RUDDY ROYE: When Living Is A Protest Galerie Polaris through February 25

When Living is a Protest • Galerie Polaris, Paris

Photograph © Ruddy Roye

'This Too Is An American Story II, November 18, 2021'

 Photograph © Ruddy Roye /  Ed. of 5

'Isolated in Ferguson, August 28, 2014'

 Photograph © Ruddy Roye /  Ed. of 5 

'Twenty year-old Robert Scott' /  'When Living is a Protest Series'

Photograph © Ruddy Roye

"When Living Is A Protest"

 Photographs by Ruddy Roye

 Exhibition through February 25th, 2024 

 Galerie Polaris • 15 rue des Arquebusiers • 75003 Paris 

Support Artists, Buy Prints

Follow Ruddy Roye on Instagram @ruddyroye

MOSIJAH ROYE: Black History Month

 

 Antonio © Mosijah Roye

Black History Month to Antonio means celebrating his lineage

and honoring those who have walked the path 

that many of us are walking through our lives today.

 

Rell © Mosijah Roye

Black History Month for Rell is community, he says 

it’s sad that we allow our culture to be celebrated for only a month 

when in reality it should be celebrated everyday.

 

Bryce © Mosijah Roye

Black History Month to me is a celebration of 

all the black people who died for us and to give up their lives for us 

to be where we are today. People like Martin Luther King , and Nelson Mandela.

 

'Kin' © Ruddy Roye

Portrait of Mosijah Roye by his father Photographer Ruddy Roye

 

Photographer and student Mosijah Roye asks, "What is Black History Month to you? For the month of February I would like to post one black person every day detailing what this month, our month means to us. Every weekday I will post a person and write a short caption about what this month means to them" 

 

Follow Mosijah Roye on Instagram @Mozijah

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!

4th of July. Anniversary of the
Signing of The Declaration of Independence

Although Thomas Jefferson is often called the “author” of the Declaration of Independence, he was a member of a five-person committee appointed by the Continental Congress including Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Robert Livingston, and Roger Sherman. When writing the first draft of the Declaration, Jefferson primarily drew upon two sources: his own draft of a preamble to the Virginia Constitution and George Mason’s draft of Virginia’s Declaration of Rights. After Jefferson’s first draft, the other members of the Declaration committee and the Continental Congress made 86 changes.

Jefferson was quite unhappy about some of the edits made to his original draft of the Declaration of Independence. He had originally included language condemning the British promotion of the slave trade (even though Jefferson himself was a slave owner). This criticism of the slave trade was removed in spite of Jefferson’s objections.

"Original Declaration of Independence/ dated 4th July 1776," was handwritten on the back of the Declaration of Independence. No one knows who wrote it. (read more here)

HENRY JACOBSON: Postcards Home

split sky, Mount Tremper, NY 2010

 Tina, Brooklyn, 2010

 feeding time, Mount Tremper, NY 2010

Postcards Home, an upcoming book of photographs by Henry Jacobson, is being published by Daylight Books in 2013 with an essay by Stephen Mayes (Director of VII). The book is the result of three years of nomadic life as a filmmaker/photographer with no permanent address. This was a period of personal, and social, upheaval, of endings and beginnings of very important relationships, of illnesses and deaths and births, of revolutions and occupied public spaces. Every image in this book was taken with an iPhone, and most were immediately sent to Henry's loved ones, friends, and family. The pictures then became a means of connection, a modern day postcard. This synergy of photography and communication, through the use of mobile technology, is changing our understanding of the medium from a frozen moment to a visual interaction between individuals. This work is Henry's attempt to connect with the people and the environments that replaced his concept home.

 

Green Driver, NY 2010

"The Kickstarter ends on the December 18th. I am 50% of the way there and halfway through the time period." Prints and advanced copies can be purchased here

Henry Jacobson: Website 

Jeff Jacobson: "The Last Roll"

LISE SARFATI: She

Christine #21 San Francisco, CA 2005. Photograph © Lise Sarfati
Courtesy Rose Gallery, L.A. and Brancolini Grimaldi, London

Sloane #15 San Francisco, CA 2007. Photograph © Lise Sarfati
Courtesy Rose Gallery, L.A. and Brancolini Grimaldi, London

Christine #10 Hollywood, CA 2006. Photograph © Lise Sarfati
Courtesy Rose Gallery, L.A. and Brancolini Grimaldi, London

Sloane #66 Oakland, CA 2009. Photograph © Lise Sarfati
Courtesy Rose Gallery, L.A. and Brancolini Grimaldi, London

La Lettre de la Photographie

Excerpts from my Interview with Lise Sarfati:

French-born Lise Sarfati has lived and worked in the United States since 2003. She produced six important series of photographs in America, each followed by major exhibitions. Two upcoming shows of her third series, She, will open shortly in London and in L.A., with a Twin Palms monograph to follow in the Spring, 2012.

Publisher Jack Woody (Twin Palms) confided about Sarfati’s work, "When I look at the women in her photographs I suspect in some way they are all self-portraits. Lise sees in these women an incredible endurance, confronting their circumstances across the surfaces of the indifferent western landscape they have come to occupy."

Q: What was your intention behind your series, She?

The ordinary and the singular. Universality. Anti-heroines. Projections and situations....My intention was to show a bit of the futility of our daily life, the simplicity of situations and our movements in our environment and to oppose this simplicity to another field: that of interiority, emotion, psychological relationships. It is to receive the emotion (of the 4 women) and to mix them with mine. I also had autobiographical elements that allowed me to situate myself emotionally: I have 3 sisters.

My point of view was not generic but I wanted to be immersed in a particular story between four women from the same family. This story had to have a generational dimension...In She and Gina are older, about 40 years of age, while Sloane and Sasha are younger, around 20. They are all sisters...The classic image of the mother is that of a woman drowned by the love for her little one. In She however, the mother, the daughter, the sister and the other sister can be rivals or enemies, competitors or indifferent.

Christine, the mother is the axis of this construction, the only woman who tries to satisfy her dreams. At first married to a Jehovah’s Witness in Arizona, she leaves her husband and her two daughters to live a fully liberated sexual life and becomes a dominatrix on the west coast. Then, she projects herself into a new dream: to become a rock star.

Gina cultivates a masculine/feminine sexual ambiguity and wears a black wig to look like her sister Christine. Sloane, Christine’s daughter, changes her appearance constantly going from a blond wig to discolored hair. She has been a nanny for two years. Sasha, Sloane’s sister, is perpetually depressed, enclosed in her cocoon and inclined to melancholia.

The environment is an important element. Christine is photographed in Oakland in the ghetto in a house she shares with a roommate. We meet Sloane in the ghetto in Oakland in the house of a friend of her mother’s. All these houses look alike with their wooden windows and their chimneys. They are the interiors of Hopper paintings. We see Gina coming out of a grocery store, these are environments linked to the 1970s. The only images of projection that are out of the ordinary are those of Christine in the desert...read the entire Interview with Lise Sarfati, La Lettre de la Photographie

She: Photographs by Lise Sarfati
Brancolini Grimaldi, London February 3 - March 17
Rose Gallery, L.A. March 31 - May 2012

She: Lise Sarfati, Text Quentin Bajac
Twin Palms Publisher, Spring 2012

PETE BROOK: 'Prison Photography' On The Road Kickstarter Project

Photograph (c) Jan Sturmann,
from the series Juvenile Prison Sweat Lodge, 2005
8″x10″ color, archival inkjet print. Not editioned. Signed, $50

Photograph (c) Steve Davis
Untitled #1 (Girl with statue), from the series Captured Youth
8x10 on a 10x12 heavyweight archival paper, $300
Special Edition of 4. Signed, $300

Photograph (c) Steve Davis,
Untitled #2 (Boy in green), from the series Captured Youth
8x10 on a 10x12 heavyweight archival paper, $300
Special Edition of 4. Signed, $300

Photograph (c) Lori Waselchuk
Prison Guard Watches from the Levee, Angola Prison, 2007
from her series Grace Before Dying
12″ X 24″ B&W, archival pigment print.
Edition: #2 of an edition of 15. Signed, $400

Photograph (c) Jenn Ackerman
A Hand to Hold, 2008, from the series Trapped
11x14. B&W, archival matte. Edition #2 of an edition of 25. Signed, $600

Photograph (c) Tim Gruber
Sunset Behind Bars, 2008, from the series Served Out
14x11" B&W, archival pigment print on matte paper
Edition #1 of an edition of 25. Signed, $500

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ABOUT PETE BROOK'S KICKSTARTER PROJECT

Pete Brook

Photograph (c) Tim Matsui

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I was honored to be the inaugural Interview by Pete Brook for Wired Raw File's new series, Raw Meet, published six days ago. I first met Pete at the Rubin Museum in New York and over scribbled notes, we became friends.

Pete Brook is from Lancashire, England, now settled in Seattle, Washington. He's a freelance writer, lead-blogger for Wired Magazines Raw File, and author/editor of his own Prison Photography blog. This year Prison Photography was listed as one of the 10 Best Photoblogs by the British Journal of Photography and LIFE.com recognized it with a Best Photo Blog Award.

And now, Pete Brook needs our help funding his time-sensitive Kickstarter project, Prison Photography' on the Road: Stories Behind the Photos, "a 12-week road-trip across America meeting many of the leading photographers who, in the past 40 years, have documented the rise of the U.S. prison industrial complex. He'll also be speaking with some of the leading practitioners in prison arts, prison education and advocacy." Here is a complete list of the over 40 photographers to be interviewed including Danny Lyon, Deborah Luster and Lori Waselchuk, among others.

PLAY PETE'S KICKSTARTER VIDEO

Buy a Print • Pledge $10 up to $1,000

INCENTIVES: This Kickstarter is a little different to others as Pete secured many generous and talented photographers as collaborators who’ve put forth prints to help him raise money. In that there’s only one item for each of the incentive levels above $200, the thing operates like a “buy now”-priced auction. The incentives at $10, $20, $50, $75 and $125 are self-explanatory.

On his Kickstarter page, the prints available are between $200 and $1,000. Every supporter who buys a print more than $200 in value also gets a postcard, mix-tape and self-published photobook Prison Photography in the Era of Mass Incarceration (56 pages). ALL who donate – at any level – become official supporters and have their names listed on his website and in the acknowledgements of the self-published book.

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"This is a journalism project, the product of which is the approximately 40 interviews I will conduct. They’ll be made available, via Creative Commons license, to any and all in the photo and prison reform communities. In addition, my writings will be free to distribute with attribution to interested parties." – Pete Brook, 'Prison Photography' on the Road

LA to NY: New Orleans, NM, TX, CO, AZ, MA, WI, UT, WY...X's mark some of the over 40 stops Pete Brook will make across 8,000 miles of America "to conduct interviews with the most creative, unique and celebrated Photographers who, through their work in prisons, have shaped America's visual culture and the debate on U.S. criminal justice." – KICKSTARTER Prison Photography' on the Road: Stories Behind the Photos

ABOUT PETE BROOK'S KICKSTARTER PROJECT

Back This Project • Pledge $10 up to $1,000

WILLIAM RUGEN: Western Dioramas

Badwater Basin, Death Valley, CA
Photograph © William Rugen

Bloomington, New Mexico
Photograph © William Rugen

New Forest Drive, Cold Springs, NV
Photograph © William Rugen

"Western Dioramas is a snapshot of the American West after nearly two centuries of Manifest Destiny. My interest is in how we Americans have used, abused, discarded and rediscovered the overwhelming space and limited resources time and again and the wary line we draw between where we live and what surrounds us." – William Rugen

William Rugen was one of 100 photographers chosen to participate in Review Santa Fe 2011. More about Review Santa Fe Part I / Part II on La Lettre de la Photographie. An Interview with Review Santa Fe's, Laura Pressley, Executive Director of CENTER.

JONATHAN SMITH: Untold Stories

Photograph (c) Jonathan Smith /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Jonathan Smith /All Rights Reserved

La Lettre de la Photographie 1.18.11
Photographer Sylvia Plachy with Jonathan Smith
Hearst 2011 8x10 Photography Biennial Opening Night

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"Jonathan Smith's use of lighting and décor emotionally augment his true subjects - the colors of night air and the abandonment that floats in it."

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Eight winners and ten honorable mentions were selected for the 2011 Hearst 8x10 Photography Biennial from over 4,600 entries from across the U.S. and 70 other countries. Jonathan Smith was spotlighted as one of the eight emerging photographers, in an exhibition currently at the Hearst Towers Alexey Brodovitch Gallery, for his series Untold Stories.

Jonathan Smith studied in the United Kingdom at the Kent Institute of Design (KIAD) and the International Center for Photography in New York. Smith worked in the studio of the renowned New York photographer, Joel Meyerowitz from 2000 until 2009. He had his first solo show Untold Stories at Rick Wester Fine Art in September 2010. His work has appeared in Metropolis and View magazines, PDN, Art and Architecture and The Royal Photographic Society Magazine.

Jonathan Smith Photography

BRANDON SCHULMAN: A Portrait of America Left Behind

La Lettre de la Photographie
Hearst 2011 8x10 Photography Biennial

Sugar Cane Processing Plant, Atchafalaya Delta, LA
Photograph (c) Brandon Schulman /All Rights Reserved

Windmill, Carson City, NV
Photograph (c) Brandon Schulman /All Rights Reserved

Eight winners and ten honorable mentions were selected for the 2011 Hearst 8x10 Photography Biennial from over 4,600 entries from across the U.S. and 70 other countries. Brandon Shulman was awarded an Honorable Mention for his series A Portrait of America Left Behind.

"A Portrait of America Left Behind is a photographic study that I have been conducting over the past two years. The photographs represent the presence that humanity plays on the land even when they are not in view. The objects and buildings that we create for our needs, and our discarding when they are not. Zig-zagging my way thru 13 states, 15,000 miles over 3 trips, 2 months and 100’s of hours in my darkroom it has yet come to an end."

Brandon Schulman Website

La Lettre de la Photographie
Hearst 2011 8x10 Photography Biennial: Part I
Hearst 2011 8x10 Photography Biennial: Part II

CHRIS VERENE: Family / Twin Palms Publishers

The Same Day They Signed The Divorce Papers, A Tornado Hit The House

Twin Palms Publishers

My Twin Cousin's Husband's Brother's Cousin's Cousins
Photograph (c) Chris Verene /All Rights Reserved

The Pregnancy Test
Photograph (c) Chris Verene /All Rights Reserved

CHRIS VERENE follows the lives of his family and friends in his new monograph FAMILY, published by Twin Palms. “Verene walks right into the lives of his folks, showing you how they are, without any embarrassment on either side. Their togetherness is taken for granted so openly that the viewer feels at each moment like one of them, a member of the clan. Verene’s color [is] tender, warm and sensual, though stops well short of being glamorous . . . flooding them all with a strange, sweet romance. These pictures convey his bittersweet fondness for a smaller world in which he grew up but no longer shares, but which has lessons to teach him about the inroads of aging, disability and other difficulties. People do what they can to help each other and themselves, all from ‘leaking boats.’ Meanwhile, the dark room and the night bring tidings of their isolation. Many viewers are familiar with visits back home in this mood, which Verene renders luminous and fatal.”–Max Kozloff, The Theater of the Face: Portrait Photography Since 1900

Verene first received recognition in 2000 appearing in The Whitney Biennial and the publication of CHRIS VERENE by Twin Palms Publications with concurrent exhibits at The Pat Hearn Gallery, Colin DeLand American Fine Arts Co., and The Paul Morris Gallery. Verene’s work is in the collection of The Whitney Museum, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Jewish Museum,, The Walker Art Center, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, among others. In 2001, Verene was the recipient of the first Pollock/Krasner award given for photography. His work has been featured in ARTFORUM, Art In America, ArtNews, The New York Times, The Village Voice, Vanity Fair, Harper’s, Vogue, and The New Yorker, among others.

FAMILY Twin Palms Publishers

MARK JENKINSON: On Death Row

Lethal Injection Chamber, (Executioner's view), Huntsville, TX
Photograph (c) Mark Jenkinson /All Rights Reserved

Colonel Donald Hocutt, (ret.) Executioner, Parchman State Penitentiary, Mississippi Photograph (c) Mark Jenkinson /All Rights Reserved

Gas Chamber, Carson City, NV
Photograph (c) Mark Jenkinson /All Rights Reserved

Lethal Injection Chamber, Angola, LA
Photograph (c) Mark Jenkinson /All Rights Reserved

Shareef Cousin, on his first day on Death Row, Angola, LA
Photograph (c) Mark Jenkinson /All Rights Reserved

I photographed Shareef on his first day on Death Row. He was seventeen years old. It later came to light that witnesses who were able to exonerate Shareef were not allowed to testify at his first trial. Eventually he was granted a new trial and the D. A. declined to retry him. After three years on Death Row, the murder charges against Shareef were dismissed.

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Mark Jenkinson's editorial, corporate and advertising photography, an estimated 30,000 plus photographs, have been published in virtually every major magazine in the world. He's won numerous awards including the Meade, AR 100, and Society of Publication Design awards. His photographs have been exhibited at the International Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House, San Francisco Art Institute, Light Gallery, Daniel Wolf Gallery, O.K. Harris Gallery, Parsons School of Design, Rhode Island School of Design, Cooper Union and others. He teaches in the Photography and Imaging Department at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts.

Jenkinson spent over ten years photographing on America's Death Row. "This project began as an outgrowth of my "Hidden Interiors" project, starting with photographs of execution sites. Eventually I became consumed with the subject of capital punishment and began a long term personal project photographing convicted murders, families of victims, executioners, and prosecutors. Most of this project has been financed by my commercial work, but a few magazines (Esquire, German Playboy, Newsweek and Time) have commissioned major features of the subject. I started the project as a death penalty abolitionist, but have come to understand that the issues are not the abstract arguments I started with. The issues became far more complex and personal once you spend time with a parent whose child had been brutally murdered, an inmate who's facing a fast approaching date with death, or a Warden who has been charged with executing a man he believes to be innocent. Nothing is so simple except that is final."

MARK JENKINSON WEBSITE
Mark Jenkinson's Blog Photography Essentials