Posts from the “Photography” Category

Guadalupe Rosales: Legends Never Die, A Collective Memory

Posted on October 15, 2018

Photographer unknown, Mind Crime Hookers party crew on 6th Street Bridge, Boyle Heights, 1993. Courtesy Guadalupe Rosales.

“The word legend means to create stories we have to tell,” observes Chicanx artist Guadalupe Rosales. “When I think about my ancestors, this is something that has passed on as someone who is Mexican. We keep these people and loved ones close to us through their stories and legends.”

Passing down stories, traditions, and hard-won lessons from one generation to the next, Rosales has built a vernacular archive of ’90s Chicanx culture and history – selections of which are currently on view in Legends Never Die, A Collective Memory at Aperture Gallery, New York, as well as in Los Angeles (Aperture Magazine, Fall 2018).

Her story begins when, at the age of eight, Rosales and her family moved to a home in East Los Angeles that faced The Boulevard, a historic street where teens had been linking up since the ’60s. Rosales fondly recalls, “hanging out, watching from the window when I was 11 or 12 before I was allowed to do these things – and seeing the beautiful cars, the men and women getting to know each other, exchanging phone numbers. As I got older and was able to go out that was something that got passed down to me and my sisters.”

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Photographer unknown, Guadalupe Rosales’s cousin, Ever Sanchez (right), and unidentified woman, East Los Angeles, 1995

Shrine to Ever Sanchez, Guadalupe Rosales’s studio, 2018; Photograph by Mike Slack for Aperture

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

Deana Lawson

Posted on October 10, 2018

Deana Lawson, Oath , 2013; from Deana Lawson: An Aperture Monograph. © Deana Lawson / courtesy Rhona Hoffman Gallery and Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

Deana Lawson’s photographs embody the realm of myth, a space where the divine and mortal realms merge. They centre around the subjects of family, spirituality, sexuality, and intimacy within the black experience, in the US, the Caribbean, and Africa. She credits Carrie Mae Weems and Renee Cox for piquing her interest in documenting issues of race and identity, as well as cultivating a nuanced conversation around black aesthetic in both art and daily life.

Now living in Brooklyn, Lawson draws inspiration from everything – from vintage nudes, juke joints and acrylic nails, to fried fish, lace curtains, the Notorious B.I.G. and thrift shops. Her large-scale photographs are extremely formalist and meticulously staged, but they’re also profoundly intimate studies of black life around the globe today.

Her first monograph, Deana Lawson (Aperture), presents 40 key works made over the past decade in the US, the Caribbean, and Africa. A selection of 13 photographs and a new film will be on view in Deana Lawson, the new exhibition opening at the Underground Museum in Los Angeles on October 12, 2018.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Deana Lawson, Nikki’s Kitchen , 2015; from Deana Lawson: An Aperture Monograph. © Deana Lawson / courtesy Rhona Hoffman Gallery and Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

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

Contact Warhol: Photography Without End

Posted on October 9, 2018

Andy Warhol (U.S.A., 1928–1987), Detail from Contact Sheet [Andy Warhol, Bianca Jagger, Halston, Diane de Beauvau, Bethann Hardison in the back of a limousine], 1976. Gelatin silver print. Gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., 2014.43.3622. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

Andy Warhol (U.S.A., 1928–1987), Detail from Contact Sheet [Photo shoot with Andy Warhol with shadow], 1986. Gelatin silver print. Gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., 2014.43.2893. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

In 1976, Andy Warhol began using a Minox 35EL camera to document his world – much in the same way he would call Pat Hackett every morning to report and record the previous day’s activities. Taking his camera wherever he went, Warhol shot over 3,600 rolls of film for an impressive total of 130,000 exposures over the following years, creating a meticulous record of New York City during its most decadent era. Through these images, we encounter the luminaries of the day including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Grace Jones, Debbie Harry, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Halston, Elizabeth Taylor, and Diane Von Furstenberg, with whom he seamlessly blended work and play.

In 2014, the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University was chosen as the permanent home for the Andy Warhol Photography Archive, selections from which are currently on view in the new exhibition Contact Warhol: Photography Without End and its accompanying catalogue from The MIT Press. Here, project archivist Amy DiPasquale takes us on a deep dive inside the days and nights of Andy Warhol during the last 11 years of his life.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

Andy Warhol (U.S.A., 1928–1987), Detail from Contact Sheet [Jean-Michel Basquiat photo shoot for Polaroid portrait; Andy Warhol, Bruno Bischofberger], 1982. Gelatin silver print. Gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., 2014.43.1547. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

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

Frances F. Denny: Major Arcana – Witches in America

Posted on October 8, 2018

When visual artist Frances F. Denny began to research her family lineage five years ago, she came across a shocking discovery: her eighth great-grandmother, Mary Bliss Parsons was accused of witchcraft while living in Northampton, MA, in 1674.

“I was researching my ancestry for my first book, Let Virtue Be Your Guide, and found a document my father had made outlining his side of our family tree,” Denny tells Broadly.

One historic account noted that Parsons, who came from a “good family” and had a large brood of children, was accused of practicing witchcraft by a woman who wanted to have children but was unable to get pregnant. Although Parsons was acquitted of the charges and lived into her 80s, her reputation never recovered.

Less then two decades after Parsons stood trial in Boston, the practice of bearing false witness rose to a fevered pitch during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692 – 1693. Over 200 people were accused; fourteen women and five men were found guilty and hanged under the auspice of Chief Justice Samuel Sewall – who in a twist of fate, Denny learned was her tenth great-grandfather.

Read the Full Story at Broadly

Categories: Art, Exhibitions, Photography, Women

Dawoud Bey: Seeing Deeply

Posted on October 8, 2018

Three Women at a Parade, Harlem, NY, 1978. © Dawoud Bey

Martina and Rhonda, Chicago, IL, 1993. © Dawoud Bey

Ar the age of 16, New York native Dawoud Bey traveled from his home in Queens to see Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900–1968, the controversial exhibition that opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1969.

As he gazed upon the portraits that James Van Der Zee made during the Harlem Renaissance, Bey recognised the profound power of the photograph to become both a repository for communal memory and a portal into another era – one that informs the way we live and think today.

This innate understanding of the portrait at a young, formative age, provided the foundation upon which he has built a tremendous, transformative body of work. Over the past half a century, Bey’s photographs have become both art and artifact, evidence and testimony, document of the moment and letter to the future.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

A Boy in Front of the Loew’s 125th Street Movie Theatre, Harlem, NY, 1976. © Dawoud Bey

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

John Waters: Indecent Exposure

Posted on October 5, 2018

Beverly Hills John, 2012. Rubell Family Collection, Miami. © John Waters, Courtesy Marianne Boesky Gallery

John Waters is a master of paradox, bridging the divide between seeming opposition with love, wit, and nerve. At 72, the Pope of Trash continues to storm the world with Indecent Exposure, his first art retrospective opening October 7 at the Baltimore Museum of Art in America and, on this side of the pond, with This Filthy World, his one-man show headlining Homotopia at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall on November 10.

Indecent Exposure features more than 160 photographs, sculptures, soundworks, and video made since the 1990s around themes including pop culture, the movie business, childhood and identity, self-portraits, sex and transgression, and contemporary art. Here, sacred cows are led to the slaughter, tenderised, and barbecued by a loving heart that embraces the absurd in every element of the work.

With 16 films and eight books under his belt, Waters brings his love for writing and editing to the visual realm and discovered that the “perfect moments” are often accidental and failed. “What works best in the art world is sometimes what works the opposite of perfect in the movie world,” Waters reveals. “In the movie world it has to be in focus, you have to hit your mark, it has to be lit well, which is what I want. In the art world, I make mistakes as I learn. The low tech, catch-as-you-can photography that I do is failed photographing in the beginning of fine art photography.”

Waters brings this same spirit to the spoken word, a practice that he began in the late 1960s when he and Divine first began showing films at colleges. Over the years, Waters has transformed what began as a vaudeville skit into a perfectly honed monologue, tailored to the time and place of his performance – while maintaining his fascination with true crime, fashion gone wild, art world extremism, and exploitation films in a joyous celebration of trashy goodness. Here, Another Man directs 50 questions to this countercultural icon; the Pope of Trash and the Baron of Bad Taste.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Man

John Waters, Divine in Ecstasy,1992. Collection of Amy and Zachary Lehman. © John Waters, Courtesy Marianne Boesky Gallery

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, AnOther Man, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Photography

Che Guevara: Tú Y Todos

Posted on October 3, 2018

ore than 50 years after his death, Ernesto Che Guevara has become an icon for the fight against Western hegemony around the globe. His decision to continue fighting abroad following the success of the Cuban Revolution sealed his fate. His capture and execution in Bolivia in 1967 at the age of 39 has made him one of the most revolutionary figures of our time.

In celebration of a singular life, Che Guevara: Tú y Todos (Skira) delves deep into the insurgent’s personal life in order to craft a more intimate, nuanced portrait of the man whose face launched a thousand t-shirts.

The book takes its subtitle from the title of a poem Guevara penned for his wife Aleida before leaving Argentina for Bolivia, where he would ultimately die. This intimacy provides the framework in which book editors Daniele Zambelli, Flavio Andreini, Camilo Guevara March, María del Carmen Ariet have framed Guevara’s epic story.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Categories: 1960s, Art, Books, Huck, Latin America, Photography

Janet Delaney: Public Matters

Posted on October 2, 2018

Janet Delaney, ‘Dominque diPrima, on Stage, 1985’ in Public Matters (2018). Courtesy of the artist and MACK.

San Francisco in the ’80s was a study in contrasts. As the shadows of gentrification began to creep over the heart of the city, just South of Market, the people of the Mission took to the streets to protest the policies coming out of the Reagan White House.

During this time, American photographer Janet Delaney was at the centre of it all, capturing the spirit of public life in parades and protests, performances and beauty pageants. In her new book, Public Matters (MACK Books), Delaney delves deep into her archive to reflect upon the incredible impact of mass gatherings organised to serve the greater good.

At the time, the Mission was a predominantly Latinx neighborhood, made up of recent immigrants from El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras who were fleeing wars and conflicts that had come about as a result of U.S. involvement. “In the 1980s, San Francisco was exploding with immigrants, not just from Central America but from Russia and Asia as well,” Delaney remembers.

Read the Full Story at Huck Online

Janet Delaney, ‘Two Young Teens, 1985’ in Public Matters (2018). Courtesy of the artist and MACK.

Categories: 1980s, Art, Books, Huck, Photography

Masahisa Fukase: Private Scenes

Posted on September 28, 2018

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.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

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

Fred W. McDarrah: New York Scenes

Posted on September 26, 2018

Reading copy of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” on the couch at Fred W. McDarrah’s apartment, 304 West 14th Street, New York City, February 14, 1959© Fred W. McDarrah, courtesy of Steven Kasher Gallery

For half a century, Fred W. McDarrah (1926-2007) was Greenwich Village’s poet-photographer laureate, penning subversive verse in black and white silver gelatin prints. As the sole staff photographer for The Village Voice for decades, and its first photo editor McDarrah centred himself at the heart of the New York’s downtown scene when it was a bohemian paradise filled with artists, activists, musicians, writers, and performers.

McDarrah’s chronicle of life recalls when the Village was just that: a community of iconoclasts ready to take on the world. In light of the closing of The Village Voice earlier this month, the comprehensive new survey exhibition Fred McDarrah: New York Scenes at Steven Kasher and catalogue from Abrams provides a timely, well-considered compendium of McDarrah’s impressive oeuvre.

McDarrah’s New York is a comet casting through space, a fiery mass of humanity in the final decades of the second millennia. Whether documenting Carolee Scheneemann’s first performance of Interior Scroll or shooting firefighters rushing into a townhouse after the Weathermen accidentally set off a bomb, McDarrah was on the scene with camera in hand, ready to capture it all. Here, his son Tim McDarrah takes us on a magical trip back in time.

Read the Full Story at AnOther Online

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, AnOther, Art, Books, Manhattan, Photography

Alanna Airitam: The Golden Age

Posted on September 25, 2018

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.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: Art, Feature Shoot, Manhattan, Photography