The Automaton

Paolo Ventura
The Old Man from The Automaton

I can't even begin to tell you how much I love the work of Paolo Ventura. I was lucky enough to wander into the Hasted Kraeutler Gallery in Chelsea on my last trip to NYC. I saw Ventura's work in an art magazine not too long before the trip and thank goodness for glass windows, as I saw the work through the gallery window and headed inside.

The entire gallery was filled with a series of photographs telling the story of The Automaton of Venice. Each photograph is a snippet or a scene of the story. The photographs are enchanting and once you realize that isn't just a photograph of a man but of a handmade maquette, the photographs become even more engrossing. Ventura creates detailed scale model sets which he then photographs.

Check out more of his work

Working with imagined worlds as well as small ones is quite fascinating and many other fabulous artists today are working this way. Ventura was part of the exhibition: Otherworldly: Optical Delusions and Small Realities
Definitely check the website out, it showcases all of the works in the exhibition. I am sure I'll cover some of the artists here in the future.

Black and White Geometry

Simone Lucas (German, 1973-)
"Not Titled Yet", 2009
Oil on canvas
70.87 x 70.87 in.
image: Jack Tilton Gallery http://www.jacktiltongallery.com/more_artwork/lucas_more/2nd./Lucas.NotTitledYet.Email.Cap.gif

Something about this artist's paintings intrigues me. Their simplicity, geometry and monochrome palette with just a touch of color. The color is usually defined within the geometry and in this painting in particular the women paint that geometry, the color coming from their brushes.

"Their idea is as simple as it is ingenious, and involves infiltrating black-and-white images taken from 19th- and early-20th-century photographs with colorful designs suggestive of the pictorial avant-garde of the same historical period, colorful spheres, checks and other geometrical designs." (Walter Robinson, Weekend Update http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/reviews/robinson/weekend-update10-16-09.asp)

More by Simone Lucas

Lower Level

John Huftalen (American, New Yorker, 1948-)
Lower Level
Metropolitan Museum

Image: http://www.jlhphotographics.com/coppermin/displayimage.php?album=19&pos=7

Hi Dad! It had to happen, here is a wonderful work by my father. I do hope it is okay. I believe it was taken with his Diana camera which he began to experiment with in the last few years (is that right?). There isn't much control with the camera (simple, plastic camera, prone to light leaks) so the shot relies so much on the intuition and eye of the photographer. I had a little trouble choosing between a few from dad's urban photos, oddly enough it came down to a scene of a Manhattan crowd and this image empty of people.

What is interesting to me is that while there are no figures in the image there it still doesn't seem isolated. As I gaze I keep expecting someone to walk into the shot, or one of the trees to turn into a figure. As quiet and still as the image appears the juxtaposition of the sharpness of the center of the image and the blur around the edges creates a movement (also in the shadows of the branches on the building).

As the title shows, this is a small portion of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a megolith of a building full of treasures and beauty, yet it is awesome to see how simple, pure and beautiful this little corner of it's outside world can be through the eyes of an artist. Yet, this could be any corner in any city and that brings an additional wonder. Thanks Dad, for your passion and your eye. Happy Birthday to you again!

Check out more of John Huftalen's work at http://www.jlhphotographics.com/

Winter

Paolo Ventura (Italian, b.1968)
Winter Stories #9
image: http://www.paoloventura.com/work/winter.html

By all appearances this image just looks like a photograph of a bookstore from the past. Looks can be wonderfully deceiving. The scene is actually a miniature set constructed, a diorama, and photographed by the artist. One of a series called "Winter Stories", this image serves as a scene from a story. The images are quiet and beautiful, “Winter Stories,” "referring literally, to the season depicted, but also, more figuratively, to the final season of one’s life. Ventura conceived of the photographs as representing the recollections of an old man as he looks back during his final moments" (Art in America, Nov. 2008, Jean Dykstra)

Camera Obscura

Jasmijn, to the light, 2008
Richard Learoyd (British, b.1966)
unique camera obscura Ilfochrome photograph
h: 71.1 x w: 60.2 in
image: http://www.artnet.com/artwork/425986868/396/richard-learoyd-jasmijn-to-the-light.html

I browse through art magazine dog-earing images that catch me eye, and this is one from today. On first glance I thought it was a painting, the softness, the light, look on the woman's face. Currently part of the exhibition, Unique Photographs at the McKee Gallery in NYC, Learoyd's photographs are more than life size.

"Created with a camera obscura, each image is projected directly onto giant pieces of Ilfochrome, and each glossy print is unique. The lack of a negative yields an almost overwhelming clarity and one needs to see the prints in person to truly appreciate them." (Brea Souders Photography: A Place for New Projects and Updates blog)

Architecture of photography

Luisa Lambri (Italian, b.1969)
Untitled (Centro Galego de Arte Contemporanea, #18), 2008
Laserchrome print
Edition of 5 and 1 Artist's Proof
29 1/2 X 25 inches
image: luhringaugustine.com

Installation shot from the exhibition, Luisa Lambri Jan 10-Feb 7, 2009

at Luhring Augustine Gallery in NYC.

I cam across the photography of Luisa Lambri today while researching artists who use light and space in their work. Lambri works within specific architectural spaces, abstracting these spaces to a point where they are only known by the title of the work. Without the title we see the shadows, lines and focus of a corner that could be anywhere. It's fascinating to discover how particular Lambri's choices are, choosing well known architects and their buildings. Architectural space is layered within her exhibitions, as she takes careful care in how her photographs enter an exhibition space, how they are hung, and where they should reside within the architectural space of the gallery. You can see more works from this exhibition here: http://www.luhringaugustine.com/index.php?mode=current&object_id=218# and more... but I am particularly attracted to the one I've chosen today. It is the same space as in other photographs but I feel that the shadows and lines in this image create the fullest, most complete, almost painterly effect.

Press Release

The Americans

Indianapolis
Robert Frank (1924-) b. Zurich
from "The Americans" (check out more about the exhibition here.
image: artnet.com

On my recent trip to San Francisco I was finally able to visit SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. They had a wonderful special exhibition, Looking In: Robert Frank's "The Americans". I'm well familiar with Frank's work as well as with "The Americans" (it was our most commonly stolen book at one of my art libraries) yet it was awesome to see all of the photographs from the book organized in sequence in accordance with the book throughout the galleries. I also didn't know much about the creation of the book other than Robert Frank takes a camera around the country. Frank conducted his travel and art on a Guggenheim Fellowship. The exhibition contained an incredible amount of archival and ephemeral material beyond his photographs, from his letter of application for the fellowship (with the edits of his friend, photography, Walker Evans) to letters about getting arrested on his way through Arkansas for ridiculous reasons, to the proofs of what were to become one of the most well-known photography books of our time. Part of Frank's intent with his travels was to see America through the eyes of someone getting to know it, the varied world that America is, from consumerism and materialism, to loneliness and displacement.

Frank's book is known not only for the revelation of an America not everyone could see both sad and beautiful, but also for the design and construction of the book. Each photograph was tightly bound to the one before and after as well as engaged in a thematic discourse throughout. Jack Kerouac wrote the introduction. This exhibition was organized on the 50th anniversary of the books publication in America. Frank initially had difficulty finding a publisher for his book in the US due to the nature of the photographs, they were not too keen on his portrayal of America.

A Flickr pool of photographs in the style of "The Americans"

Emphemeral Dandelion

Dandelion Hole (199?)
Andy Goldsworthy (1056-)
Image: travelinglight.vox.com

I unfortunately have not been able to find out the date of this particular work as no one who has posted it gives a source for the image, If I do find it I will update.

Artist, naturalist, environmentalist, Andy Goldsworthy takes natural elements and painstakingly recreates their physical and aesthetic presence. A sculptor, earth and landscape artist, Goldsworthy's aesthetic vision stems from the natural environment. His works are collaborations with nature, nature providing the inherent individual beauty and serving as found object, Goldsworthy impressing upon the natural state a unique and beautiful new vision.


While we can continue to see these works through their documentation (photograph) their existence remains ephemeral. Goldsworthy's use of the natural environment in medium and usually location (some of his works are created in indoors) is inherently fleeting, these flowers may remain like this for only hours but possibly days, or even months. Sometimes the material is hardier and sturdier like wood and stones, others as susceptible to its environment as a leaf that may soon blow away. A clip from the documentary, Rivers and Tides (which I have to admit to never having seen and will remedy this as soon as possible) shows the very essence of this ephemerality. If you are interested, you may very well be able to find it in your local library.

Salt Flats

Bonneville, Salt Flats, 1999
Richard Misrach
chromogenic print
Image: artnet.com artist's work catalogues

I am going to attempt another theme week with a focus on nature and art or nature in art, I've already considered switching to environment in art or narrowing down, or would that be broadening? to landscape, we'll see how the week progresses. My senior seminar in college was on landscape and while the semester started out a bit dull for most of us I ended up finding the topic fascinating and have since always looked for and or simple discovered landscapes I would never before considered such. I am personally quite interested in the landscape as an idea, an aesthetic and an overall view but I am going to try to keep with natural elements as subject, medium and/or inspiration in art for the week. I hope you enjoy.

Today's work is by Richard Misrach, a photographer well-known for his series Desert Cantos which is an ongoing series of works created mostly in the American Southwest. There are endless photographs I could have chosen for today but I was drawn to this one of a sunrise? in the Bonneville salt flats most likely because it is a place I've actually been (though not at this glorious time of day). Misrach did a series of photographs, Desert Canto XV The Salt Flats in 1994 but these works focused more on the intersection of man on the salt flat landscape (Bonneville races...). I am always drawn by sunrises and sunsets (though I see much more of the latter, not being much of an early rise), photographing many myself. I've seen some of Misrach's works in person and while one can grab a small hold on their beauty and intensity through reproduction, they are at their full aesthetic and bodily level as large-scale prints. I do not know the size of this print but many others run about 40x50 in. You'll find a lot of large-scale color photography in galleries and museums today but Misrach was a pioneer of it in the 1970s.

and... Judith

Untitled #228, 1990
Cindy Sherman (American, b. 1954)
Color photograph. 82 x 48 in.
Broad Art Foundation
Image: arthistory.about.com

Speaking of Judith, I didn't start out with any of a subject within a theme, though this will be limited to two. I chose Cindy Sherman because she has been a fascination of mine for years. Sherman has created a number of different series throughout her career and I decided to look for one of her historical portraits. What do I come across but another wonderful interpretation of Judith and Holofernes I simply couldn't put off.

Sherman is connected to Buffalo, she attended Buffalo State College where she got interested in art and with fellow artist, Robert Longo, started an art center in Buffalo, Hallwalls (I attended a sculpture workshop there in high school).

I first saw one of Sherman's history portraits at the Ringling Museum in Sarasota. I was wandering through a gallery and initially took the work as another painting of an aristocrat of little interest to me, but something peaked my insterest so I returned to it and quickly discovered this was not your average old portrait. While Sherman is in her photographs they do not function as self-portraits, she becomes her character, visible yet anonymous. Her work is an interplay between concept and history, reality and fantasy. Her appropriation is fascinating.

A large collection of Cindy Sherman's work.

Delicate landscape

Untitled, from the Weeds series, 1996
Byung-Hun Min (Korean b.1955)
Image: Museum of Contemporary Photography

Min's ethereal and unique photographs are reminiscent of traditional ink landscape painting. His Weeds series takes a simple bit of nature and captures it in a special rephrasing. Ming's inspiration stems from his Korean culture and landscape.

"Min’s photographs of grasses were taken on repeated visits to the same site where weeds have grown up against vinyl greenhouses and dried to their surfaces." (see Image link)

Vinyl greenhouses would not be the first thought coming to one's mind when looking at these photographs. The transformation that occurs through Ming's lense is delicate and sensitive creating a new miniature landscape.

See more of Ming's work from the Awakening exhibition at the Australian Centre for Photography and on the Muse-ings blog.

Poet's Fair

Poet's Fair ca.1953/54
Jules Aarons (1921-2008)
Image: linternaute.com

I discovered Jules Aarons when visiting the DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park in Lincoln, MA, 6 years ago. His work struck me in such a way that I brought a catalog of his show of photographs that day. I came home last night, headed over to my shelf of art books, and pulled this one off.

A physicist and engineer by trade Aarons also excelled at the art of photography. With his background in science he found the technical aspects of photography interesting, mastering them on his own. Luckily for us, he also studied the history and art of photography. Unfortunately his work is not known far beyond his home of Boston, but his rich, sympathetic and earnest photographs hold their own alongside known greats such as Henri-Cartier Bresson... Aarons spent much of his time photographing the neighborhoods of the West End and North End in Boston as well as documenting his travels around the world. A great street photographer catches moments, snapshots of life, they see the unique wonder in what many allow to pass them by. This wonderful parallel portrait, Poet's Fair, taken while on a Fulbright to Paris embodies this.


Jules Aarons Collection at the Boston Public Library.

Image of artist

Frida Kahlo, 1931
Imogen Cunningham

Yay! A work of art by a woman, with a woman artist as its subject. Double women artist day. Imogen Cunningham was a glorious artist. Her photography is wonderful. Spend some time with her Published works.

Cunningham output consisted mostly of portraits, nudes and flowers. She did many self-portraits (which I adore - see the one to the left), one of her first self-portraits being a nude self-portrait from 1906. Cunningham found her way to the creative side of photography through studying chemistry in college where she wrote her thesis on the chemical process of photography. (http://www.cs.washington.edu/building/art/ImogenCunningham/) She became one of the first professional woman photographers, opening her own studio in 1910. Cunningham worked as a photographer her entire life, dying at the age of 93, and as a result the joy of discovering new images if her work is new to you can last for a time.

Pulp Fiction

Stress, 2004
Thomas Allen
24 x 20 inches
Chromogenic print

A discovery through the current issue of Harper's, Ben introduced me to Thomas Allen. Happily, popping his name into Google did wonders and many of his images are online (if not all). Initially we thought the work was sculptural in the form of an altered book (which is an art form all its own). The now pop up books are not the works themselves but the photographs are. While Allen has taken an X-acto to a plenitude of predominately pulp fiction novels, he has created his own new scenes with the cutouts and then through aspects of photography sets the scene for the newly altered books, with lighting and background. The object serves as a kind of still-life for artist to use in his photography.

I love the combination of mediums. More photos.

Like it? See Abelardo Morell's Alice in Wonderland Series and David Levinthal.

Drizzle

GREAT BRITAIN. England. London. Hyde Park in the grey drizzle, 1937.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
c. Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos

Oh so many beautiful photographs but I simply adore this one.

Cartier-Bresson started out as a painter before discovering photography and interestingly left photography after 45 years and spent the remained of his life pursuing drawing.

"He explained his approach to photography in these terms: 'for me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. ... It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.' " (Magnum Bio)

The Magnum website is great, offering images, biographies, exhibitions, books and more on its member photographers.

See more Cartier-Bresson photos here.

Painting or Photography?

Across the Salt Marshes, ca. 1905
Edward Steichen (1879-1973)
15 1/16 x 17 7/8 in
oil on canvas?
Toledo Museum of Art 1912.4
Image ALH

It's wonderful to find out an artist's creative history. Edward Steichen, who most people know as a photographer also trained in painting and drawing. His Tonalist (sorry this is a weak link) paintings share an affinity with his much of his photography. The soft focus and size of this painting (I'll pop in dimensions when I get to work tomorrow - need to look them up) remind me of a photograph. I was initially drawn to the quiet, soft beauty of the painting, and when checking out the wall label was surprised to see that it was Edward Steichen, I had never known he was a painter as well. A quick search brought up another work with a similar title, and wonderfully, it is a Steichen photograph of the same scene. Of course, due to the digital nature, its very difficult to pay a lot of attention to differences in the images. The photograph is also dated 1905 and I would assume it came first. His early photography had this dreamlike quality and helped to elevate his work to a fine status, being particularly painterly.

I'd like to note that in our museum collections system, the image of this painting looks utterly different than my photograph and what I recall seeing in the gallery, more purples and blues than the greenish blues. Ah, frustrations of imaging. I've also realized that the work comes across differently online when shown with its frame.

Steichen also rounded out his career as curator of photography at Museum of Modern Art, as a Fashion and celebrity photographer and a documentary photographer. "The Frustrating Genius of Edward Steichen".

Women

Morro de Providencia
28 millimetres project : Women
Rio de Janiero
JR (French)

I am apologize, this entry is a little haphazard, I spent too much time looking at the images and video and didn't leave enough time to write this entry!

I am not sure when I first came across one of these images of a Rio de Janiero slum. Be sure to click to get the larger image. I was fascinated by the imagery placed on the walls of these buildings. I looked into the photographer who goes by JR. These images are part of an over-all project. JR shoots pictures of local women, blows up the images and puts them back into the community. He has done projects in various parts of Africa, Brasil and other areas. These works are obviously more than the photographs that I am sharing with you. JR refers to them as "Actions" and you can find a few videos of the process of putting the images up as well as photographing women in Africa. He is referred to as a photographer, activist and street artist.

Article

Celebrity Portrait

Mikhail Baryshnikov and Rob Besserer, Cumberland Island, Georgia, 1990
Annie Leibovitz
chromogenic print, photograph
http://www.corcoran.org/leibovitz/index.htm

In the process of cataloging a new volume on Annie Leibovitz I was dismayed to discover that this was the first book to be placed under Leibovitz's cutter number (just in case you wanted to learn a little about where those pesky numbers on library books come from :). Since this is the first significant volume to go into our collection dedicated to Leibovitz (and it's a rather short volume too) I wanted to give today's Art Dose to Leibovitz.

Leibovitz is well-known for her unique celebrity portraits as well as her documentary photography. This photo of Baryshnikov is one of the over a hundred that are part of the internationally travelling exhibition, Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life, 1990-2005, organized by the Brooklyn Museum and currently at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Double Take

A quickie for today. From the online exhibition Double Takes and the website Square America: A Gallery of Vintage Snapshots & Vernacular Photography. This is a great fun site to play around in. Enjoy!


I actually have a great double take shot, that I just thought of. Not vintage yet seeing as it was taken in 2003 I think, but it's black and white so well on its way! I'll post it tonight when I get home.

Document

The Damm Family, 1987
Crissy, six; Jesse, four; their mother, Linda, 27, a former nursing-home aide; and their stepfather, Dean, 33, an ex-trucker.
Mary Ellen Mark

I went to an artist talk last night by Mary Ellen Mark.
The talk coincided with an exhibition of her Twins Series. Mark went through the images she has created over the last 40 years and they are remarkable. Mark approaches all of her work as an artist, the capturing of reality being her main goal in her photography. Over her career she has been able to both shoot for herself as well as create searing and memorable stories through her documentary photography. A regular contributor to Life Magazine and others, this picture is from a story about "A Week in the Life of a Homeless Family"
I highly recommend reading it. When this image was taken, the Damm family was living in their car. Mark spends all of her time with her subjects when she works, getting to know them, and she follows many of them over the years. Often times helping to support them later on in life. (The young boy ended up needing a lawyer when he got himself into trouble years later).

It was very interesting to hear Mark's take on the status of magazines and photography today. She did a lot of photojournalism for magazines over the years but finds that more recently they have no interest in honest, realistic portrayals of life. They prefer what she refers to as "illustration", in essence, mock-ups of reality. They want created images (what she would consider distorted) in order to tell the story they want to tell instead of the reality that is looking them in the face. It's interesting also to hear her sort of imply that this is the fault of digital photography in a way (she surely blames society's obsession with celebrity too but...). She has no interest in digital herself.

Anyway I could go on. Check out Mark's website for more images, she has a love for the circus around the world, shooting circuses in India, Mexico, NYC and Vietnam. She also has a book coming out soon with her film photography. Another way of making a living, she spent time on the sets of major films, shooting actors and directors off camera. A quick survey of this work shows a wonderful entry into more than the film. Apparently it is much more difficult to do this as movie have gotten more complicated and glitzy and access has become limited. Her website has a section on celebrities, with portraits from Luis Bunuel to Donald Sutherland. Her first film was a Satyricon, by Fellini.