The New York Photo Festival 2012 opened on May 16 with shows assembled by four guest curators, and some nearby satellite shows. After three years in which shows took over multiple spaces in the Dumbo neighborhood in Brooklyn, this year the four-day festival has located most of the shows by its four guest curators in the Powerhouse Arena and bookstore at 37 Main Street. Powerhouse Arena is also the site of panel discussions with artists and presentations by ImageBrief, the sponsor of this year’s festival.
Amy Smith-Stewart’s “What Do You Believe?” packs loads of images into displays at 56 Water Street and 37 Main Street. Artists show include Jen DeNike, Hank Willis Thomas, Fay Ray, Anissa Mack, Matthew Spiegelman. A discussion with Smith-Stewart and some of the exhibiting artists takes place Thursday May 17 from 3 to 5 pm.
Glenn Ruga, founder of socialdocumentary.net presents several editorial and documentary photographers, including Bruce Davidson, Lori Grinker, Platon, Eugene Richards, and Rina Castelnuovo in “The Razor’s Edge: Between Documentary and Fine Art Photography” at 37 Main Street. A discussion with Ruga and some of the artists will take place at 7 pm Thursday, May 17. Ruga also curated a show on the mezzanine of 37 Main Street, made up of images presented by socialdocumentary.net.
“The Curse and the Gift,” curated by Claude Grunitzky, is exhibited on the messanine of 37 Main Street. Artists in the show include Christian Witkin, and Evangelia Kranioti and Irmelie Krekin. Friday May 18 from 3 to 5 pm there will be a discussion with Grunitzky and the artists.
http://nyph.at/grunitzky/statement.html
DJ Spooky (aka Paul Miller) has curated a show titled “Sinfonia Antarctica (The Book of Ice)” that looks at archival images from the Antarctic and how the work “has shaped some of the ways we think about contemporary digital media esthetics.” According to press information for the festival, the show will be presented on ice floes on the East River, depending on prevailing currents. There will also be a presentation Friday May 18 from 8 to 9:30 pm at 37 Main Street.
Tickets are still available for $20 at the door in the Powerhouse Arena.
A 1992 photograph by Jeff Wall sold for $3,666,500 yesterday evening during a Post-War and Contemporary art auction at Christie’s in New York City. The previous record sale for a work by Jeff Wall was $1.1 million.
The work “Dead Troops Talk (A vision after an ambush of a Red Army patrol, near Moqor, Afghanistan, winter 1986″ depicts a grisly scene in which Soviet Red Army soldiers killed by the Afghan mujahideen have come back to life and are conversing with one another.
The photograph, framed in a light box, was the first in an edition of two, with one artist’s print. The photograph has been in the collection of David and Geraldine Pincus, who acquired it from Marian Goodman Gallery in New York. The Pincus’s substantial collection formed a major part of the sale, which set a record for a Post-War and Contemporary art sale at $388.5 million, according to Christie’s.
The high lot in the sale was Mark Rothko’s “Orange, Red, Yellow,” which sold for $86.9 million, another record for a work from the Post-War period.
Three other photographs were included in the sale. A Richard Prince work that appropriated a Marlboro advertisement, “Untitled (Cowboys),” sold for $602,500. Cindy Sherman’s “Untitled #122″ sold for $206,500. And Nan Goldin’s “Ballad Triptych” sold for $218,500.
In this short program for State of the Arts, a New Jersey public television series produced by PCK Media, LaToya Ruby Frazier talks about her introduction to photography and about the work she is showing in the 2012 Whitney Biennial, including a performance piece that will debut on Friday, May 11.
Says Whitney Biennial co-curator Jay Sanders, “Her work embodies the history of documentary photography, photography that articulates social conditions, that articulates the reality of working people, but at the same time she’s very well read and embedded in a dialogue coming out of conceptual art.”
United Photo Industries, a Brooklyn-based collective dedicated to exhibiting and promoting photography, has announced their first major event, which will take place at a river-front park in Brooklyn, New York, this summer from June 22-July 1.
Dubbed “Photoville,” the event at Brooklyn Bridge Park, will feature 35 concurrent exhibitions of photography from all over the world. Each exhibition will be housed in shipping containers, forming a “village” of photography exhibitions, which will be free and open to the public.
As part of the Photoville programming, PDN has joined with United Photo Industries and Brooklyn Bridge Park to produce an outdoor photo exhibition called “The Fence,” which will adorn Brooklyn Bridge Park for two months this summer.
To create the installation, more than 300 images will be printed on photographic mesh, forming a 1,000-foot fence. The images exhibited on “The Fence” will be selected from contest entries by a jury of photography curators and editors. For more information on how to enter, visit The Fence contest site here.
In addition to the exhibitions, Photoville will also feature outdoor projections, panel discussions and lectures, workshops, a food and beer garden, tents with photo gear vendors, and even a dog run.
For more information about the inaugural Photoville event visit photovillenyc.org.
Three photographers walk into a hotel in Dubai. A guy proposes a self portrait shoot-out, and they agree to take up the challenge in front of an audience of photographers in town to attend the Gulf Photo Plus 2012 show. The first photographer, David Hobby, says, “My goal tonight is not to fatally embarrass myself in front of my long-time idols.” The second photographer, Martin Prihoda, tells the MC that still life makes him uncomfortable. (Fortunately for him, still life wasn’t the challenge.) The third photographer, Gregory Heisler, says, “I really have to pee.” Then the shoot-out begins, with an intrepid video crew on hand to capture the drama, reality-TV style. Cameo appearances by David Burnett, Zack Arias, and Joe McNally. We’ll resist the urge to spoil the surprise by revealing the winner.
Have the morality police chilled artistic expression, or does this image by John Midgley–which appears on an APA promo for a talk by the fashion and celebrity photographer–violate the standards of public decency without the alteration?
Midgley is scheduled to give a talk called “Memory: Journey’s of Fiction and Fantasy” at the Apple Store at 7 p.m. today. The talk is part of the Image Maker Lecture Series sponsored by APA New York, and Midgley provided the image, undoctored, so APA could promote his talk via e-mail blasts.
According to Midgley, APA New York regional director Jocelyn Zucker told him the image wasn’t acceptable because of the boy’s nudity. “We might shock someone with a naked little boy’s penis, or do some other greater damage,” says Midgley, apologizing for his cynicism. He adds, “The puritanism drives me a little crazy sometimes.”
Zucker says, “As per our agreement with Apple, all lectures and the images presented must be ‘family friendly’ – no nudity or swearing, etc. This is not a concern on APA’s behalf; we would enjoy being able to present more controversial content, however, the Apple lectures are not the proper venue. John made the decision to use that image and censor it, rather than select a different image for the promo.”
Midgley ended up not only covering the boy’s penis, but defacing his own image.
“It wasn’t really meant to be a form of protest, it was ‘Well, if I censor the offending bits could that work?’” he explains. “So I did it quickly and in hindsight, badly. Next thing I know it’s up there [in an APA promotion.] And in a way I think subconsciously I was so pissed that it is a form of protest. It [the objection to nudity] is ridiculous and so is the censorship I imposed.”
At the first in a series of educational seminars organized as part of the 2012 PDN’s 30 programming, three photographers named to this year’s PDN’s 30 spoke about the importance of establishing and unique esthetic perspective, and about being persistent in creating and promoting new work to potential clients.
The panel discussion at the School for Visual Arts Theater in New York City, which was moderated by PDN editor Holly Stuart Hughes, included PDN’s 30 photographers Sam Kaplan, Peter Ash Lee and Ryan Pfluger, as well as veteran photographer Andy Katz and New York Times Magazine associate photo editor Clinton Cargill. (more…)
This Sunday, March 11, is the one-year anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Photographers who have extensively covered the devastation and the environmental and nuclear consequences around the affected region are marking the anniversary in variety of ways. Here are a few of the events:
Black Tsunami FotoEvidence, the organization that supports photography books on social justice issues, is releasing a new digital book featuring Tokyo-based photographer James Whitlow Delano’s documentation of Year Zero, taken in Miyagi prefecture. His somber black-and-white photos convey the epic scale of the damage in a personal, almost poetic way. Black Tsunami is now available in the Apple iTunes store as an iPad app. A preview can be seen on Vimeo.
Dispatch from Tohoku: A Group Slide Show
Sunday March 11, from 7:30 to 9:30, photographer Jake Price’s SeenUnseen will be presenting “Dispatch From Tohoku: Documenting the Aftermath,” a slide show of work by several photographers who documented the aftermath of the disaster. Tickets are $15, and the proceeds will benefit Art in a Box, which brings supplies to children affected by the tsunami. Curated by Elissa Curtis, Dana Kien and Jamie Wellford, and produced by Price and Emmanuelle Chiche, the slide show includes images by James Whitlow Delano, David Guttenfelder, Kyoko Hamada, Dominic Nahr, Kosuke Okahara, Q. Sakamaki, Munemasa Takahashi and Price, and artwork by Midori Curtis. It will be held at The Bubble Lounge, 228 West Broadway, New York City.
Wa Project Photo Auction
In April 2011, Wa Project held a photo auction in New York City that raised over $16,000 for rebuilding efforts in Japan. Now Wa Project is holding an auction and exhibition in Tokyo at the 72 Gallery of the Tokyo Institute of Photography, featuring photos by Kenro Izu, Venetia Dearden, Jake Price, Gilles Bensimon, Jamel Shabazz and others. The images all exemplify the theme of “wa,” loosely translated to mean “harmony.” All funds raised through print sales will be donated to Archi+Aid, which works with architects, students and communities rebuilding from disaster and preparing for the future. The show ends on March 11. For more information see waphotographyauction.com
LOOK3 Festival of the Photograph announced today that Alex Webb, Donna Ferrato and Stanley Greene will be the featured “INsight” artists at this year’s festival, to be held June 7–9 in Charlottesville, VA. As featured artists the photographers will create solo exhibitions for the festival and speak about their work during the program of talks and presentations.
This year’s festival is being curated by Washington Post visuals editor David Griffin and photographer Vincent J. Musi.
Outdoor exhibits will be presented by Hank Willis Thomas and David Doubilet, LOOK3 has also announced. Doubilet will be this year’s “TREES” artist, hanging work in the trees that line the Charlottesville Mall.
LOOK3 also released a partial list for the series of “Master’s Talks” that takes place during the festival. Bruce Gilden, Robin Schwartz, Camille Seaman, Lynsey Addario and Hank Willis Thomas will all speak at the festival, the organization said.
Andrew Hetherington, Andy Anderson, Chris Buck, Mark Zibert, George Simhoni and Derek Shapton are among the more than 40 photographers who have contributed to the silent print auction to be held February 5 to raise money for Heather Morton, the freelance art buyer and popular blogger. In the fall, Morton began two years of chemotherapy for fibromatosis, an aggressive, non-malignant sarcoma.
The event will take place at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto, Morton’s home town, on February 5 at 7pm. Photographers Naomi Harris, Daniel Ehrenworth and Brett Gundlock will be showing images from recent projects, and there will also be a raffle for dozens of prizes. Sponsors include Pikto, Agency Access, Westside Studio, Katarina Marinic and others (a full list of sponsors, a look at some of the images for sale and more information can be found on Morton’s blog, where friends and colleagues have been helping with postings).
Tickets are $10, and available via PayPal on Morton’s site to anyone who wants to attend (or just support this effort from afar).
