For Elsie

Tonight

Toys R Us
Cleveland, OH
2009
copyright Brian Ulrich


Sunset Park
2005
copyright Debora Mittelstaedt

Two great shows opening tonight: Brian Ulrich's Thrift and Dark Stores at Julie Saul Gallery and NYMPHOTO Presents at Sasha Wolf Gallery. I'm going to do my very best to catch them both.

Brian has been documenting the excesses and left-overs of American consumerism over the last decade, and his most recent and eerie images portray stores now dark and desolate in the economic down-turn. Read more in a piece about his work by Lyle Rexler in Photograph Magazine: Brian Ulrich.

NYMPHOTO will be exhibiting another round of work by women photographers, this time selected from an open call for entries. I am excited to finally meet German photographer, Debora Mittelstaedt, who will be exhibiting her dreamy and enigmatic photograph of a pair of red-heads - a brother and sister or a young couple in love?

Other photographers include Jennifer Boomer, Livia Corona, Katrina d'Autremont, Jen Davis, Lizzie Gorfaine, Victoria Hely-Hutchinson, Megan Maloy, Tiana Markova-Gold, Debora Mittelstaedt, Beatrix Reinhardt, Anna Skladmann, Malou van Breevoort, Corinne Vionnet, Sophia Wallace, Susan Worsham, Nina Büsing Corvallo, Rona Chang, Candace Gottschalk, Maria Passarotti and Jane Tam.

Brian Ulrich
Thrift and Dark Stores

Julie Saul Gallery
535 West 22nd Street

Opening Reception: Thursday May 28th, 5:30-7pm


NYMPHOTO Presents

Sasha Wolf Gallery
10 Leonard Street

Opening Reception: Thursday May 28th, 6-8pm

For Pete

For Kersten

For Oznur

For Francesca

Television Screens
Shin Her Hotel
Taipei, Taiwan
2002

The Ongoing Moment

I spent a sunny afternoon yesterday on the grass in well-documented Union Square finishing an amazing book by Geoff Dyer, The Ongoing Moment. A must-read for all obsessed with photography.

Dyer's writing style is fresh and engaging and often even funny. Weaving in narrative accounts of canonical photographers' lives and relationships to one another, The Ongoing Moment meditates on how these figures examined some of the same subjects: unmade beds, benches, windows, doors, signs, skies, hats, backs, stairs, movie screens, televisions, gas stations, the blind, the open road - and through this collective consciousness, defined American photography.

Here's a particularly quirky take on the psychology of William Eggleston's photographs:

Eggleston's photographs like they were taken by a Martian who lost the ticket for his flight home and ended up working at a gun shop in a small town near Memphis. On the weekends he searches for that lost ticket - it must be somewhere - with a haphazard thoroughness that confounds established methods of investigation. It could be under a bed among a bunch of down-at-heel shoes; or in the Thanksgiving turkey that seems, somehow, to be 69ing itself; in the dusty forecourt of Roy's Motel; in the spiky ears of a Minnie Mouse cactus; in a microscopic tangle of grass and weed; under the seat of a kid's looming tricycle - in fact, it could be anywhere. In the course of his search he interviews odd people - odd in the Arbus sense - who, though polite, look at him askance. He suspects that some of them (especially the fellow sitting on a bed in what looks like the Motel Solaris) might once have been in a predicament similar to his own but have since put down roots. Not so in the guy standing naked in the red haze of a graffiti-scrawled room: he's gonna find that thing if it kills him. Trouble is, he can't remember what that thing is. Couldn't be an orange, could it?

(from The Ongoing Moment, Geoff Dyer, page 193)

Mark Burnette

Mark Burnette
Brooklyn, NY
May 2009

I wasn't really surprised to discover that my pen pal has a sweet and sensitive face, which I got to see for the first time this week after writing to one another for nearly two years. Mark is a photographer, writer and English teacher who lives in Pulaski, Virginia; and he and I struck up a lasting correspondence which has consisted of heartfelt emails, photos and music exchanged in the mail, and close attention to each others lives unfolding on our blogs. This week, Mark got on a Greyhound bus and made his way to New York City for the first time to pay a visit. It was remarkable that the person I knew from writing and images was exactly as I had imagined, and we were like two peas in a pod.

It is easy to be reminded of William Eggleston by this native Virginian who has been making prolific and artful snapshots of the small-town vernacular of his region, far removed from New York City's art world. Mark's primary outlet for these images is his blog, Conditions Uncertain, which also includes frequent excerpts from short stories, poetry and song lyrics, as well as his own beautiful and contemplative writing. Mark's blog consistently draws a relationship between American photography and American literature, particularly in its depiction of the everyday.

Like Eggleston, Mark is a loner and a wanderer, deeply passionate about the part of the country that he knows. Through his words and photographs, I have gotten a feel for places like Pulaski, Stuart, Radford, Fries, Galax, Blacksburg, Hillsville, Collinsville, Sweeney Hollow, and Cripple Creek. Sometimes, I almost envy his ability to roam through towns like these, and eventually, it's my turn to get on a bus to southwestern Virginia.

nofound(bedroom)

nofound(bedroom), a collective portfolio of images by international photographers, is scheduled to be released this month. This limited-edition book published by Kaugummi Books was the curatorial project of Emeric Glayse, based in Paris, who also maintains the nofound website ("Photographers whose work I love").

Emeric asked photographers to contribute one image of a bedroom. I sent him a photograph of a room at the City Center Motel in Provo, Utah - the site of one of the Gary Gilmore murders in 1976.

Other photographers who contributed images to the book include Henry Roy, Tania Theodorou, Chris Taylor, Agnes Karin Thor, Jeremy Liebman, Alec Soth, Alessandro DiGiampietro, Irina Rozovsky, Andra Chitimus, Andrew Phelps, Asen Ognyanov, Christina Maria Oswald, Chris Heads, Dana Goldstein, Elkie Vanstiphout, Knotan, Erika Svensson, Vincent Delbrouck, Jackson Eaton, JH Engstrom, Lina Scheynius, Julie Pike, Mihai e acolo, Olivia Jeczmyk, Tod Seelie, Vincent Ferrane, Philippe Gerlach, Maximilian Haidacher Kur, Monika Bielskyte, Rikki Kasso, Paul Herbst, Olivia Malone, Marianne Mueller, Raul Hofer Torres, Yiki Liu, Ryan Foerster, Margot Herster, and Osvaldo Sanviti.

Images from the book can be seen at: nofound(bedroom)

NYMPHOTO Exhibition at Sasha Wolf Gallery

Teenage Boy
Austin, TX
2007
copyright Tema Stauffer


Fishbowl
from Last Stop: Rockaway Park
copyright Juliana Beasley

NYMPHOTO's third exhibition opens tonight at Sasha Wolf Gallery in Tribeca and celebrates the release of a new book, NYMPHOTO Conversations: Volume 1, including images by and interviews with women photographers.

NYMPHOTO's inaugural exhibition in the fall of 2002 was my first experience showing work in New York City. I previously wrote about that fateful night on my blog, and if tonight is half as fun as that night in December, it's going to be a great time.

I am excited to be showing work with Juliana Beasley, among many talented photographers. I first read about Juliana's work through her NYMPHOTO Conversation and then met her in person at the opening for my show at Daniel Cooney in February. I have since fallen head-over-heels down the rabbit hole into the lovely land of neurosis, and what a fascinating place that really is.

The other photographers showing tonight include Michele Abeles, Rona Chang, Nina Büsing Corvallo, Candace Gottschalk, Jessica M. Kaufman, Klea McKenna, Michal Chelbin, Talia Greene, Maria Passarotti, Susana Raab, Emily Shur, Jane Tam, Garie Waltzer, and Jennifer Williams.

A slide show of images from NYMPHOTO participants was also recently featured on NPR's blog: NYMPHOTO on NPR

NYMPHOTO Conversations: Volume 1

Sasha Wolf Gallery
10 Leonard Street (bet. W.Broadway & Hudson)

May 6-20
Opening Reception: 6-8 pm