Posts from the “1990s” Category

Rosalind Fox Solomon: Liberty Theater

Posted on February 27, 2019

Rosalind Fox Solomon, ‘Chattanooga, Tennessee, 1976’ in Liberty Theater (2018). © Rosalind Fox Solomon. Courtesy of the artist and MACK.

Rosalind Fox Solomon, ‘New Orleans, Louisiana, 1992’ in Liberty Theater (2018). © Rosalind Fox Solomon. Courtesy of the artist and MACK.

Beginning in the mid-1970s, American artist Rosalind Fox Solomon traveled across the South creating a powerful series of photographs that reveal the state of the nation during the first decade following the Civil Rights Movement. It is here in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and South Carolina that we are privy to the complex interconnection of life rooted in the triumphs, tragedies, and traumas of the past.

At the time Fox Solomon started making these images, she had begun taking trips to New York to study photography with Lisette Model, a master of the human psyche laid bare in silver gelatin. Fox Solomon’s work bears witness to the power of photography to cut to the quick, to go beyond the luxuries and limitations of language by focusing solely on action, gesture, and expression to tell us more than word could ever say in a single, fleeting moment.

Fox Solomon’s photographs resonate with quiet grandeur, visceral eccentricity, and profound depth of ineffable emotion. Over the next two decades, she traversed the deepest reaches of the South to create Liberty Theater (MACK), an exquisitely nuanced portrait of the profound interplay of race, class, and segregation.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Rosalind Fox Solomon, ‘New Orleans, Louisiana, 1993’ in Liberty Theater (2018). © Rosalind Fox Solomon. Courtesy of the artist and MACK.

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

New York in Photo Books

Posted on February 6, 2019

Life is Good & Good For You in New York by William Klein (1956)

There are eight million stories in the naked city — at any given time. As the years slip away, one fact remains: the only constant is change. “New” is the truth. Nothing ever stays the same, except the photographs. This, my friend, is the only time you can and will ever go home again.

At a certain point, even if you weren’t there, you know the photograph. It’s become a memory of another time and place that has now become a part of a history that ceaselessly fascinates. The city has a curious ability to romanticize the dog-eat-dog Darwinian principles that made Frank Sinatra proudly proclaim, “If I can make it there I can make it anywhere.”

It’s vast, self-aggrandizing sensibilities spring up from the bedrock upon which the city is laid, it’s towering testaments to capitalism lining the island of Manhattan like so many rows of jagged teeth, while the outer lying boroughs nestle around like kin, creating a sprawling mass of magnificent encounters that can only happen in a place like this.

New York is not just photogenic, it’s the very landscape where genres flourish and styles abound — advancing the medium as only a true muse can. In New York in Photo Books (RM/Cento José Guerrero), editor Horacio Fernández takes us on a spellbinding tour of the city that never sleeps in ink on paper.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

New York by Keizo Kitajama (1982)

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

Patti Smith: Wing

Posted on January 15, 2019

Patti Smith (1946) Patti at William Burroughs Grave, Lawrence, Kansas, May 2013 Silver gelatin print Photo by Lenny Kaye. Image courtesy of the artist and kurimanzutto, Mexico City / New York.

In the early 1970s, Patti Smith travelled to Mexico with a Polaroid camera in hand, making photographs as components for collages, most of which have been lost to history. In the decades since, Smith returned time and again, creating a series of images and poems inspired by a feeling of kinship with the nation and its flourishing artistic community.

Now, a selection of 30 photographs is on view in Patti Smith: Wing, a celebration of creation and communion. Wing is also the title of a poem about freedom, both physical and spiritual, as well as the act of travelling independently to distant lands.

“I am not a photographer, yet taking pictures has given me a sense of unity and personal satisfaction,” Smith writes in Land 250. “They are relics of my life. Souvenirs of my wandering. All that I have learned concerning light and composition is contained within them.”

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Patti Smith (1946) Frida Kahlo’s corset 2, Casa Azul, Coyoacan, 2012 Gelatin silver print. Image courtesy of the artist and kurimanzutto, Mexico City.

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

Jacob Fuglsang Mikkelsen: Catcher in the Eye

Posted on January 14, 2019

Inside the upstairs bathrooms at The Tunnel nightclub. © Jacob Fuglsang Mikkelsen

Calvin Klein model of the time in orange with Billy Name. Silkscreen prints designed by Lynne Packwood. © Jacob Fuglsang Mikkelsen

New York City in the 1990s was a heady time. Murder surged to a record high as the crack epidemic reached its peak. Abandoned buildings became crack dens and prostitution flourished on the streets, ushering in the controversial rule of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in 1994.

Under Giuliani’s “Quality of Life” campaign, the New York Police Department began a crackdown on people committing minor offenses. Then the mayor took aim at nightclubs, ordering raids that would transform the underground scene from a DIY space for outsiders to a corporate endeavor replete with mega clubs, bottle service, and couches on the dancefloor.

The 90s was the last hurrah of bohemian New York, an epitaph to the “anything goes” insouciance that came with being able to live, work, and party in Manhattan without breaking the bank. It was into this bohemia that Danish artist Jacob Fuglsang Mikkelsen arrived and set up shop at the Gershwin Hotel on East 27th Street, the epicenter of the downtown avant-garde scene.

The Gershwin drew a delicious mix of artists, writers, and luminaries—including Quentin Crisp, Danny Fields, and Marcia Resnick; Warhol legends like Ultra Violet, Billy Name, and Paul Morrissey; and nightlife icons like Susanne Bartsch, Amanda Lepore, Sophia Lamar, and Junior Vasquez. Casting himself as Holden Caulfield armed with a camera, rather than a hunting rifle, Mikkelsen created a performance piece in which he “shot” the people on the scene, capturing them for a series he titled Catcher in the Eye.

Mikkelsen’s photographs preserve the city as it was: a surreal phantasmagoria of freedom, independence, and self-expression. VICE recently caught up with the photographer, who spent some time reminiscing about life in New York during the dial-up era.

Read the Full Story at VICE Online

Morning on 14th Street outside Junior Vasquez’s Arena Party at Palladium. From left: Actor Tim Cummings and Raymie Moynagh with friends. © Jacob Fuglsang Mikkelsen

Categories: 1990s, Art, Manhattan, Photography, Vice

Picks of the Bunch: Huck’s Top 10 Photo Stories of 2018

Posted on December 29, 2018

What a way to end the year! I am thrilled to have two of the top ten photo stories chosen by the readers of Huck — including my very first cover for the magazine!

Read the Full List at Huck Online

Then check out…

PICTURES OF REALLY, REALLY RICH PEOPLE GETTING DRUNK

Throughout the ’80s, photographer Dafydd Jones captured the well-heeled hedonists of England’s upper classes. ‘It was another world going on behind closed doors,’ he remembers. Read more…

A CAB DRIVER CAPTURES 30 YEARS OF NEW YORK AFTER DARK

Street photographer Ryan Weideman drove a New York City cab for decades. With one eye on the road and a camera in his hand, every passenger became a story, every trip a wild ride. Read more….

Dachshunds fighting over canapes, ris Love and Brooke Astor with Just Desserts and Dolly Astor at a Dachund party. Barbetta. Manhattan. 12 February 1990

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

A Guide to Judy Chicago’s Most Boundary Shifting Works

Posted on December 18, 2018

“Heaven is for White Men Only” (1973). Courtesy of Judy Chicago.

Judy Chicago has spent the better part of her career using confrontation and provocation to blow the roof off this place. Born Judith Sylvia Cohen in 1939, the artist announced her new name with a sign posted inside her 1970 exhibition at California State College, Fullerton, that stated: “Judy Gerowitz (her first husband’s name) hereby divests herself of all names imposed upon her through male social dominance and freely chooses her own name Judy Chicago.”

The new surname signalled a change had come, one fuelled by the fires of liberation and self-determination. For the past 50 years, Chicago has been on the front lines for over half a century, calling out sexism, misogyny, and the abuses of the patriarchy – while honouring women who have forged a path through history against the odds.

Now, at the age of 79, Chicago is enjoying a renaissance, beginning with Roots of The Dinner Party: History in the Making at the Brooklyn Museum – a return to her most infamous work, a lightning rod for controversy sure as the day is long. Most recently, Chicago opened two shows in Miami in conjunction with Art Week, including a new exploration of Atmospheres and A Reckoning, a major survey spanning four decades. Here we look back at some Chicago’s most controversial works.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Pink Atmosphere, 1971, Cal State Fullerton, Fullerton, CA, 2018. Judy Chicago’s Atmosphere

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Exhibitions, Painting, Women

Jamie Reid: XXXXX – Fifty Years of Subversion and the Spirit.

Posted on December 12, 2018

Anarchy In The UK, 1976 © Jamie Reid.

For half a century, Jamie Reid has done it his way, on his own terms, refusing to kowtow to the establishment and its pompous self-regard. Under his careful eye, art becomes a vehicle for anarchy, subversion, and resistance against the powers that be.

Now, for the first time in his career, Reid is the subject of a major retrospective: XXXXX: Fifty Years of Subversion and the Spirit. The show brings together collage, drawings, paintings, prints, posters, photographs, film, and installation work made over half a century. So why now? “I haven’t been asked before,” Reid says, before casually adding that he did not begin selling his work until a decade ago.

Most famous for sticking a safety pin through the Queen’s nose, desecrating the Union Jack, and crafting the ransom note letter styling of the Sex Pistols’ graphics, Reid has been a pivotal figure in the establishment of punk. His work helped shape the movement into not only a form of music, fashion and art, but into a philosophy predicated on the notion that capitalism is the biggest scam going today.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Be Aware, Fight Back, 1994. Courtesy John Marchant Gallery. © Jamie Reid

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Exhibitions, Huck

Eugene Richards: The Run-On of Time

Posted on December 7, 2018

Eugene Richards, Grandmother, Brooklyn, New York, 1993. Gelatin silver print. Collection of Eugene Richards. © Eugene Richards

More than half a century ago: the New Journalism came of age — a style of reportage so wholly unlike what came before that made it clear the seeming “objectivity” espoused by the Western eye was blind to its own innate biases. Rather than continue to presuppose one could be disinterested in covering subjects like Civil Rights and the Vietnam War, many journalists took a stand, opting to explore the complex truths of human life during the final half of the twentieth century — including their own.

Like W. Eugene Smith before him, photographer Eugene Richards (b. 1944) used the photo essay as a means to engage with his subjects through the profound transformation that comes when human beings not only connect, but are seen, heard, understood, and able to share their lives in a holistic way.

Throughout the course of his career, Richards has focused on the essential experiences of life that are daily fodder for headlines including birth, death, poverty, prejudice, war, and terrorism. But through Richards’s lens, we come to understand just how little we know — and how deeply reliant we are upon those who do the reporting in our stead.

In Eugene Richards: The Run-On of Time, now on view at the International Center of Photography through January 6, 2019, we are given a stunning trip through Richards’s life in photography. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue distributed by Yale University Press serve to remind us that we are responsible for evaluating not only the content but also the quality and caliber of the source itself. It is not enough to be talented and to have mastered technique; one must stand for something, and in doing so, use their skills in the service of the greater good.

Here, Richards shares his extraordinary journey, that includes a healthy dose of skepticism about the photograph itself.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Eugene Richards, Snow globe of the city as it once was, New York, New York, 2001. Gelatin silver print. Collection of Eugene Richards. © Eugene Richards

Eugene Richards, Wonder Bread, Dorchester, Massachusetts, 1975.
Gelatin silver print. Collection of Eugene Richards. © Eugene Richards

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

Janette Beckman & Cey Adams: The Mash-Up

Posted on November 27, 2018

Top: Janette Beckman | LADY PINK. Queen Latifah, New York City, 1990/2016

In the years leading up to the birth of hip hop, graffiti was sweeping the streets of New York and Philadelphia, reinventing itself on the cusp of a new millennium. No longer was it mere inscriptions from anonymous hands, but an emerging world filled with charismatic characters who took style to a level never before seen.

As tags hit the street and masterpieces appeared on the trains, graffiti’s vibrant style, innovative aesthetics, and transgressive nature made it the natural visual expression of a new DIY culture coming into its own. In the 45 years since Kool Herc began spinning breaks, graffiti and hip hop have linked up to collaborate in countless ways; perhaps most famously in the culture first feature film, Wild Style. The film starred some of the scene’s most influential writers at the time, including Lee Quinoñes, LADY PINK, ZEPHYR, and CRASH – each of whom were recently invited by artist and graphic designer Cey Adams to bring their talents to The Mash Up: Hip-Hop Photos Remixed by Iconic Graffiti Artists (Hat and Beard Press).

The Mash-Up is the brainchild of Adams, the former Creative Director of Def Jam, and British photographer J anette Beckman, whose portraits of hip hop’s greatest stars have graced countless album covers, magazines, and newspapers since she first encountered the artists in 1982. Here, some of the finest to ever wield spray can and marker remake Beckman’s classic images of everyone from Run DMC, Slick Rick, and Salt-N-Pepa to Grandmaster Flash, Queen Latifah, and Big Daddy Kane.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Janette Beckman | Claw Money. Salt-N-Pepa, New York City, 1987/2014

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Graffiti, Huck, Music, Photography

eddie OTCHERE: Aaliyah – London, 1994

Posted on November 20, 2018

Aaliyah, photographed by Eddie OTCHERE

By the age of 12, Aaliyah Dana Houghton hit the big time. Her uncle Barry Hankerson, an entertainment lawyer formerly married to Gladys Knight, secured a distribution deal at Jive Records for his Blackground Records label – and signed his niece to a record deal.

Hankerson introduced Aaliyah to R. Kelly, the hottest new R&B star on the scene, who was taken with her voice after hearing her sing a cappella. Thirteen years her senior, Kelly positioned himself as a mentor, guiding his protégée to success, becoming the sole songwriter and producer of her 1994 debut album, Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number.

As soon as the album dropped rumours began to swirl. Talk of a secret marriage between Aaliyah and R. Kelly was everywhere. Both artists denied the allegations and it would be some time before Vibe magazine unearthed their Illinois marriage license issued in 1994, in which the 15-year-old singer gave the age of 18 for the certificate. The pair denied the allegations, while her parents arranged to have the marriage annulled in 1995. Aaliyah then severed all communication with Kelly and had all records of the marriage expunged.

The scandal of a secret marriage did not dampen Aaliyah’s debut. Her first single, “Back and Forth” went to number one on the R&B/hip hop chart and number 5 on the pop chart, with Madonna taking notice and sampling it for a track on Bedtime Stories, released just a few months later.

In the years since Aaliyah’s death, she continues to be the subject of intense fascination. We look back for clues of who this enigmatic artist truly was in the music, the videos, the films, the photographs, and the stories she left behind.

British photographer Eddie OTCHERE first crossed paths with Aaliyah in London in 1994, while in his second year of studying photography at the London College of Communication. Like Aaliyah, OTCHERE was at the start of his career – and now his time with Aaliyah can be seen in the new book Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop by Vikki Tobak (Clarkson Potter), which presents four decades of iconic photo shoots. Here, OTCHERE shares what it was like to photograph Aaliyah at her very start.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Aaliyah, photographed by Eddie OTCHERE

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

Yasumasa Morimura: Ego Obscura

Posted on November 15, 2018

Yasumasa Morimura, “Doublonnage (Marcel)” (1988)Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York. © Yasumasa Morimura

“In the end, what is history? And what is historical truth? These are questions that do not have ready answers,” Japanese artist Yasumasa Morimura asks in “egó sympósion”, the preface he pens in the catalogue for Ego Obscura, a 30-year retrospective of photographic work in which he transforms iconic works of art and pop culture into self-portraits.

Whether presenting himself as Marilyn Monroe in the famous Playboy centerfold, appearing as Frida Kahlo standing bare-breasted in her brace, or portraying Marcel Duchamp’s alter ego Rrose Sélavy, Morimura surgically deconstructs the concept of “the self” to explore the perils of binary thinking that accompany our assumptions of race, gender, sexuality, and identity, and the ways in which we ensconce them in the pantheon of cultural memory and art history.

“Various truths are concealed in many paintings,” Morimura continues. “On the other hand, a painting can be seen as a fake, something caked with falsehoods and misunderstandings. A painter’s testimony is at once a confession of a hidden truth and an attempt to overwrite their life with a false statement.”

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Yasumasa Morimura, “Une moderne Olympia” (2018)Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York. © Yasumasa Morimura

Yasumasa Morimura, Still from Ego Obscura

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Dazed, Exhibitions, Japan, Painting, Photography