Posts from the “Art” Category

Gloria Oyarzabal: Woman go no’gree

Posted on March 14, 2019

The search for knowledge, wisdom, and understanding lies in the process of distilling fact from fiction, truth from lie, meaning from myth. It is the sifting through appearances where deception flourishes, in search of the source of authenticity and integrity upon which existence takes root.

“One consequence of Eurocentrism is the racialization of knowledge: Europe is represented as the source of knowledge and Europeans, therefore, as thinkers,” photographer Gloria Oyarzabal observes, recognizing the systems of power profiting off this misinformed belief.

These systems of power feed off a form of colonization that extends beyond the centuries-long rape, pillage, and enslavement of the people and the land — it is the colonization of the mind, a far more insidious programming that is more difficult to detect and eradicate, for its forms are multifarious, moving like a virus from one person to the next.

The programming runs so deep that many will fight to defend its dastardly deeds before do something so honorable as change their mind. Often times, the programming only ends when one finds it is too foolish and disgraceful to hold irrational thoughts. Then it becomes a process of decolonizing the mind of the bankrupt ideologies and logical fallacies one has been fed throughout their lives, and do the work of self-education, recognizing that blind spots will be revealed.

In her series, Woman go no’gree, Oyarzabal has done just this in a photographic exploration of gender, history, knowledge-making, stereotypes, and clichés of Africa. Using a mixture of archive colonial images mostly found in magazines, street photos taken with a digital camera, and studio photography found or made during her artist residence in Lagos in 2017, Oyarzabal employs a visual language that subverts and spellbinds in equal part, leading us into a silent realm of symbol and iconography. Here, Oyarzabal shares her journey with us.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: Africa, Art, Feature Shoot, Photography

Vincent Cianni: We Skate Hardcore

Posted on March 4, 2019

Welcome To Crooklyn, Walking Across the Williamsburg Bridge 1996. © Vincent Cianni

Under The Brooklyn Queens Expressway, Williamsburg Brooklyn 1996. © Vincent Cianni

In 1993, photographer Vincent Cianni moved to the south side of Williamsburg, as the next generation of Puerto Rican and Dominican teens were coming of age.

“Life was played out in so many different ways on the sidewalks, stoops, and playgrounds,” he remembers. “I started playing handball in McCarren Park and started to take my camera with me. It became part of my connection to the neighbourhood.”

After about a year and a half, Cianni came upon a scrappy group of local kids and teens who had built a skate ramp in a vacant lot by the river at North 7th Street. They were there to refine their skills, so they could get sponsored to skate professionally. “Like basketball, it was a way out of poverty and the experiences that they have growing up,” the photographer explains.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Sugeiry Touching Scarface with Knife, Bedford Avenue Williamsburg Brooklyn 1998. © Vincent Cianni

Categories: 1990s, Art, Books, Brooklyn, Exhibitions, Huck, Photography

Olivier Fatton: Coco

Posted on March 4, 2019

Coco, Copyright Olivier Fatton.

Éve-Claudine Lorétan – alias Coco – met photographer Olivier Fatton on a Sunday in November 1989, at a sauna in Bern, Switzerland. Their meeting would mark the final act of Coco’s short life, in which she was at once fashion model, performance artist, and tabloid sensation.

“We fell in love at first sight,” Fatton says, speaking through a translator from Paris. “I had the impression I just met an angel. At the time, I was really drawn to aesthetics. Coco looked so beautiful that I just wanted to take pictures of her.”

Before meeting Coco, Fatton, 32, had been photographing male nudes in staged scenes, awash with beauty but empty of love. Their connection was absolute and instantaneous. They went for coffee, then to bed, in short order.

“I want to be your model. In return, you’ll document my transformation. I’m going to have a sex change,” Coco told Fatton, as he recounts in a new book, Coco.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Online

Coco, Copyright Olivier Fatton.

Coco, Copyright Olivier Fatton.

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

Rosalind Fox Solomon: Liberty Theater

Posted on February 27, 2019

Rosalind Fox Solomon, ‘Chattanooga, Tennessee, 1976’ in Liberty Theater (2018). © Rosalind Fox Solomon. Courtesy of the artist and MACK.

Rosalind Fox Solomon, ‘New Orleans, Louisiana, 1992’ in Liberty Theater (2018). © Rosalind Fox Solomon. Courtesy of the artist and MACK.

Beginning in the mid-1970s, American artist Rosalind Fox Solomon traveled across the South creating a powerful series of photographs that reveal the state of the nation during the first decade following the Civil Rights Movement. It is here in Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and South Carolina that we are privy to the complex interconnection of life rooted in the triumphs, tragedies, and traumas of the past.

At the time Fox Solomon started making these images, she had begun taking trips to New York to study photography with Lisette Model, a master of the human psyche laid bare in silver gelatin. Fox Solomon’s work bears witness to the power of photography to cut to the quick, to go beyond the luxuries and limitations of language by focusing solely on action, gesture, and expression to tell us more than word could ever say in a single, fleeting moment.

Fox Solomon’s photographs resonate with quiet grandeur, visceral eccentricity, and profound depth of ineffable emotion. Over the next two decades, she traversed the deepest reaches of the South to create Liberty Theater (MACK), an exquisitely nuanced portrait of the profound interplay of race, class, and segregation.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Rosalind Fox Solomon, ‘New Orleans, Louisiana, 1993’ in Liberty Theater (2018). © Rosalind Fox Solomon. Courtesy of the artist and MACK.

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Photography

Jamie Diamond & Elena Dorfman: Surrogate – A Love Ideal

Posted on February 20, 2019

Elena Dorfman. Ginger Brook 4, 2001. From the series, Still Lovers

In a culture where overexposure has become the new norm, intimacy and bonding is becoming increasingly complex. People adapt in any number of ways, adopting attitudes, behaviours, and even objects that allow them to channel the desire for love in a tangible way.

In the new exhibition Surrogate. A Love Ideal, opening February 21, American photographers Jamie Diamond and Elena Dorfman explore the expression of familial and romantic love between human and doll — an expression that elicits feelings of surprise, confusion, disgust, and even empathy from those who see it from the outside looking in.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Jamie Diamond. Mother Kyla, 2012. From Forever mothers

Categories: Art, Huck, Photography

Brenda Ann Kenneally: Upstate Girls

Posted on February 14, 2019

Kayla and James © Brenda Ann Kenneally.

In the dystopian mythos that fuels the American Dream, poverty is a mark of character upon which outrageous projections are made. Many, clinging to the illusions of living in a meritocracy, where everyone starts on a level playing field, prefer the ignorance of ideology above all, villainizing the victims of a system designed to create a permanent underclass upon which America’s Next Top Billionaire will assuredly feast.

Poverty, as it is presented to us, is a choice — the wrong one, the experts suggest. “If only these people would X, Y, or Z,” the armchair analyst adds without the slightest shame, from the comforts of their breakfast nook while scrolling the latest headlines on their news feed.

“X, Y, or Z” could be any number of conservative talking points that focus the minutiae of personal accountability while turning a blind eye to the crushing weight of living hand to mouth in country that has designed systems to profit off your demise.

Artist Brenda Ann Kenneally knows how the game is played better than most, and uses her knowledge and wisdom expose the truth — rather than perpetuate the lies told and sold. In 2002, she and author Adrian Nicole LeBlanc began collaborating on a magazine assignment in Troy, New York, a once-thriving city whose fortunes have gone dark.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Tony in the dark bedroom, looking out the window © Brenda Ann Kenneally.

Dana nursing KyLanne the day before she took her baby home © Brenda Ann Kenneally.

Categories: Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Photography

The Last Dance Before the Lights Come On

Posted on February 14, 2019

A young Michael Jackson takes to the dance floor. Credit: Courtesy Hasse Persson

In a city filled with history and legend, 1977 might just be New York’s most notorious year, as decadence reached dazzling new heights typified by the flight of the Concorde soaring at the speed of sound overhead. While 100 of the world’s most glamorous jet setters shuttled back and forth above the pond, New York was collapsing into anarchy.

After years of white flight and “benign neglect,” the city was broke. The federal government refused a bailout. Criminal became bold. Arsonists torched the Bronx while landlords collected insurance checks. A serial killer dubbed “Son of Sam” was terrorizing the city and writing letters to the press. Pornography was legalized and prostitution flourished openly on the streets. Then, on one hot night in July, a blackout struck and the city descended into pure chaos.

Amid the madness, a spark had emerged, soaring through the sky like a comet until it burned to dust — Studio 54, the most legendary nightclub ever known. College buddies Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager transformed a former midtown TV studio into a pleasure palace for the senses that took the Warholian ideal of celebrity to new heights, where everyone was a star in their own right.

Read the Full Story at Jacques Marie Mage

Hasse Persson / Courtesy Embassy of Sweden

Categories: 1970s, Art, Fashion, Jacques Marie Mage, Manhattan, Music

Paolo Roversi: Doubts

Posted on February 12, 2019

Roos, Paris, 2017 © Paolo Roversi; courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

“For me to take a picture is an act of love, something to connect with the rest of the world and… voila!” Italian photographer and AnOther Magazine contributor Paolo Roversi says on the phone from his Paris studio of nearly four decades. “It’s like a kiss. It is to exchange a regard. It is very simple.”

Very simple – and pure. For Roversi, the photograph is an invitation to discover what lies beyond the known, creating a space where anything is possible. “I like to be lost in mysteries. I don’t like to explain everything. I don’t like to ask. I do not look for the answer in fact. I am happy with only the question,” he says.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

Molly, Paris, 2015.© Paolo Roversi; courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Categories: AnOther, Art, Exhibitions, Fashion, Photography

Koto Bolofo: The Prison

Posted on February 11, 2019

At the age of four, Koto Bolofo left South Africa as a political refugee, and did not return until 1992, two years after Nelson Mandela was released from prison. The first thing Bolofo did was visit Robben Island, where Mandela had been held for the majority of his 27 years in confinement in a cell barely six square meters in size. The photographs he took with his wife have just been published in a new monograph titled The Prison (Steidl). Bolofo graciously agreed to speak with L’Oeil de la Photographie about this project.

“My parents decided to go back to South Africa after Mandela was released. My father said that the country had changed, to come back and see for myself, as there could be good opportunities. My first intention was to visit Robben Island. I had heard so much about it, but I had only seen five photos. One was taken in the early 1960s when Mandela was held there, and I wanted to see this place for myself before I discovered what South Africa was.

“I took the boat, a fisherman’s boat, that took the prisoners to the island. It wasn’t yet a Museum at that time. This was in the very early days. I had to go because I knew that when a new regime comes into power, the first thing that they do is try to eradicate all the traces of the past. They don’t want to be reminded of a bad symbol of the past.

“Fortunately humanity was on the mainland celebrating getting their country back and no one was paying attention to Robben Island. It was my wife and I. When we landed we saw an old board with paint peeling off and in Afrikaaans it said, “Welcome to Robben Island.” Then we saw the main gate with the same words and it was painted really well. The slogan really shook me. Here you are, as a black person, and they are celebrating, welcoming you. And there was a sickness in that.

“When you go there, you completely break down. You cannot believe a human being could do this to one and other because they are fighting for freedom and equal rights. How can they do this? ‘Why? was the word going through my head over and over again. You are breaking down, the tears come, you are weak at the legs.

“South Africa is a vast country with a 13% white minority. And they had the black prisoners wearing shorts and going barefoot, while the Indian prisoners got to wear long trousers, pullovers, and shoes. There were other forms of discrimination, like black prisoners received no bread. Nelson Mandela was campaigning to have equal rights on that island and it took years. There is a photo of Mandela in shorts in the courtyard breaking stones. That was designed to break the human spirit. Everything they did was to break the spirit. The post was vetted, and words were blanked out in a black pen so that the prisoners couldn’t see what their loved ones were writing. They tried to break the prisoners but little did they know that the prisoners had a nobility and a strength of intellect that was part of their survival instrument. They would never break an African person down.

“I couldn’t take photos. I couldn’t even pick up the camera. It’s a burning pain that you can’t describe; it’s so close to you. My wife was saying, ‘You have to take pictures. It can be taken away and destroyed. No one is paying attention now.’”

“We came to a harrowing thing: Mandela’s cell. You can put it on paper, but you have to experience what that space is, put yourself in that room, and say, ‘How on earth can you put a man in a space like that for so many years?’ Once you are in his cell, you are completely gone. It’s really cold in there and they were wearing shorts, and the blanket was horsehair, designed to degrade you to the lowest common denominator.

“These photos are very poetic. They are not photos that wanted to provoke. This is a peace document. You sit down and look at it in your quiet moment to have a moment of your humanity and ask yourself, ‘Why?’ and ‘How can we move forward from this?’

“The most important thing in this book is the list of all the prisoners that had been sentenced to Robben Island. No one knows about this list. Thank God we have the Internet. I asked myself, ‘Who are these people? Where are these people? Where are he rest of them?” We only knew about the main people, eight or ten of them. The impression we had was these were the only prisoners they were keeping, because that’s all the South African media focused on.

“I asked about the others. I didn’t get the information so I snooped around the Internet for two and a half months before I came to a website and a massive list popped up and it had the names of all the prisoners, the date of sentence, admittance, release, and their address. There were thousands of names on the list.

“I printed it off that night, kept it, and stored it away. I later went back to the website and the list had been taken down, like it did not exist at all. I published the list in the book. The youngest prisoner who was sentenced to Robben Island was only 15 years old. He was sentenced for 10 years! His is amongst the list of prisoners in the book. His name is Dikagang Moseneke. His current occupation is the Justice Minister of South Africa.

“This is the most important book my wife and I will do in our lifetime. This is a book of education. All schools should pay a compulsory visit to Robben Island. When you show them the instrument of evil forced upon a people, the youth can see the truth stands counter to corruption. The truth can make democracy more transparent. That’s when a nation moves forward. Go back to your past and you will find your future.”

Today, Robben Island is a museum, included on the World Heritage List by UNESCO in 1999. Bolofo’s book is a monument to the past, a story of lives that will never be forgotten, lives that were given to justice, truth, and freedom.

First Published in L’Oeil de la Phootgraphie, May 2014

Categories: Africa, Art, Books

Vanguard Revisited: Poetic Politics & Black Futures

Posted on February 8, 2019

Pirkle Jones, Free Huey rally, Bobby Hutton Memorial Park (formerly DeFremery Park) © Regents of the University of California. Courtesy Special Collections, University Library, University of California Santa Cruz.

Pirkle Jones, Black Panthers discussing their reading material, Bobby Hutton Memorial Park, Oakland, CA, #101 from A Photographic Essay on The Black Panthers. Commissioned by Swedish magazine, Vi. © Regents of the University of California. Courtesy Special Collections, University Library, University of California Santa Cruz.

In 1968, the Black Panther Party (BPP) stood 2,000 strong; armed not just with firearms, but a knowledge of the Constitution, state, and local laws. Initially organised to fight police brutality, the group quickly organised to institute community social programs. Leadership understood the power of the press and began working with writers, artists, and photographers to get the word out.

That year, Kathleen Cleaver met husband and wife photographers Pirkle Jones (1914-2009) and Ruth-Marion Baruch (1922-1997), and gave them unprecedented access to the inner circle of the BPP. Of the work they made, Baruch said: “We can only tell you: This is what we saw. This is what we felt. These are the people.”

The photographs – first printed in The Black Panther weekly newspaper – were immediately well-received, and an exhibition of the work, Black Panthers: A Photo Essay, opened at San Francisco’s de Young Museum shortly after. More than 100,000 people attended the show, despite City Hall’s best efforts to pressure the photographers to delay or cancel it.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Categories: 1960s, Art, Exhibitions, Photography

Larry Racioppo: Brooklyn Before: Photographs, 1971-1983

Posted on February 7, 2019

Back in the 1950s and ‘60s, a movement was afoot. The media called it “white flight” and sang it from the rooftops. The cities were being abandoned as white families ran for the hills of suburban towns just as Black and Latinx populations were finding a foothold in northern climates following the Great Migration, Operation Bootstrap, and Operation Peter Pan.

By the 1970s, a new era had begun — one of fueled by urban decay that left only the most strident New Yorkers in place. It was a city of true grit, where only the strongest survive, a city filled with idiosyncratic characters that were simultaneously celebrated and vilified. It was, simply put, a “New” York in every sense of the word.

Brooklyn native Larry Racioppo headed west for two years before returning to his hometown in December 1970. He took a job at the phone company and a class at SVA, which inspired him to start photographing the world in which he lived. Then little by little, everything began to change.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

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