Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Monroe Gallery at The 2016 AIPAD Photography Show April 13 - 17


Lone Factory Worker, China, 2005
Stephen Wilkes: Lone Worker, China, 2005


Monroe Gallery of Photography is very pleased to be again exhibiting at the AIPAD Photography Show, this year April 13 – 17 in New York at the Park Avenue Amory, 643 Park Avenue. The gallery will be in booth # 104.

Celebrating its 36th year in 2016, The Photography Show features more than 80 of the world’s leading photography art galleries.

Monroe Gall ill be exhibiting specially selected photographs from the gallery's renowned collection of 20th and 21st Century master photojournalists. Among the highlights selected for this year's exhibition are: vintage prints from Spider Martin alongside other important civil rights photographs; a rare selection of never-before-seen vintage prints of photographs taken by Bill Eppridge on the night Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated;  a rare vintage print made from the original negative of the iconic image from World War II by George Silk "An Australian soldier, Private George "Dick" Whittington, is aided by Papuan orderly Raphael Oimbari, near Buna on 25 December 1942";  several large-scale color photographs from Stephen Wilkes’  acclaimed China and Day To Night collections, and an exciting previously unseen large scale photograph of David Bowie taken in New Mexico in 1975 during the filming of “The Man Who Fell To Earth” that is featured in the forthcoming book “Bowie: Photographs by Steve Schapiro” which will be published in April, 2016 by PowerHouse Books, and many other exciting new additions to the gallery’s collection.

Steve Schapiro: David Bowie,  New Mexico, 1975
(“The Man Who Fell To Earth’)

We hope to see you!

Saturday, April 9, 2016

David Bowie and the Photographs of Steve Schapiro


In this previously unpublished photo, David is seen with goggles and bike. Los Angeles, 1974.
In this previously unpublished photo, David is seen with goggles and bike. Los Angeles, 1974
©Steve Schapiro

Via TIME LightBox

Bowie, a new collection of archival photographs by Steve Schapiro, captures the fleeting moments when the mask dropped.

In addition to offering a host of iconic images from the mid-1970s, Bowie, a new collection of archival photographs by Steve Schapiro, captures the fleeting moments when the mask dropped, when the effort it took to create all of this wondrous puffery showed at the seams, when he occasionally made—unbelievable!—fashion blunders. Bowie, it turns out, looked terrible in mandals (a faux pas he made while renting a West Hollywood house previously inhabited by Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe). His ghastly white toes weren’t helped by the addition of high-waisted navy blue trousers paired with purple suspenders and a plaid newsboy’s cap. Read the full article here.

At the AIPAD Photography Show April 13 - 17, Monroe Gallery of Photography will feature an exciting previously unseen large scale photograph of David Bowie taken in New Mexico in 1975 during the filming of “The Man Who Fell To Earth”. The photograph is included in the forthcoming book “Bowie: Photographs by Steve Schapiro” which will be published April 15, 2016 by PowerHouse Books.

Steve Schapiro’s Bowie is published by powerHouse Books and is available now.

Saturday, April 2, 2016

A Portrait of LIFE in 1960s America by Grey Villet


Museum at Bethel Woods

April 2 - December 31, 2016

Don't miss this compelling photography exhibit of LIFE magazine photographer Grey Villet, who traveled America and the world for LIFE magazine like an observant explorer, mapping its emotional contours in the faces and lives of its people. His in-depth, personal studies of the American scene of the 1950s and ’60s illuminated the complex reality of those years with a truth that, in his own words, were "as real as real could get." His images of presidents and revolutionaries, sports heroes, and everyday people struggling for their rights tell an emotional and compelling story of an era that shaped the present. Co Curated by his wife Barbara Villet.

Barbara Villet Bio:
That I ended up being a journalist was probably bred in the bone.  My father was a j reporter   for the old NY World but in time became the Sports Editor for Fox Movietone News in the day when the weekly newsreel was the main source of visual coverage. I didn't expect to follow him, but after   Middlebury and Harvard, I found myself working on the news desk of Radio Free Europe in the middle of the Cold War.  I left that job after the Hungarian Revolution and ended up at Life as a researcher, the only opening for women there was back then. Soon enough, I was on the news desk and it was there in 1958, that I first encountered Grey Villet's work on a school bus drowning in West Virginia. I never forgot it and in l961, when I had finally earned a promotion to editor and a byline--another rarity for women back then, I met him in person in l961 on an assignment I had conceived of as part of a trilogy on Fame, Wealth and Success.  Success ended up as a benchmark essay of l6 pages in Life and is included in a volume called     Great Essays from Life.   We ended up well matched both professionally and personally, and were married the next year. Until Life folded as weekly in l972, we had what Grey described as "a great ride" working together on assignments that carried us throughout the US and abroad . In 1965, when our daughter Ann was borne, I was offered an exclusive contract to produce 3 stories a year for Life with Grey which allowed me to stay at home with Ann until both of us went off on assignment. We took her with us to England and to California when she was very small and later to South Africa when we did the World Library Book. Other books were trade productions: Viking Press picked up our work on a missionary order of nuns which was published as Those Whom God Chooses and after Life folded, I took on an extension of one of our Life essays on a Head Nurse as a book for Doubleday. More freelancing followed and I did pieces for Quest and Atlantic Monthly before taking on another book contract. Called Blood River, it was a study of South Africa in the final days of apartheid and earned a Time Notable and Book of the Year citation as well as a nomination for the Pulitzer. Grey continued to shoot for Time, Sports Illustrated and Newsweek in those years.  It has been, to quote the Stones, a Long Strange Trip, but an amazing one that tools us to 37 countries around the world, mostly for work and sometimes for fun and I have very few regrets or complaints excepting the untimely loss of the great hearted guy who was my life partner and soul mate in 2000 at age 72.  I have since spent most of my energies on preserving and advancing his historic legacy.


Each year, The Museum at Bethel Woods presents new special exhibits that explore the popular culture, politics, art, and social history of the dynamic decade of The Sixties and its legacy.

Museum information, hours, and tickets here.

Grey Villet's photographs will be included in the Monroe Gallery of Photography exhibit, booth #104, during the AIPAD Photography Show April 13 - 17, Park Avenue Armory, New York.