Happy New Year

Happy 2011 from gmtPlus9(-15). Here are some links from 2010...

Works by Shinji Abe at Japan Exposures. "...Japan Exposures is pleased to present the work of Shinji Abe, who at 26 is one of the youngest — if not the youngest — photographers we’ve featured. It may come as something of a surprise to readers of this website, but Abe is one of a rather sizable group of young photographers who not only embrace film, the darkroom, and the vagaries of the street as their subject, but who also don’t have an online presence. In Abe’s case, he doesn’t even have a personal computer. Whether by design or happenstance, this makes Abe the ideal type of photographer we hope to feature even more on Japan Exposures as we begin 2010 — young, up and coming, and to borrow a phrase coined by noted street photographer Nick Turpin, 'virtually invisible.'"

Kelly Hogan & The Pine Valley Cosmonauts... Papa Was A Rodeo (.mp3 audio 04:29). From the album Beneath the Country Underdog (2000, Bloodshot Records BS062).

Prophetic Pictures from Menomonie, Wisconsin at the WHS. "...The Visual Materials Archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society holds a most unusual photograph album that takes one back to the future — an imaginary future, that is. The album comprises 32 photographs taken in 1905 of graduates of Menomonie High School in Dunn County. It doesn't describe the students' extracurricular activities nor does it reveal their hopes, dreams and aspirations upon leaving high school. Instead, photographer Albert Hansen and 'prophet' Sarah Ana Heller, both 1905 class members themselves, portrayed imaginary futures for their classmates in words and pictures."

Slinkachu - Street based installations and photography.

Zubin Pastakia: The Cinemas Project. "...This series visually traces the lives of Bombay’s disappearing single-screen cinema halls. Once symbols of modernity, the relationship that many of these halls share with the city has changed significantly as colonial Bombay metamorphoses into 'post-industrial' Mumbai." From Zubin Pastakia Photography.

Big Star... Thirteen (.mp3 audio 02:35). From the album #1 Record (1972, Ardent Records, Stax ADS-2803). RIP: Alex Chilton.

Alejandro Escovedo... Sex Beat (.mp3 audio 04:09). From the album Bourbonitis Blues (1999, Bloodshot BS 049). Cover of The Gun Club song.

Go! Go! Go! by Marie Menken (1962–64, 16mm, color, silent, 12 min). "...Marie Menken (1909 - 1970) became one of New York’s outstanding underground experimental filmmakers of the 1940s through the1960s, inspiring artists such as Stan Brakhage, Andy Warhol, Jonas Mekas, Kenneth Anger, and Gerard Malanga. She was a probable role model of Edward Albee’s 'Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf' and ended up as a Warhol Superstar. The documentary allows a glimpse into her social and artistic struggle and radical integrity, drawing the picture of a modern myth in personal diary style."

Yutaka Takanashi... Loop Road 7, Suginami-ku (Tokyo-jin 30) (1965, gelatin silver print, printed 1970). From the exhibition Yutaka Takanashi: Towards The City at Galerie Priska Pasquer in Cologne, Germany. "...In the first overseas solo exhibition to be devoted to his works since the mid-1980s, a selection of Takanashi’s works from the period 1963–1974 will be featured. Yutaka Takanashi was one of the co-founders of the legendary 'Provoke' group which revolutionised Japanese photography at the end of the 1960s. Other members of this group included Daido Moriyamya and Takuma Nakahira. The works in this exhibition were published by Yutaka Takanashi in 1974 in the two-part volume 'Toshi-e' (Towards the City). This elaborate publication marked both the high-water mark and the end of the 'Provoke' era.



Eugene Von Bruenchenhein - an online collection of his paintings. "...EVB—Gene to his wife and friends—was born in Wisconsin, married a local girl, and worked in a bakery during the ten years that he completed his most imaginative pieces, 1954-1963. The two of them lived in a small house that had belonged to EVB’s father, and they barely got by. His first paintings were on panels of boxes that he brought home from the bakery. As his devotion to painting increased, he would purchase paint and boards from a local art supply store. Gene worked without an easel, on the kitchen table. On summer nights, he’d put up a couple of floodlights and paint in the back yard. Most of his paintings were completed in a single frenzied session, one to three hours in length. His neighbors regarded him as a weird character. EVB saw himself as a great artist, but was unsuccessful in selling his work or gaining any recognition. By his own accounting, he completed 1,080 paintings. When he died, his small house was crammed from floor to ceiling with them."

Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody's Fool at the Asia Society in New York. "...Yoshitomo Nara: Nobody’s Fool is the first major New York exhibition of the Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara (born 1959), and features more than one hundred works ranging from his early career in the 1980s to his most recent paintings, drawings, sculptures, ceramics, and large-scale installations. As one of the leading artists of Japan’s influential Neo Pop art since the 1990s, Nara is well known for his depictions of children and animals. Nara’s cute, though often menacing, children and animals are so readily associated with popular culture, particularly manga comics and animation, that viewers may neglect to contemplate his evocative imagery in depth. His popular appeal masks the serious social and personal dimensions of his work—feelings of helplessness and rage, and a sense of isolation in a hyper-networked society."

Works by Arnold Odermatt at Koenig Projekte in New York. "...These photographs were taken from the 1950’s through the 70’s while Odermatt was a police officer and official police photographer of the canton of Nidwalden, Switzerland. Joining the police force in 1948, when he was in his twenties, Odermatt assembled a large inventory of 'accident' photographs. During his career, he documented countless vehicular mishaps along Nidwalden’s treacherous roads as well as its quiet village streets. Arriving at the scene of an accident, Odermatt would take one set of photographs for the police and insurance files, and another set for himself."

The Vulgar Boatmen... Drive Somewhere (.mp3 audio 05:59). From the album You And Your Sister (1989, Record Collect RC-1171-1).