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

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.”

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.