Posts by Miss Rosen

~~ A Tribute to Arlene Gottfried ~~

Posted on August 9, 2017

Portrait of Arlene Gottfried: © Kevin C. Down

“Only in New York, kids, only in New York.”

American columnist Cindy Adams’ famed bon mot could easily caption any number of photographs in the archive of Arlene Gottfried. Whether partying in legendary 1970s sex club Plato’s Retreat, hanging out at the Nuyorican Poet’s Café with Miguel Piñero, or singing gospel with the Eternal Light Community Singers on the Lower East Side, Arlene was there and has the pictures to prove it.

“Arlene was a real New Yorker who thrived on the energy of the city, roaming the streets and recording everything she felt through a deeply empathetic and loving lens,” Paul Moakley, Deputy Director of Photography at TIME observes.

It was in her beloved city that Arlene Gottfried drew her final breath. She died the morning of August 8, after a long illness that may have taken from her body but never from her heart. In the final years of her life, she experienced a renaissance with the publication of her fifth final book Mommie (powerHouse, 2015), sell-out exhibitions at Daniel Cooney Fine Art, New York, and the 2016 Alice Austen Award for the Advancement of Photography – all of which she attended to with a style all her own.

I put together a tribute to the legendary lady who has always felt like family to me for today’s Dazed.

Photo: © Arlene Gottfried, courtesy of powerHouse Books

Photo: © Arlene Gottfried, courtesy of Daniel Cooney Fine Art.

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Brooklyn, Dazed, Manhattan, Photography

Brian David Stevens: A Tribute to the Victims of the Grenfell Tower Fire

Posted on August 9, 2017

Photo: © Brian David Stevens

Shortly after midnight on June 14, the call went out: Grenfell Tower was on fire. For the next sixty hours, the building burned and the world watched with horror as the tenants’ worst nightmare came true. For the past four years, the Grenfell Action Group had gone on record, filing official complaints that the building was a firetrap; their concerns had gone unaddressed and ignored – until it was much too late.

As of mid-July, police confirmed that at least 80 people have died but only 45 of the dead have been identified. Residents believe the number of deaths is likely over 120. More than 150 homes were destroyed, leaving survivors homeless and at the mercy of public aid, which has sparked a new round of conversation and debate. As victims face the profound challenges of recovery and re-housing, their plight has become fodder for competing narratives from people on all sides.

Within the noise, a silence exists, the silence of those who are no longer here to speak for themselves. Their faces radiate from handmade posters hung in their memory: the missing and the dead whose absence haunts those who live. Headlines rage and roar, overshadowing the humanity and the need to memorialise all that has been lost.

Photographer Brian David Stevens, a former resident of west London, found himself returning to the scene day after day, walking the streets, being in the presence of those who came to honor the dead. Concerned that in the fog of confusion, the victims will be forgotten, Stevens has focused on documenting the memorials, which serve as a place for people to gather and pay their respect, to grieve openly and find solace and support from others who struggle to cope with the tragedy.

Stevens’ connection to the community goes back two decades. He moved to the west London in 1998, where he lived and worked for ten years, getting to know the people and the neighborhood as only an insider can. In 2004, he created Notting Hill Sound Systems, a series of photographs documenting the central nervous system of Carnival. In 2016, he decided to reprise the project, which was just released in a new book from Café Royal.

Although he no longer lives in west London, the Grenfell Tower fire brought him back to its streets to reflect on the human toll the fire has cost, not only with the death of the innocent but of the burden the survivors are forced to bear living with untold trauma and grief. His photographs will be on view at The Northern Eye International Photography Festival, North Wales, Monday 9th October – Saturday 21st October 2017. All money raised will go to the Grenfell appeal. Below, Stevens speaks with us about his work.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Photo: © Brian David Stevens

Photo: © Brian David Stevens

Categories: Art, Dazed, Photography

Teju Cole: Blind Spot

Posted on August 8, 2017

Photo: Teju Cole, Brienzersee, June 2014. Archival pigment print, printed 2017. Description: I opened my eyes. What lay before me looked like the sound of the alphorn at the beginning of the final movement of Brahms’s First Symphony. This was the sound, this was the sound I saw.

The relationship between image and text is one of the most challenging pairings to exist. They demand complete attention and so one must choose: to look or to read—and in what order?

Perhaps it seems deceptively simple: one simply does as they are inclined. Yet regardless of preference, they inform each other, infinitely. When we read, we see the picture in our mind. When we look, we write the words ourselves. Now we are asked to forgo our imagination and focus on the given context.

Yet few can bridge the gap that exists between the linguistic and visual realms, the distinctive forms of intelligence that operate independently and interdependently at the same time. Most often, we simply opt out somewhere along the line, wanting to return to the freedom to imagine for ourselves rather than listen to what we are told.

Writer Teju Cole understands this well. As photography critic for the New York Times Magazine, Cole has mastered the painting pictures with words that illuminate and elucidate in equal part so that his words both add and peel back layers from that which appears before our eyes. As an author of Open City (2011) and Every Day is for the Thief (2014), Cole crafts entire worlds inside the written world, evoking the very experience of life itself.

Now, in his first solo show, Teju Cole: Blind Spot and Black Paper at Steven Kasher Gallery, New York, on view through August 11, 2017, the writer brings us along for a journey around the world, looking at life in Capri, Zurich, Lagos, Saint Moritz, Chicago, Nairobi, Brooklyn, Seoul, and more, where we see life not only through his eyes but experience it through his prose.

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Photo: Teju Cole, Zurich, November 2014. Archival pigment print, printed 2017. Description: A length, a loop, a line. Faraway wave seen from the deck of the ship. I think the Annunciation must have happened on a day like this one. Stillness. In the interior, she reads with lowered eyes, unaware of what comes next. A presence made of absence, the crossbar, the cloth, the wound in his side.

Categories: Art, Books

An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power

Posted on August 3, 2017

Photo: A GOES-13 satellite view of the full disk of the Earth. (Source: NOAA)

“Every night, the TV news is like a nature hike through the Book of Revelation,” Al Gore wryly observes in An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, the new film from Paramount Pictures that hits theaters nationwide on Friday, August 4.

These words were spoken before a Delaware-sized iceberg broke off the Larsen C Ice Shelf in Antarctica in July—a reminder of the speed in which climate change is taking place, making it virtually impossible for us to fathom the radical and potentially irreversible environmental transformation now taking place. The outlook is grim, in light of just how much worse things have gotten since Gore released An Inconvenient Truth in 2006.

In the original film, Gore was widely chastised for predicting that Manhattan would be flooded by a catastrophic storm. Then Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012, and Gore was proven correct. But An Inconvenient Sequel is no “I told you so.” It is the work of a true believer who remains optimistic and faithful.

Despite the dramatic and devastating evidence Gore presents throughout the film, which is profoundly traumatic and deeply unnerving, he is a true believer in the power of human potential to right the wrongs of the past and reverse the slippery slope to annihilation.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: Crave

Omar Victor Diop: Project Diaspora

Posted on August 3, 2017

Photo: Omar Victor Diop, Don Miguel de Castro, Emissary of Congo (c. 1643-50). From the series: Project Diaspora 2014 . Pigment inkjet print on Harman Hahnemuhle paper 47 1/4 x 31 1/2 in. Edition of 8 + 2 APs. In 1643 or 1644, Don Miguel de Castro and two servants arrived as part of a delegation sent by the ruler of Sonho, a province of Congo, via Brazil to the Netherlands. One objective of the journey was to find a resolution to an internal conflict in Congo. Original painting attributed to Jaspar Beck or Albert Eckout. Photo: © Omar Victor Diop. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie MAGNIN-A, Paris, France.

Photo: Omar Victor Diop, A Moroccan man (1913). From the series: Project Diaspora 2014. Pigment inkjet print on Harman Hahnemuhle paper 47 1/4 x 31 1/2 in. Edition of 8 + 2 APs. Jose Tapiro y Baro was a Catalan painter. One of his closest friends was the painter Maria? Fortuny with whom he shared an interest for Orientalism. He was a master of watercolor painting. Original Painting by Jose? Tapiro y Baro. Photo: © Omar Victor Diop. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie MAGNIN-A, Paris, France.

The great African proverb wisely observes, “Until the lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter.”

The lion has arrived in the form of Omar Victor Diop, a rising star in the photography world. Born 1980, in Dakar, Senegal, Diop has inherited the great traditions of African studio photography and takes them to the next level in his new exhibition, Project Diaspora, currently on view at SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film in Atlanta, GA, through August 18, 2017.

In Project Diaspora, Diop tells the story of the lions of African history through the recreation of historic portrait paintings of key figures in art, politics, theology, and trade living between the 15th and the 19th centuries. This particular period reveals the complex relationship between African and the rest of the world, as European imperialist forces ransacked the continent, enslaving its people, occupying its lands, and looting its natural resources.

As a result, the history of the African people extends far beyond the continent as the diaspora takes hold. Millions of people are captured, enslaved, and sold to foreign imperialists who seized North and South Americas. At the same time, the peoples who remained on the continent were forced to deal with what the invaders wrought, their lives and history disrupted and often times destroyed by the inhumanity practiced by those who claimed to live in “The Age of Reason.”

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Categories: Art, Exhibitions, Feature Shoot, Painting, Photography

James Baldwin: The Fire Next Time

Posted on August 2, 2017

Photo: James Baldwin joined the fight for equality in the South. Mostly, he offered a passionate voice for justice and a plea for a nation’s salvation. In Mississippi in 1963, he visited the NAACP’s Medgar Evers, who was slain later that June, following President Kennedy’s landmark televised address on civil rights. This photo was recently discovered in the photographer’s contact sheets. © 2017 Steve Schapiro.

James Baldwin penned fire to purify truth and liberate it from the lies that have clouded United States history ever since Thomas Jefferson wrote The Declaration of Independence. With every sentence, Baldwin burned away the toxic stench of injustice, oppression, and pathology that so many cling to until their dying day.

One of Baldwin’s greatest works is The Fire Next Time, a collection of two essays originally published by The New Yorker and subsequently published by Dial Press in 1963 in book form. The essays, “My Dungeon Shook — Letter to my Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of Emancipation,” and “Down At The Cross — Letter from a Region of My Mind” address the issues facing African Americans during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, as they faced down the horrors of the past and present each and every single day.

Now, Taschen introduces James Baldwin. The Fire Next Time, a collector’s edition of 1,963 copies reprinted in a letterpress edition with more than 100 photographs taken by Steve Schapiro while he was on assignment for LIFE magazine. Schapiro was on the frontlines of the movement as it marched across the South facing down the system of apartheid under Jim Crow.

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Categories: 1960s, Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Photography

Naomi Klein: No Is Not Enough

Posted on August 1, 2017

Donald Trump is not an anomaly in any shape or form. His rise to power reveals the ugly truth about a nation that prides itself on whitewashing history and spouting disinformation in its place. His election sent those who clung to these illusions into a state of shock, unable to make sense of the inevitable culmination of neoliberal policy, celebrity/CEO worship, and dog-whistle politics aligned under the banner “Make America Great Again.”

Scandalised, they began to deflect, pointing fingers to avoid the facts. Shadowboxing with lies became the order of the day as mainstream media outlets debated false paradigms and fake news, keeping misinformation alive and well. Talking heads wouldn’t shut up, fomenting confusion, rage, and fear – all in a day’s work for the merchants of trauma and confusion.

After decades of reporting on large-scale political and corporate exploitation of society, award-winning journalist and author Naomi Klein saw through the deception and set to work penning No Is Not Enough: Defeating the New Shock Politics (Penguin Press). Here, Klein charts Trump’s ascendancy as a product of our time and offers a bold plan of action to fight back against an administration entrenched in the brutal oppression and destruction of the people, democracy, economy, and environment.

What we need, Klein argues, is a paradigm shift that goes beyond policies and takes root in values that will protect life on the planet from the scourge of rampant corruption, hatred, and greed that the administration exhibits with pride and impunity. Klein shares her vision and her wisdom with us below, providing insight into the issues at hand and how we can resist, reorganise, and fight back.

Read the Full Story at Dazed Digital

Categories: Books, Dazed

The Jim Henson Exhibition

Posted on July 31, 2017

Jim Henson and Kermit the Frog in 1978 on the set of THE MUPPET MOVIE. Photo courtesy of The Jim Henson Company/MoMI. Kermit the Frog © Disney/Muppets.

My very first crush was on Animal, the wild-eyed drummer for Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem, the house band on The Muppet Show. I might have been somewhere around three or four, and Animal was the most relatable guy I had ever seen. He spoke no words and was a creature of pure id. That he was a rock star added to his allure, as his flying mane and choke chain.

You might think to yourself, perhaps this is a bit extreme for a children’s television show. But that’s the joy of The Muppet Show—it spoke to people of all ages at the same time, reaching different audiences without offending anyone. Jim Henson, the mastermind who created the show, skillfully weaved subversive humor into the classic vaudeville format, and then added the perfect twist: all the characters were puppets, and yet they were drawn from life.

Kermit the Frog, the soulful leader, was inspired by jazz trumpeter Kermit Ruffins; his girlfriend Miss Piggy was the perfect incarnation of the chauvinist pig, whose appearance during the 1970s exemplified the good, the bad, ad the ugly sides of the gender wars that had been raging for years. Fozzie the Bear was a classic Yiddish comedian who played the Borscht Belt and was woefully out of sync with the times yet as lovable as any wacky uncle at Thanksgiving dinner.

Children might miss all of the cultural clues and still appreciate The Muppets for the sheer joy that a madcap troupe of performers promises. Plus there’s a slight twinge of utopian ideal at play: no matter what walk of life you come from, you are welcome here, so long as you put your heart and soul above all.

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Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Crave, Exhibitions

Arthur Jafa: A Series of Utterly Improbably, Yet Extraordinary Renditions

Posted on July 30, 2017

Arthur Jafa, Love Is The Message, The Message Is Death (still), 2016. Courtesy: the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York / Rome

One of the first things taught in art class is the concept of “negative space”: that which is the ever-present reality in which all things exist. It is the air we breathe but cannot see, the atmosphere that fills the void and holds the most complex and compelling forms. It is what you see when you actually look, when you focus on the very idea that absence is a presence all its own.

“How do we imagine things that are lost? What kind of legacy can we imagine despite that loss and despite the absence of things that never were?” American filmmaker, cinematographer, artist Arthur Jafa asks in his new exhibition, A Series of Utterly Improbably, Yet Extraordinary Renditions, currently on view at Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London, through September 10, 2017.

Featuring the work of Ming Smith, Frida Orupabo, and Missylanus, Jafa has transformed the gallery into an immersive, hallucinatory experience that is driven by the desire to visualize that which has been erased: the history of Black America from the Middle Passage though the present day. As his ancestors have done for hundreds of years, Jafa draws upon what remains to elucidate the hazy and horrific history of life in the United States.

Jafa, who has most recently worked with Jay-Z to direct the music video for “4:44,” with Solange for “Cranes in the Sky” and “Don’t Touch My Hair,” and with Beyoncé on parts of “Formation,” is the first-name in videography. But his work crafting images of Black life has been going on for decades, whether collaborating with Spike Lee on Crooklyn or with his ex-wife Julie Dash on Daughters of the Dust, which is said to have inspired the look of Lemonade.

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Arthur Jafa, Monster, 1988. Courtesy: the artist and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York / Rome

Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

TBW Book Series No. 5

Posted on July 27, 2017

Image courtesy of Susan Meiselas and TBW Books, 2017

Perhaps you’ve been gazing upon Susan Meiselas’ Prince Street Girls for so long you, you didn’t realize they had never been published in book form. It just seemed so obvious and yet it’s taken four decades for these iconic works to be printed and bound into one sumptuous volume when Soho was an Italian neighborhood.

Remnants of the era have been all but erased by the broad sweeping brush of gentrification. But for a lone street named “Carmine” you might not ever know—well, that and Meiselas’ photographs taken one summer long ago. The photographs were taken during the era of hot pants and wedges, tube tops and high socks, back when you and your crew used to stroll the block for kicks before hightailing it to the beach—when you used to go outdoors in the summer because there was nothing to do indoors, and it was just too damn hot to be inside.

These magical moments of yesteryear have finally been published in the TBW Book Series No. 5, a four-book set that includes Mike Mandel: Boardwalk Minus Forty, Bill Burke: They Shall Take Up Serpents, and Lee Friedlander: Head.

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Categories: 1970s, Books, Photography

Karlheinz Weinberger: Swiss Rebels

Posted on July 27, 2017

“My life started on Friday events and ended on Monday mornings,” Swiss photographer Karlheinz Weinberger (1921-2006) said in 2000, on the occasion of his first major exhibition at the Museum of Design Zurich. This was the time when he could leave the daily grind behind, forgetting about his work as a warehouse manager at a factory day in and out from 1955 through 1986. It was on the weekends when he picked up his camera and came into himself.

His business card said it all: “My favorite hobbies: the individual portrait and The Extraordinary. Always reachable by telephone after 7 PM.” He refused to photograph people who did not pique his interest, throwing them the ultimate curve with lines like, “It’s easy to snap the shutter, but I’m so busy you’ll have to wait for maybe three to six months to get the photo.”

It takes nerve—and nerve is where Weinberger excelled. He dedicated himself to the raw sexuality of rebels, construction workers, athletes, and Sicilian youths, as well as men who regularly came to his home, undressed, and gave the camera a show.

As an outsider working in a milieu he created exclusively for his own pleasure and delight, Weinberger amassed a body of work is much a portrait of the artist as the subjects he photographed. Weinberger’s love of the human form was not limited to the bare flesh; he captured the raw sensuality in the very spirit of youth, fully dressed and perfectly coiffed, striking an exquisite balance between teenage lust and campy poseurdom.

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Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Crave, Fashion, Photography