Recently in Out of town Category
Wall's (new?) work is also being shown in England at White Cube. There's a longish interview in the Telegraph that starts:
Jeff Wall is arguably the most important photographer on the planet. Phaidon recently published a book showcasing 1,000 masterpieces from more than 30,000 years of art history. It contained only one photographer. Rather than Atget, Brassaï or Cartier-Bresson, the panel of experts chose Wall...Wall is rightfully modest about this assertion. Not to say that Wall's work is or isn't worthy, only that it's ridiculous that only one photo was selected to represent the medium. 'Course, one could say it's a johnny-come-lately art form (if its an artform at all). Still, to be proportionate by time frame, photography would rate at least four more examples. Based on volume, maybe the whole things should be photos.
If you had to pick 5 photographs that would represent the entire medium for a history of art, what would they be?
The results are virtually seamless color and black-and-white images that in "LS" resemble Romantic paintings and in "S" severe architectural studies. Both impress viewers on the elementary level of how the artist did them, and that is supposed to get us to forget how when this sort of thing was done before it was ridiculed and eventually swept away by the masters of modern photography.It's good to see someone else has noticed that all this digital montage work is just a quicker, easier, more seamless version of something that's gone on from nearly day one of photography.
Beate Gütschow: LS/S
Through Jan 10 at the Museum of Contemporary Photography
600 S. Michigan Ave.
Chicago, IL
(312) 663-5554
(Hey, admission is free!)
Andy Grundberg reviewed the new show "Foto: Modernity in Central Europe" in this past weekend's Washington Post.
In the show's fine catalogue, curator Witkovsky asks a central question: "Why would 'new photography' take hold especially strongly in Central Europe?" His provisional answer revolves around the presence of a strong amateur photography tradition and the creation of schools that nurtured photography as a radical new instrument of expression. One could also point to Central Europe as the meeting place of constructivist ideas from the Russian avant-garde and new art movements from France and Italy such as cubism and futurism.
The exhibition is at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, through Sept. 3rd and will be coming to the Guggenheim on October 10th.
Tyler Green has posted brief commentary on a number of photographers' works seen at the recent Miami art fairs, including Sara Pickering's explosion pics, reviewed a year ago here despite Tyler's description of her work as "new". I continue to see her work pick up additional notice over time. Slow and steady wins the race.
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)
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
Collecting vernacular photography is not so far from hoarding family photographs, particularly from two or three generations removed. I have a handful pf photographs of my father as a two or three-year old that I find visually interesting, taken by an unknown relative. Had I not been told the little boy in the picture was my dad, they'd have a whole different meaning.
When it comes to vernacular photography, the place in question is conceptual, not necessarily physical or geographic. Here, “vernacular” refers to a locus of expression in the medium of photographic image-making that is, simultaneously, everywhere and nowhere; traditionally, that familiar “place” has been and is anywhere where anyone who has ever handled a camera, shooting a conventional kind of photo (like the family snapshots or other generic images listed above), has pointed his or her lens.
From Everybody’s Photography by Edward M. Gomez
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
