BOB DYLAN AT 70

Bill Eppridge: Bob Dylan with Pete Seeger, Newport Folk Festival, 1964

Don Hunstein: Bob Dylan and Suze Rotolo, New York, 1963

Elliot Landy: Bob Dylan, Infrared, Woodstock, 1968

Elliot Landy: Bob Dylan, Woodstock, (Nashville Skyline), 1969

Ken Regan: Bob Dylan, 1975

Ken Regan: Bob Dylan and Bruce Sprinsteen meet for the first time, backstage, New Haven, CT, 1975

Ken Regan: Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg at Jack Kerouac's grave, Lowell, MA, 1975

For 50 years, Bob Dylan has inspired musicians and songwriters, politicians and protesters, presidents and popes. Robert Allen Zimmerman was born in St. Mary's Hospital on May 24, 1941, in Duluth, Minnesota.  Explaining his change of name in a 2004 interview, Dylan remarked: "You're born, you know, the wrong names, wrong parents. I mean, that happens. You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free".

Guardian UK slide show

Remembering ICP's Founder Cornell Capa today on the anniversary of his death

Cornell Capa by Alfred Eisenstaedt

"The idea that photography can't be personal is madness!...I see something, it goes through my eye, brain, heart, guts. I choose the subject. What could be more personal than that?" -- Cornell Capa (April 10, 1918 – May 23, 2008)

Via Magnum Photos

Accomplished Magnum photographer Cornell Capa passed away early on the morning of May 23rd at home in New York.


Cornell Capa was born Cornell Friedmann to a Jewish family in Budapest. In 1936 he moved to Paris, where his brother Andre (Robert Capa) was working as a photojournalist. He worked as his brother's printer until 1937, then moved to New York to join the new Pix photo agency. In 1938 he began working in the Life darkroom. Soon his first photo-story - on the New York World's Fair - was published in Picture Post.

In 1946, after serving in the US Air Force, Cornell became a Life staff photographer. After his brother's death in 1954, he joined Magnum, and when David 'Chim' Seymour died in Suez in 1956 Capa took over as president of Magnum, a post he held until 1960.

Capa made an empathetic, pioneering study of mentally retarded children in 1954, and covered other social issues, such as old age in America. He also explored his own religious tradition. While working for Life, Capa made the first of several Latin American trips. These continued through the 1970s and culminated in three books, among them Farewell to Eden (1964), a study of the destruction of indigenous Amazon cultures.

Capa covered the electoral campaigns of John and Robert Kennedy, Adlai Stevenson and Nelson Rockefeller, among others. His 1969 book, New Breed on Wall Street, was a landmark study of a generation of ruthless young entrepreneurs keen on making money and spending it fast.

In 1974 Capa founded New York City's influential International Center of Photography, to which for many years he dedicated much of his considerable energy as its director.

The Art Market: Copyright or Wrong?

Via The Financial Times

By Georgina Adam
Published: May 20 2011 22:23


Copyright infringement is a hot issue today with Britain poised for a radical shake-up of its law on the subject. In the art market – and in the law courts – it is already squarely on the agenda as more artists incorporate “appropriation” (read: copying) into their practice. Photographers, in particular, are protesting and, in a recent high-profile case, both Richard Prince (king of appropriation) and his gallery Gagosian were found guilty of violating photographer Patrick Cariou’s rights. Prince made collages using Cariou’s images of Jamaican Rastafarians but barely changed them. An appeal is pending.

Matters went the other way in another case just settled. The European court in The Hague has thrown out a suit brought by the French luxury goods group LVMH against Nadia Plesner, a Dutch art student. In her painting “Darfurnica”, Plesner showed a starving African child clutching a swanky Louis Vuitton “Audra” handbag. Inspired by Picasso’s “Guernica”, the work is designed to draw attention to the conflict in Darfur and western indifference to it. It was put on sale in a Danish gallery for €67,000.

Vuitton accused Plesner of copyright infringement and won the initial case against her in January. She was fined almost €500,000 for continuing to display the painting. Vuitton had previously stopped Plesner showing a similar image on T-shirts and posters. But this time the artist fought back and the court has reversed the decision, ruling that the artist’s freedom of expression outweighed the importance of Vuitton’s protection of property. Plesner doesn’t have to pay the fine, the picture can be exhibited publicly and Vuitton has to pay part of her costs. “We [artists] have won back our freedom to make reference to the modern society we live in,” said Plesner. Her painting is currently on display at the small Herning Museum of Contemporary Art in Denmark. Because of the increased public interest, the show has been extended to June 19.

Related: APPROPRIATION: PHOTOGRAPHY, ART, AND "STEALING"

Freedom Riders museum opens in Montgomery, Alabama

Paul Schutzer: Freedom Riders Julia Aaron & David Dennis sitting on board interstate bus as they and 25 others are escorted by 2 National Guardsmen holding bayonets, on way from Montgomery, AL to Jackson, MS, May, 1961

The Associated Press

Friday, May 20, 2011
4:43 a.m.

Montgomery's former Greyhound Bus Station is reopening as a museum honoring the Freedom Riders on the 50th anniversary of the day they were attacked in the capital city.

The Alabama Historical Commission has prepared the museum in downtown Montgomery and says several of the original Freedom Riders, including Georgia Rep. John Lewis, are scheduled to attend the dedication at 10 a.m. Friday. (Full schedule here.)

The Freedom Riders were trying to integrate Southern bus stations when they arrived in Montgomery on May 20, 1961. They were beaten by an angry white mob because no law enforcement officers were on hand.

The new museum is a few blocks from some of Montgomery's other civil rights attractions, including the Rosa Parks Library, the Civil Rights Memorial and the Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church.



----On the 50th anniversary of a night when a savage mob trapped Riders and others in a church in Montgomery, Alabama -- with no guarantee that they would not torch the church and everyone inside -- LIFE.com looks back at one of the most terrifying, and pivotal, moments

END OF WORLD MAY 21?

Steve Schapiro: The Worst is Yet to Come, New York, c. 1968

US preacher warns end of the world is nigh: 21 May, around 6pm, to be precise

Steve Schapiro: Supermarket Protests, New Jersey, 1963

Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925 in Omaha, Nebraska

Gordon Parks: Malcolm X Addressing Black Muslim Rally in Chicago, 1963

"May 19th is the date one of the most influential and greatest African Americans in history was born, El Haaj Malik El-Shabazz, known to us as Malcolm X.

Today marks what would be the civil rights activist's 86th birthday. He was many things to many people, but he was nothing short of legendary. He is credited with pushing for democracy in modern Black America, spreading Islam in black communities and boosting the morale of African Americans.

He once said he wanted 'to bring about the complete independence of people of African descent here in the western hemisphere...and bring about the freedom of these people by any means necessary.'"

-- The Oficial Malcolm X Website

Bob Gomel: Black Muslim leader Malcolm X photographing Cassius Clay, Miami, 1964







The Man with a Camera: A Night with Bill Eppridge

Bill Eppridge runs alongside a car carrying Robert Kennedy

 © Burton Berinksy.

Fairfield Museum and History Center
Thursday, May 19 7-9:00 pm

$8; Members and Students, $5
To register in advance, call 203-259-1598.

Take a march through time as former Life magazine photographer Bill Eppridge shares stories about his illustrious career spanning more than five decades. Eppridge’s iconic images are a testament to the importance of photojournalism in documenting history and range from the Civil Rights movement to the powerful image of a dying Robert F. Kennedy cradled in the arms of a busboy. His stories will inspire young and old along with a new generation of photographers.



At 8:32 Sunday Morning, May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens Erupted

Bill Eppridge: Mt. St. Helen's Survivors, July, 1980




Shaken by an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale, the north face of this tall symmetrical mountain collapsed in a massive rock debris avalanche. In a few moments this slab of rock and ice slammed into Spirit Lake, crossed a ridge 1,300 feet high, and roared 14 miles down the Toutle River.


The avalanche rapidly released pressurized gases within the volcano. A tremendous lateral explosion ripped through the avalanche and developed into a turbulent, stone-filled wind that swept over ridges and toppled trees. Nearly 150 square miles of forest was blown over or left dead and standing.

At the same time a mushroom-shaped column of ash rose thousands of feet skyward and drifted downwind, turning day into night as dark, gray ash fell over eastern Washington and beyond. Wet, cement-like slurries of rock and mud scoured all sides of the volcano. Searing flows of pumice poured from the crater. The eruption lasted 9 hours, but Mount St. Helens and the surrounding landscape were dramatically changed within moments.

A vast, gray landscape lay where once the forested slopes of Mount St. Helens grew. In 1982 the President and Congress created the 110,000-acre National Volcanic Monument for research, recreation, and education. Inside the Monument, the environment is left to respond naturally to the disturbance.
--Mt. St. Helens National Volcanic Monument

Museum Exhibit Surveys Relationship of Painting to Photography

Jackie, 1964.

Acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen, 20 x 16 inches.

The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. Founding Collection,

Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc.

© 2010 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

 

Shared Intelligence: American Painting and the Photograph

May 20, 2011 - September 11, 2011
The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum
Curators: Jonathan Weinberg and Barbara Buhler Lynes



Shared Intelligence will be the first major museum exhibition to survey the fraught but highly productive relationship of painting to photography in 20th-Century American Art. It brings together approximately 75 photographs and paintings by such artists as Robert Bechtle, Chuck Close, Thomas Eakins, Sherrie Levine, Georgia O’Keeffe, Cindy Sherman, Charles Sheeler, Ben Shahn, Edward Steichen, and Alfred Stieglitz for whom the two mediums were essential to their practices.


In opposition to Modernist critics such as Clement Greenberg and John Szarkowski, who have tried to establish the autonomy of painting and photography, a crucial theme of this exhibition is the way in which the two mediums have always intersected and spilled into each other. The camera has been used repeatedly to reinvigorate painting, even as photography has been frequently enriched by a dialogue with painting.

Whereas in the beginning of the 20th Century photographers felt obligated to justify their use of the camera as a means of expression, today the question is no longer, can photography be the equal of painting but rather has the photograph, and photo-based images, supplanted painting’s position in the hierarchy of the art world. Certainly it is nearly impossible to imagine a contemporary artist whose work is untouched by the camera, if only as a means of reproduction. And yet the photograph’s role in modern art goes far beyond reproduction or even as a source of subject matter. Photographic seeing, the way the lens freezes, flattens, enlarges and crops the world conditions all visual representations. Above all there is no way of escaping the photographic archive, the camera’s service to the vast legal, scientific and economic systems of knowledge that categorize and regulates modern existence itself.

Central to the exhibition will be the role of the crop and the close up in the modernist figurative tradition. O’Keeffe’s early work cannot be separated from the photographic practice of her husband, Alfred Stieglitz and the other photographers he represented. Her use of the close up in her paintings, while not literally based on particular photographs, responded to and influenced the photographs of Stieglitz and of Paul Strand. Certainly Stieglitz and his collaborator, Edward Steichen, were profoundly influenced by contemporary painting and collage (Steichen began his career as a painter).

The exhibition will pair paintings and photographs in which the visual relationship is both compelling and intrinsic to the creative process. How did Ben Shahn translate his photographs of a store window into a painting of the same subject? What elements did David Hockney take from his photographs of pools and swimmers in order to create a painting of a boy diving into the water? How does Chuck Close obsessively grid out and copy his source material so that in the end the process itself becomes an essential part of the work’s meaning? The aggregate result of the exhibit will be to refute the idea that painting from a photograph is some sort of failure of imagination or technique—rather the two mediums enrich each other. Ultimately, the exhibition will emphasize the role of the artist as picture maker, rather than as either painter or photographer.

Museum information and tickets here.

MAY 17, 1954: BROWN vs BOARD OF EDUCATION DECIDED

Linda Brown (L), the 10 years old, who was refused admission to white elementary school, and her 6-yr-old sister Terry Lynn walking along railroad tracks to bus which will take them to segregated Monroe Elementary School.

Carl Iwasaki's assignment for LIFE magazine was to photograph the Brown Sisters starting school during the time of the Brown vs. Board of Education trial. This essay ultimately was one of Iwasaki's most poignant and significant. The remarkable photograph of Linda Brown and her younger sister walking to school is one of the more iconic photographs representing the early civil rights struggles of the 1950s. Recently, Iwasaki, now 87,  remarked about this photo, "I distinctly remember tagging along with Linda and her sister on their 20-minute walk to school. I spent two days on the assignment and recall that it seemed curious that there was virtually no other photo coverage of the Brown family. I had a hunch as I worked that I was covering a history-making story."

In this landmark court case, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren delivered the unanimous ruling that State-sanctioned segregation of public schools was a violation of the 14th Amendment and was therefore unconstitutional. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the unanimous (9–0) decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal."

This historic decision marked the end of the "separate but equal" precedent set by the Supreme Court nearly 60 years earlier and served as a catalyst for expanding the civil rights movement during the decade of the 1950s and paved the way for significant opportunities for African Americans in our society—especially for equal justice, fairness and education.


Japanese-American Carl Iwasaki took up photography as a middle school student and began receiving assignments for the student newspaper and yearbook as he entered high school. His development, though, was interrupted when he and his family were forced into a prison camp in Wyoming by the War Relocation Authority. This arm of the government was designed to protect American soil during WWII from potentially dangerous Japanese infiltrators and locked thousands of people up for no other reason than their race.

While the experience was not a pleasant one, it did put Iwasaki in line for his first commission. Upon his release, in 1943, he was hired to take photographs for the WRA, chronicling life inside the camps and the relief experienced upon release. Working from Denver, he took over 1300 photographs for the project and gained enough on-the-job training to pursue a full-time photography career after the war. Iwasaki worked for Life, Time and Sports Illustrated, often drawn to stories about the marginalized and disenfranchised; his photos of the civil rights movement are some of the most affecting.