David Pogue posts today in The New York Times regarding two winners in Popular Photography's annual Reader's Photo Contestwhich were "photoshop jobs." He questions whether these winners should count as photographs because what the image represents never "actually existed." That objection, of course, leaves aside the question of whether the image itself is really worth looking at. Perhaps the best thing about "reality" in this case is that it constrains people from making up scenes we could do without.
In the March issue of Popular Photography magazine, the editor's note, by Miriam Leuchter, is called "What Is a Photograph?"
You'd think that, after 73 years, a magazine called Popular Photography would have figured that out. (Ba-da-bump!)
Actually, though, the editorial is about the magazine's annual Reader's Photos Contest. This year, in two of the categories, the winners were what the magazine calls composites, and what I call Photoshop jobs.
One photo shows a motorcyclist being chased by a tornado; another shows a flock of seagulls wheeling around a lighthouse in amazingly photogenic formation. Neither scene ever actually existed as photographed.
Now, in my experience, photographers can be a vocal lot. And a lot of them weren't crazy about the idea of Photoshop jobs winning the contest.
I have to admit that when I saw the winners revealed in a previous issue, I was a bit taken aback, too. I mean, composition and timing are two key elements of a photographer's skill, right? If you don't have to worry about composition and timing, because you can always combine several photos or move things around later in Photoshop, then, well -- what is a photograph?
*Travel/Places Category Winner*“This shot was half planned and half happy accident. I was on vacation in Cape May, NJ, last July, and found this lighthouse while exploring the beach. I knew I had to shoot it— just didn’t know what I wanted it to look like. Then the idea of a composite came to me. I captured just the lighthouse one day, shooting close-ups and from a distance to cover enough angles to choose from. Then I went back the next day at roughly the same time to photograph the seagulls. The sun wasn’t as much of a difficulty as you would expect—framing it behind the lighthouse, I bracketed all my shots so I knew I would get the look I wanted. The main problem was the mosquitoes. They were pretty terrible, so I had to work fast. I think I lost about a pint of blood on this shoot.”*Tech Specs: *Canon EOS 5D Mark II, with Canon 35mm f/2.8 (lighthouse) and 70–200mm f/4 (seagulls) lenses. Exposures, 1/125 sec at f/11, ISO 100. Composited in Adobe Photoshop CS4.
*Action/Sports Category Winner *“I shot this for a project I’m doing with natural disasters and extreme sports. It’s a composite of four different pieces: the background, the sky, the biker, and the tornadoes. The first two were photographed in Northern California in late afternoon. The biker I shot in my studio. It’s my friend Ashley on her bike, which was on a stand; she was pretending to ride it, but it wasn’t actually moving. I created the tornadoes by manipulating cloud images. I like to use a lot of special effects in my photography, and I like having a challenge.” See more at www.timothybaileyphotography.com. *Tech Specs:* Mamiya 645AFD with 17MP Leaf Aptus digital back and 55–110mm lens. Composite made in Adobe Photoshop CS3.
In this documentary, the founders of Adobe Photoshop - John Knoll, Thomas Knoll, Russell Brown, and Steve Guttman - tell the story of how an amazing coincidence of circumstances, that came together at just the right time 20 years ago, spawned a cultural paradigm shift unparalleled in our lifetime.
Community Celebrates Software that Changed the Way We View the World
SAN JOSE, Calif., – Feb. 18, 2010 – Adobe(r) Photoshop(r), the software product that redefined creativity in the digital age, turns 20 on Feb. 19, 2010. Around the world, Photoshop fans are celebrating the impact their favorite software has had across photography, art, design, publishing and commerce. In the United States, the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) will be hosting a special Photoshop 20th Anniversary celebration for over a thousand attendees in San Francisco at the Palace of the Fine Arts Theater today. The event will feature Adobe’s senior vice president of Creative Solutions, John Loiacono, as well as vice president of Photoshop Product Management, Kevin Connor, Photoshop co-creator Thomas Knoll and famed Adobe creative director and Photoshop evangelist, Russell Brown. To be a part of this celebration and view the live Webcast, visit: www.photoshopuser.com/photoshop20th.
The festivities continue overseas in Japan, Southeast Asia and throughout Europe. In honor of the 20th anniversary, Adobe Germany will host a special 20-hour online marathon, featuring over 15 local Photoshop “gurus” demonstrating their favorite tips and tricks live for Photoshop fans. In India and France, digital imaging contests will be held to showcase the work of Photoshop users. A special Adobe TV broadcast will also air on the anniversary date at http://tv.adobe.com/go/photoshop-20th-anniversary, reuniting the original “Photoshop team” for the first time in 18 years, to discuss their early work on the software and demonstrate Photoshop 1.0 on a rebuilt Macintosh computer.
The Photoshop community is also sharing their favorite stories online, with the product and its over 400,000 fan-strong Facebook page, the hub for a worldwide look at the product’s impact. A new “Celebrate” tab directs users to a 20th anniversary logo, which many have already personalized with Photoshop and used as a replacement for their profile image. Connect with the Photoshop team at www.facebook.com/Photoshop or http://twitter.com/photoshop, and add the tag #PS20 to tweets about the anniversary.
“For 20 years Photoshop has played many different roles – it has given creative people the power to deliver amazing images that impact every part of our visual culture and challenged the eye with its ability to transform photographs,” said Shantanu Narayen, president and chief executive officer at Adobe. “It’s no exaggeration to say that, thanks to millions of creative customers, Photoshop has changed the way the world looks at itself.”
The impact of Photoshop is everywhere – billboard signs, magazine covers, major motion pictures, even the logo on the coffee cup you drink out of every morning. All have likely been touched by the software. Over 90 percent of creative professionals have Photoshop on their desktops and today Photoshop is used by professional photographers, graphic designers and advertisers, as well as architects, engineers and even doctors. Whether it’s bringing visual effects to life in the blockbuster film Avatar, helping save lives in partnership with forensics departments and the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or challenging the human eye to determine if an image is real or fake, Photoshop continues to find new uses and advocates.
How It All Began
In 1987, Thomas Knoll developed a pixel imaging program called Display. It was a simple program to showcase grayscale images on a black-and-white monitor. However, after collaborating with his brother John Knoll, the two began adding features that made it possible to process digital image files. The program eventually caught the attention of industry influencers, and in 1988, Adobe made the decision to license the software, naming it Photoshop, and shipping the first version in 1990.
“Twenty years ago, Adobe predicted that it would sell 500 copies of Photoshop per month,” said Thomas Knoll, co-creator of Photoshop at Adobe. “I guess you could say, we beat those projections! It’s amazing to think that millions of people use this software today. We knew we had a groundbreaking technology on our hands, but we never anticipated how much it would impact the images we see all around us. The ability to seamlessly place someone within an image was just the beginning of Photoshop’s magic.”
Over its 20-year history, Photoshop has evolved significantly from a simple original display program to a wildly popular application that has over 10 million users worldwide. With each release, Adobe has introduced technological innovations that defy the impossible. Layers, introduced in Photoshop 3.0, gave designers the ability to create complex compositions easier than ever before. The Healing Brush, another groundbreaking feature introduced in Photoshop 7.0, allowed users to magically retouch images by seamlessly removing blemishes and wrinkles, while preserving lighting and texture. Photoshop tools like crop, eraser, blur and dodge and burn have become part of the creative vernacular worldwide.
The Photoshop team thrives off its rich beta tester program, with active and vocal users who have submitted requests and helped shape the development of features throughout the years. Adobe has maintained a strong connection with its customer base through blogs, user research, customer support, forums and feedback from Adobe “evangelists” who travel the world to engage with Photoshop users.
Photoshop Family Page: www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/family
Adobe Photoshop Family
Building upon Photoshop’s history of innovation and leadership, Adobe offers a line of Photoshop desktop and Web-hosted solutions for every level of user. Each product in the Photoshop family gives users across the spectrum of digital expertise the power to manage, edit, create and showcase images.
Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop CS4 Extended software are at the heart of the Photoshop family, providing unrivaled power and editing freedom. Photoshop Lightroom(r) addresses the workflow needs of serious amateur and professional photographers, helping them find, manage, enhance and showcase images in powerful ways. Photoshop Elements software provides accessible tools and sharing options for photo enthusiasts. Snap-shooters can quickly and easily share and edit photos with simple gestures on their iPhone or Android devices. Photoshop.com completes the Photoshop line providing an online photo sharing, editing and hosting resource for all.
About Adobe Systems Incorporated
Adobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information – anytime, anywhere and through any medium. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.
Adobe Photoshop Hits Twenty Community Celebrates Software that Changed the Way We View the World
SAN JOSE, Calif., – Feb. 18, 2010 – Adobe® Photoshop®, the software product that redefined creativity in the digital age, turns 20 on Feb. 19, 2010.
Around the world, Photoshop fans are celebrating the impact their favorite software has had across photography, art, design, publishing and commerce.
In the United States, the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) will be hosting a special Photoshop 20th Anniversary celebration for over a thousand attendees in San Francisco at the Palace of the Fine Arts Theater today.
The event will feature Adobe’s senior vice president of Creative Solutions, John Loiacono, as well as vice president of Photoshop Product Management, Kevin Connor, Photoshop co-creator Thomas Knoll and famed Adobe creative director and Photoshop evangelist, Russell Brown. To be a part of this celebration and view the live Webcast, visit:
The festivities continue overseas in Japan, Southeast Asia and throughout Europe.
In honor of the 20th anniversary, Adobe Germany will host a special 20-hour online marathon, featuring over 15 local Photoshop “gurus” demonstrating their favorite tips and tricks live for Photoshop fans. In India and France, digital imaging contests will be held to showcase the work of Photoshop users.
A special Adobe TV broadcast will also air on the anniversary date at http://tv.adobe.com/go/photoshop-20th-anniversary, reuniting the original “Photoshop team” for the first time in 18 years, to discuss their early work on the software and demonstrate Photoshop 1.0 on a rebuilt Macintosh computer.
The Photoshop community is also sharing their favorite stories online, with the product and its over 400,000 fan-strong Facebook page, the hub for a worldwide look at the product’s impact. A new “Celebrate” tab directs users to a 20th anniversary logo, which many have already personalized with Photoshop and used as a replacement for their profile image. Connect with the Photoshop team at www.facebook.com/Photoshop or http://twitter.com/photoshop, and add the tag #PS20 to tweets about the anniversary.
“For 20 years Photoshop has played many different roles – it has given creative people the power to deliver amazing images that impact every part of our visual culture and challenged the eye with its ability to transform photographs,” said Shantanu Narayen, president and chief executive officer at Adobe. “It’s no exaggeration to say that, thanks to millions of creative customers, Photoshop has changed the way the world looks at itself.”
The impact of Photoshop is everywhere – billboard signs, magazine covers, major motion pictures, even the logo on the coffee cup you drink out of every morning. All have likely been touched by the software. Over 90 percent of creative professionals have Photoshop on their desktops and today Photoshop is used by professional photographers, graphic designers and advertisers, as well as architects, engineers and even doctors. Whether it’s bringing visual effects to life in the blockbuster film Avatar, helping save lives in partnership with forensics departments and the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or challenging the human eye to determine if an image is real or fake, Photoshop continues to find new uses and advocates.
How It All Began In 1987, Thomas Knoll developed a pixel imaging program called Display. It was a simple program to showcase grayscale images on a black-and-white monitor. However, after collaborating with his brother John Knoll, the two began adding features that made it possible to process digital image files. The program eventually caught the attention of industry influencers, and in 1988, Adobe made the decision to license the software, naming it Photoshop, and shipping the first version in 1990.
“Twenty years ago, Adobe predicted that it would sell 500 copies of Photoshop per month,” said Thomas Knoll, co-creator of Photoshop at Adobe. “I guess you could say, we beat those projections! It’s amazing to think that millions of people use this software today. We knew we had a groundbreaking technology on our hands, but we never anticipated how much it would impact the images we see all around us. The ability to seamlessly place someone within an image was just the beginning of Photoshop’s magic.”
Over its 20-year history, Photoshop has evolved significantly from a simple original display program to a wildly popular application that has over 10 million users worldwide. With each release, Adobe has introduced technological innovations that defy the impossible. Layers, introduced in Photoshop 3.0, gave designers the ability to create complex compositions easier than ever before. The Healing Brush, another groundbreaking feature introduced in Photoshop 7.0, allowed users to magically retouch images by seamlessly removing blemishes and wrinkles, while preserving lighting and texture. Photoshop tools like crop, eraser, blur and dodge and burn have become part of the creative vernacular worldwide.
The Photoshop team thrives off its rich beta tester program, with active and vocal users who have submitted requests and helped shape the development of features throughout the years. Adobe has maintained a strong connection with its customer base through blogs, user research, customer support, forums and feedback from Adobe “evangelists” who travel the world to engage with Photoshop users.
Adobe Photoshop Family Building upon Photoshop’s history of innovation and leadership, Adobe offers a line of Photoshop desktop and Web-hosted solutions for every level of user. Each product in the Photoshop family gives users across the spectrum of digital expertise the power to manage, edit, create and showcase images.
Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop CS4 Extended software are at the heart of the Photoshop family, providing unrivaled power and editing freedom. Photoshop Lightroom(r) addresses the workflow needs of serious amateur and professional photographers, helping them find, manage, enhance and showcase images in powerful ways. Photoshop Elements software provides accessible tools and sharing options for photo enthusiasts. Snap-shooters can quickly and easily share and edit photos with simple gestures on their iPhone or Android devices. Photoshop.com completes the Photoshop line providing an online photo sharing, editing and hosting resource for all.
About Adobe Systems Incorporated Adobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information – anytime, anywhere and through any medium. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.
OTTAWA.- Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon. The term is used to describe how the human mind sees familiar objects in abstract forms, such as animals in clouds or the man in the moon. It is also an intriguing title for the recent work of Montreal artist Nicolas Baier, whose subjects include antique mirrors, the surface of polished stone, and water-stained paper. Presented by Pratt & Whitney Canada, "Nicolas Baier: Pareidolias" is on view in the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (CMCP) galleries of the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) from February 12 to April 25, 2010.
Nicolas Baier: Pareidolias was organized through the joint efforts of the artist and Bernard Lamarche, curator of contemporary art at the Musée régional de Rimouski, as well as the Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, and circulated by the CMCP. Following the Ottawa venue, the exhibition will travel to the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec in Quebec City where it will be on view from June 17 to August 23, 2010.
“Since the early 1990s, Nicolas Baier has been challenging photographic convention with his elaborately constructed digital imagery. His work is poetic, thought-provoking and playful,” said Martha Hanna, Director, CMCP. “This exhibition invites us into a world of illusions, where uncertainty is the only certainty, and where seductive surfaces and abstract imagery engage us in a search for possible meaning.”
"Pratt & Whitney Canada is proud to present Nicolas Baier’s inspiring digital imagery," said John Wyzykowski, Vice President, Mississauga & Turbofan Programs, Pratt & Whitney Canada. "His original work is innovative and we continue to support programs such as this one that enhance the cultural life of our communities all while expressing P&WC's own values of creativity, sustainability and advanced technologies."
Vanitas (2007-08) – The centrepiece of the exhibition
To Nicolas Baier, art almost always acts as a mirror. “Objects, people, the smallest surface on which our eyes come to rest—everything, no doubt, is but a reflection of who we are,” explains the artist in the exhibition catalogue. “We see only what we know.”
Mirrors are the source matter for Baier’s monumental work, Vanitas (2007-2008) from the collection of the CMCP. Astonishing in scale and complexity, this mural-like piece is comprised of 40 images, each made by directly scanning the surfaces of antique mirrors, which thereby lose their ability to reflect. Our likeness cannot be seen in the scratches, cracks, holes and other markings of these damaged surfaces, but it is practically impossible not to continue to seek for whatever may constitute an image, be it a hand here, a bear’s head there, the surface of a pond or distant galaxies. In Vanitas, what is visible refutes permanence. There is always more to see; the gaze ceaselessly invests these marks with a meaning they do not intrinsically have.
More exhibition highlights
Other works in the exhibition elaborate on the theme of pareidolias. The artist’s Paesines (2008) prints suggest that the infinitely small may appear to trace shapes and forces of the infinitely grand. To produce these works, Baier scanned the polished surface of small Tuscan stones, called pietra paesina in Italy or “landscape stone.” He then enlarged the images to suggest colourful painted landscapes.
Baier saw an interesting network of lines that were left as a result of humid temperatures on the surface of paper used to cover a storefront window. By scanning and enlarging this paper to create The Formation of Clouds (2008) and The Path of Water (2008), Baier provides a record of nature creating its own image and plays with the idea of condensation as the creator of clouds and eventual rain.
Thomas Ruff Debuts New Work in Sixth Solo Exhibition at David Zwirner
Thomas Ruff, 'zycles 4020', 2009. Chromogenic print, (186 x 186 x 6 cm) 73 1/4 x 73 14 x 2 3/8 inches. Photo: Courtesy David Zwirner, New York.
NEW YORK, NY.-David Zwirner presents Thomas Ruff’s sixth solo exhibition at the gallery, marking the New York debut of new work in two series: zycles and cassini.
Among the most influential photographers working today, Ruff has redefined photography’s conceptual possibilities, simultaneously capturing and questioning the essence of photography as both a means and a tool for visual experience. Over the past twenty-five years, he has approached various photographic genres in his work, including portraiture, the nude, landscape and architectural photography. He carries out these investigations using his own analog and digital photographs, computer-generated images, alongside images culled from scientific archives, print media, and the Internet.
In both of his new series — drawing from the natural sciences, astronomy, neurology, and art history — Ruff creates elaborate, open-ended visual systems that challenge viewer’s perceptions, demonstrating that structures can become increasingly complex the more one contemplates the details.
The zycles series, grounded in mathematics and physics, shows computer screen-grab recordings of curves modeled in three dimensions. The views captured by the computer are produced as large-scale chromogenic prints, or are printed directly onto canvas. Inspired by 19th century science books, Ruff’s 'zycles' present abstract contours based on “cycloids,” the mathematical curves obtained from rolling one curve along a second, fixed curve. Particularly interesting to Ruff was Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell’s (1831-1879) treatise on electro-magnetism, accompanied by copperplate engravings of magnetic fields. Ruff found these delicate traceries, while not intentionally aesthetic, suggestive of minimalist drawings.
To explore their visual and spatial possibilities, Ruff used a three-dimensional rendering program to translate the algebraic formulae of the cycloids — regarded in mathematics as “the most aesthetic of curves” — into computer-generated imagery. The resulting virtual structures display the intricate linear filigree of cycloids as they would appear in space. The spiraling formations, always faithful to their mathematical origins, evoke a multitude of forms: the trajectories of planets, cascading ribbons, line drawings, or musical vibrations.
The works in the cassini series are based on photographic captures of Saturn taken by NASA’s 'Cassini-Huygens Spacecraft', which launched in 2004 and completed its initial four-year mission in June 2008. The spacecraft orbited around Saturn to provide the first in-depth, close-up study of the planet and its domain, including its rings, moons, and magnetosphere, the enormous magnetic bubble that controls its planetary movement. Ruff acquired these black and white raw images from NASA’s website, where they were broadcast directly from the spacecraft and made available for public download. Through computer manipulation, Ruff infused each gray-scale image with saturated color. The resulting chromogenic prints transform the originals into visual statements that both capture the sweeping enormity of planetary structures while still distancing themselves from concrete forms, evocative instead of abstract and minimalist compositions.
Thomas Ruff (born 1958, Zell am Harmersbach, Germany) is known for his exploration of the mechanical production of images, and how technical mediation can influence a picture’s expressiveness. His telescopic views of the night sky, Sterne, printed from pre-existing negatives; his provocative nudes borrowed from pornography websites; Substrat, his colorful manipulations of Japanese manga and anime; and his jpegs demonstrate Ruff’s approach to reinventing existing images. Together with zycles and cassini, these serialized considerations draw attention to the abstraction that occurs when the visually explicit is re-imagined.
He was the subject of solo museum exhibitions at Castello di Rivoli, Turin; Museum für neue Kunst, Freiburg; Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna; Mu˝csarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest (all 2009); Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Sprengel Museum, Hanover (all 2007). His work is held in the collections of many major museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; The Art Institute of Chicago; Essl Museum, Klosterneuberg; Dallas Museum of Art; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.;
National Museum of Photography, Copenhagen; Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Ghent; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. He was the 2006 recipient of the Infinity Award for Art presented by the International Center of Photography, New York, and in 2009 Aperture published jpegs, a large-scale book dedicated exclusively to this monumental series. The artist lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany.
MANCHESTER.-Imperial War Museum North in Manchester presents the largest ever UK exhibition about the life and work of Don McCullin, one of the world’s most acclaimed photographers, to mark his 75th year. Many items are on public display for the very first time.
For more than 50 years, McCullin’s images have shaped our awareness of modern conflict and its consequences. His courage and integrity, as well as the exceptional quality of his work, are a continuing inspiration and influence worldwide. A unique collaboration between McCullin and the Imperial War Museum, this major new exhibition contains over 200 photographs, objects, magazines and personal memorabilia, and shows how war has shaped the life of this exceptional British photographer and those across the globe over the last half-century.
The exhibition examines McCullin the man, with an extraordinarily uncompromising drive to be on the frontline and document events as they unfold, the influences on his work and his impact on others. It reveals the moral dilemmas of bearing witness to and photographing conflict. Set in the context of world events and major changes in photography and journalism which have occurred in his lifetime, items on display for the first time include his US Issue Army Helmet worn in Vietnam, colour photographs from El Salvador, 1982 and Vietnam, 1972 and his most recent work, documenting the former Roman Empire.
Newly commissioned footage by the Imperial War Museum featuring Don McCullin reappraising his life as a photojournalist provides an intimate insight into his experiences in his own words. Most black and white images have been handprinted by McCullin himself and are stunning examples of his darkroom skills. Key images will also be displayed via lightboxes, banners and projections - methods that have never before been used to display his work.
McCullin’s most iconic black and white photographs of the major conflicts of the last 50 years are displayed together with his perspective on more recent events. Key turning points in his life are examined. These include his early years (experiencing evacuation, the Blitz, National Service in the RAF Photographic Unit), his discovery of photojournalism (early commissions for The Observer and reports of Berlin in 1961 and Cyprus in 1964), his seminal work for The Sunday Times Magazine (including Vietnam, Biafra, Bangladesh and Northern Ireland) and the changing approaches to journalism McCullin faced. Meanwhile documents on display from the Imperial War Museum’s Archive tell the full story of his controversial exclusion from the 1982 Falklands Conflict.
The exhibition explores how, indirectly, conflict continues to shape Don McCullin and his work today including cultural change in Britain, landscapes of England, still life photography and recent Roman Empire project.
A major new book Don McCullin: Shaped by War accompanies the exhibition and is published by Jonathan Cape in association with the Imperial War Museum on 4 February. Southern Frontiers, a new collection of photographs from Don’s journey across the boundaries and landscape of the Roman Empire (some of which feature on public display for the first time in the exhibition) is also published by Jonathan Cape on 4th March.
‘Shaped by War: Photographs by Don McCullin’ is presented in a landmark building that is itself a visionary symbol of the effects of war. Imperial War Museum North (IWMN) was designed by world-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind to represent a world shattered by conflict. IWMN’s Special Exhibitions Gallery is an extraordinary and compelling space, unrivalled in the UK. It is one of the largest temporary exhibition galleries in the country with two aluminium-clad walls that pierce the exhibition space, and a ceiling that plummets in one corner and swoops upward in another.
LOS ANGELES, CA.-The J. Paul Getty Museum presents In Focus: Tasteful Pictures, a survey of important technological and aesthetic developments in photographic representations of food, on view at the Getty Center from April 6–August 22, 2010.
Photographers have been enticed by the subject of food since the earliest years of the medium. Drawn entirely from the permanent collection, the works in this exhibition provide an overview of the Getty Museum’s world-renowned collection of photographs through the subject of food. The images span a period of 150 years, from the mid-19th century until today. The exhibition features both masterpieces and lesser known works. Among the photographers featured are Roger Fenton, Adolphe Braun, Edward Weston, Bill Owens, Martin Parr, and Taryn Simon. Several works are recent acquisitions, on view for the very first time.
“This exhibition contains a wide variety of images that showcase both appealing and not-so-appealing aspects of food,” said Virginia Heckert, associate curator, Department of Photographs, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and curator of the exhibition. “The title ‘Tasteful Pictures’ refers both to the subject of food and aesthetic preferences, particularly how the latter may have shifted over time.”
Among the selection of works in the exhibition is William Eggleston’s captivating photograph Memphis (1971), which frames a white-frosted square of freezer haphazardly stocked with a jumble of “tasty” frozen food items. The inclusion of ice-encrusted walls and adjectives announcing “artificially flavored” transforms the promise of plentiful choice into the compromise of convenience. Eggleston adopted a casual, snapshot-like style when focusing his 35mm camera on ordinary, even banal, objects and situations, demonstrating that compelling compositions could be created from the least attractive of subjects.
For Cuisine (Kitchen), Man Ray utilized the cameraless photogram process to animate his image of a roasted chicken on a bed of rice. The coiled spring he placed atop a sheet of photographic paper while exposing the print creates a spiral that suggests both an oven heating element and a world modernized by electricity. Commissioned by a utility company in Paris in 1931, the image was intended to promote domestic uses of electricity.
On view for the first time since it entered the Getty’s collection in 1999, is Floris Neusüss’ Supper with Heinecken (1983), a large-scale photogram that depicts the progress of a dinner party with exposures at the beginning and end of a meal that was enjoyed over the course of several hours in a room lit only with a darkroom safelight. Shadowy images of dinnerware, cutlery, wine bottles and glasses, spaghetti, grapes, eggs, a loaf of bread, and a corkscrew can be seen, as well as residue created by foods and liquids spilling onto the paper that was then developed and fixed.
Other selections from In Focus: Tasteful Pictures include American photographer Weegee’s Bagels, Second Avenue (1940), which depicts a New York baker rushing freshly made bagels to a restaurant in the dark predawn hours, and a group of 24 untitled images from Martin Parr’s arresting British Food series (1995), among them a half-eaten plate of food, fork, and knife resting casually on the plate, as if in mid-meal.
The exhibition includes a broad range of photographic processes, from salt, albumen, carbon, and gum bichromate prints made in the nineteenth century to gelatin silver and platinum prints made in the twentieth century. Examples of contemporary color photography can be found in dye transfer and Chromogenic prints.
In Focus: Tasteful Pictures will be the sixth installation of the ongoing “In Focus” series of exhibitions, thematic presentations of photographs from the Getty’s permanent collection. Previous exhibitions focused on The Nude, The Landscape, The Portrait, Making a Scene (staged photographs), and most recently, The Worker.
Upcoming “In Focus” shows include In Focus: Still Life opening in September 2010, which explores the ways in which still life has served as both a conventional and an experimental form of photography during periods of significant aesthetic and technological change. Also upcoming is In Focus: Trees, opening in February 2011.
Stunning, Large-Format Colour Prints by Steve Macleod Announced at Atlas Gallery
Steve Macleod, 'The Island of the Fay', 2009. Photo: Courtesy Atlas Gallery.
LONDON.-Atlas Gallery will present Scottish photographer Steve Macleod’s debut exhibition ‘Blackwater’. Stunning, large-format colour prints depict the landscape surrounding the river Blackwater through seasonal changes and shifting light. Dark, ominous woodlands with deep shadows contrast with lush landscapes bathed in radiating light. Macleod uses the landscape as a vehicle to describe his state of mind, reflecting the extreme highs and lows he experiences. Taking inspiration from a long tradition of landscape photography, Macleod interprets the medium in a new, fresh way. The technically perfect prints are not only unique in their aesthetic but also rare in their production. The entire process from camera to finished print is controlled and mastered by the photographer.
By methodically visiting the same sites along the river course, Macleod repetitively shoots the same subjects through the seasons in direct relation to the way he feels, translating his emotional state through the lens. Always waiting for just the right moment, shooting at dawn and dusk, until each object or detail of foliage is caught within its own atmosphere. A cathartic process, he uses the changes in light and atmosphere as a form of expression for his changing moods. During dark periods, he wades through a muddled mind, confused and frustrated. He finds solace in the landscape, engulfed in its sub-dawn greyness. Macleod’s emotionally charged photographs of dark woodlands have a weight, sombre yet profoundly meditative. In stark contrast, the bleached out, ethereal images represent the artist’s high, frenetic moods. During these moments, Macleod pushes the boundaries of his photography. Objects become unreadable, and we are forced to squint into the glare. Lacy structures of trees are lost in a diaphanous milky haze.
Macleod has worked as a professional printer since the early 1990s with some of the world’s leading photographers such as David Bailey and Mario Testino, collaborating and consulting beyond what is normally required. He has gained an international reputation in this area and published several books on the subject. This knowledge and experience is evident in his photographs, which are technically flawless. Working in a traditional way, he uses a weighty 5x4 Field camera and controls colour temperature and effects wholly within the camera, rather than through Photoshop. He uses early 1950s lenses, which are uncoated and lead to small aberrations, creating a softness in the image with elements of flare. He takes advantage of all the movements in the camera such as back-plate shift and lens tilt to abstract the composition, creating ambiguities of scale. Maintaining a narrow depth of field, elements of the foreground are often as sharp as the background. Large areas of the composition are blurred producing a sense of movement and an experience more akin to human memory and visual experience. In contrast, sections are captured in prosaic detail enticing the viewer into the depths of the image through the surrounding mist.
There are no signs of human presence in Macleod’s landscapes, only adding to their dream-like state, summed up best in ‘The Island of the Fay’. An ethereal image bathed in a deep purple light and velvet tones, its title taken from a story by Edgar Allen Poe about a fictional island paradise. This island can never be reached, the harder you search, the further away it becomes. True of the image itself that seems more impossibly beautiful, the longer you stare. Macleod’s sublime images are a platform for contemplation. He remains true to his own inner visions and his desire to portray a world that was created from within himself.
Steve Macleod was born in Thurso, in the Scottish Highlands, 1965. He trained as an Engineer at Dounreay Nuclear Power Station before working offshore on Oil Platforms. In 1988, he decided to abandon this and pursue his interest in art and photography, and enrolled at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen. Due to his interest in history and politics, Photojournalism became a natural choice and whilst still at college, he worked in Eastern Europe covering stories on social unrest and underground cultures. Macleod graduated in 1992 with a BA (hons) degree in Photography and the following year completed a Masters Degree in Photographic Theory and chemistry. After graduating, he moved away from Photojournalism but continued to work as a successful commercial photographer, and staged exhibitions of his personal photographic projects. Macleod currently works as Creative Director at Metro Imaging, London, whilst pursuing his personal photographic projects.
The exhibition opens on March 12 and runs through April 24, 2010.
Photographs at Auburn University Chronicle Destroyed Modernist Homes
Chris Mottalini, The Micheels House #3, 17 x 23 ½ inches.
AUBURN, AL.-Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art opens a new exhibition of photographs by Chris Mottalini entitled After You Left, They Took It Apart: Demolished Paul Rudolph Homes.
The exhibition, on view Feb. 6 through April 17, features a series of haunting images that record the demise of three abandoned houses designed by world-renowned architect Paul Rudolph, who earned his Bachelor’s degree at Auburn University.
Rudolph, who died in 1997, was one of the 20th century’s most iconoclastic architects. Originator of the Sarasota Modern style of architecture in Florida, he studied at Harvard after graduating Auburn and later became dean of the school of architecture at Yale University. Best known for his starkly geometric, concrete building design termed “Brutalism,” his residential works shared the same modernist aesthetic while reflecting regional and vernacular influences.
By exploring these neglected paradigms of modern design, Mottalini found poignancy and no small measure of irony in the startling contrast of high modernism laid to ruin. Photographed in some cases immediately prior to the homes’ demolition, his images are the last “portraits” of Rudolph’s striking creations.
Mottalini’s photographs have appeared in numerous publications worldwide and have been included in recent exhibitions at the Santa Monica Center of Art in Barcelona, Spain and the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Ill. This is his first showing in Alabama.
Ustad Bahman Jalali was an internationally acclaimed
photographer and renowned artist. He had a gentle manner that touched all of
those that came to know him, he was good hearted, observant, a private and
simple man, but an expert in his field.
He was liked and respected as a teacher and photographer by his colleagues, contemporaries
and by his many students and without a doubt has influenced many young
photographers deeply. He was known as a war photographer and covered the
Iranian Revolution, and published two books Khorramshahr and Days of Blood, Days
of Fire. He was also involved in making documentaries but he is mostly known
for the time and devotion that he bestowed on his students and as a real good
ustad (teacher) to photographers, photojournalists and his students at the
universities that he has taught for many years. He was easily the most popular
professor as many students desperately wished to have him as their tutor.
He had collected a large collection of glass negatives from Golestan Palace, and
published these in a very interesting book of his, 'Visible Treasure'. He was
curator of Iran's first photography museum and he exhibited internationally -
currently he was participating in an
exhibition in Milwaukee. In 2007 he was honoured by the Fundacio
AntoniTapies in Barcelona by a retrospective exhibition.
I worked with Bahman Jalali during the three years of the Kaveh Golestan Photojournalism
Awards for which he was head of the jury as well as a member of the steering
committee. I came to know his gentle yet interesting sense of humour during our
many committee meetings and later during less formal dinners and time we all
spent together along with our mutual good friend Mrs Golestan. I always found
him calm and serene - he spoke his mind, never insisted but let the logic of his
point reveal itself.
Bahman Jalali and Rana Javadi
With his wife, my good friend the photographer Rana Javadi, he lived in a beautiful house
in the centre of Tehran where we all went to pay our respects this afternoon.
From what I saw today, the pain and sorrow of his students was overwhelming, one
of them said to Rana, "I do not know if we are to express our condolences to you
or you to us" - this made everybody there watery eyed as this young man let out
his emotion and cried his heart out along with all of us present.
Bahman had arrived back in Iran from Germany late last night, saying that he wanted to be
under his own lahaf (blanket).On Friday morning he did not feel
well and so they went to the Tehran Clinic, where everything seemed under
control until suddenly at about 3 in the afternoon, he kissed his wife's hand
and smiled and thanked her and a few minutes later left this world for the next,
as calmly and quietly as he was famous for.
He will never be forgotten by all those who loved and respected him and I am sure that
he will be looking after loved ones and his students from high above.
His funeral will take place on Sunday morning, 17th January, commencing at
Artists Forum and he will be buried in the Artists plot at Beheshte Zahra.
Please join me sending his soul a prayer and we hope that his loved ones and Iranian
photography will be able to bear this loss. We are all surrounded by our
memories of him.
Photocollages at the Metropolitan Reveal Wit and Whimsy of the Victorian Era
Marie-Blanche-Hennelle Fournier (French, 1831–1906). Untitled page from the Madame B. Album, 1870s. Collage of watercolor, ink, and albumen prints. The Art Institute of Chicago, Mary and Leigh Block Endowment.
NEW YORK, NY.- In the 1860s and 1870s, long before the embrace of collage techniques by avant-garde artists of the early 20th century, aristocratic Victorian women were experimenting with photocollage. Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage, on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art February 2 – May 9, 2010, is the first exhibition to comprehensively examine this little-known phenomenon. Whimsical and fantastical Victorian photocollages, created using a combination of watercolor drawings and cut-and-pasted photographs, reveal the educated minds as well as accomplished hands of their makers. With subjects as varied as new theories of evolution, the changing role of photography, and the strict conventions of aristocratic society, the photocollages frequently debunked stuffy Victorian clichés with surreal, subversive, and funny images. Featuring 48 works from public and private collections—including many that have rarely or never been exhibited before—Playing with Pictures will provide a fascinating window into the creative possibilities of photography in the 19th century.
BREMEN.- Susanne M. Winterling works primarily in film, collage and photography. The various media of the individual installations developed for each of the exhibition contexts lead, altogether, to a whole. Her works produce thereby a system of concrete references, without resulting in the telling of a distinct story or following any clear narrative threads. But instead, meaning emerges in a delicate weave of references; narrative volatilizing and branching out.
Literature, music, art, architecture and in particular film history become artistic materials for Winterling in just the same ways as everyday objects are staged in her works. They can be of a porcelain cup from an erstwhile family manufacturer, a bird's feather that changes colour in differing light, the delicate flying fiery spikes of a sparkler or of the historical inscription discovered at an exhibition site. These elements of cultural history and the everyday encircle and mould each of us. Thereupon they determine the actual moulding both of identity and individuality and general societal realities. Therefore when Winterling implements everyday objects, film, literature and historical references in her works, her choice tells us, on the one hand, of her personal proclivities. On the other hand they refer to material which is also (consciously or unconsciously) known to the observer and therefore can be filled with their own perceptions, without the necessity of attaining knowledge through linked facts that descend too far into detail.
Through a sensitive grasp of the atmospheres and histories of the discovered exhibition spaces Winterling links the references from various areas in poetically charged arrangements. For the exhibition '...dreaming is nursed in darkness' at the GAK, the inscription of a founders crest at the Weserburg building indicating the Teerhof's (Teer = tar, Hof = yard) original significance as a tar works for 15th century shipbuilding, a quote by French existentialist Jean Genet and the explosion of a powder tower on the site of the Teerhof in the 18th century form the starting point for a versatility of works developed specifically for this occasion.
Thus a close up of a burning sparkler is played back in 16mm film format, links to the historical incident of the destruction of the 'bride' as the former powder tower at the Teerhof had been called and refers to the immanent beauty of the destructive incidents of fire and explosion. Various sculptures of tar and feathers and another 16mm film, showing the colour-changing feathers in their dance-like movement in a dark room, refers back to the name-giving history of the Teerhof. But likewise it plays on the custom in the Middle Ages to 'tar and feather' as a punishment and form of torture. Here too, the aesthetic beauty of the motif is brought about in singular contradistinction to the image evoked by their history. Such subsidiary perceptions and the material of tar, so bound up with black, pervades and forms the appearance of the whole exhibition – in frames, film backgrounds or the gleaming fabric panels which accentuate the elongated spaces of the GAK and are thus duplicated by the Weserburg tunnel situated in front of the door.
Another element of the presentation is formed by a modified cast of the crest/emblem inscription fixed above the tunnel entrance of the Weserburg. It alters the original formulation from 'männlichen festen Wollen' (firm masculine want) to 'weibliches festes Wollen' (firm feminine want) indicating at once the absurdity of such gender specific attributions upon which character traits are based. Furthermore it elucidates on the propagation of anachronistic, male and female connotations, which pervade our language to this day and pose questions on societal power structures. The historical crest is countered by a quote by Jean Genet the French existentialist that not only donates the title of the exhibition at GAK but is to be found again as an inscription in the presentation ('A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness'). In this way the exhibition title acts as a copula between the individual elements of the presentation such as the numerous reflecting surfaces, which are to be found in themselves – in the thought, that dreams are not only nurtured from positive and light, but can grow quite equally from the darkness, that 'grandeur' develops only where the debate also admits the violent aspects of things and where beauty is accorded its dark side.
Susanne M. Winterling (born, 1970) lives in Berlin. After taking part in international group exhibitions such as the Berlin Biennial 2008, at the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Basel and the Kunsthalle Malmő and solo presentations in Vienna, St. Louis and Tokyo the presentation at GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst is her first institutional solo exhibition in Germany. The exhibition has been created in cooperation with the Badischen Kunstverein Karlsruhe.
Dave Lewis, 'New Forest' (image from Field Work), 2009.
HAMPSHIRE.-ArtSway announced an exhibition of new work by Dave Lewis bringing together photographs and video. Dave Lewis is a photographer and filmmaker interested in identity and how people belong to a place. In making his work, Lewis attempts to act as both an ethnographer (the study of the characteristics of different people) and an artist.
Field Work is a new body of artwork inspired by the idea of the artist as a ‘stranger’ who visits a place or site to gather first-hand evidence as research. Lewis has explored the New Forest in Hampshire and Newtown in mid-Wales for Field Work. Both of theses places are linked by their rural locations and also by their cultural differences to Lewis’ hometown of London. By analyzing and contrasting these areas, interviewing residents and documenting events such as local festivals and carnivals, Lewis examines the role of the individual within society and how that individual identifies themselves with a place.
For his exhibition at ArtSway Lewis will present a series of large-scale landscape photographs taken on the outskirts of Newtown, and Sway. These photographs are taken from the viewpoint of the ‘stranger’ as he surveys a place that is new to him. Alongside these photographs are two filmed ‘journeys’ showing the ‘stranger’ as he conducts his research into Newtown and Sway, including interviews with local people.
Other images in the exhibition will include photographs Lewis took at carnivals in Wales and the New Forest that further explore ideas of identity and belonging to a place.
Dave Lewis gained a BA Hons in Film and Photographic Arts from the Polytechnic of Central London in 1985. Recent exhibitions and screenings include: Photo-ID Norwich Forum, 2009; Hybridity, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts 2008; Anywhere but Here, Southwark Gallery, 2008; AfterShock, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, 2007. Dave Lewis lives and works in London and is currently Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology, Goldsmiths, University of London.
Deborah Willis’ new book, ‘Posing Beauty,’ uses Ken Ramsay’s 1970s-era portrait of Susan Taylor for the cover.
“Where are you going next?” I asked Deborah Willis, who sat at the end of a table piled with copies of half a dozen of her 27 books in the hallway at Light Work Gallery.
“Well tomorrow I’m going to Paris for a signing and then after that to Zurich for another book event,” she smiled. All the copies of Willis’ two new books – “Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present” and a slender volume centering on Michelle Obama, which she later said she’d had to agree to do as part of a package deal to get the beauty book a publisher – had sold out.
In the hallway before the talk, under Willis’ hands on the table’s edge sat a single copy of her book with Carla Williams, “The Black Female Body: A Photographic History” (2002). It’s out of print now and the few hard-to-come-by copies on-line are collector-grade pricey. The SU Bookstore was managing the book table sales and had pulled out what other Willis volumes they had on hand for this signing event, which was how this single stray copy of “The Black Female Body” had surfaced. Willis herself quickly bought it and then called Williams on her cell to report she’d found a copy: even Williams hadn’t had one, which made me feel not so bad I’d gotten there too late.
Willis – premier photohistorian, writer, curator, Chair of Imaging at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, MacArthur “genius” fellow, and art photographer (she has a joint photo exhibition with her son, Hank Willis Thomas, “Progeny,” touring nationally through 2010) – travels a lot. The artist and photographer Carrie Mae Weems says she has never encountered anyone with a matching work ethic. The two are very old friends and last Thursday night they sat together before a packed audience in the auditorium off Light Work Gallery and talked at length about Black beauty and how that is represented in photography, something both have wrestled with and written about and made images of for years now, and ranged as well into how work really starts in the classroom with students’ questions and how Michelle Obama – once cast as fist-bumping terrorist – has changed things. The Willis-Weems talk was the final event in the Central New York Mellon Humanities Corridor’s “Key Words in Visual Culture,” a semester-long project carried on jointly among Syracuse University, the University of Rochester and Cornell.
Carrie Mae Weems was recently featured on PBS’ Artists in the 21st Century series and herself has work in the Getty Museum, the International Center of Photography and MoMA. She said Thursday that she had known Willis over 30 years.
“When I was starting out, I put out a call to find women who were working around the country – Black women in photography – Deb was one of the first who replied,” she said.
Willis was in town last year right after the presidential election at the invitation of the Southside Initiative, consulting about creating community history projects. She gave an afternoon talk at the Dunbar Center, showing slides and commenting on some of the early black-and-white photos of local photographer Marjory Wilkins. Later that day she spoke on campus, introduced by Weems, and showed slides from the beauty project, which she’d just then sent off to the publisher. She said she wished she’d seen Wilkins’ images before she’d finished the book, fastening particularly on one of a young man arm-in-arm with two well-dressed ladies and another of five young women posing before a plate-glass window after church. She again showed slides Thursday night, beginning with a 1850 poster for a runaway slave named Dolly, whom her owner so wanted back that he acknowledged publically that she was “rather good looking.”
Willis has been researching her new book actively for over a decade, seeking out images from the 1890s to the present that document how both photographers and their subjects have defined, challenged and reinvented concepts of beauty for women and men in African-American communities, how a “pose” is constructed (as well as how images actively “pose” – as in, to offer or assert – certain visual traits as beautiful) and the ways that beauty is essentially empowering. But her engagement with these questions dates from her childhood when she “watched the transformation women experienced in my mother’s beauty shop in our home in North Philadelphia,” and from her years as an undergraduate student who’d just started working at the Schomberg Center in Harlem and noticed there seemed to be very little material on Black beauty. Criss-crossing the country since then, getting a second masters in art history, she found there turned out to be a lot more material than she’d thought. She is looking always for stories, she says.
At 234 pages, “Posing Beauty” has a compact introduction that asks about both sides of the photographic interaction – what the photographer and what the subject each sought; how the Black community went about making its own store of images to counter the sea of mainstream hostile, stereotypical images in the U.S.; and references Elaine Scarry’s astute and thoughtful “On Beauty and being Just” (2001), the best working-out that I know about how we recognize the beautiful and the sources of our urge to reproduce that – to make images. The book also has a detailed index, a bibliography, end-notes – but mostly it has pages and pages of images, both men and women, and to sit with it for even a little while is to see why Publisher’s Weekly calls it “ground-breaking.”
These are divided into four sections, each of which contains wonderful surprises. Early in “Constructing a Pose,” there’s a snapshot of the musician Valaida Snow, a musician caught in a Nazi dragnet in World War II Europe who died in a concentration camp; here, she’s conducting a small orchestra during a show in London in 1934, dressed in a shimmering, slinky white gown, baton raised. There is the image of Zora Neale Hurston by Carl Van Vechten that she liked because it made her “look mean and impressive.” There’s also Cartier-Bresson’s “Easter Sunday Morning, Harlem, 1947” and Theodore Fonville Winans’ “Dixie Belles, Central Louisiana, 1938” – two girls in straw hats placed just so – and Eve Arnold’s “Malcolm X, Chicago, 1961” (also on the book’s back cover) and Bruce Davidson’s “Bodybuilder on Venice Beach, 1964,” one of the slides Willis showed last Thursday with a droll comment about the woman in the picture taking the bodybuilder’s picture while her husband looked on, helpless, hands jammed in his pockets. Some of the images in “Posing Beauty” have appeared already in “The Black Body” and it’s a pleasure to see they will have a new lease of life in this new book.
The second section is titled “Body and Image” and features a range of images that actively assert “beauty” and the power it confers – a 1930s image entitled “Brown Madonna and Child,” Prentice Polk’s portrait of Lena Horne posing with the Tuskegee Airmen in the 1940s before a statue of George Washington Carver, Eve Arnold’s “Integration Crisis” – two schoolgirls side by side in a restroom, one Black, at a party to introduce students in Virginia in 1958.
Part III, “Modeling Beauty and Beauty Contests,” brings together a number of Willis projects, including photo-documentation of Black beauty parlors and barber shops, some from the 1920s, and her question to find visual records of Black beauty contests, the earliest of which occurred over a century ago. This section also contains images of men posing with jazzy new cars and women engaging in cultured pursuits such as the image of a Black woman giving piano lessons to a young girl that W.E.B. DuBois took the Paris Exposition in 1899 as part of his project to present African Americans in radically new visual settings. And here is Jurgen Schadberg’s 1955 shot of the singer Miriam Makeba in a Johannesburg nightclub with her natural hair, which Willis has spoken of as having an electrifying effecting in those years. Part IV comprises a number of color plates, from portraits of public figures to the increasing use of self-portraiture such as Renée Cox perched in the Statue of Liberty’s crown.
Light Work videotaped the talk that Willis and Weems had so that may be available at some point. Meanwhile, there’s “Posing Beauty,” worth the wait.
Nancy covers the arts. Reach her at nancykeeferhodes@gmail.com.
Darwin's Camera tells the extraordinary story of how Charles Darwin changed the way pictures are seen and made. In his illustrated masterpiece, Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1871), Darwin introduced the idea of using photographs to illustrate a scientific theory. Creating the first photographically illustrated science book ever published, Darwin managed to produce dramatic images at a time when photography was famously slow and awkward.
During his investigation into the nature of emotions, Darwin commissioned photographs of children and adults in order to study specific facial expressions. Because of the dramatic delay between his subjects’ expressions and the photograph’s capture of them, Darwin used photographs made with electric currents to manipulate facial muscles into the desired expression. Using these and other staged photos, Darwin developed one of his most radical theories: emotions evolved biologically. With this, he altered the field of psychology, including the thinking of his later admirer, Sigmund Freud.
Darwin also influenced the course of photography. He mingled with artists on the voyage of HMS Beagle, collaborated with famed photographer Oscar Rejlander to make his pictures, and corresponded with many painters and photographers, such as Joseph Wolf and Lewis Carroll. Darwin's Camera provides the first examination ever of these relationships and their effect on Darwin's work, and how Darwin, in turn, shaped the history of art.
About the Author:
Phillip Prodger is Curator of Photography at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, and the author of E.O. Hoppé'sAmerika: Modernist Photographs from the 1920s; Time Stands Still: Muybridge and the Instantaneous Photography Movement (OUP 2003); and co-editor of Impressionist Camera: Pictorial Photography in Europe, 1888-1918. His writings on art and photography have been published in eight languages.
Hank Willis Thomas gained wide recognition with his highly provocative series B®ANDED, which addresses the commodification of African-American male identity by raising questions about visual culture and the power of logos. Pitch Blackness, his first monograph, includes selections from this series and several others.
The book begins with a deeply personal and interpretive re-telling of the senseless murder of young Songha Willis, the artist’s cousin, who was robbed at gunpoint and murdered outside a nightclub in Philadelphia in 2000. It then charts Hank Willis Thomas’s career as he grapples with the issues of grief, black-on-black violence in America, and the ways in which corporate culture is complicit in the crises of black male identity. The concluding section presents his newest body of work, Unbranded, in which Willis Thomas examines advertising and media representation of African-Americans.
With his characteristic pointedness and dark humor, Willis Thomas shows in Pitch Blackness why he is considered one of today’s most compelling emerging artists. Hank Willis Thomas is the first recipient of the Aperture West Book Prize.
Pitch Blackness was made possible, in part, by the generous support of Sondra Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-Falla, and the LEF Foundation.
Here’s an excellent short talk from TED, exploring in a very visual way the impact that oil production has had on the world. It was also great that I wasn’t the only speaker who talked about peak oil!
PARIS.- Since the turn of the new century, photography has become the dominant medium on what is an effervescent and very diverse contemporary art scene throughout the Arab countries and in Iran, a scene which is now the subject of growing interest on the part of the international market. There is a multitude of exhibitions and publications dedicated to Arab and Iranian contemporary artists, including a significant exhibition held in London in January 2009 at the Saatchi gallery entitled “Unveiled: New Art from the Middle East.”
It is important to note that contrary to what is often assumed, there is a real fascination in the Arab countries and Iran for the photographic image, and the relationship with this medium goes back a long way. Europeans set out to photograph the “biblical lands” as early as the 1840s. Most well-known among them are Gustave Le Gray, Maxime Du Camp and Felice Beato. Photography studios soon opened in Cairo, Beirut and Baghdad, largely run by Armenians who widely contributed to the spread of the practice throughout the region. The story is somewhat different in Iran where the ruler himself, Nasser Al-Din Shah, who reigned from 1848 to 1896, became passionate about photography. He imported equipment and began to practice this new art himself. He even created a gallery in a wing of his palace in Tehran, the Golestan, to display his collection. The archives belonging to this prince of the Qajar era are still held in the palace to this day. It seems the time is right to pay tribute in a prestigious international arena like 'Paris Photo' to what is a historically rich and now booming creative scene.
Inviting Catherine David to act as guest curator for this year’s special spotlight on the Arab and Iranian scene was an obvious choice. Since she directed Documenta X in 1997, she has led and developed a number of projects on “Contemporary Arab Representations” with exhibitions, seminars and publications in several cities around Europe. In particular, in 2007, she organized a monographic exhibition of the work of Iran’s great photographer Bahman Jalali at the Tapies Foundation in Barcelona. She also led a multi-disciplinary event called “Di/Visions: Culture and Politics of the Middle East” at the House of World Cultures in Berlin (Dec. 2007 to Jan. 2008). More recently, she conceived the “ADACH Platform for the Visual Arts” for the Abu Dhabi pavilion at the 2009 Venice Biennale.
For 'Paris Photo', Catherine David has been entrusted with a project based on three key components. First is the collection of the Arab Image Foundation, an institution created in 1997 in Beirut dedicated to the photographic heritage of the Arab world. The selection of images in the Central Exhibition shows a variety of examples of studio photography from the 1870s to the 1960s. The Statement section is composed of eight galleries from Iran, Morocco, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon who unveil the work of emerging contemporary artists while the Project Room offers a programme of videos which testify to the growing interest among artists of the region for the dynamics of this medium.`
In addition to this platform, a large number of galleries in the general sector have chosen to pay tribute to the work of artists from the region, or to Western artists who have worked in the area, offering visitors a rare overview of historic and contemporary photographic production from and on the Arab countries and Iran
Superfamous is the studio of interaction designer Folkert Gorter, primarily engaged in graphic and interactive design with a focus on networks and communities. Folkert holds a Master of Arts in Interactive Multimedia and Interaction Design from the Utrecht School of Art, faculty Art, Media & Technology, The Netherlands. He lives in Los Angeles, California."
Click on any text below to see Folkert's remarkable posts from the blog "but does it float."
