A young girl
takes to an abandoned building for the shade in January of 1999, Mumbai, India
Santa Fe--Monroe Gallery of
Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to announce a major exhibition by internationally
acclaimed American photographer and long-time photojournalist, Joe McNally. The
exhibition will open with a public reception for Joe McNally on Friday, October
3, 5 - 7 PM. The exhibition will continue through November 23. (The exhibit is now featured on www.monroegallery.com; also to be announced is a Google Hangout in September.)
The exhibit features more than 45 photographs from Joe
McNally’s remarkable career that has spanned more than 30 years and included
assignments in 60 countries. Joe was the last staff photographer in the history
of LIFE magazine, sharing a legacy with his heroes and mentors—Carl Mydans,
Alfred Eisenstaedt, Gordon Parks, John Loengard—who forever influenced and
shaped his work. McNally won the first Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for
Journalistic Impact for a LIFE coverage titled, “The Panorama of War.” He has
been honored numerous times by Communication Arts, PDN, Graphis, American
Photo, POY, and The World Press Photo Foundation. His prints are in numerous
collections, most significantly the National Portrait Gallery of the United
States and National September 11 Memorial & Museum.
McNally is often described as a generalist because of his
ability to execute a wide range of assignment work, and was listed at one point
by American Photo as one of the “100 Most Important People in Photography” and
described by the magazine as “perhaps the most versatile photojournalist
working today.” His expansive career has included being an ongoing contributor
to the National Geographic - shooting numerous cover stories and highly
complex, technical features for the past 25 years; a contract photographer for
Sports Illustrated; as well as shooting cover stories for TIME, Newsweek, Fortune,
New York, and The New York Times Sunday Magazine.
McNally’s most well-known series is "Faces of Ground Zero - Portraits of the Heros of September 11th", a collection of 246 Giant
Polaroid portraits shot in the Moby c Studio near Ground Zero in a three-week
period shortly after 9/11. A large group of these historic, compelling,
life-size (9’ x 4’) photos were exhibited in seven cities in 2002, and seen by
almost a million people. Sales of the exhibit book helped raise over $2 million
for the 9/11-relief effort. This collection is considered by many museum and
art professionals to be one of the most significant artistic endeavors to
evolve from the 9/11 tragedy, and examples are included in the exhibit. Some of
McNally’s other renowned photographic series include: “The Future of Flying,”
cover & 32-page story, National Geographic Magazine, December 2003. The
story, on the future of aviation and the first all digital shoot in the history
of that venerable magazine, commemorated the centennial observance of the
Wright Brothers' flight. This issue was a National Magazine Award Finalist and
his coverage was deemed so noteworthy it has been incorporated into the
archives of the Library of Congress.
He regularly writes a popular, irreverent blog about the travails,
tribulations, oddities and very occasional high moments of being a
photographer, and has also authored several noteworthy books on photography,
two of which, The Moment It Clicks and The Hot Shoe Diaries, cracked Amazon’s
Top Ten list of best sellers. While his work notably springs from the
time-honored traditions of magazine journalism, McNally has also adapted to the
internet driven media world, and was recently named as one of the “Top 5 Most
Socially Influential Photographers” by Eye-Fi. His work and his blog are
regularly cited in social media surveys as sources of inspiration and industry
leadership. He is also among the rare breed of photographer who has bridged the
world between photojournalism and advertising, amassing an impressive
commercial and advertising client list including FedEx, Nikon, Epson, Sony,
Land’s End, General Electric, MetLife, USAA, Adidas, ESPN, the Beijing Cultural
Commission, and American Ballet Theater.
A sought-after workshop instructor and lecturer, he has
taught at the Santa Fe Photographic Workshop, the Eddie Adams Workshop, the
National Geographic Society, Smithsonian Institution, the Annenberg Space for
Photography, Rochester Institute of Technology, the Disney Institute, and the
U.S. Department of Defense. He received his bachelor’s and graduate degrees
from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, and
returns there to lecture on a regular basis. Recently, he was named as a Nikon
USA Ambassador, an honor which has a special reverence for him, as he bought
his first Nikon camera in 1973, and for forty years, from the deserts of Africa
to the snows of Siberia, he has seen the world through those cameras.
Monroe Gallery of Photography was founded by Sidney S. Monroe and
Michelle A. Monroe. Building on more than four decades of collective
experience, the gallery specializes in 20th and 21st Century Photojournalism. The gallery also
represents a select group of contemporary and emerging photographers.
Bolshoi Ballet, Moscow, 1997
