JULY 4, 2016

Eric Smith: County Fair Queen, Adrian, Michigan, July Fourth, 2007

From the exhibition "The American Family Album", a selection of 50 photographs that represents a collective American Family Album: an offbeat and absorbing portrait of the American experience. Unusual, timeless, irrational; these anonymous memories of America are not what we expect.

EXHIBITION: THE AMERICAN FAMILY ALBUM

Steve Schapiro: Supermarket Protest, New Jersey, 1963

THE AMERICAN FAMILY ALBUM
Wanderlust and encounters of the American family in pictures.
July 1 through September 18, 2016

A selection of 50 photographs that represents a collective American Family Album: an offbeat and absorbing portrait of the American experience. Unusual, timeless, irrational; these anonymous memories of America are not what we expect. The images are an elusive vision of a country without limits and challenge us to reinterpret the impact, value, and status of photographs we encounter in our daily lives. There may be no Pulitzer Prize-winning pictures in the exhibition, but the photographs are nonetheless glorious in their innocence.

Guy Gillette: Racers, West Heartland, Connecticut, 1953

Although family photo albums have only been in existence for over one hundred years, now they are virtually obsolete, often replaced by an overload of digital images scattered across our many devices.  Concurrently, smaller and more advanced cameras helped contribute to the success of picture magazines and led to more photographs in newspapers. Photographers documented the major events of our collective history, with a particular emphasis on “big events” and newsworthy happenings. But these photographers also photographed the lives of average folks and their everyday unique American experiences. Professional photographers explored the American landscape in the hopes of finding average individuals in everyday settings and creating pictures that illustrate the idiosyncrasies of people, objects, and places discovered on the journey. During the heyday of magazine photography, the wanderlust of the American family often provided a narrative that comprised the American experience.

“The mission of photography is to explain man to man and man to himself. And that is no mean function. Man is the most complicated thing on earth and also as naïve as a tender plant.” – Edward Steichen

View the exhibition here.

JUNE 12: LOVING DAY

Grey Villet: Richard and Mildred Loving. 1965

Via The LA Times
June 10, 2016

"Forty-nine years ago on June 12, the Supreme Court struck down laws in 16 states that banned mixed-race marriages. The decision in Loving vs. Virginia overturned the conviction of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple from Caroline County, Va., who had been arrested, jailed and banned from their home state for violating its Racial Integrity Act.

It also ushered in a new era in the American family.

For 12 years, Ken Tanabe, a Japanese-Belgian freelance graphic designer living in New York, has been working to educate Americans about what he sees as one of the most significant civil rights cases through Loving Day, the unofficial holiday that cities across the country are slowly adapting to celebrate the lives of the fast-growing multiracial population.

Now Tanabe, whose organization has tracked and sponsored many of the dozens of dance and music festivals, film screenings, picnics and forums taking place across the country in June to commemorate Loving vs. Virginia, has launched a campaign to get the holiday recognized by the federal government." Read the full LA Times article here.

Grey Villet: Mildred and Richard Loving, King and Queen County, Virginia in April 1965

Grey Villet took over 2,400 frames of the Lovings for Life in 1965 but the magazine did not run the story until March 18, 1966, when the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals upheld the lower court ruling and the Lovings’ case headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. The tone of the piece, as well as the selected images, was cool and neutral; the three published images that include both Mildred and Richard are extremely chaste and do not capture the emotional bond between them as so many of Villet’s other images do. Life, like many other media outlets, did not want to address the topic of interracial sex directly for fear of offending popular opinion.

White House petition to establish Loving Day as a holiday.

CBS News "Sunday Morning" Almanac: June 12th,1967, 49 years ago today ... a day of triumph for a basic human right

International Center of Photography: The Loving Story: Photographs by Grey Villet

HBO Documentary The Loving Story

Feature in production: LOVING

Muhammad Ali, Titan of Boxing and the 20th Century, Dies at 74

Bob Gomel: Cassius Clay, Miami, 1964

The New York Times:  Muhammad Ali, Titan of Boxing and the 20th Century, Dies at 74

Neil Leifer:  Muhammad Ali Knocks Out Sonny Liston, Lewiston, Maine, May 25, 1965                                

A look back at selected Muhammad Ali posts from our blog:

Sonny Liston landed on canvas below Muhammad Ali’s feet on May 25, 1965, and Neil Leifer snapped a photo

On Friday, March 6, 1964, Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali

Cassius Clay couldn’t sleep in Miami Beach after beating Sonny Liston there in the legendary 1964 bout

March 8: Today In History: 'The Fight Of The Century'

Steve Schapiro: Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay - Monopoly), Louisville, Kentucky, 1963

Visit our Pop-Up Tribute exhibition now on view in the gallery.
Neil Leifer will be signing copies of his new book Relentless: The Stories behind the Photographs 

 in the gallery July 29, 2016
Pre-orders available

STEPHEN WILKES TED TALK

Stephen Wilkes: Coney Island, Day To Night

Via TED
Ideas Worth Spreading

"Photographer Stephen Wilkes crafts stunning compositions of landscapes as they transition from day to night, exploring the space-time continuum within a two-dimensional still photograph. Journey with him to iconic locations like the Tournelle Bridge in Paris, El Capitan in Yosemite National Park and a life-giving watering hole in heart of the Serengeti in this tour of his art and process."

See more of Stephen Wilkes' photography here.

Famed Life photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt

Alfred Eisenstaedt/©Time Inc.  Girl in surf, Jones Beach, New York, 1951

We are very pleased to share the recent CBS News feature on the gallery’s current Alfred Eisenstaedt exhibit:

"Famed Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt's classic images are an indelible part of history. His iconic portraits of the biggest figures of the 20th century -- including Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Marilyn Monroe and Winston Churchill -- along with his beautiful, poignant images of daily life made him one of the most published photojournalists in the world. He was the quintessential Life photographer with the unfailing ability to capture the defining moment."

The full feature may be viewed here.

 The exhibit continues through June 26.

 

TASCHEN: Stephen Wilkes: A Day in The Life

Stephen Wilkes: Serengeti, Day To Night, 2015

Coming from Taschen:

"Photographer Stephen Wilkes set out to rethink these iconic landmarks. Vast and extraordinarily detailed, his images capture not just the location, but rather a day in the life of that location. Wilkes’ process is intensive, waking before dawn and shooting up to 2,000 frames from a stationary vantage point, which are then painstakingly edited together to form a seamless collage. For every site, he also has to capture the same space without anyone in it. That empty image becomes, in Wilkes’ words, the “the naked plate” on which he overlays the details from all the other images."


To Pre-Order or receive more information about the limited edition of Stephen Wilkes please contact collectors@taschen.com.

The AIPAD Photography Show Recap

It was truly a pleasure seeing so many of our friends, colleagues, photographers, and collectors - and meeting so many new friends and collectors, during the AIPAD Photography Show. Thank you all for visiting us and we sincerely hope we may see you soon in the gallery in Santa Fe!


Hyperallergic

"I catch sight of Stephen Wilkes’s “Recycled Aluminum Can Study #1” at Monroe Gallery’s booth, and I am floored"

ArtNews:


See What Top Dealers Are Bringing to the AIPAD Photography Show

Collector Daily:

Every Booth at the 2016 AIPAD Photography Show, Part 4 of 4
(Monroe Gallery slide 15 of 21)

Every Booth at the 2016 AIPAD Photography Show, Part 3 of 4

Every Booth at the 2016 AIPAD Photography Show, Part 2 of 4

Every Booth at the 2016 AIPAD Photography Show, Part 1 of 4

NY Arts:

THE PHOTOGRAPHY SHOW AT PARK AVENUE ARMORY, NEW YORK

Monroe Gallery at The 2016 AIPAD Photography Show April 13 - 17

Stephen Wilkes: Lone Worker, China, 2005

Monroe Gallery of Photography is very pleased to be again exhibiting at the AIPAD Photography Show, this year April 13 – 17 in New York at the Park Avenue Amory, 643 Park Avenue. The gallery will be in booth # 104.

Celebrating its 36th year in 2016, The Photography Show features more than 80 of the world’s leading photography art galleries.

Monroe Gall ill be exhibiting specially selected photographs from the gallery's renowned collection of 20th and 21st Century master photojournalists. Among the highlights selected for this year's exhibition are: vintage prints from Spider Martin alongside other important civil rights photographs; a rare selection of never-before-seen vintage prints of photographs taken by Bill Eppridge on the night Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated;  a rare vintage print made from the original negative of the iconic image from World War II by George Silk "An Australian soldier, Private George "Dick" Whittington, is aided by Papuan orderly Raphael Oimbari, near Buna on 25 December 1942";  several large-scale color photographs from Stephen Wilkes’  acclaimed China and Day To Night collections, and an exciting previously unseen large scale photograph of David Bowie taken in New Mexico in 1975 during the filming of “The Man Who Fell To Earth” that is featured in the forthcoming book “Bowie: Photographs by Steve Schapiro” which will be published in April, 2016 by PowerHouse Books, and many other exciting new additions to the gallery’s collection.

Steve Schapiro: David Bowie,  New Mexico, 1975

(“The Man Who Fell To Earth’)

We hope to see you!

David Bowie and the Photographs of Steve Schapiro

In this previously unpublished photo, David is seen with goggles and bike. Los Angeles, 1974

©Steve Schapiro

Via TIME LightBox

Bowie, a new collection of archival photographs by Steve Schapiro, captures the fleeting moments when the mask dropped.

In addition to offering a host of iconic images from the mid-1970s, Bowie, a new collection of archival photographs by Steve Schapiro, captures the fleeting moments when the mask dropped, when the effort it took to create all of this wondrous puffery showed at the seams, when he occasionally made—unbelievable!—fashion blunders. Bowie, it turns out, looked terrible in mandals (a faux pas he made while renting a West Hollywood house previously inhabited by Frank Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe). His ghastly white toes weren’t helped by the addition of high-waisted navy blue trousers paired with purple suspenders and a plaid newsboy’s cap. Read the full article here.

At the AIPAD Photography Show April 13 - 17, Monroe Gallery of Photography will feature an exciting previously unseen large scale photograph of David Bowie taken in New Mexico in 1975 during the filming of “The Man Who Fell To Earth”. The photograph is included in the forthcoming book “Bowie: Photographs by Steve Schapiro” which will be published April 15, 2016 by PowerHouse Books.

Steve Schapiro’s Bowie is published by powerHouse Books and is available now.

A Portrait of LIFE in 1960s America by Grey Villet

Museum at Bethel Woods

April 2 - December 31, 2016

Don't miss this compelling photography exhibit of LIFE magazine photographer Grey Villet, who traveled America and the world for LIFE magazine like an observant explorer, mapping its emotional contours in the faces and lives of its people. His in-depth, personal studies of the American scene of the 1950s and ’60s illuminated the complex reality of those years with a truth that, in his own words, were "as real as real could get." His images of presidents and revolutionaries, sports heroes, and everyday people struggling for their rights tell an emotional and compelling story of an era that shaped the present. Co Curated by his wife Barbara Villet.

Barbara Villet Bio:
That I ended up being a journalist was probably bred in the bone.  My father was a j reporter   for the old NY World but in time became the Sports Editor for Fox Movietone News in the day when the weekly newsreel was the main source of visual coverage. I didn't expect to follow him, but after   Middlebury and Harvard, I found myself working on the news desk of Radio Free Europe in the middle of the Cold War.  I left that job after the Hungarian Revolution and ended up at Life as a researcher, the only opening for women there was back then. Soon enough, I was on the news desk and it was there in 1958, that I first encountered Grey Villet's work on a school bus drowning in West Virginia. I never forgot it and in l961, when I had finally earned a promotion to editor and a byline--another rarity for women back then, I met him in person in l961 on an assignment I had conceived of as part of a trilogy on Fame, Wealth and Success.  Success ended up as a benchmark essay of l6 pages in Life and is included in a volume called     Great Essays from Life.   We ended up well matched both professionally and personally, and were married the next year. Until Life folded as weekly in l972, we had what Grey described as "a great ride" working together on assignments that carried us throughout the US and abroad . In 1965, when our daughter Ann was borne, I was offered an exclusive contract to produce 3 stories a year for Life with Grey which allowed me to stay at home with Ann until both of us went off on assignment. We took her with us to England and to California when she was very small and later to South Africa when we did the World Library Book. Other books were trade productions: Viking Press picked up our work on a missionary order of nuns which was published as Those Whom God Chooses and after Life folded, I took on an extension of one of our Life essays on a Head Nurse as a book for Doubleday. More freelancing followed and I did pieces for Quest and Atlantic Monthly before taking on another book contract. Called Blood River, it was a study of South Africa in the final days of apartheid and earned a Time Notable and Book of the Year citation as well as a nomination for the Pulitzer. Grey continued to shoot for Time, Sports Illustrated and Newsweek in those years.  It has been, to quote the Stones, a Long Strange Trip, but an amazing one that tools us to 37 countries around the world, mostly for work and sometimes for fun and I have very few regrets or complaints excepting the untimely loss of the great hearted guy who was my life partner and soul mate in 2000 at age 72.  I have since spent most of my energies on preserving and advancing his historic legacy.


Each year, The Museum at Bethel Woods presents new special exhibits that explore the popular culture, politics, art, and social history of the dynamic decade of The Sixties and its legacy.

Museum information, hours, and tickets here.

Grey Villet's photographs will be included in the Monroe Gallery of Photography exhibit, booth #104, during the AIPAD Photography Show April 13 - 17, Park Avenue Armory, New York.

Happy Birthday Art Shay!

Art Shay, born March 31, 1922 in the Bronx, NY

We are very excited to wish photographer Art Shay a very Happy 94th Birthday!

For over 70 years, Art Shay has documented his life, combining his gifts of storytelling, humor and empathy.

Born in 1922, he grew up in the Bronx and then served as a navigator in the U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II, during which he flew 30 bomber missions and 22 aid missions.

From 1947-1949, while on staff as a writer for Life magazine, Shay wrote hundreds of bylines while helping out some of the greatest of Life's photographers. In 1949, Shay became a Chicago-based freelance photographer, landing thousands of assignments for Life, Time, Sports Illustrated and other national publications.

Elijah Muhammed's Grandchild sleeping with Black Muslim Sisters, 1969

Shay photographed nine US Presidents & major literary, business, entertainment, science and political figures of the 20th century.

A world class street photographer, Shay wondered countless miles throughout the 1950s exploring the city with author Nelson Algren, the winner of the first National Book Award.

Shay wrote weekly columns for various newspapers, several plays, children's books, sports books and several photo essay books including "My Florence" released in February 2015.

Shay's photography is included in the permanent collections of museums including the National Portrait Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Photography , Chicago. His photographs are included in the current exhibition "Vintage Photojournalism" at the Monroe Gallery of Photography through April 24, 2016. Monroe Gallery will also feature several of Art Shay's photographs at the AIPAD Photography Show in New York, April 13 - 17.

SPRING NEWS FROM MONROE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY, SANTA FE, NM

The ultimate digital magazine where everything about photography is published daily, L’Oeil de la Photographie, recently feature the gallery’s current exhibition “Vintage Photojournalism”. The feature may be viewed here.

  

Art Shay: Hilton Hotel, Michigan Avenue, August 1968, Democratic Convention

  “Vintage Photojournalism” is a major exhibition of rare vintage prints from the 20th Century’s master photojournalists. The exhibit features unique, one of a kind prints that were used to fill requests for reproduction in LIFE magazine and other major publications, many with important historic information inscribed and stamped on the verso (backside) of the photograph. The exhibit continues through April 24.

We are very pleased to announce that the gallery is now representing the Spider Martin civil rights collection.  Alabama photojournalist, James "Spider" Martin, (b. 1939 - 2003) was employed as a staff photographer at The Birmingham News during one of the most eventful periods in American history. Martin covered key events during the 1960s civil rights movement, most notably Bloody Sunday and other historic incidents from the Selma to Montgomery march. His civil rights photographs are in included in the many collections, including the Birmingham Civil Rights museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.

While a small number of Spider's civil rights era photographs have been published and exhibited, most of these dramatic and moving images have never been shown publicly because of their controversial nature for the time.

Spider Martin: Dr. King delivering his speech to the triumphant crowd at the end of the march, March 25, 1965

Monroe Gallery of Photography will be again exhibiting at the AIPAD Photography Show April 13 – 17 in New York at the Park Avenue Amory, 643 Park Avenue. The gallery will be in booth # 104. Celebrating its 36th year in 2016, The Photography Show features more than 80 of the world’s leading photography art galleries. We will be exhibiting specially selected photographs from the gallery's renowned collection of 20th and 21st Century master photojournalists. Among the highlights selected for this year's exhibition are: vintage prints from Spider Martin alongside other important civil rights photographs; a rare selection of never-before-seen vintage prints of photographs taken by Bill Eppridge on the night Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated;  a rare vintage print made from the original negative of the iconic image from World War II by George Silk "An Australian soldier, Private George "Dick" Whittington, is aided by Papuan orderly Raphael Oimbari, near Buna on 25 December 1942";  several large-scale color photographs from Stephen Wilkes’ Bethlehem Steel, China, and Day To Night collections, and an exciting previously unseen large scale photograph of David Bowie taken in New Mexico in 1975 during the filming of “The Man Who Fell To Earth” that is featured in the forthcoming book “Bowie: Photographs by Steve Schapiro” which will be published April 26, 2016 by PowerHouse Books, and many other exciting new additions to the gallery’s collection.

Steve Schapiro: David Bowie,  New Mexico, 1975 ( “The Man Who Fell To Earth’)

 We would like to invite you to visit the AIPAD Show as our guests, please contact the gallery for complimentary admission to the Show.

We will round out the Spring season with the exhibition “Alfred Eisenstaedt: Classics and seldom-seen photographs”: April 29 – June 26. Renowned as the father of modern photojournalism, Alfred Eisenstaedt’s career as a preeminent photojournalist spanned eight decades. The exhibition of more than 50 photographs features numerous classic images, several little-known gems, and never-before-exhibited photographs.

We hope to see you in the coming months, and please do not hesitate to contact us for any information.

Our best,

Sid and Michelle Monroe

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"When People Can See Time"

Via NPR All Tech Considered
February 19, 2016
Nina Gregory

Of all of the arts, photography may be the discipline most accustomed to the nudge of technology, and photographer and artist Stephen Wilkes fully embraces the challenge. His latest project, "Day to Night," takes on the idea of showcasing, in one composite still image, the transformation of a place over the course of a day.

Take his photo of Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. For 26 hours, Wilkes shot 2,200 photos without moving the camera and while suspended in the air in a tent-like structure with a little window, so that animals wouldn't see or hear him as he photographed them coming to a watering hole from sunrise to deep into the night.

"I photograph by hand; this is not a time lapse. ... It's my eye seeing very specific moments," Wilkes says. "I like to describe myself as a collector of magical moments."

Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, Day to Night, 2015

Courtesy of Stephen Wilkes                     

Once Wilkes has all the images, he picks the best moments of the day and the night and creates what he calls a master plate. Those images then get seamlessly blended into one single photograph, where time is on a diagonal vector, with sunrise beginning in the bottom right-hand corner. That process of creating a single image can take about four months — though it's photographed in a single day.

I spoke with Wilkes in Vancouver, ahead of his TED talk, about the powers of digital photography, the experience of looking in the face of time and the challenge of sharing emotion through an image. Below are some of the highlights of our conversation.

---

Interview Highlights

On watching animal life unfold during the Serengeti shoot

Times Square, NYC, Day to Night, 201   

 Courtesy of Stephen Wilkes 

          

I'm changing time within the picture. As the sun is rotating, light is changing and all these animals, you can see time change on the light in the animals. It's all based on time. ... (At) sunrise you begin to see the watering hole is quiet and the animals migrate in as the sun rises. Wildebeests and zebras graze together; one has terrible eyes and the other has lousy hearing — the blind leading the deaf. There are meerkats. It was like watching the movie Jungle Book. As time is changing, you see the sun getting higher, you see the light begins to rotate and starts to go behind the animals. I'm watching them. Guess who else is watching them? A lion.

They have this whole process of coming in and going out, it's a rhythm. I'm telling the story based on time. It's such a complicated process and yet there's so much luck involved.

Pont de la Tournelle, Paris, Day to Night, 2013      

Courtesy of Stephen Wilkes             

On evolving as a photographer

I discovered digital in 2000 and started to realize, because I had to come through the process of analog ... I wanted to push the medium outward. So what I've been exploring is this concept of day-to-night, where I change time within a photograph. I'm really exploring the space-time continuum within a two-dimensional photograph. And it's really cool because I can tell stories that photographs could never tell before. Compressing an entire day into a single image, the best moments, allows me to share things on a narrative level that you just couldn't see.

On the power of seeing the face of time

The most exciting part of it really is how people respond to the work. It's an amazing, emotional thing. When people can see time, the face of time in a way, it's this thing we can never put our hands around. But yet, when you look at it, it makes you feel a different way and there's an emotional thing that happens and that's exciting. I just think it's the best time to be alive as a photographer, really. I think as technology keeps evolving the things you could only imagine or dream are at your fingertips now. It's just about where you want to go.

View from The Savoy, London, Day to Night, 2013      

Courtesy of Stephen Wilkes             

On the advantages of digital photography

When you can capture an image on a silicon chip versus a piece of film you can see it instantly, that's the first thing. For me, when I do one of my photographs, I can shoot 2,500 images in a single day. Now, if I was doing that with an 8x10 camera, which is the image quality I have in my digital back*, that would be 2,500 sheets of 8x10 film. It would be impossible to do what I'm doing, just the visualization of that would be impossible — and financially, to boot. And my assistant would probably jump out of the cherry picker!

*Editor's Note: A digital back is a piece of equipment you can add to the back of a film camera to modify it to take digital images.

On the high level of detail in digital photography

So if I'm a storyteller, I love that, suddenly things that were insignificant are really significant now. And that's the power of what's happening now. Eventually photography is going to look like a window; you're going to have a visceral experience with my pictures on the wall. Because the way you'll see into my pictures is almost the way the eye sees, and that's the way it's going. For me, I want you to feel the way I felt when I stood there and took the picture.


On the future of photo printing
I work with a master printer in New York and I actually print on conventional photographic paper because of the depth perception. I really want to enhance that, but there are so many new technologies that are coming out in terms of 3-D printing and all kinds of different things. Who knows where we're going to be five, 10, 15 years from now based on what's happening and the speed of what's happening.



View the full Day To Night Collection here.

The Picture Show

Eerie Ellis Island, Then And Now

Vintage Photojournalism Opens Friday, February 19

Yale Joel/©Time Inc - The verso (back) of “A view of the funeral for Robert F. Kennedy, 1968” showing inscriptions and usage in publications

Santa Fe--Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to announce: “Vintage Photojournalism”, a major exhibition of rare vintage prints from the 20th Century’s master photojournalists. The exhibition opens with a public reception on Friday, February 19, 5 – 7 pm, and continues through April 17.

The exhibit features unique, one of a kind prints that were used to fill requests for reproduction in LIFE magazine and other major publications, many with important historic information inscribed and stamped on the verso (backside) of the photograph. By definition, a vintage print is a print made at or close to the time the photographer recorded the image onto the negative. Because these photographers were working on assignments for the next issue of a publication, the prints were frequently made within days of the negative and show evidence of the photographer’s or photo editor’s preferences for cropping, enlarging, or other directions. Although these images opened American eyes to the wonders of the world, many of these prints have never before been exhibited.

“Anything was fodder for the camera with Bill Eppridge”

©Bill Eppridge: Beatles Press Conference, 1964

Bill Eppridge shot 90 rolls of film while traveling with the Beatles in February 1964. Life Magazine published four photos

Ken Dixon: Gazing at history through a long lens
The Connecticut Post
February 13, 2016


Lets all get up and dance to a song that was a hit before your mother was born …”
John Lennon, Paul McCartney

This column is about “The Beatles - 6 Days That Changed the World February 1964,” photographic evidence of the late Bill Eppridge’s crazy, fun week with the Fab Four and their fans in New York and Washington, with a couple of wacky train rides to boot.

But it’s also about music, memory, history and the role of photography, the scientific process that someone with an eye, interpersonal skills and degrees of luck can use to make artful journalism.

Dozens of photos from the 90 rolls of film Eppridge shot that week are beautifully hung on the walls in the Art Gallery in the Visual & Performing Arts Center at Western Connecticut State University’s Westside Campus. The hours are Monday through Thursday, noon to 4 p.m. and weekends from 1 to 4 p.m. It’s a tour de force that runs through March 13. He’s represented by the Monroe Gallery of Photography in Santa Fe.

Grandmothers will remember being teens and tweens. Forty-somethings may contemplate the changes the Beatles wrought to music and culture. And millennials can discover a simple slice of 20th Century social phenomena without the chore of too much reading.

My favorite photo was captured outside The Plaza Hotel in New York. An amused black-clad chauffeur is trying to unload The Beatles’ baggage in a scrum of girls. One kid, with a huge smile, is hugging a guitar case as if it were Paul McCartney himself. If she was 14 then, she’s 66 now. Every time I look at the image it makes me laugh out loud.

Eppridge, a famous photographer for Life magazine and Sports Illustrated, died in Danbury about 2 1/2 years ago at 74. When President John F. Kennedy was murdered in November of 1963, Eppridge was with mountaineers in the Alps. He came off Mont Blanc, the tallest in Europe, where a local priest told him of the assassination. In just a few years, as the sassy ’60s unwound in violence and cynicism, he would get extremely close to another Kennedy murder.

On the morning the Beatles landed, Feb. 7, Eppridge got the assignment to meet them at the newly renamed JFK International Airport.

A welcome relief after the president’s murder less than three months earlier, the lads from Liverpool were met by thousands of teenagers. Eppridge called his editor and said he wanted to stay with the band for a few days.

“I liked these guys immediately,” Eppridge recalled in the 2013 book of photos about the week, published by Rizzoli. “Shortly after, Ringo Starr turned to me and said, ‘All right, Mr. Life Magazine, what can we do for you?’ ‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘not one single thing. Just be you and I’ll turn invisible. I won’t ask you to do a thing.’”

In the winter of 1964, the United States needed The Beatles and their pop harmonies. On Sunday night, Feb. 9, they took “The Ed Sullivan Show” by storm.

Monday, Feb. 10, was a nasty, cold rainy day in Stamford. It was so horrible that the runny-nosed masses at Belltown School — usually confined to the playground in all weather until school started — were allowed inside, to line up on a stairwell, dripping wet, to await the 9 o’clock bell. All the fourth-grade chatter was about The Beatles appearance the night before and who might be a kid’s favorite.

Alas, we were a “Disney” family on Sunday nights, watching wholesome entertainment on another TV network, rather than the usual cavalcade of nightclub comics and crooners that Sullivan trotted out every week for CBS.

I knew nothing about the Beatles, was drastically behind the pop curve and never really caught up. Maybe that’s why I’m a contrarian newspaper reporter.

Of course, I eventually found the Beatles and their poppy tunes and startling harmonies. You can easily catch their Ed Sullivan appearances on the Internet. Those first 13 minutes, with “All My Loving.” “Till There was You,” “She Loves You,” “I Saw Her Standing There” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” say almost all you need to know about the innocent, early ’60s.

“Anything was fodder for the camera with Bill,” recalled Adrienne Aurichio, Eppridge’s wife and collaborator, who held a gallery talk the other night at WestConn. Among his 900 assignments were Dr. Jonas Salk, who defeated polio, actress Mia Farrow, President Lyndon Johnson, Woodstock, Barbra Streisand and Vietnam.

In a way, the Beatles were a welcome respite as the remainder of the ’60s played out. By the fall of 1964, Eppridge was practically living with a couple of heroin addicts for Life’s stark, harrowing, graphic “Needle Park” report on drug users at 72nd Street and Broadway. Maybe in 50-plus years we haven’t really evolved too much, as the latest heroin epidemic plays out.

Eppridge is most famous for the iconic image of Robert F. Kennedy dying on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, a bus boy by his side, after winning the California presidential primary in 1968. The murder occurred two months after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The ’60s were surely over.

Last week, RFK’s killer, Sirhan Sirhan, now 71, was denied parole for the 15th time.

Ken Dixon’s Capitol View appears Sundays in the Hearst Connecticut Newspapers. You may reach him in the Capitol at 860-549-4670 or at kdixon@ctpost.com. Find him at twitter.com/KenDixonCT. His Facebook address is kendixonct.hearst. Dixon’s Connecticut Blog-o-rama can be seen at blog.ctnews.com/dixon/

Bob Gomel's Photograph on the cover of the new book "Blood Brothers"

Bob Gomel's photograph of Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) and Malcolm X is on the cover of the new book, "Blood Brothers".

LA Times Review
When Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali's friendship changed history: The new book 'Blood Brothers' explains

Visit us during Photo LA 2016 this weekend

photo l.a. celebrates super snapshots at The Reef from Jan. 22-24. (Photo: Stephen Wilkes, Serengeti, Tanzania, Day To Night, 2015, Courtesy of the Monroe Gallery of Photography)

NBC 4 Southern California

By Alysia Gray Painter

January 21, 2016

Weekend: photo l.a.
Celebrated shutterbugs, collectors, galleries, and fans converge to buy, admire, discuss.


photo l.a.: The yearly gathering of galleries, fans, buyers, and lauded photographers who capture elaborate stories with one click has a big name for the bigness it encompasses. The Reef downtown is the setting for The 25th Annual International Los Angeles Photographic Exposition will be flush with photos and tours and panels and everything that has anything to do with the camera, the lens, and the eye. You don't have to buy or attend one of the programs to enjoy a day; a one-day ticket to the Jan 22-24 snapshot spectacular is twenty bucks.


Monroe Gallery is located in booth #205 /302, just to the right of the main fair entrance.
Friday, January 22, 11am - 7pm
Saturday, January 23, 11am - 7pm
Sunday, January 24, 11am - 6pm
More information here

Exhibit | They Broke the Mold

Via CraveOnline
January 19, 2016
By Miss Rosen

©Amalie R. Rothschild: Janis and Tina at Madison Square Garden, November 27, 1969.

“Wrong is right,” observed Thelonious Monk. “I say, play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing? even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.”

Musicians of the past were not only artists—they were visionaries. Before video killed the radio star and digital replaced the analogue world, musicians like Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, and David Bowie were changing the cultural landscape. “They Broke the Mold”, a collection of classic music photographs, is currently on view at the Monroe Gallery of Photography, Santa Fe, NM, through January 30, 2016.

©Art Shay: The Supremes, Hitsville, Detroit, 1965

Featuring photographs taken between 1931-1974, the exhibition begins with a work by Alfred Eisenstaedt, “Violinist Nathan Milstein, pianist Vladimir Horowitz & cellist Gregor Piatigorsky after a concert, Berlin, Germany.” The early formality of live performance is evident in other works, images of Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, and Sammy Davis Jr. wearing tuxedos, Eartha Kitt and Judy Garland draped in evening gowns.

As time goes by, we witness a radical cultural shift, perhaps beautifully exemplified by a photograph of the Beatles taken by Bob Gomel in Miami in 1964. Lying out on sun chairs, fully or partially dressed, the Beatles look like nothing so much as British lads unfamiliar with the idea of catching a tan. With this image, we see the British invasion in its most self-conscious form.

©Eddie Adams: Louis Armstrong, Opening Night, Las Vegas, 1970

The times turn as a new, more radical era emerges, one beautifully rendered in Steve Schapiro’s 1965 photograph of Andy Warhol, Nico and the Velvet Underground in Los Angeles. Here we enter the age of the rock star and the freedom that is unleashed as the rise of pop culture dominates the world.

As the 1960s transform into the early ‘70s, a new kind of artist arrives in the form of Tina Turner, Janis Joplin, and Freddie Mercury. The diva incarnate returns to the stage, capturing our imagination. “I won’t be a rock star. I will be a legend,” Freddie Mercury said, playing the part to the hilt. He knew his time here would be brief, and like many others in “They Broke the Mold”, he lived it to the fullest. To one interviewer, Mercury replied, “What will I be doing in twenty years’ time? I’ll be dead, darling! Are you crazy?”

Such as it is with so many of the greats who live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse. But others live long and full lives, and it is here in the photographs that we can remember the very best of times.

“They Broke the Mold” is currently on view at the Monroe Gallery of Photography, Santa Fe, NM, through January 30, 2016.

All photos courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography.

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Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.

Steve Schapiro remembers David Bowie, his muse

David Bowie in his dressing room while filming "The Man Who Fell to Earth" in 1975.

(Steve Schapiro)

The Chicago Tribune
By Rick Kogan
January 14, 2016

World-renowned photographer Steve Schapiro, who moved to Chicago with his wife, Maura, in 2007, has in his lengthy career taken millions of photos, many of them collected in stunning books.

He is in his early 80s, and the list of his subjects is almost surreal in its breadth: Marlon Brando, Robert Kennedy, Andy Warhol, Martin Luther King Jr., Chevy Chase (Schapiro and his wife are the godparents of the actor's daughter), Jerry Garcia, Barbra Streisand, Woody Allen, Orson Welles, Johnny Depp, Mae West, Satchel Paige, Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Ringo Starr, Ike and Tina Turner (together), Buster Keaton, Richard Pryor, Sophia Loren … It goes on.

He also shot David Bowie. One of his photos was used for the cover of 2014's "Nothing Has Changed" and, in the wake of the artist's death, Schapiro remembered:

"It was 1974 when I first photographed David. From the moment he arrived, we seemed to hit it off. He was incredibly intelligent, calm, and filled with ideas.

"He talked a lot about Aleister Crowley, whose esoteric writings he was heavily into at the time. And when he heard that I had photographed Buster Keaton, one of his heroes, we talked about him and immediately became friends.

"Our first session started at four in the afternoon. David would come out in incredible costumes, each seemingly turning him into a different person. I would raise my camera to shoot and he would say, 'Wait just a minute, I have to fix something,' and 20 minutes later he would come out in a totally different outfit.

"We decided to do a close portrait on a dark green background because we felt it would make the worst possible color for a magazine cover. We laughed about it, but eventually it did become a cover for People magazine (in September of 1976).

David Bowie

A portrait of David Bowie, taken by Steve Schapiro.

"That session lasted from four in the afternoon to four in the morning, and the last photograph of David was on his bike, lit by the headlights of a car.

"Over these many years I would find photos of David in my files, photos that I had totally overlooked, unexpected and pleasant surprises. Working with an amazingly talented person can be collaborative, often unspoken. The photographs I took were David's ideas, brought from his imagination into the real world. I was merely the conduit from genius into the light of day."

Copyright © 2016, Chicago Tribune

Steve Schapiro's photographs of David Bowie are included in the exhibition "The Broke The Mold", on view through February 7, 2016.

National Geographic PROOF Features Stephen Wilkes Day To Night Series

Photographing from the Desert View Watchtower, Wilkes made this image of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in 27 hours. This vantage point allowed him to see the scale of the people along the overlook.

Via National Geographic PROOF Picture Stories
January 5, 2016

Piecing Together Time in the ‘Ultimate Brain Puzzle’

"A single image in Stephen Wilkes’s “Day to Night” series is composed of an average of 1,500 frames captured by manual shutter clicks over a period of anywhere from 16 to 30 hours. During this process, Wilkes must keep his horizon line straight and maintain continuity, which means keeping his camera perfectly still.

He then spends weeks in postproduction, piecing the best frames together into a final composite of layered images, essentially compressing time. For Wilkes, the excitement is in showing people something more than a photograph, something that provides a multidimensional experience, a window, as he describes it, into a world where the full spectrum of time, light, and experience plays across the frame. We’re treated to a view we’ve never seen before—one our eyes could never take in on their own." Full post here.

 

Wilkes and his assistant spent 30 hours perched on a platform 18 feet in the air, behind a crocodile blind so the animals wouldn’t see them. The elephant family marched across the frame just as he and his assistant had resumed shooting after taking a break to backup their files (each shoot takes about 20 gigabytes of storage). Had they passed five minutes earlier, he would have missed them

Monroe Gallery will be exhibiting Stephen Wilkes’ "Day To Night" photographs featured in the January, 2016 issue of National Geographic during photo l.a. 2016, as well as selections from Wilkes' recent Remnants collection.



Related: Nationally recognized photographer Stephen Wilkes has turned his lens to our national parks, commemorating their 100th anniversary

             

MONROE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY AT PHOTO LA 2016

Happy 2016!

We are delighted to return and be exhibiting at Photo LA, January 21 – 24, held again this year at The Reef/LAMart.

This year the fair celebrates its 25th annual edition, and Monroe Gallery will be in our same location, booth #205/302,  just to the right of the main fair entrance.

The gallery will be exhibiting a wide variety of classic photography, including never-before-seen historic vintage photojournalism prints and dramatic photographs documenting the Civil Rights movement in America from the 1950's to the present day. A special selection of Spider Martin’s photographic record of the pivotal “Bloody Sunday” will be included.

Monroe Gallery will also be exhibiting Stephen Wilkes’ "Day To Night" photographs from the January, 2016 issue of National Geographic, as well as Wilkes' recent Remnants collection.

We look forward to seeing you in Los Angeles!

Information, directions and ticket information.


Related: Nationally recognized photographer Stephen Wilkes has turned his lens to our national parks, commemorating their 100th anniversary

Happy New Year 2016

Peace, love, and happiness

in the New Year