gave Buckland invaluable advice. He let her know she could crop her prints. By giving her full authority over her work, Brandt let her know she did not, as a creative mind, need to follow the rules of the establishment. Buckland was free to set her own path, and so she began to explore her options.

Buckland recalls, “I made the transition into curatorial work because I needed to earn a living. At that time, no one was doing anything with old photographs in the UK, and that combined my interests in photography and history. The Royal Photographic Society was hiring part time, and the Arts Council was also hiring part time. So I worked at both.”

In spring 1972, the Victoria & Albert Museum hosted “From Today Painting is Dead.” The title of the show is from a quote attributed to French painter Paul Delaroche, probably made in 1839 when the artist saw [heard about? Please check] examples of the Daguerreotype.

“The exhibition at the V&A was the biggest and most important photography show in the UK in 50 years. I went to Windsor and chose photographs from the Queen’s collection and to many other major collections. I also compiled the 1000 entries , written mostly by the curator of the exhibition Dr. David Thomas, for the catalogue,” Buckland notes.

“At the same time I was working at the Royal Photographic Society, cataloguing the collection. I catalogued 350 Roger Fentons and 600 Julia Margaret Camerons [GB: check numbers]. I eventually became the Curator of the Royal Photographic Society, and then I later left to concentrate on the work of William Henry Fox Talbot.”

Fox Talbot was a British savant and photography pioneer who invented the photogenic drawing and calotype process the foundation of photographic processes of the 19th and 20th centuries. Buckland spent seven years on the research, which resulted in the landmark exhibition, “Fox Talbot and the Invention of Photography” at the Pierpont Morgan Library in 1979 and book of the same name.

“Photography has allowed me to explore all areas of life. In my day, photography was a specialty unto itself. I like to say I’ve done everything from Fox Talbot to Rock and Roll,” she adds in reference to “Who Shot Rock and Roll,” a ten-museum exhibition tour and book that featured works by photographers from Richard Avedon, Albert Watson, and David LaChapelle to Dennis Hopper, Andreas Gursky, and Ryan McGinley.

The author of fourteen books on photography and history, Buckland has collaborated with luminaries including Cecil Beaton, Sir Harold Evans, and Al Gore in her illustrious career. She remembers when Beaton put her name as large on the cover as his own and told her, “We are partners in this project.” From those early heady days in England, Buckland has come full circle, now working in Brooklyn on a new exhibition and book of photography for 2016.

“I like looking at the pictures. I don’t like making the final selection. You know you have to do it, but I prefer the actual research and the pleasure of entering someone else’s world. It is like the end of Ulysses: ‘Yes. Yes. Yes.’ The act of creation is such an affirmation. I just feel more alive from it. I respond to art in the deepest, most profound way. I can’t imagine my life without it,” she says.

“Now at my age, I’m not interested in playing it safe. I am not curating for my colleagues. You can have popular and critical success: you don’t have to sacrifice one for the others. It’s not just about celebrating established people; it’s about taking risks too. My mission now is to break down the hierarchies and enlarge the field.

“Photography is the great democratic art. A judicious use of words can help enrich an experience. It’s difficult to write a book. After fourteen books, it doesn’t get any easier. It’s torture—but it helps me understand what I think, and how to be clear about my thoughts, about what is now forty years of working in – and teaching – photography.”

Categories: Photography, Women