December 2006 Archives
Check out the NY Times' article on the LOOK magazine archive exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, if only for the amazingly bizarre Stanly Kubrick photograph accompanying it.
Willing to Be Lucky: Ambitious New Yorkers in the Pages of LOOK Magazine
Thru Jan 7 at the MCNY
1220 5th Ave at 103rd St
(212) 534-1672
A couple of emails later and some digging on my own have some up with a few additions to my Southern California tour list.
Todd Hido is a photographer whose work I have long admired in concept, but have yet to see in person.
Through Feb 28 at Rose Gallery
Bergamot Station Arts Center
2525 Michigan Ave., Building G-5
Santa Monica, CA
(310) 264-8440
The Collectible Moment, 160 photographs from the Norton Simon Museum (formerly Pasadena Art Musuem). I like these lesser known venues (to me, at least) when they put on a show from their own flat files. Typically, the canon falls away and you can evaluate each image for its own worth without having a photographer's name and reputation hovering close by.
Through Feb 26 at Norton Simon Museum
411 W Colorado Blvd
Pasadena, CA
(626) 449-6840
Wolfgang Tillmans retrospective
Through Jan 7 at UCLA Hammer Museum
10899 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles
(310) 443-7000
My sister and her family have just moved back to the United States from Kenya and our families are spending the Christmas holiday together at their temporary home southeast of Los Angeles. So, of course, I've got to try to put together a Southern Cali tour while I'm here. It's not easy. I really hate being in the car and the key shows I'm interested are spread all over the place, from La Jolla down by San Diego to the Getty Center in north Los Angeles.
I haven't been able to find good sources for gallery listings; maybe there just isn't much photography on view in LA right now. Photography Now lists 13 pages of shows in NYC but only 3 for LA. Am I missing something? Angelenos, end me an email with tips (link in right column.)
What I've got so far:
John Szarkowski
Through Dec 30 at Peter Fetterman Gallery
Bergamont Station
2525 Michigan Ave, A7
Santa Monica, CA
(310) 453-6463
Getty Center
"Where We Live", photos from the Berman Collection (thru Feb 25)
Public Faces/Private Spaces, recent acquisitions (thru Feb 4)
1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, CA
(310) 440-7330
LA County Museum of Art
Masquerade: Role Playing in Self-Portraiture
Long Exposures, photo essays form the collection
Both through Jan 7
5905 Wilshire Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA
(323) 857-6000
Brian Ulrich, Copia
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
Through May 13
700 Prospect St
La Jolla, CA
(858) 454-3541
Great interview with John Szarkowski in LA Weekly.
Some photographers think the idea is enough. I told a good story in my Getty talk, a beautiful story, to the point: Ducasse says to his friend Mallarmé — I think this is a true story — he says, “You know, I’ve got a lot of good ideas for poems, but the poems are never very good.” Mallarmé says, “Of course, you don’t make poems out of ideas, you make poems out of words.” Really good, huh? Really true. So, photographers who aren’t so good think that you make photographs out of ideas. And they generally get only about halfway to the photograph and think that they’re done.
(via MAN)
This panel discussion being held at Aperture tonight could potentially become a self-congratulatory gab fest ("examine the pioneering
gallerists of the 1970s, who jumped into exhibiting photography, and their crucial
role in shaping and marketing modern photography"), but hopefully will be more interesting than that.
Panelists:
Marcuse Pfeifer, Marcuse Pfeifer Gallery (no Web site, apparently)
Laurence Miller, Laurence Miller Gallery
Evelyne Daitz, Witkin Gallery (also no Web site that I could find)
Moderator:
Peter C. Bunnell, author and critic
Admission is free, but seating is limited (not sure about standing room.)
Thursday, Dec 14
6:30 p.m.
Aperture Gallery
547 W 27th Street, 4th Flr
(212) 505-5555
Two weekends back, I was astonished to find a long and prominent article in the Wall Street Journal (page 1) about the history of a single photograph. The photo depicts the execution of Kurds by Islamic revolutionaries and the article traces the history of the photograph in an attempt to identify its photographer, hidden for years by a shroud of anonymity for fear of retribution by the Iranian government. After being unable to find the article for free online (or the images), Google has helpfully pointed me to other folks more 'Net savvy than me.
Firing Squad in Iran, 1979 by Jahangir Razmi
No real time to comment beyond a couple of thoughts. First, though the article indicates that the photo was reprinted far and wide and generated great international condemnation of the revolutionary government, the lack of real action and change further underlines the limits of photojournalism even as powerful as this. Second, the visceral reaction to this particular image and why it was picked from a couple rolls of film to represent this event seems to be its similarity to "great execution art" of the past, as illustrated below. The aesthetic elements of even repulsive imagery simultaneously attracts our attention while dulling our understanding that such a picture represents a true event.
The Third of May, 1808: The Execution of the Defenders of Madrid, Francisco de Goya
The Execution of Maximilian, Édouard Manet
I am in London for the week, then back to NYC for a week before heading off to California for Christmas. Not enough time to see everything (anything?) on this list, but there are some great shows to catch before the year is out.
Harry Callahan
Nature
Pace/MacGill Gallery
Nov 30 - Jan 6
32 E 57th St, 9th Floor
(212) 759 7999
Patrick Harbron
Desert Sea Shores
Gallery FCB
Nov 9 - Jan ???
16 West 23rd Street, 3rd Floor
(212) 727-3635
Zoe Crosher
Out the Window (LAX)
Nov 17 - Dec 20
DCKT Contemporary
552 W 24th St
(212) 741 5052
Martin Edgar
The Diminishing Present and The Accidental Theorist
Nov 30 - Jan 13
Betty Cuningham Gallery
541 W 25th St
(212) 242 2772
David Maisel
Oblivion
Nov 16 - Dec 23
Von Lintel Gallery
555 W 25th St
(212) 242 0599
Gail Albert Halaban
This Stage of Motherhood
Nov 30 - Jan 6
Robert Mann Gallery
210 11th Ave (btwn 24th and 25th Sts)
(212) 989 7600
Don Burmeister
Ancient Earthworks of North America
Nov 24 - Dec 23
Safe-T Gallery
111 Front St, Gallery 214
(718) 782 5920
Over the past few weeks, the Guardian's arts blog has been accepting suggestions for the 50 greatest art works of all time. They've posted the results thus far (not entirely sure how this works, but whatever) and after a quick glance I see photography is completely unrepresented. Granted, the other media have a heckuva head start, but still...
Imagine the meeting where the funding for "Newton, Natchwey, LaChapelle: Men, War & Peace" show was approved. One hopes it was an inscrutably byzantine, but ingenious, argument that made the case, but realistically it was probably the bastard child of some high placed donor committee. "Wisdom of the crowd", as they say these days.
Through May 20 at Helmut Newton Foundation
Jebensstrasse 2
D - 10623 Berlin
+49 30 3186 4856
Long, long interview with landscape photographer and sometimes photojournalist Simon Norfolk. over at the architecture blog BLDGBLOG. Rambling interview covers current political ramifications of war coverage, efficacy of photojournalism, the impact of military activities on our daily lives even in the most innocuous ways. The guy's a bit sour, as you can detect from this quote:
I got fed up with the clichés of photojournalism, with its inability to talk about anything complicated. Photojournalism is a great tool for telling very simple stories: Here's a good guy. Here's a bad guy. It's awful. But the stuff I was dealing with was getting more and more complicated – it felt like I was trying to play Rachmaninoff in boxing gloves.
Take a look at Norfolk's work. I like it, but it certainly isn't "more and more complicated" in terms of explaining the effects or contributing factors to a war than traditional photojournalism. Mostly it's an after action report, beautiful, but far from impacting the causes or closures of war. Result of burnout? Maybe. I imagine it's tough to be constantly engaged as a caring observer in some of the most hopeless situations the world sees and the urge to find something beautiful in all that mess is probably a powerful one.
