Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Quote of the week

From an excellent article on The Brooklyn Rail by the ARTSEEN editors.

What has been lost, as Ms. Stewart and Ms. Smith both seem to recognize, is faith in the mysterious, non-linguistic channels through which art accomplishes its unique task, including its resistance to colonization by language. It is art’s ontology to function visually and to evoke the tactile, to engage both the mind and body of the viewer. Instead, many of our institutional guardians have sought a prescriptive approach to ensure that visual art works “properly.” These gatekeepers want to dwell in the more easily manageable world of ideas, rather than in the messiness of reality and the tangled threads of aesthetic impulses.
Via

Whoop!


Copyright Massimo Vitali

I just saw M+B is going to have a Massimo Vitali show up in June, which is pretty exciting. These are prints you'll want to see.

Monday, March 29, 2010

Workshops


Copyright Jay Reilly


OC lifestyle photographer, Jay Reilly, previously featured on WCST also teaches workshops on the basics, lighting, shooting kids and shooting for stock. A quick look through Jay's site will quickly convince you that he'd be a good teacher.

Be sure to click on that photo above for a larger view.

Saturday, March 27, 2010

PhotoEspaña - Ugo Mulas






This is a post I wrote but never published, mostly because I was just too busy to really cover the festival in depth, as I had intended. I loved this show, though, so I thought I post it now:


The first official selection opening (there are more openings per evening than you can imagine or hope to make it too that for part of the "off festival" of PHE) I was able to attend was the Ugo Mulas show at the BBVA building. You have no idea how supportive of the arts major companies and especially banks are in Spain. Many have incredible collections and are big sponsors of events such as PHE. Don't get me started on how ridiculously supportive the Spanish government is of the arts in comparison to ours.

I'd never heard of Ugo Mulas before, but I've made a point to attend all of the official selection openings and have made some nice discoveries. Mulas has been my favorite. A photographer's photographer, Mulas shot portraits (many of artists), landscapes, fashion, commercial work, and experimented with the technical aspects of chemical photography (more on this in a minute).

I particularly liked his quote that I didn't write down but basically said that he worked commercially to pay the rent and only shot what he considered legitimate or noble work 10% of the time. He said he felt, though, that if he had to shoot the commercial stuff to live, he might as well pour all of his effort into it, which felt more honest.

I've always thought that if, Picasso for example, were looking down from somewhere at his current shows, he'd likely be screaming, "What, what are you thinking putting that preparatory drawing up on a museum wall?! That was never intended to be shown!" Well, there was an example of that in the Mulas show also, where they'd printed his bracketed shots large for some bizarre reason, rather the one where the exposure was "correct." I think a curator's job for dead artists is to at least try to figure out what the artist would have intended for their own shows and present that but back to the good stuff.

In one piece, Ugo finds himself sitting across from Giacometti at an outdoor cafe as he is told he's just won the grand prize for sculpture at the 1962 Venice Bienale and starts shooting. This sequence of four photos shows the incredible range of emotion shooting through Giacometti's being and feels quite human in that we can all understand that feeling of having one's work and effort recognized.



My favorite section of the show was his Verifications series for which he took photos "whose subject matter was photography itself...meant to clear the meaning of those operations I have been repeating for years, hundred of times a day, without never stopping to consider their inherent value and always seeing only their utilitarian side."

Now I'm not always the biggest fan of text accompanying work, but I'll admit it does make sense at times and this is one instance of text perfectly complimenting or even enhancing the visual experience. You can see the whole series along with the text that was presented at the show here and I highly recommend spending some time with this, which would become his final work.

I particularly loved Mulas calling Friedlander's work his "quest." That hit home. Other notables from Verifications:

I could also say that this homage to Niepce represents 36 opportunities lost, or rather, 36 opportunities refused, in an age where, as Robert Frank writes talking about photojournalism, the air has been tainted by the smell of photography.

Maybe here, as in the subsequent self-portrait with Nini there is the obsession of being present, of seeing myself while I am seeing, of taking part and being involved. Or rather there is the awareness that the camera is not part of me, but is an additional medium whose significance cannot be either overestimated or underestimated. Precisely for this reason, it is a medium which leaves me out just when I am most present.

PhotoEspaña is an incredible festival in an amazing city and I highly recommend a visit. It opens your eyes to amazing bodies of work you never new existed or, as in the case of
Evidence, had never gotten the chance to see. I can't recommend a visit enough. Too bad the airlines are charging 1980's prices for flights these days...

Friday, March 26, 2010

Feature - Joni Sternbach, SurfLand

It is with great pleasure that I feature Joni Sternbach's tintype portraits of surfers. What could be more suitable for our geographic location and culture? I love the prevalence of long boards in these - very fitting for the process she employs, but maybe also because my surfing skills aren't so hot. All of the images below were shot here in California and many of them are from a recent trip out and not yet up on her website.

Enjoy, and hit up those beaches on this sunny, warm weekend we have ahead of us.


All images Copyright Joni Sternbach











Thursday, March 25, 2010

Hossein Farmani's Response



Hossein took the time to respond to my postings here and here and in all fairness, I thought I would post it separately here at the top of the blog.

Hossein's Reponse:

Wesley,
Thank you for asking me to respond to you post.

You are right we failed in getting 160 great photographers from LA. We, through print advertising (23 ads), email blast, newsletters, our websites and word of mouth announced MOPLA's intention months ago. None of you or commentators send in your work. I am not personally familiar with your work. but if you think your worthy of an exhibition then you should put your calculator aside and send your works in for consideration. I am always open for constructive criticism but this posts are not one in my opinion.

MOPLA is a community event. Its not a for profit event. Its all volunteer based. Its an event to put the photography community on the map so YOU and the rest of the community can benefit.

I challenge you and invite you, to gather 50 or 20, or as many as you can, great photographer's work, together find a venue, put an exhibition together and MOPLA will publicize it for you. Do your part! Volunteer to help.

We are doing this to promote the art that has given us so much. I write the check each year to support it, a few hundred thousands dollars.

If you and your readers love photography and are part of LA photography scene. Why don't you get involve. This is as much your event as anyone else in LA.

Publishing profanity on your site does not offend me, offends the hard working photography community that is trying to do something good in this town, in this difficult times. I am used to negative people hiding behind their computers and sending anonymous emails.
There are cowards that like to complain about everything and blame everyone for their short comings and there are doers that get involve and make something better because they believe they can.

MOPLA will have a life of its own like many other events that I have envisioned, thanks in big part to positive, supporting community that has embraced them. I hope you and your reader join the rest of the community in making MOPLA a big success.

See you at the opening!

My reply to Hossein:

Hossein - I'm glad you responded as all of the feedback I've gotten in response to my posts from other local photographers has been supportive of my position, which I did try to present as constructively as possible. I will admit that my attention grabbing logo up there may have been a bit much and so I apologize for that. I tried to be as respectful as possible in the posts, while offering up my views of what wasn't working.

It brings me great joy that you are offering a chance to put on a show of local photographers' work (although I do not consider myself a curator) as part of MOPLA from that which has appeared on WCST or perhaps through a contest that I, and other local members of our community might create, if MOPLA does not plan to do so already for next year's edition.

I would love to get involved in the event and I know others that would too, but it was never made clear that this was open to us for collaboration. It seemed last year and this, that MOPLA was a top-down type of event, again with no call for entries or requests for ideas or help. I have been on the mailing list and have read each notice with care and interest but never saw such an invitation to our community.

With such a short time-frame, I doubt that organizing, printing, framing and locating a venue for an additional show would be possible for this year, though I will make some inquiries. Actually, the venue is probably the bottleneck here so if you have any ideas or connections, I'd be happy to organize something for at least the second half of MOPLA.

Otherwise, I know for certain that I and others would welcome the chance to volunteering our time and effort towards making MOPLA a success in years to come.


So, in short, it appears MOPLA is open to our volunteering and proposals for exhibitions in the future, so contact them! I'll keep you all posted on my own involvement, including hopefully helping to organize a juried call for entries for next year's event. Get involved and make MOPLA something special for our local photographic community each year.

MOP"LA" Continued...

If you haven't read my post from yesterday and the comments on it, please go do so before continuing here. I contacted both of the co-founders of MOPLA so that they were aware of the issue at hand and heard nothing back yesterday. Instead of responding, they changed the language on their site from:

"With the support of the Photography Community, MOPLA will showcase the work of 160 Photographers who live, work and/or have extensive bodies of work relevant to Los Angeles (emphasis mine)"

to:

"With the support of the Photography Community, MOPLA will showcase the work of 160 Photographers worldwide."

There. All better.

Well, yes, had they just said that from the get go, no issue would have been raised really. My main problem lied in the fact that they purported to represent local photographers and were not doing so - that someone actually had come up with the (correct, in my mind) idea to make the festival about the local scene and then chose later not to follow through.

Now, it still does not address the issue of why MOPLA chose not to do this in the first place. We have such photographic talent in this city, as I hope this blog demonstrates on a regular basis. It would have been nice, were MOPLA to actually celebrate and showcase our community and if it were to better reach out to us, through things such as a juried show for local photographers to be showcased, as I mentioned in yesterdays post.

Hossein Farmani did just write me back saying he will respond shortly. I'm curious to hear what he has to say and will be happy to post it here out of fairness, if he agrees. I'm happy he's chosen our fair city for his next endeavor (read his bio to see just how much he runs in the photo world) and hope it progresses into something wonderful for photography in Los Angeles.

In all fairness to MOPLA and as I said in the comments yesterday, at this point and with things kicking off in a little over a week, there probably wasn't much more they could have done to rectify this. I can only hope that at the very least my suggestions fell on open ears and some of it was absorbed so that next year, we can consider MOPLA a home-grown event showcasing the wonderful talent we have in LA.

After all, We Can Shoot Too.


Related post - Eric over at PixFeed weighs in here.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

MOP"LA"




I was happier than most to see MOPLA's creation last year. Despite the growing pains and initial mistakes any such endeavor would experience, I was excited to welcome this celebration of photography to Los Angeles.

It struck me as funny back then that there would be no juried show as part of the festival, where local photographers could submit and be showcased. Instead, someone made executive decisions as to who was included. While this is fine and quite normal in the art world, I hoped that year two would bring Angeleno photographers an opportunity to submit and be considered.

Instead, what we've got is this:
The Month of Photography Los Angeles will deliver the most comprehensive celebration of the Los Angeles Photography Community to date. With the support of the Photography Community, MOPLA will showcase the work of 160 Photographers who live, work and/or have extensive bodies of work relevant to Los Angeles (emphasis mine) through our Exhibitions and Projections. The city of Los Angeles turns 160 years old in April 2010. The theme for MOPLA 2010 is 160/160 - Celebrating 160 years of Los Angeles through 160 Photographers.
Well, the problem with this is that it isn't true. Before delving into this, I'd like to preface it by saying that I've exhibited alongside and know personally some of the photographers I'll be naming. I'm a fan of much of their work. The issue is that these fine photographers DO NOT "live, work and/or have extensive bodies of work relevant to Los Angeles."

Some may have shows up at Los Angeles galleries and while that's great and all, it certainly gives the impression that nepotism or plutocracy is at play here.

PDN, a New York institution, will present a show of the PDN 30, just like last year. While I think this is great and all, to includ all 30 photographers in the list of 160 that purportedly are local or have worked locally is preposterous. It means that nearly 20% of those represented are represented as a favor to PDN and not because they have anything to do with our local photographic community. PDN is a magazine and a sponsor of the event and as such, appears to have been rewarded with 30 slots that should have gone to Angelenos.

I see there are currently 91 photographers that have been chosen as the group of 160. Were we to take out the 27 or so PDN selections that have nothing to do with LA and the remaining 10 photographers (see below) that have nothing to do with our fine city, save for local galleries putting on shows of their work or their agency being based here, that leaves us with just 54 photographers that match MOPLA's description, leaving 106 slots to be filled.

I call on MOPLA to fill these locally and partly through a juried exhibition. For obvious reasons, I won't enter and wouldn't expect to be selected. They can start with this blog and look at all the fine featured work that has appeared since its inception if they need any inspiration.

Included photographers who do not "
live, work and/or have extensive bodies of work relevant to Los Angeles:"

27 of the PDN 30 photographers (to be conservative, though I don't see any outside Alex Prager who are local so it could be 29)

Bill Sosin
David Bacher
Eva Kolenko (Bay area at least...)
Evelyn Hofer
Ginny Mangrum (Bay area at least...)
Jamey Stillings
Jon Johnson
Morgan Silk
Robert Bueltman (Bay area, at least...)
Robert Stivers

91
-27
-10
----
54 out of 160*


*My apologies if I overlooked something in compiling this list - I made a serious effort to research each one. I tried to be conservative and even left those that grew up or studied here but do not
"live, work and/or have extensive bodies of work relevant to Los Angeles" since they are local in my mind. Still, we end up with just 52-54 out of the 91 named so far.

I welcome this fledgling event to our local community but wish they would execute better. Selecting outsiders when you state that you are selecting local photographers is an insult to our community.
Finding 160 talented local photographers should not require too much effort if that is actually your intent. I'd be happy to make suggestions.

I know there are people that will not be happy with this posting. It probably won't do me any favors as a photographer, but having started WCST to help foster a greater photographic community in Los Angeles, how can I not speak out publicly about something that makes false claims and does just the opposite?


We are a thriving photographic community.


UPDATE: It was just pointed out to me by a fellow photographer/blogger that the entire roster of the LA-based agency, Sharpe + Associates is on the list; not just some of them. Hmm...

Quote of the Week - Koudelka

"Too often people with some talent go where there is some money to be made. They begin to trade a bit of their talent for a bit of money, then a little more, and finally they have nothing left to themselves."

- Josef Koudelka, from two excellent interviews posted over on APS here.

Four Evenings With Fine Art Photographers


Copyright Tierney Gearon for W

Julia Dean Workshops is once again hosting Four Evenings with Fine Art Photographers kicking off with none other than Tierney Gearon this Thursday evening - an excellent follow-up to her show at ACE Gallery I'm sure you caught last year.

Los Angeles has a rich tapestry of fine art photographers that create amazing work (More on this in a post later this week). Because our city is so expansive, we often don’t get the opportunity to connect and learn about each other. This second chapter of Four Evenings with Fine Art Photographers opens the door to four incredible evenings, shared through the vision of some of the most interesting fine art photographers working in Los Angeles today. Many have published books, are inspired teachers, exhibit throughout the world, and are award-winning visionaries.


March 25th - Tierney Gearon

April 29th - Jay Mark Johnson

May 20th - Robbert Flick

June 17th - Susan Anderson

Thursdays, 7-8:30pm
Paid in Advance Series Fee: $35
At-the-Door Admission: $15 general, $10 student w/ID (check and cash accepted)
Class location: A&I Photographic and Digital Services, 933 N. Highland Ave, Hollywood, CA 90038

Friday, March 19, 2010

Quote of the Week - Paul Graham


Copyright Paul Graham

Well, really two quotes from a must read presentation over on ASX here:
...there remains a sizeable part of the art world that simply does not get photography. They get artists who use photography to illustrate their ideas, installations, performances and concepts, who deploy the medium as one of a range of artistic strategies to complete their work. But photography for and of itself -photographs taken from the world as it is– are misunderstood as a collection of random observations and lucky moments, or muddled up with photojournalism, or tarred with a semi-derogatory ‘documentary’ tag.
and:
The point is that we need the smart, erudite and eloquent people in the art world, the clever curators and writers, those who do get it, to take the time to speak seriously about the nature of such photography, and articulate something of its dazzlingly unique qualities, to help the greater art world, and the public itself understand the nature of the creative act when you dance with life itself - when you form the meaningless world into photographs, then form those photographs into a meaningful world.
- Paul Graham

Reminds me of this:

Picasso was sitting at a table outside a Paris cafe. A woman came up to him and asked him to draw something for her on a napkin. He complied, doodling as only he could. After he quickly finished he requested the French equivalent of $5,000. Agast the woman said — “but it only took you 2 minutes!” Smiling, the great man replied — “no Madam, it took me my whole life.”

Thursday, March 18, 2010

In Color: New American Stories from LACMA’s Photography Collection


Copyright Taryn Simon

As part of LACMA's current American Stories show, the photography department has a great little show up, featuring works from the collection. All nine photos are excellent and worth seeing but the standouts in terms of novelty, for me anyway, were Joel Sternfeld's vertical portraits of 80's yuppies. Considering they're portrait orientation, I don't think they are part of the Stranger Passing series but I may be wrong about that. Also included are two from Larry Sultan's The Valley, one of Taryn Simon's The Innocents (above) and one of Andrew Bush's Vector Portraits. It is a nice little show and a great compliment to American Stories.

In Color: New American Stories from LACMA’s Photography Collection
Art of the Americas Building, Plaza Level
February 28–May 23, 2010

Since its invention in the nineteenth century, photography has told stories: stories about family and alienation, joy and adversity, landscapes and cities. Often described as a democratic medium—and now practiced almost universally, with camera phones and similar devices—photography is ideally suited to the depiction of our democratic nation, with all its promise and problems. These nine photographs, selected from LACMA’s Wallis Annenberg Photography Department, begin to suggest the medium’s rich potential for storytelling in our own time. They represent a particular approach to narrative, using scale, chromatic intensity, and sharp resolution to draw the viewer’s attention to precisely arranged details and spatial relationships.

While these artists use new technologies, they also rely on an age-old truism: people respond to people. In nearly every photograph included here, the subjects meet the artist’s (and the viewer’s) gaze. These people assert their identities, but they are not autonomous—as the artists demonstrate by situating individuals in larger contexts suggestive of complex stories.

Joel Sternfeld and Tina Barney portray their subjects in domestic surroundings, surrounded by possessions indicating taste and social status, while Christina Fernandez, Larry Sultan and Taryn Simon show individuals in semi-public, semi-familiar environments: a laundromat, a suburban house being used as the set of an adult film, a dive bar. Andrew Bush and Sharon Lockhart create suggestive episodes with minimal accessories: a man drives his car, a girl holds a rodent. In each case, the photograph—deliberately and inevitably—tells only part of the American story. It is our task to imagine the possible beginnings and endings.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Kohei Yoshiyuki - The Park @ M+B


Copyright Kohei Yoshiyuki

I've been on Catalina for the past few days so I missed the opening reception for this one, but it's not one to miss. I'm sure by now you are all familiar with this series, but if not:

M+B is pleased to present the West Coast premiere exhibition of Japanese photographer Kohei Yoshiyuki’s The Park. Shot in three Tokyo parks during the early seventies, The Park is a series of black and white photographs capturing couples meeting up for clandestine trysts and, more provocatively, the voyeurs who came out to watch them. First exhibited in 1979 at Komai Gallery in Tokyo, the uproar surrounding his methods caused these photographs to be hidden from the public for the next 28 years. The Los Angeles exhibition opens on March 13, 2010 with an opening reception from 6 to 8p and will run through April 17, 2010. A monograph of the same name published by Hatje Cantz and Yossi Milo Gallery will accompany the exhibition and includes an original essay by Vince Aletti, along with an interview conducted by Nobuyoshi Araki that first appeared in a 1980 monograph of Yoshiyuki’s work.

Mr. Yoshiyuki first stumbled upon this hidden world while photographing skyscrapers in front of Chuo Park in Shinjuku at night when he witnessed a couple having sex and quickly discovered an entire scene of young lovers—and their peepers. He soon returned with an inconspicuous 35mm camera, a filtered flash and infrared film, and began shooting these hetero- and homosexual couplings, along with their spectators lurking in the bushes.

What is particularly striking about this series of photographs is not the graphic nature of the sexual acts portrayed, which are usually obscured by other figures or occur out of frame, but the densely packed tableaux of voyeurs who crowd in on the couples and sometimes attempt to join in. The raw, snapshot-like quality of these images implicates photographer, viewer and subject, which makes this work especially poignant and intriguing. In the tradition of Walker Evans on the New York subway or Weegee’s photographs of couples in the movie theatre, Yoshiyuki’s The Park is a social documentary of Japan in the 1970s that is rarely seen or heard of, as well as being a comment on photography itself. As Martin Parr writes in The Photobook: A History, Volume II, “The Park is a brilliant piece of social documentation, capturing perfectly the loneliness, sadness and desperation that so often accompany sexual or human relationships in a big, hard metropolis like Tokyo."

The exhibition will also include photographs from Yoshiyuki’s 1978 companion project, Love Hotel, a group of video stills pulled from unerased videotapes made by clients of one of Japan’s infamous rooms-by-the-hour hotels. The resulting pictures are grainy abstractions of faceless, nameless people caught, mid-act, in lovemaking.

Kohei Yoshiyuki was born in 1946 in Japan, where he currently lives and works. Photographs from The Park series have been acquired by the Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago), Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), Museum of Modern Art (New York), North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh) and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. This will be his first exhibition with M+B.

M+B Gallery
612 N. Almont Drive
March 13 - April 24

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Oddsac Screening @ Arclight

It took me all of two seconds to buy tickets to the special screening of Animal Collective and Danny Perez's visual album, Oddsac, at the Arclight with the band present. I only wish they were playing a show while in town.

March 22
Los Angeles CA, USA
ArcLight Cinerama Dome
With special guests director Danny Perez and members of Animal Collective.
$15. Get tickets: 7pm, 9pm.

March 25
San Francisco CA, USA
Sundnace Kabuki Cinemas
With special guests director Danny Perez and members of Animal Collective.
$15. Get tickets: 6:30pm, 8:30pm.


Palm Springs Photo Festival



Having a day job, it's a little hard for me to get excited about something that happens out in Palm Springs during the work week but thought I'd post a link and give a heads up to those of you that are free.

Info here.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Quote of the week - Alec Soth


Copyright Alec Soth

From an interview over on Too Much Chocolate that Shawn Records did with Alec Soth regarding his publishing house, Little Brown Mushroom:

SR: What about the direction you’re going in? How do you decide what to put out? Anything you’re especially excited about for the future?

AS: Little Brown Mushroom has just been a place for aimless play. I’m working on doing something a bit more formalized, but am not ready to talk about it yet.


Does this resonate with anyone else? People always want to know what you're doing next. I've come to the realization that I don't really want to tell anyone until it's done. Why should I open myself up to potential criticism that might slow me down instead of wholeheartedly following my initial excitement through to completion and then releasing it into the world? At that point, I can listen to what others have to say, but not until I've done what I believe in, deep down inside.

It's too hard to keep hold of that excitement and see something through. The last thing I need is anything somewhat discouraging. Now, once its "done" and been put out there, I can start listening to critiques and thinking of ways to refine it.

Any thoughts?

Required Viewing - The Art of the Steal



At the risk of sounding like a cliche, if you see one movie about the art world this year, make it The Art of the Steal. I saw a screening at LACMA last night and was moved to tears by this theft that embodies everything that the American plutocracy is about - politicians and the wealthy doing whatever they want with no repercussions.

This is truly an American tragedy and I applaud the filmmakers' efforts at shedding some light, even though it seems there's nothing to be done to stop it. Make it a priority to see this excellent film.

Monday, March 8, 2010

SoCal @ FotoFest


Copyright Whitney Hubbs

Edward Robinson, Associate Curator and Sarah Bay Williams, Ralph M. Parsons Fellow of the photography department at LACMA co-curated a show of emerging Southern Californian photographers for FotoFest, happening this week in Houston. If you're headed to the festival, be sure to check it out.

Assembly: Eight Emerging Photographers from Southern California
The selected artists are: Nicole Belle, Matthew Brandt, Peter Holzhauer, Whitney Hubbs, Matt Lipps, Joey Lehman Morris, Asha Schechter, and Augusta Wood.

Friday, March 5, 2010

Feature - Toni and Zoe

So I'm venturing a bit outside the confines of LA for this one to the OC, but that's happened a few times before and will happen again. After all, Orange County's the, well, maybe I'll keep quiet and not get myself in trouble here.

I found sisters Toni and Zoe on flickr a couple of weeks ago. I'll be honest and say the Polaroid thing's never really caught my fancy. I know people go gaga over it but it just never really hit me, even after seeing the Philip-Lorca diCorcia show at LACMA. Still, I think they make great use of color and there's a consistency and playfulness to it that hits home. It certainly screams CA to me and it's nice to look at things through a different lens sometimes.





Lay Flat 02: Meta - Now available

The second edition of Lay Flat is now available for sale in a limited edition of 2,000 here. This one should sell out quickly so act fast. It looks to be a fascinating issue.

Edited by Shane Lavalette and Guest Editor Michael Bühler-Rose.

Lay Flat 02: Meta brings together a selection of contemporary artists whose photographs are conceptually engaged with the history, conventions and materiality of the medium itself. Photographs by Claudia Angelmaier, Semâ Bekirovic, Charles Benton, Walead Beshty, Lucas Blalock, Talia Chetrit, Anne Collier, Natalie Czech, Jessica Eaton, Roe Ethridge, Sam Falls, Stephen Gill, Daniel Gordon, David Haxton, Matt Keegan, Elad Lassry, Katja Mater, Laurel Nakadate, Lisa Oppenheim, Torbjørn Rødland, Noel Rodo-Vankeulen, Joachim Schmid, Penelope Umbrico, Useful Photography, Charlie White, Ann Woo and Mark Wyse are accompanied by the textual contributions of Adam Bell (Co-editor, The Education of a Photographer), Lesley A. Martin (Publisher/Editor, Aperture Foundation), Alex Klein (Editor, Words Without Pictures), artists Noel Rodo-Vankeulen and Arthur Ou, as well a conversation between Lyle Rexer (Author, The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography) and James Welling, an artist who is seminal to this dialogue.


Get yours Here.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Honorary Angeleno - Thomas Prior



So Thomas Prior is not actually an Angeleno but he did live here before and recently came through for a visit so I asked to feature some of the shots he took while here. Having long been a fan of his work and his blog, I was even happier when I found out this feature would coincide with him being named today as one of this year's PDN 30. Congrats!

Click each for a larger view and be certain to check out his other work.











Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Kevin Goff @ L.A. Archive Gallery

Before switching to movie cameras, Kevin Goff used to shoot rock shows in the 70's on Ektachrome. A selection of those efforts will be on display at the newly opened L.A. Archive Gallery in Brentwood.

Go check `em out before they got old and wrinkly.

Through April 30. Click flyer for details.

Alice


Mick


Rod


Jeff

Gursky @ Gagosian


Are you looking for the craziest of art openings with the most fashionable of people in attendance this side of the Mississippi? Well, look no further. Gagosian unveils their newly expanded digs in Beverly Hills with an opening of Andreas Gursky's newest body of work (that was funny to say, having thought of his pieces as one-off's with a theme up until the F1 cars) alongside a selection of past work from the last 20 years. The new series seems to be a series of stitched together satellite images.
In the new Ocean series, Gursky has for the first time relinquished his position behind the camera to work with satellite images of the world as his raw material, creating contemporary mappe del mondo on a scale befitting the cosmic grandeur of the subject. In their darkly nuanced surfaces, he has worked to reconcile the division between the machine eye and the human eye, continuing the debates and practices begun in the nineteenth century regarding photography and the issue of artistic expression versus objective science.

Andreas Gursky: Long Shot Close Up (2009), a documentary directed by Jan Schmidt-Garre (German with English subtitles), will be screened continuously in the rear gallery for the duration of the exhibition.

Opening - Thursday, March 4, 6-8pm
456 North Camden Drive
Gagosian Beverly Hills
Beverly Hills, CA 90210

Click on each image for a larger view, as usual.