June 2006 Archives

The Pittsburg Post-Gazette has a preview of "Pictorialism in Pittsburgh" at Silver Eye Center for Photography.

Pittsburgh is home to the oldest continuing Pictorialist society, the Photographic Section of The Academy of Science and Art, which started in 1885. The group meets in Mt. Lebanon and has joined the Silver Eye Center for Photography, South Side, to present a rare exhibition of a selection of its archival and current photos, "Pictorialism in Pittsburgh."

Some interesting history on photo competitions amongst some pretty striking photos by unknown Pittsburghers, too.

Through Aug. 19
1015 E Carson St
Pittsburgh, PA
(412) 431-1810

For the past year or so, there seems to be a burst of interest in Stephen Shore. From a profile on Shore in the Guardian last Fall:

I do think about why people are all of a sudden looking at my work and it occurs to me that it may have needed a distance in time for people to see what I was actually looking at. People need time. It's much easier to look at the past than to look at the present. I was looking at the present and people didn't want to see it until it became - for them - the past.

303 Gallery's Shore show closes in less than 2 weeks, so in case you've missed any of the others, this one would serve as an introduction. What differentiates this show from others I've seen is the inclusion of reproductions of Shore's travel journals from 1973. Each page or two outlines the day, recording the odometer reading, the evening's lodging and TV viewing, the day's meals (where, not what), exposures made and their location, all accompanied by receipts for gas and local postcards from each stop. Interestingly, manyu of these postcards feature unironic landscapes of downtown business districts, mirrored in Shore's own work. As for the record of shots, Shore was using an 8X10 view camera, so the shot count is low. No one day reaches into double digits.

3-Jul-73 by Stephen Shore

Through July 7th at 303 Gallery
525 W 22nd St
(212) 255-1121

Idris Khan's "Every Nicholas Nixon's The Brown Sisters" was featured in the recent "reGeneration" show that just closed at Aperture, an appropriated photograph made up of the average of all Nixon's group portraits of his wife and her sisters. Kahn's amalgamated take on the Becher's typologies has been picked up byt eh blogospher, it seems.

Joerg caught on to Khan last Fall.

Is it just me, or does this just seem like a parlor trick?

Aaagh! I completely missed the Affordable Art Fair going on this weekend. There were two panel discussions that sounded quite good, the second of which, "Buying and Owning Photography", you can still catch this afternoon at 2pm if you're lucky. The panel is moderated by WM Hunt of Hasted Hunt gallery with Brian Clam of Clamp Art, Daniel Cooney of Daniel Cooney Fine Art, Mike Hoeh who blogs at Modern Art Obsession, and photographer Simen Johan.

Unfortunately, I missed out on yesterday's panel which featured fellow art blogger and author (she's an author, i'm not, we're both bloggers) Lisa Hunter.

Admission is $12 and includes access to the panel.

Affordable Art Fair
The Metropolitan Pavilion
125 W 18th St (btwn 6th and 7th Ave)

Just got back from Finland and wanted to poke my head in to say I'm still here. I was able to see the Sontag show at the Met over the weeknd with a few of the scant hours I had in NYC and will try to write about it by week's end. In the mean time, you can read Tyler Green's interview with Mia Fineman, the show's curator. Strangely, Fineman seems to indicate that there is only one portrait of Susan Sontag in the show, by Peter Hujar, but there are actually two. The second is by Anne Liebovitz.

Why we can laugh at Stalinism but not Nazism - why, indeed, do so many wear faux–Socialist Realism T-shirts as symbols of ironic humour, while wearing a swastika in any form could easily get you beaten up or at least ostracized from any kind of polite company?

I've often wondered about this stragen double standard. This is not an argument for wearing more swatiskas, but a question about why we tolerate celebration of Stalnist and Maoist design when both were even more murderous than National Socialism. (via kottke.org)

Summer's arrived in NYC and there are some great shows to see before all the gallerista's head to the Hamptons.

Joe Deal
New Topographics, 1974-1977
This one closes in a week or so. Deal is a new photographer to me, working in the same vein as Robert Adams. Comparing the sprawl Deal documented in the 70s to what's going on in the West today, you have to wonder how crowded and ugly it has to get before we learn our lesson.
Through June 10 at Robert Mann
210 11th Ave
(212) 989-7600

Sharon Lockhart
Pine Flat
This appears to be an ambitious pseudo-documentary project about a town in central California. Mainly it looks interesting for the child portraiture.
Through June 24 at Gladstone Gallery
515 W 24th St (btwn 10th & 11th)
(212) 206-9300

Pine Flat is also showing at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis

Loretta Lux
I plan to write more extensively on this hot commodity (that's not a perjorative) once I get to see the show. I've been reading a collection of Arthur Danto essays lately and Lux's work has suddenly struck me as a bad omen for where photography is headed as an art. It smacks of photography's inferiority complex and follows in a direct that traditional arts have already found barren wasteland.
Through June 24 at Yossi Milo
525 W 25th St
(212) 414-0370

Hans Bellmer
Petities Anatomies, Petites Images
Bellmer epitomized the sterotype of the artist as a half-crazed genius with sexual deviency lurking just under the surface. His portraits of strangely round dolls, some with a limb or two too few or too many, makes for an unsettling combination of sex and violence.
Through July 28 at Ubu Gallery
416 E 59th St
(212) 753-4444

Angelina Jolie, 2004 by Martin Schoeller

Martin Schoeller
Close Up
There is a little cottage industry specializing in extreme close ups that fill the frame from edge to edge, usually applied to celebrity editorial work. Schoeller distinguishes himself from the crowd with an uncanny ability to turn even knock-out stars into nigh-grotesque self-charactature.
Through August 30 at Hasted Hunt
529 W 20th St, 3rd Flr
(212) 627-0006

On Photography: A Tribute to Susan Sontag
Sontag's On Photography was an early reading in my self-education and is odd for its complete lack of illustrative examples. I assume this show couples the text with noted photographs she referenced. I will post a longer review once it opens in a week.
June 6-Sep 4 at Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 5th Ave at 82nd St
(212) 535-7710