Posts from the “Books” Category

Gerhard Steidl: The Interview

Posted on May 20, 2013

Gerhard Steidl, photograph by Karl Lagerfeld

Gerhard Steidl is one of the world’s premier book publishers. He founded Steidl in 1968 in order to produce art books to the standards that he held in his mind and manifested with his hands. Unlike most publishers, who parcel out each aspect of the business to specialists in their respective fields, Steidl does everything under one roof. From acquisition, editorial, and design to production, printing, and binding to sales and marketing, every Steidl book access is given his personal touch. It is this touch we see and feel when we pick up a Steidl book. It is a sensory experience for the eyes, the hands, and yes, even the nose.

A book is more than a story. It is a complete world unto itself. It is a journey, an adventure, a trip into the mind of the author him or herself. This trip begins with the object of the book, for a book is more than words and images on paper; it is the very paper itself, the ink, the process of production that is at once hidden and revealed with each turn of the page. It is the collected experience of the tiniest details that make the book a thing to behold unto itself. It is this attention that Steidl brings to the art of book publishing that puts him on the same level as the artists he publishes. Robert Frank, Gordon Parks, William Eggleston, David Bailey, Bruce Davidson, Joel Sternfeld, Weegee, Raymond Depardon, Andreas Gursky, Arthur Elgort, Juergen Teller, Guy Bourdin, Ed Ruscha, Jim Dine, Berenice Abbott—and that’s just a few of the authors appearing on the new list for Spring 2013.

Steidl, like the artists he publishes, is driven by love, by passion, and by purpose. Book making is more than a profession; it is a way of life. It is a way of seeing and understanding life in order to share it with the expert and the amateur alike. Books are mystical objects, the mind forever captured on the paper we hold in our hands. Books are more than mere objects; they are repositories of soul. They are a wealth of knowledge, of expressions, of creativity to be revisited throughout our lives. Each time we visit, a deeper understanding occurs: of ideas, of style, of ourselves, and the word in which we live. The art of the book resides in the space where author and publisher meet, in the story they decide to tell and the way in which the story is presented to the world. The books of Steidl are stories put on paper, memories not yet our own until we behold them ourselves.

The beauty of the book is that it has not changed its form. It remains as Gutenberg designed it, leaves bound between covers, handy enough to be held in our arms. A book comes alive when it is opened, and it is here that the magic and mystery begin, as we turn the page and discover a new world held together by concept, content, and the quality of production itself. We are fortunate to have this opportunity to speak with Gerhard Steidl about his life’s work, as a single force who continues to honor the art of book making through his exquisite publishing programme.

Read the Interview at
aRUDE

Gerhard Steidl, photograph by Karl Lagerfeld

Categories: Art, Books, Photography

Karolis Kosas: Anonymous Press

Posted on March 20, 2013

Bad Tattoo, Anonymous Press No. 7957

Dogtown, Anonymous Press No. 7945

The anonymous. It is you and it is me and it is all of us. We are always anonymous, leaving footprints in our wave, evidence of where we have been and what we have done that draws or escapes attention. Identity, in as much as it is a construct, is the positive set against the void, the great swath of nameless humanity that makes for our history on earth, the way we are and we are not at the same time, and the way our technology reflects this.

The Digital Era empowers the anonymous to express and create freely under the protection of the First Amendment. Not only can we say anything we desire, we do not need to sign our name to it. Evidence becomes traces and tracks, not necessarily a complete truth, but a piece of the larger puzzle that will never be solved so much as it will be played out by countless hands through which it passes.

Anonymous Press is the spirit of our times, a completely mechanized process for zine design. It liberates the human element from the process, and presents us with something else, the ghost in the machine, perhaps. Karolis Kosas designed a simple system. Type in a title of your devising. The title can be up to forty characters. Press enter. In less than one minute, Anonymous will present a twelve page zine that presents a search of pictures found in Google Image Search. The images are placed randomly, then numbered and added to a public library. Each zine is available, print on demand, for $3 plus shipping.

There is no credit to anyone other than Anonymous Press, which was designed by Kosas as part of his MFA thesis at Virginia Commonweath University, Richmond, from which he graduates this spring. Anonymous went live in December 2012. As of late February, over eight thousand volumes have been designed, proving that there is a relentless desire to create and disseminate ideas by any means necessary. It is the concept that makes each edition striking, the way that seemingly random information becomes part of a narrative when organized sequentially, around words of any language, even letters themselves. It is at once liberating and absurd, Dada to its core.

Anonymous Press appropriates appropriation so that there is nothing left, just a snake eating its tail as the ghost floats through the machine, whispering ideas in your ear. Kosas notes the inevitable trend towards vulgarity, as well as the self-promoting instinct that is now part of our lexicography, the way in which we are not only worthy of veneration but a brand unto ourselves. The way the anonymous connects to the known and spins through its archives and shares that which we may or may not know.

People want to know: Power, Sex, Love, Grief, Self, Reflection, Time, Edie Segwick, Tupac, Charlie Brown, Early Seventies, Frank Zappa, Shadow People, Skinhead, and Citizen Kane. Then it gets more complex. There were the book ideas themselves, things of distinction like: Crude Drawings of Men I Hate, Pictures of Girls Named Rachel, and I Am a Bodice Ripper. And lastly were the literary titles, the flashes of poetry and philosophy that made the words abstracted lyrics, feelings unto themselves, such as: We Demand to Be Taken Seriously and No Is Shorter Than Yes.

Anonymous Press is casually iconoclastic, dismissing notions of authorship with effortless grace, and in its place, offering a playground for unconscious energies. What we see is a reflection, though of who and what we will never know, but it allows us to consider that the ways in which we create and recreate meaning, in ways to subvert our understanding by offering an alternate interpretation through the very form itself. And it makes bookmaking more like playing the slots, which is has a charmingly harmless quality to the way it allows you to gamble against the odds.

Harlem, Anonymous Press No. 8629

I Love You, Anonymous Press No. 8019

Categories: Art, Books, Photography

Jim Naughten – Conflict and Costume: The Herero Tribe of Namibia

Posted on March 13, 2013

Herero Woman in Patchwork Dress (2012) ©Jim Naughten/courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York City

“Herero Cavalry Marching” (2012) © Jim Naughten, Image courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York City

“Herero Woman in Blue Dress” (2012) ©Jim Naughten, Image courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York City

Costume. How we define ourselves when we stand upon the world’s stage and read from the scripts we draft. In donning an ensemble, we assume a posture, an attitude, an aesthetic that we accept as how we see ourselves, and how we wish to be seen. Costume can shape identity the way the corset shapes a woman’s waist. It can take hold and command a sense of respect, of pride, and of purpose, and in this way it can become the most subversive thing on earth.

This is evidenced in Jim Naughten’s new series of photographs collected in Conflict and Costume: The Herero Tribe of Namibia, both a book published by Merrell and an exhibition at Klompching Gallery, Brooklyn that opens March 14 and runs through May 4. In Naughten’s photographs, the Herero stand tall against a blue sky, radiant like flowers blooming across the desert floor. They are garbed in fine style, a look the world has never seen, a post-colonial aesthetic that commands authority as it illustrates the defiant spirit of the Herero peoples.

The Herero arrived in Namibia in the eighteenth century, bringing with them horses, ox-drawn wagons, guns, and Christianity. As Lutz Marten writes in the introduction to Conflict and Costume, “They also brought new styles of clothing, and it was during these early days of contact with the wider world that the Herero were first introduced to the military uniforms and Victorian-style dress.” As their economy developed, the Herero took to sartorial expression of their success.

“Herero Man in Yellow Suit” (2012) © Jim Naughten, Image courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York City

In 1884, Namibia was annexed by the Germans to forestall British encroachment. The Germans, however, made for cruel rulers, with their brutally enforced notions of racial supremacy, alternately slaughtering or enslaving the populace. The Herero resistance led to a full-scale war from 1904-08. About 80% of the population was killed. In 1915, the German colonial army was defeated by South African forces, which then annexed the country until 1988. But it was the brutal war against the Germans that became central to the rebuilding of the Herero cultural identity.

Shortly after the end of World War I, the Herero created the Otruppe, a symbolic, rather than actual army. From the uniforms of the killed or departed Germans, a regiment was born, and women joined in creating grand dame gowns that befit the most regal ladies in the world. The Herero have created a highly detailed and symbolic form of costuming for the regiments, which are donned at ceremonies and festivals to commemorate the past take on a level of radical chic. “To the victor go spoils,” it has been said. To assume the costume of the enemy in memory of those who gave their life is nothing short of a kind of victory that few could ever imagine.

As Naughten observes, “Namibia is an extraordinary country, and perhaps most interesting to me is the stories that we don’t know, the ones that have been lost or fragmented in aural tradition. There’s very little literature from the last hundred years or so, but there’s a tangible sense of history in the ghost towns, colonial architecture, cave paintings, and the landscape that feels otherworldly and timeless.

“Herero Woman in Patchwork Dress 2” (2012) © Jim Naughten, Image courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York City

“When I look at the dresses and costumes I see a direct connection with this period with an almost a ghostly imprint of the German settlers. I see my images as both a study of and a celebration of the costume, and not as a formal documentary on Herero culture, and I the paradoxical nature of the story is one of the most interesting aspects. Why would the Herero adopt the cloths of the very people who cost them so dearly?

“I see the clothes as symbolic of survival and strength, but particularly of a kind of defiance. In that sense, they are heroic. The taking and wearing of their enemies clothing is considered a way of absorbing and diminishing their power. They march and drill after the German fashion of the period, and ride horseback with extraordinary skill (horses were introduced by the settlers). To me the Herero are undiminished and have an extraordinary grace and presence.”

Naughten’s portraits are as majestic as the people he photographs, imparting a feeling of beauty and power that many in the West rarely consider twhen they think of Africa today. Naughten’s photographs of the Herero show us what victory truly means, and how it is that every day we walk this earth, we honor those who came before us, embracing the good, the bad, and the ugly on mankind and transforming it into a symbol of cultural and personal pride.

First Published in L’Oeil de la Photographie
March 13, 2013

Herero Man with Cow’s Head (2012) ©Jim Naughten/courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York City

“Herero Women Marching” (2012) © Jim Naughten, Image courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York City

Herero Woman in Orange Dress (2012) ©Jim Naughten/courtesy of Klompching Gallery, New York City

Categories: Africa, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Fashion, Photography

Estevan Oriol: Portraiture of Los Angeles

Posted on February 27, 2013

Portraiture of Los Angeles © Estevan Oriol

Back in ‘93, Estevan Oriol was tour manager for House of Pain. His father, a photographer, Eriberto Oriol gave his son a camera, told him to take pictures. Oriol remembers feeling weird about it. “Most people with cameras were paparazzi or tourists. They take out the camera for everything and nothing. I don’t want to look like that. Even now I sorta feel weird taking it out,” he reveals.

Oriol always loved cars and the lowrider culture of Los Angeles. In 1989 he purchased a 1964 Chevy Impala from a friend for $1500. Over the years he put in work, rebuilding it to its original glory. Over the years the car has had four different looks; he is currently working on a fifth edition.

This kind of dedication comes to someone with a love for the tactile, the machinery of our age, the car, the camera. Both are integral to his work. He describes Los Angeles as his canvas, as he sets forth around the city taking pictures along the way. He explains, “My Los Angeles is the beaches, mountains, everything. Beverly Hills, Hollywood, South Central, East LA, Downtown. There re so many different parts of it. I go everywhere. That’s a 300-page book right there.”

Indeed, Oriol’s filing cabinets are spilling with images, photographs going back two decades of Los Angeles, it’s residents, it’s landscape, it’s culture. And from this diverse backdrop, he is currently culling a selection of images for publication in his second monograph, Portraiture of Los Angeles (Drago). This book focuses on gang culture, a way of life that he has seen from the inside. Oriol observes, “You got cool guys, crazy guys, assholes. Most people are cool that’s why I hang out with them. It’s more a brotherhood, the family. Got the barbecue, lowriding, hanging out, school days, guns, drugs, a little bit of everything.”

And then there is style, culture, pride, a way of life that Oriol embodies as a self taught artist navigating any number of industries using the photograph. He laments on the death of magazines, as we all do, those grand days where archives were open for editors looking for classic and cutting edge work. Now Oriol is thinking about how to share his work with the world.

“I’m doing the book so that people can’t afford prints can buy the book. I ended up making products: calendars, playing cards, t-shirts. Not everyone wants t-shirts. People buy books and put them in their library. I want people to buy my books. I imagine a 60 year old man is walking through the airport and he sees the cover of my book, L.A, Woman, and he wants to get it because of that.”

That, in fact, is exactly what happened to Oriol in Italy, while promoting L.A. Women in Italy. He asked them if they knew his other work. His iconic “L.A. Fingers” or the lowrider/gang portraits that have dramatized his black and white work for years. The old man knew neither. He just knew what he liked: the ladies.

L.A. Woman is Oriol’s love poem to the girls and the gun molls, the gansta bitches and the baby dolls. It is around the way girls from the City of Angels, forever cast in film noir they are vixenish kittens prancing before the lens. Oriol’s women come hither on every page.

Oriol’s women have brought him success, and now as he prepares for his second book, he can reflect upon what it’s all about. We talk about the way it was back in the days, when gangstas all dressed in a way that represented their neighborhood, until that became a tool by which the LAPD would oppress their civil rights, with injunctions passed against public assembly of three or more people. We talk about police harassment, search and seizure, police brutality. We talk about how you reach a point in your life where you can’t be hanging out. Oriol is a grandfather. He’s building a legacy.

Portraiture of Los Angeles © Estevan Oriol

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

Nicola Lo Calzo: Inside Niger

Posted on January 25, 2013

Ominta / Barn / Tara 2009 © Nicola Lo Calzo

The Republic of Niger, the largest nation in West Africa, ranked 186 of 187 on the United Nations’ Human Development Index for 2011. With over 80 percent of its land covered by the Sahara desert, the country’s predominantly Islamic population of 15 million is mostly clustered in the far south and west of the nation. The capital city of Niamey is located here, situated on the Niger River, the third longest river in all of Africa.

As photographer Nicola Lo Calzo writes in the afterword of his book Inside Niger (Kehrer Verlag), “The origin of the name Niger has proved enigmatic among modern researchers, and thus cannot be traced with certainty. The most accepted hypothesis is that the name derives from the Tuareg word: ‘gber-n-igheren’ or ‘river of all rivers’…. Since time immemorial, the Niger River has been a meeting point and a place of exchange among various ethnic groups. A genius loci, the river has served as a depository of myths and legends, as well as being the abode of great deities like Ba Faro (mother of humanity) and the all-important Noun. The Niger River is a fountain of living waters and a breath of life.” And so it was that Lo Calzo began to photograph the people of Niger as he followed the river some five hundred kilometers through the land.

Lo Calzo photographed people that work and live on the river, where most of the commercial activities take place, such as universities, public works, markets, fishing, slaughterhouses, vegetable gardens, and tanneries. The portraits show us people who are employed in a nation known by its high rates of unemployment, thus giving us a glimpse at the haves in a world of have nots, ensuring we understand how vital work itself is to the pride and identity of (wo)man.

The result is at once powerful and provocative, challenging any and all assumptions about Africa as anything other than a majestic world. As Laura Serani notes in her introduction to the book, “Lo Calzo’s empathy and respect towards his portrait models transforms them into heroes; a transformation that echoes the words of the Italian journalist Pietro Veronese: ‘No, all men are not equal; yes, races do exist and are divided between inferior and superior. Superior to all is the African.’”

Lo Calzo’s photographs reveal the heroism of a people living on the brink, caught in a web of poverty and environmental degradation that keeps them in harms way. Yet despite a quality of life that is virtually unfathomable to all in the first world, the people photographed by Lo Calzo maintain a dignity that belies their circumstances. Each portrait reveals only the subject’s first name and their location, bringing us face to face with the people who defy all odds by simply surviving in a nation facing constant hardship.

Most of Lo Calzo’s subjects are men of various age, and as they stand before his camera we witness a pride of being that challenges commonly-held Western perceptions of gender, class, and race as it pertains to the African man. Whether a ractor of the Catholic Church, clothed in the finery begetting his position, or workers in a slaughterhouse, covered in layers of blood, the men stand before Lo Calzo as they are, with a strong, silent, and somber masculinity that demands our attention.

Respect comes when respect is earned, and when it is given it is returned ten thousand fold. The men who stand before Lo Calzo like a mirror facing itself, and the honor and prestige bestowed upon the most common of men resonates like nothing else. His portraits recall nothing so much as the Biblical passage Matthew 20:16, “So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many are called, but few are chosen.”

Lo Calzo portraits show us that though we can never fully know what fortune has bestowed upon us, when we look into the eyes of his subjects we can see all that we have been given—and all that has been lost.

First published 25 January 2013 in
Le Journal de la Photographie

Assada / Tannery / Niamey 2009 © Nicola Lo Calzo

Azize / Vegetable garden / Niamey 2009 © Nicola Lo Calzo

Categories: Africa, Art, Books, Photography

A Tribute to Gigi Giannuzzi

Posted on January 14, 2013

I believe that death is not the end, but a new beginning. It is an opportunity for us to reflect on life and discover its deeper meaning. Death appears to sever the spirit from the flesh but perhaps this is not true. Perhaps death transcends our understanding of absolutes. Death allows us to consider what matters in our lives: the people in our world and our purpose here, while on earth. Death, then, is the start of a new revolution, as we come around the circle once again. I believe for every loss there is an equal and opposite gain and I do my best to remember that the dead are not gone. So long as they live within us, their spirit lives on.

Gigi Giannuzzi died on Christmas Eve 2012 at the age of 49. Giannuzzi founded Trolley Books in 2001 and leaves behind more than a decade of art and photography books dedicated to truth, justice, and the beauty that lies in the darkest corners of the soul. A David among Goliaths and a hero among men, Giannuzzi created Trolley as a platform to stand against the exploitation and deception of our fellow man. Possessed with the heart of an activist and the spirit of a maverick, Giannuzzi’s passion for publishing brought into existence books that speak truth to power at any cost.

The nature of the book is one of permanence; we consider the book as part of the historical record. Once put into print, the book is a testament to the greatness and horrors of humankind, and Trolley Books bore witness to this in every volume. Under Giannuzzi’s direction, Trolley has released some of the most difficult stories to tell, stories that have been buried under a mountain of misinformation or ignored all together. Giannuzzi’s genius was to partner with likeminded souls, the artists, journalists, and truthtellers who give of their lives to change the world.

Read the Full Story at
LE JOURNAL DE LA PHOTOGRAPHIE

Categories: Art, Books, Photography

Ghostly Ruins

Posted on January 11, 2013

The Danvers State Hospital – Danvers, Massachusetts from Ghostly Ruins by Harry Skrdla

Ruins. Empty hollow shells of what once was. Disarray, deshabille, the beautiful poetry of decay. Buildings that once stood, fully functional, making themselves useful to the people that created them to serve a greater purpose. But time passes and use falls away, and buildings that once were designed to serve us are no longer necessary. And, if the land is not wanted, there is no need to tear them down. Instead they are abandoned, left behind, reclaimed by nature ever so slowly.

As Harry Skrdla writes in the introduction to his book, Ghostly Ruins: America’s Forgotten Architecture (Princeton Architectural Press), “We construct buildings not just as shelter, but as frameworks of life—templates within which to conduct the business of living. Each one is designed for a purpose: a place to reside, a place to bank, a place to make things. They are occupied by, and surrounded with, living breathing human beings…as long as they serve a purpose. But when their reason for existence is gone and the people drift away, only memories remain.”

Skrdla traveled around the country in search of buildings that are but remnants of their former splendor. Collected here are thirty such locations including homes and hotels, power plants and prisons, whole neighborhoods and even entire towns—what once was now becomes an eerie reminder of lives lived and long gone, haunting and poignant reminders of an earlier world. Skrdla explains, “An abandoned building is dead—as dead as any corpse left decaying in a field. But it too once lived, was animate, and in a sense, had a soul. Except that soul was us. We gave it life and meaning, motion and warmth. We put the spark of light behind the shade-lidded windows and the circulation in its corridors. It consumed supplies and excreted waste. The thing was alive and the life force was us.” The building, as we know it, is an extension of our lives themselves.

Ghostly Ruins is a cozy tome that takes us back to an earlier time in our country’s history. Organized by function, the book is divided into chapters that offer beautifully subjects for quiet contemplation in categories including Transportation, Industry, Commerce, Public Works, Home, and Amusement. It also includes two additional chapters on Reincarnation (restored buildings) and Epitaphs (buildings now permanently gone). In organizing the book by function, we begin to consider the larger way in which we, as public and private citizens of the world, conduct our affairs. We can consider all that we take for granted, all that seems permanent so easily can be stripped away, that buildings, most of all, offer us a sense of continuity within the ever shifting dynamics of so many lives that make the community strong.

Consider the Book-Cadillac Hotel in Detroit, Michigan, which was a first-class luxury hotel that, at 1,200 rooms, made it the second largest hotel in America when it opened in 1924. No expense was spared; the lobby had been furnished in breche violette marble, ornate iron railings, and gold leafed ornamentation. The ballrooms had crystal chandeliers. The restaurants were wood paneled. Every room had a a spectacular view and a private bath—a luxury of the time unknown to most people in the world. The hotel prospered until the city began to fall into disrepair, and by 1984 it shuttered its doors, never to re-open in the city’s whose decline stands for all that failed in twentieth century America. The hotel still stands, thirty-three stories tall. It has been stripped of its treasures, just like all the great ruins of civilizations that came before.

Contrast this with the City Hall IRT subway station in New York City, which had been built in 1904, and was more highly decorated than any other station in the entire city. Designed by the noted architectural firm of Heins and la Farge, and overseen by Spanish-born architect Rafael Gustavino, the City Gall Station—which stands abandoned and perfectly intact—with terra cotta tiles of buff, cream, and chocolate brown on the curving vaults of the ceiling over the tracks and platform. Three ornate leaded-glass panels admit light from overhead while chandeliers featuring the then-brand-new Edison electric light illuminated the rest. The station was the pride of the entire subway system, until it was abandoned when the sinuous curve that defined the station could no longer accommodate the train cars introduced in later years. Today the City Hall Station stands, entrances sealed and skylights covered, though urban adventurers know how to access it for their private photo shoots.

The abandoned buildings of Ghostly Ruins stand as a monument to the ingenuity and vision of the American mind, to its wealth and its greatness that is as easily lost as it is found. The photographs provide us with a dynamic history of these spaces, illustrating the inevitability of change in all facets of waking life.

The Danvers State Hospital – Danvers, Massachusetts from Ghostly Ruins by Harry Skrdla

Categories: Art, Books, Photography

Jamel Shabazz: Brooklyn Represent

Posted on January 8, 2013

Women of God, NYC © Jamel Shabazz

The Brooklyn Central Library stands proudly at Grand Army Plaza, firmly set in the Northwest corner of Prospect Park, shining bright with gold inlays upon its façade, recalling nothing so much as Egyptian hieroglyphics. Inside the library, the ceiling soars high above, opening its many collections to a public that loves books for pleasure, for knowledge, for enlightenment—much like Jamel Shabazz himself.

Shabazz, a native of Brooklyn, currently has a four-part exhibition on display at the Central Library now through February 28, 2013, which has been produced in conjunction with a self-published thirty-year retrospective of his photographs titled Represent: Photographs from 1980–2012. The exhibition is organized in four parts, each display in a different location on the first two floors. In the atrium of the ground floor stands an edit from Represent, a broad swath of color, spirit, and style as Shabazz see the people of the world.

He explains, “ Since picking up my first camera nearly thirty-five years ago, I was intrigued with how people within my community represented themselves. As time passed, I embarked on a self-imposed assignment to document the people of the world around me. I have been very fortunate to meet many wonderful and diverse people from around the globe, and each experience has enriched me in ways that far surpassed what I learned in history books.” His photographs bring that home, as we see people from all walks of life in their native dress, be it Dominican adolescents in their pageant best or two little Jamaican girls, with their afro puffs glorious in yellow, black, and green, or the Italian men, lined up in the window of a café in Little Italy, staring down the camera like they’re on the set of a Scorcese film. And we’re just getting started.

One of Shabazz’s many gifts is taste, his honing in on people killing it with their pride of purpose and the dignity that belies human greatness. It is seen in the dress, the posture, and the determination of spirit that he captures that make each person he pictures a king and queen. This is most evident in the installation along the balcony of the second floor, grandly overlooking the atrium and out the front doors. Here Shabazz gives us “Men of Honor and Women of Distinction,” a sweeping tribute to the heroes of modern life. In perhaps the most lovely social networking moment I’ve had in some time, Shabazz posted a brilliant portrait of eleven black women perfectly dressed in a bouquet of pastel suits and slinky heels, perfect coiffures and more than a couple of hats. To which, Spike Lee asked, “Who are they?” and Shabazz answered “Women of God.”

This is but one in a series that pays tribute to the traditions of family, community, nation, and global village, the very now that allows the earth to carry six billion people. Shabazz gives us a glimpse into but a few lives he has connected with over the years, as they organize themselves in groups or around distinguished individuals. He speaks of being influenced by dapper men of Caribbean descent, standing erect and proud. It is this bearing and carriage that Shabazz sees when he looks at law enforcement, military personnel, elders, social and political activists, and every day people organized for the greater good of our world. Whether wearing a uniform of Sunday best, in these photographs Shabazz bears witness to the men and women who uphold the principles of family, community, and civil service.

Nestled into the entrance of the Brooklyn Collection, just off the balcony, is “Reflections,” a series of over eighty photographs depicting the people of Brooklyn. There’s a lot of talk about Brooklyn, there always was. Maybe it’s something in the water, or it’s in the air. Shabazz’s photographs remind us of this, like nothing else; that despite all of the diversity of ethnicity, culture, and custom, there is something that unites these beautiful people together and that is the ground upon which they walk. I’m saying, it comes up through the ground. And in these photographs we feel it, Shabazz being a native and understanding that here we walk upon sacred ground.

Lastly, and perhaps most touchingly, is the installation up front, “Pieces of a Man” in the Foyer Cases, which you can catch when you are coming or going—both are good. Here Shabazz shows us an intimate glimpse into the art that inspires him, as a man and an artist and a native of this here Brooklyn. It begins with Leonard Freed, Black in White America, and it forces us to ask the question, what’s really changed, and what’s really good. Tough questions. We usually talk around them. But not Shabazz. He presses forth, he brings in the music of an era. 45s, 8 Tracks, we’re talking Marvin Gaye, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan. The list goes on. There are magazines, books, images, texts, stories, each one adding to the next, until the experience of these cases becomes a diary written by the voices of the world we know, but never fully see, until into it Shabazz brings his voice, like a bell tolling with perfect clarity.

Old School, ND, Harlem NY © Jamel Shabazz

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Brooklyn, Exhibitions, Music, Photography

Cindy Sherman: The Early Works

Posted on December 14, 2012

Cindy Sherman: The Early Works 1975-1977

Chaka Khan most famously sang, “I’m every woman” and no artist embodies this quite as brilliantly as Cindy Sherman. She has been remaking herself in the image of others throughout her career, giving a spellbinding performance of gender roles assigned to (mostly) Caucasian women as they are created and lived by countless females. Her ability to transform reveal the plasticity of identity as it is defined by appearance and affect, by the way in which we unconsciously communicate our fears and dreams through non-verbal cues.

The photograph is the ideal medium for Sherman’s experiments and discoveries, the still image being a soundless, wordless, motionless space for eternal contemplation. Sherman’s uncanny ability to play a role, to construct an entire narrative into a single frame is nothing short of remarkable. What is perhaps shocking is that she has been doing this for close to forty years, and her earliest work is just as profound and compelling as that of her later years.

These works are collected together for the first time in Cindy Sherman: The Early Works 1975–1977 Catalogue Raisonné(Hatje Cantz). This volume is simply magnificent, a breathtaking tour-de-force that unfolds with image after image of the artist who would come to embody an iconography all her own, a kind of storytelling that has no precedent on this scale in the medium.

What makes The Early Works compelling is the simplicity of the work and the way in which this is mirrored in the production of the book. It is understood this book will be grand from the very opening of the front cover, as a bright orange matte jacket flap rest against silver endpapers. That and the book is 376 pages. It is substantial, and statuesque as gatefold after gatefold reveal themselves. The works inside are pure pleasure, presented against a vast expanse of white space. They sit there, one after another, variations on a theme, repetitions to derive an effect, a kind of very clever inside joke with yourself. Sherman’s ease into the odd characters she creates are clearly a kind of genius that is perfectly suited to the medium of photography. The pleasure of this book is seeing her brilliance in its earliest stage, and the way in which she was always born to stand before a camera in order to create the image in her mind.

As Sherman notes in the beginning of Gabriele Schor’s essay, “Even though I’ve never actively thought of my work as feminist or as a political statement, certainly everything was drawn from my observations as a woman in this culture. And a part of that is a love/hate thing—being infatuated with makeup and glamour and detesting it at the same time. It comes from trying to look like a proper young lady or look as sexy or as beautiful as you can make yourself, and also feeling like a prisoner of that structure.”

Indeed, that structure forms the basis of her iconography, and the sense of imprisonment is palpable in some of her more emotionally tense scenes, Her explorations extend far beyond the frame of femininity, giving us a sense of a certain femaleness that every woman is confronted with as she reaches maturity. The Early Works offers a larger context in which to place this new frame, particularly with the facsimile of Script Notes for “A Play of Selves” written in 1976.

Here Sherman puts into words what she has been saying with imagery, a cast of characters that include A Broken Woman, The Vanity, The Madness, The Agony, The Desire, The Actual Main Character, and The Character As Others See Her, among others. We are then given four acts and a finale, each outlined with scenes, and with these pages we are given a concrete look at the structure of Sherman’s mind during the process of creation as she maps idea into actuality. Following the acts, we are given two pages that tell us about the order of characters photographed, which are then illustrated in the actual works themselves.

For this project, Sherman cut out full-body portraits so that they appear as paper dolls, each posed in specific stances to communicate meaning through gesture, emotion, and juxtaposition with one another. The facsimile pages let us know exactly what we are looking at, creating a sense of silent film as the pages unfold. And it is just this silence that makes the photograph so profound, the way in which we are invited to fill in the blanks by creating meaning through the implications of Sherman’s work.

The Early Works is a deeply fulfilling experience, not only because of its dedication to detailing this period of the artist’s work, but also because of Sherman herself. Her clarity of vision and the proliferation of her ideas present Sherman as something of an Athena, springing fully armed from the mind of Zeus himself. There is something of the warrior in Sherman’s work throughout her career, a tireless champion whose commitment to the medium has forever transformed our ideas about photography, the female gaze, and the construction of identity itself.

Cindy Sherman: The Early Works 1975-1977

Categories: 1970s, Art, Books, Photography, Women

JR: Women Are Heroes

Posted on December 12, 2012

Since its inception in the late 60s, graffiti has been the most public of public arts, the ultimate statement of self, a mark of existence that enlivens the streets. Since it began with tags, it has since expanded in all manners including beyond its original letterform. As it shifted into an image-based lexicon, it took on new forms, and was dubbed Street Art as a way to differentiate itself. And while many have succeeded in any number of mediums, there is only one photograffeur: JR.

JR has taken photography to new heights. By employing the ideals of graffiti—scale, placement, and proliferation—JR’s work creates its own expectations. The 2011 winner of the TED Prize, he works on a global scale using art to effect a change in the world. Women Are Heroes: A Global Project by JR (Abrams) showcases one his most noble efforts, a tribute to women on a massive scale, with public art works produced in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan, Kenya, Brazil, India, and Cambodia. Mural size photographs of everyday women were created on monumental scale from simple black and white portraits that are at once intimate and outlandish, evocative and emotional, provocative and profound. The cumulative effect of JR’s work allows for a new understanding in the representation of women, as well as in the discourse of public art.

Public art, such as it exists, has been a tool for the establishment to reinforce itself. Whether it is the monumental sponsored work of the church and state, or more recently, the art world’s ever-present self-veneration masquerading as a “profitable investment” most public works have been imposed by external forces upon the community it claims to serve. Graffiti and street art also impose, but they do so by way of the anonymous insider making his or her presence known. Here, JR takes the insider to the furthest possible reach, making heroes out of the people themselves, effectively saying, “In you, beauty exists.”

JR’s installations serve the people by becoming part of the whole, by transforming the landscape by fusing the internal and external at the same time. The placement of the works are as telling as the choice of subjects themselves, for the art of Women Are Heroes exists only in lands of extreme poverty throughout the world, in lands where people are marginalized in ways we of the first world all too often forget.

But JR won’t let us forget, and he takes us deeper into the abyss by granting access to the personal side of his subjects in “As Told To” narratives throughout the book. As Chantha Dol of Cambodia reveals, “I agreed to have my photograph put up so that the men in power in Cambodia would open their eyes and take a look at our condition. The reason my eyes are so wide open is to show my anger. Words are no longer enough. I want people to ask themselves why these photograph of women were put on the walls of their houses.”

But Ms. Dol might not know that when she agreed to be photographed, the question she wanted people to ask themselves would be a question to travel around the world. JR’s continued success allows the work he is doing to reach new audiences that go far beyond the traditional realms of photography and street art. As his audiences expand in both size and prominence, the questions his work raises gain power and strength, inspiring us as individuals and as societies to look at ourselves with fresh eyes.

Women Are Heroes is a sumptuously produced tome that pleasingly combines the grand scale of the public works with the directness of the photographs and stories being told. It provides context at every turn, allowing for a more complete experience of the installations themselves. This book is equally provocative and pleasurable, as each turn of the page reveals an unexpected angle on the power of photography to tell stories and touch hearts. Imagine eyes softly shut, black eyelashes lain thick, now imagine this image pasted to the side of a garbage truck at a dump in Cambodia. JR reminds us women are worthy of a veneration that goes deeper than the flesh, that celebrates an inner beauty in every being that only art can truly make manifest.

Categories: Africa, Art, Books, Graffiti, Photography, Women

African American Faces of the Civil War: An Album

Posted on November 21, 2012

1st Sgt. Octavious McFarland, Company D, Sixty-second U.S. Colored Infantry. Carte de visite by unidentified photographer, about 1864-1866. © Collection of the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum.

In February 1865, Martin Delany was received by Abraham Lincoln at the White House. There, Delany told the President, “I propose, sir, an army of blacks, commanded entirely of black officers.” Shortly thereafter, Delany received a commission as major of infantry—the first African American appointed an army officer. As Frederick Douglass reportedly stated, “I thank God for making me a man simply, but Delany always thanks Him for making him a black man.”

The story of Major Martin Robison Delany, Fifty-second U.S. Colored Infantry, is titled “Most Defiant Blackness” and leads with his portrait, dressed in Union blues. This photograph is a cartes de visite, taken with a specially designed camera that produced eight images on a single glass plate, from which the resulting paper print. It was then glued to card stock and measured 2.5 x 4 inches in size, the perfect keepsake that was economically possible at this time. From 1851–67, “cartonamia” was unleashed, with some three million cartes de visite sold. This was the first time almost anyone could record his or her own image for posterity, and they immediately became decorative objects that made picture giving a cultural phenomenon. Not to mention a resource for an author as industrious as Ronald S. Coddington.

Coddington has just released his third book, African American Faces of the Civil War: An Album (Johns Hopkins University Press), a beautiful and meticulous presentation of the likenesses and lives of seventy-seven men whose stories are part of the complex and compelling tapestry that is America. These stories offer but a glimpse into the vast ocean of men, some 200,000 African Americans, who served the Union Army and Navy during the Civil War. Some of them were born free, others escaped from slavery or set free by owners sympathetic to the war effort. And, if only for a moment, imagine what it must have been like, two hundred thousand African American men armed and dressed for combat on American soil, ready to fight the white man for freedom, the right to self sovereign.

And, if only for a moment, imagine what it must have been like, two hundred thousand African American men army and dressed for combat on American soil, ready to fight the white man for freedom, the right to self sovereign. “I am for war—war upon the whites,” Delany wrote during the 1950s in a novel that stood in marked contrast to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Delany’s words are seen in the stories of men who served not only their country but something greater than this. As soldiers in the Civil War, they stood for what the United States was founded upon: Independence.

The stories provide a reverent context for the images we witness here. They lend a gravitas to the images, which charming in their dated stylistic iconography, the way in which the photograph easily replaces the painted portrait while assuming all of its conventions. Consider the portrait of Corp. Jeremiah Saunders, Company K, 124U.S. Colored Infantry, and his wife Emily. His master died in Kentucky in February 1965, he was not free for the Emancipation Proclamation only liberated those in the seceded states. Nevertheless, Saunders left the tobacco fields and headed straight to Camp Nelson, a Union establishment. There he signed his enlistment papers with an “X” and joined the 124 U.S. Colored Infantry, a regiment composed of men between 3545, considered too old for active duty. And though he was not on the front lines, still he served. For this book proves that for all the darkness of humanity that does occur, the wheel of fortune will always turn. And though one might be born a slave, degraded in countless ways, there might just be another destiny that is meant to be. African American Faces of the Civil War: An Album serves us well to remind us of those who came before and honor them for these are the heroes we need today, the lives and lessons of humble greatness.

First published in Le Journal de la Photographie
21 November 2012

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Q.M. Sgt. Alexander Herritage Newton (left) and Q.M. Sgt. Daniel S. Lathrop, both Twenty-ninth Connecticut Infantry. Carte de visite by James Horace Wells (b. ca. 1828) & David C. Collins (b. ca. 1805) of New Haven, Connecticut, about 1865. © Collection of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

Seaman George William Commodore, U.S. Navy. Tintype by unidentified photographer, about 1865-1867. © Collection of National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.

Categories: Art, Books, Photography