RICHARD GERE: Pilgrim

 Giza, 2005

Courtesy of the Gere Foundation

Photograph (c) Richard Gere  

EA: Your photograph of the Pyramids and the South Pole (not shown) are like two jewels. I’ve never seen a photograph of the Pyramids from that angle before.

Richard Gere: I was in Cairo in 2005 on the way to the Middle East to meet His Holiness in Jordan, in the ancient stone-carved city of Petra. Elie Wiesel co-hosted “The Petra Conferences” with King Abdullah II of Jordan. They brought together Nobel Prize winners with distinguished social and political leaders. His Holiness was there and I was invited to come, but on the way there I was speaking at a conference of Arab women, "Women, Creativity, and Dissidence" in Cairo, Egypt, under the aegis of the Arab Women Solidarity Association (AWSA). I was there for a couple of days and I befriended one of the key archeologists.

I asked to get to the Pyramids early in the morning. I got there in the morning at dark and waited for the light to come up. We were way out in the desert. I took a lot of pictures. Somehow it was out and around, way on another side, and I could see the Pyramids were almost lining up. When the light was coming up, all the lines were converging and I just had to move maybe ten or twenty yards over, then all the lines created these planes. I’d never seen that angle in a photograph before either.

Richard Gere is represented by the Fahey/Klein Gallery, L.A.

Richard Gere, 108 Stupas

Erdene Zuu, Karakorum, Mongolia, 1995

  Photograph (c) Elizabeth Paul Avedon

 Richard Gere and Khyongla Rato Rinpoche, Bodh Gaya, India 1987 

Photograph (c) Elizabeth Paul Avedon

AMERICAN PHOTO MAGAZINE

 read Gere Foundation Foreword here

As I've lost most of the negatives from the photographs above and on the Gere Foundation site, click through for a last look before they disappear completely! – E.A.

A pilgrim is defined as a person who travels on long journeys. Richard Gere’s book of photographs, Pilgrim (published by Bulfinch Press, ISBN: 978-0821223222), is available from Amazon.com. All proceeds are donated to the Gere Foundation that supports humanitarian causes throughout the world. 

APERTURE 40TH SPECIAL ISSUE FALL 1992-II: Richard Misrach + Mary Ellen Mark

                         Richard Misrach (click to enlarge)

White Man Contemplating Pyramids, Egypt 1989

© Richard Misrach, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, 

Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles and Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

 APERTURE Cover by ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG
40th Year Anniversary Issue, Fall 1992

I recently came across APERTURE'S 40TH YEAR SPECIAL ANNIVERSARY ISSUE, published in Fall 1992. It's an extraordinary look back at Photography before the popularity of digital camera's came into the picture. ("Not until 2001 did Kodak begin selling mass-market digital cameras"–Ben Dobbin, AP). Michael E. Hoffman was still Director and Publisher of the Aperture Foundation. Hoffman published the legendary Diane Arbus Monograph by Marvin Israel and Doon Arbus in 1972, now in it's 40th-Year Anniversary printing, as well as books by Edward Weston, W. Eugene Smith, Paul Strand and Dorothea Lange, among many other greats.

The following excerpt is from Aperture's 40th Anniversary Issue: 

"1992, ABOUT APERTURE: Forty Years after it's origination, Aperture celebrates the Founders' affirming spirit. Seventy photographers published in Aperture since 1952 selected photographs especially for this Anniversary Issue. One image from each artist was chosen. The photographers also wrote their thoughts on photography in general or, if they referred, about their work in particular, much as the founders suggested should happen in their first editorial."

"...In keeping with the spirit of Dorothea Lange and other Founders who measured Aperture's success in part by the depth and expression of it's social conscience, Aperture will continue to be a forum for those photographers who are committed to confronting the crises and concerns of our time...." –THE EDITORS, Number One Hundred Twenty-Nine, Fall 1992

Also included in this issue were photographs by Josef Koudelka, Eugene Richards, Eudora Welty, Sophie Calle, McDermott and McGough, Alex Webb, Sally Mann, Maggie Steber, Chuck Close, Thomas Struth, David Turnley, Helen Levitt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Carrie Mae Weems, Joel Sternfeld, Masahisa Fukase, Jan Groover, Nick Knight, Barbara Morgan, David Wojnarowicz and Margaretta K. Mitchell. There may have been others I missed. See APERTURE'S 40TH YEAR SPECIAL ANNIVERSARY ISSUE: Part I here

Left, RICHARD MISRACH, White Man Contemplating Pyramids, 1989, as seen on page 50, APERTURE 1992 40th Year Anniversary issue. Right, ELAINE REICHEK, Red Delicious, 1991.

Left, INGE MORATH, Untitled, 1961, and right, MARY ELLEN MARK, Acrobats Rehearsing, Great Golden Circus, Ahmadabad, India, 1989, as seen on pages 32 and 33, APERTURE 1992 40th Year Anniversary issue.

APERTURE 40th Year, Fall 1992: PART I

Many thanks to the Fraenkel Gallery for your help in posting Richard Misrach's, White Man Contemplating Pyramids, Egypt 1989

RICHARD GERE: Talks About Photography in La Lettre de la Photographie's Weekend Agenda

Giza, 2005
Courtesy of the Gere Foundation
Photograph (c) Richard Gere

Cairo, 2010
Courtesy of the Gere Foundation
Photograph (c) Richard Gere

I was in this old Mosque and I just turned to my left and that shot was there. All the angles were right, all the lines were moving, everything was right. All I had to do was take a half step to my left. Everything lined up and I knew that was it. That was the shot...That’s a very complicated photograph; the dark areas, light areas, white against black, black against white. It’s very complicated and that’s a very straight...digital print made for me by John Paul Caponigro at his place up in Maine. – Richard Gere, Le Journal de la Photographie 4.30.2011

Cover Photograph: Pilgrim, Zansker, 1983
Pilgrim, Bulfinch Press, 1997

Richard’s photographs from “Pilgrim” are clearly made from the heart. They are not only pictures that you are informed by – but they are images you feel. Richard’s images speak to our soul by exuding spirituality, compassion, and atmosphere. Richard’s “Pilgrim” photographs formed by his experiences, defines what he represents, and documents his social, spiritual, and cultural encounters. The underlining thread of his photographs is his fondness for the people of Tibet as well as his extraordinary ability to document the livelihood of the enduring people who reside within these unfamiliar and mysterious places with dignified simplicity. – David Fahey, Fahey/Klein Gallery

Lobsang Tenzing, Daramsala, 1981
Photograph © Richard Gere, Courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

Ulan Bator (The Arrival of His Holiness), Mongolia, 1995
Photograph © Richard Gere, Courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

Angels, Shekar Monastery, Tibet, 1993
Photograph © Richard Gere, Courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

There are usually three shots. If it’s a difficult light situation like this where the shutters going to be open one, two, three seconds – from my own experience of my work, one of those three is going to be the one I want. It’s not always that one is sharper than another; whatever it is, one’s going to feel right to me if I do three of them. Sometimes it’s so dark, I can’t even see it, and I’m just sensing that there’s something there. There’s one in particular I took in a Monastery. It’s these two angels that are hovering there. (Angels, Shekar Monastery, Tibet, 1993) I could barely see anything when I took that shot, but I knew that the shot was there and I knew I had to take it “now.” – Richard Gere, Le Journal de la Photographie 4.30.2011

Le Journal de la Photographie, 4.30.11

Photography can open a doorway that can lead us into a new world, expands our horizons, and shows us exciting and challenging possibilities. Richard’s photographs allow us to engage the world and renew our perspective by reinterpreting what we think we know – leading us through that doorway. – David Fahey, Fahey/Klein Gallery

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I spoke with Richard Gere for Le Journal de la Photographie about his photographs, his book and exhibitions, and about his extensive photography collection...read the entire Interview here

Le Journal de la Photographie

CHIP SIMONS: Dog Gone

Mr. Ping
Photograph © Chip Simons/ All rights reserved

Brodie
Photograph © Chip Simons/ All rights reserved

Photograph © Chip Simons/ All rights reserved

Photograph © Chip Simons/ All rights reserved

Photograph © Chip Simons/ All rights reserved

...pets, since the very beginnings of human culture, have lived by a different set of rules than other animals – Ptolemy Tompkins "The Divine Life of Animals"

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Photographer Chip Simons, now Albuquerque based, has worked for countless publications from Time, Esquire, GQ, People, Scientific America, Audubon, Rolling Stone, and Forbes. He's shot advertising for Coke, Shimano, MTV, Nickelodeon, and Apple Computer, to name a few. He is known for his wide angle and fish-eye lenses, and his use of colored lights and light painting techniques...as well as his creative and conceptual approach to all things Americana. Check out Chip Simons Website

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Have You Read...Ptolemy Tompkins, The Divine Life of Animals: One Man's Quest to Discover Whether the Souls of Animals Live On. He received both a New York Times Book Review and an excerpt in The New York Times newspaper on the same day! In his Huffington Post Interview, Do Our Pets Go To Heaven, "Tompkins undertakes an exploration into the myths and beliefs across time that have defined animals' place in the metaphysical scheme of things". Ptolemy, the son of 1970s guru and best-selling New-Age cult author, Peter Tompkins (The Secret Life of Plants, Secrets of the Great Pyramid, and Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids), is himself the author of four critically praised books, The Beaten Path: Field Notes on Getting Wise in a Wisdom-Crazy World, Paradise Fever: Growing Up in the Shadow of the New Age, The Monkey in Art, and This Tree Grows Out of Hell, a spiritual history of Mesoamerica. More about Ptolemy