LEE FRIEDLANDER: AMERICA BY CAR/THE NEW CARS 1964

Montana, 2008. Gelatin-Silver Print. Image: 15 x 15 in. / 38 x 38 cmSheet: 20 x 16 in. / 50.8 x 40.6 cm. (©Lee Friedlander/Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco).


Lee Friedlander's "America By Car/The New Cars 1964" is at the Timothy Taylor Gallery, London until 1 October 2011. Below are several article and reviews.


Wayne Ford's Blog

Sean O'Hagen in the Guardian's The Observer

Charles Darwant in The Independant

Rachel Spence in the Financial Times


Press release :

Timothy Taylor Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of recent work by the influential and critically acclaimed American photographer Lee Friedlander, on display for the first time in the UK. This will be Friedlanderʼs first solo exhibition in London since his 1976 show at the Photographersʼ Gallery.

Lee Friedlander: America By Car charts numerous journeys made by the photographer during the last decade across most of the fifty US states. Shot entirely from the interiors of rental cars, typically from the driver’s seat, Friedlander makes use of side and rearview mirrors, windscreens, and side windows as framing devices for a total of 192 images.

In America By Car, Friedlander uses the quintessential icons of US culture - cars and the open road - to explore contemporary America, revisiting in the process many of  the places and strategies that he has incorporated into his practice throughout his career.

Elements from car interiors such as steering wheels and dashboards, as well as leather or wood panel trim, provide an index of their own; these differing qualities of finish and contemporaneity often appear strikingly at odds with the terrains in which they are located. Presented in the square-crop format that characterizes Friedlander’s more recent work, these images complicate and invigorate the most bereft of rural scenes. His desire to collapse and flatten out the three dimensional world parallels the means of cubist painting and recalls the collaging techniques of pop art.

In a career spanning over fifty years, Friedlander is renowned for his recordings of everyday phenomena in works that he describes as ‘American social landscapes’. First coming to prominence after exhibiting alongside fellow photographers Garry Winogrand and Diane Arbus in John Szarkowski’s New Documents exhibition at MoMA, New York in 1967, Friedlander has been instrumental in the medium of photography’s acceptance as a significant 20th century art form.

Lee Friedlander: America By Car was shown in its entirety at The Whitney Museum of American Art, 4 September – 28 November 2010 and was organized by Elisabeth Sussman, the Whitney’s Curator of Photography.

Lee Friedlander was born in Aberdeen, Washington in 1934 and was introduced to photography at the age of fourteen. After shooting album cover portraits of Jazz musicians in New York and New Orleans, he began freelance commercial work in the late 1950s.

Among his numerous awards are a MacArthur Foundation Award, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and three Guggenheim Fellowships. Friedlander  has published over twenty books beginning with the groundbreaking Self Portraits in1970, and including American Musicians (1976), Lee Friedlander at work (2002), and Sticks and Stones: Architectural America (2004). Friedlander was the subject of a major traveling exhibition organized by MoMA in 2005, as well as being the 25th Hasselblad Award Winner the same year

NEWLY DISCOVERED ERNST HAAS COLOR PHOTOGRAPHS

Ernst Haas: America, 1978

A new book of recently discovered "new" color photographs by Ernst Haas has generated a lot of interest.

Ernst Haas is unquestionably one of the best-known, most prolific and most published photographers of the twentieth century.

Ernst Haas: New York, 1980

He is most associated with a vibrant colour photography which, for decades, was much in demand by the illustrated press. This colour work, published in the most influential magazines in Europe and America, also fed a constant stream of books, and these too enjoyed great popularity. But although his colour work earned him fame around the world, in recent decades it has often been derided by critics and curators as “overly commercial”, and too easily accessible – or in the language of curators, not sufficiently “serious”. As a result, his reputation has suffered in comparison with a younger generation of colour photographers, notably Eggleston, Shore and Meyerowitz.

Paradoxically, however, there was also a side of his work that was almost entirely hidden from view. Parallel to his commissioned work Haas constantly made images for his own interest, and these pictures show an entirely different aspect of Haas’s sensibility: they are far more edgy, loose, complex and ambiguous – in short, far more radical than the work which earned him fame. Haas never printed these pictures in his lifetime, nor did he exhibit them, probably believing that they would not be understood or appreciated. Nonetheless, these works are of great complexity, and rival (and sometimes surpass) anything done at the time by his fellow photographers

Exhibition at London's Atlas Gallery September 14 - October 22

Prints available from Monroe Gallery of Photography

LABOR DAY

Carl Mydans: Demonstrators in a Works Progress Administration (WPA) Strike, 1937 (Time Inc.)

WPA picketers protesting against nationwide layoffs and reduction of hourly wages of WPA workers in 1937 due to reduced funding from Congress.


Related: The History of Labor Day

Art Market Watch: The Market For Ansel Adams' "Moonrise, Hernandez"

 Ansel AdamsMoonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico
1941
gelatin silver print, mounted, ca. 14 x 19 in.
$609,600
Sotheby's New York
Oct. 17, 2006


Via Artnet.com

 by Daniel Grant

Driving back to Santa Fe, N.M., on Oct. 31, 1941, after what had been a disappointing day for picture-taking, photographer Ansel Adams (1902-84) brought his car to an abrupt stop, yelling to his companions to bring him his tripod, exposure meter and other photographic equipment so that he could take what would become one of the most famous images in fine art photography, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico.

Continue to artnet.com for everything you need to know about Moonrise.

“This image encapsulates his career,”  Christopher Mahoney, senior vice-president in Sotheby’s photographs department, said, “and we can see in it his changing ideas and esthetic style.”

Wounded Photojournalist Joao Silva: ‘This Is What I Do. This Is All That I Know’

Via New York Times Lens


Photographs by Joao Silva are on exhibit at the Visa Pour l’Image photojournalism festival in Perpignan, France. Mr. Silva spoke at the Bronx Documentary Center on Aug. 2, during his first visit to New York since he was injured in Afghanistan. The following week, he went into surgery. He is doing well.

Full post with slide show here at New York Times Lens.

Premier International Festival of Photojournalism Visa pour l'Image Opens

Visa pour l'Image is the premier International Festival of Photojournalism held in Perpignan, France. This festival is a unique event where you can join thousands of kindred spirits who share a love and passion for photography. View the greatest photojournalist work from around the world in exhibitions across the city. Experience the evening screenings in the dramatic open air medieval enclosure of the Campo Santo. Take part in symposiums and conferences and meet the foremost photo agencies and manufacturers of photographic related equipment. Explore the web site for full details.

Contact information here. 

SCENES FROM A SHOW (FACES OF GROUND ZERO)

Via Joe McNally's Blog:

We set up the show on Tuesday night. When you need to get something done, it’s always good to have FDNY on your side. Louie Cacchioli rallied the guys, and over 25 firefighters showed up and worked tirelessly from 9pm through till 3am to get this in place for the Wednesday opening press reception. Pushing these frames around, many of which are close to 300 lbs., more than once I was like, “Why’d I have to shoot ‘em so big?”

I was just humbled, really, by the selfless way these guys, many of whom came from way out of town, just pitched in and got this done. My thanks also go out to Related, the owners of the building, which worked with me to allow this to happen. If we had to actually hire shippers and handlers to move it around, it simply would never get done because of the enormous cost. Louie, seen below, has been the face of the show since the book came out in 2002, and he ended up on the cover. I always tell people he’s firefighting’s answer to Robert DeNiro. He’s always been there to help.

It also would never have gotten done, were it not for the tireless efforts of Ellen Price, who has worked with the collection for almost 10 years. Her labors are done behind the scenes, organizing, cataloging, making sure it has been stored properly (24,000 lbs. of photography in museum quality, monitored storage!) and working with the 911 Museum to arrange for its’ eventual home. Below, Ellen works with the guys.

So it got done. It will be on floor of the Time Warner Center, free and open to the public, from 10am to 9pm every day until Sept. 12. After that, we’ll see what happens. More on that tk.

We had lots of press at the opening, and a bunch of subjects from the original project also graciously came. Below, Bill Butler speaks eloquently about the events of 911.

More than 75,000 people a day transit the TW Center. Which means that close to a million people will pass by these over the next couple of weeks. Hopefully, they’ll stop for a moment, and remember.

Interviews: Watch on You Tube

More; http://www.facesofgroundzero.com

Joe McNally prints

2011 Lucie Awards: Bill Eppridge is Honoree for Achivement in Photojournalism

The Lucie Awards is the annual gala ceremony honoring the greatest achievements in photography. The photography community from countries around the globe will pay tribute to the most outstanding photography achievements presented at the Gala Awards ceremony. Each year, the Advisory Board nominates deserving individuals across a variety of categories who will be honored during the Lucie Awards ceremony. Once the nominations have been received, the votes are tallied and an honoree in each category is identified.

The 2011 Honoree for Achievement in Photojournalism is Bill Eppridge.

Bill Eppridge already owned a Kodak Brownie Star Flash 620 camera when one day an itinerant photographer with a pony stopped by his house in Richmond, Virginia and asked to photograph Bill and his younger sister. Eppridge was only eight but it was then that he decided he wanted to be a photographer - he could have a big camera, travel, meet lots of interesting people, and have his own pony. That was just the hint of a lifelong career in photojournalism covering some of the most important people and events in history.

Born in Buenos Aires in 1938, Eppridge spent his early childhood in Virginia, and Tennessee. The family moved to Delaware when he was 14. A self-taught photographer, he began shooting for his school newspaper and yearbook, and then sports for the Wilmington Star newspaper. Eppridge was only fifteen, but this early exposure to a real newsroom gave him a taste for journalism.

Eppridge grew up during World War II looking at Life magazine. He was entranced by the work of their war photographers, and later influenced by Gordon Parks and Leonard McCombe. Their pictures looked effortless, as if they just happened in front of the camera and the photographers grabbed them. It was that style of photography that fascinated him –an entire story was told with one significant image.

In 1960 Eppridge graduated from the University of Missouri, Journalism program headed by Clif Edom who had begun the famous Missouri Photojournalism Workshop with Roy Stryker of the Farm Security Administration. While still a student, Eppridge was accepted into that workshop twice during his college years. He got a career boost when his photograph of a white horse against a tornadic sky won first prize for pictorial in the NPPA Pictures of the Year competition in 1959. He was twice named NPPA College Photographer of the Year and awarded internships at Life magazine.


Eppridge’s first professional assignment after graduation was a nine-month documentary trip around the world for National Geographic magazine. After that, he began shooting for Life. During the year 1964 while on a contract basis with the magazine, Eppridge was there when the Beatles first stepped off the plane in the United States, and chronicled their effect on this country. He spent several days photographing a young Barbra Streisand on the verge of stardom, covered Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan who was to sing at his first Newport Folk Festival, and immediately afterward he was sent to Mississippi where the bodies of slain civil rights workers Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner had been found buried in an earthen dam. Eppridge stayed for several days and photographed the solemn funeral of James Chaney. He soon earned a place on the masthead of Life.

As a Life staff photographer for most of the 1960s, until that magazine folded in 1972, Eppridge worked alongside many of the legends he had admired while growing up – Alfred Eisenstadt, Gordon Parks, Carl Mydans, Ralph Morse, and Larry Burrows.

Eppridge’s unique style of photojournalism brought him history-making assignments - he covered Latin American revolutions, the Vietnam war, and Woodstock. Eppridge was the only photographer admitted into Marilyn Lovell’s home as her husband, Jim, orbited the moon in the crippled Apollo 13 spacecraft. His landmark photographic essay on drug use, “Needle Park- Heroin Addiction” won the National Headliner’s Award. He was given unprecedented access to the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution in Leningrad and photographed the entire Baltic fleet as it was assembled in the Neva River, something that no westerner had ever seen.

One of Eppridge’s most memorable and poignant essays was his coverage of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, first in 1966, and then again on the road with RFK during the 1968 presidential campaign. His photograph of the wounded Senator on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel kitchen seconds after he was shot has been described as a modern Pieta.

After Life ceased publication in 1972, Eppridge joined Sports Illustrated where he continued to use his photojournalist talent to cover both Winter and Summer Olympics; America’s Cup sailing; the environmental disasters of the Mount St. Helen’s volcanic eruption, and the devastating Exxon Valdez oil spill and aftermath. His sporting essays and wildlife photography took him around the world to the Arctic, Africa, Asia, and the Alps.

Eppridge has received some of the highest honors his profession bestows – the NPPA Joseph A. Sprague Award, and The Missouri School of Journalism Medal of Honor. He has been a respected force in training a new generation of photojournalists for more than twenty years at both the Missouri Photojournalism Workshop, and the Eddie Adams Photography Workshop. His photographs have been exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum of American History; The High Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Visa Pour L’Image, and in galleries and museums around the world.

Eppridge currently lives in Western Connecticut with his wife Adrienne and his cat "Bear". After nearly six decades as a photojournalist he is, even now, never without his camera, and is currently photographing several projects including an essay about the new American farmers - but he still doesn’t own a pony.

Several of Bill Eppridge's historic photographs are featured in the exhibition "History's Big Picture" through September 25. A major solo exhibition celebrating Eppridge's Lucie Award will feature many of his most significan photo essays, and will open at Monroe Gallery of Photography September 30 and continue through November 20, 2011.

An Evening with White House Photographer Eric Draper

Eric Draper: Emma Booker Elementary School. September 11, 2001

Eric Draper, a former Albuquerque Tribune and Associated Press photographer, who lives in Rio Rancho, was selected by President-Elect George Bush to be the White House photographer in 2000. For the next eight years, Draper had a front row seat to history: during Oval Office meetings, aboard Air Force One, and even at intimate Christmas celebrations.

Eric Draper

What: The Society of Professional Journalists, Rio Grande Chapter and Citadel Broadcasting present An Evening with Former White House Photographer Eric Draper

Date: Thursday, Sept. 1, 2011

Time: 6 pm – 9 pm

Where: Central New Mexico Community College’s Smith Brasher Hall (SW Corner of Coal and University — FREE Parking)

Reception and Silent Auction: 6 pm – 7 pm

Program: 7 pm – 8:45 pm

Tickets: The Rio Grande Chapter has a limited number of free tickets available to SPJ Rio Grande Chapter members.

Citadel Broadcasting also will be giving away some tickets through special radio and online broadcast promotions.

 Eric Draper's fine-art photographs are represented by Monroe Gallery of Photography, and two are featured in the exhibion "History's Big Picture" through September 25, 2011.

"Fields of Vision" series features 20th-century photographers Gordon Parks, Arthur Rothstein, and Carl Mydans

 

Carl Mydans: Cafe in Pikesville, Tennessee, 1936 (for the Farm Security Administration) c.Time Inc

via artdaily.com

WASHINGTON, D.C.- The more than 172,000 black-and-white and 1,600 color images that comprise the Farm Security Administration Office of War Information (FSA/OWI) Collection at the Library of Congress offer a detailed portrait of life in the United States from the years of the Great Depression through World War II.

Selected images from the works of FSA/OWI photographers Gordon Parks (1912-2006), Arthur Rothstein (1915-1985) and Carl Mydans (1907-2004) are now featured in the Library of Congress series titled "Fields of Vision."

These new titles join the first six volumes in the series, which feature the work of FSA/OWI photographers Russell Lee (1903-1987), Ben Shahn (1898-1969), Marion Post Wolcott (1910-1990), Esther Bubley (1921-1998), Jack Delano (1914-1997) and John Vachon (1914-1975).

Edited by Amy Pastan, an independent editor and book packager, and published by D Giles Ltd. in association with the Library of Congress, each volume in the series includes an introduction to the work of the featured FSA photographer by a leading author.

Headed by Roy L. Stryker, the government’s documentary project employed many relatively unknown names who later became some of the 20th century’s best-known photographers.

Gordon Parks, the only black FSA photographer, was "a Renaissance man," writes Charles Johnson in his introduction to the volume. Parks was a writer, musician, poet, composer, photojournalist and motion-picture director, with many "firsts" to his credit. "The first black director in Hollywood, he opened the door for young auteurs, such as Spike Lee and John Singleton," writes Johnson.

The youngest FSA photographer, Arthur Rothstein was "the truest child of the New Deal," writes George Packer in his introductory essay. Fresh out of Columbia University with a belief in the government’s social improvement efforts, Rothstein planned to earn money for medical school. But after joining the government project, he changed his career path. By the age of 25 he was a staff photographer for Look magazine and eventually became its director of photography. He joined Parade magazine in 1972 as director of photography and remained there until his death in 1985.

A graduate of Boston University’s School of Journalism, Carl Mydans was an experienced photographer with credits in Time magazine when he joined the documentary project in 1930. He later moved to the new magazine Life, and on to a celebrated career as a war photographer. Says author Annie Proulx, "He identified himself as a photojournalist and his interest in the massive global events of the time became his life."

Each 63-page, soft-cover volume in the series is available for $12.95 in bookstores throughout the U.S. and the UK, from D Giles Ltd. and the Library of Congress Sales Shop, Washington, D.C., 20540-4985. Credit-card orders are taken at (888) 682-3557, or shop on the Internet at www.loc.gov/shop/. Reproduction numbers are provided in the books so that reprints may be ordered through the Library’s Photoduplication Service.

Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution. The Library seeks to spark imagination and creativity and to further human understanding and wisdom by providing access to knowledge through its magnificent collections, programs and exhibitions.