Posts from the “Books” Category

World Press Photo 17

Posted on April 21, 2017

Photo: © Jonathan Bachman, Reuters. Title: Taking A Stand In Baton Rouge

“Post-truth,” which was chosen as Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year for 2016, is the very thing tried to define: “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Propaganda by any other name would simply be…more of the same.

Perhaps the word appeals to those whose held fast to their illusions of some great Fourth Estate, able to disregard the consistent expression of disinformation and bias because it wasn’t directed at them. Oh, but how the tables have turned, and new words are created to disguise the new fictions from the old. Certainly there is an objectivity—but who perceives it, and by what means? And who, with the power to report, would dare deny their own inherent subjectivities? Wouldn’t we be far better served without such claims?

Truth be told, ambiguity is discomforting. So much that one needs to consider; no simple answers here. But as F. Scott Fitzgerald understood, “”The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

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Categories: Books, Crave, Photography

Larry Fink on Andy Warhol

Posted on April 20, 2017

Photo: Fashion Shoot, New York, 1966 © Larry Fink

In the early 1960s, the shadow of the post-war boom cast a dark shadow upon streets across the United States as the illusion of The American Dream was shattered by the truth of how it came to be.

Amid the fight for human rights, Andy Warhol emerged with a body of work that celebrated the most superficial mythologies of the time. By appropriating images of famous people and products, Warhol positioned himself as the champion of all that was American, fully embracing its anti-intellectual bent. With the establishment of The Factory, his quasi-bohemian Manhattan studio filled with self-titled Superstars, Warhol created an alternate universe to rival Hollywood while simultaneously infiltrating the posh art world.

In 1965, Warhol announced his retirement from painting in order to focus on filmmaking. With a coterie that included Edie Sedgwick, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, Ingrid Superstar, Susanna Campbell, and Gerard Malanga, the media could not get enough of these apolitical characters driven by a lust for fame and wealth.

At the same time, photographer Larry Fink was honing his skills, making pictures that embraced the proletariat and rebuked the haute-bourgeoisie. A self-described “revolutionary communist,” Fink worked as a journalist, creating images for the cause. In 1966, his friend Khadeja Mccall, who sold African prints on St. Mark’s Place, invited Fink to photograph a fashion shoot she was styling for a new publication titled The Eastside Review. The kicker was: the models were Warhol and his Superstars.

Fink took the assignment, adding his own twist. He brought Warhol and his coterie down to the streets of the Lower East Side, a working-class neighborhood infused with poverty – the very antithesis of Warhol’s Pop Art fantasies. The Eastside Review folded before the issue was published, and the photographs were shelved for fifty years, no further thought given to the work…until now.

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Photo: Fashion Shoot, New York, 1966 © Larry Fink

Categories: 1960s, Art, Books, Dazed, Manhattan, Photography

Peter Hujar: Speed of Life

Posted on April 10, 2017

Peter Hujar, David Wojnarowcz Reclining (2), 1981; from Peter Hujar: Speed of Life (Aperture, 2017)

The Man. The Myth. The Mystery. Photographer Peter Hujar (1934-1987) was a fixture in the downtown New York scene during the 1970s and ‘80s, creating a seminal body of work that was quietly captivating. He was a fixture in the East Village, where he lived and worked, when it was a magnet for bohemian artists, writers, performers, musicians, and iconoclasts. Back in the days, the neighborhood was rough and raw, in a perpetual state of poverty that bred the avant-garde.

Perhaps the most telling word in the neighborhood was the word “village”—it was truly a community of friends, families, comrades who were constantly in the mix. Much of New York had been abandoned throughout the decade, leaving the bold and the daring with the run of the place. There was overlap and interplay between the arts as personalities mingled freely in an ongoing dialogue of the times.

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Peter Hujar, Mural at Piers, 1983; from Peter Hujar: Speed of Life (Aperture, 2017)

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Crave, Photography

Motown: The Sound of Young America

Posted on April 10, 2017

Photo; Florence Ballard, Mary Wilson and Diana Ross in London’s Manchester Square, outside the headquarters of EMI Records, in October 1964. Courtesy of EMI Group Archive Trust

Motown: The sound of young America, coming straight out of Motor City/Detroit was the perfect blend of soul and pop. It was the home of legends from Marvin Gaye, Smokey Robinson, and Stevie Wonder to the Jackson 5, the Supremes, and Diana Ross. And it was all the brainchild of Berry Gordy, Jr., a local songwriter who quickly realized that producing records and owning the publishing was the best way to make bank.

After launching Tamla and Motown labels, Gordy purchased the property that would become the legendary Hitsville U.S.A., in 1959. The multi-purpose building served as a recording studio, administrative offices, tape library, control room, and living quarters for Gordy in those early formative years. He put several family members in key roles, and made Smoke Robinson VP. Then, on April 14, 1960, Berry Gordy, Jr. incorporated the Motown Record Corporation, and that same year the company had its first number 1 R&B hit, the Miracles, “Shop Around.”

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Photo: Seen at a Detroit nightclub in 1964 are, from L to R, Levi Stubbs of The Four Tops, Motown songwriter/producer Ivy Jo Hunter, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye, with musicians Dan Turner on sax and James Jamerson on bass. Private Collection.

Photo: With The Supremes, Berry Gordy hails members of the Motown house band, at left, and his Holland/Dozier/Holland hitmakers, in December 1965. LOOK Magazine Photograph Collection, Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division [LC-L901A- 65-26- 16-VVV, no. 10]

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Books, Crave, Music, Photography

Downtown Legend, Writer & Renegade Glenn O’Brien Dies at 70

Posted on April 7, 2017

Photo: Glenn O’Brien. Photo by Robin Marchant/Getty Images.

“Andy Warhol died 30 years ago today. I remember thinking “who’s opinion will I care about now?” and I still don’t know. I hope to become more like him every day. He was and always will be my (dear) boss,” Glenn O’Brien wrote six weeks ago in what would prove to be his final Instagram post. He died today at the age of 70.

Writer. Editor. Renegade. Glenn O’Brien might be best known as “The Style Guy” at GQ magazine, but to those who lived and loved below 14th Street, he will always be so much more than that.

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Categories: Art, Books, Crave, Manhattan

Steve Parke: Picturing Prince

Posted on April 7, 2017

Photo: Copyright Steve Parke

Photo: Copyright Steve Parke

When Prince died on April 21, 2016, the world would never be the same. More than an artist, Prince was the living embodiment of the American Dream. One part innovator, one part iconoclast, Prince took pleasure in subverting expectations and trouncing them with a mastery that belied a singular genius and an incomparable soul.

In 1988, Steve Parke joined the team at Paisley Park after he seized hold of an opportunity and ran with it – for 13 years! Parke collaborated with Prince, helping to create the look of the man whose style and sound was ever-evolving. As art director, Parke was responsible for designing everything from album covers and set design to music videos and merchandise.

In a world where nothing was impossible, Parke found himself in the unexpected position of in-house photographer. In late 1997, as digital photography came to the fore, Parke taught himself everything he needed to know in order to meet the high standards for which Prince was known.

Over the next four years, they produced a stunning body of work, most of it never seen until now, with the publication of Picturing Prince (published by Octopus). Accompanying the images is a series of 50 remarkable vignettes written by Parke that pull back the curtain to reveal Prince: the man, the artist, the legend. Parke gives Dazed Digital a look at life inside the fabled halls of Paisley Park.\

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

This Is Mars

Posted on April 5, 2017

Branch-like Forms on the Floor of the Antoniadi Crater, LAT: 21.4° LONG: 61.3°; from This Is Mars (Aperture, 2017)

Mars: The Red Planet. The earth’s twin. The shadow that lurks in our imagination looms larger with every passing year. Fifty years ago, the world set its sights on putting the first man on the moon. Today, science dreams of the day when we will reach the planet named for the God of War.

Extensive investigations are well underway, mapping the terrain of Mars to see if it would be hospitable to life in the event of disaster here on earth. On March 16, Peruvian scientist David Ramirez announced that potatoes could be grown on conditions that simulate the environment of Mars. Last November, NASA reported the discovery of a large amount of underground ice estimated to be equivalent to the volume of water in Lake Superior.

At just 238.9 million miles from earth, NASA estimates it would take a vessel with human on it just six months to make the trek through outer space. Last September, Wired reported that Jeff Bezos and his company, Blue Origin, are now working to create rockets that could send the first people to Mars. What seems like science fiction is slowly becoming fact as scientists focus their efforts on colonizing a new planet.

But for those of us who are unlikely to make the trip but still would love to see it up close and personal, Aperture releases This Is Mars: Midi Edition this month. Edited and designed by Xavier Barral, the book features 150 black and white images of the planet’s extraordinary surface taken by the U.S. observation satellite MRO (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) made over the past decade.

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Stratified, Sedimentary Buttes in the Region of Argyre, LAT: -49.8° LONG: 302.9°; from This Is Mars (Aperture, 2017)

Categories: Art, Books, Photography

Let Us March On: Lee Friedlander and the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom

Posted on April 3, 2017

Photo: Lee Friedlander, Mahalia Jackson (at podium); first row: Mordecai Johnson, Bishop Sherman Lawrence Greene, Reverend Thomas J. Kilgore, Jr., and Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., from the series Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, 1957, printed later. Gelatin silver print. Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of Maria and Lee Friedlander, hon. 2004. © Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco. Photo courtesy Eakins Press Foundation.

Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka (1954) was an historic moment in the course of the United States. In a unanimous decision of 9-0, the Supreme Court declared state-sponsored segregation in public education was inherently unequal, and a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The ruling came as the first major step in ending apartheid in the United States, which had been operating under conditions of extreme malevolence since the Court legalized segregation in 1896. It was a major victory for the Civil Rights Movement, which had begun taking shape in its wake. Together, they united as one, their voices lifted and amplified for the first time in American history.

On May 17, 1957, to honor the third anniversary of the decision, more than 25,000 African-American activists answered the call for a Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in front of the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington, D.C. Here, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous address, “Give Us the Ballot,” in which he exhort the President Eisenhower and members of Congress to ensure voting rights for African Americans.]

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Photo: Lee Friedlander, Untitled, from the series Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, 1957, printed later. Gelatin silver print. Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of Maria and Lee Friedlander, hon. 2004. © Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco. Photo courtesy Eakins Press Foundation.

Categories: Art, Books, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Moshe Brakha: L.A. Babe

Posted on March 31, 2017

Photo: Moshe Brakha, Club Zero One, 1985.

“I’m a very passionate guy. I’ve always been passionate about photography. I started in 1970 and I’m still doing it,” Moshe Brakha reveals. “Day in and day out: you have to be committed and crazy in love with it.

That love and passion appears on every page of L.A. Babe: The Real Women of Los Angeles 1975-1988 (Rizzoli New York), his phenomenal first book that showcases the sexy, stylish beauty of the era. Brakha’s crisp black and whites and luxurious color photographs transport you back to an era that was equal parts sensual and glamorous—and all the way loose.

Born in Israel, Brakha enlisted as a sailor in the Navy and arrived on the shores of Los Angeles in 1969 at the height of the countercultural movement. From Easy Rider to Midnight Cowboy, the spirit of radical freedom filled the Southern California air. Sex, drugs, and rock & roll were everywhere. At night, Brakha took his camera and hit the nightclubs and bars just as the punk scene took hold, finding himself in the company of beautiful women who became the perfect subject for his photographs.

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Photo: Moshe Brakha, Downtown Studio / 7th & Rampart, 1978.

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Crave, Photography

Oh So Pretty: Punk in Print 1976-80

Posted on March 30, 2017

Poster For Blondie’s 12-Inch singles ‘Denis’, ‘Contact in Red Square’ and ‘Kung Fu Girls’, February 1978, 42.5 x 30.4 cm, 16¾ x 12 in. Courtesy of The Mott Collection

Poster for The Slits’ album ‘Cut’, September 1979, 50.8 x 75.5 cm, 20 x 29¾ in. Courtesy of The Mott Collection

Forty years ago, a revolution took shape and stormed the shores of the U.K. Punk had arrived—and it could not, would not, refused to be denied. It took everything the nation held dear and turned it upside down, then dropped it on its head, with the aim to break it open and find freedom. Gone were the polite niceties, the veneer the nation upheld while the empire crumbled. Punks knew there was nothing nice—or civilized—about it all. No pretense could cloak the truth about the subjugation of the world.

As the U.K. struggled to rebuild, a new generation came forth calling out the fraud, the perpetrators, and the imposters. The took shots at the establishment from the outside, embracing their place as upstarts, rebels, and anarchists. From nothing came something—one of the greatest cultural movements of all time: the ethos of Do-It-Yourself that fueled their drive. From music and fashion to art and design, D.I.Y. became the a force of liberty, equality, and modernity. It produced some of the most iconoclastic images of the time, which are beautifully showcased in the new book Oh So Pretty: Punk in Print 1976-80 by Toby Mott (Phaidon).

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Bored Stiff #1, C. Terry et al., Tyneside Free Press, July 1977, [dims unknown]. Courtesy of The Mott Collection

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Crave

#FridayReads: David Bowie’s Favorite Books

Posted on March 24, 2017

In the August 1998 issue of Vanity Fair, David Bowie took the famous Proust Questionnaire. The first question asked was the most telling: “What is your idea of perfect happiness?” to which Bowie answered, “Reading.”

In celebration of Bowie the bibliophile, Open Culture put together a list of the artist’s top 100 books. The list is as diverse as it is revealing; perhaps there is no better way to get inside the mind of a person than through their library. Crave spotlights ten Bowie faves that make for great Friday Reads.

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Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Books, Crave