Posts from the “Art” Category

DonChristian Jones: Volvo Truck

Posted on June 17, 2021

Decades before Will Smith immortalised his hometown in the opening bars of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, the sound of Philadelphia has helped to shape the sonic landscape of global pop culture. Half a century ago, the iconic dance/music television show Soul Train kicked off its 35-year run, which feature MFSB’s“T.S.O.P. (The Sound of Philadelphia)” as its theme song. “People all over the world, let’s get it on, it’s time to get down,” The Three Degrees crooned over a disco-inflected beat, letting folks know it was time to get up off the sofa and move your feet.

Over the next decade Philly Soul, as it was popularly known, would redefine R&B, disco, and funk as luminaries like the O’Jays, Teddy Pendergrass, and Patti LaBelle released classic records that would soon become the backbone of the newly emerging art form known as hip hop. By the time the 90s came around, the 70s was back in vogue as Gen Xers reveled in the sweet nostalgia of youth, bringing back bellbottoms, platform shoes, and “Lady Marmalade” with equal aplomb.

At the same time, a new generation of millennials were creating memories of their very own, absorbing the smells, textures, colours, and sounds of 90s culture into the foundation of their very selves. “One’s period is when one is very young,” fashion doyenne Diana Vreeland sagely observed in her 1984 memoir D.V., going on to note how each period casts a long shadow in its wake. Shaped by the people, places, and times in which we live, our aesthetic sensibilities often reflect the profound impressions were received as youth.

“For me, the 90s in Philadelphia felt very much a Chocolate City,” says African-American musician and artist DonChristian Jones, who will present Volvo Truck, on June 17 and 18 as part of The Shed’s Open Call commission series in New York. A love letter to his mother and four aunts who raised him, the original hour-long album and immersive sculptural installation brings together Jones’ genre blending gifts that situate hip hop firmly within the canon of fine art.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Categories: 1990s, Art, Dazed, Music, Photography

Chester Higgins: The Indelible Spirit

Posted on June 17, 2021

*Chester Higgins. Early morning coffee, Harlem, 1974.*

While working at The Campus Digest, the Tuskegee Institute student newspaper, in the late 1960s, Chester Higgins visited the studio of photographer P.H. Polk and was struck by his powerful portraits of Black Americans made in the 1930s.

“The countenance of the people in Polk’s pictures made me pause,” says Huggins, who hails from the small farming community of New Brockton, Alabama and recognized the archetypes immortalized in these works. “These pictures existed because Polk understood and appreciated the dignity and character of people.”

Knowing he couldn’t afford to commission Polk to do the same for the people of New Brockton, Higgins seized upon an idea and asked if he might borrow Polk’s camera to learn how to make photographs. “He studied me, then finally said, ‘If you’re fool enough to ask me that request, I’m going to be fool enough to help you.’”

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Chester Higgins. Looking for Justice, Civil Rights Rally, Montgomery, Alabama, 1968.*

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Exhibitions, Huck, Photography

Cammie Toloui: 5 Dollars for 3 Minutes

Posted on June 16, 2021

In 1990, radical feminist musician and artist Cammie Toloui took a job working at the Lusty Lady, San Francisco’s famous women-owned strip club, to pay her way through San Francisco State University, where she was pursuing a degree in photojournalism. Seizing the opportunity to document a world few knew, Cammie turned the camera on her customers inside the ‘Private Pleasures’ booth, creating an extraordinary series of portraits and journal entries collected in the new book 5 Dollars for 3 Minutes (Void, July 2021).

“Stripping is the patriarchy and capitalism laid bare — the intersection of the two in your face,” Cammie says. “The men felt like they had the power because they’re standing there with a lot of bills, and we’re on the other side of the glass like, ‘How do I get it?’ I think that that’s what makes the pictures so compelling — you’re looking behind the curtain, and the Wizard of Oz is just this dude who looks a little needy.”

As a member of the punk band, the Yeastie Girlz, Cammie saw sex work as a natural extension of her “pussycentric” persona. “We’d talk about things that seem radical, even in a punk club,” she recalls. “We would get on stage with a speculum and show women how to give themselves a self-examination or talk about our period — all the things that made boys really squirm. It wasn’t that big a jump for me to perform in a strip club. I wanted to be as punk as possible, and at the time, that was where the really wild girls went.”

Read the Full Story at i-D

Categories: 1990s, Art, Books, i-D, Photography

Sara Cwynar: Glass Life

Posted on June 16, 2021

*Sara Cwynar, Tracy (Pantyhose), 2017, from Glass Life (Aperture, 2021) © Sara Cwynar*

The Pictures Generation of the 1970s ushered in a new era of photography, one that helped catapult its prominence within the contemporary art world, as artists took up the camera to explore the intersection between identity, iconography, and ideology in American culture. Half a century later, digital technology has democratized the production and proliferation of images, creating a veritable deluge of visual effluvia. Surrounded by screens big and small, we are constantly reading and reacting to images of all types, subtly and substantially reshaping our perceptions of ourselves and modern life.

In her 2019 book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, author Shoshana Zuboff introduces the term “glass life” to describe the ways in which data-driven technology operates, insidiously infiltrating itself through convenience while simultaneously eroding significant social bonds and boundaries including privacy, intimacy, and self-determination. “The greatest danger is that we come to feel at home in glass life or in the prospect of hiding from it,” Zuboff warns. “Both alternatives rob us of the life-sustaining inwardness, born in sanctuary, that finally distinguishes us from the machines.”

Recognizing the crux of her work within this idea, Canada-born, New York based artist Sara Cwynar adopts this idea as the title of her new monograph, Sara Cwynar: Glass Life (Aperture), which brings together the artist’s multilayered portraits and stills from her films Soft Film (2016), Rose Gold (2017), and Red Film (2018). A kaleidoscopic examination of contemporary life that explores subjective notions of beauty, the fetishization of consumerism, and the archives that have emerged around these ideas, Glass Life deftly deconstructs the ways images relentlessly reshape perception in ways subtle and overt, becoming as pervasive and wily as words themselves.

Read the Full Story at Blind

*Sara Cwynar, Tracy (Cézanne), 2017, from Glass Life (Aperture, 2021) © Sara Cwynar*

Categories: Art, Blind, Books, Photography, Women

Khalid Hadi: Disasters of War

Posted on June 15, 2021

No invading nation has ever conquered Afghanistan — not even the United States, which boasts a military budget of $721.5 billion for 2020 alone. On April 13, President Biden announced the nation would withdraw troops by the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, bringing to an end the country’s longest war on foreign soil. Despite the fact that Afghanistan ranks 169 out of 189 on the United Nations Human Development Index, the rugged mountainous nation has held its own against the U.S., which deployed almost 800,000 troops in a war that cost an estimated $2 trillion. “We have won the war and America has lost,” Taliban’s shadow mayor in the Baikh district told the BBC.

The money, military, and manpower of global empires are simply no match for the people of Afghanistan, a grim truth the British Empire and the Soviet Union discovered for themselves in the 19th and 20th centuries respectvely. Rudyard Kipling recognized as much, penning the poem “The Young British Soldier” in 1895, advising in the final verse: “When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, / And the women come out to cut up what remains, / Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains / An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.”

But what of the cost of defending oneself from attack, of standing up to trespass and maintaining sovereignty of the land? This is a history of trauma and survival rarely given its proper due in the West. But American photographer Edward Grazda, who has documented Afghanistan since 1980, understands those who lived to tell the tale must be heard. With the publication of the new book, Disasters of War (Fraglich), Grazda brings together the portraits Afghan photographer Khalid Hadi made between 1992-1994 documenting the wounded fighters, civilians, and orphans who survived the Soviet-Afghan War.

Read the Full Story at Blind

*Mullah Akond Foundation for victims of the Soviet-Afghan War. Kandahar, 1990s*

Categories: 1990s, Art, Blind, Books, Photography

Ming Smith: Evidence

Posted on June 9, 2021

*Ming Smith. Grace Jones, Studio 54 (New York), 1970s.*

Throughout her five-decade career, Ming Smith has broken through boundaries she has faced as a Black American artist coming of age during the Civil Rights Movement. Born in Detroit, raised in Columbus, Ohio, and educated at Howard University in Washington D.C., Smith moved to New York in the 1970s to work as a model alongside pioneers including Grace Jones, Toukie Smith, and Bethann Hardison.

“I didn’t call myself a photographer, but I was constantly shooting,” the artist said in Ming Smith: An Aperture Monograph. “I was just a young person in New York trying to find my way, and I had to support myself, so I took a job as a model.”

While on a go-see, Smith heard Kamoinge members Louis Draper and Anthony Barboza discussing photography. She showed Draper her work and he invited Smith to become the first woman to join the legendary photography collective. “That was a major awakening,” Smith said.

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Ming Smith. Self-Portrait as Josephine (New York), 1986.*

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Photography

Destiny Mata: The Way We Were

Posted on June 8, 2021

Collage © Culture Crush, Inc 2021 © Destiny Mata 2021. All rights reserved

Most people do not know that one of the earliest punk groups on the scene was a Black band from Detroit named Death that helped shape the sound of a radical style that would never sell out. Although Black and Latino culture lies at the roots of punk rock, its contributions have largely gone overlooked or erased. Artists like Bad Brains, Alice Bag, and Vaginal Davis have played an integral role, creating a space for communities of color within a predominantly white realm.

Over the past five decades, punk has transcended all boundaries, spanning four generations of disaffected youth. Mexican-American photographer Destiny Mata, (aka “The People’s Photographer”) remembers attending her first Punx of Color show in a Brooklyn basement and the thrill of being surrounded by Black and Brown musicians, which she describes as “the avant garde of the disenfranchised” in her first book, The Way We Were (Culture Crush Editions).

“After that one show, I thought, ‘Get me to the next one!’” Mata writes in the book’s introduction. “I met so many amazing artists, activists, and community organizers. But they were not just putting on a show, they were also putting together benefits for grassroots organizations fighting for undocumented and trafficked migrant workers, fighting against gentrification, supporting causes around autism and hunger like the Color of Autism Foundation and Feed the People/Bronx, all in support of their own communities. In other words, that night, there was much more to it than music.”

Read the Full Story at Blind

Bronx Artists and curators Kiara Cristina Ventura, Rocio Cabrera, and Nicole Bello at Emo Night, Bronx Beer Hall, organized by the Hydropunk and Odiosas art, music, and educational collectives © Destiny Mata 2021. All rights reserved

Categories: Art, Blind, Books, Music, Photography

Black Archives Presents “Stories Untold: The Raymond Boyd Collection”

Posted on June 7, 2021

*Craig Mack Live In Chicago, 1994. Photography Raymond Boyd/Michael Ochs Archives via Getty Images*

When Notorious B.I.G. dropped “Juicy” in 1995, he took a generation back to their roots with the iconic bars: “It was all a dream / I used to read Word Up! magazine / Salt ‘N’ Pepa and Heavy D up in the limousine”. Long before hip hop went pop, it was an underground scene shaped by local artists like Chicago photographer Raymond Boyd.

Growing up, Boyd used to page through Black-owned magazines like Ebony and Jet, marveling at pictures of the Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder, and Diana Ross – whose songs were sampled by hip hop artists he would later photograph. Reading their stories, Boyd was enthralled by tales of struggle and triumph against the odds. “It wasn’t so much gossip,” Boyd recalls. “You read about how they grew up, built their careers, artists who inspired them, how they set up their rehearsals and stage performances. That helped me to learn about them.”

oyd took up photography after his mother gave him a Kodak pocket camera when he graduated high school. Drawn to the local music scene, Boyd frequented local clubs and concerts, making photographs. His enthusiasm caught the eye of Earl Calloway, fine art editor of the Chicago Defender newspaper, who gave Boyd a shot, and helped nurture the young talent into a photojournalist.

“Seeing the live shows just blew me away. Being in the pit in front of the stage that close the artists could look right down at you, point, and pose – that was real cool,” says Boyd. “I also got a chance to sit in front of the artists, listen to them tell their story, get a better understanding of what they went through, and watch how their facial features would change when they talked about how far they’ve come from where they first started. But once the red light goes off on the recorder, the best part of the interview comes.”

Read the Full Story at Dazed

*Bushwick Bill of Geto Boys performs in Chicago, 1990. Photography Raymond Boyd/Michael Ochs Archives via Getty Images*

*DJ Mad Mike and rapper Paris at a bookstore in Chicago, 1991 . Photography Raymond Boyd/Michael Ochs Archives via Getty Images*

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Dazed, Music, Photography

Bill Mindlin: A Silver Anniversary

Posted on June 7, 2021

On this, the 25th anniversary of photograph magazine (originally Photography In New York), The Click sat down with publisher Bill Mindlin to speak about the little magazine that could — and did — become a national treasure, the only publication of its ilk. The magazine, which features columns by Lyle Rexer, Vince Aletti, Jean Dykstra, Elisabeth Biondi, and Sarah Schmerler, among others, has become a mainstay among photography aficionados.

Says columnist Vince Aletti, “Bill is at once easy-going and focused, with a strong vision for photograph that he’s honed and grown successfully over the years. I’m glad to have been one of the early contributors and happy to still be there among a larger group of writers and a substantially beefed-up section of reviews and features. What began as essentially a listings magazine has turned into something much more essential and lively. I’m always impressed by the design and efficiency of the magazine and happy to be associated with it.”

Mr. Mindlin’s path to publisher is as eclectic as his magazine. A native of San Francisco circa the summer of love, he grew up in a working class neighborhood, went to UC Berkeley during the people’s park years and then to Columbia for grad school in industrial social welfare. “After working at one of the New York City unions for ten years, it was time for a change. So I went to Europe and ended up in Israel where I enrolled in a photography program in Jerusalem.” Quickly realizing that he had the interest, but not the talent, Mindlin began exploring the medium more in depth, studying the lives and work of photographers and learning about the history of photography.

“When I came back to the U.S. in 1986, I starting working at the Marcuse Pfeifer Gallery in Soho. Cusie was a pioneer contemporary photography dealer in the 1970s and 80s — way ahead of the times. I also briefly worked at A Photographer’s Place, a wonderful bookstore that specialized in photography.”

Mindlin got the idea for a guide while working at the gallery. “Visitors would always ask me where are the other photography shows, so I created a mimeographed list of suggested shows that I passed out. That was the genesis,” he says.

Soon, others came on board. “I had many wonderful mentors. Founding editor Ava Swartz enlightened me as to what it means to be a good writer and a good journalist; Laura Miller educated me about the elements of good design; Conrad Gleber and Bob Warhover guided me through the printing and publishing side of the business. And the late John Figueroa worked tirelessly to get it off the ground, as did A.W. Lercher, one of our first columnists,” he recalls.

“For the first issue in November/December 1988, we listed 116 photo exhibitions in New York City. The East Village was going strong; Soho was emerging as the hot new gallery district; 57^th Street and further uptown had their fair share of galleries as well as the many museums lining Fifth Avenue.”

“1989 was a pivotal year for us in that it was the 150th anniversary of photography. Every museum across the country had a major photography exhibition. It was a phenomenon. That was the convergence of attention to photography. From that year forward, a host of dealers opened galleries: Yancey Richardson, Robert Mann, Bonnie Benrubi, the list goes on. The marketplace started to boom,” Mindlin recalls.

“Flash forward to 2008. At that time we were going strong. But then the great recession happened. It was humbling. Everyone was struggling, but fortunately most of our clients managed to stay in business. We made cutbacks to survive, and people stuck with us.”

But what came out of the shock of 2008 was Mindlin’s conviction that social media was the way of the future. “I realized a digital and social media presence was critical to growing the publication and having it exposed to new audiences,” he says.

“We created a website that mirrored all the information found in the print publication; we created a Facebook page that now has over 138,000 likes, and a Twitter page with over 23,000 followers. Our latest project is a weekly e-newsletter covering the many openings, events and news of the week. Undoubtedly the most satisfying aspect of the job is our photograph team: Anthony Beale, Jean Dykstra, Fabio Cutro, Mary Ann Livchak and the folks at Meridian Printing. Working with such a dedicated and talented team has led to the success of the publication.”

Managing Editor Jean Dykstra notes, “I’ve been working with Bill at photograph, in one capacity or another, for more than fifteen years. He is incredibly dedicated, smart, and one of the most generous people I’ve ever worked with. Photograph is really his vision, and it’s a publication uniquely dedicated to covering that world — from collectors to dealers, curators, and photographers. It’s a huge pleasure to work with him.”

Associate Editor Anthony Beale, a 20-year veteran, observes, “My experience working at photograph has allowed me to stay continuously submerged in photography after getting my MFA at SVA. Over the course of 20 years, I have witnessed the field grow, transform, and expand. Back in 1988, Bill created something that was needed for photography galleries and institutions exhibiting photography. He created a resource that enthusiasts rely on for information. Working with Bill from the age of 23 to age 44 has been a gratifying and fulfilling experience.”

Mindlin concludes, “The magazine has taught me to love the word and the visual. The photo community is an amazing group: gallery owners, museum curators, publishers, and auction house specialist are among the hardest working, most committed folks. And while the field is small, the sense of camaraderie is large.”

Original Published at The Click, Summer 2014

Categories: Art, Photography

In the Gallery with: Brian Clamp

Posted on June 4, 2021

*© Peter Berlin, “Self Portrait as Urban Cowboy, “ c. 1970s, Hand-painted vintage gelatin silver print.*

The year 2000 marked a turning point for New York-based gallerist Brian Clamp. After turning 30 and receiving his MA in Critical Studies in Modern Art from Columbia University, he had reached a crossroads. “I had been working as director of Owen Gallery on the Upper East Side, and wanted to get more involved with contemporary art, photography, and working with living artists,” says Clamp. “I decided to take the plunge and start my own gallery, not fully realising what I was getting into.”

That fall, he opened ClampArt, and worked as a private dealer from his West 27th Street loft. An avid practitioner of photography, Clamp also spent time at The Camera Club of New York (now known as Baxter St), getting to know a number of photographers whose work he admired. Through these relationships, Clamp developed the foundations for the gallery program.

In early 2003, Clamp signed a lease for a commercial space on West 25th Street, just as Chelsea was becoming the center of the downtown art world. “I was able to get a ground floor space in Chelsea for my first gallery without any backing,” he says.

Read the Full Story at British Journal of Photography

*© The Estate of Peter Hujar, “Scrumbly Koldewyn and Tom Nieze, The Cockettes,” 1971, Vintage gelatin silver print, Courtesy Peter Hujar Archive.*

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, British Journal of Photography, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Photography

Meryl Meisler: New York PARADISE LOST: Bushwick Era Disco

Posted on June 3, 2021

*Meryl Meisler. Potassa de la Fayette Poised at COYOTE Hookers Ball The Copacabana, NY, NY 1977.*

In 1975, at the tender age of 23, Meryl Meisler arrived in New York City to study with legendary photographer Lisette Model. The Long Island native quickly found herself at home living amid the dazzling display of a city that evoked the refrains of Paradise Lost, John Milton’s 1667 epic poem chronicling the fall of man. Everywhere she turned, scenes of ecstasy, pandemonium and redemption unfolded with cinematic flair, beckoning her to photograph its rapturous days and nights.

In a new book and exhibition, New York PARADISE LOST: Bushwick Era Disco, Meryl chronicles the hedonistic nightlife scene of the late 1970s and pairs it with images of Bushwick in the 1980s as it struggled to recover from the plague of “benign neglect“, wherein the Federal government systemically denied financial support to Black and Brown communities nationwide.

andlords hired arsonists to torch their buildings to collect insurance payouts, prompting Howard Cosell to allegedly proclaim, “There it is ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning” during Game 2 of the 1977 World Series. Entire city blocks were reduced to rubble while abandoned buildings were boarded up. The city was cheap, run-down and dangerous — attracting the kind of fearless devotee that defines the heroic spirit of New York. Teetering along the edge of bankruptcy, $453 million in debt, the city became a cauldron of creativity, unleashing hip hop, punk, and disco before the decade ended.

“Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven,” Satan proclaims in Paradise Lost, a sentiment befitting the city’s gritty glory. In the wake of the sexual revolution and the civil rights, women’s and gay liberation movements, a new generation came of age revelling in the libertine pleasures. Clubs like Studio 54, Copacabana, GG’s Barnum Room, and Les Mouches offered the ultimate escape: a night of freedom, fantasy, and decadence.

Read the Full Story at i-D

*Meryl Meisler. Magnolia Tree, Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY 1983.*

*Meryl Meisler. Meryl’s Hand Prints on JudiJupiter on Man Wearing White, Studio 54, 1977.*

Categories: 1980s, Art, Books, Brooklyn, i-D, Manhattan, Photography