Posts from the “Art” Category

Aperture #241: Utopia

Posted on February 5, 2021

*Tyler Mitchell, Untitled (In the Blue Bush), 2018*

*Biosphere 2, ca. 1991, from the film Spaceship Earth, 2020. Courtesy Matt Wolf*

Utopia is available to all who call upon their imagination to conjure the perfect world. And who better than the artist to visualise an escape from the infernal damnations of the earth and offer a visionary portrait of a future we might dare to dream into existence?

In ‘Utopia’, Aperture #241, artists, photographers, and writers come together to envision a world without prisons, sexism, racism, xenophobia, homophobia, environmental collapse – and all the other dangers pushing our very existence over the precipice.

Featuring the work of Nicole R. Fleetwood, The Family Acid, Lina Iris Viktor, Mickalene Thomas, Lorna Simpson, among others, Utopia offers a panoply of possible futures at our fingertips: a world without prisons, where people from all walks of life are free and unhindered by the spectre of oppression on every level of existence, starting with the relationship between artist and subject.

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Balarama Heller, Desire Tree, from the series Sacred Place, 2019.*

Categories: Art, Exhibitions, Huck, Photography

Gary Krueger’s City of Angeles, 1971-1980

Posted on February 2, 2021

American photographer Gary Krueger attributes his success to luck, chalking it up to an undeniable knack for being at the right place at the right time. After graduating high school in 1963, Krueger hopped in his 1954 Ford and drove west from his native Cleveland, Ohio, to Los Angeles to study graphic design and photography at Chouinard Art Institute, which later became the fabled California Institute of the Arts.

“I was one of four people in the ‘60s who didn’t take drugs that went to art school. I was the casual observer of what was going on,” Krueger says. “I’ve always had a camera, Brownie Starflash, but it was never anything serious. After I got into Chouinard, I made one print in the darkroom and went, ‘This is fucking magic!’ It knocked me out.”

After graduating in 1967, Krueger got a job working at the ‘Imagineering’ division of Disney to photograph the park and its events. “After six months, I decided I’m going to be a photographer,” he remembers.

Krueger quickly struck gold when he landed a cover for West magazine. “I got $250. Well, it might as well have been a million dollars! This is 1967. To give you an idea, gasoline was 11 cents a gallon. My rent was $55 a month.”

Read the Full Story at Huck

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

Larry Fink: Retrospective

Posted on January 28, 2021

*Larry Fink. George Plimpton, Jared Paul Stern, and Cameron Richardson January 1999*

“I was born a communist,” says photographer Larry Fink, who turns 80 in March. The self-described “Marxist from Long Island” who first rose to critical acclaim with Social Graces, a series of work that contrasted life in Martins Creek, Pennsylvania, where the artist has lived since the 1970s, with scenes of New York’s upper crust that same decade. Exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in 1979 and first published as a monograph by Aperture in 1984. the work catapulted Fink to the forefront of the photo world, despite the fact that he eschewed career ambitions in favor using photography to achieve political goals.

“My mother was a communist. She was an organizer, and she had no fear. She was a bourgeois also. She loved mink stoles. My father was a kind, patient man with a stamp collection. My folks had some money so they used to drive around in a Studs Bearcat, go to Florida, and hang out. They liked leisure, parties and jazz music so my upbringing was a contradictory one,” Fink remembers.

“My sister Liz and I were brought up believing there was the beginning of a new world at the end of the old world, that all of the old cruelties [of capitalism] would dissipate in time. They wanted to get rid of class and thought everything would purify. They were wrong but that’s beside the point. They were right in thinking that they could.”

Read the Full Story at Blind

*Larry Fink. New York Magazine Party New York, October 1977*

*Larry Fink. Pat Sabatine’s Eighth Birthday Party, Martins Creek Pennsylvania, April 1977*

Categories: 1970s, 1990s, Art, Blind, Exhibitions, Photography

Darnell Moore: Being Seen

Posted on January 27, 2021

Just two days after George Floyd was killed, Tony McDade, a 38-year-old Black trans man, was fatally shot by police in Tallahassee, Florida. While the Black Lives Matter movement surged to unprecedented heights, McDade’s death was underreported.

In the coming month, a new refrain would emerge: ‘All Black Lives Matter,’ signaling the need to ensure visibility for members of the LGBTQ+ community. Despite their vast contributions to culture and politics, the Black LGBTQ+ community has historically been misrepresented, marginalized and erased.

With Being Seen, a ten-episode weekly podcast, award-winning writer Darnell Moore honors the lived experiences and cultural contributions of Black gay, bi and trans masculine artists and activists. “Simply put, we wanted to create a platform that would make legible the fact that we, Black queer and trans men, exist and live lives worthy of consideration and celebration,” Moore says.

“We sought to involve Black people who come from a variety of places, people who contribute to culture in different ways, whether on screen, on the stage, or on the streets.”

Read the Full Story at Huck

Categories: Art, Huck, Photography

Roy Mehta: Revival – London 1989-1993

Posted on January 26, 2021

In the 1960s, Roy Mehta’s family emigrated from India to the Kenton section of Brent, the most diverse district in London. Home to long-established Afro-Caribbean and Asian populations, the borough also includes significant Somali, Brazilian, Chinese, Irish, Italian, and Romanian communities.

As the only member of his family born in London, Mehta holds a unique perspective of the world, one honed by time spent in nearby Harlesden where his father worked as a GP, and at the Wembley Market, where he spent time with his mother and sister.

In 1989, while attending art school in Surrey, Mehta embarked on a project documenting life on the streets of Brent to make work that spoke to this family connection. Over the next five years, Mehta would create an intimate portrait of everyday life, photographing people on the streets, in their homes, and attending places of worship where they could freely express themselves.

Read the Full Story at Huck

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

Stephen Frailey: Looking at Photography

Posted on January 25, 2021

*Pink Powder, Lilly Donaldson wearing John Galliano, 2008 © NICK KNIGHT.*

We see before we think or speak, often relying upon pictures to learn words themselves. Our first books contain pictures, showing us how to translate the visual world into a verbal one, and in turn teaching us that images contain a language all their own.

It has been said, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” suggesting a single image can contain vast stores of information and ideas, as well as be a singular experience unto themselves, evoking a visceral response. In a world filled with images, visual literacy is an underutilized tool to help people navigate contemporary life.

Recognizing this, John Szarkowski, then Director of Photography at MoMA, penned the seminal 1973 book, Looking at Photographs: 100 Pictures from the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, an accessible history of photography for seeking to learn how to become proficient at reading pictures.

Nearly half a century later, the world has become deluged by stores of images flooding our daily lives by virtue of the explosion of digital technology and our reliance upon it. Yet the subject of visual literacy goes largely unaddressed, and it is for this reason that photographer and educator Stephen Frailey’s new book, Looking at Photography (Damiani) is a much-needed contribution to the discourse.

Read the Full Story at Blind

*Poster, Koriyama City, 1990 © DAIDO MORIYAMA.*

*Bester V, Mayotte, 2015 ZANELE MUHOLI.*

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

Mike Abrahams: Toxteth 1979-1982

Posted on January 22, 2021

*Mike Abrahams. Young men on Granby Street, Toxteth. Liverpool 8. 1982*

The Toxteth section of Liverpool is the oldest Black community in England, dating back to the American Revolution of 1776. Over the centuries, it has been home to a bustling mix of West Indian, African, Chinese, Irish, and Welsh immigrants.

But that didn’t stop racism from infiltrating the area: after World War I, white Britons blamed Black people for unemployment and housing insecurity. Their rage erupted into riots in 1919, when thousands ran amok for days. Their rampage resulted in the destruction of Black-owned properties and the death of 24-year-old Bermudan Charles Wootton, who was chased into the River Mersey by a mob, as police looked on. Police officers listed drowning as the cause of the Bermudian’s death; no one was held accountable.

The underlying bigotry continued to fester, creating tensions that resulted in a Black-led rebellion on July 3, 1981. A large crowd had gathered after word got out that an unidentified young Black man had been arrested and placed in the back of a police van.

Among those in attendance was Leroy Cooper, a 21-year-old photography student, who was violently arrested in front of the crowd, sparking nine days of civil unrest that resulted in the death of a disabled man, David Moore, 500 arrests, and the destruction of 70 buildings. The subsequent Scarman Report, which focused largely on the Brixton uprising of the same year, acknowledged that systemic issues facing Black communities in the UK were the root cause of the protests.

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Mike Abrahams. Protesting against the police racist and oppressive tactics in Toxteth during the riots of 1981*

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

Godlis Streets

Posted on January 21, 2021

In 1975, New York had reached its breaking point. After years of being denied funding for essential services under the federal policy of “benign neglect,” the city was falling apart. Robberies, burglaries, and aggravated assault had spiked dramatically while the city was $34 million in debt, teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. President Gerald Ford had just announced he would veto any bill calling for a federal bail out, effectively telling New York to drop dead.

Though the city had been abandoned, those who remained were shaped and molded by the struggle for survival. They were the poor, the working class, the artists and eccentrics who understood nature abhors a vacuum and remade New York into a landscape of art, culture, and music unseen before or since. Though many had fled, some like city native Godlis returned with dreams of becoming a street photographer.

Godlis got his start in photography in 1972 after seeing the Diane Arbus exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art during his sophomore year at Boston University. After graduating, he studied at ImageWorks alongside famous photographers Nan Goldin and Stanley Greene, and began walking the streets of Boston — but he quickly realized the photographs he was making did not have the grit and glamour of Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand, Lee Friedlander, or Arbus. After getting robbed, Godlis realized, of the two cities New York was clearly the safer option.

Read the Full Story at Blind

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

New Queer Photography: Focus on the Margins

Posted on January 21, 2021

As the first generation raised on the Internet, schooled by social media, and fluent in digital technology comes of age, they possess an innate understanding of how images can be used to explore and express the intricate construction of identity and selfhood. With the democratization of photography, people from around the globe are now able to author and distribute their own visual language to tell stories on their own terms, helping to usher in a new age of liberation movements.

For LGBTQ photographers working at a time when laws against homosexuality and trans rights are finally being repealed in many countries around the globe, we are entering a renaissance comparable to the Stonewall era half a century ago. By smashing the binary precepts that have plagued Western thinking for thousands of years, a new generation of queer image-makers are introducing new ways to consider the complex expression of sexuality and gender in their works.

With the recent publication of New Queer Photography: Focus on the Margins (Gingko Press), editor Benjamin Wolbergs brings together 52 international contemporary artists who use photography as a tool of activism and self-actualization. Featuring works by Dustin Thierry, Pauliana Valente Pimentel, Laurence Rasti, and Lissa Rivera, among others, the book offers a panoply of perspectives at the edges of a new frontier, pushing the boundaries of the word “queer.”

Read the Full Story at Blind

Categories: Art, Blind, Books, Photography

Women of the African Diaspora: Identity, Place, Migration, Immigration

Posted on January 20, 2021

Growing up with strong female figures, photographer and curatorAaron Turner learned from a young age to integrate women’s perspectives into his outlook on life. “As I got older, I understood the complexities and inequalities between men and women in multiple spaces,” he says. “I began to notice the gaps in photographic history narratives, mostly white and male. But in my mind, I said to myself, I know other narratives exist; what are they, and where are they?”

Just before he embarked on his MFA, Turner discovered the work ofDeborah Willis, Hank Willis Thomas, and Latoya Ruby Frazier. “I went my entire undergrad career not knowing about so many artists of colour, and I wondered how many other people did too,” he says.

In response, Turner launched the Center for Photographers of Color in 2014, creating a platform to go beyond the narrow confines of the historically exclusionary photography world. Turner’s ongoing dedication to the work of Black artists now finds focus inWomen of the African Diaspora: Identity, Place, Migration, Immigration, a new exhibition that brings together work from three artists to explore the complexities of female perspectives while preserving the kinship that they all share.

Read the Full Story at Huck

Categories: Art, Exhibitions, Huck, Women

Brooklyn Street Art: Documenting the Art of Protest

Posted on January 20, 2021

*BLM. Manhattan, NYC. July 05, 2020. Photo © BSA/Jaime Rojo*

Though we are surrounded by omens portending the future before it occurs, many refuse to read “the writing on the wall.” The confluence of graffiti and political action dates back to the Biblical story of Belshazzar’s feast when a disembodied hand scrawled words on the palace wall in a language no one could understand. According to the Book of Daniel, the young hero deciphered the message and warned the king the great empire of Babylon was going to fall.

The parable, contained within the larger story of apocalypse, is uncannily timely given the resurgence of graffiti and street art, two of the most vital, viral forms of contemporary art. Long intertwined with photography and activism, today’s “writing on the wall” has become the medium of the proletariat in the fight against the oppressive power structures dominating everyday life around the globe.

Throughout history artists have taken to the streets to draw attention to the issues at stake in the hopes of radicalizing the populace. From the use of wheat-pasted posters in the 1910 Mexican Revolution and John Heartfield’s anti-Nazi and anti-Stalinist crusades of the 1930s to 1968 student uprisings in Paris and Mexico City, artists have long taken to the streets to expose the corruption of political institutions. Although their works are local and temporal, photography has played an integral role in preserving and distributing their messages far and wide.

“Humans have always had the urgency to leave their mark behind. Walls and rocks have been their canvases for millennia,” say photographer Jamie Rojo and editor Steven P. Harrington of Brooklyn Street Art. “By the 1980s, graffiti writers like Lee Quiñones routinely addressed social and political topics when using New York City subway trains as canvasses. Likewise, street art in 2020 has referenced police brutality, structural racism, feelings of alienation, disgust with politicians and a vast economic chasm that is shredding the fabric of society.”

Read the Full Story at Blind

*The Heart Of Will Power. Manhattan, NYC. October 11, 2020. Photo © BSA/Jaime Rojo*

*Nick C Kirk. Manhattan, NYC. June 26, 2020. Photo © BSA/Jaime Rojo*

Categories: Art, Blind, Photography