WHO? A BRIEF HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY THROUGH PORTRAITURE

Posted on 2019-10-14

The Norton’s new Kenneth C. Griffin Building features the first dedicated gallery, the Jodi Ann Saltzman Gallery, to showcase the Museum’s permanent collection of photography. The inaugural installation of approximately 60 works will trace the history of the medium through portraiture. Beginning with 19th-century daguerreotypes and albumen prints, and ending with 21st-century examples by artists such as Tim Hailand, Shirin Neshat, and Arne Svenson, these works examine the reciprocal influences between photography and the portrait. Works by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Julia Margaret Cameron, August Sander, Dorothea Lange, Irving Penn, Thomas Ruff, and Lalla Essaydi also will be on view.

Opposite – J. C. Batcherlder (American, active 1860s-1870s), Untitled [portrait of a woman], 1860s

Exhibition runs through to December 10th, 2019

Norton Museum of Art
1451 S. Olive Avenue
West Palm Beach
33401 FL

www.norton.org

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JOE VITONE – FAMILY RECORDS

Posted on 2019-10-07

Family Records is an ongoing series of portraits of photographer Joe Vitone’s relatives living in and around Akron, Ohio. Begun in 1998, this body of work documents evolving interpersonal connections between parents and children, siblings, spouses, cousins and other relations within working class communities of the Rust Belt region. Shot each summer when the artist-now based in Austin, Texas-travels back to Ohio, this series features scenes from festivities such as birthday parties and weddings as well as intimate portraits set outside homes and workplaces. Touched by celebrations and struggles including marriage, divorce, addiction, new homes, unemployment, new jobs and babies, the lives of Vitone’s relatives reflect experiences common to families across the United States.

Opposite – Arathea Booth seated on a cooler in a yard smoking a cigarette, Marshallville, Ohio, 2008

Exhibition runs through to October 27th, 2019

Akron Art Museum
1 South High
Akron
44308 OH

akronartmuseum.org

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ALEX PRAGER – PLAY THE WIND

Posted on 2019-10-07

Well established for her genre-defying approach to image making that timelessly combines eras, cultural references, and personal experiences, the photographs and the film debuted in this exhibition are a fresh reflection on Prager’s place of origin, site of inspiration, and frequent character—the city of Los Angeles. The world premiere of Play the Wind on Thursday, September 5, will include an opening reception for the artist at 536 West 22nd Street.

Prager’s contemporary take on the modernist tradition of anthropomorphizing a city, from Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s Paris, to James Joyce’s Dublin, to Keith Haring’s New York City, arises from the artist’s recent professional and personal transformation. Having passed a major career milestone—the publishing of her first monograph, Silver Lake Drive (2018, Chronicle Books), and a mid-career retrospective of the same title—Prager spent time reflecting on her beginnings as a photographer and her transition to film directing. In addition, the birth of her first child in the city where she too was born and has lived most of her life contributed to an uncanny nostalgia for the artist that psychologically pulled her into the past while simultaneously beckoning her toward the future. Creating a film that could contain these seemingly contradictory impulses became the impetus for this new body of work.

Opposite – Big West, 2019

Exhibition runs through to October 26th, 2019

Lehman Maupin
536 West 22nd Street
New York
10011 NY

www.lehmannmaupin.com

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BRIGITTE CARNOCHAN – EMILY’S GARDEN

Posted on 2019-10-07

A solo exhibition by gallery artist Brigitte Carnochan and her new photographs inspired by the poems of Emily Dickinson. Brigitte Carnochan and Emily Dickinson share a passion for flowers that inspire both their mediums. Brigitte’s career has centered around the sensuality and beauty of botanicals and nudes, and in this new work, she circles back to her original subject matter of nearly four decades ago when she began by painting on her gelatin silver floral images with oil paints. Having been drawn increasingly over the years to the narrative possibilities in photographs, Carnochan incorporates in this series lines of poems in Dickinson’s own handwriting, inconspicuously or half hidden. The resulting images are printed with the 19th century platinum palladium photo process onto handmade Japanese gampi paper that she delicately backs with gold leaf, giving the images the look and feel of 19th century daguerreotypes, with which Dickinson would have been familiar.

Opposite – For every bird a nest, 2018

Exhibition runs through to October 27th, 2019

Obscura Gallery
1405 Paseo de Peralta
Santa Fe
87505 NM

www.obscuragallery.net

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PETER HUJAR – MASTER CLASS

Posted on 2019-09-30

Featuring a selection of Hujar’s black-and-white portraits acquired by Richard Avedon in the 1970s, the exhibition examines the photographer’s idiomatic approach to portraiture that treated each photograph as a stand-alone object, capable of evoking complex emotions and expressions. The influence of Avedon’s acclaimed Master Class, a weekly seminar taught by Avedon and art director Marvin Israel at Avedon’s New York City studio and in which Hujar was enrolled in 1967, will also be examined through scholarly research. The Master Class included visiting speakers such as Diane Arbus and Lucas Samaras, and opened doors for a number of young photographers.

Avedon and Hujar remained friends following the workshop’s close and, over time, Avedon acquired the eight superb prints on view, each of which deftly captures Hujar’s avant-garde circle with penetrating sensitivity and psychological depth. The exhibition will also include Hujar’s four-part work made during the Master Class, Nude Self-Portrait Series #1, #2, #3, #4, 1967.

Opposite – Butch and Buster, 1978

Exhibition runs through to October 19th, 2019

Pace/MacGill Gallery
540 West 25th St
New York
10022 NY

www.pacemacgill.com

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HARRY CALLAHAN – FROM A RECENTLY ACQUIRED COLLECTION

Posted on 2019-09-30

The photographs in the exhibition express the constant formal and conceptual concerns that give unity to Harry Callahan’s treatment of some of his favorite subjects. The intimate landscape, including views of fields, leaves, and weeds of Aix-en-Provence, the sandy beaches of Cape Cod and the snowy shores of Lake Michigan in Chicago (trees in snow), c. 1950, exemplify Callahan’s reduction of photography’s unbroken scale of tones to the extreme whites, the pure blacks, and a middle gray in scenes with details that are delicate and inexhaustibly intricate. The studies of his beloved wife Eleanor reveal her as an individual, an icon, and a symbol of all woman — no matter how small a part of the scene, Eleanor dominates the viewer’s eye. Callahan’s technical experimentation in thematic synthesis, including multiple exposures, is represented by a pristine example of Detroit, 1943, one of three known multiple-exposure images of Detroit streets that Callahan created in 1943 with his 9 x 12 cm Linhof camera. The image is tied to reality yet freed from traditional representational qualities that challenges perceptions.

Opposite – Eleanor, 1948

Exhibition runs through to October 19th, 2019

Robert Mann Gallery
525 West 26th Street, Floor 2
New York
10001 NY

www.robertmann.com

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