Posts from the “Art” Category

Elinor Carucci: Midlife

Posted on October 24, 2019

Winter, 2016. © Elinor Carucci

Popular culture purports midlife is the provenance of men — the time where he gauges his mortality by trading in the mini-van for a sports car, leaving his wife of 20 years for a younger model. But what of the middle-aged woman? What happens to her? It seems she often just disappears from the narrative altogether.

But behind closed doors, whispers occur, stories of “the change” or something far worse. Midlife, for women, has been treated like a curse, as internal and external signs of aging have been used to erase women, keeping their struggles largely hidden from view. Midlife (The Monacelli Press) by Israeli-American photographer Elinor Carucci breaks this unfortunate history.

“I didn’t set out to make Midlife; it dawned on me at some point that I am creating it,” says Carucci, who worked on the project for seven years. She began by making works she saw as different series – photographs of her mother and daughter, her father and son, herself and husband, as well as poignant photographs of abstract paintings she made with her own blood.

Read the Full Story at The Luupe

Elinor Carucci. Hair Dye, 2016.

Categories: Art, Books, Photography, The Luupe, Women

Hal Fischer: The Gay Seventies

Posted on October 23, 2019

Between 1977 and 1979, American artist Hal Fischer created Gay Semiotics, a landmark series of photo-text works providing a pioneering analysis of gay historical vernacular as it unfolded on the streets of San Francisco’s Castro and Haight-Asbury districts.

Inspired by the work of August Sander, Fischer made a series of street black and white portraits of gay archetypes accompanied by text that deftly deconstructed the symbols of the era’s quintessential looks such as Natural, Classical, Jock, Hippie, Urbane, Forties Trash, Western, Leather, Dominance, and Submission – along with detailed descriptions of signifiers like keys, earrings, handkerchiefs, leather apparel, gag mask, amyl nitrate, and other bondage devices.

In advance of the publication of The Gay Seventies, Fischer looks back on one of the first conceptual works to bring the structuralism and linguistics to photography and reflects on the nature of gay semiotics today.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

Categories: 1970s, AnOther Man, Art, Books, Photography

Jessica Lange: Highway 61

Posted on October 15, 2019

New Orleans. From Highway 61 © Jessica Lange

At the age of 18, Jessica Lange boarded a Greyhound Bus outside the Tulip Shop in her hometown of Cloquet, Minnesota, and headed south down Highway 61 on her way to Europe and beyond. The year was 1967, and the winds of change were in the air. A new America taking shape, as fellow Minnesotan Bob Dylan foresaw on his seminal 1965 album, Highway 61 Revisited, the very first album Lange ever bought.

For Lange, the historic 2,575 kilometre interstate highway that runs from the Canadian border down to New Orleans, is a plumb line through her life – a marker of where she has been, who she was, and who she has become, as well as a testament to the changes that have shaped the United States over the past 70 years.

In the new monograph, Highway 61, Lange takes us along for a ride, creating a timeless portrait of America that evokes the work of Robert Frank. A quiet, careful observation of the human condition, Lange’s photographs reveal a sense of solidarity among the working class, recognising that they built this country from the ground up. She visits motels, roadside fruit stands, local bars, vintage diners, amusement parks, farms, private homes, markets, and sometimes just walks the streets as one of the people, rather than Hollywood royalty.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

Arkansas. From Highway 61 © Jessica Lange

Categories: AnOther, Art, Books, Photography

Miguel Rio Branco: Maldicidade

Posted on October 15, 2019

Miguel Rio Branco. Preto e rosa com bandeira, 1988-1992-2012

Miguel Rio Branco. Preto e rosa com bandeira, 1988-1992-2012

Cities are unnatural; they are purely man-made constructions of artifice masquerading as civilization that reinforce hegemonic conditioning of behavior and thought. Being adaptable, by nature, we are easily led to believe that the triumph of nature is our birthright despite all evidence that it is our death sentence.

The concentration of people inside a landscape of concrete, steel beams, and glass combined with the decimation of native flora and fauna leads to a curious result. Wo/man is never so lonely as being lost in the crowd, consumed by the shadow of fear — fear of missing out. Everywhere it seems, the illusion of success holds a promise that escapes their grasp: of beauty and joy, of status and wealth.

Here, city dwellers are locked inside a false binary, desperate to believe the illusions they are fed by pop culture and social media. They strive for the impossible, climbing to the top of the short ladder only to learn there’s nothing there; or they find themselves pushed to the bottom of it, excluded from the opportunity to learn that this is nothing more than an illusion.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Miguel Rio Branco. Sombras barrocas de Havana, 1994-2019

Categories: Art, Books, Exhibitions, Feature Shoot, Photography

Ann Ray & Lee McQueen: Rendez-Vous

Posted on October 15, 2019

Follow the Line, 1997. Image courtesy of Ann Ray and Barrett Barrera Projects

The year was 1996, and a young upstart named Lee Alexander McQueen took the helm of Givenchy as head designer at just 27 years old. French photographer Ann Ray stepped inside his fantastical world, spending two weeks with him while he was creating his first couture collection that same year.

“I had to move to London, so Lee asked me to photograph his collections and basically, I never stopped,” Ray tells AnOther while visiting New York. The result was a lifelong friendship and creative collaboration that would continue until his tragic death at the age of 40 in 2010. Given unprecedented access to document his design process and behind-the-scenes moments during his legendary runway shows, Ray spent 12-hour days in the atelier over a period of 13 years, making more than 35,000 photographs that capture the complexity of McQueen: the man, the artist, and the iconoclast.

Now, in the new exhibition Ann Ray & Lee McQueen: Rendez-Vous, Ray reveals a portrait of the artist as a young man ascending to the heights of fashion by breaking all the rules to create an avant-garde spectacular replete with theater, performance art, and gothic fairytales. Here, Ray shares her memories of life in the inner circle, sharing a side of McQueen that only those closest to him ever knew.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

Home, 2000 Image courtesy of Ann Ray and Barrett Barrera Projects

Categories: 1990s, AnOther, Art, Exhibitions, Fashion, Photography

Who Is Michael Jang?

Posted on October 15, 2019

DAVID BOWIE SIGNING AUTOGRAPHS, 1973 © Michael Jang

Hailing from California, Michael Jang came of age during the 1970s. Over that decade, the photographer would amass several series of work, including The Jangs (1973), Beverly Hilton (1973), San Francisco (1973–1987), College (1972–1973), and Punks & Poets (1978–1980).

However, although he has been working as a portrait photographer ever since, Jang never showed anyone his work from this period until he submitted selections to San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art in 2001.

“The museum had a drop off policy and I remember thinking I had nothing to lose,” Jang says. “The work was already three decades old, so I no longer had any emotional attachment or investment in it. But the lesson is you have to keep trying to get your work out there. You never know who will see it and what might happen.”

Read the Full Story at Huck

RAMONES FREE CONCERT, CIVIC CENTER PLAZA, 1979 © Michael Jang

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

Martha: A Picture Story

Posted on October 15, 2019

Selina Miles’ new documentary film – Martha: A Picture Story

When Martha Cooper quit her job as a New York Post staff photographer to photograph graffiti full time, she did what all true believers must do: she sacrificed financial stability, status, and recognition from the establishment. All to pursue a passion rooted in the love and understanding for that which is universal and transcendent. When her first book, Subway Art (Henry Holt, 1984), co-authored with Henry Chalfant tanked upon release, Cooper was disappointed to discover her gamble did not pay off.

“I was shooting up until Subway Art got published, and I imagined it was going to be — maybe not a bestseller, but I did think there would be more of a reaction, but there was virtually no reaction,” Cooper says. “The trains kind of died off right then. They had cracked down right at that moment. Maybe it had to do with the book? I didn’t think so then.”

Unbeknownst to Cooper, the book took on a life of its own as it found its way into the hands of graffiti writers in every corner of the globe. It had become the “Graffiti Bible,” inspiring generations of artists to pick up a can of spray paint and leave their mark on society. Over the years, countless artists have studied the book with reverence, Cooper’s photographs providing not only a template of style but also a wealth of knowledge about the underground culture that birthed it.

Read the Full Story at The Luupe

Martha Cooper’s first book: Subway Art, with Henty Chalfant (Henry Holt, 1984)

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

Lloyd Ziff: Desire – Photographs 1968-1969

Posted on October 15, 2019

DESIRE: Photographs 1968–1969 © Lloyd Ziff

“I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one,” Patti Smith writes in Just Kids, revealing the burning desire that drove her destiny. Along the way she met Robert Mapplethorpe and together they would meld a magical world of art and music born of passion, dreams, and youthful ideals.

As fate would have it, Lloyd Ziff crossed their path – quite literally. In 1968, Ziff was working as a graphic designer at CBS Records, creating album covers for Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin – but he harboured a personal passion for photography, which he took up in his last semester at Pratt.

“Robert and I were friends from school,” Ziff tells Another Man. “One day I saw him and Patti walking across the street and thought it would be fun to shoot some portraits of them. They had a tiny apartment on Hall Street across from Pratt. I went over one afternoon and only shot one roll of film.”

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

Categories: 1960s, AnOther Man, Art, Books, Photography

Martin Parr: Early Works

Posted on October 15, 2019

Martin Parr remembers when, as a young man growing up in the UK, he first realised that it was his destiny to become a photographer. It began when his grandfather lent him a camera, and increased when he discovered Creative Camera magazine in the late 1960s, immersing himself in the work of Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand.

“But what was most exciting for me was seeing the work of Tony Ray-Jones,”Parr tells AnOther. The year was 1971. Parr, a photography student at Manchester Polytechnic, came across Ray-Jones’ photographs made in England in the late 1960s and was transfixed. “This was one of those moments when your life is changed,” he remembers. “You see something and think, ‘Ahh, this is the aspiration I can look to in terms of work.’”

With his compass set, Parr set off to photograph the coast and countryside of north England and Northern Ireland, creating series of black and white works that laid the foundation for the next 50 years of his practice. In the new book,Martin Parr: Early Works(RRB Photobooks/Martin Parr Foundation), the photographer takes us back to those formative years, painting a portrait of Britain that eloquently captures the idiosyncratic character of its people.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

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

Viewpoints: Photographs from the Howard Greenberg Collection

Posted on October 7, 2019

Young girl in profile, 1948. Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894–1978) Photograph, gelatin silver print. The Howard Greenberg Collection—Museum purchase with funds donated by the Phillip Leonian and Edith Rosenbaum. Leonian Charitable Trust © Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York. *Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The history of photography is shaped not only by the people who make the pictures but those who preserve their work and their legacies. In a world where the art market feeds a compulsion to buy and sell, to trade art like a commodity, the words of Oscar Wilde may spring to mind: “Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

But once upon a time, it was not so. The collector was a person of tremendous importance and influence, supporting not only the artist in the tradition of patronage, but transforming the landscapes of history and art. Gallerist Howard Greenberg is one such person who understand this point of view, having not only helped establish the medium of photography in the haughty market of art, but having established a collection whose value extends far beyond the pallid discussion of price.

The new exhibition Viewpoints: Photographs from the Howard Greenberg Collection, on view at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston through December 15, 2019, presents 150 highlights from a group of 446 recently acquired images that showcases some of the most important pictures made during the twentieth century.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Gloria Swanson,1924. Edward Steichen (American (born in Luxembourg), 1879–1973) Photograph, gelatin silver print. The Howard Greenberg Collection—Museum purchase with funds donated by the Phillip Leonian and Edith Rosenbaum. Leonian Charitable Trust © Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York. *Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Categories: Art, Exhibitions, Feature Shoot, Photography

Karla Hiraldo Voleau: Hola Mi Amol

Posted on October 2, 2019

French-Dominican photographer Karla Hiraldo Voleau was often told, “never date a Dominican”. It was a piece of advice she shrugged off. Both she and her cousin were born to French mothers and Dominican fathers while her French grandmother had also travelled to the Dominican Republic and fallen in love with a local man.

“I was like, ‘But every one of you guys dated a Dominican so… what the heck?’” Hiraldo Voleau says with a laugh from her home in Lausanne, Switzerland. Growing up, she would travel to Santo Domingo, the island’s capital, every summer and she decided to return once more to do a project exploring love, sex and the relationships between men and women that have long fascinated her.

“I was intrigued by these foreign white women who come to the Caribbean to have this escape, this tropical love story, and wanted to impersonate one,” Hiraldo Voleau says, subverting the traditional idea of sexual tourism. The result is Hola Mi Amol, a shortlist nominee for Aperture’s First PhotoBook Award, which will be featured in the 2020 Foam Talent exhibition.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

Categories: Art, Books, Latin America, Photography