Annenberg Space for Photography offers live programming during WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY Exhibit

LOS ANGELES-- The Annenberg Space for Photography has announced the lineup of speakers for their popular IRIS Nights lecture series presented in conjunction with the upcoming WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath exhibition.
 

While the Photography Space typically hosts IRIS Nights weekly on Thursday evenings, WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY curator Anne Wilkes Tucker and Pulitzer Prize-winning photographers David Hume Kennerly and Carolyn Cole will kick off the series with a special Saturday evening lecture on March 23, 2013.
 

WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY will open free to the public on March 23, 2013, and run through June 2, 2013. This exhibition is organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and is made possible with generous support from the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation and the Annenberg Foundation. The exhibit encompasses over 150 images going as far back as 1887 through present-day and is arranged by themes presenting both the military and civilian points of view including the advent of war, daily routines, the fight itself, the aftermath, prisoners of war, refugees, remembrance and more.
  

Specific to the Los Angeles exhibit will be the Annenberg Space for Photography's original short documentary film entitled The War Photographers and digital image presentation produced by Arclight Productions. Together, they will feature over 500 photographs exclusive to the Photography Space from six acclaimed contemporary conflict photographers: Alexandra Avakian , Carolyn Cole , Ashley Gilbertson , Edouard H.R. Gluck , David Hume Kennerly and Joao Silva . The film offers intimate interviews that reveal experiences and life-threatening situations faced by war photographers and their subjects.
 

IRIS NIGHTS LECTURE SERIES
The Annenberg Space for Photography offers live programming through our IRIS Nights lecture series, a public program offered free of charge, by online reservation on a first-come, first-served basis. The series brings to life the most current exhibit with presentations by featured and guest photographers and notable experts. These programs give attendees unique access to the artists in an intimate setting.
 

All IRIS Nights lecture series will take place on Thursday evenings from 6:30pm-8pm unless otherwise noted. Schedule and participants are subject to change.
 

Saturday, March 23 - Anne Wilkes Tucker , Carolyn Cole and David Hume Kennerly WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: A Discussion Anne Wilkes Tucker has been the Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston since 1976. Tucker has curated over 40 exhibitions, including WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY, and was selected in 2011 as "America's Best Curator" by Time magazine.
 

Carolyn Cole is a multiple award-winning photographer and a staff photographer for the Los Angeles Times. She has covered conflicts in Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Haiti and Liberia, where she earned the Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of the siege of Monrovia.
 

David Hume Kennerly won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Vietnam War. He has been shooting on the front lines of history for more than 45 years and has photographed eight wars, as many U.S. presidents, served as chief White House photographer for President Gerald R. Ford and was named "One of the 100 Most Important People in Photography" by American Photo.
 

March 28 - Sara Terry and Marissa Roth
War: Witnesses to Aftermath
Photographer Marissa Roth has spent 28 years working on a personal, global photo essay that addresses the immediate and lingering effects of war on women in different countries and cultures.

Photographer Sara Terry created the Aftermath Project, a nonprofit committed to educating the public in peace building and post-conflict studies. Both photographers will share images from their work and insights into the long-term consequences of conflict and the resilience of the human spirit.
 

April 4 - Alexandra Avakian
Malibu Teen To Conflict Photographer: Journeys In The Muslim World
Photojournalist Alexandra Avakian has been published in National Geographic, Time, LIFE, The New York Times Magazine and more. Her photographic and written memoir, Windows of the Soul: My Journeys in the Muslim World, was named as one of American Photo's year-end best.
 

April 11 – Peter van Agtmael
Disco Night Sept 11
Award-winning photographer Peter van Agtmael has documented the consequences of America's wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and at home. His journey and experiences of life during conflict will be discussed. A monograph of his work, 2nd Tour Hope I Don't Die, was published in 2009.
 

April 18 -Benjamin Lowy
Innovation in Documentary Storytelling
An award-winning photojournalist, Benjamin Lowy has embraced new technology and mediums to promote stories. Lowy will discuss his work in conflict zones and the U.S. His image of Hurricane Sandy graced the cover of Time magazine, the first camera-phone image to ever be so featured.
 

April 25 - Stephen Mayes and Michael Kamber
Tim Hetherington: A Very Personal War Two years after Tim Hetherington 's death while documenting the Libyan war, this lecture will explore alternative representations of conflict. Hetherington sought to shift the emphasis from the military hardware to the "software" of conflict, making war a personal matter. The discussion will explore the legacy of Hetherington's work with contributions from colleagues Stephen Mayes , Director of VII Photo in New York, and Michael Kamber , conflict photographer, author and co-founder of the Bronx Documentary Center.
 

May 2 - Ed Ou
Personal Stories in the Context of Breaking News 
Ed Ou is a Canadian photojournalist who has been bouncing around the Middle East, former Soviet Union, Africa and the Americas since 2006. With work recognized by POYi and World Press Photo among others, Ou will discuss personal stories of how people in the news are shaped and affected by the world changing around them.
 

May 9 - Donna De Cesare Children of War
Photographer/educator Donna De Cesare has spent two decades focusing on the lives of Central American children exposed first to war and later to gangs. Her newly published book Unsettled / Desasociego: Children in a World of Gangs is both a memoir and a visual history of her experiences. De Cesare teaches documentary photography at the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin.
 

May 16 - Lynsey Addario
The Saturation of War
An American photojournalist based in London, Lynsey Addario photographs for The New York Times, National Geographic and Time. She will discuss her work documenting conflict over the past decade, and the challenges photographers face making compelling images from ongoing wars, when our society is saturated by these images.
 

Friday, May 17 - Slideshow Night is a special presentation that showcases hundreds of additional images related to the exhibit themes in WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY.
 

May 23 - Jeff & Andrew Topham
LIBERIA '77 – Photo is Life
In 2010, Canadian brothers Jeff and Andrew Topham returned to the war-torn West African country of their childhood, Liberia. Discovering that much of Liberia's photographic record of its peaceful past had been destroyed by war, they created a documentary and online photo project culminating in an exhibition currently housed at the National Museum in Monrovia. They will discuss the importance of photography in the rebuilding of a society devastated by war.
 

May 30 - Nina Berman
Evidence and Fantasy: The War at Home
Photographer, author and educator Nina Berman is known for her work photographing wounded American veterans including her 2006 " Marine Wedding " image. Presenting selections from work made since 9/11, she will explain her motivations and approaches to photographing war on the domestic front.
 

The photographs in WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY and content in IRIS Nights lectures may not be suitable for all visitors.
 

About the Annenberg Space for Photography
The Annenberg Space for Photography is a cultural destination dedicated to exhibiting compelling photography. The Space conveys a range of human experiences and serves as an expression of the philanthropic work of the Annenberg Foundation and its Directors. The intimate environment features state-of-the-art, high-definition digital technology as well as traditional prints by some of the world's most renowned and emerging photographers. It is the first solely photographic cultural destination in the Los Angeles area.
 

Annenberg Space for Photography
2000 Avenue of the Stars
Los Angeles, CA 90067
Tel: 213.403.3000
annenbergspaceforphotography.org

Wednesday through Friday: 11 am – 6 pm
Saturday: 11 am – 7:30 pm
Sunday: 11 am – 6 pm
Closed Mondays* and Tuesdays.
*We will be open Memorial Day, Monday, May 27^th.
Admission is free.

SOURCE The Annenberg Foundation


RELATED LINKS
http://www.annenbergfoundation.org
http://www.annenbergspaceforphotography.org

Monroe Gallery at The 2013 AIPAD Photography Show

We are very pleased that Monroe Gallery of Photography will once again be exhibiting at the AIPAD Photography Show, one of the most important international photography art events. The AIPAD Photography Show will be presented by The Association of International Photography Art Dealers (AIPAD), April 3 - 7, 2013.

Monroe Gallery will be in the same location as last year, Booth # 419, along the left aisle, near the Cafe.

We will be exhibiting specially selected work from the gallery's renowned collection of 20th and 21st Century master photojournalists. Among the highlights selected for this year's exhibition are:

 

Empire State Building During Black-Out in Lower Manhattan,Hurricane Sandy, 2012

- Nina Berman

Roller Coaster, Seaside Heights, New Jersey, Hurricane Sandy, 2012 - Stephen Wilkes

 

 

 

Apple Tree illuminated by gas flaring, Susquehanna County, 2011 - Nina Berman

 

 

 

 

 

  

 "I Am A Man", Sanitation Workers Strike, Memphis, Tennessee, March 28, 1968
- Ernest C. Withers  ©The Withers Family Trust

Throughout the show we are honored that several of our photographers will be present in our booth, including Nina Berman, Bill Eppridge, John Filo, John Loengard, Brian Hamill, Stephen Wilkes, and many others. Rosalind Withers, Board President of the Ernest C. Withers Collection Museum, will be in attendance announcing the appointment of Monroe Gallery of Photography as representative of the Ernest C. Withers Estate.

We look forward to seeing you at the exhibition.

Very truly yours,

 

Sid and Michelle Monroe
 

Show Hours:

Thursday, April 4 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Friday, April 5 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Saturday, April 6 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Sunday, April 7 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The Park Avenue Armory 643 Park Avenue (between 66th and 67th Streets)

A Must-Have Book

Ashley Gilbertson/VII

During fierce fighting in the southern part of Fullujah, four wounded men surrendered to Marines from the Bravo company, 1st Battalion, 8th Regiment, 1st Marine Division. The men claimed they were students trying to escape the fight, Nov. 13, 2004

Last summer, we posted about the forthcoming publication of a groundbreaking new visual and oral history of America’s now ten-year conflict in the Middle East, "Photojournalists on War". The New York Times Lens blog today has featured  the book's introductory essay by Dexter Filkin, with a slide show selection of photographs from the book. Among the 39 photojournalists in the book are Andrea Bruce, Carolyn Cole, Stanley Greene, Tyler Hicks, Chris Hondros, Yuri Kozyrev, Khalid Mohammed and Joao Silva.

The exhibit “Invasion: Diaries and Memories of War in Iraq,” featuring work by Tim McLaughlin, Gary Knight and Peter Maass, opens March 14 at Mr. Kamber’s Bronx Documentary Center.



Related: Overexposed: A Photographer's War With PTSD

The excitement and frenzy of Beatlemania is captured in Bill Eppridge exhibit opening Tuesday at the Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts in Massachusets

 

The Beatles exiting Pan Am Flight 101 at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on Feb. 7, 1964. The photograph, taken by Bill Eppridge, is included in the exhibit (Photo by Bill Eppridge. All rights reserved.)


Via The Republican
By Ray Kelly, The Republicanmasslive.com
on March 09, 2013

The excitement and frenzy of Beatlemania is captured in a photographic exhibit opening Tuesday at the Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield.

The black and white photographs, taken for CBS television and LIFE magazine, recall the arrival of the Fab Four in New York, their historic appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show and much more.

Bill Eppridge, 75, of New Milford, Conn., a contract photographer for LIFE magazine at the time, is responsible for 33 of the 84 photographs in the exhibit. He was initially assigned to cover The Beatles’ airport arrival on Feb. 7, 1964. Instead, he photographed and chronicled their first six days in America.

When Eppridge arrived at John F. Kennedy International Airport, he knew that long-haired musicians from England “who have caused a bit of a stir” were about to land.

“I thought this would be ‘four guys getting off a plane,’ but it turned out to be so much more,” Eppridge recalled. “Half of the New York photographer news corps was out there.”

Many members of the press expected a surly, possibly drugged out, rock’n’roll quartet to stumble off Pan Am Flight 101, but were instead charmed by The Beatles, he said.

“They were perfect gentlemen. These guys were laughing, smiling and treating the press with respect – perhaps deserved, perhaps not,” Eppridge said. “They were perfectly synchronized. One could start a sentence and the other could finish it. These guys were intelligent and they had control of the situation.”

He added, “There was something going on. I could feel it.”

Eppridge immediately called Richard Pollard, director of photography at LIFE, and offered to photograph The Beatles at the Plaza Hotel, Ed Sullivan show, Carnegie Hall performance and train trip to a Washington, D.C. concert

Unlike today when photographers typically deal with agents and handlers, Eppridge spoke directly with The Beatles.

Ringo Starr asked of him, “All right Mr. LIFE photographer, what can we do for you?”

“I told him, ‘Mr. Starr, just be yourselves and this will be painless,’” Eppridge responded.

A classical music aficionado, Eppridge experienced a Beatlemaniac’s fondest dream by witnessing the band’s first U.S. performances at CBS-TV Studio 50 (now the Ed Sullivan Theater), Carnegie Hall and the Washington D.C. Coliseum.

“The teenyboppers, the little girls, were just out of their minds. You couldn’t hear yourself from the screaming. You couldn’t hear the music at the concerts,” Eppridge said. “It was wonderfully crazy.”

During those six days, Eppridge shot nearly 100 rolls of 36-exposure film. Four photos were selected for use with LIFE’s Feb. 21, 1964 article "Yeah-Yeah-Yeah!"

Eppridge’s negatives went missing for several years before making their way back to him 1994. He is planning a book of his Beatles photography next year.

“As time goes by, you come away with a greater realization of what you have done,” Eppridge said.

While Eppridge never photographed the Fab Four again, he captured other historic moments for LIFE, National Geographic and Sports Illustrated.

He followed Robert F. Kennedy in the months leading up to his assassination on June 5, 1968 in Los Angeles.

Eppridge said he and other journalists viewed Kennedy as “totally reckless” for failing to take stringent security precautions in the wake of his brother’s assassination nearly five years earlier.

Eppridge said he was standing 12 feet behind Kennedy when the fatal shots rang out.

“Having been in Vietnam, I knew what incoming sounded like. The only thing I was wrong about was that I thought it was .25 caliber and it was .22,” Eppridge recalled.

Eppridge photographed the slain presidential candidate on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel.

“You operate on instinct. You do what you have to do,” he said. “You don’t even think about crying. I cried later.”

________

Bill Eppridge will share reflections on his memorable career at the D’Amour Museum on April 21 at 2 p.m.

IF YOU GO

Exhibit: “The Beatles! Backstage and Behind the Scenes”
When: Tuesday through June 2
Where: Michele and Donald D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield
Cost: Adults, $15; seniors and college students, $10; ages 3 to 17 year, $8; ages 2 and under and museum members, free. Admission includes all four Springfield Museums. Springfield residents receive free general admission with proof of address
For more info: Call (413) 263-6800 or online at springfieldmuseums.org

 

 

Bill Eppridge will be in atendance during the AIPAD Photography Show in New York at Monroe Gallery of Photography, Booth #419, April 2 - 7, 2013.

Daylight Savings Time

Alfred Eisenstaedt

Farewell of Servicemen, Clock at Pennsylvania Station, New York, 1943

VIVIAN MAIER NEWS

Untitled (self portrait), no date

©Maloof Collection

"Vivian Maier was a mystery even to those who knew her. A secretive nanny in the wealthy suburbs of Chicago, she died in 2009 and would have been forgotten. But John Maloof, an amateur historian, uncovered thousands of negatives at a storage locker auction and changed history. Now, Vivian Maier is hailed as one of the greatest 20th Century photographers along with Diane Arbus Robert Frank, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Weegee. And that is just where the story begins. "
--VivianMaier.com


By now, you may know that a feature documentary on photographer Vivian Maier has been announced with a trailer. Vivian Maier’s extraordinary body of work continues to be archived and cataloged for the enjoyment of others and for future generations, and we are very pleased that several new images now available - and a selection is currently on view in the gallery.

Untitled, no date

 

 

 

Updated March 11, 2013:

 

The Telegraph: Vivian Maier, a nanny with a Rolleiflex, was one of the great photographers of the 20th century

AIPAD Opening Night Gala

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, April 3, 2013
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
Includes entry for one person, one run-of-Show pass,
and one copy of the AIPAD catalogue

7 to 9 p.m. • $100
Includes entry for one person and one single-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 and abused women. inMotion has helped thousands of women 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.

"unprecedented rise in the number of journalists killed and imprisoned in the past year

Via The Committee to Protect Journalists

CPJ launches 2013 edition of Attacks on the Press


An unprecedented rise in the number of journalists killed and imprisoned in the past year coupled with restrictive legislation and state censorship is jeopardizing independent reporting in many countries, according to Attacks on the Press, CPJ's yearly assessment of global press freedom released on February 14.

Launched at a live-streamed press conference at the U.N. Headquarters in New York, CPJ's flagship publication was covered by media around the world, including The New York Times and the U.K.'s Guardian. The newest edition of Attacksalso features CPJ's new Risk List, which identifies the 10 places where the organization documented the most significant downward trends in 2012.

The publication features timely analyses by CPJ and global experts on media conditions, press freedom violations, and emerging threats in every corner of the world, along with regional data and a snapshot of conditions in close to 60 countries. The online edition of the book includes essays that focus on the weakening of the inter-American human rightsand press freedom system; the looming media vacuumin Afghanistan; China's relationshipwith the foreign press; mobile security; and the prospects of a global press freedom charterin times of increasing challenges.

The expanded print edition of the book includes essays on the Taliban by world-renowned author Ahmed Rashid; citizen journalists in Syria, by prominent freelance correspondent Oliver Holmes; jailed Ethiopian journalist Eskinder Nega, by multiple award-winner Charlayne Hunter-Gault; and the risks involved in covering the news, by CPJ Honorary Chairman Terry Anderson, who was once held hostage for almost seven years in Lebanon.

Regional sections of Attacks on the Press are available in Arabic, French, Russian, Spanish, and Portuguese. The print edition is published by Bloomberg Press, an imprint of Wiley, and is available for purchase here.

CPJ will host events around the world to promote the 2013 edition of Attacks on the Press. For more information on upcoming events, click here.

See Civil Rights & Memphis Music through Ernest Withers’ Eyes

Via Tennessee Trip Tales

You’ve seen Ernest C. Withers’ photographs whether or not you know his name. Last October, they showed in Berlin and draped a building façade in Washington, D.C. If you saw Katori Hall’s play, The Mountaintop, his were the images that shook the final scene. Even before his death in 2007, Withers’ work had exhibited internationally and appeared in films (see 2004’s The Manchurian Candidate with Denzel Washington).
But Withers’ daughter, Rosalind, says her father realized the significance of his work much earlier in his career – specifically, in 1955, when his images of Emmett Till – from the boy’s brutally beaten corpse to his murder trial and funeral – were released worldwide and credited with bringing so much attention to the U.S. civil rights movement.

In a self-published “photo story” following the acquittal of Till’s alleged murderers, Withers wrote: “…we are presenting this…not in an attempt to stir up racial animosities or to question the verdict…but in the hope that [it] might serve to help our nation dedicate itself to seeing that such incidents need not occur again.”

And so his career goes, with Withers assuming the charge of telling pivotal chapters of our country’s 20th-century civil rights story in pictures. Today, you can view the most iconic images in The Withers Collection Museum & Gallery, located on the east end of the Beale Street entertainment district in a building that formerly housed Withers’ studio (and that was named for him in 1995).

The intimate space distills Withers’ vast collection into 10 major “projects.” The school desegregation section shows members of the Little Rock Nine exiting their car (in the background, white students crowd the entrance to their school in protest). A section devoted to Medgar Evers grips you in the faces of Evers’ family attending his funeral. In another section, titled “Memphis and The South,” signs say everything – in a poster held by a young, white man (“Segregation or war!”); in a placard worn by a father strolling his infant daughter (“Daddy, I want to be free too!!!!”). There are moments of triumph, too – when the Montgomery Bus Boycott set that city’s first desegregated bus rolling in 1956, Withers and his camera were there.

Even if you’ve seen these images in other contexts, you’ll immediately recall them – once seen, they never leave your consciousness. Viewed in aggregate, they seem to me even more powerful – as does Withers’ ability to capture the most critical moments at such close range. As for Withers’ near-omnipresence along the civil rights timeline, Rosalind explains simply that her father was a “journalist by nature.” She offers more on the intimacy her father achieved with his subjects, referencing several of his images of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – particularly one of Dr. King lounging on his bed at the Lorraine Motel (King was in Memphis to join James Meredith’s 1966 March Against Fear). “It speaks to his character that he was able to get so close,” Rosalind believes.

It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that the gallery opens and closes on Dr. King – presenting first the images from 1966 of the man in repose; ordering lunch; looking cool marching in sunglasses and a hat. By the end of the exhibit, it’s two years later, and Withers’ lens is trained on Memphis’ sanitation worker strike (source of Withers’ most recognizable image, shown below) and Dr. King’s last march; King’s blood spilled on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel; masses gathered in Memphis and Atlanta following the assassination – and the riots. It’s hard to imagine, under its present-day neon glow, a Beale Street strewn with tanks and evenly-spaced soldiers, propped with their rifles against shattered-and-boarded windows. But Withers’ images show it like it was.

 

Many of the images displayed at Memphis’ Withers Collection Museum & Gallery are the same ones you’ll see archived by the Library of Congress and incorporated into the permanent collection of Washington, D.C.’s in-progress National Museum of African American History and Culture, a Smithsonian institution. Major purchases by both organizations helped to fund the creation of the Memphis museum and gallery, which opened in May 2011. Image courtesy of and copyrighted by the Withers Family Trust. All rights reserved. No images can be reproduced without permission.

 

 

The gallery takes two lighthearted turns, driven by Withers’ chronicling of baseball and music – and ultimately giving what I saw as the clearest insight into the photographer’s personal life: His series on the Negro Baseball League grew from the portraits players and fans would pay him to take at the ballpark. Withers had no studio at the time, so he would develop prints in the bathtub of his home and dry them in the family’s oven. “I still remember that smell in our house,” Rosalind laughs, but those prints helped Withers and wife Dorothy raise eight children. They were also what drew Dorothy into business with her husband. “He would print and my mom would count [the prints] and tell him how much money he would have to bring home,” Rosalind recalls.

 

The Withers Collection Museum & Gallery is located at 333 Beale Street in a building that housed Withers’ studio (and that was named for him in 1995). The now-vacant studio space still bears this window marking.

As for the music, Withers served as Stax Records’ official photographer for two decades. “He loved the blues and B.B. King was one of his best friends,” Rosalind tells me, noting that he also liked listening to Al Green and Isaac Hayes, whose relationship with Withers was so close, the performer called him “Pops.” To caption Withers’ images of Memphis music history through the 1950s and ’60s is to name-drop star after star: Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, Tina Turner – though I especially enjoyed the juxtaposition of two of Withers’ images of B.B. King: one of a newbie playing in a club on Beale Street circa-1950; the other of a veteran playing in his own club on Beale Street in 1994.

“’I am a man,’ and Elvis and B.B. – that’s Memphis,” Rosalind immediately offered when we began discussing which of her father’s images should accompany this piece. Image courtesy of and copyrighted by the Withers Family Trust. All rights reserved. No images can be reproduced without permission.

What’s next for Withers?
Among individual photographers covering the civil rights movement, Withers is commonly credited with producing the largest body of work. Though her father once told her his portfolio was five million images strong, Rosalind has stopped counting (for now, at least) at one million. Of those, only a few thousand have been digitized.

The images sit – some as negatives; others as prints – in a pandemonium of file cabinets, cardboard boxes and card catalog-style units in a space near the gallery. There is some clarity in the chaos courtesy of the Withers’ original subject-matter categorization, but the takeaway is this: The images need to be legitimately archived. Rosalind has a plan for that, but not the money. During our interview, she was preparing for a black tie fundraiser to that end. She also previewed memberships the museum will soon be offering to help offset the costs of archival, and expansion. (An ambitious project will be announced this spring to expand the gallery’s current 7,000 square feet to 28,000 – including an amphitheater for musicians and theater groups and a restaurant.)

Until then, Withers’ images will receive their largest showing since his death (in 2007) during the April 3-7 gathering of the Association of International Photography Art Dealers at New York City’s Park Avenue Armory. (Monroe Gallery of Photography, Booth #419)

You only have to go as far as Beale Street.

While Rosalind and her team work to raise the funds necessary to properly archive her father’s body of work, the images remain in Withers’ original filing system (offsite). “All of this handwriting is my mother’s and father’s,” Rosalind reflected.

Before you go:The Withers Collection Museum & Gallery (333 Beale Street) is open Wednesdays and Thursdays, 4-10 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays, 4-11 p.m. and Sundays, 4-9 p.m. (Daytime tours are available for groups of 10 or more by reservation.)
With a short video on the photographer’s life and more than 90 images on display, plan to spend around an hour.

Currently, admission is a suggested donation of $5-10. Beginning March 1, 2013, admission will be $10 for adults and $7 for children with membership packages at various levels.

Note that some of the gallery images are sensitive in nature (read: prepare your children in advance – and be prepared to answer their questions during and after viewing the exhibit).

LA Times: Steve Schapiro's photos in 'Then and Now' offer a mix of emotions

Marlon Brando in a makeup session for "The Godfather" in New York, 1971      

©Steve Schapiro

 The photographer's book features candid Hollywood portraits alongside everyday images.

Via The Los Angeles Times
By Liesl Bradner

February 24, 2013

 

When photographer Steve Schapiro first arrived on the Lower East Side set of "The Godfather" in 1971, there were rumors floating around that Marlon Brando was not well. Moving closer to the action, he noticed an old man in an overcoat and hat talking to an assistant director with this gravelly, sick voice. The rumors must be true, he thought.

"Suddenly," Schapiro recalled, "Brando turns to the crowd with this enormous electricity shooting out of his eyes and in his best 'On the Waterfront' accent said, 'I think there's someone with a camera out there.'" That stunning transformation was just one of many Oscar-worthy moments Schapiro has witnessed in his 50-year career working on the sets of such groundbreaking films as "Taxi Driver," "Midnight Cowboy" and "Chinatown."

In "Steve Schapiro: Then and Now" (Hatje Cantz) the 78-year-old pairs candid photos and portraits of Hollywood celebrities alongside artists, musicians, civil rights activists and everyday people taken from the 1960s through 2011.

"I see a lot of celebrity books that don't excite me because they're just portraits," said Schapiro on a call from his Chicago studio. "We wanted to bring pictures together that work against each other or with each other by interjecting things which weren't necessarily film-related." For example, Jane Fonda clad in aerobics attire at the height of her fitness craze juxtaposed next to sumo wrestlers in Chicago in 2010 or Dustin Hoffman in a midair jump placed next to Roman Polanski in a flying-nun pose from 1968.

Of the nearly 150 photos, only 12 pictures have been published before, quite extraordinary for a photographer who has worked on more than 200 films and created 100 movie posters. The list of famous faces he's photographed reads like a history of the Academy Awards: Francis Ford Coppola, Jodie Foster, Sophia Loren, Martin Scorsese and nominee Robert De Niro, up for his third golden statuette at Sunday's ceremony.

Whether it's a candid between-scenes shot or an intimate picture in the comfort of home, Schapiro's aim is to capture the spirit and sense of his subject. "I try to be a fly on the wall as much as possible," he said. "For me emotion is the strongest quality in a picture."

One of the more interesting discoveries he made was an unearthed negative of a young Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay) meeting his future wife Lonnie for the first time in 1963. On assignment for Sports Illustrated, the black-and-white image Schapiro shot reveals a shy, ponytailed 6-year-old girl, just one of a gaggle of neighborhood kids hanging out on the stoop with Ali outside his parent's house in Kentucky.

Growing up in Brooklyn, Schapiro was influenced by Henri Cartier-Bresson and studied under W. Eugene Smith. He began as a photojournalist during the turbulent '60s. After photo-centric publications such as Life and Look folded in the early '70s he turned to film, working as a special photographer, an industry term for a contractor hired for publicity and marketing. His photograph of Mia Farrow from "The Great Gatsby" was on the first cover of People magazine