Posts from the “Books” Category

Books | Thames & Hudson Presents “Daido Tokyo”

Posted on July 14, 2016

Photo: From Tokyo Color (2008-2015) featured in the book Daido Tokyo, Daido Moriyama, C-print, 111.5 x 149 cm. © Daido Moriyama Photo Foundation.

“If you were to ask me to define a photograph in a few words, I would say it is a fossil of light and time,” observes Daido Moriyama. “When I take photographs my body inevitably enters a trancelike state. Briskly weaving my way through the avenues, every cell in my body becomes as sensitive as radar, responsive to the life of the streets… If I were to give it words, I would say: ‘I have no choice… I have to shoot this… I can’t leave this place for another’s eyes… I have to shoot it… I have no choice.’ An endless, murmuring refrain.”

Born in 1938 in Osaka, Japan, Daido Moriyama has risen to become one of the most pre-eminent fine-art photographers working today. He began his career as a freelance photographer in 1964, frequently shooting around the American military base in Yokosuka. He began publishing books and showing his work in 1968, and by 1974, his work was being show at the Museum of Modern Art, NY.

As witness to the changes that transformed Japan after World War II, Moriyama’s photographs expose a side of his native land that few outsiders know. With the development of cities and the cold, brutality of urban life, Moriyama’s work reveals the darker side of Japanese life. Occupying a space between reality and illusion, Moriyama’s grainy black-and-white photographs take on a surreal effect, showing us the intense, chaotic nature of the world in which we live.

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Categories: Art, Books, Crave, Japan, Photography

Danny Lyon: Message to the Future

Posted on July 7, 2016

Artwork: Danny Lyon, “Tesca, Cartagena, Colombia,” 1966. Cibachrome, printed 2008. Image 25.7 × 25.7 cm (10 1/8 × 10 1/8 in.). Collection of the artist.

Danny Lyon does it like nobody else. Born in Brooklyn in 1942, he transformed photography into one of the most astounding arts of documentary possibilities. A self-described “dissenter in my own country,” Lyon took to the edges of American life to document the country from the inside out, removing the veils of appearance politics to reveal the truth about this country in black and white like no one before—or since.

A self-taught photographer, filmmaker, and writer, Lyon’s work exemplifies the best aspects of New Journalism. Forsaking the industry’s so-called “objectivity” in favor of using the media as a means to an ends greater than the story itself. Whether on the front lines of the Civil Rights movement or behind the bars of the Texas State Penitentiary, Lyon used photography to bear witness to causes, movements, and historical moments that were happening in the here and now.

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Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Bruce Davidson: Magnum Legacy

Posted on June 20, 2016

Photo: Bruce Davidson USA. New York City. 1980. Subway. ©Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos, courtesy of Prestel.

“When I was a kid, I played baseball and you heard the sound the bat made when it really connected with the ball; you knew you had a great hit. It’s the same with photography: sometimes you hear that click of the shutter and you know you’ve caught something really special,” observes American photographer Bruce Davidson (b. 1933).

Davidson, a member of Magnum Photos since 1958, authored some of the most seminal monographs of the twentieth century including Brooklyn Gang, East 100 Street, and Subway. He is now the subject of a new book, Bruce Davidson: Magnum Legacy by Vicki Goldberg (Prestel), which explores the photographer’s life work in photography. Davidson speaks with Crave about his work and about the magic of photography that kept him hooked in a career that spans six decades.

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Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Brooklyn, Crave, Manhattan, Photography

Unruly Bodies: Dismantling Larry Clark’s Tulsa

Posted on June 13, 2016

Larry Clark, Untitled, 1963, from the series “Tulsa,” 1963-71. © Larry Clark; Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York.

In 1971, America photographer Larry Clark published Tulsa with Lustrum Press, owned by Ralph Gibson, sparking a wave of controversy across the nation. The book, which features fifty black and white photographs taken by Clark in 1963, 1968, and 1971, reveal the dark side of American youth culture in the heartland of America. Drugs, sex, and guns were front and center, as much the subject of the book as the people themselves with Clark a participant, rather than a voyeur. He brought a new level of authenticity to his work, and in doing so Tulsa changed the very nature of documentary photography itself.

Forty-five years after the book’s release, a new exhibition of photographs adds a new layer of perspectives to the story of this work in Unruly Bodies: Dismantling Larry Clark’s Tulsa at the California Museum of Photography UCR ARTSblock, Riverside, now through January 28, 2017. Curated by graduate students from the History of Art and the Public History Program, Unruly Bodies speaks to the new generation reflecting on the past, reflecting on Clark’s watershed moment in contemporary photography, pairing his work alongside that of Danny Lyon, Bill Eppridge, and W. Eugene Smith to critical effect.

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Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Books, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Neil Leifer: Relentless

Posted on June 6, 2016

Photo: Photo: Neil Leifer (United States, b. 1942). Muhammad Ali reacts after his first round knockout of Sonny Liston during the 1965 World Heavyweight Title fight at St. Dominic’s Arena in Lewiston, Maine, May 25, 1965.

It was one of the most controversial fights in boxing history: Muhammad Ali vs. Sonny Liston, for the 1965 title of WBC Heavyweight Champion. It was a hotly anticipated rematch, one made all the more fervent by recent history. Just a year earlier, Cassius Clay beat Liston and taken the title with a technical knockout. Two days later, Clay publicly announced he was a member of the Nation of Islam and adopted the name Cassius X before taking the name that would make him one of the most famous men on earth on March 6, 1964.

When the rematch came along, it was more than a boxing match. It was an epic vision of self-liberation. By aligning himself with the practices and politics of the NOI, Ali was vilified. Perhaps that’s why the only thing they could do was deny the facts. Two minutes and twelve seconds. That’s all it took. Midway through the first round, Liston through a left and Ali countered with a right, an “anchor punch” he learned from actor Stepin Fechit, of all folks. Liston went down on his back, rolled over, tried to rise, and fell back again. It was a wrap for Sonny. But you couldn’t tell his fans nothin’. They called it “Phantom Punch Fight” and yelled, “Fix!” sounding like a 1960’s version of Donald Trump.

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Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Steven Hirsch: Gowanus Waters

Posted on May 26, 2016

Asteria (2014), Photo by Steven Hirsch.

The Gowanus Canal of Brooklyn is named for Gouwane, the chief of the local Lenape tribe called the Canarsee, who lived on the shorelines in the 1630s. Back then it consisted of a saltwater marshland and meadows filled with fish and wildlife, making it an ideal location for locals to live. The locale was well situated within the New York Bay, which is located snuggly between Brooklyn, Manhattan, Staten Island, and New Jersey. The newly arriving Dutch colonists immediately seized the opportunity to take ownership of their “discovery”; the Dutch government issued the first land patents in Breukelen for the area in the early 1630s, and by 1639, in one of the city’s earliest recorded real estate deals, the area was purchased for the construction of a tobacco plantation.

Over the intervening centuries, the Gowanus Bay grew into an economic hub. In 1849, the Gowanus Canal was constructed, transforming the creek into a 1.8-mile-long commercial waterway, making it a center for maritime and commercial shipping. The neighborhoods of Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, and Park Slope sprang up to support the rapidly growing industrial development, including stone and coal yards, cement works, chemical plants, factories, gas plants, and sulfur producers, all of which produced environmental pollution. The sewage in the new buildings drained downhill, directly into the Gowanus Canal, as well as being a waste channel for outside neighborhoods as well.

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Categories: Art, Books, Brooklyn, Crave, Photography

Postcard America: Curt Teich and the Imaging of a Nation, 1931–1950

Posted on April 5, 2016

Artwork: San Francisco Night View, Bay Bridge and Battleship Searchlights and Lights of Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda in Distance, 1938

The “good old days.” Everyone’s talking about ‘em. They exist as a hazy, faded memory of glory and gold, of a time when everything was shiny and new. The sky’s the limit, possibility’s infinite—all your dreams can come true. It is nothing short of heaven on earth. To tell people it’s a fantasy is just a hard way to go; people pin their hopes to the illusions life bestows. And they fuel this illusion with artifacts from the past.

Postcard America: Curt Teich and the Imaging of a Nation, 1931–1950 by Jeffrey L. Meikle (University of Texas Press) is the blueprint for the vision of the country at its greatest heights. Perhaps it was the fact that these images of grandeur were created during the height of the Great Depression and the early postwar years, that this these are the images held so near and dear to the country’s identity. It was do or die, survival was on the line, and every last bit counted.

It’s hard to imagine, but back then, the postcard was at the cutting edge of communication technology; at the same time, imagine getting beautiful cards with brief notes in the mail. What better way to say, “Thinking of you,” then to send an image to be shared? Curt Teich & Co. of Chicago understood this very need, establishing themselves as the originator of the linen postcard. Their designs featured vividly colorized landscapes and cityscapes taken across the nation, from sea to shining sea, even going so far as the Lava Fountains in Hawaii National Park. The result was a series of images that came to define America’s golden age.

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Artwork: A Breaker on Atlantic Ocean, 1933

Categories: Art, Books, Crave

Arlene Gottfried: Bacalaitos & Fireworks

Posted on March 21, 2016

Photo: Puerto Rican Day Parade. ©Arlene Gottfried, courtesy of Daniel Cooney Fine Art.

Arlene Gottfried is a New York original. Hailing from Brooklyn, Ms. Gottfried moved from Coney Island to Crown Heights when she was just ten years old, living in the area during the 1960s, as white flight and Civil Rights changed the face of the neighborhood. In the 1970s, Gottfried lived in the Village while studying photography at F.I.T. After her father had died, the family moved to the Lower East Side. Back then, it was a Puerto Rican neighborhood, rich in traditions native to the island, which, when combined with local influence, produced its very own style: Nuyorican.

Nuyorican is rhythms, horns, strings, and winds—or it is simply spoken word filling the air. Best exemplified by Miguel Piñero’s Nuyorican Poet’s Café, it is a state of mind in the place to be. Nuyorican is a street vendor selling fried codfish fritters and fireworks on July 4, announcing his wares as he made his way up and down the street shouting: “Bacalaitos y Fireworks!”

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Communion. ©Arlene Gottfried, courtesy of Daniel Cooney Fine Art.

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

Mike Brodie: Tones of Dirt and Blood

Posted on March 14, 2016

Photo: Brontez. San Francisco, California. ©Mike Brodie, courtesy of Twin Palms Publishers

In the afterword of Tones of Dirt and Blood (Twin Palms), photographer Mike Brodie describes a moment so completely, it is easy to forget these are only words: “My first memory was when I was one year old. Imagine that? Lying by a river bed. Arizona is hot in the summer, and even worse when you have an earache. No pants on, screaming and crying like it would help or something, my face bright RED. The blanket I was lying on made of prickly pear green wool. If that cloth was still around it would tell you a story. But it’s long gone, underground somewhere, tired.”

Brodie’s words beautifully conjure an image in the mind’s eye that looks just like his photographs: coarse, vulnerable, and exposed to the elements, full of raw emotion and pure energy. The colors are both sharp and dull, the light bright, the dark murky, evoking a feeling of the undertow. The photographs in Tones of Dirt and Blood were made between 2004 and 2006 while Brodie traveled throughout the United States. They were taken with a Polaroid camera and Time Zero film, using a distinct color palette that evokes memories of late twentieth-century America in all its analog glory.

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Categories: Art, Books, Crave, Photography

Builder Levy: Appalachia USA

Posted on February 22, 2016

Photo: Builder Levy. Sisters, Osage, Scotts Run, Monongalia, West Virginia, 1970. Gold-toned gelatin silver print.

Appalachia that stretches across the eastern United States, running from New York down to northern Mississippi. The former hunting grounds of the Cherokee and other indigenous groups, Appalachia became home to colonists seeking to escape oppressive British rule. Later, it was marked by the routes and hideouts of slaves escaping on the Underground Railroad. Growing into a center of abolitionism, more than a quarter million southern mountaineers joined the Union army during the Civil War.

But it was after the war that things began to change, as Appalachia was recognized as a distinctive cultural region in the late nineteenth century. Large-scale logging and coal mining firms brought industry to the region, taking advantage of the abundant natural resources of the land. Miners were recruited from southern prison conscript labor, local subsistence farms, African American communities in the south, and even towns and villages throughout Europe.

Despite the profits made by the mining and logging companies, the people of Appalachia have long struggled with poverty, as health care and educational facilities failed to meet the communities’ needs. At the same time, the region became a source of enduring myths and distortions about its inhabitants. As the media began focusing on sensationalized stories like moonshining and clan feuding, Appalachia became seen as America’s white ghetto, home to an uneducated and violent underclass.

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Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Exhibit | Warhol by the Book

Posted on February 17, 2016

Artwork: Andy Warhol (1928–1987). “So Sweet,” 1950s, The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. © 2015 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

“I just do art because I’m ugly and there’s nothing else for me to do,” Andy Warhol said. His dedication to the creation of beauty in both the glamorous and the commonplace forever changed the course of art, culture, and communication. He worked in both commercial and fine arts, always able to build a bridge between these two worlds and he used the book as a vehicle throughout his career. In celebration of his works, the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, presents Warhol by the Book, a four-decade retrospective on view now through May 5, 2016.

Featuring more than 130 objects dating back to his student days, the exhibition includes the only surviving project from the 1940s. It also features a remarkable collection of drawings, screen prints, photographs, self-published books, children’s books, photography books, text-based books, unique books, archival material; and his much-sought-after dust jacket designs. To call Warhol prolific would be an understatement. He simply was a one-man factory who aptly advised, “Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.”

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Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Crave, Exhibitions, Manhattan