Posts from the “1970s” Category

Timeless: The Photographs of Kamoinge

Posted on February 9, 2016

Boy on a Swing. New York, 1976. Beuford Smith.

In 1963, the Kamoinge Workshop produced their first portfolio of photographs taken by members who made up the group. The portfolio included a statement that read: “The Kamoinge Workshop represents fifteen black photographers whose creative objectives reflect a concern for truth about the world, about society and about themselves.” Accompanying that were the words of member Louis Draper, who elegantly wrote: “Hot breath steaming from black tenements, frustrated window panes reflecting the eyes of the sun, breathing musical songs of the living.”

A collective was born. The word Kamoinge is derived from the Gikuyu language of Kenya. Translated literally, it means “a group of people acting together.” This spirit of camaraderie and family suffused the development of the group, which included Roy DeCarava, Anthony Barboza, Louis Draper, and Shawn Walker. Early meetings were held in DeCarava’s midtown Manhattan loft. The following year, they rented a gallery in Harlem on Strivers Row, where they held meetings and hosted exhibitions. When the gallery closed, they moved the meetings to other members’ homes in the city, keeping their bonds intact throughout the years.

In 2004, founding member Anthony Barboza was selected President, and set out a course to create a photography book showcasing the group’s legacy. Together with fellow member Herb Robinson, Barboza has edited Timeless: The Photographs of Kamoinge (Schiffer). Featuring more than 280 photographs taken over fifty years, Timeless is an extraordinary collection of work that reminds us that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

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Photo: Bridge on the Beach. Nassau, Bahamas, 2007. June DeLairre Truesdale.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Bronx, Brooklyn, Crave, Manhattan, Photography

Ishiuchi Miyako: Postwar Shadows

Posted on December 21, 2015

Photo: Creator(s): Ishiuchi Miyako (Japanese, born 1947) Title/Date: Yokosuka Story #73, 1977 Culture: Japanese Medium: Gelatin silver print Dimensions: Image: 43.7 x 53.7 cm (17 3/16 x 21 1/8 in.) Sheet: 45.4 x 55.7 cm (17 7/8 x 21 15/16 in.) Accession No. 2009.96.3 Copyright: © Ishiuchi Miyako Object Credit: The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

This year marked the seventieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed over 129,000 people and decimated the country of Japan. Although nearly half the people died on the first day, the other half clung to life in desperate shape, only to die from the effect of the burns, radiation sickness, and other injuries compounded by illness and malnutrition. The only use of nuclear weapons for warfare in history, the bombings destroyed primarily civilian populations.

In the decades that followed, the bombings continued to have effect on subsequent generations born into the post-nuclear landscape. Self-taught photographer Ishiuchi Miyako was born two years after the war and stunned the Japanese photography establishment in the late 1970s with grainy, haunting, black-and-white images of Yokosuka—the city where Miyako spent her childhood and where the United States established an important naval base in 1945.

Working prodigiously over the next forty years, Miyako has created an incredible body of work that has been collected for “Ishiuchi Miyako: Postwar Shadows”, now on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, through February 21, 2016, and is published in a book by the same name.

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Photo: Creator(s): Ishiuchi Miyako (Japanese, born 1947) Title/Date: Yokosuka Story #58, 1976 – 1977 Culture: Japanese Medium: Gelatin silver print Dimensions: Image: 45.5 x 55.8 cm (17 15/16 x 21 15/16 in.) Framed: 54.4 × 65.7 × 4.5 cm (21 7/16 × 25 7/8 × 1 ¾ in.) Accession No. EX.2015.7.76 Copyright: © Ishiuchi Miyako Object Credit: collection of Yokohama Museum of Art Repro Credit: Photo © Yokohama Museum of Art

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Crave, Exhibitions, Japan, Photography, Women

Art Basel Miami Beach 2015 Edition

Posted on December 11, 2015

art_basel_miami_2015_lapostferia

Check Out
Art Basel Miami Beach 2015
Coverage at Crave Online

A few highlights from the week include:

Incas wallpaper panel, 1818, Joseph Dufour et Compagnie (founded Mâcon, France, 1801–23), manufacturer, Block-printed on handmade paper, Courtesy of Carolle Thibaut-Pomerantz

“Philodendron: From Pan-Latin Exotic to American Modern”
Wolfsonia-Florida International University

© Lorna Simpson. Direct Gaze, 2014 (detail)

Top 5 Highlights at
Art Basel Miami Beach

Amarillismo by Wilson Diaz

Wilson Diaz: Amarillismo
at Instituto de Vision at Art Basel

© James Rieck. Flared Bell Bottoms, 2015.

Top 5 Highlights at
PULSE Contemporary Art Fair

Guy Richards Smit: Mountain of Skulls
Charlie James Gallery at PULSE

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Latin America, Painting, Photography

Marcia Resnick: Punks, Poets & Provocateurs

Posted on November 23, 2015

John Belushi, photo by Marcia Resnick

Marcia Resnick was there, at the center of it all, in a burst of light and flame that set New York on edge with a new movement in art, music, literature and film. Her new book Punks, Poets & Provocateurs: New York City Bad Boys, 1977-1982 with text by Victor Bockris (Insight Editions) features photographs of the enfants terribles of the time, people like Johnny Thunders, James Brown, William S. Burroughs, John Waters, and Jean-Michel Basquiat, men who did it their way like my man Frank Sinatra said. Marcia Resnick shares her thoughts and her photos in a conversation here.

I love how you speak about creation of Re-visions as a way to demystify your past. Would you say the same is true of Punks, Poets & Provocateurs, or was the creation of the book driven by something else you wanted to explore about life?

Marcia Resnick: In Re-visions I was confronting myself as the subject which I understood least and most wanted to understand. The next subject in line for such consideration was the male species, specifically my relationship to men, especially my attraction to “Bad Boys.”

I like to think a portrait of the artist is always their subject: who they choose, the energy the two create, the frames they select—all of this is a story about the photographer themselves. When looking through Punks, Poets & Provocateurs I see a multi-faceted gem as filtered through the lens of the masculinity at a specific time and place. As a woman looking at men, what do you find most compelling about them? Is it something you see in yourself, something you aspire towards, or a mix of the two?

Definitely a mix of the two. As I said in the book “Bad Boys can be at once formidable and endearing. Being ‘bad’ also makes people attractive, especially to the opposite sex.” I think most people are intrigued by danger regardless of what their sex is. Living on the edge is dangerous and Punk Rock was the new alternative music. The writers and provocateurs I photographed also went against the grain, making considerable innovations in their respective artistic endeavors.

The Bad Boy archetype is an American ideal: the rebel driven by profound individualism—and maybe something else. In some ways it sums up the ethos of punk: fuck the system D.I.Y. style. Looking back, I’m a little shocked by how it doesn’t seem that long ago but it seems so very far away. What would you say made the era you were photographing so ripe for rebellion?

In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s people could afford to live in NYC. Everyone was challenging what was expected of them because the counterculture was still ripe. Rock musicians and artists alike were graduating from art schools. Painters were making films. Writers were doing performance art. Sculptors were doing installations. Artists were acting in films, making music and generally collaborating with each other. People were also more sexually unconstrained. This climate ended when Aids and the atmosphere of paranoia began to stymie the nightlife.

Punks, Poets & Provocateurs is an incredible compendium of the scene, very potent and resonant with a sense of energy that has, in some ways, all but disappeared. Looking back at your photographs, what mist resonates with you after all these years? What do you see in your photographs that you can only see now, with the benefit of hindsight?

I realize how fortunate I was to experience NYC and life in general when I did. Though I embrace the extraordinary technological advances that have come in time, people today communicate through electronic media. Back then, the world seemed smaller, everyone knew who their friends were and people actually got together to talk and exchange ideas.

Divine, photo by Marcia Resnick

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

Warhol & Mapplethorpe: Guise & Dolls

Posted on November 11, 2015

Photo: Andy Warhol, Camouflage Self- Portrait , 1986. Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen on canvas, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Conn. The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, with a partial gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., 1994.12.1. © 2014 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Artwork Andy Warhol, Camouflage Self- Portrait , 1986. Synthetic polymer paint and silkscreen on canvas, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Conn. The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund, with a partial gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., 1994.12.1. © 2014 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Photo: Robert Mapplethorpe, Brian Ridley and Lyle Heeter, 1979. Gelatin silver print, The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, N.Y. © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. Used by permission.

New York City in the 1970s and ‘80s was a deliciously decadent time and place where art, gender, and sexuality came together in a miasma of creative energies. As the gay rights movement ushered in a new era, a new sense of expression took hold as gender became an area ripe for exploration. The ideas of masculine, feminine, and androgynous began to capture the imagination of visual and performing artists. Musicians lead the way, as crossdressing came out of the closet and groups like the New York Dolls took advantage of it’s curious effect on their female fans. It was an era of gender fluidity and sexual freedom which held to a deep abiding sense of “anything goes” as bath houses and clubs like Plato’s Retreat flourished in the city.

Andy Warhol and Robert Mapplethorpe were two of the most significant artists in New York at this time. As portrait artists, both engaged with gender, identity, sexuality, beauty, performance, and disguise in their lives and their work, revealing the intricacies and nuances of the many-splendored personalities that populated the city then. Each artist focused on their subjects as a means to discovering their truth in a complex series of questions that directly and comfortably challenge the viewer.

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Andy Warhol, Ladies and Gentlemen, 1975. Acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Founding Collection, Contribution Dia Center for the Arts, 2002.4.22. © 2014 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Painting, Photography

Adriana Teresa Letorney: The Book That Changed My Life

Posted on November 3, 2015

Charles Harbutt, photograph by Joan Liftin

The Co-founder and Creative Director of Visura.co, Adriana Teresa Letorney has dedicated her life to building a global community to connect photographers, editors, curators, and organizations. Dedicated to the formation and implementation of economic development through art and cultural initiatives, with a focus on photography, online media, international festivals and tourism, Adriana Teresa’s love for photography resides deep in her heart. She speaks about the book that changed her life: Travelog by Charles Harbutt, first published in 1974 by The MIT Press.

Can you please talk about Charles Harbutt’s Travelog: How did you discover this book? Can you remember the first time you saw it? What was your experience of the book?

Adriana Teresa: The first time I learned about Charles Harbutt‘s Travelog was during a dinner at a dining restaurant with Sylvia Plachy, who introduced me to my now dear friend and extended family member, photographer Jeff Jacobson. They both spoke about Charles Harbutt and recommended Travelog. I will be forever grateful to them.

What was the impact of the book? How did the book change your life?

Until Travelog, I had always envisioned photography as images. It was after I experienced the images in the book and read the epilogue “I don’t take pictures, pictures take me” that I started to see and approach photography as a language of its own—filled with possibilities, layers, depth and weight. Since, I relate the work of photographers with other arts, especially literary novels, music and film. More importantly, I see images as interpretations, perspectives and even at times, reflections of the truths, not the truth.

Think about it—since, I do not seek for an answer when I look at an image; instead, I allow myself to dive into the world of questions—endless questions: The how, why, when, where and with what purpose. Questions like: how is that image a reflection of you or what drew you to that image or did the image come to you? This is the roots of Visura when I think about photography: an open dialogue filled with questions that lead to discussions, at times the peeling of an onion with the hopes that we can find, touch, describe a universal truth; and, in doing so, bring about positive change to society.

I know Charles Harbutt was very special to you. Can you talk about what he was like? How did knowing him shape your relationship to his work?

Charlie was very kind to me. He was brutally honest, which at times was hard to digest. He was the real deal: the photographer who remained a photographer throughout his entire life. Listening to him was a lesson on the history of photography, only that his version was a first-hand account. Head on, he experienced the changes and challenges that the industry faced for most of the 20th century; he also faced the impact for taking a stand when he did not agree with the direction the industry was taking in regards to photography. I will always admire his strength and courage to stay true to his voice as a photographer, a leader, a writer, a teacher and a journalist. Throughout his life, he remained truthful to his values, belief and above all love for the realm.

Charlie became a photographer at a very young age during his teens, and he passed away at the age of 80. He had seen many come and go, and I will never forget, when he told me: “In our 20s, we were many; in our 30s, we were half that number; in our 40s, we were half that number, and so on…. by now, we are around five photographers. BOOM.”

When I think of a photographer, I think Charles Harbutt: little to do with the awards, cool factor, social life and covers; everything to do with purpose, perseverance, focus, hard work, love, dedication and, most importantly, photography. From time to time, when I think of giving up—I think of Charlie…and his love for his wife Joan.

It’s true. It was all real. I saw it with my own two eyes. And his images were a reflection of it all.

Looking back now at the book, do you see something you hadn’t seen before? How has your knowledge and understanding of Charles’ work deepened and developed over time?

Now, when I go back to the book or when I re-read his column with Visura Magazine, I hear him. It was an honor to have met him. Even more, I am so grateful that he allowed me to fail so many times, yet he always gave me another chance.

I think that is a big lesson to learn….no matter how many times you fail, it is worse to do nothing.

Categories: 1970s, Art, Books, Photography

Glenn Ligon: A People on the Cover

Posted on October 19, 2015

Lorrie Davis with Rachel Gallagher, Letting Down My Hair: Two Years with the Love Rock Tribe – From Dawning to Downing of Aquarius. Published by Arthur Fields Books, New York, 1973.

While doing a residency at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, artist Glenn Ligon began collaborating with the Givens Collection of African American Literature at the University of Minnesota. Without a clear plan for the partnership, Ligon began wandering the stacks, perusing their holdings, and looking at books he randomly pulled off the shelves. As he did so he discovered the project he would create, the telling of the history of black people in the United States as represented on the covers of books. The result is an intimate white paperback quietly titled A People on the Cover (Ridinghouse).

The book begins with an introduction by Ligon, in which he recounts a brief history of his readings from 1960-1978. He begins with the formative memory of the day a white man came to his South Bronx home, going door-to-door trying to sell the Encyclopaedia Britannica in the housing projects. Ligon’s mother, who worked as a nurse’s aide at a psychiatric hospital, purchased that set of books that was the equivalent of almost an entire month’s rent, believing that education was the best way to get her children out of the hood.

Ligon, who was subsequently transferred to a private school, remembers the way that books became status symbols of white culture, and reinforced their ideals, and found himself in a precarious position of being a young teenage boy living in two worlds. In his earlier years, he recounts an interest in the pretenses of white culture, but grew out of that pose on his first trip to the Eighth Street Bookshop in Greenwich Village. He spotted James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time in the store window, and became transfixed by the red, black, and orange cover of the book. As Ligon writes, “I felt, in that moment, that in those four words on the cover, I had found myself.”

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Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Bronx, Crave

Jamel Shabazz: The Book That Changed My Life

Posted on October 14, 2015

In the Brooklyn home where Jamel Shabazz grew up, his father kept a signed copy of Leonard Freed’s book, Black in White America, on the coffee table. The book, which was first published in 1968, opens with a photograph of an African American solder standing in front of the Berlin Wall in 1962. Freed was struck by the fact that the solder was willing to defend America abroad while back in the United States, they were subject to systemic racism, oppression, and exploitation under Jim Crow laws.

Freed returned to the United States and began to document the everyday black life during the battle for civil rights in New York, Washington, D.C., and throughout the South. The result of his efforts was a landmark book that changed the life of photographer Jamel Shabazz when he was nine years old.

The original edition of the book did not have a photo. It just had the words: BLACK IN WHITE AMERICA. Shabazz remembers opening the book, and stopping at the first image of the solider taken in 1962. His father and two uncles were military, on of who was still stationed in Germany. From the very beginning, Freed’s work became a profound source of knowledge, wisdom, and understanding for Shabazz.

He recalls, “The book moved me to time travel outside of my community. It allowed m to escape the projects to North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi. I was seeing the places for the first time. After I looked at the pictures, I went back to read the book. There were so many words I didn’t understand. I saw ‘nigger’ for the first time in my life, so I went to a dictionary to look it up. I looked up ‘segregation’ and ‘integration.’ The first time I saw the word ‘rape’ was in this book. I didn’t understand what that word meant. It goes beyond the photos. I was learning horrible new words and it set my mind in a way that school wouldn’t. I was rereading the book, imaging myself at nine and ten years old, trying to decipher what is going on. I fell in love with photography and used the dictionary to unlock the mystery of this book.”

Photo: Leonard Freed

Photo: Jamel Shabazz

Shabazz recalls, “Growing up, there was only one television in the house, so I only got bits and pieces of what was going on in the outside world, especially regarding the civil rights movement. I saw a beautiful photograph of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. for the very first time in Freed’s book, thus helping me better understand what was happening in both the northern and southern cities. Through the artistry of Leonard Freed, I was introduced to the power of documentary photography and the art of visual story telling. Freed’s book enlightened me to the harsh world of inequality, segregation, and struggle. In essence, Black in White America, became an essential study guide introducing me to the real world I would soon have to face, as a boy growing into manhood.“

Shabazz picked up a camera while he was in high school during the 1970s, but it wasn’t until he came home from a tour in the military in 1980 that his passion was revealed. His father, a military photographer himself, saw the that fire in his son, and gave him Freed’s book as an instrumental guide. Shabazz recalls, “He gave me the book so I could study lighting, composition, and black and white photography. Some of the most compelling photographs I made were shot almost right away. The seed had been planted in my mind at nine years old. I see things that people have a tendency to walk by. I take my time to observe what is going on around me.”

Photo: Leonard Freed

Photo: Jamel Shabazz

Freed taught Shabazz how to be a storyteller by virtue of mastering the craft. The greatest teachers lead by example and Freed was no exception to this fact. In the spirit of revolution, the circle spins round once again. Now on the cover of the book is a photograph of a young boy, flexing his bicep. Shabazz observes, “He’s the same age I was when I first picked up this up this book. I was building my mental through this book.”

In the works of Leonard Freed and Jamel Shabazz, we can see the way in which the commitment to truth, justice, and honor is more than a career, it is a spiritual quest, a calling to honor the people of this earth through the creation of the book. I am honored to present the works of Leonard Freed and Jamel Shabazz side by side here.

Photo: Jamel Sbahazz

For More Information, Please Visit
Black in White America
Leonard Freed
Jamel Shabazz

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

Girls on Film: 70s Punk Legends by Jim Jocoy

Posted on October 7, 2015

Photo: Debbie Harry by Jim Jocoy

Picture it: San Francisco, late 1970s. The punk scene was in full swing and Do It Yourself was in the air. It was a time of youthful ingenuity and rebelliousness that was one part F the system and one part self-indulgence. It was at this time that photographer Jim Jocoy came upon an ingenious plan that resulted in some of the most iconic photographs taken at the time.

The 1970s was a time of Quaaludes. Inhibitions slipped and bold actions were taken without thought to consequence. Jocoy made regular trips to the 7-11 for Kodak color slide film. He loaded his camera, then headed on out to the clubs where he photographed everyone from Debbie Harry, Iggy Pop, and Patti Smith to Darby Crash, Exene Cervenka, and Sid Vicious. He also photographed the habitués of the scene, the young men and women that shined brighter than life, each radiating with some much pure and wild energy.

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Muriel Cervenka, photographed by Jim Jocoy

Categories: 1970s, Art, Crave, Music, Photography, Women

Training Days: The Subways Artists Then & Now

Posted on October 5, 2015

Photo: Bil Rock, Min, and Kel in the City Hall lay-up at night, 1983 ©Henry Chalfant

Graffiti is like a virus of the best kind. It resides deep in the heart and it makes its presence known in ways large and small. It travels from writer to writer around the world, bringing different handstyles, letterforms, color combinations, and placements to life. It is here today, gone tomorrow, one of the most ephemeral of all the arts.

Were it not for the photograph, some of the greatest masterpieces of graffiti would be unknown, and so it is with great fortune that Henry Chalfant began taking pictures of New York City trains between the years of 1977-1984. In total he amassed of 800 photographs of full trains from some of the greatest writers working during those years. “I have always been attracted to youthful rebellion and mischief,” Chalfant observes with a gentle laugh.

In order to photograph a full car when it arrived in the station, Chalfant stood on the platform on the opposite side, so that he could have enough distance to get 15-foot sections of the train inside his viewfinder. Using a 50mm lens, Chalfant took four or five photographs of each car, and then spliced them together using a razor and adhesive tape. As a sculptor, Chalfant’s hand was flawless, as he was able to translate the scale of each train to the photographic image. But the skill needed to get these shots? That was like stalking big game.

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Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Bronx, Brooklyn, Crave, Graffiti, Manhattan, Photography

Beauté Congo – 1926-2015 – Congo Kitoko

Posted on September 1, 2015

JP Mika, Kiese na kiese, 2014, Oil and acrylic on fabric, 168.5 x 119 cm, Pas-Chaudoir Collection, Belgique
© JP Mika/Photo © Antoine de Roux

Since 1987, André Magnin, chief curator at Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris, has had a passion for the Congo which stirred his soul to travel the country and experience the people and their arts firsthand. In response to his thirty-year journey, he has organized Beauté Congo – 1926-2015 – Congo Kitoko, a survey of paintings, photographs, sculpture, comics, music, and films now on view at Fondation Cartier, Paris, through November 15, 2015.

Organized chronologically, the exhibition begins in the 1920s, at the birth of modern painting in the Congo, when the nation was still a colony of Belgium. Having just survived the genocidal regime of King Leopold II, under which 10 million Congolese lost their lives, the art of this era had been in the shadows. Magnin obsessively search for work, drawing together pieces that reveal the way of life in the village, the natural world, the dreams and legends of the times.

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Djilatendo, Sans titre, c. 1930, Gouache and ink on paper, 24.5 x 18 cm, Musée royal de l’Afrique centrale, Tervuren, HO.0.1.3371
© Djilatendo/Photo © MRAC Tervuren

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Africa, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Painting, Photography