2.25.2011

RAGHU RAI: Magnum Photographer NYC Exhibit

Book Cover: Artist Studio, Kolkata, 2004
RAGHU RAI'S INDIA: Reflections In Black & White
(Penguin Studio 2007)

Flower Market, Kolkata, 2004
Photograph (c) Raghu Rai /All Rights Reserved


Traffic at Chawri Bazar, Delhi, 1964
Photograph (c) Raghu Rai /All Rights Reserved


Ganpati Celebration, Mumbai, 2001
Photograph (c) Raghu Rai /All Rights Reserved


Preparing for Durga Puja, Kolkata, 1999
Photograph (c) Raghu Rai /All Rights Reserved


Burial of an unknown child the morning after the catastrophic Union Carbide gas leak that killed thousands on the early morning of December 3, 1984. Raghu Rai cried as he took this picture. Photograph (c) Raghu Rai /All Rights Reserved

Skulls discarded after research at the Hamidia Hospital, Bhopal after the great Bhopal Gas Tragedy. Photograph (c) Raghu Rai /All Rights Reserved

Raghu Rai next to his well-known photograph, "Mother Teresa at her refuge of the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta during prayer."The Guardian, 2010

Photographs by Raghu Rai (Penguin Studio 2010)

I believe that the photographer's job is to cut a frame-sized slice out of the world around him so cleanly that if he were to put it back again, life and the world would continue to move without a stumble–Raghu Rai

+ + +

Raghu Rai has been in the forefront of photography in India for over 40 years. As a member of Magnum, he established an international reputation as a photographer with his special photo-essays on the Bhopal Gas tragedy. His work has regularly appeared in Paris Match, National Geographic, The New York Times and Newsweek. Twenty-five of his photographs are held in the permanent collection of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, and in 1997 the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi gave Rai the first retrospective exhibition dedicated to the work of a contemporary Indian photographer. His impressive body of work is now being featured in a retrospective at the Aicon Gallery, 35 Great Jones Street, in New York City.

Raghu Rai | A Retrospective Exhibition
February 18 - March 20, 2011

+ + +

I like being among my own people. I merge with them. I don't carry camera bags, I don't wear stylish clothes. I have one camera with a zoom lens so I am not alarming people; no one is saying, 'Here comes a photographer!'

The Guardian Interview: It was a donkey that made Raghu Rai want to become a photographer. He trained as a civil engineer in the early 1960s, but did the job for a year in Delhi and hated it. His elder brother was already earning a living taking pictures and suggested Rai accompany a friend on a shoot to take photographs of children in a local village. When he got there, Rai's interest was sparked not by the children but by a donkey foal in a nearby field.

"I tried to get closer, but when I was about 10 feet away, the donkey started running and the children started laughing," he says now, more than 40 years later. Rai chased the donkey for the best part of three hours in order to amuse his audience. "I was enjoying myself. After a while, the donkey got tired and stood there so I got closer and took the shot. It was evening and the landscape was fading in soft light." His brother entered the resulting picture into a weekly competition run by The Times in London. It was published. "The [prize] money I got was enough to live on for a month," says Rai. "I thought, 'This is not a bad idea, man!'"

That was 1965. The following year, he joined the Statesman newspaper in West Bengal as its chief photographer. He never went back to civil engineering. "My father worked for the irrigation department," says Rai. "People would ask how many sons he had and he would say, 'I have four. Two have gone photographers', like he was saying, 'Two have gone mad.'" Over a career spanning four decades, his son has become one of the foremost chroniclers of the changing face of India. His images are famed for capturing both his country's brutality and its beauty, often within a single frame.

Rai, who was born in a small Pakistani village and came to India during Partition, has been witness to some of the most significant events in his country's recent history. He was one of the first photographers on the scene after the 1984 Bhopal industrial disaster and has produced acclaimed documentary series on Mother Teresa, the Dalai Lama and the late Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi. Championed in the west by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Rai joined Magnum Photos in 1977 and went on to judge the World Press Photo Awards from 1990 to 1997...read the full Interview by Elizabeth Day in The Guardian , UK

2.23.2011

RACHEL PAPO: Lecture at The Center For Photography at Woodstock Feb 27th

Hava on Margosa Tree, Elroi, Israel 2011
Photograph (c) Rachel Papo /All Rights Reserved

RACHEL PAPO will be giving a lecture about her work at The Center for Photography at Woodstock, Sunday, February 27, 11 am. This lecture is part of a new series, Near Here, featuring photographic artists living in the Woodstock area.

You can also view images from Rachel Papo's Exhibition, Serial No. 3817131, posted here 10.13.2009, at the Redline Art Space, Denver, Colorado, March 1-April 26; the Yangon Photo Festival, Yangon, Myanmar, February 24 - March 26; and Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City, in May 2011.

2.21.2011

MIKAEL KENNEDY: Passport To Trespass

No. 101479-71
Photograph (c) Mikael Kennedy
/All Rights Reserved

No. 101479-710
Photograph (c) Mikael Kennedy /All Rights Reserved

Polaroid Vitae Vol. I: October 14, 1979
28 B+W Polaroids, 32 newsprint pages, 1000 copies

+ + +


Hunt Them Out is a Limited Edition Zine
1000 signed + numbered copies

Photograph (c) Mikael Kennedy /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Mikael Kennedy /All Rights Reserved

Loading my SX70 and duffel with some of the last remaining packs of the film in the world I set out to gather as many portraits of the folks I had photographed over the years using this unique film before it disappeared forever...
+ + +

In the Seventh Volume of the Passport to Trespass series we are updated on several of the central characters in this decade long documentation of Mikael Kennedy's wanderings and adventures. Spanning 2008 and 2009 as Kennedy visited old friends and wandered the northern coasts of the country, these portraits give us a paused moment in the journey, where we face the individuals who have played recurring roles in the Passport to Trespass story.

Volume 7 takes on a new form from previous publications, this booklet printed in Zine form is a 24 page piece containing 20 Polaroid portraits shot with the rare Polaroid film; TZ Artistic. These muted and faded images reflect the vanishing Polaroid film.

Hunt Them Out is a limited edition Zine printed in conjunction with the release of these 20 Polaroids in an online only exhibition with Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art, NY.

2.20.2011

STEPHEN MALLON: The Next Stop Atlantic

Photograph (c) Stephen Mallon/All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Stephen Mallon/All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Stephen Mallon/All Rights Reserved

Kathleen Vance, Associate Director, Front Room Gallery, in front of Stephen Mallon's "Next Stop Atlantic" image

Photograph (c) Stephen Mallon/All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Stephen Mallon/All Rights Reserved

UPDATE!
"Next Stop Atlantic"
Visual Arts Center of New Jersey
July 29 - September 25, 2011
68 Elm Street, Summit, NJ

NYC Transit joined the artificial reef building program off the east coast of the U.S. in 2000, sending stripped subway cars on barges to be dropped into the Atlantic Ocean to build refuge for fish and crustaceans to colonize the structures. Photographer Stephen Mallon beautifully traces the progress of the train cars on their last voyage out to sea.

Mallon gained enormous acclaim for his series, "Brace For Impact: The Salvage of Flight 1549," documenting the salvage of the U.S. Airways flight piloted by Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, who managed to emergency-land in the Hudson River in January 15, 2009 without losing any passenger lives.

Another Mallon Must See: Stephen Mallon produced and directed this video created from over 30,000 still images, posted in The Wall Street Journal: A New York Bridge Delivered (here). Follow the progress of this massive structure as it is floated, dragged, pushed and pulled over one hundred miles of New York's historic waterways.

UPDATE!
"Next Stop Atlantic"
Visual Arts Center of New Jersey
July 29 - September 25, 2011
68 Elm Street, Summit, NJ


2.13.2011

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!

Jill and Charlie
SmartPhonePhoto (c) Jill Cuticello /All Rights Reserved


Charlie
SmartPhonePhoto (c) Jill Cuticello /All Rights Reserved

Saint Valentine's Day
is an annual commemoration February 14th
celebrating love and affection between intimate companions.

ASMP-NY: Curators + Dealers Panel

(L to R) Moderator Susan May Tell, with Panelists: Jeff Rosenheim, Curator of Photographs, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Howard Greenberg, Owner of the Howard Greenberg Gallery; Brian Wallis, Chief Curator, ICP, The International Center of Photography

Jeff Rosenheim, Howard Greenberg, Brian Wallis

February 2, 2011: Panelists Jeff L. Rosenheim - Curator of Photographs, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Howard Greenberg - top photography dealer and owner of New York City's Howard Greenberg Gallery; and Brian Wallis - Deputy Director of Exhibitions and Collections and Chief Curator, International Center of Photography came together for a conversation on Fine Art Photography. The New York chapter of ASMP (American Society of Media Professionals) was host to this event, moderated by its Fine Art Chair, photographer Susan May Tell. The conversation took place at Soho Photo.

A few of the many topics discussed throughout the evening included, how each of them became interested in photography, their relationships with collectors and auction houses,
how they choose exhibitions, the importance (or not) of prints being editioned and/or signed ("only one signature matters - Henri Cartier-Bresson"), and wet vs digital prints. The evening was casual and fun, while also inspiring and illuminating. One example is Rosenheim's response about editioning prints: "I am less concerned with rarity and more concerned with poetry."

Read more about the evening here:
SHARPEN by Stella Kramer

2.11.2011

HIROSHI WATANABE: Love Point

Mariko 2
Photograph (c) Hiroshi Watanabe /All Rights Reserved





Japanese Edition "Love Point" (Tosei, 2010)



 La Lettre de la Photographie 2.11.2011
(Sorry, this link no longer exists)

"I took the photograph of a bar, Love Point, a few years earlier in Japan. I liked the sign and its design. I used it on the cover in order to confuse the readers. When the show opened in Japan, a newspaper article appeared saying that the show is about a real place in Japan where men play with real women and dolls. For me, the work is a kind of mind game. I hope I was able to intrigue."– Hiroshi Watanabe

+ + +

Japanese-born, California based photographer, Hiroshi Watanabe, has become an important force in photography over the past several years, with a growing list of monographs, artist's books, exhibitions and awards to his credit. He's known for his beautiful theatrical portraits of traditional Noh Masks of the Naito Clan and Kabuki Players (Hiroshi Watanabe, La Lettre de la Photographie, Jan 17, 2011)


La Lettre de la Photographie 1.17.2011
(Sorry, this link no longer exists) 

....though here he has taken a slightly different turn, photographing artificial Japanese Sex Dolls as models, along with almost identical live models. The portraits are titled out of fictional characters in an accompanying short story by novelist Richard Curtis Hauschild and all reside in a fictional place, Love Point.

"The dolls are very expensive sex dolls (about $5,000). They are human size with real joint movements, soft skin, and weigh just like a woman. As in US and Europe, there are people in Japan who live and sleep with these dolls in lieu of wife or girlfriend. US dolls are more realistic in a way, but Japanese dolls are cuter and adorable (my opinion)."

"After I photographed the dolls, I photographed real human models dressed similarly. I wanted to puzzle and confuse what is real and what is not. Of course, one can tell the difference once he/she knows there are both. I could have made them more same and thus indistinguishable if I manipulated the images digitally, buytI kept them as they are on the film. I wanted to raise a question about perfectly (and easily) manipulated digital images that we see now everywhere."

Love Point” was a collaboration of many. Hiroo Okawa of 4woods created the dolls which gave Watanabe's photographs their mysterious charm, along with the work of make-up artist, Kyoko Owada, stylist Hiromi Chiba, and models, Mariko Masu and Hiroko Sato. Richard Curtis Hauschild, “Bulldog”, wrote a strikingly original short story with the inspiration he received after looking at Hiroshi Watanabe's photographs. Kunihiro Takahashi of Toseisha belief in the work prompted an “I will publish it” response on the spot when shown the photographs, with book design by Satsuki Ishikawa. And more recently, Chris Pichler of Nazraeli Press, published the U.S. version, One Picture Book #66: Love Point (Nazraeli Press, 2011). – Elizabeth Avedon, La Lettre de la Photographie

+ + +



10 BEST 10: Photography Competition

2.08.2011

NORMAN MAUSKOPF: Descendants

Photograph (c) Norman Mauskopf /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Norman Mauskopf /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Norman Mauskopf /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Norman Mauskopf /All Rights Reserved

"newborns scream their arrivals, and fathers with wrist chains and tattoos cling to their little loves in parks, and the circle widens and expands and ripples toward every closed gate, with tribal drums beating, gourds blowing and rattles rattling we are here, we are here, we are here" – New Mexican poet, Jimmy Santiago Baca

+ + +

Northern New Mexico is a complex weave of pride and history. In this region of ancient traditions and striking environmental and ethnic diversity, documentary photographer Norman Mauskopf has spent the last decade photographing the Hispanic people and their culture. The photographs that emerged depict the intersection of religion, injustice, community, and transcendence. Twin Palms Publishers

2.06.2011

MONIKA MERVA: The City of Children

Rabbit Ears, Hungary, 2005
The City of Children (Kehrer Verlag , 2011)

Mouse, Hungary, 2004
Photograph (c) Monika Merva /All Rights Reserved

Red Bottle, Hungary, 2005
Photograph (c) Monika Merva /All Rights Reserved

"Children generally know whom to trust, especially those who´ve experienced hardships. Monika Merva brought empathy and compassion as well as skill to this project and we can feel it in the children's responses. They allowed her into their private spaces and she's honored their trust with vivid, memorable portraits." –Anne Wilkes Tucker, Curator of Photography, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
"Monika Merva, a first generation American of Hungarian descent, has spent almost a decade visiting and photographing the children of Gyermekközpont in Hungary for this, her first monograph. Her photographs of the children are vivid and personal, the pacing of the rich, color images has a comfortably varied formal character. Though the cultural divide between the democratic West and former Soviet bloc countries seems almost unbreachable at times, Merva's images do so slowly — without obscuring their cultural specificity, they form a potent bridge between the viewer and subject."–photo-eye Books

2.03.2011

THOMAS KELLNER: Photography In Art

London, Tower Bridge, 2001 
Photograph (c) Thomas Kellner /All Rights Reserved  
(click to enlarge these images)
 
Budapest Parliament, 2006  
Photograph (c) Thomas Kellner /All Rights Reserved
 
Monaco, Royal Palace, 2006 
Photograph (c) Thomas Kellner /All Rights Reserved
 
Beijing, Great Wall of Mutianyu 1, 2006 
Photograph (c) Thomas Kellner /All Rights Reserved 
 
"Each photographic work is made up of horizontally placed film strips of up to 1,269 individual pictures. Every single one of these smaller images was taken with the camera from a slightly shifted perspective and subsequently combined into an overall picture, creating an entirely new image." "To approach something like The Great Wall of China is much more complicated than it looks. Once you reach one of the accessible parts of The Wall, you have to walk, climb, and tumble up and down the path on top of the Wall and the many stairs that have been polished by the feet of thousands and thousands of soldiers, and later by millions of tourists. You have to get away from the mass tourism to find a place of silence. In the way that I work, it is not possible to photograph more than just a little piece out of the thousands of miles of this wall. It takes hours to expose 25 roles of 36-exposure film, or 900 shots, to be finished before the sunset, smog and fog enter the frame. In this image, I started with sunshine in the bottom of the image and ended with less sun towards the top."–Thomas Kellner
 
German born artist/photographer, Thomas Kellner, creates large scale images that combine photography, collage and moving pictures. His final images are contact prints of the films he shoots—the more film, the larger the final image. If he shoots one film, the size is 20cmx24cm; if he shoots 36 films, the print is 100cmx120cm. Read more here