Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts

12.29.2019

BEST PHOTOGRAPHY BOOKS OF 2019 : ROUND-UP PART II

Sara, Oahu, Hawaii 2017 © Ashly Stohl

Charlie's Handprint, Tribecca, New York 2017 © Ashly Stohl

The Days Are Long & The Years Are Short
Photographs by Ashly Stohl • Peanut Press

DAYS & YEARS
Photographs by Ashly Stohl
Foreword by Lynn Melnick
Peanut Press Books


"I take pictures of my kids, and if you’ll look closely you’ll also see me in there – my worries and fears, my attempts to correct the problems of my own childhood, my heart and my struggles.

Motherhood isn’t talked about enough in public places. Oh they say it’s the most important job in the world, but it isn’t treated that way, is it? People like it when you talk about the wonderful aspects, like hugs and fireflies in a jar, and of course that stuff makes everyone feel good. Motherhood is wonderful, but it’s also hard, and women only talk about the hard parts conspiratorially over a glass of wine, or late at night on the internet in private groups and instant messages. I want to talk about it in public because I’m tired, and when I’m tired the filter between my brain and my mouth (or keyboard) completely breaks down. Can we just talk about what it’s really like, like out in public? Sorry if it makes you uncomfortable. Actually not sorry.

In parenting circles, people often say, “the days are long and the years are short,” and for me nothing has ever felt so true. When Sara was a colicky newborn, I didn’t think I could survive a single day, and now she’s seventeen and going to college. Where did it go, all that time when the clock moved so slowly? Well some of it is in these pictures – the good, the bad and the ugly. The days I was my best, and the days I was not, and the same for my kids. It’s all there in our memories and in these pictures,  The Days & Years." – Ashly Stohl 




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ON DEATH • Kris Graves Projects / Humble Arts
Image: Nebula (A Portrait of Philip), Tim Pearse 2017
My Mothers Ashes © Aline Smithson 2003
Diverting Apprehension © Ellen Jantzen 2013

ON DEATH
Text: Roula Seikaly, Jon Feinstein
Design: Kris Graves • Sequence: Tia Weiss
Kris Graves Projects / Humble Arts



PARTICIPATING ARTISTS: Adrienne Defendi, Aline Smithson, Alvaro Deprit, Azin Seraj, Barbara Diener, Cheryl St. Onge, Christine Collins, Cody Cobb, Constance Thalken, Cook Williams, Daniel Mebarek, David Beazley, Deanne Sokolin, Debmalya Ray Choudhuri, Diana Guerra, Edgar Martins, Elea Jeanne Schmitter, Elena Helfrecht, Ellen Jantzen, Federico Vespignani, Jacob Haupt, Jane Waggoner Deschner, Jason Koxvold, Jed Devine, John-David Richardson, Jose David Valiente, Joshua Dudley Greer, Karla Guerrero, Ken Rosenthal, Kevin Cook, Kurt Simonson, Lauren Forster, Lindley Warren Mickunas, Liza Ambrossio, Lori Waselchuck, Louie Palu, Orestes Gonzalez, Paolo Morales, Paul Jimenez Thulin, Preston Gannoway, Rana Young, Riley Goodman, Sue Palmer Stone, Tabitha Soren, Tim Pearse, Tommy Kha, Tony Chirinos

“Following Humble Arts 2018 online group show On Death, and later show, Loss, Kris Graves invited Jon Feinstein and Roula Seikaly to team up on a followup photography book, On Death. For critics and philosophers, including the late Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes, photography itself was a “kind of death,” or as Sontag put it in On Photography, a “memento mori that enables participation in another’s mortality, vulnerability, mutability.” Sure, Sontag and Barthes’ waxed wisdom is decades old, but we continue to see it transcending time and shifting attitudes towards the medium. Building on the two previous online shows, the book looks at contemporary photographic takes on the end of life, not only as it passes, but conceptually and in the metaphors entangled in the practice – how time and life arrest within a frame.” – Kris Graves Projects

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 Myth of a Woman / Goðsögn um Konu
 Photographs by Agnieszka Sosnowska
Text by Ingunn Snædal, Kat Kiernan

 Goðsögn um konu / Myth of a Women Photographs by Agnieszka Sosnowska

© Agnieszka Sosnowska

Myth of a Woman / Goðsögn um Konu
Photographs by Agnieszka Sosnowska
Text by Ingunn Snædal, Kat Kiernan

Þjóðminjasafn Íslands, Reykjavík

The Icelandic landscape is beautiful, but brutally unforgiving. There is majesty in the black cliffs and glaciers, but harsh winds and long winters render them dangerous for part of the year . . . a place both alluring and treacherous, Iceland is the perfect metaphor for Agnieszka Sosnowska’s photographs about the dichotomies of womanhood. – Kat Kiernan, Myth of A Woman
The National Museum of Iceland published a selection of photographs by Agnieszka Sosnowska in conjunction with her exhibition, Goðsögn um konu / Myth of a Women. Sosnowska's intention was to interpret the poem, “Móðir mín í kví, kví,” in a series of self-portraits shot in the East fjords of Iceland in many of the same places from where these stories originated. The myth tells of a woman haunted by the voice of her abandoned child and driven to madness. Sosnowska has stated she is unable to bear children and this painful fact had affected her sensibility. In this way she connected with these Icelandic women and their sacrifices; to have the ability of motherhood taken away from you by means out of your control can be consuming. The result is a unique body of work, using a 4X5 view camera to create these mythical images.

The book includes articles by Ingunn Snædal, poet and translator, and text by Kat Kiernan, editor and managing director of Panoptican Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts. The project received funding from the Hjálmar R. Bárðarson fund and the Icelandic Museum of Photography, Reykjavík. This 80 page book was designed by Nuno Moreira. The exhibition was curated by Elizabeth Avedon. Purchase 

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Todd Hido : House Hunting
Photographs by Todd Hido
Remastered 2nd Edition
Nazraeli Press

Nazraeli Press announced a newly remastered edition of Todd Hido's iconic and highly sought-after first monograph, House Hunting. To celebrate the upcoming 20th anniversary of this important book - certainly one of the most influential and oft-cited photography monographs of our time - they have collaborated closely with the artist to achieve a new impression of the highest possible fidelity.

'Todd Hido's large color photographs of suburbia are lonely, forlorn, mysterious... and strangely comforting. Hido photographs the interior rooms of repossessed tract homes, and the outsides of similar houses at night whose habitation is suggested by the glow of a television set or unseen overhead bulb. Seldom does the similar evoke such melancholy. Yet rather than passing judgment on his anonymous subjects, Hido manages to turn the banal into something beautiful, imbuing his prints of interiors with soft pastels, and allowing the exteriors to glow in the cool evening air.’ – Nazraeli Press

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 Peuple de la Nuit
Photographs by Ibrahima Sanlé Sory (Stanley/Barker)
Les jeunes danseurs de Sikasso Sira, 1972
‘This was shot in a popular Bobo-Dioulasso neighbourhood called Sikasso Sira, where many Malian people lived. I would imagine this was a young Malian couple dating and preparing for a dance. I would often go to that place as this white wall was a perfect scene for me to shoot dancers and lovers’ 

Les deux amoureux de Dogona, 1972 
‘Dogona was a suburb outside of Bobo with leafy trees where lovers could meet up in the dark, but I think those teenagers wanted to show off their relationship’

Les Trois Cowboys de la Brousse, 1971
Ibrahima Sanlé Sory recalls: ‘These three guys were from a village around the Kou river valley, perhaps Faramana. They dressed up like the cowboys they’d seen in the movies – and some of them did indeed ride horses in order to tend their cattle.’


Peuple de la Nuit
Photographs by Ibrahima Sanlé Sory
Stanley / Barker

‘Life was cheap and everyone could have a ball. You could always go out and have some fun.’ 
- Sanlé Sory

Peuple de la Nuit is a tribute to the people who posed with cheery abandon, for the lens of Sanlé Sory from 1960-83. While Sory spent days at his Volta Photo studio in southern Burkina Faso, his nights were spent capturing a flourishing music scene, youth culture, dance parties, weddings and portraits of his home city. When he wasn’t out looking for customers at venues such as Volta Dancing, Calebasse d’Or, Normandie or Dafra Bar, Sory would set off towards the remote villages along the Kou Valley, north West of Bobo, in his Volta Photo 2CV van, with a few lights and a homemade sound system, to set up his own Bals Poussière (dustball parties). The parties lasted until well after the sunrise, at which point the farmers and herders would head straight back to tend their fields and cattle. – Stanley/Barker

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By 编号223 / LinZhipeng (aka No.223)
published by T&M Projects

"In his photography, Beijing photographer LinZhipeng (aka No. 223) carves out a portrait of an alternative young Chinese generation which enjoys life with all its might, playful, arrogant, and empathetic. The photobook “Flowers and Fruits” presents a series by Zhipeng which focuses on the titular motifs of youth, beauty, energy and transience. In colorful, vibrant images, he draws comparisons between bodies and fruit, sexuality and flowers, youth and bloom." Artist @finger223 / T&M Projects @tandmprojects  / Designed by Satoshi Suzuki  @zuduki Purchase or Inquire


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 Geomancy STANLEY/BARKER

 © Michael Lundgren

Geomancy • Michael Lundgren
Photographs by Michael Lundgren
Stanley / Barker 

“This is not a climate peril book, but it is a natural peril book,” says Lundgren. "Michael Lundgren's darkly beautiful photographs, motivated by a perceived lack of connection between humans and nature, give the viewer a window into a mystical world where time itself seems to collapse." Oversized OTA Softback, designed by le Entente

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 The Khudi family is one of 12,000 Nenets still migrating the same routes as their ancestors have done for centuries.


New Path : A Window on Nenets Life
Photographs by Alegra Ally
Schilt Publishing



Documentary photographer and anthropologist Alegra Ally traveled to the Yamal Peninsula in Siberia to study and document the Nenets way of life. For thousands of years, indigenous Nenets have lived nomadic lifestyles herding reindeer across the Yamal Peninsula in the Russian Arctic.
“New Path” follows the Khudi family, one of 12,000 Nenets of northern arctic Russia still migrating along the same routes as their ancestors did for centuries. Lena is nine-months pregnant and the journey takes a dramatic turn as she prepares to give birth while the family needs to continue their annual winter migration in order to ensure the future of their herd of 800 reindeer.

“New Path” opens a window onto Nenets life today, highlighting the adjustments they have made to modern life, and the challenges they now face in the light of expanding resource extraction in the Arctic, globalization, and climate change – Schilt Publishing


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 Through Positive Eyes Aperture
 Through Positive Eyes

Through Positive Eyes is a collaborative photo-storytelling project by 130 people living with HIV and AIDS around the world.

Through Positive Eyes
Edited by David Gere and Gideon Mendel
Foreword by Richard Gere
Published by Aperture

Through Positive Eyes is a collaborative photo-storytelling project by 130 people living with HIV and AIDS around the world. All have participated in workshops led by South African photographer Gideon Mendel, with photo educator Crispin Hughes, and David Gere, director of the Art & Global Health Center at the University of California--Los Angeles (UCLA). 

The Project chronicles a very particular moment in the epidemic, when effective treatment is available to some, not all, and when the enduring stigma associated with HIV and AIDS has become entrenched, a major roadblock to both prevention and treatment. The participants in the project have volunteered to tell their stories, in words and in photographs, empowering themselves in order to banish stigma.Aperture
 

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HONORABLE MENTIONS


Circling The Mountain; folded, bound by hand, in a slipcase

 August Eriksson, Galleri Axel, Stockholm

Circling The Mountain; folded, bound by hand, in a slipcase

Circling the Mountain
Photographs, Text and Design by August Eriksson

An edition of 300 signed and numbered, folded and bound by hand, in a slipcase

Shortlisted for Nordic Dummy Award:

A monk walks around Mount Hiei night after night to empty his consciousness and transform into a living Buddha. By the end, he has walked a distance equivalent to the circumference of the Earth. August Eriksson went there to walk around the same mountain and find the wandering monk. Eriksson is interested in how perception is related to movement and the possibility of finding the meaning of life through something as seemingly futile as going round in circles. Purchase  

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TREASURES: Objects I've Known All My Life
Photographs and Design by Bootsy Holler
BearHeart Publishing

The photographs printed on postcards in Treasures are of simple objects from Holler’s mother’s home. “My mother has always been very particular about how she likes her things - every item has its place, every task has its way of being done. Inevitably, these things and this way have become part of my life as well.” Holler is a contemporary photographer strongly influenced by stories of family, history and place. Purchase

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Somewhere Between: 
Toward the Middle Space Between Images and Words
Photographs and Poetry: Jonas Yip and Wai-lim Yip
National Taiwan University Press


Two artists, father and son, engaging in a cross-cultural, multi-generational dialogue with rhythmic, vital energy, tracing for the reader an odyssey of cultural and living complexes, explore the push-and-pull interactions between poetry's linguistic signs (seething images in the heart/mind) and photography's visual signs. We experience in this gap what American poet Ezra Pound called the “inter-recognition” between arts, “where paintings or sculptures seem, as it were, “just coming over to speech.”

Published by National Taiwan University Press, this fully bilingual book, presented in English and Chinese, collects all the photograph/poetry collaborations to date between Jonas Yip and noted scholar and poet Wai-lim Yip. This volume includes the series Paris: Dialogue, re:place, and Somewhere Between, along with the poetry inspired and written in response to those photographs. Also included are an introduction by Leo Ou-fan Lee, as well as a new essay tying it all together, by Wai-lim Yip.

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5.28.2014

JACK REZNICKI: Explorer of Light

Tanzania © Jack Reznicki

 Tanzania © Jack Reznicki

Tanzania © Jack Reznicki

"Tanzania was a fantastic place for images and for the experience. While the animals were amazing to photograph, it’s always the people and how they live that fascinates me the most." Jack Reznicki

China © Jack Reznicki

China © Jack Reznicki

China © Jack Reznicki

"The rich and deep history of China is something that has always interested me. I’ve enjoyed making contemporary images I take there look more like the past than the present." Jack Reznicki

Jack Reznicki is one of the original “Canon Explorers of Light comprised of some of the most influential photographers and cinematographers in the world, each a master of their creative specialty.

Based in New York City, Jack is a well-known and respected commercial photographer, as well as author of several books including “Photographer’s Survival Guide”, which deals with copyright and legal issues for photographers; “Studio and Commercial Photography - A Kodak Pro Workshop” and other books. Jack teaches "The Business of Photography" and a Canon Speedlite Workshop at the School of Visual Arts in the Masters of Professional Studies in Digital Photography program.

Born in Israel, the son of concentration camp survivors, Jack moved to the US when he was four years old and grew up in Rochester, NY. With a BFA cum laude degree in photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology, and after assisting some of the top photographers in New York, Jack opened his studio in 1980. In the early days of the Internet, he founded the Photo News Network (PNN) along with Life photographer Gary Gladstone. It was one of the very first online communities for professional photographers to share and discuss various issues pertaining to photography. He currently writes a column in Photoshop User Magazine called “The Copyright Zone” with lawyer Ed Greenberg.

Along with many other awards, Jack twice received the IPC (International Photographic Council) Leadership medal for “Excellence in Studio Photography” at the United Nations. He was appointed a guest professor at Shandong University of Art and Design in Jinan, China and named a Mo-Tse Grand Master Photographer in China. He is also honored to be named an Honorary Fellow of the New Zealand Institute of Professional Photography.

One of the original “Canon Explorers of Light”,  Jack is also a Photoshop World “Dream Team” instructor, an X-Rite “Coloratti”, and a Sandisk “Photo Master”. Jack also does Beta testing and consulting with Canon, Mamiya, Microsoft, X-Rite, Leaf digital backs, onOne Software, and Adobe.

5.08.2014

ANDERSON+LOW: Black Sand Surfers in Taiwan

Black Sand: Surfers In Taiwan
Published by Lucky Panda Press (March 2014)

Rinaldo Lee

Eddie Chen


"Black Sand is a continuation of Anderson + Low's ongoing studies of sport and of sport as a reflection of both individual and cultural diversity and aspiration; it is an exploration of the new Taiwanese surfing culture."

"The volcanic black sand beaches, the grey sky of the typhoon season and a lead-colored sea provide a natural monochrome backdrop for this new series.The only color in the photographs is found in the surfer's skin and the vibrant design of their surfboards and surfing attire. the resulting images are the antithesis of the archetypal surfing image." –Publisher

ABOUT ANDERSON + LOW

EA: Where did you two meet?

Jonathan Anderson: We met in a photographic facility in London 25 years ago October the 12th this year. We’ve been working as the team 'Anderson + Low' for over twenty years.   

Edwin Low: We submitted some work for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. It was quite unique because it was the first time they accepted Photography as an art form in the Royal Academy. The rest is history.  

Jonathan Anderson: We thought we’d better take ourselves seriously and carry on, so that's where it all started.

11.11.2013

SHELLY AU: Adobe Design Achievement Awards

 Sadness: a little girl sad about loosing her home. ©Shelly Au

Determination: to make life work even when things all around you has been torn down. ©Shelly Au

Stillness: as China Flag remains. ©Shelly Au


"China's rapid growth is both powerful and stunning, yet fast paced change has also ushered in the destruction of history and communities. Buildings for miles of square blocks are marked with the eight red brush stroke character (Chai) to destroy or take down. "Two Beautiful Daughters" is a meditation on the pain and anger that accompany powerlessness, and the courage and hope it takes to persevere through loss."Shelly Au

"Shelly Au has been working for an overseas nonprofit Organization for 20 years. He has spent 17 of those years living in various parts of Asia. His experience and ability to make his subjects comfortable have allowed him to capture powerful images among people who are ordinarily suspicious of being photographed."

"While living in Asia, he was drawn to the hearts of its people, and made it his mission to tell their stories through photographs. He has organized benefits in less fortunate communities, for example, photographing residents on white backgrounds and giving the portraits freely to them. In December 2011, he assembled over 90 volunteers from Nanjing to run 4 studios to help build community respect and local news picked up the story."

"While in New York, Shelly received the Paula Rhodes Honors Award when he was working on his Master of Professional Studies in Digital Photography degree at the School of Visual Arts under the chair of Photoshop Hall of Fame Katrin Eismann."

"Currently Shelly is one of three finalist for the 2013 Adobe Design Achievement Award in Photography that will be announced in New York on November 19th, 2013."


(text courtesy of Shelly Au Photography)

5.22.2013

ANDERSON + LOW: An Intimate Journey with Chinese Gymnasts at Fahey/Klein

 Anderson + Low
Dong Zhengdong from the Project Endure, 2009/2010

 Anderson + Low
Gymnasium from the Project Endure, 2009/2010

 Anderson + Low
 Beam Training from the Project Endure, 2009/2010

 Anderson + Low
Huang Huidan from the Project Endure, 2009/2010

Anderson + Low
 Warming Up from the Project Endure, 2009/2010

May 23 - July 6, 2013
Artist Reception: May 23, 7 – 9 PM

Fahey/Klein Gallery presents "ENDURE: An Intimate Journey with the Chinese Gymnasts", the first exhibition in the western world of this project from contemporary photographers, Jonathan Anderson and Edwin Low. The exhibition is comprised of large-scale color photographs taken over a two-year period documenting the elite Chinese gymnasts, their challenging and dedicated training program, their character, and the team's training facilities in Beijing.

Athletics, endurance, and the process of training have inspired Anderson + Low for over twenty years, but it wasn't until 2009 that the duo was granted exclusive and completely unique access to photograph the Chinese gymnasts.   Nobody has been given this access, and the results are as unprecedented as they are extraordinary. Over the following two years, Anderson & Low would work to create a documentary series that reinvents traditional sport imagery. Whereas conventional sport photography primarily focuses on the winning moment, or an instance of heartbreaking defeat-Anderson & Low's images explore the mental and physical process of training itself, and the structure and discipline the young gymnasts endure. The images capture powerful moments of stillness and transcend into a study of the human condition in microcosm, an examination of the purest human emotions under intense pressure. Although the images have a distinctly contemporary feel, athletics, training, and competition are among the most ancient and earliest depicted themes. Anderson & Low's images reference classic Greek and Roman forms, and the ancient ideal of the trained athlete. Their photographs examine the tension between the athlete's ideal and the very real limitations of the human body.

Anderson + Low state that the goal of the project is to celebrate the extraordinary athletes they have spent years photographing alongside, and of whom they remain in awe. They use the word "Endure" in a triumphal sense, celebrating these gymnasts' stamina, endurance, dedication, character and through this they celebrate the human spirit as a whole. Their images avoid judgment; instead, the detailed scrutiny in these images conveys the physical and mental experiences of the athletes, and the photographers' feeling of respect and admiration towards the athletes' strength, grace, power and determination. This became evident to the photographers when they first witnessed the athletes training in their massive gymnasium in early 2009, "We experienced profound emotion, intimate and powerful, made all the more intense by this primal response being so unexpected. It was, and still is, unforgettable; until that moment, we had not known that sport could still make us feel something so simple, as though it was the first time we have ever seen people train." (ENDURE, Serindia Contemporary Publications, 2012)

Since 1990, Jonathan Anderson and Edwin Low have been collaborating creatively as Anderson + Low. Their work has been exhibited internationally, and belongs to many public and private collections including: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Victoria + Albert Museum, London; National Portrait Galleries (United Kingdom and Australia); National Gallery of Australia; Museum of Fine Art, Houston; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and La Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris among many others. A limited edition book of "Endure" was recently released by Serindia Publications (2012). Jonathan Anderson and Edwin Low live and work in London, United Kingdom. (Courtesy Fahey/Klein)


Untitled (Kit The Swordsman), The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Photo © Elizabeth Paul Avedon / All rights reserved

EA: Where did you two meet?
Jonathan Anderson: We met in a photographic facility in London 25 years ago October the 12th this year. We’ve been working as the team 'Anderson + Low' for over twenty years.   Edwin Low: We submitted some work for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition. It was quite unique because it was the first time they accepted Photography as an art form in the Royal Academy. The rest is history.  Jonathan Anderson: We thought we’d better take ourselves seriously and carry on, so that's where it all started.