Posts from the “Feature Shoot” Category

Lilli Waters: Others Dream

Posted on December 12, 2018

From Where We Came

Utero © Lilli Waters

“At dusk and dawn, the edge of slumber and first light, these figures awaken out of the darkness and live in the hours when others dream,” LilIi Waters writes in the artist statement for her disquieting series, Others Dream, which features women amid an otherworldly landscape that is equal parts foreboding and curious.

Photographed across Western Australia, the images from Others Dream offer a mystical, mythical portrait of the primordial essence of life that begins in utero before being launched upon the earth. They offer themselves as wordless poems, silent revealing secrets to us, offering a moment of meditation where we can escape the artifice that civilization demands and return to something infinitely simpler albeit impossible to fully comprehend.

Here Waters shares her journey, revealing the path that brought her to the creation of this body of work, offering insight on the effortless synergy of life and art.

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The Road Before. © Lilli Waters

Categories: Art, Feature Shoot, Photography, Women

Chris Stein: Point of View – Me, New York City, and the Punk Scene

Posted on December 11, 2018

Legs McNeil, Anya Philips, and Debbie on the Staten Island ferry. More Punk magazine outtakes, 1976. © Chris Stein, courtesy of Rizzoli New York.

Brooklyn’s own Chris Stein took up photography in 1968, at the age of 18, and began to amass a body of work documenting New York life as the punk scene came into existence. In 1973, he met and began working with Debbie Harry, and together they founded Blondie. From this rarified position, Stein had the best view in the house, the consummate insider in the quintessential outsider scene.

His new book, Point of View: Me, New York City, and the Punk Scene (Rizzoli New York), is a visual diary of daily life during the 1970s, the rawest decade of them all. Stein takes us all the way back to his days as a student at SVA, and gives us a guided tour of a young artist coming of age in a city that was equal parts decadent and derelict, and home to characters like none before or since, be it William Burroughs, David Bowie, Divine, Andy Warhol, or the Ramones.

Much like the people who have departed the earth, Point of View is filled with iconic landmarks of the city that have since disappeared like the Fillmore East, the Women’s House of Detention, Times Square strip clubs, graffiti-covered trains, abandoned cars on the street, and the World Trade Center. They say you can’t go home again, so what’s a True Yorker to do?

Put it down in photographs and stories, so we can always remember the way we were, word to Babs. We have assembled here some of Stein’s choice photographs and stories from the book for a trip back to a time not so long ago that is so very far away.

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Snuky Tate, Fab 5 Freddy, and kid punk band the Brattles, 1981. The Brattles opened for the Clash at their New York City show at Bonds on Times Square. © Chris Stein, courtesy of Rizzoli New York.

Categories: 1970s, Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Photography

Eugene Richards: The Run-On of Time

Posted on December 7, 2018

Eugene Richards, Grandmother, Brooklyn, New York, 1993. Gelatin silver print. Collection of Eugene Richards. © Eugene Richards

More than half a century ago: the New Journalism came of age — a style of reportage so wholly unlike what came before that made it clear the seeming “objectivity” espoused by the Western eye was blind to its own innate biases. Rather than continue to presuppose one could be disinterested in covering subjects like Civil Rights and the Vietnam War, many journalists took a stand, opting to explore the complex truths of human life during the final half of the twentieth century — including their own.

Like W. Eugene Smith before him, photographer Eugene Richards (b. 1944) used the photo essay as a means to engage with his subjects through the profound transformation that comes when human beings not only connect, but are seen, heard, understood, and able to share their lives in a holistic way.

Throughout the course of his career, Richards has focused on the essential experiences of life that are daily fodder for headlines including birth, death, poverty, prejudice, war, and terrorism. But through Richards’s lens, we come to understand just how little we know — and how deeply reliant we are upon those who do the reporting in our stead.

In Eugene Richards: The Run-On of Time, now on view at the International Center of Photography through January 6, 2019, we are given a stunning trip through Richards’s life in photography. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue distributed by Yale University Press serve to remind us that we are responsible for evaluating not only the content but also the quality and caliber of the source itself. It is not enough to be talented and to have mastered technique; one must stand for something, and in doing so, use their skills in the service of the greater good.

Here, Richards shares his extraordinary journey, that includes a healthy dose of skepticism about the photograph itself.

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Eugene Richards, Snow globe of the city as it once was, New York, New York, 2001. Gelatin silver print. Collection of Eugene Richards. © Eugene Richards

Eugene Richards, Wonder Bread, Dorchester, Massachusetts, 1975.
Gelatin silver print. Collection of Eugene Richards. © Eugene Richards

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

Sara Bennett: Life After Life in Prison – The Bedroom Project

Posted on October 17, 2018

SHARON, 57, back in supportive housing seven years after her release. Corona, NY (2017) Sentence: 20 years to life Served: 20 years/ Released: May 2010 “My body tells me, I was in prison, but my mind tells me that I never spent a day there. I have this sense of freedom and a strong sense of feeling liberated. I am so in touch with my womanhood, of being a mom and a grandmother, a friend and a partner, a spiritual sister. I’m in touch with all that . . . my room is a place of peace and a sanctuary to come home to every day. I love turning the key in my door.”

American photographer Sara Bennett knows the legal system from a vantage point few have. Working as a public defender specializing in cases with battered women and the wrongly convicted, Bennett has developed a profound understanding of the impact that prison has on innocent and vulnerable lives.

The experience of prison resonates long after release for many who are consigned to spend years inside the system. Over the past five years, Bennett has begun documenting the lives of former inmates in the project Life After Life in Prison. Here we see women making their way back into the world, adapting to the challenges of life after having lost it all.

With a humanist eye and a sensitivity to detail, Bennett shares stories rarely told anywhere: the struggles of the dispossessed and marginalized who carry the weight of redemption on their own shoulders. It is only when they are able to retreat into their own private worlds that they may lay down their burdens for a moment.

It is here that The Bedroom Project centers itself, deep within the most intimate space of one’s domicile. Here, Bennett creates a series of portraits that reveal each of these women within the sanctity of their private lives. In each photograph, there is a sense of relationship between subject and space, in the way they dress, decorate, arrange, and pose for the portrait. A sense of consistency begins to reveal itself, a sense that we may know and be known through the way we live.

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TRACY, 51, in her own apartment three-and-a-half years after her release. Jamaica, NY (2017) Sentence: 22 years to life Served: 24 years Released: February 2014 “I imagined coming home, living in a one- or two-bedroom apartment, where one was a master and an extra room for guests. Here I have that. I call this room my “doll house,” my safe haven. I feel at peace. I’ve finally unpacked. I spend a lot of time in here. I take pride in everything. I put more into this room than into the kitchen. I know I need to eat, but my room is my nutrition.” © Sara Bennett

Top of dresser. © Sara Bennett

Categories: Art, Feature Shoot, Photography, Women

Masahisa Fukase: Private Scenes

Posted on September 28, 2018

Sasuke, from the series Game, 1983. © Masahisa Fukase Archives.

For more than two decades, the work of Japanese photographer Masahisa Fukase has been largely inaccessible. Following his death in 2012, the archives were gradually disclosed, revealing a trove of wonders never seen before. Among the most radical artists of his time, Fukase is now being celebrated with Private Scenes, a large-scale retrospective of original prints that will be on view at Foam, Amsterdam, from September 7 – December 12, 2018. Editions Xavier Barral will publish the accompanying catalogue, to be released on October 23.

Born in 1934 in Bifuka, in the northern region of the island of Hokkaido, Masahisa Fukase was destined to a life in photography. As the eldest son, Fukase was groomed to take over the family photo studio, founded by his grandfather in 1908. By the age of six, he was already helping to rinse the prints – and he stayed with the family business until moving to Tokyo in 1952 to study photography.

Fukase was notable for both his choice of subject matter, and his presentation of it. He was remarkably able to translate his personal struggles of loss and depression into playful and lighthearted looks at some of the most difficult aspects of life and death. This first became evident in the 1961 exhibition, Kill the Pig, which brought the young artist public acclaim. Here, the Fukase presented studies of his pregnant wife Yoko and still-born child in combination with photographs made in a slaughterhouse, providing a tender reflection on love, life and death.

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Bukubuku, 1991. © Masahisa Fukase Archives.

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Feature Shoot, Japan, Photography

Alanna Airitam: The Golden Age

Posted on September 25, 2018

Saint Strivers. © Alanna Airitam, courtesy of Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago.

Saint Nicholas © Alanna Airitam, courtesy of Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago.

Native New Yorker Alanna Airitam understands the impact of place as it informs our sense of what is possible. Within the history of Western Art is a vast sense of absence and exclusion. Visibility and representation occurs for a select few the powerful and wealthy wished to venerate, often propagating distorted, dissembling narratives they pawn off as history.

After considering the limited spaces offered to Black folk in Western art, both on the walls and in offices, Airitam recognized a path for herself, one she began to pursue without knowing where it would take her. Her understanding of the human spirit found a natural home in portraiture, and as she continued to photograph, a story revealed itself.

In The Golden Age, Airitam weaves a tale of two cities exchanging ideas over the centuries, reuniting Old and New Amsterdam – Haarlem and Harlem, to be exact. It’s not small coincidence that City of New York was founded by the Dutch during their seventeenth-century Renaissance – in a real estate swindle, no less.

Fast forward three centuries, and the Harlem Renaissance is in full bloom as the nation’s greatest mass migration takes place over a period of 70 years, with Black folks fleeing the South following the hell of Reconstruction. For decades, Harlem sparkled uptown, the crown jewel in the city that never slept.

But the government-sponsored plague of benign neglect helped destabilize the city, making it ripe for the plagues of crack, AIDS, and gentrification over the past 50 years. Yet, it is exactly these changes that have stirred Aitiram into action, calling forth a desire not only to honor the grandeur of yore but to inspire a new generation to carry forward a legacy that continues to reveal profound depths of knowledge, wisdom, truth, beauty, passion, and majesty.

Airitam’s photographs from The Golden Age will be on view in How do you see me? at Catherine Edeman Gallery, Chicago, from September 7 – October 27, 2018. Here, the artist shares experiences and insights she has gathered along the way.

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Saint Madison © Alanna Airitam, courtesy of Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago.

Categories: Art, Feature Shoot, Manhattan, Photography

Arlene Gottfried: Sometimes Overwhelming

Posted on September 19, 2018

Wedding Party in Connecticut, 1977. © Arlene Gottfried, courtesy of powerHouse Books.

Arlene Gottfried (1950–2017) was a paradox of the best kind: the infinitely shy artist who can blow the roof off the joint while singing gospel, or approach any person in order to take their photo. Hailing from Brooklyn, Gottfried spent her childhood in Coney Island where all kinds of characters loomed near and far.

She took up photography, casually snapping some of the greatest New York scenes ever caught on film, documenting an era of life that once defined the city, but has long since been erased. In Sometimes Overwhelming (powerHouse Books). Gottfried chronicles the charismatic figures she encountered on the streets and the beaches, the nightclubs and the parks, the boardwalks and the parades, the circus and the dog shows.

The result is a kaleidoscopic portrait of the times, of the magical and memorable personalities that peppered public life, when everyone was so distinctive, to really stand out meant you had to take it to the next level. It is those rarefied beauties that Gottfried loves most, the stars who fell to earth and glitter like fireflies of a summer night, floating past you down the street as they go about their business.

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Women on Riis Beach, New York, 1980. © Arlene Gottfried, courtesy of powerHouse Books.

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Photography

Alex Webb & Rebecca Norris Webb: Violet Isle

Posted on August 31, 2018

For more than a century, Cuba has mesmerized the world, beckoning visitors to its vibrant shores and the rich fertile soil that has earned the island the little-known name of the “Violet Isle.” It is a land of captivating beauty, majestic wonder, and alluring mystique, one whose magic and mysteries are slowly revealed through the work of artists, filmmakers, and musicians.

Over a period of 15 years, American photographers Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb made 11 trips to Cuba, each drawn to difference elements of this multi-faceted gem. Alex Webb explored the country’s street life, capturing scenes of everyday life set in a prism of vivid colors that glow under the Caribbean sun, while Rebecca Norris Webb was drawn to the resounding presence of animal life, photographing tiny zoos, pigeon societies, and personal menageries.

The result is Violet Isle (Radius Books), their first collaboration. First published in 2009, the book is a photographic duet that pairs two distinct but complementary visions of Cuba at the turn of the millennium. The book, long unavailable, has just been re-released. We speak with the authors here about their fresh take on a much-photographed land, giving us new perspectives of life on the Violet Isle.

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Categories: 1990s, Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Latin America, Photography

Jamel Shabazz: Icons of Style

Posted on August 28, 2018

Jamel Shabazz (American, born 1960); Digital chromogenic print; 25.4 x 20.3 cm (10 x 8 in.); EX.2018.7.163

Hailing from Brooklyn, Jamel Shabazz began taking photographs of his friends during the late 1970s. After returning from the Army in 1980, he began to dedicate himself to documenting life on the streets of New York, taking portraits of street legends and regular folks alike, taking an entirely new approach to the art of the fashion photograph.

With an eye for style, Shabazz used the camera as a vehicle for conversations with his subjects, who are predominantly African American and Latinx teens. Focused on helping them to develop a knowledge of self and how to survive in America, Shabazz easily spent hours with his subject before photographing them. The result is a series of portraits that convey a sense of power, pride, and dignity. As an independent artist working outside the fashion and publishing industry for decades, Shabazz has established himself as the rare artist who has been able to crossover long after this body of work was made.

Now a selection of Shabazz’s work can be seen alongside the likes of Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Guy Bourdin, William Klein, Antonio Lopez, and Herb Ritts in the new exhibition Icons of Style: A Century of Fashion Photography, 1911-2011 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, now on view through October 21, and accompanying catalogue of the same name. Shabazz shares his thoughts on the power of fashion photography, the importance of visibility and representation, and the power of staying true to one’s vision.

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Jamel Shabazz (American, born 1960); Digital chromogenic print; 25.4 x 20.3 cm (10 x 8 in.); EX.2018.7.164

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

Alex Prager: Silver Lake Drive

Posted on August 16, 2018

The Big Valley: Eve, 2008. © Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong. Courtesy Alex Prager Studio, Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong.

The Big Valley: Susie and Friends, 2008. © Alex Prager Studio and Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong. Courtesy Alex Prager Studio, Lehmann Maupin, New York and Hong Kong.

Hailing from Los Angeles, Alex Prager is a true photograph-auteur. Her cinematic sensibilities are perfectly at home in the single image, expertly making use of the imagination’s inimitable ability to construct fantastical narratives when provoked. With the eye of a director allowing a tale to unfold, Prager stages each photograph with the precision of a blockbuster Hollywood film.

Silver Lake Drive, Prager’s mid-career retrospective currently on view at The Photographer’s Gallery, London, through October 14, 2018, traces the artist’s career over the past decade, exploring the ways that her work crosses the worlds of art, fashion, photography to explore and expose fascinating scenes of human melodrama concealed within some of the most mundane moments of life. The exhibition is accompanied by a book of the same name, published by Chronicle in the United States (on sale October 9) and Thames & Hudson in Europe.

Prager takes us on a masterful romp through scenes that evoke Hollywood luminaries like Alfred Hitchcock and Douglas Sirk. The exquisite grandeur of Prager’s images belies a haunting anxiety: here beneath the luscious trappings of artifice something sinister lurks. An intangible presence can be felt throughout her work, the all-seeing eye that invites the viewer in as an accomplice.

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

Michael Abramson: Light on the Southside

Posted on August 10, 2018

Between 1975 and ’77, Michael Abramson (1948-2011) created an extraordinary body of work documenting Chicago’s Southside nightclubs as the subject of his Masters thesis for the Illinois Institute of Technology. Abramson made the rounds, carrying a camera and strobe light to catch all the action going down at Perv’s House, Pepper’s Hideout, The High Chaparral, The Patio Lounge, and The Showcase Lounge.

The sound was afterhours, featuring the funky, soulful vibes of blues artists like Little Mac Simmons, Bobby Rush, Lady Margo, and Little Ed. But Abramson wasn’t checking for the musicians on stage — he came for the crowd on the dancefloors and the bars, shooting half a dozen rolls every night inside this rarely seen milieu. “It was a living self-contained theater,” Abramson said of those heady nights.

Now a selection of the works will be on view in Michael Abramson: Light on the Southside at Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, OR (August 2 – September 2, 2018), bringing the scene back to life. It is, in the words of British novelist Nick Hornby, an admirer of Abramson’s work, “One tiny corner of the world over a handful of evenings a long time ago; but that tiny corner of the world has, for decades now, meant a great deal to an awful lot of people scattered all over the world.”

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Categories: 1970s, Art, Feature Shoot, Photography