Paul Schiek: dead men don't look like me

Paul Schiek: dead men don't look like me at Stephen Wirtz Gallery. "...Presented are 15 portraits of men re-photographed from 1950s-era mug shots found by the artist’s friend Mike Brodie in an abandoned Georgia prison. Brodie gifted the mug shots to Schiek, who then edited the original cache of hundreds down to a select few, cropped the images to remove all official documentary references while leaving stains, staple marks, tears and other signs of age, and enlarged the prints on highly reflective chromogenic paper to imbue them with personal and cultural meaning beyond their original purpose."

Point Of View: Vintage Photographs Of Italian Urban & Suburban Landscape

Point Of View: Vintage Photographs Of Italian Urban & Suburban Landscape at Keith de Lellis Gallery in New York.

Ernst Haas: Color Correction

Lens Culture... Ernst Haas: Color Correction. "...'Bored with obvious reality, I find my fascination in transforming it into a subjective point of view. Without touching my subject I want to come to the moment when, through pure concentration of seeing, the composed picture becomes more made than taken. Without a descriptive caption to justify its existence, it will speak for itself – less descriptive, more creative; less informative, more suggestive; less prose, more poetry.'" - Ernst Haas from ‘About Color Photography’, in DU, 1961. More Works by Ernst Haas at Ernst Haas Estate.

Pottery by Susan S. Frackelton

Pottery by Susan S. Frackelton at the WHS. "...Susan S. Frackelton (1848-1932) of Milwaukee began her artistic career as a landscape and china painter, like many women artists in the late 1800s. But for Frackelton, this was just the beginning. She soon became a major contributor to the arts in America as a businesswoman, inventor, author, and artist. She transformed her love of decorating china into a prolific business and began throwing her own pieces. Frackelton eventually developed her own style of art pottery featuring distinctive blue and gray designs on stoneware."

Bambi and Her Pink Gun

Read Bambi and Her Pink Gun by Atsushi Kaneko. In Japan I had every volume of this. Gotta love the Piggy Town Massacre.

Color Photographs from the New Deal (1939-1943)

Color Photographs from the New Deal (1939-1943) at Carriage Trade in New York. "...Largely forgotten until the mid-seventies when they resurfaced in the Library of Congress archives, the color photographs of the Farm Security Administration/ Office of War Information (1939-1943) document the later period of FDR’s New Deal, an ambitious series of government programs designed to address the brutal effects of the Great Depression on the social and economic fabric of 1930’s America. While the Library’s archive of black and white depression-era photographs is more familiar and more often reproduced, the color images, taken within three years of the invention of Kodachrome film, are striking for their rich, saturated colors and rigorously formal compositions."

When I'm sixty I hope I'm that cool!

Brian and SB saw Nick Lowe at 1st Avenue in Minneapolis last Wednesday night. Go Basher!

August Sander and Boris Mikhailov: German Portraits

August Sander and Boris Mikhailov: German Portraits at Pace/MacGill Gallery. "...From 1910 through 1956, documentary photographer August Sander, strove to make a visual index of the population classifying Germany’s most conventional groups: The Farmer, The Skilled Tradesman, The Woman, Classes and Professions, The Artist, The City, and The Last People. This monumental project turned into the masterpiece, People of the 20th Century, featuring over 600 images. Twenty portraits by Sander will be shown in this exhibition, each striking a rare symmetry of the individual and an illustration of the archetype, forming a sincere social portrait of the time.
Ukrainian-born Boris Mikhailov has photographed Germany’s middle class. Nearly a century after August Sander, Mikhailov focuses on the distinct appearance of the individual and the transmission of physical traits from parents to offspring. He captures his subjects against a dark backdrop, taken in profile, inviting us to contemplate line and form and what it means to be German in a literal and physical sense."

Evgeny Mokhorev: Photographs, 1991-2010

Evgeny Mokhorev: Photographs, 1991-2010 at Nailya Alexander Gallery. "...Mokhorev was eight when he began taking photographs. He is the first Russian photographer who showed such an incredible insight into the fragile and troubled world of children. Since the late 1980s, he has passionately explored the marginal territories of adolescence, the unsettling revelations of lost childhood, and the magical transformations into adulthood. His first solo exhibition outside of his homeland was in Paris in 1992, right after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was held within the framework of Mois de la Photo, a Photography Festival in Paris, where his series about street kids of St. Petersburg 'Games Children Play,' became a sensation."

EVOL: Repeat Offender

EVOL: Repeat Offender at Jonathan LeVine Gallery in New York. "...Evol’s multi-layered stencil paintings on used cardboard and scrap metal portray unpopulated cityscapes. The artist carefully selects materials with a weathered appearance to use as his canvases, representing the neglected quality of low-income housing in Berlin. Evol achieves extremely convincing architectural illusions through clever incorporation of torn edges, dents, tape fragments, box markings and exposed corrugated textures. Believing the character and history of any space is worn on its façade, like scars on skin, Evol’s works convey elements of urban decay and remnants of a turbulent history in a post-wall, pre-gentrified East Berlin."

GUN: A Collection of Photographs

Rodrigo Moya... Pistolero, Mexico D.F. (1960, Gelatin silver print). From the exhibition GUN: A Collection of Photographs at Charles A. Hartman Fine Art. "...Guns are a loaded topic. Their renderings in art are as varied as people's views regarding them. From rifles for hunting to handguns for protection to weapons used in war and violent crime, guns are a part of American history, culture and mythology. With GUN: A Collection of Photographs, Charles A. Hartman Fine Art is excited to present an exhibition of compelling images both historical and contemporary. From tintype to c-print, the exhibition includes classic images by photographers such as Frederick Sommer, Danny Lyon, William Klein, Elliott Erwitt and Berenice Abbott, as well as recent works by gallery artists Mark Steinmetz, Raymond Meeks, Jason Langer and Corey Arnold."

Poor Politicians

Lens Culture... Poor Politicians - 28 Destroyed Posters of Albanian Politicians in the Streets of Prishtina - photographs by Frederic Lezmi. "...This is the second in a series of delightfully quirky photobooks of images made by Frederic Lezmi with his iPhone. It's not really a book; it's more like a box of beautifully printed lithographs on heavy paper — so you can take them out one by one to appreciate them (even frame them), shuffle the order, or arrange them as a grid on your wall... They are self-published in a signed limited edition of 100."

Works by Enrico Natali

Works by Enrico Natali at Joseph Bellows Gallery.

Shelby Lee Adams: Salt & Truth

Shelby Lee Adams: Salt & Truth at Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago, IL. "...For more than thirty years, Shelby Lee Adams has been photographing in Appalachia, visiting families within the mountain hollers. Salt & Truth is his fourth book dedicated to the people of this region, and is a testament to his commitment to present his friends and family with dignity and truth. Although he now lives in Massachusetts, Shelby Lee Adams' heart is forever in Appalachia." More... Works by Shelby Lee Adams at his personal site.

50

So... Did anyone else turn 50 today? We're half-way to 100.

Bound: Hans Bellmer & Unica Zürn

Bound: Hans Bellmer & Unica Zürn at Ubu Gallery in New York, NY. "...an exhibition of over fifty works created over two decades — spanning the German artists’ relationship — from their meeting at Bellmer’s opening at Galerie Rudolph Springer in 1953 until Zürn’s suicide in 1970. Including anagrammatic drawings, erotic portraits, illustrated manuscripts, photographic collaborations and archival photographs of the artists at their shared flat at rue Mouffetard"

Neighborhood Rhythms (Patter Traffic)

John Doe... Jean Harlow and Jeffrey Lee Pierce... Tribute To Miles Davis. From Neighborhood Rhythms (Patter Traffic) (1984, Freeway Records – FRWY 213) at UbuWeb Sound.

Awesome People Hanging Out Together

Awesome People Hanging Out Together. Thank you SB.

John Gossage: The Whole Pond and A Little Romance

John Gossage: The Whole Pond and A Little Romance at Stephen Daiter Gallery in Chicago, IL. "...The POND is a body of work – vintage silver print photographs taken around and away from a pond situated in an unkempt, wooded area at the edge of a city. The images and the book of the same title present a foil to Henry David Thoreau's stay at Walden. Gossage's photographs reveal a subtle vision of reality on the border between man and nature. His nature is at once at odds with itself and with humankind, but the tone is ambiguous and evocative rather than didactic."

Nikkatsu Noir: A Colt Is My Passport - Eclipse Series 17

Criterion Confessions... Nikkatsu Noir: A Colt Is My Passport - Eclipse Series 17. "...The final film in the Nikkatsu Noir boxed set is easily the best. Takashi Nomura's 1967 fugitive picture A Colt is My Passport stars Joe Shishido as a hitman on the lam. Paid off by one crime boss to kill another crime boss, his plans to scarper out of the country with his partner, Shun (Jerry Fujio), are scuttled by the dead man's loyal gunmen showing up at the airport to block their way. One ingenious getaway later, and the two guys are hiding out by the wharfs, missing one departing ship after another, their freedom receding over the horizon."

Structures, Textures, & Time: Photographs by Judy Morris Lampert

Structures, Textures, & Time: Photographs by Judy Morris Lampert at Barbara Archer Gallery. "...Judy Morris Lampert's recent series documents structures unique to the American South—both old, decomposing buildings rich in history and newer structures ripe with personality. The artist's attraction to these structures comes from their irresistible combinations of form, color and texture; what follows is a deeper connection, heavy with the nebulous sense of loneliness, isolation and the passage of time. The structures are, in fact, freestanding abstract sculptural forms and yet with her subtle and personal approach they read as portraits, offering up an intimacy rarely captured on film." More... Works by Judy Morris Lampert at her personal site.

English As A Second Language (Talking Package)

English As A Second Language (Talking Package) at UbuWeb Sound (1983, Freeway Records – E 1031, Produced, Compiled By, Sequenced By – Harvey Robert Kubernik).