Tahukah Sayang

P. Rosnah & The Siglap Five... Tahukah Sayang (.mp3 audio 03:48).

The Daniel Cowin Collection of African American Vernacular Photography

The Daniel Cowin Collection of African American Vernacular Photography. "...The Daniel Cowin Collection of African American Vernacular Photography was given to ICP by Daniel Cowin in 1990. The collection of about 1,600 photographs, including several albums and dating from 1860 to 1960, offers a glimpse into the rarely seen everyday lives of African Americans in a variety of genres and poses: formal studio portraits, casual snapshots, images of children, images of uniformed soldiers, wedding portraits, and 'Southern-views' made for tourist consumption."

Appalachian Eyes

Carlene Carter... Appalachian Eyes (.mp3 audio 02:57). From the album Musical Shapes (1980, F-Beat Records).

Albert Larson with Giant Squash

Albert Larson with Giant Squash (November 6, 1931). "...Albert A. Larson, Burke Township, displays a 58 pound squash which he gave to the Madison Salvation Army." Happy Thanksgiving!

Pop Art Playmates

Lisa Petrucci and Junko Mizuno team up for the exhibition Pop Art Playmates at Mondo Bizzarro Gallery in Rome.

Works by Filib Schürmann

Filib Schürmann... ein spaziergänger grüsst fauna und flora (2008, Technique mixte, dessin sur papier). From an exhibition of Works by Filib Schürmann at Galerie Guy Bärtschi in Geneva.

Japan Exposures

Japan Exposures - a personal introduction to Japanese photography. Congratulations, Kurt. Now if only I could find a Fuji Pet to carry along with my Olympus Pen EE-2.

Gembira Ria

Rosnah & The Siglap Five... Gembira Ria (.mp3 audio 02:36). An exceptionally cool track from 1966 Malaysia.

Xue Mo: Mongolian Renaissance

Xue Mo... Portrait of Miss Naren (2008, oil on linen). From the exhibition Xue Mo: Mongolian Renaissance at Diane Farris Gallery in Vancouver, Canada. "...Beijing-based painter Xue Mo creates stunning original portraits of her fellow Mongolian people. With their regal poses and elegantly embellished clothing and hats, the figures provide a fascinating look at the Mongol 'fashion' culture."

Explorations in the Garden of Good & Evil

Monika Steinhoff... Rapture Anyone? (Egg Tempera on Board). From the exhibition Explorations in the Garden of Good & Evil at Owings-Dewey Fine Art in Santa Fe, NM. "...The exhibition includes a plethora of mediums, subjects and interpretations. The theme has been interpreted freely by artists – literally in some cases and conceptually in others. Some have produced actual shrines and others have created interpretive variations of shrines."

Wayne F. Miller: Photographs 1942-1958

Wayne F. Miller: Photographs 1942-1958 at Stephen Daiter Gallery in Chicago, IL. "...Stephen Daiter Gallery is honored to present the first major gallery overview of the early photography of Chicago–born photographer, Wayne F. Miller. Wayne, (born 1918) began his career in the U. S. Navy during the Second World War. He documented Franklin D. Roosevelt's funeral and recorded the destruction of Hiroshima – a few short weeks after the first atomic bomb was dropped. In response to the horrors he witnessed and wanting to continue his profession in ways that better celebrated the human condition – he returned to his native Chicago, and with a pair of coveted Guggenheim grants, Wayne began an historic series of photographs (1946-1948) of the bustling Bronzeville community."

New York Town

Cisco Houston... New York Town (.mp3 audio 03:29). From the album I Ain't Got No Home (1962, Vanguard VSD-2107).

What you do woman, that sure don't worry me
What you do woman, Lord, that sure don't worry me
What you do woman, that sure don't worry me
I got more women than the Civil War set free

Learn more about Cisco Houston.

Louis Stettner: The Subway Series

Louis Stettner: The Subway Series (1946). From Works by Louis Stettner - Photography, Sculpture, Painting.

Deanna Templeton: The Swimming Pool

Deanna Templeton: The Swimming Pool at New Image Art Gallery in West Hollywood, CA. "...Growing up in the suburban sprawl of Orange County, Deanna spent her early years going to any and all punk shows she could. After returning home from a one-night runaway her Mother bought her a camera as a coming home present. This was 1985 and the start of her photographic career. She has shown all over the US and Europe, including a solo show at the Museum Het Domein in the Netherlands, and group shows at the Contemporary Art Center in Virginia and the Preus Museum in Norway."

Dark As A Dungeon

Merle Travis with The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band... Dark As A Dungeon (.mp3 audio 02:47). From the album Will The Circle Be Unbroken (1972, EMI America).

Hiroh Kikai Talks About Photography

Lens Culture... Hiroh Kikai Talks About Photography. "...Hiroh Kikai was born in Yamagata, Japan in 1945. He began to take photographs when the influential editor Shoji Yamagishi showed him photographs by Diane Arbus in 1969. The Hasselblad camera that he bought at the time is the camera that he still uses today. He became a freelance photographer in 1984. Living close to Asakusa in Tokyo, he often spent time there and the area became the location for a series of portraits that he has been shooting for over 30 years." More... Works by Hiroh Kikai at Studio Equis.

Calma

Stephan Doitschinoff aka Calma: Novo Mundo at Jonathan LeVine Gallery. "...a solo exhibition featuring new works by Stephan Doitschinoff, the Brazilian street artist also known as Calma. Calma creates a unique visual language and style by embracing his eclectic influences. Themes in his work are inspired by an informed spiritual history and heritage, filtered through a distinctly urban point of view. The resulting imagery is rich in religious symbolism and often accompanied by Latin text as well as pichação (a style of graffiti writing, native to São Paolo)." More... Works by Calma at his personal site.

Sander's Children: Figurative Photography in the Tradition of August Sander

Seydou Keita... Fashionable Men (Mali, C. 1955). From the exhibition Sander's Children: Figurative Photography in the Tradition of August Sander at Danziger Projects. "...The exhibition 'Sander's Children' looks at the significant, lasting, and acknowledged influence August Sander has had on many photographers. Most active from the early 1900s through the 1920s, Sander's cool, objective style of portraiture anticipated work ranging from Irving Penn's 'Small Trades' series to Richard Avedon's outdoor portraits and has continued to influence photographers to this day."

Works by Martín Ramírez

Works by Martín Ramírez at Ricco Maresca Gallery in New York. "...Amidst political and religious upheaval, Martín Ramírez left his native Jalisco, Mexico for America in 1925 seeking work to support his family and struggling ranch. He labored as an impoverished immigrant until he was picked up by police in California in 1931, reportedly in a disoriented state. By 1932, Ramírez was declared schizophrenic (with varying diagnoses of catatonic, manic-depressive and paranoid amending that) and committed first at Stockton State Hospital and eventually at DeWitt State Hospital in Auburn. During this internment and until his death in 1963, Ramírez's fantastic drawings, formerly only found in the margins of his letters home, ranged up in scale."

Rocket To The Moon

Moon Mullican... Rocket To The Moon (1953, King 1198 .mp3 audio 02:27). From Probe is Turning-on the People!

Tango with Cows: Book Art of the Russian Avant-Garde, 1910–1917

Kazimir Malevich... Cover of Threesome (Troe) (1913, In Threesome (Troe), poetry and prose by Velimir Khlebnikov, Alexei Kruchenykh, and Elena Guro; imagery by Kazimir Malevich (St. Petersburg, 1913), Lithography). From the exhibition Tango with Cows: Book Art of the Russian Avant-Garde, 1910–1917 at The Getty Center.

Sunrise

Trailer (QuickTime Video) for Eureka Video's Masters of Cinema edition of Sunrise (1927, directed by F.W. Murnau). "...F. W. Murnau - invited to America by William Fox, the promise of complete artistic freedom, and a blank cheque - made Sunrise on the cusp of two eras: it represents the silent film at the peak of its poetic sophistication, and the sound film in its infancy. Fox told Murnau to take his time, to make any film he wished, and Sunrise was completed without any studio interference — as though with a dying flourish in a medium which at that moment had achieved a startling richness of expression. It was the swan song of the era."

Shoji Ueda: Theater Dunes

Shoji Ueda: Theater Dunes at Gallery Toki No Wasuremono in Tokyo. "...The dunes were Shoji Ueda's favourite place to take pictures, since it was a gigantic backdrop where he could take good pictures at different angles and and in many different ways. His two-dimentional compositions without depth remind us of surrealism. His style named 'Ueda-cho' is highly appreciated in the world. We will exhibit 16 photographs including 11 works in the dunes."

Hiroshi Watanabe: Portfolio 6 - Ideology

Hiroshi Watanabe... Music Band, Pyongyang School, North Korea (2007, Pigment Print). From Hiroshi Watanabe: Portfolio 6 - Ideology at Meter Gallery. "...'The news about North Korea was all negative,' Hiroshi Watanabe says. 'I thought...there have to be different stories there.' And so he set out to find a different angle on North Korea than its frequent depiction by the media as a nation of oppressed people. What he found was a quiet vibrancy; two lines of schoolgirls scowl in red scarves, a young violinist in a canary-yellow Hanbok calmly appraises the viewer, and a boy soldier smiles bashfully under his exuberant salute."

Staggolee

Pacific Gas & Electric... Staggolee (.mp3 audio 03:50). From the album Are You Ready (1970, Columbia 1017).

Jaimie Warren: Don't You Feel Better

Jaimie Warren... Unitiled (Self Portrait, Doll Girls,Tokyo) (2007, digital c-print). From the exhibition Jaimie Warren: Don't You Feel Better at Higher Pictures in New York. "...Warren’s theatrical and humorous self-portraits mine her naturally bizarre life. Living and working in Kansas City, Missouri, her photographs ride the boundaries between snapshot happenstance, the seemingly set-up and deadpan portraiture." More at Jaimie Warren Photography.

Terry Winters: Knotted Graphs

Terry Winters: Knotted Graphs at Matthew Marks Gallery. "...The paintings on view in this exhibition mark an important step forward in Winters’ oeuvre. The influence of scientific theory is present in familiar grids and patterns upon which the images are built, and yet they possess a spontaneity and fluid movement in space that breaks away from any kind of rigid underpinning. One important reason for this is the artist’s decision to use transparent lake pigments almost exclusively. The artist notes that the transparency of the paints allows for one to witness 'all the events that went into the making of the painting.'"

Endless Sleep

Jody Reynolds & The Storms... Endless Sleep (.mp3 audio 02:27) b/w Tight Capris (.mp3 audio 02:11) 1958, Demon FF-1507. RIP: Ralph Joseph Reynolds.

Nightingale

Brinsley Schwarz... Nightingale (.mp3 audio 03:07). From the album Silver Pistol (1972, United Artists UAS 29217).

Michael Francis Blake Photographs, 1912-1934

Michael Francis Blake... Seated Woman With Two Children (identified as Anna Beatrice Aiken, Isaiah Nathaniel Aiken, Jr., Arthur Aiken, circa 1918-1922, Photograph). From Michael Francis Blake Photographs, 1912-1934 at Duke University Digital Collections. "...117 photographs of men, women, and children taken between 1912-1934 by Blake who opened one of the first African-American photography studios in Charleston, S.C."

Works by Djordje Ozbolt

Works by Djordje Ozbolt at 303 Gallery in New York, NY. "...Ozbolt’s figurative works are influenced by the ideologies and histories of Southern Europe, United Kingdom and India. The paintings merge varied world views that are humorous, slightly disquieting and offer wry commentaries on the paths our lives have taken, often injected with a curiously unflinching optimism."

Cartoon II

Cartoon II at Chinese Contemporary Art in New York. "...Cartoon II is the second show dedicated to three young emerging female artists working along the aesthetics of animation. The cartoon trend among young Chinese artists was first recognized in creative circles in Guangzhou in the mid to late 1990s. The so called 'Cartoon Generation' consists of young artists, mostly in their twenties, using cartoon-like imagery in their paintings. Chinese Contemporary is pleased to present Wang Ke, Zhang Shuang and Zhou Nan. Each artist is using different media to convey contrasting meanings."

Gerhard Gesell's Alma: Mississippi River Town

Gerhard Gesell's Alma: Mississippi River Town. "...Gerhard Gesell's prolific career as a photographer began in Reads Landing, Minnesota, in 1873, but three years later he moved across the Mississippi River to Alma, Wisconsin, where he opened a photography studio at 401 S. Main Street. There, Gesell carefully documented the town, its people and culture, capturing the integral role the Mississippi River played in the lives of the people of Alma."

Jamie

Happy Birthday to my son Jamie - 13 years old on the 14th.

Pointed Toe Shoes

Carl Perkins... Pointed Toe Shoes (1959, Columbia 4-41379 .mp3 audio 02:02).

Andy Warhol: Still-Life Polaroids

Andy Warhol... Gun (1981, polaroid photograph, 4 x 3 1/4 inches). From the exhibition Andy Warhol: Still-Life Polaroids at Paul Kasmin Gallery. "...Meticulous arrays of bananas, knives, and crosses contrast with jumbled assemblages of shoes and other commercial products, including Warhol's iconic soup cans and Brillo boxes. Warhol often deploys multiplication and varying degrees of order to alter and enliven quotidian objects. In other compositions, such as a single gray human heart presented on a vibrant red plate, individual subjects in the picture frame gain potency in isolation. Recurrent themes of desire, consumption, and mortality run throughout. The rarity of these works, coupled with the dwindling production of Polaroid film, dually capture a specific time in both Warhol's practice and the history of photography."

Melissa Catanese: Fieldwork

Melissa Catanese: Fieldwork at Sasha Wolf Gallery in New York, NY.

Issei Suda

Photographs by Issei Suda at Charles A. Hartman Fine Art in Portland, OR. Also... works by Daido Moriyama and Recent Acquisitions.

Works by Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman... Untitled (2008, color photograph, Edition of 6). From Works by Cindy Sherman, 15 November - 23 December 2008 at Metro Pictures Gallery. "...Working as her own model for more than 30 years, Sherman has developed an extraordinary relationship with her camera. A remarkable performer, subtle distortions of her face and body are captured on camera and leave the artist unrecognizable to the audience. Her ability to drastically manipulate her age or weight, or coax the most delicate expressions from her face, is uncanny. Each image is overloaded with detail, every nuance caught by the artist's eye. No prosthetic nose or breast, fake fingernail, sequin, wrinkle or bulge goes unnoticed by Sherman."

artless: About Japanese Essentials

PingMag... artless: About Japanese Essentials. "...We know for sure that you, beloved reader, want to know all about upcoming Japanese graphic designers! Maybe artless sounds familiar to you? Tokyo-based artless, a.k.a. Shun Kawakami is one of the hottest in Japan with a sophisticated blend of monochrome graphics with delicate calligraphy. Interestingly, he realised that his creative uniqueness lied in working with Japanese essentials (think of Bonsai) only when he went overseas to exhibit. At the moment, he is touring with the Art with Sound exhibition that will arrive in Tokyo by the end of November."

Play It Again, Sam

Play It Again, Sam - Songs of the Labor and Progressive Movements of the 1940's at Labor Arts.

Surinamese in the Netherlands

Surinamese in the Netherlands at the IISH. "...The Historical Image Archive on Migrants shows photos of Surinamese who came in the fifties and sixties to the Netherlands."

James Castle: Works in Paper

James Castle: Works in Paper at Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle, WA. "...Castle's most eloquent means of expressing what he felt about the world around him was through drawing in the works on paper he made for nearly 70 years until his death in 1977. Whether sketching the domestic interior scenes of his home and family, or rendering the rustic architecture and pastoral terrain of rural Idaho, Castle tried to place the viewer within his own idiosyncratic world."

25 Under 25: Up-and-Coming American Photographers

25 Under 25: Up-and-Coming American Photographers (Digital Journalist, November 2008). "...Honing their technical skills, sharpening their critical thinking, they have not been shy in looking and bringing back images that probe, question, and give expression to a wide range of feelings. Some take risks to engage with a world that has grown increasingly violent; others explore the puzzles of the inner self and intimate social interactions. There is humor here too, and pathos, and throughout these pages a respect for human life and culture. The camera has given these 25 photographers the license to go out into the world; a privilege they are not wasting."

Songs Of Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen... Winter Lady (.mp3 audio 02:15) and... Sisters Of Mercy (.mp3 audio 03:33). From the album Songs Of Leonard Cohen (1968, Columbia Records) and featured in the Robert Altman film McCabe & Mrs. Miller.

Miriam Wosk: Paradise and Wildlife

Miriam Wosk: Paradise and Wildlife at Billy Shire Fine Arts. "...Wosk's works dazzle the viewer with the extravagance of their labor for just this effect; their excess alluding to the futility of earthly pursuits, while also reminding us of just how precious life is. Elegiac and celebratory at the same time, they reveal the artist's desire to, as she puts it, 'explore the paradoxes and contradictions inherent in the human experience, life's beauty and its shadow.'" More Works by Miriam Wosk at her personal site.

Saving Shattered Images

Saving Shattered Images at the WHS. "...In a quiet project on the Society's fourth floor, photo archivists are resurrecting long-lost pictures of Wisconsin life. For roughly a century, most serious photographers took pictures not with flexible film but with glass plates. Craftsmen such as Andreas Larsen Dahl, H.H. Bennett, and Charles Van Schaick captured their remarkable images on sensitized glass, which they later contact printed to create positive images on paper. The Society library and archives possess more than 40,000 of these glass-plate negatives dating from the Civil War era into the 1960s. Most have never been printed on paper, and their historical information survives only as negative images on century-old, emulsion-coated sheets of glass."

How Does Smokey Bear Spend The Evening?

Little Marcy with Smokey Bear... How Does Smokey Bear Spend The Evening? plus... When Smokey Bear Says His Prayers (.mp3 audio 03:27). From the album Little Marcy Visits Smokey Bear (1973, Word K-707). From WFMU's On The Download.

Flor Garduño: Mujeres fantásticas

Flor Garduño: Mujeres fantásticas - fantastic women at Throckmorton Fine Art in New York. "...Garduño was born in Mexico City in 1957. She began her career as an assistant to Manuel Álvarez Bravo, and has since labored steadily, becoming a master photographer who proudly prints all of her own images. Garduño works exclusively in black and white, with an exquisite mastery of light, shadow, and darkness. To this she adds a fascination with the female body—the nude—and objects plucked from nature: ripe fruit, billowing leaves and fronds, and wild animals unexpectedly at ease. There are unworldly juxtapositions of the living and the dead, of sharpness and softness, of luminosity and opacity, and carnality and innocence." More Works by Flor Garduño at her personal site.

Tokyo Stories

Lens Culture... Tokyo Stories vintage photography exhibition. "...Tokyo Stories, an exceptional exhibition of close to 100 rare prints, reveals the multiple faces of Tokyo from the 1930s until the present day through the works of three of Japan’s leading photographers: Hiroshi Hamaya, Tadahiko Hayashi and Shigeichi Nagano." More about Tokyo Stories at Studio Equis.

That's All It Took

Gram Parsons & The Fallen Angels... That's All It Took (.mp3 audio 03:21). From the album Live 1973 (1973, Sierra Records 35565 6002 2).

Alcohol Is Dynamite

Alcohol Is Dynamite (1958, Sid Davis Productions). "...Teens Bud and Jack, eager to get some alcohol from the liquor store, ask the adult to buy it for them. Instead, the adult tells them a story of three teenagers who learn the hard way that "alcohol is a violent narcotic. In true Sid Davis form, the story ends with one innocent teen being killed and one who becomes an alcoholic bum, leaving the others to deal with guilt from their night of reckless abandon."

Callie Shell: Obama

Callie Shell: Obama (Digital Journalist, October 2008). "...Four years ago Time photographer Callie Shell met Barack Obama backstage when she was covering presidential candidate John Kerry. She sent her editor more photographs of Obama than Kerry. When asked why, she said, 'I do not know. I just have a feeling about him. I think he will be important down the road.' Her first photo essay on Obama was two and half years ago. She has stuck with him ever since."

Halloween in Dublin

Lost Art presents... Halloween in Dublin.

Bo Mambo

Yma Sumac... Bo Mambo (.wma audio 03:20). From the album Mambo! (1954, Capitol Records T-564). RIP: Yma Sumac.

Jan Koblasa: Grafika, 1959-2006

Jan Koblasa: Grafika, 1959-2006 at Art Gallery, Svetlana & Lubos Jelinek. "...Jan Koblasa (*1932) patří mezi výrazné osobnosti evropského sochařství 2. poloviny 20. století. Chrudimská výstava skýtá možnost zažít tentokrát Jana Koblasu jako autora děl menších formátů a seznámit se na vybrané stovce listů s několika polohami jeho grafické tvorby za obdivuhodné půl století. Jan Koblasa je nejen živoucí legendou plodných šedesátých let, ale především stále tvůrčí a energickou bytostí." (cz)

Bam Bam Bam

The Spiders... Bam Bam Bam (.mp3 audio 02:26).

Needle In A Haystack

Penny West and Lucky Penny Trio... Needle In A Haystack (1956, Ozark 4-102 .mp3 audio 02:13).

Fritz Scholder: Indian/Not Indian

Fritz Scholder: Indian/Not Indian. "...Featuring 135 paintings, works on paper, and sculptures drawn from major public and private collections, including the color-saturated canvases for which the artist is famous, Indian/Not Indian opens concurrently at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., and at NMAI's George Gustav Heye Center in New York. The Washington exhibition surveys Scholder's forty-plus years as a working artist, with particular emphasis on his groundbreaking and controversial Indian paintings from the 1960s and 1970s. The New York exhibition focuses on the artist's works from the 1980s and 1990s, when he stopped using overt Indian imagery and explored mythical beings, the afterlife, and the unknown."

New York, N. Why?: Photographs by Rudy Burckhardt, 1937–1940

New York, N. Why?: Photographs by Rudy Burckhardt, 1937–1940 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. "...In the late 1930s, Rudy Burckhardt - then a recent émigré to America from Switzerland - created what are today considered to be some of the greatest photographs of New York ever made. This exhibition will present in its entirety a unique album (acquired by the Museum in 1972) of 67 now-classic images of street furniture, outdoor advertising, and pedestrians, selected and sequenced by Burckhardt in 1940."

Works by Beatriz Milhazes

Beatriz Milhazes... Popeye (2008, Acrylic on canvas). From Works by Beatriz Milhazes at James Cohan Gallery in New York, NY. "...As one of the most celebrated Brazilian artists working today, Milhazes' exuberantly colored, rhythmically constructed abstract paintings, collages, prints and architectural installations are well-known worldwide. Milhazes merges all of the formal concerns inherent in abstract painting with a dizzying hybrid of influences that bounce off of each other to produce works in which, as the artist describes, 'culture eats culture.'"