7.26.2016

NICHOLAS SYRACUSE: Highway Traveler

HWY series © Nicholas Syracuse

TRAVELER series © Nicholas Syracuse

TRAVELER series © Nicholas Syracuse

TRAVELER series © Nicholas Syracuse

"Nicholas Syracuse’s beautiful portraits of drifters, train hoppers, runaways and hobos are all self-portraits in a way. There is a deep sense of camaraderie between Syracuse and his subjects, both sharing the itch to remain in constant motion.” – Director’s Sam Roden and Nick Hartanto

Nicholas Syracuse, born in Arizona and raised in the DC area, studied photography at the Corcoran School of Art in DC. and The Northwest Photographic Center in Seattle. His largest series of photographs is his ongoing "Highway" project, with photographs from Seattle, San Francisco, Phoenix, Texas, South Carolina, Indiana, and many points in between. Director’s Sam Roden and Nick Hartanto made a feature documentary film "TRAVELER" about his work, that premiered to a sold-out crowd at the Ashland Independent Film Festival in Ashland Oregon last April. I came across his work recently and wanted to share some of it.

TRAVELER series © Nicholas Syracuse

LINKS:


7.23.2016

DAVID REINFELD : The Reality of Illusion at Piermont Fine Arts Gallery

 from Reality of Illusion © David Reinfeld

from Reality of Illusion © David Reinfeld

 from Reality of Illusion © David Reinfeld

 from Reality of Illusion © David Reinfeld

David Reinfeld : The Reality of Illusion
August 04, 2016 - August 21, 2016

"In the early ’70-s, as a graduate student at the Rhode Island School of Design, I had the great privilege of studying with Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan, Lisette Model, and Minor White. Their classes were my introduction to the world of art, and their teachings remain a fundamental part of the way I see. Before RISD, as a young street photographer from New York, I never thought about what made photographs good or bad . . . I just took pictures."

"Spending time with my teachers outside of school was an equally important part on my education. I drove Lisette from New York to Providence every week. Those were sacred hours for me, filled with discussions of everything from photography to philosophy. On a trip with Aaron to Goblin Valley, I remember his great excitement as he set up his camera in front of a rock. Not seeing the rock as anything other than ordinary, I looked through his old Rollie, and there it was— the picture was right there, hidden in plain sight. Through the lens of Aaron’s camera, the rock was brought to life."

"What makes a picture come alive? Why do some photographs remain in our consciousness, while others fall away? These are the questions I ask, as a photographer, in a world where the boundaries of well-crafted commercialism and fine art have blurred. I tell myself the seeing should be clear but not too obvious. Spending countless hours at my computer, I have to remind myself not to remain at the surface. Beautiful prints are very seductive and can have considerable visual impact. I pause to remember art is not only an arrangement of form and content, but of responsibility and awareness, of visual impact and contemplation. Art is our affirmation that life is worth living, like Siskind’s ordinary rock that is full of life and charm, frozen in time, kept alive by human connection." – David Reinfeld 


from Reality of Illusion © David Reinfeld

 from Reality of Illusion © David Reinfeld

 from Reality of Illusion © David Reinfeld

David Reinfeld : The Reality of Illusion
August 04, 2016 - August 21, 2016

Visit David's Website

*The above photographic composited images from Reality of Illusion, were selected from an ongoing series in Oaxaca, and various locations.

7.19.2016

THE GRIFFIN MUSEUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY: 22nd Peter Urban Legacy Exhibition

THE PETER URBAN LEGACY EXHIBITION
Opening night reception was well documented 
by the many photographers who attended. 

The 22nd Peter Urban Legacy Exhibition 
Juried by Elizabeth Avedon 
Open through August 28, 2016

THE GRIFFIN MUSEUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY
67 Shore Road, Winchester, MA

Thanks to Griffin Director, Paula Tognarelli, and her incredible team - Mike Bodall, Meg Birnbaum, Iariza Menjivar,  Julie Williams-Krishnan and volunteers - who work tirelessly to promote photography! 

Steven McCarthy sponsored this Exhibition in honor of photographer Peter Urban's Legacy. Many thanks to Steven, The Peter Urban family and the Arts and Business Council of Greater Boston.



7.11.2016

DIANE ARBUS : In The Beginning

The Backwards Man in his hotel room, N.Y.C. 1961
© The Estate of Diane Arbus, LLC. All Rights Reserved

For Best Viewing Click on Images to Enlarge

Female impersonator holding long gloves, Hempstead, L.I. 1959
© The Estate of Diane Arbus, LLC. All Rights Reserved

Man in hat trunks socks and shoes, Coney Island, N.Y. 1960
© The Estate of Diane Arbus, LLC. All Rights Reserved

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue which includes two essays: "in the beginning" by Jeff L. Rosenheim and "notes from the archive" by Karan Rinaldo, Senior Research Assistant. The book is published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press.

My favorite photograph in the Catalogue
Clown in a fedora, Palisades Park, N.J. 1957

Taxicab driver at the wheel with two passengers, N.Y.C. 1956 
© The Estate of Diane Arbus, LLC. All Rights Reserved


diane arbus: in the beginning
July 12-November 27, 2016
The Met Breuer, 75 x Madison, NYC

As part of the inaugural season at The Met Breuer, diane arbus: in the beginning will open on July 12, featuring more than 100 photographs that together will redefine one of the most influential and provocative artists of the 20th century. This landmark exhibition will highlight never-before-seen early work of Diane Arbus (1923–71), focusing on the first seven years of her career, from 1956 to 1962—the period in which she developed the idiosyncratic style and approach for which she has been recognized, praised, criticized, and copied the world over.

"Nothing is ever the same as they said it was. It’s what I’ve never seen before that I recognize." –Diane Arbus

diane arbus: in the beginning focuses on seven key years that represent a crucial period of the artist's genesis, showing Arbus as she developed her style and honed her practice. Arbus was fascinated by photography even before she received a camera in 1941 at the age of 18 as a present from her husband, Allan, and made photographs intermittently for the next 15 years while working with him as a stylist in their fashion photography business. But in 1956 she numbered a roll of 35mm film #1, as if to claim to herself that this moment would be her definitive beginning. Through the course of the next seven years (the period in which she primarily used a 35mm camera), an evolution took place—from pictures of individuals that sprang out of fortuitous chance encounters to portraits in which the chosen subjects became engaged participants, with as much stake in the outcome as the photographer. This greatly distinguishes Arbus's practice from that of her peers, from Walker Evans and Helen Levitt to Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander, who believed that the only legitimate record was one in which they, themselves, appear to play little or no role. In almost complete opposition, Arbus sought the poignancy of a direct personal encounter. 

Arbus made most of her photographs in New York City, where she was born and died, and where she worked in locations such as Times Square, the Lower East Side, Coney Island, and other areas. Her photographs of children and eccentrics, couples and circus performers, female impersonators and Fifth Avenue pedestrians are among the most intimate and surprising images of the era. From the beginning, Arbus believed fully that she had something special to offer the world, a glimpse of its many secrets: "I do feel I have some slight corner on something about the quality of things. I mean it's very subtle and a little embarrassing to me but I really believe there are things which nobody would see unless I photographed them."

Nearly half of the photographs that Arbus printed during her lifetime were made between 1956 and 1962, the period covered by this exhibition. At the time of her death in 1971, much of this work was stored in boxes in an inaccessible corner of her basement darkroom at 29 Charles Street in Greenwich Village. These prints remained undiscovered for several years thereafter and were not even inventoried until a decade after her death. The majority of the photographs included in the exhibition are part of the Museum's vast Diane Arbus Archive, acquired in 2007 by gift and promised gift from the artist's daughters, Doon Arbus and Amy Arbus. It was only when the archive—a treasury of photographs, negatives, notebooks, appointment books, correspondence, and collections—came to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2007 that this seminal early work began to be fully explored.

Among the highlights in the exhibition are lesser-known published works such as Lady on a bus, N.Y.C. 1957, Boy stepping off the curb, N.Y.C. 1957–58, The Backwards Man in his hotel room, N.Y.C. 1961, and Jack Dracula at a bar, New London, Conn. 1961, as well as completely unknown additions to her oeuvre, such as Taxicab driver at the wheel with two passengers, N.Y.C. 1956, Woman with white gloves and a pocket book, N.Y.C. 1956, Female impersonator holding long gloves, Hempstead, L.I. 1959, and Man in hat, trunks, socks and shoes, Coney Island, N.Y. 1960. Included among the selection of six square-format photographs from 1962 is the iconic Child with a toy hand grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C. 1962, a photograph that signals the moment when Arbus turned away from the 35mm camera and started working with the 2¼ inch square format Rolleiflex camera, a format that remained a distinctive attribute of her work for the rest of her life. The photographs from her early career reveal that the salient characteristics of her work—its centrality, boldness, intimacy, and apparent artlessness—were present in her pictures since the very beginning. Arbus's creative life in photography after 1962 is well documented and already the stuff of legend; now, for the first time, we can properly examine its origins.

Jeff Rosenheim, Curator in Charge of the Department of Photographs, added, "Arbus's early photographs are wonderfully rich in achievement and perhaps as quietly riveting and ultimately controversial as the iconic images for which she is so widely known. She brings us face-to-face with what she had first glimpsed at the age of 16—'the divineness in ordinary things'—and through her photographs we begin to see it too."
+  +  +

diane arbus: in the beginning is curated by Jeff L. Rosenheim, Curator in Charge of the Department of Photographs at The Met. Exhibition design is by Brian Butterfield, Senior Exhibition Designer; graphics are by Anna Rieger, Graphic Designer; and lighting design is by Laura Mroczkowski, Lighting Designer, all of The Met's Design Department. The exhibition is made possible by the Alfred Stieglitz Society. Additional support is provided by The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation and the Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne.

Text : Courtesy of  The Met Museum
+  +  +
Read More :  Neal Selkirk is the only person ever authorized to make posthumous prints of the work of Diane Arbus.  Read my Interview with Neal Selkirk


7.09.2016

LENSCULTURE STREET PHOTOGRAPHY AWARDS: Call for Entries!


UPDATE September 2016: Magnum Photos and LensCulture announced 44 remarkable photographers from around the world who have been chosen by our international jury for the first annual Magnum Photography Awards www.lensculture.com....

"Mr. Leiter was a photographer less of people than of perception itself." In honor of our recently opened LensCulture Street Photography Awards 2016, celebrate the street photography of the American master, Saul Leiter.


 LensCulture Street Photography‬ Awards 2016 
are open to all photographers and all approaches!
Final entry deadline - August 16, 2016
lensculture.co/street-photography-awards

announced 44 remarkable photographers from around the world 
who have been chosen by our international jury
for the first annual  

7.03.2016

THE CARMIGNAC PHOTOJOURNALISM AWARD: 7 Years of Commitment To Freedom of Expression

Mona Al Ashqar
1st Edition Laureate Carmignac Photojournalism Award
© Kai Wiedenhöfer for the Fondation Carmignac

Mahnbanr (Qilagai), near the Dir border, Swat Valley, Pakistan,
2nd Edition Laureate Carmignac Photojournalism Award
March 2011 © Massimo Berruti, VU’ for the Fondation Carmignac
Portrait "ZIMBABWE, your wounds will be named silence"
3rd Edition Laureate Carmignac Photojournalism Award
© Robin Hammond, NOOR for the Fondation Carmignac

Shatoy from "Spasibo"
4th Edition Laureate Carmignac Photojournalism Award
© Newsha Tavakolian, Magnum for the Fondation Carmignac

A portrait of Somayyeh, a 32-year old divorced teacher.
5th Edition Laureate Carmignac Photojournalism Award
© Davide Monteleone,VII Photo for the Fondation Carmignac

Camopi, March 2015
6th Edition Laureate Carmignac Photojournalism Award
© Christophe Gin for the Fondation Carmignac

The 7th Edition Laureate will be formally revealed at the Visa pour l’Image Festival, Perpignan

THE CARMIGNAC PHOTOJOURNALISM AWARD : SEVEN YEARS OF COMMITMENT TO FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

The Carmignac Foundation launched the Carmignac photojournalism Award in 2009 with the aim of supporting and celebrating photojournalism. This unique Award funds a photographer to explore an area of the world at the centre of geostrategic conflicts, where human rights and freedom of speech are violated. Previous subjects have ranged from Gaza (Kai Wiedenhöfer), Pachtounistan (Massimo Berruti), Zimbabwe (Robin Hammond), Chechnya (Davide Monteleone), Iran (Newsha Tavakolian), lawless areas in France (Christophe Gin) and Libya.

A key aim of the Award is to support the winning photojournalist by providing a global platform for their work to be seen and collected. The Carmignac Foundation collaborates with the winner throughout the entire project by offering the laureate 50,000€ to go into the field, financing a monograph and developing and staging an international touring exhibition upon their return, in Paris and then in London at the Saatchi Gallery. Four photographs from this work will be integrated into the Carmignac Collection.

1st. Kai Wiedenhöfer
2nd. Massimo Berruti, VU’
3rd. Robin Hammond, NOOR
4th. Davide Monteleone, VII Photo
5th Newsha Tavakolian, Magnum
6th. Christophe Gin
7. The 7th Edition Laureate will be formally revealed at the Visa pour l’Image Festival, Perpignan, Summer 2016.


 Call For Entries for the
8th CARMIGNAC PHOTOJOURNALISM AWARD
Theme: Slavery and the Trafficking of #Women
Apply! #WomensRights #Slavery #photojournalism #Award

THE 8th CARMIGNAC PHOTOJOURNALISM AWARD: Slavery and the Trafficking of Women


CALL FOR APPLICATION THEME
SLAVERY AND THE TRAFFICKING OF WOMEN

The purpose of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award is to support the winning photojournalist in undertaking a photographic and investigative assignment, and providing a global platform for their work to be seen and collected. The Carmignac Foundation collaborates with the winner throughout the entire project by offering the laureate 50,000€ to go into the field, financing a monograph and developing and staging an international touring exhibition upon their return, in Paris and then in London at the Saatchi Gallery. Four photographs from this work will be integrated into the Carmignac Collection.

The 8th edition of the Carmignac photojournalism Award is devoted to modern day slavery and its incidence among women.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) estimates that there are more than 2.5 million victims of modern day slavery, and women make up the majority of this number. According to Amnesty International, women represent 80% of the victims of human trafficking, of whom nearly 50% are minors. The types of exploitation are numerous: sexual, forced labor, domestic slavery…

Women are all the more vulnerable in situations where they have little protection. The countries of South and South-East Asia as well as those of Central Europe and the ex-USSR are the principal purveyors of these modernday slaves. Although abduction is the most common route into slavery, women are also sold by their own families or entrapped into joining the networks of traffickers.

Armed conflicts exacerbate discriminatory and violent behaviour towards women. In Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey, numerous camps of Syrian refugees have emerged. These refugees provide easy prey for networks on the lookout for ‘merchandise’. In Nigeria, in the Darfur region of western Sudan and in the Democratic Republic of Congo, women and girls are subject to abductions carried out to provide their kidnappers with sexual or domestic slaves.

Chaired by Monique Villa, Founder of Trust Women, the 8th edition of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award aims to make visible these forms of modern day slavery, by supporting a project with the potential to become a tool for reflection and concrete change in the fight against the trafficking of women.

THE JURY

The jury of the 8th Edition of the Award, chaired by Monique Villa, CEO of Thomson Reuters Foundation and Founder of Trust Women, will meet in November 2016 in Paris.

The panel comprises:

- Elizabeth Avedon, Independent Curator specialized in photography books
- Francesca Fabiani, Photography Special Projects, Department for Contemporary Art and Architecture, Ministry of Culture, Italy
- Thierry Grillet, Chief Curator of Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF)
- Olivier Laurent, Editor-in-chief of Time Lightbox
- Élisabeth Quin, Journalist, Writer and Arte TV Presenter (28 Minutes)
- The Laureate of the 7th edition, currently working in Libya

The pre-selection jury, whose task is to shortlist 12 to 15 submissions from all applications received, consists of :

- Patrick Baz, Photojournalist
- Dimitri Beck, Photo Director at Polka Magazine
- Celina Lunsford, Artistic Director of the Fotografie Forum Frankfurt.


After the selection, the jury will meet the winning photographer in order to speak to him/her and to provide, if necessary, the support s/he will require throughout his/her project - from the preparation stage of the report, to its final exhibition.

The photographers must submit their projects before midnight (GMT) on Sunday 16th October 2016, by applying online on www.fondation-carmignac. com or at the following address:


Theme: #Slavery and the Trafficking of #Women
Apply! #WomensRights #photojournalism #Award

7.02.2016

CHRISTOPHE GIN : At The Collection Lambert in Avignon 3 July - 6 November 2016

 A ‘legal’ Guianese canoe, jump crossing. Oyapock River, 
April 2015 © Christophe Gin for the Fondation Carmignac

Trois-Sauts, January 2015
© Christophe Gin for the Fondation Carmignac

Illegal service station on the Surinamese bank of the Maroni,
June 2015 © Christophe Gin for the Fondation Carmignac

An exhibition dedicated to Christophe Gin, 6th Laureate of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award, on view from 6 July to 6 November at the Hôtel de Montfaucon in Avignon, is the fruit of a unique partnership with the Lambert Collection and the Fondation Carmignac.

The Fondation Carmignac aims to support and promote works of investigative photojournalism documenting areas often under represented in mainstream news coverage.

The jury for the 6th edition, chaired by Christophe Deloire, Secretary General of Reporters Without Borders, chose Christophe Gin as the 2014 laureate of the Carmignac Photojournalism Award. 

Gin spent five months exploring the landscapes of Guiana, from border regions to the most remote Amerindian villages, where soldiers mingle with gold prospectors and exploited immigrant workers, and where local population is forced to integrate republican concepts. His photography bears witness to the reality of life in a land full of contrasts, far from the caricatures often presented through the mainstream press. 
  
CHRISTOPHE GIN  
The Collection Lambert en Avignon
5 rue Violette - 84 000 Avignon
3 July - 6 November 2016. 
Tuesday to Sunday 11am to 6pm
Every day in July and August 11am to 7pm
  
Christophe Gin was born in 1965 in Nevers. A self-taught photographer, he started his career in the early 1990s, with the photo report Nathalie conduite de pauvreté (Nathalie: Conduct of Poverty, 1994-2001), which was shot behind closed doors and explored the inner workings of misery by focusing on Nathalie, who agreed to have her daily life photographed for seven years. The method is minimalist, getting as close to the protagonist as possible, with the photographer disappearing to give the audience a better view of the subject.

Following this work, Christophe Gin wanted to avoid being trapped in a specific genre, and felt the need to discover new horizons, which led him to explore French Guiana for the first time in 2001. Encountering and understanding this society would be a long and arduous process, taking the photographer to Brazil, Colombia, Bolivia and Suriname. A second series came out of it: Le Pont des Illusions (The Bridge of Illusions, 2002-2014).

His work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, inlcuding Rencontres Photographiques de Guyane in the capital Cayenne, the Galerie Fait et Cause in Paris, at Shenyang (China), the China International Photo Festival in Lianzhou, the Visa pour l’Image event in Perpignan and PhotoEspaña.


THE GRIFFIN MUSEUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY: 22nd Annual Juried Peter Urban Legacy Exhibition July 14 – Aug 28, 2016

Lissa Rivera
The Peter Urban Legacy Award

  Jennifer McClure
The Arthur Griffin Legacy Award

Rebecca Biddle Moseman
 The Griffin Award

Statement for the 22nd Juried Exhibition 
Juror: Elizabeth Avedon

“Garry Winogrand was, of course, an artist who practiced an art of having “something to say, sound or unsound.” In fact, I believe that he said more in his work than any photographer of his time.”– Tod Papageorge, Core Curriculum (Aperture)

I was honored to be invited to jury the Griffin Museum of Photography’s 22nd Annual Peter Urban Legacy Exhibition. With this call to entry, no boundaries were set, no requests were made to follow any particular theme, medium, style or schools of thought to participate. Traditional, contemporary, experimental and mixed-techniques were welcome and encouraged. I believe the unspoken commonality was our shared love of the medium and magic of the photographic image.

My introduction into the extraordinary world of photography began with the traditional study of Atget, Brassai, Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans and Robert Frank, the ‘core curriculum’ as relayed by Tod Papageorge. Instilled with a high regard for black and white images and a passion for “street photography” early on, I was later thrown into the high fashion and fine art worlds of Saul Leiter, Richard Avedon, Diana Vreeland and others, cultivating a taste for an eclectic range of color, motion, glamour, and unconventional work, reshaping my aesthetic and wide-ranging love around the medium.

Decades later, I find my interests evolving away from the photography I’ve worked with most of my career. I’ve razed old rules, burned some bridges, set horses free, and am now open to be delighted by whatever lays on the road ahead. I believe there is an audience for everything; from the inexplicably mundane to the super electrifying. As before, as now, and as we continue – meaningful work resonates regardless of what camera you prefer, what lens you choose, what app you favor, or what paper you swoon over. “Real” photography finds its audience.

With this on my mind and an open heart I began to review the 2000+ photographs entered into this year’s exhibition. The images ranged from mysterious and evocative to realistic and naturalistic. I recognized many from portfolio reviews, including friends and colleagues I’ve viewed and worked with over the years. I had to edit known work as if seeing it for the first time, and to view new work as if they were familiar images I want to get to know better. I spent weeks going back and forth, whittling down only a few each day, until I finally narrowed the 2000 images down to 300. I then had to turn a ruthless eye on the remaining 300 to arrive at the last, and most potent 50 or 60.

While looking for that elusive essence – what moved me visually or emotionally, what seduced me with a new point of view, striking a fresh chord – I tried to imagine how I would feel in a room with this photograph on the wall, and how I may miss it by its absence there.

These final pictures, including the award winning images, sit well with me in the end. Each image has a different voice that takes me on a journey I have not been on before. They whisper and call for me to look again, and isn’t that all we ask and hope for from the medium we love, and the photographs that find us?

Elizabeth Avedon
July 1, 2016

Susan May Tell
Honorable Mention

Ashly Leonard Stohl
Honorable Mention

Ruben Natal-San Miguel
Honorable Mention

Ben Altman, Craig Becker, Sheri Lynn Behr, Norm Borden, Chris Borrok, Joan Lobis Brown, Anja Bruehling, Lynne Buchanan, Lauren Ceike, Tom Chambers, Keith Conforti, Francis Crisafio, Francisco Diaz Deb Young, John Delaney, K.k. DePaul, Norm Diamond, Nicholas Fedak II, Selma Fernandez Richter, Bill Franson, Jennifer Georgescu, Laurent Girard, Tessa Gordon, Tamar Granovsky, Meg Griffiths, Tytia Habing, Suzy Halpin, Amanda James, Yoichi Kawamura, Asia Kepka, Jung S Kim, Karen Klinedinst, Molly Lamb, Yvette Meltzer, Ralph Mercer, Jenna Miller, Andrew Mroczek, Toni Pepe Dan, Jaime Permuth, Zoe Perry-Wood, Camilo Ramirez, John Rizzo, Michelle Rogers Pritzl, Russ Rowland, Lee Saloutos, Wendi Schneider, Raphael Shammaa, Lacey Terrell, India Treat, Dawn Watson, Aaron Wax, Sandra Chen Weinstein, Guanyu Xu, Anna Katharina Zeitler
22nd Peter Urban Legacy Exhibition
Juror: Elizabeth Avedon
July 14 – Aug 28, 2016
Reception: July 14th, 7pm
67 Shore Road, Winchester MA