9.28.2012

NY BOOK FAIR: MOMA PS1 This Weekend!

  Self Publish, Be Happy 
Book Club 1, 2012

2nd floor, Q42


Antonio de Luca (left), Art Director, and Bruno Ceschel (right), Director of Self Publish, Be Happy. Check out their selection of remarkable, rare contemporary books at the NY Book Fair, 2nd floor, Q42!

Bruno Ceschel, "Self Publish, Be Happy" Founder/Director, talks to photography students from my School of Visual Arts "Professional Community" class.

"Self Publish, Be Happy is an organization founded by Bruno Ceschel in 2010 with the aim of celebrating, studying and promoting self-published photo books through events (such as exhibitions, displays and talks), publications and online exposure. Self Publish, Be Happy also organizes workshops that help artists and photographers make and publish their own books." selfpublishbehappy.com


"A-Jump Books is a small publishing house dedicated to producing photo-based books that challenge convention through understatement and artistic rigor. a-jumpbooks.com/Home.html


Limited edition (100) silk-screened box, hand numbered and signed by the artist. Contains additional 11×14 traditional c-print, and loose silkscreen cover image.

 Photography Critic Vince Aletti at the NY Book Fair

There are literally hundreds of incredible book publishers to check out at the New York Book Fair this weekend at MOMA's PS1 in Long Island City. Easy to get to on the M, G, 7 trains. 

September 28-30
iPhone snaps © Elizabeth Paul Avedon/all rights reserved.

9.22.2012

HOWARD GREENBERG: The Interview

  Dorothea Lange, Migratory Cotton Picker, Eloy, Arizona, 1940 
© Library of Congress, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery
                           
 Dorothea Lange, Plantation Overseer And His Field Hands, Mississippi Delta near Clarksdale, Mississippi, 1936 © Library of Congress, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery

"I really enjoyed getting Plantation Overseer And His Field Hands” by Dorothea Lange. It’s not the most valuable FSA print, but it’s such an interesting picture. Read pages 48-49 in my book [An American Gallery, Twenty-Five Years of Photography]; you’ll see why I have it. You can read so much into this photograph. The white farm owner, the ex-slave workers, their relationship to each other; it has a kind of universal symbolism. That’s the way I knew it. But then I came across this FSA print one day. On the left, almost out of the frame, is her husband Paul Taylor. It speaks to the issue of what is truth in a photograph, what’s real in a real photograph. [View the traditional cropping hereHer husband is cropped out in the well known image] I found this to be such a fascinating example because this photograph is one that always stuck in my head as just a great amazing photograph.

"Do you know the picture “White Angel Breadline”? I have a variant of that. It’s the picture immediately before or after. It’s all the same people in the picture, the same spot she photographed in; but the way the people move and the way it’s structured; it becomes a very different picture. It’s really amazing. I think it’s in the show, so you’ll see it. That is another one; I sold it and then bought it back and I kept it the second time. That kind of thing has happened a lot more than once because I do fall in love with these things and a lot of times I sell them and miss them."Howard Greenberg from my original Le Journal de la Photographie Interview

Howard Greenberg, Collection opened at the Musée de l’Elysée September 2012. Exhibited for the first time were a selection of 120 photographs from Howard Greenberg’s private collection.

2014-15  UPDATE
September 10, 2014 – January 11, 2015
 "Masterpieces from the Howard Greenberg Collection" 
Nieuwe Amstelstraat 1, 1011 PL Amsterdam

Howard Greenberg Photo © Elizabeth Paul Avedon

It’s not an encyclopedic history of photography...it’s the magic of photography when the right picture printed the right way just grabs you. – Howard Greenberg

Howard Greenberg’s name has been synonymous with great photography for over thirty years. A leader in the modern photography market, Greenberg early on established himself as one of the pillars of the New York photography scene. Now a selection of photographs from Greenberg’s personal photography collection will be exhibited for the first time at the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne in September and the Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation, Paris in January.

I sat down with Howard Greenberg last week and came away bedazzled by his contagious enthusiasm and love for photography and descriptions of some of my favorite photographers work.

Elizabeth Avedon: I’m curious why it took so long to show your Collection?

Howard Greenberg: First of all, I have to say my collection is really, truly personal. There are many known photographs, classic photographs, in the collection to be sure. But there are more than that many photographs which are unknown or hardly known or certainly not what you would consider important - but they are important to me for my own personal reasons. It’s my life and just like in your life you’ll see certain pictures you can relate to, you want it because of your experience. So it’s that way with my collection.

And also, I started as a photographer and I was like most photographers earlier on, a darkroom junkie, I loved to print and I was completely enamored of printing. When I started to learn about the history of photography and saw older prints that were beautiful prints - that was something yet again. A lot of the photographs in my collection got there because the print of the image was truly special to me. It’s really about the magic of photography. That’s how I see it. In so many pictures that I fall in love with, that I bought for myself, display that magic....

The Howard Greenberg Gallery
 Unfortunately *Le Journal de la Photographie has since closed
The complete Interview is not posted online

9.19.2012

KALPESH LATHIGRA: Projects


Coriolanus • Film Set Tableaux • Directed by Ralph Fiennes
Photograph (c) Kalpesh Lathigra

Coriolanus • Film Set Tableaux • Directed by Ralph Fiennes
Photograph (c) Kalpesh Lathigra

Road Trip • EuropePhotograph (c) Kalpesh Lathigra

Anglo - Afghan War • Afghanistan
Photograph (c) Kalpesh Lathigra

Lost in the Wilderness • Pine Ridge Reservation • South Dakota
Photograph (c) Kalpesh Lathigra

Lost in the Wilderness • Pine Ridge Reservation • South Dakota

Photograph (c) Kalpesh Lathigra

Kalpesh Lathigra (b. 1971 London) is regularly commissioned to shoot documentary essays and portraits of actors, authors, film directors for a variety of clients. After receiving his Certificate in Law from the University of Hertfordshire, UK, he completed his PgDip in Photojournalism from the London College of Printing. His many awards include the Taylor Wessing/NPG Portrait Prize, Descubrimientos PhotoEspana, Winston Churchill Fellowship, W. Eugene Smith Fellowship, Amnesty International Award, World Press Photo 1st Art, Magazine Photographer of the Year(UK). His clients include The New Yorker, New York Times, etc...I'm just saying! He continues to work on long term personal projects. Check out his incredible portraiture and photojournalism work on his website.


SAUL LEITER: ICP Book Signing 9.21.12

The Book: Saul Leiter (Kehrer Verlag, 2012, 296 pages)

Book Signing: Saul Leiter's Retrospective
ICP Store, 1133 Avenue of the Americas
Friday, Sept 21, 5:45pm–7:15pm

Join Saul Leiter for a signing of his retrospective book Saul Leiter

"This book, published to mark the first major retrospective of Leiter's work anywhere in the world, features for the first time, in addition to his early black and white and color images, his fashion photography, the overpainted nudes, as well as his paintings and sketchbooks.


Saul Leiter (b. 1923 in Pittsburgh) saw himself for a long time mainly as a painter. After coming to New York in 1946, he exhibited alongside abstract expressionists like Willem de Kooning before beginning in the late 1940s to take photographs. Like Robert Frank or Helen Levitt, he found his motifs on the streets of New York, but at the same time was visibly interested in abstraction. Edward Steichen was one of the first to discover Leiter's photography, showing it in the 1950s in two important exhibitions at New York's Museum of Modern Art. Back then color photography was regarded as "low art," fit only for advertising. Leiter accordingly worked primarily as a fashion photographer, for magazines such as Esquire and Harper's Bazaar. Nearly forty years would go by before his extraordinary artistic color photography was rediscovered." Publishers description

ICP: Signed books will be available on a first-come, first-served basis only, on the night of the signing. Mr. Leiter will be signing his new book only, and proof of purchase from ICP will be required. And as per the artist's request, no flash photography, please. Limit of two signed copies per customer.

This event takes place during voluntary contribution hours at the museum. Free Friday night programs in the Museum are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn.


9.18.2012

LYDIA PANAS: Exhibitions Here + There

Fish
Falling From Grace...

Photograph (c) Lydia Panas



Lydia Panas

A Suspended Moment
Photograph (c) Lydia Panas


It's a Matter of Perspective, Mr.President
Photograph (c) Lydia Panas

Our earliest relationships factor considerably in determining whom we turn out to be. For three years, in hot weather and cold, I invited families of various forms to stand before my lens. I asked them not because I knew what to expect, but because I was curious to see what would happen. These groups and occasional individuals stood graciously before me. I watched how they arranged themselves and then began to photograph them with my view camera.

In these pictures of family relationships, the details matter most. Although they portray engaging people, verdant landscapes and beautiful light, the photographs also provide more subtle clues for understanding the nature of my work.

These images depict specific people, but they go beyond portraits to explore the universal questions of how we feel. The pictures ask that we look deeper than the surface for what lies underneath: that complex part of our own personalities we often don’t see. – Lydia Panas

THE MARK OF ABEL
Rayko Photo Center, San Francisco
September 5 - October 7

+ + +

Monograph: The Mark of Abel
Essays by Maile Meloy and George Slade
96 Pages, 52 Color Photographs
Kehrer Verlag

MARIA MARTINEZ-CAÑAS: Photo Paintings

Untitled 004 [PC], 2012
Julie Saul Gallery, 535 West 22 Street, New York

Untitled 001 [FB+EM], 2011 (left) and Untitled 004 [PC], 2012 (right)


Julie Saul Gallery is exhibiting Maria Martinez-Cañas large-scale works, described as “Photo Paintings”. "This body of work stems from an inversion of Francis Bacon's process, which originated in cinematic formats and photographic sources that were then turned into paintings. Martinez-Cañas takes his paintings as a reverse starting point; each unique work is of mixed media, incorporating image transfer, painting and collage onto wood veneer, measuring either 96 x 96 or 36 x 48 inches. Her new series, as those that have come before it, wrestles with origins, identity, perceptions and ideas of source, translating the inspirations that have empowered and informed her work into physical manifestations."

MARIA MARTINEZ-CAÑAS
PHOTO PAINTINGS

September 6-October 20
Julie Saul Gallery, New York



9.11.2012

GORDON PARKS: Centennial Honoring the Legendary African American Photographer

Untitled, Mobile, Alabama, 1956 
(c) The Gordon Parks Foundation. Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery
Ondria Tanner and Her Grandmother Window-shopping, 1956
(c) The Gordon Parks Foundation. Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery


The two images above are included in a Limited Edition Portfolio of 12 color photographs taken by Gordon Parks for a 1956 Life Magazine photo-essay, The Restraints: Open and Hidden. The set of twelve 16 x 20" images is printed in a limited edition of twelve numbered sets released in a Portfolio published by the Gordon Parks Foundation, available from the Howard Greenberg Gallery.


Untitled, Shady Grove, Alabama, 1956
(c) The Gordon Parks Foundation. Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery

The color photograph, Untitled, Shady Grove, Alabama, 1956, of a family waiting in front of an ice cream shop on a hot summer day, is on view for the first time as part of the "Segregation Story" series taken for Life Magazine.

Muhammad Ali, Miami, Florida, 1966
(c) The Gordon Parks Foundation. Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery


Ingrid Bergman at Stromboli, 1949
(c) The Gordon Parks Foundation. Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery

"Gordon Parks is the most important black photographer in the History of Photojournalism. Long after the events that he photographed have been forgotten, his images will remain with us, testaments to the genius of his art, transcending time, place and subject matter.”– Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Gordon Parks, born into poverty and segregation on a farm in Kansas in 1912, was the youngest of 15 children. He worked at odd jobs before buying a camera at a pawnshop in 1938 and training himself to become a photographer. Parks was a photographer at the Farm Security Administration and later at the Office of War Information in Washington D.C. from 1941 to 1945. As a freelance photographer, his 1948 photo essay on the life of a Harlem gang leader won him widespread acclaim and a position from 1948 to 1972 as the first black staff photographer and writer for Life Magazine, the largest circulation picture publication of its day. He was also a noted composer and author, and in 1969, became the first African American to write and direct a Hollywood feature film, The Learning Tree, based on his bestselling novel of the same name. This was followed in 1971 by the hugely successful motion picture, Shaft. Parks was the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Medal of Arts in 1988 and over 50 honorary doctorates. Parks died in 2006 at the age of 93.

In honor of the 100th Anniversary of the birth of Gordon Parks, the Howard Greenberg Gallery in collaboration with the Gordon Parks Foundation will present two simultaneous exhibitions of his work. Contact: Gordon Parks, Ralph Ellison, and “Invisible Man” curated by Glenn Ligon and Gordon Parks: Centennial, which includes nearly 40 works spanning five decades of the artist’s career beginning in the early 1940s, including some of the legendary photographer’s most seminal images. Most noteworthy in the exhibitions will be a number of color prints from Segregation Story, 1956.

The exhibitions will coincide with Gordon Parks Collected Works, a five-volume book on his photographs. (Steidl, 2012). The book will be the most extensive publication to document Gordon Parks’s legendary career.


Untitled, 1950
(c) The Gordon Parks Foundation, courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery
Paris Fashions, Countess Maxine de la Falaise, 1950
(c) The Gordon Parks Foundation, courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery

The Gordon Parks Foundation permanently preserves the work of Gordon Parks, makes it available to the public through exhibitions, books, and electronic media, and supports artistic and educational activities that advance what Gordon described as "the common search for a better life and a better world." The Foundation is a division of the Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation.

A number of other exhibitions in New York will coincide with the exhibition at Howard Greenberg Gallery including Gordon Parks: 100 Years at the International Center for Photography through January 6, 2013; Gordon Parks: 100 Moments at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture through December 1, 2012; Gordon Parks: Crossroads at the Tisch School of the Arts, Gulf+Western Gallery, from September 4 through September 25, 2012; and Gordon Parks: A Harlem Family 1967 at the Studio Museum of Harlem from November 7, 2012 through February 2013.

Many thanks to the Howard Greenberg Gallery for images and text above; and to Diana Revson, Director of External Affairs for The Gordon Parks Foundation, for keeping me informed over the years of the Foundations artistic and educational activities that advance what Gordon Parks described as "the common search for a better life and a better world." –EA

9.10.2012

FALL 2012: Exhibitions + Events

Sightlines, 2011 | Photograph (c) Helen Sear

HELEN SEAR: Sightlines
Sept 13 – Oct 26
KLOMPCHING GALLERY


Pete Brook | Photograph (c) Lara Shipley

Men & Women
Photographic Portraits by Daniel W. Coburn and Lara Shipley
John Sommers Gallery, UNM


FRACTION MAGAZINE: Review

from On Hollywood | Photograph (c) Lise Sarfati
LISE SARFATI: On Hollywood
Sept 6–Oct 13
YOSSI MILO GALLERY

from The Mark of Abel | Photograph (c) Lydia Panas

LYDIA PANAS: The Mark of Abel
Sept 5–Oct 7
RAYKO PHOTO CENTER, SF


Artist Talk and Book Signing
Sept 13, 5:30PM


from A Girl and Her Room | Photograph (c) Rania Matar

RANIA MATAR: A Girl and Her Room
Sept 14–Dec 14
SOUTHEAST MUSEUM of PHOTOGRAPHY

Artist Talk and Book Signing
Sept 14, 6-8PM

Photograph (c) Ruben Natal-San Miguel
RUBEN NATAL-SAN MIGUEL
Nocturnal/Activo de Noche
Sept 8–Oct 31
THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Curated by Elizabeth Barragan
Artist's Talk - Sept 15 @ 3:30 pm

Girl Dancing in Pink, Baptist-Town, Greenwood, MS Delta
Photograph (c) Magdalena Solé

MAGDALENA SOLÉ: Mississippi Delta
Sept 27–Nov 10
SOUS LES ETOILES, Soho, New York

Seeker
Photograph (c)
Vicki Hunt
1st Place Award | SlowExposures 2011 Exhibition

2011 SlowExposures Gang
Many returning to this years event
Click to Enlarge. Top row, l to r: John A Bennette; Jerry Atnip, John Bennette, Sylvia Plachy, Elisabeth Biondi, Nancy McCrary, Gabrielle Larew; Sylvia Plachy, David Simonton, and Magdalena Sole; Bennette Exhibition crowd, on the right, Alex Novak. Bottom row, l to r: Slow Exposure Co-Directors, Chris Curry and Nancy McCrary; Peter Essick; Sylvia Plachy and Jessica Hines; Elisabeth Biondi , Nancy McCrary, and Steve Harper. Last year's event here

2012 SLOW EXPOSURES PHOTO FESTIVALCelebrating Photography of the Rural South
Sept 21–23, 2012

About last year's event here
+ + +

SVA Lecture Series

a few of the great line-up of Speakers this Fall

Sept 25: Stephen Mallon

Oct 9: Darren Ching
Nov 27: Miriam Romais

School of Visual Arts
136 West 21 St, Rm 418F, 7pm


9.06.2012

THOMAS ALLEN: Beautiful Evidence Opens Foley Gallery's New Space

from the series Beautiful Evidence
Photograph (c) Thomas Allen/Courtesy of Foley Gallery, NY


After eight years in Chelsea, the Foley Gallery relocated to the Lower East Side on Allen Street. Opening the new gallery space is their fourth solo exhibition of artist Thomas Allen.

Foley Gallery writes, "Playing the role of scientist, Thomas Allen enlists mid 20th-century books on the natural phenomenon of science (astronomy, physics, electricity, biology) and presents his research as if through the eyes of his 8-year old daughter. How would she understand and portray these theories and absolutes of science?"

"Allen’s signature use of cutting and repurposing book illustrations has not vanished. Instead of the pulp fiction genre, Allen plays with 50’s era versions of clean cut youths and domesticated moms. His unmistakable talent for creating the illusion of 3D in photography with his deft cuts and crimps, establishes a magical world in which a boy and girl play tag creating their own kind of electricity, a milkman makes a very special delivery in space, young toughs play marbles with the solar system and a mother busily sews her own version of “string theory.”

THOMAS ALLEN | FOLEY GALLERY
Sept 9 through Oct 14, 2012
97 Allen St, NYC
Open Wed – Sun
11AM – 6PM

9.01.2012

W.M. HUNT: The Unseen Eye Looks at Portland

THE UNSEEN EYE LOOKS AT PORTLAND

Collector W.M. Hunt will be in Portland to present a special performance of his monologue “The Unseen Eye: A Life in Photographs and Other Digressions …” This free event is presented in partnership with the Museum’s Photography Council.

“A Life …” is a monologue with projections and video, a rumination on Hunt’s many years of collecting and a life in photographs. Hunt began collecting during his early years as an actor. He has been a fundraiser (Photographers + Friends United Against AIDS, The Center for Photography at Woodstock and the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund), a dealer (Ricco/Maresca Gallery and his own Hasted Hunt), as well as a writer and teacher (ICP and School of Visual Arts).

"The Unseen Eye: A Life in Photographs and other digressions "
Special performance by W.M. Hunt
Saturday, September 8, 2:00 PM, Miller Room,
Portland Art Museum. Free admission

+ + +

The Blue Sky Gallery, Portland
"The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the W.M. Hunt Collection"
September 6 - September 30

Collector and curator W.M. Hunt will be in attendance, and Ampersand Gallery & Fine Books will be at Blue Sky with copies of Hunt's book "The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious" (Aperture) available for purchase that evening. Free admission.

Imogen Cunningham, Veiled Woman, 1910/1975
from The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious
by W.M. Hunt (Aperture, 2011)


...W.M. Hunt began collecting over forty years ago with his first acquisition, Veiled Woman, by Imogen Cunningham. Hunt...was profiled in the BBC series, appropriately titled in his case, The Genius of Photography...read more here