Posts from the “Huck” Category

Daybreak: New Affirmations in Queer Photography

Posted on June 25, 2018

Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. Complex Occupation, 2016

As photography evolves, a new generation is coming of age, pushing the formal and conceptual properties of the medium beyond their existing boundaries.

With these advancements, fresh perspectives about how to represent not only the self but also the very nature of the queer experience have come to the fore in the exhibition Daybreak: New Affirmations in Queer Photography now on view at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York, through September 2, 2018.

The genesis for the exhibition began in 2016, when curators Matthew Jensen and Ka-Man Tse witnessed an explosion of young artists in schools around New York City, whose range of styles and techniques were as diverse and expansive as the LGBTQI lives themselves.

They chose 12 emerging artists, including Kevin Aranibar-Molina, Elliott Jerome Brown Jr., Ryan James Caruthers, Ryan Duffin, Andrew Jarman, Mikaela Lungulov-Klotz, Groana Melendez, Vanessa Rondón, Alexis Ruiseco-Lombera, Matthew Papa, Jess Richmond, and Elias Jesús Rischmawi, each of whom is forging ahead in the genres of portraiture, self-portraiture, documentary, and conceptual photography.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. The company of her shadows,
2016

Categories: Art, Exhibitions, Huck, Photography

Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano LA

Posted on June 19, 2018

Anthony Friedkin, Jim and Mundo, Montebello, East Los Angeles, 1972. From The Gay Essay, 1969–73. Gift of Anthony Friedkin. ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries. Courtesy of Anthony Friedkin

Teddy Sandoval, Las Locas, c. 1980. Courtesy of Paul Polubinskas. Photo by Fredrik Nilsen

Born in Tijuana in 1955, Edmundo “Mundo” Meza was raised in East LA, in the heart of the Chicano scene. As an artist, Meza worked outside of the mainstream, building a network of radical creatives who were dealing with issues political activism, identity, and social justice connected with the emergence of the Chicano Civil Rights, Women’s, and Gay Liberation Movements.

His untimely death from complications due to AIDS at the age of 29 in 1985 changed everything. As an early casualty of the epidemic, his voice was silenced too soon. Shortly after, his work stopped being exhibited and began to disappear.

Curators C. Ondine Chavoya and David Evans Frantz were on an urgent mission to preserve what remained. As they began their work, they tapped into a gold vein. An explosion of artists from Mundo’s underground network began to pour forth, and over a period of four years, the curators developed relationships with more than 50 artists, groups, and bands working between the late ’60s and early ’90s.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Patssi Valdez, Reclining (Betty Salas and Gloria), c. early 1980s. Courtesy of Patssi Valdez

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Huck

Jess T. Dugan and Vanessa Fabbre: To Survive on This Shore

Posted on June 18, 2018

Duchess Milan, 69, Los Angeles, CA, 2017 © Jess T. Dugan

From 2012 through 2017, photographer Jess T. Dugan and social worker Vanessa Fabbre travelled across the United States to meet with older trans and gender non-conforming people who live on their own terms, surviving and thriving despite all of life’s unexpected turns.

Understanding the power of representation, Dugan and Fabbre assembled an incredible collection of portraits and stories of people who live within the complex intersections of gender identity, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class, geographic location, and age for the incredible new book To Survive on This Shore (Kehrer Verlag). The result is a phenomenal portrait of people from all walks of life who have lived to tell their tales – a feat unto itself given the fact that the average trans life expectancy is just 35 years old.

“From the beginning, we were mindful of trying to include as wide a range of experiences as possible,” Dugan explains. “Some people may think of LGBTQ as one community, but each person featured in the book approaches their identity in a different way.”

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Dee Dee Ngozi, 55, Atlanta, GA, 2016 © Jess T. Dugan.

Categories: Art, Books, Huck, Photography

Represent: Hip-Hop Photography

Posted on June 14, 2018

Salt’n’Pepa, outside Bayside Studios, Bayside, Queens, Feb. 6, 1989: Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Photo by Al Pereira, © Al Pereira

“Rap is something you do. Hip hop is something you live,” KRS One memorably said, reminding fans that the culture of hip hop is more than just an MC on the mic. Hip hop is a style, an attitude, and a way of life that transcends all boundaries, be it cultural or political, and brings people together in celebration of black power, pride, and principles.

At the foundation of hip hop are DJs, MCs, B-boys and B-Girls, and graffiti – which represent the music, literature, dance, and visual arts. Although MCing (aka rapping) has become the most famous element, it’s the fruit of a tree with much deeper roots, one that Rhea Combs, curator of photography and film, and director of CAAMA, explores in the new exhibition, Represent: Hip-Hop Photography.

Represent takes work from Bill Adler’s Eyejammie Hip Hop Photography Collection as its departure point, visually sampling from the seminal archive that includes more than 400 iconic photographs by 60 leading artists including Charlie Ahearn, Harry Allen, Janette Beckman, Al Periera, and Jamel Shabazz. For the exhibition, Combs has paired these works with historical photographs and other objects from the museum’s permanent collection, to illustrate the ways in which the innovative practices can be found in African-American history decades before hip hop was born in the Bronx.

Read the Story at Huck Online

Queen Latifah, NY, June 23, 1991. Collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, Photo by Al Pereira, © Al Pereira

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Exhibitions, Huck, Music, Photography

Stanley Kubrick: Through a Different Lens

Posted on June 13, 2018

Stanley Kubrick, Stanley Kubrick with Faye Emerson from “Faye Emerson: Young Lady in a Hurry”, 1950. © Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick was just 17 years old when he became a staff photographer for Look, one of the biggest large format photo magazines of the ’40s. The Bronx native was a natural behind the camera, capturing scenes of everyday life that perfectly prefigured the intense sensibilities that would come to define his films.

In the era when Weegee ruled the New York photo scene, Kubrick began to carve out a space for himself, shooting the common man and woman as they went about the business of modern life in the years immediately following World War II. Although the scenes could be pedestrian, his photographs were anything but – as Kubrick skillfully crafted a palpable sense of intensity, drama, and tension that made every picture vibrate with life.

Rarely seen photographs from Kubrick’s work for Look at the subject of Through a Different Lens, a new exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York and book published by Taschen. Here, we travel with Kubrick over a period of five years, as he traverses the streets of New York, bringing us onto the movie set, under the big top, into the boxing ring, and backstage on Broadway to get a look at extraordinary lives as they unfolded.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Stanley Kubrick, from “Life and Love on the New York City Subway”, 1947. © Stanley Kubrick

Categories: Art, Books, Exhibitions, Huck, Manhattan, Photography

Letso Leipego: Tell My Story

Posted on June 7, 2018

Bed Time Stories, 2015. © Letso Leipego, courtesy of Guns & Rain

My Grandfather, 2017. © Letso Leipego, courtesy of Guns & Rain

Shortly after independence in 1966, Botswana was ranked one of the poorest nations in Africa. Yet, over the past 50 years, the southern African nation has risen to become one of the world’s fastest growing economies with flourishing mining, cattle, and tourist industries.

One of the most sparsely populated nations on earth, Botswana is home to just two million people, most of whom live in the challenging environmental conditions of the semi-arid countryside. It’s here, in these remote corners of the nation, that photographer Letso Leipego journeys to create a series of portraits for a project he began in 2014 titled Tell My Story.

Hailing from the national capital of Gaborone, Leipego recognised a strong interest in the native Tswana culture from both tourists and social media. He then focused his energies on developing a series of portraits that reveal the majesty of the people, the dramatic beauty of the land, and the powerful synergy that occurs when they are in harmony together.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

The Shepherd, 2016. © Letso Leipego, courtesy of Guns & Rain

Giving Thanks, 2016. © Letso Leipego, courtesy of Guns & Rain

Categories: Africa, Huck, Photography

Danny Lyon: The Destruction of Lower Manhattan

Posted on May 26, 2018

Aerial view of Manhattan, 1966–67. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of George Stephanopoulos. © Danny Lyon

In 1966 at the age of 25, American photographer Danny Lyon returned to his native New York at the top of his game. Having completed his work on The Bikeriders and in the Civil Rights Movement as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, settled into an apartment in Lower Manhattan just as the neighbourhood was undergoing radical change.

Under the auspices of David Rockefeller, the Downtown Manhattan Association had been formed as part of a new program of urban renewal. Industries were decamping from Manhattan in search of greener shores, leaving the city abandoned and in an abject state of decay. The financial district was heading to midtown where they could erect shiny new skyscrapers; the Washington Street Market closed after the fruit and vegetable suppliers set up shop in New Jersey. All that remained were 19-century residential and industrial buildings.

Governor Nelson Rockefeller, David’s brother, already had plans for the construction of the World Trade Center in the works, and together they focused on a new vision for downtown New York. A plan was enacted that would wholesale erase the buildings and streets of lower Manhattan and in its place, a new neighbourhood would be built, one designed to attract middle and higher income people in the name of “urban renewal.”

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

View south from 88 Gold Street, 1966–67. The Cleveland Museum of Art © Danny Lyon

Categories: 1960s, Art, Exhibitions, Huck, Manhattan, Photography

Susan Meiselas: Mediations

Posted on May 21, 2018

For more than 40 years, American photographer Susan Meiselas has grounded her work in the idea of place. Whether working on the front lines of civil war in Nicaragua or backstage with carnival strippers in New England, Meiselas is fully present in the moment, seeing not just the surface of things but that which lies beneath – the spirit within the flesh and bone that continues to live in her photographs long after they are made.

Mediations, her newest book (Damiani/Jeu de Paume/Fundació Tàpies) traces her singular journey across time and space, exploring the ways in which the photograph works as object, art, and evidence. The book, which accompanies a touring exhibition that will open at SFMoMA on July 21, is not so much a catalogue as it is a meditation on the threads that weave the complex tapestry of Meiselas’ career.

In it, a variety of writers offer their take on the issues that inform the questions at the heart of her work; such the language of the body, the meaning of place, the position of the photographer, and the legacy of documentary work. They also begin to consider the ways in which the photograph works as a book or a print, a scan or a memory.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Huck, Photography

LES YES!: Meryl Meisler 1970s & 80s Lower East Side Photos

Posted on May 17, 2018

100 years ago, New York’s Lower East Side (LES) was the pre-eminent melting pot – a mixture of old and new immigrants leaving Europe en masse, creating a singular blend of Ashkenazi Jews, Germans, Italians, Greeks, Russians, Slovaks, Ukrainians, Hungarians, Poles, and Romanians. With some 400,000 Jews living in the hood, the Ashkenazi made up one of the largest groups in the LES, bringing their unique spin on old-world culture to the city that never sleeps.

A neighbourhood with a leaning towards radical politics, the LES helped foster a new culture rooted in housing reform following the publication of Jacob A. Riis’ 1890 book, How the Other Half Lives, which documented the horrors of people forced to live in slums. The New Law Tenements passed in 1901 resulted in the construction of settlement houses – such as the Henry Street Settlement on Grand Street – which transformed living conditions for the working class, and has continued to serve the community for generations.

In 1976, a young Jewish-American photographer named Meryl Meisler began frequenting art events at the Henry Street Settlement, where her cousin and roommate taught art. Here, she met Mr Morris Katz, the self-proclaimed Mayor of Grand Street. A retired widower who once worked at Coney Island guessing weights, Mr Katz cut a striking figure that could best be described as Yiddish chic. Donning a sports jacket over a zebra-patterned shirt, patterned bow tie and plaid pants, Mr Katz warmly greeted Meisler at the street corner and offered her a lollipop. She was instantly charmed.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Exhibitions, Huck, Manhattan, Photography

Huck Magazine: The Coming of Age Issue

Posted on May 14, 2018

Cover Story: Angela Boatwright X Godlis: Punk Now and Then

If coming of age means realising who you are, then the breakthrough can arrive at any time – no matter what stage you’re at. But wherever life takes us, wherever we end up, we all remain connected to the same point in our rearview mirrors: that wide-eyed teen just trying to figure shit out as best we can.

Join us as we celebrate characters who know that better than anyone – from the teenage activists shaping our future to prodigious creatives who don’t believe in failure – and keep forging their own path regardless.

For more, visit Huck Magazine

Categories: 1970s, Art, Huck, Music, Photography

Teenage Kicks: Angela Boatwright X Godlis on Punk Now and Then

Posted on May 11, 2018

What is it about punk that endlessly endures, uniting kids across space and time? Photographers Godlis and Angela Boatwright may have captured two distinct scenes – 1970s New York and contemporary Los Angeles – but in-between these images, made then and now, lies a single connecting thread.

Read More at Huck Magazine

Categories: 1970s, Huck, Music, Photography