The End of the Line

I'm discontinuing this blog. Like material can be found at PhotoEphemera.

Alec Soth in The New York Times

In today's New York Times you can find a full page article on Alec Soth. It's tied to a show of new work that opens at Atlanta's High Museum next week. Here it is online. There are more and larger photos in the paper.

David Goldblatt this Thursday

Just a reminder:

Thursday, July 16, 7 PM
David Goldblatt and Richard Flood in Conversation

In conjunction with the exhibition "Intersections Intersected: The
Photography of David Goldblatt," photographer David Goldblatt will discuss
his forty-year body of work documenting South Africa with the New Museum
Chief Curator Richard Flood. More here.

The exhibit will run July 15 - October 11, 2009

New Museum
235 Bowery, New York
$6 Members, $8 General Public

Ralph Gibson, Taschen, Nudes

Taschen is at it again:

Ralph Gibson
Nude
Hardcover in a clamshell box
XL-format: 13 x 17.3 inches, 306 pages
US$500

A decade after his first TASCHEN book, Deus ex Machina, master photographer Ralph Gibson returns with an exquisite collection of nudes, combining the best of his recent work with an in-depth interview by Eric Fischl. Strikingly graphic, meticulously composed, and loaded with subtle provocations, Gibson’s mysterious, dreamlike images pay homage to greats such as Man Ray and Edward Weston, while continually pursuing new frontiers.

Limited to 1,200 numbered copies, each signed by the artist. Also available in two exclusive Art Editions, each limited to 100 copies, including one of two signed photographic prints.
More Information

David Goldblatt Talk

Thursday, July 16, 7 PM
David Goldblatt and Richard Flood in Conversation

In conjunction with the exhibition "Intersections Intersected: The
Photography of David Goldblatt," photographer David Goldblatt will discuss
his forty-year body of work documenting South Africa with the New Museum
Chief Curator Richard Flood. More here.

The exhibit will run July 15 - October 11, 2009

New Museum
235 Bowery, New York
$6 Members, $8 General Public

Miniature Chris Killip Prints for Sale

In April, the Isle of Man Postal Authority issued a set of 8 stamps with photographs of mills and millers on them. The photographs were taken by Chris Killip as part of the group of images that became his book, The Isle of Man: A Book About the Manx. According to Jeff Ladd at 5B4, only two of the eight images were reproduced in the book.

You can find the stamps here.

The limited edition album made by Killip to celebrate their release, here.

And Ladd's review of the limited edition and all current things Killip, here.

William Eggleston on NPR

On the NPR website, there is a nice interview/tour with William Eggleston. He is walking the correspondent through the Corcoran Gallery of Art exhibit of his work, talking about the photographs. You can find it here. The piece is just over 3 minutes and if you hit the full screen button, it actually maintains the resolution.

Oh, and by the way, they don't mean anything, they're just pictures.

Adam Bartos at Glenn Horowitz

Adam Bartos
Yard Sale
Reception and book signing
Saturday, June 20th, from 6 to 8p.m.

Photos from Yard Sale will be on exhibition during the reception and, beginning June 26th, as part of an exhibition at The Drawing Room.

Glenn Horowitz Bookseller
87 Newtown Lane
East Hampton, NY 11937
P: 631.324.5511
www.ghbookseller.com

Book Sale This Weekend at Taschen, NYC, Hollywood & Beverly Hills

Books for Sale at 5B4

The 5B4 website is hosting a garage sale to raise operating capital. You can find common, unusual, rare and signed books at reasonable prices here. Happy hunting.

Chris Payne at the Architectural League

Cremation Urns, Oregon by Chris Payne

Thursday, June 25, 6:30 p.m.Chris Payne
Chris Payne
Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals, A Photographer's Journey
Lecture
The Architectural League
The Urban Center
457 Madison Avenue

RSVP at rsvp@archleague.org.
Admission is free.
Information at info@archleague.org or 212.753.1722 x13.

From the League: For more than half the nation's history, vast mental hospitals were a prominent feature of the American landscape. From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth, over 250 institutions for the insane were built throughout the United States. Yet in the second half of the twentieth century, after the introduction of psychotropic drugs and policy shifts toward community-based care, patient populations declined dramatically, leaving many of these massive buildings neglected and abandoned. Photographer Chris Payne will discuss and show images from his six-year research and book project, Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals (MIT Press, forthcoming September 2009), which explores the architecture, decay, and presence in the American landscape of state mental hospitals.

June Events & Book Signing

Friday, June 5, 6:00 to 7:30 pm
Lynn Saville: Night/Shift
Book signing
ICP Museum Store
1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street
New York
212.857.9725

From the publisher: Lynn Saville photographs New York during the time of transition from daylight to night, the fleeting moments when natural light gives way to streetlight, moonlight, window light, and advertisement and surveillance lighting. Subdued tones and shadows reveal a geometry hidden beneath the visual distractions of daylight. Saville has sought out places that seem questionable—deserted factories, back alleys, the shadowy infrastructure of urban highways and bridges that suggest the city’s exoskeleton.



Tuesday, June 9, 2009, 6:30 pm
Doug DuBois: All the Days and Nights
Artist's Talk and Book Signing
Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street
New York, New York
(212) 505-5555

From the publisher: In his first monograph, All the Days and Nights, Doug DuBois turns the camera on his own family, both before and after his father's near-fatal fall from a commuter train and his mother's subsequent breakdown. The unblinking eye of DuBois's camera captures the nuances of his family's intensely personal struggles and relationships.




Wednesday, June 10, 07:00PM - 08:30 pm
Anthony Goicolea Fictions
Strand Book Store
828 Broadway (at the corner of 12th Street)

From the publisher: Anthony Goicolea's third book is an amalgam of photographs and drawings. Though the artist no longer uses himself as a model, he continues to use the motifs of his earlier work. All male, and under thirty, Goicolea's subjects seem to have left their public schoolboy roots behind, and matriculated in an environment which is otherworldly, replete with codes and rituals unfamiliar to the viewer.



Thursday, June 11, 2009, 6:30 pm
Dan Winters, Periodical Photographs
Talk, Book Signing, and Reception
Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street, 4th floor
(between 10th and 11th Avenues)
(212) 505-5555

From the publisher: Periodical Photographs, the long-awaited first monograph from top editorial photographer Dan Winters, provides an overview of his assignment work as a contributor to some of America’s most prestigious magazines, including New York, Esquire, Rolling Stone, and the New York Times Magazine. With an emphasis on his iconic portraiture, this volume considers the body of work of a top photographer whose unique sensibility is both adaptable and instantly recognizable. Winters is responsible for the definitive portraits of some of Hollywood's most photographed A-listers (Gwyneth Paltrow, Denzel Washington, Leonardo DiCaprio) and music superstars (Bono, Eminem, Willie Nelson). His voracious passion for the quirky and the creative also draws him to visual artists, scientists, architects, and everyday, extraordinary Americans.



Tuesday, June 16, 2009, 6:30 pm
Lyle Rexer, Abstraction in Photography
Lecture and Book Signing
Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street
(212) 505-5555

From the publisher: From the beginning, abstraction has been intrinsic to photography, and its persistent popularity reveals much about the medium. The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography is the first book in English to document this phenomenon and to put it into historical context, while also examining the diverse approaches thriving within contemporary photography. In addition to Rexer’s engagingly written and richly illustrated history, this volume includes a selection of primary texts from key practitioners and critics, such as Edward Steichen, László Moholy-Nagy, and James Welling.



Thursday, June 18, 2009, 8:00–11:00 pm
Some Like It Hot Summer Party
Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street, 4th floor
(between 10th and 11th Avenues)
New York, New York
(212) 505-5555

From Aperture: The evening's festivities will include cocktails and live music by the trendy emerging band, The Willowz and a raffle of choice items, including a commissioned portrait by Matthew Pillsbury, a deluxe Raymond Weil watch, a one-year Art Circle membership with Aperture Foundation, a selection of recent Aperture publications, a Chelsea gallery romp with curator, writer, collector, and New School photography professor John A. Bennett, and concert tickets for the Dave Matthews Band.

Tickets are limited and are available at the following price points:
$200 dual ticket (admission for two, plus limited-edition print by Thomas Allen)
$150 single ticket (admission for one, plus limited-edition print by Thomas Allen)
$50 single ticket (admission for one)
Raffle tickets: $10

THOMAS ALLEN (b. 1963)
Beachcomber, 2009
Created exclusively for Aperture’s first Some Like It Hot summer party
Digital C-print
Image size: 8 x 10 in.
Paper size: 8 x 10 in.
Edition: 250 and 2 artist’s proofs
Signed and numbered by the artist

Richard Mosse

Al Faw Palace, Camp Victory, Baghdad, Iraq 2009 from Breach

Toyota Hilux, Mosul, Iraq 2009 from Nomads

I recently discovered the work of Richard Mosse, an Irish photojournalist who has spent some very productive time in Iraq of late. You can find his work here. Be sure to check out the portfolios labeled "Breach" and "Nomads." His vision is remarkably sharp.

Bill Jay Dead at 68

Bill Jay by Burke Uzzle, 2002

Did the death of Bill Jay get reported at all in the USA? I read a lot of newspapers and troll quite a few websites and I'm only discovering this now. Here you'll find an obit.

And here you'll find his writing and portraits of photographer.

Sebastiao Salgado

In Sunday's New York Times, May 31, 2009, is a nearly full-page article on Sebastiao Salgado's Genesis project. You can find it online here.

Anselm Kiefer

I like Anselm Kiefer's work. I like his work a lot. I like his work so much in fact that once upon a time, I borrowed--for the sake of art--pieces of one of his works.

He had a show at Marian Goodman's many years ago at the time he made the move from Germany to France--I think it was called "20 Years of Solitude", or at least one room was. He took everything in the studio, which is to say everything that wasn't worth much by itself (I assume) such as canvases, detritus, floor sweepings, sent it to Goodman and piled it up in a huge pile about 18 feet wide by 18 feet high. (As I write I realize we're talking: everything at a garage sale, piled on high, and sold as one piece. Very clever: you can have it all or nothing. ) From a distance, it looked like an elephant turd.

So I picked up--off the floor--a piece of straw, a piece of lead, a piece of a silver print and a piece of clay.

So what, you ask? Well, exactly. So what.

Not inclined to throw them out, I mounted them on a board and labeled it "With the Right Materials, I Too Can Become an Artist."

Sadly, it turns out not to be axiomatic.

Still, I find him one of the most inventive, creative, visually interesting artists of the last 40 years. I particularly like his use of photographs as narrative (albeit, obscure) and his book work. Jeff Ladd at 5B4 reviewed one of his books of books here and had some very insightful things to say. So...

If you have any interest in Keifer, on the Saatchi Online TV & Magazine website, there is a 4 minute video tour of Anselm Kiefer's studio at Barjac in France.

Robert Frank's The Americans

Here's a treat for fans of Robert Frank's work or for fans of just The Americans. The gallery owner James Danzinger, has posted a report from the San Francisco stop of the show, Looking In: Robert Frank’s “The Americans.” There is a map that shows the routes Frank took on his three Guggenheim trips. There are also posted eleven Frank photos from a display that reproduces the wall where Frank would pin up the photos to figure out which ones work and what the best sequence would be. I've never seen any of them before. Here.

Adam Bartos at ICP

From ICP:

Book Signing with ADAM BARTOS
Friday, May 29
6:00–7:30 pm
ICP Museum Store
1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street

Join Adam Bartos for a signing of his latest book, Yard Sale Photographs. If
you are unable to attend, please call 212.857.9753 or click the title to
reserve a signed copy. Limit of two signed copies per customer.

The yard sale is a perfect platform for bizarre juxtapositions of objects,
perhaps the only stage upon which the Compte de Lautréamont's famous "chance
meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing machine and an umbrella" might
occur of its accord. In turning his lens to the random constellations formed
by rummaging and perusing, Adam Bartos has struck gold, with an idea so
simple it seems odd nobody had thought of it before.

5B4 reviewed it here.

PhotoBook Reviews

Robert Frank and June Leaf By Eamonn McCabe

Liz Jobey is a London-based writer on photography and an associate editor of Granta, the literary book/magazine that often runs interesting photography portfolios. She has written a couple of books as well including The End of Innocence: Photographs from the Decades That Defined Pop (Scalo, 1997) and A Photographic History of the 20th Century (Pan Macmillan, 2002.) She reviews photography books for the Guardian in London. She's quite smart on the subject (not the least because she recommends 5B4 as another site to find good book reviews.) Her lastest book review was Here Comes Everybody by Chris Killip. Here's an index of her articles..

The Guardian also had a photography blog going for a while. They closed it down and lumped it all under "Art and Architecture" but the archives are still available, including a piece on a talk by Don McCullin and posts on Robert Frank, Nan Goldin and Stephen Gill.

GMB Akash

Photographs by GMB Akash

GMB Akash is a photographer from Bangladesh who shoots for the Panos Pictures photo agency in London. He's a modern-day Lewis Hines. His work is very good. You can find it here.

Ellen Von Unwerth

Von Unwerth by Steven Meisel

And I thought I was an obsessive collector...

Willam McFadden has collected an astonishingly encyclopedic collection of Ellen von Unwerth's work. The website where he presents this stuff includes links to interviews, biographies and articles about von Unwerth; photos of her as a model; images from all of her books; photos of the installation of gallery shows; advertising she shot, categorized by client and within each entry, listed by year; editorial work; and commercials, music videos and films she has made. It's a huge reservoir of imagery, much of it reproduced large. And the most amazing part of this archive is that these thousands of images were nearly all gathered from the web.

Personally, I find her work more interesting than most fashion/advertising/editorial work so this was quite the time-eater. And you never know when you might have to write a research paper about her and her work. It's all here.

Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams and Everett Ruess

Alright, so this isn't strictly about photography but famous photographers are mentioned. Better yet, it's a great story.

The New York Times issue of Friday, May 1, has a story about the disappearance of Everett Ruess in 1934 and the apparent solution to the riddle of what happened to him.

Ruess was a young poet and writer, friend of Ansel Adams and Dorothea Lange and also an "Into the Wild" sort of fellow.

It's online here.

The photo above is Ruess by Lange, with a photographic superimposition of skeletal remains found in southern Utah.

Darn, now I've given away the whole story.

FotoTapeta, Nan Goldin and Annie Leibovitz

Nan Goldin by Nan Goldin; Annie Leibovitz by Krzysztof Wojciechowski

Out there in the ethersphere is a photography-related site by the name of FotoTapeta or Photo Wallpaper. The thing that led me there was an interview with Nan Goldin that I stumbled on. A quite interesting interview actually, where she is much more open than usual. Backtracking, I found an interview with Annie Leibovitz as well. Both are a little old but still relevant. Those are the only two things in English on the site; everything else is in Polish.

Photographs by Jerzy Lewczyński

Still, it does offer one a chance to see what contemporary photographers in Poland are doing and discover some non-contemporary photographers that might be unknown to you. For instance, I didn't know Jerzy Lewczyński work. It's not all great but some of it is very nice. (From 2005 and from 2009.)

Steven Meisel

Meisel, right of center, in black

I find this one awe-inspiring:

April 27, 2009
‘Three Hundred and Seventeen and Counting’
By David Sebbah The photographer Steven Meisel has photographed every single cover of Italian Vogue for the last 20 years and nine months. From visual parodies of super models heading into rehab, to B-listers posing on the red carpet, to photographing artist Elizabeth Peyton for the cover way back in 1998, Meisel has used his lens to tap into the zeitgeist. This week, the photographer’s third book, “Three Hundred and Seventeen and Counting,” will be published by Mallard/Janvier. For information about purchasing the book, write to mallard.janvier@gmail.com. © 2009 The New York Times Company


249 Italian Vogue covers in a row? For 20 years? 317 magazine covers? The guy has been making photographs for almost 30 years, that's over ten covers a year. That is an incredible run. (And beyond my capacity to figure out just how lucrative it would be.)

Actually, I don't find Meisel a particularly interesting photographer--especially, for fashion work--but he is remarkably ubiquitous and quite a few curators, gallery owners, editors and the like disagree with me. He's in every museum show with fashion as the theme. He shot the book "Sex" for Madonna. So, he's worth checking into.

Here is a very interesting article/interview with Meisel. It's been cut down from a longer article in the May 2009 issue of Vogue.

Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, David Seymour (Chim)

B&W photos by David Seymour/Magnum; Color photo by Tony Cenicola/The New York Times

One of the most wonderful stories from the history of photography is the rediscovery of the Robert Capa/Gerda Taro/David Seymour negatives. The neg strips, rolled up and stored in three cardboard boxes, are thought to have been given by Capa to his darkroom manager for safekeeping when Capa fled Paris for New York in 1939. They ended up in Mexico. Their existence was revealed in 2007 and finally given to the International Center of Photography (founded by Capa's brother, Cornell.)

The latest episode of this story was reported in today's New York Times. It's an interesting article. And the slideshow is good too.

New Listings Added to Events Page

Here.

Or below.

Actually, take note that the Events page is dynamic, which is to say, I will add to and subtract from it on a regular basis.

Bob Dylan, Bruce Davidson, Josef Koudelka

Ben Ratliff reviewed the new Bob Dylan album in today's New York Times. What I found interesting about the piece is the prominence afforded the photographers who shot the front and back covers: a third of the short review talks about how the images align or don't with the music. And there seems to be an assumption in the article that we all know who Bruce Davidson and Josef Koudelka are. I think few probably do, but it's nice that the reader is encouraged to think that s/he should know who they are.

Danny Lyon in the New York Times

A very nice article on Danny Lyon in the New York Times today. Almost makes the famously cantankerous photographer feel warm and fuzzy.

Photography-Related Events in April & May

(Call before you go anywhere, things change.)

Thursday, April 30, 6-8 pm
Opening reception and book signing
Sites of Impact: Meteorite Craters Around the World by Stan Gaz
ClampArt Gallery, 521-531 West 25th St., Ground Floor
646-230-0020
From Princeton Architectural Press: The eightyfive b&w photographs collected in Sites of Impact transcend the purely documentary. In addition to photographs of the craters and their surrounding landscapes, Gaz includes photographs of actual meteorites and of his own carefully crafted sculptures that recreate their often dynamic form and mimic their specific mineral content. Advance copies of the book are presently available only at the gallery.

Also at Clamp Art on April 30, 6-8 pm
Opening reception and book signing
Aids In Odessa by Andrea Diefenbach
From Hatje Cantz: In the spring of 2006, the German photographer Andrea Diefenbach (b. 1974) spent time with several HIV-positive Ukranian women and men as they went about their daily routines in the harbor city of Odessa. Ukraine has been among those countries most severely affected by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Recently Ukraine set an unhappy record for the highest rate of new infections in Europe.


Friday, May 1, 6:00 to 7:30 pm
Book signing
Not in Fashion by Mark Borthwick
ICP Museum Store, 1133 Ave of the Americas at 43rd Street
212-857-9725
From Rizzoli: This book showcases over 200 images from Borthwick’s best fashion editorials, celebrity portraits, and advertising work, as well as excerpts from his personal journals. The journal pages, consisting of Polaroids, sketches, and notes on shoots, reveal the workings of a photographer’s mind.
(Friday nights at ICP feature a DJ and complimentary wine and admission to the museum from 5:00 to 8:00 pm is by donation. You can also order signed books by calling 212-857-9725.)


Saturday, May 2, 6-8 pm
Opening reception and book signing
The Other Half of the Sky by Lili Almog
Andrea Meislin Gallery, 26 West 26th St., Suite 214
212-627-2552
From powerHouse: Over the past two years, Lili Almog has photographed minority women in the countryside, small cities, and villages of China. In her second monograph, The Other Half of the Sky, Almog examines these women at a time when the demands of rapid growth and a sweeping desire for modernity is encroaching upon the traditions and values that have sustained their cultures as intact microcosms in the larger picture of China for centuries.


Wednesday, May 6, 2009, 6:30 pm
Lecture
Melanie Bonajo
Aperture Gallery, 547 West 27th St.
212-505-5555
From Aperture: Photographer Melanie Bonajo will discuss how she works as an artist, performing and exhibiting her photographs in art institutions around the world. A solo show of her work will be on view at PPOW, New York, in May 2009. In addition to numerous exhibition catalogues, I Have a Room, a retrospective book of her work, was released in September 2008 (Capricious Publishing).


Thursday, May 7, 2009, 5:00 pm
Panel Discussion
Contemporary Portraiture with Doug DuBois and Richard Renaldi
Affordable Art Fair, 20 West 22nd St., Ste. 1512
212-255-2003
Admission: $20
From Aperture: Doug DuBois (All the Days and Nights, Aperture, 2009) and Richard Renaldi (Figure and Ground, Aperture, 2006; Fall River Boys, Charles Lane Press, 2009), will speak about their respective bodies of work and how they fit into the broader context of portraiture in contemporary photography.


May 8, 2009
Conversation with Ron Haviv, Franco Pagetti, Alberto Cairo and Christiane Amanpour
Doors open at 7 pm, Program begins at 8 pm
401 Projects, 401 West St.,
between Charles and West 10th St.s
Please RSVP by April 30 to com.was@icrc.org or 202-587-4618
This conversation with Haviv, Pagetti (both VII Photographers), Cairo (International Committee of the Red Cross-Afghanistan) and Amanpour (CNN Chief International Correspondent) is in conjunction with an exhibit opening at 401 called Our World At War. The show features "the work of world renowned war photographers" James Nachtwey, Christopher Morris, Franco Pagetti, Ron Haviv, and Antonin Kratochvil.
Cairo, by the way, had a book published of his experiences in Kabul. It was issued in Italy (2003) and then reprinted in French (2007). The photos are by Sebastiao Salgado and though I've not seen the book and don't know how many there are, the cover photo is nice.


Thursday, May 14 - Sunday, May 17
The New York Photo Festival
Lots of stuff going on


Friday, May 15, 6:00 to 7:30 pm
Book signing
Tim Walker Pictures by Tim Walker
ICP Museum Store, 1133 Ave of the Americas at 43rd Street
212-857-9725
From Te Neues: This book offers us a glimpse into the artistic process used by fashion photographer Tim Walker. Featuring sketches, contact-sheets, collages and Polaroids, this comprehensive overview of his work brings us deep inside his glamorous world of adventure. The over-sized format showcases some of the most imaginative and exuberant art being produced today.


Saturday, May 16, 1:00 pm
Book signing
Female Bodybuilders by Martin Schoeller
The Randall Scott Gallery, 111 Front St., Dumbo, Brooklyn
212-796-2190

Saturday, May 16, 7:00-10:00 pm
Opening reception and book signing
Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography by Lyle Rexer
Aperture Gallery, 547 West 27th St.,
212-505-5555
From Aperture: From the beginning, abstraction has been intrinsic to photography, and its persistent popularity reveals much about the medium. The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography is the first book in English to document this phenomenon and to put it into historical context, while also examining the diverse approaches thriving within contemporary photography.


Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Artist's Talk and Book Signing
Sawdust Mountain by Eirik Johnson
Aperture Gallery, 547 West 27th St.,
212-505-5555
From Aperture: A culmination of four years photographing throughout Oregon, Washington, and Northern California, Sawdust Mountain focuses on the tenuous relationship between industries reliant upon natural resources and the communities they support. Sawdust Mountain records a region affected by historic economic complexities and, by extension, one aspect of our fraught relationship with the environment in the twenty-first century.


Friday, May 29, 6:00 to 7:30 pm
Book signing
Yard Sale Photographs by Adam Bartos
ICP Museum Store, 1133 Ave of the Americas at 43rd Street
212-857-9725
From Damiani: In turning his lens to the random constellations formed by rummaging and perusing, Bartos has struck gold with his still lifes of "chance meetings," the bizarre conjunctions of objects that occur at yard sales. Photographing at close range from an elevated vantage point, Bartos allows the viewer to connect the dots, supplying only the raw combinations of materials for our story-making.

King Assassination Photos Surface

Outside of room 306, Theatrice Bailey, the brother of the motel's owner,
sweeps blood from the balcony. By Henry Groskinsky/Time & Life Pictures

The LIFE website is always fun to peruse, but this is really something:

LIFE Presents: Never-Before-Published Photos From Memphis, April 4, 1968
On April 4, 1968, LIFE photographer Henry Groskinsky and writer Mike Silva, on assignment in Alabama, learned that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. They raced to the scene and there, incredibly, had unfettered access to the hotel grounds, Dr. King's room, and the surrounding area. For reasons that have been lost in the intervening years, the photographs taken that night and the next day were never published. Until now.

Roger Ballen Interview

Bite, 2007 by Roger Ballen

American Photo has an interview with Roger Ballen in advance of the release of his new book, Boarding House (May 2009.) I love Outland but wasn't as impressed with Shadow Chamber. What I've seen of Boarding House is more interesting. The sets and backdrops have gotten very elaborate.

Photobook Auction Watch

Monday, April 27, at 10 am, Doyle New York will be hosting an auction of RARE BOOKS, AUTOGRAPHS & PHOTOGRAPHS. There are quite a few interesting photographs but of particular interest to me are the seven photobooks up for auction. As I wrote previously, if the economic downturn gets worse, prices should start dropping. I'm curious to see how these books will do, as a bellwether before the May 14 Swann Galleries auction of Photographic Literature and Fine Photographs.

These are the books:

AARONS, SLIM, A Wonderful Time: An intimate portrait of the good life. Harper and Row, [1974]. Estimate $300-400

BRASSAI, Paris de nuit. Editions "Arts et Metiers Graphiques," n.d. (1933). Missing one page. Estimate $300-500

CARTIER-BRESSON, HENRI. America in Passing. Little, Brown, 1991. + CARTIER-BRESSON, RATNA. Nos ombres en fete. N,p., 1990. One of 250 copies with a small original Cartier-Bresson photograph (taken in 1937) tipped-in at the end of the text. + And four other pamphlets. All six items are inscribed by Cartier-Bresson to Lincoln Kirstein. Estimate $400-600

DENBY, EDWIN. In Public, In Private. The Decker Press, 1948. Photographs by Rudy Burckhardt. Estimate $300-500

GOSSAGE, JOHN. Stadt des Schwarz. Berlin: Loosestrife Editions, 1987. One of 500 copies, signed and additionally inscribed. + Together with three other photobooks, including Snake Eyes by Terri Wiefenbach and John Gossage (Loosestrife Editions, 2002); In the Time of the Wall by John Gossage (Loosestrife Editions, 2004); and NY '71 by Daido Moriyama (PPP, 2002). Estimate $600-900

MAN RAY. Photographs by Man Ray, Paris, 1920-1934. James Thrall Soby, (1934). + Together with a copy of Formes nues. Paris: Forme, 1935. Publisher's metal spiral binding with a photographic cover by Man Ray. Estimate $1,500-2,500

STRAND, PAUL. The Mexican Portfolio. Da Capo Press, (1967). Second edition, one of 1000 copies signed by Paul Strand. Estimate $1,500-2,500

You can look at the catalog online or the real items can be viewed at Doyle New York Saturday and Sunday at 175 E. 87th St.

Garry Winogrand Family Snapshots

Last year, James Danzinger posted some photographs by Garry Winogrand on his blog, The Year in Pictures, which are a real treat. They look just like Winogrand photos, only they're of his kids, so they're basically family snapshots. If you click on them, most are big too, which is extra nice. Here.

Walker Evans in the New York Times

The New York Times of Friday, April 24, 2009, has an article in their Escapes section about following Walker Evans' path through the back roads of Alabama. It can be found online here.

Events on Thursday, April 23, 2009, NYC

Access To Life (Left) Mali © Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum Photos; Russia © Alex Majoli/Magnum Photos

Book Signing with Magnum Photographers

On Wednesday (which is to say right now) there is a panel discussion about a project where eight photojournalists, all members of Magnum, document the transformative effect of antiretroviral treatment on the bodies, lives, and families of HIV infected people around the world.

Tomorrow there will be a book signing at Aperture which will include some of the following photographers: Jonas Bendiksen, Jim Goldberg, Alex Majoli, Steve McCurry, Paolo Pellegrin, Gilles Peress, Eli Reed, and Larry Towell.

Most likely not Gilles Peress who I'm told will not sign books anymore.

Thursday, April 23, 2009, 7:00 pm
Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street
212-505-5555




Andrew Bush Book Signing and Reception

Tomorrow, at Yossi Milo Gallery, an exhibit of Andrew Bush's series of photographs called Vector Portraits will be opening. A year ago, a book of these images called Drive was published by Yale University Press and I suppose that's the book they'll have on hand to be signed though he does have a couple of other books under his belt as well.

This is how the gallery describes the work in the show:

Begun in 1989, Andrew Bush’s series Vector Portraits was taken while the artist drove the city streets and freeways of Los Angeles. Either stopped in traffic or traveling at speeds of 20 to 70 miles per hour, the artist took portraits of other drivers using a medium-format roll-film camera and flash attached to the passenger side door of his car. Extended titles note particulars of speed, location or time with scientific precision while leaving other details unclear, such as “Man traveling southbound at 67 mph on U.S. Route 101 near Montecito, California, at 6:31 p.m. on or around Sunday, August 28, 1994”.

The photographs capture subjects in the ambiguous combination of private and public space created by a “private room on wheels.” The drivers are either alone in their vehicles lost in thought, or with passengers, revealing the dynamic between families, couples or friends. An examination of people and their cars in a city famous for its car culture, the series addresses personal privacy and challenges our definition of public space.

I suppose...

Thursday, April 23, 2009, 6:00–8:00 pm
Yossi Milo Gallery
525 West 25th Street
212-414-0370
info@yossimilo.com

No Caption Needed

The website No Caption Needed is one of the smarter blogs around on the subject of photography. This is how they describe themselves:

No Caption Needed is a book and a blog, each dedicated to discussion of the role that photojournalism and other visual practices play in a vital democratic society.

The site is written by two professors, not photography teachers but "Rhetoric and Public Culture" teachers. Robert Hariman teaches at Northwestern University, in the department of communication studies. John Louis Lucaites is professor of rhetoric and public culture, department of communication and culture and adjunct professor of American studies, Indiana University.

That said, they don't get too academic (because I know that's not too cool these days.) But they do explore issues of concern, speculation and interest to the practice and consumption of contemporary photography.

Check it out.

Robert Adams Wins Hasselblad Award

Adams at the ceremony in San Francisco. Photos by Daniel Cheek, Joshua Chuang and Lars Andersson

Alright, so this is a little old but it was news to me. Couldn't have gone to a better photographer though.

Robert Adams, U.S. Photographer, Wins $61,000 Hasselblad Award
By Niklas Magnusson

April 15 (Bloomberg) -- Robert Adams, the U.S. photographer known for his images of the American west, has won the 2009 Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography.

Adams, who is based in Astoria, Oregon, received the 500,000 kronor ($61,000) prize at a ceremony in San Francisco yesterday, the foundation -- which is based in Gothenburg, Sweden -- said in an e-mailed statement issued today. It described Adams as “one of the most important and influential photographers of the last 40 years.”

“During that time, he has worked almost exclusively in the American West, and, as photography has altered and fragmented, he has refined and reaffirmed its inherent language, adapting the legacies of 19th-century and modernist photography to his own very singular purpose,” the foundation said.


You can read the "chat" with Adams at the ceremony here.

Deborah Turbeville Signs Books

Deborah Turbeville has a book just published called Casa No Name and she'll be out and about NYC signing copies.

Wednesday, April 22, she'll be at Rizzoli Bookstore on 57th Street (between 5th & 6th Avenues) though I don't know the time. Call them at (800) 52-BOOKS or (212) 759-2424.

Then, on Friday, April 24, from 6:00–7:30 pm she'll be at the ICP Museum Store (1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street). If you can't go and want a signed copy, you can call the store and they'll reserve one for you.

The Recession Hits Aperture

Aperture is in the process of laying off staff and cutting the number of books they publish. Here is the press release.

Realistically, we can expect this from all the other publishing houses. There will be fewer photobooks published over the next couple of years and the ones that are published, for the most part, will only be ones that are certain (by publishing standards) to be popular (and will probably be cheaply produced and priced.) As the recession drags on, or gets worse, more people will lose their jobs and will be forced to sell more things to get by. We can expect more stuff to end up on eBay, more books to appear at auction, more used books in the bookstores.

The lack of money, the fear of lacking money and the divesting of possessions will depress prices. That's the way these things go, economically.

What this means is that those books you've coveted for so long but couldn't afford will be within reach...assuming that your access to capital is secure and stays consistent and you don't get spooked by what's going on around you. You'll be able to pick up many bargains (by today's past-looking standards), fill in those gaps in the collection.

The only problem with snapping up everything within reach is that if this recession turns into a depression and hangs around, most everything you snap up will be relatively worthless for many years. Because, overall, there will be less money floating around. And we will therefore be a poorer country. Possibly, for a while.

But you know what, the books and the work they hold will intrinsically hold their value: the work will still be good, enjoyable to look at, interact with. And in the end, that's the only reason to buy art.

Taschen Book Sale

Taschen is having a book sale which unfortunately does not include many photography related books. It does however include many film related books, so, if that's of interest you can go here to see what and where they have them for sale.

Here are the photobooks that they've discounted:



And of course no collection is complete without these:

Ed Kashi at Leica Gallery

This coming Saturday, 25 April, 2009, from 2 to 4 pm, Ed Kashi will be signing books at the Leica Gallery.

PowerHouse has just published a new book of his work called Three in which Kashi juxtaposes three images as a triptych.

He has shot editorial and documentary photography for many years. Other books of his include:

No Surrender: The Protestants, Self-published, 1991

When the Borders Bleed: The Struggle Of The Kurds, Pantheon, 1992

Denied: The Crisis of America’s Uninsured, Talking Eyes Media, 2003

Aging in America: The Years Ahead, powerHouse Books, 2003

Curse Of The Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta, powerHouse Books, 2008

Larry Towell & Steve McCurry at Tishman

For those in New York (and I'm afraid that event-wise, this will be a New York-centric blog), Aperture has a panel discussion coming up tomorrow, Wednesday, April 22.

Photography in Context:
Access to Life - Photojournalism on AIDS

Wednesday, April 22, 7:00pm
Tishman Auditorium
66 West 12th Street
Admission free; no reserved seating

Some of the world’s leading photojournalists from Magnum Photos, including Steve McCurry and Larry Towell, discuss 25 years of photojournalism and the global AIDS crisis.

Follow Up to Taliban Ambush

The photo on the front page of the New York Times today is of the casket of the soldier killed in the ambush mentioned in the last post.

And on a related note: Tyler Hicks, the photographer caught in the ambush, would have been part of the news team whose international coverage from Afghanistan and Pakistan won the Times a Pulitzer yesterday.

Tyler Hicks Under Fire

We seem to have another Don McCullin in our midst.

If you don't see the New York Times (and I've been on vacation so I missed the first part), go to their website and check out this story: an element of First Battalion, 26th Infantry, in the Korangal Valley, Kunar Province, Afghanistan, lays an ambush for Taliban fighters. (Here.) Three days later, the Taliban ambush a platoon of 1/26 with C. J. Chivers and Tyler Hicks with them. (Here.) And there is a photo-slide show of Hicks work, under fire. (Here.) Beautiful landscape, horrific experience, great work.

William Gedney's Archives

William Gedney, Untitled, 1966-67

If you'd like to see more of the photography of William Gedney, much of it can be viewed online. The physical archive resides at the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections at Duke University, but they have digitized a big chunk of it and mounted it on the Duke library's website. (The above image is really not indicative of his work, which is more often concerned with people and the social landscape of American life. The images below, from his book, are more in keeping with his concerns; the above just makes me smile.)

This is how the website describes the content:

William Gedney Photographs and Writings
The 50,000 item collection documents Gedney's work from the 1950s to 1989. Subjects include photographs of cross country road trips; rural New York; Manhattan; Brooklyn; rural Kentucky; Hippies in San Francisco; composers; gay rallies and demonstrations; St. Joseph’s School for the Deaf; India; England; Ireland; France; and, a large number of nocturnal pictures.

Included on the site are his book dummies which I always find interesting.




One of the nice things about this archive being available publicly is that the one book of his work, What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney, has become quite expensive. Not sure how this came to pass, and, of course, there is a very wide range of prices, as seems to be true of the web. It may just be because the work is very good. If for no other reason though, it's worth picking up for Maria Friedlander's lovely foreword, a glimpse of not only Gedney's life but of the Friedlander's life in photography as well. (I mean worth picking up if found for a reasonable price.)

Harry Callahan Updates on PhotoEphemera

The latest post on PhotoEphemera features items related to Harry Callahan and it has been updated since it's initial posting.

Really Big Pictures

There is a site called Shorpy which sells prints of vintage images from the Library of Congress and other sources. The prints are a good deal, reasonably priced, and they're probably very well printed and suitable for framing and hanging on the wall.

What else is really nice about the site is that it has mounted hi-rez images of the photos that it sells. Thousands of photographs in fact, with some by Walker Evans, Ansel Adams, Lewis Hines, Dorothea Lange and other well-known photographers. Since it covers the 1850s to the 1950s, you can look at it as one of those "Way We Were" sort of projects with fascinating images from World War II, the Civil War and of course much that is non-war but doesn't fall into an easily defined historical category.

And if they keep adding 4 images a day, in about 8,587 years, they will have posted every image the Library has.

By the way, the Library of Congress is also a fantastic place to view hi-rez imagery.

PhotoShop Disasters

On the subject of the manipulation of photographic images, here is a website that you can get lost in for quite a while: PhotoShop Disasters. If all photo-doctoring was as ham-handed as these examples, we would not have to worry about the loss of faith in the veracity of photography.

Sorry, I forgot for a moment, we WANT people to question the veracity of photography (except in the newspapers.) (At least we won't have to worry about the newspapers anymore.)

Bill Jay

Bill Jay as seen by Burke Uzzle, 2002

Bill Jay has been involved with photography for many years as a writer, editor and photographer: He's the author of many books on the minutiae of photographic history; founder and editor of the short-lived magazine Album; essayist on the subjects of the why, where and how of being a photographer; and as a photographer himself, has compiled an impressive portfolio of images of photographers from the early 1960s to the present.

And a man after my own heart when it comes to what to do with the flotsam and jetsam of one's life. From the intro to his site:

"Looking up from my desk I see a long row of fat ring-binders containing hundreds of my published articles...several unpublished book manuscripts...a row of authored books...and scores of boxes containing thousands of photographs. This detritus of a life in photography has always posed storage problems and a sense of pointlessness if no one had access to it. However, I always harbored the fond hope that, one day, there would miraculously appear a means by which all this stuff could be freely available to anyone interested in the history and current practice of the medium. That day is now, thanks to the ubiquity of the worldwide web."

And sure enough you can find the entire run of Album in pdf form, hundreds of photogaphs, all his articles (again, in pdf form), his bibliography and more. It's a fantastic repository of not just the "detritus of a life in photography" but the evidence of a passionate and obsessive engagement with the medium. And to our benefit. Here 'tis.

I came to a similar conclusion recently: that my accumulation of ephemera from the history of photography was nothing but a Collyer brothers pile of useless trash unless it was somehow shared with others. (Then, hopefully, it will be seen as an "academic project" available for "research" to further our understanding of the medium.) So I have started mounting the material accumulation of some 30 years of collecting photography-related items.

The latest post is on Harry Callahan and can be found here.

The Big Picture Strikes Again

(Left: REUTERS/Giampiero Sposito; Right: REUTERS/Max Rossi)

The last two posts from The Boston Globe's "The Big Picture: News Stories in Photographs" are very good. The most recent is photographs from the site of the L'Aquila earthquake.

The photo on the right is what volcanic ash looks like magnified: tiny rocks.
(Left: Bryan Mulder; Right: Pavel Izbekov, Jill Shipman / AVO/UAF-GI)

And the post before that is on the Mount Redout volcano eruptions in Alaska.

I love this stuff.