Obituary: Goksin Sipahioglu: Acclaimed photojournalist and Founder of Sipa Agency

 

AP Photo

Via The Independant

Goksin Sipahioglu: Acclaimed photojournalist who went on to found the Sipa agency

By Phil Davison
Saturday, 8 October 2011

Himself a daring frontline photojournalist from the 1950s onwards, Göksin Sipa-hioglu founded the Paris-based Sipa photo agency, which went on to become one of the most respected and most successful in the world.

Following in the footsteps of the great Magnum co-operative, which had been launched in both Paris and New York after the Second World War, Sipa attracted some of the best photographers and photojournalists from around the globe, perhaps best-known for their coverage of wars, disasters and other major stories.

Having spent most of his life in Paris, Sipahioglu was dubbed "le Grand Turc" by the French media. He launched or accelerated the careers of some of the greatest photojournalists and war photographers of recent years including the Iranians Abbas (Attar) and Reza (Deghati) and the Frenchmen Luc Delahaye and Patrick Chauvel. "He managed Sipa as a father," the agency said, announcing his death.

Sipa, still providing many of the photos we see in our papers, TV screens and online every day, was one of three Paris-based agencies – along with Gamma and Sygma – that dominated world photojournalism from the 1970s until the digital revolution allowed freelancers to transmit and sell directly to media outlets. In those pre-digital days, photographers would send their rolls of film via international courier services – or sometimes by persuading or paying an airline passenger to "pigeon" their film to someone from their agency, who would pick them up at the arrival gate.

During his own career behind the lens, initially for Turkish newspapers, Sipahioglu was one of the few "western" reporters or photographers in Havana during the 1962 missile crisis. With President Kennedy poised to take out Soviet missiles on Cuba, Havana was not high on the list of places to be for normal foreigners. But Sipahioglu stayed, and conveyed to the world much of the tension of the time, famously capturing a young, armed civilian girl protecting a Havana bank on behalf of her revolutionary leader Fidel Castro. That and many of his other images of the crisis appeared on the front pages of countless US newspapers.

Six years later, in 1968, juggling wide-angle and zoom lenses and going through dozens of rolls of film, he was one of those photographers in between riot police and student and other protesters in the streets of his adopted Paris. His photo of a well-dressed woman in high heels, pleading to riot police amid exploding tear gas canisters on the Place Mabillon, became one of the enduring images of the uprising. Another showed a girl student sticking a flower in the hat of a wary policeman. He went on to work for two of the major international photo agencies, Black Star and Gamma.

Sent to Munich in 1972 to cover the Olympics, Sipahioglu found himself visually chronicling the Palestinian attack on Israeli athletes and its bloody outcome. His international recognition for those pictures led him to launch Sipa the following year along with his girlfriend, the American journalist Phyllis Springer (whom he would marry almost 30 years later). They started out in a tiny office on the Champs-Elysées.

Göksin Sipahioglu was born in Izmir, Turkey, in 1926. After attending the French Lycée St Joseph in Istanbul he helped found the Kadiköy Sports Club, now best known for the Efes Pilsen basketball team. He later studied journalism at Istanbul University. After making a name for himself in Turkey as a photographer, he received international recognition for his 1956 photos of wounded Egyptian soldiers after Israel invaded the Sinai Peninsula during the Suez crisis.

He sold Sipa in 2001 to France's Sud Communication group, owned by the industrialist Pierre Fabre, although he stayed on as chairman until he retired in 2003. In January 2007, then French president Jacques Chirac appointed him Knight of the Legion of Honour.

"Sipahioglu was the greatest photojournalist ever," the French photojournalist Jean-Francois Leroy told the British Journal of Photography. "He helped so many photographers ... giving them their first assignments. He had a unique position in this industry. He was a giant."

Göksin Sipahioglu, photojournalist and agency founder: born Izmir, Turkey 28 December 1926; married 2002 Phyllis Springer; died Paris 5 October 2011.

Santa Fe, Rétrospective Bill Eppridge

White Barn, New Preston, CT, March 9, 2007 © Bill Eppridge

Via la Lettre de la Photographie

Bill Eppridge is one of the most accomplished photojournalists of the Twentieth Century and has captured some of the most significant moments in American history: he has covered wars, political campaigns, heroin addiction, the arrival of the Beatles in the United States, Vietnam, Woodstock, the summer and winter Olympics, and perhaps the most dramatic moment of his career – the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles.

Born in Buenos Aires, the second of three children, young Bill Eppridge came to the U.S. and grew up in upstate New York near Rochester. In 1960, Eppridge refined his art and his eye at the University of Missouri, where he received his bachelor’s degree in journalism. While at the School of Journalism, Eppridge won a picture competition and first prize brought him to a week-long internship with LIFE magazine.
After his graduation, Eppridge worked for National Geographic, and then, LIFE magazine. With well over 100 assignments, he had already proved his talent by the time he was formally made a member of the exalted Life staff in 1964. His assignments with LIFE magazine marked some very important points in history, beginning with coverage of several wars in the early sixties.

Still later, Eppridge worked on environmental and outdoor stories for LIFE magazine until it ceased publication as a weekly in 1972. He then signed a corporate contract with Time Inc. “I tried all the magazines to see if I liked working for TIME or Fortune. I was there for the start of People.” Eventually in 1977, he joined Sports Illustrated. He describes his work with SI as “Sports with no balls” as he was not fond of shooting baseball, basketball, or football. “I prefer to do something that I’ve never done before”, he remarks. “Rather than specialize, I’m a generalist.”

For the first time, this exhibition presents many of Eppridge’s most important photo essays together, including:

The Beatles:
Bill Eppridge really didn’t know who the Beatles were, but “One morning my boss said, ‘Look, we’ve got a bunch of British musicians coming into town. They’re called the Beatles.’” Eppridge was at John F. Kennedy airport on February 7, 1964 awaiting the arrival of The Beatles. He continued to photograph The Beatles that day, and over the next several days. He was invited to come up to their room at the Plaza Hotel and “stick with them.” He was with them in Central Park and at the Ed Sullivan Show for both the rehearsal and the historic performance. He rode the train to Washington, D.C. with them for the concert at the Washington Coliseum, and photographed their Carnegie Hall performance on February 12, 1964
.
“These were four very fine young gentlemen, and great fun to be around,” Eppridge recalls. After he introduced himself to Ringo, who consulted with John, the group asked what he wanted them to do while being photographed for Life. “I’m not going to ask you to do a thing,” was Eppridge’s reply. “I just want to be there.” An exhibit of Eppridge’s Beatles photographs has been touring since 2001, and was seen by over 2 million people at the Smithsonian Museum.

Mississippi Burning: The James Cheney Funeral:
In late June of 1964, three civil rights workers in Mississippi went missing, kidnapped by Klu Klux Klansmen. One man was black, the other two were white. Their names were James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Bill Eppridge arrived in Neshoba County shortly after the bodies of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were pulled from the muck of an earthen dam on August 4, 1964. There are no pictures of the crime, just the brutal aftermath and the devastating grief and sorrow brought upon a family.

In 1967, eighteen men faced federal charges of civil rights violations in the slayings of Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman. Seven were convicted by an all-white jury, eight were acquitted and three were released after jurors deadlocked. The state of Mississippi prosecuted no one for 38 years. But in 2005—after six years of new reporting on the case by Jerry Mitchell of the Jackson Clarion-Ledger—a sawmill operator named Edgar Ray Killen was indicted on charges of murder.

On June 21, 2005, exactly 41 years after the three men were killed, a racially integrated jury, without clear evidence of Killen’s intent, found him guilty of manslaughter instead. Serving three consecutive 20-year terms, he is the only one of six living suspects to face state charges in the case.

A sign in rear window of car in Philadelphia, Mississippi, 1964

©Bill Eppridge:

Robert F. Kennedy:
One of Eppridge’s most memorable and poignant essays was his coverage of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, first in 1966, and then again on the road with RFK during the 1968 presidential campaign. On June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, he was instructed by his boss to “stay as close as you can to Bobby”. Kennedy assured Eppridge that he would be part of his immediate group, which meant that wherever the Democratic candidate went, Eppridge wouldn’t be far behind. His photograph of the wounded Senator on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel kitchen seconds after he was shot has been described as a modern Pieta. Among the thoughts Eppridge had at that moment was a very loud and clear one: “You are not just a photojournalist, you’re a historian.”


Bill Eppridge
Until November 20, 2011
Monroe Gallery of Photography
112 Don Gaspar
Santa Fe, NM 87501
505.992.0800
Gallery hours are 10 to 5 every day, Monday through Sunday

Bill Eppridge will conduct an exhibition walk-through and gallery talk on Friday, November 4, from 5  to 7 PM.

Links

http://www.monroegallery.com/

Exhibition: Köln: Portraits of Picasso

Picasso parrain de Olivia Clergue, 1967 © Lucien Clergue

Via La Lettre de la Photographie


When Doctor Ludwig founder of the same name museum celebrated his 70th birthday, his friends and Fritz Gruber was among them gave him the centennial portfolio prepared by Lucien Clergue with 15 silver prints that are exhibited today in the Ludwig Museum in Koln.

When he was young Doctor Ludwig did a thesis on Picasso and had since gathered the third largest collection of the artist. In this exhibition presented at the Ludwig Museum until January 15th 2012 Doctor Kerstin Stremmel wants to show that the face of Picasso is as well known as his oeuvre . He was portrayed by the most famous photographers and some of these pictures have become iconic.

Thus the exhibition MeMyselfand photo portraits of Picasso brings together prints from 250 photographers such as Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton,Henri Cartier Bresson, Lee Miller and Man Ray.

The story begins at the start of the XX Th century in the years of Parisian Bohemia and goes on to south of France with incipient celebrity. The work of the curator was not only to find and put together portraits, the exhibition also wants to show the psychological relationships and the links between the artist and the photographers, tensions for some , obvious complicity for others , a stage production here and private moments with close acquaintance .

The exhibition also show the work and personal approach of seven women photographer. The contrast between Lee Miller who photographed him for thirty six years starting summer of 1937, Madame Nora who was about his age and made the most relax pictures of the artist, diagonally opposed to those of Dora Maar.

The Exhibition also show the work of : Rogi André, Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Bill Brandt, Brassaï, René Burri, Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Chim, Lucien Clergue, Jean Cocteau, Denise Colomb, Robert Doisneau, David Douglas Duncan, Yousuf Karsh, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Herbert List, Dora Maar, Mme d’Ora, Willy Maywald, Lee Miller, Gjon Mili, Inge Morath, Arnold Newman, Roberto Otero, Irving Penn, Julia Pirotte, Edward Quinn, Man Ray, Willy Rizzo, Gotthard Schuh, Michel Sima, Horst Tappe et André Villers.

Bernard Perrine
Bernard.Perrine1@orange.fr
MemyselfandI. Portraits of Picasso
Until February 15th 2012
Museum Ludwig
Heinrich-Böll-Platz
50667 Köln
Germany
+49 221 26165

info@museum-ludwig.de

Tuesday-Sunday: 10 AM – 6 PM
MemyselfandI. Portraits of Picasso
Text Pierre Daix, Frederike Mayröcker, Katherine Slusher and Kerstin Stremmel, published by Hatje Cantz

Links

http://www.museum-ludwig.de/

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth: "I went to jail for a good thing, trying to make a difference."

Steve Shapiro: Rev. Shuttlesworth's confrontation with Sheriff Clark at start of Selma March

AP Photo

Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth right, escorts Dwight Armstrong, 9, and his brother Floyd, 11, from the Graymont Elementary School in Birmingham, Ala, Sept. 9, 1963. State troopers, on order from the governor, opened the school but turned the African Americans away. 

AP Photo

Seated from left, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth and the Rev. Ralph Abernathy in Birmingham, Ala., in 1963. 

The Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth, who was bombed, beaten and repeatedly arrested in the fight for civil rights and hailed by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for his courage and tenacity, has died. He was 89.    Read the New York Times obituary here.

An American Girl In Italy - by David Schonauer

Ruth Orkin: An American Girl in Italy, 1951

The 60th anniverary of the making of a truly iconic photograph was recently celebrated, resulting in numerous news articles and an appearance by the subject of the photograph on the TODAY Show. David Schonauer has written on a variety of topics for Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, Worth, Mademoiselle, Outside, and other publications. He is the former editor in chief of American Photo magazine, and here is his take.

Via The Big Picture

A Journal of the Visual Culture from David Schonauer

 

Photographer Ruth Orkin’s “American Girl in Italy” is probably one of the most widely known and loved images from the 20^th century. Orkin, who died in 1985, took the picture a little more than 50 years ago, on August 21, 1951, in the Piazza della Repubblica in Florence, a day after meeting a 23-year-old American woman who was traveling through Europe alone. Her name was Ninalee Allen, known to her friends by a childhood nickname, “Jinx.” A recent graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, she was spending the summer on a great adventure. Her carefree spirit—as well as her beauty and commanding six-foot height, caught Orkin’s attention. She thought she might take a color picture of Allen near the Arno River, which she could sell to a newspaper for a few dollars. And so the stage was set for a remarkable moment and a remarkable photograph.

The picture has beguiled and confounded the world since it was printed as a poster in the 1970s. It has been seen as a symbol of female powerlessness in a male-dominated world, which is not what Orkin intended. It also has been the subject of debate because Orkin in fact shot it twice—after recording the reaction of the men in the Piazza when Allen walked through, she asked the young woman to walk through again. It was the second entrance that became the famous photo. Did she play too fast and loose with the truth? Does it matter?

I recently wrote about the photograph for the October issue of Smithsonian magazine. (Go here to read my piece.) As part of my research, I went to the best primary source I could find—the American Girl herself. Ninalee Allen is now Ninalee Craig, age 83 and living in Toronto. She is lively, lovely, and very certain that Orkin’s picture reflects the truth of what happened that day. Here is a excerpt of my interview with her.

An Enduring Aftermath: An Interview with Nina Berman, Documentary Photographer

Posted on October 4, 2011 by 10yearsandcounting

Minneapolis curator and arts writer Tricia Khutoretsky interviews photographer Nina Berman for 10 Years + Counting. Nina begun taking photographs 10 years ago, and has since been working on ongoing documentation of America since the invasion of Afghanistan

Photographs are often a glimpse into the past, a way to remember and a way to record. Nina Berman’s award-winning and internationally exhibited documentary photographs however seem to hold a sort of timelessness. Perhaps this is because many of the images she captures are of our country changed by a war that is equally endless. From the legacy left on war veteran’s bodies and minds, to images taken in Afghanistan pre-invasion, or her exploration into America’s troubling ideological landscape… her photographs attempt to understand subjects that she feels personally curious about. That genuine search for deeper insight translates visually in a way that is memorable and provoking. In the following interview, Nina and I converse about the coinciding 10 year anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan and the stories and motivations behind her decade long study of a nation at war.

Full interview here.

David Friend to Chair 2012 World Press Photo Contest

Via World Press Photo
Mon, 10/03/2011 - 13:39

 

World Press Photo is delighted to announce that the jury of the 2012 World Press Photo Contest will be chaired by David Friend, Vanity Fair's editor of creative development. The judging will take place in January-February 2012 in Amsterdam. Friend is chairing an international jury of 19 leading professionals in the field of photojournalism. The full list of judges will be announced later.
Based in New York, David Friend served as Life magazine's director of photography during the 1990s. As a correspondent, he covered conflicts in Afghanistan, Lebanon and elsewhere. As a web editor, he established Life.com and VanityFair.com. In 2008, he co-curated Vanity Fair Portraits, winning the Lucie Award for curator of the year, together with Terence Pepper. David Friend served previously on the World Press Photo jury in 2009.

David Friend reflects on the task of judging the contest: “This year the world has experienced a series of upheavals. The Arab Spring’s mass protests that triggered regime change across the Middle East were made possible, in part, by digital imagery and social media. The devastation and loss brought on by Japan’s earthquake, tsunami and the ongoing ravages of radiation were documented in film and footage that continue to haunt us. The humanitarian crisis in Somalia would be a largely muted grace note were it not for photojournalists revealing the extent of that catastrophe. The telltale signs of a chaotic global economy appear in every news cycle on the fringes of countless stories. And through it all, new technologies have allowed diverse image-makers to express, experiment and expand our perspectives. The coming World Press Photo Contest will doubtless serve to remind us how the still photograph can help focus and anchor us in uncertain times.”

Judging takes place at the World Press Photo office in Amsterdam from 28 January until 9 February 2012. The results of the contest will be announced on 10 February in a press conference at the Amsterdam City Hall and on the foundation’s website.

The 2012 World Press Photo Contest will be open for participants to enter their work from the beginning of December 2011. The deadline for submissions is 12 January 2012. Entries may only be submitted online. In the 2011 contest, a record number of 108,059 images was submitted to the contest. The number of participating photographers was 5,691, representing 125 different nationalities.
In 2011, World Press Photo held its first contest for multimedia production and a second edition of the contest will be held in 2012. Details about the multimedia contest will be announced later this year.
World Press Photo receives support from the Dutch Postcode Lottery and is sponsored worldwide by Canon and TNT.

 

 

About World Press Photo

World Press Photo is committed to supporting and advancing high standards in photojournalism worldwide. We strive to generate wide public interest in and appreciation for the work of photographers and for the free exchange of information. Our activities include organizing an annual contest, exhibitions, the stimulation of photojournalism through educational programs, and creating greater visibility for press photography through a variety of publications.

World Press Photo is run as an independent, non-profit organization with its office in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where World Press Photo was founded in 1955.

For further information, please contact:

Ms. Sasja de Bie at World Press Photo, press@worldpressphoto.org or tel. +31(0)20 676 6096.

The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the W.M. Hunt Collection

Via The George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film


All eyes will be on George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film this fall as it presents one the largest exhibitions in its history — The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the W.M. Hunt Collection. More than 500 photographs by the masters of the medium will be on view Oct. 1, 2011 through Feb. 19, 2012. The Eastman House is dedicating all of its primary gallery space to this exhibition.

Earlier this year The New Yorker referred to the collector as “the legendary” W.M. Hunt. He is a renowned curator and dealer who has been collecting photographs for 40 years. A self-described “champion of photography,” he is well-known for his “eye” and sense of humor. Hunt describes the collection as “magical, heart-stopping images of people in which the eyes cannot be seen.”

The photographs of The Unseen Eye have a common theme — the gaze of the subject is averted, the face obscured, or the eyes firmly closed. The images evoke a wide range of emotions and are characterized, by what, at first glance, the subject conceals rather than what the camera reveals.
Eastman House will present the first major U.S. exhibition of the collection, from which Aperture is simultaneously publishing a book titled The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious, to be released in October. Highlights from the collection have previously been seen in Europe at the Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles, France; the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland; and Foam-Fotografiemuseum in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

“This collection and exhibition represent a very personal journey for me,” Hunt said. “It is my conscious made manifest. These are all photos of me. But they’re all of you, too. They are evocative, whimsical, representational, many things. I love the mystery of it. You have to react, to come to the image, to make up your own story.”

The collector’s first purchase was an Imogen Cunningham photograph, in which the subject’s eyes are veiled and unseen by the camera. This now extensive collection of haunting photographs reflects Hunt’s surreal vision and includes Weegee's multi-imaged portrait of Andy Warhol in sunglasses, the breakthrough news photo of Ruth Snyder in the electric chair in 1928, and Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs of artist Alice Neel shortly before her death. Vintage and contemporary black and white images join photographs in vibrant colors to create a picture of humanity from birth to death, from the banal to the transcendent.

The featured works range from daguerreotype to digital by photographers such as Berenice Abbot, Richard Avedon, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Annie Leibovitz, Robert Mapplethorpe, Irving Penn, Man Ray, Edward Steichen, Edward Weston, and Joel-Peter Witkin, as well as 19^th-century work from Nadar, Alinari, and Roger Fenton. The whole range of photographic processes, as well as different formats, is featured via the 500 photographs, selected from the 1,500 images in the collection. The most recent acquisition is a triptych of film stills from Jean-Luc Godard’s “Le Petit Soldat.” The largest is a hand-colored self-portrait by Dutch artist Teun Hocks and the smallest is a photo-booth self-portrait by the Surrealist André Breton. The oldest object is a gravure of the Shroud of Turin by Secondo Pio.

The exhibition also includes work by contemporary photo-based artists — some of whom have not yet been shown at Eastman House — such as Mitch Epstein, Steven Klein, and Kiki Smith. Hunt is a long-time supporter of emerging talent. He selected a portrait by Carrie Levy as the cover image of his book’s U.S. version. As a dealer he introduced talents such as Elinor Carucci, Luc Delahaye, Michael Flomen, Bohnchang Koo, Luis Mallo, Erwin Olaf, and Paolo Ventura, and as a writer he has worked with Bill Armstrong, Mark Beard, Manuel Geerinck, and Jeff Sheng — all of whom are represented by work in the collection and exhibition.

The Unseen Eye exhibition features little wall text, but it does include video commentaries by Hunt, with personal responses to these images gathered over many years and his insights into the psychology of collecting.

Eastman House will feature a small accompanying exhibition of “unseen eyes” selected by Hunt from the museum’s unparalleled permanent collection. These range from Dorothea Lange’s 1933 photograph “White Angel Bread Line,” to an unattributed 1850 daguerreotype of a blind man holding a cat. A related online exhibition will include hundreds of vernacular photographs —snapshots — from Hunt’s collection.

Hunt has had a long relationship with Eastman House as well as with photography. “George Eastman House is excited about this special collaboration with this insightful collector,” said Dr. Alison Nordström, Eastman House curator of photographs and director of exhibitions. “We have always understood ourselves as a collection of collections, beginning with Kodak’s Eastman Historical Collection and the collections of Gabriel Cromer, Alden Scott Boyer, Alvin Langdon Coburn, and Edward Steichen. The idiosyncratic eye of an individual private collector offers a rich and varied complement to our institutional holdings.”

W.M. Hunt and Featured Artists in Person

Eastman House will welcome W.M. Hunt for a public lecture about The Unseen Eye at 6 p.m. Friday, Oct. 21, in the Dryden Theatre, followed by a booksigning and reception for museum members. The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious (Aperture, $75) will be sold on site at the Eastman House Store following the lecture. Admission will be $12 adults, $10 seniors, and $5 students.

The next day, from 9:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 22, Hunt and artists whose work is featured in The Unseen Eye will present a panel discussion of their work next door to Eastman House at The Hutchison, 930 East Ave. Following the talk, the artists will sign copies of Hunt's book and photo books of their own. Included with museum admission: $12 adults, $10 seniors, and $5 students. Tickets can be purchased that day at Eastman House or The Hutchison.

GRIFFIN MUSEUM OF PHOTOGRAPHY 2011 FOCUS AWARDS

 

Via The Griffin Museum of Photography

This year’s event is being held on Boston’s historic waterfront on Saturday, October 1 at 7:00 p.m. at the Exchange Conference Center. The master of ceremonies is photographer Lou Jones.

The Griffin Museum created the annual awards in 2006 to recognize individuals who have made critical contributions to the promotion of photography. They are one of the few to recognize the work of those who have been instrumental in building greater awareness of the photographic arts in the general public.
The Focus Awards are presented in three categories: The Life Time Achievement Award, given to an individual whose ongoing commitment to photography has created far reaching impact; the Rising Star award given to an emerging force that the photographic community is watching with great enthusiasm; and the New England Beacon, recognizing a local individual whose work brings prominence to the local photographic scene. This year’s recipients are:

Life Time Achievement – Dr. Alison Nordström, Curator of Photographs and Director of Exhibitions at George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Rising Star – Eileen Gittins, Founder, President, and CEO of Blurb; and

New England Beacon – Susan Mosser, Special Services VP of the New England Camera Club Council

“Each year the Focus Award selection process is a humbling experience and an exciting challenge. As always, we’re very fortunate to be in such wonderful company,” said Paula Tognarelli, executive director, Griffin Museum of Photography. “Moving this event to Boston is a significant milestone for the Museum and coupled with the new satellite gallery at A Street Frames in the South End, it provides new opportunities and further expands our reach.”

EXHIBITION OPENING TONIGHT

© Bill Eppridge: The Chaney family as they depart for the burial of James Chaney, Meridian, Mississippi, August 7, 1964

Exhibition Celebrates 2011 Lucie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Photojournalism Recipient Bill Eppridge. Join us at tonight's opening reception from 5 to 7 PM at 112 Don Gaspar Avenue.


More here.

View available Bill Eppridge prints here.

Steve McQueen by John Dominis

Steve McQueen swinging from rope at gym, 1963 © John Dominis

Via La Lettre de la Photographie
September 30, 2011

It was 1963 when Life Magazine sent its photographer, John Dominis, to cover Steve McQueen in his Palm Springs home. Since the end of the 1950’s, he had become one of America’s most popular actors, and at 33, was about to celebrate his greates success with the release of The Great Escape.

During their three weeks together, John Dominis took some of the star’s most beautiful pictures. We discover the “King of Cool”, his family life, his villa, and his love of speed, beautiful cars and motorcycle races.

He shared this passion with Dominis, creating a friendly bond between the two men. Never actually posing for the camera, Steve McQueen is graceful and incomparably photogenic. Nude by the pool, in a tuxedo or returning from a dirty car race, he exudes a rare elegance.

Actor Steve McQueen walking naked outdoors in his backyard, Hollywood, 1963 © John Dominis

Steve McQueen, the King of Cool
Until december 11, 2011
La Galerie de l’Instant
46, rue de Poitou
75003 Paris
Tél. 01.44.54.94.09

Links

http://www.lagaleriedelinstant.com

Actor Steve McQueen and wife taking sulphur bath at home © John Dominis

For the Record: Searching for Objectivity in Global Conflict

Stealth Bomber, Atlantic City, New Jersey, 2007 ©Nina Berman

Via Montserrat College of Art

Bombarded by information from a variety of sources, it is often difficult as observers of current affairs to fully make sense of the concepts and facts presented. Artists offer us the opportunity to engage and interpret this information in an alternative way. They were the first compelled to record and present the events of the world. Artists illustrate and record many aspects of war in a variety of ways, whether through genuine factual representation (witness accounts of war) through war reportage drawing and/or documentary work or as artistic interpretation (visual response to war). The artists in For The Record offer a testament of the effects of war and conflict on people, societies and the physical earth.

For the Record Symposium This Weekend, September 30 and Saturday, October 1:

A two-day symposium highlighting the Montserrat Gallery exhibit, "For the Record" will open Friday, Sept. 30 with panel discussions with veterans, talks by artists and writers, a showing of Sebastian Junger's film, "Restrepo" and a keynote address by American art critic, curator and Dean of the Yale School of Art Robert Storr.

The exhibition, curated by Montserrat faculty members artist Rob Roy and social historian and author Gordon Arnold, along with Gallery Director Leonie Bradbury, came in part from a 30-year conversation between the two faculty on the topic of conflict, how it is interpreted, and leaving the viewer to draw their own conclusions.

The symposium activities are free and open to the public, but registration is requested.

WHEN Friday, September 30 and Saturday, October 1, 2011.
WHERE Montserrat Campus and various surrounding venues
Cost Free: Registration is required. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER
Contact Leonie Bradbury leonie.bradbury@montserrat.edu

Friday, Sept. 30

Dane Street Church, 10 Dane Street, Beverly, MA
7:30 pm
Symposium Welcome
7:45 pm
Awarding of an Honorary Docorate to Keynote Speaker Robert Storr, Dean of the Yale School of Art
8 - 9 pm
KEY NOTE SPEECH by Robert Storr
Topic: Gerhard Richter September by Robert Storr American curator, academic, critic, and painter.

Saturday, Oct. 1
Dane Street Church, 10 Dane Street, Beverly, MA
9:00am
Symposium welcome with coffee
9:30 am
AUTHOR TALK Susanne Slavick
Topic: OUT OF RUBBLE, an anthology of artists responding to the aftermath of war by Susanne Slavick, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh. She will discuss a selection from nearly 40 international artists who consider the causes and consequences of rubble, its finality and future, moving from decimation and disintegration to the possibilities of regeneration and recovery. Approaching the 10th anniversary of our military engagement in Afghanistan and continuing conflict in Iraq, the book and related exhibits remain all too timely.
10:30am
ARTIST TALK Nina Berman
Topic: the American experience by Nina Berman a documentary photographer with a primary interest in the American political and social landscape. Her powerful images of wounded American veterans from the Iraq War are internationally known with recent exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art 2010 Biennial. She is the author of two monographs, Purple Hearts - Back from Iraq and Homeland.

11:30 am - 1 pm Break for lunch on your own

1 pm
LECTURE Steven Dubin, Ph.D.
Topic: Peace and Art, a lecture by arts and culture scholar Steven Dubin, Ph.D. Dubin has written and lectured widely on censorship, controversial exhibitions, the culture wars, popular culture, and mass media. He is interested in the intersection of culture and politics; the evolution of the arts from providing ideological support as well social resistance during South Africa's apartheid era, to becoming a force in building and critiquing democracy. He examines the interplay between the arts, ideology and power; the tension between creative freedom and social control; the arts as a vehicle of expression for otherwise socially marginalized people. Dubin will demonstrate how the visual and performing arts can also critique and thus challenge established social power.
2 pm
LECTURE Gordon Arnold, Ph.D., author and professor at Montserrat College of Art
Topic: Arnold will address how art, film, and other modes of cultural production reveal and probe the shape and scope of the overarching ideological system that informs much of contemporary American culture. Gordon Arnold, Ph.D. is an active scholar, writer and social historian who teaches courses in the social sciences and mass media at Montserrat College of Art.
2:30 pm
FILM SCREENING Restrepo by Sebastian Junger
Winner of the 2010 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Prize for documentary, Restrepo chronicles the deployment of a platoon of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan's Korengal Valley, one of the most dangerous postings in the U.S. military. The movie focuses on 15 soldiers based at Outpost Restrepo, named after a platoon medic killed early in the deployment. Filmed by author Sebastian Junger and award-winning photographer Tim Hetherington, Restrepo takes viewers on their own 90-minute deployment, without comment or agenda.
Co-director Tim Hetherington, an experienced photojournalist who reported on reported social and political conflict worldwide, was killed in fighting in Libya on April 20, 2011.
4 pm
PANEL DISCUSSION
Topic: Media Representations of Global Conflict moderated by Vietnam War Veteran Wayne Burton, President of the North Shore Community College. Panelists include: Steven Dubin, Montserrat Professors Gordon Arnold and Rob Roy; James O'Neill, Nina Berman, Susanne Slavick
5 - 6:30 pm
CLOSING RECEPTION
Location: Montserrat Gallery, Montserrat College of Art, 23 Essex St., Beverly(the college is a three minute walk from the Dane Street Church.)

1961 Mark Shaw Photo of Jacquline Kennedy on Cover of People Magazine

The new issue of People Magazine features a 1961 photograph of Jacqueline Kennedy by Mark Shaw. This photo of Jackie, taken by Mark Shaw for the cover of “Look” magazine in 1961, has been seen frequently due to the fact that it was mistakenly distributed all over the world by the White House as an “official White House photo.” In fact, Mark Shaw retained the rights to all his photographs, an unusually forward thinking decision at that time.

Mark Shaw lived from 1922-1969. He was born in New York's Lower East Side, the only son of a Lower East Side seamstress and an unskilled laborer. He was a student at New York's Pratt Institute where he majored in Engineering. He became a highly decorated World War II Air Force pilot. Shaw was chosen to fly Russia's famous tank commander, General Zhukov, to his meeting with the Allied Command. He was also chosen to be part of the command that flew General MacArthur and his staff to sign the armistice papers in Tokyo.

After the War, Shaw started working as a professional photographer and soon became a freelancer for LIFE magazine.

As a photographer he is perhaps best known for his images of Jacqueline and John F. Kennedy and their family which he originally shot as their family photographer. After JFK's death a selection of photographs was published as a book "The John F. Kennedy's - A family album". This book sold over 200,000 copies when it first came out, very impressive even today. In 2000 Rizzoli published an updated version of "The John F. Kennedy's - A family Album," featuring many never before seen color and black and white photographs. Most recently, Mark Shaw’s images of the Kennedys were widely used in the exhibition “Jacqueline Kennedy – The White House Years”, originating at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and later traveling around the country.

 Only two weeks before John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Jacqueline Kennedy wrote a note to Shaw, one of many, thanking him for photographs of her with her three-year-old, John F. Kennedy Jr.: "They really should be in the National Gallery! I have them propped up in our Sitting Room now, and everyone who comes in says the one of me and John looks like a Caravaggio—and the one of John, reflected in the table, like some wonderful, strange, poetic Matisse. And, when I think of how you just clicked your camera on an ordinary day in that dreary, green Living Room. I just can't thank you enough, they will always be my greatest treasures. Anyone who puts a finger-print on them will have his hand chopped!"

 Also leading fashion photographer, Mark Shaw worked for Harper's Bazaar, Mademoiselle, and a host of other fashion magazines. He started working for Life magazine in 1952 and in 16 years shot 27 covers and almost 100 stories. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s Mark Shaw shot the European fashion collections for Life, and was one of the first photographers to shoot fashion on the runways and "backstage" at the couture shows.

Related: mptv Mark Shaw image on the cover of People Magazine

“I was frustrated with photojournalism, and I was frustrated with society back in the U.S. being indifferent to the war”

Must Read, Must See: "Hell and Back Again" Afghanistan Documentary

Via The New York Times Lens PhotoBlog:

As the Afghan war neared a decade’s worth of combat, casualties and headlines, the photographer and filmmaker Danfung Dennis was looking to jolt people’s consciousness.

“I was frustrated with photojournalism, and I was frustrated with society back in the U.S. being indifferent to the war,” said Mr. Dennis, who had covered Afghanistan as a still photographer in 2006. “I moved into video and new media to try to shake people up — to show the war’s brutal reality in an honest way.”

Did he ever. “Hell and Back Again,”  his new award-winning documentary film about the war, is a tour de force that breaks new ground in the documentary tradition, combining chilling reportage with sometimes dreamy or drugged-up sequences. The film – with clinical precision – peels away the daily headlines to expose the reality of the Afghan war and the devastating burden carried by American service members back home.

Full post here with video.

GETTY MUSEUM DISPLAYS FIRST COMPREHENSIVE OVERVIEW OF PHOTOGRAPHS BY LYONEL FEININGER

A Selection of Bauhaus Photographs from the Getty Museum's Permanent Collection Complements the Exhibition

Lyonel Feininger: Photographs, 1928–1939

Via The Getty Trust

LOS ANGELES—Widely recognized as a painter, printmaker, and draftsman who taught at the Bauhaus, Lyonel Feininger (American, 1871–1956) turned to photography later in his career as a tool for visual exploration. Drawn mostly from the collection at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Lyonel Feininger: Photographs, 1928–1939 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center, October 25, 2011–March 11, 2012, presents for the first time Feininger's unknown body of photographic work. The exhibition is accompanied by a selection of photographs by other Bauhaus masters and students from the Getty Museum's permanent collection. The Getty is the first U.S. venue to present the exhibition, which will have been on view at the Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin from February 26–May 15, 2011 and the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich from June 2–July 17, 2011. Following the Getty installation, the exhibition will be shown at the Harvard Art Museums from March 30–June 2, 2012. At the Getty, the exhibition will run concurrently with Narrative Interventions in Photography.

"We are delighted to be the first U.S. venue to present this important exhibition organized by the Harvard Art Museums/Busch-Reisinger Museum," says Virginia Heckert, curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum and curator of the Getty's installation. "The presentation at the Getty provides a unique opportunity to consider Lyonel Feininger's achievement in photography, juxtaposed with experimental works in photography at the Bauhaus from our collection."

Read the full Press Release here.

Related: Andreas Feininger

Exhibition Celebrates 2011 Lucie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Photojournalism Recipient Bill Eppridge

©Bill Eppridge:  sign in rear window of car in Philadelphia, Mississippi, 1964

Monroe Gallery of Photography is honored to announce an extensive exhibition of more than 50 important photographs by Bill Eppridge, recipient of the 2011 Lucie Award for Achievement in Photojournalism. The exhibit opens with a reception on Friday, September 30, from 5 - 7 PM; and continues through November 20. 

The Lucie Awards is the annual gala ceremony honoring the greatest achievements in photography. The photography community from countries around the globe will pay tribute to Bill Eppridge, who will receive the 2011 Lucie Award for Achievement in Photojournalism at a special ceremony October 24 at Lincoln Center in New York.

Bill Eppridge is one of the most accomplished photojournalists of the Twentieth Century and has captured some of the most significant moments in American history: he has covered wars, political campaigns, heroin addiction, the arrival of the Beatles in the United States, Vietnam, Woodstock, the summer and winter Olympics, and perhaps the most dramatic moment of his career - the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles. Over the last 50 years, his work has appeared in numerous publications, including National Geographic, Life, and Sports Illustrated; and has been exhibited in museums throughout the world.

 For the first time, this exhibition presents many of Eppridge's most important photo essays together, including:

 The Beatles: Bill Eppridge really didn't know who the Beatles were, but "One morning my boss said, 'Look, we've got a bunch of British musicians coming into town. They're called the Beatles.'" Eppridge was at John F. Kennedy airport on February 7, 1964 awaiting the arrival of The Beatles. He continued to photograph The Beatles that day, and over the next several days. He was invited to come up to their room at the Plaza Hotel and "stick with them." He was with them in Central Park and at the Ed Sullivan Show for both the rehearsal and the historic performance. He rode the train to Washington, D.C. with them for the concert at the Washington Coliseum, and photographed their Carnegie Hall performance on February 12, 1964.

©Bill Eppridge: Beatle Fans scramble for Jelly Beans, Washington Coliseum, 1964

"These were four very fine young gentlemen, and great fun to be around," Eppridge recalls. After he introduced himself to Ringo, who consulted with John, the group asked what he wanted them to do while being photographed for Life. "I'm not going to ask you to do a thing," was Eppridge's reply. "I just want to be there." An exhibit of Eppridge's Beatles photographs has been touring since 2001, and was seen by over 2 million people at the Smithsonian Museum.

Mississippi Burning: The James Cheney Murder: In late June of 1964, three civil rights workers in Mississippi went missing, kidnapped by Klu Klux Klansmen. One man was black, the other two were white. Their names were James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Bill Eppridge arrived in Neshoba County shortly after the bodies of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were pulled from the muck of an earthen dam on August 4, 1964. There are no pictures of the crime, just the brutal aftermath and the devastating grief and sorrow brought upon a family.

©Bill Eppridge: Mrs. Chaney and young Ben, James Chaney funeral, Meridian, Mississippi, 1964

 In 1967, eighteen men faced federal charges of civil rights violations in the slayings of Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman. Seven were convicted by an all-white jury, eight were acquitted and three were released after jurors deadlocked. The state of Mississippi prosecuted no one for 38 years. But in 2005—after six years of new reporting on the case by Jerry Mitchell of the Jackson Clarion-Ledger—a sawmill operator named Edgar Ray Killen was indicted on charges of murder.

On June 21, 2005, exactly 41 years after the three men were killed, a racially integrated jury, without clear evidence of Killen's intent, found him guilty of manslaughter instead. Serving three consecutive 20-year terms, he is the only one of six living suspects to face state charges in the case.

Robert F. Kennedy: One of Eppridge’s most memorable and poignant essays was his coverage of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, first in 1966, and then again on the road with RFK during the 1968 presidential campaign. On June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, he was instructed by his boss to "stay as close as you can to Bobby". Kennedy assured Eppridge that he would be part of his immediate group, which meant that wherever the Democratic candidate went, Eppridge wouldn't be far behind. His photograph of the wounded Senator on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel kitchen seconds after he was shot has been described as a modern Pieta. Among the thoughts Eppridge had at that moment was a very loud and clear one: "You are not just a photojournalist, you're a historian."

"I believe our world is at a time right now in which it should be documented completely. If we can influence people with photographs, maybe we'll be able to maintain our planet." -- Bill Eppridge

 View the exhibition here.

"There are many historically crucial artworks at the Instanbul Biennial"

Street Execution of a Viet Cong Prisoner | Photo by Cemre Mert

Via Instanbul The Guide

The 12^th Istanbul Biennial came in much secrecy but it was totally worth the anxious wait. In the press opening, curators Jens Hoffmann and Adriano Pedrosa stated that the reason for the secrecy was to prevent pre-consumption of the artists and their works. This year, it was not only the secrecy that was new but also the decision in limiting the exhibition spaces. The show used to be scattered around the city, taking advantage of its intricate urban structure; however, this time around the curators chose to house the exhibitions in two large warehouses in Tophane, famously known as Antrepo 3 and Antrepo 5.

When: September 17–November 13

The Venue
Having cut down on the exhibition spaces, the curators commissioned the Office of Ryue Nishizawa to design the interior. The unique architecture clearly reflects some aspects of Istanbul. Rooms of different sizes leading one into passageways, shortcuts, and multiple rooms create distinct interior-exterior relationships. The architecture, thus, manages to create the city structure that it borrows from Istanbul, while adding a touch of Gonzales-Torres’s minimal and elegant approach to art.

The Concept
The Cuban American artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957–1996) is the point of departure of the 12^th Istanbul Biennial. Gonzalez-Torres was one of those artists who constantly demonstrated that the personal is political. As in previous years, the twelfth edition of the Biennial delves into the relationship between art and politics. There are both politically outspoken works, and formally innovative and curious art pieces. One of the refreshing aspects of the Biennial is its balanced use of diverse artistic mediums.

The Sections
The venue houses 5 group exhibitions and 50 solo shows. Each of the group exhibitions are marked by gray walls, occupying a room for each subdivision: Untitled (Death by Gun), Untitled (Ross), Untitled (History), Untitled (Passport), and Untitled (Abstraction). Marked by white walls, the solo shows are situated around the group exhibitions. All continents are represented in the show but there is a special focus on Latin America and the Middle East.

The Works
There are many historically crucial artworks at the Biennial. For instance, in the section Untitled (Death by Gun), there is Street Execution of a Viet Cong Prisoner taken in three frames by the American photojournalist Eddie Adams in 1968. As shocking and gruesome as they were, these photographs brought a much-needed discussion around the Vietnam War.

Bullet Hole | Photo by Cemre Mert
 

Jacques-Henri Lartigue, The choice of happiness

 

The choice of happiness © Jacques Henri Lartigue

Via La Lettre de la Photographie

Forma, the Foundation of photography in Milan presents an exhibition of photographs by Jacques-Henri Lartigue, one of photography’s precocious prodigies, a genial enthusiast and a professional of happiness.

Jacques-Henri Lartigue achieved fame during the sixties, on the threshold of his eight decade, when his photographs reached the spaces of the MOMA in New York.

He was born into a wealthy French bourgeois family at the beginning of the twentieth century. From an early age the young Lartigue began to capture the romance of his family life in images, images seen through the eyes of a child, full of wonder and laughter. From then on, this ‘boy’ who spent his long life without ever having to worry about making ends meet, would manage to create images of infinite poetry and rare grace, thanks to his spontaneity and intimacy and a magic that still enchants us today.

Together with his diary, photography was Lartigue’s record of his experience and the things he wished to experience; an attempt to find happiness for himself and his charmed little world, happiness that might last for ever. Thus, every day he would collect amazing images with his camera, waterfalls and fountains, happy friends, beautiful smiling women, fluttering dresses, car races, seaside outings, fragments of carefree joy, wishing, with aching nostalgia, that that day might never end.

From 5 October, the exhibition will be further enriched with select pages from the great photographer’s diary and his albums of large photographs: JH Lartigue. Diary in Images.

 

Jacques Lartigue was born in Courbevoie, in France, on 13 June 1894. At the age of six he took his first photographs using his father’s camera and began writing a diary which he continued to keep throughout his life.

From 1904 he began to photograph his childhood experiences, family games and then the beginnings of aviation and the first automobiles, the “beauties of the Bois de Bouologne” and social and sporting events. As a curious amateur he experimented with all the available photographic techniques. As a tireless collector of the moments of his own life, he took several thousand photographs which he diligently gathered in his large albums. It would appear, however, that this was not his vocation, instead, he wanted painting to be his profession. He met several artists, such as Sacha Guitry, Kees van Dongen, Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau. As a film enthusiast he photographed the sets of various films by Jacques Feyder, Abel Gance, Robert Bresson, François Truffaut and Federico Fellini.

It was the great exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the publication of an important photo portfolio in Life, which earned Jacques Lartigue, at the age of 69, a place among the great photographers. Adding his father’s name to his own he became Jacques Henri Lartigue, and three years later his first book Album de Famille, and later Instants de ma Vie (designed by Richard Avedon), brought him worldwide recognition and appreciation. Lartigue died in Nice on 12 September 1986.

Emiliana Tedesco
The choice of happiness
From September 23 to November 20, 2011
Fondazione FORMA per la Fotografia
Piazza Tito Lucrezio Caro 1
20136 Milano
02.58118067

Links

http://www.formafoto.it

La Lettre de la Photographie: "Born from a dream and from our assessment that in the current new medias no one was covering photography in its entire extent, our Lettre shares and informs daily on the events in the world of photography.

The web site is deemed free and all the featured contents are free to the viewers, without any previous engagement from them. The web site covers entirely all the current events in the world of photography, with the exception of the technical aspects.

Available in English and French, La lettre is featured in the form of a “newsletter”, a web site and an iPad application to all audiences interested in photography."

-- a highly recommended daily source for photography information.

ERNST HAAS: COLOR CORRECTION

The acclaim for Steidl's new book of Ernst Haas' color photography continues. Today, La Lettre de la Photographie covered the recently published book Color Correction.

THOUGHTS ON AN EXHIBITION

 HISTORY'S BIG PICTURE

This is the final week for the exhibition "History's Big Picture". We always find ourselves discussing our impressions and thoughts and the feedback we received from gallery visitors and collectors as each exhibit concludes. This time, it is different.

We have each been involved in the art world for 30 years. We couldn't begin to count the number of exhibits we have visited - or hosted as galleriests - over that period.

"History's Big Picture" coincided with the start of the 10 year anniversary of our move to Santa Fe, and after more than 55 exhibits here we wanted to present a very special exhibit, one that somehow emphasized the necessity of understanding and appreciating photojournalism.

There have been many exhibits that we wished could have run longer. This will be the first that will be actually difficult to take down. Since the opening on July 2, the exhibit has been seen by many thousands of viewers, timed as it was to coincide with the busy Santa Fe summer season. Visitors from all over the world have experienced a walk through the past 80 years in history: young, old, tours, school groups, veterans, politicians, museum curators, collectors, the "famous", and even a few homeless. We have seen parents quietly explaining the situation behind a photograph to their children, we have seen people softly weeping, and the quiet of the gallery has occasionally been startled by someone gasping "Oh my God!".

The exhibit progresses chronologically, starting in 1930's Germany with photographs of Dr. Joseph Goebbels, and the first meeting of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini that have caused several visitors to whirl about and face the front desk and exclaim "This is serious!"

The photographs from Depression-era America have instantly resonated with gallery guests as they compare that time with the current economic condition. Interestingly, the same comparison has just recently been addressed in articles in the Los Angeles Times and The Guardian.

And from there the exhibition continues, a roller coaster through World War II, the 1950's; the brief hope of John Kennedy and the violent and shocking end of that hope; through the civil rights struggle and another shocking assassination, the shining hope of Robert Kennedy, the devastation of his assassination; the horror of Vietnam, the shock of 9/11, and the complicated consequences of America's involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The final photograph is by Eric Smith of the casket of an Iraq War soldier on an empty stage prior to his memorial service delivers visitors near the exit and the front desk, and often a conversation ensues. Some need to talk, some need comfort, some have been angry, and some have been inspired to find out more.

This exhibition has affirmed our steadfast belief in the power of a photograph. The exhibit's press release stated "Photographers in this exhibition illustrate the power of photography to inform, persuade, enlighten and enrich the viewer's life." And on the About Us page of our website we state " The way a photograph can capture time, emotions, and feelings makes photography a unique art form". We have witnessed this first hand and in a very powerful confirmation during this exhibit.

We are so grateful for all of the participating photographers, so many of whom we have been privileged to have known know personally. For those who are no longer living with us, we thank their families. For those still working, we honor your commitment and service to humanity.

We are so very thankful to all who have visited the exhibit. There are discussions about the possibility of travelling the exhibit to some museums, so if you missed it stay tuned. It will continue to live on our website in the Archived Showcase section as well.

Thank you.

"If you think you're going to create an unposed photograph, think again. There is no such thing."

 

Roger Fenton /Smithsonian/AP
Some believe photographer Roger Fenton placed the cannonballs on the Ukrainian road during the Crimean War himself


Errol Morris Looks For Truth Outside Photographs
 September 17, 2011
Via NPR

Believing Is Seeing

Observations on the Mysteries of Photography

by Errol Morris

Hardcover, 310 pages | purchase

Errol Morris is regarded as one of the world's most important filmmakers and is best known for his documentaries The Thin Blue Line and the Oscar-award winning Fog of War.

But before he was a filmmaker, he was a detective and he's always been interested in uncovering the mysteries of photographs. In his new book, Believing Is Seeing, Morris focuses on the things you can't see in photographs and the importance of what lies outside the frame.

Morris tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz that his obsession with photos began when he was a small boy and his father died.

"I was only 2 years old [and] don't have any memory of him at all. But there were photographs of him all over the house," he says. "I remember looking at these photographs; this is someone that I should know, probably should remember, but there's this mystery."

Photo Manipulation

Trying to recover the context of photographs is a theme in Morris' book. In one example, he takes his critical eye to two photos of the Crimean War taken by Roger Fenton in the 1850s. Both images are shot from the same spot, but one shows markedly more cannonballs on the road than the other. Photography scholars have long considered the photo with more cannonballs as the first instance of a photo manipulation. They say it was done by Fenton to drum up drama about the war for his British readership.

But Morris disagrees. He says no one can be sure if Fenton added or removed the cannonballs from the frame.

"I walked away thinking I really don't know. We all know that staging is that big no-no in photography. I would call it a fantasy that we can create some photographic truth by not moving anything, not touching anything, not interacting with the scene that we're photographing in any way," he says. "If you think you're going to create an unposed photograph, think again. There is no such thing."

Staged Dust Bowl

Morris says photographers have been posing photos as long as they've been taking them. During the Great Depression, President Roosevelt sent out photographers to capture what life was like during the Dust Bowl. An iconic image taken by Arthur Rothstein of a cow skull on a barren landscape was meant to show the drama of the drought.

"Then they found out he had taken multiple photographs of the cow skull and clearly it had been moved," he says. "Well, people who were opposed to the Roosevelt administration seized on this. They became outraged, they felt manipulated, deceived; [there were] allegations that Rothstein had actually brought the cow skull with him from Washington."

Even though there actually was a drought, Morris says, critics were quickly caught up in the deception.

 

 

Arthur Rothstein/Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, FSA/OWI Collection

Overgrazed Land. Pennington County, South Dakota (1936) is one of several photographs Arthur Rothstein took to document dry, sun-baked earth of the South Dakota Badlands.

"Was he trying to deceive the public? Was he trying to use the photograph for propaganda? If not him, was it the newspaper editors who placed it in their newspapers?" he says. "And it goes into that whole question of what is propaganda. Can any photograph be used for the purposes of propaganda?"

Parallels Between Filmmaking, Photography

Morris says when he first started making films, he was accused of making documentaries the wrong way.

"People would say, 'You're not supposed to use Philip Glass music, you're not supposed to use reenactments.' And my answer then — and it's still my answer over the years — is that style is not what guarantees truth," he says.

Morris says there's no such thing as a true or false photograph, and that doesn't really matter anyway. He says the most important thing is to ask any documentarian — in film, photography or print — to pursue the truth.

Read an excerpt of Believing Is Seeing

Photographing the Great Depression, then and now

Florence Owens Thompson, a migrant worker and mother of seven children. Photograph: Dorothea Lange/Getty Images

Dorothea Lange's stark portraits of poverty-stricken Americans in the 1930s seem terrifyingly contemporary

Jonathan Jones

 Friday 16 September 2011 09.00 EDT

Via the Guardian

Faces from the Great Crash of 1929 and its aftermath are haunting the 21st century. Wall Street brokers fleeing the trading floor in panic, or putting their cars on sale because they are suddenly broke, appear in old black-and-white photographs beside analyses of the current state of the markets composed by sombre authorities. Not only the collapse of confidence that shattered investors 82 years ago but the long years of misery that followed now seem to call out to us, to warn us, to show us a truth that is urgent and immediate. Can this really be so? Can that nightmare history be repeating itself?

This week an American paper, the Los Angeles Times, republished one of the most renowned of all depression photographs. Dorothea Lange was working in 1936 for an American government agency called the Resettlement Administration, documenting the journeys of desperate farm labourers in search of work. In Nipomo, California she met Florence Owens Thompson and her children. Lange's picture of the road-weary family has endured because it is an intimate human portrait, that cuts through statistics and abstractions to show us real life in the Depression. The weather-beaten, stoical, dignified face of Thompson, her children burying themselves in her for protection, speaks of poverty that is not destined, or deserved, or inevitable, of people whose suffering is random, cruel and, surely, preventable.

Out of the Great Depression in 1930s America and Europe came a broad acceptance that society needed to do better, that markets could not guarantee universal wealth or even survival by themselves, that governments needed to do two things as a matter or course: manage the economy, and ensure the welfare of citizens. At least the western democracies reached this consensus by 1945, after 16 years of chaos, during which far more dangerous alternatives to capitalism took the world by storm. Lange's photograph was shocking in 1936 because it revealed that extreme poverty now existed on a frightening scale in the United States, the country where wealth was freest, industry most advanced, whose business was business. If capitalism was failing in America, did that mean it was finished?

In 1936, when this picture was taken, many believed Karl Marx right in his prediction that capitalism would be broken by its contradictions. They looked admiringly to Russia or even joined communist parties. Meanwhile, Hitler's Germany blamed the troubles on Jewish financiers and created work through massive public schemes. Liberal, capitalist democracy would only regain strength with the new consensus for welfare and planning that emerged from the second world war.

The face of Florence Owens Thompson in Lange's photograph is hemmed in by shadows of this dark period in history. So why did she make her appearance on the LA Times the other day, on the breakfast tables of film producers and television executives? The article was asking why today's artists have not risen to the challenge of depicting what it claimed is already a new depression – where is our Dorothea Lange? Yet the real question seems to be why we suddenly find images of the 1930s pertinent and recognisable and … contemporary.

The stark images of the 1929 crash and the 1930s depression that currently haunt us are forebodings, night terrors, nervous jitters. They express something essential about the state of the world in 2011: fear.

Nothing is scarier than the thought that we might be repeating the history of the 1930s. There is no more terrifying period in human history. The economic travails of that time tore apart societies. Americans suffered catastrophic poverty, as shown in Lange's photograph. Germans succumbed to the politics of hate, Spain became a battleground, soon Europe would be one. All that is evoked in chilling photographs of the depression era.

This is a moment of sweat and nerves. Over the summer, financial news got eerie. As it happens, the nightmare scenarios have not yet come to pass – some were predicting a collapse of the euro in August. The threat of Washington failing to raise the American debt ceiling was another panic averted at the last moment. But the fears continue.

Fear is a historical force. At the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789 peasants were driven to violence by a "great fear", a panic that swept the countryside. It was, of course, during the Great Depression that president Franklin D Roosevelt made his famous speech denouncing the irrationality of fear. He used his inaugural address in 1933 to urge "that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance".

Here is something truly eerie – the thing we have in common with the people of the Great Depression is a mood of deepening fear, "nameless, unreasoning …"

In America in 1933, Roosevelt faced down fear and insisted that rational measures could defy the forces of destruction. Meanwhile, that same year Hitler took power with a politics of pure unreason that feasted on terror.

Today it is avowedly democratic politicians who seem ready to exacerbate terror. Deficits are talked up as ghoulish menaces, social ills blamed on moral decay. In America, government itself, as any kind of rational agent for reform, is widely portrayed as a monster.

When Lange took her photograph, times were terrible. But there were powerful voices of optimism and rationality, from Roosevelt to John Maynard Keynes, and these voices would win through in the end. In 2011 American politics seems headed in the opposite direction to the forward-looking road it took in the 1930s, while everywhere primitive gloom is in the ascendant. In this sense the situation does not resemble the 1930s. It is potentially far worse.


Related: Facing Change: Documenting America

Untitled (12th Istanbul Biennial), 2011

The art world's moveable feast takes up residence in Istanbul this week, as the opening of the 12th Istanbul Biennial, Sept. 17-Nov. 13, 2011, corresponds with the launch of a new art fair, Art Beat Istanbul, Sept. 14-18, 2011. Also on the schedule are the inauguration of several new galleries. More here from Artnet.

12th Istanbul Biennial, “Untitled,” 2011

Sept. 17-Nov. 13, 2011

Art and politics is the theme of the 12th Istanbul Biennial, which promises to present artworks that are both formally innovative and politically outspoken. It takes as its point of departure the work of the Cuban American artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres (1957–1996), whose work was able to “integrate high modernist, minimal and conceptual references with themes of everyday life.” The festival, which is organized by Jens Hoffmann and Adriano Pedrosa, embraces Gonzalez-Torres’ idea that the world can be made a better place, and that art can be a catalyst for change.

To paraphrase Gonzalez-Torres, the 12th Istanbul Biennial is “Untitled” because meaning is always changing in time and space. The biennial consists of five group exhibitions and more than 50 solo presentations, all housed in a single venue, Antrepo 3 and 5 exhibition halls. Each of the group shows (“Untitled (Abstraction),” “Untitled (Ross),” “Untitled (Passport),” “Untitled (History)” and “Untitled (Death by Gun)”) departs from a specific work by Gonzalez-Torres. Visitors are encouraged to become active readers, not just silent recipients.

Participating artists, whose names have still not been officially released, include Eddie Adams, with a rare series of three vintage photographs from Street Execution of a Viet Cong Officer, Saigon, 1968, on loan from Monroe Gallery of Photography. The photographs are featured in the "Untitled (Death by Gun)" exhibition.

Related: The New York Times: A Simplified and Secretive Istanbul Biennial

               The Guardian has compliled a list of 10 of the best modern art galleries in Istanbul and  a slide show: Vintage Istanbul - in pictures.