Posts from the “1990s” Category

George Rodriguez: Double Vision

Posted on April 11, 2018

L: Los Angeles, 1992. R: Eazy-E, Burbank, 1980s. “He was a cute little guy but was real solid. He looked very powerful. The times I saw him he was always with a different pretty girl. Whenever N.W.A. would come to my studio in Burbank, across from NBC, they’d come by way of Taco Bell.” © George Rodriguez

There are many sides to LA. But few people travel between the realms that were separated during the first half of the 20th century when the Great Migration and post-war Mexican immigration changed the face of the city.

Photographer George Rodriguez is the rare artist who has thrived between Hollywood and Chicano LA for more than half a century. Born in 1937 to a Mexican immigrant father and a Mexican-American mother, Rodriguez has spent his life creating a body of work that captures the many facets of life in LA—from the glittering stars of music, TV, and film to the leaders and activists of the Civil Rights, United Farm Workers, and Chicano movements.

From an archive that includes everyone from Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and the Brown Berets to Jimi Hendrix, Michael Jackson, and N.W.A., Rodriguez has partnered with author Josh Kun to publish his first career retrospective Double Vision: The Photography of George Rodriguez (Hat & Beard Press, April 10). An exhibition of photographs from Double Vision will open at The Lodge in Los Angeles on May 26. I spoke with Rodriguez about creating art of the fabled city during some of its most incendiary years.

Read the Full Story at Vice Online

L: Lincoln Heights, 1969. R: Cesar Chavez , Delano, 1969. © George Rodriguez

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Photography, Vice

Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick: Slavery, the Prison Industrial Complex

Posted on April 9, 2018

Chandra McCormick. YOUNG MAN, ANGOLA STATE PENITENTIARY, 2013. © Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun

At 7,300 hectares, the Louisiana State Penitentiary – the largest maximum-security prison in the United States – is home to 6,300 prisoners. The inmates are forced to work the land under the 13th Amendment of the constitution, which legalises slavery in the case of incarceration.

The penitentiary is one of the most prominent examples of how slavery has evolved in the United States, a nation that leads the world in profiting off the prison industrial complex. With more than 2.2 million people living behind bars, America accounts for 25 per cent of the prisoners on earth, despite having just 5 per cent of the world’s population.

Commonly known as “Angola,” the penitentiary took its name after the country of origin for countless men, women, and children who were brutally enslaved and brought against their will to work on the pre-Civil War plantation where the prison now sits. The prison has another nickname, just as evocative: it is called “The Farm” to describe the labour inmates are forced to work, generating as much as 1,814 metric tons of cash crops every year.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Chandra McCormick. MEN GOING TO WORK IN THE FIELDS OF ANGOLA, 2004. © Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun

Keith Calhoun. OUR CHILDREN ENDANGERED, THE NEW PREY FOR PRISON BEDS, NEW ORLEANS, 1982. © Chandra McCormick and Keith Calhoun

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

Lukas Birk: Burmese Photographers

Posted on April 5, 2018

Actor Kyaw Thu. Taken by U Sann Aung, USA Photo Studio, Yangon 1989/1990

Calendar photographs taken by Har Si Yone, Bellay Photo Studio, Yangon 1970s

The Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar has long been shrouded in mystery and intrigue. Formerly known as Burma, the country sits on the Bay of Bengal where it lies nestled between India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Laos, and China, and has been subject to invasions for the better part of the past millennia.

For the past six decades, it has been ruled by a military dictatorship that has worked to keep its borders closed. “We have this idea that the country was closed off from the world and to some extent it was – but certain things always come through,” Austrian photographer and archivist Lukas Birk reveals.

In 2013, Birk launched the Myanmar Photo Archive (MPA) to create a comprehensive archive of Burmese photographers working between 1890 and 1995. Featuring some 10,000 photographs, it provides an inside look at the nation through the eyes of its citizens. A selection of the work is showcased in the new book, Burmese Photographers (Goethe Institut Yangon), which includes fascinating chapters on youth culture between 1970 and 1990.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Calendar photographs taken by Har Si Yone, Bellay Photo Studio, Yangon 1970s

Actors Kyaw Thu & Moh Moh Myint Aung. Taken by U Sann Aung, USA Photo Studio, Yangon 1989/1990

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

Ed Templeton: Hairdos of Defiance

Posted on March 23, 2018

Californian photographer Ed Templeton gives us a preview of his upcoming exhibition featuring 20 years worth of photos of the Mohawk

Hailing from southern California, Ed Templeton got into the punk and skateboard scene in 1985. At that time, the aesthetics of rebellion were becoming codified as politics and style become strongly intertwined. Perhaps the most visible symbol of rebellion was Mohawk, a hairstyle that took its name and style from an Iroquois tribe residing in Quebec and New York.

Composed of a series of carefully crafted spikes of hair running down the center of a shaved head, often dyed bright colors like orange, blue, and green, the Mohawk brazenly respectability politics and polite society. By radically altering their appearances to signify displeasure, disgust, and rejection of the status quo, punks firmly drew a line in the sand, one that squares found intolerable and rude.

Templeton, however, understood that Mohawks were a message about authenticity in a fake world. In celebration, Roberts Projects in Culver City, CA, presents Hairdos of Defiance, an exhibition of 42 photos made in the U.S. and Europe over the past 20 years accompanied by a book from Deadbeat Club. Like his 1999 book and exhibition Teenage Smokers (Alleged Press), Templeton looks at the ways that kids revel in acts of disobedience to establish their independence and refusal to conform. Here, Templeton speaks about how the Mohawk has become a symbol of opposition, integrity, and self-determination for more than forty years.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, AnOther Man, Books, Exhibitions, Photography

Nicole R. Fleetwood: Prison Nation

Posted on March 23, 2018

Jack Lueders-Booth, from the series Women Prisoners, MCI Framingham (Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Framingham), 1978–85. Courtesy the artist and Gallery Kayafas, Boston.

Slavery in the United States was never abolished – it simply changed shape, allowing the government, corporations, and individuals to continue to profit off the oppression and exploitation of men, women, and children since the 13th Amendment of the constitution was ratified in 1865.

The 13th Amendment, which legalises slavery in the case of incarceration, has spawned a massive prison industrial complex. Although the US is a mere 5 per cent of the world’s population, it accounts for 25 per cent of the prisoners in the world – with 2.2 million people behind bars today. Invariably, race plays a major factor in who is imprisoned, with the police, courts, and legal system working against American citizens of African and Latinx communities for the past 150 years.

While millions of families have been torn apart and destroyed, for millions of other Americans, the prison industrial complex can be summed up as: “Out of sight, out of mind”.

But photography has the power to change the way we see the world, enabling us to look directly at what is happening here and now. With its Spring issue, titled Prison Nation, Aperture Magazine takes on the issues at hand, examining the historical and contemporary implications of present-day slavery in the United States.

Co-edited by Aperture Magazine’s editor, Michael Famighetti and scholar Nicole R. Fleetwood, Prison Nation features work by Jamel Shabazz, Joseph Rodriguez, Lucas Foglia, Hank Willis Thomas, Pete Brook, Jack Lueders-Booth, and Bruce Jackson, and examines all sides of the crisis, looking at how photography can be used to create a visual record of the issues at hand. Prison Nation empowers readers to educate themselves so that they can begin to understand that the “land of the free and the home of the brave” is anything but.

Here, Fleetwood shares her insights into how we can work together to take on the abuses of the state, by changing the way we look at the system and those who are forced to live inside the belly of the beast.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Jamel Shabazz, Pretrial detainees all part of the “House Gang” (sanitation workforce) pose in the day room of their housing area, Rikers Island, 1986. Courtesy the artist.

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

Milton Glaser: Posters

Posted on March 19, 2018

Now 89, Milton Glaser is one of the foremost graphic designers in the United States, best known for his iconic series “I love NY”. Throughout his illustrious career, which includes solo exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art and the Pompidou Centre among others, Glaser has elevated graphic design to an artform all its own.

And yet, of course, it’s not an art at all. “Design is one activity, art is another, and they have different objectives,” he explains from his office in New York. “Design is purposeful and intends to accomplish a goal, which is premeditated and defined at the beginning [whereas] what art does is guide you towards avoiding premeditation. It illuminates what is real and what is not real.”

Yet in the hands of a master, there is interplay between the commercial aims of design and the illuminative possibilities of art, and this can readily be seen in Glaser’s posters, of which he has made more than 450 since 1965. In celebration, Abrams will release Milton Glaser Posters on March 27, an incredible compendium of poster art at its best. Here Glaser shares insights into five of his favourite works.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, AnOther, Art

Huck Magazine Cover Story: The Journeys Issue

Posted on March 14, 2018

I could not be more thrilled to discover my feature on Ryan Weideman’s vintage taxi cab photos made in the 80s and 90s has been selected for the cover of the new issue of Huck Magazine.

Ryan took me back to the nights when the “Speed Deman” cruised the streets of New York. His stories had me holding on to the edge of my seat, and when it was all said and done he imparted a classic bit of taxi cab wisdom that concludes our wild ride.

Read the Announcement at Huck

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Huck, Photography

Joel Meyerowitz: Where I Find Myself

Posted on March 9, 2018

New York City, 1974. © Joel Meyerowitz

At 80 years old, American photographer Joel Meyerowitz is still going strong, forging a singular path that has taken him around the globe several times over. Hailing from East Bronx, Meyerowitz began his career as a street photographer, capturing the curious, quirky moments that reveal themselves as quickly as they disappear.

Today, Meyerowitz now finds himself living on a farm in Tuscany, amassing an archive of 50,000 photographs in just about every genre imaginable. “How come I found myself here, living in Italy and making still lifes when I am a street photographer Jew form New York City? What am I doing here?” Meyerowitz laughs.

He set out to answer this question in Where I Find Myself (Laurence King), a career retrospective presented in reverse chronological order. Here, Meyerowitz takes us on a magical journey from the present into the past, guiding us through the many chapters of his well-lived life.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Elias, Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1981. © Joel Meyerowit

New York City, 1963. © Joel Meyerowit

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Huck, Photography

A Portrait of Ming Smith, Pioneer Photographer & Model

Posted on March 6, 2018

Pioneers are often so far ahead of the curve that few know who they are and what they accomplished though we may all benefit from their work. Many simply live their destiny, leading quiet, humble lives, bearing the stripes and scars of the struggle while their legacy allows generations to succeed because they refused to fail.

In 1973, Ming Smith moved to New York. A recent graduate of Howard University, Smith took up modelling to support herself, working alongside Grace Jones, Bethann Hardison, Toukie Smith, Sherry Bronfman, and Barbara Smith – the first generation of African-American women to break through the colour barrier which had kept them out of the fashion and beauty industries.

Living in a studio apartment on Carmine Street in the West Village long before gentrification had set in, Smith invested all of her earnings into her true passion: photography. She carried her camera wherever she went, taking photographs while working in Paris and on assignment in Africa. Photography was a means to survive the challenges of daily life, providing a space where she could integrate with her authentic self, combining the profound power of the black experience with the universal beauty of humanity.

A woman of principle, poetry, and poise, Smith is a true pioneer in every sense of the word. The first woman member of Kamoinge, the African-American photography collective established in 1963, Smith is the first black woman to have work included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art – the very establishment that championed the transformation of photography from a vernacular activity into a fine art.

Despite her historic achievements, Smith never pushed herself into the public eye. It is only in 2017 that the world is catching up with her. Smith kicked things off with a solo exhibition at Steven Kasher Gallery, New York; is featured in the landmark exhibitions We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85; Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power; and Arthur Jafa’s recent show at Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London; and is wrapping things up with a big bow, as Karl Lagerfeld personally selected her photograph of Sun Ra for Paris Photo (Steidl).

Below, Smith shares her journey as an artist and model, reflecting on the challenges of breaking boundaries in fashion and art, and the importance of staying true to yourself while navigating this thing called life.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Africa, Art, Dazed, Photography

Matthew Rolston: Hollywood Royale

Posted on March 1, 2018

The magical grandeur of Hollywood glamour first came into vogue when Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich fled their native Germany in the 1930s and brought the aesthetics of the Weimar Republic stateside. Together they made six films at Paramount Studios, and introduced an innovative look using the spotlight on the face to create a luminous mask that stood in sharp contrast to the dark shadows it cast, emulating the aesthetic of 1920s Berlin.

By the early 1960s, the look had run its course and faded away, until Andy Warhol and Helmut Newton resurrected it in the late 1970s. Los Angeles native Matthew Rolston got his start at this time, shooting for Interview before rising to the heights of celebrity photography as a new Golden Age of Hollywood photography took shape. Working for Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Esquire, Rolston embraced the aesthetics of George Hurrell and Irving Penn, creating timeless portraits of the era’s greatest icons from Prince, Michael Jackson, and Madonna to Christian Lacroix, Yohji Yamamoto, and Mikhail Baryshnikov.

In celebration, Hollywood Royale: Out of the School of Los Angeles opens tomorrow at Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles, in conjunction with the recent publication of a magnificent monograph by the same name from teNeues featuring works made between 1977 and 1993. Here, Rolston speaks with us about the timeless allure of the glamour photo.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Online

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, AnOther, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Photography

Arlene Gottfried: A Lifetime of Wandering

Posted on February 28, 2018

Couple with Glasses. (Arlene Gottfried / Courtesy of Daniel Cooney Fine Art)

American artist Arlene Gottfried was a quiet storm of power, beauty and strength. She traversed the streets of her native New York, photographing the heart and soul of the people who have made the city a wholly original place.

Over her 50-year career, Gottfried saw New York through its ups and downs. Hailing from Brooklyn, she moved to the West Village in her early 20s, hitting the nightclubs during the era of Studio 54 and Plato’s Retreat, hanging out on New York’s Lower East Side and singing in an African American gospel choir. Whether photographing seminal figures like activist Marsha P. Johnson and poet Miguel Piñero or three generations of women in her Ashkenazi Jewish family, Gottfried had the empathetic eye, imbuing understanding, warmth, and humor into every picture she made.

After a long battle with breast cancer, Gottfried died in August, and in celebration of her life and work, Daniel Cooney Fine Art in New York is opening “A Lifetime of Wandering” (Feb. 28 to April 28, 2018). The exhibition features a selection of work made throughout her career, including never-before-seen black and white, color, and Polaroid photographs made on the streets, the beaches and in the parks of her beloved New York.

Read the Full Story at The Lily

Woman on Subway. (Arlene Gottfried / Courtesy of Daniel Cooney Fine Art)

Marsha P. Johnson (Arlene Gottfried / Courtesy of Daniel Cooney Fine Art)

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Exhibitions, Photography, The Lily