Max Penson: Photography between Revolution and Tradition

Max Penson: Photography between Revolution and Tradition at Nailya Alexander Gallery in New York. "...The best photojournalists from Moscow like Arkady Shaikhet, Max Alpert and Georgy Zelma traveled to Uzbekistan to cover the modernization effort: formation of collective farms, irrigation of arid lands for cotton growing, development of the paper industry and silk production, liberation of women, and the education of children. Penson recorded these historical changes alongside with other photographers and contributed regularly to TASS (Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union).
Penson created a unique visual chronicle, an epic poem in photographic form of the radical transformation of life and colossal engineering projects in the region. His images show men digging vast irrigation canals, attending literacy classes, women rid off their traditional horsehair veils to wear contemporary clothes and pursuing new professions, as telephone operators or tractor drivers. In 1937 Penson was part of the World Fair in Paris, winning an award for his 'Uzbek Madonna,' a portrait of a young woman unveiled and publicly nursing her child. Penson’s photographs reflect both an awareness of the Modernist aesthetic used by European artists and an idealization of a new Soviet life."

Monica Denevan: Songs of the River: Portraits of Burma and China

Monica Denevan: Songs of the River: Portraits of Burma and China at Scott Nichols Gallery in San Francisco, CA. "...Portraits from Burma and China by Monica Denevan features photographs from two very different countries in Asia. Ms. Denevan has been photographing in Burma for more than ten years. Her intimate portraits, which incorporate the surrounding landscapes, are of her Burmese friends and their families who live and work on the Irrawaddy River. Monica noted in her artist statement that she "seeks out remote places that have been relatively untouched by development in order to photograph those whose culture and traditional way of life reflect a deep authenticity or bond with the past." In the spring of 2007 she traveled to southwest China photographing the lush patterns and details she found in the countryside. Ms. Denevan's work is quiet and meditative, languid and sensual."

Hiroshi Watanabe: Love Point

Hiroshi Watanabe: Love Point at Paul Kopeikin Gallery. Hiroshi Watanabe was born in Sapporo, Japan. He graduated from Department of Photography, College of Art, at Nihon University in 1975. He moved to Los Angeles after graduation and became involved in the production of TV commercials, eventually working as a producer. He later established his own production company and produced numerous commercials. He received an MBA degree from UCLA Business School in 1993. In 1995 his passion for photography rekindled, and since then he has traveled worldwide extensively, photographing what he finds intriguing at that moment and place. In 2000 he closed the production company in order to devote himself entirely to the art and became a full time photographer." More... Works by Hiroshi Watanabe at his personal site.

The Real Weegee

The Real Weegee (1993) at UbuWeb Film & Video. "...This video documents the career of Arthur Fellig, whose sensationalistic photographs helped to define tabloid and legitimate news photography. By the late '30s, Fellig was freelancing as a news photographer. Specializing in the overnight shift, he quickly earned a reputation for always being one of the first to arrive at a grisly news scene, first to snap a stark flash photo of what newsroom slang labeled 'roasts' (fire victims), 'dry divers' (people jumping off buildings), or 'bottom feeders' (victims of drowning). Going by the nickname of 'Weegee,' he became famous enough that Life magazine ran a profile on him in 1937. Fellig branched out, photographing New York nightlife and its entertainments. He gained notoriety with his experiments in manipulating photographs, creating, for example, a series of distorted heads of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Picasso, and John F. Kennedy. Over his long career, Fellig immortalized on film dozens of politicians, gangsters, and movie stars."

Taillights Fade

Buffalo Tom... Taillights Fade (.mp3 audio 03:45). From the album Let Me Come Over (1992, Beggars Banquet 61105-2).

Stanley Kubrick, l'exposition

Stanley Kubrick, l'exposition - La Cinémathèque française. "...The archives of Stanley Kubrick contain numerous and precious working documents: scenarios, correspondences, research documents, photos of film shoots, costumes and accessories. The exhibition, film after film, includes the unfinished projects: the Napoleon that Kubrick hoped to direct and his project for a film on the death camps, Aryan Papers. These materials allow us to get backstage and better understand the narrative and technical intentions of the director who was a demigod of world cinema, a secret and fascinating figure. The exhibition will be installed on two floors of the Frank Gehry building, on the 5th and 7th storeys, owing to the bulk of the materials exhibited, including large-scale models and interactive digital installations."

Longing For Identity: Postwar Japanese Photographers

Seiji Kurata... Flash Up (1975, Vintage B & W print). From the exhibition Longing For Identity: Postwar Japanese Photographers at Yoshii Gallery in New York. "...This exhibition brings together important and rarely seen vintage photographic works by Nobuyoshi Araki, Eikoh Hosoe, Kazuo Kitai, Seiji Kurata, Daido Moriyama, Shomei Tomatsu and Shoji Ueda from the early 1950s to the late 1970s. It unveils how Japanese photographers responded to their country’s shifting social and political surrounding during the postwar years.
By presenting an insider’s view of the condition of Japan after the devastation of the war and the legacy of the atomic bomb, while at the same time accentuating the effects that industrialization, urbanization, and the American occupation had on this transformed metropolitan society, the photographers featured in this show were at the cutting edge of a postwar cultural movement in Japan. Particularly interested in exploring subjects such as death, erotic obsession and irrationality to increase the psychological impact of the images, the seven artists share a common sensibility while their works differ in style. Meanwhile, they suggest the imprints of popular culture in the modernization of the new society by depicting the various moments in urban life."

Fonzie Meets Kotter's Sweathogs (At The School Dance)

Frank Lyndon... Fonzie Meets Kotter's Sweathogs (At The School Dance) (.mp3 audio 1976, Strawberry 101). From Probe is Turning-on the People.

Elizabeth Taylor by Ron

Ron Galella... Elizabeth Taylor (August 19, 1989: Tangier, Morroco, attending Malcom Forbes' 70th birthday celebration at Tangier Country Club). From Ron Galella – Photography with the Paparazzi Approach. RIP: Elizabeth Taylor.

Karlheinz Weinberger: Halbstarke to Bikers in Color

Karlheinz Weinberger: Halbstarke to Bikers in Color at Anna Kustera Gallery in New York, NY. "...the third solo show in New York of work by the noted Swiss photographer. The exhibition will showcase color prints of images shot in the late 1950s through the 1960s, selected from among those recently discovered during the process of compiling a second monograph on Weinberger, entitled Rebel Youth (to be released in February 2011 by Rizzoli New York.) Arresting digital c-prints that depict the artist’s now iconic visual vocabulary— ne’er-do-well Euro-teens and grungy bikers as well as bucolic landscapes from the artist’s beloved homeland are on display. Weinberger, who died in 2006 and whose frequently referenced aesthetic was embraced by contemporary fashion cognoscenti over a decade ago, photographed his subjects in both black-and-white and 35mm slide film, often with two different cameras. The resulting pairings depict images of his stylish rebels taken seconds apart."

Steve Schapiro: Taxi Driver / The Godfather

Steve Schapiro... Travis Mug Shot (1975). From the exhibition Steve Schapiro: Taxi Driver / The Godfather at Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago, IL. "...In 1971, Francis Ford Coppola started work on The Godfather, one of the most acclaimed films ever made. Steve Schapiro, then a 37 year old established photojournalist whose clients included Life, Look, Time, Newsweek and film studios, was hired by Paramount as the special photographer for the film. This title gave Schapiro unprecedented access to one of the most stellar casts ever assembled, photographing whichever film scenes he chose, capturing the memorable moments often cited when referencing this film, including the whisper and Marlon Brando with the cat.
Four years later, at the request of Robert DeNiro, Schapiro landed the job as the special photographer on the set of Taxi Driver, one of Martin Scorsese’s most seminal films, which is currently celebrating its 35 year anniversary release with a book published by Taschen. Through Schapiro’s lens, we see DeNiro as Travis Bickle, practicing his firing stance in front of a mirror and Jodie Foster as Iris, standing in the hotel doorway, waiting."

R.I.P., Rest in Pieces: A Portrait of Joe Coleman

Joe Coleman... R.I.P., Rest in Pieces: A Portrait of Joe Coleman (1997, directed by Robert-Adrian Pejo) at UbuWeb Film & Video. "...A lot of people say they are weird, or seem moderately eccentric, but few truly are. And sadly, when we do find people that are far from the path of the supposed norm we don’t celebrate those people, we run from them, hands in the air, shrieking like banshees. Well, consider this documentary nothing less than a love letter to the oddball, and to one in particular – artist Joe Coleman. The documentary focuses mainly on the many artistic endeavors of Mr. Coleman. Known in his early years as a provocative performance artist, Coleman was not a stranger to controversy. Drawn to the world of sideshows, Coleman took the idea of becoming a ‘geek’ to new levels – biting the heads off of live mice, wiring his body for explosives, and basically pushing people into a place where they had no choice but to confront his art. Since those early days Coleman has found other artistic pursuits to take up his time, and a better forum to let people see his demons. In moving from a performance artist to a painter, Coleman has found the perfect outlet for his view of the world. Creating paintings that are like the works of a madman, Coleman has taken his darker thoughts and view of the world and has created a nightmarish world of serial killers and the world that needs them. Each painting is done with obsessive attention to detail, the viewer having to get almost inside the painting just to catch all of the messages and imagery hidden within."

David Maljkovic: Recalling Frames

David Maljkovic: Recalling Frames at Metro Pictures. "...Croatian artist David Maljkovic's latest works, Recalling Frames, are photomontages that interweave still images from Orson Welles' film The Trial, shot in Zagreb in 1962, with the artist's own contemporary photographs of the filming locations. Welles' haunting exploration of the terror of faceless bureaucracy was set against the city's Cold War-era Modernist buildings, to which Maljkovic returned to carefully photograph the sites from the same dramatic angles shown in the film. Spliced together from black-and-white negative prints, the resulting unique prints conflate five decades of aesthetic and ideological change."

5 Japanese Divas

5 Japanese Divas at Film Forum in New York. "...In the Golden Age of Japanese Cinema, even as male stars like Toshiro Mifune flourished, its greatest strength was in an astonishing array of female icons, great actresses as well as superstars: in a career that spanned over 40 years, Kinuyo Tanaka (1909-1977) suffered for Mizoguchi 15 times, gun-molled for Ozu early and got laughs for him late, eventually becoming everyone’s favorite aunt; Isuzu Yamada (born 1917) vaulted to stardom in her teens before playing a series of powerful, dominant parts, topped by her legendary 'Lady Macbeth'; former dancer Machiko Kyo (born 1924) became internationally famous in Rashomon, then was glorified in LIFE, co-starred with Brando, and grew in screen sexiness into her 50s; Setsuko Hara (born 1920), the beloved 'Virgin Star,' personified Miss Japan as the perfect daughter, sister, daughter-in-law, even mother for Ozu, while displaying Dostoyevskian range for Kurosawa; while Hideko Takamine (1924-2010), who died this past December, graduated from being Japan’s Shirley Temple into the tightly wound, unconquered Naruse heroine, even attaining the ultimate: a full-blown New Yorker profile."

Bye Bye Kitty!!! Between Heaven and Hell in Contemporary Japanese Art

Bye Bye Kitty!!! Between Heaven and Hell in Contemporary Japanese Art at the Japan Society in New York, NY. "...Bye Bye Kitty!!! is a radical departure from recent Japanese exhibitions. Moving far beyond the stereotypes of kawaii and otaku culture, Japan Society’s show features sixteen emerging and mid-career artists whose whose paintings, objects, photographs, videos, and installations meld traditional styles with challenging visions of Japan’s troubled present and uncertain future."

RIP: Ferlin Husky

Ferlin Husky... The Cold Hard Facts Of Life (1967, Capitol 2705 .mp3 audio 3:05). RIP: Ferlin Husky.

Alexander Rodchenko

Alexander Rodchenko at the Moscow House of Photography. Photos from the exhibition Aleksandr Ródtchenko: revolução na fotografia at Pinacoteca, São Paulo, Brazil.

Wijnanda Deroo: Inside New York Eateries

Wijnanda Deroo: Inside New York Eateries at Robert Mann Gallery. "...Employing her characteristic affinity for distinctive color, décor and light, Deroo's subtle formalism explores the particular character of each location. These photographs playfully alternate between kitsch and cool, appropriate to their individual subjects. In this sense they take seriously the significance of ornament and adornment, leveling the disparate hierarchies normally associated with these subjects and turning the focus away from the food. These photographs delight in the uncanny trompe l'oeil murals, genre paintings, floral carpeting and odd assemblages of artifacts lining the restaurant interiors." More... Works by Wijnanda Deroo at her personal site.

Frank Lloyd Wright: Organic Architecture for the 21st Century

Frank Lloyd Wright: Organic Architecture for the 21st Century at the MAM. "...celebrates the 100th anniversary of Taliesin, Wright’s home, studio, and school in Spring Green, Wisconsin. The exhibition also marks the beginning of a year-long celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Santiago Calatrava–designed Quadracci Pavilion, the 2001 addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum."

RIP: Augustus Owsley Stanley III

RIP: Augustus Owsley Stanley III. "...Owsley Stanley, the prodigiously gifted applied chemist to the stars, who made LSD in quantity for the Grateful Dead, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Ken Kesey and other avatars of the psychedelic ’60s, died on Sunday in a car accident in Australia. He was 76 and lived in the bush near Cairns, in the Australian state of Queensland."

Digital Sanborn Maps of Milwaukee 1894 & 1910

Digital Sanborn Maps of Milwaukee 1894 & 1910. "...The Digital Sanborn Maps of Milwaukee 1894 & 1910 brings online 2 fire insurance atlases featuring detailed color maps of Milwaukee. Produced by the Sanborn Map Company, the 1894 atlas includes four volumes, consisting of 450 map sheets and the 1910 atlas includes eight volumes, consisting of 830 map sheets. Sanborn maps were designed to assist fire insurance agents with insuring property. Produced for over 12,000 urbanized areas in the United States, Sanborn maps have been described by the Library of Congress as 'the single most important record of urban growth and development in the United States during the past one hundred years.'"

Frank Ward: The Drunken Bicycle-Travels in the Former Soviet Union

Frank Ward: The Drunken Bicycle-Travels in the Former Soviet Union. "...'The Drunken Bicycle' is a collection of pictures made in Russia, Ukraine, Mongolia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan from 2005-2010. I would think of this portfolio as the equivalent to travel writing with a camera except that the pictures contain few tourist vistas or landmarks. Evidence of the Silk Road, Genghis Khan and other empires remain in the dust."

Purpose 10

Purpose 10 - désir / desire. "...Perfect bodies, trendy clothes and accessories, idyllic holiday destinations, 'fundamental' high-tech objects... merchandise spread out all over the place. There is always a solution to satisfy each one of our desires, and we selfishly always need to have something else; immediate pleasure and individualism dehumanize our relationship to the other. Is this what desire really is? In this issue of purpose, we have tried to think about desire in a different way, as a form of resistance to the merchandization of the world."

Wisconsin: A Guide to the Badger State

Wisconsin: A Guide to the Badger State at the WHS. "...Photographer Harold Hone photographed cities, towns and landscapes in Wisconsin from 1936 to 1940. Most of the images in this collection were done as part of his role as staff photographer for 'Wisconsin: A Guide to the Badger State,' the 1941 publication by the Wisconsin Federal Writers' Project. The Works Progress Administration, a Depression-era New Deal program, created the project to put people back to work on public works projects. In addition to downtown views of Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay, Wisconsin Dells and other major Wisconsin cities, the collection includes images of Vilas Zoo in Madison, the Lake Michigan shoreline, major Wisconsin industries including lumber and milk production, mass-produced housing, and the landscapes of Wisconsin.
The collection held in the Society's library and archives consists of more than 769 photographs and 705 negatives, and around 25 oversize photographic prints. This gallery includes select images from the whole collection, focusing on the images used in the "Guide to the Badger State" and those depicting the Madison area."

Interview with Shinya Tsukamoto

Midnight Eye... Interview with Shinya Tsukamoto. "...The road to bringing a third Tetsuo film to the screen has been a long and rocky one for Shinya Tsukamoto. First launched immediately after the release of Tetsuo II: The Body Hammer in 1993, the idea of Tetsuo III went through many transformations, from a Tarantino-produced, Tim Roth-starring semi-Hollywood production to its current incarnation as a fully Japanese-funded semi-indie. One thing that never changed was that the third Tetsuo would somehow have an American influence. After September 11 and the Bush/neocon administration provided the original Tetsuo premise of a human weapon of mass destruction with a new topicality and validity, Tsukamoto found his Bullet Man in Tokyo-based American actor/performer Eric Bossick. As the circle closes with the North-American release of the film, Midnight Eye reunites with Shinya Tsukamoto to discuss Tetsuo: The Bullet Man." Also... Midnight Eye's Best (and worst) Of 2010.

Jasper, Texas: The Community Photographs of Alonzo Jordan

Jasper, Texas: The Community Photographs of Alonzo Jordan at the ICP in New York, NY. "...The quiet East Texas town of Jasper achieved notoriety as the site of one of the most brutal race crimes in U.S. history: the June 7, 1998 killing of a forty-nine-year-old African American named James Byrd, Jr., who was dragged to his death by three white men in a pickup truck. The protracted media coverage of this crime and of the trial of the perpetrators, in addition to the local and national trauma caused by this event, did not for the most part reveal either the longstanding pattern of racial animosity in the area or the rich and complicated social life in the African American half of that starkly segregated town. Many years before however, Alonzo Jordan (1903–1984) had been extensively chronicling that unseen portion of the populace. A barber by trade, Jordan took up photography to fill a need he recognized in his community, and over the course of his career actively documented the world in which he lived and worked, focusing on those civic events, social organizations, schools, churches, and activities that were integral to the daily life of the people he served." Also... Jasper, Texas by Alonzo Jordan at The Morning News.

Gary Baseman: Walking through Walls

Gary Baseman: Walking through Walls at Jonathan LeVine Gallery in New York, NY. "...In the new series of work, Baseman introduces a figure named Lil Miss Boo, a young girl wearing a homemade ghost costume. The character is based on a child in an old black and white photograph, one of over 2000 vintage photographs of masked subjects in the artist’s personal collection, garnered over the last 20 years. The collection has often been a source of creative inspiration. This exhibition marks the first time Baseman incorporates imagery from his photo collection into his paintings, through elements of collage and silkscreen."

Billy Monk: Nightclub Photographs

Billy Monk... The Balalaika, December 1969 (Silver gelatin print on fibre paper). From the exhibition Billy Monk: Nightclub Photographs at Michael Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town. "...The unusual narrative of his life and work has often been related and embellished upon, and has become entwined with our perceptions of the images. In essence, he was born in 1937, and worked as a nightclub bouncer for Les Catacombs Club in Cape Town in the late 1960s when he was around 30 years of age. He later moved to the West Coast and lived in Port Nolloth periodically until his death in 1982.
Using a Pentax camera with 35mm focal-length lens, Billy Monk photographed the nightclub revellers and sold the prints to his subjects. His close and long friendships with many of the people in the images allowed him to photograph them with extraordinary intimacy in all their states of joy and sadness. His images of nightlife seem carefree and far away from the scars and segregation of apartheid that fractured this society in the daylight."

Chris Burden: B-Car

Chris Burden: B-Car (1977) at UbuWeb Historical. "...Chris Burden is a singular figure in contemporary art. He works in a conceptualist mode as a sculptor, draftsman and performance artist, but his work is so dada-inflected, so informed by stunts, car culture, and science projects, and so frequently involves dangerous physical ordeals, as to belie such dry categorization. He created this book to document one of his most characteristic works, a project that he explains on the introductory page: During the two month period between August 24 and October 16, 1975, I conceived, designed, and constructed a small one passenger automobile. My goal was to design a fully operational four-wheel vehicle which would travel 100 miles per hour and achieve 100 miles per gallon. I imagined this vehicle as extremely lightweight, streamlined, and similar in structure to both a bicycle and an airplane. Once the project was conceived, I was compelled to realize it."

Some Velvet Morning

Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazelwood... Some Velvet Morning (1967, Reprise 0651 .mp3 audio 03:37).

Enrique Metinides: In The Place Of Coincidence

Enrique Metinides: In The Place Of Coincidence at Zone Zero. "...Crime reporter Enrique Metinides has spent over 50 years photographing crime in Mexico City. Discovered by a photographer from the yellow press, 'El Indio Velasquez,' who was intrigued by the presence of an 11-year-old child next to him photographing a car accident in the public thoroughfare, Enrique Metinides began to practice his trade at this tender age, earning himself the nickname of 'the Metinides boy.'
Murders, suicides, electrocuted persons, train, car and plane crashes, catastrophes and disasters are the tragic events constituting the obscure universe of this Mexican photographer. His aesthetics is drawn from his taste for ciné noir and his passion for police investigation. His composition is moderate and does not make excessive use of pictures of victims in the foreground. It avoids sensationalism and as Carlos Monsivais used to say, 'There is nothing morbid about Metinides' work.' His position as an impartial observer contrasts with that of those who gaze at his photographs, with their many perspectives that question the spectator. Deafening silence is another great element with which Enrique Metinides composes his images."

The Fighting Finches

The Fighting Finches (1937) at the WHS. My mother's maiden name is Finch. These are distant relatives of mine. The book, 'is composed entirely of stories told to W.P.A. field workers as they collected Wisconsin folklore in the late 1930s. They heard many tales about a 19th-century family named Finch who rustled cattle and stole horses throughout Rock and Jefferson counties before the Civil War. The 'Fighting Finches' terrorized south-central Wisconsin for three decades from their hideout in London swamp, just west of Lake Mills. Only about 200 copies of this booklet were made. They were printed by mimeograph, bound by W.P.A. workers in the Milwaukee Handicraft Project, and distributed to public libraries.'

O. Winston Link: The Last Steam Railroad in America

O. Winston Link: The Last Steam Railroad in America at Robert Mann Gallery. "...a selection of classic images from Link's body of work produced in the 1950s. When the Norfolk & Western Railway began to convert its operations from steam to diesel, Link spent five years documenting the trains and the towns along the line in Virginia. A longtime hero of railfans, Link received overdue art world recognition for the prescience of his photographic vision in the decades before his death. His flare for cinematic mise-en-scène and for staging images is now acknowledged to have paved the way for the dramatic tableaux of luminaries such as Gregory Crewdson and Jeff Wall, while his interest in the socio-historical infrastructure of the railroad has inspired another vein of photographers such as Jeff Brouws and Mark Ruwedel."

Dawoud Bey: Early Portraits

Dawoud Bey: Early Portraits at Stephen Daiter Gallery in Chicago, IL. "...brings together for the first time selections from two seminal groups of photographs by this major American artist. "Harlem, USA," the photographer's first project, completed in the mid-late 1970s, and "Street Portraits" were made in the late 1980s through early 1990s. As a youngster growing up in Queens, NY, Bey was intrigued by his family's history in Harlem. His parents met at church there and it was home to many family members and friends he visited as a child. Bey began making photographs at sixteen, after viewing the work of James VanDerZee and other photographers in the 'Harlem On My Mind' exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1969. Further experiences viewing the works of Roy DeCarava, Mike Disfarmer, Irving Penn, and Richard Avedon clarified his interest in photographing the human subject." More... Works by Dawoud Bey at his personal site.

Mr. Imagination

Mr. Imagination at Barbara Archer Gallery in Atlanta, GA. "...Like a medieval blacksmith manipulating his metal, Mr. Imagination draws from an amorphous slab of sandstone the face of a king or the mask of a god, with no more than a nail. He recaptures the lightning images of his mind's eye and bottles it in the medium of his art, be it sandstone or hundreds of thousands of bottle caps.
It is with bottle caps that his spirit has made it's most recent and powerful declarations. In the glimmering euphoria of his north side apartment in Chicago, imposing thrones of red velvet with large looming backs composed entirely of nailed bottle caps, cast long glorious shadows. The shining body of a boy, his bottle cap dread locks worming about his head, rides a skateboard past a chair interwoven with cigarette packs on which rests a bottle cap vest and jacket."

Kusama's Self-Obliteration

Yayoi Kusama... Kusama's Self-Obliteration (1967) at UbuWeb Film & Video. "...Only the film Kusama's Self-Obliteration can today still give an idea of the energy and radicality with which Yayoi Kusama provoked the New York art world of the late 1960s with her performances. The film documents the legendary 'nude happenings' of these years, and has been shown at numerous international film festivals and awarded several prizes."

Philip-Lorca diCorcia: Eleven

Philip-Lorca diCorcia: Eleven at David Zwirner Gallery in New York. "...the works were selected from a series of eleven editorial projects the artist created for W magazine between 1997 and 2008. This is the first time diCorcia will exclusively exhibit his fashion photography in New York, which not only occupies an inspirational and improvisational role within his thirty-year-long career as an art photographer, but which also helped redefine the genre as a whole."

Phyllis Galembo: Maske

Phyllis Galembo: Maske at Steven Kasher Gallery. "...an exhibition featuring recent photographs by Phyllis Galembo. Included in the exhibition are sixteen large-scale color prints presenting African and Haitian figures in indigenous masquerade costume. In her recurring travels throughout Africa and the Caribbean over the past thirteen years, Galembo shoots revelers during traditional rituals, rites, ceremonies, and festivals. This exhibition coincides with the release of Galembo’s new book, Maske (Boot, 2010), which includes an introduction by Chika Okeke-Ogulu, Assistant Professor of Art History at Princeton University." More... Works by Phyllis Galembo at her personal site.

John Thomson’s Illustrations of China and its people, 1873-1874

John Thomson’s Illustrations of China and its People, 1873-1874 at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. "...John Thomson (1837-1921), a pioneering Scottish geographer and traveler, was the first known photographer to document the people and landscape of China for publication and dissemination to the Western world. Between 1868 and 1872, he traveled over 6,500 kilometers with his cumbersome camera and equipment, darkroom and chemicals capturing all aspects of Chinese life. The photographs in these four volumes show the many sides of China: sweeping landscapes, royalty and ruling classes, merchants and economic activity, everyday life, and the faces of men, women, and children."

Dr. Lakra

Dr. Lakra at the Drawing Center in New York. "...Presented in collaboration with the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, this will be the first solo exhibition in New York by Mexican artist Dr. Lakra (b. 1972, Mexico). For this exhibition, Lakra will create a site-specific wall drawing throughout the gallery, integrating works on paper. In this presentation, Lakra uses drawing as the most immediate artistic impulse to invoke fundamental human urges like sex and violence. Using a range of source material, from anatomy textbooks to magazine pin-ups and comic strips, Lakra looks to Mexican and international art historical traditions, as well as the contemporary iconography of tattoo art and borrows a rich sense of satire from his early interest in cartooning." More... Works by Dr. Larka at the ICA in Boston.