Posts from the “Art” Category

Francesca Woodman: Portrait of a Reputation

Posted on February 11, 2020

*George Lange, Untitled photograph, circa 1975-1978. Gelatin silver print, 3 ¾ x 5 5/8 inches. George Lange Collection. Courtesy the artist.*

The brief life and tragic death of Francesca Woodman only seems to deepen the mystery of her powerful and provocative work. But who was she, beyond the adolescent artist whose haunted photographs are the epitome of American Gothic with a surrealist twist?

The new exhibition and book Francesca Woodman: Portrait of a Reputation sets forth to find out by exploring the young artists artist’s coming-of-age period between 1975-1979. Featuring approximately forty unique vintage prints, as well as contact sheets, notes, letters, postcards, and other ephemera related to Woodman’s burgeoning career, Portrait of a Reputation considers how the artist developed her singular approach to exploring gender, representation, and sexuality by photographing her own body and those of her friends.

Photographer George Lange, Woodman’s long-time friend, first met the young artist as a fellow photo student at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1976. “She was the real deal,” he writes in the introduction to the book. “She lived her art. She looked like her art. She had the vocabulary of art. Almost best of all, her images each week, which are some of the most famous of her brief career, blew me away.’

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

*George Lange, Untitled photograph, circa 1975-1978. Gelatin sil- ver print, 4 1/4 x 5 3/4 inches. George Lange Collection. Courtesy the artist.*

Categories: Art

Jackie Surnell: The Prisoner’s Apothecary

Posted on February 10, 2020

In 2002, organiser jackie sumell launched Herman’s House; a collaborative exhibition, book, Emmy Award-winning film and advocacy campaign. She started the project with political prisoner Herman Wallace, a member of the “Angola 3” who spent 41 years in solitary confinement for a crime he did not commit.

Just three days after his conviction was overturned and he was released in 2013, Wallace died of liver cancer in New Orleans at the age of 71. “I ask you not to let the tragedy eclipse the miracle,” sumell says. “Herman died free, innocent in the eyes of the law, and surrounded by those of us who loved him most.”

Fueled by the desire to keep Wallace’s legacy alive, sumell embarked onThe Solitary Gardens, a project inspired by a 2006 letter from Wallace in which he described his dream garden replete with gardenias, carnations, and tulips. “This is of the utmost importance,” Wallace wrote sumell. “I would like for guests to be able to smile and walk through flowers all year long.”

Read the Full Story at Huck

Categories: Art

Janette Beckman, Joe Conzo & Martha Cooper: Collecting New York Stories

Posted on February 5, 2020

*Martha Cooper, Lower East Side [Boy Jumping from Fire Escape], 1978 (printed later). Gelatin silver print. Museum of the City of New York. Museum purchase.*

“Only in New York, kids, only in New York,” Cindy Adams famous wrote in her New York Post gossip column when telling a story that could happen nowhere else on earth. There are some things that simply can’t, won’t, and don’t happen anywhere but the city that never sleeps—dating all the way back to its very settlement when Dutch colonial Director-General Peter Minuit executed the city’s first real estate scam in 1624, swindling the Canarsie peoples into “selling” the island of Manhattan for 60 guilders ($900 in 2018).

It takes a certain kind of person to live in New York—an unstoppable, indomitable force that refuses to quit. The new exhibition Collecting New York’s Stories: From Stuyvesant to Sid Vicious celebrates the famous, the infamous, and the anonymous alike, the diehard locals who have called this town home for better and for worse. Here, we bring together photographers Janette Beckman, Joe Conzo, and Martha Cooper, who documented the graffiti, hip hop, and Latin music scenes during the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, to offer their take on the city long before gentrification.

Read the Full Story at Document Journal

*Janette Beckman, RUN DMC with Posse, Hollis, Queens, 1984 (printed later). Archival pigment print. Museum of the City of New York. Gift of Janette Beckman.*

*Joe Conzo, JDL of the Cold Crush Brothers at Skatin’ Palace, 1981. Courtesy of the artist.*

Categories: Art

James Casebere: On the Water’s Edge

Posted on February 5, 2020

James Casebere. Bright Yellow House on Water, 2019. Tirage pigmentaire encadre et monte sur Dibond Framed archival pigment print mounted to dibond 152,7 x 118,7 cm (60 1/8 x 46 3?4 in.) 160,4 x 124,6 cm encadre? (62 7/6 x 49 1/16 in. framed) Copyright of the artist

For American artist James Casebere, the constructed image is the assertion of ideas, fantasies, concepts and the relationships between them. Though they are not documents of real things, they vividly convey possibilities, portending a future that reminds us just how often life follows art.

In the new exhibition, On the Water’s Edge, now on view at Galerie Templon in Paris through March 7, 2020, Casebere explores the subject of climate change through a series of architectural landscapes that offer a look at how me might adapt and evolve to meet the encroaching threat of environmental disaster.

Casebere imagines beautiful structures that are designed to exist in a world where the water level continues to rise, offering a hybrid space for private sanctuary as well as an open embrace of the elements. Rather than work with existing structures, Casebere imagines a new type of architectural language that he painstakingly builds in his studio, then creates a majestic realm where the ocean and the land mingle and merge in a sumptuous water world.

Here Casebere shares his inspiration and experiences making this incredible series of work, reminding us never to underestimate the human imagination and our ability to solve the very problems we create.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

James Casebere. Industrial Overlap, 2019 Tirage pigmentaire encadré et monté sur Dibond Framed archival pigment print mounted to dibond 169,5 x 113 cm (66,75 x 44,47 in.) 175,4 x 118,7 cm encadre? (69 1/16 x 46 3/4 in. framed) Copyright of the artist.

Categories: Art

Compliments of Chicagohoodz: Chicago Street Gang Culture

Posted on February 4, 2020

*Female members of the Party People, a party crew turned gang in Pilsen. Circa early 1980s. Photo courtesy of Frank. All images courtesy of the photographers and Feral House.*

Chicago is a microcosm of the United States: a mélange of working-class neighborhoods dominated by a single ethnic group, be it African-American, Latinx, or European descent. The enclaves were hermetic, drawing strict boundaries that were fiercely protected by local street gangs, widely known as “clubs” that often got their start in schools and athletic associations.

In the 1950s, the gangs began to don sweaters to identify themselves, and carried compliment [business] cards that bore their affiliation and became status symbols. As the gangs grew, the violence increased, and by the 1980s, many of the smaller local clubs had been consumed by larger syndicates that have become synonymous with inner-city violence. Within this extremely male-dominated culture, the ultimate underground phenomenon emerged: that of girl gang members whose stories have largely gone untold.

“It’s real shit,” says Diamond, who first got involved with Chicago gangs in the mid-1980s. “I came from Riverside, Illinois—an all-white neighborhood, middle to high-class, million-dollar homes—and went into the heart of Humboldt Park. This can happen to anybody’s kid. If they walk the wrong way, they can end up being a gangbanger, drug dealer, drug addict, or in the street.”

Read the Full Story at Document Journal

*Female faction of the Saints street gang, Back of the Yards, circa 1992/93. Photograph by Jinx. All images courtesy of the photographers and Feral House.*

*Compliment card from the “peewee” rank of the 12th Street Players’ female faction.*

Categories: Art

Kirsten Grimstad and Susan Rennie: The New Woman’s Survival Catalog

Posted on February 3, 2020

A page from The New Woman’s Survival Catalog, 1973/2019. Courtesy Primary Information.

When The New Woman’s Survival Catalog launched in Christmas 1973, it took America by storm. A collection of alternative feminist cultural activity across the United States, it introduced a new way of tackling issues centred by the Women’s Liberation Movement.

Now, more than 45 years after it’s release, Primary Information is republishing a facsimile edition. The goal, according to authors Kirsten Grimstad and Susan Rennie, is to remind us that the power to change the world begins in the local grassroots.

The original project began while Grimstad, a Barnard alumna, was pursuing her doctorate in 1971. While there, she began working on a scholarly bibliography of women’s studies for the newly opened Barnard College Women’s Centre. She sent a survey out to feminist activist organisations across the United States to fund out what was happening at the grassroots level, and connected with Rennie, also a Barnard alumna.

Read the Full Story at Huck

Categories: Art

Kamoinge Workshop: View From the Inside

Posted on February 3, 2020

When Nina Simone said in a 1968 interview, “An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times,” she spoke not only for herself, but for so many who were called to react, reflect, and respond to the searing injustices of post-war American society.

“I think that is true of painters, sculptors, poets, [and] musicians. At this crucial time in our lives, when everything is so desperate, when every day is a matter of survival, I don’t think you can help but be involved. That to me is the definition of an artist,” Simone continued. To see the expressions and hear the voices of those being oppressed is essential, but it requires more than just the act of creating. In 1960’s America, it would require an overall rethinking of the practices of inherently racist institutions already in place to begin representing the underlying truth, beauty, and wisdom of the Black experience in America.

And so it was during the fall of 1963, two local groups of African American photographers in Harlem held a joint meeting in response to the under-representation of Black photographers in the art world—Group 35, which included James Ray Francis, Louis Draper, Herman Howard, Earl James and Calvin Mercer and another group comprised of Herb Randall, Albert Fennar, Shawn Walker and James Mannas. And together they decided to form theKamoinge Workshop.

Read the Full Story at The Culture Crush

*Anthony Barboza. Ntozake Shange, October 1977*

*Shawn Walker. Harlem Walls, NYC, 1980s.*

Categories: Art

Daido Moriyama: How I Take Photographs

Posted on January 29, 2020

For more than 50 years, photographer Daidō Moriyama has walked the streets of his native Japan with a compact camera in hand creating high-contrast, grainy images of daily life that have pushed the aesthetic and conceptual boundaries of the medium. Rejecting the technical precision of photography that had gripped the West in favor of a deconstructivist approach, Moriyama strips the picture down to its most essential elements to evoke the raw energy of urban life.

To call him prolific would be an understatement. Over the past half-century, Moriyama has had over 100 solo exhibitions and authored more than 150 books of his work, including the recent paperback, Daidō Moriyama: How I Take Photographs by Takeshi Nakamoto (Laurence King). Here, the man who allows his photographs to speak thousands, if not billions of words, shares the wisdom gleaned from the daily practice of street photography, which requires him to always be ready to shoot in rapid bursts.

“Whatever the genre of photography, all images are records of humanity, the world, and the time they were made, which is amazing,” Moriyama reveals in his only English-language interview for the book. “As long as we hold a powerful tool like the camera, we have nothing else to do but keep taking photographs.”

Read the Full Story at Document Journal

Categories: Art

Yannis Guilbinga: Boy Wives & Female Husbands

Posted on January 28, 2020

When Europe set forth to colonize the globe over the past five centuries, they brought with them a host of weapons to destroy the integrity of peoples far older than them. Among the artillery in their arsenal were religious doctrine, which — among other things — decreed the LGBTQ community in violation of the law, subject to persecution, imprisonment, and death.

Though most nations regained their independence, the damage was done: the history had been whitewashed, traditions lost and destroyed, and what remained was the stain of European injustice and bigotry. Today, in the 54 nations recognized by the African Union and the United Nation, homosexuality is illegal in 34 countries, and the death penalty operable in four states.

In 2001, Steph O. Murray published Boy Wives & Female Husbands: Studies of African Homosexualities, the first book on the subject to draw upon anthropology, history, ethnographic, and literary sources to provide a well-researched look at what has long been a volatile subject of discourse in African communities.

Years later, photographer Yannis Guibinga decided to create visual narratives inspired by the subjects featured in the book for his series Boy Wives & Female Husbands to create a connection between the spaces that LGBTQ and non-binary communities occupied in African societies, both then and now. Originally from Libreville, Gabon, Guibinga is now based in Montreal, Canada, where he made the series of work. Here, he reflects on the importance of visibility and representation of identities on the African continent and its diaspora.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: Art

Jesús León: THE NIGHT

Posted on January 27, 2020

As Mexican photographer José de Jesús “Chucho” León Hernández delves into the recesses of his memory, rooting through the experiences of his formative years, the impressions emerge, shining brightly for a moment before fading to black like scenes from an old movie, with the occasional still image sometimes appearing, perfectly crystallizing the beauty, horror, joy, and despair of his youth.

Born in the Colonia Doctores neighborhood of Mexico City, Chucho was raised by his aunts, two devout Catholic women who adorned their home with vivid images of suffering: the Passion of Christ covered in blood and souls burning in Purgatory. Surrounded by altars and daily prayers, reminders of the Apocalypse lingered and perfumed the air, hovering like a shadow ready to cast out the light.

“I remember fear in every sense of the early knowledge of my homosexuality,” Chucho says. “My aunts were obsessed with the end of days and searching for a better afterlife because they were convinced that people are in this one just to suffer. [The doctrine] is called Valle de Lágrimas (Latin vallis lacrimarum or ‘vale of tears’), which seems so sad and beautiful to me, due to the classic Catholic paraphernalia of saints being tortured. Oddly, the Devil was never mentioned at home.”

Categories: Art

Nan Goldin: The Other Side

Posted on January 27, 2020

Back in 1972, Nan Goldin was walking through downtown Boston when she came upon three trans women that would become her entrée into another world. As Goldin watched Ivy, Naomi, and Colette crossing the bridge near the Morgan Memorial Thriftshop, she immediately became infatuated with their beauty and their poise, following them with a Super 8 camera, making a video as they walked.

Soon thereafter David Armstrong, Goldin’s closest friend, started to perform at The Other Side, Boston’s premier drag bar. Goldin accompanied him and was transformed. “I was eighteen and felt like I was a queen too,” she wrote in an essay published in her 1993 seminal monograph, The Other Side, which Steidl recently reissued in an expanded volume featuring additional images and texts.

“Completely devoted to my friends, they became my whole world. Part of my worship of them involved photographing them. I wanted to pay homage, to show them how beautiful they were. I never saw them as men dressing as women, but as something different—a third gender that made more sense than either of the other two.”

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: Art