MENTORS: SVA Graduate Photography Exhibition

Photograph © Connor Hughes

Photograph © Gabriela Machuca

Photograph © Grace Prunoske

Photograph © Amy Utter

Mentors, an exhibition of works by the School of Visual Arts most promising graduating BFA Photography students, inspired by their relationships with leading members of the New York City Arts Community. Last years Mentors included Vince Aletti, Elinor Carucci, Yosi Milo, Adam Fuss and Elisabeth Biondi, among countless other forces in Photography, so I was especially honored to be invited as one of 2012's.

Stephen Frailey, chair of the BFA Photography Department, Editor-in-Chief of Dear Dave, and Curator of the Mentor Exhibition, explains, “We are always seeking to provide our students with opportunities that support their growth as professional artists. Working with these mentors offers our students an invaluable learning experience, one that inspires them to take their work further.”

It was a great experience for me to work with a talented new photographer, Gabriela Machuca; at first getting to know her work, and then exchanging ideas and insights towards her final exhibition choices. In the end I'm very proud of her series, as well as all of the other participants. Drop by and view these emerging photographers work.

Mentors
March 16 – 31, 2012
Visual Arts Gallery, 601 West 26 Street, New York

IMAGE 12: ASMPNY Photo Contest

Second Prize, Image 09

Islamic Woman Ascending Stairs
Photograph (c) Jeffris Elliott/All rights reserved
(read: Jeffris Elliott In His Own Words)

First Prize, Image 09
Photograph © Martine Fougeron, Tête-à-Tête series
(read: Fundraising Campaign for Tête-à-Tête)

IMAGE 12 is a nationwide photo contest run by the New York chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers. The competition is open to all professional, serious amateur and student photographers residing in the United States. Contestants are asked to submit one or more images that were created after January 1, 2011. The deadline for entry submissions is May 1, 2012. Two categories: Professional and Student. Each category will have a first, second and third place prize awarded.

IMAGE 12 Judges

Elizabeth Avedon, Independent Curator and Correspondent, La Lettre
Holly Stuart Hughes, Editor, Photo District News and PDNonline
Jody Quon. Photography Director, New York Magazine
Marc Sobier, Global Creative Director, Y&R NY
Hosanna Marshall, Art Buyer/ Creative Producer, Sastchi & Saatchi

How to submit an image
View the previous years winning images

SUSAN MAY TELL: 30x30 Interview in Honor of Women’s History Month

Enigma

Photograph (c) Susan May Tell

Untitled 02, Photograph (c) Susan May Tell
Series: "A Requiem: tribute to the spiritual space at Auschwitz"

(read more: ARTnews Review)

André Kertész (angel), Chez Lui, 1983
Photograph (c) Susan May Tell

30 by 30 Interview: Susan May Tell / Lilo Raymond

Susan May Tell is an award-winning Fine Art Photographer whose work has been showcased in solo exhibitions at several Museums across the U.S. As a former successful photojournalist, Tell spent four years based in Cairo and four years in Paris working for the New York Times, LIFE, TIME, and Newsweek Magazines. This was followed by ten years as a staff photographer and photo editor at the New York Post. Tell’s photographs are in the Smithsonian’s Samuel Wagstaff Collection... (read more here)

Tell is Interviewed about the important influence photographer Lilo Raymond played in her work. Read this inspiring piece in an Interview series 30x30 created by Catherine Kirkpatrick for (PWP) Professional Women Photographers.

30 by 30 Interview: Susan May Tell / Lilo Raymond

A Series in Honor of Women’s History Month

30 Women Photographers and the Women Photographers
Who Inspired Them: March 1 – 31, 2012

BASTIENNE SCHMIDT: Home Stills in Houston

The Laundry Spiral, Bridgehampton, 2004
Photograph © Bastienne Schmidt

The Tree Farm, 2004
Photograph © Bastienne Schmidt

Bastienne Schmidt "challenges the popular idyll of household as private utopia with her Home Stills series. Posing in the role of a lonely housewife, and staging her works exclusively in Long Island, the artist recapitulates familiar scenarios excerpted from daytime TV. Following Highway 27 across Long Island from Patchogue to Easthampton, Schmidt recreates her interiors—from cheap motel rooms to upscale mansions—as imaginary rooms of her own, a twist on Virginia Woolf's eponymous idea of a feminist haven." – Press Info

H o u s t o n C e n t e r f o r P h o t o g r a p h y
H O M E S T I L L S
B a s t i e n n n e S c h m i d t
M a r c h 9 - A p r i l 2 2

R e c e p t i o n a n d A r t i s t T a l k M a r c h 1 5, 5 . 3 0 - 8 p m

JULIE BLACKMON: New Work at Fahey/Klein

Queen, 2010
Photograph © Julie Blackmon

Night Movie, 2011
Photograph © Julie Blackmon

New work from photographer Julie Blackmon’s ongoing series “Domestic Vacations” depicts imagined, as well as autobiographical, narratives inspired by the hectic and multifaceted domestic life of her own family. “As an artist and as a mother,” Blackmon states “I believe life’s most poignant moments come from the ability to fuse fantasy and reality: to see the mythic amidst the chaos.”

"The painterly influences of Julie Blackmon’s work are further emphasized by the large scale of the works being exhibited including four Archival Pigment Print photographs each measuring over 4 ½ feet tall and six feet wide. Blackmon states, "The paintings of Steen, along with those of other Dutch and Flemish genre painters, helped inspire this body of work. As Steen’s personal narratives of family life depicted nearly 400 years ago, the conflation of art and life is an area I have explored in photographing the everyday life of my family and the lives of my sisters and their families at home. These images are both fictional and auto-biographical, and reflect not only our lives today and as children growing up in a large family, but also move beyond the documentary to explore the fantastic elements of our everyday lives, both imagined and real.”'

Julie Blackmon: New Work

Fahey/Klein Gallery / March 8 – April 21
Also Showing Vee Speers

JASON FLORIO: Burma Freedom Fighters

KNLA - Karen National Liberation Army
Freedom Fighter and Film Maker
Photograph (c) Jason Florio/All rights reserved

Retired KNLA -
Karen National Liberation Army Freedom Fighter
Photograph (c) Jason Florio/All rights reserved

KNLA - Karen National Liberation Army
Freedom Fighter and Medic
who lost his leg after stepping on a land mine
Photograph (c) Jason Florio/All rights reserved

I have been arrested by the Taliban...ridden into far-flung Afghan valleys in search of nomads with mujaheddin as my security, dressed as a woman to cross a border, was at the foot of the Twin Towers as they collapsed, enjoyed the 'comforts' of a Cuban hospital, hunted bats in Surinam, chatted with Somali pirates over Coke and biscuits and danced like a fiend in Beirut nightclubs...among other things – Jason Florio

JASON FLORIO was born in London and relocated to the USA in 1987. He moved to NYC to pursue photography after seeing Richard Avedon's In The American West exhibition. "Florio photographed freedom fighters and civilians who struggled for independence in the Karen State of Burma, along the Thailand border in what is now the world’s longest ongoing conflict. The ill-equipped people have been fighting for an independent homeland against the ruling Burmese military government. “The Karen people have been locked in a David-and-Goliath conflict with a powerful authoritarian regime that seeks to push the Karen people off the map.” reports the award-winning photographer. Self -funded, he decided to bring the under reported struggle for survival against the brutal junta, to a wider audience."' – Gallery

JASON FLORIO
Portraits from the Jungles of Burma
Messineo Art Projects Wyman Contemporary
March 8 – May 4th
+

Jason's Makasutu: Mecca In The Forest Project

KEN ROSENTHAL: Photographs 2001-2009 at KLOMPCHING in DUMBO

Seen and Not Seen #1311-3 (2001)
Photograph ©Ken Rosenthal
Image: Courtesy Klompching Gallery

Seen and Not Seen #001-A-1 (2001)
Photograph ©Ken Rosenthal
Image: Courtesy Klompching Gallery

Ken Rosenthal (b. 1964) is an American artist living and workingin Tucson, Arizona. Since 2001, his subject has been an over-arching study of time, collective memory, fiction and cultural iconography; as seen through a somewhat brooding re-interpretation of historic negatives and photographs—specifically imagery from his own family album. He presents exceptionally crafted photographs—bleached, split-toned and blurred—that bring together a range of associations that seem at once shared yet highly personal, unknowable yet familiar. Like memory, his photographs are ethereal and ambiguous.–Klompching Gallery

March 9 – April 20, 2012
Artist Reception March 8 6–8PM
KLOMPCHING GALLERY
111 Front Street | Brooklyn NY 11201

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

VOJTECH V. SLAMA: Wolf's Honey

TV Show (2004)
Photograph ©Vojtěch V. Sláma
Image: Courtesy Klompching Gallery

Bodies (2002)

Photograph ©Vojtěch V. Sláma
Image: Courtesy Klompching Gallery

Vojtech V. Sláma (b. 1974) lives and works in the Czech Republic. His photographs have been exhibited in numerous venues across the United States, Europe and Asia. In Wolf’s Honey, Vojtech V. Sláma offers a wonderful glimpse of his world—days spent with friends, observations of his artist peers, visits to places and events, glances of strangers, still life and figurative studies—all personal vignettes inherently connected to the tradition of Czech photography. Together they reveal Sláma’s fascination with the beauty of ordinary life and moments that he snatches without fanfare and yet with such poetic force. Stunningly rendered by the artist into Silver Bromide prints, the photographs are quiet, melancholic and at times—timeless.–Klompching Gallery

March 9 – April 20, 2012
Artist Reception March 8 6–8PM

KLOMPCHING GALLERY
111 Front Street, Suite 206 | Brooklyn, NY 11201

MAX SNOW: 100 Headless Women

An Interview: Max Snow Talks to Elizabeth Avedon

click on La Lettre de la Photographie

Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts, New York
March 2 to March 27

View Images Here
(I can't post Nudes)

ADAM BARTOS: Travel Work

Teotihuacan, Mexico (agave plants), 1981
Courtesy of Adam Bartos/Gitterman Gallery

Mombasa, Kenya (park), 1980
Courtesy of Adam Bartos/Gitterman Gallery

County Road 80, Southampton, NY, 2010

Courtesy of Adam Bartos/Gitterman Gallery

Martin's Marine, Bay Shore, NY, 2010

Courtesy of Adam Bartos/Gitterman Gallery

"Adam Bartos’ interest in the 19th century travel work of Samuel Bourne, Robert MacPherson, and others, led him to Egypt, Kenya, and Mexico with a large format camera and color film. His images are thoroughly modern, yet their energy is inspired by the lucid depiction of form and light that the earlier photographers achieved. His attention to the picture plane creates a tension that resonates between the photograph as both his expression of a place and an object in and of itself. None of the photographs are constructed wholly from incident or narrative."–Gitterman Gallery

Adam Bartos | March 1–May 5
Gitterman Gallery
New York, NY

MONA KUHN: Bordeaux Series | Flowers Gallery, New York

Mona Kuhn | Bordeaux Series
February 23 - March 24

Artist Talk • Saturday February 25th • 4 PM

Flowers Gallery
529 West 20th Street
New York City

Paysage 7, Bordeaux Series, Photograph © Mona Kuhn

Mona Kuhn spends her summers in the beautiful countryside near Bordeaux, France, in a house nestled in the pine forest, lit only by oil lamps and candles.

Stone 1, Bordeaux Series, Photograph © Mona Kuhn

EA: How did the idea of including landscapes fit into this series?

MK: They are landscapes I took of the region in-between the portraits, to inform a little bit about the area. When I had the beautiful light, I was photographing my friends. When it was raining, and there are a lot of summer thunderstorms that go though there, I would go out and photograph the thunderstorms. A couple of them are dramatic thunderstorms images and large clouds and high contrast, and some are of pathways that create this idea where this room is where all the people have gathered. So you have a little bit of a maze like feeling with the landscapes that lead somewhere, but you don’t know where.

Paysage 9, Bordeaux Series, Photograph © Mona Kuhn

"It started with a group of friends in France that go truffle hunting. I realized that I would love to photograph this path, kind of bringing them to my work. It’s not that I want truffle hunting in my work, but I transferred that into the idea of almost a tale, a little like Hansel and Gretel. You’re going somewhere, there’s this house in the photograph, but no one knows where you are going. In a more philosophical way, I was looking at those pathways also as the passages of entering and leaving life. Not that’s what you see in the images, just what was in the back of my mind...To celebrate black and white, I made prints that are 38” x 72,” very large black and white silver gelatin prints on fiber paper. They are like the most traditional black and whites you can possibly have. They are perfect. I am so excited about those black and whites."–Mona Kuhn

Read my Interview With Mona Kuhn here

CRUEL AND UNUSUAL: Prison Photography Noorderlicht Gallery

PREVIEW NEWSPRINT CATALOG HERE
Buy It Here

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

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

Photograph © ARAMINTA DE CLERMONT
Series: Life After. Title: Passport (Achmed), 2008

CRUEL AND UNUSUAL:
Prison Photography Exhibition
Part I + Part II

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

MICHAEL AVEDON: VMAN and the Artists

Portrait of Artist Chuck Close
Photograph (c) Michael Avedon

In ART RUBY, photographer Michael Avedon states, "Photography is largely in part a mystery to me. I am drawn to faces, and when I received my first camera as a gift from my grandmother that is where I began. Friends’ faces, strangers’ faces, my own face. As of recently I have found a particular interest in photographing artists at work in their studios. Each space ends up being a reflection or extension of the artist within it, and it therefore seems to be the ideal natural environment to capture some sort of truth about that person." Read "Meet Michael Avedon: Art Ruby's Newest Contributor"

25th Issue of VMAN | Guest Edited by Carine Roitfeld, includes
The Artists Are Present: Photographs by Michael Avedon

The Artists Are Present...these 6 rising artists are just starting to make a name for themselves, as is the young man who shot them, Michael Avedon, 21-year-old grandson of iconic photographer Richard Avedon.–VMAN

As guest editor of VMAN's 25th issue, Carine Roitfeld, former editor-in-chief of Vogue Paris, featured photographs by Michael Avedon of emerging artists shot with his preferred black & white 35mm film. Also check out "Michael Avedon: A Portrait of the Artist" which includes one of my favorite self-portrait's ever!

RICHARD GERE: 2012 George Eastman Award

Portrait of Richard Gere © Michael Weschler Photography

Richard Gere Receives the George Eastman Award
By Elizabeth Avedon for Le Journal de la Photographie

“It's a great honor to receive this prestigious award. In light of past recipients and the valuable work the Eastman House has done in film preservation, photography and the captured image, I'm very grateful to have been recognized by such a distinguished group.” –Richard Gere

February 16th, Richard Gere received the the George Eastman Award for Distinguished Contribution in the Art of Film, as well as for his International Humanitarian Leadership, from George Eastman House in Rochester, NY.

Gere is known as much for his leading rolls in films such as American Gigolo, An Officer and a Gentleman, Cotton Club, Pretty Woman, Primal Fear, Unfaithful, The Hunting Party, and Chicago, as for his ongoing commitment as advocate and supporter of numerous humanitarian causes through his Gere Foundation.

Dr. Anthony Bannon, Director of George Eastman House, said about Gere's nomination, “We have a special interest in inviting Mr. Gere to receive this honor, as he embodies the spirit of all four of the major awards this institution bestows, including the George Eastman Award, the George Eastman Honors (which is presented to those who excel in both motion picture and photography) and the Eastman Medal of Honor (which is awarded for exemplary public service). We admire Mr. Gere’s own considerable photographic skills. I am also well aware of Mr. Gere’s work on behalf of the people of Tibet and his relationship with H.H. The Dalai Lama, and I have followed both his career and his advocacy for many years. I read with interest his recent statements before Congress, and must tell you they very much echoed a conversation I had with the late Manute Bol when he visited Eastman House to speak about the crisis in Darfur.”

George Eastman House, the world’s oldest museum dedicated to the art, history and science of photography and motion pictures, was the first museum to create a school of film preservation, the L. Jeffrey Selznick School of Film Preservation. Established in 1947, their motion picture archive contains the leading silent film collection in the world. With nearly 30,000 titles, the collection includes significant holdings from Metro Goldwyn Mayer, various independent studios, personal film collections of Cecil B. DeMille and Martin Scorsese, the Merchant Ivory Archives, the Technicolor Archives, as well as lesser known documentaries, shorts, newsreels, and avant-garde works. In addition, Eastman House is home to more than 400,000 photographs representing the history of photography, making Eastman House the world’s most consequential non-government, independent collection of still and moving images.

The George Eastman Award was first presented in 1955, and past recipients include Charlie Chaplin, Gary Cooper, Cecil B. DeMille, John Ford, Greta Garbo, Harold Lloyd, Louise Brooks, James Stewart, Gregory Peck, Lauren Bacall, Lillian Gish, Audrey Hepburn, Mary Pickford, Isabella Rossellini, Martin Scorsese, Meryl Streep, Gloria Swanson, Jessica Lange, and Graham Nash.

Also Read
An Interview With Richard Gere
by Elizabeth Avedon

Le Journal de la Photographie: 2•16•2012

NEW DELTA RISING: Magdalena Solé

New Delta Rising | Photographs by Magdalena Solé

University Press of Mississippi,
Dreyfus Health Foundation, Rogosin Institute, 2012

Photograph (c) Magdalena Solé

Photograph (c) Magdalena Solé

Young Ladies SlowExposures 2011 Exhibition
Photograph (c) Magdalena Solé

Photograph (c) Magdalena Solé

I have returned to the Delta a dozen times.
Always for the same reason: the people.

New Delta Rising | Photographs by Magdalena Solé
An exploration of life in the Mississippi Delta

The Mississippi Delta has been called "the most southern place on earth. Award-winning photographer Magdalena Solé spent a year interviewing and photographing hundreds of residents in the Mississippi Delta. The deep connection she felt comes through in the compelling images in this book. Solé captures their personal dignity, resilience, and resourcefulness, along with the closeness of family and community she found among them. (publisher)

"People in the Delta have stories, music, love and deep care for their community, irrespective of the hardship they endure. I was drawn to the people I encountered. They were unlike most I had known. They allowed me to slip into their midst as if they had known me for a long time, and we could share stories, laughter, sorrow and silence. This didn’t happen one time, it happened every day in every town." – Magdalena Solé read more here

The Wall Street Journal

Photo-Op: Delta Hues "Ms. Solé's lushly colorful and formally striking images are restless. The people of Clarksdale are lively and in motion, contrasting sharply with their crumbling surroundings."

New Delta Rising
Photographs by Magdalena Solé

Text by Barry H. Smith and Tom Lassiter