Posts from the “Feature Shoot” Category

Kirk Crippens & Gretchen LeMaistre: Live Burls

Posted on July 4, 2017

Photo: Semper Virens, © Kirk Crippens and Gretchen LeMaistre, courtesy of Schilt Publishing.

The redwood trees of Northern Pacific Coast are among the oldest living things on earth, with life spans that average 1,200 to 1,800 years. Also known as Sequoia sepmervirens, they include these evergreens include the tallest trees on the planet, reaching up to 379 feet (115.5 meters) in height and 29.2 feet (8.9 meters) in diameter. Simply put, they are majestic beings that have fallen victim to the greed of wo/man.

The First Peoples of American lived in the forest for thousands of years, able to create a symbiotic relationship with the land without destroying it. Their spiritual beliefs, combined with knowledge of the natural world, allowed them to cultivate the resources of the forest and live in harmony with the earth.

All of this changed with the arrival of an imperialist force that traveled across the Atlantic Ocean and took land that did not belong to them. As the descendants of Europe made this country their own, they ravaged the landscape without thought to the consequences of their actions. They began decimating the forests to build homes, tearing down trees with no effort to replace the forests they destroyed.

The size of redwoods made them highly prized, for their could provide prized timber known for its durability and workability. By 1853, nine sawmills plowed through the glories of the earth, threatening the very existence of this ancient species of tree.

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Categories: Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Photography

David Gwinnutt: Before We Were Men

Posted on June 21, 2017

Photo: Duggie Fields b.1945. © David Gwinnutt

When Swinging London collapsed, the Pop-optics faded away. The bright cheerful colors of promise became muted, grubby, and grey as the city fell into created desperate times. The rising tide of unemployment, set against an on-going recession, brought the conservatives to fore, and through them a new leader was.

In 1979, Margaret Thatcher became the first woman to assume the mantle and she went hard: deregulating the financial sector, privatizing state-owned companies, and reducing the power of trade unions. She spoke for the elite and was largely unpopular until victory in the 1982 Falklands War.

During those intervening years, a new generation was coming of age, embracing the D.I.Y. ethos of punk and taking it far beyond the reaches of the known. The scene, which came to be known as the New Romantics, was centered at the Blitz, a nightclub in the Covent Garden section of London.

If ever there was a fitting name, it was this. At the Blitz, a fantastical coterie of artists, musicians, designers, filmmakers, and performers came dressed to kill, wearing handmade pieces that could best be described as Ziggy Stardust on acid. The Blitz Kids, as they were known, took that art of the poseur to the next level. The donned costumes and makeup that blurred gender lines, sometimes going so far as to erase the human element in the search for an identity that spoke to the moment.

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Photo: Alison Owen c. 1984 © David GwinnuttDavid Gwinnutt: Before We Were Men

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

Irving Penn: Centennial

Posted on May 30, 2017

Photo: Irving Penn, American, Plainfield, New Jersey, 1917–2009, New York. Three Asaro Mud Men, New Guinea, 1970, printed 1976 Platinum-palladium print. Image: 20 1/8 x 19 1/2 in. (51.1 x 49.6 cm.) Sheet: 24 15/16 x 22 1/16 in. (63.3 x 56 cm.) Mount: 26 1/16 x 22 1/16 in. (66.2 x 56 cm.) Overall: 26 1/16 x 22 1/16 in. (66.2 x 56 cm.) Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation IP .154

“Photography is just the present stage of man’s visual history,” Irving Penn (1917-2009) sagely observed, recognizing the infinite possibilities of the human animal to create technology that would advance our ability to document, represent, and re-envision the world. As a master of the form, Penn understood that the only thing that limits us is imagination.

For seven decades he worked, becoming a master of studio photography with the ability to craft pictures of anything he wished. Here was a man who could transform his very first commission for Jell-o pudding into a resounding success, even though, as Penn realized, it was, “a abstract nothing, it’s just a blob of ectoplasm.”

Yet with that formless glob of goop crafted in a laboratory, Penn was able to entice consumers to buy and serve the product en masse. It’s precisely this ability to transcend the particulars that made Penn a master of whatever form he chose to shoot, be in portraits, fashion, still life, food, nudes, or flowers. He understood that the photograph was an invitation to engage, to gaze upon the world without actually having to interact with it.

Through the safety of distance in time and space, Penn asked us to look at the complex and extraordinary beauty of existence in its many forms, whether Miles Davis’ hand, the Asaro Mud Men of New Guinea, or the curious silhouettes of Japanese designer Issey Miyake.

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Irving Penn, American, Plainfield, New Jersey, 1917–2009, New York. Two Miyake Warriors, New York. June 3, 1998, printed January-February, 1999. Platinum-palladium print. Image: 21 x 19 5/8 in. (53.4 x 49.8 cm.) Sheet: 23 1/4 x 21 9/16 in. (59 x 54.7 cm.) Mount: 23 1/4 x 21 9/16 in. (59 x 54.7 cm.) Overall: 23 1/4 x 21 9/16 in. (59 x 54.7 cm.) Promised Gift of The Irving Penn Foundation IP .166

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

Larry Sultan: Here and Home

Posted on May 26, 2017

Photo: Larry Sultan, Business Page, from the series Pictures From Home, 1985; chromogenic print. © Estate of Larry Sultan. Photos courtesy Casemore Kirkeby and Estate of Larry Sultan.

Home is a state of mind as much as it is a place. For some it can be a four-letter word of the very worst kind—or it can be synonymous with love. Home can be so many things, all of them deeply personal.

For photographer Larry Sultan (1946-2009), home was where he created work, lush images of suburban California that are as American as Hostess cupcakes. There’s something delightfully unnatural about it all, something that comforts us with soothing visions of a naïve faith in the possibilities of the contrived. Here, the element of control reveals itself, that deeply seductive belief that we run this.

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Photo: Larry Sultan, Practicing Golf Swing, from the series Pictures from Home, 1986; chromogenic print. © Estate of Larry Sultan. Photos courtesy Casemore Kirkeby and Estate of Larry Sultan.

Photo: Larry Sultan, My Mother Posing for Me, from the series Pictures From Home, 1984; chromogenic print. © Estate of Larry Sultan. Photos courtesy Casemore Kirkeby and Estate of Larry Sultan.

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

Berenice Abbott: Paris Portraits 1925-1930

Posted on May 16, 2017

Photo: Lucia Joyce (Irish/Italian, 1907-1982). © Berenice Abbott, from Paris Portraits: 1925-1930, published by Steidl

Paris, 1925: Berenice Abbott stood on the balcony of Man Ray’s Paris studio with his camera in her hands, taking photographs that would become the very first portraits in a long and legendary career.

Four years earlier, she arrived in Paris at the age of 23. Within two years, she was working as a darkroom assistant to her friend Man Ray. With his encouragement she stepped into the light and began producing work of her own. A selection of 115 works from this period now appear in the luxurious tome, Berenice Abbott: Paris Portraits 1925-1930 (Steidl), giving us an unfettered glimpse into the early years of a natural.

“The first [portraits] I took came out well, which surprised me,” Abbott is quoted as saying in the book’s introduction. “I had no idea of becoming a photographer, but the pictures kept coming out and most of them were good. Some were very food and I decided perhaps I could charge something for my work. Soon I started to build up a little business and I paid Man Ray out of the money I made for the supplies I used, but eventually I was paying him more than he was paying me and that’s when it started to become a problem.”

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Photo: Pierre de Massot (French, 1900-1969). © Berenice Abbott, from Paris Portraits: 1925-1930, published by Steidl.

Categories: Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Photography

Martha Cooper at Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

Posted on May 16, 2017

Photo: Japanese girl with tattoo, Tokyo, 1970. © Martha Cooper.

Photographer Martha Cooper has always lived life on her own term. After graduating high school at 16 and Grinnell College at 19, the Baltimore-native decided to see the world so she joined the Peace Corps and traveled to Thailand, where she taught English for a spell. Then she hopped on a motorcycle and hightailed it from Bangkok to London, taking all along the way.

She received a diploma in anthropology from Oxford, which speaks to her truest sensibilities: her passion for documenting the creative fruits of the human experience. In her hands, the camera is not merely a tool to create an image for aesthetic pleasure, it does something more; it bears witness to a time and place that is inherently ephemeral: street art and culture, which is inherently urban folk art.

In 1970, Cooper found herself walking along a street in Tokyo when she spotted a man in a crowd. On his back was a Japanese tattoo, with figures drawn in the style of a woodblock print. Entranced, Cooper followed him until he disappeared, then began asking her friend about tattoos—a touchy subject. Tattooing had been outlawed in 1872, then legalized again in 1948, then quickly became a status symbol for the yakuza and the Japanese underworld. But Cooper is not one to give up when she has her sights set, and so she pursued her quest to completion: entrance to the studio of Horibun I, a tattoo master.

It is here, in his studio that Cooper made the photographs that comprise the earliest work in the exhibition Martha Cooper, currently on view at Steven Kasher Gallery, New York, through June 3, 2017.

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Photo: Christopher Sawyer breaking, Upper West Side, NYC, 1983. © Martha Cooper.

Photo: Woman with white pants on 180th Street platform, Bronx, NYC, 1980. © Martha Cooper.

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Bronx, Exhibitions, Feature Shoot, Graffiti, Manhattan, Photography

James Pomerantz: A Successful Artist

Posted on May 11, 2017

Photo: Barneys $1,790.00 © James Pomerantz

When photographer James Pomerantz turned 40 in January of this year, he took a moment to reflect on success and what it meant. As the father of two young children, he recognized the importance of financial security, but understood that being a successful artist went deeper than this. It required him to be “true to my ideas, able to do it, and keep doing it. If I didn’t have to worry about the finance, I’d have the freedom to just create.”

With this awareness, something snapped into place. For the first time in several months, Pomerantz found the mental space to get back to work on personal projects. Suddenly, he was able to move outside his comfort zone, discovering new means to create photographs that went beyond the commercial work that paid the bills each month.

Pomerantz did something he had never done before: he made himself the subject of his work. For the new series, A Successful Artist, the photographer hit upon an idea: he would visit various haberdashers across his native New York and tell the sales clerks, “I need to look like a successful artist. Could you pick out something suitable?”

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Categories: Art, Fashion, Feature Shoot, Photography

Basquiat Before Basquiat: East 12th Street, 1979-1980

Posted on April 28, 2017

Photo: Basquiat in the apartment, 1981. Photograph by Alexis Adler.

Before Jean-Michel Basquiat was known by name, his work had already hit the streets of New York. Writing under the name SAMO©, Basquiat and partner Al Diaz co-opted the means of graffiti to build street cred and fame but they took it a step further by adding tongue-in-cheek turns of phrase in bold block letters. By avoiding the highly stylistic letterforms of graffiti writers, SAMO© made it clear: they wanted to be read, known, and understood. Theirs was a message to the people of New York.

SAMO© was a name that Diaz and Basquiat came up with one day while smoking they called “the same old shit.” They shortened it to “Same old,” then “SAMO” came through. At the time, Basquiat had been working in the art department of Unique Clothing Warehouse, perfectly situated at the intersection of Broadway and West Eighth Street. At night, they’d go out bombing, leaving messages behind, letting the city know what was on their mind.

“SAMO©… THE SO-CALLED AVANT GARDE”
“SAMO©… 4 MASS MEDIA MINDWASH”
“SAMO as an alternative 2 playing art with the ‘radical chic’ sect of Daddy’s$funds’

While art critic Jeffrey Deitch described the messages as “disjointed street poetry” in a 1982 issue of Flash Art, Basquiat admitted in a video interview that first ran on ART in 1998 it was, “Teenage stuff. We’d just drink Ballantine Ale all the time and write stuff and throw bottles…”—because, in fact, he was just 18 and 19 years of age.

But then, in 1979, things changed. Basquiat and his friend Alexis Adler got a small apartment in the East Village together. The Brooklyn-native was on his own, free to explore life on his terms. Although his work as SAMO© continued through 1980, it was slowly getting phased out as Basquiat began to develop his work as a fine artist.

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Photo: Basquiat in the apartment, 1981. Photograph by Alexis Adler.

Photo: Basquiat practicing clarinet in the bathroom of the apartment, c. 1980. Photograph by Alexis Adler.

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

Colleen Plumb: Path Infinitum

Posted on April 11, 2017

The path to truth is a long and arduous road, traveled by the few who can withstand the slings of arrows and bows. It takes courage and strength to allow the myths to fall away and stand face to face with the cold heart of reality. Photographer Colleen Plumb set for on this path many years ago, looking to understand the relationship between wo/man and animal that we have inherited from our ancestors.

“Then God said: Let us make* human beings in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the tame animals, all the wild animals, and all the creatures that crawl on the earth,” Genesis 1:26 decreed, creating a divide that would come to result in an oppressive hierarchy.

In her first book Animals Are Outside Today (Radius, 2011), Plumb reflects on the intricately layered intersections between the animal and human world for better or, far more often, for worse. The origins of our stories, rituals, and symbols have been lost over time, creating dangerous space for opportunistic and predatory behavior fraught with disinformation and rationalizations.

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Categories: Art, Exhibitions, Feature Shoot, Photography