Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band | Ice Cream for Crow

Jean Prouvé | Gagosian, Paris

 
Jean Prouvé (1901-1984) is widely acknowledged as one of the twentieth century’s most important and influential designers whose wide-ranging oeuvre combined bold elegance with economy of means and strong social conscience. Working as a craftsman, designer, manufacturer, architect, teacher, and engineer, his career spanned more than sixty years, during which time he produced prefabricated houses, building components and façades, as well as furniture for the home, office and school. The exhibition focuses primarily on Prouvé’s prefabricated structures of the late 1940s and includes maquettes, plans, and architectural sections of them, and films. It attests to the pivotal role that Prouvé played in the development of cutting-edge technology and modular systems for mass production in the post-war modernist period.

Actors Acting | Vincent Cassel

Alison Rossiter | Yossi Milo, New York

Fuji, exact expiration date unknown, ca.1930's, processed in 2010

Gelatin Silver Print, Diptyc

Fuji, exact expiration date unknown, ca.1930's, processed in 2010

Gelatin Silver Print, Diptyc

Eastman Kodak Royal Bromide, expired March 1919. processed in 2010

Gelatin Silver Print

Barnet Bar-Gas, Exact expiration date unknown, ca. 1925 processed in 2007
Fingerprint found fr, Gelatin Silver Print, Smaller than 2 1/2 x 3 1/2 inches

 Ansco Cyko, Expires Dec 1, 1917, processed in 2007
Gelatin Silver Print, 6 x 4 inches

Alison Rossiter | Reduction
September 23rd - October 30th 2010
Alison Rossiter’s photographs are created without a camera on expired, vintage photo paper. The artist experiments with gelatin silver papers she collects from throughout the 20th century, making controlled marks by pouring or pooling photographic developer directly onto the surface of the paper. Dark forms emerge which often resemble mountainous landscapes or active tornados; other shapes are paired by the artist to create minimalist diptychs.

Each batch of gelatin silver paper, such as Eastman Royal Bromide, which expired in 1919, or Nepera- Velox, which expired in 1906, possesses unique qualities, depending on its particular color, surface, condition and age. Utilizing her experience in conserving photographs, Ms. Rossiter reacts to these variables and manipulates the interaction of paper and developer by hand, paying tribute to the intrinsic qualities of photographic materials and reintroducing unpredictability into a process which is now commonly digitized.

http://www.alisonrossiter.com

Taryn Simon | TED

The Death of a Building | Christoph Gielen

Urban Scotland, 2003

Christoph Gielen in the New York Times

Most of my work as a photographer centers on urban development in the sense of construction and expansion. But not all development succeeds, and not all construction lasts. In recent years a number of cities in Britain have recognized that some of the large public housing projects built during the postwar era have been failures; what were supposed to be new residential communities have been overtaken by crime and drug use. In several cases, particularly unmanageable buildings have even been torn down.

New York, N.Y. (1986) | Raymond Depardon

Incognito | Yancey Richardson

 

 Mitch Epstein, "Untitled, NY, 1996"

24" x 30" Chromogenic Print, Edition of 15

Stephen Shore, "Room 125, Westbank Motel, Idaho Falls, Idaho, July 18, 1973"

20" x 24" C-print, Edition of 8

Matthew Pillsbury, "Matthew Pillsbury, Alias, 9-10 pm, 2010"

13" x 19" Pigment ink print, Edition of 20

 Francesca Woodman, "P.059 Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island, 1976"

(printed 2002-04), 8" x 10" Gelatin Silver Print, Edition of 40

 Ray Metzker, "Philadelphia, 1964"

8" x 10" Gelatin silver print, Edition of 20

 Lisa Kereszi, "Thrilling, Neon Sign, Niagara Falls, Canada, 2005"

30" x 40" Chromogenic Print, Edition of 5
 

 Gail Albert Halaban, "Out My Window, Chelsea, Flower Block from the series 
Out My Window, NYC, 2009", 20" x 24" Archival Pigment Print, Edition of 10

“Incognito,” the current show at Yancey Richardson, explores the ways that photographers can weave their own presence into their work. Many of the photos serve as clandestine self-portraits: traces of the artists appear as shadows, reflections, and body parts, clues embedded within each photographer’s game of hide-and-seek with the camera.

from Photo Booth

Corinne Vionnet

  from the series Du Glacier du Rône au Lac Léman / From Rhone Glacier to Lake Geneva

Corinne Vionnet

William Kentridge: Five Themes | Jeu de Paume, Paris

 Dessin pour "II Sole 24 Ore [World Walking]"

[Le Soleil 24 heures (Le Monde en marche)]" 2007, William Kentridge

Fusain, gouache, pastel et crayon de couleur sur papier, 213.5 x 150 cm

Journey to the Moon, 2003

35mm and 16mm film transferred to video (black and white, sound) 7:10 min

 William Kentridge, Five Themes

29 June 2010 until 05 September 2010

Featuring about 40 works in a range of media, including animated films, drawings, prints, theater models, sculptures, and books, "William Kentridge: Five Themes" brings viewers up to date on the artist’s work over the past decade, exploring how his subject matter has evolved from the specific context of South Africa to more universal stories. In recent years, Kentridge has dramatically expanded both the scope of his projects (such as recent full-scale opera productions) and their thematic concerns, which now include his own studio practice, colonialism in Namibia and Ethiopia, and the cultural history of postrevolutionary Russia. His newer work is based on an intensive exploration of themes connected to his own life experience, as well as the political and social issues that most concern him.

South African artist William Kentridge (born 1955) first achieved international recognition in the 1990s with a series of what he called “drawings for projection”: short animated films based on everyday life under apartheid. Since then, Kentridge has widened his thematic range, expanding beyond his immediate environment to examine other political conflicts. His oeuvre charts a universal history of war and revolution, evoking the complexities and tensions of postcolonial memory and imaging the residual traces of devastating policies and regimes.

Unfruchtbare Landschaften | Yvon Lambert, Paris

Unfruchtbare Landschaften, 1969 

Black-and -white photographs, surgical instruments and graphite on bound cardboard
36 x 25 x 4.5 cm, 14 pages

Exhibition View

Anselm Kiefer | Unfruchtbare Landschaften

Yvon Lambert, Paris 19 May –26 June 2010

“Among the works to be exhibited at Galerie Yvon Lambert are a number that were conceived in around 1969, when the artist was 24 years old, including “For Genet,” “The Flooding of Heidelberg” and “Heroic Symbols.” These pieces take the form of strange books on cardboard in which he stuck photographs, watercolours and dried flowers. Even in these early years Kiefer had begun to write down names from his strange, obsessive pantheon. Here, for example, Genet’s name appears with those of Wagner, Beuys and Joan of Arc. These enigmatic clues seem to have been scattered among clichés that are both provocative and disturbing. It is well worth deciphering them and placing them in the context of Kiefer’s art generally, with all its extremes and gigantic scale.

Today, it is indeed important to return to these books which recall some of Kiefer’s very daring interventions. They constitute views or visions, images heavily freighted with memories and symbols, but submerged in blackness, and also self-portraits of the young artist incongruously dressed in a nightshirt or woollen robe, or making the Nazi salute in grandiose or ridiculous settings. At the time, he had taken on the solitary task of what he called the “occupation” of significant spaces – a dark, gratingly ironic gesture that, like the clichés themselves, provoked a scandal. The works were misunderstood, or met with shocked incomprehension, even in the most radical artistic milieus: critics at the time simply could not accept Kiefer’s pathetic and provocative questioning.

Cyril Croucher | Coverack

Cyril Croucher (b.1951), Coverack, Acrylic

Noriwaki Miyamoto | Dream of Blue Houses

Noriwaki Miyamoto (1940), Dream of Blue Houses, Japanese colour etching with aquatint.

Hedi Slimane

Improvisation 1 | Oscar Nilsson by Hedi Slimane

Frieze Magazine March 2010: Long Exposure | The death and resurrection of photography in a digitized world

Cindy Sherman, Untitled 67 (1980)

Photography is dead. That news may come as a surprise, since obituaries about art tend to be written about painting. Invented in the 1830s, photo-graphy is still in its infancy as an art form compared to the centuries-old medium of painting. Despite inventions like portable paint tubes and fast-drying acrylic, painting has not undergone the transformations that digitalization is bringing to the medium of photography.
Of course, I’m speaking about the death of film photography. Happy to save on the cost of film and the time taken to develop it, consumers embraced digitalization with such gusto that a whole industry is dying. In 2005, the film photography giant AgfaPhoto filed for bankruptcy. In 2009, Polaroid ceased the production of instant Polaroid film, and Kodak discontinued Kodachrome film. Digital photographs are not only cheaper and faster to produce; they can be stored endlessly and shared instantly with countless friends. Polaroids, though ‘instant’, could not be emailed and tweeted. 

Robert Rauschenberg The Early 1950s

Ceiling & Lightbulb, 1950, gelatin silver photograph
38.0 x 37.9cm image; 50.4 x 40.4cm sheet 

No 5 New York City, 1980, gelatin silver photograph
48.0 x 32.5cm image; 50.5 x 40.0cm sheet

Known largely as a pop artist and painter, Robert Rauschenberg was originally a photographer, an art form he would later return to, capturing in his unique way the oddities of everyday life. Stimulated by a commission to design a stage set for the dancer Trisha Brown, he returned to photography to capture new images as source material for the work. Using similar collage techniques to his paintings, Rauschenberg forms his compositions through the lens rather than in the darkroom, preferring the adventure of waiting until the photographic frame is full of the right ingredients; light, shadow, form and truth.1 Believing that perfection is death, Rauschenberg re-creates a sensation, an instant in which the photograph can comprise moments and things unseen by the naked eye, resulting in truth with a little chance thrown in.
‘No 4 Los Angeles’ 1981 (AGNSW collection) and ‘No 5 New York City’ reflect Rauschenberg’s anomalous approach to the image that acquires ‘a presence due to a lack of literal reference and in some cases the aggressive absence of internal information’.2 Like moments from a Jacques Tati film, these images are reflections of Rauschenberg’s meanderings through the streets of Los Angeles and New York, shooting whatever captures his imagination and eye. Shot in the middle of the day, the bicycle, a vehicle of speed and high manoeuvrability, is instead at rest. He has chosen to photograph the bike as fractured; its front half missing with no means to direct itself, the only hint of its desire for speed being in the sharp angle of its shadow. The close shot of a water fountain in ‘No 4 Los Angeles’ reveals the chance of redemption in the drinking of the chilled holy water. The interplay of shapes and strange objects reveals his interest in the odd juxtapositions of life, such as the sign ‘Holy Water’ and the sign ‘Free’ offering religious tracts to the lost, and the bell from which the call for salvation can be made. Each component forms a collage of information so familiar in his paintings.
1. Sayag A 1981, ‘Interview with Robert Rauschenberg, January 9 at Captiva Island, Florida’, ‘Robert Rauschenberg photographs’, Pantheon Books, New York
2. ibid
© Art Gallery of New South Wales Photography Collection Handbook, 2007

Rauschenberg | Cardbird

 Cardbird VI 1971 

 from 'Cardbird' series, 1971, print, stencil, planographic, collage

Technique: colour photolithograph, screenprint, tape, polyethylene, coated with acrylic polymer on paper laminated to corrugated cardboard

Rauschenberg has suggested that his choice of cardboard as a material was the result of his wish ‘to work in a material of waste and softness’. The Cardbird series is a tongue-in-cheek visual joke. It is in fact a printed mimic of cardboard constructions. The labour intensive process remains invisible to the viewer – the artist created a prototype cardboard construction which was then photographed and the image transferred to a lithographic press and printed before a final lamination onto cardboard backing. By choosing the most mundane of materials, Rauschenberg once again succeeds in a glamorous make-over of the most ordinary. The Cardbird series is an exploration of a new order of materials, a radical scrambling of the material hierarchy of Modernism.

Is Photography Over? SFMOMA

Unknown, Untitled (Man reflected in mirrors), n.d. | photograph | gelatin silver print. 

Collection SFMOMA, Gift of Gordon L. Bennett

City Girl (1929) | F.W.Murnau

Boru O'Brien O'Connell

 

 

Miscellaneous Photographs

La Montagne Gallery, 555 East 2nd Street, South Boston, Massachusetts

Gordon Matta Clark | Wallspaper

Art handlers install Gordon Matta-Clark's Wallspaper for the exhibition Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, October 2009.

Miranda July | How to Make a Button

Playing with Pictures | The Art of Victorian Photocollage at the MET

 Mary Georgiana Caroline, Lady Filmer (English, 1838–1903). Untitled loose page from the Filmer Album, mid-1860s. Collage of watercolor and albumen silver prints; 8 3/4 x 11 1/4 in. (22.2 x 28.6 cm). Paul F. Walter.

Will Rogan | Remant World

Will Rogan Life Removed 1, 2008 erased magazine page. 12 x 10 inches

The camera — as the artist’s tool, as a physical object, and as a metaphor for mortality – is at the heart of these recent works. Aligned around a tension between absence and presence, Rogan seeks to identify the vanishing point that haunts the instantaneous present. As in earlier bodies of work, these pieces address a series of related, but tangential ideas expressed in different media.

In several works, visual information is obscured, diffused, refracted or omitted, complicating modes of perception and undermining conventions for image-making. In Collapse, a video depicts a woman on the back of driving through the streets of Tokyo holding a mirror so that the immediate past and the immediate future are visible on one plane. video is projected on a sculpture that mirrors the shape of light projector and rests on a piece of rubble from the gallery renovation. In another, a dangling bulb emits an intense light refracted through a chaotic cluster of glass prisms; the orb resembles a glowing celestial body, a sloppy chandelier that is captivating but blinding. And in a small group of works on paper, magazine pages are manipulated until all information except an image of a camera is erased or concealed.

Humor, and in particular the humor of everyday idiosyncrasy, is central to Rogan’s work. The title, Remnant World, is drawn from a series of small black and white photographs — Other Worlds —that plainly depict overly specialized but generic stores that assert themselves as comprehensive outlets for the consumer or connoisseur. These shops (Smoker’s World, Vacuum World, Popcorn World, etc) offer inelegant declarations of wholeness and suspect grandiosity. As an index, Remnant World registers certain limitations: the fragmented nature of perception and the impossibility of omniscient experience. Literally, it refers to a black and white image of a place to buy cheap carpets.

Rihanna | Rude Boy dir. Melina Matsoukas

Rihanna - Rude Boy

You Are Everywhere | Coachella Music Festival California 2009 Poppy de Villeneuve

Migrant child in Shafter camp, Farm Security Administration. California. Dorothea Lange. Nov, 1938