Posts by Miss Rosen

Ernest C. Withers: I’ll Take You There

Posted on August 30, 2021

*Double Exposure of a Nighttime March © The Ernest C. Withers Family Trust; courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles*

Working at a time when mainstream American publications rarely hired Black photographers,Dr. Ernest C. Withers, Sr. (1922 – 2007) made a way. His work, on view in the exhibition “I’ll Take You There” and new book The Revolution in Black and White: Photographs of the Civil Rights Era by Ernest C. Withers (CityFiles Press) provides a look at Black life in the American South during the height of Civil Rights Movement.

Hailing from Memphis, Tennessee, Williams became one of the first nine Black police officers to join the force in 1948 after serving in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Although Withers was given a uniform, patrol car, and gun, he was forbidden to patrol white communities or arrest white folks. His power was proscribed strictly within the confines of Black Memphis, during the height of segregation.

Off duty, Withers photographed the same community, documenting the fabled Beale Street music scene, the birthplace of Memphis Blues icons like B. B. King. After getting caught selling liquor illegally, Withers left the force to work as a freelance photographer. He shot for the Tri-State Defender, the Memphis offshoot of Chicago’s famed Black newspaper and legendary photo magazines Ebony and Jet, while also working as Stax Records’ official photographer for 20 years.

Withers’ business cards bore the slogan “Pictures Tell The Story” — a philosophy he used over the course of six decades to create more than one million images. But it wasn’t until years after his death that the bombshell dropped — documents revealed Withers worked as a paid FBI informant.

Read the Full Story at Blind

*Ernest Withers’s Beal Street Studio © The Ernest C. Withers Family Trust; courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles*

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Art, Blind, Books, Exhibitions, Photography

Irina Rozovsky: In Plain Air

Posted on August 26, 2021

*Irina Rozovsky. Image from In Plain Air (MACK, 2021). Courtesy the artist and MACK.*

Throughout its existence, Prospect Park’s fate has mirrored that of the city, rising and falling with the economic tides, eventually being designated a New York City Historic Landmark in 1975 and listing on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980. Most, knowing little of its extraordinary history, simply partaking in the pleasures of an oasis nestled inside the eye of the storm, a quiet escape from the madness that churns in the streets beyond its walls.

“I came to New York like millions of others, lured by a city pulsing with possibilities, where it’s not who you are or where you’re from but what you work to become,” writes Russia-born, America-raised photographer Irina Rozovsky in her book, In Plain Air (MACK), a collection of lyrical photographs made in Prospect Park between 2011–2020.

Some 17,000 years ago, Brooklyn’s luminous Prospect Park took shape as the Wisconsin Glacier receded, leaving a string of hills, kettles, and plains in its wake. At the very northeastern tip, Mount Prospect took shape, forming one of the tallest hills in Brooklyn, rising some 200 feet about sea level and providing its own private oasis just a few miles inland from the Atlantic Ocean.

During her first scorching summer in the city, where the air is so thick from pollution and humidity, it starts to bend light, Rozovsky escapes to the park where she can breathe easily among the trees and grass.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: Art, Books, Brooklyn, Feature Shoot, Photography

Marvel Harris: MARVEL

Posted on August 24, 2021

*Marvel Harris. Image from MARVEL (MACK, 2021). Courtesy the artist and MACK.*

As a teen, Dutch photographer Marvel Harris struggled with disordered eating and profound feelings of insecurity and aversion towards his body. Not understanding the root of his conflict, therapists trotted out textbook analysis, telling him: “Not wanting to gain weight, when struggling with an eating disorder, is associated with not wanting to grow up and take responsibilities.”

Recognizing this was not the source of his distress, Marvel dug deeper in search of understanding. When he gained weight, people offered compliments like, “Real women have curves,” which inadvertently got at the crux of the matter: Marvel was not a woman.

While reading about gender dysphoria in 2016, Marvel began to recognize himself and embarked on a journey to live his truth. A year later, he picked up the camera and began making a series of self-portraits documenting his experiences as a non-binary transgender artist transitioning to manhood. But something happened as he created a space for silent reflection of himself — Marvel found the path to his lifelong search for self-love and self-acceptance.

Read the Full Story at i-D

Categories: Books, i-D, Photography

Albert Watson: Creating Photographs

Posted on August 23, 2021

*Divine, New York City, 1978 © Albert Watson*

On the cusp of his 80th birthday, Scottish photographer Albert Watson has become one of the greatest photographers of our time. With more than 100 covers for Vogue, 40 covers forRolling Stone, and 100 album covers for Michael Jackson, Diana Ross, Sade, Aaliyah, and Jay-Z, Watson stands alongside Irving Penn and Richard Avedon as an artist whose work has transformed the very way we see.

Since publishing his iconic photograph of Alfred Hitchcock holding a cooked goose by the neck for the 1973 Christmas issue of Harper’s Bazaar, Watson has become a veritable force of nature. Whether shooting fashion, celebrity, portraiture, advertising, landscape, still life, or fine art, Watson is equally comfortable photographing Queen Elizabeth II or Tupac Shakur.

With the recent publication of Creating Photographs, Watson offers an affordable and accessible guide to the secrets of his photography career, including, “Be bold,” “Capture the geography of the face,” “See the beauty and charisma of objects,” and “Surround yourself with good people.”

The book opens with a chapter titled, “Learning from the journey,” Watson looks back on half a century behind the camera. “I wasn’t trying to be a photographer so there was a lot I had to learn. I assumed that I should be learning technical things in the same way you learn to drive a car,” he reveals. Learning on the job, Watson discovered how things worked, what made them good or bad, and how he could make them better through the fusion of technique and creativity.

Read the Full Story at Blind

*Mick Jagger in Car with Leopard, Los Angeles, 1992 © Albert Watson*

*Gabrielle Reece in Vivienne Westwood, Paris, 1989 © Albert Watson*

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Blind, Books, Fashion, Photography

Cey Adams: Smithsonian Anthology of Hip-Hop and Rap

Posted on August 20, 2021

*Photograph by Jamel Shabazz. Four young men posing. This image was made on the Lower East Side of Manhattan at the famous Delancey Street & Orchard Street in 1980, a major shopping hub.*

“Like a kid that’s always dreaming about going to the NBA and then you get the call, I was dreaming of this project even before I knew I was going to work on it,” says artist Cey Adams, the founding creative director of Def Jam. Adams art directed the Smithsonian Anthology of Hip-Hop and Rap, which is released on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings today (20 August 2021).

Tracing hip hop’s evolution from 1979 to 2013, the anthology brings together nine CDs with 129 tracks and a 300-page illustrated book published to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). Featuring photographs by Janette Beckman, Charlie Ahearn, Anthony Barboza, Adrian Boot, Jamel Shabazz, and Glen E. Friedman, it offers a panoramic history of a culture born on the streets of the Bronx, that has since become a multi-billion dollar global phenomenon.

The anthology’s creators eschew the notion of a canon and instead envision the project as a foundation upon which to build. “I was on a call with LL Cool J and Chuck D, and we talked about not only making this book, but our journey as a people,” says Adams, who got his start as a graffiti writer in the 1970s.

Read the Full Story at Huck

*MC Sha-Rock, The Valley, NYC, June 1980, photo by Charlie Ahearn*

*Female Rappers, Class of ’88, 1988, photo by Janette Beckman*

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Bronx, Brooklyn, Graffiti, Huck, Music, Photography

Hiro, Celebrated Fashion Photographer, Dies at 90

Posted on August 20, 2021

Yasuhiro Wakabayashi, the Japanese-born American photographer known as Hiro died August 15, 2021, at the age of 90 in his country home in Erwinna, Pennsylvania. Best known for his fashion and still life work, Hiro’s surreal vision of glamour established him among giants of the industry including his mentor Richard Avedon.

“Hiro is no ordinary man,” Avedon said. “He is one of the few artists in the history of photography. He is able to bring his fear, his isolation, his darkness, his splendid light to film.” Avedon’s words are a testament to Hiro’s extraordinary life, one turned upside down as a child born in Shanghai on November 3, 1930, just one year before Japan invaded Manchuria. One of five children of a Japanese linguist who may have been involved in espionage, Hiro lived a protected life during the better part of World War II, until the battles in the Pacific Theater came to an end.

After being interned for five months in Peking (now Beijing), the family was repatriated to occupied Japan in 1946. A stranger among his own people, Hiro became intrigued by elements of American pop culture in postwar Japan. While paging through glossy fashion magazines at hotels, Hiro discovered the work of Richard Avedon and Irving Penn, and soon acquired a camera of his own. In the ruins of imperial Japan, Hiro realized a vision all his own — one that brought the luxurious and quotidian together to create a phantasmagoric spectacle of opulence.

Read the Full Story at Blind

*Marisa Berenson, Hat by Halston, Harper’s Bazaar, February 1966, cover © HIRO*

Categories: 1960s, 1980s, Art, Blind, Books, Fashion, Photography

Syd Shelton: The Battle of Lewisham August 13th 1977

Posted on August 19, 2021

In the wake of global independence movements following World War II, the British Empire collapsed, the economy declined, and the extreme-right began to reassert itself on the national stage. During the late 1960s, the National Front (NF) rose to prominence by fanning the flames of racism and xenophobia to expand its power base.

The NF began targeting South London – home to Afro Caribbean and South Asian immigrants – to make their stand. They announced plans for an “Anti- Mugging March” from New Cross to Lewisham on August 13, 1977.

The march was precipitated by the arrest of young Black men and women known as the Lewisham 21. On May 30, the police raided their homes at dawn and charging them in connection with a series of muggings over a period of six months.

Read the Full Story at Huck

Categories: 1970s, Art, Books, Huck, Photography

Patrick D. Pagnano: The Streets of New York

Posted on August 18, 2021

*Patrick D. Pagnano. Twin young women leaning on car; taken in NYC in the 1970s*

*Patrick D. Pagnano. Two men relaxing on park bench; New York city; Early 1970s*

“I was going to begin my tales of this city with a statement about how long I’ve been here, but the phone rang,” the Italian-American photographer Patrick D. Pagnano (1947-2018) wrote in a notebook on April 16, 1974 — just six weeks after he and his new wife, Kari, arrived in New York City for their honeymoon.

After spending their first week at the Times Square Motor Lodge, Pat and Kari found a cosy apartment on Thompson Street in the heart of Greenwich Village, which was then home to the bustling Italian-American community. “He loved the neighbourhood,” Kari says. “The Italian ladies in our building brought chairs down to sit on the stoop. There were a number of mafia-related characters that we always talked about. There was a guy on the next block, Sullivan Street, always walking up and down the sidewalk in his bathrobe.”

Pat was in his element. “The building we live in is practically all Italians,” he wrote in his notebook. “On Sunday you can smell the garlic and tomato floating from floor 1 to 6.” Undoubtedly the scent of Italian food evoked memories of home. A second-generation Italian-American, Pat was raised in a multi-generational home in Chicago’s South Side during the 1950s and 60s.

His family faced the horrors of ‘urban renewal’ twice in Pat’s youth: first when the government seized his father’s store to build the notorious Cabrini-Green housing projects where the movie Candyman was based, and then a second time when the family home was razed to build the University of Illinois in Chicago. These experiences shaped Pat’s outlook, building a firm sense of solidarity with the working class.

Read the Full Story at i-D

*Patrick D. Pagnano. Young man at Lunch Counter; taken in NYC in the 1970s*

*Patrick D. Pagnano. Four Guys Setting Up; taken in New York City in early 1970s*

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, i-D, Manhattan, Photography

Reverend Wanda R. Johnson Honors Her Son Oscar Grant

Posted on August 17, 2021

“Oftentimes when a loved one is killed by law enforcement officers, that individual is demonised,” says reverend Wanda R. Johnson, mother of Oscar Grant III, whose last day on earth was memorialised in Ryan Coogler’s 2013 film Fruitvale Station starring Michael B. Jordan.

In the early hours of New Year’s Day 2009, Grant, a 22-year-old Black man, was restrained by Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Police. He was forced to lie face down on the train station platform, then shot in the back by officer Johannes Mehserle. Although millions watched one of the very first police shootings captured by mobile phone, no one outside the police department had heard some 60 hours of police investigations, which were kept secret until now.

Earlier this year, KQED radio station filed a lawsuit against BART, forcing them to comply with California’sThe Right to Know Act, which gives the public access to select records of police misconduct and excessive force. On July 8, NPR and KQED released the newest episode of the On Our Watch podcast, which makes information on those tapes available for the first time.

Last October, Johnson organised a press conference asking for Grant’s case to be reopened in order to bring charges against a second officer, Anthony “Tony” Pirone, based on the new evidence that had come to light. According to a 2009 Meyers Nave report commissioned by BART, “Pirone was, in large part, responsible for setting the events in motion that created a chaotic and tense situation on the platform, setting the stage, even if inadvertent, for the shooting of Oscar Grant.”

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Categories: Dazed

Douglas Corrance: New York 1970-1980s

Posted on August 17, 2021

By 1975, New York City teetered along the edge of bankruptcy, some $11 billion in debt. By October the situation had reached dire straits when President Gerald R. Ford refused a federal bailout, prompting the infamous Daily News front page: “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD”.

The headline cost Ford re-election the following year, and haunted him for the rest of his life – a fitting turn of events for the man who dared to turn his back on the city that never sleeps. New Yorkers, on the other hand, had no choice but to soldier on.

Despite the crumbling infrastructure and economic decline further exacerbated by the Nixon White House of “benign neglect,” which systematically denied government services to Black and brown communities nationwide, and landlord-sponsored arson that reduced city blocks to rubble at record speed, New Yorkers proved to be resilient.

Read the Full Story at Huck

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Huck, Manhattan, Photography

Hannah Wilke: Art for Life’s Sake

Posted on August 15, 2021

*Hannah Wilke with Ponder-r-rosa 4, 1975*

Long before the selfie came into vogue, American artist Hannah Wilke (1940–1993) understood the importance of harnessing the power of self-representation through photography. At the tender age of 14, the native New Yorker donned her mother’s mink stole, white pumps, and nothing else to pose for a self-portrait in front of a wall bearing her birth name, Arlene H. Butler — lest anyone not know exactly who she was.

“I become my art, my art becomes me…. My heart is hard to handle, my art is too,” Wilke wrote in a letter published in the 1975 book, Art: A Woman’s Sensibility(California Institute of the Arts). With the understanding that a woman laying claim to her own body was a transgressive act, Wilke rose to prominence doing just that. Working as a photographer, sculptor, video artist, and performance artist who turned the female gaze on herself, Wilke’s art acted as a Rorschach Test — admiration and criticism revealing more about the viewer than the art itself.

Emblematic of the revolutionary times in which she lived, Wilke emerged from the 1960s with a practice that reshaped the conversation about the relationship between feminism, art, and the role of women in society just as the Women’s Liberation Movement took off. She used her work to establish an iconography that centers the female body and pleasure at a time when such topics were taboo and largely excluded from the male-dominated provenance of art history.

Read the Full Story at Blind

*Hannah Wilke: Intercourse with… audio installation cover, 1975*

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Blind, Exhibitions, Photography