New limited edition print release on collect.give

I'm very honored to share the news that the above image, from my ongoing series Yard Sales, is now available through collect.give as a limited edition print. If you're serious about collecting works or otherwise interested in this project, please follow this link to my page on the collect.give site to purchase a print.

collect.give was founded in December 2009 as a place to collect contemporary photography and donate to worthy causes at the same time. All of the chosen photographers have pledged to donate 100% of the profit from their print sales to worthwhile causes they support. To date, collect.give has raised over $33,000 for various causes by selling over 700 limited edition photographs. See the collect.give website for more information about how it all works, and be sure to check out the other photographs available from other artists -- its a stacked list, one I'm very humbled to be included on.

I will be donating all the money from my print sales to benefit the Center for a New American Dream, which helps Americans to reduce and shift their consumption to improve quality of life, protect the environment, and promote social justice. The Center works with individuals, institutions, businesses and communities to conserve natural resources, counter the commercialization of our culture, support community engagement, and promote positive changes in the way goods are produced and consumed. See their website for more info.

art openings 2/29 - 3/3: Gitterman Gallery, Catherine Edelman Gallery, DNJ Gallery

Gitterman gallery in NYC opens a new exhibition tonite of previously unseen color photographs by Adam Bartos. Throughout his long career, Bartos has established his photography as working portraits of the places in front of him, often in the vein of the "traveling photographer", and frequently with an eye for quiet, everyday scenes. He is also then able to seamlessly transfer this vision into equally revealing portraits of domestic places when working close to his home in Long Island.

Mombasa, Kenya (park), 1980
© Adam Bartos

The exhibition at Gitterman gallery is no exception: an interest in 19th century travel photography led Bartos to working in Mexico and various places across Africa in the early 1980s; selections from those trips are presented here alongside more recent images he made in Long Island between 2007-2010. Bartos presents these locations with a singular vision, utilizing formal compositional methods and a traditional, subdued color palette that have marked his work among the pantheon of early color photography practitioners when the genre gained steam in the fine art world in the 1970s.

County Road 80, Southampton, NY, 2010
© Adam Bartos

photographs by Adam Bartos
opening Wednesday 29 February
6-8pm
Gitterman gallery
170 E. 75th St., NYC

Over the weekend, two photo exhibitions open that employ their own distinct versions of documentary photography to reflect very poignant issues about the prevalence of consumption in contemporary western societies. The first, opening Friday nite at Catherine Edelman gallery in Chicago, is the exhibition Spill, featuring photographs by Daniel Beltra from the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.

Oil Spill #1 (2010)
© Daniel Beltra

The Deepwater Horizon disaster spilled nearly 5 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, killed 11 men working on the drilling platform, and caused long-term (and perhaps in some cases, irreparable) damage to marine and wildlife habitats in the Gulf as well as local fishing and tourism industries. It is the largest and worst oil spill disaster in U.S. history, surpassing the infamous Exxon Valdez spill of 1989.

Oil Spill #12 (2010)
© Daniel Beltra

Beltra spent two months photographing the disaster, mostly through a set of aerial photographs. The final body of images he has assembled raise some very important and striking questions about the capitalist ethos of progress and expansion through industrialization, here providing us a very clear picture of the potential for tragic effects when that manifesto is carelessly and negligently employed. Beltra's images also join a long history of documentary photography contributing to social justice, and here in particular to revealing the pitfalls of our continual human exploitation of the natural world, and the long-lasting environmental ramifications thereof. In Beltra's words:

"The fragile state of our ecosystems is a continuous thread throughout my work. It is in nature's beauty and complexity that I find my inspiration. My photographs show the vast scale of transformation our world is under from man-made stresses. To capture this, I have found it is often best to work from the air, which more easily allows for the juxtaposition of nature with the destruction wrought by unsustainable development. Aerial photography gives a unique perspective emphasizing that the Earth and its resources are finite. By taking viewers to remote locations where man and nature are at odds, I hope to instill a deeper appreciation for the precarious balance we are imposing on the planet."

I'd also like to add a very important point about the continuing relevance of Beltra's Spill images, namely in the context of the blatant attempts at censorship and media strangulation (particularly as it pertained to photographers) by BP during the cleanup and aftermath of the oil spill. I have written about this specific issue multiple times (here and here, to start) already, so I won't rehash old territory. However, I think its crucial for an open and democratic society to note these valuable collections of EVIDENCE such as Beltra's photographs especially in the face of censorship, propaganda and political rankling about this historic event, which is becoming all the more relevant at a time such as now, in the midst of the surging (or perhaps as some would say, the post-winter reawakening) Occupy movement that has brought some long overdue dialogue about corporate behavior into the national conversation (finally). And its equally worth keeping in mind where the interests of everyone's elected officials fall on these corporate issues, for surely as Rand Paul called the president "un-American" for insisting that BP be held responsible for the oil spill, so too did government entities at the local, state, and federal level aid in the logistics of BP's media censorship. The general public, and particularly the residents along the Gulf whose livelihoods have been so drastically altered by the spill, have a right to full and total accountability by their government and the BP corporation for the consequences of this man-made disaster.
All told, Beltra's Spill images are a powerful and essential set of photographic documents, one that provides very clear evidence on a number of issues, and asks some pointed questions for the road forward in America's oil-dependent way of life.

Spill
photographs by Daniel Beltra
opening Friday 2 March
5-7pm
Catherine Edelman gallery
300 W. Superior St., Chicago

Lastly, opening Saturday nite at DNJ gallery in SoCal, artist Michael Krebs uses a peculiar twist on historic documentary photographs to create images with fresh social commentary in his series Surplus.

Surplus I
© Michael Krebs

Krebs revisualizes iconic photographs from press coverage of war to create a body of work that examines what he considers a vicious war currently being waged in western societies:

"A war of trademarks, brands and conglomerates -- in other words a war of consumerism. The victims of that war are the consumers. Artificial consumer needs are created to form constantly buying 'Consumers.' The Consumer falls into a dependency with his income to buy things he really doesn't need..."

Krebs uses his images to expose and take on this system of psychological manipulation, and to call into question the capitalist social beliefs of success and competition and the subsequent lifestyle they generate, wherein the burden to consume creates a pattern of conspicuous consumption whose behavior is based on the misguided notion that one's economic success a) ought to be made known, flaunted, bragged about, and b) that the most effective and powerful method of doing so is the visual representation of owning alot of stuff.
By employing the references to historic and familiar war imagery, Krebs seems to implicate the power of photographs themselves in perpetuating rampant consumption, as well as hoping to connect his ideas of the "war of consumerism" to a generation that has only now known war through media images of violence and suffering in far-off places. While I'm personally not entirely won over by his reformulation of the historic images, I do concur with his analysis of the image and media as co-conspirators in the corporate manipulations that sustain western-style consumerism, and as an artist who shares many of his convictions on the topic (and indeed tries to address them in my own ways in my work), I certainly applaud his efforts.

Surplus III
© Michael Krebs

Surplus
photographs by Michael Krebs
opening Saturday 3 March
6-8pm
DNJ gallery
2525 Michigan Ave. (Bergamot Station Arts Center), Santa Monica CA

Art Openings 2/23-2/25: Pace Gallery, OHWOW Los Angeles Gallery, Rose Gallery

New York City has historically been the muse of many street photography practitioners, intimately documented in the style of Garry Winogrand, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, and countless others who have captured the quirky vibrancy, energy, and perpetual motion of one of the most bustling cities in the world. The photographer Paul Graham joins that tradition with his new series The Present, an exhibition of which opens tomorrow nite at the Pace Gallery.

Vesey Street, 25th May 2010, 5.51.05pm
from the series The Present
© Paul Graham

Graham's images in this project take the street photograph to an additional dimension, however, presenting them as a grouping of diptychs and triptychs that perform two functions: the first, to maintain the otherwise fleeting moment just one second longer, or one frame longer, as the scene unfolds; the second function being the juxtaposition of serendipitous events that take place before him. For example, in the diptych Vesey Street, 25th May 2010, 5.51.05pm (seen above), we see a man at left wearing an eye patch, while in the photo paired alongside we see a businessman's one-eyed wink or squint into the bright late-day sun. These "moments" are indeed small, brief, subtle idiosyncrasies that comprise everyday life, easily missed or overlooked amidst the frantic pace of the metropolis.

6th Avenue, 28th June 2010, 12.23.59pm
from the series The Present
© Paul Graham

The Present is Graham's third body of work in a trilogy that also includes American Night (1998-2002) and a shimmer of possibility (2004-2006), which have been shown at MoMA and extensively around the world. In its entirety, the trilogy represents Graham's explorations of and experiences in contemporary America.

Paul Graham: The Present
opening Thursday 23 February
6-8pm
Pace Gallery
545 W. 22nd St., NYC

On the West Coast, another major city of acclaimed American lore that has also been the subject of extensive photographic study is, of course, Los Angeles -- often fueled by the mystique and allure of Hollywood. Two other exhibitions opening this week, both in LA, are distinctly contrasted takes on the intricacies of landscape and life in/around Hollywood. The first, opening Friday nite at OHWOW Los Angeles gallery, is Terrywood, photographs by Terry Richardson.

Hooray for Hollywood, 2011
© Terry Richardson

His first solo show in LA, Terrywood includes 25 of Richardson's newest works, bringing Hollywood's characters, architecture and local flavor under the microscopic eye of Richardson's very unique vision and approach. Known for a photographic style that is often simultaneously described as humorous, tragic, brash, and controversially titillating, Richardson (who was raised in Hollywood) brings that manner to documenting the long-known tales of celebrity, kitsch, and broken dreams that comprise an everyday reality of Hollywood.

Untitled (red lips), 2011
© Terry Richardson

Terrywood
photographs by Terry Richardson
opening Friday 24 February
6-9pm
OHWOW Los Angeles gallery
937 North La Cienega Blvd., LA

Quite the contrast from Richardson's loud, bold, frenetic images of Hollywood is the more nuanced, studied depictions of the iconic setting by Lise Sarfati in her new body of work On Hollywood, which opens on Saturday nite at Rose Gallery.

Dana, 6323 Hollywood Blvd., 2010
from the series On Hollywood
© Lise Sarfati

Whereas one might be able to say that many of Richardson's images (particularly as an expression of his eccentric personality) are, in a sense, a celebration of the glam veneer and excess of a privileged class in Hollywood, Sarfati's photographs are much more attuned to the harsh realities of comparatively marginalized people living there, who may perhaps aspire to achieve that fame and success someday, but so far those opportunities have not presented themselves. And thus, her subjects carry on, coping with the daily struggles, and, ultimately, waiting -- for something. Something else. Something better. In a way, this makes their stories much more universal, extending far beyond the plastic dreams of privilege in Hollywood and LA.

Also, Sarfati is plugged into something specific to the female experience; her On Hollywood series is a continuation of extensive research into the female identity and the construction of femininity, focusing on the ways in which women create and reveal their female character and the intersection of constructed femininity vs. that which is natural and innate.

Madeleine, 6672 Hollywood Blvd., 2010
from the series On Hollywood
© Lise Sarfati

So its interesting to see these ideas carried out in Sarfati's photographs of women in Hollywood in particular, a place whose existence has almost entirely been associated with the star-struck aspirations of many, and the daily tragedies of having those illusions shattered. Sarfati describes her female subjects here as "toys of strange and terrible fates they are aware of but which they never seem to achieve any control over" -- a theme that is abundantly illustrated in the repeated faces of young, hopeful beauties and the visage they try to project of themselves, set against the mundane fringes of parking lots and empty sidewalks that reveal the tension between their dreams and the realities of life in LA.

On Hollywood
photographs by Lise Sarfati
opening Saturday 25 February
6-8pm
Rose Gallery
2525 Michigan Ave. (Bergamot Station Arts Center), Santa Monica CA

Cruel and Unusual: Prison Photography Exhibition at Noorderlicht

The Twins: Blessa and Kojak
from the series Life After
© Araminta de Clermont

from the series Captured Youth
© Steve Davis

The exhibition Cruel and Unusual, curated by Pete Brook (aka Prison Photography) and Hester Keijser (aka Mrs. Deane), opens this weekend at the Noorderlicht Gallery in the Netherlands. The exhibition showcases works by Araminta de Clermont, Amy Elkins, Alyse Emdur, Christiane Feser, Jane Lindsay, Deborah Luster, Nathalie Mohadjer, Yana Payusova, Lizzie Sadin, and Lori Waselchuk, as well as additional images by Sye Williams, Jon Lowenstein, Joseph Rodriguez, Richard Ross, Lloyd Degrane, Jenn Ackerman, Tim Gruber, Steve Davis, and others.

from the series Prison Landscapes
© Alyse Emdur

from the series The Dungeon
© Nathalie Mohadjer

Even if you're here in the U.S. or otherwise can't see this show in person, it'd be worth the time to look through the information, as Brook and Keijser have assembled an extremely compelling collection of powerful photography projects about prisons and the societal implications of mass incarceration. Go here to see an online preview of the exhibition catalogue they created to accompany the show.
With over 9 million people imprisoned worldwide, a major question to consider with this show is: what does a society hope to accomplish by locking up such massive numbers of offenders? Part of starting to answer that question relies on how citizens (aka taxpayers) understand the prison system and life behind bars, and how do they formulate their thoughts and convictions about mass incarceration based on the information they receive (and where that info is filtered through). Cruel and Unusual gets to the heart of that issue by examining how prisons and prisoners are presented in images, and how those images are created, distributed, and consumed.

Carla
from the series Valley State Prison for Women
© Sye Williams

Harrison County Juvenile Detention Center. Biloxi, Mississippi. 2009
from the series Juvenile-in-Justice
© Richard Ross

In reference to the American prison system, the curators write:

"In the U.S. the expense and failure of prisons has come under increasing scrutiny since the global economic recession. Over a period of just 40 years, failed 'tough on crime' policies, sensationalist TV media, prison privatization, and a misinformed public contributed to a near 500% increase of the U.S. prison population."

The artists in the exhibition employ a wide range of materials and techniques in addressing these issues, including vernacular photography, painted photos, digital manipulations, alternative processes, found materials, texts, and straight black and white documentary. The exhibition also includes materials gathered by Brook during his Prison Photography on the Road project, a 12-week road trip across the U.S. to visit major prisons, as well as interviews with photographers who have documenting prisons, and leading practitioners in prison arts, education, and advocacy.

Pete Brook: Prison Photography on the Road from timmatsui.com on Vimeo.

I had the honor of hosting Pete for a nite when he came through Chicago on the road trip, and in talking to him it strikes you right away that his conviction and passion for the topics of prisons and social justice go far beyond merely academic. This exhibition is a critical and thoughtful look at a crucial issue in modern societies, and points to those societies' shifting sense of decency and justice. Be sure to check it out, in one form or another.

from the series Tent City
© Jon Lowenstein

4 Years Out of a Deathrow Sentence (ocean)
from the series Black is the Day, Black is the Night
© Amy Elkins

"A penpal 26 years into his deathrow sentence in a landlocked prison, described an early childhood memory that haunted him, of walking further and further into the ocean during low tide until the sudden depth and darkness before him overcame him with fear." (from Elkins' series Black is the Day, Black is the Night)

A Society of Spectacles

inside the Spectacle

Co-Prosperity Sphere, Jan. 2012

Somewhere only we know from Jesse McLean on Vimeo.

Society of the Spectacular
Co-Prosperity Sphere, Jan. 2012

Re-blogged from A Society of Spectacles, my other online project. Give a look if you haven't seen it already.

Art Openings 2/2: Sean Kelly Gallery, Klompching Gallery, wall space gallery

from the series Broken Manual
© Alec Soth

In the accompanying text to his series Broken Manual, Alec Soth (via his crafted alter-ego Lester B. Morrison) writes: "Over the last few years I've studied experts of escape. Let us now praise those lonely men: hermits and hippies, monks and survivalists."

from the series Broken Manual
© Alec Soth

Sean Kelly gallery in NYC opens an exhibition tonite of Broken Manual, which takes the viewer into the lives of people who have chosen, for various reasons, to remove themselves from American society. This project sees Soth on another of the cross-country wanderings that have come to typify much of his work, gaining the trust of his subjects and revealing intimate details of their worlds -- and, in the case of Broken Manual, illustrating the oftentimes harsh and unforgiving landscapes in which they've secluded and insulated themselves.

from the series Broken Manual
© Alec Soth

In a sense, the viewer is somewhat a voyeur, peeping thru the keyhole into these quasi-dystopian scenes -- and yet at the same time, Soth's lyrical narrative (as he often employs) allows us to slow down and imagine ourselves as those subjects, maybe even to entertain the possibility of what if I were to drop out of society, to choose to live off the grid, where would I go and how would I survive? Indeed, our minds are encouraged to wander as Soth wanders, and perhaps to dream. As Barry Schwabsky writes in an essay in From Here to There: Alec Soth's America (a catalogue published by the Walker Art Center in 2010 on occasion of their large-scale Soth retrospective):

"'You feel like you're living two lives, right? In one life you haul yourself out of bed each day to fulfill another set of dreary obligations. In the other life you DREAM.' The dream as experienced by Morrison/Soth is not the gratifying wish fulfillment one might hope for. It is hemmed in by anxiety, consumed with the threat of violence and destruction. This is the paranoid world of the survivalists, those who aspire to live off the grid, to secede from both state and civil society...And yet there's always some kind of trail, isn't there? Some lead inward, into the dream world. Others lead outward, into the lives of others, which can touch us so deeply, sometimes painfully, even as we remain strangers to them. If you fear leaving a trail, it is because you fear discovery. But every path leads to solitude: one's own, or the mirroring solitude of another."

The exhibition at Sean Kelly gallery will also include screenings of the documentary film Somewhere to Disappear, which follows Soth across the U.S. in search of his subjects for Broken Manual.

Broken Manual
photographs by Alec Soth
opening Thursday 2 February
6-8pm
Sean Kelly gallery
528 W. 29th St., NYC

Another element that is often visually represented in Soth's photos (both in his portraits and landscapes) is an exploration of "place", both public and private, and how individuals correspond with that. Two other exhibitions opening tonite also tackle a similar topic. First, also in NYC, Klompching gallery shows The Architecture of Space, featuring works by Matthew Baum, Andrea Land, Sebastian Lemm, Benjamin Lowy, S. Billie Mandle, James Pomerantz, Justine Reyes, Greg Stimac and Monika Sziladi.

Untitled (Kansas City, Missouri), 2009
from the series Eighteen
© Matthew Baum

This exhibition, which sprung out of the Flash Forward Festival, confronts the perception and representation of space in numerous ways: the collapse between public and private, space as an abstract form, and space as a metaphor. And we see these ideas constructed in a variety of ways through each artist's unique approach: Sziladi's examination of social networks and subcultures, Lowy's framed viewpoint of war thru the looking glass, Baum's hyper-realistic street photography, Mandle's meditative look at mundane everyday spaces, or Pomerantz's mysterious and anonymous landscapes (perhaps the perfect place to escape to, a la Soth's characters) as captured from web cameras.

from Iraq | Perspectives (2005-2008)
© Benjamin Lowy

Remote Control #1 (2009)
from the series Remote Control
© James Pomerantz

The Architecture of Space
photographs by Matthew Baum, Andrea Land, Sebastian Lemm, Benjamin Lowy, S. Billie Mandle, James Pomerantz, Justine Reyes, Greg Stimac and Monika Sziladi
opening Thursday 2 February
6-9pm
Klompching gallery
111 Front St., suite 206, Brooklyn NY

Also taking a very specific look at "place" is the exhibition Wisconsin Tavern League, photographs by Carl Corey opening tonite at wall space gallery in SoCal.

2641 - Bill, Club 53, Amery
from the series Wisconsin Tavern League
© Carl Corey

I'm just gonna be completely forthcoming and say that, as someone with a deep affinity for Wisconsin, for the incomparable character of old school dive bars, for sociology and anthropology and any form of photography that successfully employs the camera to create sociological documents -- I am head-over-heels in love with Wisconsin Tavern League.

2761 - Kathy and Bernie Tworek, Moccasin bar, Hayward
from the series Wisconsin Tavern League
© Carl Corey

With a keen eye for the warmly familiar, the one-of-a-kind, and the downright strange, Corey captures something timeless and quintessential about the people and spaces of one of Wisconsin's favorite pastimes. His images bring us into the welcoming environs of taverns across the state, from city bars in Milwaukee (such as Jamo's, seen below, a gem of a place that I've frequented many times) all the way to rural communities in the west and far north of the state. Imbued with a sharply distinct "sense of place", his photographs remind us of the notion of a tavern -- or frankly any small, locally-owned business -- as both a microcosm and a solid cornerstone in a neighborhood or community.

2982 - Jamo's, Milwaukee
from the series Wisconsin Tavern League
© Carl Corey

Wisconsin Tavern League
photographs by Carl Corey
opening Thursday 2 February
6-8pm
wall space gallery
113 W. Ortega St., Santa Barbara CA

I just can't get enough of these pictures. In addition to the exhibition images at wall space, be sure to check out the four galleries of tavern photos on Corey's website. I've got a real soft spot for Wisconsin taverns, there's something about them that is completely unique from any other bars I've been to anywhere in the U.S. or the world. This past New Years, my special lady and I had the chance to experience a few more awesome spots in a little town called Elkhart Lake; particularly loved this quaint yet festive bar called Brown Baer (shabby hipstamatic photo below), which would've probably fit quite nicely in Corey's project.
Good times, Wisconsin, always good times...

(Brown Baer bar, New Years Eve. Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin)

Limits of Photography exhibition at Museum of Contemporary Photography

Had a chance last nite to check out the new exhibition at MoCP, titled Limits of Photography and featuring photographs, video, and mixed media by Chris Naka, Curtis Mann, Daniel Hojnacki, Doug Stapleton, J.J. Murphy, John Brill, Randy Hayes, Rhona Shand, Sally Ketcham and Vera Klement.

Combined, their works explore the area where viewers lose faith in the truthiness of images. The exhibition challenges the structure of how audiences interact with photographs, and perhaps how that varies depending on the setting or arena in which that interaction takes place. The works call into question what exactly we expect from images and how those expectations ultimately define the identity of a photograph.

Untitled, 1991
© John Brill

There has been this historical assumption -- particularly in journalistic or documentary photography -- that photographs can somehow reveal an "objective truth" about the reality of the world, insofar as the photo was supposed to be a precise mirror of the scene before the camera.

The notions of authenticity and veracity in journalistic photographs have at times been upheld as next to godliness by the photos' creators, and every act of deception or manipulation that threatened the sanctity of their practice would accordingly be met with equal amounts hand-wringing, censuring, and re-affirmation of principle, as the medium struggles to maintain the sacred trust of its audience and its own credibility in the Fourth Estate. And yet the potential for manipulation in the photographic technique has been its own shadow ever since the creation of the craft. The history of documentary photography is ripe with notorious transgressions, from Alexander Gardner's setup photos in the Civil War all the way up through the digitally altered photo of Iranian missiles in 2008 and other countless examples by press photographers from the front lines of war zones to the Main Streets of daily newspaper coverage.

War Monody, Autumn, series 3, #4, 2008
© Vera Klement

What becomes a crucial question then is: how and why do we assume that photographs are imbued with some sort of "objective truth"? That concept alone seems ambiguous and misleading, and difficult to say that photographs could ever really live up to such a task. Surely there are numerous subjective decisions that get made along the entire process of creating and disseminating pictures -- so in reality, photographic depiction is infinitely nuanced and complex, as I wrote about in an essay on a similar topic in March 2011.

Indiana's Wildflowers Pt. 1
© Daniel Hojnacki

But I'm also interested in how the viewer's assumptions about photography are shaped by the context of the viewing -- more specifically: do people have different expectations of a photo they view in a magazine versus a photo they view in a museum or gallery? Are their criteria for "journalistic photography" different than their criteria for "art photography", and if so, how?

I think this territory becomes even murkier as we've seen a very recent explosion in at least the past 10-15 years of blurred distinctions between those two arenas of photography, with plenty of so-called "art photographers" being consistently commissioned to create work for journalistic magazines and vice versa with so-called "journalistic photographers" exhibiting their works more frequently in museums and galleries. So to add one more layer to the question: do viewers see a "journalistic photograph" differently in a magazine versus in a gallery? And do they see an "art photograph" differently in a gallery versus in a magazine?

A part of me has a hunch that most audiences of photography in either or both of those settings probably don't actually draw as sharp a line in the sand between the two approaches (and their respective inherent truthiness) as the creators and facilitators of those images do amongst themselves. Which leads me to emphatically believe that the continued overlapping and cross-overs of "art photography" and "journalistic photography" influencing and informing each other in certain ways is actually quite a healthy development, and a positive adaptation for the future of all photography in a complex and visually sophisticated modern society.

These are among the complicated topics addressed in the Limits of Photography exhibition. The works represent a wide range of materials and forms of manipulation, from the very subtle to others that have been so heavily manipulated as to almost not even resemble photographic objects at all -- and as such, might altogether lose their veracity as documents depicting reality.

Reduction, 2011
© Curtis Mann

I'm a big fan of what Curtis Mann is doing, and had a moment to meet him yesterday and chat briefly about his methodology. Much of his work begins with found images from a variety of sources (for example, his series Everything After is comprised mainly of photos from war and conflict zones in the Middle East), and he takes the perspective of the photograph as a physical object. He is then able to alter the image through various processes of folding, bending, cutting, painting varnish or spraying bleach onto it, thus imposing a permanent change onto the nature of the photo as well as its definition as a document and the reality it is perceived to reflect.

And just to take Mann's work as a further example, some of his photos were used on the cover of the New York Times Magazine in July 2011, for their story "Yemen on the Brink of Hell" (and to answer the paramount concern of photojournalists: yes, they were labeled as photo illustrations). How are those photos read in that context? Do viewers expect them to be real because they're presented in a journalistic publication (and on a very serious topic, at that)? What is their perceived truthiness as documents (especially if the viewer had not yet read they were illustrations)?

© Curtis Mann

In the summary of curator Rod Slemmons:

"The exhibition title exploits a double meaning. The first is that many of the artists in the show push photography to the limits of recognizing it as photography. The second refers to the limitations encountered when we trust photography as if it were perception -- as if it were a window rather than a flat, constructed surface".

Limits of Photography
ongoing thru 25 March
Museum of Contemporary Photography
600 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago

Updated Galleries on my Website, Plus a New Online Project

(detail), screen print on paper
from the series Black Friday

from the series Black Friday

Recently completed a fresh update of my website, which now includes a new series titled Black Friday, and recent edits from the ongoing Yard Sales and The Balance Sheet projects.

Untitled #7183
still photo from store surveillance video
from the new ongoing project The Balance Sheet

Keep Shopping #3
mixed media, digital inkjet print, chine colle print
from the new ongoing project The Balance Sheet

I also just started another online project called A Society of Spectacles, which, similarly to this blog, will have somewhat of a curatorial bend, although this time much more photo-heavy (minimal text) and with particular emphasis on presenting my own photographs and works-in-progress. So if you're interested in more photos and less reading, make a note of that site and check it out occasionally. Cheers.

Art Openings 1/12-1/14: Foley Gallery, threewalls Gallery, Clampart, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Bruce Silverstein Gallery

Throughout its existence, photography has often struggled to solidify its unique place in the art world (even despite the frequent practice by painters of using photography to record scenes and references for their works). Many would argue it has achieved noted success in recent years, as evidence by the explosion of photography exhibitions in major galleries and museums around the world, as well as the multi-million dollar sales of photographs at the big auction houses (think Andreas Gursky's record-breaking $4.3 million print sale, for example).
And yet this emergence is also taking place in the face of challenges from technology in the modern era, namely the democratization of the medium through digital cameras and software, which, greatly accelerated by the Internet, have spawned a wide proliferation of photography appearing all around us. One could argue that this larger cultural awareness of photography might have fueled the exorbitant sale prices at the auction houses, but regardless, the growing ubiquity of photography in contemporary art and culture has created a certain burden of proof on photographic artists -- perhaps both to distinguish their craft from the amateurs as well as to perpetuate its increased status in the art world. So its probably no surprise to see the craft of photography evolving in such a variety of spinoffs and approaches as we are seeing today -- often in ways that incorporate or react to the external forces acting upon it as mentioned above.

That being said, among the myriad of great photography exhibitions opening this week, it seems strangely appropriate to start on the group show Penetration, at Foley Gallery, featuring work by Danielle Durchslag, Joseph Heidecker, Marco Breuer, and Jowhara AlSaud.

Untitled (C-690), 2007
© Marco Breuer

All four artists employ their own personal methods of inserting the artist's creative hand directly into the surface (literally) of their photographic art -- in the process, manipulating and compromising the sacrosanct materials of photographic negatives and papers: Durchslag uses hundreds of pieces of cut paper to weave mosaic re-creations of family portraits as a meditation on ancestral history; Heidecker sews beads and threads into everyday images to form new identities for their subjects, often in a humorous way that questions how identities are shaped and managed by individuals; Breuer is widely known for his unique method of creating photographs without a camera, instead strategically scraping and scratching light-sensitive papers to produce abstract images that challenge our basic concepts about the nature of image-making; and AlSaud's faceless portraits, applied to her personal photographs by etching and drawing on the negative, are influenced by the practice in Saudi Arabia of censoring images deemed unsuitable for viewing.

Business Man (grey mask), 2009
© Joseph Heidecker

Penetration
works by Danielle Durchslag, Joseph Heidecker, Marco Breuer, Jowhara AlSaud
opening Thursday 12 January
6-8pm
Foley Gallery
548 W. 28th St., 2nd floor, NYC

Reacting in a similar way to the mountains of photographs in existence today (both on the Internet and elsewhere), artist Laura Mackin acts as curator and archivist in much of her work, featured in the solo show 120 Years opening at threewalls gallery in Chicago on Friday.

To Hagerman (B's postcards), c. 1910-1968
© Laura Mackin

Mackin collects images of the mundane and everyday, honing in on the vernacular photography that comprises the majority of our visual clutter today. However, in her artistic intervention, Mackin re-presents and re-contextualizes the mass of images in ways that create subtle portraits of both the visual clutter itself and the original authors/owners of the objects (who are otherwise basically anonymous or unknown).
This exhibition presents her works with two distinct collections: one of home movies shot from 1946-2006 by a man named Dean, and another of postcards from 1910-1968 predominantly mailed to a woman named Mrs. Ernst (as seen above).

Dean, driving (composite of movies from 1946-2006), 2010
© Laura Mackin

Mackin collages images together from these two ambiguous collections to form new pieces that present the viewer with everyday perspectives on landscape and travel, told through the experiences of these freshly rendered characters.

120 Years
works by Laura Mackin
opening Friday 13 January
6-9pm
threewalls Gallery
119 N. Peoria St., #2C, Chicago

Also opening on Friday nite is the exhibition A, photographs by Gregory Halpern, at Clampart in NYC. This is Halpern's first solo show at the gallery. Working in a photographic tradition very similar to what Walker Evans termed "lyric documentary", Halpern brings the viewer through tragically beautiful scenes in the Rust Belt.

Untitled, 2009
from the series A
© Gregory Halpern

The series, also part of a book of the same name published by J&L Books last year, focuses on places like Baltimore, Cincinnati, Omaha and Detroit -- cities with a shared history of deindustrialization and economic stagnation similar to the artist's hometown of Buffalo. Halpern quietly and patiently renders the broken faces and landscapes in these areas that have become emblematic of the modern failures in our capitalist economy.

Untitled, 2010
from the series A
© Gregory Halpern

A
photographs by Gregory Halpern
opening Friday 13 January
6-8pm
Clampart
521-531 W. 25th St., NYC

Working in a somewhat similar documentary tradition and a shared focus on the lives of many for whom the typical American dream seems far from daily reality, the acclaimed photographer Zoe Strauss has dedicated the past decade to illustrating the plight of the working-class in/around her home of Philadelphia, and beyond. This weekend, the Philadelphia Museum of Art honors those efforts with the opening of Zoe Strauss: Ten Years, a mid-career retrospective of her works.

Half House, Camden, NJ, 2008
© Zoe Strauss

The exhibition also serves as an assessment of Strauss' ten-year project to annually exhibit her photographs under a highway bridge off Interstate 95 in South Philly -- a setting that merges art and the social sphere to create a wholly unique public space much different than the traditional museum or gallery setting.
The retrospective will feature 150 prints from her work in Philly and elsewhere across the U.S., along with a slideshow of additional images AND -- in a clever ploy to extend the show outside the museum walls -- a series of Strauss' photographs installed on large billboards around the city.
Untrained as a photographer or artist, Strauss first turned to the camera in 2000 and quickly had her first book, America, published in 2008. Her photographic approach seems to match her personality perfectly: tender and harsh, all at the same time (and I mean this as a high compliment). Her images demonstrate an ability to very quickly establish an intimate rapport with her subjects, bringing the viewer a vividly clear depiction of the joys and struggles in their daily world. Strauss' thorough and passionate documentation of the blue collar experience is probably among the most extensive and complete as I've ever seen.

Vanessa, Philadelphia, 2006
© Zoe Strauss

Zoe Strauss: Ten Years
opening Saturday 14 January (running thru 22 April)
Philadelphia Museum of Art
26th St. at Benjamin Franklin Pkwy., Philadelphia

Lastly, Strauss has also contributed her name to the Silverstein Annual, opening this weekend at Bruce Silverstein gallery in NYC, by nominating photographer Katrin Winkler to the show, to join other nominees Raul de la Cruz, Calum Colvin, Ludovica Carbotta, Sebastien Girard, Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs, Ivan Mikhaylov, Nelli Palomaki, Sharon Yaari, and Katja Mater.

© Katrin Winkler

The Silverstein Annual is part of the gallery's efforts to promote emerging photographers. The gallery annually invites ten prominent curators and other art figures to nominate one artist each for the exhibition. Past nominees can be seen here, here, and here.

from the series The Great Unreal
© Taiyo Onorato & Nico Krebs

Silverstein Annual
opening Saturday 14 January
6-8pm
Bruce Silverstein Gallery
535 W. 24th St., NYC