PalmAire

Flak Photo's Winter Pictures

2012-01-23T19:38:00.005-05:00

Thank you to Andy Adams for including Tree, 2003 in Flak Photo's Winter Pictures series featuring 20 photographs each weekday in January. All of the winter images can be found in The Collection.

Jorge

2012-01-07T07:20:00.002-05:00

Jorge
Main Street
Paterson, NJ
December 2011

Country Life: Poetry by Amy Beeder

2011-12-17T07:10:00.009-05:00

Field of Sad Trees, 2008

One of my photographs, Field of Sad Trees, was published on the Design Observer/Places accompanying a poem by Amy Beeder, author of Burn the Field and Now Make the Altar and professor of poetry at the University of New Mexico. Country Life is poem about Eastern European immigrants in the American Midwest.

Thank you to Places editor and friend Josh Wallaert for making the connection between my image and her words.

Country Life, by Amy Beeder

They came for land. For hog-high wheat to Dixon, Weeping Water, Garland Falls;
came to Midland hamlets, made their farms from bogs & marshes,
fens & bottomland: immigrants from Kraków, Darkov, Lasko

who fled famine, coming wars, or the Eastern factories, left
the city rivers thick with indigo & slaughter’s crimson, tenement
air: TB & boiled tubers, fled the bellows & gutter cast, sawdust & accident;

left forever what Riis called the strip of smoke-colored sky so that
their children’s children might grow up corn-fed, reverent,
thrifty; that they might join 4-H & raise lambs, might

crochet & macramé; might play the clarinet or their fathers’ accordions, always
optimistic despite the blizzards & drought, locust & blight.
Where there’s space to push the earth aside: that’s the place

to raise a child — here amid arrival’s plenty: starch & punch in a church basement; even so, a century later their descendants hear another music
over the television, the civics lesson, over the highway’s drone:

a white noise off the flat plain, an echo of the empty well’s temptation,
as if something in them yearns after all for chimney spill, the gritty stink of war,
how else to explain how some came to worship this caustic god,

taking in their bodies his small poison, in abandoned barns & chicken coops:
battery acid, lye, brake cleaner, Sudafed, salt & red sulfur —
Was it to hear clearly the deep corn’s chorus, maybe; maybe

to be nightwind, milkweed, goldenrod, chaos & immersion: to be the intolerable wild unplowed field, to be the one elm black with starlings?
Those whose parents thought they’d never be suppliants, never

wilt or starve — but we’ve seen them in mug shots, baffled
& sallow, broken as those girls in sweatshops going blind,
or the rawboned young Spinner in a Carolina Mill 1901

or the miners’ families evicted, or the garment workers corralled:
faces smeared & scattered as blossoms before the plow; all
catastrophically struck in the light of their own interminable

now, weary, girding themselves, helpless before the lens.

Culturehall Feature 81: NEW ARTISTS, FALL 2011

2011-12-15T19:36:00.006-05:00

Congratulations to four artists presented in culturehall's Fall 2011 New Artist Feature Issue: Livia Corona, Mandy Cano Villalobos, Justin Gainin, and Elliot Wright.

Applications for our Winter 2012 New Artists Feature open in mid-January.

Akeem

2011-11-24T08:02:00.001-05:00

Akeem
Summer Street
Paterson, NJ
October 2011

CCNY Conversation Series: Molly Landreth with Introduction by Tema Stauffer

2011-11-17T06:02:00.007-05:00

Cruz, aka Jalessa, Columbus, OH, 2007
© Molly Landreth

Friday, November 18, 7pm
at the CCNY studio
336 West 37th Street, Suite 206

Free admission - Seating is limited

CCNY presents a talk with artist Molly Landreth, with an introduction by curator Tema Stauffer on Friday, November 18 at 7pm at the CCNY Studio. Landreth will present both work from the Embodiment: A Portrait of Queer Life in America series, as well as other bodies of work.

This Conversations Series artist talk is held in conjunction with CCNY’s Other Places exhibition, guest curated by Tema Stauffer.

Q & A to follow the talk

“Embodiment: A Portrait of Queer Life in America” is a series of photographs in an archive and a journey through a rapidly changing community and the lives of people who offer brave new visions of what it means to be queer in America today. Stopping in churches, parks, high school classrooms, back yards and bedrooms, I have collaborated with individuals from both urban and rural areas for over six years. With this ever-growing archive of portraits, I aim to highlight a national experience while acknowledging its many diverging, overlapping and at times conflicting parts.

Created as a joint effort with participants who boldly stand in front of my lens, “Embodiment” reveals images of love and survival, the process of growing into one’s self, creative forms of gender expression and the ever-changing anatomy of a family. It is my hope that these photographs will become a lasting archive for generations to come.
-Molly Landreth

Molly Landreth is a Seattle-based artist who explores concepts of identity and community by way of intimate large-format film photography and multi-media collaboration. She has been recently featured in the New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Time Magazine’s Lens Blog and in The Advocate for her work on “queer America.” Landreth holds an MFA in Photography, Video, and Related Media from the School of Visual Arts, New York; and a BA in Studio Art from Scripps College in California. She is faculty at The Photographic Center Northwest and Seattle University. Visit her website at: www.mollylandreth.com

Pictures are Words-not-Known at LiShui Museum in China

2011-11-12T08:14:00.013-05:00

Two of my photographs, White Horse and Burning Brush, are included in an exhibition curated by Sean Justice at the LiShui Museum in China on view through Spring 2012. Pictures are Words-not-Known presents work by faculty from the International Center of Photography exploring the limits of language-centric knowing in photographs to a Chinese audience.

Culturehall invited artist and educator Sean Justice to feature the portfolios of four exhibiting photographers and new Culturehall members in Feature Issue 80: Pictures are Words-Not-Known. Thank you to Lori Grinker, Abraham McNally, Claudia Sohrens, and Bradly Dever Treadway for sharing their work with Culturehall.

Other participating photographers and ICP faculty include Nelson Bakerman, Marina Berio, Rhona Bitner, Jean-Christian Bourcart, Christine Callahan, Elinor Carucci, Jean Marie Casbarian, Ken Collins, Cecilia Dougherty, Suan kae Grant, Michael Wesley Ham, Curtis Hamilton, Thomas Holton, Bill Jacobson, Susan Jahoda, Sean Justice, Ed Kashi, Joshua Lutz, Jay Manis, Tanya Marcuse, Karen Marshall, Garret Miller, Yola Monakhov, Kambui Olujimi, Sylvia Plachy, and Andreas Rentch.

White Horse and Burning Brush exhibited at the LiShui Museum in China with photographs by ICP Faculty in Pictures are Words-not-Known

Other Places at CCNY

2011-11-05T08:14:00.011-04:00

Becoming 10, 2010
© Kerstin Honeit

Other Places / Curated by Tema Stauffer
November 9 - December 10
Camera Club of New York
336 West 37th Street, Suite 206, New York, NY

Opening Reception on Wednesday, November 9, 6- 8pm

The exhibition at the Camera Club of New York stems from Culturehall Feature Issue 60 published online in January 2011. This issue drew connections between contemporary artists whose work in photography focuses on identities, relationships and environments defined by unconventional expressions of sexuality and gender. As the idea of realizing an exhibition of this work at CCNY evolved, the original group of artists expanded.

Other Places brings together different generations of international artists whose photographs contribute to a dialogue about individuals and communities—past and present—existing in social and political margins based on sexuality and sexual identity. A selection of work by five artists from the United States, Mexico and Germany serves as a foundation for examination of each of their larger series and continuing practices.

Los Angeles-based artist Kaucyila Brooke documents the history of lesbian bars in cities and towns across the United States and Europe. This ongoing project, The Boy Mechanic, has been exhibited at galleries and museums around the world throughout the past decade. Other Places includes Brooke’s two-sided offset poster originally produced for exhibition at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany, depicting photographs of the sites of seventeen former and three current bars, along with narrative descriptions of her encounters with owners and patrons of these establishments. The photographs, videos, maps and text of the larger project create a historical record of lesbian bar culture and assert the significance of these social spaces and the recollections of those who participated in them.

Doug Ischar produced a series of photographs documenting a community of gay men who congregated on a Chicago beach in the mid-1980s. Two of the twenty-six images comprising Marginal Waters are included in the exhibition, and the entire series is reproduced in a catalogue published by Golden Gallery accompanying the first exhibition of prints in 2009. The images convey the relaxed intimacy and open expression of sexuality at the Belmont Rocks, one of the most visible urban gay beaches in North America nearly a quarter of a century ago. Omar Gamez similarly photographs environments where gay men gather to celebrate their physicality and to create bonds without inhibitions. His Natura series provides an insider’s view of a nudist retreat near Mexico City—a weekend meeting spot for men to engage in bare-fleshed communal revelries.

Embodiment: A Portrait of Queer Life in America by Molly Landreth reflects a cross-country journey over the course of more than half a decade photographing gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people of various ages, races and economic backgrounds. Two portraits from this study of what it means to be queer in America today focus on Cruz, aka Jalessa, performing drag for the first time in a backyard in Columbus, Ohio, and Clare Mercy, a truck driver and musician perched on the back of her car in Bellingham, Washington. Berlin-based artist Kerstin Honeit, in Becoming 10, explores gender construction through a series of photographs in which she assumes the identities of nine half-siblings whom she has never met. The images appear as film stills of everyday urban scenes in which Honeit performs a cast of vivid male and female characters.

In conjunction with the exhibition of Other Places from November 9 – December 10, 2011, additional images and information about the participating artists will be available through their Culturehall portfolios. Also as part of the Other Places exhibition, CCNY presents a talk with artist Molly Landreth, with an introduction by curator Tema Stauffer on Friday, November 18 at 7pm at the CCNY Studio. Landreth will present work from the Embodiment: A Portrait of Queer Life in America series, as well as other bodies of work.

Brian

2011-10-27T21:11:00.002-04:00

Brian
Paterson, NJ
September 2011

Tasha

2011-10-24T20:53:00.001-04:00

Tasha
Market Street
Paterson, NJ
September 2011

Culturehall Feature 77: NEW ARTISTS, SUMMER 2011

2011-09-23T09:03:00.007-04:00

Congratulations to the artists whose work is highlighted in culturehall's NEW ARTISTS FEATURE, SUMMER 2011: Antoine Lefebvre, Jenny Herrick, Bahar Yurukoglu, and Irina Rozovsky.

Our next juried application opens mid-October.

culturehall feature 74: TRACES

2011-08-15T13:09:00.001-04:00

The four artists presented in this issue engage in photography’s dialogue with mortality and memory, presence and absence, visibility and invisibility. Through individual methods of photographing physical environments, each artist blurs the distinction between what exists and what is imagined or felt. Their relationships to the external world reflect personal investigations into themes of death, dreams, desire, attachment, and transformation. In some works, they look for evidence left behind even where it is not visible on the surface, and in others, they transfigure spaces to express internal realities.

During her early adolescence in Israel, Ayala Gazit learned from her father that she had a half-brother named James who lived in Western Australia with his mother and her children by another father. Six months later, James took his own life at 20-years-old. Driven by a desire to know James through the spaces he had occupied, Gazit traveled to Australia thirteen years after he passed away to search for traces of her brother’s existence in this barren terrain where fierce winds reinforce a feeling of isolation and eerie discordance. Her series of photographs, Was it a dream, convey the mystery and sorrow surrounding his death by focusing on trees, details of rooms, resonant natural light, and deep shadows. Also by combining portraits that she made of living family members with letters exchanged between them, as well as found photographs of James himself, she explores the layers of a complex story surrounding the enormous tragedy of her family’s loss. Together, these pictures and words communicate a haunting sense of absence and a quest for answers to questions that can never be fully answered.

Inspired by late 19th century spirit photographs and Victorian ghost stories written by women, Corinne May Botz collected oral stories and photographed over eighty locations where ghosts were reported throughout the United States. Over the course of nearly a decade, Botz investigated attics, bedrooms, bathrooms, hallways, windows, doors, and staircases in private residences as well as taverns, inns, army barracks, theatres, and museums. The images she made at these sites suggest the notion that the imprint of an event, real or imagined, imbues each place with a metaphorical hauntedness. The photographs reveal psychically charged visual clues about the history of these interiors and their inhabitants, or in some cases, allow the power of empty space and what is not visible or explicit to create mystery and ambiguity. Haunted Houses essentially speaks to the personal and subjective experience of perception of place particularly as it relates to narratives of memory, loss, and mourning. As Botz writes in the introduction to her book, “Houses are real and they are not real; they are both a physical space and a mental space full of dreams and desires.”

The relationship between the external world and the human psyche similarly informs landscape photographs made by Megan Cump. She, too, cites spirit photography as an important influence on her work. Feral explores personal mythology as the artist infuses herself into a sublime wilderness. Traces of her body appear in primordial landscapes, transforming them into mythic and paranormal scenes. Cump retreats into water or fog or dark shadows like an apparition, as animal as she is human. A fire burns in a river, the blood of a human heart stains a frozen waterfall. In Phantoms Limbs, Cump references 19th century paintings by French Realist Gustave Courbet. Reminiscent of the nude figure in his erotically charged L’Origine du monde, the lower region of her body is the focal point of the image – her legs spread under the rush of water – while the surrounding rocks and trees evoke Courbet’s reverent depictions of caves and grottos in other works.

Paola Davila’s photographic studies, Interior Seasons, are surreal and painterly meditations on water as a metaphor for human existence and the passage of time. The recurring motifs of a pillow and a puddle in each scene imply states of being and dreaming; lush color and texture dramatize the visceral beauty of these symbolic beds in natural settings. Davila photographs an actual bedroom, no less dreamlike - a stream of sunlight cast across a pool of fluid soaking dark red sheets. The image is quietly violent, deeply sexual. Elegant folds of the sheets undulate in light and shadow. The glistening liquid is the aftermath of a force and a flow – the revelation of what exists inside of us.

The Chain

2011-07-08T20:54:00.012-04:00

'Balance' (set by Ye Rin Mok) - photograph by Tema Stauffer

Stuart Pilkington (curator of The Alphabet Project and the 50 States Project) invited 107 photographers from around the world to participate in The Chain, a series of photographs responding to a title set by the person directly behind them in a chain of photographers. The title they set inspired the photographer in front of them.

I revisited Frye, a disc jockey whom I discovered in the parking lot of Dreamers Video Store in Austin on Christmas Day in 2009. I asked the photographer in front of me, Bieke Deporter, to consider 'oversaturation' - a condition to me that is not just about color density in photography - but also about life in New York, life in the arts, life in the wide wild world of images and the internet. Bieke made something deep, dark, beautiful, and serene.

Please see 105 more links in the chain here: The Chain

'Oversaturation' (set by Tema Stauffer) - photograph by Bieke Deporter

Culturehall Feature 70: NEW ARTISTS, SPRING 2011

2011-06-15T20:50:00.007-04:00

Congratulations to culturehall's four new artists: Jason Bailer Losh, David Schoerner, Claudia X. Valdes, and Sarah Palmer.

Our next juried application opens mid-July.

CCNY's Annual Juried Photography Competition

2011-06-14T06:03:00.006-04:00

The Camera Club of New York announces an open call for applications for its Annual National Photography Competition juried by photographer, Richard Renaldi. The deadline is Monday, June 27.

For more information, please see: CCNY's 2011 National Photography Exhibition Call for Entries

Elpraa Argnenis Diaz

2011-06-09T22:00:00.003-04:00

Elpraa Argenis Diaz
Paterson, NJ
May 2011

Michael

2011-05-28T21:21:00.002-04:00

Michael
Straight Street
Paterson, NJ
May 2011

George

2011-05-19T21:48:00.005-04:00

George
Dr. Martin Luther King Way
Paterson, NJ
April 2011

Kathy

2011-05-08T13:15:00.005-04:00

Kathy
Market Street
Paterson, NJ
April 2011

Rocket Science Interview

2011-04-23T20:00:00.004-04:00

Thank you to photographer Pauline Magnenat whose recent interview with me can be found in the photographer interview series on her blog: ALL OF THIS IS ROCKET SCIENCE - Tema Stauffer

Food & Money

2011-04-16T08:41:00.006-04:00

Food
Paterson, NJ
2010

Money
Paterson, NJ
2011

Jesus

2011-04-14T22:15:00.003-04:00

Jesus
Main Street
Paterson, NJ
April 2011

Marvin

2011-04-12T20:53:00.002-04:00

Marvin
Paterson, NJ
April 2011

inMotion Photography Auction and Benefit

2011-04-07T09:05:00.005-04:00

Couple Embraces in yard near scene of domestic violence incident
Chicago, IL
2000

I've donated a print of the image above shot on a police ride-along on the south side of Chicago in the year 2000 to inMotion's 2011 Annual Photography Auction & Benefit. InMotion provides free legal services to low-income woman in New York City.

The Live Auction takes place tonight at the Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers. The work can be previewed online at:
Live Photography Auction Collection

A Silent Auction can be viewed at:
Silent Auction Collection

Naeem

2011-04-04T06:32:00.001-04:00

Naeem
Straight Street
Paterson, NJ
April 2011

Nathaniel

2011-04-03T10:42:00.004-04:00

Nathaniel Browne
Dr. Martin Luther King Way
Paterson, NJ
March 2011

Bory

2011-04-02T08:05:00.006-04:00

Bory outside Circle Cafe
Washington Street
Paterson, NJ
March 2011

Junior

2011-04-01T06:12:00.005-04:00

Junior
Market Street
Paterson, NJ
March 2011

Message to Junior:

Hi Junior,

Thank you again for letting me make a portrait of you on the street in Paterson. You're a very handsome young man with such a lovely expression in your eyes.

I am sending the photo in the attachment. I hope you like it.

Best,

Tema

Reply from Junior:

I love compliments, thanks!

Stacey

2011-03-30T05:36:00.007-04:00

Stacey in Doorway
Dr. Martin Luther King Way
Paterson, NJ
November 2009

Pedro

2011-03-28T07:25:00.002-04:00

Pedro
Paterson, NJ
March 2011

Miguel

2011-03-26T06:42:00.004-04:00

Miguel, The Boxer
Ellison Street
Paterson, NJ
March 2010

culturehall feature 65: NEW ARTISTS, WINTER 2011

2011-03-23T15:09:00.003-04:00

Congratulations to culturehall's new artists - Lydia Anne McCarthy, Chris Wright, Brian Gillis, and Matthew Gamber. Their exceptional work was selected from our second open call for applications for membership and is highlighted in Feature Issue 65: NEW ARTISTS, WINTER 2011.

Our next open call will be announced in April 2011.

Kalamazoo Gazette Interview

2011-03-20T13:43:00.007-04:00

Thank you to Simon A. Thalmann and the Kalamazoo Gazette for a recent interview published in the arts section of the Sunday March 20th edition.

Please see: Photographer Tema Stauffer discusses winning AOL's '25 for 25' Grant for innovation in the arts

FUNCTION/CULTUREHALL - curated by David Andrew Frey

2011-03-07T14:33:00.007-05:00

Ligne Roset, Cottelston Advisors and Culturehall are pleased to present Function, an exhibition curated by David Andrew Frey.

Lucas Blalock
Joseph Burwell
Diane Carr
Ethan Greenbaum
John Houck
Michelle L. Leftheris
David B. Smith
Luke Stettner
Lee Vanderpool
Robyn Voshardt / Sven Humphrey
Ashley Zangle

Function explores a selection of creative practices based on logic, systems and play while in conversation with a working space. Much like design-based objects, which exist to serve a defined physical plane, artworks in the exhibition find their own territory by creating individual sets of rules. Through the use of conceptual and formal concerns, artists in the show contemplate the workings of our contemporary surroundings, ponder perceived structure and examine gaps that may appear on closer inspection.

Artists participating in Function are members of Culturehall, an invitational online artist registry and curatorial project founded by David Andrew Frey.

February 22 – May 20, 2011
Opening Reception March 10, 6-8pm

Ligne Roset
250 Park Avenue South
New York, New York

Artist Lecture at Kutztown University

2011-03-02T06:48:00.004-05:00

CLIMATE

2011-02-26T07:23:00.006-05:00

CLIMATE:
Karen Azoulay, Jem Cohen, Brent Green, Ben Kingsley and Jessica Langley, Carolyn Monastra, and Dan Torop

CLIMATE, curated by Megan Cump and Carolyn Monastra, features short films/videos that blur the distinction between the outer environment and an inner more psychological realm.

ARTPROJX CINEMA at the SVA Theatre, New York
in association with The Armory Show and VOLTA NY

FREE screenings:
Wednesday, March 2nd: 8:45 - 9:15 pm
Thursday, March 3rd: 5:05 - 5:35 pm

The SVA Theatre
333 West 23rd Street (between 8th and 9th Avenues)
New York, NY 10011

Victoria Sambunaris

2011-02-23T07:15:00.008-05:00

Untitled from The Border series
2010
copyright Victoria Sambunaris

The Photographer's Lecture Series: Victoria Sambunaris
International Center of Photography
February 23, 7pm

The Border
Victoria Sambunaris
Yancey Richardson Gallery
535 West 22nd Street 3rd Floor
February 24 - April 9

More Fuel for Allison

2011-02-16T13:15:00.012-05:00

Pennsylvania, 2006

Brooklyn, 2006

Brooklyn, 2006

Australian writer and poet Allison Browning and I began our correspondence a year ago when I discovered my White Horse on her blog accompanying her poem, Small Gods. We quickly became overseas pen pals, sharing our experiences and intimate thoughts on love, relationships in their various manifestations, writing, soul-searching, and art-making.

Allison's poetry is inspired by images from photographers around the world, and in time, more of my own photographs appeared on her blog along with her poems: Fuel, Two Little, and Quickstep. I was thrilled for Allison that Fuel was selected for The Best Australian Poems 2010.

David Andrew Frey and I invited Allison to curate a Culturehall Feature Issue based on Australian photographers, and in September 2010, she contributed a beautiful essay, OUT BACK.

In honor of our year as kindred spirits and confidants, I've searched my contact sheets for old images with open spaces for Allison to find words. Thank you, Allison, for an inspiring friendship.

NOFOUND TO NEW DOCUMENTS

2011-02-02T07:53:00.005-05:00

Umbrella
2001

Two of my photographs are included in a group exhibition opening tonight in London, curated by Emeric Glayse. Emeric is the Paris-based curator of the photo blog NoFound, and a selection of the photographs he has exhibited online will be shown in a traveling exhibition starting at Viktor Wynd Fine Art. NoFound to New Documents references the MOMA exhibition, New Documents, 1967, curated by John Szarkowski, and all of the images will be similarly exhibited in a line of small framed prints.

Other participating photographers include Agnes Thor, Alexander Binder, Ana Kraš, Bjarne Bare, Chris Heads, Elena Chernyak, Elinor Carucci, Emanuele Cardesi, Erik Van Der Weijde, Giasco Bertoli, Henry Roy, Jackson Eaton, Jerry Hsu, Jonnie Craig, Keiichi Nitta, Lina Scheynius, Linus Bill, Logan White, Nicole Lesser, Noël Loozen, Olivia Malone, Peter Sutherland, Peter Zachary Voelker, Philippe Gerlach, Rasha Kahil, Ren Hang, Rikki Kasso, Roberto Rubalcava, Thobias Fäldt, Todd Fisher, Tod Seelie, Valia Fetisov, Vincent Delbrouck and Yi-Qing Liu.

The exhibition runs through February 28, 2011

Viktor Wynd Fine Art
11 Mare street, E8
London, UK

SIP Call for Research: Philosophy and Photography

2011-01-24T14:30:00.006-05:00

The Shpilman Institute for Photography (The SIP) announces open calls for general research on photography and for research on philosophy and photography.

The SIP invites scholars and independent researchers from all over the world to submit their applications through its website, where guidelines, themes, the application process, and submissions can be found.

Grants are based on proposals for research leading to the completion within the grant period of a written document, whether an essay or extended research paper. All submissions and papers for both the calls must be in English. Grants for individuals and group research will range from US $5,000 up to $15,000. Deadline for submissions is March 1, 2011.

culturehall feature 60: OTHER PLACES

2011-01-12T14:08:00.010-05:00

Historically, one of the most powerful aspects of the medium of photography, particularly through genres of portraiture and documentary work, has been its ability to make marginalized individuals and communities visible. Culturehall features four photographers in this issue whose work specifically focuses on identities, relationships, and environments outside of heterosexual norms. Like their predecessors and contemporaries – Peter Hujar, Nan Goldin, David Armstrong, Mark Morrisroe, Jack Pierson, and Catherine Opie, to name a few – these artists, through widely varied photographic strategies, portray people and social spaces whose differences are defined by unconventional expressions of sexuality and gender.

The constructed images in Kelli Connell’s ongoing series, Double Life, elicit multiple readings. One of these is an interpretation of masculinity and femininity as they manifest in the context of lesbian relationships. Using a single model, Connell uses digital technology to produce fictitious photographs that appear almost like film stills in which a psychologically charged moment exists between two characters. In more or less subtle ways, one of the women appears to perform a masculine role, where the other performs a feminine role. Her photographs raise questions about how gender dynamics are expressed in lesbian relationships and the nature of gender itself as a social construct. What makes the identity of this single subject different from that of her “other self” in each image are cultural cues like hairstyle, make-up, clothing, and body language. Reminiscent of scenes between Alma and Elisabet from Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, Connell creates spaces fraught with tension and ambiguity.

Molly Landreth’s series of large-format photographs, Queer America, celebrates a broad notion of queer identity. Among her subjects are gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender people – individuals, couples, groups, and families existing outside mainstream conventions of sexuality and gender. Landreth asks her subjects, some of whom she meets through Facebook or Myspace, to suggest meaningful places in their own homes and neighborhoods where she can make portraits of them wearing clothing of their choice. These frank portraits made in states across the country document GLBT subjects of various ages, races, and economic backgrounds. In one image, Landreth photographed Cruz, aka Jalesa, in a backyard in Columbus, Ohio. At 17, Jalesa had just performed drag for the first time at Baptist church camp and struck poses learned from watching America’s Next Top Model. Landreth’s method of creating these photographs enables her subjects to present themselves as they wish to be seen; however, an inescapable truth is that how they are perceived entirely depends on who is looking.

Using a hidden camera, Omar Gamez spies on furtive sexual encounters between men in cuartos oscuros, or darkrooms, in Mexico City. Like Tennessee William’s Joy Rio – a formerly opulent opera house converted into a third-rate cinema where sexual dramas transpire in the roped-off regions – the darkrooms in Gamez’s photographs exist in old houses with tall ceilings, candelabras, and fading gilt. Legally, the spaces pass as gyms, and songs from radio stations fill the large hallways and decaying rooms with rhythmic sounds. Gamez occupies these spaces both as an artist and as a participant. In his images, the faces and identities of men are obscured beyond recognition by shadows, soft focus, and framing. What is visible are fragments of trysts between strangers where light leaks into darkness. The impressionistic stills and video of The Dark Book secretly capture anonymous men like ghosts in a ritual based in desire, mystery, and danger.

In contrast, Doug Ischar’s Marginal Waters series depicts gay men basking in sunlight on a Chicago beach. Ischar documented a community of men who congregated on the Belmont Rocks of Lake Michigan in the mid-eighties before the site was demolished in 2003. The images communicate a sense of warmth and relaxed intimacy - as well as freedom and openness in sexual expression – within a group of kindred spirits. In some cases, the men are coupled and shown in sensual embraces. Besides their historical significance as documentation of a specific cultural moment, what makes the images so engaging is the pure pleasure of looking at them. The saturated colors of the sky, water, and skin tones of seductive bodies accompanied by an assortment of quirky artifacts, like the biography of Diane Arbus and a pink flamingo or the eighties hairstyles and slinky shorts, result in irresistible pictures.

Head to Head, by Kelli Connell

Cruz, aka Jalesa, by Molly Landreth

From The Dark Book, by Omar Gamez

Marginal Waters #14, by Doug Ischar

Gay rights in focus before UN vote

2010-12-21T09:12:00.007-05:00

Jessica Stern, Director of Programs at The International Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission, is quoted in an article published in The Washington Post on Sunday December 19th discussing a vote today at the UN.

According to Anita Snow of The Associated Press:

A culture war has broken out at the United Nations over whether gays should be singled out for the same protections as other minorities whose lives are threatened.

The battle will come to a head on Tuesday when the General Assembly votes to renew its routine condemnation of the unjustified killing of various categories of vulnerable people.

It specifies killings for racial, national, ethnic, religious or linguistic reasons and includes refugees, indigenous people and other groups. But the resolution, because of a change promoted by Arab and African nations and approved at committee level, this time around drops "sexual orientation" and replaces it with "discriminatory reasons on any basis."

The U.S. government says that it is "incensed" at the change, as are the gay rights campaigners.

Please read Jessica Stern's comments in the full article: Gay rights in focus before UN vote

culturehall feature 58: NEW ARTISTS, FALL 2010

2010-12-15T15:38:00.005-05:00

Congratulations to culturehall's four new artists: Jillian Conrad, Alexander Harding, Evi Rita Lemberger, and Sam Keogh. Their work was selected by David Andrew Frey and myself from our first open call for applications for membership on the site.

Please see: NEW ARTISTS, FALL 2010

Robin Schwartz speaks at ICP

2010-12-08T07:06:00.007-05:00

Congratulations to my friend and colleague at William Paterson University, Robin Schwartz, who will lecture about her work tonight at the School at the International Center of Photography.

The Photographers Lecture Series: Robin Schwartz
School at ICP, 1114 Avenue of the Americas
Wednesday, December 8, 7:00pm
Price: $15 Member Price: $15

Alexis

2010-12-06T18:05:00.002-05:00

Alexis
Paterson, NJ
November 2010

culturehall at NADA

2010-11-30T04:59:00.005-05:00

I'm staying here in Brooklyn, but for those of you headed to the fairs in Miami, please visit David Andrew Frey at NADA. He will be sharing information about culturehall from December 2nd - 5th.

We have reviewed applications for culturehall's first New Artists Feature scheduled to publish on December 15th. David and I were impressed by the number and quality of applications from around the world, and it was hard to select only four artists for the feature issue from such an amazing group of applicants working in various media. We're excited to contact selected artists soon and hope others will consider applying again.

Thank you to all of the artists who applied. We are sincerely moved by and grateful for your interest in culturehall.

The Heal Dara G Online Art Auction

2010-11-25T07:42:00.010-05:00

I've donated a small print of Highway, 2003 to The Heal Dara G Online Art Auction, a fundraiser to support friend and artist/activist, Dara Greenwald, while she heals from a recent diagnosis of cancer. Dara and her partner Josh’s community across the country have been organizing to raise money to help them through recovery. The goal is to raise enough funds for them to live worry free throughout 2011.

The auction will take place online from Monday November 29th – Sunday December 5th. The winning bidders will receive their work directly from the donating artists.

Please see more information about the auction at: About Heal Dara G

culturehall opportunities

2010-11-13T06:56:00.016-05:00

culturehall is assembling the FEATURE ISSUES program for 2011 and is seeking curatorial proposals from artists, writers, curators, and arts professionals. For more information, please email: features@culturehall.com

culturehall also currently invites artists to submit work for consideration to its first quarterly open application call. The application closes November 28th by midnight EST. Please find more information at: Feature Application Call

Open Season

2010-11-05T06:44:00.005-04:00

Two of my portraits are included in a group show opening tonight at Flanders Gallery in Raleigh. The exhibition reflects work represented in the photography collection of Allen Thomas Jr., a collector based in North Carolina. Other work by Keliy Anderson-Staley, Tim Briner, Jesse Burke, Katrina d’Autremont, Ian F.G. Dunn, Nils Ericson, Dan Estabrook, Jody Fausett, Taj Forer, Anthony Goicolea, Allison Hunter, Michael Itkoff, Bill Jacobson, Sara Anne Johnson, Carrie Levy, Chris McCaw, Pamela Pecchio, Kristine Potter, Francesca Romeo, Kerry Skarbakka, Bill Sullivan, Tim Tate, Brian Ulrich, Burk Uzzle, Stacy Lynn Waddell, Shen Wei, Jeff Whetstone, and Cosmo Whyte.

Essay by Lauren Turner: Open Season

Open Season
Flanders Gallery
Raleigh, NC

November 1, 2010 - January 2, 2011

AOL 25 for 25 Grant Recipient

2010-10-28T09:02:00.010-04:00

I am very excited to announce that I have been awarded an AOL 25 for 25 Grant. AOL awarded 25 grants of $25,000 to "creative-thinkers" - artists, journalists and innovators. In their words, grants were given to "individuals with a spark to ignite – the next generation of culture shapers and influencers."

Please see a list of the 25 recipients: AOL Artists

Thank you to AOL and the members of the Advisory Board, including Adam D. Weinberg, Director, Whitney Museum of American Art; Chrissie Iles, Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art; Andy Spade, Partners & Spade; Rafael de Cardenas, Architecture at Large; Kim Hastreiter, Paper Magazine; Christian Viveros Faune, Village Voice; Glenn O’Brien, Writer; and Jen Bekman, 20x200.

Thank you to Toxico Cultura's Founder & Director, Gabriella Gomez-Mont, and Culturehall's Founder & Director, David Andrew Frey, for writing letters of support. Thank you to both for providing opportunities to collaborate with them on their amazing projects and inspiring me with their passion and their generous spirits.

Thank you, always, to my parents for their love and support and for their careful proofreading. Thank you to Jessica for bringing so much joy into my life and for inspiring me with her dedication to human rights advocacy for the international LGBT community and with her infectious optimism.

culturehall feature 54: TÓXICO CULTURA

2010-10-20T15:21:00.015-04:00

Tóxico: Cultura Contemporanea describes itself as an independent cultural project, a creative think-tank, a cultural salon. Founded by writer, filmmaker, and TED Senior Fellow, Gabriella Gomez-Mont, Tóxico is based in Mexico City and, among other things, invites international artists to teach workshops for advanced professionals in various disciplines such as cinema, industrial design, literature, and photography. Tóxico receives support from la Colección/Fundación Jumex, The Lift, and the museums and institutions in Mexico City that provide spaces for these workshops to take place. Tóxico’s past instructors include Martin Parr, Amy Stein, Stefan Ruiz, and Christopher Doyle. Upcoming workshops will be led by camerawoman Agnès Godard and photographer Taryn Simon.

In August 2010, photographer Juliana Beasley and I co-taught the first Tóxico Lab workshop. Tóxico Lab is a new series of events designed for emerging photographers. Truth or Dare: Establishing Connections with Your Subjects was a three-day intensive course during which we gave artist talks, lectured about the work of relevant photographers, and critiqued student works-in-progress. We were introduced to twelve photographers living and working in Mexico City, and from this inspiring group, I invited four to contribute portfolios to culturehall.

Juan Carlos Lopez’s photographic installation, Memento Mori, references a Latin phrase, “Remember you will die.” Lopez constructs images and sculptures that resemble a cabinet of curiosities composed of scientific specimens and mechanical objects. These elegant and meditative still lifes of animal cadavers, bones, decaying machines, and a camera preserved in a container of photographic fixer contemplate mortality and metaphysics. His arresting photograph of a bleeding goat carcass resting on a tablecloth, its head gracefully draped over a metal car cylinder, is reminiscent of the tradition of vanitas paintings which used symbolism to describe the impermanence of life and the certainty of death.

The Mennonite communities of Mexico have been portrayed in Carlos Reygadas’ 2007 film, Stellet Licht (Silent Light), as well Juliana Beasley’s photographic series, Eyes of Salamanca. Documentary photographer Eunice Adorno focuses specifically on Mennonite women and their relationships in communities in Durango and Zacatecas. Her body of work, Fraum Blaum (Flower Women), captures their quiet moments and their tender bonds. The subjects reveal to the young photographer personal experiences and domestic interiors with remarkable openness and candor. Adorno’s images appear to come from the view of an insider, as though they are no less intimate than snapshots from a family photo album. In fact, the photographer combines borrowed photographs taken by the Mennonites themselves with her own images to examine their homes, their rituals, and their daily lives.

The larger subject of Cristobal Trejo’s Calle Litost/Street Litost is the character of urban existence and its perpetual state of transience. His “city” is fragments of many cities, from Mexico City to Hanoi, New York City to Dhaka, Havana to Manila. Trejo wanders city streets in pursuit of the poetry found on sidewalks, in chaos, in the frenetic and the ephemeral. His use of saturated colors and atmospheric light gives his images an emotive charge and vibrant energy.

Marcel Rius, on the other hand, explores the flat, still, and barren terrain of northeastern Mexico. His Invaders series documents “alien” water towers erected in rural locales in the desert that supply water necessary to support life. The ghostly towns seem barely populated, except for a few figures in cars or on bikes in the dusty streets. Rius also photographs abandoned roadside diners in his related series, Cheap Meal. His images convey the stark beauty found in these desolate landscapes with wide blue skies – perfectly clear, or full of dramatic cloud formations.

Memento Mori, by Juan Carlos Lopez

Fraum Blaum, Eunice Adorno

Calle Litost/Street Litost, by Cristobal Trejo

Invaders, by Marcel Rius

Albert

2010-10-12T07:07:00.006-04:00

Albert on his birthday
Main Street
Paterson, NJ
September 2010

CCNY Photo Benefit Auction

2010-10-09T08:08:00.003-04:00

Winter Gas Station
Minnesota
2003

I've donated a small print of the Winter Gas Station to this year's Photo Benefit Auction for The Camera Club of New York. Other contributing artists to the auction include Mareitte Path Allen, Jowhara AlSaud, Brett Bell, Timothy Briner, James Casebere, Pradeep Dala, Jen Davis, Jon Feinstein, Larry Fink, Martine Fougeron, Stephen Frailey, Allen Frame, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Lori Grinker, Henry Horenstein, Leigh Ledare, David Levinthal, Wayne Liu, Joshua Lutz, Dana Miller, Andrew Moore, Alex Morel, Santaigo Mostyn, Lori Nix, Cara Phillips, Mauro Restiffe, Justine Reyes, Saul Roobins, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Amy Stein, Joni Sternbach, Deborah Turbeville, Penelope Umbrico, William Wegman, Shen Wei, Emma Wilcox, Pinar Yolacan, and Shigeki Yoshida.

For an online preview of the auction: CCNY Auction 2010

Photo Benefit Auction for The Camera Club of New York
Monday, October 25th, 6 - 8pm
The Exhibition Lab
548 West 28th Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY

Vertical Currency

2010-09-24T11:36:00.004-04:00

My work is included in a group show opening this weekend in Minnesota, Vertical Currency: Five Years of Emerging Artists at the Rochester Art Center. Curated by Kris Douglas, the exhibition brings together artists who previously had solo shows in the The 3rd Floor Emerging Artists Series.

Other artists include: Liz Miller, Erik Ullanderson, Scott Stulen, Erika Olson, Viv Corringham, Anthony Marchetti, tectonic industries, Chris Deo, Janet Lobberecht, Jennifer Danos, David Bowen, Mary Reid Kelley, Nicholas Conbere, Eric William Carroll, Paula McCartney, Beth Jeffries Barnes, Ruben Nusz, Regan Golden, and Joe Sinness.

Vertical Currency
Rochester Art Center
Rochester, Minnesota

September 25, 2010 - January 9, 2011
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 25th, 7pm

DIRTY MAGAZINE Interview

2010-09-13T09:04:00.004-04:00

A recent interview with Editorial & Creative Director, Paul Bruno, was published in Issue No. 2 of DIRTY, a new online arts and culture magazine. Please find the interview here: American Beauty

culturehall feature 52: OUT BACK

2010-09-08T14:39:00.007-04:00

Thank you to Melbourne-based writer, Allison Browning, for culturehall's Feature Issue 52: OUT BACK highlighting four photographers whose work examine the land and communities of rural Australia. Featured artists are: Renee Nowytarger, Donna Bailey, Karl E Scullin, and Dean Sewell.

Congratulations also to Allison, whose poem, Fuel, will be included in the Best Australian Poetry Anthology 2010.

Please find more of Allison's writing and the images she curates on her blog: JEMIMA IS NOT MY NAME

TRUTH OR DARE at Toxico Cultura

2010-08-14T21:26:00.022-04:00

Juliana Beasley and I leave for Mexico City in just over a week to co-teach an intensive photography workshop at an interdisciplinary creative think-tank, Toxico Cultura. The course, Truth or Dare: Establishing Connections with Your Subject, takes place from August 25th - 29th, and more information can be found on Toxico's blog. Many thanks to Toxico's Founder and Director, Gabriella Gomez-mont, a documentary filmmaker, writer, and luminary who made this happen.

A description of the workshop:

Two American photographers, Juliana Beasley and Tema Stauffer, will share their experiences with and ideas about forming intimacy with subjects. Juliana Beasley’s monograph, Lapdancer, which explores stripper culture through the perspective of an insider was published by powerHouse Books. In 2009, Beasley’s project, Last Stop: Rockaway Park, was awarded fellowships from The Aaron Siskind Foundation and The New Jersey State Council of the Arts. Her most recent series of portraits shot at a residency in Sete, France, was published in a second monograph. Tema Stauffer’s series of portraits of adolescents on Main Street in Binghamton, New York, The Ballad of Sad Young Men, was exhibited at Daniel Cooney Fine Art Gallery in 2009, and selections from her American Stills series were shown in Whatever Was Splendid, an exhibition exploring the legacy of Walker Evans on contemporary American photographers at Fotofest Biennial 2010 in Houston.

These two artists with different approaches to developing relationships with their subjects will help students find their own methods for photographing people. The course will address how photographers can use the camera as a vehicle to make a deeper connection to people both within and beyond their own social circles. Both artists will give lectures about their own work and will also examine relevant historical and contemporary photography through slide presentations and readings, including work by Diane Arbus, Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, Richard Billingham, Katy Grannan, Rineke Dijkstra, Jane Evelyn Atwood, Donna Ferrato, and Jim Goldberg.

Students will complete a shooting assignment photographing subjects in private and public environments. Students can begin a new project or further develop an existing project. The course will also include a writing component asking students to make journal entries about their experiences photographing subjects, and this written content will be discussed in class. The course will conclude with an exploration of the editing process and critiques of students’ work.

Juliana and I will also co-teach an extended 10-week Personal Vision course at the ICP on Friday evenings beginning Friday October 6th. Please find more information listed in the ICP's Fall Programs Guide: Truth or Dare: Establishing Connects with Your Subjects

culturehall feature 50: HOLDING PLACES

2010-08-11T10:00:00.005-04:00

Thank you to writer and cultural critic Emily Carter for culturehall's current feature issue, HOLDING PLACES, describing work that captures a sense of place. Featured artists are Daniel Kukla, Adam Ekberg, Marie Koetje, and Jamie Maxtone-Graham.

A close friend from our overlapping years in Minneapolis, Emily and I got to spend a hot, sunny afternoon this summer exploring her new place in New Haven, CT.

Emily Carter
New Haven, CT
July 2010

August apartment sublet/share

2010-07-17T19:46:00.006-04:00

I will be out of town more than half of August and I'm looking for someone who is interested in subletting my apartment for all or part of the month. I would be willing to rent it by the week to someone interested in spending time in New York in August, or rent it for the month to someone who would share it with me for part of the time. Please contact me to discuss possibilities and prices.

More info about the apartment:

It is located on Graham Avenue about five blocks from the Graham L-train (near Williamsburg/Greenpoint). It takes less than fifteen minutes to get to Union Square in Manhattan. It is a charming block with a laundromat, a bakery, a cafe, a nail salon, a hair salon, two delis, two vintage stores, a French restaurant, an Italian restaurant - everything you could possibly need.

The apartment is an older railroad on the third floor of a small building. There are three rooms - a kitchen, a living room, and a bedroom/office. Plus a little bathroom with a shower and a tub. The apartment gets sunlight on both ends and the general aesthetic is very retro.

There is a double bed in my bedroom as well as a futon that folds out into a double bed in the living room, so it is practical for extra guests.

Other amenities include: wireless internet, air conditioning, old tv/dvd player, stereo/music collection, art books, and photos.

I would love to find a friend of a friend to stay here, or someone who can assure me they are entirely trustworthy and responsible. Artists, students, international visitors are all great.

WIP Grant

2010-07-07T14:59:00.005-04:00

Two weeks left to apply for Women in Photography's 2010 WIP - LTI/Lightside Individual Project Grant with guest judge Karen Irvine, Curator and Manager of Publications at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago. The $3,000 grant award will provide funding for one female photographer to support project costs. An additional $1,000 grant will be provided by Kodak for the selected artist's choice of Kodak materials. The new deadline is Thursday, July 22.

Matt Olson interviews culturehall for ROLU

2010-07-01T09:51:00.010-04:00

Minneapolis-based curator Matt Olson recently interviewed culturehall for his art and design blog ROLU - a favorite in our Resources. Matt curated Feature Issue 46 for culturehall, bringing four new artists to the site. Thank you, Matt, for a ton of support and enthusiasm. To see a better-looking version of the interview, please find us on his sexy blog: ROLU INTERVIEWS CULTUREHALL

There's such a huge number of art related blogs and sites now. It's almost mind- boggling. You call Culturehall “a curated online resource for contemporary art.” Could you talk a bit about what your initial thinking was for starting it? And where within the continuum of sites do you fit?

David:
My interest in the Internet started during the late nineties while finishing up grad school. It was a funny time where radically new technology was worming its way through society and there was nothing close to a consensus on how it would change the way we live. I was also intrigued by the media and marketing hype surrounding the promise of the Internet, especially since most of this future was unavailable due to slow connections, slow computers, bad search engines, and websites with poor information architecture.

The idea for Culturehall started in 2000 after completing my studies. I was looking for ways to promote my work and the Internet seemed like an interesting option but I couldn’t find the equivalent of a slide registry. The few sites I did find had no curatorial outlook and were for the most part random jumbles. I thought this was kind of odd since the Internet could be a very convenient way to show art. If someone were interested in seeing your work, you would just send a link instead of dealing with slides or other physical portfolio material.

Tema:
Part of what distinguishes Culturehall from other portfolio sites is that participating artists are chosen selectively. David and I work together along with guest curators to invite artists whose work reflects a strong vision and serious commitment to the arts. While artists included on the site are at various stages in their careers, we intend to keep the bar high in terms of the quality of the work.

Culturehall features work by four artists every two weeks on our homepage. These features are accompanied by curatorial statements written by one of us or by our guest curators. David and I are interested in reaching out to dynamic figures in the arts – artists, writers, curators – to get a range of perspectives. Some of our recent curators include Erin Sickler, Ruben Natal-San Miguel, Shane Lavalette, and Zeina Assaf, among others. We were thrilled to invite you, Matt, to curate a feature issue, and we love the new artists whose work you brought to the site.

Culturehall has also created a resource for descriptive links to other blogs and websites. David and I have researched the Web for writing about the arts that we felt was relevant to our community of artists and to our audience. We’re invested in collaborating with an international network that shares some of our interests in contemporary art.

What are your long-term goals for Culturehall?

David:
I would like to see Culturehall become a place where artists can connect with their audience and build a wider following for their work.

What’s the reaction been so far?

Tema:
Culturehall has received enthusiastic responses from artists we’ve invited to the site. Other figures in the arts we contacted about adding their blogs and websites to our resources have also given us great feedback. The writing our guest curators have contributed to the site has generated interest from an increasingly wider audience.

David:
We’ve received very positive feedback from both our members and the public. It’s rewarding to see the opportunities that come about for our members as a direct result of their presenting work on Culturehall.

What do you think about the massive amount of art being consumed online rather than in person?

Tema:
Ideally, viewing and reading about art online will stimulate interest in experiencing art in person rather than replace it. Culturehall exists as a place to discover and research artists’ work through their portfolios, as well as a list of their current exhibitions and events.

David:
I see the online environment as a way for creating an increased interest in art for a broader public. The convenience of being able to easily sample a broad selection of work is a powerful aspect of the online experience. Viewing art online informs the public and invites participation.

What is the best “art moment” you’ve had recently … both in “the real world” and online?

Tema:
The best art moments in “the real world” for me consist of making my own work, which recently has involved making trips on the bus to Paterson, New Jersey to develop a new series of portraits. Other great art moments stem from communicating with artist friends and peers day-to-day, both in person and online, and being involved in a vibrant arts community in New York City. Selecting work and writing feature issues for Culturehall are also exceptionally rewarding experiences.

David:
Real World - wandering through the Whitney Biennial on a lazy Sunday afternoon at the same time as Yoko Ono. She was in the full Yoko. Her presence felt like an undocumented work in the show.

Online - http://www.fondazionemaxxi.it - After many years of anticipation the MAXXI in Rome has finally become a reality (and their website too.) I’ve visited Rome twice in the past few years and was disappointed each time to find that this long awaited Zaha Hadid project was only more chronically behind schedule.

Do you think art is good for you?

David:
Personally, yes, art is good … for me … but I’m very hesitant to impose that assumption on an audience broader than myself. However, I do think the critical thought and creativity that go into making and viewing art would be beneficial to many people.

Tema:
What could possibly be better than something that expands imaginations, heightens sensitivity, challenges conventions, creates community, and encourages critical dialogue? Fortunately, the definition of what is good for you, like art itself, is vastly subjective and open to interpretation.

culturehall feature 47: AMERICA

2010-06-30T12:11:00.012-04:00

As the Fourth of July approaches, culturehall features artists whose provocative work challenges us to consider, or reconsider, the American experience. These four artists draw from a variety of sources - personal relationships, historical representations, cross-country tours - to examine our national identity through their images. When viewed together, their work collectively asks us to look at America’s religious groups, its vast working class, its legacies of sexism and homophobia, and the impact of its foreign wars. Their pictures of America, real and invented, recognize diversity, complexity, inequality, and humanity.

Clayon Cotterell’s All in the Family series contributes to a broader dialogue about the effects of United States military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan on American soldiers, their families, and their communities. Included in this dialogue is Nina Berman’s startling photographic series of returned soldiers wounded in Iraq, Purple Hearts, as well as Oren Moverman’s 2009 film, The Messenger, dramatizing the experiences of two officers assigned to the Army’s Casualty Notification service. Cotterell’s ongoing, and more directly personal, photography project focuses on his younger brother, Ian, at various stages in his career as a U.S. soldier deployed to Afghanistan. Cotterell made portraits of his brother before he left for war and continued to photograph him when he returned on leave. These haunting images describe a boy engaged in the rites of passage into manhood – still baby-faced, with a profound sense of apprehension cast in his expressions – bearing tattoos and trying on his Body Armor. Cotterell’s intention to complete the series upon the end of his brother’s tour underscores an implicit sadness about the uncertainty of the future for Ian and indeed for a generation of young Americans in a time of war.

A recent graduate of the School of Visual Arts graduate program in photography, Debbie Grossman’s thesis work consists of a series of historical photographs altered by the artist to present a version of the American West populated exclusively by women. Grossman borrowed images from the Library of Congress of a settlement called Pie Town in west-central New Mexico shot by American photographer Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration in 1940. Using Photoshop as a drawing tool and changing text to re-imagine the gender of and relationships between Lee’s subjects, Grossman created My Pie Town, a fictitious parallel reality where women perform both traditional male and female roles, exist within lesbian partnerships, and demonstrate positions of leadership, strength, and authority. Her homesteaders don boots with spurs, rope calf, grow crops, raise families, and manage town politics. Grossman transformed an iconic American scene by subtly changing the gender of one of Lee’s original subjects from a man to a masculine woman to portray a lesbian couple strolling harmoniously with their young children on her Pie Town’s Main Street.

Greg Reynold’s Jesus Days is a pictorial memoir of his experiences as a closeted gay man working for an American evangelical movement in the late 1970’s and early 80’s. Prior to coming out and moving to New York City, Greg Reynolds spent eight years as a youth evangelist counseling Christian students, leading prayer meetings, and participating in missions and evangelical projects in Central America and Florida, where Christian students proselytized to beach vacationers. While homosexuality was regarded as a sin within his organization, Reynold’s collection of personal snapshots from this era of his life conveys the affection and attraction he experienced and suppressed towards his adult male friends and colleagues. The eroticism in his gaze at male bodies and personalities, so clearly expressed in his pictures, suggests that photography was an outlet and perhaps a source of revelation for deeply repressed and forbidden desires.

In the tradition of photographers like Stephen Shore and Joel Sternfeld who explored America through road trips, Brooklyn-based photographer Marc McAndrews has developed an extensive survey of working-class people and environments through a series of cross-country journeys in his van. Combining a sense of reality and fantasy, McAndrews produced large-format images of bikers, mechanics, motel clerks, waitresses, bowling teams, and prostitutes in legal brothels in Nevada. His subjects and the spaces they occupy appear uncannily vivid and almost three-dimensional, such as Sheree Tucker at her desk with a burning cigarette in hand, an assortment of coffee mugs on her large wooden desk, and family photos and taped notes decorating the wood-paneled walls of her office. The heavy dose of Americana in McAndrew’s work is imbued with warmth and remarkable detail.

Body Armor, Clayton Cotterell

Main Street, Debbie Grossman

Christian Staff Taking a Break, Greg Reynolds

Sheree Tucker, Marc McAndrews

SELF EXPOSURE

2010-06-21T09:17:00.008-04:00

copyright Francesca Romeo

Francesca Romeo and Shen Wei debut new color photographs from their self-portrait series along with work by Nils Ericson and Zachari Logan in a sexy summer show opening this Thursday at Daniel Cooney Fine Art.

SELF EXPOSURE
Daniel Cooney Fine Art
511 West 25th Street
New York, NY

June 24 - July 30
Opening Reception: Thursday, June 24, 6-8pm

copyright Shen Wei

culturehall feature 46: YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW - curated by Matt Olson

2010-06-16T07:33:00.010-04:00

Inspired by an exceptional blog about architecture, art, design and culture called ROLU BLOG, David Andrew Frey and I invited its Minneapolis-based author, Matt Olson, to curate our current Feature Issue 46. Matt examines the role of the Internet in his experience of contemporary art and highlights the work of culturehall artists Emilie Halpern, Maryanne Casasanta, David Horvitz and Sam Falls.

Matt's design studio, ROLU, recently commissioned art/design duo ASDF to create a call and answer photography project, Scattered Light, which proposed a series of assignments asking artists to attempt to reacquaint the viewer to his/her surrounding environment and introduce another way of seeing and interpreting the things around them.

culturehall birthday picnic

2010-06-06T21:00:00.016-04:00

May in Paterson

2010-06-01T10:43:00.006-04:00

Glen
Main Street
Paterson, NJ
May 2010

Kassandra
Main Street
Paterson, NJ
May 2010

Stacey
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Way
Paterson, NJ
May 2010

Paterson, New Jersey

2010-05-22T08:37:00.007-04:00

Tommy
Main Street
Paterson, NJ
April 2010

Dorothy
Bus Station
Paterson, NJ
March 2010

Jose
Main Street
Paterson, NJ
April 2010

culturehall feature 43: FACT, FICTION, FILM AND FANTASY

2010-05-05T14:09:00.017-04:00

Photographs are perhaps the most mysterious of all the objects that make up, and thicken, the environment we recognize as modern.
- Susan Sontag, On Photography

In the decades since Susan Sontag wrote a collection of critical essays about the impact of images on modern reality, our environment has grown considerably thicker - and stranger - and our notion of what is real even more complicated and confounding. Facebook, YouTube, photo blogs, reality TV and cheap digital cameras have accelerated the rate at which the image-world can expand, invent and devour reality. culturehall presents four contemporary artists whose work, in one sense or another, testifies to these subjective and slippery ways we interpret moving and still images, and the influence of images on our fantasies, myths, fictions and identities.

German artist Stefan Heyne’s images investigate the perceptual psychology of how we read photographs. Heyne deliberately captures blurred images of everyday objects and spaces – a wardrobe, a shelf, a corridor, a playground. The original subjects become vaguely recognizable or virtually abstract, transformed into hazy and sensual color fields. Each of these things or places translates simultaneously as familiar and elusive. Rather than providing us with a description or a set of facts, Heyne’s photographs delve into subconscious territory and evoke memories, emotions and associations.

Louise M. Noguchi shoots the Wild West – at least the legendary place we know from movies and tourist attractions with good lookin’ bad guys and lots of guns, blood and dust. Her document series explores Western lore and its romance with violence and aggression. These documentary photographs made in theme parks seduce us with cowboy fantasies while poking fun at their absurdity. By showing us the stage, the props, the actors, Noguchi reveals the smoke and mirrors of a cultural myth.

Noguchi collaborated with artist June Pak to produce somewhere, an installation of five vertically stacked TV monitors appropriating a short clip of footage from The Wizard of Oz. The dramatic clip of Dorothy’s house falling from the sky appears on the five monitors, giving the impression that the house is falling from one monitor into another, while the sound increases until the house reaches the bottom screen. Noguchi and Pak call attention to the transfiguration of reality through the use of Hollywood effects.

Millee Tibbs’ series, This is a picture of me, uses self-portraiture to examine the influence of mediated images of women in vernacular photography and cultural views of sexuality. Tibbs pairs snapshots of her childhood self with staged photographs of her adult self in identical outfits and poses. Her reenactment of these girlish expressions and gestures, like talking to Daddy on the telephone or lying on her back naked in a bathtub, are provocative and unsettling, raising uncomfortable questions about childhood sexuality and the representation of femininity. The actual snapshot of Millee emulating a female pop star crooning into a microphone in a wood-paneled family room becomes creepier still in conjunction with the adult version of the same scenario.

Wardrobe, by Stefan Heyne

Bang, by Louise M. Noguchi

somewhere, June Pak in collaboration with Louise M. Noguchi

"3-2-83, 2007", Millie Tibbs

CONTEMPORARY U.S. PHOTOGRAPHY Catalogue

2010-04-24T08:08:00.009-04:00

The FotoFest 2010 Biennial closes this weekend in Houston and what remains is a catalogue including five curatorial essays on the work in the exhibitions with an introduction by Charlotte Cotton.

The catalogue is available for purchase thru the FOTOFEST STORE and PHOTO-EYE BOOKSTORE.

Thank you to curator Aaron Schuman for his beautiful essay about the work in Whatever Was Splendid: New American Photographs. Four of my images (Bedroom, Teenage Boy, Couple Embraces, Winter Gas Station) were reproduced in the catalogue, and Aaron's insight into my own work was moving to say the very least.

Excerpt from Whatever Was Splendid: New American Photographs, page 38:

Finally, Tema Stauffer, who focused American masculinity and male adolescence in her portraiture series The Ballad Of Sad Young Men (2008), includes several such portraits within her broader and more extensive body of work: American Stills (1997-2009). Returning to the eclecticism of the first chapter of American Photographs, and under a similarly sweeping heading, Stauffer presents an assortment of sharply poetic observations of a country that at times can be angry, melancholy, brutal, and cold, but can also be enchantingly majestic and profoundly moving. Throughout the series there is a critical yet immensely forgiving sense of real compassion at work - a profound love for the subject, with all of its flaws - which strikes straight at the soul of the matter, in the most ordinary places and everyday moments. Rather than simply testifying to waste, selfishness, imminent collapse, and so on, Stauffer's Stills represent a truly committed and heartfelt attempt at unearthing the "splendid" from the "whatever" of contemporary America.

- Aaron Schuman

inMotion's 2010 Photography Auction and Benefit

2010-04-19T10:12:00.009-04:00

I donated a large print of my White Horse photograph to inMotion's 2010 Photography Auction and Benefit taking place tonight at the Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers.

InMotion's annual Benefit raises vital, life-changing resources for thousands of New York City's most needy women and their families - a majority of whom are abused and many are immigrants. InMotion provides free legal services to women, primarily in the areas of matrimonial, family and immigration law.

Please see inMotion's website for more information about the organization: inMotion Justice for All Women

Douglas Britt reviews WHATEVER WAS SPLENDID for Houston Chronicle

2010-04-14T17:56:00.008-04:00

Fotofest exhibit traces Walker Evans' legacy

One of the FotoFest 2010 Biennial's official exhibitions, Whatever Was Splendid: New American Photographs, explores parallels between Walker Evans' Depression-era photos and current lens-based U.S. work.

The unavoidable conclusion is that Evans casts a long, wide shadow over much of today's photography, luckily for us. It's not just that the nation has endured the worst recession since the period depicted in Evans' seminal 1938 book, American Photographs. It's that many of today's photographers — whose styles and subjects differ wildly from one another — are up to the same things Evans was, which isn't to say there's anything nostalgic about their work.

Aaron Schuman, founder of the online SeeSaw Magazine and the exhibition's curator, sets up the show by citing Lincoln Kirstein's introductory essay to Evans' monograph.

“(Evans) can be considered a kind of disembodied burrowing eye, a conspirator against time and its hammers,” Kirstein wrote. “Here are the records of the age before imminent collapse. His pictures exist to testify to the symptoms of waste and selfishness that caused the ruin and to salvage whatever was splendid for the future reference of the survivors.”

Photographers' eyes burrow through plenty of ruin today. For his Down These Mean Streets series, Will Steacy walks with a large-format-view camera from various cities' airports to their central business districts — always at night, with an emphasis on “neighborhoods you wouldn't want to be in at night; the parts of town you drive through — not to,” he says.

Steacy captures the signs of blight and neglect — a Philadelphia power plant looming over a crumbling neighborhood, a desolate Detroit housing project, the charred remains of a burned-out car in Los Angeles — with unwavering candor and, often, eerie beauty.
We see more thoroughly burned-out — and bombed and bullet-riddled — remains of cars in Richard Mosse's photographs following American soldiers in Iraq. And his photos and video of American soldiers lounging in the ruins of one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces — “whatever was splendid,” indeed — brilliantly straddle the line between wry humor and tragic grandeur.

Closer to home, Todd Hido burrows through ruin in the interiors of foreclosed suburban homes and, more dreamily, along rural roads, and Tema Stauffer's American Stills echo Evans' poetic portraits of everyday people and places.

More counterintuitive at first glance is Schuman's inclusion of work by Hank Willis Thomas and Jason Lazarus, both of whom work with other people's photographs to explore aspects of popular culture. But Schuman notes that American Photographs is “as much an interrogation of photography as it is of America, if not more so,” and Thomas and Lazarus update that exploration in fascinating ways.

For his Unbranded series, Thomas takes images from magazine advertisements featuring black Americans, often targeting them as consumers, and strips them of their copy and logos. His tactic highlights the stereotypes and assumptions behind the imagery. Because the same image can be disturbing, cheesy, poignant and hilarious all at once, the results are riveting.

Lazarus reversed Thomas' process, adding text instead of removing it while using amateur photos, not commercial ones. He asked various people, “Do you remember who introduced you to the band Nirvana?” and got them to write the answer with an anecdote on the back of a snapshot of that person. He then scanned, enlarged and framed the images and handwrote their responses on the prints' margins.

You might not think such a simple technique would pack much of a punch, but Lazarus' selection is unbelievably sweet — and often devastating. It shows how ordinary people, recording their memories, transform Nirvana's “well, whatever, never mind” mantra into something heartfelt, even splendid.

-Douglass Britt

More good stuff in the mail

2010-04-10T07:47:00.008-04:00

culturehall as resource in arts education

2010-04-07T14:29:00.015-04:00

Besides culturehall providing artists with a online space to display and promote their work, and the arts community a place to discover this work, David Andrew Frey and I envision the site increasingly utilized as a resource in arts education. We hope it will make a useful tool for educators to present contemporary artwork to students and to inspire written or visual assignments.

I experimented with the Digital Photo I class that I am currently teaching at William Paterson University by demonstrating how the site functions, as well as giving students a writing assignment based on work on the site. Since the class is examining portraiture and shooting portraits in a series of assignments this month, I asked them to write a paper based on a culturehall portfolio that contains photographic images of human subjects.

The photographers whose portfolios my students wrote about include: Dina Kantor, Mara Bodis-Wollner, Paolo Morales, Millee Tibbs, Heather Musto, Tiana Markova-Gold and Ayala Gazit.

Culturehall Assignment: Photographing the Human Subject

Please visit culturehall, an online resource for contemporary art. Use the browse link at the top of the homepage to locate the browse page. You can browse all works or be more specific in your search by browsing by genre or medium.

Locate a portfolio of photographic work including images of human subjects that are of interest to you. You might choose any of these genres of work: street photography, documentary photography of a single subject or a group of subjects, studio portraits, staged portraits, etc.

Please write a one-page paper addressing these questions:

Who is the subject, or who are the subjects, of the photograph or series of photographs?
What is the photographer’s relationship to the subject(s) as you perceive it?
How is the photographer using light? (Natural? Available? Flash? Studio?)
How is the photographer framing the subject(s)?
What mood does the photographer capture?
Does the work have any political content such as issues of race, class or gender?

Prepare to present your paper to the class along with a link to the selected portfolio that we will view as a group.

Interview on GRAYPIGEON

2010-03-31T06:12:00.009-04:00

Maria and Yasmine
Austin, Texas
December 2009

A short set of interview questions I answered over the course of a few winter nights in January 2010 for GRAYPIGEON was recently published on their site. GRAYPIGEON describes itself as a social networking site whose sole purpose is to bring together a collective of artists. The site is under transition and will be relaunched with a new name at some point in the near future.

Q&A

Why do you do what you do?

I write and take photographs in order to search for a meaningful understanding and expression of life experiences and to participate in a dialogue with a community of peers who share similar passions and values. Being wired for a creative path often feels like a condition or affliction – it is inescapable. I can’t imagine a life for myself outside of the arts.

What are the works you are most happy with? Why?

If I were to choose one image that best represents my photographs of American spaces, it would be the White Horse. I spent a week in the winter of 2007 driving around Florida swamplands chasing an elusive dream and felt like I actually captured it in that image. I think some of the qualities that exist in much of my work – the quiet tension, melancholy, mystery and beauty – come through vividly in this photograph.

More recently, I have primarily been shooting portraits – the young men in Binghamton in the fall of 2008 and other subjects I have found since in Texas, Michigan and New Jersey. I’m specifically interested in searching for people whose lives exist on an edge and exploring their expressions, emotions and stories.

What themes are hot on your mind right now?

Love, loneliness, vulnerability, uncertainty, sexuality, dreams, broken dreams, internal and external struggles.

You seem to have your hands in just about everything. Highlight some of the things you are up to besides making photographs.

I teach photography courses at William Paterson University in New Jersey and The School of the International Center of Photography in New York. In addition to teaching, I work as a curator for an arts website called culturehall founded by artist and curator, David Andrew Frey. culturehall is a curated online resource for contemporary art where selected artists can share their work with curators, gallerists, collectors and other artists. My role has been to invite artists, feature and write about their work, and build our list of resources that includes international blogs, websites and organizations devoted to the arts. The goal of the site is to build a sense of community amongst artists, promote their exhibitions and events, and provide greater exposure for their work. It’s a great job for me because I thrive on developing relationships with other artists and supporting work that I think merits attention. I also participate in online discussion of the arts and share personal work-in-progress through my own blog, PalmAire.

Why do you teach? Does it help you as an artist?

Teaching is one of the most rewarding ways I can make a living in the arts. I love teaching. Teaching is about communicating ideas and forming relationships with students. It gives my life more structure and purpose. It motivates me to be more informed, organized and articulate. I like the kind of conversations that transpire in critiques, and it is satisfying to watch students develop an enthusiasm for photography and grow in their work.

How would you describe the process through which a talented young artist achieves professional and financial success? Is that even the goal?

Professional success, understood as visibility and accomplishment in the art world, doesn’t necessarily lead to financial success. Most of my peers, even those who have achieved some substantial recognition for their work, are still struggling to make a living as artists. As far as I can tell, professional success comes from a combination of talent, hard work, commitment, perseverance and a supportive community. Financial success is exceptional. Artists who recognize and utilize the power of the Internet as a forum for networking, promotion and creative expression are probably more likely to receive exposure and succeed in their careers.

I recently finished reading the biography and journals of John Cheever which describe the financial challenges of one of America’s great writers even while his stories were regularly being published by The New Yorker. Making art tends to cost more than writing, and many visual artists whose work is shown in respected galleries often spend more on the expenses of producing work than they receive from sales of the work, especially during the current economic climate.

Developing a career in the arts is a tough path and one that requires a great deal of sacrifice and endurance. The majority of artists I know support themselves through teaching or other jobs related to the arts – and those jobs are competitive as well.

Any gallery shows or events you’d like to talk about?

I will be exhibiting thirteen photographs – made from 1997 thru 2008 – in a group show called Whatever was Splendid at the Houston Fotofest Biennial opening in March 2010. The show, curated by Aaron Schuman, explores the influence of Walker Evans on contemporary American photographers. Walker Evans has been a significant figure in shaping my understanding of who and what is worth photographing, and it will be interesting to have my work viewed in that context. Other participating photographers include Will Steacy, Michael Schmelling, Greg Stimac, Jason Lazarus, Jane Tam, Richard Mosse, Craig Mammano, Todd Hido, Hank Willis Thomas and RJ Shaughnessy.

I love good things in the mail

2010-03-30T00:31:00.014-04:00

I Met a Unicorn

2010-03-23T11:34:00.007-04:00

Unicorn
Austin, Texas
copyright Barry Stone

Since I couldn't make it to Texas (and I'm just about over that now), I'm happy to report that Texas is coming to me. Well, not just me. Good friend and photographer Barry Stone is exhibiting seven photographs in his third solo exhibition at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery opening Friday March 26th. Originally from Texas, Barry spent some years in New York teaching at the ICP. He currently lives in Austin near my favorite place to swim, Barton Springs, and teaches at Texas State University in San Marcos. Barry is also the author of a beautiful photo blog, YES YES YES, as well as a new blog specifically devoted to images of Texas, O EMPIRE WIDE AND GLORIOUS.

According to the press release for this upcoming exhibition of his recent work:

Barry Stone employs a wide variety of practices as a means of generating singular images. His approach includes "straight" photography, rephotographing, computer-rendering, and manually reworking, and does not value one method above another. Instead, Stone takes an egalitarian view of image-making. At a time when an explosion of photographic imagery can seem to dilute the medium to an infinite stream of information, Stone displays a considered selection which exemplifies his varied approaches. Through the seven photographs, he has slowed the eye to focus on points within his photographic practice.

In two photographs—one of a "unicorn" at a children's party, the other of a woman pointing her digital camera at a sunset—the conceptual focus of the image is enclosed in the framing of a scene observed by Stone through the lens of his camera. Another work in the show is a rephotographed image of an oil painting, an image within an image. In a third piece, Stone employs the conceit of the self-referential image again by spray-painting an arc on a photograph of a corner space and rephotographing, collapsing the pictorial space back into abstract elements.

The image Alan Greenspan as a Rainbow in Washington D.C. on October 23, 2009, 12.20.2009 was created by sampling the colors of a Washington Post press photograph of Greenspan testifying in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and creating a gradient rainbow from those colors, a nod to the connection between photography and currency, neither of which is tied to a gold standard that delineates a definitive value.

Stone's photographs deal with the problems of description in photography, and can reflect our perceptions of reality as we acknowledge the factors which inform their production and interpretation.His aesthetic in this regard is as indebted to the language of painting as it is to the language of advertising as it is to capitalist production.

I Met a Unicorn
Barry Stone

Klaus Von Nitchtssagend Gallery
438 Union Avenue
Brooklyn, NY

March 26 - April 25
opening reception Friday, March 26, 7 - 9pm

Telegraph features WHATEVER WAS SPLENDID

2010-03-15T20:15:00.016-04:00

Telegraph (UK) features WHATEVER WAS SPLENDID: NEW AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHS, curated by Aaron Schuman. The feature closes with this powerful commentary:

As much as Evans’s precedent has provided both the inspiration and reinforcing framework for this exhibition, WHATEVER WAS SPLENDID is first and foremost the manifestation of the intelligence, ingenuity, and multiplicity of voices and visions that can be found within current US photographic practice. Yet consciously or not, all the photographers represented here have, in their own distinct ways, expanded upon many of the themes, strategies, clues, symbols, ‘certain sights, [and] certain relics of American civilization past or present’ first glimpsed in American Photographs. They all inherently possess a somewhat familiar ‘burrowing eye’, and share a determination to record, testify, and salvage what they can of their own precarious age for its survivors. And just like Evans, they have both reinvigorated American photography and redefined their country—conceptually, aesthetically, culturally, politically, historically, photographically, and so on—within very contemporary terms, celebrating both the United States and its photography, as Kirstein put it, ‘with all [its] clear, hideous and beautiful detail, [its] open insanity and pitiful grandeur.’

Please see the full feature: Whatever was splendid: New American Photographs

And a slide show of selected works from participating photographers: Whatever was splendid: slideshow

Aaron Schuman has kindly sent me shots of the installation of some of the work that I contributed to the exhibition.

Arriving from Texas ...

2010-03-13T10:03:00.006-05:00

While I was home emailing my pen pals and trying not to feel too terrible about the fact that I couldn't make the trip to Houston for the opening of Fotofest last night on account of my often terrifying state of being financially stuck, I received this very sweet and pretty hilarious snapshot of the installation from photographer Carolyn Monastra. In between the women on the bench and the gang at the Minnesota State Fair on the wall, that is photographer Dana Miller on the left, who I met and exhibited work with along with Mara Bodis-Wollner in the inaugural opening of Jen Bekman Gallery in 2003. Keep your fingers crossed for me that my life can become less virtual one of these days.

Houston Fotofest 2010 Biennial

2010-03-12T08:43:00.011-05:00

Thirteen photographs I made between 1998 - 2008 are included in an exhibition at Vine Street Studios, one of five exhibitions in the Fotofest 2010 Biennial in Houston, Texas opening tonight. Whatever Was Splendid: New American Photographs explores the legacy and continued influence of Walker Evans on contemporary American photography. The exhibition was curated by Aaron Schuman - a photographer, writer, lecturer, curator and founder/editor of SeeSaw Magazine. Other participating artists are Will Steacy, Michael Schmelling, Greg Stimac, Jason Lazarus, Jane Tam, Richard Mosse, Craig Mammano, Todd Hido, Hank Willis Thomas and RJ Shaughnessy.

Also at Fotofest is an exhibition, Road to Nowhere?, including work by one of the contemporary photographers whose spirit I admire the most, Victoria Sambunaris. I had the opportunity to meet Vicky earlier this fall before she left on a long journey to make new photographs in the southwestern region of the United States which finally winds down in a couple of weeks. Her beautiful and politically-charged images of the American landscape will be shown along with work by an exceptional group of American photographers: Sheila Pree Bright, Jeff Brouws, Tim Davis, Myra Greene, Eirik Johnson, Jason Lazarus, An-My Le, Nic Nicosia, David Oresick, Trevor Paglen, Greta Pratt, Michael Robinson, Jason Salavon, Christina Seely, Paul Shambroom, Greg Stimac and Brian Ulrich. Road to Nowhere? was curated by Natasha Egan, Associate Director and Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago.

For a complete list of Fotofest exhibitions, please see: Fotofest 2010 Biennial

March Photo Frenzy

2010-03-02T10:32:00.017-05:00

copyright Deana Lawson

Sway
Station Independent Projects
Scope Art Fair NYC, booth A30
March 4-7

Exhibiting Artists: Juliana Beasley, Brian Getnick, Miles Ladin, Deana Lawson, Leah Oates, Ruben Natal San-Miguel, Kari Soinio and Pierre St-Jacques

******

The Concrete Jungle
Ruben Natal- San Miguel
Kris Graves Projects
111 Front Street #224
DUMBO
March 4 - April 10
Opening reception: Thursday, March 4, 6 - 9pm

******

At Sea
Dan Estabrook
Daniel Cooney Fine Art Gallery
511 West 25th Street, Suite #506
New York, NY
March 1 - April 24
Opening reception: Thursday, March 4
Lyle Rexer in Conversation with Dan Estabrook: Saturday, March 6, 4pm

******

31 Women in Art Photography
Humble Arts Foundation
Affirmation Arts
523 West 37th Street
New York, NY
Opening reception and dance party: Saturday, March 6, 6 - 9pm

Exhibiting Artists: Erica Allen, Amelia Bauer, Claire Beckett, Gilda Davidian, Jessica Eaton, Naomi Harris, Carmen von Kende, Anna Krachey, Yvonne Lacet, Erika Larson, Jessica Mallios, Alison Malone, S. Billie Mandle, Paula McCartney, Rachel Mozman, Yamini Nayar, Sarah Palmer, Kristine Potter, Heather Rasmussen, Justine Reyes, Lisa Robinson, Irina Rozovsky, Sasha Rudensky, Victoria Sambunaris, Robin Schwartz, Emily Shur, Bea Shouders, Rachel Sussman, Kirsten Kay Thoen, Carson Fisk-Vittori and Ann Woo

copyright Ruben Natal-San Miguel

NYMPHOTO Art For Haiti Auction

2010-03-01T07:02:00.007-05:00

I have donated a small print of the cars in the desert above to NYMPHOTO Art for Haiti: Benefit Print Auction. Proceeds from the auction will support the relief effort through Partners in Health, a non-profit organization that has established 12 medical facilities in Haiti.

Other work in the auction has been donated by Keliy Anderson- Staley, Nina Busing Corvallo, Jeff Cate, Rona Chang, Cameron Goodyear, Candace Gottschalk, Laura Heyman, Geoffrey Hutchinson, Hee Jin Kang, Michelle Kloen, Yijun Liao, Minette Lee Managhas, Tiana Markove-Gold, Stephen Meierding, Maria Passaroti, Suzanne Revy, Jon Shireman, Emily Shur, Brea Souders, Juliana Swaney, Jane Tam, Hidemi Takago and Jennifer Williams.

Please preview the artwork here: ART FOR HAITI

Bids on work can be placed on ebay: PRINT SALES TO BENEFIT PARTNERS IN HEALTH

culturehall feature 38: INSIDE OUT

2010-02-24T14:05:00.014-05:00

Some of the most compelling bodies of work in the history of documentary photography reveal characters so vivid that they live in our imaginations almost as though we know them: Diane Arbus’ giant towering over his parents, Robert Frank’s lonesome American strangers, Larry Clark’s heroin-addicted teens in Tulsa, Nan Goldin’s vast circle of bohemian friends and lovers, Richard Billingham’s inebriate father and brawny mother. In this highly personal and subjective tradition, culturehall presents four contemporary photographers with a similar sensitivity to the struggles, fantasies and realities of diverse groups of people whose lives have resonated with the photographers’ psychologies, personal histories, cultural backgrounds or social concerns.

Like many of the portraits of mentally ill and/or alcoholic subjects in her project, Last Stop: Rockaway Park, Juliana Beasley’s recent photographs of people in Sete, a town on the southern coast of France, are intimate and searing. Shot during a residency organized by CeTaVoir and published in a monograph scheduled for release this spring, Beasley’s images portray the cast of characters who populate this Mediterranean fishing port at the summer’s end. Searching the beaches and making her way into homes and social centers, the photographer gets close to her subjects to reveal their flesh, their wounds and their gazes in the stark light of her flash. Her teenagers are awkward or defiant, sunburnt and self-destructive. Beasley’s photographs remind us that, wherever we retreat or congregate, we are vulnerable and mortal.

Born in Taiwan, Wayne Liu divided his early years between his native country and the United States. He moved to New York City after his first year of college and shot his first photographs in the streets of Chinatown. Liu cites films at the Film Forum and Anthology Film Archives, street photography of American and European photographers, and books he discovered as an employee of the Strand Bookstore as influences on his artistic practice. In 2008, Liu travelled on buses through big cities and the countryside of China, parts of which were ravished by an earthquake. His series of black and white photographs, OK China, resemble stills from a grainy film noir. The drama of these dreamlike and melancholic images of anonymous strangers in motion or repose is further enhanced in the darkroom through a painterly process in which Liu burns in deep blacks and highlights specific areas of his prints.

Heather Musto began photographing Anna as a one-year-old in the year 2000. As her babysitter, Musto developed an intimate bond with the child and her extended family living in a blue-collar town in northern New Jersey. Over the course of seven years, she documented the domestic life and emotional bonds of her subject as her family members struggled with addiction and financial instability. While Anna’s parents and relatives appeared and disappeared in her life, her grandmother, a caretaker and licensed nurse, provided a home for the young girl. The photographer conveys an unsettling reality of a childhood through her honest and unflinching snapshots, but not without attention to Anna’s essential spiritedness and the efforts of adults to love and care for her. Musto’s own empathy underlies her commitment to connect with Anna both as a photographer and as a friend.

In his series, Prairieland, Chicago-based photographer Dave Jordano has explored the relationship between the land and the people of rural Illinois. His portraits describe people who exist on the fringes of mainstream culture as a result of their choices, isolation or economic hardship. Some of his inhabitants are dreamers, drifters or eccentrics, like Doris with her white dog and white fur coat. Some long to escape, to be picked up on the road and taken to a better place; others seem resigned, content or proud to be who and where they are. The accomplishment of Jordano’s best portraits lies in his gift for capturing subjects who are simultaneously individualistic and iconic of characters throughout Middle America.

Junkie Camper, by Juliana Beasely

from OK China/the Past is a Foreign Country, by Wayne Liu

Doc holding Anna with orange popsicle, by Heather Musto

Doris and White Cloud, Wateska, Illinois, by Dave Jordano

culturehall at the School of Visual Arts

2010-02-15T20:13:00.009-05:00

I joined David Andrew Frey for a presentation this afternoon about culturehall to students in Michelle Leftheris' graduate class, Colloquia of Moving Images, at SVA. David described how he arrived at the idea of creating the site, and we both discussed how the site operates, how it is evolving, how we curate work and the role of the Web in promoting artists - topics we will also address in some upcoming interviews.

We are excited to have two new interns working for culturehall, Nikolai Shveitser and Rhiannon Platt, and more on board soon. Students are welcome to contact us for additional internship opportunities.

Interview on Two Way Lens

2010-02-11T10:55:00.016-05:00

Christian
Paterson, NJ
December 2009

I was recently interviewed by German photographer Michael Werner for a project on his blog, Two Way Lens. Two Way Lens features an interview series with contemporary photographers in an effort to inform and inspire emerging photographers who are interested in developing careers in photography. It includes interviews with artists Alec Soth, Amy Stein, Zoe Strauss, and Richard Renaldi, among others.

Michael asks each photographer the same three questions. Despite whatever neurosis and insecurities these kinds of questions drag up for me, I tried my best to come up with some simplified answers and to sound a little saner than I feel most of the time.

You can find the interview below or an illustrated version on Two Way Lens: Interview with Tema Stauffer on Two Way Lens

Also see more of my images on Michael's personal blog: The Truth of Beauty

MW: What inspired you to start taking photographs, and what is the primary inspiration for you to keep working in this field?

TS: I spent much of my childhood with my head buried in books or roaming my neighborhood for adventures and places to daydream. I collected baseball cards and wore cowboy shirts and pitched tents in my backyard.

Most of my friends were boys or tomboys. I was a thief for a while and stole coins from my mom’s purse and candy from the corner store. I took naps on the branch of a lilac tree and cried when I read That Was Then, This is Now by S.E. Hinton.

I was fascinated with stories and was determined to invent my own path. Among some of my early fantasies of what I might be when I grew up were a writer, an artist and the leader of a motorcycle gang.

My mother enrolled me in my first photography class at an art center while I was in high school. I took pictures of my friends in fields and cemeteries and jumped out of the car with my camera for the right stranger on the street - someone who looked as restless as I felt.

Photography was license for adventure and storytelling. I liked it even more than drawing, painting and practicing my violin. Taking pictures gave me an adrenaline rush. Photography was sexy and subversive.

If you merge a writer, an artist and the leader of a motorcycle gang, you might come up with someone who explores people and places in America and returns to a Brooklyn railroad apartment to share photographs and thoughts about those experiences. I love driving and searching. I also love nesting with a keyboard and a computer screen.

Photography transforms how I look at the world. Things that are sad, mundane, ugly or beautiful become more interesting and poignant. Both taking pictures and writing stimulate and deepen my perception of reality. I become more engaged in my experiences and capable of reflecting on the most difficult ones. If I stopped taking pictures and writing, I am sure my world would fall flat.

MW: In your opinion and experience, how can emerging photographers evaluate themselves as ready to start promoting their works and seek a broader exposure for their photographs? What is one vital action you would recommend photographers undertake to find their audience, be included in exhibitions, and gain professional representation?

TS: During my twenties, I was involved in a number of shows organized by peers in alternative art spaces. We were eager to show work and commercial galleries seemed out of our reach. Shortly after I finished graduate school, I curated an exhibition of work by twelve photographers at a warehouse space known as The Butcher Shop in Chicago. This kind of show was good practice for resolving work, getting feedback and building relationships with other artists. My first exhibition in New York was organized by a collective of women photographers called NYMPHOTO in a loft in Manhattan, which led to a series of exhibitions at Jen Bekman Gallery.

Artists develop their careers in part through their involvement in a community. Going to openings, supporting other artists, recognizing where one’s work fits in, looking for mentor figures and reaching out for advice are all important steps in this process. I wrote to a number of artists and writers whose work I admire, often with the result of forming lasting relationships.

The Internet has expanded the notion of an arts community, and it is critical for young artists to make their work visible in this environment. One of the most important steps I took was starting a blog, PalmAire, which gave me a place to share work-in-progress and develop my thoughts about photography and the photo community. Many of my opportunities have arisen organically through personal contacts and exposure on the Internet. My relationship with Daniel Cooney, who is currently representing my work, resulted from a friend mentioning my name to him and Daniel discovering portraits on my blog.

The efforts I made to write about photography on my blog furthermore led to a position for an arts website called culturehall, whose mission is to support the careers of a community of artists. culturehall is an online resource where selected artists can share their work with curators, gallerists, collectors and other artists. My role as a curator gives me the opportunity to help artists create online portfolios of work and promote their exhibitions and events. culturehall’s director, David Andrew Frey, and I also invite guest curators to bring artists to the site and write about their work.

MW: How did it come about that you achieved the status of successful, professional photographer? What steps were involved in reaching your level of success?

TS: When I first read this question, I laughed out loud and squirmed a little. The notion of a “successful, professional photographer” conjures a mythic figure with a studio, fancy cameras, interns, magazine assignments, and a substantially greater income. Of course there are many versions of a successful, professional photographer, but still, it isn’t the most appropriate definition for me.

It is more accurate to describe me as an artist and teacher whose life is deeply invested in the arts community. What constitutes “success” is subjective. I am driven and passionate about the arts, and my efforts and involvement have lead to some significant exhibitions, recognition from my peers, and a relationship with a great gallery, which are some of the most satisfying forms of success.

On a day-to-day basis, I feel acutely more aware of my “struggle” than my “success.” Feelings of accomplishment are rewarding but also fleeting. When the high of one accomplishment fades, it creates an opportunity to work through a set of more challenging feelings towards the next one. For most artists, developing a career in the arts is a series of small steps over a long period of time. It demands the ability to experience rejections, creative blocks, financial constraints, self-doubt and anxiety. And then to brush off the dust, strategize, produce work and move forward.

Family, close friends, therapy, swimming, biographies of artists and writers, steady correspondence and supportive relationships with other artists are crucial to my own survival. I think there is good karma in helping others and I try to keep that principle at the forefront of my relationship to the art world.

Tim and Amy

2010-02-02T10:09:00.014-05:00

copyright Tim Briner

Tim Briner and Amy Stein will giving a discussion this Saturday at Daniel Cooney Fine Art about Tim's current exhibition, Boonville, exploring small town America through nineteen beautifully rendered black-and-white photographs.

Tim Briner in Conversation with Amy Stein
Saturday, February 6 at 4pm

Daniel Cooney Fine Art
511 West 25th Street, #506
New York, NY

Dreamers

2010-01-18T20:59:00.011-05:00

Frye
Dreamers Adult Video Store
Austin, TX
Christmas Day, 2009

I stopped to take photographs in the parking lot of Dreamers, and it felt serendipitous that Frye got out of his car and happily agreed to step into the picture. Thank you for making my Christmas Day. Frye told me that he was a DJ in a strip club in Dallas and he was in Austin for the night. He was as spontaneous and likable as they come and tried on different outfits that he pulled from his car. It felt like we could be friends - like we were friends.

Frye is the first person I have photographed to invite me to be his friend on facebook. Welcome to my neurotic world of facebook, Frye. Is yours as compulsive, voyeuristic, riddled with temptation and torture as mine? Who and what do you spy on? What landmines lie in your past and present, occupying this single space?

Until we meet again in Texas, let's stay in touch here. Let's be less alone together. Let's hope each other's dreams come true. Let's take care of each other when they don't.

culturehall seeks intern

2010-01-16T09:56:00.011-05:00

David Andrew Frey and I are searching for an intern to assist us with upcoming research and development projects for culturehall. This is a good opportunity for a graduate or undergraduate student in art administration to gain experience in promoting the arts. Please pass this information along to potential candidates who might be interested in this internship position.

Internship description:

culturehall seeks a motivated individual to assist in the development of key programs over the next several months. The successful candidate will possess strong writing skills, a keen eye for detail and punctuality regarding deadlines. Intern will assist with research and marketing. Will possibly need to assist with New York-based events. Work will largely take place offsite, with a weekly phone conference and in-person meeting every two weeks. Expected workload will require 8-12 hours per week. Candidate is responsible for offsite access to a computer and the Internet. Internship is unpaid, however culturehall is happy to assist with college credits.

About culturehall:

culturehall is a curated online resource promoting contemporary artists. Our members are generally emerging professionals who have completed a graduate studies or equivalent program. culturehall members are actively showing in New York and around the world.

Please see our website at: www.culturehall.com

Please submit resumes to Tema Stauffer: tema@culturehall.com

NYMPHOTO curates culturehall

2010-01-13T07:07:00.016-05:00

Mom and Her Boyfriend Mr. Art
2005
copyright LaToya Ruby Frazier

Thank you to NYMPHOTO founders, Nina Corvallo and Candace Gottschalk, who selected the work of four female photographers for the current Feature Issue 35 on culturehall. NYMPHOTO is a collective of women photographers whose members maintain the NYMPHOTO Blog, sharing news and issues relating or relevant to women in photography.

For their culturehall feature, Framed, Nina and Candace choose work by Sara Appelgren, Andrea Chung, LaToya Ruby Frazier and Tiana Markova Gold.

Culturehall featured artist, LaToya Ruby Frazier, will present her work, ideas and concerns as part of a lecture series presented by the International Center of Photography. LaToya's current work is a collaboration between herself and her family which acts both as portraiture and social document. Her lecture takes place on February 3rd at 7pm at the ICP.

Melanie

2010-01-10T13:46:00.011-05:00

Melanie
Brooklyn, NY
January 2010

January brought a surprise visit from an old and dear friend, costume designer Melanie Ree. Melanie and I met in Minneapolis in May of 2003 and those wicked sexy eyes of hers cast a spell on me - perhaps you can see why. Now almost seven years later, we are keeping warm in my Brooklyn apartment - drinking pots of coffee and watching movies and sharing stories about our similarly rocky love lives (sometimes ex's make the best friends ever). Melanie brought with her from Minnesota a black wig, blonde wig, fur coat, fur cap, sunglasses and two suitcases full of accoutrements. Like everyone who holes up here for a while, she got her picture taken by the kitchen window, the only place where there is a stream of light.

Please see some of Melanie's wild and one-of-a-kind corsets, couture and fashion on her website: www.seamstrix.net

January Exhibitions

2010-01-06T09:05:00.007-05:00

copyright Tim Briner

Tim Briner
Booneville

Daniel Cooney Fine Art
511 West 25th Street, Suite #506
New York, NY

January 7 - February 27
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 7, 6 - 8pm

Versus
curated by Ruben Natal-San Miguel

Hous Projects
31 Howard Street 2nd Fl
New York, NY

January 7 - March 8
Opening Reception: Thursday January 7, 6 - 10pm

Participating Artists: Brian Ulrich, Alex Leme, Mickalene Thomas, Nadime Rovner, Hank Willis Thomas, Cara Phillips, Amy Elkins, Molly Landreth, Matthew Pillsbury, Kris Graves, Phil Toledano, Elizabeth Fleming, Zoe Strauss, Ruben Natal San-Miguel, Jen Davis, Eric Ogden, Michael Wolf, Gina Levay

copyright Wayne Liu

New Photography:
Selections from the 2008 - 2009 CCNY Darkroom Program

The Camera Club of New York
336 West 37th Street
New York, NY

January 7 - February 20
Opening Reception: Thursday January 7, 6 - 8pm

Participating Artists: Brett Bell, Lisa Elmaleh, Anthony Hamboussi, Carrie Levy, Wayne Liu, Santiago Mostyn, Mauro Restiffe, Emma Wilcox

Ruben Natal-San Miguel curates culturehall

2009-12-30T15:18:00.006-05:00

Adultry
2009
copyright Alex Leme

Thank you to one of contemporary photography's greatest enthusiasts, Ruben Natal- San Miguel, who worked tirelessly though the holidays towards curating an upcoming exhibition, Versus, opening on January 7th at Hous Projects, as well as our current Feature Issue 34 on culturehall. David Andew Frey and I asked Ruben to suggest four photographers for us to invite to submit portfolios to the site. He selected work that he felt communicated strong messages and reflected the direction of the medium in the new year.

Please visit culturehall to see new portfolios by Alex Leme, Gina Levay, Matthew Pillsbury and Carlo van Der Roer.

More of Ruben's steady stream of thoughts and passions can be found on his blog: ARTmostfierce

Leaving for Austin

2009-12-22T12:39:00.005-05:00

Mustang Jewelry & Pawn Shop
Austin, TX
July 2009

culturehall news: winter

2009-12-17T01:19:00.020-05:00

David Andrew Frey and I have been working together for nearly a year on developing culturehall into a vital resource for compelling artists’ portfolios and online writing about the arts. We look forward to inviting more artists, promoting their exhibitions and events, expanding our network of partners, and collaborating with guest curators to bring a diverse selection of work to culturehall in 2010.

As the winter looms ahead, I searched for images on the site that reflect the psychology of the season.

Mark Burnette’s photograph of a horse painting in a storefront window in Pulaski, Virginia speaks quietly of romantic longing and nostalgia. The dark and regal horse is contained by a tawdry picture-frame resting alone beneath sunlit glass dusted with fake snow. The reflection of the street in the window merges the everyday of the present with the grandeur of America’s past. Like most of Mark’s photos, this image is imbued with a love for things timeworn and specific to the small towns of his geographical region.

Jessica M. Kaufman’s recent project, Seep, explores a catastrophic oil spill that occurred in a body of water in Greenpoint and Newtown Creek between Brooklyn and Queens, NY and contaminated a neighborhood of big industry and mostly Polish immigrants who began colonizing the area about a century ago. Instead of documenting the impact of the disaster like a reporter, she has created a highly subjective and atmospheric portrait of the area with its sense of history and decay. Shot on a positive/negative Polaroid film that she allows to deteriorate before she makes her prints, Jessica’s photographs possess an enigmatic timelessness. Her untitled image of a Brooklyn stoop carefully decorated with bouquets of flowers and an American flag suggests the vulnerability of our homes and neighborhoods to natural and manmade forces. It looks much like an old snapshot from a family album weathered by decades of chemical erosion.

Photographer, Mickey Kerr, also shot Brooklyn neighborhoods – his, at night buried in snow - as well as suburban streets and residences in his hometown of Kansas City, Missouri. His series, Sights and Sounds, examines the mysterious and seductive nature of nighttime light in depopulated settings. Made with long exposures on large-format film, Mickey’s photographs capture a haunting stillness and absence. With sharp detail and dark shadows, these images seem to both reveal and conceal lurking stories and secrets.

Canadian artist, Jeff Otto O’Brien, recently contributed a portfolio of his work including selections from his series of photographs, Cache Creek, which beautifully depict a stark and dramatic winter landscape. Surrounded by snow-covered mountains spiked with evergreen trees, Cache Creek is home to the Tumbleweed Motel, a diner, tract houses, some industry and rusted automobiles. One gets the sense those cars might not start – the air is fiercely cold and crisp – and the warmest place is a lonely motel room with a flickering blue TV screen.

Newly added listings to our RESOURCES include: Daylight Community Arts Foundation, White Fungus, Nymphoto, and blogs kept by Amy Stein and Nina Corvallo

Pulaski, VA, by Mark Burnette

Seep, by Jessica Kaufman

Sights and Sounds, by Mickey Kerr

Untitled from Cache Creek, by Jeff Otto O'Brien

"Looking: Robert Bergman's Portraits" by Kevin Romoser

2009-12-05T16:10:00.015-05:00

copyright Robert Bergman

Of all the photography I have seen this fall, the work that has resonated with me the most are portraits by Robert Bergman that have recently surfaced in the art world after decades of the photographer's obscurity. I discovered his work shortly before the opening of his current show at Yossi Milo and was surprised never to have seen it before. His haunting portraits left a deep spell on me in the way that the best kind of artwork can.

I recently asked students in my photography class at William Paterson University to visit a photo exhibition of their choice and come back with a paper about the work to present to our class. One of my students, Kevin Romoser, read a beautifully written and insightful short essay about Robert Bergmans's show at P.S.1. It was so uncanny given my own response to Bergman's work, I took the liberty to share it on my blog.

Looking: Robert Bergman's Portraits

Perhaps more than anything else, Robert Bergman's solo show, "Selected Portraits" at P.S.1 in Long Island City is an exploration of the human act of looking. In one way, each of the 24 untitled pieces is a standard portrait photograph. Tightly framed, classically composed and shot with a handheld 35mm camera in natural light, the portraits refer back to a rich history of anonymous portrait photography. They have the pathos of Dorothea Lange's Depression-era series and the haunting atmosphere of Diane Arbus' work. However, Bergman's work accomplishes its mission of conveying the depths of human experience with a refined subtlety, relying on mood-evoking color and most importantly, the human stare.

Some of Bergman's subjects stare directly into his camera, or perhaps more accurately, directly at the viewer, while some seem to avoid it. Some appear to look right through the viewer, and others still seem oblivious to the presence of the camera or viewer at all. What their gazes all share, though, is profound but not overwrought expression. There is always emotional conflict; slight smiles betray forlorn eyes. And every subject conveys a sadness that is not maudlin. It could be the sadness of the acceptance of a burdened life. Or maybe, it is a yearning for the sense of connection that they have found in the momentary click of the camera.

The momentary nature of photography is important in Bergman's work because through the captured instant, the subjects' expressions tell of lifetimes. The photographs speak intricate stories whose details remain mysterious. The lives of his subjects are full, dimensional lives, complete with disappointment and promise. There is very little about the settings or the subjects' dress that indicate the particularities of their lives. But ultimately, for Bergman, these particularities are unimportant. It is the empathy and the connection between subject and viewer that give these portraits their poignant, haunting power.

- Kevin Romoser, November 2009

Robert Bergman: Selected Portraits
P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center
22-25 Jackson Avenue
October 15 - January 4, 2010

Robert Bergman: A Kind of Rapture
Yossi Milo
525 West 25th Street
November 5 - January 9, 2010

copyright Robert Bergman

Camera Club of NY's Photo Benefit Auction

2009-12-01T11:29:00.007-05:00

Back Door
New Orleans, LA
2005

I have donated a large framed print of the image above to the Camera Club of New York's Silent Photo Benefit Auction which will take place on Wednesday at Calumet Photographic's exhibition space.

Participating artists include Erica Allen, Mariette Pathy Allen, Merry Alpern, Timothy Briner, Susan Burnstine, Megan Cump, Amy Elkins, Jon Feinstein, Larry Fink, Martine Fougeron, Samuel Gottscho, Henry Horenstein, Leigh Ledare, David Levinthal, Wayne Liu, Alex Morel, Lori Nix, Leah Oates, Nadhar Omar, Stuart O'Sullivan, Francesca Romeo, Lynn Saville, Aaron Siskind, Will Steacy, Amy Stein, Joni Sternbach, Eric Weeks, William Wegman, Susan Wides, Shigeki Yoshida, Bernard Yenelouis, and many others.

Please see an on-line preview of donated work: Silent Benefit Auction

CCNY's Silent Photo Benefit Auction
Contemporary and Vintage Photographs

Calumet Photographic
22 West 22nd Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues)

Wednesday, December 2, 6-8 pm

Whatever Was Splendid

2009-11-26T06:36:00.012-05:00

I have recently wrapped up the printing stage for the next show on my horizon - Whatever Was Splendid - a group exhibition curated by photographer and director/editor of SeeSaw Magazine, Aaron Schuman, exploring the legacy and influence of Walker Evans on contemporary American photography. The exhibition opens at the Fotofest Biennal 2010 in Houston on March 12 and also includes work by Will Steacy, Micheal Schmelling, Greg Stimac, Jason Lazarus, Jane Tam, Richard Mosse, Craig Mammano, Todd Hido, Hank Willis Thomas, and RJ Shaughnessy.

The broader theme of this year's Fotofest is Contemporary U.S. Photography and there are four additional exhibitions at the festival. Assembly: Eight Emerging Photographers from Southern California, curated by Charlotte Cotton, examines the region's place in the American mythos. Medianation, curated by Gilbert Vicario, explores the interrelationship between the digital image and notions of process and performance in contemporary art. Discoveries of the Meeting Place showcases ten artists discovered at last year's Fofofest Biennial portfolio review. And Road to Nowhere, curated by Natasha Egan, addresses issues of politics, surveillance, race, war, and economic insecurity in the United States. This show includes work by one of my favorite contemporary photographers, Victoria Samubunaris, who is currently making road trips in West Texas to shoot new images of the American landscape.

More information about Fotofest can be found on their website: Fotofest 2010 Biennial

Maggots and Men

2009-11-18T07:25:00.013-05:00

A feature film co-written and shot by one of my old friends from Oberlin College, Ilona Berger, is screening in the MIX NYC film festival on Sunday November 22nd at 8pm.

According to the film's website, Maggots and Men, an experimental historical narrative set in post-revolutionary Russia, re-tells the story of the 1921 uprising of the Kronstadt sailors with a subtext of gender anarchy. A thoughtful homage to Soviet silent era directors and artists of the Russian avant-garde, the film explores themes of re-invention, revolution, community, and corruption.

Maggots and Men
MIX NYC
125 W. 21st Street
New York, NY
Sunday November 22nd, 8pm

Artist's Talk at Tyler School of Art

2009-11-10T06:18:00.010-05:00

I will be giving an artist's talk this Thursday November 12th to students in artist and instructor Leeza Meksin's critical theory class at Tyler School of Art. The talk will take place in room TA 126 in the art building at 2001 N. 13th Street in Philadelphia beginning at 12:30pm. Students in other departments are welcome to attend.

In the afternoon, I am planning to check out some photo shows in the area. Thanks to a tip from photographer Alex Segreti's great new blog, Wish You Were Here, I hope to see Personal Views: Contemporary Photographic Portraiture in Philadelphia at Gallery 339 including work by Justyna Badach, Rita Bernstein, Jessica Todd Harper, Andrea Modica, Nadine Rovner, Sarah Stolfa and Zoe Strauss.

I'd also like to visit the Philadelphia Photo Arts Center where there is currently an exhibition called Next: Emerging Philadelphia Photographers. I have included an intriguing image by Danielle Bogenhagen which I found on the gallery's website. Her image brought to mind Sarah Pickering's blazing rooms from her Fire Scene series - a poster of one of these rooms on fire is hanging in my kitchen from her phenomenal 2008 exhibition at Daniel Cooney Fine Art Gallery .

Fled
copyright Danielle Bogenhagan

culturehall news

2009-11-04T20:17:00.011-05:00

For the current issue of culturehall's FEATURED WORK , I selected images from four artists who whose work employ unique surfaces and conceptual methods drawing from their interest and experience in various media.

Karen Azoulay combines sculpture, painting, photography and performance to create hybrid conceptual works. Her theatrical installations, which often involve an interaction between the artist and objects she has made in a studio, reference mythology and classical painting and conjure a heightened sensory atmosphere. Fire, water, light, rock and other elements create rich color fields and a mysterious sense of a symbolic significance.

For the her recent series of ink-and-wash drawings which were exhibited at Nature Morte Gallery in Berlin earlier this fall, June Glasson staged photo shoots based on images from a 1860’s publication, Sins of New York, depicting women engaged in scenes of violence and revelry. The influence of fashion, illustration and decorative art can be seen in these charged images that question the limits and acceptability of female behavior in urban society.

Moscow-born artist, Leeza Meksin, uses a variety of paints and textiles in her paintings and installations to create complex and metallic surfaces. Spandex predominates in her list of materials and can be found both stretched over the surface of her paintings and also within her large-scale sculptural pieces. Selections of her work were exhibited this fall in a group show at Thomas Erben Gallery in New York and in a solo exhibition at the Abington Art Center in Philadelphia.

Craig Prehn, an artist with roots in Detroit and Chicago, has ventured west and now resides in San Francisco. His most recent series of drawings, An American Western, examines the mythology and stark beauty of the western journey. Prehn, whose background is in photography, collects and views found snapshots of the American vernacular as inspiration for these simple and evocative pen-and-ink sketches.

In The Water (3), by Karen Azoulay

She Caught It Hot, by June Glasson

Splayed Rack, by Leeza Meksin

Glasses, An American Western, by Craig Prehn

Jose

2009-10-31T15:21:00.001-04:00

Jose
Barton Springs
Austin, TX
June 2009