Posts from the “Photography” Category

Steve Parke: Picturing Prince

Posted on April 7, 2017

Photo: Copyright Steve Parke

Photo: Copyright Steve Parke

When Prince died on April 21, 2016, the world would never be the same. More than an artist, Prince was the living embodiment of the American Dream. One part innovator, one part iconoclast, Prince took pleasure in subverting expectations and trouncing them with a mastery that belied a singular genius and an incomparable soul.

In 1988, Steve Parke joined the team at Paisley Park after he seized hold of an opportunity and ran with it – for 13 years! Parke collaborated with Prince, helping to create the look of the man whose style and sound was ever-evolving. As art director, Parke was responsible for designing everything from album covers and set design to music videos and merchandise.

In a world where nothing was impossible, Parke found himself in the unexpected position of in-house photographer. In late 1997, as digital photography came to the fore, Parke taught himself everything he needed to know in order to meet the high standards for which Prince was known.

Over the next four years, they produced a stunning body of work, most of it never seen until now, with the publication of Picturing Prince (published by Octopus). Accompanying the images is a series of 50 remarkable vignettes written by Parke that pull back the curtain to reveal Prince: the man, the artist, the legend. Parke gives Dazed Digital a look at life inside the fabled halls of Paisley Park.\

Read the Story at Dazed Digital

Categories: 1990s, Art, Books, Dazed, Music, Photography

This Is Mars

Posted on April 5, 2017

Branch-like Forms on the Floor of the Antoniadi Crater, LAT: 21.4° LONG: 61.3°; from This Is Mars (Aperture, 2017)

Mars: The Red Planet. The earth’s twin. The shadow that lurks in our imagination looms larger with every passing year. Fifty years ago, the world set its sights on putting the first man on the moon. Today, science dreams of the day when we will reach the planet named for the God of War.

Extensive investigations are well underway, mapping the terrain of Mars to see if it would be hospitable to life in the event of disaster here on earth. On March 16, Peruvian scientist David Ramirez announced that potatoes could be grown on conditions that simulate the environment of Mars. Last November, NASA reported the discovery of a large amount of underground ice estimated to be equivalent to the volume of water in Lake Superior.

At just 238.9 million miles from earth, NASA estimates it would take a vessel with human on it just six months to make the trek through outer space. Last September, Wired reported that Jeff Bezos and his company, Blue Origin, are now working to create rockets that could send the first people to Mars. What seems like science fiction is slowly becoming fact as scientists focus their efforts on colonizing a new planet.

But for those of us who are unlikely to make the trip but still would love to see it up close and personal, Aperture releases This Is Mars: Midi Edition this month. Edited and designed by Xavier Barral, the book features 150 black and white images of the planet’s extraordinary surface taken by the U.S. observation satellite MRO (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) made over the past decade.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Stratified, Sedimentary Buttes in the Region of Argyre, LAT: -49.8° LONG: 302.9°; from This Is Mars (Aperture, 2017)

Categories: Art, Books, Photography

Bond Street Print Shop: Saturday, April 8

Posted on April 5, 2017

Body Poppin’, Photo©Joe Conzo

Johnny Rotten, Photo©GODLIS

This Saturday, April 8, please join Janette Beckman and Julie Grahame at the Bond Street Print Shop (30 Bond Street, 3 Floor, NY) for the a photography exhibition and print sale to benefit The Southern Poverty Law Center.

The event will feature a selection of prints starting at $100 from New York’s finest photographers and artists including Charlie Ahearn, Joe Conzo, Martha Cooper, Jane Dickson, Godlis, Lisa Kahane, Joseph Rodriguez, Michael Lavine, Danny Clinch, Chi Modu, Sue Kwon, Bill Bernstein, and Jonathan Mannion, among others.

“Curator Julie Grahame and I decided to organize a photography exhibition and print sale to benefit the Southern Poverty Law Center,” Janette Beckman explains. “The idea is to bring our photo community together in a grass roots way and give some love for a great cause that has been fighting hate and prejudice since the 1970’s. At the same time we hope to do something positive to counteract the gloom that has cast a shadow over our creative community since the election of the president last November. Our ‘rock star’ photographer friends and have donated an amazing collection of images, photographs of Prince, The Clash, Tupac Shakur, the Dalai Lama, Mahershala Ali, John Lennon, Miles David, Keith Haring, Rebel soldiers in Gambia, Nelson Mandela, Nan Golden, and more.”

For more information, please visit Bond Street Print Shop

Mahershela Ali, Photo©Henny Garfunkel

Prince, Photo©Deborah Feingold

Categories: Art, Manhattan, Photography

Let Us March On: Lee Friedlander and the Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom

Posted on April 3, 2017

Photo: Lee Friedlander, Mahalia Jackson (at podium); first row: Mordecai Johnson, Bishop Sherman Lawrence Greene, Reverend Thomas J. Kilgore, Jr., and Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., from the series Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, 1957, printed later. Gelatin silver print. Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of Maria and Lee Friedlander, hon. 2004. © Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco. Photo courtesy Eakins Press Foundation.

Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka (1954) was an historic moment in the course of the United States. In a unanimous decision of 9-0, the Supreme Court declared state-sponsored segregation in public education was inherently unequal, and a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The ruling came as the first major step in ending apartheid in the United States, which had been operating under conditions of extreme malevolence since the Court legalized segregation in 1896. It was a major victory for the Civil Rights Movement, which had begun taking shape in its wake. Together, they united as one, their voices lifted and amplified for the first time in American history.

On May 17, 1957, to honor the third anniversary of the decision, more than 25,000 African-American activists answered the call for a Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom in front of the Lincoln Memorial, in Washington, D.C. Here, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his famous address, “Give Us the Ballot,” in which he exhort the President Eisenhower and members of Congress to ensure voting rights for African Americans.]

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Photo: Lee Friedlander, Untitled, from the series Prayer Pilgrimage for Freedom, 1957, printed later. Gelatin silver print. Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of Maria and Lee Friedlander, hon. 2004. © Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco. Photo courtesy Eakins Press Foundation.

Categories: Art, Books, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Moshe Brakha: L.A. Babe

Posted on March 31, 2017

Photo: Moshe Brakha, Club Zero One, 1985.

“I’m a very passionate guy. I’ve always been passionate about photography. I started in 1970 and I’m still doing it,” Moshe Brakha reveals. “Day in and day out: you have to be committed and crazy in love with it.

That love and passion appears on every page of L.A. Babe: The Real Women of Los Angeles 1975-1988 (Rizzoli New York), his phenomenal first book that showcases the sexy, stylish beauty of the era. Brakha’s crisp black and whites and luxurious color photographs transport you back to an era that was equal parts sensual and glamorous—and all the way loose.

Born in Israel, Brakha enlisted as a sailor in the Navy and arrived on the shores of Los Angeles in 1969 at the height of the countercultural movement. From Easy Rider to Midnight Cowboy, the spirit of radical freedom filled the Southern California air. Sex, drugs, and rock & roll were everywhere. At night, Brakha took his camera and hit the nightclubs and bars just as the punk scene took hold, finding himself in the company of beautiful women who became the perfect subject for his photographs.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Photo: Moshe Brakha, Downtown Studio / 7th & Rampart, 1978.

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Crave, Photography

Richard Renaldi: Manhattan Sunday

Posted on March 30, 2017

Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Benrubi Gallery. © Richard Renaldi

In the wee hours of Sunday when the night breaks into morning, a curious cast of characters can be found on Manhattan’s streets and sidewalks. From nightclubbers, circuit bots, and prostitutes to garbage collectors, custodians, and drunks, the sun’s early light shines down upon a diverse array of personalities going about their business.

Intrigued by the possibilities of what he could find in the ever-changing fabric of New York, photographer Richard Renaldi began to set his alarm for 3 or 4 am, dragging himself out of bed while it was still dark, in order to take portraits of perfect strangers with an 8×10 camera.

The result is Manhattan Sunday, a collection of portraits, streetscapes, and still lifes that capture the witching hour in perfect black and white. The work, first collected for a book by Aperture, is currently on view at the Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York, now through June 11, 2017. Renaldi speaks with Dazed about a New York that few know well.

Read the Story at Dazed Digital

Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Benrubi Gallery. © Richard Renaldi

Photo: Courtesy of the artist and Benrubi Gallery. © Richard Renaldi

Categories: Art, Dazed, Exhibitions, Photography

Honoring the Legacy of Chinese Artist Ren Hang (1987-2017)

Posted on March 17, 2017

Photo: ©Ren Hang, courtesy of Taschen.

On February 24, Chinese photographer and poet Ren Hang (1987-2017) killed himself in Beijing, jumping from one of the terrifyingly vertiginous buildings that appears in so many of his photographs. His sudden death shocked the world, as Hang had reached a new level of success with the simultaneous release of his first major monograph, Ren Hang (Taschen), along with exhibitions of work at Fotografiska, Stockholm, and Foam, Amsterdam.

Dian Hanson, who wrote the introduction to the book, described Hang as, “an unlikely rebel. Shy, lanky, prone to fits of depression, the 29-year-old Beijing-based photographer [was] nonetheless at the forefront Chinese artists’ battle for creative freedom. Controversial in his homeland, but wildly popular in the rest of the world he says, ‘I don’t really view my work as taboo, because I don’t think so much in cultural context, or political context. I don’t intentionally push boundaries, I just do what I do.’”

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Photo: ©Ren Hang, courtesy of Taschen.

Categories: Art, Books, Crave, Photography

Black in America: Louis Draper and Leonard Freed

Posted on March 16, 2017

Photo: Portrait, New York, c 1965. Louis Draper (American, 1935–2002). Gelatin silver print; 20.3 x 25.4 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Mr. and Mrs. Richard W. Whitehill Art Purchase Endowment Fund, 2016.271. © Louis H. Draper Preservation Trust.

The photograph is more than a work of art: it is a piece of evidence, a document of fact, and an artifact of the past. It offers proof of what has transpired in time and space, for seeing is believing—and belief is faith. To shoot or not to shoot, that is the question, for what we focus our attention on grows in power and strength. To frame a story through just one perspective, or to never frame it at all, these acts have the power of changing the way people see the world.

Photographers Louis Draper (1935-2002) and Leonard Freed (1929-2006) understood this, each in their own way using the camera as a way to write history. Together they created fresh perspectives that were heretofore largely ignored in favor of the spreading of malicious lies, telling the truth about what it means to be Black in America.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Children in the Mirror, Johns Island, South Carolina, 1964. Leonard Freed (American, 1929–2006). Gelatin silver print; 23.8 x 29.8 cm. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg, 2016.282. Image courtesy of Leonard Freed / Magnum Photos.

Categories: 1960s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Eternal Youth

Posted on March 15, 2017

Photo: Larry Clark American, b. 1943 Untitled (KIDS) 1995 Chromogenic development print 16 × 20 in. (40.6 × 50.8 cm) Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago Gift from The Howard and Donna Stone Collection 2002.16.8 Photo: Michal Raz-Russo, © MCA Chicago

When Larry Clark released Kids in 1995, he set the silver screen ablaze with his vision of New York City youth as it tore itself apart through sex, drugs, and manipulation. He thrust a new cast of characters onto the world stage, taking us through a day in the life of a group of kids who embodied a combination of sexual precociousness and racial dysmorphia.

Kids was designed to wreak havoc and cause fright, playing with paranoid fears of HIV in a new generation of adolescents coming up just a few years after the disease had decimated a generation right before their eyes. In the ‘80s and ‘90s sex did not create life; it created a death sentence from which there was no recourse at that time. In light of this apocalyptic vibe, the film embodied fully embodied the nihilistic existentialist crisis of the times. Not surprisingly, not everyone in the cast survived. Two of the film’s biggest stars Justin Pierce and Harold Hunter would die young—while Chloe Sevigny and Rosario Dawson would go on to become Hollywood stars.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

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

The Rivington School: 80s New York Underground

Posted on March 9, 2017

Photo: The Rivington Garden as monument signalled the victorious end of art in the Lower East Side, 1987. Photo by Andre Laredo. ©2016 Black Dog Publishing Limited, the artist and authors. All rights reserved.

Back in the 1970s, the Lower East Side of New York City had been devastated by the government policy of “benign neglect,” which denied basic services to the community. Fires had destroyed buildings reducing them to rubble leaving vacant lots in their wake, while other buildings were abandoned and reclaimed by squatters, creating a new community born out of resilience and necessity.

By the 1980s, a subculture was finding its way through acts of outlaw art. “Cowboy” Ray Kelly, founder of the No Se No Social Club, cultivated a space where patrons could express themselves in any way they wished. It was a space unlike any other in the city that combined the performance art with bar life to spectacular effect.

From this world, the Rivington School came forth, an outdoor guerilla art gallery located across the street from No Se No, on the corner of Rivington and Forsyth Streets. The Rivington Sculpture Garden, which opened in 1985, began as a memorial to Geronimo, a homeless Puerto Rican man who died that year. It quickly developed into a space for exhibitions, concerts, performances, and festivals, taking the D.I.Y. approach to making art. Anyone could do anything they liked and they did, effectively sharpening the cutting-edge.

Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: 1980s, Art, Books, Crave, Manhattan, Photography

Ricky Flores: The South Bronx c. 1980

Posted on March 9, 2017

The South Bronx became infamous during Game 2 of the 1977 World Series, when newscaster Howard Cosell noticed a nearby abandoned school engulfed in flames and not a fire truck in sight, uttering his legendary phrase, “There it is, ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning.”

The Bronx had been burning throughout the 70s, in a massive series of fires set by arsonists working on behalf of landlords who knew they could collect more money from insurance fraud than they could from rent. From 1970 to 1980, more than 97 per cent of seven census tracts in the South Bronx had been lost to fire and abandonment, turning the once majestic neighborhood into blocks of rubble resembling a war zone. Yet, through it all, the people of the Bronx persevered.

The era was ruled by the do-it-yourself ethos, because under a governmental policy of “benign neglect” (systemic racism that denied basic services to Black and Latinx neighborhoods), it was understood if you didn’t do it, no one would. Hip hop was born out of the fires, the poverty, and the despair, as a new generation of youth invented a brand new art form using nothing but pure ingenuity.

South Bronx native Ricky Flores began taking photographs as a high school senior in high school in 1980, shooting pictures of his friends and his neighborhood. His photographs capture the South Bronx as it was, a place filled with beauty amidst the rubble. He began studying with Mel Rosenthal, one of the most renowned photographers of the South Bronx, and realized he had a responsibility to document his community as an insider.

While outsiders, working for the mainstream media or Hollywood, would come in and create an image of the Bronx as the worst borough in New York City, Flores photographed the community as he knew them to be: a warm, creative, dynamic, resilient, and strong. Flores gives Dazed an inside look at growing up in the South Bronx.

Read the Full Story at Dazed Digital

Categories: 1980s, Art, Bronx, Dazed, Music, Photography