Posts from the “Photography” Category

Mariette Pathy Allen: Rites of Passage

Posted on May 20, 2019

Cori and poodle, 1987. © Mariette Pathy Allen, courtesy of the artist.

The many expressions of identity that exist on the gender spectrum is a subject of tremendous depth and breadth, though it has largely existed underground in realms secreted away from the masses. It has given birth to a culture so innovative and rich that, 50 years after Stonewall, the underground has emerged and center itself with impeccable aplomb.

Over the past half-century, artists like Mariette Pathy Allen have been deep in the trenches, using their work to fight for dignity, respect, and rights — taking on the tyranny of ignorance, bigotry, and oppression.

In celebration, The Museum of Sex presents Mariette Pathy Allen: Rites of Passage, 1978–2006, a stunning survey of the artist’s archive that includes photographs, interview transcripts, personal correspondence, and materials from her career working with trans, genderfluid, and intersex communities over the past four decades.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Sunday morning during a Drag Ball, 1984. © Mariette Pathy Allen, courtesy of the artist.

Harlem Drag Ball, 1984. © Mariette Pathy Allen, courtesy of the artist.

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

James Van Der Zee: Studio

Posted on May 17, 2019

James Van Der Zee, Marcus Garvey with George O. Marke and Prince Kojo Tovalou-Houénou, 1924. Gelatin silver print; printed c.1924, 5 x 7 inches ©Donna Mussenden Van Der Zee, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Picture it: Harlem. 1918. James Van Der Zee, 32, opens Guarantee Photo Studio on 135 Street just as the Harlem Renaissance was coming into bloom during the first wave of the Great Migration.

As northern Manhattan became the Mecca for Black America, Van Der Zee was there to record it all inside his studio and on the streets. James Van Der Zee: Studio, recently on view at Howard Greenberg Gallery, is a portal into the past, into a time when Black society thrived and set the pace for music, art, poetry, literature, dance — well, you name it.

Van Der Zee was no exception. He set himself apart by using painted backdrops and luxurious props in the studio to create elaborate tableaux for his subjects, and bathed them in sumptuous lighting to evoke a painterly touch, imbuing each photograph with the hand of the artist.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

James Van Der Zee, Eve’s Daughter, c.1920. Gelatin silver print; printed c.1920, 6 ¼ x 4 ¼ inches ©Donna Mussenden Van Der Zee, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Categories: Exhibitions, Feature Shoot, Manhattan, Photography

Tom Bianchi: 63 E. 9th Street. NYC Polaroids 1975–1983

Posted on May 15, 2019

untitled, nyc099 by Tom Bianchi

After discovering the Pines on Fire Island in 1972, Tom Bianchi found himself drawn into New York’s flourishing gay scene which emerged in the years following Stonewall.

“I was having an affair with the playwright Edward Albee, which brought me in and out of New York,” Bianchi says from his home in Los Angeles. “I thought New York was too difficult a place to live – too expensive and too crazy – but my contacts lead me to imagine I could live there and be a New Yorker. What was thrilling was the sexual availability of the gay community at that time: we were just bursting at the seams.”

In 1975, Bianchi moved to the heart of Greenwich Village and took a job as in-house counsel at Columbia Pictures. That year, Bianchi received a Polaroid SX-70 camera during a corporate conference and began documenting the lives of his friends and lovers in the early years of Gay Liberation – images which are now compiled in the new book, 63 E. 9th Street. NYC Polaroids 1975–1983.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

untitled, nyc079 by Tom Bianchi

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, AnOther Man, Art, Books, Manhattan, Photography

Miron Zownir: NYC RIP

Posted on May 15, 2019

NYC 1983 © Miron Zownir

Hailed by Terry Southern as the “Poet of Radical Photography,” Miron Zownir took up photography in the late 1970s when he arrived in West Berlin. Moved by the spirit of punk, Zownir embraced the utopian vision of anarchy and nihilistic self-destruction that flourished openly on the streets and in the sex clubs, drug dens, and nightlife of West Berlin and London.

It was a spirit that continued to guide his photography when he moved to New York in 1980, just as the city reached new heights of decadence just before the advent of AIDS. Using his camera as his guide, Zownir made his way from his digs in the East Village to explore the streets of New York at its most outlaw.

Before gentrification erased all that had come before, Zownir captured New York’s seedy years when prostitutes walked the streets, movie theaters screened porn around the clock, live sex and peep shows took loose change, and the West Side piers were the ultimate destination for anonymous sex—but also art interventions by Vito Acconci, Gordon Matta-Clark, and Peter Hujar in the years following Stonewall.

Zownir’s photographs show New York after a decade of “benign neglect” and landlord-sponsored arson that reduced large swaths of the Bronx, Brooklyn, Harlem, and the Lower East Side to rubble. Real estate was affordable—if not outright cheap—after white flight had sent the middle class out to the suburbs. In their absence, artists like Zownir arrived, mixing and mingling with locals with roots going back generations to create a powerful document of an era that has otherwise disappeared.

In Zownir’s pictures, we see the people who often fall through the cracks from the eye of one who understands the struggle and pays respect in the tradition of Bruce Davidson, Nan Goldin, and Larry Clark. In advance of a presentation of his work by Galerie Bene Taschen during Photo London (May 16-19), Zownir takes us on an incredible journey though the New York underground.

Read the Full Story at VICE Online

NYC 1981 © Miron Zownir

NYC 1982 © Miron Zownir

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

Bruce Davidson – Subject: Contact

Posted on May 10, 2019

Bruce Davidson, East 100th Street, 1966–68 © Bruce Davidson, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery/Magnum Photos

At the tender age of ten Bruce Davidson embarked on a quiet, solitary hunt in search of the perfect photograph. It was a journey that began when his mother built a darkroom in the basement of their home in Oak Park, Illinois so that he could meticulously print and edit his work, scanning contact sheets in search of gems preserved in slips of silver gelatin first captured on his forays out into the world.

“I always felt like an explorer on some faraway planet,” Davidson tells AnOther from his home in New York City. “I work best if I’m left alone. I like to explore, uncover, observe and reflect without anyone looking over my shoulder.”

His independence has been an integral part of his career, a trait that announced itself while serving in the US Army during the 1950s. Posted to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers in Europe outside Paris, Davidson was given enough freedom to follow his own path – one that lead to his meeting the widow of the impressionist painter Leon Fauché in Montmartre, who he photographed alongside her late husband’s paintings.

His photographs of their encounter, first published in Esquire in 1958 in an essay titled Widow of Montmartre, caught the eye of Henri Cartier-Bresson, who arranged to have Davidson inducted into Magnum Photos that year. As a member of the fabled photo agency, Davidson has become one of the most influential photographers of our time, writing history with his camera in a series of landmark images.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Online

Bruce Davidson, Brooklyn Gang, 1959 © Bruce Davidson, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery/Magnum Photos

Categories: 1960s, AnOther, Art, Brooklyn, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Photography

The Portrait is Political

Posted on May 9, 2019

texas isaiah, “Capricorn Moon Saturn” (2016)Photography texas isaiah. Courtesy of BRIC

Portraiture is a political act. Who gets to be represented and revered, passed through the channels of history and power long after they have left the Earth? Who gets to have wall panels written in their name, their lives detailed while their likeness becomes a commodity available for purchase, view, and mass reproduction?

With the advent of photography, the portrait became democratised, creating space for those who were marginalised, misrepresented, or erased – though it is only in recent years that the art world proper has begun to make space.

“There is a mirror that is being held up to the art world in so many different ways; it seems like we are poised on the brink of some really big change,” says Jaishri Abichandani, one of the artists featured in The Portrait is Political at BRIC OPEN, Brooklyn.

The Portrait is Political brings together the work of artists pushing the portrait into new realms, using a collaborative approach to generate the social capital and social justice for the LGBTQ artists, subjects, and communities of Brooklyn.

Organised into three parts, the show includes Jasmine Blooms At Night, Abichandani’s jewel-like paintings of South Asian American feminists; Dear Los Angeles, Love, Brooklyn, a series of photographic portraits of black individuals by texas isaiah; and The Other Is You: Brooklyn Queer Portraiture, curated by Liz Collins, with Anna Parisi, and Sol Nova, a group show that exclusively features LGBTQ artists and subjects.

“One thing portraits have been doing for centuries is celebrating people and who they are, showing a person in their chosen environment as they feel best, most true, and their clearest self,” Collins says – a testament to the genre’s power to elevate and transform the way we look at the world. Here, Jaishri Abichandani, texas isaiah, and Liz Collins share their insights into how to use portraiture to create a political impact.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Jaishri Abichandani, “Urooj Arshad” (2018)Artwork Jaishri Abichandani. Courtesy of BRIC

Naima Green, “Untitled (Riis)” (2017). Archival inkjet printPhotography Naima Green. Courtesy of BRIC

Categories: Art, Dazed, Exhibitions, Painting, Photography

Mastering the Medium and Sustaining Your Practice

Posted on May 9, 2019

USA. Los Angeles and vicinity. 2008-2015. From the project “ZZYZX”.

Photography is a calling and a need to communicate through images. It is a language all its own, one which benefits from a diverse array of applications in the world of art — be it museums and galleries, book publishing, commercial or editorial work.

Upcoming photographers find themselves charged with the dual tasks of mastering the medium while also developing a sustainable business practice. Those fluent in the language of photography excel when they learn how to translate their vision across these platforms , very often by winning over an audience of one: those gatekeepers who can help the photographer build a mutually beneficial partnership.

In early April, Magnum hosted an educational two-day professional practice workshop at Jersey City’s Mana Contemporary, in the United States, which featured presentations by leading figures in the field, who offered insights on their inspirations, stories about significant projects, and hard-won wisdom after collective decades working across the industry.

Here we share five key insights from speakers Magnum nominee Gregory Halpern, Azu Nwagbogu the director of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, photobook publisher Michael Mack – of Mack Books, TIME’s Paul Moakley, and MoMA’s Sarah Meister.

Read the Full Story at Magnum Photos

USA. Los Angeles and vicinity. 2008-2015. From the project “ZZYZX”.

Categories: Magnum Photos, Photography

Phil Knott: Didn’t Know You Cared

Posted on May 8, 2019

In the early 2000s, British photographer Phil Knott photographed Amy Winehouse at the very outset of her career, before the world discovered the majestic talent swaddled in the addiction and pain that fuelled her art — and the tabloids’ bloodthirst. Dead at the age of 27, Winehouse had become a symbol of the fallen woman, denied redemption for bearing her wounds and scars openly, without shame.

Years after her death in 2011, Knott rediscovered the photographs he made of Winehouse and organised an exhibition of 27 prints for Didn’t Know You Cared to honour the life and legacy of a singular talent whose light was extinguished far too soon. Knott’s encounters with Winehouse predate her rise and fall, giving us a glimpse of a pure, innocent soul bound for a tragic destiny.

Knott, who has photographed everyone from Aaliyah to A$AP Rocky over the past 30 years, almost named the exhibition “Amy, I Love You” – a sentiment that is infused in every one of his photos. With the images now on display at New York City’s MixdUse Gallery until June 9, Knott shares his encounters with Winehouse and provides a portrait of the artist as a young woman on the cusp of fame.

Read the Full Story at Dazed

Categories: Art, Dazed, Exhibitions, Music, Photography

Warhol’s Women

Posted on May 7, 2019

Andy Warhol. Judy Garland (Multicolor), 1978. Acrylic and silkscreen on canvas, 40 x 40 inches (101.6 x 101.6 cm) © 2019 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Tim Nighswander

Andy Warhol turned appropriation into fine art, perhaps the most profoundly American aspect of his practice. Where Dada subverted the known, Warhol exalted it, creating a pantheon of iconography that charmed, rather than challenged, the status quo – while simultaneously being edgy enough to avoid becoming camp, corn, or schmaltz.

Warhol is America looking back at itself, with a nod and a wink, taking art in the age of mass reproduction to the next level when he began making silkscreens in August 1962. Marilyn Monroe’s tragic death sparked it off. She was his first, perhaps his greatest, and far from his last, as he transformed The Factory into an art world machine.

Andy’s Marilyn is a Mona Lisa of sorts — her many incarnations and moods a psychic x-ray into the person none of us ever knew. Using a publicity photography by Gene Korman for the 1953 film Niagara, Warhol took the manufactured image and remade it into something beautiful and grotesque.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Andy Warhol. Judy Garland (Multicolor), 1978 Acrylic and silkscreen on canvas, 40 x 40 inches (101.6 x 101.6 cm) © 2019 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Tim Nighswander

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

Lebohang Kganye: Ke Lefa Laka – Her-story (2012-2013)

Posted on May 3, 2019

South African artist Lebohang Kganye was just 20 years old when her mother died in 2010. A couple of years later, Kganye was looking through family photo albums in their Johannesburg home and realised that many of the clothes her mother wore in the pictures were still in her wardrobe.

Kganye became intrigued. Most of the snapshots were made before she was born in 1990, at her grandmother’s house and on the lawn. Up until then, Kganye explains, the photos and albums were never really all that significant. “I’d go to my grandmother’s house and we’d look at the photos every now and then, and laugh about how they’d aged, the different periods they had gone through,” she says. “We had never gone over individual photos, the history, and the narrative of each.”

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Categories: 1980s, Africa, Art, Huck, Photography, Women

Ming Smith: A Tribute to Linda Goode Bryant’s JAM Gallery

Posted on May 3, 2019

Ming Smith. Grace Jones at Studio 54, 1978, archival pigment print, 30 x 40 inches

Ming Smith. Sun Ra Space II, New York City, NY, 1978, archival pigment print, 40 x 60 inches

In 1974, at the age of 23, Linda Goode Bryant opened Just Above Midtown (JAM), a non-profit New York arts organization dedicated to showing the work of artists of color in the heart of 57th Street, then the capital of the art world. Rent was a astonishing $300 per month, the 70% discount a testament to Goode Bryant’s negotiating prowess.

Like Goode Bryant, JAM was a revolution unto itself, with the intention to burn the art world down to the ground. JAM pioneered the works of now-renowned Black artists including Dawoud Bey, Norman Lewis, Senga Nengudi, Lorraine O’Grady, Howardena Pindell, Lorna Simposon, and Ming Smith — all of whom are being show at Frieze New York (May 2-5) as part of a special tribute to Linda Goode Bryant’s JAM Gallery from the 1970s.

The 2019 Frieze Stand Prize was awarded to Jenkins Johnson Gallery for their presentation of the work of photographer Ming Smith, whose contributions to the medium have recently come into clear focus. Hailing from Columbus, Ohio and educated at Howard University, Smith moved to New York in 1973 to live as an artist. To support herself, Smith joined the ranks of Grace Jones, Bethann Hardison, B. Smith, Sherry Bronfman, and Toukie Smith as the first generation of Black women to break the color barrier in the fashion and beauty industries,

“People would tell me, ‘You should be a model,’ but I never really thought about it. But when I came to New York I needed to make money, and then it was like $100 an hour,” Smith recalls. “I wasn’t really interested in modeling, but the money was good. Being a Black woman, I never saw that as an obstacle. I just knew I had to go.”

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Ming Smith, James Baldwin, archival pigment print, 20 x 24 inches

Ming Smith, Curiosities, Brooklyn, NY, 1976, archival pigment print, 30 x 40 inches

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