GEORGE SCHUMACHER – POLAROIDS

Posted on 2012-06-04

Schumacher, a psychiatrist working in central and northern California, originally considered photography a hobby. He became immersed in the Polaroid medium because of its immediacy as well as its ability to express “deep inner reflection through light and framed subject.” A chance meeting with Ansel Adams in the mid-1950s led to Schumacher’s participation in several of the Yosemite Workshops led by Adams. Adams thought so highly of his protégé’s work that he featured his images in the 1963 publication: Polaroid Land Photography Manual. This technical handbook served to acquaint and instruct photographers on the creative use of this revolutionary new photographic process. It included works by Adams, as well as such early Polaroid practitioners as Paul Caponigro, Minor White, Marie Cosindas, Philippe Halsman and Schumacher.

Schumacher’s success in capturing intimate, delicate, and quiet images led to exhibitions and reproduction in various art and photographic publications including Aperture, Art in America, and Infinity, among others. Aperture magazine, perhaps the most influential photography publication at the time, included Schumacher’s work as early as 1961.

Exhibition runs through till July 14th, 2012

Joseph Bellows Gallery
7661 Girard Avenue
La Jolla
CA
92037

www.josephbellows.com

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LISA KERESZI – THE PARTY’S OVER

Posted on 2012-06-04

Continuing her investigation of escapist and fantastical spaces, Kereszi has trained her eye on the gritty, abandoned sites of former amusement parks, strip clubs, theaters, and other entertainment locales. The works offer subtle visual hints of a once happier existence, using windows and reflections, for example, as metaphorical portals to escape a reality of decay.

Though subdued in tone and content, the work is also a celebration of the magic of the purely photographic. Reactive, though quiet, Kereszi’s photos are not pre-conceived or planned out, but rather genuine, instinctive responses to strange, silent and secret beauty. In Topless bar reflected in puddle, Doylestown, PA, Kereszi frames a sliver of the defunct club’s sign in a parking lot puddle, which forms the shape of an arrow and reflects the club’s essential message, Topless Motel Bar Food. The building’s A-frame roof and chimney suggest that this is a former home converted to a strip club, another subtle reminder of the distressed conditions to which Kereszi lends her poetic sensibility.

Elsewhere, Kereszi’s compositions are more direct in their message, as in the show’s title image, The Party’s Over, Disco ball in box, CT, which peers down upon a shabby cardboard box containing a disco ball, no longer spinning overhead, and therefore bereft of its former power to entice. And Plastic Shark in lake behind sports bar, Pocono Mountains, PA, which reveals a comically placed shark head jutting out of shallow water, its toothy mouth agape, a sad, static reminder of a once popular recreational playground cast aside.

Opposite – Topless bar reflected in puddle, Pennsylvania, 2010

Exhibition runs through till July 6th, 2012

Yancey Richardson Gallery
535 West 22nd Street 3rd floor
New York
NY
10011

www.yanceyrichardson.com

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CHRISTER STROMHOLM – LES AMIES DE PLACE BLANCHE

Posted on 2012-06-04

Christer Strömholm (1918–2002) was one of the great photographers of the 20th century, but he is little known outside of his native Sweden. This exhibition presents his most powerful and acclaimed body of work: Les Amies de Place Blanche, a documentation of transsexual “ladies of the night” in Paris in the 1960s. Arriving in Paris in the late 1950s, Strömholm settled in Place Blanche in the heart of the city’s red-light district.There, he befriended and photographed young transsexuals struggling to live as women and to raise money for sex-change operations. Strömholm’s surprisingly intimate portraits and lush Brassaï-like night scenes form a magnificent, dark, and at times quite moving photo album, a vibrant tribute to these girls, the “girlfriends of Place Blanche.” The photographs were first published in Sweden in 1983, and the book quickly sold out, becoming a cult classic; it is being reissued in French and English this year. Strömholm’s photo-essay raises profound issues about sexuality and gender; as he wrote in 1983, “It was then and still is about obtaining the freedom to choose one’s own life and identity.”

Opposite – Soraya and Sonia, 1962

Exhibition runs through till September 2nd, 2012

International Center of Photography
1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street
New York
NY
10036

www.icp.org

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