Posts from the “Art” Category

Manhattan Transit: The Subway Photographs of Helen Levitt

Posted on February 2, 2018

Helen Levitt was an extremely private person and preferred to let her photographs speak for her – and if you listen very carefully, you might just hear the Bensonhurst accent coming through. “Dawling,” a photograph might intone with intimate familiarity, suggesting we come closer to get the gossip or a bite to eat. “Fuhgeddaboudit,” another might insist, making it clear the window for opportunity is firmly shut.

The Brooklyn soul of Levitt is firmly entrenched in her perfectly composed portraits of daily life in New York. Once upon a time before gentrification took hold, New Yorkers were everything America aspired to be. They came from all walks of life, frequently crossing paths, having the good sense not to gawk or to stare because that would be gauche. They came to expect the unexpected and took it in stride, spouting Cindy Adams catchphrase, “Only in New York, kids,” with pride.

They were characters, in every sense of the word, but rarely were they posers because somebody would pull their card. The New York of Helen Levitt spanned seven decades, from the 1930s through 90s, as she walked it streets, discreetly taking photographs without anyone clocking her. She was as much a part of the scene as everyone else, but she was on a mission: to create a body of work in tribute to this big galoot, this metropolis sitting on a pile of schist that would becoming the most powerful city in the world while Levitt walked its streets.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

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

Sara Shamsavari: World Hijab Day

Posted on February 1, 2018

The veil hides, just as it reveals, a deeper side of the woman beneath. It speaks without words, letting us know that she who wears the veil is a Muslimah. In celebration of these women who line the cityscapes of the world, Sara Shamsavari presents London Veil | Paris Veil | NYC Veil, a series of street portraits that capture the beauty, intimacy, and majesty of the Muslim women today.

Sara Shamsavari: “I am neither critic nor an advocate of the veil, I have a worldview that we are all one people and, although not religious, I respect all religions and faiths. I believe that each of us has the right to our choices without having to suffer prejudice, persecution or exclusion.

I am originally from Iran, a place where women are forced to veil. When I visited Paris, where some of these portraits were made, Muslim women are forced to unveil at their place of work or education. I don’t agree with anything by force. A person should not be forced to wear it or take it off. We are all human beings and we all deserve respect and fair treatment regardless of our background and choices. The women I met and photographed in these western cities wear their hijabs out of choice.

I think that sadly, even in the liberal West, people are still afraid and threatened by the idea of difference as well as change. I believe that differences should be embraced and celebrated. I believe in synergy and that the most incredible things can happen when those who are different come together. I also think these differences are part of the reason why cities like London and New York are so dynamic.

I like to work in different mediums however photography has the ability to connect people who are different in an instant and in a way I haven’t experienced with other art form. It brings people together. I actually began with a background of fine art-mainly painting drawing and also music and still produce work in other mediums. I got in to photography around the age of 16 and experimented with disposable cameras, then SLRs and black and white processing. To me it felt like making a painting or drawing instantly and it still feels that way, I think about color and composition a lot. Moreover I was profoundly impressed with its immediacy and ability to create a bond between myself and the person I was made a portrait of. This inspired me to push forward with photography.

I am moved by the inclusivity of photography on many levels, it draws diverse audiences to spaces they may not ordinarily feel welcome, it has the ability to elevate and empower individuals and communities from the moment I photograph them to the time I enlarge their image and hang it proudly on gallery and museum walls. It has allowed me to share my vision without words, my vision of beauty beyond what I see celebrated on mass media.

I chose to photograph women in London, Paris, and New York because they are western cities where Muslim women are not required to wear Islamic dress, therefore those who do, mostly do this out of choice. New York is interesting because it is where 9/11 took place and, in the years that have followed ,I have noticed an increase in young women wearing hijab. The women in New York are strong, no-nonsense entrepreneurs. My dear friend Nailah Lymus (in the orange and leopard print hijab) is a good example- she is an incredible designer and the founder of UNDERWRAPS, the first hijabi modelling agency.

Paris is interesting because of the governments extreme attitude towards Muslims and the hijab. Parisians are particular and perfectionist and my ladies in London are stylish but often idiosyncratic, a fairly British trait. I think the way that some of the participants of the series express their identity through their hijab style show solidarity with other Muslims, as well as other influences such as western fashion and music that connects them with the environment and people of other cultures they have grown up with. I’m inspired by the idea of transformation and I see style as one example of how we respond to our challenges. Being in the minority is one challenge and the response of the women through their sense of style and expression is beautiful.

I think it is cruel and unfair that so many Muslims are judged or demonized because of the behaviors of a few extremists and it is amazing how ignorance still exists and thrives. I think it is important to take a visible stand against this real lack of education about Muslims, to take a stand against injustice, inequality, and prejudice. I think that it is really fear of difference that prevents people from truly seeking to understand one another. This is what I have experienced in my lifetime, a fear of difference, otherness.

This brings me back to photography, it is so amazing how it has the ability to include and bring people together. The photographer, the artist has that opportunity to spark a change in the way people view others and themselves. I see women’s rights as exactly that: A woman’s right to choose her life and experience whatever that may be. What ever a woman does must be her choice, not something that is imposed upon her.”

Categories: Art, Photography, Women

Mark Morrisroe (1959-1989): Boy Next Door (Beautiful but Dumb)

Posted on February 1, 2018

“Blow Both Of Us”, (1978/1986). Image: © Estate of Mark Morrisroe (Ringier Collection) at Fotomuseum Winterthur, Blow Both of Us, Gail Thacker and Me, Summer, 1978/1986, Vintage chromogenic print (negative sandwich), Courtesy of ClampArt, New York City

At the tender age of 30, American artist Mark Morrisroe died from complications due to Aids. The year was 1989 and by then the virus had claimed over 27,400 lives in its first decade. The loss was irreplaceable.

Morrisroe was the unofficial leader of The Boston School, a group of artists including Nan Goldin, David Armstrong, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Tabboo!, and Gail Thacker who attended either the School of the Museum of Fine Arts or Massachusetts College of Art between 1971 and 1984. Here, he helped kindle the nascent punk scene while also acting as a catalyst in bringing autobiographical photography to the forefront of the art world.

Morrisroe was an enigmatic figure whose diaristic artwork was fuelled by his notoriously radical persona. A teenage prostitute raised by an alcoholic mother, he walked with a cane and a pronounced limp due to a bullet lodged deep within his chest, a wound inflicted while in high school when he was shot by a john. The artist turned to photography to mediate his experiences of life. Working in Polaroids, he embraced the immediacy of the moment transformed into an object that could be manipulated at will. Morrisroe forsook the sanctity of the print in favour of engaging with a mixed-media approach, presciently prefiguring so much of the digital culture in which we currently live.

Yet his premature death has relegated his work to the shadows, making him one of the least-known figures of his time. For more than a decade, gallerist Brian Clamp has exhibited Morrisroe’s art, working tirelessly to restore his rightful place in the art world. In conjunction with the February 1 opening of Mark Morrisroe (1959-1989): Boy Next Door (Beautiful but Dumb) at ClampArt, New York, Clamp shares the details of Morrisroe’s spectacular life and the ways in which his personal experiences fuelled the creation of his art.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

“Hello From Bertha”, (1983). Image: © Estate of Mark Morrisroe (Ringier Collection) at Fotomuseum Winterthur, Hello From Bertha, 1983, Vintage chromogenic print (negative sandwich) retouched with ink, Courtesy of ClampArt, New York City

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

Khalik Allah: Souls on Concrete

Posted on January 29, 2018

Photo: © Khalik Allah

Photo: © Khalik Allah

In the summer of 1998, Khalik Allah had come to a major crossroad after failing eighth grade. Dancing with a B-boy crew had been keeping him out late at night, and school had failed to interest him. Yet he understood the importance of educating himself. Concerned about his future, he headed up to Harlem and began to study with the Five-Percent Nation at the Allah School.

The Five-Percent teachings provided Allah with the self-knowledge and street smarts needed to turn his life around. When he graduated high school, he received a $1,000 scholarship that he used to buy his first camera. He took up filmmaking, then photography, with a mission to create an original style that he could use to create what he describes as “psychic x-rays” – portraits of the soul that lies within.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Photo: © Khalik Allah

Categories: Art, Books, Huck, Manhattan, Photography

Francois Beaurain & Medina Dugger: Chromatin

Posted on January 27, 2018

From Chromatin, © Francois Beaurain and Medina Dugger.

In 2015, Francois Beaurain traveled to Lagos Photo, where he met Medina Dugger. Inspired by the work of late photographer J.D. Okhai Ojeikere and Nigerian hair color trends, they launched Chromatin, an on-going collaboration that transforms Dugger’s photographs of traditional Nigerian women’s hair styles into a series of mesmerizing gifs that are rooted in fractals, the very heart of African design and art.

Fractals are a curve or geometric figure where each part has the same statistical character as the whole, creating a never-ending pattern on an on-going feedback loop. While the West came to understand and name this phenomenon in 1975, fractals have been an integral part of African culture daring back to ancient Egyptian times, and can be seen in cultures in Sub-Saharan Africa writ large.

With the invasion of the continent by Euorpean imperialists for centuries, a great deal of the traditional cultures were destroyed and erased — with the exception of hair braiding. “African hair designs are among the last remaining remnants of an ancient African cultural pillar that has been almost completely annihilated by centuries of colonization and cultural domination,” Beaurain and Dugger note.

With Chromatin, the artists restore fractals to their rightful place: as the fundamental essence of African art and design, and imbue it with a modern twist, combining hair design and digital technology to create a powerful new way of seeing the depth and complexity of traditional African culture and thought. Beaurain speaks with us about making fractals the center of their art.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

From Chromatin, © Francois Beaurain and Medina Dugger.

Categories: Africa, Art, Feature Shoot, Photography

Harry Gruyaert: East/West

Posted on January 24, 2018

Las Vegas downtown motel, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States, 1982. © Harry Gruyaert Magnum Photos. Courtesy of Thames & Hudson.

“Higher emotions cannot be communicated in color,” American photographer Paul Strand claimed – revealing the power of irrational beliefs to take root in the mind and spread like a virus through those who fear to question ideology in search of the truth.

The decision to invite Belgian photographer Harry Gruyaert (b. 1941) to join Magnum Photos in 1982 caused dissent among the ranks. At that time Gruyaert had been working in color for two decades, but the powers that be “didn’t see color,” so to speak. Photography was still a fledgling medium in the art world, and those who were desperate to join the ranks revealed a powerful insecurity that fed simple-minded biases and false hierarchies designed to exclude innovative thinkers who worked outside the narrow frame of the status quo.

Gruyaert, however, was undeterred. His commitment remained consistent throughout his remarkable career. In 1981, Geo photo editor Alice Rose George commissioned Gruyaert to photograph Las Vegas. Rather than provide his take on the tired tropes of the Strip, Gruyaert ventured off the beaten path ton the Vegas where residents lived. The result was entirely too realistic; Vegas was not the place of fantasies and spectacle – it was a world where people eked out their existence on the margins.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Moscow, Russia, 1989. © Harry Gruyaert Magnum Photos. Courtesy of Thames & Hudson.

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

Georgia O’Keeffe: Art, Image, Style

Posted on January 22, 2018

Tony Vaccaro, Georgia O’Keefe with “Pelvis Series, Red with Yellow” and the desert, 1960. Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. Courtesy of Tony Vaccaro studio.

Georgia O’Keeffe is an American original, who created the life she wanted to live on her own terms, liberated from the constraints and constructs imposed on women during the first half of the 20th century. For over seven decades, O’Keeffe cultivated her public persona, challenging all aspects of the status quo, in order to live her truth in the eyes of the world.

Georgia O’Keeffe: Art, Image, Style is the first exhibition to examine the relationship between the artist’s lifestyle and her work. Curated by Wanda M. Corn and assisted by coordinating curator Austen Barron Bailly, the exhibition features a selection of never-before-seen garments designed and created by O’Keeffe that became part of her signature look, along with iconic artworks and photographs by her husband Alfred Stieglitz, Cecil Beaton, Bruce Weber, Todd Webb, Arnold Newman, John Loengard, and Tony Vaccaro, among others.

“Georgia O’Keeffe was never afraid of standing out,” Barron Bailly observes. “She had a certain fearlessness and a conviction of who she was and what she needed to do to make the art she was called to make. This show demonstrates her identity as an independent, as someone who did not worry about fitting into a mainstream conception of what a woman should look like and how a woman should dress, of what and how a woman should paint.”

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Georgia O’Keeffe, Ram’s Head, White Hollyhock-Hills (Ram’s Head and White Hollyhock, New Mexico), 1935. Brooklyn Museum, Bequest of Edith and Milton Lowenthal, 1992.11.28. Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Museum.

Categories: Art, Books, Exhibitions, Huck, Women

Kwame Brathwaite: Black is Beautiful

Posted on January 22, 2018

Untitled (Naturally ’68 photo shoot in the Apollo Theater featuring Grandassa models and founding AJASS members Kwame Brathwaite, Frank Adu, Elombe Brath, and Ernest Baxter 1968, printed 2016. Photography by Kwame Brathwaite, Image courtesy the artist and Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles.

Untitled (Sikolo with Carolee Prince Designs) 1968, printed 2017. Photography by Kwame Brathwaite, Image courtesy the artist and Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles.

On the evening of January 28, 1962, a massive crowd gathered outside Harlem’s Purple Manor, eager to gain entrance to Naturally 62 – the landmark event that introduced the ‘Black is Beautiful’ movement to the world.

The brainchild of photographer Kwame Brathwaite (born in 1938) and his older brother Elombe Brath (now deceased), Naturally 62 presented Blackness in its natural state through a powerful combination of fashion, music, and politics. The brothers, who were born in Brooklyn to a politically active family, had embraced Marcus Garvey’s Back-to-Africa movement and co-founded the African Jazz-Art Society and Studios (AJASS), a collective of artists, writers, musicians, dancers, and fashion designers. “Our mission was to reach the folks so that they could see their own work,” Brathwaite reveals. “It was a time when people were trying to organize and improve the community, to get themselves in order so that they would not be the low man on the totem pole.”

The brothers worked on two fronts, supporting the African independence movement while embracing Black business at home, producing jazz concerts at legendary locales including Club 845 in the Bronx and Small’s Paradise in Harlem. But it was a local beauty contest that gave the brothers the inspiration for Naturally 62. A year earlier, while attending the annual Marcus Garvey Day Celebration, they watched ‘The Miss Natural Standard of Beauty Contest’, wherein models came to the stage without make-up, their hair free from heat press.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

Untitled (Self Portrait) 1964, printed 2017. Photography by Kwame Brathwaite, Image courtesy the artist and Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles.

Categories: 1960s, Africa, AnOther, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Fashion, Manhattan, Photography

Calvin Reid: View from the Hilltop

Posted on January 21, 2018

Calvin Reid

When I began my career as a book publicist, Calvin Reid was the first journalist I met in person. His warmth and wit, his disarming charm, and his knowledge of the book publishing industry cannot be underestimated. As Senior News Editor of Publishers Weekly, the premier trade publication, Mr. Reid has been at the forefront of the major changes in book publishing for the past thirty years.

More than a reporter, Mr. Reid is a businessman. He understands the nature of the medium to the point that he has been a central figure in the rise and success of graphic novels as a genre of publishing. Here, he shares his experiences as an artist and journalist over the past five decades.

Calvin Reid: “I was a curious kind of kid, always reading books, newspapers, and comics (comics obsess me to this day) and sports. I still love comics and sports to this day. I was always a reader. As a kid I realized that if you read a lot you had an edge on people particularly adults, especially if you read the newspaper and remarked on a story. I remember thinking that they liked that. I read endlessly.

I always loved books as a kid. As a job, it was a pure accident. They used to call book publishing, ‘The Accidental Profession.’ A lot of people entered the profession from very disparate fields. Often they started in business, and couldn’t bear it any longer. They made career turns and lucked into publishing. I came about it the same way.

My background is as an artist. I have a BFA in Art Education with a minor in Photography from Howard University, and an MFA in Printmaking from the Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. I also wrote for The Hilltop, the Howard University student newspaper, and was the newspaper’s photo editor. We had a big budget, I think about $80-90K per year, and all the editors were paid a stipend. I wrote about jazz and art in The Hilltop and supported myself as a freelance photographer covering a regular schedule of writers’ conferences held at Howard.

While I was there, I photographed people like James Baldwin, C.L.R. James, and LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka and musicians from Archie Shepp to Sonny Rollins. I also attended FESTAC 77 in Lagos, Nigeria. It was an Olympics of African Diasporan culture. It was held for one month, every four years and attracted artists, intellectuals and academics of African descent from around the globe. I covered the whole event as a photographer along with another reporter from The Hilltop. Probably one of the most incredible experiences of my college years.

“One of my great friends from Howard of that time is the journalist/critic and musician Greg Tate. He was an all around Afro-Futuristic icon even then. When I came up in Washington, D.C. during the 70s everyone was publishing their own little magazines at the time. We were all helping each other do our own magazines. It was an interesting time to be at Howard as it was a time of transition from the black power movement to more assimilationist black cultural politics that followed. The art department in particular was very focused on black nationalist sensibility and activism and very concerned with the role of the black artist. That really prepared me for the rise of multiple viewpoints, parallel art worlds, market factions, and commercial critiques.

Calvin Reid

I came to New York to be an artist. I arrived June 7, 1981. I continued to produce etchings and lithographs as well as drawings after I moved to New York and I have exhibited widely in New York and in shows around the country. Moving to New York and meeting and marrying my wife were the two best decisions of my life.

New York is the central marketplace for art and after grade school (and a short stay in Pittsburgh) I had moved to the East Village/Lower East Side of New York just as the East Village art scene started to buzz in the 1980s. I was making prints at the historic Printmaking Workshop, under the late Bob Blackburn. A little later my roommates (shout out to Patty Harris and Janet Gillespie!) and I started a zine called 108 East Village Review, named after the building number of the loft we were living in. We reviewed the shows and artists on the gallery scene that blew up after FUN Gallery opened in the East Village. We reviewed shows, went to parties, rode that wave.

The East Village was having a moment, and I said, ‘Hey we should write about this!’ The artists were doing it themselves. We weren’t waiting to be picked out of a crowd. It was a very cool time to be in New York. You could show your work in a gallery, or an abandoned building. You could meet editors, collectors, curators, and publishers directly. Writing about art got me into shows. The early East Village Galleries, artist-run galleries, that were showing their friends before it all evolved into a more professional gallery scene. I eventually went on to write about contemporary art for the old Arts magazine, Art in America and other art magazines.

My plan was to find a way to work and to do the artist thing. I got a job as a temp; I was a ‘Kelly Girl’ (Laughs). I worked for Kelly Services in different places including Matthew Bender, which is a legal publisher. Later I switched jobs and became a typist at Library Journal, which eventually led to me becoming a journalist. At Library Journal I typed up the book reviews that librarians wrote on little sheets of paper, each about 300 words long. They were mailed in from all over the country and even from Europe where we had our far-flung correspondents. I typed them into the Atex system; this was back in the early days of digital layout and electronic production.

This was a great job to have as an artist. I showed up, typed, and was out by 5:01 p.m. I was surrounded by books. Books were always magic to me. They take you away from where you are, they make you think, and they enable you to connect with other people even though no one is around. Books provide entertainment and education.

While I was at Library Journal, I moved over to Publishers Weekly to be the Assistant to the News Editor in 1986. In a weird way it is almost the same job as I have now—except everything has changed. PW is a multi-faceted publication that is updated hour-by-hour. I am not only a Senior News Editor at PW, I am also the co-editor of PW Comics World, with my colleague and co-editor Heidi MacDonald. My obsession with comics has evolved into a department in the magazine. I first began reviewing graphic novels at PW in the late 1980s before eventually launching regular news coverage of comics publishing and later, with Heidi, PW Comics World, a now-twice a month newsletter on comics and graphic novel publishing.

Comics in this country have traditionally been part of the magazine industry. But thanks partly to the role of PW and our coverage (as well as the changing attitudes of librarians and teachers), comics and graphic novels are now established as a category in the book industry. Book-format comics were originally an afterthought in the comics industry. That was transformed when graphic novels became a significant and growing niche in publishing proper. The big New York houses now all have imprints or editors that acquire comics titles for their lists. PW has become a pulpit to bring comics to the book market. It has proven itself indispensable.

Publishing has been transformed by the digital world. The challenge now is covering an industry that doesn’t look anything like it once did. I feel like I live in the future. I don’t even remember how I was able to do my job in the old days. “

Categories: Art, Books

Alex Prager at Lehmann Maupin Hong Kong

Posted on January 18, 2018

Shopping Plaza 1, 2015. Courtesy Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong.

Applause, 2016. Courtesy Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong.

Everyday life is filled with fleeting moments of grandeur, when the mundane suddenly becomes majestic and you feel the overwhelming glory of being alive. American photographer and filmmaker Alex Prager understands this perfectly. “I can see drama in everything, the comedy and the tragedy, even where there is none,” Prager reveals. “My interest is with the emotional and psychological components in a frame. The technical, the narrative, and the process – all of that is secondary to the mood. This is what makes art timeless for me.”

The Los-Angeles based artist got her start after seeing a William Eggleston exhibition at the turn of the millennium. “When I first discovered photography I looked at the great street photographers and tried to make pictures like them,” Prager explains. “I’m still obsessed with street photography and it finds its way into everything I make.”

But Prager strayed from the documentary path, preferring to create staged photographs that embrace the cinematic elements of the medium. Imbuing each image with a theatricality that is at once visceral and spiritual, Prager finds the balance between fiction and fact by grounding her practice in truth.

This winter, Prager will be showing a selection of her signature photographs and films, along with her first exhibited sculpture at Lehmann Maupin Hong Kong. Here, we speak about the influence of life in Los Angeles, the freedom of the staged photograph, the porous boundary between reality and imagination, and magic of playing with perception.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

Hawkins Street, 2017. Courtesy Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong.

Categories: AnOther, Art, Exhibitions, Photography

Debi Cornwall: Welcome to Camp America

Posted on January 17, 2018

After 12 years working as a civil rights lawyer working with innocent DNA exonerees, Debi Cornwall made a major career change. Still invested in the lives of those wrongfully imprisoned for crimes they did not commit, Cornwall put down the legal pad and picked up the camera in order to address the issue from a different perspective.

While having dinner with a friend who represented Guantánamo detainees, Cornwall realised striking similarities between the prison and military industrial complexes. “The question of resilience after trauma and systemic abuses of power is something I have been fascinated by my entire life,” Cornwall explains.

“When I first started trying to contact them, I got zero response. Because who was I? No one wanted to take the risk on me at that point. On a whim, I decided I should try to figure out if I could get permission to photograph at Guantánamo to make a different kind of picture that will invite us to look again.”

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Photo: Mourad, French Algerian (France). Muslim Youth Counselor. Held: 2 years, 8 months, 1 day. Transferred: July 26, 2005. Charges: never filed in the U.S. French conviction reversed on appeal. © Debi Cornwall

Categories: Art, Books, Huck, Photography