ED VAN DER ELSKEN – “LOVE” & OTHER STORIES

Posted on 2018-04-30

With a confident, gritty, and unconventional style, van der Elsken’s confrontational portraits of young love, alienation, and counterculture bohemian life paved the way for late 20th century photographers such as Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, and Wolfgang Tillmans. He is best known for his iconic photography book, Love on the Left Bank, 1954, acclaimed for expanding the boundaries of documentary photography. His work was most recently seen last year in a retrospective exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, which traveled to the Jeu de Paume in Paris and the Fundación Mapfre in Madrid.

Ed van der Elsken (1925-1990) was “a man who would have liked to have transplanted a camera into his head to permanently record the world around him” noted Beatrix Ruf, the director of the Stedelijk Museum and Marta Gili, the director of the Jeu de Paume wrote in his retrospective exhibition catalogue.

“He was always looking for what he called ‘my king of people,’” said Hripsime Visser, the curator of the exhibition at the Stedelijk. “And what he meant by that was not the beautiful people and not the famous people but the people who tried to live or to survive.”

Opposite – Cafe “Au Mabillon” Boulevard Saint Germain des Pres, Paris 1950

Exhibition runs through to May 5th, 2018

Howard Greenberg Gallery
41 East 57th Street
New York
10022 NY

www.howardgreenberg.com

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NIALL O’BRIEN – THREE CITIES

Posted on 2018-04-23

‘Three Cities’ explores Santa Clara’s ‘Silicon Valley’ through a series of intuitive landscapes and portraits, shot in and around the county’s seven-mile long Bascom Avenue.

During his time there, O’Brien was struck by the banality of a place that prides itself on being a world leader in innovation. Although no stranger to the US and its economic landscape, he was affected by the enormous inequality that exists amongst Bascom’s residents – some of America’s wealthiest and most impoverished, living side by side.

Despite this he found moments of remarkable beauty in and around the valley, over his many visits to the area. He also found beauty in the people that inhabit Bascom Avenue. Blake, a homeless man, and his girlfriend Dana became incredibly important to O’Brien, who began to see the world from their point of view.

The photographer’s naturalistic and voyeuristic imagery is the result of a very personal process, which has historically seen him embed himself within ‘tribes’, whether they be young punks in the suburbs of London and Berlin, or the isolationist communities of conservative middle-America. Here he was drawn specifically to Blake and Dana’s stories and their surroundings – spending months getting to know them and their routines, documenting their turmoil and their triumphs, as well as the streets that they call home.

Exhibition runs from April 27th – May 26th, 2018

Sid Motion
142 York Way
London
N1 0AX

www.sidmotiongallery.co.uk

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BARBARA CRANE – THE POLAROID YEARS

Posted on 2018-04-23

Barbara Crane is recognized as one of the leading conceptual artists to have emerged from The Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. With more than ninety solo exhibitions to date, including seven retrospectives, Crane has solidified her place as one of the most important experimental photographers today. For twenty-eight years she taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago becoming one of the most renowned educators worldwide, while consistently working on her own photography. She retired from teaching in 1995, and is currently working on several book projects.

Barbara Crane was one of a handful of photographers who was given unlimited access to Polaroid film, allowing her to experiment and push the boundaries of the material. Several of these pieces will be on view, including some of her seminal SX-70 grids that examined repetition and its power to elevate simple patterns into majestic effects. In Polka Dots I, 1980, a grid of red dots play against a yellow backdrop, begging the viewer to see the difference between each frame. In Tucson, 1979, Crane manipulates Polaroid packfilm with a scribe, moving around the emulsion to create an outline of the subjects. And in Private Views, 1981, Crane spent time photographing at Chicago beaches and summer festivals, focusing on the people that make the city so culturally diverse.
Opposite – Private Views, Coney Island, NY [002], 1982

Exhibition runs through to April 28th, 2018

Holden Luntz Gallery
332 Worth Avenue
Palm Beach
Florida 33480

www.edelmangallery.com

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DEEP IN A DREAM WITH MICHAEL MASSAIA

Posted on 2018-04-23

Michael Massaia’s nocturnal images present a uniquely poetic and pure body of work. The photographer’s hand-crafted images capture the quietude and isolation of the city during the hushed hours of the early morning by creating luminous, ethereal landscapes devoid of people. The parks, amusement rides and abandoned houses become dramatic sets waiting to be brought to life.

Massaia began his quiet walks at night in Central Park to relieve an ongoing insomnia, taking pictures of New York City during the walks between 2:00 A.M. and 5:00 A.M. Massaia’s interest in photography began in high school and though self-taught, his practice has grown into a superb craftsmanship that includes perfecting enlarging negatives, building his own cameras, and contact printing both silver and platinum photographs. Being raised in New Jersey and remaining in the New York City metro area, Massaia’s photography is based on locations close to the photographer’s upbringing. In Massaia’s photography, the most visited urban park in the United States, Central Park, becomes a fantastic landscape that shimmers in the half-light of the moon, with radiating pathways and mirror-like bodies of water. Iconic buildings become luminescent and appear alive, radiating light from within themselves while bridges and trees seem eerie and haunting.

Opposite – Eaglevale Arch Looking North

Exhibition runs through to April 28th, 2018

Holden Luntz Gallery
332 Worth Avenue
Palm Beach
Florida 33480

www.holdenluntz.com

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MATTHEW ROLSTON – HOLLYWOOD ROYALE

Posted on 2018-04-16

One of a handful of artists to emerge from Andy Warhol’s celebrity-focused Interview magazine, Rolston is a well-established icon of Hollywood photography. His latest exhibition and publication, Hollywood Royale: Out of the School of Los Angeles is a retrospective of his 1980s photography and presents a stunning array of portraits that beautifully capture the breadth of that decade’s iconic talent, from Michael Jackson to Madonna, from Cyndi Lauper to Prince.

Alongside such luminaries as Herb Ritts and Greg Gorman, Rolston was a member of an influential group of photographers (among them, Bruce Weber, Annie Leibovitz, and Steven Meisel) who came from the 1980s magazine scene. Rolston helped define the era’s take on celebrity image-making, ‘gender bending,’ and much more. The photographs in this collection recall the glamour of old Hollywood with postmodern irony, helping to point the way towards the cult of fame with which we live today.

Opposite – Drew Barrymore, Portrait as a Boy, Los Angeles, 1991

Exhibition runs through to April 21st, 2018

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

www.faheykleingallery.com

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JOCELYN LEE – THE APPEARANCE OF THINGS

Posted on 2018-04-16

The exhibition will showcase a selection of Lee’s portraits, landscapes and still lifes, including works from her latest series The Appearance of Things.

Lee’s photographs seek to question and expand on the traditional definitions of female beauty her portraits steer clear of the conventional and idealised. Women, both old and young, are posed in the natural landscape, creating raw and honest portraits, rich in implied narrative.

New works on display from the series The Appearance of Things, (2016 – ongoing), continue Lee’s ongoing examination of the physical world. Encompassing and fusing still life, portrait and landscape genres, the works depict bodies enmeshed in an ephemeral environment. The female forms are submerged in water or dappled in sunlight, counterpointed with contemporary memento mori of vivid and painterly still lifes of rotting flowers and glistening fruit. Collectively, the works offer a melancholy yet unsentimental reflection on life’s transitions through stages of birth, blossoming and death.

Opposite – The Empty Mirror, 2016

Exhibition runs April 19th through to May 12th, 2018

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

huxleyparlour.com

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