Displaying items by tag: photography

“Modern Alchemy,” a small gem of an exhibition at the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, is a good reminder that experimental photography did not begin in the age of the digital camera, although technology has certainly helped it evolve. A selection of diverse images, accompanied by thorough explanations of how various photographers worked, starting with Man Ray in the 1930s, supports this idea.

“Today, with digital photography and the iPhone, we’re inundated with images all day long,” said Lisa Chalif, curator of the Heckscher, who began putting the show together about 12 months ago after pondering it for several years. The process, she said, was fun but also quite a challenge. “There’s so much experimental photography,” she said. “How do you define the term?”

International Center of Photography deputy director and chief curator Brian Wallis will leave his post at the end of February, the museum reports. “Brian Wallis has had a long and distinguished career at ICP. He came on board before our renovated Midtown galleries opened in 2000 and has been instrumental to our success over the last 15 years,” executive director Mark Lubell said in a statement. In its future move to the Bowery, ICP will continue to build on the foundation Wallis has laid, Lubell added.

Since Wallis joined in 1999, ICP has organized some 150 shows and acquired over 20,000 photographs.

Richard Avedon may be synonymous with iconic fashion photography, but the lensman was known for his striking portraits of powerful personalities too.

While on commission by Rolling Stone magazine to cover the 1976 presidential election, Avedon created black and white portraits of luminaries such as Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford; A.M. Rosenthal, a former managing editor of the New York Times who gained fame for publishing the Pentagon Papers; and W. Mark Felt, also known as “Deep Throat.” Sixty nine of these portraits, collectively titled “The Family,” will feature as part of “Richard Avedon: Family Affairs,” now on at the National Museum of American Jewish History (NMAJH) in Philadelphia.

Gordon Parks (1912-2006), one of the most celebrated African-American photographers of all time, is the subject of a new exhibition of groundbreaking photographs at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. "Gordon Parks: Back to Fort Scott" (January 17–September 13, 2015) traces Parks’ return to his hometown of Fort Scott, Kansas and then to other Midwestern cities, to track down and photograph each of his childhood classmates. On view in the MFA’s Art of the Americas Wing, the exhibition’s 42 photographs were from a series originally meant to accompany a Life magazine photo essay—but for reasons unknown, the story was never published. The images depict the realities of life under segregation in 1950—presenting a rarely seen view of everyday lives of African-American citizens in the years before the Civil Rights movement began in earnest. One of the most personal and captivating of all Parks’ projects, the images, now owned by The Gordon Parks Foundation, represent a rare and little-known group within Parks’ oeuvre.

The Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts will be represented exclusively by the international gallery Hauser & Wirth, the organizations announced Thursday.

The foundation, established by Kelley in 2007, issues grants for challenging and novel projects in Kelley's favored mediums, which included textiles, drawing, painting, video, photography, sculpture, installation and performance.

When Kelley died of an apparent suicide in South Pasadena in 2012, the foundation took on the role of shepherding his legacy. Hauser & Wirth said it will seek to reinforce Kelley's stature as one of Los Angeles' most influential artists, expand the foundation's programs and exhibit Kelley's work at its galleries worldwide.

Douglas Druick, President and Eloise W. Martin Director of the Art Institute of Chicago, announced today that Barbara Levy Kipper has pledged to give the Museum nearly 400 items from her exceptional collection of Buddhist ritual objects and Asian ethnic jewelry. Kipper’s gift will provide an important new dimension to the Museum’s collections of Indian, Himalayan, Central Asian, Southeast Asian and Chinese art. An exhibition of the objects, with an accompanying catalogue, is planned for the museum’s Regenstein Hall in the summer of 2016.

Kipper, the former chairman of book distributor the Chas Levy Company and a Life Trustee of the Art Institute, is a wide-ranging collector who previously has made generous donations to the Museum’s departments of Photography, Prints and Drawings, and Asian Art.

Paris' Musée d'Art Moderne is expanding its collection of photography thanks to a pioneering patronage scheme focused on young collectors, "Le Figaro" reports.

The 21 members of the newly established patronage group have committed to pledge €5,000 each year. This means the museum has secured a yearly budget of €105,000 entirely allocated to the acquisition of international works of photography. Two new female members will join the group during 2015, and the museum is hoping to reach a total of 30 young patrons in the longer term.

When City College student Stephen Somerstein heard Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s call for a march to Montgomery in 1965, he wanted to witness what he knew was going to be a historic event.

A budding photographer and picture editor of the school newspaper, Somerstein, then 24, grabbed his camera and headed to the Deep South. Fifty years later, his photographs documenting the Selma-to-Montgomery Civil Rights March are on display in a new exhibition at New-York Historical Society.

The 35th annual AIPAD Photography Show in New York is planned for April 16–19 at the Park Avenue Armory. This year's iteration will feature photography from 89 galleries around the world, as well as a special selection of short films presented by ART21 curator Wesley Miller. Called "New York Close Up," the films by Rashid Johnson, Liz Magic Lase, Martha Colburn, Daniel Gordon, and others will be on view for the duration of the fair.

AIPAD is the longest-running photography fair in the world, presenting a diverse range of works from portraits and self-portraits (a portrait of Georgia O'Keeffe by Alfred Stieglitz will on view at Edwynn Houk Gallery) to landscapes and fashion photography (Louis Faurer's 1962 works for "Harper's Bazaar" will be available at Deborah Bell Photographs).

It is perhaps not surprising that Alona Pardo and Elias Redstone, curators of "Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age," chose the work of Berenice Abbot as a starting point for their exhibition. Abbot, who made powerful images of the architectural changes that gripped 1930s New York, seemed to not only document what she saw, but to question it, too.

While Abbot herself might disagree (she was an avid documentarian who rejected the idea photography should ever express feelings) there is an inescapable unease to her 1936 shot of Park Avenue towers soaring over a two-story show house, and a hazy peculiarity to her famous image of midtown Manhattan from the Empire State Building.