Posts from the “Exhibitions” Category

Joshua Rashaad McFadden: Evidence

Posted on September 8, 2020

*Joshua Rashaad MxFadden. Minneapolis 2020.*

Hailing from Rochester, a city rooted in photographic history, artist Joshua Rashaad McFadden was introduced to the medium by his mother when he was given a camera at the age of seven. While pursing his BFA from Elizabeth City State University, an HBCU in North Carolina, McFadden began to recognize the power of photography to evoke visceral, sometimes empathetic, responses from viewers.

Inspired by artists including Roy DeCarava, Carrie Mae Weems, and Lyle Ashton Harris, McFadden now uses the medium to explore identity, masculinity, father figures, history, and race in a wide array of series including Evidence, selections from which will be on view in the 2020 Aperture Summer Open from September 16-October 18, 2020 at Fotografiska New York.

“For a long time, I have sharpened my lens on black men, capturing how we perceive ourselves, especially in contrast to how America at large sees us… Like many Millennials, I was rocked to the core by Trayvon Martin’s murder in 2012, mainly because I could identify with him,” McFadden told The Undefeated.

“I also began to grasp the comparisons to Emmett Till’s murder in 1955. I began to really see that the media presented young Black males, even kids like Trayvon as aggressive, and that prompted questions, pushing me to use my work as an instrument to dive deep into what Black masculinity is and is not.”

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

*Joshua Rashaad MxFadden. Avery Jackson, from “Evidence”*

Joshua Rashaad MxFadden. Against a backdrop of billowing smoke from a local fire, Black Americans band together in exhibition of their strength and resilience in the face of adversity. Protests continue in support of George Floyd, a Black man unjustly killed by police while detained.

Categories: Exhibitions, Feature Shoot, Photography

Remsen Wolff: Amsterdam Girls

Posted on September 7, 2020

*Patch, Amsterdam, April 22, 1992. © The Remsen Wolff Collection, Courtesy of Jochem Brouwer 2020*

In 1990, American photographer Remsen Wolff (1940–1998) embarked on the creation ofSpecial Girls – A Celebration, an ambitious series capturing more than 125 trans and genderfluid models from New York and Amsterdam. From this extraordinary series, Wolff amassed some 100,000 photographs – a selection of which will be on view in the new exhibition Remsen Wolff: Amsterdam Girls, opening this week.

The exhibition showcases a selection of portraits Wolff made between 1990 and 1992 on his annual month-long pilgrimage to Amsterdam, then known as “the gay capital of Europe”. A self-taught photographer, Wolff made intimate, spirited and at times subdued portraits of nightlife luminaries including Jet Brandsteder, aka Francine, Hellun Zelluf and Vera Springveer as well as anonymous trans women struggling with their gender identity – an issue Wolff understood all too well. In the last years of his life, Wolff took the name of Vivienne (Viv) Blum, a name inspired by Vivienne Westwood and family friend Edith Blum, and described himself as a “faux transsexual”.

Jochem Brouwer, Wolff’s former assistant who inherited the estate, draws a connection between artist’s focus on femininity with that of his mother, Isabel Bishop, an American realist painter renowned for her paintings of women. As the son of Bishop and neurologist Dr Harold Wolff, the artist was born into privilege, attending Phillips Exeter and Harvard University, where he received a BA in Art History in 1964. After marrying, fathering two daughters, and converting to Judaism, Wolff divorced, becoming a drifter and a loner for the rest of his life.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

Hellun Zelluf, Amsterdam, November 14, 1990. © The Remsen Wolff Collection, Courtesy of Jochem Brouwer 2020

Categories: 1990s, AnOther, Art, Exhibitions, Photography

The Way She Looks: A History of Female Gazes in African Portraiture

Posted on November 14, 2019

J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere, Untitled (Suku Banana Onididi), from the series Hairstyles, 1974 (printed 2009). Courtesy of The Walther Collection and Galerie Magnin-A, Paris

S. J. Moodley, [Two women wearing Western attire], 1981. Courtesy of The Walther Collection

As European imperialists set forth to colonise the globe, they took everything they could – including images of indigenous peoples forced to pose for photographs against their will. They made, sold, and distributed images, often objectifying and fetishising the subjects. This is where our story begins.

A new exhibition, The Way She Looks: A History of Female Gazes in African Portraiture, features more than 100 works drawn from The Walther Collection to trace the history of female agency in photographic form. Guest curated by Sandrine Collard, the show features works by Malick Sidibé, Seydou Keïta, David Goldblatt, J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere, Yto Barrada,Zanele Muholi, and Lebohang Kganye, exploring the role of women as both subject and photographer.

Read the Full Story at Huck

Nontsikelelo “Lolo” Veleko, Nonkululeko, from the series Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder, 2003. Courtesy of the artist and Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Africa, Art, Exhibitions, Huck, Photography, Women

Cammie Toloui: Five Dollars for Three Minutes

Posted on November 6, 2019

Cammie Toloui. Outside, 1992.

In the early 1970s, the Lusty Lady Theatre made its debut on Kearney Street in San Francisco, providing 16mm peep show films for a newly burgeoning pornography market. Recognizing the increasing demand, in 1983, the club began showcasing live nude dancers, known as the Lusties, which quickly became the primary focus of the 24-hour business.

From 11am to 2am, customers could pull up a stool, drop quarters into a slot, and watch a bevy of women perform for them on the main stage in a scene reminiscent of Madonna’s famed “Open Your Heart” video. Should patrons desire something more intimate, the Lusty Lady graciously obliged with the Private Pleasures booth. Here you could indulge in one-on-one shows—separated by a mere a sheet of glass—that started at $5 for three minutes, with add-ons for extras like a dildo show, role playing, or whatever peccadillo the client might request.

“Everything was whorehouse red: red velvet curtain, red carpet, and black painted walls. It was dark and smelled like cum. You could always hear the jukebox playing with songs chosen by the dancers,” says native San Franciscan Cammie Toloui, who worked at the Lusty Lady in the early ‘90s to pay her way through San Francisco State University, where she was studying photography.

Read the Full Story at Document Journal

Cammie Toloui. Private Pleasires, 1992.

Cammie Toloui. Time is Money, 1992.

Categories: 1990s, Art, Document Journal, Exhibitions, Photography

Steven Arnold: Heavenly Bodies

Posted on November 5, 2019

Heal-a-zation Swathe a la Glob-Ba, silver gelatin print, 1985. The Steven Arnold Museum and Archives

Artist, photographer, filmmaker, and “queer mystic” Steven F. Arnold (1943–1994) is a quintessential icon of our times, a revolutionary figure whose ideas about gender fluidity, radical acceptance, and non-binary consciousness, first realised in the late 1960s, are just now becoming part of the cultural conversation.

Protégé of Salvador Dalí and shared encounters with Debbie Harry, Anjelica Huston, Antonio Lopez, and Joni Mitchell, Arnold seamlessly weaved celebrity, glamour, and camp theatricality with ancient ritual, two-spirit philosophy, and eastern art into a majestic Baroque-inspired tableaux that will be on view atFahey/Klein Gallery during Paris Photo next week.

“Steven was a prophet,” says Vishnu Dass, director of the Steven Arnold Museum and Archive and director of Steven Arnold: Heavenly Bodies, a documentary about the artist’s life which came out earlier this year. “He visually fused his interests in filmmaking, spiritual traditions, sexuality, and gender to present a new visual mythology crafted for the late 20th century.”

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

The Luxury of Solitude, silver gelatin print, 1984. The Steven Arnold Museum and Archives

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, AnOther Man, Art, Exhibitions, Photography

Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism from the Jaques and Natasha Gelman Collection

Posted on October 24, 2019

Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Monkeys, 1943.

Diego Rivera, Landscape with Cacti, 1931.

In the early 1920s, a teenage Frida Kahlo met Diego Rivera while he was painting the mural ‘La Créación’ at the Escuela National Preparatoria, the oldest high school in Mexico. In his late 30s, Rivera was at the outset of a spectacular career, and was set to become one of the most prominent modern artists in the world.

“One day they asked me who I wanted to marry, and I said I would not marry,” Kahlo told Olga Campos in 1950. “But I did want to have a child by Diego Rivera.”

Though they never had any children, the couple married twice. Theirs was not an easy life, as Kahlo famously confirmed: “I have suffered two grave accidents in my life, one in which a streetcar knocked me down… The other accident is Diego.”

Yet for all their trials and tribulations, their legacy lives on, and is being celebrated in the new exhibition Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Mexican Modernism from the Jaques and Natasha Gelman Collection. Featuring about 140 works, the exhibition explores their lives and love affair, while placing their contributions within the larger context of revolutionary Mexican art.

Read the Full Story at Huck

Diego Rivera, Portrait of Natasha Gelman, 1943.

Frida Kahlo, The Bride Who Becomes Frightened When She Sees Life Opened, 1943

Categories: Art, Exhibitions, Huck, Latin America, Painting

Miguel Rio Branco: Maldicidade

Posted on October 15, 2019

Miguel Rio Branco. Preto e rosa com bandeira, 1988-1992-2012

Miguel Rio Branco. Preto e rosa com bandeira, 1988-1992-2012

Cities are unnatural; they are purely man-made constructions of artifice masquerading as civilization that reinforce hegemonic conditioning of behavior and thought. Being adaptable, by nature, we are easily led to believe that the triumph of nature is our birthright despite all evidence that it is our death sentence.

The concentration of people inside a landscape of concrete, steel beams, and glass combined with the decimation of native flora and fauna leads to a curious result. Wo/man is never so lonely as being lost in the crowd, consumed by the shadow of fear — fear of missing out. Everywhere it seems, the illusion of success holds a promise that escapes their grasp: of beauty and joy, of status and wealth.

Here, city dwellers are locked inside a false binary, desperate to believe the illusions they are fed by pop culture and social media. They strive for the impossible, climbing to the top of the short ladder only to learn there’s nothing there; or they find themselves pushed to the bottom of it, excluded from the opportunity to learn that this is nothing more than an illusion.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Miguel Rio Branco. Sombras barrocas de Havana, 1994-2019

Categories: Art, Books, Exhibitions, Feature Shoot, Photography

Ann Ray & Lee McQueen: Rendez-Vous

Posted on October 15, 2019

Follow the Line, 1997. Image courtesy of Ann Ray and Barrett Barrera Projects

The year was 1996, and a young upstart named Lee Alexander McQueen took the helm of Givenchy as head designer at just 27 years old. French photographer Ann Ray stepped inside his fantastical world, spending two weeks with him while he was creating his first couture collection that same year.

“I had to move to London, so Lee asked me to photograph his collections and basically, I never stopped,” Ray tells AnOther while visiting New York. The result was a lifelong friendship and creative collaboration that would continue until his tragic death at the age of 40 in 2010. Given unprecedented access to document his design process and behind-the-scenes moments during his legendary runway shows, Ray spent 12-hour days in the atelier over a period of 13 years, making more than 35,000 photographs that capture the complexity of McQueen: the man, the artist, and the iconoclast.

Now, in the new exhibition Ann Ray & Lee McQueen: Rendez-Vous, Ray reveals a portrait of the artist as a young man ascending to the heights of fashion by breaking all the rules to create an avant-garde spectacular replete with theater, performance art, and gothic fairytales. Here, Ray shares her memories of life in the inner circle, sharing a side of McQueen that only those closest to him ever knew.

Read the Full Story at AnOther

Home, 2000 Image courtesy of Ann Ray and Barrett Barrera Projects

Categories: 1990s, AnOther, Art, Exhibitions, Fashion, Photography

Who Is Michael Jang?

Posted on October 15, 2019

Hailing from California, Michael Jang came of age during the 1970s. Over that decade, the photographer would amass several series of work, including The Jangs (1973), Beverly Hilton (1973), San Francisco (1973–1987), College (1972–1973), and Punks & Poets (1978–1980).

However, although he has been working as a portrait photographer ever since, Jang never showed anyone his work from this period until he submitted selections to San Francisco’s Museum of Modern Art in 2001.

“The museum had a drop off policy and I remember thinking I had nothing to lose,” Jang says. “The work was already three decades old, so I no longer had any emotional attachment or investment in it. But the lesson is you have to keep trying to get your work out there. You never know who will see it and what might happen.”

Read the Full Story at Huck

Categories: 1970s, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Huck, Photography

Viewpoints: Photographs from the Howard Greenberg Collection

Posted on October 7, 2019

Young girl in profile, 1948. Consuelo Kanaga (American, 1894–1978) Photograph, gelatin silver print. The Howard Greenberg Collection—Museum purchase with funds donated by the Phillip Leonian and Edith Rosenbaum. Leonian Charitable Trust © Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York. *Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The history of photography is shaped not only by the people who make the pictures but those who preserve their work and their legacies. In a world where the art market feeds a compulsion to buy and sell, to trade art like a commodity, the words of Oscar Wilde may spring to mind: “Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

But once upon a time, it was not so. The collector was a person of tremendous importance and influence, supporting not only the artist in the tradition of patronage, but transforming the landscapes of history and art. Gallerist Howard Greenberg is one such person who understand this point of view, having not only helped establish the medium of photography in the haughty market of art, but having established a collection whose value extends far beyond the pallid discussion of price.

The new exhibition Viewpoints: Photographs from the Howard Greenberg Collection, on view at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston through December 15, 2019, presents 150 highlights from a group of 446 recently acquired images that showcases some of the most important pictures made during the twentieth century.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Gloria Swanson,1924. Edward Steichen (American (born in Luxembourg), 1879–1973) Photograph, gelatin silver print. The Howard Greenberg Collection—Museum purchase with funds donated by the Phillip Leonian and Edith Rosenbaum. Leonian Charitable Trust © Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York. *Courtesy, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Categories: Art, Exhibitions, Feature Shoot, Photography

Hunter Barnes: Outside of Life – Lowriders, Coolers, Bikers and Bloods

Posted on October 1, 2019

Booty Man, East St. Louis, Missouri, 2003 Photography Hunter Barnes

In 2003, Hunter Barnes travelled across the United States, photographing the outsider cultures he encountered along the way. The North Carolina native went to New York to photograph bikers, East St. Louis to shoot Bloods, the New Mexican deserts to capture lowriders, and California State Prison, where he was the first person to be permitted to photograph coolers, inmates often serving 25 years to life.

“When I travelled to take pictures, I would go on the road with nothing – I don’t even know how I did it,” Barnes tells Another Man. “I was 23 years old. I slept wherever, ate whatever, I was in it. It was the first time I developed patrons who gave me money to make editions of prints. I only do editions of four and two artist proofs.”

Now, a selection of those rare vintage prints is on view for the first time in over 15 years in Outside of Life: Lowriders, Coolers, Bikers and Bloods. The series began at the outset of Barnes’ career through bikers named Mike and Joey, who were old family friends. “It was a new world to me. I was invited in and I appreciated their trust,” he recalls.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

Leroy, Espanola, Chimayo, New Mexico, 2003 Photography Hunter Barnes

OG Nub, East St. Louis, Missouri, 2003 Photography Hunter Barnes

Categories: AnOther Man, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Photography