Posts from the “Art” Category

Peter Hujar: Speed of Life

Posted on January 16, 2018

Candy Darling on Her Deathbed, 1973. Collection of Ronay and Richard Menschel. © Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy of Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York, and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

Peter Hujar (1934–1987) is your favourite photographer’s photographer – a man who lived independently, crafting a life in downtown Manhattan that flourished between the Stonewall uprising of 1969 and the AIDS crisis of the 1980s.

Inside his East Village loft, Hujar mastered his craft, pursuing the art without the burdens of commerce. Liberated from the strictures of the market, Hujar created a body of work that is as broad in subject matter as it is refined in technique and as original in perspective.

A new exhibition, Peter Hujar: Speed of Life, looks at the work the legend left behind, three decades after his death. The show presents 140 photographs drawn from the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, the most comprehensive public collection of the artist’s work. Curated by Joel Smith, the exhibition adopts the traditional retrospective format while staying true to Hujar’s vision.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Ethyl Eichelberger as Minnie the Maid, 1981. © Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy of Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York, and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

Christopher Street Pier, 1976. © Peter Hujar Archive, LLC, courtesy of Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York, and Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco.

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Huck, Manhattan, Photography

Vince Aletti: Curator, Collector, Writer Extraordinaire

Posted on January 15, 2018

Vince Aletti has a way with words, an ability to cast an image in your mind’s eye as he describes a moment caught forevermore, with the photographic precision of the medium about which he writes. Equal parts critic, reporter, and curator, Aletti’s prose is poetic, perceptive, and always a pleasure to read, beautifully complementing the experience of the photograph itself.

The photograph has had a special place in Aletti’s life dating back to his childhood. He recalls, “My father was a camera club photographer, so I grew up with a darkroom in the house. I remember being with my father in the darkroom, watching photographs appear. It was like magic. It had a profound effect on me.

“My dad died when I was young and he left his archive of US Camera Annuals. On rainy days, I’d spend hours looking through those photo anthologies, going back again and again to images that fascinated me, like Irving Penn‘s “Summer Sleep,” and Avedon‘s portrait of Anna Magnani, and George Rodger‘s picture of naked Nuba wrestlers. Those books introduced me to photographs and photographers that still move me today. They gave me a deep background.”

Winner of the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Award for writing in 2005, Aletti is currently a photography critic for The New Yorker and Photograph. He was also the art editor of the Village Voice from 1994-2005. But for the first twenty years of his career, Aletti was a music critic. He was the first person to write about the emerging disco scene for Rolling Stone in 1973. Aletti’s book, The Disco Files 1973-78: New York’s Underground Week by Week (Djhistory.com) chronicles his famed column in Record World magazine; the book, first published in 2009, is now out of print and sells for over $100 on Amazon and is considered essential reading on this chapter in music history.

Yet his love of photography never left him. When offered the opportunity to begin reviewing photography shows for the Village Voice, he took it. Aletti remembers, “It was a break from the usual descriptions of club music. It gave me a good chance to expand. At the time, I was close friends with Peter Hujar. Spending a lot of time with him, seeing him at work, affected my thinking and writing about photography. I saw it not as an exalted undertaking, but as a way to for someone to make a living and express themselves at the same time in a very real way. For Peter, it was like putting life and feelings down in a picture, which is not what most people care to do these days. I’ve always been most excited by people whose work was soulful and based in their lives and feelings.

“After a few years of doing brief exhibition reviews, one of the first things I started to write at the Voice was profiles of photographers, one-page critical essays on people I was curious about, like Dawoud Bey. I wrote about new and emerging photographers–Andrea Modica, Sally Mann, Marco Breuer, Barbara Ess, Fazal Sheikh–and why they did what they did. Personally, I’m very drawn to portraiture, and work that resonates in our lives, from Nan Goldin to Ryan McGinley. But I am also a huge fan of people who work with process and abstraction, like Adam Fuss and Mariah Robertson. I couldn’t be writing about nearly every show in town if I had narrow interests.

“When it comes to portraiture, a photograph records what is in front of the camera in a way that can be very revealing. Although they are only dealing with the surface, if a photographer is really looking and has a desire to connect with the other person, they can get at something beneath that surface. Nothing is quite so direct, confrontational, and revealing as the photograph.”

Aletti has also contributed essays to photography books including Avedon Fashion 1944-2000 (Abrams), Peter Hujar: Love & Lust (Fraenkel Gallery), Hedi Slimane: Rock Diary (JRP/Ringier), and A Respect for Light: The Latin American Photographs 1974-2008 by Mario Algaze (Glitterati Incorporated).

Most significantly, Aletti contributed to Andrew Roth’s The Book of 101 Books: Seminal Photographic Books of the Twentieth Century (PPP Editions/Roth Horowitz), a tremendous undertaking. Aletti recalls, “I wrote half the descriptive texts. It was an education for me. Many of the books I had never seen before, or even knew about. Roth had a rigorous approach and he set strict criterion. The book had to be conceived as a unit, it had to be unique. I was conscious of the sequencing, scale of the photograph on the page, the typography, the quality of the reproductions, the binding of the book. It made me aware of how important all these thing were to the experience of the book. That got me deep into photography books and what makes them work.

As a form, the photography book is over one hundred years old. It has a quality of permanence that sets it apart from all else. As Aletti observes, “The book is lasting. It preserves an exhibition for a much longer period of time. I love exhibitions because you can see the photograph in actual size and get a real sense of its presence–an experience of the physicality of the object. You won’t get that in a book. But a book lasts longer and can cover a whole large project better. Plus, I like the permanence of a book.

“So many photographers can do their best work in books. It’s many photographer’s first choice as a way of putting their work into the world. An exhibition can be more of a compromise. But if an artist has control over a book, it’s more expressive. The explosion in self-publishing has affected publishing in general. Young photographers can make books and have total control. That’s so important and energizing. I go to Printed Matter’s Art Book Fair every year. It’s encouraging that there are so many young and self-published photographers looking at the quality of books in a different way. There’s more attention to books generated by the photographers themselves. Alec Soth is one of those photographers who is really book oriented. He gets into and works through interesting projects, and the end result is a book. It can also be a show, but it won’t include all the quirky elements that he can fit into a book.”

Indeed, it is the distinctiveness of the form that makes the book unlike any other object, except, perhaps, the magazine. As a collector, Aletti observes, “I’m always picking up things at flea markets. I don’t think I’ve ever been so immersed in photography as I have been over the last few years. Being a curator, a collector, a writer connects so many parts of my life. I’m living with it in a very real way with pictures on my wall. Most of my collections are of vernacular material, things that I’ve been able to afford from small photo sales. But much more of my collection is magazines and books. I have a huge collection of fashion magazines, full of pictures by Avedon, Penn, Beaton, Blumenfeld, Helmut Newton. That collection is more important than the photographs that I own. It allows me to access a much larger world in my own apartment.”

All photos courtesy of Jason Schmidt, first published in Document Journal.

Categories: Art, Books, Photography

Allan Tannenbaum: New York in the 1970s

Posted on January 11, 2018

Photo: Girls will be girls – and boys will be boys – at a pre-opening Construction Party at John Addison’s Bond’s mega-disco in Times Square. Penthouse Pet Anneka and friend, 1980. © Allan Tannenbaum from ‘New York in the 1970s’

Photo: Coming on strong on the dance floor at the 82 Club, 1974. © Allan Tannenbaum from ‘New York in the 1970s’

The 1970s were the height of personal liberation. Prior to the advent of Aids, sex was a space for experimentation by a new generation coming of age, reaping the freedoms of the sexual revolution and the women’s and gay liberation movements. Powered by a profound desire for pleasure, self-expression, and the need to connect, sexuality became an open space for men and women free from the heavy-handed social control of the 1950s – and the results were amazing.

Nightclubs became the go-to place to live out fantasies, find a partner to hook up with, and for a brief, shining moment there was no ‘walk of shame’ in the morning. Everyone was encouraged to let it all hang out. Performers and patrons alike led decadent lives of pure, unadulterated fun. There were sex clubs as well as sex-themed parties, and sometimes people just felt the vibe. Sometimes it seems like everyone was naked just because – something virtually unimaginable now.

As a former chief photographer of the SoHo Weekly News, Allan Tannenbaum covered New York in the 1970s like no one else. Whether visiting sex clubs like Plato’s Retreat and the Hellfire Club on assignment or covering sex-themed parties and art happenings, Tannenbaum captured the most hedonistic period in the city’s history in glorious black and white photographs.

The author of four books, including New York in the 1970s (Overlook Press) and Grit and Glamour (Insight Editions), Tannenbaum gives us a taste of the libertines living the life, as comfortable with their bodies as they were with their lust. Here, at the intersection of gender and sexuality, it was a time when anything goes. Tannenbaum looks back at an era unlike any other, reflecting on the power of youth culture to change the way we relate to each other – and to ourselves.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Two models wear designs based on bicycle parts by Karl Lagerfeld at the “Fashion as Fantasy” exhibition at the Rizzoli Bookstore, 1975© Allan Tannenbaum from ‘New York in the 1970s’

Categories: 1970s, Art, Dazed, Manhattan, Photography

Myriam Abdelaziz: After the Revolution Comes

Posted on January 10, 2018

Photo © Myriam Abdelaziz

Photo © Myriam Abdelaziz

A French photographer of Egyptian origins, Myriam Abdelaziz was born in Cairo, a city that would later be home to the Revolution of 25 of January in 2011. The Revolution was a diverse movement of demonstrations, marches, plaza occupations, riots, non-violent civil resistance, acts of civil disobedience, and labor strikes, with millions of protesters from all walks of life demanding the overthrow of the Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

As of 2014, when this interview was done, control of Egypt has gone back and forth between different groups; most recently on 3 July 2012, a coup d’Etat lead by Minister of Defense General Abdel Fattah El-Sissi reinstated power to a government of military rule. Under the military, many things have changed, not the least of which is life a palpable paranoia of photographers and journalists.

For Abdelaziz, life was no longer the same. She speaks about what it wass like to be a woman—and a photographer—on the streets of Cairo following the revolution.

Photo © Myriam Abdelaziz

Myriam Abdelaziz: “The experience of the street in Egypt is a different experience for women than anywhere else. Sometimes I feel like the street is a jungle with wild animals, some of which are nice—and some are not. As a woman, you can be a target for sexual harassment and male aggression, especially if you do not blend in.

I really like to walk on the street for pleasure, but I cannot do it here. It is out of the question. I even think twice about something as simple as running an errand.

It is a painful experience as a woman to be on the street. I make physical and mental preparations. I have to think of how to dress. I ask myself what to wear so that I become transparent, invisible. I never have the right answer. It takes a lot of energy. I won’t wear the veil. That is my right. But veil or no veil, a woman on the street will be harassed.

Egyptians people feel they have the right to address you, based on how you dress and how you walk. They feel they have the right to interfere, with words, with touch, or with looks. It has always been like that, but it has become more so ever since the Revolution. Without police, people have less shame to sexually harass a woman. This behavior gets taught from generation to generation, as I see young boys learn it from teenagers and adult men.

Men have a totally different experience of the street. No one looks at them. No one talks to them. No one cares. But for a woman, having to go out is a task. It is not joyful. I cannot simply “go for a walk” as I do in New York. When you are on the street, you want to get into a car as fast as you can. Cairo is not a city to walk in. Its sidewalks are in bad shape and are becoming the territory of various vendors taking the supposedly pedestrian space. It is so hectic that you take a car, and then there is tons of traffic…

Photo © Myriam Abdelaziz

When I am on the street, I look serious. I do not smile. I avoid eye contact. I try to make myself transparent. I walk fast like if I am on a mission, avoid interacting unless I have to. My body language is closed so people don’t notice me. I just try to blend in as much as I can.

As a woman documenting the street, you are subject to another kind of harassment. People will question you, ask you who you are, why you are taking photographs, what you are going to do with them. It’s a constant stream of questions, and soon you are surrounded by ten people questioning you, almost always men. They won’t give up until they get the answer they are looking for.

People were very happy about the coverage of the Revolution in the beginning of 2011. But events have changed, and now journalists are getting arrested. After the Al Jazeera scandal, the state TV started saying that the foreign media lies.

My experience in Egypt as a woman photographer shooting the streets, shooting anything and everything, has had an effect on me personally: it has turned me off the streets. Emotionally and practically, it’s just too complicated and too hectic. I can no longer photograph what I want. I can’t produce what I want to produce.

After the Revolution, I started photographing graffiti instead of people. Graffiti was new, and also photographing it, I had less interaction with other people and less questions were raised. But recently I was in Alexandria working on a project, and I wanted to take a photograph of a poster including Marilyn Monroe on the street. Immediately, I was spotted by two police officers who demanded I prove to them that I am not a journalist. How can I prove that? They were really scaring me. I thought they were going to arrest me but they let me go.

In terms of creativity, working in a stressful environment is not the kind of spirit for me. It has slowly turned me off the street. I have a lot of respect for the women who still do it. Photographing what is happening on the streets should be a pleasure, but it isn’t for me anymore.”

Photo © Myriam Abdelaziz

Photo © Myriam Abdelaziz

Categories: Africa, Art, Photography

Teresa Engle: An Afternoon in Arles with Robert Mapplethorpe and Sam Wagstaff

Posted on January 10, 2018

Photography Teresa Engle, courtesy of Daniel Cooney Fine Art

When you think of Robert Mapplethorpe, powerful images come to mind: the purity of his nudes and flowers, the precise lighting and printing of his work and, perhaps most recognisably, the transgression of boundaries that he boldly took. You may remember Mapplethorpe as a beautiful young man whose brief existence on Earth forever changed the way we think about the spaces where art, photography, and pornography intersect and unfold.

While many know his work, few knew the man himself, the person behind the bullwhip. Teresa Engle is one of those who had the chance to spend private time with Mapplethorpe as his career reached stratospheric heights in the art world. In July 1981, Engle was fresh out of college, just getting her bearings in the world, completing a year-long darkroom internship with Lucien Clergue in Arles, France. Although she had studied photography, was coming to realise her true calling was that of a printer.

Mapplethorpe has come to town to show his work at the annual Rencontres d’Arles photography festival. Engle first met him when he dropped by the Clergue studio, but the forces of fate had them cross paths once more, while Mapplethorpe was lunching at Place du Forum. This chance encounter led to an unexpected connection of a most profound kind, one that resulted in the opportunity for Engle to photograph Mapplethorpe and Sam Wagstaff, his benefactor, before they left Arles.

Engle’s portraits from this encounter will be on view in An Afternoon in Arles: Photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe and Sam Wagstaff at Daniel Cooney Fine Art, New York, (January 11 – February 24, 2018). Here, she remembers the hope and inspiration that Mapplethorpe provided her in the formative years of her career, and what it’s like to photograph one of the world’s top photographers.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Photography Teresa Engle, courtesy of Daniel Cooney Fine Art

Categories: 1980s, Art, Photography

Marc H. Miller and Bettie Ringma: Amsterdam Polaroids

Posted on January 9, 2018

Bar girl Nettie at Cafe Mascotte. Photography © Marc H. Miller and Bettie Ringma.

Fifi, the French bar girl at the Mexican Saloon. Photography © Marc H. Miller and Bettie Ringma.

In spring 1979, Bettie Ringma and Marc H. Miller moved from New York’s Lower East Side to Amsterdam. The newly arrived couple had already become known on New York’s downtown art scene, taking “Paparazzi Self-Portraits” with the new Polaroid SX-70 instamatic camera, and giving the world a taste for instant gratification.

In search of a way to support themselves in a new city, they remembered a photographer hustling Polaroid portraits at Coney Island and decided to test the waters. “We tried first at Zandvoort Beach but it was too much work,” Miller recalls. “The sand was potentially deadly for the camera so we moved to the nightclubs and it clicked right away.

”For next two years, they made the rounds five or six nights a week, shooting anywhere from 30 to 100 portraits a night of locals at old-school bruin cafés, Turkish cafés, soccer bars, gay bars, discos, red-light district bars, and tourist traps. They describe the portraits as “tronies,” comparing them to 17th-century tavern paintings by artists like Adriaen Brouwer who painted typological portraits very similar in spirit.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

At the Turkish bar Cascade. Photography © Marc H. Miller and Bettie Ringma.

Bar girl with live snake at Chez Tony. Photography © Marc H. Miller and Bettie Ringma.

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Huck, Photography

Grant Ellis: Bless Your Heart

Posted on January 5, 2018

Photo: © Grant Ellis from Bless Your Heart, Kris Graves Projects

Formed over thousands of years of river flooding, the Mississippi Delta is an alluvial plain filled with dense, swampy jungles of cane, gum, and cypress. Early imperialists recognised the value of the land and began to clear it, draining the swamps, razing the forests, and building communities using slave labour.

Today, the region is one of the poorest, most undereducated and malnourished areas of the nation – yet it is also a place where creativity has flourished despite (or perhaps because of) rough conditions. The Blues was born in the Delta, and from its humble beginnings it went on to become of the most influential genres of contemporary music, giving birth to both rock and soul music. Add to this the literary legends hailing from the region, including William Faulkner, Walker Perry, and Tennessee Williams.

Hailing from the town of Cleveland, Mississippi, local photographer Grant Ellis spent the summer of 2014 creating a portrait of the Delta for Bless Your Heart, a limited edition from Kris Graves Projects. “I wanted to document what I saw in a place that reminded me of home,” Ellis explains.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Photo: © Grant Ellis from Bless Your Heart, Kris Graves Projects

Categories: Art, Books, Huck, Photography

Andres Serrano: Torture

Posted on January 3, 2018

Photo: “Fatima”, was Imprisoned and Tortured in Sudan, 2015. 60 x 50 inches. © Andres Serrano, courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery.

Last August, the unthinkable occurred. Just as the very first civil case involving CIA torture was about to go to trial, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced a settlement in the lawsuit against two psychologists, James Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen, who designed and implemented the agency’s brutal program.

The ACLU brought the lawsuit on behalf of Suleiman Abdullah Salim, Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, and the family of Gul Rahman, who froze to death in a secret CIA prison. The three men were tortured and experimented on using methods developed by Mitchell and Jessen. Although the full terms of the settlement agreement are confidential, the outcome shows that those who engage in torture on behalf of the United States government can and will be held responsible.

Mitchell and Jessen have a sordid history in government-sponsored torture. In 2005, they founded a company that the CIA contracted to run its entire torture program and were paid $81 million for their services over several years. The psychologists tortured prisoners themselves, trained CIA personnel in their methods, and supplied interrogators to the agency’s secret “black site” prisons.

Until this historic win, every lawsuit against the CIA torture program had been dismissed at initial stages because lawyers for the government argued that letting the cases proceed would reveal state secrets. But not this time. Not only was the CIA forced to release secret records, but the doctors and high-ranking CIA officials Jose Rodriguez and John Rizzo had to testify about torture during depositions.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: Art, Feature Shoot, Photography

Lilla Szasz: Daughters

Posted on January 3, 2018

When we think of juvenile delinquency, we usually imagine teenage boys taking out their rage on the world. But what of the girls who have turned to crime: the teen who stabs her father to death? The thief, the prostitute, or the burglar? Hungarian photographer Lilla Szasz sought them out for her series, Daughters, a portrait of teens aged 14-18 living in one of Budapest’s oldest correctional institutions.

“I was working on a larger project on women living in public shelters observing how they live together as a community in different stages of their lives,” Szasz recalls. “In 2005 I was invited to participate in a group exhibition examining the female identity, exploring issues, and bringing to bring to light questions that are as yet unanswered. The organisers asked me to make new work for the show, so I paged through the phone register looking for an idea. This is how I discovered the correctional facility. I was curious and contacted them.”

Read the Full Story at Huck

Categories: Art, Huck, Photography, Women

Huck Chooses the Most Popular Photo Stories of 2017

Posted on January 1, 2018

Constantine Manos: American Color

From the ’90s through to the ’00s, Magnum photographer Constantine Manos travelled across the sunshine state, capturing the life, love and surreal, sun-soaked style of its local residents. Read the full story.

Categories: Art, Huck, Photography

Dazed Selects the Best Photo Stories of 2017

Posted on December 27, 2017

Arlene Gottfried with Midnight, courtesy of powerHouse Books

The Photos That We Needed to See This Year

I am thrilled to announce that Dazed has chosen three features I wrote for their top 10 list of the best photo stories of 2017. The stories include my tribute to Arlene Gottfried, a tribute to the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire as photographed by Brian David Stevens, and my conversation with Ryan McGinley that was easily two decades in the making. Each feature I’ve written for the site has been a true labor of love, and I’m delighted to have had so many amazing conversations this year. As I always say, the best part of writing is listening.

La Ventana. Photography Arlene Gottfried, courtesy of powerHouse Books.

How Arlene Gottfried Photographed NYC’s Truest Self

Arlene Gottfried was fascinated with New York and turned it into her life’s work to capture its true character. More focused on the person on the street corner than someone on a stage, Gottfried documented her adopted home up until her death at 66 from complications from breast cancer. In a touching tribute, her friends and art family paid tribute to her spirit. Read the full story at Dazed.

Ryan McGinley Talks Coming Full Circle

Ryan McGinley’s polaroids are notorious, having captured the hedonistic essence of New York’s Downtown scene in the early 90s. Two decades on, with the release of a book and an exhibition which showed the seminal photographs that made him famous in 2003, we caught up with the photographer to reflect on his early works and gauge some advice. Read the full story at Dazed.

Photo: Copyright Brian David Stevens

A Touching Photo Tribute to Ensure We Don’t forget Grenfell

On 14 June 2017, fire engulfed Grenfell Tower, a 24-storey tower in London. It would take over 60 hours to fully extinguish it, within which 71 people would have lost their lives and many more their homes. The government’s response was shambolic and to this day, Grenfell victims and families, alongside Londoners, don’t have the answers they need. In the days following the fire, photographer Brian David Stevens took his camera to the streets to capture the many memorials that appeared in the hopes that we will never forget this terrible, tragic moment. Read the full story at Dazed.

Categories: Art, Dazed, Photography