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Posts from the “Photography” Category

Yuri Dojc: Last Folio

Posted on January 26, 2017

Photo: ©Yuri Dojc, from “Last Folio.”

It was written. And then it was lost. But prophecies must reveal themselves. This is the story of serendipity, of miracles, of discovery that can only happen by the right person at the right time in life.

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Yuri Dojc was born into one of the few surviving Jewish families in Slovakia in 1946. During the war, the nation had eagerly aligned itself with Germany, seizing Jewish businesses, closing schools, and carting the peoples off en masse to concentration camps where few lived to return. His parents escaped such a fate by fleeing to the mountains and hiding in a bunker outside a village that kept their presence a secret.

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After the war, the Jews who returned or remained were careful to hide their identities. Dojc remembers, “You have to understand the history. Being a Jew was unpopular. You don’t tell anyone. You hide that because if you tell them, you might not have any friends. No one in their right mind would come out and do this.”

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Read the Full Story at Crave Online

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Photo: ©Yuri Dojc, from “Last Folio.”

 

Categories: Art, Books, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Gordon Parks: I AM YOU

Posted on January 25, 2017

Photo: Untitled, Harlem, New York, 1948, by Gordon Parks. Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation.

“I picked up a camera because it was my choice of weapon against what I hated most about the universe: racism, intolerance, poverty. I could have just as easily picked up a knife or gun, like many of my childhood friends did,” American photographer Gordon Parks (1912-2006) revealed.

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Parks understood that photography possessed the power to change the way we see and understand the world by speaking a language entirely its own. Seeing is believing, as the old saw goes, which is why representation matters. But representation is only the first step; truth is the pinnacle to which great artists aspire to reach.

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Parks was not only a master of the medium, he was an activist using his work to propel political and social change throughout the twentieth century. He decided to become a photographer while working as a waiter in a railroad dining car, after observing passengers read picture magazines for pleasure. At the age of 25, he purchased his first camera and began to shoot, never putting his weapon down until the Lord called him home.

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Read the Full Story at Crave Online

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Photo: Untitled, Shady Grove, Alabama, 1956, by Gordon Parks. Courtesy of and copyright The Gordon Parks Foundation.

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Art, Books, Crave, Photography

Whose Streets? Our Streets!

Posted on January 20, 2017

Photo: Squatters attempt to defend their building by blocking the street with overturned cars and trash before an expected attack by the police on East 13th Street. 1995 © Andrew Lichtenstein

As we enter a brave new world filled with threats unfolding against the citizens of this nation by the very hand of the government it purports to serve, we can look to the recent past to find inspiration in the power of the people and their will to speak truth to power by any means necessary.

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From race relations, policy brutality, and war to gay rights, abortion, and housing, ever issue facing the common man and woman was addressed by organizers who understood the power of mass protests. Civil disobedience, a term coined by no less that Henry David Thoreau in an essay of the same name penned in 1849, takes the high road of political activism. Grounded in the moral welfare of the people, it is a practice that is American at its core, for this country was founded upon the refusal to accept state-sanctioned abuse that openly violated human rights.

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Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Art, Bronx, Brooklyn, Crave, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Photography

Anthony Friedkin: The Gay Essay

Posted on January 19, 2017

Photo: Hustlers, Selma Avenue, Hollywood, 1971. ©Anthony Friedkin, courtesy of Daniel Cooney Fine Art.

In the Tao Te Ching, Leo Tzu observes, “Nature does not hurry, but everything is accomplished,” recognizing the way in which the Universe works, for what is meant to be occurs as it naturally unfolds through human experience. Perhaps artists are particularly sensitive to the times in which they live, as the zeitgeist flows like a channel throughout the air we breathe.

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1969 was a pivotal year in American history. It was the year of the Stonewall Riots, which occurred in New York, when patrons at the Stonewall Inn fought back against the police during a raid at 1:20 am the morning of June 28. At that time homosexual acts were illegal in every state in the nation, with the exception of Illinois. As a result, the police frequently abused their power, targeting gay people and destroying their lives—until one night when the people stood up and fought back.

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That same summer, at 19 years of age, American photographer Anthony Friedkin was traveling through Europe, thinking about what he would like to do as an artist. Friedkin, who had been honing his craft as a photographer since he was 11 years old, recalls, “I asked myself what would be the most complicated, challenging, difficult subject for a photo essay—and I decided on The Gay Essay for a lot of reasons. There is anger I still feel today when people suggest gay people are insufficient or lacking something that heterosexuals have. The audacity to judge and put down people and the conceit to say God told you this is what you are supposed to do! We all have our own unique sexuality, like your fingerprint.”

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Categories: 1960s, 1970s, Art, Books, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Ming Smith

Posted on January 18, 2017

Photo: Ming Smith, Sun Ra space II, New York City, New York, 1978 Vintage gelatin silver print, printed ca. 2000 28 3/16 x 39 7/8 in. © Ming Smith, courtesy of Steven Kasher Gallery

Ming Smith is the quiet storm, her photographs evoking the soul of Billie Holiday’s music in photographic form. She has lived as an artist all her life, creating a body of work that captures the mysterious beauty of eternal truth. “Images outlive us,” Smith observes, and at the same time, without them, things disappear and the moment is gone. In this way, photographs become not only a work of art or an artifact—they become part of the collective consciousness that defines human experience.

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“Something flows through you,” Smith explains. The photographer becomes a channel open to the world, transforming three dimensions into two then delivering them so that we may feel and understand their point of view. Smith’s perspective is as singular as she is. The first African-American woman to have her work collected by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Smith is a pioneer, an innovator, and a rebel imbued with ineffable elegance.

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Categories: 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Manhattan, Photography

Titus Kaphar: Shifting Skies

Posted on January 17, 2017

Artwork: TITUS KAPHAR, Destiny 2, 2016, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 inches. ©Titus Kaphar. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

Several years ago, I first wrote the words, “Destiny is the handshake between God and Man,” not fully realizing yet, that the covenant was not between the individual but with the species as a whole. Our destiny is not inherently singular; it is intertwined by the forces of humanity working for or against the greater good of the whole.

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Those who fail to see our interconnection are invariably complicit in the exploitation and destruction through unconscionable disregard masquerading as willful ignorance. They take comfort in the belief cognitive dissonance will protect them, but such logical fallacies only cause a greater fall from grace.

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Those who understand the fact that injustice to one is injustice to all continuously seek to elevate their understanding of the problem so that they may become a part of the solution in the way they are best designed to contribute to it. For American artist Titus Kaphar, this has been an ongoing quest, one in which he uses his art to investigate and expose our presumptions of criminality and guilt in a system that was purposely designed to exploit and enslave the most vulnerable.

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Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

“Celebrating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” on His 88th Birthday

Posted on January 15, 2017

Photo: James Karales (American, 1930-2002), Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Home with His Family, 1962 (in Kitchen), 1962, gelatin silver print. High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase, 2008.38

On April 4, 1968, James Earl Ray shot and killed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Thirty-one years later, in 1999, a jury of six whites and six blacks found the United States government guilty of assassination and wrongful death in the murder of Dr. King in civil court (the full transcript can be downloaded here). Yet the case received virtually no press coverage nor is it taught in most schools, despite the fact that children are given a day off to honor of one of the nation’s most important freedom fighters.

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You might ask yourself, Why is that? For the answer, we can turn to the words of Dr. King himself. In Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? (1967), he explained, “Whites, it must frankly be said, are not putting in a similar mass effort to reeducate themselves out of their racial ignorance. It is an aspect of their sense of superiority that the white people of America believe they have so little to learn.”

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Fortunately, we live in the Information Age, where vast stores of verified facts can be accessed free of charge. We are no longer dependent on the “education” system to teach us how or what to think, what questions to ask, or how to learn. One of the greatest treasures we have today is easy and immediate access to credible sources, delivered straight to our fingertips. We can live the dream in a way Dr. King could never have imagined when he spoke in front of the Lincoln Memorial.

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

Brassai: Graffiti

Posted on January 13, 2017

Artwork: BRASSAÏ. Maquette originale pour la réalisation de la tapisserie Nocturne 1968-1972 Collage d’épreuves gélatino-argentiques peintes, 140 × 70 cm Collection Centre Pompidou, musée national d’art moderne, Paris © Estate Brassaï – RMN-Grand Palais © Centre Pompidou/Dist. RMN-GP/ Georges Meguerditchian

When the future is bleak, denial only delays the inevitable—and can often make our fall from grace that much harder. But for those who cast illusions to try to comfort themselves, the wise advise us to read “the writing on the wall.”

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It’s a telling phrase that speaks to the truth about graffiti: it has been here as long as humanity has used written language as a means to record our reality. Writing on the wall is inherently subversive in a culture that supports the creation of private property, particularly in the public realm, for it reminds us that the desire and need to communicate will trump the attempt to reign it in. To leave a written mark behind not only transgresses the law, but it is also a silent scream, cry, or whoop of laughter let loose in the world.

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Read the Full Story at Crave Online

Categories: Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Yoav Horesh: Aftermath

Posted on January 12, 2017

Photo: August 9, 2011. Sbaroo Pizzeria, Jerusalem. Photographed: August 2003. © Yoav Horesy, courtesy of SPQR Editions.

Israeli photographer Yoav Horesh remembers a formative moment many years ago while walking with his father through a pedestrian mall in downtown Jerusalem on the way to buy new shoes. “A block behind us, a guy came running down the street, shooting an AK 47 and throwing hand grenades. My father pulled me into an alley, and in three or four minutes, everything was over. [The gunman] was probably shot dead; the ambulances came. Then my father said, ‘Okay, we’re going to buy shoes now.’”

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“Is it right or not? I don’t have an answer,” Horesh observes, pondering the implications of an immediate return to normalcy. But the question remains. It is a question that has affected Horesh in ways he’s just beginning to actualize through his work as a photographer, which takes on the subject of trauma with thought, concern, and tremendous care.

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Read the Full Story at Crave Online

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December 1, 2001. Ben Yehuda Street, Jerusalem. Photographed: January 2004. © Yoav Horesy, courtesy of SPQR Editions.

Categories: Art, Books, Crave, Photography

Witness at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Posted on January 6, 2017

Photo: Larry Clark, American, b. 1943 Untitled 1963 Gelatin silver print Sheet: 11 × 14 in. (27.9 × 35.6 cm); image: 8 × 10 in. (20.3 × 25.4 cm) Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago Gift of Herbert and Lenore Schorr 2002.85.2 Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

Although the photographer usually stands behind the camera, they are present in every shot they make, from the choice of subject matter and the framing to the moment of release and the selection of the print from hundreds, if not thousands, of others that remain unseen in the archive. Every photo taken and shown bears the eye of the photographer, just as every painting and sculpture bears the hand of the artist. We can consider the photographer many things: provocateur, mastermind, or more “objectively,” witness to scene they are recording for posterity.

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The photographer as witness is a popular conceit celebrated in Western art as it embraces the impossible ideals of detachment, neutrality, and independence from the subject and the creation of the image. It carries the noble, even heroic, connotations that elevate the photographer to a status all their own. This response was most recently seen after Associated Press photographer Burhan Ozbilici took a picture of Turkish police officer Mevlut Mert Altintas moments after he assassinated Russian ambassador Andrey Karlov. While the world lay agog at the perfectly orchestrated act of a cold-blooded killer, many in the photography and art worlds took the opportunity to disassociate, waxing rhapsodic about the aesthetics of the image and the valor of Ozbilici.

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Photo: Dawoud Bey, American, b. 1953 The Birmingham Project: Mathes Manafee and Cassandra Griffin 2012 Archival pigment prints mounted on Dibond Diptych, each sheet: 40 × 32 in. (101.6 × 81.3 cm) Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago Restricted gift of Pamela J. Joyner and Alfred J. Giuffrida, and Mary and Earle Ludgin by exchange 2014.8.a-b Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

Categories: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, Art, Crave, Exhibitions, Photography

Iwan Schumacher: 1972

Posted on January 3, 2017

Photo: © Iwan Schumacher, courtesy of Edition Patrick Frey.

The beauty of liberation is that it is a deeply personal affair, requiring none but ourselves to realize. In many ways, it is a test of courage more than anything else: do we have the faith and the will to choose freedom from the known? For artists, the answer is always, “Yes!” That’s what makes them who they are; they cannot be contained by preexisting ideologies. Pablo Picasso knowingly advised, “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them alike an artist.” And sometimes all it takes to break the rules is to discard them hand over fist.

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In early 1972, Iwan Schumacher had been living in south London, where he had been teaching photography at an art school. He bought a Canon half-frame camera that allowed him to take 72 pictures, as opposed to 36, on a regular 35mm roll of film. The camera was small enough to travel everywhere he went, quickly becoming a diary of his daily experiences. Later in the year, Schumacher returned to Switzerland to assist on a documentary movie and started to work on his first film. All the while, he continued to take photographs, amassing an archive of more than 3,000 images.

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Read the Full Story at Crave Online

 

Categories: 1970s, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Photography

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