Panel Discussion: Photojournalism and Civil Rights

© Steve Schapiro: "Stop Police Killings, Selma March, 1965"

Santa Fe--Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is honored to present a special panel discussion on the role of photojournalism in the civil rights movement up to the present day. Freelance photojournalist Whitney Curtis, veteran LIFE magazine reporter Richard Stolley and interim director of the UNM Art Museum and Dean of the College of Fine Arts Kymberly Pindar will share their experiences and views on Friday, September 18, starting promptly at 5:30. Seating is  very limited and will be on a first come basis. The discussion will take place in the gallery during the final week of the exhibition "The Long Road: From Selma to Ferguson", which closes on September 27.

Many of the now iconic photographs of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States were once front-page news. The year 2015 brought renewed attention to many of these historic images not only from the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's march and the acclaimed film "Selma" but also as Baltimore, Charleston, and Ferguson, Missouri, and other American cities grapple with conflicts across the racial divide and produce new images that have confronted American society anew with questions of equality.

Richard Stolley already had a distinguished career in journalism when he joined TIME magazine in 1953. As a reporter for Time and LIFE he covered numerous civil rights stories during the 1960's, of which he has said "There would not have been a civil rights movement without journalism. I think LIFE magazine was the most influential publication in changing American attitudes toward race because other news magazines would tell you what was happening and LIFE magazine would show you. LIFE photographers captured images of people spitting on black kids. Those people landed in a great big photo in the magazine, their faces distorted with hate, and spit coming out of their mouths. That image is going to change peoples' attitude in a way that words never could. That is exactly what LIFE magazine did week after week after week."

After graduating with a degree in photojournalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia, Whitney Curtis worked as a staff photojournalist at The Kansas City Star, northern Utah’s Standard-Examiner, and the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago. As an editorial photojournalist, Whitney’s work has been honored by The Associated Press, NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism, CPoY, and Women in Photojournalism. A resident of St. Louis, Whitney was not surprised by the outpouring of anger and emotion after a police officer killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. What she did not expect, however, was to be caught in the middle of it. She covered the 2014 protests extensively, often on assignment for The New York Times. Her image of image of Rashaad Davis from the Ferguson, Missouri protests was awarded 1st place Domestic News 2014 in NPPA's Best of Photojournalism Contest.

Kymberly Pindar is the interim director of the UNM Art Museum and dean of the UNM College of Fine Arts. Pindar is co-curator of the exhibition "Necessary Force: Art of the Police State which" will run from September 11 through December 12, 2015 at the UNM art museum. This exhibition interrogates law enforcement’s longstanding history of violence, and the systemic forces that continue to sanction and promote the violation of civil rights in this country. Dr. Pinder holds two master’s degree and a Ph.D. in art history from Yale University.

Monroe Gallery of Photography was founded by Sidney S. Monroe and Michelle A. Monroe. Building on more than five decades of collective experience, the gallery specializes in 20th and 21st photojournalist imagery. The gallery also represents a select group of contemporary and emerging photographers. Monroe Gallery was the recipient of the 2010 Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for Excellence in Photojournalism.

Gallery hours are 10 to 5 daily. Admission is free. For further information, please call: 505.992.0800; E-mail: info@monroegallery.com.
 

Follow  @Monroegallery on Twitter for a Periscope livestream of the panel on Friday, September 18. 

Exhibit explores history of police use of force

Via The Albuquerque Journal
September 11, 201
 By Adrian Gomez / Asst. Arts Editor, Reel NM

Karen Fiss is one of the two curators of “Necessary Force: Art in the Police State.” She is standing in front of “Amelia Falling 2014” by Hank Willis Thomas. The exhibit is in the University of New Mexico Art Museum and will be on display until Dec. 12. (Roberto E. Rosales/Albuquerque Journal)

An art exhibit opens tonight in Albuquerque that’s sure to generate discussion, and possibly controversy.

“Necessary Force: Art in the Police State” includes work from 31 artists, and covers such historical themes as the civil rights movement to more current events such as the James Boyd shooting here and the Ferguson, Mo., riots that started after Michael Brown was fatally shot by a police officer.

“This exhibit is getting the dialog started about the problems our society is facing,” said co-curator Kymberly Pinder. “These are problems that have existed for a long time. The show balances what today’s society is dealing with in conjunction to what has happened in the past.”

Pinder, who also is dean of the UNM College of Fine Arts, and Karen Fiss, a professor at the California College of Arts, worked on pulling together the exhibit for the past year.

If you go
WHAT: “Necessary Force: Art in the Police State”
WHEN: Opening at 6 tonight. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Saturday through Dec. 12
WHERE: Main Gallery, UNM Art Museum, UNM campus
HOW MUCH: Free

 

It is in the University of New Mexico Art Museum, and will be on display until Dec. 12.

“Art is not just to entertain; it can also be challenging and thought provoking,” the curators said in their exhibition statement. “The term ‘necessary force’ is the art created by artists who feel an urgent need to respond to contemporary events that reflect a society that is increasingly policed on many levels and how that affects us all. The words ‘police state’ are used because these artists address this increased policing and the many social conditions that contribute to the complex history of police violence in the United States.”

The majority of the works are responding to actual events. Documentary photographs from the 1960s and ’70s from the museum’s renowned collection stand alongside work by contemporary artists, which includes an installation of an overturned police car to a piece that points out items that were mistaken for guns.

“The juxtaposition of historic and recent imagery helps us assess the evolution of these pressing social issues over the 50 years since the Civil Rights movement,” Pinder said.

The exhibit comes after a Department of Justice investigation found that Albuquerque police used excessive force for years, and as the department tries to comply with a court order to overhaul its practices.

Pinder said the curators and artists hope to encourage critical thinking and dialogue around the complex history of law enforcement and violence in the United States.

The contemporary works in the exhibition address a range of issues, including surveillance, incarceration, drug abuse, inadequate mental health care, gun violence and racial profiling, as well as the power of collective protest and collective healing.

It also examines the role of photography in shaping public opinion, as well as the longer-term matter of how we come to know and remember history.

The goal for the exhibit falls in line with UNM’s mission to encourage critical thinking, dialogue and problem-solving around issues that are relevant today, Pinder said.

“The caliber of artists that are in the exhibit is profound,” Fiss said. “These were artists that showed interest in the show.”

Pinder always wanted to work with Fiss on a show. The pair have known each other since their graduate studies at Yale University.

A thematically related exhibition, “The Long Road: From Selma to Ferguson,” is currently on display at The Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe until Sept. 27.

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"For decades, Steve Schapiro’s iconic photographs have been witty visual documents of American cultural and social movements"

Via Time LightBox

For decades, Steve Schapiro’s iconic photographs have been witty visual documents of American cultural and social movements. He’s captured significant moments like Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s march to Selma as well as intimate portraits of Hollywood celebrities such as Marlon Brando in The Godfather and Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver.

To this day, the American photojournalist and documentarian still gives his audience compelling testimonies of the social and cultural flaws that society has survived, capturing an intriguing side of a multifaceted complexity. And his latest body of work is no different. In Bliss: Transformational Festivals & the Neo Hippie,  slated for release in October by powerHouse Books, Schapiro chronicles today’s hippie counterculture movement throughout the U.S. and in parts of Europe.

Continue to full article here.


Steve Schapiro's iconic photographs are included in the exhibition "The Long Road: From Selma to Ferguson" at Monroe Gallery of Photography, Santa Fe, through September 27.

HELP THE EDDIE ADAMS WORKSHOP

Via RocketHub

The Eddie Adams Workshop is an intense, tuition-free photography workshop open annually to 100 students from around the world, led by the industry's top professionals who volunteer their time for the 4-day experience. Eddie Adams, the founder and namesake, created this first and only tuition-free photo workshop in 1988. Since then, through the help of corporate sponsorship and private donations, Eddie, his wife, Alyssa, and their friends have created a space for mentorship, motivation, and an irreplaceable family of photographers. We would like to thank our community for its assistance through donations and spreading the word to others for their support of our workshop.  We would also like to thank our partners who continue to sponsor the workshop, including our main sponsor Nikon, to help keep Eddie’s vision alive and strong.

Why keep this workshop alive and kicking? Well, just ask a few recent students:

"The Eddie Adams Workshop is the kind of place where, among other things, a senior photo editor at National Geographic gives you a lift to your assignment, influential photographers go from heroes to peers through the course of a conversation, an industry professional moonlights as your photo assistant, an award winning photographer serves you mashed potatoes for lunch, and you meet people who will become friends for life. The Eddie Adams Workshop was a lightning bolt of inspiration and I give it credit for triggering a metamorphosis that led me to where I am now." - Tamir Kalifa, Workshop 24

"Besides taking pictures, the Eddie Adams Workshop was the best thing I have done as a photographer." - Egill Bjarnason, Workshop 27

At the workshop, each student is part of a 10-person team that is sent out on assignment. In addition to working on and completing their assignment in four days' time, students attend portfolio reviews and discussions with world renowned photographers and editors such as James Damon Winter, Preston Gannaway, John Moore, Vincent Laforet, Andrees Latif, Rodrigo And, Nancy Andrews, James Balog, Al Bello, Jodi Cobb, Erika Larsen, Elizabeth Krist, Ami Vitale, Carolyn Cole, David Guttenfelder, Todd Heisler, Tyler Hicks, Lynn Johnson, David Hume Kennerly, Santiago Lyon, James Nachtwey, Eugene Richards, Stephanie Sinclair, John H White, Dan Winters, MaryAnne Golon, Jamie Wellford, Michele McNally, Gordon Parks, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Joe Rosenthal, Cornell Capa, Mary Ellen Mark, Chris Hondros, Platon, Bill Eppridge, Maggie Steber, Nick Ut and many more.

WORKSHOP RECOGNITION:

• 2014 PMDA Visionary Award Recipient, Eddie Adams Workshop (PhotoImaging Manufacturers and Distributors Association)
• 2010 Lucie Awards Visionary Award Recipient, Eddie Adams Workshop

RECENT PRESS:
TIME
The NY Times 
The Chicago Tribune
National Geographic

Contribute HERE.

STEPHEN WILKES: HURRICANE KATRINA

Stephen Wilkes: TV in Sand, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, June 12, 2006

Several of Stephen Wilkes' photographs from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will be featured in the forthcoming exhibition "Remnants". The exhibition of large-scale color photographs (up to 50 x 80 inches) of the environment and the environmental remnants left behind either by nature or man will be at Monroe Gallery of Photography October 2 - November 22, 2015.

Stephen Wilkes: Bridge Through Window

"In February of 2006, six months after Hurricane Katrina, I traveled to New Orleans to document the devastation, instead I found hope. At town meetings, I met survivors determined to rebuild their homes and communities in the face of insurmountable odds. I was in awe of their inner strength.
I wanted to give voice to those that had been all but forgotten; I wanted their stories to be told. Of varied backgrounds, professions, and ethnicities, a thread ran through everyone I met—a deep sense of faith and an enduring sense of hope.



I am at a loss to describe them as anything short of heroic. I hoped their stories would inspire others to return to the Gulf Coast, and help maintain focus on an area whose story, ten years ago, was only just beginning."

See more of Stephen Wilkes's photographs from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on his Instagram feed this week.

Related: Before his Iris Nights lecture at the Annenberg Space for Photography, Stephen Wilkes discussed photographing New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina

Don’t Stop the Presses: An evening to celebrate free speech

Via New Mexico Foundation for Open Goverment

Monday, August 24 at 7 p.m. at the Jean Cocteau Cinema in Santa Fe!

From Charlie Hebdo in Paris to the Rio Grande Sun here in Northern New Mexico, the press and free speech are under attack. Join with the New Mexico Foundation for Open Government, the New Mexico Press Association and The Santa Fe New Mexican by sponsoring a screening of The Sun Never Sets.

This critically acclaimed documentary showcases Espanola’s Rio Grande Sun newspaper and its fearless, honest investigative reporting. Watch the trailer about the film here. The film was written, directed and produced three years ago by Benson Daitz, who will be present for the screening and participate in a panel discussion to be held after the film. Also on the panel will be Greg Williams, FOG president; Bob Trapp, editor and owner of The Sun; and Ray Rivera, editor of The New Mexican.

The Sun was recently the victim of an arson attack, and The New Mexican, the NMPA and FOG stand in solidarity with The Sun. We are proud to present the film and host an interactive panel of First Amendment experts discussing how to protect and celebrate free speech!

Register to attend the event here. Individual tickets are $20 each. Or for $50, you’ll receive your ticket for the screening and a one-year FOG membership. Sponsorship opportunities are also available!

Journalists charged months after being arrested in Ferguson

Via The Committe To Protect Journalists


New York, August 11, 2015--Two U.S. journalists have been charged in Missouri with trespassing and interfering with a police officer nearly a year after they were detained by police in the city of Ferguson, according to news reports. Wesley Lowery, a reporter for The Washington Post, and Ryan J. Reilly, a reporter for the Huffington Post, were briefly detained in August 2014 while working out of a McDonald's restaurant in Ferguson to cover protests following the fatal shooting by police of unarmed teenager Michael Brown, according to news reports. If convicted, the two face a possible fine of $1,000 and up to a year in jail, according to the county's municipal code.

"U.S. authorities have no business hauling reporters into court for doing their jobs, especially on a world story like Ferguson," said CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney. "We are appalled by this judicial intimidation of Wesley Lowery and Ryan Reilly and call on St. Louis authorities to drop all charges immediately."

 

Lowery said that he received a summons to appear in a St. Louis County court on August 24, according to The Washington Post. The summons said he would be arrested if he did not appear. Cordell Whitlock, a spokesman for the county executive, said that Reilly had been issued a summons on the same charges, the report said. CPJ and other groups in 2014 documented the widespread harassment and detention of journalists who covered the unrest in Ferguson. At least 11 reporters were detained between August 13 and 19, and journalists reported being threatened by police, hit with rubber bullets, and affected by tear gas. Other reporters said they were threatened by crowds who were protesting and, in some cases, looting during the unrest, according to news reports.

• For data and analysis on the U.S., visit CPJ's U.S. page.

Sign the petition: Tell St. Louis County: Journalism Is Not a Crime

Rember When?   HERE WE GO AGAIN: OCCUPY WALL STREET ARRESTS JOURNALISTS

August 11, 1965: Watts

Caption from LIFE "Children in Watts grow up with the signs of fear, desperation and hatred all around. The words painted last August on this little grocery store, telling rioters that it is owned by a Negro and urging them to burn something else, were left on the walls for months afterwards -- just in case." Photography by Bill Ray.

The Watts Riot, which raged for six days and resulted in more than forty million dollars worth of property damage, was both the largest and costliest urban rebellion of the Civil Rights era. The riot spurred from an incident on August 11, 1965 when Marquette Frye, a young African American motorist, was pulled over and arrested by Lee W. Minikus, a white California Highway Patrolman, for suspicion of driving while intoxicated. As a crowd on onlookers gathered at the scene of Frye's arrest, strained tensions between police officers and the crowd erupted in a violent exchange. The outbreak of violence that followed Frye's arrest immediately touched off a large-scale riot centered in the commercial section of Watts, a deeply impoverished African American neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles. For several days, rioters overturned and burned automobiles and looted and damaged grocery stores, liquor stores, department stores, and pawnshops. Over the course of the six-day riot, over 14,000 California National Guard troops were mobilized in South Los Angeles and a curfew zone encompassing over forty-five miles was established in an attempt to restore public order. All told, the rioting claimed the lives of thirty-four people, resulted in more than one thousand reported injuries, and almost four thousand arrests before order was restored on August 17.

Throughout the crisis, public officials advanced the argument that the riot was the work outside agitators; however, an official investigation, prompted by Governor Pat Brown, found that the riot was a result of the Watts community's longstanding grievances and growing discontentment with high unemployment rates, substandard housing, and inadequate schools. Despite the reported findings of the gubernatorial commission, following the riot, city leaders and state officials failed to implement measures to improve the social and economic conditions of African Americans living in the Watts neighborhood. The Civil Rights Digital Library

Bill Ray's photographs from Watts are included in the exhibition "The Long Road: From Selma to Ferguson" through September 27, 2015.

A year after the Watts Riots in 1965, LIFE magazine revisited the neighborhood through a series of color pictures by photographer Bill Ray. (Via Time.com)

Photojournalist Whitney Curtis featured on Lens Blog; to appear on Civil Rights panel discussion

Photojournalist Whitney Curtis is featured in today's New York Times LENS:

"Whitney Curtis has covered Ferguson, Mo., for The New York Times since the day Michael Brown was shot and killed by a local police officer a year ago. Her photos of the protests that followed were published on the front page of The Times, and in many other publications around the world. And they were featured on Lens. For the last few weeks she has been photographing in Ferguson, looking for what has changed, and what has not, over the last year. She spoke with James Estrin earlier this week about her recent experiences there. The conversation has been edited."--   Full article here.

 Monore Gallery of Photography  is  honored to present a special panel discussion on the role of photojournalism in the civil rights movement up to the present day.  Freelance photojournalist Whitney Curtis, veteran LIFE magazine reporter Richard Stolley and interim director of the UNM Art Museum and dean of the College of Fine Arts Kymberly Pindar will share their experiences on Friday, September 18, starting promptly at 5:30. Seating is limited and will be on a first come basis. The discussion at Monroe Gallery will take place in the gallery during the final week of the exhibition "The Long Road: From Selma to Ferguson", which closes on September 27.

Many of the now iconic photographs of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States were once front-page news. The year 2015 brought renewed attention to many of these historic images not only from the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's march and the acclaimed film "Selma" but also as Baltimore, Charleston, and Ferguson, Missouri, and other American cities grapple with conflicts across the racial divide and produce new images that have confronted American society anew with questions of equality.

Richard Stolley already had a distinguished career in journalism when he joined Time magazine in 1953. As a reporter for Time and LIFE he covered numerous civil rights stories during the 1960's, of which he has said "There would not have been a civil rights movement without journalism. I think LIFE magazine was the most influential publication in changing American attitudes toward race because other news magazines would tell you what was happening and LIFE magazine would show you. LIFE photographers captured images of people spitting on black kids. Those people landed in a great big photo in the magazine, their faces distorted with hate, and spit coming out of their mouths. That image is going to change peoples' attitude in a way that words never could. That is exactly what LIFE magazine did week after week after week."

After graduating with a degree in photojournalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia, Whitney worked as a staff photojournalist at The Kansas City Star, northern Utah’s Standard-Examiner, and the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago. As an editorial photojournalist, Whitney’s work has been honored by The Associated Press, NPPA’s Best of Photojournalism, CPoY, and Women in Photojournalism. A resident of St. Louis, Whitney was not surprised by the outpouring of anger and emotion after a police officer killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. What she did not expect, however, was to be caught in the middle of it. She covered the 2014 protests extensively, often on assignment for The New York Times. Her image of image of Rashaad Davis from the Ferguson, Missouri protests was awarded 1st place Domestic News 2014 in NPPA's Best of Photojournalism Contest.

Kymberly Pindar is the interim director of the UNM Art Museum and dean of the UNM College of Fine Arts. Pindar is co-curator of the exhibition "Necessary Force: Art of the Police State" which will run from September 11 through December 12, 2015 at the UNM art museum. This exhibition interrogates law enforcement’s longstanding history of violence, and the systemic forces that continue to sanction and promote the violation of civil rights in this country. Dr. Pinder holds two master’s degree and a Ph.D. in art history from Yale University.

Related:

Review: The Long Road: From Selma To Ferguson

The Santa Fe New Mexican Pasatiempo: "The Long Road: From Selma to Ferguson couldn’t be more timely"

Review: The Long Road: From Selma To Ferguson

THE Magazine
August, 2015

“There is no scientific or anthropological basis for race.”
  –Maya Angelou

                           

Steve Schapiro: "Stop Police Killings", Selma March, 1965

 

The is only one race: human. Being a bigot based on any other concept of so-called “race” is similar to being a climate change denier. Both are premised on what could be called belief-desires on the part of the willfully ignorant, rather than on any sort of scientifically, empirically, or reality based truth.

The Long Road: From Selma to Ferguson—an elegant exhibition of fifty-five photographs documenting the faces and places of America’s Civil Rights era alongside today’s rising BLACK LIVES MATTER movement is a timely contribution to the local cultural scene by the Monroe Gallery. The curation of the prints is thoughtful, and rich in response to the face-to­face with the ethnically biased police brutality that is confronting the nation. Whitney Curtis’ image of a twenty-three-year-old African-American activist backing away from three heavily armored St. Louis County cops with large weapons drawn, makes an iconic, Leon Golub­like, presentation of the point. A 1961 LIFE magazine image by Paul Schutzer of Freedom Riders on an interstate bus escorted by National Guardsmen with rifles and bayonets carries the tension of violent possibility held at bay, and echoes of the future found in the sign of one protester on the 1965 Selma March preserved by legendary LIFE photographer Steve Schapiro, that reads simply “Stop Police Killings.”

Relevant today, because the domestic terrorism of African-Americans hasn’t ceased since they were forcibly enslaved and brought in chains to this continent by Euro-American colonizers. A uniquely American ethnic hate and systematized terrorism campaign has been carried out ever since. For centuries now, law enforcement, judges, the Klu Klux Klan, skinheads, and Nazi-wannabes have conducted a long brutal pogrom of slavery, lynchings, scape-goating, church burnings, and institutionalized hatred against African-Americans. This was tragically capped most recently by the nine murders of Reverend Clementa C. Pinckney and eight parishioners at the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina by a twenty-one-year-old white supremacist espousing the belief-desires of a “black and white races” ideology of “racial hierarchy” woven into a hate and anger fueled action based on nothing but differences in skin tones. Children, when your ideology drives you to kill, the first thing to kill is your ideology.

The point of color in painting or people is visual pleasure and UV protection. The late, satirical Klan paintings of Phillip Guston are more relevant than ever today. Women of the Klan Bow Their Heads in Prayer, taken in South Carolina by Charles Moore and Segregationists, (again by Steve Schapiro) from a 1964 gathering in St. Augustine, Florida have a similar sense of the bleak stupidity of bigots on the wrong side of history. The exhibition does a great job of branching out to include images connecting the Selma March with anti-war, gay rights, labor, and feminist actions, making it clear that the crux of the matter is not the distraction of an erroneous race concept, but rather the still unattained dream of a reality based upon the self-evident and scientific truth that all people are created equally and are endowed with certain inalienable human rights and liberties that they must not be denied. Images of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. and his courageous entourage figure prominently. Pinckney joins him, now. Photographer Bill Eppridge’s moving image of activist James Chaney’s mother and younger brother at Chaney’s funeral is a study of dignity in grief that hits a universal human note far beyond any individual ancestry.

As King knew, no people holds a monopoly on evil or good. There are no fine hierarchical lines to be drawn between races because there is no place to draw them. Our homeland is the planet. We are all relatives in one species, and our major differences across ethnicities are simply cultural. Ancient tribalism is real, for sure, in fanatics’ belief-desire systems, but is based on nothing actual. Worldwide, it is supported most evilly by cultural ideologues and used in contemporary times, along with poverty and terrorism by a multi-ethnic cabal of nationalists and other politicians in collusion with banksters and financiers to divide and conquer various populations, and to enforce strict differences in access to wealth, resources, and territory. Economic differences (and growing disparity) are what they’re trying to hide.

It’s as ugly a situation as the eight shots to the back at short range that an unarmed Walter Scott took as he fled a now-indicted police officer, or the scenes of the crazed cracker cop in McKinney, Texas tackling an unarmed fourteen-year-old African-American girl to the ground at a pool party, and pointing his gun at her unarmed friends. Or Mike Brown’s body lying dead on the ground in the middle of the street for hours, or Freddie Gray’s severed spine. Nina Berman’s chilling Will I Be Next glimpses a black-haired boy looking out of the doorway next to the title text on a placard placed at the site of the Eric Garner strangulation in 2014. It’s a good question, unfortunately. —Jon Carver

Monroe Gallery in "Best of Santa Fe" 2015

Arts & Culture
Best of Santa Fe 2015
July 29, 2015


Best Blast from the Past


Monroe Gallery
112 Don Gaspar Ave.
992-0800


Charming and ethereal, powerful and thought provoking, no two visits to Monroe Gallery are the same. The product of owners Sid and Michelle Monroe’s love for great photojournalism of the Time/LIFE era keeps the inventory simultaneously pragmatic and poignant. “I just can’t think of anything more compelling or dynamic than chronicling our human history, our progress and our failures; our agonies of defeat and extraordinary moments of elevation,” Michelle says. Through Sept. 27, Monroe hosts The Long Road: From Selma to Ferguson, which began as a commemoration of the historic march. “We thought we had finished this show in 2013,” the gallerist continues. “Events started to unfold in Ferguson and Staten Island, in Cleveland with Tamir Rice, that presented such an extraordinary/terrible opportunity to make it a bigger conversation about how far we’ve come and what accomplishments have we let slip.” (EL)

photo by Enrique Limon

Bob Gomel shares never-before-seen pictures of The Beatles

Houston photographer shares never-before-seen pictures of The Beatles

Via KHOU

 

 
Bob Gomel: The Beatles, Miami, 1964

 

 

All of The Beatle's photographs by Bob Gomel are available as fine art prints from Monroe Gallery of Photography.

" documenting the history of the movement from the 1960s to the present day through more than 50 compelling images"

Steve Schapiro: On the Road, Selma March, 1965

The Santa Fe New Mexican: Pasatiempo


"The Long Road: From Selma to Ferguson couldn’t be more timely"






The Albuquerque Journal: Venue North


"Exhibit lays out emotional images from civil rights movement, along with some from today that are strikingly similar."

Steve Schapiro: "Stop Police Killings", Selma March, 1965

Nina Berman: "Will I Be Next", site of Eric Garner killing, New York, 2014

The Long Road: from Selma To Ferguson July 3 - September 27, 2015

The Fourth of July

Steve Schapiro: Martin Luther King, Selma March, 1965

Martin Luther King Jr.: "You can get so busy in life that you forget holidays and other days, and it had slipped my mind altogether that today was the Fourth of July. And I said to him, "It is coincidental and quite significant, and I think when I get to Atlanta and go to my pulpit, I will try to preach a sermon in the spirit of the founding fathers of our nation and in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence." And so this morning I would like to use as a subject from which to preach: "The American Dream."


"The American Dream" Delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church, Atlanta, Georgia, on 4 July 1965

"It is found in those majestic words of the Declaration of Independence, words lifted to cosmic proportions: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by God, Creator, with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." This is a dream. It’s a great dream.

The first saying we notice in this dream is an amazing universalism. It doesn’t say "some men," it says "all men." It doesn’t say "all white men," it says "all men," which includes black men. It does not say "all Gentiles," it says "all men," which includes Jews. It doesn’t say "all Protestants," it says "all men," which includes Catholics.  It doesn’t even say "all theists and believers," it says "all men," which includes humanists and agnostics"

The Long Road: From Selma To Ferguson

"how news coverage from Ferguson, Mo., ended up in one of the world's foremost art photography shows"

Rashaad Davis, 23, backs away as St. Louis County police officers approach him with guns drawn and eventually arrest him, Ferguson, Missouri, August 11, 2014
 ©Whitney Curtis


Via Full Frame
Global Images and the stories behind them
The Christian Science Monitor
By Ann Hermes, Staff Photographer    


       Boston — It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the range of photo exhibits – from new experimental artists to historic documentary works – at the Association of International Photography Art Dealers show in New York City. What is harder to find at AIPAD are modern works of photojournalism. This is part of the reason that scenes from the racial turmoil in Ferguson by photojournalist Whitney Curtis stood out. Her work was exhibited by the Monroe Gallery of Photography there. To get a better sense of how images from Ferguson moved from the pages of a newspaper to a framed exhibit at an international art photography show, I caught up with gallery owner, Sid Monroe. Here are some excerpts.         






Whitney Curtis' photographs from Ferguson are featured in the exhibit "The Long Road: from Selma to Ferguson", Monroe Gallery, Santa Fe, July 3 - September 28, 2015

Santa Fe Public Radio "At Noon" features Margaret Bourke-White exhibition

 

 

KSFR Santa Fe Public Radio

 

The exhibition Margaret Bourke-White: Pioneering Photographer was featured on "At Noon" June 15, 2015.

The work of trail-blazing photo-journalist Margaret Bourke-White is on display in downtown Santa Fe. The Monroe Gallery of Photography opened in Santa Fe in 2002, re-locating from Manhattan where it stood near the targeted World Trade Center towers on September 11th, 2001. The Monroe Gallery specializes in classic black & white photography with an emphasis on humanist and photojournalist imagery. Sid Monroe co-owns the gallery with his wife, Michelle. The Bourke-White exhibit at the Monroe Gallery runs through June 28th.


Listen here.

Happy Birthday Margaret Bourke-White



 Margaret Bourke-White working atop the Chrysler Building, NY 1934

by Oscar Graubner

Margaret Bourke-White was born on June 14, 1904, in New York City, and graduated from Cornell University in 1927. Choosing photography as a profession, she immediately began her dramatic career by experimenting with industrial subjects.

 

  

THE Magazine Review: Margaret Bourke-White: Pioneering Photographer

 PHOTOGRAPH Magazine Review: Margaret Bourke-White: Pioneering Photojournalist

 

The exhibition continues through June 28, 2015.

 

 

EDDIE ADAMS DAY 2015

             

EDDIE ADAMS DAY 2015

via New Kensington Camera Club

Please join us to celebrate the life and times of one of America's greatest photographers, New Kensington's own PULITZER PRIZE WINNER,
EDDIE ADAMS.

- 1969 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Spot News Photography -

Show Opening Saturday, June 13th, 2015

10:00am at the Alle-Kiski Valley Heritage Museum in Tarentum, PA. The program will include a Marine Color Guard, special guests, a display of 21 large Eddie Adams prints from his Paris Exhibition, a display of photos by Barry Lavery, and the Inspired by Eddie Adams Show by members of the New Kensington Camera Club. Light refreshments will be provided for guests at the Museum.

 

A screening of the Eddie Adams documentary,

"An Unlikely Weapon" will take place at 1:00pm

 

A dinner at the Clarion Hotel in New Kensington will follow at 6:00pm with special guest speaker,  Justin Merriman of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. The photo exhibit will run throughout the month of June.

 

Proceeds from the show and dinner will be used toward the purchase of a Pennsylvania Historical Marker for Eddie Adams in his hometown of New Kensington, PA. Additional proceeds will be used toward the Eddie Adams, John Filo Scholarship fund and ƒ-Stop ALS/NKCC Cares.

Museum Admission is $5.00 (free to all paid members of NKCC  & Alle-Kiski Valley Historical Society)

Dinner Tickets are on sale for $25.00

Tickets for the EAD2015 Dinner may be purchased in advance from NKCC or  the Alle-Kiski Valley Heritage Museum. A limited number of tickets will be available at the door before the dinner.

 

Eddie Adams Day is an event held by the New Kensington Camera Club with the cooperation and sponsorship of the Alle-Kiski Valley Historical Society.
Visit nkcameraclub.org and akvhs.org for further information.

Special Guests

   

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Photographer

Justin Merriman

Justin Merriman (b. September 28, 1977), an award-winning photojournalist with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, has spent more than a decade traveling the world to cover politics, wars, natural disasters and civil unrest. His work has appeared in leading national publications and he has received multiple top
journalism awards.

After covering the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks – including the crash of United Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania – Merriman committed to chronicling the U.S. military and its war on terror. He has followed this story across the United States and into the conflict zones of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He also has covered life in Fidel Castro’s Cuba in 2002, India’s efforts to
eradicate polio from its population, the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Pope Benedicts XVI’s visit to Cuba in 2012, the 2013 conclave and election of
Pope Francis in Rome, the second anniversary of Egypt’s revolution and subsequent unrest, Russia’s invasion of Crimea and the international political crisis that unfolded in Ukraine in 2014, and most recently, traveled the U.S. border with Mexico documenting issues on immigration.

Merriman has worked at the Tribune- Review since 1999, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, American Profile Magazine, Time, USA Today, MSNBC, Sports
Illustrated and publications across the globe. He has been recognized with numerous regional, national and international awards from organizations including: the Society of Professional Journalists, the National Press Photographers Association, the Society for News Design, the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar, the Northern Short Course, the Southern Short Course, the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, the Military Reporters and Editors Association, and the Western Pennsylvania Press Club. He was awarded Photographer of the Year by the News Photographer Association of Greater Pittsburgh four times.

In 2014, Merriman received awards for his work in Egypt including the top award in the International Photo Story category in the Northern Short Course contest and an award of excellence in the Pictures of the Year International Competition for News Picture Story.

Born in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, Merriman graduated from the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg in 2000 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Writing. In 2009, the university awarded him its prestigious Alumnus of Distinction award.

Currently Merriman lives in Oakmont with his fiancé, Stephanie Strasburg, also a photojournalist with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Justin is a Barnstorm XV alumnus and worked for the Valley News Dispatch.

    

  

Photographic work of Eddie Adams can be viewed at the Monroe Gallery of Photography.

For more information visit http://eddieadamsday.com/

© 2015 New Kensington Camera Club.

REVIEW: Margaret Bourke-White: Pioneering Photographer

Margaret Bourke-White, Fort Peck Dam, Fort Peck, MT, silver gelatin photograph, 14” x 11”, 1936

THE Magazine
June, 2015

IMAGINE, IF YOU CAN, A WORLD IN WHICH PHOTOGRAPHS WERE A RARE FORM

 of artistic documentation whose workings few understood. Imagine the United States in the first third of the twentieth century, with illiteracy and poverty key defining characteristics of the pitiable lives led by you and most everyone you knew. Images had nearly the power and drama, then, that they did during the Counter-Reformation in Europe, when the Catholic Church fought back against dull Protestantism with paintings as theatrical as opera sets, their shadowy depths filled with depictions of gruesome martyrdom—lit only at the moment of a would-be saint’s transmutation from agonizingly human into gloriously divine. Radiant sculptural forms of gold and silver reflected not merely the material wealth but the spiritual wealth of a religion that had dominated that part of the world for roughly a millennium. Bring yourself back now, from the seventeenth to the twentieth century and from Europe to the United States, populated by the shell-shocked heroes of the Great War dancing with pretty little flappers, their bobbed hairdos gleaming, and the gangsters, with their molls, who kept the country’s beak wet during Prohibition; imagine, finally, on a late fall day in 1929, stock-market millions vanishing within hours, heartlessly slamming shut the doors to the anything-goes twenties. (While you’re at it, imagine the unthinkable: Wall Street investors with such an overwhelming sense of responsibility that they jumped out of skyscrapers rather than face their own— and their clients’—financial ruin. Incomprehensible!) Meanwhile, the Great Depression loomed in the drought-stricken plains of America’s heartland. In the mind’s eye, these times could only have existed in grayed-out shades of black and white. Color, it seems, had been forgotten.

 

Unlike now, when anybody with a cell phone can, and unfortunately does, take pictures of everything from their breakfast to their genitalia—and makes them available to an unwitting public—only a very few of those initiated into the science of the lens and the alchemy of the darkroom were able to make photographs in the 1930s. Margaret Bourke-White was one of the few, and she led a charge of firsts: the first woman to photograph for LIFE magazine (for you post-Millennials, sort of the Internet of its time), the first accredited female war photographer (in World War II), and the first Western photographer allowed into the Soviet Union to record the proletariat’s triumph of mega-industry over the ease and comfort of privileged individuals.

 

In that heyday of pioneering photographers whom Bourke-White epitomized, black-and-white photography equaled photojournalism, which equaled truth with a capital T. This Truth was on a par with the same truth Americans revered in Norman Rockwell’s “real-life” scenes lifted straight out of a Mayberry without the laugh track, long before there was a Sheriff Taylor, Opie, Deputy Fife, or Aunt Bee. Or even television, for that matter. When images were few and far between, they had a credibility that is lost today in a thick overlay of irony and sheer disbelief. In the 1930s, if it appeared in LIFE magazine, or the Saturday Evening Post, or the newspaper, it was flat-out real.

Viewers lacked the objectivity to read meaning into a photograph as social commentary, for example, any more than the illiterate could read the black marks scratched into the white page.

The always-excellent Monroe Gallery presented their exhibition of silver gelatin photographs by Margaret Bourke-White as art, finding that, for her “as an artist,” photography served “as an instrument to examine social issues from a humanitarian perspective. She witnessed and documented some of the twentieth century’s most notable moments, including the liberation of German concentration camps by General Patton in 1945...” Bourke-White’s picture, “German civilians made to look at instruments of torture and execution at Buchenwald concentration camp, 1945,” is hardly an icon of objectivity. Nor should it be; some truths are beyond apprehension. Not to quibble with our dearly held ideals of photojournalism as an act of witnessing and documenting, but black-and-white imagery exists, among other reasons, when color cannot hold the entirety of its content. We demand this state of in-between-ness from art when what it depicts is too awful for mere reproduction.

While today you can find images of gore online anytime you choose to search for them, that they are not generally reproduced ad infinitum speaks to our understanding of the power of imagery. What Warhol repeated in a nightmarish grid (Jackie’s grief-stricken face on Air Force One en route from Dallas), and Picasso abstracted in his Guernica, Bourke-White reflected in the faces of her “German civilians” at Buchenwald.

Finally, when her country needed shoring up in 1936, during the height of the Depression, LIFE, a burgeoning publication that would become our society’s pocket mirror for at least a couple of decades, chose for its very first cover Bourke-White’s symbol of capitalism’s ultimate success. Her Fort Peck dam picture, all art-deco curves and fat-cat angles, describes more than the enormous potential for hydroelectric power: It is an image of America rediscovering her own righteous might, an America that, like the photographer “Maggie the Indestructible,” would liberate us from ourselves. There was the evidence, right in front of us in it-must­be-true black and white. —Kathryn M Davis

Margaret Bourke-White, Fort Peck Dam, Fort Peck, MT, silver gelatin photograph, 14” x 11”, 1936 ©Time Inc.

 

--The exhibition continues through June 28, 2015

 

 

"I take my responsibility as a photographer much more seriously"

My Most Important Photograph: Spc. Robert Acosta, 20, photographed at his home

 in Santa Ana, Calif., April 13, 2004

©Nina Berman-NOOR

 

Via TIME Lightbox

Best known for documenting the aftermath of the Iraq War and the militarization of American life, Nina Berman tells us about the most important photograph she's ever made.

"I thought I could add some complexity into the narrative by investigating what it meant to be wounded, who these troops were, what it meant to return home at such a young age and make the transition to disabled veteran."

Eddie Adams exhibition of photographs opens at the Dublin Arts Council

Eddie Adams' Pulitzer-prize winning shot of a man being executed on the streets of Saigon.


Via the Dublin Villager
By JENNIFER NOBLIT
Wednesday May 20, 2015


The exhibition of photographs set to open at the Dublin Arts Council Monday, May 25, is likely to bring conflicting emotions.


Eddie Adams: Vietnam is set to run through Sept. 11 at the Dublin Arts Council, 7125 Riverside Drive, and will show 50 photographs from Adams' time covering the Vietnam War, including his Pulitzer-prize winning shot of a man being executed on the streets of Saigon.


A group of veterans working with the Arts Council on the exhibition got a preview of some of the photos and it brought back memories for Vietnam veteran Jeff Noble.


"It was representative of my time," Noble said of the exhibition.


Noble spent one year in Vietnam as a pilot, supporting troops with firepower on a UH1C helicopter.


"Believe it or not there were some good times," he said.


Humor and camaraderie among troops number among the good times, as well as a job well done.


"There were times when we knew we had helped the troops on the ground and that was a good thing," he said.


Noble also saw some amazing things, including two soldiers walk away from a bad situation.


Noble was called into support troops under siege and after hitting the target twice he was told to cease fire because two U.S. soldiers were in the area.


"I couldn't believe after all this ordinance those guys were still alive," he said.
But Noble also remembered bad times, especially the third day after he arrived in Vietnam.


"We heard noise on the charlie pad from a team getting ready to go," he said.
The team was on the ground, waiting for a storm to pass, Noble said.
"Lightening hit the fox mike (of the helicopter) and sent electricity through the whole ship," he said.


The electricity launched rockets and one went into the lead helicopter, killing the pilot and injuring others.


"It was a rude awakening to life in the war zone," Noble said.


More bad news hit Noble within weeks of arriving in the war zone: "A good friend of mine from flight school went to a different unit and on his second mission in country, his helicopter was destroyed by enemy fire and he died."


Noble and fellow veteran Leroy Clendenen have provided the Arts Council with stories of their time in the Vietnam War for the exhibit and a booth will be set up to take other stories and recollections.


The public will also be invited to write letters to service members and veterans. Workshops on Tim O'Brien's book "The Things They Carried" are slated for August and will discuss the physical and emotional weight of war.


Counselors will also be available at peak times during the exhibit to offer guidance.
The photos could bring mixed reactions, and Noble offered advice for talking to Vietnam Veterans there: "Walk up and say 'Welcome home and thank you for your service.' "

Review Santa Fe Photo Festival

Via Center

Review Santa Fe Photo Festival

June 11-14, 2015

Review Santa Fe Photo Festival is celebrating its 15th anniversary and this professional development conference has expanded to include an exhibition and presentation series. The conference hosts 100 photographers from around the world showing their projects to leading professionals seeking out new talent. These top-notch reviewers including curators from The Library of Congress, J.Paul Getty Museum as well as editors from The New Yorker, TIME Magazine, MSNBC and 40 others.

An array of free and open to the public programs and exhibitions will be offered, The Curve Exhibitions, CENTER Artist Talks, a night of the Review Santa Fe 100 Portfolio Viewing, a very special event honoring photographic luminary Anne Wilkes Tucker and more.

 

For more information visit: http://visitcenter.org/

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

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

Via Slate

The photo languished unlauded—before it was (much later) recognized as one of the greatest sports photos of all time; Ali became the most hated figure in American sports—before he was (much later) named “The Sportsman of the Century”; and Liston was subjected to intense scrutiny—before (not much later) he fizzled into a mostly forgotten footnote.

Like many sports fans, I’d glimpsed this picture for years—in random Ali articles, atop “best of” lists, even on T-shirts—but it wasn’t until doing my own research, excavating layers, that I discovered its most astounding attribute:
 

Everything you’d initially imagine about the image is wrong.
 

But first, just look at that photo! It instantly hits your eyes haloed in a corona of potency—structured so soundly as to seem staged, this forceful frieze of physical dominance. The Victor yells, the Loser displays himself vanquished, and the Watchers are all caught in that moment. The kinetic poetry of moving bodies, momentarily frozen, such is the stuff of the best sports photos—this has that.

There are also the incongruities! The Victor, appearing to proclaim dominance, is in fact pleading for the bested man to rise; and, for that matter, there is secretly a second bested rival below Ali; and though this looks like the moment after a vicious put-down punch, the photo was actually preceded by the puniest of blows, a “phantom punch,” as it would later be known—a wispy, theoretical mini-hook that none in attendance even observed. That Crowd so multitudinous that it stretches beyond the horizon line? They were actually the smallest assembled crowd in heavyweight championship history—there to witness a bumbling conclusion, filled with calls that the fix was in. This bout: still boxing’s biggest unsolved mystery. This image: still iconic, even (especially) with the controversy, for a sport as mythologized as it is crooked. Click for full article.