VALENTINE'S DAY 2012

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Vivian Maier: New York, 1954

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Grey Villet: Richard and Mildred Loving laughing and watching television in their living room,

King and Queen County, Virginia, 1965

 HBO: The Loving Story Tuesday, February 14 at 9 PM (check local listings)


The New York Times: Scenes From a Marriage That Segregationists Tried to Break Up

Time Light Box: The Loving Story: Loving v. Virginia and the Photographs of Grey Villet

Washington Post: Virginia’s Caroline County, ‘symbolic of Main Street USA’

Slide show:
About 6 percent of Caroline Middle School’s population is multiracial, a statistic that would not be possible without Mildred and Richard Loving, a couple from the school’s county whose Supreme Court case 45 years ago paved the way for mixed-race marriages

Mother Jones: The Loving Story: How One Interracial Couple Changed a Nation

Entertainment Weekly:  A Moving Tale Of Love And Civil Rights

Grey Villet: The Lovings




Related: Happy Valentine's Day 2011

On Ellis Island, Examining Those Who Arrived Before and After

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Stephen Wilkes: Isolation ward, curved corridor, Island 3

Via The New York Times

Michael Nagle for The New York Times

The Ellis Island Immigration Museum is expanding its scope to include all immigrants,

not just who arrived on the island.

Officials of Ellis Island estimate that as many as one in three Americans can trace their ancestry to immigrants who landed there from overseas.

Now, the officials are focusing on the other roughly 200 million newcomers who arrived in the United States before Ellis Island opened its doors or after it stopped becoming a portal for immigrants. The national historic site in New York Harbor is halfway through a transformation into a more inclusive National Museum of Immigration.

“The Ellis story is a finite story; American immigration is continuing,” said David Luchsinger, the National Park Service superintendent who oversees the island and the Statue of Liberty.
And Stephen A. Briganti, president of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation, said, “If we didn’t tell the current story we would be obsolete in 25 years.”

As part of a $20 million project privately financed by the foundation, 20,000 square feet, comprised of a former railroad ticket office and offices for Park Service staff, are being converted into a new museum that encompasses the story of immigration from the 16th century through today. The first phase, which covers 1550 to 1892, when Ellis Island began operating as an immigration station, opened informally last fall. The second phase, which focuses on the period after 1924—, when strict quotas on foreigners were imposed and the island was used primarily as a detention center—, and especially on the influx following World War II, is scheduled to open about a year from now with a formal ceremony to celebrate the new museum.

Full article here.

Your rights as a photographer

Know Your Rights: Photographers
Via ACLU

When in public spaces where you are lawfully present you have the right to photograph anything that is in plain view. That includes pictures of federal buildings, transportation facilities, and police. Such photography is a form of public oversight over the government and is important in a free society.

When you are on private property, the property owner may set rules about the taking of photographs. If you disobey the property owner’s rules, they can order you off their property (and have you arrested for trespassing if you do not comply).

Police officers may not generally confiscate or demand to view your photographs or video without a warrant. If you are arrested, the contents of your phone may be scrutinized by the police, although their constitutional power to do so remains unsettled. In addition, it is possible that courts may approve the seizure of a camera in some circumstances if police have a reasonable, good-faith belief that it contains evidence of a crime by someone other than the police themselves (it is unsettled whether they still need a warrant to view them).

Police may not delete your photographs or video under any circumstances.

Police officers may legitimately order citizens to cease activities that are truly interfering with legitimate law enforcement operations. Professional officers, however, realize that such operations are subject to public scrutiny, including by citizens photographing them.

Note that the right to photograph does not give you a right to break any other laws. For example, if you are trespassing to take photographs.

Full post here.

So long as we have enough people in this country willing to fight for their rights, we'll be called a democracy.

-- ACLU Founder Roger Baldwin


Related: Freedom of the Press?

The 2012 World Press Photo of the Year

Samuel Aranda—The New York Times via Reuters

A woman holds a wounded relative in her arms, inside a mosque used as a field hospital by demonstrators against the rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, during clashes in Sanaa, Yemen on 15 October 2011.

Today the winners of the prestigious 55th annual World Press Photo competition were announced in Amsterdam naming Samuel Aranda from Spain as the World Press Photo of the Year 2011.


"They called me yesterday around 7pm, and told me that I had won the World Press Photo," Samuel Aranda tells BJP in his first interview of the day. "At that exact moment, I was checking my bank account because I didn't know how I was going to pay my rent this month. I was crunching numbers to make it work."

 World Press Photo: "It was about the people," says jury chair Aidan Sullivan



Jury chair Aidan Sullivan speaks about the winning image by Spanish photographer Samuel Aranda

World Press Photo: Does the winning image reference Michelangelo's Pietà?


Analysis: Yet, in spite of the strong islamist connotations of the full veil, I cannot help but be reminded of the Christian iconography of the Pieta in which the Virgin Mary holds the body of Jesus after his death


View the entire collection of winning images from the 55th World Press Photo Contest



By the numbers: 5, 247 Photographers, 124 Nationalities, 101, 254 pictures. Three hundred and fifty images by 57 photographers of 24 nationalities were awarded prizes in nine categories


World Press Photo: What was missing for this year's entries?  (For one, Occupy was not represented in this year's entries)



"My photo history class (at art history department) is going to hear all about the (ab)use of the pieta in their next class." "OK, I'm just going to say it: It might be time for an alternative to World Press Photo. Bc you know, I mean, come on!" http://twitter.com/jmcolberg

The most unforgettable images of the year / Best photographs of 2011

50 stunning Olympic moments No13: Tommie Smith and John Carlos Salute

<><> Smith and Carlos, the 200m gold and bronze medallists, don black gloves and give the Black Power salute on the podium in Mexico in 1968 Photo by John Dominis ©Time Inc.

The Guardian has been publishing a series of memorable Olympic moments as a lead up to the 2012 London Olympics.

"On 17 October 2005 a 20ft-high statue was unveiled at San Jose State University showing their former students Tommie Smith and John Carlos frozen, fists aloft, as they had stood exactly 37 years earlier on the Olympic podium in Mexico City. "Tommie Smith and John Carlos stood for justice, dignity, equality and peace," reads the inscription. "Hereby the university and associated students commemorate their legacy."

Two years later Smith published his autobiography. In 2008 the pair were given the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the ESPYs, something akin to an American Sports Personality of the Year awards. Carlos's own autobiography followed last October. This, now, is their life, full of speaking engagements and interviews, publicity and publication, applause and acclaim.

In the moments before the medal ceremony in Mexico City, Carlos, Smith – as of a few moments earlier the 200 metres world record-holder – and the Australian silver-medallist Peter Norman sat in a room the athletes called "the dungeon", deep in the bowels of the Olympic Stadium. As they prepared, they discussed what was about to happen. One of the things mentioned was the possibility of them being murdered on the spot.

"I remember telling Mr Smith: 'Remember when we get out there, we've been trained as runners to listen to the gun,'" Carlos has said. "'So when we get out there and do what we do, if the hammer hits that bullet, hit the deck. Don't be just a duck on the table for them to just shoot at.'"

Full article here.

On Exhibit: Grey Villet's Photographs of The Lovings

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 Grey Villet

 Mildred and Richard Loving, King and Queen County, Virginia in April 1965

Concurrent with the opening of Vivian Maier: Discovered, we are pleased to exhibit selected photographs Grey Villet shot of the Richard and Mildred Loving for Life magazine in 1965. "Grey Villet: The Lovings" will continue through March 18, 2012.

Grey Villet took over 2,400 frames of the Lovings for Life in 1965 but the magazine did not run the story until March 18, 1966, when the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the lower court ruling and the Lovings’ case headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The tone of the piece, as well as the selected images, was cool and neutral; the three published images that include both Mildred and Richard are extremely chaste and do not capture the emotional bond between them as so many of Villet’s other images do. Life, like many other media outlets, did not want to address the topic of interracial sex directly for fear of offending popular opinion.

The Loving Story, a documentary film, tells the story of Richard and Mildred Loving to examine the drama, the history, and the current state of interracial marriage and tolerance in the United States. It's World Premiere was at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in April 2011, and the On-air premiere of The Loving Story will be on HBO, February 14, Valentine’s Day, 2012.

A selection of Grey Villet's photographs, including several of The Lovings, will also be on exhibit during the AIPAD Photography Show in New York March 28 - April 1, at Monroe Gallery Booth #419.

Related:

NPR: The Loving War: How Black History Is Both Black And White

Richmond Times Dispatch: HBO documentary examines Lovings' struggle

Life of Marital Bliss (Segregation Laws Aside)

Grey Villet: The Lovings

"I always think that if I had had any money and any decent equipment, I would never have taken that picture"

Neil Leifer:  Alan Ameche TouchdownN.Y. Giants vs. Baltimore Colts, NFL Championship Game
Yankee Stadium, Bronx, N.Y., December 28, 1958

"There is a picture of Alan Ameche scoring the winning touchdown in what has been referred to as "the greatest game ever played". It was the famous sudden death between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants, which coincidentally took place on my 16th birthday, December 28th 1958. When Alan Ameche scored the winning touchdown there were so many Colt’s fans, (mainly drunken Colt’s fans) on the field that the security had their hands full just making sure that they could keep those people off the field. They weren’t worried about someone like me that they had seen every week. So I ended up exactly ten yards in front of Ameche as he scored the winning touchdown. He came right at me and I got that picture, which today, is certainly one of my best-known pictures. I always think that if I had had any money and any decent equipment, I would never have taken that picture because, if I would have had a long lens, a 135mm or a 180mm, I would have tried to fill the frame with Ameche going in for the winning touchdown. Instead I got the wide shot that takes in the whole ambiance of Yankee Stadium that afternoon which is so much better than any picture I would have taken years later when I was an established pro." -- Neil Leifer

Bonus: Live Blog of Today's Super Bowl Commercials

VIVIAN MAIER: DISCOVERED

Pasatiempo, Friday, February 3, 2011

Pasatiempo is the in-print, nationally-acclaimed, arts and culture magazine published by The New Mexican. "Vivian Maier Discovered" is the feature article in today's edition, click to enlarge:.

© 2012 The New Mexican

Santa Fe woke up to a surprise snowfall this morning, and for a while travel was difficult. But, the sun is out and all roads are clear now. Please join us tonight from 5 - 7 as we celebrate the opening of the exhibition "Vivian Maier: Discovered". (And enjoy the skiing later!)

EYE ON THE STREET

Photographer Vivian Maier, showing at Monroe Gallery, was almost never discovered

By Kate McGraw

The Albuquerque Journal North

February 3, 2012

For the Journal

     An international sensation is coming to Santa Fe.

In the past couple of years, the world of photography has been shaken by the discovery of a cache of negatives and undeveloped film rolls shot by a woman named Vivian Maier. The discoverer, a photographer and collector named John Maloof who lives in Chicago, found the trove in a couple of trunks he bought at a 2008 public auction of items from a storage unit.

Curious, he began printing the negatives and realized that they were what is called “street photography;” that is, pictures taken on the Chicago streets in the 1950s and ’60s. But these weren’t just good photographs, Maloof decided, they were great.

Finding her name on a photo-lab envelope, Maloof Googled Vivian Maier and discovered that she was ill. By the time he made up his mind to try to reach her in 2009, she had died at age 83.

He began working with curators and photographic experts, all of whom were as excited by his find as he was. In the past 18 months, Maloof has spread the word about this extraordinary photographer. Her photographs have been shown in the United States and Europe, and published in a book about her and her work, “Vivian Maier: Street Photography” (PowerHouse Books, 2011). An exhibit of 35 photos of her photos opens today at Monroe Gallery of Photography on Don Gaspar Avenue.

The story has spread and been told in The New York Times, National Public Radio, La Republica, TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Independent, the Guardian, Vanity Fair, CBS News, Smithsonian magazine and elsewhere. “Maier is posthumously being recognized as one of the greatest American street photographers of the 20th
 century,” gallery owner Sidney Monroe said in a written release about the show.

“The story is really fascinating,” Monroe said in a separate interview. “Little is known about her. She was born in New York in 1926 and she worked as a nanny in Chicago all her adult life. When at the end of her life she was very poor, some of the children she’d taken care of banded together and took care of her. She never talked to anybody about her photography and never showed it to anyone.

“John Maloof has spent four years with some of the best photography curators doing research and cataloguing her work, to preserve her legacy. It’s become his full-time avocation. Her work is not only good but shockingly good,” Monroe said. The 35 prints being shown in Santa Fe are a selection by Maloof and Monroe, some of them also seen in the book. Copies of the book will be available at the gallery.

Reportedly, Maier was a quiet, almost aloof person who often was seen on the streets of Chicago with a Rolleiflex camera around her neck. People posed for her willingly, apparently never asking themselves what she was doing with the pictures. She managed to amass more than 2,000 rolls of film, 3,000 prints and 100,000 negatives that she shared with virtually no one during her lifetime.

Her black and white photographs form indelible images of the architecture and mid-century street life of Chicago. She rarely took more than one frame of an image and seemed to concentrate on children, women, the elderly and the indigent.

There are also a series of striking self-portraits and a series of prints from her many travels to Egypt, Bangkok, Italy and the American Southwest.

“Maier’s subject,” Monroe said in his description of her work, “is the interaction of the individual and the city in the 1950s through 1970s. She scouts out solitaries of all ages and frames them in poignant juxtapositions. Her pictures have the tug of effecting urgency.”

Monroe obviously is as infatuated with Maier’s story and work as Maloof and the other curators. “It is hard enough to find this quality and quantity of fresh and moving images in a trained photographer who has benefited from schooling and a community of fellow artists,” the veteran photography enthusiast wrote. “It is astounding to find it in someone with no formal training and no network of peers.

“Yet Vivian Maier is all of these things,” he added. “The photographs are amazing, both for the breadth of the work and for the high quality of the humorous, moving, beautiful and raw images of all facets of city life in America’s post-war golden age.”

John Maloof

Maloof is almost as interesting as the woman whose legacy he has been fighting to rescue. A native Chicagoan, he is a collector and writer who has become a street photographer himself in response to working with Maier’s photographs.

“I guess you can call me a street photographer. I always have my camera with me to document interesting moments or stories I come across in my life. I’m not a commercial photographer and not interested in becoming one. Photography is a personal obsession of mine,” he wrote in a blog on his own website.
 

Maloof also created vivianmaier. com, where he has written about his work on her behalf, always calling her by her first name. After so much work reviving her imagery, it appears, he seems to feel a kinship.

“I acquired Vivian’s negatives while at a furniture and antique auction while researching a history book I was co-authoring on Chicago’s Northwest Side. From what I know, the auction house acquired her belongings from her storage locker that was sold off due to delinquent payments. I didn’t know what ‘street photography’ was when I purchased them,” he blogged.

“It took me days to look through all of her work. It inspired me to pick up photography myself. Little by little, as I progressed as a photographer, I would revisit Vivian’s negatives and I would ‘see’ more in her work,” he wrote. “I bought her same camera and took to the same streets, [only] to realize how difficult it was to make images of her caliber. I discovered the eye she had for photography through my own practice. Needless to say, I am attached to her work.

“After some researching, I have only little information about Vivian. Central Camera (a 110-year-old camera shop in Chicago) encountered Vivian from time to time when she would purchase film while out on the Chicago streets. From what they knew of her, they say she was a very ‘keep your distance from me’ type of person but was also outspoken. She loved foreign films and didn’t care much for American films.

“Some of her photos have pictures of children and oftentimes it was near a beach. I later found out she was a nanny for a family on the North Side whose children these most likely were. One of her obituaries states that she lived in Oak Park, a close Chicago suburb, but I later found that she lived in the Rogers Park neighborhood.

“Out of the more than 100,000 negatives I have in the collection, about 20,000-30,000 negatives were still in rolls, undeveloped from the 1960s-1970s. I have been successfully developing these rolls. I must say, it’s very exciting for me. Most of her negatives that were developed in sleeves have the date and location penciled in French (she had poor penmanship),” he added.

“I found her name written with pencil on a photo-lab envelope. I decided to Google her about a year after I purchased these only to find her obituary placed the day before my search. She passed only a couple of days before that inquiry on her. I wanted to meet her in person long before I found her obituary but the auction house had stated she was ill, so I didn’t want to bother her. So many questions would have been answered if I had,” he wrote sadly.

“Over the course of scanning her work I’ve discovered that Vivian traveled the world in 1959. She visited and photographed places like Egypt, Bangkok, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, France, Italy, Indonesia ... the list goes on. Something also notable is that she traveled alone.”
 

Maloof added that he wanted to thank everyone for their support and encouraging emails.

“There’s a lot of weight on my shoulders and I hope I’m doing the right thing for Vivian’s legacy,” he said.

    If you go

WHAT: “Vivian Maier: Discovered,” posthumous exhibit of street photography
WHEN: Today through April 22; reception 5 to 7 p.m. today
WHERE: Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar
CONTACT: (505) 992-0800; monroegallery.com  

 

COURTESY OF MONROE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY

This September 1956 photograph shows a woman standing next to a bus. Titled “Sept., 1956, New York, N.Y.,” it was taken by street photographer Vivian Maier.

COURTESY OF MONROE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY

This untitled photograph of a man carrying a newspaper was taken by Vivian Maier in Chicago.

“New York, Undated” is a gelatin silver print from a photograph by Vivian Maier.

“June 7, 1956, Chicago” is a gelatin silver print from a photograph by Vivian Maier.

This Aug. 11, 1954, photograph of a boy and a horse was taken by Vivian Maier in New York City.

The gallery is open daily 10 to 5.


Related:

EYE ON THE STREET: Photographer Vivian Maier, showing at Monroe Gallery, was almost never discovered

Everyday People:  Vivian Maier was essentially unknown throughout her lifetime

Save The Date: AIPAD Photography Show Opening Night March 28

The Association of International Photography Art Dealers

invites you to preview The AIPAD Photography Show New York at the

AIPAD Opening Night Gala
to benefit inMotion

Wednesday, March 28, 2012
from 5 to 9 in the evening

The AIPAD Photography Show New York
Park Avenue Armory • Park Avenue at 67th Street

5 to 9 p.m. • 250 USD
Includes entry for one person, one four-day Show pass, and one copy of the AIPAD catalogue

7 to 9 p.m. • 100 USD
Includes entry for one person and one, one-day Show pass

To purchase tickets online, please visit gala.aipad.com

Since 1993, inMotion has confronted the challenging needs of families in crisis by providing free legal services to low-income, underserved, abused women and their children. InMotion has helped thousands of women in New York City free themselves from abusive relationships, stay in their homes and win the financial support to which they—and their children—are legally entitled. Learn more at:

inmotiononline.org

 

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS?

Police during the Occupy Wall Street 'Day of Action.'

Adrian Kinloch

Via CapitalNew York

By Joe Pompeo

12:23 pm Feb. 1, 2012

The New York Times fired off another letter to the Police Department today on behalf of 13 New York-based news organizations about police treatment of the press over the last several months.

The first letter, sent back in November during the height of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, resulted in a meeting with NYPD brass and "stepped up" efforts on the part of the department's public information office to train officers in working with the media.

But in today's letter, a copy of which was obtained by Capital, the news organizations, which also include the New York Post, Daily News, Associated Press, Reuters, Dow Jones, Bloomberg News, the National Press Photographers Association, several local TV affiliates and others, say problems have persisted.

"There have been other reports of police officers using a variety of tactics ranging from inappropriate orders directed at some joumalists to physical interference with others, who were covering newsworthy sites and events," the letter reads. "Indeed, as recently as this Monday it was reported ... that at another OWS demonstration, police 'officers blocked the lens of a newspaper photographer attempting to document the arrests.'"

Read the full post HERE.

Related:

Report: American Press Freedom Declines Due to Occupy Arrests

"You got that credential you’re wearing from us, and we can take it away from you.”