Posts from the “AnOther” Category

Paolo Roversi: Intangible Presence

Posted on September 24, 2019

Guinevere in a Nina Ricci Haute Couture dress, Paris, 1996 © Paolo Roversi, courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery

When Paolo Roversi steps inside his Paris studio, he is on a quest in search of that which lies beneath the flesh. Whether capturing the glamour of haute couture or the intimacy of a nude, for Roversi, “a photograph is always a portrait, and always autobiographical in a way. Fashion photography is a double portrait: a girl dressed in a certain outfit and this outfit dressed by a certain girl. This is magic to me.”

In celebration of his extraordinary body of work, Roversi’s new exhibition Intangible Presence delves into an archive that includes portraits, nudes, and even still lifes that underscore the artist’s love for that which can be seen with the heart.

“Every show is another story. I try to put together a little new fairytale so I see my work in a different angle,” says the photographer and AnOther contributor. “This time it was about the idea of the intangible presence. For me, photography is always a presence and an absence at the same time. It is a little phantom, a little ghost in the photograph. Even if it is silent photography talks a lot.”

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Anna, Paris, 2015 © Paolo Roversi, courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery

Categories: 1990s, AnOther, Art, Exhibitions, Fashion, Photography

Jane Evelyn Atwood: Paris Red Light 1976-1979

Posted on September 18, 2019

Pigalle, Paris (Barbara sur la Voiture), 1978-1979 © Jane Evelyn Atwood, courtesy of L. Parker Stephenson Photographs

Hailing from New York City, Jane Evelyn Atwood travelled to Europe in the summer of 1971 after graduating from Bard College, where she had studied theatre. With no plans for her future and no reason to go back home, she decided to stay in France. While working as an au pair, Atwood realised she was deeply unhappy and found an English-speaking therapist who helped her unlock a wellspring of creativity inside of her, which had previously been blocked.

One evening, while attending Tuesday night gallery openings, Atwood met a woman who told her that she knew a prostitute. “I had seen these women prostitutes on the street whispering at the men who passed in these incredible costumes and fur coats, jewellery, and make-up,” she recalls. “In France, prostitution is not illegal; it is what they call ‘tolerated’. In 1975, they were allowed to stand in the street and solicit.”

That same evening, the woman took Atwood to 19 Rue des Lombards, a brothel located in the centre of Paris, and they ended up drinking champagne with a group of sex workers. “It was very chic to be there,” she says. “I was very excited because I was in this unknown and completely forbidden world – it was right where I wanted to be.”

Read the Full Story at AnOther

Rue des Lombards (Natasha chez le Tunisien), 1976-1977 © Jane Evelyn Atwood, courtesy of L. Parker Stephenson Photographs

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

Alex Prager: Play The Wind

Posted on September 10, 2019

Big West, 2019. Courtesy Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, and Seoul

Alex Prager’s lifelong love affair with Los Angeles has informed the creation of her art since the beginning of her career, when she went around the city with a camera and a friend making photographs guerilla-style – no permits and all heart.

The city as muse is an archetype that runs throughout art history, from Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Paris to Keith Haring’s New York City, providing a setting just as alive as its inhabitants. It is a sensation evident in every breath of Play The Wind, Prager’s new exhibition of film, photography, and sculpture.

“This is the most autobiographical work I have ever done,” Prager says, a statement that reveals itself figuratively and literally throughout the show. Upon entering the gallery, you are greeted by the figure of ‘Big West’, a towering sculpture of a woman decked out in her freshest Gloria Vanderbilt jeans, whose message is simply: ‘Welcome Home’.

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Play the Wind Film Still #2, 2019. Courtesy Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong, and Seoul

Categories: AnOther, Art, Exhibitions, Photography, Women

Robert Giard: Particular Voices: Photographs of LGBTQ Writers, Artists and Activists, 1980s – 90s

Posted on June 6, 2019

Robert Giard. Pamela Sneed, NYC 1992.

In 1985, Robert Giard (1939-2002) went to see The Normal Heart – Larry Kramer’s largely autobiographical play about the rise of the AIDS crisis. The set was austere. Newspaper headlines, statistics, and the names of those who had died were painted on the walls of The Public Theater.

“The fact that we knew so many of those people was deeply moving and motivating,” remembers Jonathan Silin, Giard’s life partner, co-president of the Robert Giard Foundation, and executor of the Robert Giard Estate.

Inspired, Giard set forth on a journey to photograph LGBTQ writers, artists and activists across the United States, creating over 600 portraits between 1985 and 2002. Giard’s sitters include Stonewall veterans Stormé DeLarverie and Sylvia Rivera, Samuel R. Delany, Edward Albee, Edmund White, Eileen Myles, Quentin Crisp, Allen Ginsberg, Jacqueline Woodson, and Gertrude Stein, among many others.

A new exhibition, Particular Voices: Photographs of LGBTQ Writers, Artists and Activists, 1980s – 90s, presents a selection of 53 portraits from Giard’s archive, curated to illustrate the photographer’s inclusive spirit, inquisitive mind, and generous heart.

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Robert Giard. Sylvia Rivera, Brooklyn, 1999.

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

Bruce Davidson – Subject: Contact

Posted on May 10, 2019

Bruce Davidson, East 100th Street, 1966–68 © Bruce Davidson, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery/Magnum Photos

At the tender age of ten Bruce Davidson embarked on a quiet, solitary hunt in search of the perfect photograph. It was a journey that began when his mother built a darkroom in the basement of their home in Oak Park, Illinois so that he could meticulously print and edit his work, scanning contact sheets in search of gems preserved in slips of silver gelatin first captured on his forays out into the world.

“I always felt like an explorer on some faraway planet,” Davidson tells AnOther from his home in New York City. “I work best if I’m left alone. I like to explore, uncover, observe and reflect without anyone looking over my shoulder.”

His independence has been an integral part of his career, a trait that announced itself while serving in the US Army during the 1950s. Posted to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe outside Paris, Davidson was given enough freedom to follow his own path – one that lead to his meeting the widow of the impressionist painter Leon Fauché in Montmartre, who he photographed alongside her late husband’s paintings.

His photographs of their encounter, first published in Esquire in 1958 in an essay titled Widow of Montmartre, caught the eye of Henri Cartier-Bresson, who arranged to have Davidson inducted into Magnum Photos that year. As a member of the fabled photo agency, Davidson has become one of the most influential photographers of our time, writing history with his camera in a series of landmark images.

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Bruce Davidson, Brooklyn Gang, 1959 © Bruce Davidson, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery/Magnum Photos

Categories: 1960s, AnOther, Art, Brooklyn, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Photography

Ron Galella: Shooting Stars – The Untold Stories

Posted on March 28, 2019

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Ron Galella. Photography by Joy Smith © Ron Galella

What makes a legend most? Some say glamour, others scandal – or, in the case of Ron Galella, the ‘Godfather of Paparazzi’ who captured Hollywood’s most illustrious stars over a decades-long career, both.

The Bronx-born, first-generation Italian-American got his start in the early 1950s working as a US Air Force photographer during the Korean War, and took the lessons he learned on the frontlines straight to Hollywood. Armed with two cameras – no bag or coat – Galella would jump fences, crash parties, don disguises, and spend countless hours on stakeouts – all the while enduring threats, humiliation, and even violence for the opportunity to snap celebs.

Infamous for his legal battles with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, he was spat at and punched by Sean Penn; had his tooth knocked out by Richard Burton’s bodyguard; his tires slashed by Elvis Presley’s bodyguards; hosed down by Brigitte Bardot’s security; banned from Studio 54, twice; and caused Elizabeth Taylor to hiss, “I’m going to kill Ron Galella!”. It was all in a day’s work for the fearless paparazzo, who was willing to risk it all to get the shot.

Now 88, Galella has just published a new book Shooting Stars: The Untold Stories, a photographic memoir – including 22 tips for aspiring paparazzos from the man who knows. Here, on a call from his home in New Jersey, Galella recounts some of the most unforgettable moments of his career.

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Marlon Brando and Ron Galella, 1974 © Ron Galella

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, AnOther, Art, Books, Photography

Araki: Impossible Love – Vintage Photographs

Posted on March 20, 2019

Photo: Ohne Titel, a.d.S. The Days We Were Happy, 1975 © Nobuyoshi Araki. Courtesy of Privatsammlung Eva Felten

For over half a century, Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki has devoted himself to plumbing the depths of that which is most intimate – the invisible, intangible spirit that animates our very flesh. In his hands, the erotic transcends the mere functionality of pornography and reveals the raw intensity of the emotional, physical, and psychological self that gives sex its power.

At 78, the prolific artist has published over 500 books, including his latest offering Araki: Impossible Love – Vintage Photographs, out today. Arranged chronologically, the book maps Araki’s oeuvre as it unfolds, transforming his photo diary into a visual autobiography of a singular, subversive life in art.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

Kinbaku, 2010, Polaroid
© Nobuyoshi Araki. Courtesy of artspace AM, Tokyo

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, AnOther, Art, Books, Japan, Photography

Olivier Fatton: Coco

Posted on March 4, 2019

Coco, Copyright Olivier Fatton.

Éve-Claudine Lorétan – alias Coco – met photographer Olivier Fatton on a Sunday in November 1989, at a sauna in Bern, Switzerland. Their meeting would mark the final act of Coco’s short life, in which she was at once fashion model, performance artist, and tabloid sensation.

“We fell in love at first sight,” Fatton says, speaking through a translator from Paris. “I had the impression I just met an angel. At the time, I was really drawn to aesthetics. Coco looked so beautiful that I just wanted to take pictures of her.”

Before meeting Coco, Fatton, 32, had been photographing male nudes in staged scenes, awash with beauty but empty of love. Their connection was absolute and instantaneous. They went for coffee, then to bed, in short order.

“I want to be your model. In return, you’ll document my transformation. I’m going to have a sex change,” Coco told Fatton, as he recounts in a new book, Coco.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Online

Coco, Copyright Olivier Fatton.

Coco, Copyright Olivier Fatton.

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

Paolo Roversi: Doubts

Posted on February 12, 2019

“For me to take a picture is an act of love, something to connect with the rest of the world and… voila!” Italian photographer and AnOther Magazine contributor Paolo Roversi says on the phone from his Paris studio of nearly four decades. “It’s like a kiss. It is to exchange a regard. It is very simple.”

Very simple – and pure. For Roversi, the photograph is an invitation to discover what lies beyond the known, creating a space where anything is possible. “I like to be lost in mysteries. I don’t like to explain everything. I don’t like to ask. I do not look for the answer in fact. I am happy with only the question,” he says.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

Categories: AnOther, Art, Exhibitions, Fashion, Photography

Patty Carroll: Domestic Demise

Posted on January 18, 2019

Over the past four years, American artist Patty Carroll’s life has been in a state of flux as the question of home has had her turned upside down. While managing a move from her primary residence in Indiana to a new apartment and studio in Chicago, Carroll was simultaneously doing renovations on a place in Miami.

“Home became an overwhelming situation of ‘What the hell am I doing?’ and ‘Where am I today?’” Carroll laughs. “It was more than I could deal with. Houses were doing me in.”

But rather than go under, Carroll transformed the sensation of chaos and impending doom into a series of photographs entitled Domestic Demise, which opens at Catherine Couturier Gallery in Houston on January 19.

The latest chapter in Carroll’s ongoing Anonymous Women project, Domestic Demise takes the game of Cluedo as its departure point, staging lavishly decorated scenes inside rooms like the Conservatory, Library, Kitchen, and Hall. Here, the titular ‘Anonymous Woman’ meets her untimely end. The moral of the story: The perfect home is a catastrophe in the making – but at least you will go out in style. You might even say, “Death becomes her”.

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Categories: AnOther, Art, Exhibitions, Photography, Women

God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin

Posted on January 15, 2019

Photo: James Baldwin, writer, Harlem, New York, 1945. hotography by Richard Avedon © The Richard Avedon Foundation, Courtesy David Zwirner

The work of James Baldwin (1924–1987) speaks not only to his time, but that of our own – calling out abuses of power while painting a heartfelt portrait of those they harm. Yet in becoming a public figure, Baldwin’s fame became a double-edged sword, amplifying the impact of his ideas while simultaneously draining him of his creative resources.

In a new exhibition God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, writer, and curator Hilton Als explores Baldwin’s life as both inspiration and cautionary tale. Featuring the work of Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Richard Avedon, Beauford Delaney, Marlene Dumas, Glenn Ligon, Anthony Barboza, Kara Walker, and James Welling, the exhibition also includes a wealth of archival materials including a vinyl recording of Baldwin singing, Precious Lord, Take My Hand – which Als first heard inside the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine during Baldwin’s funeral.

Here, speaking to AnOther, Als reflects on his relationship with Baldwin, one that came about as Als began his journey just as Baldwin was concluding his.

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Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, AnOther, Art, Exhibitions, Photography