Thursday, May 3, 2012



May 3, 2012

Dear Attorney General Eric Holder:

 The First Amendment has come under assault on the streets of America. Since the Occupy Wall
Street movement began, police have arrested dozens of journalists and activists simply for
attempting to document political protests in public spaces. While individual cases may not fall
under the Justice Department’s jurisdiction, the undersigned groups see this suppression of
speech as a national problem that deserves your full attention.


The alarming number of arrests is an unfortunate and unwarranted byproduct of otherwise
positive changes. A new type of activism is taking hold around the world and here in the U.S.:
People with smartphones, cameras and Internet connections have been empowered with the
means to report on public events. These developments have also created an urgent need for
organizations such as ours to defend this new breed of activists and journalists and protect their
right to record.

Freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of access to information are vital whether
you’re a credentialed journalist, a protester or just a bystander with a camera. In the digital age,
these freedoms mean that we all have the right to create and share information using all manner
of devices and lawful means.

In this new environment, we must guard these rights and protect the networks that give so many
the means to connect and voice their political beliefs. The First Amendment’s protections must
extend to everyone.

The right to record is an essential component of our rights at a time when so many of those
witnessing public protests carry networked, camera-ready devices such as smartphones.

Continuous access to the open Internet and social media — over both wired and wireless
networks — is also essential.
We the undersigned call on authorities at the local, state and federal level to stop their assault on
people attempting to document protests and other events unfolding in public spaces. We must
protect everyone’s right to record.


Sincerely,

Access
American Civil Liberties Union
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Free Press
National Press Photographers Association
New America Foundation
Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press
Reporters Without Borders
Witness

OPENING NIGHT: STEPHEN WILKES - DAY TO NIGHT



On April 27, 2012, Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, opened a one man show featuring photographer Stephen Wilkes' series of Day to Night images, Ten very large framed prints occupied the entire gallery in this first one man show of Stephen’s latest work.












Hance Partners/Image Craft, under the direction of master printer Richard Jackson, collaborated with Stephen to produce the prints said to be some of his most stunning images ever.

Hance Partners/Image Craft produces these magnificint images up to 80 inches wide, and also creates a complex four stage mounting and framing process to complete these works of art.

For more info on the images, please see the Hance Partners/Image Craft blog at:
imcraft.wordpress.com/2011/08/23/stephen-wilkes-ny-day-to...

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

World Press Freedom Day 2012

About World Press Freedom Day
Via UNESCO World Press Freedom Day

Every year, May 3rd is a date which celebrates the fundamental principles of press freedom; to evaluate press freedom around the world, to defend the media from attacks on their independence and to pay tribute to journalists who have lost their lives in the exercise of their profession.

3 May was proclaimed World Press Freedom Day the UN General Assembly in 1993 following a Recommendation adopted at the twenty-sixth session of UNESCO's General Conference in 1991.
It serves as an occasion to inform citizens of violations of press freedom - a reminder that in dozens of countries around the world, publications are censored, fined, suspended and closed down, while journalists, editors and publishers are harassed, attacked, detained and even murdered.
It is a date to encourage and develop initiatives in favour of press freedom, and to assess the state of press freedom worldwide.

It serves as a reminder to governments of the need to respect their commitment to press freedom and is also a day of reflection among media professionals about issues of press freedom and professional ethics. Just as importantly, World Press Freedom Day is a day of support for media which are targets for the restraint, or abolition, of press freedom. It is also a day of remembrance for those journalists who lost their lives in the exercise of their profession.


Exhibit: "People Get Ready: The Struggle for Human Rights"
Monroe Gallery of Photogrphy, June 22 - September 22, 2012


 




Tuesday, May 1, 2012

MAY 1 AND DOROTHY DAY

<>Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker newspaper, picketing against the Atomic Bomb, New York, 1959
<>
Vivian Cherry: Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker newspaper, picketing against the Atomic Bomb, New York, 1959

May 1 marks the 79th anniversary of Dorothy Day’s great achievement: a movement whose vision of activist faith couldn’t be farther from the moralizing of the religious right that has seemed to define Christianity’s incursion on politics since the 1980s. The Catholic Worker, which Day founded with Peter Maurin, a French immigrant, was — and remains — a philosophy, a social initiative, a way of life. Its understanding of personal responsibility maintains not that we all must rely on ourselves, but rather that we are all beholden to better the lives of the less fortunate. On May 1, 1933, during the height of the Great Depression, Day took to Union Square handing out the first copies of her newspaper, also called The Catholic Worker, which delivered the message of compassion and justice at the cost of one penny; the price has never gone up. 

A Different Intersection of Church and Politics   Via The New York Times



PROTESTING: Loren Hart, a member of the Catholic Worker Movement, on Thursday.

Forthcoming Exhibition: People Get Ready: The Struggle For Human Rights
Monroe Gallery of Photography
June 22 - September 2

Monday, April 30, 2012

1 World Trade Center becomes NY's tallest building today

<>World Trade Center and Washington Square Arch, New York, 1998
<>
Carolyn Schaefer: World Trade Center and Washington Square Arch, New York, 1998


On Monday, April 30, 2012, at approximately 2:00 p.m., the Port Authority will mark a major milestone in the construction of One World Trade Center with the installation of steel columns that will make the skyscraper the tallest building in New York. When the columns are put in place, the building will officially surpass the height of the Empire State Building, which currently is the tallest structure in New York.


An inside look of construction on the 91st Floor of One WTC

"Cowboys of the sky.” The New York Times Magazine featured a series of images by Damon Winter, who spent five days in July, 2011 with the ironworkers who are rebuilding the Manhattan skyline atop 1 World Trade Center


The Empire State Building, at left, became the city’s second tallest building on Monday afternoon, surpassed by the unfinished Freedom Tower at One World Trade Center, at right.
Ron Antonelli for the New York Daily News

Friday, April 27, 2012

OPENING RECEPTION TONIGHT, 5 - 7: STEPHEN WILKES - DAY TO NIGHT




Santa Fe--Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to present "Day To Night", an exhibition of large-scale color photographs (up to 50 x 80 inches) by leading contemporary photographer Stephen Wilkes. The exhibition opens with a public reception with Stephen Wilkes from 5 - 7 PM tonight, Friday, April 27. The exhibition continues through June 16. 

More.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day is April 29!


 logo


Via Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day
What is Pinhole Day?

Anyone, anywhere in the world, who makes a pinhole photograph on the last Sunday in April, can scan it and upload it to this website where it will become part of the annual Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day celebration's online gallery.

The next pinhole day is April 29, 2012

Locate a workshop near you.

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day is an international event created to promote and celebrate the art of pinhole photography.

On this unique day, we encourage people throughout the world
  • to take some time off from the increasingly technological world we live in and to participate in the simple act of making a pinhole photograph.
  • to share their visions and help spread the unusual beauty of this historical photographic process.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

VIVIAN MAIER: Deceased April 21, 2009; Exhibit Closes Today



Via The Obit Patrol

....John Maloof set out to learn more about Vivian Maier. His first Google searches had fizzled, but in April 2009, he spotted her name scrawled on the lab envelope of a roll of developed film. He tried again.

This time, he found an obituary in the Chicago Tribune. "Oh, my God," he said.

Vivian Maier had died just days earlier.

"Vivian Maier, proud native of France and Chicago resident for the last 50 years died peacefully. ... A free and kindred spirit who magically touched the lives of all who knew her. Always ready to give her advice, opinion or a helping hand. Movie critic and photographer extraordinaire ..."

Her 83 years on earth, summed up in 96 words. But one sentence stood out: "Second mother to John, Lane and Matthew." Maloof wondered. Perhaps she was their stepmother?

Maloof called the Tribune, but the newspaper's leads turned out to be dead ends.

Then came one of those serendipitous moments: As he was filing loose negatives and about to throw out a shoe box that had been stuffed in the larger box, he spotted an address in north suburban Highland Park.

Bingo. A starting point.


 And, as they say, the rest is History. Today, Sunday, Aprl 22, 2012 is the final day of VIVIAN MAIER: DISCOVERED.  The gallery will be open from 10 to 5.

Friday, April 20, 2012

STEPHEN WILKES: DAY TO NIGHT








 
 

Coney Island, Day To Night

Santa Fe--Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to present "Day To Night", an exhibition of large-scale color photographs (up to 50 x 80 inches) by leading contemporary photographer Stephen Wilkes. The exhibition opens with a public reception with Stephen Wilkes from 5 - 7 PM on Friday, April 27. The exhibition continues through June 16. 

For more than two decades Stephen Wilkes has been widely recognized for his fine art, editorial, and commercial photography. With numerous awards and honors, as well as five major exhibitions in the last five years, Wilkes has made an impression on the world of photography. His most recent series features vibrant photographs of Times Square, Park Avenue, Coney Island, and Central Park, among other iconic New York locations, and capture, in a single frame, the transition from “Day to Night”. Using digital composites of images of the same site taken over a period of up to 15 hours, the photographs have a time-traveling quality, with the hustle and bustle in the afternoon sun giving way to the glow of city lights in darkening, cloud-streaked skies.

 "Anything one can imagine one can create. Over the last several years, photographic technology has evolved to a point where anything is possible. I imagined changing time in a single photograph. I began to explore this fascination with time in a new series of photographs called: “Day to Night”. Photographing from one camera angle continuously for up to 15 hours, capturing the fleeting moments throughout the day and night. A select group of these images are then digitally blended into one photograph, capturing the changing of time within a single frame."

"Day to Night embodies a combination of my favorite things to photograph; documentary street photography melded with epic cityscapes. The work is a personal reflection of my deep love for New York. As this series has evolved, I discovered that the photographs began to highlight a form of emergent behavior within the daily life of the city. Studying the communication between pedestrians on sidewalks, cars and cabs on the street, these individual elements become a complex life form as they flow together to create the chaotic harmony that is Manhattan."

"Henri Cartier Bresson once said, “Photography is the recognition of a rhythm in the world of real things.” I am forever fascinated by the rhythm that is New York, the city’s relentless energy from “Day to Night”'.--Stephen Wilkes

Selected photographs from the Day To Night series were exhibited at 2011 Art Basel Miami, and just recently at the 2012 AIPAD Photography Show in New York to widespread acclaim. This exhibition will be the first time the full collection has been exhibited together.

 Photography has been Stephen’s passion since age 12, when his fascination with science led him to take photographs through a microscope. He began working on his own at age 15, attended Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications, graduating in 1980. In 1982, Wilkes opened his own studio in Manhattan.

 “Ever since I took my first pictures, photography has always been the joy of discovery for me,” says Wilkes. “The excitement not only lies with what I see and how I see it, but mostly when someone looks at the finished photograph and feels the same emotions I felt when I took the picture. There is something sacred about the right moment. The frame where all the energy comes together and, in one instant, a story is told.”

Wilkes' photographs are in the permanent collection of The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Dow Jones & Company, New York City; The Jewish Museum, New York City; and in numerous important private collections throughout the world. His work has graced the covers of numerous international publications, including Sports Illustrated, Fortune, Vanity Fair, The New York Times Magazine, Life Magazine, and Time Magazine.

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

PHOTOGRAPHY MARKET APRIL, 2012



ArtMarketInsight [Apr 2012
 Via ArtPrice
 

Photographs [Apr 12]

Sotheby's photography sale on 6 April last year (2011) was particularly successful, generating a sales revenue of $4.5 million (excluding fees) and 82% of the works sold. Two days later (8 April), its rival Christie’s generated nearly as much ($4.2m) from a photography sale, and then on 9 April 2011, Phillips de Pury & Company ended the week with a massive photography sale (259 lots, 90% sold) that generated $4.6m. Together the three leading auction houses generated $13.3m from their New York Photography sales in April 2011. A year later, this figure has been revised downward by $1m primarily due to a sharp decline at Sotheby's, whose unsold ratio rose from 18% to 31%. The other two auctioneers maintained their sales figures with $4.2m at Phillips de Pury & Company on 4 April 2012 (19% unsold) and no less than $5.38m at Christie's on 5 April 2012 (19% unsold).

The Sotheby's total would not have been so low had it not failed to sell its star lot: a box containing 10 photographs of Diane ARBUS, each numbered as one of a limited series of 50. These photographs, taken by Neil SELKIRK in the early 1970s (Diane Arbus died in 1971) were estimated at between $400,000 and $600,000. And yet the most famous pictures of this limited edition can fetch $80,000 at auctions, as we saw with Identical twins acquired in April 2010 at Phillips de Pury & Company. The same subject, printed during the artist’s lifetime and signed by the artist, fetches between $200,000 to $400,000 on average! If the classic favourites such as Ansel Easton ADAMS, William Henry Fox TALBOT, Robert FRANK, Irving PENN and Robert MAPPLETHORPE sold without much trouble, more contemporary signatures have not yet caught up with their 2007 prices. For example, Andres SERRANO’s Black Mary (100.3 x 68.6 cm, limited edition of 10) did not reach its low estimate of $30,000, although it fetched $34,000 in 2001 and $36,000 in 2007.

Christie's did better thanks notably to 25 photographs by Irving PENN. His famous Black and white Vogue Cover reached $360,000, the second best hammer price for this very graphic 1950 photo (the best was $400,000 in April 2008 at Christie's). In fact, the old Vogue cover generated the best result of the three days of sales dedicated to photography.

Earlier this year, on 12 March 2012, Christie's New York dispersed no less than 36 photographs by William EGGLESTON of which 16 found buyers between $100,000 and $480,000. The work of this pioneer of colour in art photography rose in value by 23% between 2004 and 2008. The subsequent contraction in his prices over the 2009-2010 period provided an excellent buy opportunity. Nowadays his small formats are reaching unprecedented prices, such as his Untitled (1973) (21.1 x 47.7 cm) which seems to crystallise the America of the 1970s and which fetched $200,000 on 5 April against an initial estimate of $70,000 – $90,000. Indeed, Christie's mammoth photography sale in New York on 5 April offered another 15 works by William EGGLESTON, most of which were priced between $5,000 and $15,000. Other notable results at the Christie's 5 April Photographs sale included $180,000 for Schadographie Nr. 17 by Christian SCHAD, champion of the New Objectivity, well known for his paintings, setting a new record for a photo by the artist.

The collectors of legendary photographs hotly contested Helmut NEWTON’s famous Self Portrait with Wife and Models ($75,000, whereas his less famous shots generally fetch between $9,500 and $12,000) and Robert FRANK’s Trolley - New Orleans which sold for $360,000 against a high estimate of $150,000. There was also a lot of 29 photogravures by Edward STEICHEN which fetched $100,000. Meanwhile, the Contemporary signatures maintained their prices next to the great classics and works signed by Massimo VITALI, Adam FUSS, Vik MUNIZ, Candida HÖFER or Hiroshi SUGIMOTO found buyers for between $45,000 and $55,000.

The prices of pictures from the 1960s to 1980s have also climbed steeply: Phillips de Pury & Company recorded an impressive record for Candy Cigarette (1989, ed. 25) by Sally MANN which sold for $220,000 against a high estimate of $60,000, as well as a new record for Francesca WOODMAN whose Untitled, Rome,1977, was acquired for $140,000 against an estimate of $15,000 to $20,000. Above all, there was a result of $520,000 for Cindy SHERMAN’s Untitled Film Still # 49(1979) against an estimate of $400,000!

As usual, these mammoth sales also offered plenty of affordable works such as chromogenic prints by the famous Cindy Sherman or albumen prints by Eugène ATGET from $2,000.

The next major photographs auctions will be held in London in May: Christie's will be offering a hundred lots estimated between £30,000 and £120,000 on 16 May with a Diptych by Andreas GURSKY (Art Market Confidence Index, est. £80,000 - £120,000), the Guggenheim Museum, New York seen by Hiroshi SUGIMOTO (est. £70,000- £90,000) or a large format print of Helmut NEWTON’s Self-Portrait with Wife and Models ‘Vogue’ Studios, Paris 1980 (est. £70,000 - £90,000).

A week before these sales, the world of Contemporary photography will be looking forward to Christie's Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale in New York on 8 May which includes an Untitled # 96 by Cindy SHERMAN from her Centerfold series (1981). Recall that another copy of the same work fetched no less than $3.4m in May 2011, becoming for a while, the world’s most expensive Contemporary art photograph. The copy submitted for auction on May 8th will be a good test of the high end of the art photography market.

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 Related: Drutt Report - Photography Reconsidered