"David Butow was working in D.C. during some of the most historic moments of the last five years"

 

Via Spectrum News 1

BY Andrew Freeman

 February. 09, 2022

Video link here

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Some of the most historic moments of the last five years are now on display in Rochester.

It's the work of a photojournalist in Washington, D.C. who describes what the pictures say that the written word can not.

David Butow sees coaching aspiring students as an absolute privilege.

"I see the enthusiasm these 20-year-olds have right now," said Butow. "I shared that exact same feeling and that sense of excitement when I was that age."

He was at the Rochester Institute of Technology helping to review student portfolios. His own photography has taken him all over the world.

"No matter where you’re from, you can look at a picture of another human being and have a certain, perhaps, empathy for them, and relate to them on a very basic, human level," he said.

In downtown Rochester, RIT’s City Art Space is hosting a gallery of some of his most recent work. It's a collection from his new book "BRINK," which chronicles the presidency of Donald Trump.

"I just thought this is going to be a very unusual time in American politics and maybe American history, and I just wanted to see it up close," said Butow. "That’s kind of the instinct of a journalist."

RIT Assistant Professor Jenn Poggi served as a key editor of the project.

The two used to work together at U.S. News & World Report in the early 2000s.  

"The beautiful work always pops out, the amazing work," said Poggi. "I think the challenge comes from… what’s the narrative you’re trying to construct. And sometimes that means losing an image that could be a favorite, but doesn’t quite match with the direction the book is trying to take."

David was working in D.C. during some of the most historic moments of the last five years.

"I’m really curious what happens outside the frame of the TV camera," Butow said. "So it’s sort of like, what’s it actually like to be there? What are the things you see that you can’t see when you’re watching this big hearing on TV?"

His work concluded with the January 6 insurrection where hundreds stormed the U.S. Capitol.

"The scale of this, and the amount of violence and energy pushing up into the Capitol, took me completely by surprise," he said.

The event gave him the name of his book: "Brink."  

"And that’s when really the gravitas of what has transpired became apparent to me," Butow said. "That there was no denying how serious of a period in American history it was, and how close our democracy came to not functioning."

But whether people buy his book or come view the exhibit downtown, Jenn and David hope it helps people experience history in a different way.

"I think that the book and exhibit seek to ask a lot of questions, more than give answers," Poggi said. "And I hope people think about that."

"There were so many small things that happened every day, day after day, that you sort of forget what it all added up to," Butow said. "And how significant of a moment in U.S. history it was. And it’s still continuing, a lot of these dynamics are still very much in place."

The exhibit and gallery are located near the Liberty Pole in downtown Rochester. It's free and open to the public through Feb. 20.

BRINK is also on exhibit through February at Monroe Gallery of Photography

Muhammad, Malcolm, and Miami: A Conversation with Bob Gomel and Peniel Joseph

 Via The Briscoe Center for American History

Muhammad, Malcolm, and Miami:

A Conversation with Bob Gomel and Peniel Joseph

Feb. 15, 2022  •  5:00 p.m. CST • Recording available here

About the program:

Please join the Briscoe Center and LBJ Presidential Library on Feb. 15, 2022, for Muhammad, Malcolm, and Miami: A Conversation with Bob Gomel and Peniel Joseph. The online event is presented in conjunction with the Briscoe Center’s exhibit “One Night in Miami”: From Photo to Film, currently on display at the LBJ Presidential Library.

 After his victory over Sonny Liston for the heavyweight championship on Feb. 25, 1964, Muhammad Ali celebrated at the Hampton House, a motel and diner in Miami that served as a gathering place for Black entertainers and celebrities. The evening inspired Kemp Powers’s 2013 play, “One Night in Miami,” which was adapted into Regina King’s Academy Award-nominated 2020 movie.

 Key scenes in the movie were inspired by iconic photos taken by Bob Gomel and Flip Schulke, famed photojournalists whose archives are housed at the Briscoe Center. These photos—Gomel’s photographs of Malcolm X and Ali in the Hampton House diner, and Schulke’s underwater photos of Ali—will be the focus of the event.

Bob Gomel will talk about his relationship with Ali over multiple photo sessions, including the “Life” magazine assignment that resulted in the iconic images of Ali and Malcolm X at the Hampton House. Distinguished historian Peniel Joseph will discuss the event’s historical context and share his thoughts on the relationship between Malcolm and Ali. The discussion will be joined by Mark Updegrove, president and CEO of the LBJ Foundation, and Don Carleton, executive director of the Briscoe Center.

 The online event is free. Visit https://muhammadmalcolmandmiami.eventbrite.com to register, and you will receive an email the day before the event with the link.

 

The exhibit, “One Night in Miami”: From Photo to Film, showcases photos from the Briscoe Center’s collections that inspired key moments in the 2020 film. The photos by Gomel and Schulke, many of which have never before been exhibited, depict a young Muhammed Ali (then known by his birth name, Cassius Clay) during the early years of his boxing career. Located in the LBJ Library’s Great Hall, the exhibit is open through May 8, 2022. 

REGISTER HERE

About Bob Gomel:

A native New Yorker, Bob Gomel produced numerous noteworthy images for “Life,” including assignments documenting Marilyn Monroe, the Beatles, and this series showing Muhammed Ali with Malcolm X. He later freelanced for “Sports Illustrated,” “Newsweek” and “Fortune” magazines, among others, before transitioning to advertising photography. Gomel has received numerous awards during his career and continues to travel and photograph international subjects. His archive at the Briscoe Center ranges in date from 1959 to 2014, and includes film negatives, contact sheets, and exhibit prints. He currently resides in Houston, Texas, with his wife Sandra.

WXXI News talks with photojournalist David Butow.

 

Via WXXI News

February 4, 2022

Connections with Evan Dawson talks with photojournalist David Butow. His new book, "BRINK," is five-year body of work he created starting with the 2016 campaign cycle. His photos chronicle politics and society in the United States during the Trump administration, the insurrection at the Capitol, and its aftermath. Butow is in Rochester this week as a guest of the Rochester Institute of Technology, where his work will be exhibited at RIT's City Art Space. We talk about his photos and what those images say about U.S. politics and ourselves. Our guests:

Listen here

David Butow, author of "BRINK"

Jenn Poggi, assistant professor in the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences in the College of Art and Design at RIT, former deputy director of the White House Photo Office, and an editor on the "BRINK" project

View Brink here

Brink: David Butow in Conversation at Rochester Institute of Technology

David Butow:  January 6, 2021. Supporters of President Donald Trump retreat from tear gas during a battle with Law Enforcement officers on the west steps of the Capitol in Washington during the attack on the day of Joe Biden’s election certification by Congress

Via Rochester Institute of Technology City Art Space

This solo exhibition chronicles politics in the United States from the 2016 presidential election, four years of the Trump administration, the turmoil of 2020 and concludes with the insurrection and its aftermath at the U.S, Capitol in January 2021. Butow writes, "We lived through history minute by minute, so much so that the gravitas of what transpired is apparent only when one steps back and sees how the whole saga unfolded."

"As revisionists seek to trivialize or downplay these events, it's critical to maintain a record of just how close the presidency of Donald Trump brought U.S. democracy to the brink of disfunction.​" While some of the photographs were taken on assignment, or published right away in places like The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, TIME and Paris Match, Butow says, "I was most interested in making pictures that would be different from daily news coverage and that would be particularly compelling to viewers decades from now." - David Butow

Two different talks will take place during Butow's visit to RIT, both free and open to the public:

Charles Arnold Lecture Series Presents David Butow

Thursday, February 3, 6:00 PM | RIT Campus

Wegmans Theater @ MAGIC, RIT Campus, 300 Lomb Memorial Drive, Rochester, NY, 14623.

In person & Zoom/Webinar Option Click Here to Register (for webinar option)

Butow will share an overview of his long career in photojournalism. A facemask is required.

BRINK: David Butow in Conversation

Friday, February 4, 6:00 PM | Downtown Rochester

RIT City Art Space, 280 East Main Street, Downtown Rochester, NY, 14604

Free and open to the public | in-person only, facemasks required

RIT Photojournalism Assistant Professor Jenn Poggi, a former White House photo editor, will lead a conversation with David Butow about his latest project and book, BRINK. A facemask is required.

Butow is a freelance photojournalist whose projects and assignments have taken him to more than two dozen countries including Afghanistan, Burma, Iraq, Peru, Yemen and Zimbabwe. In 2017, as Donald Trump took office, Butow felt compelled to move from California to Washington, D.C., to document the events up close.

Butow's latest work, Brink, is a book of 104 photographs chronicling politics in the United States during the 2016 presidential election and the Trump administration, concluding with the January 2021 insurrection and its aftermath. Jenn Poggi, assistant professor in RIT's School of Photographic Arts and Sciences, served as an editor on the project.

An exhibition of the same name is also on view at RIT City Art Space from Feb. 4-20. A gallery conversation with Poggi and Butow is also scheduled for 6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 4, at City Art Space in downtown Rochester.

The events and exhibition are organized by Poggi and sponsored by RIT's School of Photographic Arts and Sciences.

Related exhibitions: David Butow: Brink

                                January 2021, One Year Later

Remembering Steve Schapiro

Steve Schapiro at one of his many exhibitions held at Monroe Gallery of Photography, Santa Fe, NM

Photo by ©R. David Marks

Steve Schapiro died peacefully on January 15 surrounded by his wife, Maura Smith, and son, Theophilus Donoghue in Chicago, Illinois after battling pancreatic cancer. He was 87. 

The New York Times: Steve Schapiro, Photojournalist Who Bore Witness, Dies at 87

“You didn’t get the sense from his photographs that Steve was even in the room,” Sidney Monroe, co-owner of a photojournalism gallery in Santa Fe, N.M., that exhibited Mr. Schapiro’s work, said in an interview.

CNN: 'His images moved minds': The legacy of Steve Schapiro

BLIND Magazine: Steve Schapiro, Chronicler of 20th Century America, Dies At 87

The Times UK: Steve Schapiro obituary - Acclaimed photographer whose subjects ranged from Martin Luther King to Barbra Streisand

People: Steve Schapiro, Photojournalist Who Shot PEOPLE's First Cover, Dies at 87: 'His Talent Defied Genres'

Chicago Sun Times: Photographer Steve Schapiro, whose photos captured civil rights, arts ‘time capsules,’ dead at 87

Los Angeles Times: Photojournalist Steve Schapiro, who died last week, left images that reach into the soul of history

ArtDaily: Photographer Steve Schapiro has died at age 87

Pro Photo Daily: What We Learned This Week: Steve Shapiro, Acclaimed Photojournalist, Dies at 87

Chicago Tribune:  Chicago photographer Steve Schapiro is dead at 87. He captured the world with his camera, from the civil rights era to De Niro.

Variety: Steve Schapiro, Photojournalist and Film Industry Photographer, Dies at 87

The Guardian UK: Ali to Andy W: Steve Schapiro’s life in photography – in pictures

Washington Post: Steve Schapiro, Prize Winning Photographer, Dies at 87

ABC News: A prize-winning photographer whose indelible images ranged from civil rights marches to the set of “The Godfather” and other films, Steve Schapiro has died at age 87

US News: Steve Schapiro, Prize-Winning Photographer, Dies at 87

Hollywood Reporter: Steve Schapiro, Acclaimed Photojournalist, Dies at 87

Bronx Documentary Center Exhibit "The Storming of The Capitol" Includes Photographs By Nina Berman

 Via The Bronx Documentary Center

Opening January 29, 2022

©Nina Berman: Inauguration platform breach, The Capitol, January 6, 2021

On January 6, 2021, for the first time in American history, an angry mob stormed the halls of Congress. Protestors destroyed federal property and assaulted police officers. Five people died as a result and more than 150 were injured. The mob successfully halted the 2020 election certification as they rampaged through the Capitol building, searching for legislators and narrowly missing members of Congress and Vice President Mike Pence as they were rushed to safety.

If the mob had nullified the popular state-by-state vote and forced the electoral process into the House of Representatives, as some planners hoped, 200 years of American democracy would be at an end.

Through photographs, video and multimedia, the Bronx Documentary Center’s exhibition, Storming of the Capitol, examines in detail the events of that day, seeks to put forth a historical record of events, and sheds light on the deep cleavages in our nation.

Featuring the work of Nina Berman, Gabriela Bhaskar, Victor J. Blue, Balazs Gardi, Adam Gray, Shuran Huang, Christopher Lee, Luke Mogelson, Mark Peterson, and others.

Bronx Documentary Center

614 Courtlandt Ave, Bronx, NY 10451

Gallery Hours: Thur-Fri 3-7PM + Sat-Sun 1-5PM

Monroe Gallery: January 2021 - One Year Later

 

Ed Kashi : Abandoned Moments : A Love Letter to Photography

 

Via The Eye of Photography

January 18, 2022

For forty years, celebrated photojournalist Ed Kashi has delivered the world’s stories through images that both imply, as well as directly show, humanistic challenges and joys. Abandoned Moments: A Love Letter to Photography (Kehrer Verlag, March 2022) is a window into Kashi’s unique voice and craft, and presents glimpses of ordinary life, as well as extraordinary events, struggles, and triumphs.

A tenet of journalism is to remove one’s own voice, as much as is possible, from the narrative. But a photographer’s impulses are also inextricably linked to and driven by who they are. This cues how they see, what they notice, and how they compose. The book’s publisher notes, “When geometry, mood, and possibility unite to unintentionally create something new, the magical and fictional qualities of still photography capture the unplanned essence of existence. In contrast to his journalistic approach of deep personal connection and keen observation, this work is about capturing the untamed energy of a moment with abandon.”

In the essay she contributed for this book, “On Recollection,” photography scholar and curator Alison Nordström reflects on this intersection between the intentional and unplanned elements within Kashi’s work.

“By returning to his archive, long after the images have lost their primary relevance and immediate use, he re-inserts his voice, heart, and intellect into a world of pictures from which he had once intentionally concealed his presence.”

In Nordström’s consideration of how the book is structured and curated, she points out that in part this book is a reflection of the place Kashi is at in his career. “Recalled, reconsidered, and recontextualized, these images serve as a point of departure for the photographer’s retrospective meditations on his work.”

Kashi shares that this book is a 40-year “labor of love.” He speaks to the evolution of his style and methodology, revealing that, “Over time, I developed a more personal approach, one that is instinctive and without premeditation. I often shoot from the hip. Sometimes it is simply a matter of letting my camera absorb light in hopes that the intensity and immediacy of life-simply-being-lived has been devoured in all its fullness. It is precisely the uncontrolled circumstances sparking these images that gives them their vitality and surprise.”

The images selected span the decades of his work and were taken around the world. Kashi speaks to the ‘abandoned moment’ theme cued by the title, stating that, “Abandoned moments demonstrate a different kind of precision. They are shaped by serendipity and instinct, rather than objectivity and intellect. They are free to be less controlled but for that very reason they may be more certain and more certainly true…”

 

Ed Kashi is a renowned photojournalist, filmmaker, speaker, and educator who has been making images and telling stories for 40 years. As a member of VII Photo Agency, Kashi has been recognized for his complex imagery and its compelling rendering of the human condition. Along with numerous awards from World Press Photo, POYi, CommArts and American Photography, Kashi’s images have been published and exhibited worldwide. His editorial assignments and personal projects have generated nine books. Kashi in partnership with his wife, writer and filmmaker Julie Winokur, founded Talking Eyes Media. The non-profit company has produced numerous award-winning short films, exhibits, books, and multimedia pieces that explore significant social issues.

 

Alison Nordström is an independent scholar, specializing in photographs of all kinds. She is known for her writing, speaking, and curating and for the administration of photographic projects both in the US and internationally. Her long career in the field includes positions as Founding Director and Senior Curator of the Southeast Museum of Photography (FL), and Senior Curator of Photographs, Director of Exhibitions at George Eastman House (NY). In 2011, Nordström received the Focus Award for Lifetime Achievement in Photography from the Griffin Museum in Boston and the Apple Valley Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence. She is currently a Research Associate in Photography at Harvard University.

 

“Perhaps most importantly, this book demonstrates an innovative and nuanced form for autobiography from someone whose entire working life has been predicated on his own invisibility. By offering the story of his life in this way, this thoughtful man has risen above some of the restrictions his chosen career has imposed.”—Alison Nordström

 

Kehrer Verlag : Ed Kashi : Abandoned Moments : A Love Letter to Photography

Photographs by Ed Kashi

Texts by Ed Kashi and Alison Nordström

Hardcover

42 color and 26 b/w illustrations

12 x 0.5 x 9.75 inches

ISBN: 3969000440

Price: $58 US, €45.00, £40

Order here

A book signing event will be held at Monroe Gallery of Photography at a date to be announced.

PHOTOGRAPHER STEVE SCHAPIRO DIES AT 87

 

Steve Schapiro in Monroe Gallery, Santa Fe

Photograph by ©R. David Marks

January 16, 2022

Prolific photographer Steve Schapiro covered major historical events and captured seminal moments of the American Civil Rights Movement

Santa Fe, NM--Steve Schapiro died peacefully on January 15 surrounded by his wife, Maura Smith, and son, Theophilus Donoghue in Chicago, Illinois after battling pancreatic cancer. He was 87.

Steve Schapiro discovered photography at the age of nine at summer camp. Excited by the camera’s potential, Schapiro spent the next decades prowling the streets of his native New York City trying to emulate the work of French photographer Henri Cartier Bresson, whom he greatly admired. His first formal education in photography came when he studied under the photojournalist W. Eugene Smith. Smith’s influence on Schapiro was far-reaching. He taught him the technical skills he needed to succeed as a photographer but also informed his personal outlook and worldview. Schapiro’s lifelong interest in social documentary and his consistently empathetic portrayal of his subjects is an outgrowth of his days spent with Smith and the development of a concerned humanistic approach to photography.

Beginning in 1961, Schapiro worked as a freelance photojournalist. His photographs appeared internationally in the pages and on the covers of magazines, including Life, Look, Time, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Sports Illustrated, People and Paris Match. During the decade of the 1960s in America, called the “golden age in photojournalism,” Schapiro produced photo-essays on subjects as varied as narcotics addition, Easter in Harlem, the Apollo Theater, Haight-Ashbury, political protest, the presidential campaign of Robert Kennedy, poodles and presidents. A particularly poignant story about the lives of migrant workers in Arkansas, produced in 1961 for Jubilee and picked up by the New York Times Magazine, both informed readers about the migrant workers’ difficult living conditions and brought about tangible change—the installation of electricity in their camps.

©Steve Schapiro: Migrant Bean Pickers, Arkansas, 1961

An activist as well as documentarian, Schapiro covered many stories related to the Civil Rights movement, including the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the push for voter registration and the Selma to Montgomery march. Called by Life to Memphis after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, Schapiro produced some of the most iconic images of that tragic event.

©Steve Schapiro

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

In the 1970s, as picture magazines like Look folded, Schapiro shifted attention to film. With major motion picture companies as his clients, Schapiro produced advertising materials, publicity stills, and posters for films as varied as The Godfather, The Way We Were, Taxi Driver, Midnight Cowboy, Rambo, Risky Business, and Billy Madison. He also collaborated on projects with musicians, such as Barbra Streisand and David Bowie, for record covers and related art.

Schapiro’s photographs have been widely reproduced in magazines and books related to American cultural history from the 1960s forward, civil rights, and motion picture film. Monographs of Schapiro’s work include American Edge (2000); a book about the spirit of the turbulent decade of the 1960s in America, and Schapiro’s Heroes (2007), which offers long intimate profiles of ten iconic figures: Muhammad Ali, Andy Warhol, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Ray Charles, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, James Baldwin, Samuel Beckett, Barbra Streisand and Truman Capote. Schapiro’s Heroes was the winner of an Art Directors Club Cube Award. Taschen released The Godfather Family Album: Photographs by Steve Schapiro in 2008, followed by Taxi Driver (2010), both initially in signed limited editions. This was followed by Then And Now (2012), Bliss about the changing hippie generation (2015), BOWIE (2016),

Misericordia (2016) an amazing facility for people with developmental problems, and in 2017 books about Muhammad Ali and Taschen’s Lucie award-winning The Fire Next Time with James Baldwin’s text and Schapiro’s Civil Rights photos from 1963 to 1968. At the time of his death, Schapiro was working on a book of his photographs of Andy Warhol (Taschen) and a book pairing his photographs alongside his son Theophilus’s photography.

Since the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s seminal 1969 exhibition, Harlem on my Mind, which included a number of his images, Schapiro’s photographs have appeared in museum and gallery exhibitions world-wide. The High Museum of Art’s Road to Freedom, which traveled widely in the United States, includes numerous of his photographs from the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King Jr. Recent one-man shows have been mounted in Los Angeles, London, Santa Fe, Amsterdam, Paris. And Berlin. Steve has had large museum retrospective exhibitions in the United States, Spain, Russia, and Germany.

Schapiro continued to work in a documentary vein. His recent series of photographs have been about India, music festivals, the Christian social activist Shane Claiborne, and Black Lives Matter.

In 2017, Schapiro won the Lucie Award for Achievement in Photojournalism. Schapiro’s work is represented in many private and public collections, including the Smithsonian Museum, the High Museum of Art, the New York Metropolitan Museum, and the Getty Museum.

Steve is survived by his wife Maura Smith, his sons Theophilus Donoghue and Adam Schapiro, and his daughters Elle Harvey and Taylor Schapiro. 

Rest in power.

Opening Feb. 4 at RIT’s City Art Space, “Brink: Photographs by David Butow” features a gripping selection of images from the new book

 

Via Rochester Institute of Technology
January 14, 2022

©David Butow

January 6, 2021. Supporters of President Donald Trump retreat from tear gas during a battle with Law Enforcement officers on the west steps of the Capitol in Washington during the attack on the day of Joe Biden’s election certification by Congress

"I was most interested in making pictures that would be different from daily news coverage and that would be particularly compelling to viewers decades from now.”--David Butow

--A solo exhibition of photographs and video by David Butow, whose new book, Brink, chronicles politics in the United States from the 2016 presidential election through the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, is coming to RIT’s City Art Space.

Opening Feb. 4, “Brink: Photographs by David Butow” features a gripping selection of images from the book (Punctum Press) for which Jenn Poggi, assistant professor in RIT’s School of Photographic Arts and Sciences, served as a key editor. The exhibition runs through Feb. 20. Full article here.

On January 20, 2022, the one year anniversary of President Biden’s inauguration, at 5 pm MST (4 pm PST, 6 pm CDT, 7 pm EST) David Butow will be in conversation with Steve Appleford, a contributing writer and video producer with the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, and other publications. BRINK chronicles the dynamics that unfolded during the 2016 presidential election and led, finally, to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in January 2021. Registration required, click here.

Ashley Gilbertson photograph heads Opinion in today's NY Times

The New York Times Opinion

January 14, 2022

Ashley Gilbertson photograph heads Opinion in today's NY Times