Santa Fe, Rétrospective Bill Eppridge

White Barn, New Preston, CT, March 9, 2007 © Bill Eppridge

Via la Lettre de la Photographie

Bill Eppridge is one of the most accomplished photojournalists of the Twentieth Century and has captured some of the most significant moments in American history: he has covered wars, political campaigns, heroin addiction, the arrival of the Beatles in the United States, Vietnam, Woodstock, the summer and winter Olympics, and perhaps the most dramatic moment of his career – the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles.

Born in Buenos Aires, the second of three children, young Bill Eppridge came to the U.S. and grew up in upstate New York near Rochester. In 1960, Eppridge refined his art and his eye at the University of Missouri, where he received his bachelor’s degree in journalism. While at the School of Journalism, Eppridge won a picture competition and first prize brought him to a week-long internship with LIFE magazine.
After his graduation, Eppridge worked for National Geographic, and then, LIFE magazine. With well over 100 assignments, he had already proved his talent by the time he was formally made a member of the exalted Life staff in 1964. His assignments with LIFE magazine marked some very important points in history, beginning with coverage of several wars in the early sixties.

Still later, Eppridge worked on environmental and outdoor stories for LIFE magazine until it ceased publication as a weekly in 1972. He then signed a corporate contract with Time Inc. “I tried all the magazines to see if I liked working for TIME or Fortune. I was there for the start of People.” Eventually in 1977, he joined Sports Illustrated. He describes his work with SI as “Sports with no balls” as he was not fond of shooting baseball, basketball, or football. “I prefer to do something that I’ve never done before”, he remarks. “Rather than specialize, I’m a generalist.”

For the first time, this exhibition presents many of Eppridge’s most important photo essays together, including:

The Beatles:
Bill Eppridge really didn’t know who the Beatles were, but “One morning my boss said, ‘Look, we’ve got a bunch of British musicians coming into town. They’re called the Beatles.’” Eppridge was at John F. Kennedy airport on February 7, 1964 awaiting the arrival of The Beatles. He continued to photograph The Beatles that day, and over the next several days. He was invited to come up to their room at the Plaza Hotel and “stick with them.” He was with them in Central Park and at the Ed Sullivan Show for both the rehearsal and the historic performance. He rode the train to Washington, D.C. with them for the concert at the Washington Coliseum, and photographed their Carnegie Hall performance on February 12, 1964
.
“These were four very fine young gentlemen, and great fun to be around,” Eppridge recalls. After he introduced himself to Ringo, who consulted with John, the group asked what he wanted them to do while being photographed for Life. “I’m not going to ask you to do a thing,” was Eppridge’s reply. “I just want to be there.” An exhibit of Eppridge’s Beatles photographs has been touring since 2001, and was seen by over 2 million people at the Smithsonian Museum.

Mississippi Burning: The James Cheney Funeral:
In late June of 1964, three civil rights workers in Mississippi went missing, kidnapped by Klu Klux Klansmen. One man was black, the other two were white. Their names were James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Bill Eppridge arrived in Neshoba County shortly after the bodies of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were pulled from the muck of an earthen dam on August 4, 1964. There are no pictures of the crime, just the brutal aftermath and the devastating grief and sorrow brought upon a family.

In 1967, eighteen men faced federal charges of civil rights violations in the slayings of Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman. Seven were convicted by an all-white jury, eight were acquitted and three were released after jurors deadlocked. The state of Mississippi prosecuted no one for 38 years. But in 2005—after six years of new reporting on the case by Jerry Mitchell of the Jackson Clarion-Ledger—a sawmill operator named Edgar Ray Killen was indicted on charges of murder.

On June 21, 2005, exactly 41 years after the three men were killed, a racially integrated jury, without clear evidence of Killen’s intent, found him guilty of manslaughter instead. Serving three consecutive 20-year terms, he is the only one of six living suspects to face state charges in the case.

A sign in rear window of car in Philadelphia, Mississippi, 1964

©Bill Eppridge:

Robert F. Kennedy:
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. On June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, he was instructed by his boss to “stay as close as you can to Bobby”. Kennedy assured Eppridge that he would be part of his immediate group, which meant that wherever the Democratic candidate went, Eppridge wouldn’t be far behind. 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. Among the thoughts Eppridge had at that moment was a very loud and clear one: “You are not just a photojournalist, you’re a historian.”


Bill Eppridge
Until November 20, 2011
Monroe Gallery of Photography
112 Don Gaspar
Santa Fe, NM 87501
505.992.0800
Gallery hours are 10 to 5 every day, Monday through Sunday

Bill Eppridge will conduct an exhibition walk-through and gallery talk on Friday, November 4, from 5  to 7 PM.

Links

http://www.monroegallery.com/

Exhibition: Köln: Portraits of Picasso

Picasso parrain de Olivia Clergue, 1967 © Lucien Clergue

Via La Lettre de la Photographie


When Doctor Ludwig founder of the same name museum celebrated his 70th birthday, his friends and Fritz Gruber was among them gave him the centennial portfolio prepared by Lucien Clergue with 15 silver prints that are exhibited today in the Ludwig Museum in Koln.

When he was young Doctor Ludwig did a thesis on Picasso and had since gathered the third largest collection of the artist. In this exhibition presented at the Ludwig Museum until January 15th 2012 Doctor Kerstin Stremmel wants to show that the face of Picasso is as well known as his oeuvre . He was portrayed by the most famous photographers and some of these pictures have become iconic.

Thus the exhibition MeMyselfand photo portraits of Picasso brings together prints from 250 photographers such as Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton,Henri Cartier Bresson, Lee Miller and Man Ray.

The story begins at the start of the XX Th century in the years of Parisian Bohemia and goes on to south of France with incipient celebrity. The work of the curator was not only to find and put together portraits, the exhibition also wants to show the psychological relationships and the links between the artist and the photographers, tensions for some , obvious complicity for others , a stage production here and private moments with close acquaintance .

The exhibition also show the work and personal approach of seven women photographer. The contrast between Lee Miller who photographed him for thirty six years starting summer of 1937, Madame Nora who was about his age and made the most relax pictures of the artist, diagonally opposed to those of Dora Maar.

The Exhibition also show the work of : Rogi André, Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Bill Brandt, Brassaï, René Burri, Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Chim, Lucien Clergue, Jean Cocteau, Denise Colomb, Robert Doisneau, David Douglas Duncan, Yousuf Karsh, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Herbert List, Dora Maar, Mme d’Ora, Willy Maywald, Lee Miller, Gjon Mili, Inge Morath, Arnold Newman, Roberto Otero, Irving Penn, Julia Pirotte, Edward Quinn, Man Ray, Willy Rizzo, Gotthard Schuh, Michel Sima, Horst Tappe et André Villers.

Bernard Perrine
Bernard.Perrine1@orange.fr
MemyselfandI. Portraits of Picasso
Until February 15th 2012
Museum Ludwig
Heinrich-Böll-Platz
50667 Köln
Germany
+49 221 26165

info@museum-ludwig.de

Tuesday-Sunday: 10 AM – 6 PM
MemyselfandI. Portraits of Picasso
Text Pierre Daix, Frederike Mayröcker, Katherine Slusher and Kerstin Stremmel, published by Hatje Cantz

Links

http://www.museum-ludwig.de/

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth: "I went to jail for a good thing, trying to make a difference."

Steve Shapiro: Rev. Shuttlesworth's confrontation with Sheriff Clark at start of Selma March

AP Photo

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth right, escorts Dwight Armstrong, 9, and his brother Floyd, 11, from the Graymont Elementary School in Birmingham, Ala, Sept. 9, 1963. State troopers, on order from the governor, opened the school but turned the African Americans away. 

AP Photo

Seated from left, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963. 

The Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, who was bombed, beaten and repeatedly arrested in the fight for civil rights and hailed by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for his courage and tenacity, has died. He was 89.    Read the New York Times obituary here.

An American Girl In Italy - by David Schonauer

Ruth Orkin: An American Girl in Italy, 1951

The 60th anniverary of the making of a truly iconic photograph was recently celebrated, resulting in numerous news articles and an appearance by the subject of the photograph on the TODAY Show. David Schonauer has written on a variety of topics for Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, Worth, Mademoiselle, Outside, and other publications. He is the former editor in chief of American Photo magazine, and here is his take.

Via The Big Picture

A Journal of the Visual Culture from David Schonauer

 

Photographer Ruth Orkin’s “American Girl in Italy” is probably one of the most widely known and loved images from the 20^th century. Orkin, who died in 1985, took the picture a little more than 50 years ago, on August 21, 1951, in the Piazza della Repubblica in Florence, a day after meeting a 23-year-old American woman who was traveling through Europe alone. Her name was Ninalee Allen, known to her friends by a childhood nickname, “Jinx.” A recent graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, she was spending the summer on a great adventure. Her carefree spirit—as well as her beauty and commanding six-foot height, caught Orkin’s attention. She thought she might take a color picture of Allen near the Arno River, which she could sell to a newspaper for a few dollars. And so the stage was set for a remarkable moment and a remarkable photograph.

The picture has beguiled and confounded the world since it was printed as a poster in the 1970s. It has been seen as a symbol of female powerlessness in a male-dominated world, which is not what Orkin intended. It also has been the subject of debate because Orkin in fact shot it twice—after recording the reaction of the men in the Piazza when Allen walked through, she asked the young woman to walk through again. It was the second entrance that became the famous photo. Did she play too fast and loose with the truth? Does it matter?

I recently wrote about the photograph for the October issue of Smithsonian magazine. (Go here to read my piece.) As part of my research, I went to the best primary source I could find—the American Girl herself. Ninalee Allen is now Ninalee Craig, age 83 and living in Toronto. She is lively, lovely, and very certain that Orkin’s picture reflects the truth of what happened that day. Here is a excerpt of my interview with her.

An Enduring Aftermath: An Interview with Nina Berman, Documentary Photographer

Posted on October 4, 2011 by 10yearsandcounting

Minneapolis curator and arts writer Tricia Khutoretsky interviews photographer Nina Berman for 10 Years + Counting. Nina begun taking photographs 10 years ago, and has since been working on ongoing documentation of America since the invasion of Afghanistan

Photographs are often a glimpse into the past, a way to remember and a way to record. Nina Berman’s award-winning and internationally exhibited documentary photographs however seem to hold a sort of timelessness. Perhaps this is because many of the images she captures are of our country changed by a war that is equally endless. From the legacy left on war veteran’s bodies and minds, to images taken in Afghanistan pre-invasion, or her exploration into America’s troubling ideological landscape… her photographs attempt to understand subjects that she feels personally curious about. That genuine search for deeper insight translates visually in a way that is memorable and provoking. In the following interview, Nina and I converse about the coinciding 10 year anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan and the stories and motivations behind her decade long study of a nation at war.

Full interview here.

David Friend to Chair 2012 World Press Photo Contest

Via World Press Photo
Mon, 10/03/2011 - 13:39

 

World Press Photo is delighted to announce that the jury of the 2012 World Press Photo Contest will be chaired by David Friend, Vanity Fair's editor of creative development. The judging will take place in January-February 2012 in Amsterdam. Friend is chairing an international jury of 19 leading professionals in the field of photojournalism. The full list of judges will be announced later.
Based in New York, David Friend served as Life magazine's director of photography during the 1990s. As a correspondent, he covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Lebanon and elsewhere. As a web editor, he established Life.com and VanityFair.com. In 2008, he co-curated Vanity Fair Portraits, winning the Lucie Award for curator of the year, together with Terence Pepper. David Friend served previously on the World Press Photo jury in 2009.

David Friend reflects on the task of judging the contest: “This year the world has experienced a series of upheavals. The Arab Spring’s mass protests that triggered regime change across the Middle East were made possible, in part, by digital imagery and social media. The devastation and loss brought on by Japan’s earthquake, tsunami and the ongoing ravages of radiation were documented in film and footage that continue to haunt us. The humanitarian crisis in Somalia would be a largely muted grace note were it not for photojournalists revealing the extent of that catastrophe. The telltale signs of a chaotic global economy appear in every news cycle on the fringes of countless stories. And through it all, new technologies have allowed diverse image-makers to express, experiment and expand our perspectives. The coming World Press Photo Contest will doubtless serve to remind us how the still photograph can help focus and anchor us in uncertain times.”

Judging takes place at the World Press Photo office in Amsterdam from 28 January until 9 February 2012. The results of the contest will be announced on 10 February in a press conference at the Amsterdam City Hall and on the foundation’s website.

The 2012 World Press Photo Contest will be open for participants to enter their work from the beginning of December 2011. The deadline for submissions is 12 January 2012. Entries may only be submitted online. In the 2011 contest, a record number of 108,059 images was submitted to the contest. The number of participating photographers was 5,691, representing 125 different nationalities.
In 2011, World Press Photo held its first contest for multimedia production and a second edition of the contest will be held in 2012. Details about the multimedia contest will be announced later this year.
World Press Photo receives support from the Dutch Postcode Lottery and is sponsored worldwide by Canon and TNT.

 

 

About World Press Photo

World Press Photo is committed to supporting and advancing high standards in photojournalism worldwide. We strive to generate wide public interest in and appreciation for the work of photographers and for the free exchange of information. Our activities include organizing an annual contest, exhibitions, the stimulation of photojournalism through educational programs, and creating greater visibility for press photography through a variety of publications.

World Press Photo is run as an independent, non-profit organization with its office in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where World Press Photo was founded in 1955.

For further information, please contact:

Ms. Sasja de Bie at World Press Photo, press@worldpressphoto.org or tel. +31(0)20 676 6096.

The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the W.M. Hunt Collection

Via The George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film


All eyes will be on George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film this fall as it presents one the largest exhibitions in its history — The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the W.M. Hunt Collection. More than 500 photographs by the masters of the medium will be on view Oct. 1, 2011 through Feb. 19, 2012. The Eastman House is dedicating all of its primary gallery space to this exhibition.

Earlier this year The New Yorker referred to the collector as “the legendary” W.M. Hunt. He is a renowned curator and dealer who has been collecting photographs for 40 years. A self-described “champion of photography,” he is well-known for his “eye” and sense of humor. Hunt describes the collection as “magical, heart-stopping images of people in which the eyes cannot be seen.”

The photographs of The Unseen Eye have a common theme — the gaze of the subject is averted, the face obscured, or the eyes firmly closed. The images evoke a wide range of emotions and are characterized, by what, at first glance, the subject conceals rather than what the camera reveals.
Eastman House will present the first major U.S. exhibition of the collection, from which Aperture is simultaneously publishing a book titled The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious, to be released in October. Highlights from the collection have previously been seen in Europe at the Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles, France; the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland; and Foam-Fotografiemuseum in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

“This collection and exhibition represent a very personal journey for me,” Hunt said. “It is my conscious made manifest. These are all photos of me. But they’re all of you, too. They are evocative, whimsical, representational, many things. I love the mystery of it. You have to react, to come to the image, to make up your own story.”

The collector’s first purchase was an Imogen Cunningham photograph, in which the subject’s eyes are veiled and unseen by the camera. This now extensive collection of haunting photographs reflects Hunt’s surreal vision and includes Weegee's multi-imaged portrait of Andy Warhol in sunglasses, the breakthrough news photo of Ruth Snyder in the electric chair in 1928, and Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs of artist Alice Neel shortly before her death. Vintage and contemporary black and white images join photographs in vibrant colors to create a picture of humanity from birth to death, from the banal to the transcendent.

The featured works range from daguerreotype to digital by photographers such as Berenice Abbot, Richard Avedon, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Annie Leibovitz, Robert Mapplethorpe, Irving Penn, Man Ray, Edward Steichen, Edward Weston, and Joel-Peter Witkin, as well as 19^th-century work from Nadar, Alinari, and Roger Fenton. The whole range of photographic processes, as well as different formats, is featured via the 500 photographs, selected from the 1,500 images in the collection. The most recent acquisition is a triptych of film stills from Jean-Luc Godard’s “Le Petit Soldat.” The largest is a hand-colored self-portrait by Dutch artist Teun Hocks and the smallest is a photo-booth self-portrait by the Surrealist André Breton. The oldest object is a gravure of the Shroud of Turin by Secondo Pio.

The exhibition also includes work by contemporary photo-based artists — some of whom have not yet been shown at Eastman House — such as Mitch Epstein, Steven Klein, and Kiki Smith. Hunt is a long-time supporter of emerging talent. He selected a portrait by Carrie Levy as the cover image of his book’s U.S. version. As a dealer he introduced talents such as Elinor Carucci, Luc Delahaye, Michael Flomen, Bohnchang Koo, Luis Mallo, Erwin Olaf, and Paolo Ventura, and as a writer he has worked with Bill Armstrong, Mark Beard, Manuel Geerinck, and Jeff Sheng — all of whom are represented by work in the collection and exhibition.

The Unseen Eye exhibition features little wall text, but it does include video commentaries by Hunt, with personal responses to these images gathered over many years and his insights into the psychology of collecting.

Eastman House will feature a small accompanying exhibition of “unseen eyes” selected by Hunt from the museum’s unparalleled permanent collection. These range from Dorothea Lange’s 1933 photograph “White Angel Bread Line,” to an unattributed 1850 daguerreotype of a blind man holding a cat. A related online exhibition will include hundreds of vernacular photographs —snapshots — from Hunt’s collection.

Hunt has had a long relationship with Eastman House as well as with photography. “George Eastman House is excited about this special collaboration with this insightful collector,” said Dr. Alison Nordström, Eastman House curator of photographs and director of exhibitions. “We have always understood ourselves as a collection of collections, beginning with Kodak’s Eastman Historical Collection and the collections of Gabriel Cromer, Alden Scott Boyer, Alvin Langdon Coburn, and Edward Steichen. The idiosyncratic eye of an individual private collector offers a rich and varied complement to our institutional holdings.”

W.M. Hunt and Featured Artists in Person

Eastman House will welcome W.M. Hunt for a public lecture about The Unseen Eye at 6 p.m. Friday, Oct. 21, in the Dryden Theatre, followed by a booksigning and reception for museum members. The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious (Aperture, $75) will be sold on site at the Eastman House Store following the lecture. Admission will be $12 adults, $10 seniors, and $5 students.

The next day, from 9:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 22, Hunt and artists whose work is featured in The Unseen Eye will present a panel discussion of their work next door to Eastman House at The Hutchison, 930 East Ave. Following the talk, the artists will sign copies of Hunt's book and photo books of their own. Included with museum admission: $12 adults, $10 seniors, and $5 students. Tickets can be purchased that day at Eastman House or The Hutchison.

GRIFFIN MUSEUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY 2011 FOCUS AWARDS

 

Via The Griffin Museum of Photography

This year’s event is being held on Boston’s historic waterfront on Saturday, October 1 at 7:00 p.m. at the Exchange Conference Center. The master of ceremonies is photographer Lou Jones.

The Griffin Museum created the annual awards in 2006 to recognize individuals who have made critical contributions to the promotion of photography. They are one of the few to recognize the work of those who have been instrumental in building greater awareness of the photographic arts in the general public.
The Focus Awards are presented in three categories: The Life Time Achievement Award, given to an individual whose ongoing commitment to photography has created far reaching impact; the Rising Star award given to an emerging force that the photographic community is watching with great enthusiasm; and the New England Beacon, recognizing a local individual whose work brings prominence to the local photographic scene. This year’s recipients are:

Life Time Achievement – Dr. Alison Nordström, Curator of Photographs and Director of Exhibitions at George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Rising Star – Eileen Gittins, Founder, President, and CEO of Blurb; and

New England Beacon – Susan Mosser, Special Services VP of the New England Camera Club Council

“Each year the Focus Award selection process is a humbling experience and an exciting challenge. As always, we’re very fortunate to be in such wonderful company,” said Paula Tognarelli, executive director, Griffin Museum of Photography. “Moving this event to Boston is a significant milestone for the Museum and coupled with the new satellite gallery at A Street Frames in the South End, it provides new opportunities and further expands our reach.”

EXHIBITION OPENING TONIGHT

© Bill Eppridge: The Chaney family as they depart for the burial of James Chaney, Meridian, Mississippi, August 7, 1964

Exhibition Celebrates 2011 Lucie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Photojournalism Recipient Bill Eppridge. Join us at tonight's opening reception from 5 to 7 PM at 112 Don Gaspar Avenue.


More here.

View available Bill Eppridge prints here.

Steve McQueen by John Dominis

Steve McQueen swinging from rope at gym, 1963 © John Dominis

Via La Lettre de la Photographie
September 30, 2011

It was 1963 when Life Magazine sent its photographer, John Dominis, to cover Steve McQueen in his Palm Springs home. Since the end of the 1950’s, he had become one of America’s most popular actors, and at 33, was about to celebrate his greates success with the release of The Great Escape.

During their three weeks together, John Dominis took some of the star’s most beautiful pictures. We discover the “King of Cool”, his family life, his villa, and his love of speed, beautiful cars and motorcycle races.

He shared this passion with Dominis, creating a friendly bond between the two men. Never actually posing for the camera, Steve McQueen is graceful and incomparably photogenic. Nude by the pool, in a tuxedo or returning from a dirty car race, he exudes a rare elegance.

Actor Steve McQueen walking naked outdoors in his backyard, Hollywood, 1963 © John Dominis

Steve McQueen, the King of Cool
Until december 11, 2011
La Galerie de l’Instant
46, rue de Poitou
75003 Paris
Tél. 01.44.54.94.09

Links

http://www.lagaleriedelinstant.com

Actor Steve McQueen and wife taking sulphur bath at home © John Dominis