MONA KUHN: Between Modernism & Surrealism | Edwynn Houk Gallery

 

Spectral, 2021© Mona Kuhn
Solarized gelatin silver enlargement print

 

Interleaving, 2022 © Mona Kuhn

Solarized gelatin silver print

Portrait Revealed, 2021 © Mona Kuhn

Solarized gelatin silver enlargement print

 

Photographer Mona Kuhn and Darius Himes, International Head of Photographs at Christie’s 

Photographer Mona Kuhn and Darius Himes, International Head of Photographs at Christie’s discuss her series along with artworks by masters exploring surreal representation.

“Mona Kuhn: Between Modernism and Surrealism” 

An exhibition of seven solarized photographs by Mona Kuhn from her series Kings Road in dialogue with artworks by masters exploring surreal representation, including Man Ray, Láslzó Moholy-Nagy, Dora Maar, Erwin Blumenfeld, and Bill Brandt.  +  +  +  

Mona Kuhn’s portraits visualize an uncanny love story. Kuhn’s solarized photographs in this exhibition follow a young woman throughout the groundbreaking mid-century modernist home designed by architect Rudolph Schindler in West Hollywood. In this mysterious narrative, Kuhn explores the core themes of Surrealism — dreams, desire, creation, and a challenge to conventional modes — through this autonomous woman. An active subject, she seeks formal and spiritual union with the King’s Road House, an avant-garde center of its day and a symbol of community and creativity. Kuhn’s solarization pushes these scenes further into the otherworldly, dissolving the aesthetic distinction between the human body, and its presence within the building. Rendered in layers of oxidized silver, body parts and architectural elements mirror and dissolve into each other, and the woman’s silver shadow cast on the building creates a literal space of integration.

The breakthrough of Surreal explorations in photography are widely traced to Man Ray’s experimentations, which radically expanded the horizons of photography beyond straight representation. This show presents two of the artist’s solarized gelatin silver prints, a technique that he discovered with Lee Miller in 1931: a nude portrait of Meret Oppenheim posing in front of Salvador Dalí’s painting, printed on a carte-postale, as well as a portrait. Both the figure of the mysterious woman and architecture were key motifs used by Surrealists and artists influenced by the movement, and photographs by László Moholy-Nagy, Dora Maar, Erwin Blumenfeld, and Bill Brandt open a historical dialogue with Kuhn’s practice.

“Mona Kuhn: Between Modernism and Surrealism” 

Edwynn Houk Gallery, 745 Fifth Ave NY 

through May 11, 2024

 

Mona Kuhn: Kings Road, Published by Steidl

Mona Kuhn’s lyrical and formally daring portrait of the iconic Schindler House in Los Angeles, supplemented with letters, blueprints and more. In Kings Road, Californian photographer Mona Kuhn (born 1969) reconsiders the realms of time and space within the architectural elements of the Schindler House in Los Angeles. Built by Austrian architect Rudolph M. Schindler in 1922, the house was both a social and design experiment and an avant-garde hub for intellectuals and artists in the 1920s and 1930s.

photo-eye's 2020 FAVORITE PHOTOBOOK LIST : ZAIDO by Yukari Chikura

 

ZAIDO by Yukari Chikura (Steidl)

After following a succession of personal tragedies, Yukari Chikura photographed the 1,300-year-old Japanese ritual, "Zaido". Walking through the snow, where days can reach a severe -20°C., Chikura’s images are of a strange and mysterious landscape encompassing a range of subtlety between light and illusion.

"Steidl has designed a book that perfectly complements this stunning body of work. Opening from a slipcase to reveal a brilliant peacock-blue linen cover, we are taken on a journey through her photographs, printed on luminous silvery papers. Included is a separate Folk Tale booklet, map and a hand-made fortune by Chikura, wishing each person good health and happiness. Brilliant." – EA

 

"Before the festival, the noshu(performer) perform a very strict spiritual purification. In some of the longest cases, it is known to have lasted up to 48 days. Cold water ablutions are perfomed in the middle of the night to cleanse the body as a part of this purification. Seems like a very tough thing to do as a young person, doesn't it? On the day this photo was taken, there was a particularly heavy blizzard. The weather was so bad that it was impossible to see well in front of us" – Yukari Chikyra

photo-eye Books 

MY 2020 FAVORITE PHOTOBOOK

YUKARI CHIKURA “ZAIDO” | FotoFest

 Performers walking through the snow to the shrine.

Photograph © Yukari Chikura

A shrine, hidden in an otherworldly snow landscape, dedicated to the Sun Goddess Amaterasu. It is located in an area known for its heavy snowfalls, the border between thethree prefectures of Aomori, Iwate and Akita. © Yukari Chikura

The Godaison-mai. The two wearing the golden masks are the Ōbakase and Kobakase. The chant of the Ōbakase has been passed down from generation to generation by word of mouth. Because of the sudden death of an Ōbakase a long time ago, its meaning was lost and the performer is actually only pretending to chant. © Yukari Chikura

Photograph © Yukari Chikura 

A nōshū performing mizugori (cold water ablutions) at Makanaiyado, a ritual that is currently only executed at one of the four original localities. On this day the lake in front of the house had frozen, making the task even harder. © Yukari Chikura

YUKARI CHIKURA 

ZAIDO (Dedicated to My Father…)

“My deceased father came to me in a dream. “Go to a village hidden in deep snow where I lived a long time ago,” he whispered to me. As if in a dream, I followed his instructions and boarded a train; when I disembarked at a small village, I found it covered in silvery-white snow; the landscape an otherworldly dream.” – Yukari Chikura

Following a succession of tragedies, including her father’s sudden death, her own critical injuries from an accident, and the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, Yukari Chikura set off on a pilgrimage to northeast Japan. Her father’s whispers from a dream inspired her to follow his instructions, which were to document the 1,300-year-old Japanese ritual New Year’s festivity. Described by Steidl in a soon to be published monograph, Chikura captures photographs “of snowscapes that border on abstraction with images of the intricate masks and costumes of Zaido, depicting the cultural diversity of the participants, as well as their common bond in creating collective memory and ensuring the survival of this ritual.” I am deeply taken both visually and emotionally with the metaphysical nature of these performances

Yukari Chikura, Fotofest Portfolio Reviews 2016

FotoFest invited me to select one artist whose work I found particularly compelling from my experience as a reviewer at the 2016 Meeting Place Portfolio Reviews. I selected Yukari Chikura from the many wonderful photographers I reviewed as I was most impressed with her images and their back story. Her photographs, along with the other nine photographers chosen by 2016 reviewers, will be featured in the Biennial's "Discoveries of the Meeting Place" exhibition at the Spring Street Studios in Houston from March 10 through April 22, 2018. EA  

www.fotofest.org

Artists Reception: March 20, 2018, 6-8pm 

DISCOVERIES OF THE MEETING PLACE

March 10 - April 22, 2018

Spring Street Studios

1824 Spring Street

Houston, Texas

Marina Black (Russia/Canada): Selected By Patricia Conde, Director, Patricia Conde Galería (Mexico City, Mexico)

Jinhyun Cha (South Korea): Selected By Elda Harrington and Silvia Mangialardi, Encuentros Abiertos (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Yukari Chikura (Japan): Selected By Elizabeth Avedon (New York, USA), Independent Curator  

Debi Cornwall (USA): Selected By Duan Yuting, Founder and Director, Lianzhou Foto, (Guangzhou, China)

Kirk Crippens + Gretchen LeMaistre (USA): Selected By Maarten Schilt, Founder and Director, Schilt Publishing & Gallery (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

David Fathi (France): Selected By Louise Clements, Artistic Director, Quad; and Director, Format International Photography Festival (Derby, United Kingdom)

Thomas Holton (USA): Selected By Jae-Hyun Seok, Independent Curator and Professor at Daegu Mirae College (Daegu, South Korea)

Priya Kambli (India/USA): Selected By Dan Leers, Curator of Photography, Carnegie Museum of Art (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA)

Elaine Ling (China/Canada): Selected By Xavier Soule, Owner & President, Galerie VU' & Agence VU' (Paris, France)

Dylan Vitone (USA): Selected By Malcolm Daniel, Gus And Lyndall Wortham Curator Of Photography, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Houston, Texas, USA)

+  +  + 

www.fotofest2018.art

Alongside the FotoFest 2018 Biennial's central exhibition, INDIA/Contemporary Photographic and New Media Art,FotoFest sponsors the popular Discoveries of the Meeting Place, an exhibition that originates from the FotoFest International Meeting Place Portfolio Review for Artists. FotoFest invited ten reviewers to select artists whose work was an interesting discovery from their experience at the 2016 Meeting Place Portfolio Reviews. These artists are featured in the Biennial's Discoveries of the Meeting Place exhibition. The Meeting Place has established itself as a launching pad for the careers of artists, and these Discoveries are among its most successful, finding opportunities for exhibition, publication, and sales across the globe as a result of the portfolio reviews. FotoFest is proud to highlight this group of artists as a testament to their success. 

LOS ANGELES BILLBOARD EXHIBITION: Mona Kuhn + Alex Prager + Jennifer Steinkamp

She Disappeared into Silence, 2017

Mona Kuhn

"For this billboard exhibition, my intention is to expose privacy and intimacy on a collective and public scale. My hope is to transport the audience away from the collective and into the private, and vice versa.” – Mona Kuhn

Mona Kuhn is a highly acclaimed artist and longtime Californian, attending the San Francisco Institute of the Arts before moving to Los Angeles, where she has resided for over 10 years. Known for her large-scale dreamlike images of the human form, her work often references classical themes, though recent works have begun explorations with abstraction. For this exhibition, she has contributed a collage from her upcoming series and book She Disappeared into Silence with text by curator Salvador Nadales, Museo Reina Sofia, to be published Spring/Summer 2017 by Steidl.

(click images to enlarge) 

 Orchestra Center (Intermission), 2016

Alex Prager

“I chose this work for the billboard because it juxtaposes the audience and viewer, provoking the questions who is the performer and who is the audience? Where does reality end and artifice begin?”– Alex Prager

Alex Prager is a Los Angeles-based artist whose elaborately staged scenes tap into a shared cultural memory. She frequently references Hollywood cinema in her photography and film, using it as a tool for manipulating realities. “The construction of the images is intentionally loaded” says MoMA curator Roxana Marcoci. “It reminds me of silent movies – there is something pregnant, about to happen, a mix of desire and angst.” The work shown, Orchestra Center (Intermission), 2016, was recently presented at a solo exhibition of her work entitled La Grande Sortie at Lehmann Maupin Gallery, New York.

 Impeach, 2017

Jennifer Steinkamp

Jennifer Steinkamp is an installation artist who works with video and new media in order to explore ideas about architectural space, motion, and perception. She completed her BFA, MFA and an honorary PhD from Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, California, and is currently a professor at University of California Los Angeles. Jennifer’s work has been internationally recognized for pushing the boundaries of synesthetic and experiential artwork, particularly as our technological achievements and access increases.

+  +  +

The Billboard Creative (TBC) announced the debut of its first spring edition featuring artworks by three leading contemporary artists: Alex Prager, Jennifer Steinkamp, and Mona Kuhn. This exhibition is the first in a series of micro-initiatives aimed at keeping the mission of TBC activated throughout the year. These artists were selected for their unique dialogue with film and photography, two of the quintessential artistic mediums of Los Angeles. All three artists live and work in Los Angeles and play a vibrant role in the cultural community, fostering learning and supporting emerging artists. The artworks will be displayed on three prominent billboards across the city, with two billboards located in downtown Los Angeles, and another across from Paramount Studios in Hollywood. The goal of this exhibition, as with all TBC initiatives, is to broaden the reach of public art — transforming the streets of Los Angeles into an open-air museum, accessible to all. 

The billboards are on view the month of April 2017.

CHRIS KILLIP: In Flagrante Two at Yossi Milo

Youth on Wall, Jarrow, Tyneside, 1976

From the series In Flagrante Two
Gelatin Silver Print © Chris Killip

Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York
 

‘Bever’, Skinningrove,  N. Yorkshire, 1980

From the series In Flagrante Two
Gelatin Silver Print © Chris Killip,

Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

Families, Whitley Bay, Tyneside, 1976

From the series In Flagrante Two
Gelatin Silver Print © Chris Killip

Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York 

 

In Flagrante Two (Steidl, 2016)

 New version of the origin 1988 book

An exhibition of Manx photographer Chris Killip’s classic body of work, In Flagrante, is currently at Yossi Milo Gallery in Chelsea. This is the first time since 1988 that the series - fifty gelatin silver prints hand-printed by Killip  -  has been exhibited in the United States. The show will be on view through Saturday, February 27.

Killip, born in Douglas, Isle of Man, is a Professor of Visual Studies at Harvard University. In Flagrante was photographed by Killip between 1973 and 1985 mainly in Northeast England. Shot with large format cameras in black and white documentary style, these 20” x 24” gelatin silver prints bring to light the lives and landscapes during the time of Britain’s deindustrialization, from before and after the “Thatcher Years”. Often compared with Robert Frank’s The Americans, In Flagrante is considered to be a key artistic document of the era. This work is an enduring witness to the history and perseverance of working-class people and their communities struggling to survive social and economic upheaval. (Text courtesy of Yossi Milo Gallery)

In Flagrante Two coincides with Steidl Verlag’s new version of the origin out-of- print book published in 1988. 

CHRIS KILLIP

In Flagrante Two

through February 27, 2016 at

Yossi Milo Gallery
245 Tenth Avenue, NY, NY

JAMEY STILLINGS: The Evolution of Ivanpah Solar in the Mojave Desert

#8502, 27 October 2012

View North of Ivanpah Units 1, 2, 3 at Sunrise

#8796, 27 October 2012

Tower and Power Block Surrounded by Heliostats of Unit 1

#14110, 3 February 2014

Power Production at Unit 1

#6425, 2 June 2012.

Installed Heliostats in Horizontal or "Safe Mode"

"When I first encountered Jamey Stillings’ photographs of Ivanpah Solar in the Mojave Desert, I was captivated not only by their stark beauty, but by the questions his work raises in our quest to balance the growing demands of a consumer-based culture with the need to preserve Earth’s natural spaces and resources. As the impacts of global climate change become clear, we must grasp that the sum of our human activities is having a huge and negative impact on this planet. Since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, we have drilled, mined, and transformed much of Earth's wilderness, while burning enough coal, oil, and gas to radically raise the temperature of the atmosphere and oceans—a process that threatens to disrupt life, as we know it, by the end of the century. We face the urgent need to shift away from fossil fuels to energy sources that can profoundly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions.” –Robert Redford, Foreword

The Evolution of Ivanpah Solar (Steidl)

In this new monograph, Jamey Stillings synthesizes environmental interests with his longstanding fascination with the intersections of nature and human activity. In October 2010, Stillings began a three-and-a-half-year aerial exploration over what has become the world's largest concentrated solar power plant, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the Mojave Desert of California. From the simple and stark terrain of the preconstruction landscape to the angular forms of the completed solar plant producing 392 megawatts of electricity on 14 square kilometers of public land, Stillings explores dynamic interactions between raw organic forms of nature and those defined by the project's precise geometric lines. Shot from a helicopter during first and last light, Stillings' black-and-white images intrigue with tight abstractions, oblique views of geologic and geometric forms, and broad open views of the dramatic desert basin. (Text courtesy the Publisher)

The Evolution of Ivanpah Solar 

Photographs by Jamey Stillings

Foreword by Robert Redford

Introduction by Anne Tucker

Text by Bruce Barcott

Published by Steidl, 2015

DEAR DAVE, CONVERSATIONS: Domingo Milella in Conversation with Stephen Frailey

Photograph © Domingo Milella

Nemrut Dagi, Turkey 2013

Photograph © Domingo Milella

Myra, Turkey 2012

Photograph © Domingo Milella

Gavur Kale, Turkey, 2013

DEAR DAVE, presents

DOMINGO MILELLA

in conversation with

STEPHEN FRAILEY

SUNDAY,  October 25TH, 2015

SVA Theatre
12 PM

333 West 23rd St, NYC
RSVP: info@deardavemagazine.com

DEAR DAVE, presents a talk by Artist Domingo Milella about the process of making his recently published monograph, Domingo Milella (STEIDL, 2015). Inspired by the subject of cities and their borders, cemeteries and villages, caves and homes, Domingo Milella  documents photographs from what turned into a global journey of the oldest lands and the archaic world. 

"It's hard to talk about photography without facing issues of time, memory and death - not as stereotypical archetypes, but as challenging and malleable entities of culture and nature." – Domingo Milella

Domingo Milella, Steidl

Subscribe to DEAR DAVE Magazine

Domingo Milella was born in 1981 in Bari, where he lived until the age of 18. After moving to New York, he studied photography at the School of Visual Arts under the guidance of Stephen Shore. He worked with Massimo Vitali then Thomas Struth was for him an influential mentor. He currently lives between London and Bari. His work has been exhibited at the Foam Museum in Amsterdam, the 54th Venice Biennale and Les Rencontres d ‘Arles.

MONA KUHN + STEIDL + PARIS PHOTO: "Private" Book Signing at Paris Photo

Mona Kuhn "PRIVATE"

Monograph Published by Steidl (Nov 2014)

November 15, 2014

"Private" Book Signing at Steidl Booth, ParisPhoto 

Grand Palais, Paris  4PM

"PRIVATE" 

Photograph © Mona Kuhn

"PRIVATE"

Photograph © Mona Kuhn

MONA KUHN + STEIDL + PARIS PHOTO

"“Private” is a personal journey, weaving together the desert beauty with its brutal sense of mortality, understanding mysticism and our place in it." – Mona Kuhn

Mona Kuhn Talks About "PRIVATE"

with Elizabeth Avedon on L'Oeil de la Photographie

“Private” is a calm and introspective series; a meditative collection of images I took over a period of 2-years. I entered the heart of the American desert, traveling through the Mojave and Arizona regions, entering for the first time the remote parts of a Navajo reservation, areas close to James Turrel’s Roden Crater. “Private” is a personal journey, weaving together the desert beauty with its brutal sense of mortality, understanding mysticism and our place in it.

I usually start a new series with colors. I knew I wanted a little bit of that golden sand skin tonality. I wanted black as it has a certain sense of mortality. You are constantly testing your endurance in the desert, the limits of how long you can stay out there or how debilitating it is to be at 100 and some degrees. Your system really slows down and you can’t think straight. So the whole series is about our vulnerability in that environment as a metaphor to life.

At the time I was reading T. S. Eliot  “The Waste Land.” There are no direct parallels, but I noticed a certain essence of his poem in the work, like a perfume that stays in the air after someone left.

I wanted to approach what is truly strange, beautiful and disorienting about the desert. Aside from vast landscapes and intimate nudes, for the first time I also photographed a few desert animals as metaphors. I was intrigued by their mysticism, like desert shamans, they have an instinct of their own. They know well their place and function in that vast space. Like the California pale moths that fly into the light. Or a black widow tattooed on a woman’s hand. I photographed a majestic black condor, then I photographed a Nephila’s golden spider web. Animals seem to understand nature's balance and survive better than humans in the desert.   

I met a lot of people who moved to the desert because they want to escape or get “off the grid”. But the desert is not for the weak of the heart. It offers an alluring American sense of freedom, but its harsh reality does not cease to remind us of our own limitations. It is shocking to face one’s own mortality. Lee Friedlander once said: “The desert is a wonderful, awful, seductive, alluring stage on which to be acting out the photography game.”

One of the homes I stayed in was built on top of this slanted rock formation. Underneath that slanted rock, there was a large shaded open area, like the shape of a mouth half open. A perfect habitat for rattlesnakes.  This guy had dozens of stretched rattlesnake skins stapled on plywood board to dry out, all over the place.  Hundreds of snakes live right under his rock foundation.  I arrived at places and entered homes I could have never imagined before. But at the same time, being who I am, I wasn’t going to photograph the desert like “Breaking Bad.” I wanted to photograph the desert with a certain human element to relate to the beauty and the harshness. So there is a lot more landscape in this series than most.

The light is incredibly sharp; it contracts the pupils into tiny dots, making views of crystal clarity in which light and land are one. At times, I would photograph just the light by itself, its abstractions, bright sunlight and the graphic dark shadows - it had a powerful and minimal feel to it. 

I photographed some people along the way, at times in their homes. Most homes I have been inside had their curtains closed. People get tired of the heat, you start feeling the weight of light, it becomes heavy. You go into people’s homes and all shades are down. Some of the desert people I met prefer to live in darkness. 

You can easily loose the sense of scale in the desert.

In 1930’s, Georgia O’Keefe would often refer to what she called the “Faraway Nearby”.  I photographed what seemed to have a force and scale of its own, that being macro or micro.

One of these beautiful places was Grand Falls in a Navajo Reserve in Arizona.  It is a larger than life multilayered waterfall system. But the water is not clear; the water carries this monochromatic sand-like tonalities with it. It looks like a waterfall of skin tones.  There, water and skin become one.

On the opposite scale, I found a little spring flower that was so frail. It’s very delicate image shot from above.  T.S. Elliot would say that Spring season lasts only one day in the desert.  The Spring flower rises in the morning and dies at night. 

Along a similar scale curiously I shot from the computer screen an image of California City, a planned but unrealized urban development.  The roads marked out in the dust for a civilization that never really came, seen from a camera orbiting miles above the desert.   Like ruins in reverse.

November 13-16, 2014

Private, solo booth at Jackson Fine Art, ParisPhoto

Grand Palais, Paris

November 15, 2014

Private Book Signing at Steidl Booth, ParisPhoto 

Grand Palais, Paris  4PM

Mona Kuhn Website

SAUL LEITER: Early Black and White Photography from the 1940's and 50's

Jean, c. 1948

Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery

Scarf, c.1948

Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery

Debra and Regina, c.1948

Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery

‘He has a rapturous way with color, which stems from his love of the masters of modern art,’ writes Max Kozloff in the introduction to "Saul Leiter: Early Black and White." ‘But his black and white production is just as indebted to lessons he learned from those same masters.’

Saul Leiter 

Howard Greenberg Gallery

to October 25, 2014

Saul Leiter, presented by Howard Greenberg Gallery, represents the first solo show of the artist’s early black and white photography from the 1940s and 50s, focus's on more than 40 images including many unique prints that have never before been exhibited. Leiter made an enormous and unique contribution to photography with a highly prolific period in New York City in the 1940s and 50s. His abstracted forms and radically innovative compositions have a painterly quality that stands out among the work of his New York School contemporaries. Well-known for his color work, Leiter’s earliest black and white photographs also show an extraordinary affinity for the medium. His distinctive imagery stems from his profound and touching response to the dynamic street life of New York City. This show includes the artist’s iconic street photography and intimate portraits of friends and family.

The exhibition coincides with the publication of "Saul Leiter: Early Black and White" a two-volume monograph published by Steidl / Howard Greenberg Library, a new imprint at Steidl. With text by Max Kozolff and an additional essay by Jane Livingston, the volumes show the impressive range of Leiter’s early photography.

From Wedding as a Funeral, c.1951

Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery

LIFE Magazine, September 3, 1951

"Saul Leiter, who is a young free-lance photographer, spends a great deal of his time searching for incongruity...."text accompanying Leiter's award winning "Young Photographers Contest" spread in Life Magazine, displayed at Howard Greenberg Gallery.

Saul Leiter's 1951 LIFE Magazine "Young Photographers Contest" Entries displayed at Howard Greenberg Gallery.

Wedding as a Funeral, c.1951

Saul Leiter 

Howard Greenberg Gallery

41 East 57 St NY NY

to October 25, 2014 

Many thanks to Howard Greenberg Gallery for images and text

MONA KUHN: PRIVATE at AIPAD

Photograph © Mona Kuhn

"I wanted to approach what is truly strange, beautiful and disorienting about the desert. Aside from vast landscapes and intimate nudes, for the first time I also photographed a few desert animals as metaphors. I was intrigued by their mysticism, like desert shamans, they have an instinct of their own. They know well their place and function in that vast space. Like the California pale moths that fly into the light. Or a black widow tattooed on a woman’s hand. I photographed a majestic black condor, then I photographed a Nephila’s golden spider web. Animals seem to understand nature's balance and survive better than humans in the desert." – Mona Kuhn   

Photograph © Mona Kuhn

"I usually start a new series with colors. I knew I wanted a little bit of that golden sand skin tonality. I wanted black as it has a certain sense of mortality. You are constantly testing your endurance in the desert, the limits of how long you can stay out there or how debilitating it is to be at 100 and some degrees. Your system really slows down and you can’t think straight. So the whole series is about our vulnerability in that environment as a metaphor to life."

Two galleries will be previewing Mona Kuhn's upcoming series titled “Private” at AIPAD; Jackson Fine Art and M+B. Steidl is printing the accompanying book in May, to come out in early Fall as part of Paris Photo.

Mona Kuhn: PRIVATE

AIPAD, NY

Jackson Fine Art – Booth #102 and
M+B Gallery – Booth #423
Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Avenue (67th St.) 

Mona Kuhn: Acido Dorado
4 April – 10 May 2014
Flowers Gallery
82 Kings Road
London, England

Lee Friedlander once said: 

“The desert is a wonderful, awful, seductive, alluring stage

 on which to be acting out the photography game.”

Read My  

Interview With Mona Kuhn 

in L'Oeil de la Photographie here

BOOKS I: Photography Books Given and Gotten

Robert Polidori: After The Flood (Steidl)

Flowers Gallery, London

In late September 2005, Robert Polidori traveled to New Orleans to record the destruction caused by Hurricane Katrina and by the city's broken levees. He found the streets deserted, and, without electricity, eerily dark....read more here

Matthew Flowers with Photographer Robert Polidori

Photo (c) Elizabeth Paul Avedon

 Ken Rosenthal: Photographs 2001 – 2009

Photographs: 2001-2009 is the long awaited first publication of work from Ken Rosenthal. Published on the occasion of his Fall 2011 exhibition at Wall Space Gallery, titled Retrospective, this catalogue offers a condensed yet potent survey of Rosenthal's evocative split toned silver-gelatin prints....read more here

 Ken Rosenthal: Limited Editions

Designed and published by Jace Graf, Cloverleaf Studio

Bruce Morton: Forgottonia

Bruce Morton: Forgottonia

Yes, such a place exists.  It is actually the nickname for several counties in far west central Illinois.  The reason for the nickname started in the 1950s and 1960s when the interstate highway system was being designed and constructed.  Many times a route from Chicago to Kansas City, which would run thru the heart of this region, was considered but....read more here

Tom Chambers: Entropic Kingdom

 Tom Chambers: Entropic Kingdom

Having grown up on a Pennsylvania farm, I am inspired by Andrew Wyeth's rural landscapes, characterized by subtle, but powerful emotion. I hope to strike a similar emotional connection in the viewer by illustrating a disturbed ecosytem created by man's self-serving interests....read more here

 

Jane Fulton Alt: The Burn (Kehrer Verlag)

 Jane Fulton Alt: The Burn (Kehrer Verlag)

 Book Review by Douglas Stockdale here

 

Kottie Gaydos: Genong

 

Kottie Gaydos: Genong

The images in Genong were taken in the Garze Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan, China between 2010-2012. This handmade casebound book is the culmination of the three year photographic project, Genong....view more here

This is the first of several BOOK posts coming up. I was honored to receive most of the above books from their authors, including three from this year's Filter Photo Festival; Kottie Gaydos, Jane Fulton Alt and Bruce Morton. This list includes some famous photography publishers as well as a self-published book or two. – EA