Posts from the “Feature Shoot” Category

Andrea Giunta: Radical Women – Latin American Art, 1960-1985

Posted on July 22, 2018

Paz Errazuriz (Chilean, b. 1944), La Palmera (The palm tree), 1987, from the series La manzana de Adan (Adam’s Apple), 1982-90. Gelatin silver print. 15 9/16 × 23 ½ in. (39.5 × 59.7 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Galeria AFA, Santiago. ©the artist.

Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985, the phenomenal survey of Latin American artists, enters its final weekend at the Brooklyn Museum, where it will be on view through July 22, 2018. Accompanied by a catalogue of the same name published by DelMonico|Prestel, the exhibition is a stunning tour de force through a quarter century across the Western hemisphere showcasing an extraordinary group of women who experimented with photography, performance, video, and conceptual art to explore the issues of autonomy, oppression, violence, and the environment.

Photography plays a pivotal role in Radical Women, examining how it is both a work of art and a piece of evidence. Here archetypes and iconography are pushed to the edge as the artists featured here subvert expectations and stereotypes, offering fresh and empowering new perspectives for consideration.

Guest curator Andrea Giunta, who co-curated the exhibition with Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, shares insights into the ways artists used photography to raise awareness, expose, and explore the issues facing Latin American women during a tumultuous and transformative time in history – issues that are as pertinent then as they are today.

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Maria Evelia Marmolejo (Colombian, b. 1958), 11 de marzo—ritual a la menstruacion, digno de toda mujer como antecedente del origen de la vida (March 11—ritual in honor of menstruation, worthy of every woman as a precursor to the origin of life), 1981. Photography: Camilo Gomez. Nine black-and-white photographs. Five sheets: 11 3/4 × 8 1/4 in. (29.8 × 21 cm) each; four sheets: 8 1/4 × 11 3/4 in. (21 × 29.8 cm) each. Courtesy of Maria E. Marmolejo and Prometeo Gallery di Ida Pisani, Milan. ©the artist.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Feature Shoot, Latin America, Photography, Women

Jill Greenberg: Alreadymade

Posted on July 10, 2018

While women account for 85% of consumer purchasing power, they are woefully underrepresented behind the camera, creating the images behind entertainment and advertising campaigns. Male photographers account for 90% of the commercial work – a disparity fueled by the “boys club” mentality that is out of step with the times.

Photographer Jill Greenberg decided to address the issue head on with the creation of Alreadymade, an online directory of women photographers, which she launched in tandem with a TEDx Talk titled “The Female Lens.” Here, Greenberg shines a light on the gender gap in the photography industry and the ways in which it reshapes the way we see the world.

“Here’s a dirty little secret about what photographers do: We make image propaganda!” Greenberg said in her talk. “So what happens when our views of the world are shaped by only a male lens? We are only getting the perspective, and biases of half the population. Almost every image we are surrounded by has been filtered through a man’s eyes, a man’s mind.”

With Alreadymade, Greenberg has created a platform featuring the work of 49 women. The list will continue to expand, with the oversight of an advisory board that includes Carla Serrano, CEO of Publicis New York, Judith Puckett-Rinella, Photography Director at Entrepreneur, and Meg Handler, Editor at Large for Reading the Pictures.

We caught up with Greenberg to discuss her vision for Alreadymade, and the significance of addressing gender parity in photography.

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Categories: Art, Feature Shoot, Photography, Women

Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings

Posted on May 23, 2018

Sally Mann. Bean’s Bottom, 1991. Silver dye bleach print, 49.5 × 49.5 cm (19 1/2 × 19 1/2 in.) Private collection. © Sally Mann

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past,” William Faulkner wrote in the 1951 novel Requiem for a Nun. He understood the ways in which history is ever present to the point in which it casts a long shadow over our daily lives. It lingers and mingles until it dyes the color of our thoughts, camouflaging itself by hiding in plain sight.

Faulkner understood the nature of the American South, a land shrouded in myth and mystique, nestled in layers of illusion and untold histories. For the novelist, the South was not so much a place as it was an “emotional idea,” one that could be mined endlessly for stories that evoke the truth about who we were – and who we are.

American photographer Sally Mann shares this knowledge of the South. A native Virginia born in a hospital that had once been Stonewall Jackson’s home, Mann’s work is infused with mix of romantic and Gothic sensibilities that underscore her southern roots. In every image there is a sense of a past so profound that it pulls the present backwards until the very sense of when these images were made melts away.

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Sally Mann (American, born 1951) On the Maury, 1992, gelatin silver print, Private collection. © Sally Mann

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

Then They Came For Me: Incarceration of Japanese Americans During World War II

Posted on May 11, 2018

Dorothea Lange, Oakland, California, March 13, 1942. Courtesy National Archives and Records Administration.

Dorothea Lange, Centerville, California, May 9, 1942. Courtesy National Archives and Records Administration.

It has been said that history repeats itself – and if this is true it is because the majority of people are pragmatists. For them, life occurs through a lens of cognitive dissonance framed by confirmation bias. They seek reinforcement of opinion in place of truth, relying on other people to tell them what and how to think. They prefer the appearance of goodness over goodness itself, forgoing sacrifices that would require they take radical responsibility in the name of self reliance.

As a result, mythological narratives become objects of faith and become rooted in identity, where integrity should be. Invariably, when push comes to shove, they shrug. It’s not their problem – until it is. And by then, they’ve passed the tipping point and it’s much too late.

All of this could be avoided were people willing to acknowledge that myths are not truth, that historical fact consistently undermines the veracity of their sacred cows and renders them nothing more than illusions. Let us consider the idea that the United States is the “land of the free and the home of the brave,” as they claim in “The Star Spangled Banner” (the same song that explicitly endorsed the killing of slaves).

Despite the rhetoric we know these words to be untrue, as proven time and again by the actions of the United States government. A pervasive prejudice exists, cowering in the shadows and consistently reasserting itself with abject violation of the Constitutional rights of this nation’s citizens. Consider Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, issued in response to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

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Toyo Miyatake, Hand and Barbed Wire, ca. 1944. Courtesy Toyo Miyatake Studio.

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

Malick Sidibé: Mali Twist

Posted on April 25, 2018

Photo: Malick Sidibé. Un jeune gentleman, 1978. © Malick Sidibé. Courtesy of Fondation Cartier pour l’art contempourain and Éditions Xavier Barral.

Malick Sidibé (1935–2016) was a master of the form, a singular visionary whose photographs tell the story of the liberation, self-determination, beauty, dignity, and pride of his native Mali in the heart of West Africa.

Born in the village of Soloba when Mali was still a colony of France, Sidibé hailed from a family of herders who worked the land. His natural propensity for art made him the first member of his family to attend school: the Institut National des Arts de Bamako, in the nation’s capital in 1952.

In 1955, be began an apprenticeship with photographer Gérard Guillat-Guignard; he opened Studio Malick in 1958. His timing could not have been more fortuitous for Sidibé and Mali were coming into their very own at the same time. As a member of the Mali Federation, which included Sengal and the French Sudan, the nations achieved independence from France on June 20, 1060, after a period of negotiations. On September 22, Mali left the Federation and was on its own.

The spirit of freedom is evident throughout Sidibé’s work. Honing in on the youth culture of the times, he captured the joyous energy of the first generation of liberated Malians on the beach, in the clubs, at sporting events, and in his studio. In every photograph he created he found the heart and the soul of his people and the result was nothing short of beautiful.

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Malick Sidibé. Regardez-moi!, 1962. © Malick Sidibé. Courtesy of Fondation Cartier pour l’art contempourain and Éditions Xavier Barral.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Africa, Art, Bronx, Exhibitions, Feature Shoot

Patrick Willocq: Song of the Walés

Posted on April 16, 2018

BONTONGU, ONE OF THE LAST BANTU WALE. Bontongu — the young. From the village of Ikoko. Itele clan. © Patrick Willocq

EPANZA MAKITA, BAT WALE. Epanza Makita — the trouble maker. From the village of Bioko. Ilongo clan. © Patrick Willocq

The Bantu (Pygmy) tribes of the Democratic Republic of the Congo are among the oldest peoples living on earth. Believed to be the direct descendants of Late Stone Age hunter-gatherers of the central African rainforest, they have maintained traditions and rituals that date back thousands of years.

When women of the Ekonda pygmy tribe become first-time mothers, they become Walés (“nursing mothers”), living in seclusion with their children. Here they are tended to by other women who teach them about their health and that of their children, who regardless of gender are the heir of the family and sometimes the entire clan.

Here, the Walés are given the respect and care otherwise reserved for the king, devoting their energies exclusively to themselves and their children. Adopting elaborate grooming rituals including coating themselves in ngola, a red powder from a tree of the same name that is believed to chase evil spirits away, and donning heavy brass bracelets known as kongas that restrict their movements along with nkumu, the skins of carnivorous animals, the Walés are follow strict rules in seclusion until the time arrives for liberation.

Liberation requires the women to learn a song and dance that will be performed in a three-hour ceremony that commemorates their experiences. The ritual is highly competitive and requires each Walé to compete for prestige and power by outshining her rivals. At the end of each performance, the Walé is led to bamboo scaffolding built for the occasion, where she is launched into the air or dropped to the floor, symbolically being released from her period of seclusion.

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WALE ASONGWAKA TAKES OFF. Asongwaka — the beautiful. From the village of Bioko. Ilongo clan. © Patrick Willocq

Categories: Africa, Art, Feature Shoot, Photography, Women

Nan Goldin: The Beautiful Smile

Posted on April 13, 2018

Nan Goldin’s photographs are filled with spirits and ghosts, becoming vestiges of lives lived, loved, and lost. They are evidence of we who once were and no longer are, here today, gone tomorrow – were it not for her art.

Over the past five decades, Goldin has created a body of work so iconoclastic and powerful that she has spawned generations of artists who follow in her footsteps, from Juergen Teller to Wolfgang Tillmans and Corinne Day. Goldin first picked up the camera in 1968 at the age of 15, using photography as a means to deal with life following her older sister Barbara’s suicide just four years earlier.

By 1973, she had her first solo exhibition in Boston, wherein she showed the world her travels through the city’s gay and transsexual communities in a series of black and white photographs that are stunningly timeless – yet prescient, as Goldin always is.

“My desire was to show them as a third gender, as another sexual option, a gender option,” Goldin told Stephen Westfall in a 2015 interview for BOMB magazine. “And to show them with a lot of respect and love, to kind of glorify them because I really admire people who can recreate themselves and manifest their fantasies publicly. I think it’s brave.”

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

Wyatt Gallery: The Windows of My Studio

Posted on February 10, 2018

1:50pm November 26, 2011 – Port of Spain, Trinidad. © Wyatt Gallery

“Wherever you go, there you are,” Confucius observed, explaining one of the inherent paradoxes of life. The nature of the human mind is one of an eternal quest, a seeking for answers – or maybe even the questions themselves.

We come to this earth without words, able to communicate through gesture, facial expression, guttural sounds and tones. It is enough to keep up going during our earliest, most vulnerable period of life but soon we are compelled to go beyond this visceral state. We are given words, words, and more words and shown how and when to use them: how to ask, how to answer – and, ultimately, how to think.

Life then becomes a process of accumulation until it reaches the tipping point and we discover that we are trapped inside losing paradigms made by lesser minds. It is then that our search takes a powerful turn, as we are forced to unwire our programming in the search for truth, undergoing the pain of stripping away lies that have shaped our identity in the most intimate and profound of ways.

This journey in inevitable although some may wish never to go, digging their heels in through denial, distraction, or delusion. But even within that, the yearning occurs, as we catch ourselves gazing out the window wondering, “What if? What is? What could be?”

It is here, in this moment of quiet repose, that our imagination is set free, able to launch itself into the world of possibility. This possibility is the essence of hope – the thing we dare not to say aloud for fear that it might escape our grasp. We hold it close to our heart, so close it lives in silence until the courage comes, to see out in the world whom we are truly meant to be.

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Categories: Art, Feature Shoot, Photography

Manhattan Transit: The Subway Photographs of Helen Levitt

Posted on February 2, 2018

Helen Levitt was an extremely private person and preferred to let her photographs speak for her – and if you listen very carefully, you might just hear the Bensonhurst accent coming through. “Dawling,” a photograph might intone with intimate familiarity, suggesting we come closer to get the gossip or a bite to eat. “Fuhgeddaboudit,” another might insist, making it clear the window for opportunity is firmly shut.

The Brooklyn soul of Levitt is firmly entrenched in her perfectly composed portraits of daily life in New York. Once upon a time before gentrification took hold, New Yorkers were everything America aspired to be. They came from all walks of life, frequently crossing paths, having the good sense not to gawk or to stare because that would be gauche. They came to expect the unexpected and took it in stride, spouting Cindy Adams catchphrase, “Only in New York, kids,” with pride.

They were characters, in every sense of the word, but rarely were they posers because somebody would pull their card. The New York of Helen Levitt spanned seven decades, from the 1930s through 90s, as she walked it streets, discreetly taking photographs without anyone clocking her. She was as much a part of the scene as everyone else, but she was on a mission: to create a body of work in tribute to this big galoot, this metropolis sitting on a pile of schist that would becoming the most powerful city in the world while Levitt walked its streets.

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

Francois Beaurain & Medina Dugger: Chromatin

Posted on January 27, 2018

In 2015, Francois Beaurain traveled to Lagos Photo, where he met Medina Dugger. Inspired by the work of late photographer J.D. Okhai Ojeikere and Nigerian hair color trends, they launched Chromatin, an on-going collaboration that transforms Dugger’s photographs of traditional Nigerian women’s hair styles into a series of mesmerizing gifs that are rooted in fractals, the very heart of African design and art.

Fractals are a curve or geometric figure where each part has the same statistical character as the whole, creating a never-ending pattern on an on-going feedback loop. While the West came to understand and name this phenomenon in 1975, fractals have been an integral part of African culture daring back to ancient Egyptian times, and can be seen in cultures in Sub-Saharan Africa writ large.

With the invasion of the continent by Euorpean imperialists for centuries, a great deal of the traditional cultures were destroyed and erased — with the exception of hair braiding. “African hair designs are among the last remaining remnants of an ancient African cultural pillar that has been almost completely annihilated by centuries of colonization and cultural domination,” Beaurain and Dugger note.

With Chromatin, the artists restore fractals to their rightful place: as the fundamental essence of African art and design, and imbue it with a modern twist, combining hair design and digital technology to create a powerful new way of seeing the depth and complexity of traditional African culture and thought. Beaurain speaks with us about making fractals the center of their art.

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Categories: Africa, Art, Feature Shoot, Photography

Harry Gruyaert: East/West

Posted on January 24, 2018

Las Vegas downtown motel, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States, 1982. © Harry Gruyaert Magnum Photos. Courtesy of Thames & Hudson.

“Higher emotions cannot be communicated in color,” American photographer Paul Strand claimed – revealing the power of irrational beliefs to take root in the mind and spread like a virus through those who fear to question ideology in search of the truth.

The decision to invite Belgian photographer Harry Gruyaert (b. 1941) to join Magnum Photos in 1982 caused dissent among the ranks. At that time Gruyaert had been working in color for two decades, but the powers that be “didn’t see color,” so to speak. Photography was still a fledgling medium in the art world, and those who were desperate to join the ranks revealed a powerful insecurity that fed simple-minded biases and false hierarchies designed to exclude innovative thinkers who worked outside the narrow frame of the status quo.

Gruyaert, however, was undeterred. His commitment remained consistent throughout his remarkable career. In 1981, Geo photo editor Alice Rose George commissioned Gruyaert to photograph Las Vegas. Rather than provide his take on the tired tropes of the Strip, Gruyaert ventured off the beaten path ton the Vegas where residents lived. The result was entirely too realistic; Vegas was not the place of fantasies and spectacle – it was a world where people eked out their existence on the margins.

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