Magnum Archive Moves to Texas

Funny to think of all those amazing photographs heading down the highway in a big ole truck (with GPS, of course)...

Read the story in The New York Times HERE

Above Image: Larry Towell/Magnum Photos

A 1993 image of an Arab child and an Israeli soldier after a protest in East Jerusalem is part of Magnum's archives in Austin.

Criterion Collection Releases New Chantal Akerman Set

I'm certainly going to buy this for the Art Department, but I'll bet it's available on Netflix as well. The story from The New York Times is below....


CHANTAL AKERMAN IN THE SEVENTIES

A new entry in the Criterion Collection’s no-frills Eclipse series, “Chantal Akerman in the Seventies” offers five films by this Belgian director best known for her 1975 “Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles,” a seminal work of women’s cinema that combined gender politics with an innovative style using long takes to underline the passing of time.

The set includes Ms. Akerman’s first feature-length film, the 1975 “Je Tu Il Elle,” in which she plays an alienated young woman on a road trip punctuated by two erotic encounters; and “Les Rendez-Vous d’Anna,” a more mainstream feature from 1978, centered on a film director (Aurore Clément) and her glancing contacts with humanity during a promotional tour of European cities.

Both are challenging and often beautiful works, but the highlight of the set may be the disc called “The New York Films.” It unites two of the short, experimental works that Ms. Akerman made in Manhattan during a 1971-73 residency, and the 86-minute “News From Home” (1976), a return to New York filmed after “Jeanne Dielman.”

All three were made in collaboration with the cinematographer Babette Mangolte. And all three reflect Ms. Akerman’s fascination with the avant-garde work — by filmmakers like Marcel Hanoun, Yvonne Rainer and Michael Snow — that she discovered at Anthology Film Archives during her New York stay. Taken together they allow us to see a young artist absorbing her influences and confidently moving into territory of her own.

The 11-minute single-shot film “La Chambre” borrows a formal device from Michael Snow’s “Région Central” (1971), in which a coldly precise camera movement is used to survey a space, here a cramped one-room apartment. As the camera pans in a full circle (three rotations from right to left, then suddenly from left to right), it passes Ms. Akerman lying in bed in poses that variously suggest sloth, sensuality and paralysis. A geographical gesture in Mr. Snow’s work here becomes something domestic and dramatic, allowing us to infer a story from these few glimpses of a woman confined in her personal space, as “Jeanne Dielman” would do more extensively and expressively.

In “Hotel Monterey” (1972) Ms. Akerman expands her vision to include an entire building. A residential hotel on the Upper West Side is covered from bottom (the lobby and lounge area) to top (the camera strains to peer out windows on the upper stories, trying to catch a glimpse of the Hudson). Filmed over the course of a single night, the movie proceeds from dark elevators and dimly lit corridors to expansiveness and sunshine, while the human presence gradually drains away. These images have a lyrical loneliness that critics have compared to the works of Edward Hopper, but there is something more spectral here too, a haunting emptiness that looks forward to similarly filmed hallways in Stanley Kubrick’s “Shining” (1980).

The spatial configuration of hallways returns on a grander scale in “News From Home” as eerily unpopulated New York streets. This time there are no domestic interiors, but only public places: an East Village corner covered by a slow pan, a view from the side window of a car driving up a far West Side avenue, extended shots of subway interiors (in which some passengers can be seen defiantly returning the camera’s gaze).

The two previous films were silent, but “News From Home” has a crowded soundtrack consisting of city sounds blended with Ms. Akerman’s own voice, reading increasingly imploring letters from her mother back home in Belgium. As in “Jeanne Dielman” we gradually become able to infer a story — this time, of a young woman’s growing autonomy and escape from the past.

Like William Friedkin’s “French Connection,” “News From Home” has, with time, become a documentary on New York in the 1970s. Lingering shots of pre-gentrified downtown neighborhoods, graffiti-slathered subway cars and the little village of shops and stands that once filled the Times Square station now carry a sense of impermanence and inaccessibility, of a world receding into the past, just as notions of “home” have receded for the unseen protagonist.

The final image — a 10-minute take from the deck of the Staten Island ferry, looking back on a lower Manhattan fading into fog and mist — now carries an extra charge. Defining the left border of the frame is the World Trade Center. (Criterion Collection/Eclipse, $44.95, not rated)

Above content from The New York Times

Human Rights Activisit and Photojournalist Paula Allen to Speak @ UCF Next Week

For more information, visit www.ucfglobalperspectives.org

Being In The World @ CIFO in Miami

Highly recommended, if you can make your way down to Miami.

Being in the World: Selections from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection

Curated by Berta Sichel for cifo
December 2, 2009 - March 7, 2010

The Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation (CIFO) is proud to present Being in the World: Selections from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection, an exhibition curated by Berta Sichel on view from December 2, 2009 to March 07, 2010, coinciding with Art Basel Miami Beach (Dec. 2-6 2009).

Being in the World: Selections from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection is freely framed by the idea of situation as it was developed by French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre's situation, or being in the world, includes an individual's place-or current circumstance-and that person's memory, which is a closed circuit providing a background view. The way an individual understands his/her position in the world is a product of past and present circumstances, which include people, close friends and acquaintances as well as strangers who pass unnoticed.

The exhibition proposes this as a useful model for understanding recent artworks which struggle with the individual in a changing world. Being in the World includes 7 artists whose works were selected from the 63 media-based works in the collection. It features works by leading artists Chantal Akerman, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Muntean/Rosenblum, Robin Rhode, Shirin Neshat, Bill Viola, and Francesca Woodman.

The works in Being in the World: Selection from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection, might also be closest to Sartre's notion of the difference between life and art, since for Sartre art only belongs to us if it restores ambiguity and sometimes a brutal freshness to actual events. In one way or another, the works selected all tell stories, and for Sartre to tell a story when we don't know the outcome creates illusion. Some of these stories are close to reality, others drawn from imagination, but all have uncertain outcomes. All describe situations, ways of being in world. Together they transmit the freedom of art, the freedom of choice-the only freedom Sartre recognized. That is their intrinsic value.

Featuring work by: Chantal Akerman, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Muntean/Rosenblum, Shirin Neshat, Robin Rhode, Bill Viola and Francesca Woodman

Image:
Muntean / Rosenblum
Disco, 2005
HD DVD, 1 sequence: 5: 5; looped
Courtesy the artist

Above content from Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation

Photography RULES!

I had to borrow this link from my colleague Peter Happel-Christian as I found it so wonderfully hilarious. And, as Peter suggests in his post on his Creative and Social Blog at St.Cloud State University in Minnesota, sometimes the images in the "wrong" column are much, much more interesting than those in the "right" column. Have a look - it's a good time, I swear (just click on the link below)...

78 Photography Rules for Complete Idiots

Photo-Eye Best Books of 2009

(Click on the image to access the link to Photo-Eye)

The list is HERE! As suggested by others who are passing the list around, do make sure you have some time on your hands as you go through this, as you are likely to be prompted to do lots of looking and wandering around via various links and searches that you find yourself undertaking. Fun, fun, fun!!

Art Palm Beach Opens Tonight

Head on down, gang - only about 2 1/2 hours south of us. Aperture will have a presence, it'll be a hoot! (Click on the logo to access more information)

Omer Fast @ The Whitney

Omer Fast: Nostalgia
Through February 14, 2010

Omer Fast: Nostalgia is a new three-part film and video installation that continues Fast's fascination with exploring configurations of fact and fiction through narrative and filmic constructions, intertwining modes of documentary and dramatization. The exhibition is presented as part of the 2008 Bucksbaum Award, conferred on Fast for his significant contributions to the visual arts in the United States. Fast's work has previously been seen at the Whitney in the 2002 and 2008 Biennials.

Read reviews of the work in Art in America and The New York Times.

Get ready, everyone!!!

For over 30 years, photo-eye has published our annual selections for Best Books of the year. Last year we started what we hope will be a long tradition of inviting photographers, writers, curators, publishers, and other photo professionals to select their 10 top books of the past year. Among the list are a few of the wonderful guest contributors from last year and some new additions.

2009 Best Books Guest Contributors:

Ron Jude & Danielle Mericle
Marco Delogu
Antone Dolezal
Tricia Gabriel
John Gossage
Todd Hido
Anne Kelly
Jeff Ladd
Lesley Martin
Melanie McWhorter
Jeff Mermelstein
Eric Miles
Laura Moya
Martin Parr
Andrew Phelps
Markus Schaden
Paul Schiek
George Slade
Alec Soth
Ed Templeton
Sara Terry
Jennifer Thompson
Erik van der Weijde
Michael Wolf

Above content from Photo-Eye Newsletter

Chuck Samuels at Daziboa in Montreal

Since 1980, Chuck Samuels has been using the history of photography and cinema to explore philosophical questions concerning memory and the construction of the self in a body of work shaded with irony. His work, which has been seen widely in Canada and abroad, can be found in collections such as that of the Maison européenne de la photographie in Paris, the Musée de la Photographie de Charleroi.

With Before Photography, Dazibao’s series of events and exhibitions based on the recovery and appropriation of images comes to a close. Chuck Samuels, in a vast deconstruction and re-organisation project, explores his personal history by means of a powerful critical and aesthetic strategy: fiction.

This task, which is much more than a stylistic exercise, derives from Samuels’ enquiry into the nature of the bond that tied him to his father. In Chuck Goes to the Movies, 108 photographs form the basis of an exuberant analysis of photographic representation in popular cinema and television from their early days until 1967, the year Samuels was introduced to photography by his father. Here Samuels, a kind of Zelig of the camera lens, offers up a delirious repertoire of possibilities, hypotheses and characters. Chuck’s Home Movies takes a similar tack, creating free associations between clips from a number of films with iconic depictions of photographers.

In the other two sections of the exhibition, Last Words on Photography and Chuck’s Family Photos, Samuels speaks directly of his memories of his father to paint an emblematic, perhaps even mythical, portrait of the “man with a camera”, thereby highlighting and interrogating an entire field of recent cultural history which has suddenly become accessible and even popular, one marked by the desire of individuals to see themselves depicted in it.

Above content from Daziboa Centre de Photographies Actuelles

in Belgium and the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, as well as in numerous private collections. He lives in Montreal.

1989 Fresh Air Interview with Larry Sultan

Photographer Larry Sultan, Dies at 63

Sad news today. Pictures From Home is one of my favorite books. If you've never looked it over, you ought to.

Here is a link to the New York Times obituary....

Aperture Foundation | Events | The Projected Image

Aperture Foundation | Events | The Projected Image

Posted using ShareThis

Posting Video to Your Blog...

...is a thankfully simple process. With your project open in iMovie, select Share -> YouTube. Add your YouTube account name (you must open an account on YouTube in order to post), and your password. Select a category, and then give your video a title and - if you like - description. This is not an appropriate place for your summary description, however. Your summary should be posted underneath the video on your blog (see below, for example).

Be sure to select either Large or HD as the size for your video (preferably HD, unless you shot your video on a camera without this capability). Once you've posted your video to YouTube, it will be available on the site, although this can sometimes take several minutes to several hours depending on how busy the server is. DO NOT LEAVE THIS TO THE LAST MINUTE.

Once you are logged into YouTube, under your account name, select My Videos, then click on the title of your video. Your video will open and play in a viewing window on YouTube. Notice the box below containing both URL and Embed html codes. Be sure to select the customize icon to the right of the Embed code. Type in a width of 400. The height will be determined automatically. This will ensure that the Blogger window has enough room to show your video and that it will upload quickly. Keep the rest of the boxes unchecked. Please also ensure that your video is not set to "private" as this can cause viewing problems.

Now, highlight/select all of the code in the Embed box and select Copy. Then simply create a New Post on your blog, and paste the code into the text box.



When composing your post, you will only see html code, but when you preview or publish your post, you will see the embedded video file (see above). Your final task is to include the summary paragraphs for your video, which should be at the bottom of your post.

Joan Jonas Receives Lifetime Achievement Award from Guggenheim

On the occasion of the First Annual Art Awards, the Guggenheim is proud to honor Joan Jonas and Kasper Koenig with Lifetime Achievement Awards for their extraordinary contributions to the field of contem- porary art.

Joan Jonas

Over the course of four decades, Joan Jonas has created a consistently unique body of work, establishing herself as a pioneering force in the genres of body art, performance, and video art. Within this expanded field of production—which also includes the mediums of drawing, film, installation, photography, and sculpture—Jonas has systematically investigated the structures of time and space that govern our physical world, and the place of the perceiving subject within them. All the while she has also remained deeply engaged with the cultural realms of myth, folklore, and history, and how identity, especially feminine identity, plays a role in these constructions.

Getting her start in New York’s downtown art scene of the 1960s, Jonas—like her artistic peers—set out to rethink the status of the artwork in the wake of Pop art and Minimalism. Adopting the idea of art-as-process, Jonas turned to performance, systematically yet intuitively exploring every aspect of how live events could be structured. She moved outdoors, emphasizing the physical properties of sound and vision in real space, and used mirrors to reverse her audience’s gaze, turning spectators into spectacle. Delving into new technology, she forged bold paths for a phenomenology of video, in all its permutations. She donned costumes and appropriated folkloric traditions, unearthing forgotten archetypes of the feminine just as the women’s movement gained power. By the early 1980s Jonas had begun to create complex, nonlinear narratives premised on literary and historical texts, reaching back to medieval Icelandic sagas, the work of the poet H.D., and, more recently, the writings and biography of famed art historian Aby Warburg.

Jonas has been the subject of several major retrospectives organized by the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart; and the Queens Museum of Art, Flushing, New York. She has performed and exhibited her work extensively, working internationally with institutions too numerous to list, and collaborating with such contemporaries as the Wooster Group. Most recently, she presented her multimedia installation Reading Dante at this year’s Venice Biennale to much critical acclaim.

Above content from www.guggenheim.org