CRUEL AND UNUSUAL: Prison Photography Exhibition Part I

Photograph © Deborah Luster
Series: 'One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana.' Year: 1999 - 2003
Title: Cowboy, Louisiana State Penitentiary. Year: 1999.
Courtesy Jack Shainman Gallery
read more

Photograph © Jane Lindsay
Series: Gems. Year: 2011 - ongoing
Tintypes, cast resin, bottlecaps
read more

Photograph © Steve Davis
Series: Captured Youth. Year: 2000-2005.
Title: 10, 11, 12, 13 & 14, Green Hill. Year: 2000
read more

Photograph © Nathalie Mohadjer

Series: The Dungeon. Year: 2009. The prisoners receive no food by the government in these detention cells. Some prisoners have no food for weeks and they beg the others to get the left over’s. Cibitoke, Burundi. read more

Photograph © Jon Lowenstein

Series: Tent City. Josue Enrique Vargas, Michoacan, Mexico worked as a home painter in the United States. He had been in the United States for five years when he was picked up for a DUI (drunk driving) arrest. read more

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Cruel and Unusual is a curatorial collaboration between guest curators Pete Brook and Hester Keijser. The exhibition showcases the work of Araminta de Clermont, Amy Elkins, Alyse Emdur, Christiane Feser, Jane Lindsay, Deborah Luster, Nathalie Mohadjer, Yana Payusova, Lizzie Sadin, Lori Waselchuk, and others.

"Cruel and Unusual looks at how prison systems are depicted and what those depictions tell us. As taxpayers and empathetic humans, how well informed are we of the lives and experiences within penal institutions? How are images of locked facilities manufactured, distributed and consumed? United by what might be considered a limiting subject matter, the exhibited photographers employ a wide range of approaches, materials and techniques, depending on the amount of access granted, and varying from vernacular photography, alternative processes, texts, painted photos, digital manipulations to straight black and white documentary."

"In the U.S. the expense and failure of prisons has come under increasing scrutiny since the global economic recession. Over a period of just 40 years, failed 'tough on crime' policies, sensationalist TV media, prison privatization, and a misinformed public contributed a near 500% increase of the U.S. prison population. Recent arms trade figures show heavy investments in military crowd control systems across Africa, the wider Middle East and beyond. Incarceration is one of the many instruments put into place by states fearing popular revolts and riots threatening their internal stability."

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"Cruel and Unusual refers to a long-established legal term that first appeared in the 1689 English Bill of Rights. Adopted in the late 18th century as part of the U.S. Constitution, the 8th Amendment declares: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” In 1958, the U.S. Supreme Court stated that understanding of "cruel and unusual punishments" should change over time, being those punishments which offend society's "evolving sense of decency."

Newspaper Catalog Available Here

Cruel and Unusual
18 February - 1 April, 2012
Noorderlicht Gallery
9711 JB Groningen, Netherlands

Prison Photography's Pete Brook
Talks Blogs, Prisons, Road Trips and Photography
February 18th 4:00 - 6:00 pm

CRUEL AND UNUSUAL: Prison Photography Part II

Text courtesy of the curators and the Noorderlicht Gallery

MIRIAM ROMAIS: Mission Murals

Hay Perro, 2011
Photograph © Miriam Romais

Hand, 2011
Photograph © Miriam Romais

Moon, 2011
Photograph © Miriam Romais

Photographs of Mission Murals by Miriam Romais

"The Muralist Movement in this predominantly Latino neighborhood in San Francisco (the Mission District) involves an act of acceptance, sharing, validation and celebration –– an art form that can be easily traced back to Mayan and Aztec scenes painted on temple walls, or the caves of Lascaux. Many are highly politicized statements, whether celebrating indigenous cultures, protesting the wars in Central America, or honoring the fight for freedom in Nepal. Life and art are intertwined here, each mural with its own message inspired by the works of Mexican Muralists and motivated by the Civil Rights movement." "My fascination with the meaning and temporality of these murals, inspires me to help preserve what can easily disappear or become vandalized, while helping the muralist further disseminate their little-known histories to new and broader geographic audiences. Many of these murals are kept as safe as possible thanks to PrecitaEyes.org* in San Francisco, which is why a percentage of print sales are being donated to this organization that has been so instrumental in their creation and preservation."–Miriam Romais

PAINTED VOICES: Photographs by Miriam Romais
January 16 - March 7
Grady Alexis Gallery / El Taller Latino Americano
2710 Broadway @ 104th St NYC

Miriam Romais is a NY based photographer, curator and also the Executive Director & Editor of En Foco & Nueva Luz Photographic Journal...read more

MICHAEL CROUSER: Mid-Career Retrospective

Los Toros (Twin Palms)

Photograph © Michael Crouser

Dog Run (Viking Studio)
Photograph © Michael Crouser

Valladolid, Spain, 1996
Photograph © Michael Crouser

Mountain Ranch
Photograph © Michael Crouser

Michael Crouser: A Mid-Career Retrospective
January 13 - February 25

Leica Gallery 670 Broadway NYC

Michael Crouser's retrospective exhibition at New York's Leica Gallery includes work from four distinct series covering 25 years, Los Toros, Dog Run, Mountain Ranch and Sin Tiempo. Los Toros was a fifteen-year exploration of bullfighting in Spain, Mexico, South America and France. The collection was published as a monograph by Twin Palms, and won first place in the 2008 International Photography Awards, Fine Art Book category. Mountain Ranch was an exploration of the disappearing world of cattle ranching in the mountains of Colorado. This project was made possible through the generous support of Kodak. Dog Run was an experiment in seeing dogs in a new way...in the midst of their intense play in urban dog parks. Shot in Minneapolis and New York, Dog Run was published by Viking Studio, and was supported by Kodak. His series, Sin Tiempo, "without time" in Spanish, are fascinating "momentary vignettes giving no evidence of the photographs time or place." All the photographs in the exhibition were shot on Tri-X film and printed in a traditional darkroom.

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New York City's Leica Gallery has been run in partnership with Leica Camera since 1994 and is closely linked to the company. The gallery has become a leading location for both traditional and modern photojournalism in the New York gallery scene; located in an historic building in Greenwich Village that is listed in the records of the American Institute of Architects.The gallery has housed more than 115 exhibitions, including renowned photographers such as Alfred Eisenstaedt, Inge Morath, Leonard Freed, Alex Webb, Erich Hartmann, and Karl Lagerfeld.

GREGORY HALPERN: At ClampArt

Untitled, 2010 © Gregory Halpern

Gregory Halpern at ClampArt
January 5 - February 11

GILLES PERRIN: Africa

Ceremonial Masques, Burkina Faso, 2009
Photograph (c) Gilles Perrin

Ceremonial Masques, Burkina Faso, 2009
Photograph (c) Gilles Perrin

Ceremonial Masques, Burkina Faso, 2009
Photograph (c) Gilles Perrin

Ceremonial Masques, Burkina Faso, 2009
Photograph (c) Gilles Perrin

Portrait, The Omo Valley, Ethiopia
Photograph (c) Gilles Perrin

"I produce social and documentary photography. My work is centered around making photographs and witnessing the condition of the world around me. I try to show a certain reality, which matches my vision and my emotions. My desire is to show the contradictions and paradoxes; the counterbalance of a world in progress which is impossible to deny. I am interested in the reality we don’t see."–Gilles Perrin

Africa has a place of honor this year at Paris Photo 2011 and although Gilles Perrin is not showing his Burkina Faso Ceremonial Mask photographs there, his exhibition "WOMEN" is in Rueil-Malmaison at Espace Renoir.

Femme - Photographies de Gilles PERRIN
à l'espace Renoir
27 rue Guy de Maupassant
92500 Rueil-Malmaison

JERRY ATNIP: Gone South

No 214 Tennessee
Photograph (c) Jerry Atnip

No 193 Georgia
Photograph (c) Jerry Atnip

No 184 Georgia
Photograph (c) Jerry Atnip

No 197 Texas
Photograph (c) Jerry Atnip

“Many photographers feel that they need to travel to faraway or exotic places to capture great images. I also travel the world on assignments, but enjoy recording the land I was raised in. I find I’m never at a lack for interesting subject matter throughout the South.”–Jerry Atnip

Jerry Atnip, a commercial and fine art photographer for over 35 years, was born in San Antonio and is now based in Nashville. He's spent the last few years traveling throughout the South exploring the back-roads and highways searching for the nuances that shape this unique part of the country. The thirty-nine images in his recently released book, Gone South: A Collection of Images from the American South (Nashville: CIA Publishing, 2011), are a part of a much larger body of work which includes scenes from Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky and Texas, on exhibit now at Nashville's Surroundings Gallery. Atnip describes the South in the introduction to the book as “a transitory area where the past and the present exist in a familiar tandem.

Gone South: A Collection of Images from the American South is available as both a regular trade book and as a Limited Edition (of 200 copies), which includes a signed and numbered print. Both can be ordered at JerryAtnip or CIA Creative.

No 226 Tennessee
Photograph (c) Jerry Atnip

"Jerry Atnip’s exhibition of photographs, Gone South: A Collection of Images from the American South, opened Friday evening at Nashville’s Surroundings Gallery...The ensemble of images, most of them moody black-and-white, a few dashes of color here and there, looks unplanned, as if stabbed on a bulletin board, so many snapshots, simple statements of the commonplace carefully saved. Railroad tracks, gulls, tree limbs against the sky and against each other, water in its many modes, a clapboard house, steps almost absorbed by the hill they climb, a tire swing hanging from a tree, and a timeless horse worthy of Paolo Uccello.

All respectful echoes as much of the South’s finest writers as of her photographers— Faulkner, Shelby Foote and Andrew Lytle as well as Eudora Welty, Walker Evans and Al Clayton. No axes to grind, nor politics to shout. No sound at all. Neither angst nor sermons. Just a dream-like serenity invoking nostalgia for times us older folks would like to pass on to the youngsters, but seldom succeed in doing.

Over thirty years of experience, Jerry Atnip’s photographic subjects include “people, architecture, corporate, music, travel” and, I expect, many other diverse subjects. Since 2002, he has won twenty-one awards in shows of various kinds, has mounted over seventy exhibitions in places as far-flung as Abu Dhabi, Paris, Geneva, Budapest, and throughout the U. S. Since 2006, his bibliography includes thirty-four citations, and his work has been widely acquired by private, corporate and academic collections."–excerpted from a Review by Marshall Fallwell, Jr.

Jerry Atnip Website
CIA Creative

LORI WASELCHUK: Grace Before Dying

Photograph (c) Lori Waselchuk from her series Grace Before Dying

A person is a person through another person. My humanity is caught up, bound up, inextricably, with yours.–Desmond Tutu

Grace Before Dying
PHOTOGRAPHS BY LORI WASELCHUCK
November 3 - January 12
Umbrage Gallery, 111 Front St, Dumbo

PIETER HUGO: Permanent Error

Yakubu Al Hasan, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana, 2009
Photograph © Pieter Hugo, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, NY
and Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town

Untitled, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana, 2010
Photograph © Pieter Hugo, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, NY
and Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town

Abdulai Yahaya, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana, 2010
Photograph © Pieter Hugo, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, NY
and Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town

David Akore, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana, 2010
Photograph © Pieter Hugo, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, NY
and Michael Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town

Pieter Hugo Photographs | Permanent Error
Yossi Milo Gallery
to October 29, 2011

"Pieter Hugo’s new series, Permanent Error, depicts Agbogbloshie, a massive dump site for technological waste on the outskirts of Ghana’s capital city, and the locals who burn down the components to extract bits of copper, brass, aluminum and zinc for resale. Tons of outdated and broken computers, computer games, mobile phones and other e-waste are shipped to the area as “donations” from the West, under the guise of providing technology to developing countries. Rather than helping to bridge the digital divide, the equipment is transformed into noxious trash threatening the health of the area’s inhabitants and contaminating the water and soil.

Gray plumes of smoke rise from smoldering piles of disassembled monitors, motherboards and wiring, providing an apocalyptic backdrop for Hugo’s portraits of the workers. The subjects, many of whom are young men sent by their families from impoverished outlying villages, are photographed full-figure and directly engaged with Hugo’s medium-format camera. With each portrait, Hugo draws the viewer into the conditions imposed on this slum community and their effects on individuals. Collectively, the photographs expose consequences of the West’s consumption of ever-new technology and its disposal of outmoded products in poor countries ill-equipped to recycle them." –Yossi Milo Gallery

MOBY: Destroyed Interview

My Weakness
(c) MOBY

Hyenas
(c) MOBY

Read the Full Interview on La Lettre de la Photographie

“When I play music, I’m just exclusively focused on the music. When I’m taking photographs, I’m exclusively focusing on that. There’s not a lot of interdisciplinary stuff going on in my head.”

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"I’ve been a photographer since I was ten years old. My uncle had been a photographer at the New York Times and as I was growing up he gave me his hand-me-down sort of cast-off camera’s and dark room equipment. I grew up shooting film and working in darkrooms...When I went on to University, I was a Philosophy major with a Photography minor, and although I’ve been doing photography since I was 10 years old, I’ve never really felt comfortable showing it to anyone. It’s only in the last couple of years that I got past my reservations or shyness in showing people my photographs...I think I was intimidated to show people my photographs because my uncle was such a good photographer."

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EA: Your parents nicknamed you “Moby” after your family’s ancestral relationship to Moby Dick author, Herman Melville. As you are both writers, have you felt a connection or been inspired or influenced by his work?

MOBY: That’s a really interesting question. The one thing, if I’m being completely honest, the one connection that I feel, and it’s not even necessarily a good one, is on that side of the family, my fathers side of the family, the men have a tendency to be very prone to brooding and taking themselves too seriously. For better or worse, I think I’ve inherited that. I’d love to feel more of a creative connection with Melville, and maybe it’s there, but I definitely more see the brooding New England melancholy, which is strange because I live in southern California now.

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"The image that’s on the cover of both the book and the album is a photograph I took in LaGuardia Airport and it was a sign that said “Unattended Luggage Will Be Destroyed”- a very small sign that would only fit one word at a time. So I stood in this hallway taking photographs of this sign every time it flashed this word “Destroyed”... Because a lot of the music on the album, and the images as well, are the product of insomnia and exhaustion and so the word “Destroyed” just summed up that feeling of living in these strange alien environments and trying to make sense of them through music and photography."

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moby exhibition to october 22

KOPEIKIN GALLERY

ELISABETH BIONDI | Beyond Words: Photography In The New Yorker

The Embrace, 1952
Photograph by Milton H. Greene

Costume Party, New York, 2002

Photograph by Mary Ellen Mark

Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas at home on the Rue de Fleurus, 1921
Photograph by Man Ray

CURATED BY ELISABETH BIONDI

"Beyond Words: Photography in The New Yorker"

HOWARD GREENBERG GALLERY

"The New Yorker Magazine began to publish photographs in 1992, under the editorial direction of Tina Brown. At that time, the only photographer the magazine employed was Richard Avedon. The first Avedon photograph that the magazine ran was his iconic 1963 portrait of Malcolm X. The exhibition opens with this photograph and from that, an enlightening, visual history of photography in the magazine ensues.

In 1996, Elisabeth Biondi arrived at The New Yorker with a mandate to expand the presence of photography in the magazine. She contracted a small group of photographers to shoot on a regular basis, employed numerous others on an occasional basis and drew from a multitude of esoteric, often historical sources to locate images that richly illustrate the magazine’s multi-faceted content. For fifteen years, Biondi presented photographs that heightened the experience of reading the articles for which the magazine has been respected, treasured and enjoyed.

The work of staff photographers Ruven Afanador, Mary Ellen Mark, Gilles Peress, Platon, Robert Polidori, Steve Pyke, Martin Schoeller, and Max Vadukul, are all represented in the exhibition. From Afanador’s whimsical portrait of Mario Batali, published in the popular “Food Issue” to Polidori’s hauntingly beautiful Havana, Cuba interior and Gilles Peress’ wrenching coverage of Kosovo, these photographers produced pictures that, through publication in the magazine, became permanently etched in our collective, visual consciousness.

Also present in the exhibition are portraits by Irving Penn, William Klein, Duane Michals, Harry Benson, Brigitte Lacombe, Ethan Levitas, and others. The exhibition includes powerful images by some of the boldest photo-journalists of our time: Thomas Dworzak’s work from Afghanistan, Benjamin Lowy’s from Iraq, Marcus Bleasdale’s from Darfur, Samantha Appleton’s from Lagos, Joao Pina’s from Brazil and Ami Vitale’s from Kashmir. The historical section of the exhibition includes rarely seen photographs from the former Soviet Union, the Time Life Archive, Martin Munkacsi, Robert Doisneau, Lord Snowdon, Alexander Liberman, and Horst P. Horst, among others.

The third section of the exhibition includes images from the page at the front of the magazine’s opening section, “Goings on About Town,” which, each week, features a color photograph that in a delightful and quirky manner, illustrates an event occurring in New York City that week. Photographers in this section include Sylvia Plachy, Lisa Kereszi, Brian Finke, Landon Nordeman, Gus Powell, Yola Manakhov, Martine Fougeron and Martynka Wawrzyniak." –Howard Greenberg Gallery, thru October 22

About Elisabeth Biondi on La Lettre de la Photographie

PAOLO VENTURA: Automaton of Venice

The Automaton #2 , 2010

Courtesy of Paolo Ventura / Hasted Kraeutler

The Automaton #1 , 2010

"The fictional story centers around an elderly, Jewish watchmaker..."

Courtesy of Paolo Ventura / Hasted Kraeutler

The Automaton #7 , 2010
Courtesy of Paolo Ventura / Hasted Kraeutler

The Automaton #15 , 2010
Courtesy of Paolo Ventura / Hasted Kraeutler

The Automaton #16 , 2010

Courtesy of Paolo Ventura / Hasted Kraeutler

PAOLO VENTURA
THE AUTOMATON OF VENICE
HASTED KRAEUTLER GALLERY
September 8 - October 15, 2011

"The Automaton of Venice is a photographic narrative from beginning to end. It was created based on a story Photographer Paolo Ventura was told as a child. The fictional story centers around an elderly, Jewish watchmaker living in the ghetto of Venice in 1943, one of the darkest periods of the occupation of the Nazis and the rule of the fascist regime in Italy. The city where the watchmaker has lived his entire life, now desolate and fearful, is the stage where this story unfolds. The old man decides to build an automaton (an anthropomorphic robot), to keep him company while he awaits the arrival of the fascist police who will deport the last of the remaining Jews in the ghetto."

"Ventura’s creative process for The Automaton of Venice was first to write the story as he wanted to tell it through the photographs, then build elaborate models in his studio out of sets and miniature figurines. The final works are the photographs of the scenes created within the models. "

"Paolo Ventura’s work is currently on display in the Italian national pavilion at the Arsenale at the Venice Biennale and in the exhibition Otherworldly: Optical Delusions and Small Realities at the Museum of Art and Design. His works have been acquired by prominent public collections including the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. and the Martin Margulies Collection in Miami, Florida. Two monographs of Paolo Ventura’s work have been published: War Souvenir (Contrasto, 2006) and Winter Stories (Aperture and Contrasto, 2009). He is also included in the new publication Photographic Memory: The Album in the Age of Photography (Aperture/ Library of Congress, 2011)." – Hasted/Kraeutler

HASTED KRAEUTLER GALLERY
537 West 24th St NYC
September 8 - October 15, 2011

SHELBY LEE ADAMS: Salt & Truth

Salt & Truth (Candela Books, 2011)

Angela with Banty Rooster, 2004
Photograph (c) Shelby Lee Adams
Courtesy of the Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

Eddies Wayne, 2010

Photograph (c) Shelby Lee Adams
Courtesy of the Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

"A native of Kentucky, Shelby Lee Adams has been recording the individuals, families, and communities of Appalachia for nearly forty years. Following word of mouth introductions only, the subjects of Shelby’s portraits are comprised of Adams’ friends and acquaintances from the close-knit families in Appalachia, a historically tight-knit community. Adams approaches his subjects with respect, care, and grace as he is welcomed into their homes and lives."–Fahey/Klein Gallery

SHELBY LEE ADAMS: Salt & Truth
Fahey/Klein Gallery
September 8 – October 15

RALPH EUGENE MEATYARD: Classic Vintage Black and White Prints

Untitled, c. 1960
© The Estate of Ralph Eugene Meatyard,
courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Gitterman Gallery, New York

Untitled (Zen Twig), 1961

© The Estate of Ralph Eugene Meatyard,
courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Gitterman Gallery, New York

RALPH EUGENE MEATYARD
SEPTEMBER 14 – NOVEMBER 19
Gitterman Gallery, NY

This exhibition, from a private collection, includes work from Motion-Sound, Zen Twigs, Light on Water and Romances.

TOM CHAMBERS: Dreaming In Reverse / Soñando Hacia Atrás

Presumptuous Guests / Invitados Presuntuosos
Photograph (c) Tom Chambers

Two Chairs / Dos Sillas
Photograph (c) Tom Chambers

Stuck In The Key Of C / Atrapado en la Tecla de C
Photograph (c) Tom Chambers

Glass Flower / Flor de Vidrio Photograph (c) Tom Chambers

"Twenty-five years ago I traveled freely throughout the Mexican countryside where I relished a warm, welcoming, and slow-paced style of living. I was heartened by the physical beauty of the landscape and the simple, pure lifestyles shared by both the Hispanic and indigenous people of Mexico. A sense of spirituality and magic were imbedded in their religious practices, crafts, art, dance, and literature...Sensing that little time remains to photograph the beauty of Mexico, I have created the series, Dreaming In Reverse, to express both my concern for cultural loss, as well as my appreciation for the inherent loveliness of Mexican life. Employing Magic Realism, an art genre used in the early twentieth century in Mexico, I have attempted to create images of Mexico which seem true and believable, but also perhaps improbable."– Photographer Tom Chambers

photo-eye Editions just released a portfolio of twelve pigment ink prints from this series, Dreaming In Reverse, housed in an archival anodized aluminum box is published in a limited edition of thirty with two artist’s and two printer’s proofs. The prints were produced with archival pigment inks printed on hahnemühle photo rag baryta.

Dreaming In Reverse / Soñando Hacia Atrás
Photographs by Tom Chambers
August 5 - September 25
photo-eye Gallery, Santa Fe

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Also on View
Aline Smithson: In Case of Rain

States Puzzle
Photograph (c) Aline Smithson

"We live in a world full of technical distractions. I see my children gathered around their computers as though it’s a summer campfire, faces aglow, as they peer into a world of friends and fantasy, participating in a new forms of entertainment that further remove them from the childhood that I experienced...

...And it’s because of this that I have been looking at bookshelves and untouched childhood pursuits with a new eye. With great sadness, I realize that these objects will someday be obsolete, at least in their current incarnations. And like a curator of antiquities, I see them now as beautiful objects to be admired and preserved, if only on film."—Aline Smithson

Aline Smithson: In Case of Rain
photo-eye Photographer's Showcase

Aline's PDN September 2011 Cover!