Posts from the “Books” Category

How Danny Lyon Became the Defining Photographer of America’s Outsiders

Posted on May 10, 2024

Few artists are willing to risk it all, except those who know no other way to exist. Photographer and filmmaker Danny Lyon inherited the spirit of rebellion and resistance from his mother, who regaled him with heroic tales of her brothers’ fearless crusade against the Tsar in the Russian and Bolshevik Revolutions of the early 20th century. As a young boy growing up in Queens, New York, Lyon would lie in bed at night and dream of seeing the world – never knowing his destiny was inextricably bound to history, art, and film.

Now 82, Lyon charts his extraordinary journey in the new book, This is My Life I’m Talking About (Damiani), a picaresque memoir that reveals his natural gifts for storytelling. Like his photographs, Lyon’s prose is electric, poetic, and filled with explosive details, bringing readers into the middle of the action before roaring off to the next episode. The stories move with the same intense pace with which he worked, crisscrossing the country on his red Triumph motorcycle during the 1960s.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

*Danny Lyon. Susan Measles and Nancy Weiss.*

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, AnOther, Art, Books, Photography

Sarah Rose Smiley: Coming Home – Milk, Honey, Healing

Posted on November 1, 2021

*Coming Home: Milk, Honey, Healing © Sarah Rose Smiley and Taewee Kahrs*

Anyone who has survived trauma knows all too well that the healing process is non-linear; it moves like a circle, going around and around again in a cycle that can sometimes feel like it is spiraling out of control. For many sexual assault survivors, social stigmas and victim-blaming cause them to retreat into a state of isolation that further harms the healing process.

With the understanding that photography can be a therapeutic tool, American photographer Sarah Rose Smiley and collaborator Taewee Kahrs — both sexual assault survivors — created the project “Coming Home: Milk, Honey, Healing“. In drawing from their own experiences, they have created a series of intimate images of vulnerability, pain, loss, joy, and triumph that reflect their inner states and disrupt the buttoned-down images of survivors that mainstream media has constructed as “respectable” in order to make themselves visible to the people who need to see them most — other survivors struggling to heal themselves.

“Photography has always been a therapeutic tool and survival skill because it gave me an outlet when hard things were happening in my life,” says Smiley. “It showed me a type of world-building and laid the foundation for storytelling combined with social justice to share my experiences and those of others in a way that wasn’t speaking for them, but rather uplifting them.”

Read the Full Story at Blind

Categories: Art, Books, Exhibitions, Photography, Women

Guns, Drugs and Rock & Roll: The Tumultuous Life of Jim Marshall

Posted on October 29, 2021

*John Coltrane, in his backyard in Queens New York at sunset, 1963 © Jim Marshall Photography LLC*

American photographer Jim Marshall died peacefully in his sleep in 2010 at the age of 74 — probably the least likely end to a tumultuous life fueled by guns, drugs, and rock & roll. A natural born provocateur, Marshall understood the power of art to transform our lives. In his hands, the camera became a tool for activism, a recorder of history, and a means to salvation.

Whether photographing Johnny Cash during his historic San Quentin and Folsom prison concerts during the 1960s or traveling with Joan Baez on voter registration drives through the South during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Marshall was anchored in his work. Photography gave him purpose, put him in community, and was a way to show love — things that sometimes slipped away when he found himself alone.

In those moments, Marshall looked for ways to escape, his efforts to self-medicate often snowballing into catastrophic acts of self-harm. “A lot of creative people get really stuck in addiction because they are so sensitive,” says photographer Amelia Davis, Marshall’s longtime assistant and sole beneficiary of Marshall’s estate. “They connect with people on such a human level that they want to numb themselves out because it is overwhelming, especially when you are doing it 24/7 like Jim. Photography was his life so when there was downtime, he started feeling all these things and it was too much for him.”

Read the Full Story at Blind

*Jimi Hendrix filming Janis Joplin backstage, Winterland San Francisco, 1968 © Jim Marshall Photography LLC*

*Monk Family, NYC, 1963 © Jim Marshall Photography LLC*

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Art, Blind, Books, Music, Photography

Larry Racioppo: Coney Island Baby

Posted on October 29, 2021

*Larry Racioppo. Palm Reading sign and the Thunderbolt rollercoaster, 1978.*

With its beach, boardwalk, and amusement park, Coney Island has long been the perfect escape from the stress of everyday life. South Brooklyn native Larry Racioppo and his extended family reveled in the pleasures of “America’s Playground” during his youth and teen years.

In the late 1960s, Racioppo enrolled in VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) and traveled to rural California, where he served two and a half years. He returned home in November 1970, with the dream of becoming a photographer.

In early 1971, Racioppo and a friend drove out to Coney Island to revisit his childhood stomping grounds — only to discover “Electric Eden” was on the brink of collapse. The once bustling boardwalk empire had become a ghost town. Abandoned buildings, burned out lots, neglect, disrepair, and white supremacist graffiti had brought seaside paradise to a standstill.

“Seeing the physical decline in my neighborhood and the city in general saddened me,” says Racioppo. “When I went to Coney Island I was struck by its emptiness. I saw that some attractions like the Tilyou Theater were closed not for the winter but for good.”

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Larry Racioppo. Young Boy in the Arcade, 1979.*

*Larry Racioppo. Stauch’s Baths with WARRIORS graffiti, 1979.*

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Brooklyn, Huck, Photography

Mel D. Cole: American Protest – Photographs 2020–2021

Posted on October 25, 2021

During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Black American photographer Mel D. Cole took to the streets of New York to photograph the world as it transformed before his very eyes. Then George Floyd was murdered and everything changed.

As the history’s largest Civil Rights movement took root, Cole started following Justice for George Floyd for updates on Black Lives Matter protests in New York. Social media quickly became the nexus for community, with feeds popping up nationwide to spread the word on local rallies, food banks, and other collective actions.

Recognizing that “this is not a moment, it’s a movement,” Cole devoted himself to documenting protests around the country. He traveled to cities including Minneapolis, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Richmond, and Houston to bear witness as people from all walks of life took to the streets to demand justice.

“The movement needed someone like myself and my fellow photographers, videographers, and journalist to be out there, not afraid of the police. Protesters have to be fearless. You have to be out there and do it every single day,” says Cole.

Read the Full Story at Huck

Categories: Art, Books, Photography

Black Is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Brathwaite

Posted on October 21, 2021

*wame Brathwaite, Grandassa Models at the Merton Simpson Gallery, New York, ca. 1967.*

While Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used nonviolence to push for Civil Rights and Malcolm X embraced the ethos of Black Nationalism to fight injustice in the United States, Brooklyn-born photographer Kwame Brathwaite turned to the teachings ofPan-Africanism and Marcus Garvey to introduce the “Black Is Beautiful” movement in the 1960s.

Rejecting the standards imposed by Western cultural hegemony, Brathwaite and his brother Elombe Brath embraced African aesthetics, creating Grandassa Models in Harlem and Naturally 62, a fashion show that set the groundwork for a global revolution in fashion and beauty. With the introduction of “Black Is Beautiful,” the brothers helped to popularize natural hair, a full range of skin tones, and African styles across the diaspora.

“I have been called ‘The Keeper of Images,’” Brathwaite writes in Black Is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Brathwaite, selections from which are currently on view in a major museum tour across the United States. “My task has been to document creative powers throughout the diaspora—not only in our Black artists musicians, athletes, dancers, models, and designers, but in all of us….I have often been asked how I was granted so much access as a photographer. It was the fact that people trusted me to get it right, to tell the truth in my work.”

Read the Full Story at Blind

*Kwame Brathwaite, Marcus Garvey Day Parade, Harlem, ca. 1967*

*Man smoking in a ballroom, Harlem, ca. 1962.*

Categories: 1960s, Art, Blind, Books, Exhibitions, Fashion, Manhattan, Music, Photography

Helen Levitt: In the Street

Posted on October 21, 2021

*Helen Levitt. New York, 1940 © Film Documents LLC Courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne*

Hailing from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, Helen Levitt (1913–2009) was a New York original. The daughter of Russian Jewish émigrés, Levitt rose to become one the greatest street photographers of the twentieth century.

“In a genre dominated by men at the time, Levitt created an outstanding body of work that spans more than six decades and encompasses images, films and books,” says Anna Dannemann, Senior Curator at The Photographers’ Gallery, who collaborated with curator Walter Moser and the Albertina Museum in Vienna, on the new exhibition, Helen Levitt: In the Street.

The exhibition, along with the new book Helen Levitt, offer a look at street life in working class communities around New York, which she began photographing in 1936 after meeting Henri Cartier-Bresson. Drawn to the spectacle of everyday life, Levitt embraced the passion and pathos of the community — a time when kids transformed the streets into their playground.

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Helen Levitt. New York, 1982 © Film Documents LLC Courtesy Galerie Thomas Zander, Cologne*

Categories: Art, Books, Exhibitions, Huck, Manhattan, Photography

Gianfranco Gorgoni: Land Art Photographs

Posted on October 20, 2021

*Gianfranco Gorgoni, Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, Rozel Point, Great Salt Lake, Utah, 1970, 2013*.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the avant-garde turned its back on the “ruthless commercialization” of art in America, understanding that the commodification of the object was driven by business above all. Determined to make work that could defy the system while simultaneously offering a space for cultural critique, the land art movement was born. Artists including Christo and Jeanne Claude, Robert Smithson,Nancy Holt, Walter De Maria, and Michael Heizer transformed the natural landscape into extraordinary spectacles that combined elements of installation, sculpture, and architecture.

In 1970, 29-year-old Italian photographer Gianfranco Gorgoni (1941–2019) ventured into the Utah desert alongside Robert Smithson, embarking on what would become his career as a “roadie, stuntman, and documentarian” as an art critic once quipped.

“For me, seeing these expanses of desert where Heizer, Smithson, and De Maria were realizing large works was an almost mystic experience,” said Gorgoni, whose documentation of the movement is chronicled in the new book and exhibition Gianfranco Gorgoni: Land Art Photographs. “Getting lost in those parched, sandy stretches, there were incredible places; more than the work itself, the place where the work was situated mattered.”

Read the Full Story at Blind

*Gianfranco Gorgoni, Ugo Rondinone’s Seven Magic Mountains, near Jean Dry Lake, Nevada, 2016*.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Art, Blind, Books, Exhibitions, Photography

Chas Gerretsen: Apocalypse Now: The Lost Photo Archive

Posted on October 20, 2021

*Chas Gerretsen. Pestering the Prisoner Children on top of bamboo cage. Martin Sheen as prisoner and Marlon Brando, Kurtz Compound.*

Growing up, Dutch photographer Chas Gerretsen noticed a glaring discrepancy between the stories his father told him about World War II and the Hollywood movies he saw. “To find answers about what war is really like, I had to go there and experience it,” he says.

In the 1960s, Gerretsen traveled to Vietnam, realized the benefit of having a press card, and secured a job a cameraman for UPI television news. A month later he went freelance, selling film stories to ABC. After finding a Browning 9mm pistol in the field after a firefight, Gerretsen traded it with UPI photographer Dana Stone for a Nikon F camera with a 105mm lens.

Gerretsen documented the war across Vietnam until 1969, when the fighting began to slow down. After returning home, people asked him what war was like. “When I told them what I’d seen and experienced, they would not believe me, because they’d read the newspaper or saw on television the propaganda of the day and that was the ‘truth’ for them.”

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Chas Gerretsen. Blowing Bubbles Amidst Enemy Kia. Behind the scenes: Kurtz Compound.*

*Chas Gerretsen. Mr. Clean with MG0 Machine Gun. Laurence Fishburne Do Lung Bridge.*

Categories: 1970s, Art, Books, Huck

Namsa Leuba: Crossed Looks

Posted on October 13, 2021

*Namsa Leuba. HeiHere, from the series Illusions, 2019.*

In 2011, Namsa Leuba traveled to Guinea Conkary, her mother’s ancestral hometown, to embark upon Ya Kala Ben (Guinean for “Crossed Looks”), her first long-term photography project that explored “the representation of Africa identity in the Western imagination. As a Guinean-Swiss woman born and raised in the West, Leuba was neither “either/or” but both at the same time. Standing on the outside, rather than in the center of her respective cultures, gave her a wholly original vantage point, one that has informed her photography practice over the past decade.

“My Swiss heritage gave me an aesthetic sensibility for making pictures, and my African heritage and ancestors gave me a spiritual form for my work,” Leuba tells Dazed. “Depending on where we are situated in the world, we can have different perceptions. With photography was can say much more than a thousand words. It’s the perfect medium for me. My pictures are not the reality you know but expressions of my imagination.”

Liberated from constructs of rational thought, Leuba moves gracefully between the liminal space of fiction and fact, creating fantastical photographs that combine elements of documentary, fashion, and performance with singular aplomb. With publication of her first monograph, Crossed Looks (Damiani) and first solo exhibition at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, Leuba brings together five major bodies of personal work made over the past decade in Guinea, Benin, Nigeria, South Africa, and Tahiti, as well as selections of commercial and editorial work.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

*Namsa Leuba. Untitled I, from the series Cocktail, 2011.*

*Namsa Leuba. Mamiwata, from the series Weke, 2017.*

Categories: Africa, Art, Books, Dazed, Photography

Meryl Meisler: Lost & Found: Bushwick

Posted on October 10, 2021

*Meryl Meisler. The School Yard Fence Face to Face Palmetto St., Bushwick, May 1983.*

When American photographer Meryl Meisler arrived in Bushwick, Brooklyn, for a job interview at I.S. 291 Roland Hayes in December 1981 she was shocked at the state of the neighborhood.

“I got out of the subway and everything was boarded up or burned down. It looked like there was a war going on but this was a quiet time,” she recalls. “I thought to myself, ‘It’s a week before Christmas and there’s a job opening? Maybe the other art teacher was killed.’”

Meisler, who had previously been a hostess in Manhattan’s famous go-go bars, arrived at the junior high school on Palmetto Street. The school stood at the edge of an area that had been destroyed by a devastating fire that wiped out 23 buildings that occurred just one week after the infamous 1977 blackout unleashed a wave of arson and looting across the community.

Four years later, Bushwick remained in dire straights with 45% of the population living below the poverty level. “I later found out it had one of the highest vacancy rates in the city — people were leaving,” says Meisler.

Read the Full Story at Huck

*Meryl Meisler. Boyz To Men Palmetto St., Bushwick, October 1982.*

*Meryl Meisler. Knickerbocker Ave., Bushwick, Brooklyn, June 1982*

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