MONA KUHN – SHE DISAPPEARED

Posted on 2019-03-18

Mona Kuhn’s photography is characterized by large-scale photographs of the human body, which are often intimate and natural. American photographer Mona Kuhn (1969-present) is known for her large-scale photos of the nude human form. Mona Kuhn’s photographs draw inspiration for her work both from classical art and the desire to examine – and sometimes transform – how society views the natural human body. Much of Mona Kuhn’s photography focuses on capturing people feeling comfortable in their own skin, while still exuding a sense of dreamy beauty. Mona Kuhn is known for developing close relationships with her subjects and making them feel at ease in her presence, resulting in a unique type of playful intimacy in Mona Kuhn’s photography. The deep connections Mona Kuhn cultivates with her models not only lend a physical closeness to her work, but a sense of the emotional connections she has developed as well. Indeed, many of Mona Kuhn’s photographs manage to somehow be both whimsical and sensual at once.

Opposite – AD 7085, 2014

Exhibition runs through to April 6th, 2019

Jackson Fine Art
3115 East Shadowlawn Avenue
Atlanta
30305 GA

www.jacksonfineart.com

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HEMAN CHONG – FOREIGN AFFAIRS

Posted on 2019-03-18

Foreign AfFairs is a series of apparently banal photographs of embassy back doors. The systematic repetition of images simultaneously recalls a cinematic frame and the omnipresence of the surveillance camera that watches nothing and everything. As a literal and cumulative representation of embassy backdoors, each image of a backdoor can be read as infrastructural, making apparent the very form of the non-descript embassy backdoor and its component parts: greenery as camouflage, the solitary aspect of a strategically positioned surveillance camera, the additional lock or additional gates. These mundane representations are the threshold of the exceptional space of the embassy, which in and of itself is the physical manifestation of an agreement between two states of respective sovereignty.

Foreign Affairs speaks to the sites of infrastructural power in society today. The series implicitly points to society’s real fears of ‘back door’ agreements, actors invisibly and insidiously pulling the strings behind the veil of the everyday. As representations of information, the images reflect both the back stage upon which fears of international conflict, calamity and national disaster play out and/or are produced.

Opposite – Foreign Affairs #127, 2018

Exhibition runs through to April 6th, 2019

Amanda Wilkinson
1st Floor, 18 Brewer Street
W1F 0SH
London

amandawilkinsongallery.com

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THOMAS R. SCHIFF – THE POETICS OF DISTORTION

Posted on 2019-03-18

Thomas R. Schiff. The Poetics of Distortion: Panoramic Photographs of the San Francisco Bay Area presents familiar icons in San Francisco’s built and natural environment from a comprehensive perspective. Thomas R. Schiff’s latest work will be on view in February 2019 at the Harvey Milk Photo Center and the SFArtsED Gallery at Minnesota Street Project. The simultaneous exhibitions will present separate collections, encouraging viewers to both locations to experience the artist’s expansive vision. Both openings are free and open to the public.

In The Poetics of Distortion, Thomas R. Schiff marshals his technical mastery to convey a lifelong fascination with the San Francisco Bay Area’s unique visual aesthetic. Stately structures including Coit Tower and Oakland’s Paramount Theater appear to ripple across Schiff’s viewfinder, suggesting movement where there is none. Schiff’s mastery of panoramic techniques produces thrilling and unexpected views that refresh our perspective of sites known worldwide for their dramatic beauty.

Opposite – Whiz Burger, 2012

Exhibition runs through to March 31st, 2019

Harvey Milk Photography Center
50 Scott Street
San Francisco
94117 CA

harveymilkphotocenter.org

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TODD HIDO – BRIGHT BLACK WORLD

Posted on 2019-03-11

Bright Black World, is a new exhibition of work by Todd Hido exploring the dark topography of the Northern European landscape, highlighting Hido’s first significant foray extensively photographing territory outside of the United States, chronicling a decidedly new psychological geography and environmental concern. A new publication by Nazraeli Press accompanies the exhibition of the same title and will be available through Casemore Kirkeby.

For nearly three decades, Hido has crafted narratives through loose and mysterious suburban scenes, desolate landscapes, and stylized portraits. He has traversed North America capturing places that feel at once familiar and unknown; welcoming and unsettling. Nordic mythology, specifically the idea of Fimbulwinter, which literally translates to ‘the great winter’, influenced many of Hido’s new images, which provide form for this notion of an apocalyptic, never-ending tundra.

Opposite – Bus Station with Young Elephants

Exhibition runs through to April 2nd, 2019

Casemore Kirkeby
1275 Minnesota Street, #102
San Francisco
94107 CA

casemorekirkeby.com

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NICK BRANDT – THIS EMPTY WORLD (LOS ANGELES)

Posted on 2019-03-11

In this series Brandt directs our attention to a world where, overwhelmed by runaway human development, there is no longer space for animals to survive. The humans in the photographs are also often helplessly swept along by the relentless tide of “progress”.

In This Empty World, Brandt uses color for the first time, and a digital medium format, bringing immediacy to a critical subject that demands our attention. Made on Maasai land in Kenya, Brandt began by photographing indigenous animals in their natural habitat. Almost always keeping the camera in precisely the same position, he then built temporary urban structures in the same location, a highway overpass, a fueling station, re-photographing the transformed space. Brandt then combines the two images in post-production, composing dramatic scenes that confront urgent environmental issues, such as the scarcity of resources and encroaching industrialization.

The series, shot primarily at night, shows the neon glow of urban lights illuminating passive crowds and displaced animals. In This Empty World, Brandt makes powerful and haunting images revealing the mutual suffering of animals and humans as victims of environmental devastation.

Opposite – Bus Station with Young Elephants

Exhibition runs through to March 28th, 2019

Fahey/Klein Gallery
148 North La Brea
Los Angeles
90036 CA

www.faheykleingallery.com

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HARRY CALLAHAN – CHICAGO | DETROIT

Posted on 2019-03-11

Incorporating landscape, portraiture and abstraction, the exhibition will demonstrate Callahan’s deeply personal response to his own life. His wife, daughter, and the streets, buildings and landscape of the cities he called home, were all re-occurring subjects of his work. Within his diverse subject matter, he established a singular aesthetic with a drive for experimentation which has had a lasting influence on post-war photography.

The exhibition will focus on works from the first two decades of Callahan’s career, from the early 1940s until the late 1950s, when he was based in Chicago. Callahan met Hungarian painter and photographer, László Moholy-Nagy in 1946, and went on to join the faculty of the New Bauhaus school that Moholy-Nagy had established in the city. The significance of this is evident in Callahan’s photographs from the 1940s which share the principles of Bauhaus design and experimentation. Much of his work from this period explores both total abstraction and the technicalities of the photographic medium, including use of double and triple exposures, blurs, extreme contrasts and collage.

Opposite – Eleanor, Chicago, 1949

Exhibition runs through to April 6th, 2019

Huxley-Parlour Gallery
3-5 Swallow Street
London
W1B 4DE

huxleyparlour.com

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