Posts from the “Books” Category

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn & Adama Delphine Fawundu: MFON

Posted on November 15, 2017

Photo: Copyright Nydia Blas

Photo: Copyright Sabriya Simon

In 1986, history was made when Jeanne Moutousammy-Ashe published Viewfinders: Black Women Photographers (Dodd Mead), the first book to showcase the history of African-American women behind the camera dating back dating back to 1866. It spanned more than a century of work, showcasing the work of artists whose work had gone largely unrecognised in photography, which the author described to the Chicago Tribune as a traditionally racist and sexist industry.

The book spoke to Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, a young photographer from Brooklyn, who wanted to see more. As years passed, nothing occurred – so Barrayn took it upon herself to be the change she wanted to see in the world. In 2006, she and photographer Adama Delphine Fawundu put together a prototype for the project that would become MFON: Women Photographers of the African Diaspora.

MFON is a biannual journal that will launch with a book of the same name featuring work of 100 women from across the diaspora, including Ming Smith, Delphine Diallo, Émilie Régnier, Lauri Lyons, Noelle Théard, and Dr. Deborah Willis, who wrote the introduction. MFON is named for Mmekutmfon “Mfon” Essien (1967 – 2001) a visionary Nigerian-American photographer who died from breast cancer the day before her photographs from The Amazon’s New Clothes, opened at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in the acclaimed exhibition Committed to the Image: Contemporary Black Photographers.

With the spirit of Mfon guiding their journey, Barrayn and Fawundu persevered, creating the book through a grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council and crowdsourcing through GoFundMe. Photographers in their own right, Barrayn and Fawundu, know exactly what it takes to make great work. Together they reviewed more than 1,000 works created by women around the world, and honed their selection with precision to create a powerful look at the heart of photography through the eyes of Black women from all walks of life. From the work of 13-year-old Fanta Diop, a native of the South Bronx, to 91-year-old Mildred H. Jackson, who reflects on Harlem in the 1930s.

Barrayn and Fawundu speak with us about their experience creating MFON, spotlighting the work of six artists featured in the book whose unique perspectives and incredible styles brings fresh new visions, original ideas, and innovative thinking to the art form while simultaneously giving us an inside look at the multidimensional experiences of Black women from every corner of the globe.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Photo: Copyright Samantha Box

Photo: Copyright Hélène Amouzou

Categories: Art, Books, Photography, Women

Gregory Kramer: Drags

Posted on November 14, 2017

Photo: Fllyod. Copyright Gregory Kramer.

After paging through Small Trades, Irving Penn’s portrait series depicting skilled trades people in their work clothes, New York-based fashion photographer Gregory Kramer had an epiphany. “I woke up one morning and was like – that’s it! Let’s document the New York drag scene,” he recalls.

Kramer was inspired by the classic studio photography that Penn had mastered in the early 1950s: a full-length figure set before neutral background and softly lit with gentle lighting. Each subject was portrayed with elegance and dignity so that viewers could see the person who lay beneath the uniforms they wear. This approach resonated with Kramer who understood: underneath the wigs, the make-up, and the costumes are innovative and creative performers greater than the sum of their parts: they are groundbreaking figures whose commitment to the craft of drag has redefined the art.

Kramer called the person he knew best: Linda Simpson, a fixture on New York’s drag scene since the 1980s. Simpson was Kramer’s first subject and his entrée to the scene. Over the next year, Kramer went to work, creating a series of portraits of legends including Charles Busch, Lady Bunny, Duelling Bankheads, Sherry Vine, Flotilla DeBarge, and Tobell Von Cartier. He also made a foray into the Brooklyn scene, photographing the drags who continue to push the envelope, including cover girl Sasha Velour, winner of the latest season of RuPaul’s Drag Race.

The result is Drags (KMW Studio), a sumptuous monograph with 80s black and white portraits that will leave you breathless as you take in the full glamour and glory of New York’s finest. As a way to give back to the city that he loves, Kramer is donating his author royalties to the Ali Forney Center, which assists and protects homeless LGBTQ youth. Kramer speaks with us about his experiences making a book with the city’s groundbreaking drags.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Photo: Peppermint. Copyright Gregory Kramer.

Photo: Wang Newton. Copyright Gregory Kramer.

Categories: Art, Books, Brooklyn, Dazed, Manhattan, Photography

Albert Watson: KAOS

Posted on November 9, 2017

Photo: Road to Nowhere, Las Vegas, 2001 Edition 10 (72 x 42). Photography Albert Watson

Back in 1973, Scottish photographer Albert Watson got the call: Harper’s Bazaar wanted him to photograph the “Master of Suspense” for their holiday issue. The story was titled “Alfred Hitchcock cooks his own goose” and the assignment called for Watson to photograph the portly Brit presenting roast fowl on a serving dish. But Watson demurred and brought his own vision to bear – directing the legendary filmmaker in a series of photos depicting Hitchcock clasping an uncooked goose by the neck and throttling it with morbid elegance.

The photographs were pitch perfect and the world took note, launching Watson into the stratosphere of contemporary photography across every genre: portraiture, fashion, music, celebrity, still life, landscape, architecture, advertising, and fine art. Whether shooting Michael Jackson, Naomi Campbell, or Prince, King Tut’s artefacts, a Las Vegas dominatrix, or inmates at Angola State Prison – Watson deftly combines innovative thinking with a mastery of technique, making his work a visual symphony of rhythm, compositional harmony, and tonal melodies.

In celebration of his illustrious career, Taschen presents KAOS, an XXL collector’s edition of 1,200 signed and numbered copies that come in a clamshell box covered in faux chimpanzee fur – because, why not? Selections from the book are currently on view in an eponymous exhibition at Taschen Gallery, Los Angeles.

Watson’s ingenious approach, which includes a double exposure of Mick Jagger and a cheetah, and Michael Jackson dancing broken down into single frames, has set him apart from his contemporaries. With nearly 100 Vogue covers to his credit, Watson is still going strong at 75. What’s more, he prints all his photographs himself in his Tribeca studio. It is rare to see the hand of the artist in the photograph, but Watson understands that the process continues long after the shutter clicks. He speaks about how to master the art of photography.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Photo: Sade, London, 1992. Photography Albert Watson

Photo: Tupac Shakur, New York City, 1991. Photography Albert Watson

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

Brian “B+” Cross: Ghostnotes – Music of the Unplayed

Posted on November 2, 2017

Jay Electronica, Pyramids of Giza, Cairo, Egypt. August 2011 / Nas, Los Angeles, California, US. November 2010. Photography Brian “B+” Cross

From left to right, Beni B, Chief Xcel, and Lyrics Born at Records, downtown Sacramento, California, US. May 1995. This is the cover of “Endtroducing” by DJ Shadow. Photography Brian “B+” Cross.

French Quarter, New Orleans, Louisiana, US. August 1998 / Grand Wizard Theodore, Manhattan, New York, US. February 1996. Theodore is the first person to ever scratch a record. His hands started a revolution in music. Photography Brian “B+” Cross.

Life moves in circles, though we may not notice until the revolution is complete. In 1996, DJ Shadow released Endtroducing…, his debut studio album on Mo’ Wax Recordings, with curious photo on the cover. It showed two guys inside a record store: one in profile, the other’s face blurred – neither were DJ Shadow.

It was a scene from everyday life, the very thing you’d recognize as a fellow hip hop head. It stood out for it unpretentiousness, it’s lack of glamour and glitz. Just as hip hop was going pop, Endtroducing… was taking it back to the earliest days of the art form when the DJ was king and crate digging was everything.

Five years later, an editor at C Photography in Spain reached out to Brian “B+” Cross, the photographer who created this seminal image. They wanted to feature it in their annual. Cross agreed – then sent along more images turning their request into a 15-page spread. When it was published, David Hamrick put a Post-It note on the page. Then, in 2015, when he was the director of the University of Texas Press, he reached out to Cross to see if he had more work, thinking it could make an excellent book.

The inevitable does not need a plan; it simply arrives. Cross had been working on Ghostnotes, a collection of photographs made throughout his career, for nearly two decades. The book was conceived as a mixtape, a visual corollary to the sounds of the African diaspora that flow through hip hop, uniting generations of people from all walks of life in the rhythms of the drums, the heartbeat of the art form.

Weaving together threads the combine documentary and portrait photography, Cross guides us through a musical landscape, crafting a composition as brilliantly conceived as a work by Miles Davis. Conceptualized with “A” and “B” sides, Ghostnotes takes us on a journey around the world, brilliantly synthesizing hip hop, Jamaican dub, Brazilian samba, Ethiopian jazz, Cuban timba, and Colombian cumbia. The book features portraits of everyone from The Notorious B.I.G., Eazy-E, and Kendrick Lamar to George Clinton, Brian Wilson, and the Watts Prophets, among so many more. Cross speaks with us about his journey bringing Ghostnotes to life.

Read the Full Story at Miss Rosen

The Notorious B.I.G., Beverly Hills, California, US. April 1995. Biggie was murdered outside this building three weeks later, and there is still no plaque or monument to commemorate his death. Photography Brian “B+” Cross

Forest Lawn, Glendale, California, US. February 14th, 2006. J Dilla’s funeral. Photography Brian “B+” Cross.

Categories: 1990s, Africa, Art, Books, Bronx, Dazed, Exhibitions, Music, Photography

Laurence Rasti: There Are No Homosexuals in Iran

Posted on October 31, 2017

Photo: From There Are No Homosexuals In Iran. Photography Laurence Rasti

In February 1979, the Persian Empire came to an end. After 2,500 years of a continuous monarchy, Iran became an Islamic Republic governed by Sharia Law – making homosexuality a crime subject to the imprisonment, corporal punishment, and execution.

At its core the issue is intercourse. Any activity outside heterosexual marriage is viewed as a violation of religious law. Interestingly, transgender people are considered heterosexual and will not be persecuted if they complete gender confirmation surgery, which may be partially funded by the state. As a result, Iran ranks as second in the world, following Thailand, for gender realignment surgeries. Many gay men have been pressured by their families to become transgender – or are forced to flee the country in order to save themselves.

Many come to Denizli, an industrial city in southwest Turkey that acts as a transit zone, allowing Iranian refugees to live in a state of purgatory while they wait patiently for a visa to live in yet another country. Since the U.S. travel ban was implemented and Canada stopped accepting Iranian refugees, their circumstances are becoming increasingly dire and difficult. While homosexuality is legal in Turkey, homophobia remains an issue that all LGBTQI people must face. Although free from the Kafkaesque struggles of their native land, the Iranians must remain anonymous in order to protect themselves

It is here in Denizli that Swiss-born Iranian photographer Laurence Rasti began her work. While pursuing her BA in photography from Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne, Rasti began focusing on issues of gender and identity. As a first-generation Swiss woman, she began using photography to examine the cultural codes of both the East and the West. Between 2014 and 2016, Rasti made ten trips to the city to photograph men and women driven to hide in plain sight. By befriending the people and earning their trust, Rasti created a series of intimate portraits that were singled out for distinction to the Magnum Photography Awards 2016 by juror Amy Pereira, Director of Photography at MSNBC.

On November 4, Rasti will publish her first book There Are No Homosexuals in Iran (Edition Patrick Frey). The title was inspired by the words of former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at a speech given at Columbia University on September 24, 2007. “In Iran, we do not have homosexuals like in your country,” the then President proudly declared, failing to shed light on the circumstances that enabled him to make this claim.

Rasti shares her experiences making this work, offering insights on how to photograph invisible people with compassion, dignity, and respect.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Photo: From There Are No Homosexuals In Iran. Photography Laurence Rasti

Photo: From There Are No Homosexuals In Iran. Photography Laurence Rasti

Categories: Art, Books, Dazed, Photography

City as Canvas: Graffiti Art from the Martin Wong Collection

Posted on October 27, 2017

The Death of Graffiti by LADY PINK, 1982, acrylic on masonite, 19×22.” Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.

DUMP KOCH painted by Spin, photograph by Martha Cooper, 1982.

It began in the stacks. Sean Corcoran, Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Museum of the City of New York, came across a collection of black books Martin Wong had donated to the Museum in 1994, just five years before he would die from AIDS in San Francisco. The black books were the site of sketches and drawings, works on paper that were passed from head to head, giving writers a look at what their contemporaries were doing with marker in hand and giving them a space to contribute to the conversation.

In total, Martin Wong (1946-1999) donated 55 black books and more than 300 mixed media paintings on canvas, cardboard, paper, and plywood. The work Wong collected includes early permutations of designs that would later appear on trains and buildings throughout New York City. And though those paintings are long gone, their legacy lives on.

Opening February 4 at the Museum of the City of New York, City as Canvas: Graffiti Art from the Martin Wong Collection presents 105 works by legendary writers DAZE. DONDI, FUTURA 200, Keith Haring, LADY PINK, LEE, and SHARP among others, alongside historical photographs by Charlie Ahearn, Henry Chalfant, Martha Cooper, Jon Naar, and Jack Stewart. Paired together, the paintings, drawings, and photographs take us back to a time and a place that, though not far away at all, no longer exists in our daily lives.

It is the photographs that create the context, a context that may be difficult to imagine for those who did not live it. Trains were bombed with spray paint and marker both inside and out, as masterpieces ran the entire length of whole cars and tags decorating the interiors. This was the era of an artistic impulse made manifest as by any means necessary, of going down to the yards after dark or walking through live and dead tunnels to paint. This period in New York City history marks the creation of a style and a culture that has swept the world with anti-authoritarian delight. It was here in these black books and paintings that a new world was born, and it is here in these photographs that this world remains forever more.

Graffiti Kids, photograph by Jon Naar, 1973. ©Jon Naar

Redbird (Stay High 149) photograph by Jon Naar, 1973. ©Jon Naar

Corcoran observes, “We decided to show the Martin Wong Collection because we thought it had real cultural significance to New York’s story over the last thirty, forty years. Graffiti was such an omnipresent part of life in New York. It was loved and hated, there was no in between. Whatever you thought of it, theirs is not doubt it had an affect on the culture in general. Style writing as it is known today was born in New York and became a worldwide phenomenon.”

Accompanying the exhibition is a catalogue of the same name, published by Skira Rizzoli with the Museum of the City of New York, featuring essays by Charle Ahearn, Carlo McCormick, Sacha Jenkins, Lee Quiñones, Chris “Daze” Ellis, Aaron “Sharp” Goodstone, and Sean Corcoran. The essays create a context for Wong’s obsession for the art, an obsession that adds intimacy and understanding to his need to collect, to document, to preserve. Twenty years ago, Wong knew, intuitively, that neither he nor the graffiti of the era would be with us today. And it is in this way that “City as Canvas” is more than an exhibition of art, but it stands as a monument to an era that has come and has gone. And era that is preserved forevermore in the photographs that show what had come of these preparations for masterpieces that once dotted the subway lines and crowned Kings.

For those who once witnessed the world that lives in these photographs, City as Canvas is like a teleportation device into the past. The raw, live energy of the letterform set against a backdrop of freedom at an cost beings us back to that old school D.I.Y. vibe of the 1970s and 80s New York. And for those who missed it, the Museum exists, as a place of honor and veneration to the legacy we as New Yorkers carry forth.

First Published in L’Oeil de la Photographie
March 20, 2014

Howard the Duck Handball Court photograph by Charlie Ahearn. Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.

Lion’s Den Handball Court photograph by Charlie Ahearn. Courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York.

Martin Wong, photograph by Peter Bellamy, 1985.

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Graffiti, Photography

Meg Hewitt :Tokyo Is Yours

Posted on October 27, 2017

Photo: Meg Hewitt. Johnny, Golden Gai 2015

Photo: Meg Hewitt. Legs – after Daido, 2016

In March 2011, disaster befell Japan as the Great Earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster hit the nation in record time. Five years later, Japan’s prime minister Naoto Kan revealed that the country came within a “paper-thin margin” of nuclear destruction that would have required the evacuation of 50 million people – a feat he acknowledged was near impossible.

As this science-fiction horror story played out in real time, Australian photographer Meg Hewitt began to imagine the density of Tokyo, the feeling of being trapped as a cloud of nuclear fallout spread, and the disturbing question of whether or not to trust the government and big business. For Hewitt, thinking was not enough: she needed to experience life in Tokyo for herself.

Over a period of two years, Hewitt created a body of photographs inspired by the curious co-existence of darkness and light, trauma and innocence, death and life – which she crafted into the newly released monograph, Tokyo Is Yours. Hewitt combines the raw edge of Anders Petersen with the knowing glance of Daido Moriyama, the haunting glamour of Fritz Lang with the graphic traditions of Manga through a careful edit and sequencing that pairs unlikely moments to sublime effect.

Read the Full Story at Huck

Categories: Art, Books, Huck, Japan, Photography

Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Painting

Posted on October 19, 2017

Artwork: Eye Body, Transformative Actions For The Camera, 1963. Courtesy of Carolee Schneemann

You may remember Lady Gaga’s meat dress as something of a scene – but it doesn’t hold a candle to Meat Joy, the Carolee Schneemann happening from 1964 that inspired it. Where Gaga took an existing idea and transformed it into a publicity stunt, Schneemann invented something that had never been seen or done – and it nearly cost her life.

Picture a group of young men and women clad in their undergarments experiencing the pleasures of the flesh: of the carcasses of fish and chicken, along with sausages, touching their bare skin. Imagine being in the same room as they gathered on the floor to engage in an experience of sensuality the likes of which had never been realised before. Envision a man in the audience becoming so enraged he leaped from his seat, dragging Schneemann off to the side, and beginning to strangle her.

This happened during the Paris edition and went on until two bourgeois women jumped from their seats and fought off the attacker until he stopped. Then Schneemann got back into the happening and continued on with the knowledge that her explorations could unleash a cataclysmic storm. But Schneemann is an unstoppable force – she is freedom incarnate. Uninhibited and unafraid, she has been challenging the patriarchy by virtue of being true to herself.

Born in 1939 to a country doctor and a farm wife, Schneemann grew up close to nature, embracing the life and death cycle of the earth. When her father refused to support her decision to go to college, she won a full scholarship to study painting at Bard College, in New York, which she attended until she was expelled on the grounds of “moral turpitude.” Where others might have given up, Schneemann persevered, creating a body of work so singular and so challenging that to this day she has no equal in the field.

Her pioneering investigations into the female body, sexuality, and gender have tapped into archaic visual traditions and wrestled with social taboos, transforming Schneemann into a vessel of transgression and subversion in search of truth. In celebration, MoMA P.S. 1, New York, presents Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Painting (October 22, 2017- March 11, 2018), the first comprehensive retrospective spanning her prolific six-decade career.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Prestel has released a catalogue of the same name, while the Artists Institute has published Carolee’s Issue 02, which illustrates the ways in which other artists, advertisers, and pop culture figures have drawn heavily from her work. Schneemann speaks with us about Meat Joy as well as her career as “both image and image maker.”

Read the Story at Dazed

Artwork: Meat Joy 1964, chromogenic color print. Photo by Al Giese. From performance at Judson Church, November 16-18, 1964 New York. Courtesy of C. Schneemann and P.P.O.W, New York

Artwork: Nude on Tracks,1962-1977. Courtesy of Carolee Schneemann.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Dazed, Exhibitions, Painting, Women

Pieter Hugo: Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

Posted on October 15, 2017

Emeka, motorcyclist and Abdullahi Ahmadu Asaba, Nigeria, from the series “The Hyena & Other Men”, 2005-2007, 2007. © Pieter Hugo / Stevenson gallery, Cape Town/Johannesburg

Imagine coming of age as a white man in South Africa during Apartheid. How does the truth of your people weigh on you: does it turn you into an accomplice or does it push you into the margins of resistance? It’s a question worthy of consideration outside the frame of SA – it speaks to the nature of existence: do you stand for or against oppression?

South African photographer Pieter Hugo took to the camera to address his questions and concerns, using the medium as a means to examine, document, and subvert, creating several bodies of work that are deeply layered and resonant, charged with strength, emotion, and defiance.

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg/Prestel) beautifully presents Hugo’s most important series made over the past two decades. Here we see how Hugo inherently understood his position as a white man in South Africa and the legacy it entailed, neither shirking from, diminishing, or rationalizing the horrors of his people. Instead he took his inheritance as the opportunity to set the record straight, to stand as an outsider and from this vantage point, use the camera to speak truth to power.

Of the first series, Looking Aside, made in South African between 2003 and 2006, Hugo writes, “In this early body of work I explicitly took a confrontational stance, an attitude that is rehearsed in a lot of my subsequent work. It is an unflinching series. I wanted the intensity of my own gaze.”

That gaze was informed by two trajectories: the falsehoods of photojournalism as informed by American ideologies steeped in superficial humanism and the use of photography by the South African government as a means to control apartheid through a system of classification and separation. With these currents flowing through his mind, Hugo pointed his camera straight on, creating a series of portraits that defy romanticism, intended to discomfit and disconcert with their lack of heroicism, beauty, or pretense.

This direct approach makes use of the camera as a tool of aggression, for it forces us to look, to see, to recognize a picture of humanity that has been whitewashed, distorted, or completely denied. Whether photographing the vestiges of the Rwandan Genocide in 2004 or The Hyena & Other Men in Nigeria in 2005-2007, Hugo’s photographs are challenging and confrontational, yet courageous.

Hugo’s willingness to upend tradition was transformative. Where The Hyena & Other Men was shocking when it was first released, it has now become embedded into the fabric of fine art photography. And this is where things begin to shift, as Hugo’s work blurs the boundaries between documentary, portraiture, and fine art to create a new kind of environmental portraiture.

Obechukwu Nwoye, Enugu, Nigeria, from the series “Nollywood”, 2008-2009, 2008. © Pieter Hugo / Stevenson gallery, Cape Town/Johannesburg

Green Point Common, Cape Town, from the series “Kin”, 2006-2013, 2007. © Pieter Hugo / Stevenson gallery, Cape Town/Johannesburg

From the Wild Honey Collectors, shot in Ghana in 2005, to Nollywood, made in Nigeria in 2008-2009, we see the emergence of a new aspect to Hugo’s work. “In my development as an artist,” Hugo writes of Nollywood, “this project was the first time I really questioned the veracity of the portrait. I became aware of how one can play with portraiture, this it can be much more than just the superficial depiction of a subject.”

And so, by the time he was making Kin in South Africa between 2006-2013, and Permanent Error in Ghana in 2009-2010, everything had changed. Hugo’s portraits had entered into a new realm, one that was just as direct but less antagonistic. They were subtle and complex yet at times eerie and apocalyptic. Their humanism was neither sentimental nor idealistic; instead they captured the disturbing fact that reality is deeply unnerving.

Rooted in truth, we simply look and we observe, but it is how we react — and what we do with that reaction, that speaks of and for our character. Since seeing Hugo’s photographs made for Permanent Error, published by Prestel in 2011, I felt a shift: a purpose and a calling in my writing about photography and art.

His photographs are made inside a circle of hell. The Agbogbloshie dump, located on the outskirts of Ghana’s capital, Accra, is a wetland turned wasteland, a slum and a workplace populated by thousands of men and boys who refer to this area as Sodom and Gomorrah. This is a slum of the twenty-first century, a place that Western countries would never allow within their borders, a place that could only exist among disenfranchised—in the rice fields of Guiya, China; behind the electronics markets of Lagos, Nigeria; in the back alleys of Karachi, Delhi, and Hanoi. It is the place where pits are dug and fires burn, and in those fires, our Information Age truly leaves its mark.

The United Nations Environment Program estimates that we now produce 50 million metric tons of e-waste per year, and 6,500 tons will arrive each month at the Port of Tema, where it then finds its way on to Agbogbloshie. The workers in these poisoned pits make their living first by hauling then smashing, gutting, and burning the televisions and computers to recover copper, steel, and aluminum. The only thing green in this equation is the money being made by electronics manufacturers, whose sales are booming—despite the recession—for computer games, printers, electronic toys, MP3 players, digital cameras, GPS devices, camcorders, tablet readers, computers, and televisions.

In 2001, when the book was released, United States, New Zealand, Australia, Israel, Japan, and South Korea refuse to honor the Basel Ban Agreement, which was created in 1995 to ban the export of all forms of hazardous wastes for any reason. Of these countries, only the US refused to ratify the original 1989 United Nations treaty known as the Basel Convention, which created a full an on the export of toxic wastes for any reason from developed to developing countries.

The result of this failure is the creation of places like Agbogbloshie, where the unrelenting waves of the Information Age crash upon the shores like tidal waves. Pieter Hugo’s photographs show us the price of progress, an unquantifiable desecration of the earth and its inhabitants. This kind of inhumanity reaches a level on unconscionable ignorance that Hugo’s photographs brutally address. Baring witness to a new kind of inferno that is in its nascent stage, Hugo’s photographs stand as a testament against our complacent assumptions. “Recycling” is the chipper chatter of marketers leading the masquerade.

Permanent Error stands in dark warning and reveal the reality of our brutally consumerist lifestyle. We share this responsibility, just as we share this earth. You and me, your friends and family, all of us are the reason Agbogbloshie exists. I’ve never gotten over this and it challenges me to come to terms with not only my work as a writer but as someone complicit in the destruction of the planet.

Hugo reminds me that reality exists beyond our experience of it, and at the same time it is our responsibility to come to terms with our inheritance. To avoid and ignore, to rationalize, to pretend or play dumb is nothing more than a lie. On the path to solutions, we must first speak the truth, to ask the disturbing questions, and come to terms with our guilt. Too many get caught up in shame and blame, in a disingenuous paradigm that asserts itself to avoid responsibility.

That we don’t have the answers is rational. How could we when we can barely speak or acknowledge the truth? Hugo reminds us, the first step towards salvation is owning up, baring the burden, and transforming it through the action of redemption and salvation in the name of humanity.

Thoba Calvin and Tshepo Cameron Sithole- Modisane, Pretoria, from the series “Kin”, 2006- 2013, 2013. © Pieter Hugo / Stevenson gallery, Cape Town/Johannesburg

Categories: Africa, Art, Books, Photography

Jonas Mekas: A Dance with Fred Astaire

Posted on October 4, 2017

Jonas MekasPhotography John Lennon. Photo courtesy of Anthology Editions

At 94-years-old, Jonas Mekas is undergoing a literary renaissance. The esteemed filmmaker, poet, and artist is publishing five books of work, most notably A Dance with Fred Astaire (Anthology Editions), a visual autobiography comprised of anecdotes and drawn from Mekas’ life after his arrival in New York in 1949.

Born in Lithuania in 1922, Mekas was a teen when the Russian Army invaded his homeland. As he and his brother, Adolfas, attempted to flee in 1944, they were captured and forced to spend eight months in Elmshorn, a Nazi labour camp. When the war ended, they became Displaced Persons living in refugee camps, until finally able to emigrate to America, settling in Brooklyn.

Once in town, Mekas planted new roots, from which the tree of life has grown firm, with many branches bearing countless fruits. At his deepest core, is a love for cinema, its revolutionary forms, and a profound respect for the avant-garde. Together with his brother, Mekas launched Film Culture magazine, which ran from 1954 to 1996. His commitment to community went far and wide, enabling him to serve a need and fill a void.

Mekas became the first film critic for the Village Voice, founded the Film-Makers’ Cooperative and the Film-Makers’ Cinematheque, which has since evolved into Anthology Film Archives, located in the heart of the East Village. Along the way, he met and collaborated with some of the greatest figures of the times, from Andy Warhol to Salvador Dalí, John Lennon to Jacqueline Onassis.

As you weave your way through his work, the words of Plato reveal themselves time and again: “Necessity is the mother of invention.” His is a singular life unlike any other, one filled with passion, determination, and innovation. His stories inspire, enlighten, and entertain with equal parts charm, courage, and originality. Mekas takes us on a stroll down memory lane, sharing the knowledge and wisdom garnered from a lifetime dedicated to art.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Photo: Courtesy of Anthology Editions

Photo: Courtesy of Anthology Editions

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Dazed, Manhattan

Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985

Posted on September 28, 2017

Photo: Sandra Eleta (Panamanian, b. 1942), Edita (la del plumero), Panamá (Edita (the one with the duster), Panama), 1978-1979. Black and white photograph. 30 × 30 in. (76.2 × 76.2 cm)Courtesy of the artist. Artwork © the artist

“I don’t give a shit what the world thinks. I was born a bitch, I was born a painter, I was born fucked. But I was happy in my way. You did not understand what I am. I am love. I am pleasure, I am essence, I am an idiot, I am an alcoholic, I am tenacious. I am; simply I am,” Frida Kahlo wrote in a letter to her husband, artist Diego Rivera.

The Mexican artist, who faithfully painted self-portraits throughout the course of her life, has become not only one the most famous artists in the world, but is very often the only Latin American women artist most people know by name. The invisibility of her comrades can be attributed to the power structures within the art world that disregarded the major contributions that women from 20 countries have been making to the art world throughout the twentieth century.

Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985, a new exhibition on view at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, is a major step towards setting the record straight with more than 260 works by 116 women artists now on view through December 31, 2017. Curated by Dr. Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and Dr. Andrea Giunta, Radical Women is a watershed moment in the art world, illustrating the power of intersectionality in the new millennium.

Six years in the making, Radical Women brings together women from across Central and South America, the Caribbean, and the United States, showcasing the works of pioneers making art on their own terms, including Brazilian art star Lygia Pape, who had a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art earlier this year; visionary Venezuelan Pop artist Marisol, who died at the age of 83 in 2016; and the gender-bending self-portraiture of Cuban American performance artist Ana Mendieta, whose husband was found not guilty of her murder in 1985.

The exhibition, which is accompanied by a catalogue of the same name, published by Prestel, is a brilliant introduction to both the artists and the issues they face as women in the Latin American diaspora, providing their own take on feminism, patriarchy, gender, sexuality, identity, and art history. We spotlight six artists you should know, who have inherited the mantle from the indomitable Frida Kahlo.

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Photo: “Marcha gay (Gay pride march)”, 1984. Gelatin silver print. 11 × 14 in. (27.9 × 35.6 cm) Courtesy of Yolanda Andrade.

Photo: Paz Errázuriz (Chilean, b. 1944), La Palmera, from the series La manzana de Adán (Adam’s Apple), 1987. Digital archival pigment print on Canson platinum paper. 19 5/8 × 23 1/2 in. (49.8 × 59.7 cm)Courtesy of the artist and Galeria AFA, Santiago. Artwork © the artist.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Dazed, Exhibitions, Latin America, Photography, Women