ISA LESHKO: Elderly Animals

Pumpkin, Age 28
Photograph (c) Isa Leshko /All Rights Reserved

Finn Sheep, Age 12
Photograph (c) Isa Leshko /All Rights Reserved

Waterscape Series, Waterscape 1
Photograph (c) Isa Leshko /All Rights Reserved

Pulitzer Prize winning photo critic, Mark Feeney, wrote about Leshko's work in a review of the current shows at the Griffin Museum on Boston.com. A Conversation with Isa here.

Isa Leshko's Thrills & Chills Exhibition
Griffin Museum of Photography to May 9th
Recent News About Isa

CHRIS VERENE: Town Hall Meeting April 29

Family Chris Verene • Twin Palms Publishers
Monograph 80 Four-color Plates 120 Pages May 2010

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: TOWN HALL MEETING" April 29 NYC

Chris Verene hosts a group discussion and performance expanding on his new documentary photography book, "Family," which chronicles twenty-six years of his family and their struggling community of Galesburg, Illinois. More about the book here.

Thursday, April 29th, 6:30pm-8:30pm
POSTMASTERS GALLERY
459 West 19th Street (at 10th Avenue) NYC 10011

STEPHEN MALLON: Earth Day In Grand Central Terminal April 21-24

Weeks 297, 2008
Photograph (c) Stephen Mallon /All Rights Reserved

Virginia, 2008
Photograph (c) Stephen Mallon /All Rights Reserved

Stephen Mallon Prints on display at Grand Central Station Apr 21 - 24th

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Two images from my upcoming New York solo show "Next Stop Atlantic" will be on display at Grand Central Station, courtesy of The Metropolitan Transit Authority, in conjunction with Earth Day, April 22nd. These images are from the artificial reef project of the MTA to form sanctuaries for marine life by using former subway cars deep in the Atlantic ocean to form steel condos for fish! You can see a documentary on how they look Underwater Here. I am really honored that they are on display at Grand Central Station! – Stephen Mallon

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Giant Earth Images: This show illuminates Grand Central's soaring main concourse with inspiring environmentally themed quotes, messages, photographs and graphic images contributed by artists such as Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Roy Lichtenstein, and Rafal Olbinski, among others. The show, projected onto two of the north columns in the concourse, runs 10 hours a day.

EarthFair Outdoors: April 23rd and April 24th; A two-day festival of art, music and the environment on Vanderbilt Ave. A large exhibit area highlighting green businesses, organic food and environmental groups, EarthFair also features live music.

Stephen Mallon "Next Stop-Atlantic"

Exhibition Opens Sept 10 2010

Front Room Gallery

ALEXEY TITARENKO: Saint Petersburg

#1 Untitled (Boy), 1993

Photograph © Alexey Titarenko/ All rights reserved

# 5 Untitled (Zigzag Crowd), 1994
Photograph © Alexey Titarenko/ All rights reserved

#7 Untitled (Three Women Selling Cigarettes), 1992
Photograph © Alexey Titarenko/ All rights reserved

#3 Untitled (Crowd 1), 1992
Photograph © Alexey Titarenko/ All rights reserved

"A crowd of people flowing near the subway station formed a sort of human sea, providing me with a feeling of non-reality, a phantasmagoria. These people resembled shadows from the underworld, a world visited by Aeneas, Virgil’s character. My impressions as well as my emotional state were enormously profound and long lasting. I felt an intense urge to articulate this suffering and despair, to visualize the “peopleghosts,” to awaken empathy and love for my native city’s inhabitants, people who have been constantly victimized and ruined during the course of the twentieth century."

–Alexey Titarenko

ALEXEY TITARENKO: Saint Petersburg in Four Movements
Through April 24, 2010
NAILYA ALEXANDER GALLERY

LYNN GOLDSMITH: Rock & Roll New Orleans April 21 - July 5

The Beatles
Photograph © Lynn Goldsmith

Bob Dylan
Photograph © Lynn Goldsmith

Lynn Goldsmith surrounded by her Rock Mosaics
Photograph © Lynn Goldsmith

Mick Jagger Rock Mosaic
Photograph © Lynn Goldsmith

Mick Jagger Rock Mosaic close-up (click image to enlarge)
Photograph © Lynn Goldsmith

John Lennon Fans NYC
Photograph © Lynn Goldsmith

Bruce Springsteen
Photograph © Lynn Goldsmith

Music makes me feel like I've connected to people. —Lynn Goldsmith

Legendary rock photographer Lynn Goldmith’s exhibition, Rock and Roll: Lynn Goldsmith, is coming to New Orlean's April 21 through July 5, 2010 at A Gallery For Fine Photography on Chartres Street. This show will include her 'Rock Mosaics', made up of thousands of her photographs using the Chuck Close grid system. Goldsmith's exhibition is accompanied by her book, Rock and Roll, a collection of her best work with an introduction by The Godfather of Punk, Iggy Pop. The book also includes quotes by many of the artists and three gate-folds of her 'Rock Mosaics' of the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen and Kiss. PDN Master Series Goldsmith Gallery

Rock And Roll: Lynn Goldsmith
A Gallery For Fine Photography • April 21 - July 5, 2010
241 Chartres Street - New Orleans

ALINE SMITHSON: Photographing Family

Copyright (c) Aline Smithson

Copyright (c) Aline Smithson

To create the series Arrangement in Green and Black: Portrait of the Photographer's Mother, Aline Smithson took photographs of her 85-year-old mother combining traditional photography techniques with hand painted color. The inspiration for the series began when she found a small print of Whistler's painting Arrangement in Grey and Black: Portrait of the Painter's Mother, at a neighborhood garage sale. The same weekend she found a leopard coat and hat, a 1950s cat painting, and what looked like the exact chair from the Whistler painting. "That started me thinking about the idea of portraiture, the strong compositional relationships going on within Whistler's painting, and the evocative nature of unassuming details," says Smithson. 

ALINE SMITHSON

The Griffin Museum of Photography  
April 7 - May 16, 2010

Arrangement In Green And Black
 PORTRAIT OF THE PHOTOGRAPHER'S MOTHER
The Atelier Gallery, 395 Main Street, Stoneham, MA

MIKAEL KENNEDY: 500 Polaroids

Austin, Randolph, VT 2006
Photograph (c) Mikael Kennedy /All Rights Reserved

Oregon Coast 2007
Photograph (c) Mikael Kennedy /All Rights Reserved

Kennedy Blog: Passport To Trespass

Shoot The Moon 500 Polaroids by Mikael Kennedy
April 14 - May 2, 2010 • Suite 524 of The Chelsea Hotel
video

MONA KUHN: Gallery Talk

Mona Kuhn's Gallery Talk about her work "Native"
Photograph: Elizabeth Avedon

Gallery Talk

Matthew Flowers (l) and Gallery Director, Brent Beamon (r)

Mona Kuhn Gallery Talk
April 10, 2010
Flowers Gallery 
529 West 20th Street NYC

Native , Published by Steidl

MONA KUHN

MONA KUHN: Native Exhibition + Interview

Marina
Photograph (c) Mona Kuhn

 Kuhn's work at AIPAD 2010

Virgin Forest
Photograph (c) Mona Kuhn

Emerging Boy
Photograph (c) Mona Kuhn

Jungle Roots
Photograph (c) Mona Kuhn

Doppelgänger
Photograph (c) Mona Kuhn

Silent Waters
Photograph (c) Mona Kuhn

MONA KUHN NATIVE
APRIL 9 - MAY 15 • FLOWERS GALLERY NYC
ARTIST TALK APRIL 10 3 PM

One of my favorite contemporary photographers, acclaimed artist Mona Kuhn, has an exhibition of her latest series of photographs in conjunction with her new book, Native (Steidl) opening this week at the Flowers Gallery in New York City. Kuhn will also conduct a Gallery Talk April 10th.

"Mona Kuhn, best known for her alluring figurative studies in a French naturist colony, returned to her birthplace of Brazil after a 20 year absence to produce this new body of work. While this personal journey home was an attempt to reconnect with her past, Kuhn soon found that only traces of it actually remained. Through the discovery of new people and places, Kuhn was able to create her abstracted dreams and desires of both the past and the present. The result is a sensual and pensive narrative depicting lush jungle landscapes, rustic interiors, and captivating nudes.

In these photographs, Kuhn encapsulates the emotions of living in Brazil through the personal memory of the green, yellow and pink palette of the landscape as well as her intimate connection with its people. By contrasting the vitality of the dense Brazilian countryside with the sparse interior of an abandoned apartment, Kuhn establishes her own fantasy of time and place. As in all of her portraits, Kuhn develops a trusting relationship with her subjects, allowing her to portray the complexities of human nature both tempting and provoking the viewer’s imagination. The intertwining of these aspects forms what one could consider Kuhn’s most mature work to date."–Flowers Gallery

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INTERVIEW
HEATHER SNIDER + MONA KUHN

Curator Heather Snider graciously allowed me to reprint her interview with Mona Kuhn about this new body of work and Kuhn's experience of returning home to Brazil after 20 years.
HS: It has been a long time since you lived in Brazil; you’ve spent your adult life elsewhere. Though you undoubtedly expected things would be unfamiliar, what things surprised you the most as you dug under the surface and tried to operate in this new yet familiar situation?

MK: I wasn’t so surprised because it was very familiar. It was more like the re-occurrence of something you once knew but had forgotten. I was surprised by how connected I still am, emotionally, to everything there: the smells, the taste, and the feel of my own body in such a familiar environment.

HS: What were the biggest challenges you faced?

MK: My biggest challenge was finding the people that I wanted to photograph. I’ve been working in a naturalist community because I want to do nudes and I want it to be an authentic experience, where people are already in the nude. But Brazil is, despite the images of bikini beaches and Carnival, a Catholic, Latin American country, and not as open as you might think. Interacting with the people there, and old friends, took time. Trust had to be established. But once it all started rolling then it grew by word of mouth which is in the end most fulfilling. Through good fortune I was able to find a place where I could bring all the people to photograph, a place that had been empty for 20 years and coincidentally had the palette that I wanted to use. A friend of mine told me about an apartment, and offered to show it to me. When we opened the door I knew immediately that it was the place. In France I have my own closed environment to work in but in Brazil I didn’t have that place. I didn’t want to use my own personal house because it wasn’t about exploring my own attic. I wanted it to be more abstract than that, to be a fantasy and not autobiographical. I didn’t want the sepia reproduction photographs of my grandparents.

HS: The whole process of working in Brazil was quite different from how you have been working for the past few years, yet you achieved a remarkable consistency in your imagery. How much did you have to consciously work on this? What were the parameters you set to make sure you stayed within the rather specific visual language you have delineated in your work up to this point?

MK: I like researching. When I realized I wanted to do something in Brazil, something that would interpret my own feelings about Brazil now, as an adult, I looked at things that had been done. I knew what I did not want to do: Carnival, the beaches, the poor people in the streets, and the images of happiness and Bossanova. I started narrowing my thoughts, becoming more and more personal, and realized my interest was in the internal, the emotions of living there. l wanted to use colors that I always felt were part of my life there, the greens the yellows and the pinks. The way I worked with the people was similar to how I usually work, it was just a bit more moody perhaps. But with photography, inside your parameters, you have to leave it loose and open, to allow for the spontaneous and let life be what it is, so that was an important part of it too.

HS: Would you say you were searching for something in particular, or wondering what you would find? If so, what was “it?”

MK: There is a quote of Eugene Smith’s that has always been important to me: “You must be lost before you can find yourself again”....that thought was often in my mind. When you go back to your childhood place, certain things seem so mundane, but you have to remind yourself (that they might be wonderful to someone else) and try to see things with new eyes. I was working intuitively, not knowing what was going to come out, letting myself react, putting myself into situations. I didn’t really know what I was looking for, which was good, because my antennae were open to everything. When I found the apartment it started coming into focus. The first trip I made was very broad and open, but it was like being a cat: you throw it and it has to land on its own feet.

HS: Would you say that this series is more about yourself than earlier work?

MK: It is about myself because it is my homeland, but I’d say that my other work is equally about myself in other ways. I also still go to France to work and that work is a big part of who I am and have been for the past 15 years. Native is about my first 20 years.

HS: Was this work done mostly in São Paolo? Can we talk about choosing to portray only interiors and nature in the midst of one of the biggest urban environments in the world?

MK: I worked mostly in the state of São Paolo, though some of the forest regions were further out, in different areas. But many of these portraits were taken in the city, in the very heart of the city. I didn’t really want to capture reality. I wasn’t interested in portraying where it was, more in entering the thoughts. In the editing, the way the apartment photographs and jungle photographs work together, my intention was to be inconclusive. It’s not meant to be about São Paolo. It is about a mood, about Brazil, about a bird returning to a nest in the forest. Just like my work in France is not about the Medoc region. It is about a fantasy place.

HS: Jungles are such potent metaphors: thick, dense with life in a dangerous sort of way, a fecund, untamed environment. As a child growing up in Brazil, what was the jungle of your imagination, or real life experience? What is your adult perspective on the jungle, and on the Brazilian jungle in particular?

MK: When you enter a forest, deep into a forest, and walk under very tall trees, you realize how overpowering nature is. It has a spirituality that draws you into it. It is also a place where you can escape and create your own reality. For an adult, it has the power of bringing your instincts out. You have to be aware of what’s happening around you, your instincts are turned on, and human nature comes out. This is a different set of instincts than those of day-to-day street life. It is humid, you can smell your sweat, and feel the moisture in the air, your senses become more acute. The Brazilian forest is also very sultry, and makes your sexual senses more acute. There is also a feeling of adventure, and fear, balanced by a sensual element.

HS: Were there any artists you had in mind when you set about photographing, artists that you had in mind either for the idea of returning home or who portrayed similar environments?

MK: I was definitely looking at Rousseau, whose forests look like paradise, idyllic with beautiful fruits and so full of detail. But one thing I did not want to do was to pose people in the forest setting. I wanted the forest to be separate, a psychological atmosphere more than a real place. In the instances where I did photograph people there, it was because I happened to find them there or I was walking in the forest with a friend and we just decided to try it. I also looked at Gauguin, particularly a painting titled Where Do we Come From: What Are We? Where Are We Going? Gauguin was looking for clues, learning about life. He submerged himself in Tahiti and it became part of his life.

HS: There has always been a certain artifice to your photographs, of subjects being posed or placed, which is tempered by the very natural atmosphere of your work, the relaxed lack of self-consciousness. In most of these new images, your subjects weren’t found in the environment, they were introduced for the purpose of making photographs. How did this change your working process and the photographs that you ended up with?

MK: I wanted to create a narrative, and it was important to put parameters in place as we mentioned earlier. Unlike Avedon traveling across America, or Irving Penn’s use of a backdrop in many settings, I didn’t want to isolate my subjects from their environment, or to photograph them as the “other” or the exotic. I wanted to photograph contemporary people that are part of my generation in Brazil, the people I might have been if I were living in Brazil today. The apartment we worked in was in the very center of downtown São Paolo, one of the oldest areas of the city. At one time it was a prominent neighborhood but now it is a marginal area, decayed and empty at night, not really a residential area. It took some time to get there from other areas of São Paolo and more than once the people I was photographing mentioned that the long drive getting there helped them to detach a bit from their everyday. Visiting this place we wouldn’t normally go helped to enter a different state of mind, to abstract the moment.

HS: The interiors have a distinctive atmosphere, suggesting decay, abandonment, and to me are quite unfamiliar and mysterious. Are they, or are certain elements, particularly Brazilian? Do you think they would resonate differently to a viewer from Brazil than to someone who has never visited or lived there?

MK: I guess they are very Brazilian because there are hints about what the culture has gone through. The green walls reference the geography, the forest, and also the militarism in Brazil’s history. There is also the decayed matte gold curtain, a sign of the early Euro-baroque influence and a light fixture that is very 1950s, an era in which Brazil was letting go and having their own cultural enlightenment. This was when Brasilia was built, and Brazil developed a tropical Modernism. There was this girl named Veronica who is wearing a crucifix. When she came to the apartment she asked if she should take it off but I thought it was perfect, just a hint. All these things made sense to me, touching on the symbols of culture without entering it completely.

HS: I spoke with you the night before you left on one of your first trips for this project and you described to me a dream you’d had filled with anxiety, about the fears you had of the real dangers present in Brazil, and your concern that you might be putting yourself in harm’s way. How did this anxiety work its way out in the process?

MK: I was very afraid, because I had experienced dangerous situations when I lived there and there is always the threat of random criminality. It was an anxiety about destiny. I was wondering what it meant for me to be returning and if I was tempting fate. Part of my creative process, a big part of the project, was to throw myself into unknown situations. Especially working in downtown as I was, and even in the forests there is the possibility that people can be hiding there. I did everything alone. I didn’t have an assistant. I didn’t have security. I was putting myself into situations and had to be aware and alert, but the work is not about that. There certainly were risks, but I was not interested in documenting or portraying any of that in the photographs. This was just part of the territory I was working in. It did manifest itself twice while I was working there, but it wasn’t part of the work.

HS: Will you go back to photograph in Brazil? Do you feel that this project is complete?

MK: It feels complete now. If I went back, I would do something else. My curiosity about coming to terms with the past is resolved. I was searching for the past but it was an oxymoron because you can never find the past. You can’t go back. The people I met there represented the present.

HS: In one of the essays in your new book, Wayne Anderson mentions the quietude and silence of your photography. Do you agree with this observation? How did this change in regard to the above project, when you were literally working with sound?

MK: I do relate to the idea of slow motion, a pensive state, and the moments in between thoughts. Though my photographs show nudity, they are quiet as opposed to sexy. In making the video we weren’t really working with sound, it was placed afterwards. We knew we had a five-minute space we had to create and I knew the music and the lyrics, but it was a visual process.

HS: Are you already working on your next project, what ideas are next on the horizon?

MK: I have been working on a side project for the past couple of summers in the Bordeaux region of France, that one is a collection of portraits over a long period of time, all taken in the same room. It is quite traditional, and it may take as long as wine to reach maturity. Meanwhile, I’ve started researching my next active project. I’d like to do it about my present time and place, which is Los Angeles. I’m still defining it, but it will be about my present, where I am now.

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Mona Kuhn has exhibited extensively in the United States, Europe and South America. Steidl published her past two monographs Photographs (2004), Evidence (2007), as well as her most recent Native (2009).

FLOWERS GALLERY 529 WEST 20TH NYC
View Mona Kuhn's Gallery Talk Video's

PDN EMERGING 30: West Coast Exhibition

Photograph (c) Alex Prager /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Deborah Hamon /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Yang Yi /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Brent Lewin /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Andy Spyra /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Brent Lewin /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Elizabeth Weinberg /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Estelle Hanania /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Gratiane de Moustier /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Alex Prager /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Matthieu Gafsou /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Wayne Lawrence /All Rights Reserved

Photograph (c) Sohrab Hura /All Rights Reserved

“2010 PDN Emerging 30” photography exhibition in conjunction with Month of Photography Los Angeles (MOPLA) at The Icon. Photo District News (PDN) selected thirty emerging photographers most likely to make an impact on the photographic industry. View the entire "2010 PDN Emerging 30" Gallery and Interviews.

April 8- May 28

Clark | Oshin Gallery at The Icon 5450 Wilshire Blvd.L.A.

JIM MARSHALL + TIMOTHY WHITE: Match Prints Opening

Match Prints: (left) Robert Plant, Los Angeles, CA, 1970 by Jim Marshall (right) Nicole Kidman, New York, NY, 2003 by Timothy White

Photography Heavyweights: Jean-Jacques Naudet (left) Author, Curator and Commissioner of Exhibitions in Arles, with (center) David Schonauer, Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. and (right) Achard & Associates, Philippe Achard.

The Opening crowd included actress Glenn Close (center) and photographer Roxanne Lowit (far left) with Stockland Martel photo agent Emily Leonardo

Match Prints Photographer Timothy White and Glenn Close. White photographed the Oscar-nominated actress for the FX series "Damages," in which she stars

Glenn Close with Match Prints Photographer Timothy White

Exhibition film crew captures wall photographs; (top left) by Timothy White, Shirley MacLaine, Los Angeles, CA, 1991; (top right) by Jim Marshall, Shelley Winters, New York, NY, 1963

Celebrity photographer and author, Roxanne Lowit
(gotta see her website!)

All Snapshot Photographs (c) Elizabeth Paul Avedon /All Rights Reserved

MATCH PRINTS
Photographs by Jim Marshall and Timothy White
March 26 - April 24, 2010 Staley Wise Gallery NYC

"Jim Marshall, a photographer who took some of the most famous images of rock and pop musicians, including Jimi Hendrix setting his guitar aflame at the Monterey International Pop Festival and Johnny Cash at San Quentin State Prison, died on Tuesday night (March 23) in a hotel in New York. He was 74."–The New York Times, March 24, 2010