Posts from the “Art” Category

José de Jesús “Chucho” León Hernández: Mexico City After Dark

Posted on June 18, 2020

For José de Jesús “Chucho” León Hernández, the night is the perfect muse. It’s a mystery, an adventure, and an escape – one in which the Mexican photographer feels innately at ease, despite any terrors it posed.

“I was afraid of ghosts and the devil, but also afraid of the rage of God,” Chucho says. Raised by two devout Catholic aunts who decorated the home with visceral images of the suffering of Christ, martyred saints, and souls in Purgatory, he spent much of his youth thinking about the Apocalypse.

“Daytime was dull and boring, full of noise and mediocrity – especially living in this neighbourhood, people are scared of people who are different,” he says. “The night was by far more interesting and benevolent maybe because I was able to be alone, I was a rebel and a charming little boy, always aware of my sexuality. I guess I was more connected and identified with this fantasy world.”

Read the Full Story at Huck

Categories: Art

Miron Zownir: London, 1978

Posted on June 16, 2020

In 1978, as trade unions organised widespread strikes and the economy fell into a period of staggering decline, the UK was barrelling towards the Winter of Discontent. With inflation rising, the Troubles in Northern Ireland escalating, and independence movements across the world in full swing it looked as though the sun had finally set on the British Empire.

That year, German photographer Miron Zownir packed a bag and hitchhiked his way through a heavy snowstorm from Berlin via Brussels and Ostend to London. As Zownir remembers it, “After almost three years in Berlin being rejected in film school, surviving from underpaid temp jobs, feeling kind of oppressed by that grey, seemingly futureless, walled in spirit, I was open for any change and London sounded as good or better than any other city in Europe.”

After finding a cheap flat in Earls Court, Zownir hitchhiked back to Berlin, borrowed his brother’s Volkswagen, and moved his things to London.Hailed by Terry Southern as the “Poet of Radical Photography,” Zownir embraced the emerging punk scene of the city, a distinctive mix of anarchy and utopia where the have-nots raged against the machine.

Read the Full Story at Huck

Categories: Art

David Goldblatt: Some Afrikaners Photographed

Posted on June 15, 2020

*David Goldblatt. Some Afrikaners: A plot-holder with the daughter of his servant, Wheatlands, Randfontein, Transvaal*

Born in Randfontein, a gold-mining town 70 kilometers west of Johannesburg, David Goldblatt (1930-2018) was raised in a middle class, liberal white Jewish family who had come to South Africa in the 1890s to escape persecution in Lithuania.

Though not politically active, his family practiced basic tenets of morality, treating all whom they encountered — Afrikaners, Blacks, and Indians — with fundamental respect. It was not always returned in kind; Goldblatt remembers experiencing anti-Semitism as a child from the colonizers, unclear why they felt the need to degrade him for simply being alive.

In 1948, the very year Goldblatt graduated high school, the National Party came into power. “I remember on their election poster outside my father’s shop in the main street of Randfontein a caricatured Hoggenheimer, the archetypal Jewish capitalist,” Goldblatt wrote in 2006 for an essay that appears in Some Afrikaners Photographed (Steid).

“Besides the swart gevaar [Afrikans for ‘Black danger’] Jewish capitalists were the ultimate evil in the eyes of the party. Right-wing Afrikaners made no secret of their sympathies for the Nazis and their hatred of Jews….Aside from a declaration of prejudice against Jews and Indians, this was a government that subscribed to the notion that whites were inherently superior to Blacks. These things weight heavily on us.”

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

*David Goldblatt. Some Afrikaners: A farmer’s son with his nursemaid, Heimweeberg, Nietverdiend, Western Transvaal*

Categories: Art

Greg Ellis: Ward 5B

Posted on June 11, 2020

Robert T. Ford, the publisher and co-editor of Thing Magazine, a black and queer arts publication, wrote a five-part series of articles, “Life During Wartime,” that documented his personal struggle with HIV/AIDS. Ford died of an AIDS-related illness in 1994.

Plenty of New York art world figures have taken umbrage with MoMA over the decades, but the artist Ben Morea may be the only one who actually managed to shut it down. “They had the entrance of the museum barricaded, with cops behind it,” Morea told the New York Times of the day in 1966 when his manifesto targeting the staid arts institution as one of the objects of a “total revolution, cultural as well as political and social,” persuaded nervous museum staff members to bar the doors pre-emptively. This is the flyer with the printed manifesto he taped to MoMA’s door, simply reading: MUSEUM CLOSED.

“Like everything to do with AIDS, I didn’t set out to become any of the things that would eventually define my life,” says Greg Ellis, archivist, curator and creator of Ward 5B, which takes its name from the first AIDS ward in the world, established at San Francisco General Hospital in 1983.

Growing up in the notorious Tenderloin neighbourhood of San Francisco, Ellis saw the effects of heroin on family and friends — as well as the early cases of AIDS spreading among intravenous drug users (IVDUs). In 1986, Ellis and a friend moved into an old Salvation Army building in SoMA, a San Francisco neighbourhood long known for its history of radical queer sex clubs and working-class community.

“Our loft space quickly became a central meeting place for the cabaret performers, artists and musicians that would come to represent the AIDS activist community, and served as a de facto shooting gallery for our friends who were IVDUs,” Ellis says. “It was also the set for numerous straight and gay porn films.”

Read the Full Story at Huck

In 1980, John Fekner stenciled the words Broken Promises, Falsas Promesas, Decay, Broken Treaties and Last Hope on the walls and buildings of the decaying South Bronx, drawing attention to the inhumane living conditions of the area residents. This piece printed in conjunction with the South Bronx radical arts space Fashion Moda, includes the infamous photograph of Reagan with Fekner’s stencil on the burned out building behind him.

This is a photocopied flyer by John Giorno published by Visual Aids on the occasion of the 1993 instalment of a Day Without Art. Giorno was a longtime advocate for those with AIDS. For over two decades from 1983 onwards, Giorno Poetry Systems made emergency grants to those who fell ill, proving a lifeline during the crisis.

Categories: Art

Stephen Shore Transparencies: Small Camera Works 1971–1979

Posted on June 4, 2020

*Stephen Shore. Image from Transparencies: Small Camera Works 1971–1979 (MACK, 2020). Courtesy of the artist and MACK.*

In 1971, American photographer Stephen Shore made history. At the age of 23, he became the first living photographer to have a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. By that time, the native New Yorker was well-established in his hometown, having sold his first work to the Museum of Modern Art at the age of 14 and spent his teen years documenting life inside Andy Warhol’s Factory.

That same year, he embarked on a project that would change the landscape of photography forevermore: a decade-long series documenting “main street” America in a series of road trips. Positioning himself as an explorer, Shore purchased a safari-style suit from Abercrombie & Fitch, which he donned on his very first expedition. His was a deceptively simple mission: to make images that were the visual equivalent of ordinary speech.

It’s been said a picture speaks a thousand words, but we’re usually thinking of who, what, where, when, and maybe why; how rarely enters our mind. But Shore was focused on not just the subject matter, the message, and the style — he wanted to preserve the very essence of vernacular America in the work itself. Using a large format camera, Shore captured the exquisite subtleties and extraordinary nuance of quotidian American life, which he later published in the groundbreaking monograph, Uncommon Places, 1973-1981 (Aperture, 1982).

Read the Full Story at Blind

Categories: Art

Dawoud Bey: Two American Projects

Posted on June 4, 2020

*Dawoud Bey. Three Women at a Parade, Harlem NY (1978).*

On January 18, 1969, during the height of the Black Arts Movement in America, Thomas P.F. Hoving, then Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and curator Allon Schoener mounted Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900-1968, a three month long multimedia exhibition designed extensively to highlight the history of Harlem throughout the twentieth century.

But, like so many Americans whose privilege enables them to effortlessly ignore the issue of race, the exhibition largely excluded the work of Black painters and sculptors living and working in Harlem. In response, the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition, a group of 75 African American artists including Romare Beadren and Norman Lewis, came together to picket in front of the museum in protest of the show — drawing so much attention to the cause that African American artists finally started receiving their due by the white-owned institution.

The protests raised awareness and the public turned out, some 75,000 in the opening week, with hundreds of thousands more during its run. Among those who came to see the work was Dawoud Bey, then a 16 year old high school student hailing from Queens, who wanted to see the protests. But things were quiet that day so he headed inside to see the show and was taken with the photographs of James Van Der Zee, one of the few Black photographers to have his own studio in the first half of the twentieth century. Van Der Zee’s records of the Harlem Renaissance were both art and artifact, evidence of a people and a culture that white America knew virtually nothing about.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

*Dawoud Bey. A Man in a Bowler Hat, Harlem NY (1976).*

*Dawoud Bey. A Young Man Resting on an Exercise Bike, Amityville, NY (1988).*

Categories: Art

Shawn W. Walker: A Life in Photography

Posted on June 1, 2020

*Shawn W. Walker. From the “Harlem Streets” series.*

Now in his 80th year, African American photographer Shawn W. Walker’s extraordinary life is a testament to the power of self-determination in the face of forces mobilized to subjugate and destroy the Black race. Hailing from 117th Street in Harlem, Walker’s parents moved to New York from the South during the Great Migration, determined to create a better life for themselves.

Walker first fell in love with photography as a youth, watching his uncle hustle Polaroids. “I used to carry the film and the cameras, and he would go do the route of the local bars,” Walker says. “On Friday, Saturday night, he’d kill them. He was the first person with a Polaroid; it really blew Black folks’ mind.”

Walker set up a makeshift darkroom at home, using an enlarger his uncle gave him, which was missing the diaphragm, while setting up developing trays on his mother’s ironing board. After a junior high school teacher encouraged him to pursue art, Walker enrolled in Benjamin Franklin High School, the only local public school where he could study photography. “It was still Harlem, but in the Italian neighborhood,” he says.

Read the Full Story at Document Journal

*Shawn W. Walker. From the “ Be-Bop to Illusion 1990-2014” series.*

Categories: Art

Gary Green: When Midnight Comes Around

Posted on May 28, 2020

Growing up in the suburbs of Long Island in the 1960s and early 70s, Gary Green got turned onto bands like The Velvet Underground and The New York Dolls, quickly becoming enamoured with New York’s underground rock and roll scene that took root at fabled nightclubs like Max’s Kansas City and CBGB.

In the summer of 1976, Green moved to Manhattan, sharing a two-room flat just north of Washington Square Park with two roommates. It was cramped and run-down, but that didn’t bother the young upstart in the least.

“I had no idea what I was going to do with my life,” Green, now 64, says. “I worked during the day as a photographer’s assistant in midtown. At night, I would go out whenever I could to see a band, meet someone to photograph, or see what was going on. I wasn’t very career oriented – I just knew I wanted to make photographs.”

And that he did. While Patti Smith, Blondie, Television, The Ramones, and The Heartbreakers played all over town, only Max’s and CBGB had shows every night – the perfect training grounds for the aspiring photographer. “I probably spent to much time there, misspent youth as they say, but at least I made pictures,” Green says with a laugh. “It feels important that I made something because that was so seminal in my life and I realise it more now than I did then.”

Read the Full Story at AnOther

Categories: Art

Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures

Posted on May 28, 2020

*Dorothea Lange. Richmond, California. 1942*

In 1918, at the age of 23, Dorothea Lange (1895–1965) and a close friend set out to see the world. They drove from New York City to San Francisco, where they were robbed, thus ending their youthful adventures on the road. Lange then fell in love with the San Francisco scene and opened a photo studio where she took portraits of the city’s bohemian and artistic elite. Then the Great Depression hit, and everything changed.

One day in 1933, Lange is said to have looked out the window at a bread line that started near her downtown San Francisco studio. “Lange dared to venture out with her bulky camera, taking the picture we now know as ‘White Angel Bread Line’,” says Sarah Hermanson Meister, curator of Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures and accompanying exhibition catalogue (The Museum of the Modern Art).

“Once she took that picture, it’s as if she never looked back. Her sense of commitment to equity, justice, and paying attention to those less fortunate then became the hallmark of her career.”

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Dorothea Lange. Kern County, California. 1938*

Dorothea Lange. Migratory Cotton Picker, Eloy, Arizona. November 1940

Categories: Art

Ekow Eshun: Africa State of Mind

Posted on May 28, 2020

*Ruth Ossai. Kingsley Ossai, Nsukka, Enugu State, Nigeria, 2017*

*Athi-Patra Ruga and WHATIFTHEWORLD. Night of the Long Knives I, 2013*

The history of photography and Western imperialism are closely intertwined, as the camera was long used as a tool for the subjugation and objectification. Europeans introduced photography to Africa in the mid-19th century, often taking pictures of native peoples against their will and using those images to propagandise “the white man’s burden”.

But with the advent of the African Independence Movement during the 20th century, things began to shift as native peoples wrest control of their lands and their image. In authoring their history and contemporary life, new ideas and aesthetics came to the fore, introducing vital, innovative voices that offer new ways of considering not only the continent but the very medium of photography itself.

“We’re in an extraordinary moment of creative flourishing when it comes to African photography,” says Ekow Eshun, author of Africa State of Mind: Contemporary Photography Reimagines a Continent (Thames & Hudson).

https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/photography-2/meet-the-new-generation-of-african-photographers/Read the Full Story at Huck

*Hassan Hajjaj. Courtesy of the Artist. Afrikan Boy Sittin’, 2013*

*Andrew Esiebo. Tafawa Balewa square bus stop, Lagos, 2015 – 19*

Categories: Art

God’s Love We Deliver Fundraiser: Music Edition

Posted on May 27, 2020

*Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love, NY, 1992© Michael Lavine*

Since the Covid-19 crisis first swept the globe, music has become one of the primary sources of joy and community for millions of people dealing with the strains and stresses of social isolation. Whether watching historic Verzuz battles, participating in the “justice for” streaming campaigns, or simply enjoying the pleasures of your favourite artists, one thing can be counted on in this uncertain world: the song remains the same.

Inspired by the outpouring of support for an earlier photography fundraiser that secured $4,000 in just four days, curator Julie Grahame and photographer Janette Beckman have teamed up to launch the God’s Love We Deliver Fundraiser: Music Edition on Tuesday, May 26.

The fundraiser features nearly 50 photographs of iconic artists including Madonna, Prince, Debbie Harry, David Bowie, and Bob Marley alongside stars like Cardi B, Nicki Minaj, and Kendrick Lamar for just $150 each, available on a “first come, first served” basis. 100 per cent of the proceeds will be donated to God’s Love We Deliver to feed 5,000 severe and chronically ill New Yorkers during the ongoing Covid-19 emergency.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

*Aretha Franklin, Detroit, 1996 © Timothy White*

Categories: Art