Jan Kučera: Burleska

Jan Kučera: Burleska (1932, Cinematography by K. Kopřiva) at UbuWeb Film & Video. "...Kučera's only film. This man was and still remains important for his writing about TV and film theory, especially cutting. He was a teacher at FAMU and published some acclaimed theoretical work."

Daniele Tamagni & Africolor

Daniele Tamagni & Africolor at Danziger Projects. "...In 2008, Tamagni traveled to the Atlantic coast of Africa to document the little known sub-culture of the sapeurs or La SAPE - a French acronym for La Societe des Ambianceurs et des Personnes Elegantes. The sapeurs sport ostentatiously dapper suits and fedoras. They have made fashion their religion, living an elegant lifestyle in direct reference to the French colonialism that contributed to the poverty of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Sapeurism is a means of dealing with this past, by appropriating western style. A code of conduct dictates to sapeurs not to wear more than three colors in any outfit and to not only look but also to behave in an elegant manner." More... Works by Daniele Tamagni at her personal site.

The Summer Show - Photographs From The Gallery Collection

Monica Denevan... Guitar, Burma, 2004. From The Summer Show - Photographs From The Gallery Collection at Scott Nichols Gallery. "...The exhibition features vintage and contemporary photographs by Ansel Adams, Ruth Bernhard, Francis Bruguiere, Wynn Bullock, Ron Church, Imogen Cunningham. Monica Denevan, Rolfe Horn, Philip Hyde, Mona Kuhn, Dorothea Lange, Joel Leivick, Rondal Partridge, Michael Rauner, Peter Stackpole, George Tice, Brett Weston, Edward Weston, Don Worth and others."

The Carter Family Project

The Carter Family Project. We grew up listening to the Carter Family. The rules for this project are simple: record the songs in chronological sequence, beginning with the first 1927 Bristol Sessions recordings, don't worry too much about flubs, and get everything recorded while the baby is napping. Via Metafilter.

Linda McCartney: Life in Photographs

Linda McCartney: Life in Photographs at Bonni Benrubi Gallery. "...Linda McCartney was born in New York City and studied art history at the University of Arizona and also attended evening courses in photography. After settling back in New York, she began her photography career in 1966 shooting portraits of rock musicians. By 1968, her portrait of Eric Clapton was on the cover of Rolling Stone and she made history as the first woman photographer to achieve this milestone.
She captured that era’s most important musicians: Aretha Franklin, Jimi Hendrix, The Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan and many others including her future husband. In 1967, while working in London, she photographed The Beatles at an album launch event and met band member Paul McCartney. They wed in 1969 and raised a family and performed in their band Wings together.
From the mid 1960’s to 1998, McCartney captured her whole life on film: rock and roll portraits, her family, travels, celebrities, animals, and still lives. Her fresh and candid photographs display warmth and feeling for her subjects and are a strong and lasting reminder of her life’s journey and her artistic talent."

Laura Levine: Musicians

Laura Levine: Musicians at Steven Kasher Gallery in New York. "...Levine is highly esteemed as a photographer and documentarian of the downtown NYC, London and Los Angeles music scene in the 1980s and early 90s. Her portraits of such seminal figures as Bjork, R.E.M., the Clash, Afrika Bambaataa, Tina Weymouth, DNA, the Ramones, Beastie Boys, Iggy Pop, Chrissie Hynde, Joan Jett, Madonna, and many others are valued for their unpretentious intimacy and emotional power.
Levine was the Chief Photographer and Photo Editor of the important underground paper New York Rocker. She published frequently in the Village Voice, Sounds, Rolling Stone, Spin, the New York Times, Trouser Press, and Creem. She worked for numerous record labels. Levine enjoyed wide access to musical greats, many of whom became close friends."

The Atomic Explosion

The Atomic Explosion - A Collection of Vintage Photographs at Peter Blum Gallery in New York, NY. "...The need for testing and developing the atomic bomb began in the late 1930s in response to the rise of the Third Reich and the fear that Germany would develop a weapon of mass destruction. The United States initiated the Manhattan Project, headed by the physicist Robert Oppenheimer, known as the father of the atomic bomb. During the 1940s and 1950s over 200 atomic bombs were tested. Most famously atomic bombs were used for the attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which ended World War II.
The photographs in the exhibition were used for documentation, press or taken by eyewitnesses. The photographer is often anonymous. We merely see a photograph of the event, sometimes accompanied by a plain description. The images range from the powerful explosions to shattered crater landscapes to viewers and soldiers watching the explosions from afar."

Simone Lueck: Cuba TV

Simone Lueck: Cuba TV at Kopeikin Gallery. "...The TV sets themselves are outdated, pre-revolution relics imported from America or sets from Russia over fifteen years old; green-hued beats jimmy-rigged with ancient computer parts and fantastically adorned like religious altars. In Cuba, television is a national pastime. The government controls all media, including the three main newspapers as well as the four television stations. The stations broadcast news reports, baseball, educational programs, soap operas, and Hollywood movies. Whether used for information or as a background for socializing and drinking rum, during broadcast hours, all TVs in Cuba are ON." More... Works by Simone Lueck.

John Storrs: Machine-Age Modernist

John Storrs: Machine-Age Modernist at the Grey Art Gallery at NYU. "...John Storrs (1885–1956) was one of the most important modernist sculptors to emerge in the early 20th century. During the 1910s and ’20s, he divided his time between his native Chicago and Paris, where he found a community of likeminded artists committed to invention and to redefining traditional art forms. After studying with Auguste Rodin in 1913, Storrs reinvigorated the largely academic medium of sculpture with a radicalism then unknown in America. An avid admirer of Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright—whose architecture he had encountered as a young man in the Midwest—he adopted their columnar, 'building block' idioms into his own work. The spare, freestanding stone sculptures that Storrs created between 1917 and the early 1920s in both figural and abstract modes echo the burgeoning Art Deco movement."

Life and Limb: The Toll of the Civil War

Life and Limb: The Toll of the Civil War at the U.S. National Library of Medicine. "...The perspectives of surgeons, physicians, and nurses are richly documented in the history of Civil War medicine, which highlights the heroism and brutality of battlefield operations and the challenges of caring for the wounded during wartime. Yet the experiences of injured soldiers during the conflict and in the years afterwards are less well-known. Life and Limb: The Toll of the Civil War focuses on disabled veterans and their role as symbols of the fractured nation."

Suburbia Mexicana

Lens Culture... Suburbia Mexicana - photographs by Alejandro Cartagena. "...Alejandro Cartagena photographs the particularities of the suburbs of Monterrey, Mexico which are relatively new and often hastily built, reflecting a general disregard for planning. Over the years, various governmental policies resulted in new, decentralized cities with limited infrastructures where the pursuit of immediate financial gain trumped any interest in sustainability." More... Works by Alejandro Cartagena at his personal site.

Rude and Reckless: Punk/Post-Punk Graphics, 1976-82

Gene Greif... The Clash, Give ‘Em Enough Rope, US Version (1978, vintage poster). From the exhibition Rude and Reckless: Punk/Post-Punk Graphics, 1976-82 at Steven Kasher Gallery in New York. "...The exhibition showcases a wide range of American and British artistry, with influences that include the Bauhaus, Futurism, Dadaism, Pop Art, Constructivism and Expressionism. The exhibition features over 200 rare posters, along with fanzines, flyers, clothing, badges and stickers.
Rude and Reckless documents an era that produced a great burst of applied graphic-design creativity, one of the most subversive of the 20th Century. Vivid, violent and frequently acid tongued, the works in Rude and Reckless represent one of the truly authentic DIY youth culture movements of the Western World."

Schatten (Shadows)

Schatten (Shadows, 1960, directed by Hansjürgen Pohland) at Europa Film Treasures. "...Jazz music gives rhythm to the montage; black and white shots follow on from one another. We discover different aspects of the town: its architecture, its movement, its inhabitants. But we only catch sight of projected shadows! This exercise in style, realised in 1960, falls within the tradition of an avant-garde cinematographic genre, the urban symphony."

Salon Photography

Salon Photography: 1930's Exhibition Prints from the Collection of the Museum of Science & Industry, Chicago at Keith De Lellis Gallery. "...The salon system in place for the first half or so of the twentieth century was based on the camera clubs found in most major American cities (those in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Pittsburgh were among the best known and most prestigious) as well as in other countries such as Germany, England and France. Many of these clubs held annual salon exhibitions to which photographers from around the world would compete. The best work was exhibited in these salons, which were important events in the photo world and served as a major way for photographers to expose their work to fellow enthusiasts and the public at large."

Hans Malm

Photographs by Hans Malm of Gustavsberg, Sweden.

Ai Weiwei: New York Photographs, 1983-1993

Ai Weiwei: New York Photographs, 1983-1993 at the Asia Society in New York. "...an exhibition of 227 photographs taken by famed Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei, capturing the history, culture, and atmosphere of 1980s New York from his unique perspective. The exhibition marks the first time Ai Weiwei's New York Photographs series is being shown outside of China."

Bruce LaBruce: Super 8 1/2

Bruce LaBruce: Super 8 1/2 (1993) at UbuWeb Film & Video. "...Bruce LaBruce is a Toronto based filmmaker, writer, director, photographer, and artist. He began his career in the mid eighties making a series of short experimental super 8 films and co-editing a punk fanzine called J.D.s, which begat the queercore movement. He has directed and starred in three feature length movies, 'No Skin Off My Ass' (1991), 'Super 8 1/2' (1994), and 'Hustler White' (1996). More recently he has directed two art/porn features, 'Skin Flick' (2000)(hardcore version: 'Skin Gang') and 'The Raspberry Reich' (2004)(hardcore version: 'The Revolution Is My Boyfriend'), and the independent feature 'Otto; or, Up with Dead People' (2008). After premiering at Sundance and Berlin, 'The Raspberry Reich' took off on the international film festival circuit, playing at over 150 festivals, including the Istanbul, Guadalajara, and Rio de Janeiro International Film Festivals. He was also honoured with retrospectives at the end of ’05 at the Madrid and Hong Kong Gay and Lesbian Film Festivals. 'Otto; or, Up with Dead People' also debuted at Sundance and Berlin and played at over 150 film festivals, culminating in a screening at MoMA in New York City in November of 2008. His new film, L.A. Zombie, starring French star Francois Sagat, premiered in competition at the Locarno International Film Festival in August, 2010. It will have it’s French premier at the L’Etrange Film Festival in Paris and its North American premier at the Toronto International Film Festival in Septemer. 2010. The hardcore version, L.A. Zombie Hardcore, will be released at Halloween, 2010."

Berenice Abbott: New York

Berenice Abbott: New York at Charles A. Hartman Fine Art. "...a stunning collection of images from 20th century master photographer Berenice Abbott. This ambitious series of photographs chronicles the 'Changing New York' of the 1930s. The exhibition includes gorgeous original prints of important photographs such as Nightview (New York at Night), Penn Station, Exchange Place as well as many others. This is a unique opportunity to see one of the richest bodies of work by this noted artist."

Rong Rong’s Ruins, Fragments and Wedding Gown Series: 1996-2000

Rong Rong’s Ruins, Fragments and Wedding Gown Series: 1996-2000 at Chambers Fine Art. "...Since 1993 when he moved to the “East Village” in Beijing, Rong Rong has established himself at the center of the world of photography in China. In addition to his own creative photography which continues unabated to the present day, he has also been active as a magazine publisher (New Photo in 1995) and in 2007 was co- founder with inri of the Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in Beijing."

Jennifer Shaw: Hurricane Story

Jennifer Shaw: Hurricane Story at Soulcatcher Studio. "...Shaw uses plastic cameras, such as a Holga, to produce her ethereal imagery. She states, '(Plastic cameras are)...an extention of my psyche. They lend a whimsical spontaneity to the act of photographing. When I see something that moves me I just click, rather than losing the moment by fussing around with the technical adjustments of a more formal camera. I also feel like the plastic lens imparts an image that comes closer to the way we actually see with our eyes. I try to create images that transcend literal description, that provoke an emotional response to my surroundings. I hope to convey a sense of time and place that is beautiful and sensual and serene.'"

Louviere + Vanessa - Exquisite Collaborations: Concerto da camera

Louviere + Vanessa - Exquisite Collaborations: Concerto da camera at Andrew Smith Gallery. "...Louviere + Vanessa have created a fascinating hybrid of photographically generated prints and objects from an arsenal of antique and modern technologies. Unlike so much contemporary photographic work that merely documents or constructs events as technically proficient but artistically inferior digital prints, Louviere + Vanessa's art works transcend imagery. Instead, they craft exquisitely beautiful objects rich in physicality that are also supremely intelligent." More... Works by Louviere + Vanessa at their personal site.

Panorama Photographs Collection

Panorama Photographs Collection at the University of Washington Digital Collections. "...This database showcases over 90 panoramic photographs from the Special Collections Visual Materials Collection. Displayed with the ability to zoom into the smallest details of the photograph, this digital collection features such exemplary images such as Front St. in Dawson City around the time of the Klondike Gold Rush, sweeping city views of Seattle after the turn of the century and the memorable Mississippi flood of 1927. Other photographs feature group portraits, city scenes, and landscapes covering such topics as Pacific Northwest labor and political history, University of Washington campus scenes, and ethnic groups especially Japanese American organizations."

Alejandro Chaskielberg: The High Tide

Alejandro Chaskielberg: The High Tide at Yossi Milo Gallery. "...Interested in the relationship between people and their environment, Alejandro Chaskielberg has lived in the Paraná River Delta region in Argentina periodically since 2007. While there, he observes the daily routines of the local islanders: fishing, boating, and farming. Drawing from his background in film, the artist carefully recreates scenes from his observations and photographs them at night. The light sources used to illuminate the images are moonlight, flashlights, strobes and lanterns, casting them in eerie and surreal light of unnatural colors.
Chaskielberg’s project, The High Tide, depicts life in the remote community of the Delta, where the river tides determine the activities and movements of its inhabitants. Chaskielberg breaks with the tradition of documentary photography by casting real people in imagined situations based on their own lives. In his photographs, everyday reality is transformed into a dreamlike world where perceptions of color, light and space are challenged." More... Works by Alejandro Chaskielberg at his personal site.

Elliott Erwitt

Elliott Erwitt at Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York. "...A photographer since 1948 and a member of the prestigious Magnum Photo Agency since 1953, Elliott Erwitt’s early photographs set a precedent for the genre of social landscape. His work anticipated the iconic imagery of Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand, Robert Frank (whose first roommate, upon arriving to the United States, was Erwitt) among others who embraced the genre. Juxtaposing natural and manmade landscapes, Erwitt’s photographs recall an awareness of how man affects his natural surroundings in blatant and ironic ways. Overtly conscious that the eye of the camera depends on four key factors—frame, perspective, focus and time—Erwitt’s camera-vision arrangements strike the viewer with their meticulous composition and simultaneous 'decisive moment' precision."

James Brown for Cup Noodle Miso-Pa

James Brown for Cup Noodle Miso-Pa (1992, Flash Video 01:00). No shortage of American celebs in Japanese tv commercials in the early 90's. Thank you, SB

Revolutionary Film Posters: Aesthetic Experiments of Russian Constructivism, 1920-33

Revolutionary Film Posters: Aesthetic Experiments of Russian Constructivism, 1920-33 at Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York. "...Culled from the world’s largest collection of Russian Film Posters from the great era of Constructivism, the 95 examples of the medium on view represent a unique opportunity to survey how one of the most significant movements in the early 20th Century avant-garde informed a radical graphic style that has had a dramatic influence on the development of fine art and design over many subsequent generations. Most of the work shown, though originally produced in the hundreds, constitutes the only surviving examples, and few have ever been publicly exhibited before."

Jan Saudek & Sara Saudek: Retrospettiva 1992-2003

Jan Saudek... The deep devotion of Lenka (Once in the South) (1988). From the exhibition Jan Saudek & Sara Saudek: Retrospettiva 1992-2003 at Mondo Bizzarro Gallery in Rome. "...Jan Saudek was Jewish and having been born in Prague, he lived through the horrors of deportation during World War II. On returning to Prague he was forced to work in secret, hidden in a cellar, where he developed dreams and fantasies whilst living under a rather grey and pragmatic dictatorship. In the seventies he began to "correct" his black and white prints tinting them with watercolours. In his exclusion this "underground man" created an art of dreams, beautifully sad and light: erotic in the most spirited and interesting way. The works of Saudek, are as fascinating and mysterious as Prague itself and have made him one of the greatest living authors. A pillar of twentieth century photographic history.
The surreal world of Jan Saudek is a room with plaster peeling from the walls, which filters the infinite."