BEN ARNON: Documents Life at PhotoNola

A classic hat lays next to the pew beside the foot of a 102-year old gentleman at Berean Baptist Church in Philadelphia. Photograph (c) Ben Arnon

"Police Your Racism" - Protestors demonstrate against police brutality at Union Square in New York City in July 2016, days after the back-to-back killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castille. Photograph (c) Ben Arnon

Several teams of girls await their Irish dance performances backstage in the 8-hand Mid-Atlantic Regional Competition in Philadelphia. Photograph (c) Ben Arnon

A bucking bronco throws tosses a rider and his hat to the ground at the Friday Night Rodeo in Dubois, Wyoming. Photograph (c) Ben Arnon

 

I met Ben Arnon, a New York City-based visual journalist, at PhotoNola 2016 Portfolio Reviews. His work focus's documentary reportage, street portraiture, and the impact of human existence on urban landscapes. He documents the unflinching honesty of people’s lives and is particularly interested in examining themes of socio-economic, racial and class dynamics amongst and within communities of people.

Photographs from Ben’s most recent work, entitled "RIO," are on view throughout New York’s Chelsea Market to December 31, 2016. Photographs from Ben’s “Black Lives Matter” series were exhibited at Davis Orton Gallery from October 8 to November 13, 2016, and were exhibited during the 2016 DNC Convention in Philadelphia at an exhibition called Truth To Power.  

Ben writes frequently for the Huffington Post, offering social commentary on a wide array of topics including visual arts, culture, society, digital media, and politics.    

benarnonphoto.com

huffingtonpost.com/ben-arnon

DAVID CAROL: No Plan B | 1993-2016

 Boy In Lake, Maine

Photograph (c) David J. Carol

  Joe With Fish, Baffin Island, 1997
Photograph (c) David J. Carol

 Turnaround

Photograph (c) David J. Carol

DAVID J. CAROL   |   NO PLAN B

Trade edition - bound in black
Photographs from 1993-2016. Afterword by Jason Eskenazi

DAVID J. CAROL   |   NO PLAN B

Limited edition - Bound in white, and includes a signed and numbered 6"x 8" gelatin silver print of Gorilla. Edition of 99. Photographs from 1993-2016. Afterword by Jason Eskenazi $150.00

In David Carol's own words, "Hey, did you guys know I'm selling my new book, NO PLAN B, for only $35.00? Did you also know I'm selling the same book in a limited edition with a signed silver print for only $150.00?"

David J. Carol’s new book, NO PLAN B, from publisher Peanut Press, is a retrospective of his uniquely humorous and often surreal personal work from the 1990s to the present. The book is a culmination of images from David’s “road trips” from the Arctic Ocean to post-Soviet Russia, from the Mojave Desert to the streets of Istanbul. Consisting of 32 black and white photographs, with an afterward by renowned photojournalist Jason Eskenazi, NO PLAN B is available in two bindings; the “black” trade edition, and a “white” limited edition, which includes a gelatin silver print signed and numbered by the artist. For sale online at Peanut Press.

The book NO PLAN B coincides with a retrospective exhibition on view at the Leica Gallery Soho, New York from February 1 - March 31, 2017. An opening reception and book signing with the artist will be held February 16 from 6:00 - 9:00pm.

DAVID J. CAROL   |   NO PLAN B
Photographs from 1993-2016

Afterword by Jason Eskenazi

Peanut Press

Available in two editions:

Trade edition - bound in black. Limited edition - Bound in white, and includes a signed and numbered 6"x 8" gelatin silver print of Gorilla. Edition of 99. Ships within 2 weeks. 

NEW YORK PHOTO FESTIVAL: PhotoWorld 2014 Exhibition Invitation

Photograph © Martine Fougeron, Tête-à-Tête

NYPH, 2011

"New York Photo Festival presents PhotoWorld 2014, a wide-ranging exhibition invitational selecting the best new documentary, fine art, and motion and drone photography being produced today, determined by top photo and image professionals from The New Yorker, CNN, Fortune, National Geographic, International Center for Photography, Esquire, Foto Visura, LensCulture and L'Oeil de la Photographie."

"Finalists chosen will exhibit their work in an installation at POWERHOUSE Arena opening September 26 during the DUMBO Arts Festival. Grand prize winners also receive a one-hour consultation with one of the esteemed jurors. PhotoWorld 2014 is an unparalleled opportunity to jump start your career in Photography."

Jurors: Elizabeth Avedon, L'Oeil de la Photographie; Jim Casper, LensCulture; Neil Harris, Fortune; Elizabeth Griffin, Esquire; Whitney Johnson, The New Yorker; Elizabeth Krist, National Geographic; Adriana Letorney, FotoVisura; Graham Letorney, FotoVisura; Aline Smithson, Lenscratch.

Follow NYPH News for Juror Features here.

Details to Enter here

Extended Deadline: September 16th, 2014

Complete your uploads by 
Tuesday September 16, at midnight (pst).

Details to Enter here

Extended Deadline: September 16th, 2014

Complete your uploads by 
Tuesday September 16, at midnight (pst).

Dumbo - Brooklyn NY

RICHARD BARNES: Murmur + Refuge at FOLEY

Murmur no. 1, 2005. 44 x 44 inches, Pigment print

Murmur no. 13, 2006. 44 x 44 inches, Pigment print

In Murmur, Barnes observes the flocks of starlings that cloud the skies of EUR, a suburb of Rome.  In this series, Barnes depicts nature as it behaves on it’s own, alive and breathing.  The photographs capture the birds’ aerial displays, which seem to take on the form of suspended mesh sculpture, and the uncontrollable fluctuation of nature as it moves on its own.

Green Leaf Nest, 2000. Pigment print

Refuge examines the complex architecture of bird nests, constructed from elements of the natural world and debris discarded by humans.  The nests are intricate structures, unique in shape and form. Murmur and Refuge are part of Barnes' larger series, Animal Logic.

 

Richard Barnes: Murmur + Refuge

FOLEY GALLERY
through February 23, 2014

+  +  +

Elizabeth Avedon: Is your work collaborative or do you work resolutely by yourself?

Richard Barnes: I enjoy working collaboratively. While in Rome, I entered into what was perhaps the most fruitful collaboration of my career to date. I produced “Murmur” with Alex Schweder, an architect and video artist, and Charles Mason, a composer. “Murmur” forms another chapter in my book (Animal Logic, Princeton Architectural Press) and is an investigation into the flocks of starlings which every winter fill the evening sky over Rome. No one is quite sure why the starlings stopover in Italy but before roosting for the night, they converge on the city from the countryside in flocks numbering in the hundred of thousands. This would be impressive enough in it’s own right, but they also do these incredible aerial displays that resemble drawings or computer animation written large overhead. The effect is awe-inspiring, though the Romans detest this “invasion of the starlings”.

Elizabeth Avedon: There is a surreal quality to these images. Do you regard yourself as a Surrealist or feel an affinity with the notion of the images as a kind of dream?  

Richard Barnes: I certainly have an affinity for surrealist imagery. I don’t see how it can be avoided as it’s so ubiquitous in our time, from movies and books to advertising. What sets my work apart is that it grows out of a documentary tradition and from this straight ahead or forensic approach I subvert the document through either juxtaposition or de-contextualization of an object from its surroundings, thereby rendering it hyper-real. I believe real life is strange and surreal enough if one looks a little longer and harder than to attempt to make something surreal on purpose, which usually comes off as contrived. As far as my images conjuring up the realm of a dream reality in someone, I would take this as an indication that they are working. 

My complete Interview With Richard Barnes here

Murmur Installation, 22 4th St at Market, San Francisco
Permanent installation commissioned by Jamestown LP

JAMES KARALES: Howard Greenberg Gallery

Rendville, Ohio, 1956

Gelatin silver print; printed c.1956. Signed, titled, and dated with "vintage 1-2" in pencil, photographer's stamps and "Life" in pencil on mount verso. Courtesy of the Howard Greenberg Gallery

 Untitled, date unknown

Gelatin silver print. Not For Sale. Courtesy of the Howard Greenberg Gallery

 Lower East Side, New York, 1969

Gelatin silver print. Signed in ink with photographer's stamps on mount verso. Courtesy of the Howard Greenberg Gallery

"James Karales (1930 - 2002) graduated from Ohio University with an M.F.A. in photography in 1955. His first job was as an assistant to W. Eugene Smith where he learned darkroom skills from the master. Early in his career, his work began to attract attention, most notably from Edward Steichen, the director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, who purchased two prints. Beginning in 1960, Karales was a photographer for LOOK magazine for 11 years, and became known for his landmark essays on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who granted him unprecedented access to his family. When LOOK closed in 1971, Karales became an independent photographer. His work is in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art and the International Center for Photography in New York." 

 +  +  +

"James Karales’ photographs of the Civil Rights movement put him on the photo world map, but some of his other major themes are the focus of an exhibition at Howard Greenberg Gallery to December 14, 2013. While his iconic image of the Selma to Montgomery march are on view, the exhibition delves deeper into his lesser-known surveys of the integrated mining community of Rendville, Ohio; logging in Oregon; and the aftermath of the Andrea Doria disaster. Many of the images were taken for LOOK magazine and are on public view for the first time. The exhibition includes work from 1956 to 1969."

James Karales

Exhibition: Nov 7 – Jan 4, 2014

Howard Greenberg Gallery
41 East 57th Street
New York, NY

Vietnam, 1963

Gelatin silver print; printed c.1963. Signed, titled and dated with "Vintage 1-2" in pencil, photographer's stamps on mount verso. Courtesy of the Howard Greenberg Gallery. "In 1965, Karales traveled to Vietnam to photograph the U.S. Special Forces, where he told the story of the war though faces of the people. A 1963 image shows a young Vietnamese boy carrying a baby on his back in a cloth sling."

 BOOKS

The exhibition of work by James Karales coincides with the publication of a new book by Steidl, with text by Vicki Goldberg, Howard Greenberg, and Sam Stephenson. The book, James Karales, aims to show that Karales’ stature as a photojournalist and social documentary photographer par excellence is based on much more than one image from Selma.

Another book published earlier this year, Controversy and Hope: The Civil Rights Photographs of James Karales (The University of South Carolina Press, April 2013), includes a forward by Civil Rights leader Andrew Young, who was Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s aide. He writes, Karales’ images reveal “the complexity of emotions intertwined with the hopes and hardships of the struggle.”

Text and images courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery

HOWARD GREENBERG GALLERY: Vivian Maier

Vivian Maier: Self Portrait Exhibition

 Photograph (c) Dina Regine

Vivian Maier: Self Portraits

 

Glass case with Vivian Maier's Rollei and small color prints

Curator Frances Vignola and Filmmaker Collector John Maloof

Also showing, Vivian Maier's unpublished work

An exhibition of self-portraits by recently discovered street photographer Vivian Maier made from 1950 – 1976 are on view at Howard Greenberg Gallery to January 4, 2014. The exhibition coincides with the publication of the book Vivian Maier: Self-Portraits (powerHouse Books, November 2013) that surveys Maier’s self-portraits, many of which are being shown and published for the first time.

The story of Vivian Maier has practically become a photography legend:  Born in New York City in 1926, she spent much of her youth in France. Returning to the U.S. in 1951, she worked as a nanny in Chicago and New York for 40 years. Reclusive and eccentric, she took pictures all the time, yet never showed them to anyone. From the 1950s to the 1990s, with a Rolleiflex dangling from her neck, she made over 100,000 images, primarily of people and cityscapes.

Maier’s massive body of work, which could have been destined for obscurity, was housed in a storage locker in Chicago for many years. Unbeknownst to her caretakers (three of the grown children she had looked after), the contents of her storage locker had been dispersed due to non-payment. Her negatives were discovered by Chicago-based realtor and historian John Maloof at an auction house in Chicago in 2007. Maloof pieced together the identity of the mysterious photographer, but Vivian Maier died in 2009, before Maloof was able to speak with her. In the years that followed, Maloof has brought her work to the attention of the art world and the general public; and since 2010, nearly 20 exhibitions of photographs by Vivian Maier have been mounted in the U.S. and Europe. Numerous critics have written that her work will be remembered as some of the best 20th-century street photography.

Vivian Maier: Self-Portrait at Howard Greenberg Gallery is the first exhibition to explore the photographer’s numerous self-portraits and the first U.S. gallery exhibition of her color work.  

Vivian Maier: Self-Portrait
Exhibition: Nov 7 – January 4, 2014

Howard Greenberg Gallery
41 East 57th Street
New York, NY

Vivian Maier: Self-Portraits
Photographs by Vivian Maier, Edited by John Maloof
Essay by Elizabeth Avedon. Published by powerHouse Books

(Text courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery)

CHRISTOPH KLAUKE | DOUBLE PORTRAITS

 Double Portraits  

Photograph (c) Christoph Klauke

Double Portraits  

Photograph (c) Christoph Klauke

Double Portraits  

Photograph (c) Christoph Klauke

Double Portraits  

Photograph (c) Christoph Klauke

German born Photographer Christoph Klauke, based in London, received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Brooks Institute of Photography in California. Over the years Klauke has gone on to work for many publications, including The New York Times Magazine, French Vogue and Vanity Fair, as well as solo exhibitions in London, Paris, Tokyo, Basel and Lugano.

His first book, The 28 Faces of Corinne Dolle, was published in 2011. I spoke with him recently about the upcoming launch in London of his second book, Double Portraits.

 +  +  +

EA: How long have you been working on your series, Double Portraits?

CK: I started Double Portraits with the intention of making a portrait photo book in early 2000. I had my own photo studio then, in an up-and-coming area of London called Spitalfields. After relocating to New York in the summer of 2001, I continued with the portraits in New York until 2004 and finally finished a third chapter on the West Coast in 2005. On returning to  London I thought I would be able to place the project with one of the specialist publishers but it proved impossible. I self-published my first photo book two years ago, as a form of trial run for the "Double Portraits" book.  I would recommend to other photographers to do the same. Although painful at times, it is incredibly rewarding to stay in control of the book production process.

EA: Are these portraits identical?

CK: No, the portraits are similar but not identical. There is a time lag of several seconds between the first exposure, the left photograph and the second exposure, the right photograph. All these portraits were taken with an 8x10" Deardorff camera, which requires using a heavy tripod. The left frame is focused and composed, the second is uncontrolled. The sitter knows that I am taking two pictures and is attempting to sit still. Since the depth of field in this close up setting is so shallow, there is inevitably some movement or at least a different expression in the second photograph. Combined together, the viewer's eye scans for differences and sometimes feels or imagines the moment in between.

EA: How did you arrive at this idea?

CK: Back in Spitalfields, in 1999, I was asked to exhibit in a small space, a former tailor's shop called "Made to Measure" in a Georgian house in Princelet Street.  I did a series of sittings with a local beauty and neighbor, and the first double portraits evolved. The images had to be printed large scale since the work could only be viewed from the street through the shop front window. Today, I am much happier working with small prints, closer to life size. 

EA: How large are the actual prints?

CK: The image size is 8 1/2 x 11" on 9 x12" Agfa paper, so just a minimal enlargement from the 8 x 10" size of the camera negative. The hand prints were made by Brian Dowling in London, close to the time of the sittings. Our intention was to produce a master set of reproduction prints for this book. Other than this set, I have a couple of spare prints of each image and that's it. We had no idea at the time of printing that the paper would disappear soon after. Agfa went bust and Kodak, which made the second most suitable paper stock, also stopped making the paper. It's worth mentioning that the photographs are reproduced 8x10" in size in "Double Portraits"; this is a homage to the 8x10" negative format.

EA: Who was involved with the making of this book?

CK: Stephen Male did the edit and sequencing of "Double Portraits", so when I met with Leon Krempel, I had a dummy with blind text in hand. It was suggested that I approach him with a view to writing the introduction because Krempel had curated and put together a very interesting exhibition and book called "Marlene Dumas: Tronies," where he contrasted historical paintings by the Dutch Masters with contemporary paintings by Marlene Dumas. Tronies are small, isolated paintings of heads. While a rigorous art historian interested in portraiture, Krempel was able to convey what the photographs feel like, as opposed to what they look like.

EA: The book has beautiful design details. Can you tell me a little about the printing, paper and binding?

CK: Lena Mahr is responsible for many of these details. She finished the book design based on the initial design direction by Stephen Male with great diligence. The book was printed by Optimal, one of the top printers in Europe. The paper we used is 115g/m2 Phoenix Motion by Xantur. In Germany the binding we used is called "Japanese binding", but I believe in English it is either known as pouch binding or French binding. Another term for the binding is Japanese fore-edge fold. Besides the obvious advantage of printing only on one side of the paper and having no 'show through', the pages lie almost perfectly flat when opened and don't close on themselves. I have to give the printer credit for this suggestion. It made a big difference for this project.

EA: Your book launch will be September 4th (at Claire de Rouen Books) in London. Any other future plans for this series?

CK: The "Double Portraits" book is really the finished work. There are only 750 books printed and all are numbered.  I would like to produce a sequel, which would involve spending a year or so in Africa, Asia and India, but this would require external funding. And who knows if Kodak survives. One day soon there may not be any film left to take these kinds of photographs.

ChristophKlauke.com

"The first portrait of each pair results from a carefully-established relationship between photographer and sitter. The second shot is taken a moment after the first, capturing the consequences, in the sitter, of becoming a ‘subject’. Sometimes these second portraits show us what León Krempel calls ‘sundered egos'. All of them describe the passing of time and, as such, allude to the way in which portraiture aspires to posterity."
  

DoublePortraits.com

  

Double Portraits. Photographs Christoph Klauke

A Limited Edition Hardcover. 156 pages, 56 photographs

First Edition, 750 numbered copies

Contact: Eudora Pascall: 44 (0) 7900 568 745

doubleportraits@gmail.com

DoublePortraits.com

PHOTOGLOBAL: The School of Visual Arts Emerging International Photographer Grants

 The African Queen © Namsa Leuba

Hadri, 2010, from “The Meat Tree”©Andrew Moynehan

The School of Visual Arts in New York City has announced the availability of two $35,000 tuition grants for emerging international photographers to it's PhotoGlobal program.

PhotoGlobal is a one year international program for young and advanced photographers to share in the vast creative opportunities that New York City offers, and provides the photographic community of the School of Visual Arts as a portal for that experience. The goal of this post-baccalaureate certificate program is to provide critical rigor and develop an individual's work through critique, lectures, museum and gallery seminars and a dialogue with faculty and the other participants.

Ten finalists will be announced on May 1, with the two foundation grant winners on May 15. For details on the full program and to enter, go to: SVA PhotoGlobal .

Founder: Stephen Frailey. Seminar Leader: Marc Joseph Berg. Critique Faculty: Peter Garfield. For additional information please contact: Tel: 212 592 2357 photoglobal@sva.edu / http://www.sva.edu/special-programs/photoglobal

MIKE BRODIE: A Period of Juvenile Prosperity Book + Exhibitions

 Photograph © Mike Brodie

  Photograph © Mike Brodie

  Photograph © Mike Brodie

 Photograph © Mike Brodie

 

  Photograph © Mike Brodie

Mike Brodie Talks To Elizabeth Avedon 

for Le Journal de la Photographie

"Mike Brodie doesn’t have a telephone, so I asked someone who asked someone who asked Mike Brodie a few questions..." Read Brodie's Interview

“Mike Brodie spent years crisscrossing the U.S. amassing a collection, now appreciated as one of the most impressive archives of American travel photography. At 17 he hopped his first train close to his home in Pensacola, FL thinking he would visit a friend in Mobile, AL. Instead the train went in the opposite direction to Jacksonville, FL. Days later, Brodie rode the same train home, arriving back where he started. Nonetheless, it sparked something and he began to wander across the U.S. by any means that were free - walking, hitchhiking and train hopping. Shortly after, he found a Polaroid camera stuffed behind a car seat. With no training in photography and coke-bottle glasses, the instant camera was an opening for Brodie to document his experiences. As a way of staying in touch with his transient community, he shared his pictures on various websites gaining the moniker “The Polaroid Kidd”. When the Polaroid film he used was discontinued, Brodie switched to 35mm film and a sturdy 1980’s camera.”–Twin Palms

Book

Mike Brodie: A Period of Juvenile Prosperity

First Edition, Casebound
Twin Palms Publishers

 

Exhibitions
Mike Brodie: Period of Juvenile Prosperity

March 7–April 6, 2013
Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

Mike Brodie: Period of Juvenile Prosperity

16 Mar - 11 May 2013
M+B Gallery, Los Angeles

KENNETH JOSEPHSON: Gitterman Gallery Moved to 41 East 57th St. NYC

Kenneth JOSEPHSON
Honolulu, 1968

Kenneth JOSEPHSON
Chicago, 1961

Kenneth JOSEPHSONChicago, 1973

Kenneth JOSEPHSONIllinois, 1971

 

 Kenneth JOSEPHSON
Colorado, 1959

 Kenneth JOSEPHSON
Chicago, 1970

The Gitterman Gallery moved to the Art Deco style Fuller Building on East 57th Street where many of New York's elite galleries are located including Howard Greenberg, Bonni Benrubi, Amador and Nailya Alexander Gallery, among others. 

Gitterman opened their new space with an exhibition of vintage black and white photographs by Kenneth Josephson (American, b.1932). "This exhibition includes many works rarely seen and features two continuous themes in his art: his exploration of abstraction with light and his dialogue with nature. These overlapping themes have been present in Josephson’s work since his early years at the Institute of Design in the late 1950s."

"Throughout his career, Josephson has explored an impressive range of subjects and concepts, often in dialogue with each other. He seeks to increase our perspective and challenge our perceptions. He utilizes a variety of ways to make images: anything is fair game, even calling attention to the illusions he has created."

"Though much of his work deals with conceptual ideas, formal concerns are integral to his vision. His early images of the patterns of light from the elevated tracks in Chicago have a syncopated rhythm of light which is echoed in much of his work from the 1960s. It is in his exploration of the abstraction of light in nature that this rhythm is most meditative, as if nature itself is drawing with light. In his later work nature’s palette becomes more subtle and seemingly infinite."

"Kenneth Josephson began his formal photography training at the Rochester Institute of Technology, earning an Associates Degree before being drafted into the army in 1953, where he spent several months in Germany doing photolithography for aerial reconnaissance. He returned to R.I.T. immediately after to earn his B.F.A. studying under the new program head, Minor White. Josephson started his graduate studies at the Institute of Design in 1958 studying under Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. In 1960 Josephson became an instructor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he taught until 1997."

"Josephson’s work is featured in numerous collections around the world. His publications include Kenneth Josephson (Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, 1983), Kenneth Josephson: A Retrospective (The Art Institute of Chicago, 1999), Kenneth Josephson: The First Fifty Years (Stephen Daiter Gallery, 2008), and Kenneth Josephson: Matthew (2054 Press and Stephen Datier Gallery, 2012)." (Gitterman Gallery Press release)

KENNETH JOSEPHSON

 to March 16, 2013 

GITTERMAN GALLERY

41 East 57th Street, New York

THOMAS ALLEN: Beautiful Evidence Opens Foley Gallery's New Space

from the series Beautiful Evidence
Photograph (c) Thomas Allen/Courtesy of Foley Gallery, NY

After eight years in Chelsea, the Foley Gallery relocated to the Lower East Side on Allen Street. Opening the new gallery space is their fourth solo exhibition of artist Thomas Allen.

Foley Gallery writes, "Playing the role of scientist, Thomas Allen enlists mid 20th-century books on the natural phenomenon of science (astronomy, physics, electricity, biology) and presents his research as if through the eyes of his 8-year old daughter. How would she understand and portray these theories and absolutes of science?"

"Allen’s signature use of cutting and repurposing book illustrations has not vanished. Instead of the pulp fiction genre, Allen plays with 50’s era versions of clean cut youths and domesticated moms. His unmistakable talent for creating the illusion of 3D in photography with his deft cuts and crimps, establishes a magical world in which a boy and girl play tag creating their own kind of electricity, a milkman makes a very special delivery in space, young toughs play marbles with the solar system and a mother busily sews her own version of “string theory.”

THOMAS ALLEN | FOLEY GALLERY
Sept 9 through Oct 14, 2012
97 Allen St, NYC
Open Wed – Sun 11AM – 6PM

CENTRAL PARK: A Group Portrait, Leica Gallery

Group of Bears, Central Park, 1993
Photograph (c)Laurent Girard

CENTRAL PARK: A Group Portrait
June 8 - August 4
Leica Gallery • 670 B'way • New York

Bruce Davidson • Elliot Erwitt • Ralph Gibson • Saul Leiter • Mary Ellen Mark • Nicholas Vreeland • Mio Nakamura • Arlene Gottfried • and more

GEORGE PLATT LYNES | The Jack B. Woody Collection: Steven Kasher Gallery to April 7

James Leslie Daniels, ca. 1937
(Jimmie Daniels, Singer at Le Ruban Bleu...read more)
Photograph by George Platt Lynes
Courtesy of Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

Self-Portrait, ca. 1945
Photograph by George Platt Lynes
Courtesy of Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

Robert McVoy, ca. 1941
(Robert McVoy was a dancer in Lincoln Kirstein’s company,
Kirstein co-founded the New York City Ballet...read more)
Photograph by George Platt Lynes
Courtesy of Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

George Tichenor, 1939
(Lynes fell in love with his studio assistant George Tichenor,
who was killed during the War...read more)
Photograph by George Platt Lynes
Courtesy of Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

Gloria Swanson, ca. 1939
(One of the most prominent stars of silent films)
Photograph by George Platt Lynes
Courtesy of Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

Marsden Hartley, 1943
(American Modernist painter, poet, and essayist)
Photograph by George Platt Lynes
Courtesy of Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

Bill Miller, 1944
Photograph by George Platt Lynes
Courtesy of Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

Jack B. Woody | George Platt Lynes Collection at Steven Kasher Gallery

Courtesy of Steven Kasher Gallery, New York

JACK B. WOODY, editor and publisher of Twelvetrees Press and Twin Palms Publishers, has produced some of the finest photography and art books for over thirty years. Woody’s first published photography book, George Platt Lynes: Photographs 1931-1955 (Twelvetrees Press, 1981), was immediately recognized as a classic monograph. Platt Lynes had been a highly successful fashion and portrait photographer in the 1930s and 1940s, rediscovered by Woody in the late 1970's. His George Platt Lynes Collection can now be viewed at the Steven Kasher Gallery through April 7.

From An Interview with Jack Woody: "While working as Director of Photography for the Nicholas Wilder Gallery in L.A. in the late '70's, Duane Michals told me, “There’s someone really out of fashion, a photographer named George Platt Lynes, you might be interested in.” About six months later someone called the gallery and said, “There’s a man in Berkley that wants to sell an album of approximately fifty photographs. Most of them are male nudes.” I went to San Francisco to meet Samuel Steward. George Platt Lyons’s had given him all of these photographs in the ‘50’s. There were fifty photographs. I had gone with a dealer from San Francisco, so I put up half the money and he put up the other half and we bought the album. That became the basis for my first photography book."

"I decided I wanted to do the George Platt Lynes book. I had the collection of fifty images, but I wanted about a hundred for the book. I spent two years tracking down all the living models and accumulating their photographs for this book – I borrowed some and some I bought.. Back then they weren’t worth anything. No one even knew who this George Platt Lynes was. I applied to the National Endowment for the Arts for a grant for the book and I got $12,500. from one of the non-profit arts organizations in LA."

"I sold the books by hand to the Strand and took them to Rizzoli on 57th Street in New York; they bought like fifty of them and put them in the window on Fifth Avenue. I went home and got a call from Andy Grundberg of the New York Times. He said, “I saw your George Platt Lynes book at Rizzoli. Could you send me a review copy?” I had no idea what a review copy was, all I knew is it was free. I said, “What is it for?” He said, “I’d like to write a review”. He gave me The New York Times Fed Ex number, so I sent it to him. He wrote this amazing review, and it just exploded from there."–Jack B. Woody (read more here)

George Platt Lynes
March 1st to April 7th
Steven Kasher Gallery

521 west 23 street new york

An Interview with Jack Woody
La Lettre de la Photographie