Posts from the “Art” Category

Mel D. Cole: American Protest – Photographs 2020–2021

Posted on October 25, 2021

During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Black American photographer Mel D. Cole took to the streets of New York to photograph the world as it transformed before his very eyes. Then George Floyd was murdered and everything changed.

As the history’s largest Civil Rights movement took root, Cole started following Justice for George Floyd for updates on Black Lives Matter protests in New York. Social media quickly became the nexus for community, with feeds popping up nationwide to spread the word on local rallies, food banks, and other collective actions.

Recognizing that “this is not a moment, it’s a movement,” Cole devoted himself to documenting protests around the country. He traveled to cities including Minneapolis, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Richmond, and Houston to bear witness as people from all walks of life took to the streets to demand justice.

“The movement needed someone like myself and my fellow photographers, videographers, and journalist to be out there, not afraid of the police. Protesters have to be fearless. You have to be out there and do it every single day,” says Cole.

Read the Full Story at Huck

Categories: Art, Books, Photography

Black Is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Brathwaite

Posted on October 21, 2021

*wame Brathwaite, Grandassa Models at the Merton Simpson Gallery, New York, ca. 1967.*

While Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used nonviolence to push for Civil Rights and Malcolm X embraced the ethos of Black Nationalism to fight injustice in the United States, Brooklyn-born photographer Kwame Brathwaite turned to the teachings ofPan-Africanism and Marcus Garvey to introduce the “Black Is Beautiful” movement in the 1960s.

Rejecting the standards imposed by Western cultural hegemony, Brathwaite and his brother Elombe Brath embraced African aesthetics, creating Grandassa Models in Harlem and Naturally 62, a fashion show that set the groundwork for a global revolution in fashion and beauty. With the introduction of “Black Is Beautiful,” the brothers helped to popularize natural hair, a full range of skin tones, and African styles across the diaspora.

“I have been called ‘The Keeper of Images,’” Brathwaite writes in Black Is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Brathwaite, selections from which are currently on view in a major museum tour across the United States. “My task has been to document creative powers throughout the diaspora—not only in our Black artists musicians, athletes, dancers, models, and designers, but in all of us….I have often been asked how I was granted so much access as a photographer. It was the fact that people trusted me to get it right, to tell the truth in my work.”

Read the Full Story at Blind

*Kwame Brathwaite, Marcus Garvey Day Parade, Harlem, ca. 1967*

*Man smoking in a ballroom, Harlem, ca. 1962.*

Categories: 1960s, Art, Blind, Books, Exhibitions, Fashion, Manhattan, Music, Photography

Helen Levitt: In the Street

Posted on October 21, 2021

*Helen Levitt. New York, 1940 © Film Documents LLC Courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne*

Hailing from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, Helen Levitt (1913–2009) was a New York original. The daughter of Russian Jewish émigrés, Levitt rose to become one the greatest street photographers of the twentieth century.

“In a genre dominated by men at the time, Levitt created an outstanding body of work that spans more than six decades and encompasses images, films and books,” says Anna Dannemann, Senior Curator at The Photographers’ Gallery, who collaborated with curator Walter Moser and the Albertina Museum in Vienna, on the new exhibition, Helen Levitt: In the Street.

The exhibition, along with the new book Helen Levitt, offer a look at street life in working class communities around New York, which she began photographing in 1936 after meeting Henri Cartier-Bresson. Drawn to the spectacle of everyday life, Levitt embraced the passion and pathos of the community — a time when kids transformed the streets into their playground.

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Helen Levitt. New York, 1982 © Film Documents LLC Courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne*

Categories: Art, Books, Exhibitions, Huck, Manhattan, Photography

In the Gallery with The Center’s Archivist Caitlin McCarthy

Posted on October 20, 2021

*Christopher Street Liberation Day March, New York City, 1971. Photo by Leonard Fink. From the Leonard Fink Photographs, LGBT Community Center National History*

Until 1962, all 50 states in the US criminalized same-sex sexual activity. In 2003, less than two decades ago, all remaining laws against same-sex sexual activity were invalidated. But before that, LGBTQ people were forced to live in secret, lest they risk the possibility of losing their education, jobs, healthcare, homes, families, freedom, or lives. As a result much of LGBTQ history has been lost or destroyed by people fearing discovery. Understanding this, activist and historian Richard C. Wandel created the LGBT Community Center National History Archive at The Center in New York City in 1990 to, to collect, preserve, and make available to the public at large the material evidence of LGBTQ New Yorkers and their lives.

“As a community-based archive, we focus on unpublished records that people create… [connecting] with folks on the ground in big and small ways,” says Director of Archives Caitlin McCarthy. “The Center Archive was created as a space for those impacted by the devastating personal loss during the AIDS crisis. After people died, a family member or landlord might have tossed their belongings because they didn’t see any value in their artwork, journals, or photo albums — but we did.”

After working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the New York Historical Society, McCarthy joined The Center when Wandel retired in 2017, after 27 years of service. “I’m the only staff in the department, which happens sometimes in archives,” says McCarthy, who handles donations, reference services, education, and exhibition aspects of the work. “Working with my community here has given me the ability to break the mold when necessary, with the recognition that the traditional ways of running an archive, collecting, serving researchers and even defining them may not serve The Center Archive.”

Read the Full Story at British Journal of Photography

*Travis Mark. The Center, New York City, 2014.*

Categories: Art, British Journal of Photography, Manhattan, Photography

Gianfranco Gorgoni: Land Art Photographs

Posted on October 20, 2021

*Gianfranco Gorgoni, Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, Rozel Point, Great Salt Lake, Utah, 1970, 2013*.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the avant-garde turned its back on the “ruthless commercialization” of art in America, understanding that the commodification of the object was driven by business above all. Determined to make work that could defy the system while simultaneously offering a space for cultural critique, the land art movement was born. Artists including Christo and Jeanne Claude, Robert Smithson,Nancy Holt, Walter De Maria, and Michael Heizer transformed the natural landscape into extraordinary spectacles that combined elements of installation, sculpture, and architecture.

In 1970, 29-year-old Italian photographer Gianfranco Gorgoni (1941–2019) ventured into the Utah desert alongside Robert Smithson, embarking on what would become his career as a “roadie, stuntman, and documentarian” as an art critic once quipped.

“For me, seeing these expanses of desert where Heizer, Smithson, and De Maria were realizing large works was an almost mystic experience,” said Gorgoni, whose documentation of the movement is chronicled in the new book and exhibition Gianfranco Gorgoni: Land Art Photographs. “Getting lost in those parched, sandy stretches, there were incredible places; more than the work itself, the place where the work was situated mattered.”

Read the Full Story at Blind

*Gianfranco Gorgoni, Ugo Rondinone’s Seven Magic Mountains, near Jean Dry Lake, Nevada, 2016*.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Art, Blind, Books, Exhibitions, Photography

Chas Gerretsen: Apocalypse Now: The Lost Photo Archive

Posted on October 20, 2021

*Chas Gerretsen. Pestering the Prisoner Children on top of bamboo cage. Martin Sheen as prisoner and Marlon Brando, Kurtz Compound.*

Growing up, Dutch photographer Chas Gerretsen noticed a glaring discrepancy between the stories his father told him about World War II and the Hollywood movies he saw. “To find answers about what war is really like, I had to go there and experience it,” he says.

In the 1960s, Gerretsen traveled to Vietnam, realized the benefit of having a press card, and secured a job a cameraman for UPI television news. A month later he went freelance, selling film stories to ABC. After finding a Browning 9mm pistol in the field after a firefight, Gerretsen traded it with UPI photographer Dana Stone for a Nikon F camera with a 105mm lens.

Gerretsen documented the war across Vietnam until 1969, when the fighting began to slow down. After returning home, people asked him what war was like. “When I told them what I’d seen and experienced, they would not believe me, because they’d read the newspaper or saw on television the propaganda of the day and that was the ‘truth’ for them.”

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Chas Gerretsen. Blowing Bubbles Amidst Enemy Kia. Behind the scenes: Kurtz Compound.*

*Chas Gerretsen. Mr. Clean with MG0 Machine Gun. Laurence Fishburne Do Lung Bridge.*

Categories: 1970s, Art, Books, Huck

Arlene Goffried: Clandestine – The Photo Collection of Pedro Slim

Posted on October 15, 2021

*Arlene Gottfried. Pituka at Bethesda Fountain, Central Park, 1977. Pedro Slim Collection. Courtesy of Daniel Cooney Fine Art, New York.*

“New York from the 1980s was crazy,” says photographer and photography collector Pedro Slim as he thinks back to his early days buying art. “I did terrible things economically.” Driven by passion and pleasure in equal part, Pedro has been blessed with a discerning eye that effortlessly distils the exquisite nuances of the human body, whether clothed or nude.

“I never thought of myself as having a collection,” he says. “I just bought pieces I liked, mainly nudes, by photographers like Peter Hujar and Allen Frame, who has been so important in my life.” Then one day, someone asked to borrow the collection, and everything became clear.

With images dating back to the turn of the 20th century, Pedro’s collection chronicles photography’s longstanding love affair with the human form. Whether embracing the classical glamour of George Platt Lynes’ homoerotic works made in the 40s, when depictions of male full-frontal nudity was illegal, or gazing upon Merry Alpern’s gritty images of sex workers in the backroom of a 90s Manhattan strip club, Pedro has amassed a breathtaking collection of black-and-white photographs that are sexy, cinematic and tender.

Over the past four decades, Pedro’s collection has grown to include works by luminaries likeLarry Clark, Robert Mapplethorpe, Diane Arbus,Helmut Newton, Man Ray, Horst P. Horst andNan Goldin, to name just a few. A new exhibition, Clandestine: The Photo Collection of Pedro Slim, takes us on a whirlwind tour through some of Pedro’s most captivating works. From an Anthony Friedkin portrait of Divine sitting backstage at San Francisco’s Palace Theatre in 1972 to Mary Ellen Mark‘s 1994 photograph of a bearded lady reclining in the bathtub, each image offers a timeless take on the beauty, joy and wonder of the body.

Read the Full Story at i-D

*Arlene Gottfried. Miguel Pinero and Friend, 1980. Pedro Slim Collection. Courtesy of Daniel Cooney Fine Art, New York.*

*Arlene Gottfried. Two Young Men With Afros, late 80 ́s. Pedro Slim Collection. Courtesy of Daniel Cooney Fine Art, New York*

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Photography

Andy Warhol: Photo Factory

Posted on October 15, 2021

*Dolly Parton © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.*

Andy Warhol was a master diarist, a man who understood that the foundations of art, history, and culture are built on the shared experience of daily life. Under the banner of Pop Art, Warhol elevated consumer products and celebrities into the realm of fine art. With his time capsules, Warhol preserved the mundane for posterity — much in the same way his daily calls to Pat Hackett detailing his comings and goings about town became the basis of The Andy Warhol Diaries, which was published after his untimely death in 1987.

But perhaps Warhol’s penchant for chronicling mid-century life could best be seen in his enduring, albeit lesser known, photography practice. Between the early 1970s and his death, Warhol had produced some 130,000 black and white 35mm photographs and 20,000 Polaroids. No matter where he went, Warhol took a camera along — his “date” as he fondly described his Polaroid camera.

Read the Full Story at Blind

*Keith Haring and Juan Dubose, 1983 © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.*

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Blind, Exhibitions, Photography

Jamel Shabazz: Prospect Park – My Oasis In Brooklyn

Posted on October 14, 2021

Hailing from Red Hook, Brooklyn, Jamel Shabazz recounts his early memories of visiting Prospect Park in the mid-1960s. Spring was in the air and his youthful Aunt Bev took Shabazz and his two cousins on the F train to the park.

“The atmosphere of the park was quite refreshing after a strenuous school week and a great escape from the concrete and congestion of public housing,” Shabazz says. “What I remember most was the beautiful greenery, numerous horse trails, and the warm spirited people I would meet along the way. It felt like being in another state.”

The son of a Navy photographer, Shabazz first picked up the camera in high school, making portraits of his friends. After graduating, he served in the U.S. Army and was stationed in Germany. Shabazz and his unit spent a lot of time in the Black Forest where he developed a deep appreciation for nature. “I recall thinking to myself that the only other place that mirrors this atmosphere, is Prospect Park,” he says.

Read the Full Story at Huck

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

Sean Maung x DFLii on LA’s Exotic Male Dance Scene

Posted on October 14, 2021

In May 1990, National Geographic magazine published a 26-page cover story on Spanish Harlem by Puerto Rican photographer Joseph Rodriguez, chronicling daily life in El Barrio at the height of the crack epidemic. From the streets to the social clubs, the churches to trap houses, Joseph crafted a powerful portrait of a neighbourhood struggling to survive. At a time when the mainstream American media rarely offered honest, compassionate stories of Latino life, publishing these images was a powerful political act — one that added to a growing rift inside the magazine, which resulted in the firing of photography director William Garrett.

A couple of years later, Los Angeles native Sean Maung found a copy of the magazine in his Los Angeles elementary school. “One of the first photos that ever hit me was Joseph Rodriguez’s photo of a girl with a blue and white ice cream pop,” Sean says. “I was in fourth grade like, ‘Damn, that’s a dope photo!’”

A seed was planted, taking root and eventually came to fruition in 2004 when Sean picked up a camera for himself. “My first passion has always been people — I am fascinated by them,” he says. Rather than confining himself to a neighbourhood or scene, Sean moves between different worlds without disrupting the flow. Whether hanging out at swap meets, barbershops, vaquero bars in East Hollywood, the Flower District in Downtown LA, Venice Beach or South Central, Sean uses photography to celebrate the working class who give the city its style and edge.

While hanging out at King Henry VIII, an old school strip club in Hawthorne, Sean met Cash, a dancer whose style he admired. He photographed her for a shoot, and they stayed in touch. “One night in 2018, she texted me and said, ‘I’m dancing at this event in Inglewood. You should come through and take pictures’. She didn’t explain what it was,” Sean says. “So I showed up at a comedy club, and the bouncer said, ‘You know what you’re about to get yourself into, right?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, of course.’ I went inside and it was nothing but women in the crowd. Next thing I knew, there were dudes coming out and putting on shows.”

Read the Full Story at i-D

Categories: Art, i-D, Photography

Namsa Leuba: Crossed Looks

Posted on October 13, 2021

*Namsa Leuba. HeiHere, from the series Illusions, 2019.*

In 2011, Namsa Leuba traveled to Guinea Conkary, her mother’s ancestral hometown, to embark upon Ya Kala Ben (Guinean for “Crossed Looks”), her first long-term photography project that explored “the representation of Africa identity in the Western imagination. As a Guinean-Swiss woman born and raised in the West, Leuba was neither “either/or” but both at the same time. Standing on the outside, rather than in the center of her respective cultures, gave her a wholly original vantage point, one that has informed her photography practice over the past decade.

“My Swiss heritage gave me an aesthetic sensibility for making pictures, and my African heritage and ancestors gave me a spiritual form for my work,” Leuba tells Dazed. “Depending on where we are situated in the world, we can have different perceptions. With photography was can say much more than a thousand words. It’s the perfect medium for me. My pictures are not the reality you know but expressions of my imagination.”

Liberated from constructs of rational thought, Leuba moves gracefully between the liminal space of fiction and fact, creating fantastical photographs that combine elements of documentary, fashion, and performance with singular aplomb. With publication of her first monograph, Crossed Looks (Damiani) and first solo exhibition at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, Leuba brings together five major bodies of personal work made over the past decade in Guinea, Benin, Nigeria, South Africa, and Tahiti, as well as selections of commercial and editorial work.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

*Namsa Leuba. Untitled I, from the series Cocktail, 2011.*

*Namsa Leuba. Mamiwata, from the series Weke, 2017.*

Categories: Africa, Art, Books, Dazed, Photography