Since its inception in 2000, C/O Berlin International Forum For Visual Dialogues has firmly established itself within the cultural landscape of Berlin-Mitte, near Museum Island and the government district.
Through the energies and commitment of its three founders - photographer Stephan Erfurt, designer Marc Naroska, and architect Ingo Pott - a singular institution in Germany has been created, presenting a cultural program of international stature and quality.
In 2000 square meters of exhibition space at the former Postfuhramt (Old Post Office), C/O Berlin exhibits the work of international photographers including Martin Parr, Annie Leibovitz, Rene Burri, James Nachtwey, Anton Corbijn, and Karl Lagerfeld, whose exclusively planned solo shows have affirmed C/O Berlin's conceptional competence and high standards.
A program of guided tours, lectures, and artist talks provides more in-depth insights into different aspects of each exhibition's subject matter and perspectives.
Talents Competition 2010: Me, Myself and the Others
Who can apply?
Photographers and art critics up to the age of 35.
Topic of Talents 2010
The annual topic for 2010 is “Me, Myself and the Others.” Only samples of work dealing with this topic will be considered by the jury.
How do I apply?
As a photographer
1. Fill out the online form
2. Transfer the entry fee of €20 to the following account:
Bank: Berliner Volksbank
Recipient: C/O's e.V.
Account number: 7214040004
Bank code: 100 900 00
------------------------------
IBAN: DE 32 1009 0000 7214 040004
BIC: BEVODEBB
All bank transfer and commission costs must be borne by the payer.
3. Send a maximum of 15 samples of work in printed form (no larger than A4, please no originals!) as well as a project description (no more than one A4 page) to the following address:
C/O Berlin
Re.: “Talents 2010”
Auguststraße 5a
10117 Berlin
Germany
Materials can only be returned if a self-addressed stamped envelope is included with the submission. Submissions for which no entry fee has been received by December 31, 2009, unfortunately cannot be taken into consideration.
As an art critic
Art critics should submit several writing samples on topics in the areas of art history, photography, design, or architecture, as well as a resume to the address above. There is no entry fee.
Application deadline?
The deadline for photographers is December 31, 2009 (data of postmark). Art critics are welcome to apply at all times.
Who decides on the winners?
In the spring of each year, a jury of experts selects four of the submitted portfolios for the following year. The jury’s decision is final. There is no appeal procedure.
November 30, 2009
November 29, 2009
Ryerson Gallery Holiday Show and Sale in Toronto
Ryerson Gallery Holiday Show and Sale
Silent Auction, Preview and Bidding
November 21 to December 10
Bids close at 5 PM, Thursday, December 10
Gala Reception, Draw and Awards
Thursday, December 3, 6 - 10 PM
Announcing the 2009 Give Us Your Best Shot Winner
Selected by Bonnie Rubenstein, Artistic Director
CONTACT Toronto Photography Festival
Book Launch: Emergence
Celebrating thirty years of emerging artists!
Co-published by Gallery 44 and Ryerson University
Winning bids: payment and pick-up of works
December 11 and 12, noon to 5 PM at Ryerson Gallery
Ryerson Gallery thanks all its sponsors:
Adina Photo and Custom Frames I Canadian Art Magazine I ColourGenics I Downtown Camera I Dufflets I Elpro I Gallery 44 I Gallery TPW I PFACS - Ryerson University I Pikto I Prefix Photo I Scaramouche / Morden Yolles I School of Image Arts I Steam Whistle I Stephen Bulger Gallery I Studio of Edward Burtynsky I Toronto Black and White I Toronto Image Works
Gallery Hours: Wednesday - Saturday, 12 - 5 PM
80 Spadina Ave., Suite 305, Toronto ON M5V 2J4
www.ryersongallery.ca
The Malcolmson Collection at Presentation House Gallery in North Vancouver
The Malcolmson Collection
Until December 20, 2009
On exhibit at Presentation House Gallery is a selection of photographs from one of Canada's most unique and significant art collections, shown for the first time in a public gallery. Over the past twenty-five years Ann and Harry Malcolmson, who live in Toronto, have assembled a rare collection of vintage photographs that span the history of the medium. After a long period of collecting contemporary art, they were gradually drawn to early twentieth-century experimental photography, and then began to investigate nineteenth-century material before expanding into classic modernist and contemporary works. This exhibition selected from over two-hundred photographs offers a rare opportunity to witness the scope and depth of this remarkable collection, that reveals the scholarship, intuitions and passions of the collectors.
The exhibition features iconic as well as anonymous images that underscore the Malcolmson’s interest in experimental approaches to the medium, from Fox Talbot to Robert Frank. The beginnings of photography is represented by salted paper prints from paper negatives of the mid-1840s and twenty-first century photography, by several of Vancouver’s most notable contemporary artists. This range of images draws links between the earliest innovations in the medium to those of today; for instance, Gustave Le Gray’s 1850s seascape produced from two negatives precedes the collage techniques of modernist photography that continue in digital practices. While alluding to historical developments and stylistic periods, the exhibition knits together images from diverse contexts, genres and time frames. The significance of photography as both an artistic practice and mode of perception is considered in relation to its profound impact on visual culture and social history. Many of the nineteenth-century images resulted from commissions for empirical records of significant events and social conditions evident in the pictures of archeological and urban sites. In the twentieth century, more fragmented and prosaic views of the world dominate.
Photography as an act of drawing with light is made palpable throughout the exhibition, from the long exposures that fail to still the breath of a subject, to photograms that record movements of light on paper, to a film montage of moving reflections. Human figures often appear veiled and immaterial, as if apparitions. The surrealist impulse to conflate mind and body and to evoke psychic space is expressed in the bodily distortions of the many phantasmagoric figurative works. A grouping of portraits evolves from stiff formal portraiture of sitters posing in conscious self-portrayal to an increasing focus on isolated gestures and fleeting moments of someone caught offguard. While associated with naturalism, the artificial spatial effect of photographic optics evident in the condensed spaces and surface details of the nineteenth-century landscapes becomes more pronounced in the skewed and montaged perspectives called for by the chaotic energies and visual dynamics of modern cities. Abstraction and visuality itself as subject matter are prevalent threads in the exhibition.
The exhibition reveals how developments in camera and print technologies impacted “the new vision.” The unique character of each vintage print emphasizes the very materiality of photographs—their physical surfaces, the patinas of aging and accidents of chemicals interacting with paper. These visual effects emphasize the mysterious, elusive qualities of photographic images as traces of a moment in time and the strong poetic and elegiac mood in The Malcolmson Collection. A vitrine of publication materials offers clues to the importance of the book form, especially albums and portfolios, to the history of the medium.
Presentation House Gallery
333 Chesterfield Avenue North Vancouver BC V7M 3G9
www.presentationhousegall.com
Gallery 44 Celebrates Its 30th Anniversary with the Book Launch of "Emergence: Contemporary Canadian Photography", Party, and Exhibition
Gallery 44’s 30th Anniversary Events on December 3, 2009 from 6 -10pm:
Cake Cutting at 7:30pm I Raise a glass to the first 30 years with DJ Siquemu!
Wall to Wall | 3oth Anniversary Edition Exhibition and Sale of Photographs Dating From 1979 to 2009 by Gallery 44 Members and Friends
On Until December 19
A NEW PUBLICATION FROM GALLERY 44 ON CANADIAN CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY
Emergence: Contemporary Canadian Photography
Co-published by Gallery 44 and Ryerson University
124 Pages | 5 Essays | Works by 30 Artists | 84 colour reproductions | $23.95
What emerges in the development of an image, in looking at a work of art, in the expansion of an artist’s career or practice?
To mark its 30 years of commitment to the advancement of photographic art in Canada Gallery 44 has produced a book of Canadian contemporary photography on the subject of emergence. The book is comprised of original essays by esteemed Canadian writers, curators and artists. Each writer was invited to explore the concept of emergence with reference to the work of artists who have exhibited at Gallery 44. These artists were in turn asked to choose the work of an emerging Canadian photographic artist to be published along side their own work in the book. This book is a major contribution to the discourse on contemporary photography, showing a broad-spectrum of photo-based work contextualized by engaging and informative texts. Emergence will appeal to artists, educators, students, curators, critics and any serious devotee to contemporary art.
Editor Sarah Parsons, in her introduction, speaks of “the important conceptual connection between photography, visibility and emergence”, as well as photography’s “more literal and technical relationship to emergence” this is a connection which each writer explores from a unique perspective in relation to select photographic artists.
Cover Image: Michael Taglieri, t for Thomson, from Wearing a raincoat in case it begins to rain, 2007
Gallery 44 Centre for Contemporary Photography
http://www.gallery44.org
Prefix Photo: Call for Submissions from Photographers and Writers
Call for Submissions from Photographers
Prefix Photo encourages submissions of new or previously unpublished photography for editorial consideration. Submissions should include visual support material in the form of digital files, 35mm slides, transparencies, work prints, laser prints, etc.; a written description of the work, if available; and a curriculum vitae of the artist. The number of images submitted remains at the discretion of the artist, with a recommended maximum of 20. Submissions are accepted on an ongoing basis and are reviewed twice annually: January 15 and July 15. Please send submissions to:
Tamara Toledo
Prefix Photo
124 - 401 Richmond Street West
Toronto, Ontario
M5V 3A8
Mailed support materials will not be returned unless accompanied by a self-addressed envelope with return postage or equivalent. Prefix Photo also accepts submissions by email to tamara@prefix.ca. Please follow the digital submission requirements below.
Proposals from young and emerging artists and from artists from all cultural and regional communities of Canada are particularly encouraged.
Digital Submission Requirements
72 dpi resolution I Maximum size of 1024 x 768 pixels I Files should be no larger than 500K I RGB format I Name each image file with your name, surname, the number and the title I Please send only up to 20 images
Call for Submissions from Writers
Prefix Photo encourages submissions of writer's outlines for new critical essays of 3000-4000 words in length, but does not consider completed manuscripts for publication. Outlines should be no more than 250 words in length, and may be supported by one or two previously published texts. Outlines are accepted at any time, but should be submitted at least six months in advance of a projected publication date. If accepted for publication, the deadline for the submission of the completed essay is approximately three months in advance of an issue's release. Prior to publication, writers will be consulted regarding editorial revisions and writer's fee. Please note that, in addition to critical essays, Prefix Photo also reviews proposals for literary features of 600-800 words. Submission materials will not be returned unless accompanied by a self-addressed envelope with return postage or equivalent.
For more information on the submissions process, please contact Tamara Toledo, Production Manager, T: 416-591-0357, E: tamara@prefix.ca.
Available Now - Prefix Photo 20: Archival Legacies
Prefix Photo 20: Archival Legacies
Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the release of the twentieth issue of Prefix Photo magazine. As the magazine embarks on its tenth-anniversary year, editor Scott McLeod addresses the theme of “archival legacies,” as follows: “This issue directs our gaze toward the vast array of physical materials that are archived in order to preserve our multiple histories. The archive – and the uses to which the archive can be put – facilitate the envisioning and elaboration of these sometimes competing, sometimes complementary histories. In this way, history is not left to languish in the past, but becomes available to be recuperated and animated not only in, but as the present.”
These thoughts resonate strongly with the works of the artists and writers represented within the magazine, as follows:
Monika Kin Gagnon expands on the notion of “posthumous collaboration,” considering books and archives as material traces and triggers of memory, in an essay that is part homage, part letter to Gagnon’s late friend, poet and curator Nancy Shaw.
Jacob Korczynski presents a reading of the Pride Records series by Houston–based artist Jamal Cyrus. Korczynski interprets the series through the lens of the “cut,” as Cyrus slices through historical images via collage and through official histories via the rupture of fiction.
Jordan Troeller writes on the object-based photography of New York–based artist Zoe Leonard, responding to current discussions on digitalization and photography. She argues that far too much weight has been given to describing technology and far too little to examining its social and political effects.
Sudhatri Murthy, in her literary feature “Simple Time,” reflects upon a snapshot that mediates her unique experience – intimately connected and yet outside – of mothering twin boys.
Other contributors include Barbara Balfour, Rose Bouthillier, Neil Cummings and Marysia Lewandowska, Kyla Mallett, Stephen G. Rhodes, Gabor Szilasi, and more.
While quantities last.
Subscribe to Prefix Photo now and receive a free designer tote bag exclusive to Prefix Photo subscribers. Offer expires January 31, 2010
Prefix Photo is published by Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, a registered charitable organization that fosters the appreciation and understanding of contemporary photography, media and digital arts. Prefix Photo is available by subscription and in fine bookstores and newsstands in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Singapore and China.
For their assistance with the release party held for issue 20 in Toronto, Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art gratefully acknowledges its Supporting Sponsor Steam Whistle Brewing and its Official Catering Sponsor à la Carte Kitchen.
Prefix Photo is published with the assistance of its staff, volunteers and patrons, as well as the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. Prefix Photo also acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Magazine Fund toward its editorial and production costs. The Ontario Arts Council is an agency of the Government of Ontario.
www.prefix.ca
Call for Entries - 3rd Annual International Juried Plastic Camera Show
3rd Annual International Juried Plastic Camera Show
Deadline for submissions - January 5, 2010
Located in San Francisco, RayKo Photo Centers competition is open to artists working with plastic cameras with plastic lenses. The more obsolete, flawed, and lo-tech, the better. Images should be taken with cameras with limited controls, such as Diana, Holga, Lubitel, Lomo, Banner, and Ansco. Beautiful prints from less-than-gorgeous cameras – that’s what we’re looking for!
"Best of Show" receives a $250 cash prize. There are also four additional juror awards: honorable mentions receive plastic cameras of your choosing.
Submission guidelines
Complete submission form I A non-refundable entry fee of $25 I Check or money order payable to RayKo Photo Center I Limit of 5 images per person I CD entries must be jpegs I Save files with artist’s last name and title of image I Contact information should be on the CD and CD case I Please note that any work deemed misrepresented by its CD will be declined I SASE or adequate postage for notification and return of CD, if desired I Late submissions or substitute images will not be hung
RayKo Photo Center
c/o Plastic Camera Show
428 Third Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
Submission of Accepted Work
The work must be framed or mounted with a wire affixed and ready to hang. No saw tooth hangers, please. Entries will be handled with the greatest care, however, RayKo assumes no liability for work on its premises. All works selected for exhibition must be for sale. RayKo will retain 40% commission on all work sold, so please price your work accordingly. Please note that images selected for the show may be used for promotion of the exhibition.
Eligibility
All work must be original and completed within the past five years. Works previously shown at RayKo are not eligible.
January 5, 2010 - Deadline for submissions
January 13 - Notification of juried results
February 20 - Deadline for shipped works
February 26 6-8pm - Opening reception
February 26 – April 17 - Exhibition on view
May 2 - Unsold works shipped by RayKo Photo Center
To download the submission form please visit
http://raykophoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/3rd-annual-plastic-camera-call-4-entries.pdf
November 28, 2009
Call for Entries - Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day & 3rd Annual Juried Pinhole Show
Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day & 3rd Annual Juried Pinhole Show
Deadline for submissions: March 7, 2010
“Best in Show” will receive a cash prize of $250 and there are also four additional juror awards
Located in San Francisco, RayKo Photo Center will be hosting an exhibition of pinhole photography in their main gallery. This is an open call for photographic work taken with a pinhole camera. Artists selected for exhibition will be encouraged to participate in the artist’s reception and Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day on April 25th between 12-5pm. RayKo will be offering free image uploads onto the WPPD website, supplies for making pinhole images, and displays of pinhole cameras.
Submission Guidelines
Images must be made with a pinhole camera I There is a non-refundable entry fee of $25 I Check or money order should be made out to RayKo Photo Center I No Cash or Credit Cards I Limit of 5 images per person I CD entries must be jpegs I Save files with artist’s last name and title of image I Make sure contact information is on the CD and CD case and individual slides I Please note that any work deemed misrepresented by its CD or slide will be declined I Completed submission form I SASE or adequate postage for notification and return of CD or slides, if desired I Late submissions or substitute images will not be hung
RayKo Photo Center
c/o Pinhole Photography Show
428 Third Street
San Francisco, CA 94107
Submission of Accepted Work
The work must be framed or mounted with a wire affixed and ready to hang. NO saw tooth hangers, please. Entries will be handled with the greatest care, however, RayKo assumes no liability for work on its premises. All works selected for exhibition must be for sale. RayKo will retain 40% commission on all work sold, so please price your work accordingly. Please note that images selected for the show may be used for promotion of the exhibition.
March 7, 2010 - Deadline for submissions
March 13 - Notification of juried results
April 19 - Delivery of accepted work
April 25, 12-5pm - Opening reception
April 25 – May 31 - Exhibition on view
June 1 - June 3 - Pick up of hand-delivered work
June 20 - Unsold works shipped by RayKo Photo Center
To download the submission form please visit
http://raykophoto.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/pinhole-call-for-entries.pdf
November 18, 2009
Paolo Ventura at Hasted Hunt Gallery in New York
PAOLO VENTURA: WINTER STORIES
December 10, 2009 - January 23, 2010 at Hasted Hunt Gallery
Ventura's Winter Stories is an imaginative series of photographs depicting scenes from the memory bank of a fictional circus performer as he looks back on his life. A master of narrative staged photography, Ventura brings his imagined stories to life by building three-dimensional sets in miniature. Winter Stories also reveals the drawings and watercolors that Ventura uses as a starting point for his stories, as well as the handmade album of Polaroids that Ventura uses to guide the building of his elaborate sets.
Ventura used his tabletop constructions to poignant effect in his previous series, “War Souvenir” (2005), in which he mined his own memories of stories he was told by his grandmother to re-create the atmosphere of ravaged Italy during World War II. Those images were conceived not only in their evocation of iconic documentary photographs and actual war events, but also of impressions of loss or sacrifice. The latest pictures rely on a common bank of imagery, too- Fellini films, for example, or shadowy Brassai- like shots of postwar Paris- but also on a shared sense of childlike wonder. In one image, the viewer becomes part of a crowd of onlookers gazing up at a tightrope walker executing an impressive feat of balance. In the photograph that greeted viewers when they walked into the gallery, a melancholy clown stands on a wooden chair, arms wide open, as if in welcome to the artist’s old-world fantasy.
Ventura, who honed his ability to create fictional worlds during a career as a fashion photographer, has here conjoined scenes of a small Italian town where a carnival has stopped. It could be the 1940s or the ‘50s. All the men wear hats and heavy overcoats, and the carnival itself is something out of another era. The level of detail-the tiny apples strewn in the grass, the snow-covered shoes of the clown, leaves collecting on a damp street- is extraordinary. But it wouldn’t carry the work if the images weren’t so atmospheric and artfully composed, or if they didn’t suggest so many narrative layers. In one photograph, a man poses as a pilot in a painted airplane on a false façade, the kind of thing that’s a fixture at fairs and carnivals still. In another, the painted airplane sits empty, a camera on a tripod in front of it, and the photographer, slumped in a chair, waits for customers. At the gallery, the actual doll-sized façade itself framed and hung on the wall, a bit of evidence that grounded Ventura’s fictional “memories” in constructed reality.
http://www.hastedhunt.com/home.php
November 17, 2009
Andrew Moore: Detroit at Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York
ANDREW MOORE: DETROIT
November 5, 2009 - January 9, 2010 at Yancey Richardson Gallery
Yancey Richardson Gallery is pleased to present Detroit, the gallery!s fifth solo show by New York-based photographer Andrew Moore. The exhibition, the result of seven trips made to Detroit over the past two years, continues Moore's use of architecture as a way to explore themes of history, culture and time. As the artist states: “ My interests have always laid at the busy intersections of history, particularly at those locations where multiple tangents of time overlap and tangle… Detroit is more than a story of physical decline, decay and transformation; it is a city where the distortion of time is inventing new symbols for the America of the future.”
Moore's Detroit series will be the subject of a traveling solo exhibition in 2010, originating at the Akron Art Museum and accompanied by a monograph Detroit: Disassembled with an essay by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and Detroit native Philip Levine.
Several of the gallery exhibition's photographs are characterized by a hint of Surrealism, with things jarringly out of place or come alive. The ruined ornamental architecture of a former movie palace, the UA Theater, suggests the fantastic labyrinthine structures of Piranesi, an early influence on the Surrealists. In a photograph of what was once Henry Ford's elegant executive offices at the Model T headquarters, a carpeted floor ripples with an incongruous landscape of brilliant green moss. In an abandoned burned school Moore photographed a melted clock whose face bears the inscription National Time. The photograph serves as an ironic comment on the country!s economic debacle while referring directly to the melting clock in Salvador Dali's painting The Persistence of Memory. As Moore states, “Detroit is more than a story of physical decline, decay and transformation; it is a city where the distortion of time is inventing new symbols for the America of the future.”
Moore's previous projects include colonial and modernist Havana, the war damaged buildings of Sarajevo, post-Cold War Russia, the old theaters of New York's 42nd Street and the consumer-laden vertical landscape of the new Times Square.
Model T Headquarters, Detroit, Michigan, 2008
Palace Theater, Gary, Indiana, 2008
http://www.yanceyrichardson.com/
Michael Wolf and Barbara Crane at Aperture Gallery in New York
MICHAEL WOLF: THE TRANSPARENT CITY
BARBARA CRANE: PRIVATE VIEWS
November 7, 2009 - January 21, 2010 at Aperture Gallery
Aperture Gallery is pleased to present two simultaneous exhibitions exploring the city of Chicago from different vantage points and periods in history. While Michael Wolf’s large-scale color photographs of downtown Chicago’s buildings and their inhabitants examine public versus private space in the context of 21st-century urban life, Barbara Crane’s intimate Polaroids from the 1980s hone in on private human gestures performed in public at Chicago’s summer festivals. Both bodies of work reveal private moments that were intended to go unnoticed, each eliciting very different visceral responses from the viewer while evoking the voyeurism that permeates our culture today.
Michael Wolf: The Transparent City
Chicago, like many of the world’s great urban centers, has recently undergone a surge in new construction, grafting a new layer of architectural experimentation onto those of past eras. Bringing his unique perspective on changing urban environments to a city renowned for its architecture, Michael Wolf chose to photograph Chicago’s central downtown area, focusing specifically on issues of voyeurism and the contemporary urban landscape in flux. His first body of work to address an American city, Michael Wolf: The Transparent City opened at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago (MoCP), in November 2008. The show at Aperture marks the second U.S. venue for the exhibition. The work, which is accompanied by a book of the same title copublished by Aperture and MoCP last fall, was created as part of the Chicago-based U.S. Equities Realty Artist-in-Residence Program, in collaboration with MoCP.
Whereas Wolf’s prior series concentrated on the “architecture of density,” this most recent work invites the viewer to examine the transparency and fluidity of the new American cityscape. Juxtaposing humanizing details within the surrounding geometry of the urban landscape, fragments of everyday life—digitally distorted and hyper-enlarged—are snatched surreptitiously via telephoto lenses. Think Edward Hopper meets Blade Runner. In Michael Wolf: The Transparent City, Wolf’s work resonates with all the formalism of the constructed, architectural work for which he is known, and emphasizes his ongoing engagement with the idea of how modern life unfolds within the framework of the ever-growing contemporary city.
Michael Wolf (born in Munich, 1954) grew up in the United States. Wolf attended UC Berkeley, and later studied with Otto Steinert at the University of Essen in Germany. Two previous books—Sitting in China (2002) and Hong Kong: front door/back door (2005)—feature his much-acclaimed photographs of China. Wolf lives and works in Hong Kong and Paris.
Barbara Crane: Private Views
In the early 1980s, photographer Barbara Crane embarked on a photographic project shot during Chicago’s various summer festivals. Armed with a Super Speed Graphic camera and Polaroid film, Crane waded in close to the revelers and focused on capturing the details of clothing and hairstyles, but most importantly, gesture. The images are tightly cropped and terrifically alive, viscerally bringing us into the crush of people eating, drinking, and enjoying the crowd dynamic—an incredible inventory of private gestures performed in public spaces.
The collective effect of the images in Barbara Crane: Private Views is mesmerizing and intensely compelling, creating a palpable sensuality from image to image—an astonishing document, not of a particular event or personality, but of something far less tangible: the public expression of euphoria. Barbara Crane: Private Views is a celebration of the classic 1980s Polaroid snapshot with an experimental flair; Crane’s mixture of natural light and flash combined with her use of Polaroid film highlights the primary colors of ’80s fashion, which still feels hip and contemporary today. An accompanying book of the same title was published by Aperture in the spring 2009.
Barbara Crane (born in Chicago, 1928) is a celebrated American photographer known for her extraordinary commitment to experimentation and innovation, especially in exploring the themes of the human form and the urban landscape. Crane studied art history at Mills College, completing her BA at New York University in 1950. She returned to Chicago and enrolled in the Institute of Design’s graduate photography program, studying with luminaries including Aaron Siskind. Her work has been the subject of six retrospective surveys and more than seventy-six one-person exhibitions. Crane is professor emeritus of photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is represented by Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago; Higher Pictures, New York; and Galerie Françoise Paviot, Paris.
http://www.aperture.org/gallery/
Maarten Wetsema at Van Kranendonk in the Netherlands
MAARTEN WETSEMA : OVATIE
November 29, 2009 - January, 14, 2010 at Van Kranendonk
Maarten Wetsema's images are of dogs photographed in her studio or a dog owners home. They are captured in such a way that the surrounding elements seem to tell us something about the dog and its' personality. Sometimes funny, sometimes sad, but always with the utmost respect for the animal.
http://www.maartenwetsema.nl/
http://www.vankranendonk.nl/index.html
November 16, 2009
Matthias Bruggmann at Galerie Polaris in Paris
MATTHIAS BRUGGMANN
November 14 - December 22, 2009 at Galerie Polaris
"My work is an attempt at a repurposing of classical photographic dogma by its intersection with art history and semiotics : the images, which are taken in conflict situations with photojournalistic tools function both as a photographic representation of an event and as a photographic representation of photojournalism.
The final objective is always substantiation of theoretical conjectures, for example, the validity of the decisive instant or whether using codes which challenge the viewer intellectually to generate an emotional reaction is more valid than forcing an emotional link to generate an intellectual reaction." - Matthias Bruggmann from Saatchi Online
http://www.boring.ch/matt/
http://www.galeriepolaris.com/
Simone Nieweg: Garden/Constructions at Galerie m Bochum in Bochum, Germany
SIMONE NIEWEG: GARDEN/CONSTRUCTIONS
November 13th 2009 - February 13th 2010 at Galerie m Bochum
From 13 November 2009 to 13 February 2010, Galerie m Bochum is presenting an exhibition of never-before-published landscape photographs by Simone Nieweg (*1962 Bielefeld). Nieweg lives and works in Düsseldorf, where she studied at the Art Academy and was a master student of Bernd Becher. Gardens as well as field, forest and meadow landscapes are the subjects she has been focusing on since 1986 or 1990, resulting in a kind of long-term study. The present exhibition centers on large-format color photographs showing garden structures such as sheds, greenhouses and trellises. Also on view are recent landscapes shot in northeastern France that herald a new pictorial vocabulary within the artist’s oeuvre.
On prolonged forays through gardens and fields, Simone Nieweg develops intimate knowledge of her motifs. She returns again and again to certain spots in order to find just the right conditions for her shot. On the matte lens of her large-format camera, the image appears upside down – an important abstracting moment in which Nieweg is able to balance out perspectival distortions, choose the desired degree of detail and lend the overall picture order and structure. Her concentrated gaze uncovers the aesthetic situation within the organic fabric before her, something Nieweg calls the “perfect coincidence.” She then converts the reality she sees into a composition in which structures, lines and colors shape the image. And yet a tension nevertheless remains between the structured composition of the photo and the relative anarchy of the gardens and landscapes depicted.
The large-format works show largely improvised miniature architectures whose materials are just as diverse as the plant life itself. What continually comes to the fore in Nieweg’s photographs are the parallels between manmade objects and nature, such as in “Glasshouse with steel lattice” (2004), where the ramification of the branches in the background is echoed by the arched roof of the glasshouse. At the same time, we feel a sense of harmonious dichotomy: in terms of content, between the rusting provisional structures and the living greenery, and compositionally with the weighing of horizontals and diagonals, of frontal and tilted viewpoints, of surface and detail.
Nieweg avoids any clichéd associations, picturesque motifs or narrative elements in her landscape pictures. Her works focus our gaze instead on the two-dimensional image, without however estranging us from nature. The pictorial planes are hallmarked by a visual fecundity that comes from the earth, the vegetation, the geographic situation, the climate and from the human hand that has shaped the scene. Materiality, color and surface structure evoke a very specific texture. Ultimately, what the photographs of Simone Nieweg convey is an overwhelming impression of timeless serenity and harmony.
http://www.m-bochum.de/mbochum_en.php
Delphine Balley: Deux Series Inedites 2008 - 2009 at Galerie Réverbère in Lyon
DELPHINE BALLEY: DEUX SERIES INEDITES, 2008 - 2009
Until November 21, 2009 at Galerie Réverbère in Lyon
I was born in Romans on May 7. I live and work in Lyon. After studying at the French National School of Photography in Arles, I moved back to Lyon in 1999, near my parents' house in Saint Laurent en Royans in the Drôme.
In 2002, I began to work on a series of photos in my mother's cupboards, in the family home... and exhibited the results for the first time at the "9bis" gallery in Saint Etienne. After a lengthy persuasion session over Sunday chicken and chips—and even though my parents were still sober—they agreed to pose for me without me needing to chop their heads off.
Armed with this crucial permit, I showed portraits of them in 2003 at the exhibition entitled Jeunisme (organised by the FRAC Champagne-Ardenne), then at the Centre of Photography in Lectoure, and finally at the De Visu gallery in Marseille. Everyone back home in Saint Laurent en Royans seemed pleased… so I continued with my photos, extending the family album to include the rest of the Balley family.
Being fond of stories, I also take part in La Collection Louche, a magazine that uses monographs to present "objects and their history, giving them a chance to enjoy a brief spell back in the limelight, to present and explain the person they incarnate…", extract from the back cover of Louche 3: Dossier Gaëtan Barthélémy, Nov. 2005, text by François Beaune.
© Delphine Balley
Courtesy Galerie Le Réverbère, Lyon
http://www.galerielereverbere.com/exposition.php
Masters of Photography at Fifty One Fine Art Gallery in Antwerp, Belgium
MASTERS OF PHOTOGRAPHY
UNTIL JANUARY 16, 2010 at Fifty One Fine Art Gallery in Antwerp, Belgium
William Klein I Irving Penn I Frank Horvat I Robert Frank I Seydou Keita I Malick Sidibé I Hiroshi Sugimoto I Arnold Newman I Richard Avedon I Cindy Sherman I Diane Arbus I Lee Friedlander I Stephen Shore I Gary Winogrand I Duane Michals I Ray K. Metzker I Saul Leiter I Harry Callahan
We all carry a vast visual library of images engraved in our heads: one could refer to it as a ‘Musée Imaginaire’ as André Malraux called it. Thanks to photography, we are able to create a visual and virtual museum. We collect artworks from their photographic reproductions in various artbooks and magazines and visualize them in our private museum. Some artistic photographs have become iconic images in this way, carried preciously in our mind and head. These are the well-known photographs from the masters of the 20th and 21st century photography; all of them pioneering and groundbreaking photographers, the medium’s innovators and pioneers.
With the exhibition ‘Masters of Photography’, Fifty One Fine Art Photography is pleased to showcase an important selection of these significant photographers. Irving Penn, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Seydou Keita, Arnold Newman, Richard Avedon and Cindy Sherman, amongst others, are some of the masters we will honour. Our perspective and selection will be mostly personal within the realm of commonly accepted genres and highlighting names.
Masters of portraiture like Arnold Newman, Seydou Keita and Malick Sidibé will be on show next to documentary photography from William Klein and Robert Frank, and more contemporary genres as the film still photographs of Cindy Sherman.
Moreover, this celebration of photographic masters is appropiately announcing the ten-year celebration of the gallery in 2010, which will culminate in a unique birthday event during Summer 2010.
Images: Seydou Keita I DuaneMichals I Gary Winogrand I Hiroshi Sugimoto I Diane Arbus
http://www.gallery51.com/index.php
Jalal Sepehr at Galerie Ester Woerdehoff in Paris
JALAL SEPEHR: WATER AND PERSIAN RUGS
December 9, 2009 - February 10, 2010 at Galerie Esther Woerdehoff in Paris
Iranian photographer Jalal Sepehr was recently awarded the 2009 edition of the 'Prix de la Photographie, Paris' in France.
Jalal Sepehr began photography at an art institute in Tokyo and works in advertising, industrial, and nature & wild life Photography. He is a member of the Canadian Association for Photographic Art (CAPA), the Advertising & Industrial Association of Iran and the Iranian Hunting & Nature Association.
Sepehr has held numerous exhibitions in Iran, Bulgaria, Iraq, Slovakia and Canada.
The 'Prix de la Photographie, Paris' (Px3) aims to promote the appreciation of photography, to discover emerging talents, and introduce photographers from around the world to the artistic community of Paris.
http://www.ewgalerie.com/INDEX.html
Milton Rogovin at Danziger Projects in New York
MILTON ROGOVIN: IN CELEBRATION OF HIS 100TH BIRTHDAY
December 17, 2009 - January 16, 2010 at Danziger Projects
Social documentary photographer Milton Rogovin, now 99 years old, has been likened to the great social documentary photographers of the 19th and 20th Centuries, Lewis Hine and Jacob Riis. His photographs are in the Library of Congress, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Center for Creative Photography and other distinguished institutions around the world. His work speaks of the humanity of working people, the poor and the forgotten ones.
Milton Rogovin, now ninety-seven years old, has dedicated his life's work - as an optometrist, a political activist, and a photographer - to enabling people to see more clearly. Born in New York in 1909, Rogovin was radicalized by the widespread deprivations he witnessed during the Depression and dedicated himself to working for social and economic justice. After military service during the Second World War he began practice as an optometrist in Buffalo, New York. He and his wife Anne were politically active, engaging in union organizing and voter registration in Buffalo's African-American community. In 1957 he was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, or HUAC, and after refusing to testify was dubbed "Buffalo's Number One Communist." Much of his optometry clientele vanished, and with his increased free time he turned to photography as a way to speak about social inequities. Still, he maintained his optometry practice until he was nearly seventy years old.
Milton Rogovin's story is not the story of a lone artist. Rather, it encompasses the dynamics of a relationship and a family. It was Anne - teacher, author, and ardent activist - who held the family together when, following her husband's summoned appearance before HUAC, his optometric practice was devastated and their children were shunned. And, though she herself had a demanding job as a teacher, when he continued to work at his office during the day and in his basement darkroom in the evening, she was their children's primary caregiver. She opened doors into people's lives and made it possible for Milton to walk through these doors with his camera. She did not simply accompany her husband on his photographic forays; she was the instigator of many of his projects, his constant organizer, and his persistent publicist, bringing his photographs to the attention of writers, museum curators, and publishers. Throughout their sixty-one years of marriage they shared ideas and political commitments as loving comrades-- Anne died in 2003.
Rogovin's story is also about community-- various communities in Buffalo, where he has lived and worked for most of his life, and where he photographed working and poor people, people at work and at home, and people out of work, for nearly fifty years-- and communities in other parts of the world, where he photographed workers and their families. His story is entwined with that of many other people, particularly those of the U.S. political left, people advocating for fundamental change in the distribution and enactment of power in this country.
And his story is also part of the larger story of the history of social documentary photography. Milton Rogovin is heir to a tradition of social documentary photography that came of age in the climate of liberal social reform that characterized the Progressive Era. This was when nineteenth and early twentieth century sociologists such as Jacob Riis (1849-1914) and Lewis Hine (1874-1940) took up the camera or enlisted the services of contemporary photographers to add credibility to their studies. While a number of cultural critics and activist artists are critical of the reformist perspective that has shaped the historical trajectory and discourse of documentary photography, Rogovin himself would argue that while social documentary photographers share the aim of inciting their viewers to awareness, their perspectives in fact vary-- from visions of social reform that ameliorates the conditions of social ills to a more radical critique of the social structures that produce these conditions.
In his autobiographical writing and in presentations on his development as a social documentary photographer, Milton Rogovin emphasizes his own awakening to this country's gross social inequities and his formation of an understanding of their causes during the Great Depression of the 1930s. This was an era in which photographers, like other artists, regarded themselves as cultural workers, utilizing a variety of expressive media in the service of social consciousness. Accordingly Rogovin names as vital influences photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971) and social documentary photographers such as Dorothea Lange (1895-1965) and Walker Evans (1903-1975), whose best known photographs were made under the auspices of various federal agencies, particularly the Resettlement and Farm Security Administrations, established by the Roosevelt Administration's New Deal during the 1930s. For many people, these Farm Security Administration photographs represent the pinnacle of social documentary photography; the culmination of the early twentieth century vision of photography's potential to serve the cause of progressive reform.
When Rogovin returned to Buffalo following three years of service in the U.S. Armed Forces during the Second World War, he and his brother established an optometric practice together. Milton and Anne Rogovin had three children, and continued their political work. But with the onset of the Cold War they found themselves under increasing surveillance for political activities which, along with Rogovin's volunteer service as literature director for the local branch of the Communist Party, were deemed dangerous by the U.S. government.
Milton Rogovin was summoned and appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) in Buffalo on October 4, 1957. Refusing to answer the questions put to him other than his name and occupation, he was proclaimed the "Top Red in Buffalo" by that day's Buffalo Evening News. His appearance before HUAC was an excruciating experience, and it had devastating repercussions - on his optometry practice, his family, and his friends. Neighbors kept track of who visited the Rogovin house. Neighborhood children were warned against playing with "the Rogovin children." Friends and other associates were afraid to greet them openly on the street. Though Milton and his brother kept their optometry office open, many of their patients, fearing accusations of guilt by association, went elsewhere. Anne Rogovin refused to sign the Loyalty Oath required for teachers in the Buffalo public schools and went to work in Buffalo's suburbs for the Board of Cooperative Education as a Special Education teacher; she later became a recognized leader in this field as an educator and a writer.
"But as it turned out," Rogovin has said, "There was also a positive result to all these attacks." In 1957 he was invited by his friend William H. Tallmadge, a professor of music at State University College in Buffalo, to accompany Tallmadge while he made sound recordings at a Holiness Church in Buffalo's African American community and to make photographs of the church services. "I readily accepted my friend's offer," he said, "since I felt that once again I could speak out about the problems of the poor, but this time through my photography." After three months Tallmadge had completed his recordings; Rogovin continued to photograph in Buffalo's various storefront churches for three years.
In the summer of 1962, when the Storefront Church series was completed, Milton and Anne Rogovin traveled to West Virginia and eastern Kentucky to photograph miners and mining communities. They returned to Appalachia each summer through 1971; Milton photographed miners and their families, and the landscape devastated by strip-mining. They also recorded interviews with some of the miners. Anne's role on these trips was crucial, for she initiated conversations with the women of these mining communities and, as a couple, she and her husband would be invited into their homes. "I often wonder why they let me go into their houses," Rogovin recalls. "I guess there was something about Anne and me, we didn't look threatening to them."
Rogovin went on to photograph residents of Buffalo's East Side, the neighborhood surrounding the Storefront Churches; Native Americans in Buffalo and on the nearby reserves; working and poor people of Buffalo's Lower West Side-- in a series that spans more than thirty years; steelworkers in Buffalo; and miners in Scotland, Cuba, Mexico, France, Czechoslovakia, Spain, Germany, Zimbabwe, and China, and, again, in Appalachia. His "Working People" and "Family of Miners" images pair photographs of workers at work and at home, visual manifestations of the fullness of people's lives and of the specificities and complexities of gender, ethnicity, and class in particular locations and at particular historical moments.
What is critically important is that while Rogovin recognizes the impact of social conditions and is unfailingly critical of the social and economic structures that impose and maintain these conditions, his photographs are not portrayals of abject victimization. Nor does he romanticize or heroize his subjects. Rather, he seeks to convey the effects of material reality on his subjects and how people live their lives in relation to social conditions. He is not satisfied with a one-dimensional portrayal of a subject, and his photographs defy simplistic interpretation, instead suggesting questions - about individual lives, communal circumstances, and the social and economic structures that shape these circumstances. Aware of his presence-- Rogovin unfailingly asks his subjects' permission before making a photograph - his subjects engage the camera and the photographer. Accordingly, there is a sense of connection, whether momentary or extending through years or even decades, in these photographs.
Milton Rogovin has dedicated his life's work to enabling people to see more clearly- as an optometrist, a political activist, and a photographer. He offers the following advice to those just beginning their life's work: "You must believe in what you are doing. When you run into problems you must keep plugging away and keep doing it. It is never easy. My slogan is 'Never give up!'" His work demonstrates an abiding respect for the humanity of his subjects, awareness of how people's circumstances and surroundings have an impact on their lives, and consciousness-- even, at times, astonishment-- at the resilience of human beings as he makes visible that which might otherwise remain unseen.
Note: this essay is excerpted from Melanie Herzog's book, Milton Rogovin: The Making of a Social Documentary Photographer, published by the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona and the University of Washington Press (2006).
http://www.miltonrogovin.com/home.php
http://www.danzigerprojects.com/
Upcoming Exhibitions at the Australian Centre for Photography
Upcoming Exhibitions at the Australian Centre for Photography in Paddington
Montalbetti And Campbell: The Sensualists in Gallery 1 and 2
November 27, 2009 - January 23, 2010
If Botticelli were alive today he'd be working for Vogue - Peter Ustinov
In a lush, immersive feast for the senses the creative duo of Denis Montalbetti and Gay Campbell present a stunning array of personal and commissioned work. With a taste for the baroque their images are marked by a rich visual complexity subtly laced with a darker sensuality. In this exhibition the works are staged in a series of installations styled by Cassandra Scott-Finn, creating a fairytale journey through the imagination of two of Australia's most celebrated photographers.
Multi-award-winning masters of the studio and of postproduction, Montalbetti and Campbell harness the full potential of digital technology to create images with a nonetheless timeless quality. With a practice that spans commercial editorial and fine art, they remind us that many of the artists of the past created their greatest works to commission and for a purpose.
Images © Montalbetti and Campbell
Simon Harsent: Melt in Gallery 3
November 28, 2009 - December 13, 2010
Simon Harsent's Melt begins with images of massive icebergs as they enter Greenland's Disco Bay from the Ilulissat Icefjord and ends off the East coast of Newfoundland. This is an area known as Iceberg Alley and is where, in 1912, the Titanic met its fate. By the time they reach Newfoundland the icebergs have travelled hundreds of miles, and have been so battered that they are little more than a broken spectre of their former selves.
Seeing them first in their austere grandeur and then, later, dissolving into the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, is both awe-inspiring and humbling: a metamorphosis that endows each iceberg with a lifespan, a story and a personality.
Simon Harsent was born in England and currently divides his time between Australia and the USA. He has exhibited internationally and has received a number of prestigious awards for his photographic work.
Image © Simon Harsent
Now And When in Gallery 4
November 27 - December 13, 2009
ACP is developing a major new social inclusion program. We are delighted to present here photographs from an early research trial, which ACP ran in partnership with the Salvation Army's Oasis Youth Support Network in Surry Hills. The participants were young people struggling to re-engage with the community in positive ways.
http://www.acp.org.au/
The Searchers: Sasha Bezzubov and Jessica Sucher at Daniel Cooney Fine Art in New York
SASHA BEZZUBOV AND JESSICA SUCHER: THE SEARCHERS
Until December 23, 2009 at Daniel Cooney Fine Art
The photographs in The Searchers look at various aspects of Western spiritual tourism in India. India has long had a vast, loosely organized industry in Spiritual training made up of Utopian communities, yoga centers, meditation retreats, Gurus both Indian and Western, and a massive circuit of festivals, pilgrimage sites and places of worship. This landscape of spiritual (and social) possibility, along with exotic surroundings and low costs draws large numbers of Western seekers who come for a week or a lifetime.
The Searchers builds on our previous work The Gringo Project (Sasha Bezzubov, 1997-2003) and Expats and Natives(Sasha Bezzubov and Jessica Sucher, 2002-2005) by addressing the population of young Western travelers visiting the developing world, their relationship with their host country, and what this means within the larger questions of history, economy, race, and idealism.
The Searchers consists of several distinct series (ranging in genre from portraiture to landscape to abstraction), which compliment and inform one another. Believing that no one stylistic approach could accommodate this multi-layered subject, we formed several responses - from somber to humorous, from visually driven to conceptually structured. Using 4x5 and 5x7 view cameras, we photographed transient seekers and lifetime converts, architecture in the communities they found, and the spiritual practices they engage in.
http://www.sashabezzubov.com/index.php
http://www.danielcooneyfineart.com/index.html
Exhibitions at Bruce Silverstein Gallery in New York
Yao Lau: New Landscapes
Until December 12, 2009 at Bruce Silverstein Gallery in New York
Bruce Silverstein Gallery is pleased to announce the first New York exhibition by Chinese artist Yao Lu. The artist has created a thoughtful and timely series inspired by traditional Chinese paintings entitled New Landscapes in which mounds of garbage covered in green protective nets are assembled and reworked by computer to create images of rural mountain landscapes shrouded in the mist. Lying somewhere between painting and photography, and between the past and the present, Yao Lu's work speaks of the radical mutations affecting nature in China as it is subjected to rampant urbanization and the ecological threats that endanger the environment.
According to Lu, “Today China is developing dramatically and many things are under constant construction. Meanwhile many things have disappeared and continue to disappear. The rubbish dumps covered with the 'shield', a green netting, are a ubiquitous phenomenon in China.”
Born in 1967 in Beijing, Yao Lu attended Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA). Lu’s work has rarely been seen in the West, except at the Fotofest Biennial in 2008, and the "Space and Transportation" exhibition in Graz, Austria in 1997. He won the 2008 Paris Photo BMW Prize for contemporary photography. His work has been shown in numerous festivals and collective exhibitions around China: Lianzhou International Photo Festival 2007, New China Occidentalism – China Contemporary Art in Beijing in 2006, Pingyao International Photography Festival in 2004. Currently, Lu lives and works in Beijing.
Aaron Siskind Foundation: Constructions
Until December 12, 2009 at Bruce Silverstein Gallery in New York
Photographer and educator Aaron Siskind holds a preeminent place in the history of American photography. Beginning his photographic career in the 1930’s as a social documentarian with the New York Photo League, he ultimately radicalized the medium by emphasizing the photograph as an abstract form of expression and an aesthetic end in itself. As the sole photographic member of the American Abstract Expressionist movement, Aaron Siskind is regarded as one of the most influential photographic-based artists of the 20th century.
Siskind taught in New York City's public schools for 25 years before becoming recognized as a photographer and then a gifted pioneer of photographic education. His vision and methods have and will continue to inspire and instruct future generations of artists and teachers.
The Aaron Siskind Foundation maintains this legacy by providing annual grants which “encourage and celebrate artistic achievement in contemporary photography by supporting the creative endeavors of individual artists working in still-photography and photography-based media.
John Wood: Collages, 1955 - 2006
Until December 12, 2009 at Bruce Silverstein Gallery in New York
John Wood is known as an artist’s artist. He is one of the pre-eminent artists and educators of our time. A master of processes from straight photography, collage, cliché verre, solarization, mixed media, offset lithography to drawing. He has an incredible ability to work decisively across a variety of media with ease. Wood spent 35 years teaching photography and printmaking at the School of Art and Design at Alfred University in Alfred New York. His teaching, his art making, and his life are intricately entwined, each reinforcing the other.
Born in California in 1922, John Wood’s early childhood was marked by the effects of the Depression. His family made frequent moves, as his father sought better employment. While in third grade, John began taking drawing classes at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester, New York for several years. In 1941 he volunteered for the Army Air Corps, where he trained as a B-17 pilot.
By 1950 John Wood was determined to study art and design. He subsequently trained as a visual designer and photographer at the Institute of Design in Chicago, John Wood’s work freely moves between conceptual and visual exploration. He loves to draw, the way some people love to read.
He has exhibited extensively and his work can be found in most major collections. John Wood’s exhibitions are noted for their breadth and strength. His work refuses to be shoehorned into one style. At a time, when specialization in art was the norm, he exhibited work in photography, drawing, printmaking and artist’s books. His unique books especially bring the power of his ideas into a cohesive whole.
This exhibition represents a survey of his collage work from the 1950s through 2006. Currently, John Wood lives in Baltimore, Maryland with his wife, Laurie Snyder who teaches photography at the Maryland Institute College of Art. They migrate each summer to their home and studio in Ithaca, New York.
Bruce Silverstein /20: On View: selections from the gallery
Until December 12, 2009 at Bruce Silverstein Gallery in New York
Jesse Chehak
Joel-Peter Witkin
Ernst Haas
http://www.brucesilverstein.com/index.php
2009 Nokia Mobifest in Toronto
Nokia Mobifest Toronto Fourth Annual Festival shines a spotlight on the world’s best made-for-mobile films
November 17, 2009
Nokia Mobifest Toronto, Canada’s premier made-for-mobile film festival, will present more than 35 films & videos under 90 seconds, from nearly 20 different countries on November 17th, 2009 at the Revue Cinema at 7pm. The festival screening will offer attendees the opportunity to view a variety of exceptional made-for-mobile-platform films, including 2 competitive series - the official festival selections and the completed Toronto Made-For-Mobile Challenge films; plus 2 showcase series - World Tour 2009 highlight films and a sneak peak of 2 Athletes in Motion (AIM) films.
Along with this year’s official selections, the November 17th event will screen completed works from the first-ever Toronto Made-For-Mobile Challenge. The inaugural competition saw Nokia Mobifest Toronto select five of the city’s most promising filmmakers and challenge them to produce, shoot and edit a 90-second, Toronto-themed made-for-mobile film in 24 hours. Participating filmmakers were the first in Canada to use the soon-to-be-released N86 8MP phone from Nokia – an exciting new device boasting an 8-megapixel camera with ultra-wide angle Carl Zeiss optics. The challenge winner will be announced at the screening and be presented with a $2,500 cash prize, generously donated by the City of Toronto.
The fourth annual event will also screen a sneak preview of two films from the Athletes in Motion (AIM) project, including a film directed by Jason Priestly featuring World Champion Downhill Skier, Jan Hudec. The special series of 2-minute vignettes featuring Canadian athletes was commissioned by CTV Bravo!FACT for the 2010 Winter Olympic Games.
As part of the mobile World Tour in 2009, the festival will also screen films hailing from the Hong Kong Mobile Film Festival, The Netherlands Viva la Focus festival and Spain’s Mofilm festival. Nokia Mobifest Toronto is one of ten International mobile film festival World Tour members – a reciprocal deal that sees notable mobile fests from around the world spotlight each other’s strongest submissions.
Nokia Mobifest Toronto founder, Duncan Kennedy, enthuses, “The proliferation of the mobile screen is undeniable. With more than 500 million video-capable mobile devices globally, the mobile platform is now the largest video and film distribution platform since the television. As usability and image technology improves, mobile video will continue to attract creative minds, increasing the quality and breadth of content offerings. We are so pleased that Nokia continues to demonstrate their unwavering support for the creative community; consistently offering unique opportunities for forward-thinking filmmakers to be recognized and excel in this rapidly growing arena.”
All official festival selections are eligible to win in one of three Nokia Mobifest Toronto award categories. The first award, Shot on Mobile, will go to the entry that best exemplifies compelling and creative content specifically shot using mobile technology. The festival’s second award will be given out to the top Animation entry, and the final honour will be awarded to the winner of the prestigious Best of Festival prize: an award that includes a one week trip for two to the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles, California—plus $2,000 cash. An esteemed industry jury will select the award winners by screening each submission on a Nokia device.
www.mobifest.net
Robyn McCallum: Patrimony at Pikto Gallery in Toronto
Robyn McCallum: Patrimony
Until December 11, 2009 at Pikto Gallery
"The reinterpretation of well known works has long been a tradition in fine art, rooted in the renaissance artists' varying versions of such iconic images as the Last Supper or Madonna and Child. Operating within a more modern context, the images in this series similarly represent the appropriation and re-contextualiztion of art, in particular classical western paintings.
This series employs more "modern" representations of women to recreate famous paintings from throughout art history. In doing so it illuminates the through-line of female representation that exists art historically: from early fine art paintings to the pop cultural images of the 20th century. Using magazine 'pin-ups' to represent the more modern woman is itself a significant selection, in that these were images unabashedly created with the aim of sexual excitement. However, one cannot ignore the relationship between these representations of women and the equally objectifying nature of the historical paintings being re-contextualized. Many of the high art paintings created throughout history were done so as pornography in an era preceding film, photography and the Internet. It is only through the passage of time that "high art" and its acquired status has succeeded in distancing itself from this fact".
Distillery District, 55 Mill St. Bldg. 59-103, Toronto
http://www.pikto.com
Exhbitions Until January 23, 2010 at York Quay Centre in Toronto
Hinterlands: Fastwürms I Sky Glabush I Diana Thorneycroft I Colette Urban - Curated by Patrick Mahon
Until January 3, 2010 at York Quay Centre at Harbourfront Centre
The exhibition Hinterlands takes as its focus the works of five contemporary Canadian artists (Fastwürms are two) who mine the potential of distant and “unseen” places as zones of myth-making that encourage psychological disclosure. Each of the four projects represented in the exhibition is predicated on the notion of a place partially understood to be “out there” that betrays a readiness to be encountered as strangely familiar. Through painting (Glabush), photography (Fastwürms, Thorneycroft), and video and performance-installation (Urban), the artists of Hinterlands bring the periphery to the centre, maintaining a fascination for the particular and the psychologically charged qualities of places that are just beyond the reach of everyday experience. The artists of Hinterlands propose our re-consideration of the potential of “lost” zones to be engaged for the purposes of play, psychological speculation, and cultural and environmental criticism. – Patrick Mahon
Colette Urban, BARE, 2008 Performance
Diana Thorneycroft, Group of Seven Awkward Moments (Lake and Mountains with Double-double), 2008
Kalle Kataila: Landscapes and Contemplations
Until January 3, 2010
Kalle Kataila's photographic series captures the experience of being present in a moment and observing the landscape in stillness. Being part of the landscape that we interconnect can lead us to explore our relationship and understanding with the environment around us. Landscapes help us to reflect on our role as humans in the ever-changing diversity of our planet’s landscapes.
Kataila seizes moments of contemplation. A landscape shows nature in all its varied beauty, but also our ability to shape it in a harmonious and sustainable way. Landscapes also reveal the impacts of our acts that might not always be positive. The relationship between man and landscape is constantly redefining itself as man builds and changes his surroundings and the climate.
The challenge is to preserve the beauty of the natural world, and to alter it wisely. Increasing awareness of climate change and the ongoing financial crisis pushes us to more closely consider our impacts, and underlines a responsibility to take care of the environment and landscape that we are creating for future generations.
There is the opportunity to pause, carefully observe and consider what we want to see on the horizon.
Kalle Kataila (b.1978 Helsinki) is an artist currently based in Helsinki, Finland. Kataila's work is based around concepts of landscape, awareness and personal stories. He has exhibited with artists from The Helsinki School at Paris Photo, Art Forum Berlin, École des Beaux-Arts, Paris and the Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki. Kataila's works are in art collections at the Helsinki City Art Museum and the Finnish State Art Gallery as well as in several private and corporate collections in Europe and in the United States.
Kalle Kataila, Contemplation Lapland, 2007 from the series Landscapes and Contemplations
Directed North: Garett Walker: Sledhead I Eamon Mac Mahon
Until January 3, 2010
Two artists present two unique photo-based series of works that seek out communities in the northern wilderness.
Garett Walker | Sledheads
Beyond the urban centres of southern Ontario, beyond the sprawling suburban communities, and up into the rural north, the landscape changes as does the climate. The wilderness opens up in its natural state and envelops the smaller and more isolated communities. The snowmobile was born out of this topography. These “chariots of the north” serve as a functional transportation vehicle for individuals and communities living in more remote and snowbound places across Quebec, Ontario, Northern Michigan and beyond.
I had heard about a vintage snowmobile rally in Eganville and it piqued my curiosity. With a growing interest in documenting regional cultural festivals in Canada, and as an outsider to snowmobile culture, I made my way northeast towards the Ottawa Valley. I’ve been documenting some of the lesser known Canadian cultural festivals, celebrations, and rituals of the present. In documenting a diverse range of smaller regions, communities, and individuals, I am attempting to construct an understanding of my own relationship to the multifarious notion of Canadian identity.
I have been documenting regional cultural events that are seldom seen outside their locales. These events are traditions that are important in building and maintaining regional communities in different places across Canada. As a country, Canada spans 9,984,670 square kilometres, making it the largest country in the western hemisphere. Its culture is as diverse as its geography, and so it is not so strange for me to feel like a foreigner inside the country I call home. This is one of the reasons why I wish to bring these activities into focus and share them with a larger public in hopes of including these hidden treasures in a larger picture of how we as Canadians view Canada.
Garett Walker completed his BFA in Photography and is currently working on his MFA in Documentary Media Studies at Ryerson University. He is an active participant in the Toronto arts community and has been the recipient of many private and public artistic development grants, which help to fund his ongoing work. Various private collectors and public institutions in Canada collect his work. Walker lives and works in Toronto.
Garett Walker, part of the series Sledheads
Eamon Mac Mahon
Since 2004, Toronto-based photographer Eamon Mac Mahon has spent up to three months of each year working in the wilderness of northwestern Canada and Alaska. These slow journeys via bush plane have allowed him to intimately photograph remote landlocked communities, and the vast areas of uninhabited land surrounding them. His work has appeared in various publications including the Walrus, National Geographic, W and New York Magazine, as well as exhibition spaces such as The Power Plant, The Detroit Institute of the Arts, the Griffin Museum of Photography in Boston and Higher Pictures NYC. Mac Mahon also spends much of his time creating video projections for stage productions, short films and documentaries.
Eamon Mac Mahon, from the series Landlocked: Living room, Uranium City, Saskatchewan
Visual Arts at York Quay at http://www.harbourfrontcentre.com/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
