4.26.2013

PHOTO L.A. 2013: Le Journal de la Photographie in PRINT! Edition Zero

Parking © Alex Kummerman
Le Journal de la Photographie
in Print!

Le Journal de la Photographie, April 26, 2013

"For the opening of Paris Photo LA 2013, we have decided to release a printed copy of the Journal de la Photographie. Alex Kummerman, Co-founder and Chairman of the Journal took it with him to Los Angeles and did some snapshots of its birth and delivery in the amazing Paramount Studios."(Le Journal)

I'm so honored my "Interview with Lise Sarfati" (now updated) is the cover of Le Journal de la Photographie's first printed edition. 

Save me one!

4.24.2013

AMY ARBUS: ICP Book Signing April 26

 Join Amy Arbus for a signing of her new book, After Images, at ICP


ICP Book Signing: Amy Arbus "After Images"
ICP Store, 1133 Avenue of the Americas
Friday, April 26, 6:00pm–7:30pm 
 
Amy Arbus's fifth book, After Images, is an homage to classic paintings by Picasso, Modigliani, and Cezanne among others. A boxed edition from Schiffer Publishing, it contains 24 color plates and a conversation between Arbus and Larry Fink. After Images is perhaps her most visually arresting photographic series to date. Arbus's chiaroscuro lighting and lush colors produce emotionally dark trompe l'oeil portraits. The photographs are a discussion of what occurs in the lens between the real, the represented, and how memory influences perception. ICP Chief Curator Brian Wallis writes, "her astonishing pitch-perfect pictures say as much about the sweetly treasured past of painting as they do about the unpredictably hybrid future of photography."

Please note that due to professional obligations, photographer's book signing dates may change without notification. Limit of two signed copies per customer. Pre-orders and reserve orders are not guaranteed but every effort is made to fulfill orders. Books must be purchased from the ICP Store. If purchased before date of event, please bring your receipt. For more information, call 212.857.9725. This event takes place during voluntary contribution hours at the museum. (Source: ICP)

More About 

4.15.2013

GARRY WINOGRAND: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Exhibition and Catalog

 John F. Kennedy, Democratic National Convention, Los Angeles, 1960
Garry Winogrand, posthumous digital reproduction from original negative; Garry Winogrand Archive, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona; © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

 Los Angeles, ca.1980–83
Garry Winogrand, gelatin silver print; Garry Winogrand Archive, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona; © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

 Richard Nixon Campaign Rally, New York, 1960
Garry Winogrand, posthumous digital reproduction from original negative; Garry Winogrand Archive, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona; © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

 Los Angeles, 1980–83
Garry Winogrand, posthumous digital reproduction from original negative; Garry Winogrand Archive, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona; © The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

(SFMOMA/Yale University Press)

The exhibition catalog, Garry Winogrand, serves as the most comprehensive volume on Winogrand to date and the only compendium of the artist's work. Five new essays, and nearly 400 plates, trace the artist's working methods, major themes, and create a collective portrait of Winogrand.  

Leo Rubinfien provides an extensive overview of Winogrand's life and career. Erin O'Toole, assistant curator of photography at SFMOMA, considers the Winogrand archive at the Center for Creative Photography and matters relating to the ethics of posthumous printing of the artist's work; she also writes introductions to each of the three main plate sections. Sarah Greenough, senior curator of photographs at the National Gallery of Art, considers the magazine culture that gave birth to Winogrand's early work and the emergence of the museum context that fostered his ideas in the 1960s. Sandra S. Phillips, senior curator of photography at SFMOMA, writes about Winogrand's relevance for contemporary photography. Susan Kismaric, former curator in the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, offers a selected bibliography, full chronology, and annotated checklist that enables the reader to tell who among Winogrand's various editors has been responsible for the selection of any photograph, and when.  

Photographer Tod Papageorge, the Walker Evans Professor of Photography in the School of Art at Yale University, and Winogrand's intimate friend, protégé, and sometime editor, writes of his early years in New York when he met Garry Winogrand and became one of his closest friends. Papageorge curated Winogrand's 1977 exhibition, Public Relations, at the Museum of Modern Art. His own photographs have been exhibited and published widely, including Passing Through Eden (Steidl, 2007), American Sports, 1970: Or How We Spent the War in Vietnam (Aperture, 2007), OPERA Città. (Punctum Editions, Rome 2010) and Core Curriculum: Writings on Photography (Aperture, 2011). 

In the exhibition catalog Papageorge writes, "Before long, Garry and I were photographing together....moving up and down Fifth Avenue between Forty-second and Fifty-seventh Street, picture scouts loosely spread along a block or two, the flow of office workers, shoppers, tourists, cops, would-be world-beaters, and les belles dames sans merci presenting whole schools of potential actor-subjects shifting, rushing, pushing, expressing incalculable, evanescent patterns of gesture and movement. We each found a place in it, and a reason. For me, the challenge was to stop and hold that streaming flood of movement in a clear, coherent picture. Garry, for his part, was more compelled by the exchanges and story lines of the human comedy he encountered (and, with his rapid eye and mind, intuited or imagined), bringing his camera so quickly to and from his eye that he appeared to be scratching his nose. Up and down, back and forth: we were all in it nearly every moment, but Garry Winogrand was in it and in his very element."

March 9 - June 2, 2013
Edited by Leo Rubinfien; With contributions by Sarah Greenough, Susan Kismaric, Erin O'Toole, Tod Papageorge, and Sandra S. Phillips 

 + + +

Garry Winogrand: Co-organized by SFMOMA and the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC. San Francisco March 9–June 2, 2013 (Source: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art http://www.sfmoma.org)

4.12.2013

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

4.09.2013

MAGGIE STEBER+CARLOS RENÉ PEREZ: Collaborate at New York's Leica Gallery

Sleeping Beauty, 2008
 Photograph © Maggie Steber

Madje Steber sleeps in her bed with her stuffed kitty at Midtown Manor her home in Hollywood, FL. in 2008.  Dementia and the medications she takes to fight memory loss, causes Madje to sleep most of the day and night.


 
Cilla and Maggie, Mexico, 1992
Photograph © Carlos Rene Perez

Maggie Steber and Carlos Rene Perez collaborate in a combined exhibit, Presence and Absence. The personal nature of both presentations acts as a common bond and theme and deals with issues of isolation. A secondary bond is that until the mid-nineties the two photographers had lived together for over two decades and their continuing friendship creates a system of support and influence.

Maggie Steber’s exhibit, Rite of Passage, is an intimate recording of her mother’s voyage through the melancholy of dementia.  An only child of an only parent, Steber oversaw her mother’s care for nine years.  She used photography as a therapeutic tool to survive this longest goodbye. The fact that Steber never intended to share the work publicly makes the intimacy far more pronounced. Steber has worked in 63 countries as a freelance magazine photographer. While working as Director of Photography of The Miami Herald, the paper’s photo staff won a Pulitzer and were twice finalists for this coveted award. Her extensive work in Haiti in the 1980s and 1990s was published in an Aperture monograph entitled Dancing on Fire. Steber’s work is included in many private and museum collections as well as the Library of Congress.  She has been a recipient of grants from the Alicia Patterson Foundation, the Ernst Haas Foundation and the Knight Foundation.

In a remarkable contrast, the diversity of Carlos Rene Perez’s work exemplifies the role of the photographer as artist.  During almost 20 years of Leica Gallery’s existence, Perez has been a regular contributor to its calendar. With this exhibition, An Artist’s Life, he shows a remarkable multiplicity of style, vision and technical control, all along maintaining a truly personal perspective. His work spans 45 years beginning with traditional street photography but then veering off to fanciful tabletop toy adventures, and on to gilded masterworks inspired by Renaissance illuminations. In recent years he's been influenced by Edward Hopper's paintings focusing on the solitary experiences and encounters of individuals in intimate and introspective moments. Perez has consistently exhibited his fine art photography in New York and Texas and is in many private collections across the United States.  Commercially he's worked with Associated Press, USA Today and US News & World Report; Pratt Institute and Columbia University; New York Presbyterian and New York University Medical Centers; Bloomberg News; and 20 years covering New York fashion shows. (courtesy of the Leica Gallery, NY)

Presence and Absence
Maggie Steber and Carlos Rene Perez
 April 19 - June 1, 2013

4.05.2013

LAUREN HENKIN: Self Publishing Artist Books

This Is Your Land 2 
Photograph © Lauren Henkin
 
 This Is Your Land 3
Photograph © Lauren Henkin

 This Is Your Land 4
 Photograph © Lauren Henkin

Lauren Henkin with "This Is Your Land"


“My work focuses on the question, What will last? I work from the inside out, using internal narrative as the foundation in which to produce objects that reinterpret space, light and form found in the external."–Lauren Henkin

Last week I went to the Center for Alternative Photography to hear artist photographer Lauren Henkin speak about her work and her self-publishing ventures. Born in Washington, D.C., artist Lauren Henkin grew up in Maryland, graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in architecture from Washington University in St. Louis and now resides in New York City.

Henkin is an educator, reviewer, frequent speaker, photolucida advisory board member, author and publisher of multiple books, and active member in the photographic community. Her work is widely collected by institutions such as the Southeast Museum of Photography, Yale University and Dartmouth College as well as numerous private collectors. Her work has been published in numerous journals on photography and book arts including Black+White Magazine, Photo District News, Shots Magazine, Diffusion Magazine, Flak Photo, Urbanautica, Landscape Stories, Parenthesis and The Washington Post. She is both a Px3 multi-category award and Oregon Regional Arts & Culture Council grant winner, with other award nominations in both the Brink Emerging Artist and Contemporary Northwest Art Awards. She also founded her own imprint, Vela Noche, a small fine press publishing company and online shop.

Lauren Henkin
Workshop: Self-publishing Artist Books, An Introduction
36 East 30th Street
May 18

4.02.2013

AMY ARBUS: After Images ( two ) Exhibitions

 Nina / After Jeanne, 2012
Photograph © Amy Arbus

Libby / After Therese, 2012
Photograph © Amy Arbus

"I chose portraits that I found emotionally intense 
and heartbreakingly beautiful," says Arbus

 Nina / After Melancholy, 2012
Photograph © Amy Arbus

"Amy Arbus is fearless…Her astonishing and pitch-perfect pictures say as much about the sweetly treasured past of painting as they do about the unpredictably hybrid future of photography." –Brian Wallis, Chief Curator, International Center of Photography

PHOTOGRAPHS: AMY ARBUS
Amy Arbus is no stranger to portraiture but this latest series takes her work to a new level. These photographs are a discussion of what occurs in the lens between the real, the represented, and how memory influences perception. It is an homage to classic paintings by masters such as Picasso, Modigliani, Cezanne, and Courbet wherein Arbus extends photography's range. Her chiaroscuro lighting and lush colors produce emotionally dark trompe l'oeil portraits in which the live models appear to be trying to escape the confines of the picture.

"Re-enacting a painting requires a very deliberate kind of scrutiny,” says Amy, "It's like dissecting and re-assembling. The challenge for me has been to use extremely soft lighting and to figure out how to represent the sloped shoulders, elongated necks and fingers that don't exist in real life. I was always too intimidated to create portraits in the style of another photographer, yet ironically with this series, in taking liberties from the original, I feel I was able to make my most unique body of work yet. When people first see them, they are convinced they are paintings."

Amy Arbus has published four  books, including the award winning On the Street and The Inconvenience of Being Born. The New Yorker called her most recent book, The Fourth Wall, her masterpiece. Her photographs have appeared in more than 100 hundred periodicals around the world, including New York Magazine, People, The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. She teaches portraiture at the International Center of Photography, and The Fine Arts Work Center and NORDphotography. Arbus is represented by The Schoolhouse Gallery and The Griffin Museum of Photography in Massachusetts. She has had 24 solo exhibitions worldwide and her photographs are a part of the collection of The National Theater in Norway, The New York Public Library, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York. (NYDC/1stdibs)

Books and prints available: Blair Douglas blair@nydc.com + 1stdibs.com

200 Lexington Avenue • 10TH FLOOR • NY NY  
April 2 to 29th

67 Shore Road, Winchester, MA 
Artist Talk: April 12, 7PM
April 9 to June 2

ICP Book Signing: Amy Arbus "After Images"
ICP Store, 1133 Avenue of the Americas
Friday, April 26, 6:00pm–7:30pm  

+ + +

And one of my favorite AMY ARBUS books...
 The Fourth Wall * Amy Arbus * Welcome Books


4.01.2013

DEBORAH LUSTER: Pratt Photography Lecture


WEDNESDAY, APRIL 3, 7PM
Higgins Hall Auditorium
61 St. James Place, Brooklyn

New Orleans-based Photographer Deborah Luster will speak as part of the Pratt Photography Department's 2013 Lecture Series on Wednesday, April 3. The lecture will take place at 7PM in Higgins Hall Auditorium, 61 St. James Place, Brooklyn, and is free and open to the public.

The theme of violence remains front and center in Luster's photographs, revolving around the murder of her mother in 1988. She is most famous for her series One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana; Tooth for an Eye: a Chorography of Violence in Orleans Parish; and Prison Culture. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and others.


3.28.2013

DIANE ARBUS: FAHEY / KLEIN GALLERY

© The Estate of Diane Arbus, LLC

"There's a kind of power thing about the camera. I mean everyone knows you've got some edge. You're carrying some magic which does something to them. It fixes them in a way." –Diane Arbus
  
In 1967, Diane Arbus was included with her contemporaries Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander, in the hugely significant exhibition “New Documents” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York curated by John Szarkowski. A posthumous retrospective of her work was exhibited at MoMA in 1972, one year after her death.

Fahey/Klein Gallery presents a special Diane Arbus exhibition opening March 28. This exhibition includes several important Arbus photographs such as: Russian midget friends in a living room on 100th Street, N.Y.C., 1963; Lady Bartender at home with a souvenir dog, New Orleans, L.A., 1964; Jack Dracula, the Marked Man, N.Y.C., 1961; Two ladies at the automat, N.Y.C., 1966; and Circus fat lady and her dog, Troubles. "Diane Arbus remains one of the most influential and revered artists in the history of photography." –Fahey/Klein

DIANE ARBUS: Photographs
March 28 – May 18

3.25.2013

MALCOLM LIGHTNER: Dixieland

Stars and Stripes, 2008
Photograph © Malcolm Lightner

 Braids, 2009
Photograph © Malcolm Lightner

  Hauling Ass, 2009
Photograph © Malcolm Lightner

 Gator, 2001
Photograph © Malcolm Lightner

 Off Season, 2008
Photograph © Malcolm Lightner

MALCOLM LIGHTNER is a fourth generation native Floridian and his work is rooted in the distinctly American tradition of Southern Photography. By combining the traits of an articulate narrative storyteller, probing cultural anthropologist, and contemporary visual artist, Malcolm chooses depth over distance, imbuing both his pictures and his subjects with a profound sense of dignity.

His work has been featured in numerous exhibitions including: Art + Commerce Emerging Photographers and Joint Venture: Selections from the Dr. Barry S. Ramer Collection & Other Photographs. Several of his works are included in the permanent photography collections at the Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona Beach, Florida. His work has also appeared in publications including Life Magazine, Florida Trends Magazine, Guernica, Photo District News and Visual Arts Journal.

Malcolm currently resides in New York and is a member of the photography faculty at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

3.20.2013

STUDENT SHOWCASE: Roman Anaya

 My 85 year old Grandfather came here from Mexico as a migrant worker.
Photograph © Roman Anaya

My Grandfather captures the essence of a hard working man.
Photograph © Roman Anaya

"My family came here from Mexico as migrant workers. These images represent the hard work and obstacles my family has had to overcome to get to where we are today."–Roman Anaya

Roman Anaya is this month's Student Showcase choice. He is currently a student in the School of Visual Arts BFA Photography program.

3.16.2013

MONROE GALLERY: AIPAD Booth 419

  I Am A Man
 Sanitation Workers Strike, Memphis, Tennessee, March 28, 1968
Photograph © The Withers Family Trust

Roller Coaster, Seaside Heights, New Jersey, Hurricane Sandy, 2012 
Photograph © Stephen Wilkes

Apple Tree illuminated by gas flaring, Susquehanna County, 2011 
("Fracking The Shale Play")  Photograph © Nina Berman

 Empire State Building During Black-Out in Lower Manhattan, 
Hurricane Sandy, 2012.  Photograph © Nina Berman

And Photographer Bill Eppridge will be in attendance 
during the AIPAD Photography Show

 AIPAD
April 4 - April 7
Park Avenue Armory, Park Avenue at 67th Street

3.11.2013

SCHEINBAUM + RUSSEK: AIPAD Booth 307

Georgia O'Keeffe, Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, 1968
Photograph by Eliot Porter, Gelatin silver print

Retrato de lo Eterno, 1935
Photograph by Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Gelatin silver print

Scheinbaum & Russek will be exhibiting works by
Ansel Adams
Manuel Alvarez Bravo
Walter Chappell
Harry Callahan
Laura Gilpin
Yousef Karsh
André Kertész
Beaumont Newhall
Arnold Newman
Eliot Porter
Sebastião Salgado
Aaron Siskind
Alfred Stieglitz
Jerry Uelsmann
Minor White

April 4 - April 7
Park Avenue Armory, Park Avenue at 67th Street

3.08.2013

JAIME PERMUTH: Yonkeros

 Yonkeros. Photographs © Jaime Permuth

 Yonkeros. Photographs © Jaime Permuth

In his first monograph, Yonkeros, Guatemalan photographer Jaime Permuth documents “The Iron Triangle”: Willets Point, a small and often overlooked enclave of New York City that is home to junkyards and scrap metal businesses. “Permuth’s beautiful black-and-white photographs highlight local workers, and their tools and materials.”
 
 

Elizabeth Avedon: In the past, you've documented the circus performers of El Circo Rey Gitano in Guatemala. What drew you to photograph in Willets Point?

Jaime Permuth: The Guatemalan poet Alejandro Marre recently described my work as coming from the “B-side of life”. Considering these two projects, I would have to admit that there is some truth to that statement!

Circus life is like a revolving door, with people walking in and out of it constantly. The same is true of the mechanics that work in Willets Point. There is an essential mystery and poetic richness in this kind of human community. People tend to live on the margins of society and play by their own rules. In my experience, photographers are not that different. We go from one project to the next. We arrive, set up camp, and then inevitably pick up and leave so we can move on to our next destination.

For the past 40 years the mechanics in Willets Point have been locked in a battle for survival with the City of New York, which wishes to evict them and redevelop the area as mixed residential and commercial neighborhood. Occasionally there is a flare up in tensions that make it to the newspapers. One fine day in spring of 2010, curiosity got the best of me and I took a ride on the 7 train to take a look for myself. What I saw there was absolutely surreal; I felt like I had stepped back in time and found myself a figure standing in a Walker Evans landscape from the Great Depression of the 1930’s...read Jaime Permuth's Interview here on Le Journal de la Photographie.

3.07.2013

MATTHEW AVEDON TRIO: Gypsy Jazz At The Club Room at The Soho Grand

 MATTHEW AVEDON TRIO - FRIDAYS AT THE SOHO GRAND
with Matthew Avedon, Jordan Hyde and Jay Sanford
The Club Room at The Soho Grand 7 - 10

"It is with great pleasure that we are able to introduce The Matthew Avedon Trio into our weekly program at The Club Room at The Soho Grand. The Trio have proven their ability to bring a uniquely beautiful sound to wherever they play, but we like to think that when they step into The Club Room a little bit of magic happens."

We spoke with Matthew Avedon, guitarist of the trio about his influences, growing up around great music and the current state of jazz in NYC:

GrandLife: Growing up, how big of a role did music play in the Avedon household?

Matthew Avedon: Music was always a big part of my family but in very specific ways. I don’t think my dad ever played anything besides the Beatles my entire childhood, which is why I can’t ever listen to the Beatles anymore! I can sing every lyric to every song but I haven’t listened to any of it for years. My mom was more of a Doors fan and I feel the same way about their music; I love and can’t stand it! However, these are definitely the foundation on which my love for music was built even if I’ve moved away from them.

GL: Clearly, Django Reinhardt is a big influence on your music. How did you discover him?

MA: Django entered my life almost by accident. Every now and then I’ll go and buy a bunch of records from bands or artists that I’ve never listened to or even heard of just to find new music I like. I’ve spent a fortune on crap music but it’s all been worth it for those few records that stuck with me, and in Django’s case changed my life. I had read his name in guitar magazines and decided to check him out, this was before I had ever played any jazz, but the music struck a chord immediately. It’s got all the elements for good music: strong melody, strong rhythm, and virtuosity. It’s just so much fun to listen to and even more fun to play.

GL: How did you develop your style? Would you consider yourself more comfortable as a soloist or in an ensemble?

MA: I’ve definitely used Django and gypsy jazz as a foundation from which I developed my style. I play modern jazz, blues, rockabilly and used to be in some punk and metal bands (!) but my playing at its most basic form comes from what I’ve learned playing Django’s music. I do like to think that I’ve built on it significantly though, I play a way more modern version of gypsy jazz than Django did; it’s 2013, I’m not a strict traditionalist so much as a fan of this music which happens to be 70 years old. My band mates Jay Sanford (upright bass) and Jordan Hyde (guitar) are much the same. We all listen to the old recordings for inspiration and filter them through our own personal styles, that’s why we get along so well and play so well together.

GL: What makes for a perfect gig?

MA: A perfect gig for me is one where everyone in the band is feeling good and really listening to each other. When we’re connecting musically we push each other to play better, this is when I’m happiest. We’ve all played high paying gigs that just sucked because the music was boring or there was no energy or something; a good gig comes from good music and that requires everyone in the band to be on point.

GL: If you could go back to any period of New York jazz, which would it would be and why?

MA: Like most jazz musicians I’d love to be in NYC in the mid 40′s when bebop was really coming together as a new style of music. Even though I don’t really play that music so much the creative energy that formed it was so intense I’d just love to be involved or witness it at least. Now that music is considered completely normal, square and stale even, but at the time it was so revolutionary that it was unheard of, like a musical wild west. So exciting!

GL: What future plans for performing and recording can we expect in the future?

MA: We’ve just finished our first album in classic Django and swing tunes, which should be available for purchase at our gigs soon and plan on recording an album of originals in the gypsy jazz style in a few months. As for gigs we’re going to continue playing the Soho Grand every Friday, it’s been a great gig so far with a beautiful ambiance and fun receptive clientele as well as having great acoustics. We sound great in that room! We play around the city about four nights a week and encourage everyone to visit our website at kingscountyswing.com to keep up to date on our schedule!


Tuesday Nights: MOTO, 394 Broadway, Brooklyn
Friday Nights: The Club Room at The Soho Grand, NY

2.28.2013

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 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