“Looking in: Robert Frank The Americans” - MET

“Looking in: Robert Frank’s The Americans”, exhibited at MET, celebrates the 50^th anniversary of Frank’s publication. The exhibition divided into four rooms and a projection area exposes Frank’s black and white (gelatin silver prints) photographic work and his work as a filmmaker. The portraits were taken in times of economic, social and political tension during the Cold War reflecting the life and evolution of the Americans. The first portion sequenced at the galleries of the MET exhibit a retrospective on Frank’s early work in Peru, photographing hats; his submission to Life Magazine for their contest “People you don’t see”, and “The Welsh Miners” were he photographed miners while at work. After giving us a background of Frank’s beginnings the exhibit continues to expose “The Americans” through images, letters, contact sheets, work prints and sample books.

The Americans consists of 83 photographs sequenced in the galleries as in the original book. The images embody different communities in their everyday life. The images portray and redefine icons of the American lifestyle during the 1950s. His photographs surround the themes of politics, glamour, rich, poor, middle class, blacks, whites, urban, rural, civilians and everything in between. All these themes are encapsulate thematically, conceptually and sequentially.

Franks journey, enabled by the Simon Guggenheim Foundation fellowship, began in June 1955 and ended June 1956. He was allowed “to photograph freely throughout the United States.” The timeline of the application process, the journey and work process, are as well exhibited at the MET. These materials include various draft of his proposal for the fellowship as well as correspondence between Frank and Walker Evans, contact sheets and an entire wall dedicated to work prints were we can visualize the editing process that Frank explored.

The sequence seems to be sectioned in different categories that reflect the political and religious believes of certain groups, the hardships and discontents of others, and the joy, happiness and pride of some. The imagery includes political leaders, the rich in New York, the glamour of Hollywood, the cowboys in the Midwest, the roads of the south and the political rallies in the north.

“Dress Code: The Third ICP triennial of Photography and Video” - ICP

ICP culminates its year in Fashion with “Dress Code: The Third ICP triennial of Photography and Video.” The large exhibit shows a series of projects by 34 artists from 18 different countries. The works vary in medium from photography, to collage to video, as well in styles, perception and imagery. The aim of the show is to examine fashion’s relationship to art, society and culture. From these themes the show also stems to depict differences in age, gender, race, religion, identity and individuality. Woven into the imagery was the art of making fashion, couture, costume, and the use of fabric.

Although the space seem loaded with projects, each image showed different aspects of fashion. The artists’ interpretations of fashion took the shape of documentary photography and video, abstract images, video performances and the explorations of avatar technology and fashion

Mickalene Thomas was one of my favorites. She used the Blaxploitation film genre of the 1970s as inspiration to create the scenes in her images. Just as the film genre the images capture the urban – domestic environments of African American women in their fashionable and colorful homes and wardrobes. The look includes sexy outfits, animal prints and the exaggeration of jewelry. Other element that Thomas included was the soul, jazz, and funk music showcasing vinyls, one of them of Diana Ross. The images depict strong and complex women.

Lorna Simpson is also part of the exhibit with photo booth images (1940s-1970s) of women. There is a large quantity of images scatter in an organized method throughout the wall. The images are intimate and separated by unexposed images. The photo booth was the subjects’ instrument to record a moment in their lives. A record they sought to be beautiful and lasting. Through these small images these women seem to be creating memories of happiness using the camera as a mirror of time and the inside of the booth as their intimate studio were they had control.

“Maria,” by Pinar Yolacan, is an interesting series of portraits of elder women in Brazil. The images show dresses designed with a historical Portuguese influence. The materials used for the dresses include velvets and satins. The dresses were adorned with animal organs such as cow placenta and a collar of rabbit eyes. The organs from the far seem plastic, with a pale bronze color pallet. The models seem aware of the camera but remain static. The historically inspired dresses, the color pallet and pose of the model remind me of the formal portraits of aristocrats in the 1600s.

Yto Barrada’s simple grid of portraits of a Moroccan woman is an interesting way to expose a culture and the social and economical lives of certain woman. The grid establishes step by step the path of this woman who moves contraband fabrics from a Spanish city to Morocco by layering them on her.

Cindy Sherman, once again using herself as the subject examines the style and appearance of middle age women. The characters played by Sherman seem to desperately try to stay young and hip. In their efforts they become grotesque caricatures with exaggerated facial features.

“New Photography” - MoMA

The exhibit “New Photography 2009” features six artists showcasing diverse ways of contemporary image making. They try to expand the horizons of photography by using traditional methods and adding images from magazines, newspapers, archives and books and later assembling their findings in a digital form. The artists also stretch the possibilities by incorporating drawing, sculpture and graffiti painting. The images range from the abstract, to the conventional, to the historical/political but as a whole they all attempt to explore different ways of creating.

Although the purpose of the exhibit is to see how far the medium of photography can be pushed, I wasn’t really impressed with the works. Some of the projects were mainly collage, mix with Photoshop and other mediums that went to an extreme manipulation nevertheless not very much appealing or innovative.

Visually, the work of Walead Beshty was the only one that caught my attention for a longer period of time. I thought the images were visually captivating due to the burst of vibrant saturated colors and the symmetry of the composition. I thought the process of using the darkroom instead of a camera was interesting, but I question how far can this method go.

museum responses

MOMA- New Photography 2009

An exhibition that is supposed to highlight significant recent photographic work that pushes our definition of the medium only leaves the viewer wondering what it is they were supposed to even be looking at. The confusion begins upon entering the photographic area. You are filtered more naturally into the permanent collection and after looking at the beautiful silver prints of the masters that line the walls, you enter into a huge, open room that holds the giant prints of the six new photographers. In contrast with everything you have just seen, majority of the images appear to be trying to hard. They manipulate the medium with photo collages and photoshop, much of which feel unoriginal and outdated. The intention seems to be challeneging the idea of what is photography- could it be more than just an image captured, or even an image with conventional photographic manipulation? The works of Sterling Ruby and Sara VanDerBeek are both done in digital collage aesthetics which are reminscent of computer programming when it was first being used. Compositionally, they are messy and uninteresting. The only artist whose work I was really drawn to was that of Leslie Hewitt who challenges our ideas of perception and what we read as truth in a photograph. Using old snapshots she contexualizes them into a specific enviornement so that the banality in the picture transcends that of the new photograph. By creating contradictory view points, the viewer is challenged with what they shoud be looking at and how they look at it.

ICP- Dress Codes Triennial

The third ICP Triennial offers a variety of contemporary video and photographic artists to have their work shown together. All of the pieces speak towards ideas of fashion and identity. Curatorial, there are many gems in the show. Cindy Sherman's new work feels as seamless as all of her other work. A constant evolution of the way we see ourselves and as she grows, so do her characters. Middle-age women fight for the eye of the camera and seek to be

seen. Despite trying to stand out, they all are eerily reminscent of one another not only in Sherman's eyes, but in their matching print clothes and overinflated lips. Another piece I was particularly drawn to was that of Swedish artist, Nathalie Djurberg. Known for her shocking and controversial claymation videos, Djurberg did not disappoint with her piece entitled New Movements in Fashion which follows a group of five models as they change clothing and attitudes in front of a demanding photographer. The power dynamics and alliances are as constantly shifting as their wardrobe and I felt like I was watching middle school girls who inhabited the bodies of these beautiful, amazonian women. Her work delves into how horrible human nature can be and by creating caricatures allows the viewer to process her ideas in a medium that is reminiscent of childhood. The rest of the artists show beautiful work but it becomes to overwhelming in a space like ICP. There should have been less work shown and the point would have still come across as every artist is in the most basic way saying the same thing.

The Met- Robert Frank

Marking the fiftieth anniversary of the groundbreaking book, The Americans, the Met has created an extensive exhibition that among other things, holds a print of every page in the original book in its correct sequencing. Set up with contact sheets, work prints, earlier photographs, and letters, the show creates a world for the viewer, it creates a way to see things the way Frank would have seen them. All of the prints are beautiful and I enjoyed reading the anecdotes. The way the images hang on the walls allows them to adopt a cinematic feel. They move fluidly and you are led gently through images of racial and class discrimination, poverty, and a culture obsessed with glamour and fame. Frequent imagery of windows and cars creates the sensation that we are looking for ourselves and with the way Frank photographed, it feels like we are seeing our own image for the first time. The book, originally met with poor reviews has become so iconic that it would have been hard for the Met to mess it up.

More links

Lyn Hershman Leeson
and the living blog by Lynn Hershman Leeson




Living Magazine Cover & Spread - Outside Magazine from Alexx Henry on Vimeo.





Laundromat washers and dryers all over New York City have been bombed with flyers inviting curious customers to call The Dirty Laundry Line and anonymously “air out” their dirty laundry. Listen to what’s being aired out here.













AND new projects posted on Multimedia Links

Housing is a Human Right multimedia Project

CECUT Project on Tijuana Maquiladora Industry
by Krzysztof Wodiczko, Adam Whiton, Sung Ho Kim

Shepard Fairey and Fair Use

 Is There "Hope" for Shepard Fairey?
How does fair-use law work, anyway?By Tim Wu, Slate, Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2009

Shepard Fairey Obey Giant Site

Behind the scenes #2

Behind the scenes again.

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Ellen Gallagher














Cassette from My Ex: Stories and Soundtracks of Lost Loves shares sixty hilarious, nostalgic and heartbreaking stories stories all about crushes and mixtapes.

SMITH is the home of Six-Word Memoirs and a vibrant community of storytellers.

HERESEIS A feminist publication on Art and Politics, 1997-1992
published by the Heresies Collective.








***Check out Featured Slideshows on Art 21 site**
here you can look at artist work by topic

more to come.....

PERFORMA 09

PERFORMA 09 is a biennial dedicated to performance providing audiences with a highly selected overview of the most outstanding work and, at the same time, showing the relevance of live art as an innovative and important contemporary form.  NOVEMBER 1 - 22, see calendar.


Try to see some of the events - many are free.

Gallery Beat - Paul H-O

GalleryBeat

Guest of Cindy Sherman

article in Slate on Guest of Cindy Sherman

interview with Paul H-O

New photography at MoMA, old photography at the Met, and everything in between at ICP

Saw a few shows. Have a few things to say.

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New Photography 2009 at the MoMA

The New Photography 2009 exhibition at the MoMA claims to be “a thematic presentation of significant recent work in photography that examines and expands the conventional definitions of the medium.” As not all the work was analog, I’m assuming the show’s curators were open to including digital images and processes. Given that, I’m surprised by how questions and challenges raised by the digital were explored so minimally (if at all) in a show that aimed to examine the conventions of photography—because what else, if not the digital, is doing that? Well, apparently lots of collage.

The show frustrated me to a thankfully quick end (it’s a small group of six artists with one body of work each) simply because the work reminded me of high school art projects that either I did myself or that I saw many of my peers produce in abundance. Collage, digital collage, sculptural collage, photocopying, photograms—what were exercises in developing the visual thinking of prep school youth supposedly now expands the conventions of photography? Not any conventions I’m familiar with (or still see as the convention).

The only photographs that interested me were Sara VanDerBeek’s, but only because of how interesting the sculptural compositions were (using different photographs of varying iconic recognition to create, in their physical and conceptual relationships, portraits of Detroit). That they were photographs of the compositions—or the way she photographed them (presentational studio still lifes)—didn’t add anything to the pieces nor did they challenge how I see photography. I would’ve rather just seen the compositions themselves instead of these representations.

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Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans at the Met

I don’t have much to say about Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans at the Met except that the show seemed to focus so much on Frank’s sequencing and storytelling by juxtaposition skills, which I feel is best exhibited in, well, book form. I’m not sure that the exhibition accomplishes anything that the book doesn’t—except maybe spread the images out a little bit to give them room and air to breathe.

It’s the Met though, and it’s intended to be a celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the book’s publication, so I guess they weren’t necessarily trying to accomplish anything new or challenging. And the exhibit does expose the book and the photographs to the modern Met audience (i.e., the masses who go to the Met to go to the Met, not to think about art) that may not know the work or have the attention span to sit down and peruse the book. So that’s cool.

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Dress Codes: The Third ICP Triennial at ICP

I’m also nearly speechless about Dress Codes, the Third Triennial at ICP, though not for a lack of things to say but more so a lack of words to express how I felt about it. I enjoyed it. Thoroughly. Maybe I’m just overwhelmed by how extensive (if not exhaustive) the show is with driving the point home. Maybe I’m crippled by my fear that I can’t look at the work objectively as art when I love the subject matter (fashion and personal image) so much. Or maybe it’s just that my experience at the show is colored by my having taken a class with curator Chris Phillips last spring, who then previewed a lot of the exhibited work for us in class. I was able to experience the work first in a classroom setting, so I don’t know if what I experienced at the show is from seeing the show up or from (subconscious) recollection of our discussion.

Trying to close the gap between fashion images and fine art photography is a contemporary challenge, and I think the exhibition takes a commendable stab at it: Dress Codes looks at how art represents, explores, and comments on how people dress—its reflection of personal identity and of the global implications. And it does so with a great variety of media, visual styles, and ideas, no less. From the consumerist and the commercial (Kota Ezawa’s IKEA-inspired images) to the personal (David Rosetzky’s video portrait of Cate Blanchett) to the ethno-racial (Mickalene Thomas’s 70s film-inspired portraits of confident black women) and beyond, there are many social and cultural perspectives that add richness to the show. I think the curators did a great job of amassing and presenting work that exhibits the great social observation out there amongst artists, regarding fashion, beauty, and style (personal or otherwise).

Response to MoMA's New Photography 2009

This show was quite different to say the least. It has an abundance in collage and photograms rather than straight photography. This seems to be the direction photography is going these days. There was only one specific series that I absolutely loved: Walead Beshty and the other artist which caught my attention was Sara VanDerBeek's compositions. Beshty's floor to ceiling prints draw you into this work consisting primarily of neon shapes composed through overlapping lines. I saw his work in the past at Harris Lieberman Gallery in the LES, but it wasn't the same series. These ones are stronger. Sarah VanDerBeek's compositions, were interesting as they were a mix between straight photography and abstract photography. I didn't love the entire compositions, but found the piece within very attractive.

Daniel Gordon's work did absolutely nothing to me. Rather, I found it quite disturbing. It made me think about a killer cutting up body parts and reassembling them to create his perfect person. Sterling Ruby's series as well didn't do anything for me. They reminded me of punk art work. The colors and eery sketches gave the work this gloomy death like feel.

All in all the show was not much of a success in my opinion. I spent more time looking around the permanent collection than the two rooms alloted to MoMA's New Photography show.

Response to ICP: Dress Codes

“Dress Codes,” marks the end of ICP’s Year of Fashion, the theme that surrounds its Third Triennial. The goal of the exhibitions included, was to shine a light on fashion photography by representing it through a cultural as well as a social perspective. This exhibition in particular showcased the notion of how we dress ourselves, how we look at dress in society: critically, historically and personally, and how we grapple with the idea. Thirty-four artists, from eighteen different countries were chosen to be apart of this show, where the work consists of photography, video as well as mixed media. Each artist approached dress in a different way and was given a personalized unique exhibition wall to visually express themselves.

“Dress Codes” curators, Kristen Lubben, Christopher Phillips, Carol Squiers and Vince Aletti, in their introductory statement, addressed a number of questions that they focused the exhibition on which included:

“How can individuality and cultural identity be expressed in an increasingly homogenized world? How do we construct the selves that we show to others? How can clothing, style and beauty be employed to define community, instill a sense of power, or fabricate fantasies? What do we now make of the aesthetics of unbridled luxury and excess that reigned during the past decade? And, perhaps most importantly what does the current blurring of the boundaries between art, fashion, and commerce foreshadow?”

“How can clothing, style and beauty be employed to define community, instill a sense of power, or fabricate fantasies?”, was the question most appropriately answered through the work of Jeremy Kost, Mickalene Thomas and Valérie Belin consecutively, while together encompassing the theme as a whole.

Jeremy Kost shoots in the most fashionable of mediums – the endangered Polaroid. Born in Texas and moved to New York City six years ago, Kost used his camera as his tool to interact with night people, taking party pictures at Premiers, Openings, Bars and Clubs. His piece in the exhibition is a grid of approximately 10 x 6 Polaroids framed together of partygoers including celebrities such as Richie Rich and Miss Piggy, Drag Queens, and others such as the woman dressed as Snow White. The piece as a whole screams fashion by the ‘head to toe’ looks these people are adorned in; from hair to makeup, jewelry and clothing. Amanda Lepore, American transsexual icon known for her modeling, partying and fas

hion, is the subject of one of the Polaroids in this piece. She is clad in a red bustier decorated in numerous diamond shaped mirrors throughout the bosom area, enhancing her tremendous cleavage, along with a blue and white diamond ring, shaped as a bird, that extended over her entire right hand. In addition, her perfectly coiffed bleached blond hair with ringlets hugging each shoulder, her fake eyelashes as well as lacquered red lips that match her exquisite lengthily fake nails embody the term, making a statement. She, along with the other people in Kost’s piece, personify this same term. These people are connected by the common parties they attend – they together use clothing, style and beauty to define themselves as a community of fashionable New York party people. The physical grid of Polaroids touching one another emphasizes this bond and the community that is created.

Mickalene Thomas is a New York based mixed media artist who primarily works with paint. The body of work featured in “Dress Codes,” is comprised of three photographs from her Odalisque series. This is the first time she has exhibited her photos in such a notable environment. Thomas doesn’t consider herself a photographer. She normally uses photography as pieces in collages or as images to paint from. In terms of the creation of these photographs, she began by building installations or sets and then placed the African American models inside them. She adamantly claims that the credit is not all hers for she considers the collaboration and relationship developed between herself and the models she used to be a big part of the success of the photographs. In Portrait of Qusuquzah, 2008, Thomas references Henri Matisse’s Odalisque series with the poses of the models as well as with the patterns of the fabric. By using an African American model as subject rather than a Caucasian as in Matisse’s paintings, she plays with the reversal of roles, whereby she empowers the Black servants in the background of the Odalisques. Her models are also not waif, but rather normal full body models who exude empowerment stripped down through Qusuquzah’s pose as well as her comfort in showing her naked skin. There is a feeling of, I’m black and I’m beautiful. The dress and the environment have a lot to do with this. They not only reference Art History, but also female heroines from the 1970’s such as Foxy Brown.

Valérie Belin is a photographer from France who is currently based in Paris. She has created numerous bodies of work where she tries, through her photographs, to represent the essence of simple objects extending from still life Venetian mirrors to celebrity icon Michael Jackson. For this exhibition, she used her expertise in lighting to make models look like mannequins. The five images of male and female models, nude from the shoulders up, are brushed with powder to have uniform skin tones and are placed in front of a black background. The only features that somewhat pop are the varying colors of the model’s eyes ranging from blue to green to brown. These models are excessively thin and ‘beautiful’. They embody the notion of perfection through their symmetrical youthful features and surreal airbrushed skin. They are dressed down to nude, while dressed up to represent this fantasy of flawlessness that the culture and society of today aspires to and obsesses about.

Jeremy Kost, Mickalene Thomas and Valérie Belin, together showed how clothing, style and beauty can define community, instill power and fabricate fantasies, through Kost’s representation of the community that makes statements in the New York City nightlife with their style and beauty, Thomas’s African American models taking the empowering role of Matisse’s Caucasian Odalisques clad in their patterned environments and Belin stripping models down to their nude core to illustrate unrealistic beauty that is seen as a fantasy of today’s culture to achieve perfection.

Response to Robert Frank Show

The Met’s exhibition “Looking in: Robert Frank’s The Americans”, honoring the 50^th anniversary of the publication The Americans, truly captured the importance and timelessness of the art of photography. The social commentary as well as the satire displayed in Frank’s photographs show how forward thinking he was as his images still speak to the contemporary American. Secondly, his work is supported by the abundant didactic information—letters, contact sheets, work prints—that accompany the 83 sequential photographs, all indispensible to the publication.

A Guggenheim Fellowship enabled Robert Frank to create this body of work, that being his quest to "photograph freely throughout the United States" and "make a broad voluminous picture record of things American." He did this driving around the United States, in the mid 1950’s, accompanied only by his trusty Leica.

To read the actual letters exchanged between Walker Evans and Robert Frank discussing his application for the Guggenheim grant was one of the most fascinating parts of the exhibition. Frank’s reasoning for wanting to go on this journey seemed so amateur. If a fellow student would propose something similar, using comparable wording, I feel it would undoubtedly be rejected. It makes you wonder, in retrospect, if there were ever a more worthy project and also what other projects were being considered at the time. I might assume one of the main reasons he was granted the Fellowship was because, with Evans, his friend and mentor, playing a key role in the FSA, it seemed that a recommendation from him secured the fellowship.

Upon examination of many of Frank’s photographs, I found myself thinking of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s coined term: “The Decisive Moment,” which he defined as "The simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression.” Although Frank’s work is more journalistic than Cartier-Bresson’s, I feel that he was able to capture “The Decisive Moment” just as well. Photographs like that of the waitress in the diner with the Santa Claus ornament hung above her head, the iconic trolley image pre Rosa Parks, as well as the African American caretaker holding the porcelain baby, all evoke this notion of capturing a moment. This concept is the gift of photography, the magic that occurs with the click of the shutter. With these photographs, he was making a comment on society, whether: presenting the timely issue of Racial Segregation, the waitress at the local diner – tired and lonely, Consumerism expressed by the bouquet of cheap fake flowers at a cemetery, where sorrow is measured materialistically, or the Environment with his photograph of the gas station in Santa Fe, New Mexico where in it. he satirically comments on the double entendre of the word SAVE. Just like Cartier-Bresson, Frank fell upon these images.

An interesting thing to ponder—something we similarly do when analyzing literature—is are we as viewers creating, through interpretation, meanings for these photographs that didn’t exist when Frank originally took them? I believe our society feels the need to qualify and so maybe it is a little bit of both. Frank probably took some images where upon clicking the shutter he knew he had captured that moment, and fell upon others later when closely examining his contact sheets. Only he would know for certain.

re: erin

thought you might be interested in corey holm's photography

hey guys. i know this isn't photo related specifically but you still might be into it. i keep a blog with my roommates and we post funny things we find and artists we like. give it a gander if you please.

because who can resist a baby tiger?

For Taylor

I fell upon another Emmet Gowin and thought of you :)

you know, just another photo shoot...

behind the scenes, Taylor's thesis shoot.

You asked for it - more Info on Boris Groys

Bio He is a global professor here at NYU!

6 Questions for Boris Groys by Kurt Mueller
published in Art Lies - what looks to be a interesting contemporary art quarterly.

From the e-flux journal

Religion in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

Self Design and Aesthetic Responsibility

I recommend joining the e-flux list to receive notices of art shows/publications/conferences from around the world.