Posts from the “Art” Category

Harvey Stein: Then and There – Mardi Gras 1979

Posted on March 12, 2021

In January 1979, American photographer Harvey Stein quit his job at a Madison Avenue advertising agency to pursue his dream of being a photographer. After publishing his first book, Parallels: A Look at Twins, the previous fall, Stein was ready to strike out on a path all his own. To celebrate leaving the business world behind Stein and fellow photo buddies Bruce Gilden, Charles Gatewood, and Jim Colman decided to travel to New Orleans for Mardi Gras that February.

“As I recall, the shooting was non-stop, all day,” Stein says. “There was high energy everywhere. I wanted to document exuberant public behaviour, nudity, and high spirits. This was prevalent. I photographed mostly in the French Quarter – I thought that part of the city was charming, with narrow streets and small-scale buildings. Altogether it was a wonderful trip.”

Under the bright light of daytime, Stein used his Leica M-4 to create a series of black and white street photographs capturing the decadence of America’s most famous carnival. At dusk, Stein took out his Polaroid SX-70 camera to make intimate street portraits of people adorned with face paint and masks, published for the first time in the new book Then and There: Mardi Gras 1979 (Zatara Press).

Read the Full Story at Huck

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

Jim Goldberg: Fingerprint

Posted on March 11, 2021

*Jim Goldberg. Wea, Near Hollywood Boulevard. Los Angeles, California. USA. 1988-1994. © Jim Goldberg | Magnum Photos*

From 1985-1995, Jim Goldberg worked on the streets of Los Angeles and San Francisco getting to know a number of homeless teens, building the relationships that would come to form the basis of Raised by Wolves, the groundbreaking monograph that redefined commonly held notions of documentary work. Weaving together photographs, handwritten notes, drawings, snapshots, found objects, and ephemera into a majestic tapestry, Goldberg crafted a brutally compelling portrait of troubled youth struggling to survive.

Through the stories of protagonists Tweeky Dave and Echo, Goldberg provided visibility, and a voice, to at-risk teens at a time when they were alternatively vilified and marginalized, or erased from most peoples’ awareness, allowing the subjects to control the narrative.

The dazzling sunshine of Southern California and noirish shadows it cast made the perfect visual backdrop for a tale of adolescent antiheroes driven from their homes, fending for themselves on the streets. “The stories that they created about themselves were based on Hollywood, rock and roll, and love stories. Their family on the street was a movie in itself. They were in Hollywood and San Francisco, too. They would flow back and forth and be the new James Deans or Johnny Rottens.”

Read the Full Story at Magnum Photos

*Jim Goldberg. Schemer and Cupcake, Near Hollywood Boulevard. Los Angeles, California. USA. 1988-1994. © Jim Goldberg | Magnum Photos*

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Magnum Photos, Photography

Mitch Epstein: Property Rights

Posted on March 11, 2021

*Ashton Clatterbuck, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania 2018, dye coupler print, © Mitch Epstein*

It wasn’t until photographer Mitch Epstein traveled to India in the 1980s that he began to understand what it means to be an American. By putting distance between himself and the United States, Epstein began to develop a deeper sense of his cultural identity. His travels to Vietnam in the early 1990s became a turning point, deepening the political dimension of his work. From that point forward, Epstein began to confront the political underbelly of American history in a series of projects made throughout the first two decades of the twenty-first century.

Although Epstein did not set out to create a trilogy, in retrospect he recognizes the thread that weaves through the cycle that began with Family Business, an intimate story about the cost of pursuing the illusory American Dream. Afterwards, Epstein expanded his perspective in a study of American Power and most recently with Property Rites, an exhibition and soon to be released book that ultimately reckons with the call to resistance on the home front.

Epstein does not consider himself an environmental photographer, but the stories he shares offer entrees into American histories that have largely been erased from view. “I don’t have a political agenda or a preconceived operandi in my head when I’m making the pictures,” Epstein says. “It’s not useful to me to be at service to the ideas I already have in my head. That’s an artistic handicap. But in the end I’m clear about the importance of taking responsibility of the work, to contextualize and position it without denying its own enigma. I’m not explaining it.”

Read the Full Story at Blind

*Tree of Life Synagogue Memorial, Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 2018 © Mitch Epstein*

Categories: Art, Blind, Books, Exhibitions, Photography

Jamil GS: The ’90s

Posted on March 11, 2021

As the son of jazz saxophonist Sahib Shihab, who played with no less than John Coltrane, Quincy Jones, and Thelonious Monk, the connection between visual art and music was imprinted upon photographer Jamil GS as a child, while playing his father’s records and studying album covers in his hometown of Copenhagen.

“I believe input determines output,” he says. “I grew up in a very creative environment. My mother was talented at drawing and her mother was a famous illustrator working for fashion magazines and catalogues. There was a big American expat community in Copenhagen, and I was surrounded by musicians, artists, painters, poets, journalists, writers, directors, both American and Danish.”

Jamil GS got into hip hop in the 1980s at the age of 13 when he was a certified B-Boy, dancing in the clubs and bombing trains as a graffiti writer. “My dad started teaching me to play the saxophone,” he remembers. “He told me, ‘If you really want to do this and become good at it you have to practice six hours a day.’ As a teenager, I was out running the streets so I was like, I don’t know about that. I really wanted to be a professional graffiti artist, to be the next LEE or FUTURA.’”

After members of his crew got busted Jamil GS changed course, channeling his creative energy into photography, using the camera his father had given him at the age of 16. “For me, the connection with visuals and music is very close. When I hear the music, I see pictures,” he says. “I felt like photography hadn’t been explored that much by my generation. When something would come out in magazines or album art, there was a disconnect for me. I was like, this is not the experience I am having listening to this music. The music was so advanced and sophisticated: the production, compositions, poetry, slang. I wanted to make visuals that represented that.”

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Categories: 1990s, Art, Bronx, Dazed, Manhattan, Music, Photography

Mona Kuhn: Works

Posted on March 8, 2021

As a young girl coming of age in 1980s Brazil, Mona Kuhn discovered the power of photography when she received a Kodak Pocket Instamatic camera for her 12th birthday. “Photography is a modern, fast-paced medium and in a way that is what I like because I have a very restless side to me – but at the same time it scares me,” Kuhn tells AnOther in advance of the April 6 publication of Mona Kuhn: Works (Thames & Hudson), her first retrospective monograph chronicling a quarter century of work, selections from which are now on view at Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York.

Since she was a teenager, Kuhn had been drawn to figurative work, particularly that of painters including Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, and Egon Schiele. After meeting Braziian artist Mário Cravo Neto, who used figurative photography to investigate the Afro Brazilian heritage and mysticism in Bahia, Kuhn embarked on her first study of the human form.

“I always wanted to go against how fast-paced the medium is, and work with nudes as a way of stopping time,” Kuhn reveals. “I was interested in the nude because it wasn’t limited by fashion; it was open-ended. It was not an easy thing because nudes have been done a lot, maybe in ways I do not think are best. At the time I was in college, in the early 90s, Helmut Newton and Herb Ritts were iconic, but it was not how I wanted it to be.”

Read the Full Story at AnOther

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

Leonard Fink Photographs

Posted on March 8, 2021

*Leonard Fink. Manon Motorcycle at the Pier.*

An amateur photographer with a passion for documenting gay life in New York, Leonard Fink (1930–1992) worked in complete obscurity for more than 25 years, amassing an extraordinary archive of work now being digitised by the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center in New York.

Fink’s photographs capture the early years of the gay liberation movement as a new generation came of age, taking to the streets to celebrate newly won freedoms to live and love openly. His vibrant scenes of parades, bars, and cruising at New York’s infamous West Side Piers offer an intimate slice of life as seen by an insider who was also extremely reclusive.

An attorney for the New York Transit Authority, Fink was a self-taught photographer who never exhibited or published his work while he as alive. He worked in his small apartment on West 92 Street, living frugally to afford the pricey cost of photographic supplies and develop his photographs in a homemade darkroom.

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Leonard Fink. Pier 46 ’79 Boy with skateboard in pier 46 & shammey loin cloth.’79.*

Leonard Fink. Bar Patrons in Front of Badlands Bar and Gay World Series Banner.

Categories: 1970s, Art, Exhibitions, Huck, Manhattan

Joe Conzo: Born in the Bronx

Posted on March 5, 2021

“Never give up! That’s my call to everything in life,” says Nuyorican artist, activist, and author Joe Conzo. The former FDNY EMT – who was buried under 9/11 rubble – is a survivor in every sense of the word. After recently battling and beating cancer of the pancreas and liver brought on by conditions at Ground Zero, Conzo made the front page of the January 26 Daily News after taking on Glacier Equities, a real estate firm that in November 2020 purchased the Bronx building where Conzo has lived since 1991.

Two days before Christmas, Conzo and dozens of residents across the Bronx and Inwood received a letter informing them they were being evicted during a pandemic, and given just 90 days to find a new place to live as of January 31. “Getting the letter was like being told again, ‘We found cancer in your body,’” Conzo says.

But Glacier Equities had met its match; Conzo is Bronx royalty. His grandmother, Dr. Evelina López Antonetty (1922-1984), was an activist affectionately known as “The Hell Lady of the Bronx” who let politicians know: “I don’t work for you. You work for me. You do for us first and then we will do for you.” An educator unafraid to take on the establishment, Dr. Antonetty founded United Bronx Parents (UBP) in 1965 to fight for equal opportunities for the poor, the fruits of her labour resulting in bilingual education nationwide and school meal programs for impoverished children.

“My grandmother died fighting. Same thing with my mother,” Conzo says of Lorraine Montenegro who took the helm of UBP after her mother’s death and passed in 2017 as a result of the lack of government support in the wake of Hurricane Maria. Today, two adjacent Bronx street corners bear their respective names, honouring the work they did to help the people of the community.

“I’m still fighting – and it’s not by choice,” Conzo says with a laugh. “It’s like that line in The Godfather III, ‘Just when I thought I was out, they pull me backed in!’ It’s about education and standing up for your rights. If you do your due diligence, you’ll come out on top. I don’t care how big Goliath is.”

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Categories: 1970s, Art, Books, Bronx, Dazed, Music, Photography

Ebony: Covering Black America

Posted on March 5, 2021

Throughout the twentieth century, most mainstream U.S. publications were reticent to bring more than one — if any — Black photographers on staff, resulting a biased depiction of the issues facing the Black America. Understanding the truth in journalist H. L. Mencken’s dictum, “Freedom of the press is limited to those who own one,” businessman John Harold Johnson founded the Johnson Publishing Company in Chicago in 1942 to provide Black America with media made by, for, and about the community.

In 1945, the Johnson Publishing Company launched Ebony, which quickly became Black America’s answer to LIFE magazine. Rather than appropriate white culture, Ebonyoffered an inside view into a striving Black bourgeois through a series of photo essays and features on celebrities and current events. For 75 years, Ebony was the forerunner of Black American culture, chronicling the times, and offering a visual history of the nation from segregation through Civil Rights, and beyond.

“As one of the few individuals who know of a world before Ebony, let me tell you, John Johnson’s magazine was a game-changer, and remains one to this day,” retired educator Hazel S. Red says in Lavaille Lavette’s sumptuous new book Ebony: Covering Black America (Rizzoli New York). “It has been a vehicle by which we have maintained our dignity and sanity through our efforts to achieve true justice and equality for all.”

Read the Full Story at Blind

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Blind, Books, Music, Photography

Michael Grecco: Punk, Post Punk, New Wave – Onstage, Backstage, In Your Face, 1978-1991,

Posted on March 5, 2021

Bow Wow Wow #2, Boston, Massachusetts, 1981 © Michael Grecco

“Punk, in a strange way, saved my life,” musician Lizzie Borden says in Punk, Post Punk, New Wave: Onstage, Backstage, In Your Face, 1978-1991, a breathtaking collection of 162 photographs by Michael Grecco accompanied by essays by Fred Schneider of The B-52sand music journalist Jim Sullivan.

By the age of 13, Borden — who shares her birth name a woman who allegedly killed her family with an axe — was rocking at CBGB, the epicenter of New York’s burgeoning punk scene. “It was filthy, it was raw. It was sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll, and the bathrooms were disgusting,” she told Sullivan. “It was a group of people that not everyone wanted to join, but once you were in you were family….We would be up all night. Drugs, no sleep, more drugs. We lived in the streets. We squatted in Alphabet City. We lived punk rock.”

With “Do It Yourself” as the guiding ethos, punk encouraged all comers to make art without catering to careerist ambitions, commercial markets, or capitalist pretense. Stripped down to its bare essentials, punk was loud, angry, and raw — capturing the angst of adolescence and the disdain for the privileged politic of hippie ideology. With punk, anyone possessed with the audacity of youth could grab a guitar, jump on stage, thrash three chords, and howl at the moon.

Read the Full Story at Blind

*Poison Ivy, The Cramps, Boston, Massachusetts, 1980 © Michael Grecco*

*Siouxsie and the Banshees, Boston, Massachusetts, 1980 © Michael Grecco*

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Blind, Books, Music, Photography

Philip Wolmuth: Notting Hill

Posted on March 2, 2021

Socially concerned photography, which dates back to the work ofJacob Riis and Lewis Hine, has the power to change lives by shining a light on how the other half lives. In the 1970s, Philip Wolmuth, then in his 20s, began using photography to document the Horniman’s Adventure Playground in North Kensington where he worked, and got involved with community activism in North Paddington.

“Philip was interested in documenting the society we live in and the way people live and work, and felt very comfortable behind the camera,” says his partner Jane Matheson, and their children Anna and Eva Wolmuth.

“Philip has a strong sense of social justice and has always been strongly anti-establishment. He sought to document the reality of people’s lives in an unjust society, including community struggles, housing problems, low paid work, cuts to public services.”

Read the Full Story at Huck

Philip Wolmuth. 1983: Young bikers on the first skateboard bowl in Meanwhile Gardens, a community-run park next to the Grand Union canal in North Paddington. The bowl was replaced by a new, state-of-the-art design in 2002.

*Philip Wolmuth. 1975: demolition of shops and houses in Kensal Road, North Kensington.*

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

Deanna Templeton: What She Said

Posted on February 25, 2021

As the first generation of truly disaffected youth came of age, Generation X watched hippies trade in their “save the world” idealism of their youth to become yuppies who believed everything could be bought and sold. In Reagan’s America, neoliberalism took root, transforming corporations into people and people into brands. Raised as latch key children born to members of the “Silent Generation,” Gen-Xers understood they were on their own. Although taboo issues were finally starting to be spoken of openly on daytime talk shows, after school specials, and the occasional made-for-TV movies like The Burning Bed, by and large, silence continued to cloak the struggles many faced.

Hailing from Huntington Beach, California, American photographer Deanna Templeton lived in the quintessential suburban home that epitomized American life. But for all her family’s strides, Templeton felt lost in a culture that pushed a shiny, pretty, picture perfect image of womanhood promoted by fashion magazines. As a teen, Templeton kept a journal, chronicling the pain she felt inside, exacerbated by the endless capitalization of unattainable standards of beauty foisted upon girls in their youth. Like so many others, Templeton equated her innate value with her attractiveness, channeling her sense of self worth into her appearance to detrimental effect.

“By the time I hit 14 I was hard on criticizing myself for not being the way I wanted to be,” Templeton remembers. On November 17, 1986, she wrote in her journal, “Tonight for the 100th time I looked at myself in the mirror and realized how ugly I am and how cute I could of [sic] been. My acne is so horrible! I don’t understand why I am so ugly. I hate it. I wish I was dead until it went away. Someone please help me.”

Read the Full Story at Blind

Categories: Art, Blind, Books, Photography, Women