Imagine a world without photojournalism exhibit Opens, Marks Monroe Gallery's 20th anniversary in Santa Fe

 Via Art Daily

July 2, 2022

David Butow, March 15, 2022. Two of the millions of refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine, this woman and her son leave for Poland and a completely unpredictable future. © David Butow. Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography.

SANTA FE, NM.- Monroe Gallery of Photography opened a major exhibition celebrating the Gallery’s 20th anniversary in Santa Fe. “Imagine a World Without Photojournalism” is a multi-photojournalist presentation of news events of the 20th and 21st Centuries. The exhibition will continue through September 18, 2022.

A special program with gallery photojournalists Nina Berman and David Butow will be held on Friday, July 22 at 5:30 PM, RSVP required, please contact the Gallery for information.

Imagine a world without photojournalism

Across America and throughout the world, photojournalists working to bring the world vital news have come under attack, often from authorities, governments, and groups using violence and repression as a form of censorship. Combined with deliberate misinformation creating public skepticism, the photojournalist’s mission of creating visual moments essential to understanding societal and political change may be threatened.

For 20 years, Monroe Gallery of Photography has presented exhibitions championing the critical work of photojournalists.

Photojournalism’s work and mission—one that can be put simply as documenting a news event through the medium of photographic images, has arguably become the most essential and enduring news messaging tool, and one that has gained only further traction and relevance in the 21st century.

On the occasion of Monroe Gallery of Photography’s 20th anniversary in Santa Fe, the gallery presents an exhibition of photojournalists that they have exhibited throughout the years which span almost 100 years of history.

Photographs in the exhibition cover 20th- and 21st- century societal and political change, from the battles of World War II to the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s, from the frenzy of Presidential campaigns to the January 6 Insurrection on the United States Capitol. The exhibit includes a photograph from the 2019 Charlotte, North Carolina Gay Pride parade that the Gaston County manager ordered removed from a Gaston County museum exhibit on June 15, 2022.

Photographs in this exhibition are universally relevant; they reflect the past, the present, and the changing times. These unforgettable images are imbedded in our collective consciousness; they form a sort of shared visual heritage for the human race, a treasury of significant memories. Many of the photographs featured in this exhibition not only moved the public at the time of their publication, and continue to have an impact today, but set social and political changes in motion, transforming the way we live and think.

NINA BERMAN

Nina Berman is a documentary photographer, filmmaker, author and educator. Her wide-ranging work looks at American politics, militarism, post violence trauma and resistance. Her photographs and videos have been exhibited at more than 100 venues from the security walls of the Za'atari refugee camp to the Whitney Museum of American Art. She is the author of Purple Hearts – Back from Iraq, (2004) portraits and interviews with wounded American veterans, Homeland, (2008) an examination of the militarization of American life post September 11, and, An autobiography of Miss Wish (2017) a story told with a survivor of sexual violence which was shortlisted for both the Aperture and Arles book prizes. Additional fellowships, awards and grants include: the New York Foundation for the Arts, the World Press Photo Foundation, Pictures of the Year International, the Open Society Foundation, the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, the MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellowship and the Aftermath Project. She is a Professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she directs the photography program. She lives in her hometown of New York City.

DAVID BUTOW

David Butow is a freelance photojournalist whose projects and assignments have taken him to over two dozen countries including Afghanistan, Burma, Iraq, Peru, Yemen and Zimbabwe. His new book, BRINK, chronicles politics in the United States from the 2016 presidential election through the chaos of the Trump presidency, the turmoil of 2020 and concludes with the insurrection and its aftermath at the U.S, Capitol in January 2021.

Born in New York and raised in Dallas, he has a degree in Government from the University of Texas at Austin. After college he moved to Los Angeles and worked in newspapers before beginning a freelance career for magazines in the 1990's. From the mid-90's through the late-2000's he worked as a contract photographer for US News and World Report magazine covering social issues and news events such as post- 9/11 in New York, the Palestinian/Israeli Intifada, the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, the 2019 Hong Kong protests, the funeral of Nelson Mandela, and the death of Pope John Paul II at the Vatican.

Most recently, his photographs from Ukraine and Ulvalde, Texas have been published in Politico, Time, and The New York Times

David's photographs have been shown in numerous exhibitions including the Asia Society NY, the United Nations NY and Visa Pour l'Image in Perpignan, France. They have also appeared in books and magazines worldwide.

Monroe Gallery presents the exhibition "Imagine a world without photojournalism"

 Via Visura

June 29, 2022

For 20 years, Monroe Gallery of Photography has presented exhibitions championing the critical work of photojournalists.

IMAGINE A WORLD WITHOUT PHOTOJOURNALISM

Exhibit Celebrates Monroe Gallery's 20 Years in Santa Fe

Santa Fe--Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to announce a major exhibition celebrating the Gallery’s 20th anniversary in Santa Fe. Opening on Friday, July 1, “Imagine a World Without Photojournalism” is a multi-photojournalist presentation of news events of the 20th and 21st Centuries.  A public reception will occur on Friday, July 1, from 5 – 7 pm. The exhibition will continue through September 18, 2022.

A special program with gallery photojournalists Nina Berman and David Butow will be held on Friday, July 22 at 5:30 PM, RSVP required, please contact the Gallery for information.

Full article here.

The Truth in Tears….

 Via Joe McNally's Blog

June 27, 2022

Ed Clark/Life Picture Collection: Navy CPO Graham Jackson as he Plays 'Goin' Home' on the accordion while President Franklin D. Roosevelt's body is carried from The Warm Springs Foundation, where he died suddenly of a stroke on April12, 1945 Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography

One of the proudest associations I have enjoyed in my career is my long time affiliation with the Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe. The gallery represents historically important photojournalism, and Sid and Michelle Monroe are fierce advocates of the importance of photojournalism, and equally fierce defenders of the artists who create the work they show on their walls. They are also amongst the most knowledgeable people in this industry, steeped in the history, legends and lore of this art and craft.

On Friday, July 1, they launch an important exhibit. “Imagine a World Without Photojournalism,” which is a date that coincides with the gallery’s 20th anniversary in Santa Fe. Their walls will simply vibrate with famous, important, provocative, challenging, memorable, sad and glorious slices of our life and times. The images enrich, enrage, dismay, and soothe the soul. Your eyes and heart will never be the same after seeing this collection of work.

Sid and Michelle are dear friends, and they know me well by now. Whenever I sell an image through the gallery, I never ask for the money. I leave it with them, building a bank account over time, at the gallery. When I have enough stashed to afford a print, I choose one. Such as CPO Jackson, above, in the banner photo. I have it on my wall, and see it every day.

Made by the formidable LIFE staffer Ed Clark, it depicts Navy CPO Graham Jackson as he plays “Goin’ Home” on the accordion while President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s body is carried from The Warm Springs Foundation, where he died suddenly of a stroke on April 12, 1945. According to accounts, he had a personal relationship with FDR, thus his grief, so poignantly manifest in this frame, is both about the loss of a leader, and a friend.

The picture is just as searing, relevant and heart wrenching today as it was the day Mr. Jackson was playing that accordion, and Ed Clark clicked a shutter button. Without the hearts and minds of photojournalists, a picture like this doesn’t exist. Without the photographers who are risking their lives in Ukraine, we don’t know and thus can’t feel the weight and horror of the madness raging there.

Photojournalists are often not welcome, as we show, in unflinching fashion, things many don’t want to see or recognize. But visual storytelling is more necessary than ever. As our country devolves into vengeful tribalism, and skepticism flourishes, nourished by unalloyed ignorance, I look at CPO Jackson’s face from long ago. There is truth in the tears.

More tk….

Collection spotlights photojournalist Ed Kashi’s ‘spontaneous “uncomposition”’

 Via NPAA

June 25, 2022

Taking pictures by intuition sounds mystical. How can you make photographs without thinking about composition, focus and adjusting the exposure?

Maybe after enough missteps — the back-focused portrait, an underexposed face, the wrong choice of lens — you can make the right decisions without thinking about them. Think of musicians who learn to adjust for a wrong note and a basketball player who seems to know where the ball is going before the pass is made.

Some photojournalists learn the same kind of automatic reaction. Ed Kashi is one of them.

He calls his new collection of 40 years of photography “Abandoned Moments,” a term he describes as moments “shaped by serendipity and instinct, rather than objectivity and intellect.” Released from the formality and training that direct most of the work of a creative soul, Kashi feels that with less control over his photography his images “may be more certain and more certainly true.”

In his search for truth, Kashi found himself observing life and reacting in a split second, finding serendipity and shaping it.

View Ed Kashi's fine art prints here. Signed copies of "Abandoned Moments" are available from the Gallery.

Monroe Gallery exhibit looks at history through Life’s photographs

 Via The Albuquerque Journal

By Kathaleen Roberts    June 19, 2022

The Beatles, Miami 1964,” at a private residence after their appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” (Courtesy of Bob Gomel)

SANTA FE – When Sidney and Michelle Monroe stepped into the workplace of the great photojournalist Alfred Eisenstaedt decades ago, they were more than intimidated.

“There’s a picture of Hitler and Mussolini shaking hands in his office,” Michelle Monroe said. “We’re not peers.

“Honestly, we could barely catch our breath, we were so star-struck.”

That meeting in New York’s Time-Life building would launch a career of exhibiting some of the most pioneering photojournalists in the country. Monroe Gallery will celebrate the glory days of Life magazine with about 40 images by such photographic luminaries as Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White, Bob Gomel and Bill Ray through June 26.

Known as the father of photojournalism, Eisenstaedt is best recognized for his image of a sailor kissing a nurse in a dance-like dip during Times Square’s V-J celebration in 1945. When the Monroes approached him, he had never shown his work in a gallery before.

In 1963, Life assigned the photographer a photo essay on life in Paris.

“He didn’t know what he could do that Henri Cartier-Bresson hadn’t done,” Sidney Monroe said.

While he was walking the streets, Eisenstaedt spotted a playground with a puppet show of “St. George and the Dragon.” He crawled under the stage and began shooting the crowd from beneath the drape. The photographer captured the children in the audience, their facial expressions tumbling from delight into fear and horror.

“It’s almost timeless, aside from their clothing, it could be any time,” Sidney said. “It’s a great example of what a photographer does.”

Gomel was already in Miami to shoot the Muhammad Ali-Sonny Liston fight when his editors asked him to photograph the Beatles. The foursome had flown south to relax immediately after their 1964 “Ed Sullivan Show” debut. Gomel shot them sunbathing at a private home.

“The editor of Life was really interested in the world of pop culture,” Sidney said. “The Beatles would sell so many magazines.”

Carl Mydans had been captured by the invading Japanese when the Philippines fell during World War II. He was freed during a prisoner exchange in 1943.

In 1945, Mydans photographed the Japanese formal surrender on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri in front of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

Mydans had also shot the famous image of MacArthur wading onto a Philippines beach.

“When news came of the formal surrender, it was bedlam,” Sidney Monroe said. Mydans approached a MacArthur aide to make sure he gained entry to the ship.

The photographer captured the iconic moment while he was straddling a cannon. As soon as he shot the photo, a sailor pulled him off.

“The U.S. officials came in wearing their day-to-day khakis, much to the displeasure of the Japanese,” Sidney Monroe said.

Bourke-White was the first photographer hired by Life.

When she photographed Mahatma Gandhi in 1946, he insisted she learn to spin in order to have an audience with him.

“He had no time to digress from his campaign to free India from British oppression,” Sidney said. “She needed him and he knew he needed her.”

Founded by Henry Luce, publisher of Time magazine, Life was long one of the most popular and imitated of American magazines, selling millions of copies a week. Published weekly from 1936 to 1972, it emphasized photography.

“They’re all in their very defining moments,” Sidney Monroe said. “The moments are in our heads because they’re part of our history.”

If you go

WHAT: “The LIFE Photographers”

WHERE: Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, Santa Fe

WHEN: Through June 26

CONTACT: monroegallery.com, 505-992-0800

Podcast: Photojournalist Grant Balwin on Removal of LBGQT Picture from Exhibit

 

On episode 60 of the Nooze Hounds podcast, Ryan Pitkin talks to photojournalist Grant Baldwin about a story that made national headlines this week after one his photo of two men kissing was removed from an exhibit at the Gaston County Museum of Art & History at the request of Gaston County Manager Kim Eagle. 

Charlotte photojournalist Grant Baldwin discusses how he found himself at the center of a story that made national headlines this week after a photo he took of two men kissing was removed from an exhibit at a Gaston County history museum.

Listen here

This photograph is included in the Monroe Gallery of Photography exhibit "Imagine A World Without Photojournalism" July 1 - September 18

Photographs in the exhibition cover 20th- and 21st- century societal and political change, from the battles of World War II to the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s, from the frenzy of Presidential campaigns to the January 6 Insurrection on the United States Capitol. The exhibit includes a photograph from the 2019 Charlotte, North Carolina Gay Pride parade that the Gaston County manager ordered removed from a Gaston County museum exhibit on June 15, 2022.

"This is just two people protected under the Constitution, and it is seen as suddenly offensive. That's a huge problem."

 

This photo, shot by freelance photographer Grant Baldwin, was taken down from the Gaston County Museum at the direction of the county manager. 

(Photo: courtesy of Grant Baldwin Photography)

Via Gaston Gazette

June 15, 2022

Photo removed from Gaston County Museum to be displayed in Santa Fe gallery

Kara Fohner

The Gaston Gazette

A gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, will display the photograph that the Gaston County manager ordered removed from a museum exhibit.

The photograph, which features two men kissing after one of them proposed at a Charlotte Pride parade in 2019, will be featured in an exhibit titled "Imagine a World Without Photojournalism" at the Monroe Gallery of Photography. The exhibit runs from July 1 to Sept. 29.

Grant Baldwin, the photographer who shot the image, said that he received an email from the gallery owners, Sidney and Michelle Monroe, asking to use the photograph in the exhibit with plans to include an explanation about how it was removed from the photography exhibition at the Gaston County Museum of Art and History.

The photograph was removed from the Gaston County Museum at the order of County Manager Kim Eagle. The county said in a written statement that Eagle reviewed the photograph and told museum staff to work with the photographer to find an alternative photograph to display "that would be more considerate of differing viewpoints in the community." 

The county said that it finds it important that the items the museum shares be "informational without championing political views," according to a statement released by the county Tuesday.

Baldwin, who has been a freelance photojournalist for 11 years, has mixed feelings about the situation. He is sensitive to the impact that the news of the photo's removal may have had on LGBTQ+ individuals in Gaston County, but he is also excited that the photograph seems to have taken on a life of its own. 

"I just feel like, you know, on those occasions when a journalist gets to make something that takes on its own narrative and life, ... that's really great, that excites me. And I feel honored that I got to make a piece of work that's doing that," Baldwin said. "So, as a journalist, I'm excited about what's going on, and I don't mean that in any sort of disrespectful way to the challenges that this poses for the LGBTQ community. I'm not happy with what they're experiencing with this."

Michelle Monroe, one of the co-owners of the Monroe Gallery of Photography, said that she learned the photograph had been removed from the museum exhibit from media reports.

"I'm using the photo for several reasons, but it is also a wonderful photograph. We are a gallery, and you know, we don't just want a photograph with substance. We want a photograph that is well done and beautiful, and tells an important story," she said. "We actually have had other work that would represent the human civil rights of the LGBTQ and decided that we would switch out one of those for this, because this was so current and apparently so threatening that we wanted to champion it."

She said that in terms of the arc of history, some moments are signals, catalysts that ultimately have historical significance.

She said the removal of the photograph from the exhibit is a clear signal that history is moving in the wrong direction.

"This piece of art is simply a photograph, right?" she said. "This is just two people protected under the Constitution, and it is seen as suddenly offensive. That's a huge problem." 

Related Coverage

"It is our understanding that the photograph has already been sent to a gallery in Santa Fe, where the gallery owner, Michelle Monroe of Monroe Gallery of Photography, recognizes that it is a substantial photograph that tells an important story about human civil rights."  -Opinion, Gaston Gazette

N. Carolina county orders museum to remove photo showing same-sex couple kissing to celebrate marriage proposal

NC museum removes LGBTQ Pride photo, sparking outrage

Gaston County Museum pulls gay Pride photo

'It's surreal:' Man shocked his engagement photo at center of Gaston County controversy

When the Moment Occurs – Review of “Abandoned Moments: A Love Letter to Photography” by Ed Kashi

 Via Frames

Ed Kashi calls Abandoned Moments, his new collection, an autobiography, and the distinction is important. In this case, Kashi has curated his own oeuvre to make a statement. -Click to read full review

View Ed Kashi's available prints here.

A Sobering Documentary Shows the Fourth Estate Under Strain

 Via Variety

June 14, 2022

Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady's potent new HBO doc finds frightening evidence of the free press — and democracy — in multinational decline.

By Dennis Harvey

The resurgence of neo-fascist movements and authoritarian rule around the world has unsurprisingly coincided with a ramping-up of hostility against press freedom. Assassinated U.S.-based Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi is the most notorious single example, but hundreds in his profession have been murdered in recent years, with many more assaulted, detained, harassed and so forth. Telling the truth has become a dangerous business in an era where politicians now frequently stoke anger towards “fake news,” as they often brand any reportage that doesn’t flatter them. All this is occurring at a time when professional outlets and standards continue to diminish, their existence eroded by competition from newer platforms where opinion and rumor often supplant factual reality.

That escalating crisis gets its pulse taken by “Endangered,” the latest documentary feature by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, whose stellar collaborations to date have tackled diverse subjects from U.S. evangelicals (“Jesus Camp”) to broadcast maverick Norman Lear (“Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You”). Executive produced by Ronan Farrow, this urgent yet admirably cool-headed look at an increasingly heated issue launches on HBO and HBO Max June 28, two weeks after its Tribeca festival premiere.

After an opening-credits montage of meaningful free-press moments in the 20th century’s second half (notably Watergate), we begin meeting the film’s principals. Each is embroiled in covering national politics in a climate where the more conservative leaders and supporters prefer to combat negative stories by “shooting the messenger,” sometimes literally.

In Sao Paolo, newspaper reporter Patricia Campos Mello attends a rally for Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, a nationalist strongman who frequently directs his fervent followers’ rage towards the Fourth Estate. Having exposed fraud within his election campaign, she’s been a regular target for his often crudely sexualized attacks: She isn’t kidding when she says, “To half the Brazilian population, I am a whore who trades sex for information.” Finally deciding to sue him for slander in order to “send a message,” she provides “Endangered” with a rare encouraging development here, when the court duly awards her monetary damages.

In Mexico City, purple-haired photojournalist Sashenka Gutierrez is in an even more perilous position, noting “Mexico is one of the most dangerous countries to be a journalist … A lot of my colleagues have disappeared or been killed.” Their casualties are minuscule, however, compared to the estimated 3600 women murdered every year in a nation where misogynistic violence seems to be an epidemic. (That death toll is about twice as many as in the U.S., which has nearly three times the population.) “My mother taught me not to be afraid to tell the truth,” she says, wading with her camera into protests where fed-up women take a stance just as aggressive as the police who arrive in full riot gear to meet them. Despite this brave attitude, however, there’s undeniable tension underlying her daily work. When we see her arrive at home alone at night, we brace for the kind of unpleasant surprise that happens in fictional thrillers.

Such professional peril, more common to war-zone reportage, as yet seems a remote risk Stateside — but that may change. Covering a Black Lives Matter protest after George Floyd’s murder, Miami Herald photographer Carl Juste records the heavy-handed police response, his images becoming evidence as local law enforcement files false reports of their actions. On a similar occasion not long after, cops appear to actively target press persons for harassment, tear-gassing and strong-arm treatment.

Juste and reporter Oliver Laughland, who writes about American politics for the U.K. Guardian, actively feel infrastructure as well as popular support for a free press eroding around them. At Trump rallies, his base (often urged on by the man himself) demonstrate the venomous flipside of their adulation by spewing insults at the journos in the rear. When Laughland asks individuals how they feel about a variably shrinking and biased media landscape, he gets responses ranging from “I’m not gonna buy a newspaper that doesn’t reflect my view” to citing of YouTube videos as a better information source. Such deteriorating relations reach a logical climax when we see January 6 insurrectionists destroying the equipment of media personnel they’ve already forced to flee.

After introducing these main figures at some length, “Endangered” intercuts between them to find increasing parallels, particularly once COVID descends — and far-right voices spread related disinformation. In Mexico City, officials deny an emergency exists even as a hospital worker tells Gutierrez that her facility’s patient death rate is 90 percent. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro lies, “The whole coronavirus thing is a fantasy.”

Framed by an early-1960s U.S. broadcast program exalting the role of a free press in democracy — as specified in the Constitution — “Endangered” views so much open antagonism towards accurate reportage as a dire sign of decreasing institutional accountability in general. Every dictatorship begins in earnest with the forced dissolution of media that doesn’t parrot the administration’s talking points. A fifth major interviewee is Joel Simon, who comments on such trends as executive director (a post he left last year) of the NYC-based watchdog organisation Committee to Protect Journalists. He notes issues that formerly only arose abroad are now relevant here in the States, given rising public distrust towards the profession, and the growth of “news deserts” where no truly local newspapers still exist.

The prognosis looks bleak for “moderators of fact and falsehoods,” as Juste calls fellow journalistic practitioners. But Ewing and Grady deliver that bad news with a tonal emphasis on obstinate resistance, and a briskness that lets the darkening view register without succumbing to hand-wringing or nihilism. The complexity of unfolding events (and of a reporter’s job in interpreting them) is nicely captured by frequent use of split-screen imagery, the clarity of that busy editorial approach abetted by terrifically sharp photography credited to three DPs.

A concise call for awareness towards what’s already a considerable emergency, “Endangered” is too disciplined and focused to simply hit the panic button. But you can tell the filmmakers, like their subjects, are struggling to suppress a scream.

---Exhibition opening July 1 at Monroe Gallery of Photography: Imagine a World Without Photojournalism

Raft by Raft, a Rainforest Loses Its Trees: photographer Ashley Gilbertson traveled 500 miles along the Congo River and its tributaries to explore the forces driving deforestation.

 Via The New York Times

June 14, 2022

Dionne Searcey, a climate reporter at The New York Times, and photographer Ashley Gilbertson traveled 500 miles along the Congo River and its tributaries to explore the forces driving deforestation.