The New York Photo Review

An eye made quiet...

Susan Sermoneta — Sat, 4 Jun 2016 00:00:00 EST

It's been a while since I've been to the Laurence Miller Gallery and I was in for a surprise. "Pursuing the Sublime: Man And Nature In Contemporary Photography And Japanese Ukiyo-E Prints" is an exhibition unlike any I've been to. Through a large glass door I see a wide, framed image of a huge iceberg, snow-capped mountains, and the gathering clouds beyond. Approaching the image of the ice, I am suddenly transported back to college days, and to William Wordsworth's pursuit of the sublime. I'm primed for this exhibition. Standing before an image nearly six feet wide, I see not a floating chunk of ice but rather a huge glacier, extending miles back toward the mountains. Moving closer, I see tiny..... continues in the current New York Photo Review.

Along for the Ride

John Haber — Wed, 25 May 2016 00:00:00 EST

For a child, a car wash is the equivalent of an amusement park ride without the fear. It makes sense that your parents take you to both. In each, the vehicle moves passively forward, a splash of soap as fragile, white, and entertaining as a ghost. For Mark Lyon, the ghosts are real, but not the ride. For him a car wash is a window onto a wider world. It holds deep vistas onto a greener nature and holds a refuge from the ice and cold. That wider world is the greater New York area, but one would hardly know it. Lyon's camera never leaves a succession of plain white rooms, mostly bare of evidence. These are not the kind that serve as..... continues in the current New York Photo Review.

Brooklyn to Austin / Photos of Revelation

Larry Racioppo — Thu, 26 May 2016 00:00:00 EST

When I started photographing in 1971, I had no idea what I was doing, but I really enjoyed it. I gradually realized that I felt sharper and more aware of everyday life in my South Brooklyn neighborhood when I had my camera with me. As I began learning about the craft and art of photography, I was influenced by Robert Leverant's book Zen in the Art of Photography. "A camera is an extension of ourselves. An appendage to bring us closer to the universe." Looking at the small black and white prints I made in my storefront darkroom, I was surprised to see so many images depicting religious expression. I thought that I had moved on from my Italian-American Catholic upbringing, but..... continues in the current New York Photo Review.

Born to Collect: David Solo

Barbara Confino — Sun, 1 May 2016 00:00:00 EST

Computer engineer by training, cyber security expert by profession, and collector by nature, David Solo is one of the great champions and collectors of photo books. His expertise in this area continually being called upon by one group or another, (including ICP where he is working on a history of photo books with Matthew Karsten) he possesses over 5000 books, including piles of as yet uncatalogued material. On a cold Sunday afternoon we met in his Brooklyn Heights apartment where he introduced me to the collection and talked about his love of photo books.
..... continues in the current New York Photo Review.

Only a Pose: Elisabeth Hase

John Haber — Thu, 14 Apr 2016 00:00:00 EST

An artist in Germany had to be careful as the Nazis rose to power�even more so as the Allied bombs fell. It was only natural to put aside worldly matters and to look within. Could that be why Elisabeth Hase looked so often to herself? Though they may look at first ever so carefree, her self-portraits take exquisite care. She catches herself asleep, in the shower, at ease, and in tears. She throws herself to the wind and up a staircase, only to fall headfirst, her Sunday best in disarray and her purse lost by her side. Of course, each is only a pose. Hase could not have fallen asleep in front of her camera, and not many showers rain down..... continues in the current New York Photo Review.

MoMA, SELFIES AND PHOTOGRAPHY TODAY A CONVERSATION WITH QUENTIN BAJAC Part II

Barbara Confino — Fri, 15 Apr 2016 00:00:00 EST

This is the second part of a conversation between Quentin Bajac, the The Joel and Anne Ehrenkranz Chief Curator of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art and the New York Photo Review Managing Editor Barbara Confino. The first part can be read here.
Barbara Confino:What precisely is the perspective of MoMA on photography? Quentin Bajac: We are writing A history of photography, not THE history of photography. We do not collect all the forms of photography. Sometimes people say "But you are not collecting this and that". No, we are not. We exclude many forms of photography. MoMA is trying to establish a..... continues in the current New York Photo Review.

Get Real: Brian Griffin

John Haber — Thu, 24 Mar 2016 00:00:00 EST

So get real. There is socialist realism, the kind with workers up on a pedestal, and then there is "Capitalist Realism," in Margaret Thatcher's England. Do not ask which is more chilling. Under Stalin, Soviet photography had to choose between propaganda and experiment, and the choice could be a matter of life and death. For Brian Griffin, at Steven Kasher through April 9, the choice no longer exists. The market has its dogma, and the results are surreal. Griffin shares the gallery with Meryl Meisler and, in one of her photos, "A Scholarly View of the Jewish Mother." Meisler presents the entirety of Long Island as one big dysfunctional family. This being the 1970s, for a gay woman about to come out of..... continues in the current New York Photo Review.

Two Photo Events at the Valentine Museum

Fri, 19 Feb 2016 00:00:00 EST

Join the conversation at the Valentine Museum at Phillip Howard for two weekends. Saturday, Feb 20th, from 2 to 6 PM join photographers Hazel Hankin, Larry Racioppo and John Rossi, discussing their work at Coney Island and their careers from their beginnings at Brooklyn College to today. Then on Saturday, Feb 27, join artist Jamel Shabazz, discuss "A Tribute to the Ancestors". Work of all 4 artists as well as others, are on display in the museum's current exhibition "Coney Island". For more information visit the museum's website here

Nothing Personal: Irving Penn at Pace

John Haber — Tue, 9 Feb 2016 00:00:00 EST

"Irving Penn: Personal Work" begins and ends in the gutter. At least it begins and ends on the way there. The show opens with scraps on the sidewalk, at Pace Chelsea< through March 5, blown up to poster size. It ends with cigarette butts brought together like the columns of a ruined monument. The first could pass for dark creatures or their shrouds, the second for sculpture by Louise Bourgeois. It takes time to make out the cigarette labels, in faint type on white against white, or to separate objects from their ashes�and longer still to forget them. Irving Penn was always concerned for making..... continues in the current New York Photo Review.

Untitled

review by Ed Barnas — Fri, 19 Feb 2016 00:00:00 EST

How important is the caption to a photograph? In journalism, it is essential to provide the who-what-where-when needed by the viewer to place the visual information in context. And just as the photographer can skew what the viewer is shown by choice of vantage point and framing, the caption writer can skew the viewer's interpretation of the image by the selective use of text. In the realm of the art gallery, however, the viewer is expected to judge the image on its visual merits. Captions rarely appear on the wall next to photographs. Visitors must refer to a printed list with captions that run the gamut from informative to obscure, but in many cases simply say "untitled." Only in rare..... continues in the current New York Photo Review.

To The Memory of Myself

Ed Barnas — Tue, 26 Jan 2016 00:00:00 EST

Although revered as the father of Scandinavian photography in the second half of the 20th century, Christer Str�mholm (1918-2002) is relatively unknown in the US. The current show at Pace/MacGill is only his second solo exhibit in the US. In 2012 I had the pleasure of seeing the first, "Les Amies de Place Blanche," at ICP. The twenty vintage black and white photographs on display are actually a reprise of "Till minnet av mig sj�lv" (to the memory of myself), the first show of his work in 1965 at a department store in Stockholm. The images range from 1949 through 1964, providing an overview of his work during that period. All the photos are dated but untitled, leaving it to the viewer..... continues in the current New York Photo Review.

Photography Twice Over

John Haber — Tue, 26 Jan 2016 00:00:00 EST

Some photographers still love the medium�so much that they use it twice. They nurture snapshots from family and friends. They hold them in their hands and pin them to the wall. They seek them out on the Web. They cling to album covers and newspaper clippings from long ago. And then they pull out the camera. Photo-Poetics: An Anthology," at the Guggenheim through March 23, takes to photography and other seemingly dated media. Most of its artists work in series or with actual slide shows, one starting the very year that Kodak stopped making slides. They are not, though, conducting exercises in nostalgia, for all the quaintness of "poetics" and "an anthology." (Vinyl, you know, is having a comeback.) The Guggenheim..... continues in the current New York Photo Review.

Thursday, January 7, 2016

Norman Borden — Sat, 16 Jan 2016 00:00:00 EST

"First Thursdays" often come with a sense of heightened expectations, as in "What new work will surprise me tonight? Happily, the two shows I saw on January 7 did not disappoint. In fact, the real disappointment may have been just that there were only two opening receptions that night in Chelsea. No matter. My viewing time was well spent at Penelope Umbrico's intriguing new exhibition � her first at the Bruce Silverstein Gallery � called "Silvery Light." Umbrico, best known for appropriating images she finds on the internet by using search engines and picture sharing websites, created an installation of new photographic and video works that is related to her continued appropriation of other people's work..... continues in the current New York Photo Review.

Kodak Moments: Images from the Exposition Universelle of 1900

Deirdre E. Lawrence — Fri, 8 Jan 2016 00:00:00 EST

Paris is very much on our minds today in the aftermath of terrorist attacks. Almost universally acknowledged as one of the great art centers, any threat to Paris is seen as a threat to the cultural legacy of the entire world. Historically, Paris hosted several expositions culminating in the spectacular 1900 Universelle Fair, these fairs contributing to its reputation as the capital of modernity. Many of these achievements left a permanent mark on the city such as the Eiffel Tower, built for the 1889 exposition. Entitled Paris: Capital of the Civilized World, the 1900 Exposition Universelle was the largest fair up to that time, attracting an international audience of over 50 million visitors. Held from April to November 1900, the fair..... continues in the current New York Photo Review.

Quentin Bajac on a Walkabout through An Ocean of Images

Barbara Confino — Sat, 26 Dec 2015 00:00:00 EST

Perhaps more than any of his predecessors at MoMA, Quentin Bajac is a scholar who partakes of a scholar's pleasures. Interested in the genealogy of the image as much as in its purely visual qualities, in tracking its lineage and web of associations, he embraces its entire history. No longer taken in isolation but in context, the photograph is seen longitudinally across time and vertically across categories, so that it becomes an Extended Image. Echoing a perennial debate among critics, photographers today debate the virtues of the standalone approach versus the contextual one. In Bajac one finds a reaffirmation of the school that emphasizes cultural lineages and contexts. For him the entire plant, roots and all must be examined--even the soil it grows in ..... continued in the current New York Photo Review.

Behind the Masks: Ralph Eugene Meatyard

John Haber — Thu, 7 Jan 2016 00:00:00 EST

Picture B> Will anyone ever see the man behind the masks? Probably not, but four dozen photographs span the art of Ralph Eugene Meatyard, at D. C. Moore through December 23, with nary a mask in sight. Some ten years since a survey at the International Center of Photography fully introduced Ralph Eugene Meatyard to New York, he remains a shadowy presence. So, too, do his subjects, and he means it that way. His photographs show motion in bare trees, woods like a shower of rain, ripples on the water, and empty houses. They show his children, who moved him to take up photography in the first place. Yet no one glowers more than the occasion warrants or looks disfigured as if caked and rotting..... continues in the current New York Photo Review.

MoMA Still Cares

John Haber — Sat, 12 Dec 2015 00:00:00 EST

With "New Photography," the Museum of Modern Art wants you to know: it still cares. It cares enough about the medium to track its currents--quite apart from contemporary art from Eastern Europe and Latin America upstairs as "Transmissions," recent acquisitions downstairs as "Scenes for a New Heritage," and the four floors of ""Greater New York 2015" at MoMA PS1. Maybe it has to make a point of it, now that the last of these has all but given up on emerging artists. It cares, too, about its heritage, enough to extend the show outside the photography galleries, where a stairwell modeled after the Bauhaus once provided chief access to the museum itself. Katharina Gaenssler recalls its former grandeur and intimacy in papering..... continues in the current New York Photo Review.

Barriers: Gordon Parks

John Haber — Wed, 2 Dec 2015 00:00:00 EST

For once, blacks and white find themselves on the same side of a barrier. Three children peer through a barbed-wire fence, their backs to a dirty, weathered wood-frame house. The sole white boy grasps the harsh metal with both hands, while the boy at center holds out a six shooter in a restless gesture. From his upturned face and outstretched arm, he could almost be reeling from a gunshot himself. The third boy peeks out shyly from behind a bush and tantalizingly broad gaps in the fence, both his pistol and wide eyes aimed directly at the viewer. For Gordon Parks, in Alabama in 1956, people can reach out, but the barriers remain .... continued in the current New York Photo Review.

MoMA, Selfies and Photography Today

Barbara Confino — Thu, 3 Dec 2015 00:00:00 EST

Gentille is the French word for people like Quentin Bajac: polite, kind, unassumingly charming. A slender, elegant man eager to engage in dialogue, the tautness of his mind echoed in his body, he leans forward with the effort to articulate his insights precisely. Someone who has thought long and hard about his subject, he wants to make sure he has got it right. For the past 3 years MoMA's Chief Curator of Photography, Bajac brings to this American citadel of modernism European credentials, a French education, and Gallic acuteness. At a time when the medium is undergoing radical innovations in the ways photographs are made, viewed, stored, and considered, he must decide what is important and worthy of preservation at MoMA..... continues in the current New York Photo Review.

Photo Plus Expo 2015

Norman Borden — Wed, 2 Dec 2015 00:00:00 EST

Another October, another PhotoPlus Expo; overwhelming, overstuffed, disappointing, inspiring, educational, exhausting, interesting, fun, rewarding... and all under one roof. From my perspective, Photo Expo rarely fails to please or enlighten and I speak from experience -- I've been attending this annual industry event for as long as I can remember and that includes the "vintage" Photo Expos in the 1980s at the old Coliseum on Columbus Circle. I've learned that whether you shoot weddings or wars, fine art or street life, or are just a photography enthusiast, there's something here for everyone. And the 2015 version did not disappoint. With more than 225 exhibitors at the Javits Center this year, the approximately 23,000 visitors over the three days (a 10% increase over 2014) had..... continues in the current New York Photo Review.

Beyond Architectural Photography

Ed Barnas — Thu, 3 Dec 2015 00:00:00 EST

Photography, by its nature, is a documentary medium. What it documented and how it is presented depend on the vision of the photographer and the choices made when interacting with a particular environment. With a trait shared by many photographers over the history of photography, Georges Rousse has long had an affinity for abandoned and derelict spaces, a trait shared by many photographers over the history of photography. His early interest in such spaces led to a career as an architectural photographer. Exposure to Land Art and Kazimir Malevich's Black Square against a white field moved him away from traditional documentation to a more interactive approach, combining painting, architecture and photography. Rousse seeks out spaces that are in transition, either derelict..... continues in the current New York Photo Review.

Art and Propaganda

Natalie Rahhal — Wed, 2 Dec 2015 00:00:00 EST

There is something rather austere about the photography displayed in The Power of Pictures: Early Soviet Photography, Early Soviet Film exhibition at the Jewish Museum. The photographs taken by Jewish photographers of Soviet era Russia are striking in their starkness, geometry and sterility. In spite of the avant-garde and experimental techniques employed by these photographers, the presence of an uncontested ideology looms over the subject matter of the exhibition. These works exemplify a period of time during which visual artists -- particularly photographers, filmmakers and graphic designers -- were utilized as vehicles of an explicit political ideology. The resulting visual media feel fascinatingly alien to a 21st Century observer. Where we are inundated constantly by conflicting messages from every corner of the political playing. .... continues in the current New York Photo Review.

In Search of Photographic Treasure

Barbara Confino — Wed, 2 Dec 2015 00:00:00 EST

It was Baudelaire who first recognized the city's propensity for drama. The way it offered public spaces for private matters. He understood, too, that the city was the nexus of the modern, the place where life was at its richest and most diverse. Like Dickens he saw the city itself as a character, a gigantic inhuman life form, something photographers, too, often feel intuitively. From fairly early on many of them realized that their medium was the ideal chronicler of urban life. Charles Gilbert Hine certainly did. A photographer I had never heard of, I discovered him and his work in the New York Historical Society. There are few places left in New York where one can escape the 21st century, even the..... continues in the current New York Photo Review.

Brooklyn Museum: a legacy of collecting and exhibiting photography

Deirdre E. Lawrence — Wed, 2 Dec 2015 00:00:00 EST

The Brooklyn Museum has a long, but little known, legacy of collecting and exhibiting photographs and formed what is believed to be the first school of photography associated with a museum in the United States. Clarence H. White, founder of the Photo-Secession movement, served as a professor of photography and instructor of the newly created school. Annual exhibitions of photography were begun in 1891, and continued through to 1940, with the Museum acquiring photography as an art form as early as 1899. .... continues in the current New York Photo Review.

Going Through a Stage

John Haber — Wed, 2 Dec 2015 00:00:00 EST

Around 1855, well over a century before Cindy Sherman, photographers were playing to the camera. They, too, posed as other than themselves, and they did it with authority. Louise-Pierre-Théophile Dubois, for one, did it in judge's robes and Roger Fenton with the barrel of a gun. Fenton, who had traveled to the Crimea as European photography's first war correspondent, dressed as a Zouave fighter from Algeria. Neither may be exactly a household name, but in 1895 Edgar Degas inserted himself into a group portrait. He leans so intently toward a woman at his right that one may forget that he had set up the shot and ordered someone to snap the shutter. Playing along, his two friends look more bored than..... continues in the current New York Photo Review.

What Will Suffice

Alfred Corn — Wed, 2 Dec 2015 00:00:00 EST

Among the most thoughtful African-American photographers is Carrie Mae Weems, whose work began to be noticed in the early 1980s. One key project was her black and white platinum-print Kitchen Table series (1990), which used the minimal stage set of a table and three chairs under a suspended lampshade in a small room with a closed door in the background. The term "stage set" fits because the pictures were consciously and deliberately posed, with the photographer herself figuring in most of them. So we have to assume that a time-lapse device was used in the pictures where Weems appears, introducing a small element of chance and the likelihood that several shots were discarded before she arrived at the definitive image. .... continues in the current New York Photo Review.

Sex and More Sex

Ed Barnas — Wed, 2 Dec 2015 00:00:00 EST

The distinction between the erotic and the obscene, between art and pornography, continue to cause conflict to this day. One need only recall the recent brouhaha when FaceBook censored Courbet's 1866 painting The Origin of the World (L'Origine du monde) in a social media post. Though many would agree with Justice Potter Stewart that "I know it when I see it," obscenity is difficult to define and its perception can vary over time (e.g., in the 1896 short film The May Irwin Kiss, a fairly chaste peck on the lips, was considered pornographic). However, many would class graphic depictions of sexual subject matter created solely for sexual arousal as obscene, whether or not there is any "redeeming social value." While every age tends..... continues in the current New York Photo Review.

In Situ

Ed Barnas — Wed, 2 Dec 2015 00:00:00 EST

For many photographers the NYC Subway system is irresistible. Riders learn to yield personal space and, unless riding with a friend, adopt a state of studied isolation on their daily commute. That look of being present but entirely self-absorbed in the crowd, has attracted photographers over the decades. Except for the elevated sections, the subway is an enclosed space, artificially lit from above. Flash and tripods were (and still are) prohibited, so it is was a challenging environment for film photographers, requiring fast film and slow shutter speeds. Many have taken up the challenge over the years. Walker Evans is perhaps the best known. From 1938 to 1941 Evans photographed his fellow riders with a camera concealed in his bulky overcoat. Many..... continues in the current New York Photo Review.