"Petters' Polaroid gets the OK to be put up for sale
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Gregory Kishel has given go-ahead approval for the sale of Polaroid Group, one of the few assets of Petters Group Worldwide with tangible value, with bids to open at $42 million."
from Liz Kuball Photography | Blog by Liz "I’m on a Tierney Gearon kick lately, so I made sure to be at the opening of her solo show, Explosure, last night at ACE Gallery in Beverly Hills. The photographs are double exposures, and everything is done within the camera, no retouching or external manipulation involved. I listened to Tierney explain her process—art comes out of accidents, she said."
It was simply the most amazing show I’ve ever seen—her work is beautiful and dreamy, and it made me want to move into the gallery and just surround myself with her photographs day and night. There’s no way the images online can even begin to show you what they’re like in person, so you owe it to yourself, if you’re anywhere near Los Angeles between now and April, to see it. And if you have no chance of getting here, you can buy a book of the images through the gallery (72 pages, 36 color illustrations, 12 x 9½ inches, $40)."
In February 2008, Dawoud Bey and Carrie Mae Weems discussed the work from Bey’s acclaimed book and exhibition, Class Pictures, on view at the time at Aperture Gallery.
Class Pictures features Bey’s striking, large-scale color portraits of students at high schools across the United States. Depicting teenagers from a wide economic, social, and ethnic spectrum—and intensely attentive to their poses and gestures—he has created a highly diverse group portrait of a generation that challenges teenage stereotypes. After several stops including New York, Houston, Indianapolis, and Baltimore, this successful exhibition will open at the Milwaukee Museum of Art, April 16, 2009.
In this excerpt from the talk, Dawoud Bey explains how he decided to become a photographer, speaks about his first significant picture as well as his approach to portraiture through his Harlem series.
"Remember that photographer who got arrested for photographing Amtrak trains for their photo contest ? The day after he popped up on Colbert Report, Duane Kerzic got a five-figure settlement. "
*Warning* Graphic and Emotionally Disturbing Content Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape
"During the 1994 genocide, hundreds of thousands of Rwandan women were subjected to massive sexual violence by members of the infamous Hutu militia groups, known as the Interhamwe. Among the most isolated survivors are women who have borne children as a result of those rapes. The number of children born from these atrocities is estimated around 20,000. Due to the stigma of rape and “having a child of the militia,” the women’s communities and few surviving relatives have largely shunned them. Intended Consequences: Rwandan Children Born of Rape brings together Jonathan Torgovnik’s remarkable portraits of these women and children, and their harrowing first-hand testimonies.
The exhibition on view at Aperture Gallery is comprised of thirty-one stunning individual portraits of these women with their children, accompanied by their testimonies—intensely personal accounts of what they have gone through, the daily challenges they continue to face, and their conflicted feelings about raising a child who is a reminder of horrors endured. The testimonies are presented in text panels and multimedia interviews projected in the center of the installation, produced by MediaStorm. The exhibition also features a video interview with Torgovnik.
Come see this powerful exhibition on view starting tomorrow, Friday, February 20, at Aperture Gallery.
Aperture’s accompanying book, Intended Consequenceswill be published worldwide on April 7, 2009, coinciding with the fifteenth anniversary of the genocide and the opening of a satellite exhibition in the lobby of the United Nations."
"Under Vladimir Putin’s rule, Russia has reclaimed its position among the superpowers of the world in the past eight years, the economic recession and the tumultuous nineties seemingly all but forgotten. Thanks to the country’s huge abundance of raw materials such oil and natural gas, the Russian economy is flourishing as never before. After a mere 18 years of capitalism, the January 2008 issue of Finans Magazine reported that there are currently 101 billionaires in Russia. It is difficult to detect much prosperity in the book “101 Billionaires”, which portrays an entirely different segment of the Russian population. Far away from the glitter and glamour of Moscow, the world’s most expensive city, we find the impoverished Russians, victims of the ‘tough-as-nails’ capitalism with which Russia made its name immediately after the fall of Communism. "
With nearly a decade of public exhibitions behind him, renowned undercover photographer JR this week launched his newest public exhibit in one of Africa’s largest and poorest slums, Kibera, Kenya. Famous for transforming his photos into posters and using them to make “open space galleries out of our streets,” JR’s latest exhibit is not only his most ambitious to date, but also has no set end-date scheduled.
Covering 2,000 square feet of rooftops and train cars with the eyes and faces of Kibera women, JR’s latest action is visible from space and can be seen on Google Earth. The posters were printed on waterproof material, so in addition to beautifying the rooftops they will also protect inhabitants from the brutal downpours expected in the upcoming rainy season.
The exhibit is part of a multi-action project called Women Are Heros, which aims to highlight the dignity, courage and noble struggle of women around the world.
So far, Women has exhibited in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Kenya and Belgium, and plans for installations in various other Western countries are underway. In the coming year, JR also plans to develop Women Are Heros in India, Cambodia and Laos. He is currently in Brazil putting together another action for the project.
"Stranded in Canton" had its Canadian premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 14, 2005 in a paired screening with Michael Almereyda's new documentary "William Eggleston in the Real World". There may have been several other previous screenings but the only other one that I easily found on the internet was when it opened the 6th annual Memphis International Film Festival on April 21, 2005.
Eggleston filmed about 30 hours of footage in the years 1973-74 and this has been recently edited down to 76 minutes for this final production which Eggleston said was now finished. Director Robert Gordon and film editor John Olivio assisted Eggleston with this final distillation and Eggleston himself provides an occasional commentary right in the film itself as shown. Perhaps the eventual DVD release will have a more complete commentary, but with the laconic Eggleston, this might very well be it. The little that Eggleston said was usually humorous and gave some comic relief.
The film left me feeling nostalgic for various hell-raising drunken friends from my own youth because the vibe here was as if William Eggleston had traveled back in time to secretly film these people in the early seventies. Most of them seem quite oblivious to the camera and with the infra-red lens some of this may have been filmed almost in pitch darkness so people were even more likely to act uninhibited. The video technology itself was so new that many may not have even understood that a movie camera was in fact being used. Eggleston films various colorful family friends and sometimes strangers in bars and on the streets. One interesting historical note is the informal performance footage of Memphis based blues guitarist/musician Furry Lewis (1899-1981) performing at a private house party (Lewis is the musician name-checked in the Joni Mitchell song "Furry Sings The Blues" on the 1976 Hejira album).
A word of warning for those with modern day PETA sympathies: one scene here captures the old-time carnival act of geeking chickens, although it is filmed at a night time street scene. In the days before such TV shows as Fear Factor, you could go to carnivals/circuses where a low-ranked performer would perform acts such as biting the heads of chickens or snakes or eating worms whole etc. for the entertainment of the paying crowds. The low-brow level of this "entertainment" caused the other carnies to disassociate themselves from the "geeks" or "geek men" which has gradually led to the word's modern day connotation of socially inept individuals."
"As with most of Warhol’s work you can see how influential the screen tests have become. It would be hard to count how many music videos and ads have taken off from these. For more than four decades it’s been difficult to see the films, but next month, Plexifilm are releasing "13 Most Beautiful...Songs for Andy Warhol's Screen Tests" a 60 minute film featuring 13 of the tests (including Nico, Lou Reed, Edie Sedgwick, and Dennis Hopper) along with a newly commissioned soundtrack by Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips. The musicians were picked by The Warhol Museum’s curators, one would imagine for their Velvet Underground style cool, but it’s an inspired choice that creates a timeless continuum for the first authorized DVD of Warhol’s seminal short films."
"In the United States during the mid-1950s, two photographers were each making the works that would eventually form two of the most renowned photobooks of the twentieth century – William Klein’s New York (1955) and Robert Frank’s Les Americains (1958). Both were expatriates of a kind, one returning for a brief period to his homeland after living in Europe, the other an immigrant to the United States from Switzerland. Though very different from each other, these two books introduced a new kind of attitude into photography. The work was rough, raw, and gestural. It was spontaneous and immediate, highly personal, echoing both the uncertain mood of the era and the characteristics that marked much of the art – especially the American art – of the 1950s."
"There is an excellent group show currently up at Andrew Kreps which deserves some attention. The exhibition, titled To Be Determined, is described by the press release as being “centered around a generation of artists whose work stretch the limits of photography. Portraiture and self-portraiture, archiving, and typology, as well as free-form fiction are at the core of their exploration of the medium.” It goes on,
The selection of artists, some of whom would not consider themselves to be solely photographers, have interrogated the medium, and expanded its conventional definition. When looking at the group, one may question whether there is indeed a circumscribed, or unified practice of photography. But while utilizing strategies that diffuse its understanding, this group of artists can be unified by their focused engagement with their subject matter.
"I've just found a new blog I like called A Collection of Self Portraits. I've added it to my "Blogs I Like" section so you can click on it to find the site. I really enjoy these themed, photo based blogs I stumble on now and then. I may even convince myself to start one or two myself. All themes are not created equal, and I think this blog shows what a durable, malleable, and ever-fresh theme the self -portrait is. Take a look.....http://selfportraitgallery.blogspot.com/"
Holly Andres - Sparrow Lane (Till Feb 14, 2009) LINK Julie Blackmon - Domestic Vacations (Till March 7, 2009) LINK Jeremy Kidd - Fictional Realities (Till March 7. 2009) LINK Joseph Rodríguez - Flesh Life: Sex in Mexico City (Feb 14-March 15, 2009) LINK Todd Walker - A Legacy of Images (Till Feb 21,2009) LINK John Divola – Dark Star (Till Mar 7, 2009) LINK Lucien Clergue – the Intimate Picasso (Till March 21, 2009) LINK Group f/64 (Till March 21, 2009) LINK Kim Weston - Painted Photographs (Till April 10, 2009) LINK Carlos and Jason Sanchez (Feb 21 - April 18, 2009) LINK David Fokos - New Work (March 14 - April 18, 2009) LINK George Tice - American Photographer (Feb 21 - April 30, 2009) LINK Erwan Frotin - Strangers (Mar 21 - May 30, 2009) LINK Balthasar Burkhard (Mar 10 - May 31, 2009) LINK Joseph Sterling - Age of Adolescence (June 6 - July 11, 2009) LINK
Wolkoff
Bryan Graf
What are They Doing At Yale? from nina corvallo by nina
Take a wild ride rough steel bracin' your rollin' wandering eyes, bracin' your rollin' adventurin' thighs, runnin' wind and flowery air rushin' through your tingly beaming beautiful feeling face... free hearts, open skies, push your spirit out on a rise... to the roof of the world... ride, baby, ride. Run and don't stop, sleep when you roll, roll when you wake, green and yellow dreams, your body aches, dirt bath livin', creek side givin'... swimmin' escape filled livin', give up your back, jumpin' jack, across the canyon crack'.... rails and dreams, nothin' but sun, clouds and pillows, dirt bath and willows, the sun is guardin' your life, the sky is your wife... the land is your man, go baby go...
"This is definitely something I've noticed a lot of lately: people are more interested in taking photos of something they're witnessing than actually, you know, witnessing it."
The Girl Project explores the lives of American teenage girls by putting them behind the camera to document themselves. Using disposable cameras, girls 13-18 photograph their lives as only they know and understand it.
It is 1,474 megapixels big. You can zoom in on lapel buttons for as far as the eye can see. Seriously: amazing! David Bergman made it out of 220 separate photos.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is not sleeping. President Bush is not sending a text message. Yes, Oprah Winfrey is blocked by a camera tower. We’re still looking for Waldo.
"In 2003 an all night exposure of the stars made during a camping trip was lost due to the effects of whiskey. Unable to wake up to close the shutter before sunrise, all the information of the night’s exposure was destroyed. The intense light of the rising sun was so focused and powerful that it physically changed the film, creating a new way for me to think about photography."
