Stephen Wilkes, The Power of the Still Image

Via X-Rite Photo Blog


"A new video has just been released today featuring Coloratti Stephen Wilkes talking about The Power of the Still Image, his own projects to document parts of American life and culture that are fading into memory, some of his disturbing and compelling images of the Gulf oil spill, and his latest project called Day to Night. In this video Stephen talks about the “subtext” beneath his photographs. “The power of what’s underneath is much greater than what’s on the surface,” he says. “And I want you to go underneath what I’m showing you but the only way I can get there is to draw you in with beauty.”

 

Wilkes is an amazing photographer. His passion for the still image is fueled by his ardent belief that it is the still image that “burns” into our minds. “I don’t think that, in terms of memory, things stay with us unless we have the image,” says Wilkes. “I think there is infinitely more power in a visual than there is in anything that is verbal or even written.”

 

Seaside Heights, N.J
©2012 Stephen Wilkes

One of Stephen’s most recent projects was documenting Hurricane Sandy for Time. Stephen’s 22 image photo essay on the super-storm disaster is available on Time Lightbox. The aerial photos he captured are both beautiful and horrific. Here’s a quote from his words accompanying the photo essay: “On the Sunday after Sandy made landfall, I decided to rent a helicopter and fly over some of the most devastated areas, including the New Jersey shore, Breezy Point and Far Rockaway. It was a beautiful day to fly, but unfortunately that beauty quickly eroded into shock as we began to get close to the coasts. It was everything I’d heard about, but it was difficult to believe what I was actually seeing. Once we got above the shoreline, I really started to understand the scale of the destruction. The expanse of land it ruined, the totality of the devastation — it was like a giant mallet had swung in circles around the area. It was mind numbing.” Read more about the Hurricane Sandy project online and see all 22 photos in the essay at Time Lightbox."

Full post with links here.

See Stephen Wilkes Day To Night and Hurricane Sandy photographs during Photo la, January 17 - 21, at Monroe Gallery of Photograph, booth M-150.

Photo la 2013 Opening Night Thursday, January 17

photo l.a. is honored to host the preview reception for the benefit of Inner-City Arts on January 17, 2013 from 6 – 9 pm. Please join us for an evening of art and charity. Tickets are $80 and can be purchased directly from Inner-City Arts

January 17-21: Photo L.A. Fair Strengthens Emerging-Artist Focus

Via artinfo.com

SALE: Photo L.A.
LOCATION: Santa Monica Civic Auditorium
DATE: January 17-21

ABOUT: Many of the auction houses are still on winter hiatus, but photography collectors know to scout out the wealth of vintage, contemporary, and multimedia works this time of year at the photo l.a. fair at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.

Among the 45 galleries and nonprofits participating in the 22nd annual edition, the Monroe Gallery of Photography brings the work of legendary photojournalist Bill Eppridge, who is also speaking about his time shooting Robert F. Kennedy in the 1960s as part of the fair’s lecture series, which also includes appearances from Los Angeles County Museum of Art curator Britt Salvesen, filmmaker Meg Partridge, and an Artillery Magazine-hosted debate.

In the department of unusual character studies, visitors will find shots from Frank Marshall’s immersion with a subculture of African cowboy metalheads in Botswana, including one of a leather-clad man named “Bound by the Moon,” on offer for $1,500 at Bekris Gallery. And Polish photographer Leon Borensztein’s intimate glimpse of unsmiling Americans can be found at Smith Andersen North.

More experimental forms can be found at Susan Spiritus Gallery, which is exhibiting Fran Forman’s nostalgic photo assemblages, like a print of a carousel sinking underwater, priced at $950 (unframed).

The fair has made a push this year to welcome not just collectors, but photographers, too, particularly those just starting out. It has partnered with the Emerging Focus Photo Expo, held across the street at the Hilton Doubletree Hotel. There, photographers can stop by with their portfolios for classes and on-the-spot critiques. Or, for those with publishing ambition, this year marks the launch of photoBOOK LA, where experts offer photographers advice on their book proposals.
General admission starts at $20 at the door, $25 online.

— Rachel Corbett

 

(Photo: Fran Forman, “Carousel Escape,” $950 at Susan Spiritus Gallery, at photo l.a.)

   

Getty Publications publishes "This is the Day: The March on Washington Photographs by Leonard Freed

 

© Estate of Leonard Freed - Magnum Photos (Brigitte Freed).

Via ArtDaily.org

 

LOS ANGELES, CA.- August 28, 1963, marked a great day for democracy in America. On that day nearly fifty years ago, more than 250,000 people gathered at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to mount a peaceful protest demanding equal rights and economic equality for African Americans. Led by a contingent of civil rights organizations, The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom called for the desegregation of public schools, protection of the right to vote, and a federal program to train and place unemployed workers. This demonstration ultimately led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and soon became the iconic expression of social protest that inspired the women's rights movement, as well as rights for the disabled and other disenfranchised groups, and serves to this day as a blueprint for democratic action.

This Is the Day: The March on Washington, which will be published by Getty Publications in February 2013 to coincide with Black History Month and the 50th anniversary of the march, presents Magnum photographer Leonard Freed's stirring and nuanced visual testimony of the event that culminated in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s prophetic "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered at the base of the Lincoln Memorial. The 75 photographs in this volume, most of them never before published, were chosen from hundreds of images Freed made in the nation's capital the day before, during, and after the march. These images present spectacular wide-angle views of the hundreds of thousands of marchers overflowing the National Mall, intimate group portraits of people straining to see the speakers, and tight close-ups of individual faces filled with hope and yearning.

A Visionary Portrait of Democracy
Freed's images reveal the powerful impact of the march, which took place in the midst of the civil rights movement, when racial inequities were being most painfully exposed to the nation and the world. Freed's holistic approach to photographing the events of this historic day is revealed in the details he chose. In the hours before the march, he photographed the area surrounding the Mall as people arrived in buses and cars, protest signs were being stacked in preparation for distribution, policemen took up their posts, and people passed by the famed Ford Theatre, where a sign reads "House Where Lincoln Died." With the Washington Monument, the Reflecting Pool, and the Lincoln Memorial as his visual anchors, Freed photographed the massive crowd as it gathered and swelled, and then went in tight to capture groups of marchers chanting and singing in their Sunday-best clothes, a range of individual expressions, and the interplay of text and image on placards. He photographed well into the evening when the remaining marchers linked hands for a final rendition of "We Shall Overcome," and the aftermath as the crowds dispersed and the visual remains of this history-making event were reduced to placard scraps blanketing the ground.

Return Visits to Washington, D.C.
Freed would return to the National Mall numerous times to photograph other marches and rallies, including Vietnam War protests. In 1964 he photographed individual African Americans exercising their right to vote for the first time, and in the same year made an iconic photograph--reproduced in the book--of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. being celebrated in a Baltimore motorcade after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. This Is the Day includes a selection of Freed's images from the 20th Anniversary March of 1983. These photographs, which reveal a more casual trend in American style and dress, from the dark suits and pearls of 1963 to T-shirts and shorts in 1983, show a youthful Jesse Jackson three months before he declared he would run for president and placards calling for President Reagan to cut the military budget.

The Legacy of Freedom Fighters
Freed was born in Brooklyn, New York on October 23, 1929, to a working-class Jewish family of Eastern European descent and strong social values. Working in Germany in the 1960s Freed photographed a black soldier standing before the Berlin Wall and was struck by the realization that while this soldier was defending freedom in Europe, his brothers and sisters were fighting for their own freedom at home. This thought inspired him to return to the United States and produce a photo-essay examining the daily life of blacks across America, from the East Coast to the Deep South. His resulting photo-essay culminated in the book Black in White America, first published in 1967/68 and reissued in 2010 by Getty Publications. It was during the course of this project that Freed photographed the March on Washington. After Freed's death in 2006 his widow, Brigitte, was inspired to compile a book on the March on Washington from her late husband's archive when she heard then-Senator Barack Obama remark to an audience of civil rights activists, "I stand here because you walked."

Accompanying the photographs are a first-hand, backstage account of the preparations leading up to the march by civil rights activist and author Julian Bond; an introduction to the importance of the march, and Dr. King's involvement, by sociology professor and author Michael Eric Dyson; and an informative discussion of Freed's approach to the photographic project by scholar Paul Farber.

Book Launch Event at Library of Congress
A book launch event will be held at 12 Noon on Tuesday, February 5 at The Library of Congress's Center for the Book in Washington, D.C., as part of its "Books & Beyond" program. The event is a conversation with Brigitte Freed and authors Paul Farber and Michael Eric Dyson who will discuss the significance of the march and how its legacy lives on in the present day. The conversation will be followed by a Q&A and book signing. The event takes place in the West Dining Room, Madison Bldg. (101 Independence Avenue, SE, Washington, DC, 20540). Many other activities are being planned throughout the year.

Leonard Freed (American, 1929-2006) began making photographs in 1954 and joined Magnum Photos as a full-time member in 1972. He photographed extensively in Germany, Holland, Italy, and Israel, and published numerous books and photo-essays. It was, however, his coverage of the American civil rights movement in the 1960s that brought him the most acclaim. Getty Publications reissued his book Black in White America, first published in 1967/68, in 2010. Freed's photographs are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

Julian Bond is a social activist and civil rights leader as well as a writer, teacher, and lecturer. While a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, during the early 1960s, he helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He was the first president of the Southern Poverty Law Center and was elected to both houses of the Georgia legislature, where he served a total of twenty years. He was chairman of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) from 1998 to 2010 and is professor emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville.

Michael Eric Dyson is a widely published writer, media commentator, and professor of sociology at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He is the author of sixteen books, including April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Death and How It Changed America and I May Not Get There With You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr.

Paul M. Farber is a scholar, currently completing his doctorate in American culture at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He is currently a visiting instructor of Urban Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Bill Eppridge: 50 Years of Photojournalism

June 5, 1968. Senator Robert F. Kennedy and his wife Ethel (Standing at the podium in the Ambassador Hotel Ballroom. Kennedy was just finishing his California primary victory speech and was moments away from walking into the kitchen where he was shot by Sirhan Sirhan.)

Photograph by Bill Eppridge/LIFE/©TimeInc.

 

photo la 2013

Keynote Speaker Bill Eppridge

Friday, January 18, 2013  3:30 - 5 PM

Bill Eppridge, noted photojournalist, lectures on his experiences documenting the 1960s, specifically, Robert F. Kennedy's final campaign and the Beatles first US tour.

 

Museum Exhibit

FOTOmentor Exhibition
Bill Eppridge: 50 Years of Photojournalism

Opening Reception

January 25, 2013 from 6:00-8:00 pm

On View thru January 12 to February 28, 2013

 

One highlight of the upcoming FOTOfusion will be the presentation of the prestigious FOTOmentor Award to Bill Eppridge, a Life Magazine staff photographer during the golden era of photojournalism when the big picture publications supported numerous pages of great photography. In addition to the award, Mr. Eppridge’s work will be featured in this year’s FOTOmentor Exhibition.

Present at some of history’s most famous events, Eppridge’s photographs weave a visual narrative of our times. This exhibition will feature many of his most famous images from the Sixties including the Presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy, the Beatles first U.S. visit, the Woodstock Music festival, and his groundbreaking photo essay on heroin addiction in Needle Park.

A self-taught photographer, Bill Eppridge later graduated from the University of Missouri Journalism School. Winning first prize in the National Press Photographers competition earned him internships at Life magazine, where he was named a staff photographer in 1964 and stayed until the magazine folded in 1972. Following assignments with National Geographic, Mr. Eppridge spent 30 years traveling the world as a photographer for Sports Illustrated.

He has been awarded the Joseph A. Sprague Award, The Missouri Journalism Honor Medal and The Lucie Foundation Achievement in Photojournalism. In 2009, Mr. Eppridge was inducted into the Missouri Photojournalism Hall of Fame. He has published four books and his work is included in major collections and museums worldwide.

Bill Eppridge was a Life staff photographer during the golden era of photojournalism when the big picture magazines supported pages of great photography. Present at some of history’s most famous events, Eppridge’s photographs weave a visual narrative of our times. The exhibition features his most famous images from the Sixties including the Presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy, the Beatles first U.S. visit, the Woodstock Music festival, and his groundbreaking photo essay on heroin addiction in Needle Park.

Mr. Eppridge will present the Rising Star award at the FOTOfusion Awards Dinner on January 23 and will be present at the exhibition’s Opening Reception on January 25.

About the FOTOmentor Award:

Each year, the PBPC Awards Committee selects a photographer to receive the FOTOmentor Award in honor of his/her lifetime achievements in the world of photography. Previous recipients include distinguished photographers Ralph Gibson, Gordon Parks, Sebastiao Salgado, Arnold Newman, Ruth Bernhard, Duane MichaeIs, James Nachtwey, Michael Kenna, David Hume Kennerly and Robert Glenn Ketchum.
 

2012 - 2013

As we all approach the new year 2013, a very sincere thank you to our esteemed photographers, clients, friends, and colleagues. We hope to see you in the gallery during 2013, and at the following photography fairs:

photo la Santa Monica Civic Auditorium
January 17 - 21

The New York AIPAD Photography Show at the Park Avenue Armory
April 4 - 7.



Our compliation of the "Best Photos of 2012" post was the most popular post of the year on this blog. The next top 4 Monroe Gallery Blog posts of 2012 were:

Stephen Wilkes DAY TO NIGHT Photo Shoot Feature On CBS News Sunday Morning Show Nov 11

50 YEARS AGO: The Night Marilyn Sang to JFK

Stan Stearns dies; captured immortal image at JFK’s funeral

Mohammad Ali by Steve Schapiro



Wishing you all the very best in 2013.

Thank you as well to our Twitter followers and Facebook friends !

                                           

Happiest of Holidays

 

 

 

 

Thank you for your encouragement and support.

 

We wish you Happy Holidays and the very best in 2013.

 

The Monroes

 

 

 

 

A Photographer's War With PTSD

Marines run for cover after white phosphorus was accidentally fired at them by another company in Falluja, Iraq on November 9, 2004. [Ashley Gilbertson / VII]

Recomended read, via The Atlantic:

"As Ashley Gilbertson crept up the dark staircase of a minaret in Fallujah, he hovered closely behind advance troops of the United States Marines. Stepping around and over the rubble created by an earlier shelling of the mosque, Gilbertson could hardly see the two soldiers in lead.

Moments before starting their climb, Gilbertson argued to be the first person in the room. He wanted to take first shot at the insurgent who used this holy perch to prey on advancing U.S. forces. However, Lance Corporal William Miller and his partner, Lance Corporal Christian Dominguez, would not back down, and they took the lead that November afternoon. As Gilbertson took to the stairs, his partner Dexter Filkins mounted the steps behind him.

Guns at the ready, the convoy had just crested the first flight of crumbling stairs when gunfire erupted. Gilbertson was pushed backwards, tumbling down the steps. His face felt wet.

It was the blood of Lance Corporal Miller.

As the scene became chaotic, Gilbertson's immediate reaction was to shoot back.

He didn't.

He couldn't.

And it wouldn't matter.

The only weapon Gilbertson carries is a camera.

Full article here.

Photographer Craig Varjabedian discusses “Landscape Dreams” at 1:30 today at the Albuquerque Museum

 

This photo titled “Welcome to New Mexico” was made near Chama. (CRAIG VARDJABEDIAN FROM ‘LANDSCAPE DREAMS, A NEW MEXICO PORTRAIT’)

 

Review: Captivating panorama

Via The Albuquerque Journal

By David Steinberg / Journal Staff Writeron Sun, Dec 16, 2012

 Which one to choose for publication? A San Marcos cowboy holding a saddle with his canine friend Buddy next to him? A roadside descanso in Mora? Quaking aspen in Red River? Chile fields near Hatch?

I reviewed and re-reviewed the many wondrous black-and-white images of Santa Fe photographer Craig Varjabedian in his new book “Landscape Dreams” before deciding on the accompanying one you see.

I was taken by the tilt and the architecture of the “Welcome to New Mexico, Chama, New Mexico” sign. How 1950s New Mexico it was. I was also enraptured by the shimmering cool leaves, the curving vale, the stand of trees in the middle ground, the upward slope of the hill to the sky.

As the first full-page photograph in the book, it welcomes the reader to a journey – a journey into Varjabedian’s work – into a thoughtful essay on the Land of Enchantment, into an explanation of the photographer’s themes and artistic philosophy and into the how and why of his own coming to New Mexico.

I asked Varjabedian about the “Welcome to New Mexico” photograph.

“The sign is a kind of metaphor for New Mexico,” Varjabedian said. “As real and truthful as it looks, it is not really truthful. Ultimately what I am trying to say is that I’ve been calling this book my love letter to New Mexico. Whatever tools, tricks I can use as a photographer, I use. The sign was shot up. There were holes in it.”

The fact that the sign is a bit off-kilter, Varjabedian commented, says that there’s something “wonderfully different” about New Mexico.

He took the photograph in 2010. Since then, he said, the state Highway Department has replaced the sign with one that is more vertical.

“It’s a new sign and it doesn’t have the quality of its older relative,” he said.

Craig Varjabedian discusses “Landscape Dreams” at 1:30 today at the Albuquerque Museum, 2000 Mountain NW. In addition, Jeanetta Calhoun Mish and Jennifer Simpson read from essays in the book. Rebekkah Varjabedian, the photographer’s daughter, introduces her short film “Landscape Dreams.” UNM Press director John Byram talks about the press’ collaboration with Varjabedian and the importance of physical books.

To Varjabedian, the sign signifies something more.

“There’s something magical, enchanted and turned a little different about this place, which brings it its charm … and delights me to want to photograph it. I’m struck by those things that are turned a little bit differently, whether a sign or some historical fact,” he said.”

On the facing page of the “Welcome” sign is part of historian Hampton Sides’ foreword. In it, Sides touches on New Mexico’s road to statehood. The state “worked its way into the national consciousness,” he wrote, “and, as it nearly always does, won people over.” It was a reference to a welcoming act on Jan. 6, 1912 – membership into the Union as the 47th state.

Varjabedian’s public love letter was published in the same year as the New Mexico Centennial.

An exhibit of images from the book is up through Dec. 31 at William Talbot Fine Art, 129 W. San Francisco St., Santa Fe.

David Steinberg is the Journal’s Books editor and an Arts writer.

This is the cover of the book “Landscape Dreams: A New Mexico Portrait” (courtesy of unm press website)

Photojournalist Steve Schapiro's Contrasting Life

Steve Schapiro: Martin Luther King Marching for Voting Rights with John Lewis, Reverend Jesse Douglas, James Forman and Ralph Abernathy, Selma, 1965


Via CNN

December 12, 2012

Photographer Steve Schapiro's five decade career of classic photos displayed in new book, ‘Then and Now’

During his five-decade career, photographer Steve Schapiro likes to say he has photographed everything from presidents to poodles. Schapiro has captured the special moments of rock stars, film stars and politicians of the 60's and '70's as well as photos of migrant workers and the Selma March with Martin Luther King. In his new photobook "Then and Now" Schapiro compiles some of his best and most iconic images. The book contains more than 170 photos – some of which have never been published before. He joins “Stating Point” this morning to discuss some of his most iconic photos and his new book.

Video link here.
 

Schapiro says it has always interested him, “to capture all the different elements that make up our country.” He tells the story behind him capturing an iconic photo of Actor Marlon Brando when he was hired to photograph “The Godfather.” Schapiro says, “Brando let me photograph his makeup session… and in the middle of it he just gave me this wonderful look which luckily I caught.” Reminiscing on a picture he took of Actor Dustin Hoffman leaping in a narrow hallway he says, “[Dustin] is a delight. He is a delight on and off camera. He just has such spirit and you know such wonderful feeling and humor all the time…This was just a moment after they had been feeling and it just was a spontaneous event.”

Schapiro admits that he always wanted to be a “Life Magazine” photographer and “one of the things that interested [him] was the migrant worker situation in America.” He talks about his very first story where he spent four weeks documenting the lives of the migrant workers through his photos and an essay and reflects on one particular photo of a cabin wall where a child once wrote “I love anybody who loves me".