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Exhibition: ‘Calder: Sculptor of Air’ at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome

Exhibition dates: 22nd October, 2009 – 14th February, 2010

Many thankx to the Palazzo delle Esposizioni for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Marcus

Installation view of the exhibition Calder: Sculptor of Air at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, October 2009 – February 2010 showing at centre, Calder’s The Spider 1940 (below)
Photograph by Claudio Abate

Alexander Calder (American, 1898-1976)
The Spider
1940
Sheet metal, wire, and paint
95″ × 99″ × 73″
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas

Alexander Calder (American, 1898-1976)
Little Spider
c. 1940
Media
Sheet metal, rod, wire, and paint
55″ × 50″
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Gift of Mr. & Mrs. Klaus G. Perls, 1996

Alexander Calder (American, 1898-1976) 'Gibraltar' 1936 from the exhibition 'Calder: Sculptor of Air' at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, October 2009 - February 2010

Alexander Calder (American, 1898-1976)
Gibraltar
1936
Wood, wire, and paint
Dimensions
51 7⁄8″ × 24 1⁄4″ × 11 3⁄8″
The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Gift of the Artist

Alexander Calder (American, 1898-1976)
Cascading Flowers
1949

The City of Rome is to devote its first ever major exhibition to Alexander Calder. The exhibition is being organised by the Azienda Speciale Palaexpo to celebrate the famous US artist born in Lawnton, Pennsylvania, in 1898 and who died in New York in 1976. His Mobiles are some of the modern era’s most celebrated icons. Exuberance, happiness, vigour and a strong and lively sense of humour are features James J. Sweeney already attributed to Calder in the catalogue of a retrospective held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1943. This was the exhibition that raised Calder to the level of one of the leading artists of the day. After majoring in engineering, being awarded a diploma at the Art Students’ League in New York and immersing himself fully in the Parisian Avant-Garde movement in the twenties, Calder went on in the following decade to produce his first Mobiles, as Marcel Duchamp was to christen them. In these sculptures, which were to become enormously popular, the artist harmonically fused shape, colour and movement into an essential whole, which he himself saw as a “universe” where “each element can move, shift and oscillate back and forth in a changing relationship with each of the other elements.”

The exhibition at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni – over 100 works from major public and private collections and the Calder Foundation itself – is set out in the form of a chronological journey designed to explore the artist’s entire creative cycle starting in the twenties. A large selection of his most important works will be on display, including some of the sculptures that were shown at the 1943 exhibition at the MoMa. The exhibition will also be taking a look at some of the lesser known aspects of his work, with groups of works that are rarely on display to the general public. The exhibition opens with his wire sculptures of acrobats, animals and portraits, most of which were created in Paris in the twenties. They include his first attempts to portray movement in a playful and wryly ironic mood.

A lesser known series of small bronze figures produced in 1930 showing contortionists and acrobats will allow the visitor to see how the artist resorted to different techniques to experiment in expressing the notion of movement. An important selection of works also illustrates the way in which Calder wholeheartedly embraced the Abstract movement after paying a visit to Mondrian’s studio in Paris. The visitor will also be able to track Calder’s surrealist vein and his interest in biomorphic shapes through a series of masterpieces produced in the mid-thirties including: Gibraltar, Tightrope, Yellow Panel and Orange Panel, all completed in 1936 (see images above).

The exhibition will be built around the Mobiles that the artist produced throughout his career, working industrial metal plates using a craftsman’s technique. Throughout the exhibition, visitors will be able to admire a selection of the most representative pieces from different periods: Arc of Petals, 1941 (see image below); Cascading Flowers, 1949 (see image above); Le 31 Janvier, 1950; and The Y, 1960 (see image below). The exhibition will also be hosting a significant selection of Stabiles, free-standing sculptures that were given their name by Hans Arp. The Stabiles on display will range from those produced in the mid-thirties, such as Black Beast and Hollow Egg (dated 1939), right up to the more recent Cactus, dated 1959, and La Grande Vitesse created in 1969 (see image below). The exhibition will also be exploring the chronological development of Calder’s painting, a branch of his art in which the artist resorted principally to the agile and dynamic method of gouache on paper. The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue published by Motta, with contributions from Alexander S. C. Rower and Giovanni Carandente as well as a broad anthology of texts by the artist himself and other authors, many of whose works will be appearing in Italian translation for the first time.

Press release from the Palazzo delle Esposizioni website [Online] Cited 01/09/2010. No longer available online

Alexander Calder (American, 1898-1976)
Helen Wills
1927

Helen Newington Wills (October 6, 1905 – January 1, 1998), also known as Helen Wills Moody and Helen Wills Roark, was an American tennis player. She became famous around the world for holding the top position in women’s tennis for a total of nine years: 1927-33, 1935 and 1938. She won 31 Grand Slam tournament titles (singles, women’s doubles, and mixed doubles) during her career, including 19 singles titles.

Wills was the first American woman athlete to become a global celebrity, making friends with royalty and film stars despite her preference for staying out of the limelight. She was admired for her graceful physique and for her fluid motion. She was part of a new tennis fashion, playing in knee-length pleated skirts rather than the longer ones of her predecessors. Unusually, she practiced against men to hone her craft, and she played a relentless game, wearing down her female opponents with power and accuracy. In 1933 she beat the 8th-ranked US male player in an exhibition match.

Her record of eight wins at Wimbledon was not surpassed until 1990 when Martina Navratilova won nine. She was said to be “arguably the most dominant tennis player of the 20th century”, and has been called by some (including Jack Kramer, Harry Hopman, Mercer Beasley, Don Budge, and AP News) the greatest female player in history.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Alexander Calder (American, 1898-1976)
Parasite
1947
Sheet metal, wire, and paint
41″ × 68″ × 28″
Calder Foundation, New York

Installation view of the exhibition Calder: Sculptor of Air at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, October 2009 – February 2010 showing at left, Calder’s Mobile (Arc of Petals) 1941 (below)
Photograph by Claudio Abate

Alexander Calder (American, 1898-1976)
Mobile (Arc of Petals)
1941
Sheet metal, wire, rivets, and paint
94 1⁄2″ × 86 5⁄8″ × 35 7⁄16″
Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 1976

Alexander Calder (American, 1898-1976)
The Y
1960
Sheet metal, rod, and paint
Dimensions
98 13⁄16″ × 14’6 1⁄2″ × 66 3⁄8″
Collection
The Menil Collection, Houston

Installation view of the exhibition Calder: Sculptor of Air at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, October 2009 – February 2010 showing at centre, Calder’s La Grande vitesse (1:5 intermediate maquette) 1969 (below)
Photograph by Claudio Abate

Alexander Calder (American, 1898-1976)
La Grande vitesse (1:5 intermediate maquette)
1969
Sheet metal, bolts, and paint
8’6″ × 11’3″ × 93″
Calder Foundation, New York

Alexander Calder (American, 1898-1976)
La Grande Vitesse
1969

Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome
Via Nazionale, 194, and Via Milano, 9

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday 10am – 8pm
Monday closed

Palazzo delle Esposizioni website

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Exhibition: ‘I.E.D.: War in Afghanistan and Iraq’ by David Levinthal at Stellan Holm Gallery, New York

Exhibition dates: 19th December, 2009 – 13th February, 2010

Many thankx to the Stellan Holm Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Marcus

David Levinthal (American, b. 1949) 'Untitled' from the series 'IED' 2008 from the exhibition 'I.E.D.: War in Afghanistan and Iraq' by David Levinthal at Stellan Holm Gallery, New York, December 2009 - February 2010

David Levinthal (American, b. 1949)
Untitled from the series IED
2008
Archival Pigment Print on Polyester Film

Stellan Holm Gallery is presenting I.E.D.: War in Afghanistan and Iraq, an exhibition of photographs by David Levinthal. The exhibition runs through February 13, 2010. This is the first solo exhibition of works by David Levinthal on view at Stellan Holm Gallery.

I.E.D.: War in Afghanistan and Iraq features eighteen colour photographs by renowned photographer, David Levinthal, which seek to examine the way in which our society looks at war. The idea for this series was conceived when Levinthal recognised a flood of figurines and models available to the American consumer, depicting the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Through the use of these miniature soldiers, civilians and armoured vehicles, Levinthal constructs extremely realistic dioramas that recreate the horrors of contemporary warfare. However, these photographs do not simply recreate scenes from a foreign war. Instead they bring a new perspective to the discourse about war, how it is broadcast in real time and how it relates to American society as a whole. Without interjecting his own prejudgments, David Levinthal asks the viewer to reconsider their own perceptions of reality.

Released by powerHouse Books, the publication, I.E.D.: War in Afghanistan and Iraq, compiles the entirety of Mr. Levinthal’s series of photographs. The book features seventy colour photographs along with an introduction by the artist. It is accompanied by a series of writings culled by David Stanford, editor of The Sandbox, an online military blog that posts writings from troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. This ‘boots-on-the-ground’ testimony adds a powerful voice to the compelling and harrowing photographs constructed by Levinthal.

Born in 1949 in San Francisco, CA, David Levinthal has been exploring and confronting various social issues through the playful use of toy figurines since 1972. He has released numerous publications including, Hitler Moves East: A Graphic Chronicle, 1941-43, Bad Barbie, and Blackface. He was the recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 1995 and the National Endowment for the Arts, Visual Artists Fellowship in 1990-1991. His works are featured in numerous, notable public collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art.

Text from the Stellan Holm Gallery website [Online] Cited 16/01/2010 no longer available online

David Levinthal (American, b. 1949)
Untitled from the series IED
2008
Archival Pigment Print on Polyester Film

Stellan Holm Gallery

This gallery has now closed.

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Exhibition: ‘Paste Up’ by Barbara Kruger at Sprüth Magers London

Exhibition dates: 21st November, 2009 – 23rd January, 2010

Many thankx to Sprüth Magers London for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Barbara Kruger (American, b. 1945) 'Untitled (Money can buy you love)' 1983 from the exhibition Exhibition: 'Paste Up' by Barbara Kruger at Sprüth Magers London, Nov 2009 - Jan 2010

Barbara Kruger (American, b. 1945)
Untitled (Money can buy you love)
1983
Collage
19.5 x 17.5cm
Courtesy of the artist and Sprüth Magers London Berlin

Barbara Kruger (American, b. 1945) 'Untitled (Your misery loves company)' 1985 from the exhibition Exhibition: 'Paste Up' by Barbara Kruger at Sprüth Magers London, Nov 2009 - Jan 2010

Barbara Kruger (American, b. 1945)
Untitled (Your misery loves company)
1985
Collage
18 x 17.3cm
Courtesy of the artist and Sprüth Magers London Berlin

Barbara Kruger (American, b. 1945) 'Untitled (Our prices are insane!)' 1987 from the exhibition Exhibition: 'Paste Up' by Barbara Kruger at Sprüth Magers London, Nov 2009 - Jan 2010

Barbara Kruger (American, b. 1945)
Untitled (Our prices are insane!)
1987
Collage
Courtesy of the artist and Sprüth Magers London Berlin

Barbara Kruger (American, b. 1945)
Untitled (We will no longer be seen and not heard)
1985
17.8 x 18.5cm
Courtesy of the artist and Sprüth Magers London Berlin

Sprüth Magers London is delighted to present a survey of early work by acclaimed American artist Barbara Kruger. Using contrasting layers of text and image, Kruger’s work has for almost three decades probed the nature of a media-saturated society in late capitalism, and the significance of highly evolved cultures of consumerism and mass politics to the experience and making of social identities. In addition to offering acute, indeed often piquant cultural insights, Kruger’s work also presents a serious conceptual exploration into the relationship between language and image, and their dynamics as collaborators and antagonists in the bearing of meaning. The artist’s unique blend of conceptual sophistication and wry social commentary has made Kruger one of the most respected and admired artists of her generation, and this timely reappraisal of her early practice reveals the ingenuity and precision of her craft.

The early monochrome pre-digital works assembled in the exhibition, known professionally as ‘paste ups’, reveal the influence of the artist’s experience as a magazine editorial designer during her early career. These small scale works, the largest of which is 11 x 13 inches, are composed of altered found images, and texts either culled from the media or invented by the artist. A negative of each work was then produced and used to make enlarged versions of these initial ‘paste ups’. The influence of Kruger’s magazine publishing training extends far beyond technique however. The linguistic and typographic conventions of consumer culture, and an understanding of the inherent potential of a single image, are appropriated and subverted by Kruger, as the artist explores the power of the soundbite and the slogan, and the method and impact of ‘direct address’ on the consumer/viewer.

Although Kruger’s practice is embedded in the visual and political culture of mass media and advertising, the work moves beyond simple appropriation and the ironic meditation on consumerism which animated earlier movements such as Pop art. The emblazoned slogans are often slightly yet meaningfully adjusted clichés of common parlance and the commercial world, and are overlaid on contrasting images which range from the grotesque to the banal. The juxtaposition of pictorial and linguistic modes of communication on the same plane thereby begs conceptual questions of human understanding, and the means by which messages are transmitted and distorted, recognised and received.

Barbara Kruger was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1945. She currently lives in both Los Angeles, California and New York and teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has been the subject of many one-person exhibitions, including a comprehensive retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 1999, which travelled to The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York in 2000. More recently, she has exhibited large-scale installations at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Tramway in Glasgow, Scotland, the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne, Australia, and at BCAM at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others. She was honoured with the “Golden Lion” award for Lifetime Achievement at the Venice Biennale in 2005.

Press release from the Sprüth Magers London website [Online] Cited 25/05/2019 no longer available online

Barbara Kruger (American, b. 1945)
Untitled (We won’t be our own best enemy)
1986
Collage
18 x 22cm
Courtesy of the artist and Sprüth Magers London Berlin

Barbara Kruger (American, b. 1945)
Untitled (Surveillance is their busywork)
1988
Collage
11.1 x 22cm
Courtesy of the artist and Sprüth Magers London Berlin

Barbara Kruger (American, b. 1945)
Untitled (You are a very special person)
1995
Collage (colour)
13.6 x 19.1cm
Courtesy of the artist and Sprüth Magers London Berlin

Barbara Kruger (American, b. 1945)
Don’t be a jerk
1984
Screenprint on vinyl
250 x 388.5cm
Courtesy of the artist and Sprüth Magers London Berlin

Sprüth Magers London
7A Grafton Street,
London, W1S 4EJ
Phone: +44 (0)20 7408 1613

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 6pm

Sprüth Magers website

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Exhibition: ‘Lisette Model’ at the Instituto de Cultura, Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid

Exhibition dates: 23rd September, 2009 – 10th January, 2010

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Riviera - elderly woman' c. 1934 from the series 'Promenade des Anglais, Nice' from the exhibition 'Lisette Model' at the Instituto de Cultura, Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid, Sept 2009 - Jan 2010

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Riviera – elderly woman
c. 1934
From the series Promenade des Anglais, Nice
Gelatin silver print
© The Lisette Model Foundation

An interesting discussion of the life and work of Lisette Model (and her influence on Diane Arbus and vice versa) can be found on the AMERICANSUBURB X: THEORY website in an article by Elsa Dorfman titled “Ann Thomas on Lisette Model”. More photographs by Lisette Model can be found on the Masters of Photography website including some fabulous “Running Legs” images.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to Fundacion MAPFRE for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“New images surround us everywhere. They are invisible only because of sterile routine convention and fear.”

“Photography starts with the projection of the photographer, his understanding of life and himself into the picture.”

“New images surround us everywhere. They are invisible only because of sterile routine convention and fear. To find these images is to dare to see, to be aware of what there is and how it is. The photographer not only gets information, he gives information about life.”

Lisette Model

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Running Legs, NYC, 42nd Street' c. 1940-1941 from the exhibition 'Lisette Model' at the Instituto de Cultura, Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid, Sept 2009 - Jan 2010

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Running Legs, NYC, 42nd Street
c. 1940-1941
Gelatin silver print
© The Lisette Model Foundation

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Running Legs, 5th Avenue' c. 1940-1941 from the exhibition 'Lisette Model' at the Instituto de Cultura, Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid, Sept 2009 - Jan 2010

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Running Legs, 5th Avenue [Jambes de passants, 5e avenue]
New York
c. 1940-1941
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
© The Lisette Model Foundation

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Sammy's' 1940-1944

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Sammy’s
New York
1940-1944
Gelatin silver print
© The Lisette Model Foundation

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Lower East Side
c. 1942
Gelatin silver print
Collection Fundación MAPFRE
© The Lisette Model Foundation

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Albert-Alberta, Hubert's 42nd St Flea Circus, New York' c. 1945

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Albert-Alberta, Hubert’s Forty-second Street Flea Circus
New York
1945
Gelatin silver print
© The Lisette Model Foundation

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Belmont Park' 1956

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Belmont Park
New York
1956
Gelatin silver print
© The Lisette Model Foundation

If Lisette Model took up photography as a way of earning a living, it is also true that she always fought for her own subjects, rather than simply carry out the assignments given by editors. She believed that for a photograph to be successful its subject had to be something that “hits you in the stomach.” This could be something familiar or something unfamiliar. For Model, the camera was an instrument for probing the world, a way of capturing aspects of a permanently changing reality that otherwise we would fail to see.

Model always said that she looked but did not judge. Yes, her photographs of the Promenade des Anglais in Nice were published by the left-wing journal Regards, in 1935, but she was not interested exclusively either in the rich or in the poor, and her images are much more about human relations. Her work evinces empathy, curiosity, compassion and admiration, and reflects the photographer’s attraction to voluminous forms, energy and liveliness, to emphatic gesture and expression: the world as stage. The critic Elizabeth McCausland has described Model’s camerawork as expressing “a subconscious revolt against the rules.”

This exhibition of some 120 of Lisette Model’s most representative photographs illustrates the very bold and direct approach to reality that made her one of the most singular proponents of street photography, the particular form of documentary photography that developed in New York during the 1940s, through the camerawork of such as Helen Levitt, Roy de Carava and Weegee.

Alongside the photographs, archive film and sound recordings of Lisette Model will evoke the photographer’s life, and there will be copies of magazines to which she contributed (Regards, Harper’s Bazaar, etc.).

Exhibition organised by Jeu de Paume and Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid.

Text from the Jeu de Paume website [Online] Cited 01/01/2010 no longer available online

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Promenade des Anglais
Nice c. 1934
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
© The Lisette Model Foundation

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Gambler, French Riviera
1937
Gelatin silver print
Collection Fundación MAPFRE
© The Lisette Model Foundation

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Coney Island Bather, New York' [Baigneuse, Coney Island] c. 1939-1941

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Coney Island Bather [Baigneuse, Coney Island]
New York
c. 1939-1941
Gelatin silver print
© The Lisette Model Foundation

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Diana Vreeland, New York
c. 1945
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
© The Lisette Model Foundation

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Restaurant, New York
c. 1945
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
© The Lisette Model Foundation

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Reflections' [Reflets] c. 1939-1945

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Reflections [Reflets]
New York
c. 1939-1945
Gelatin silver print
Collection Fundación MAPFRE
© The Lisette Model Foundation

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Reflection' [Reflet] c. 1939-1945

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Reflection [Reflet]
New York
c. 1939-1945
Gelatin silver print
© The Lisette Model Foundation

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Sammy’s, New York
1940-1944
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada
© The Lisette Model Foundation

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Las Vegas, on the bar
c. 1945
Gelatin silver print
Collection Fundación MAPFRE
© The Lisette Model Foundation

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983) 'Cafe Metropole, New York City' c. 1946

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Metropole Cafe
New York
c. 1946
Gelatin silver print
© The Lisette Model Foundation

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Fashion show, Hotel Pierre, New York City
1940-1946
Gelatin silver print
Collection Fundación MAPFRE
© The Lisette Model Foundation

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
San Francisco
1949
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
© The Lisette Model Foundation

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Woman with Veil, San Francisco
1949
Gelatin silver print
© The Lisette Model Foundation

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Opera, San Francisco
1949
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
© The Lisette Model Foundation

Fundacion MAPFRE
Avenida General Perón, 40
Madrid 28020
Phone: 91 581 16 28

Opening hours:
Mondays (except holidays): 2pm – 8pm
Tuesday to Saturday: 11am – 5pm
Sunday and holidays: 11am – 7 pm

Fundacion MAPFRE website

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Exhibition: ‘Ray K. Metzker: Automagic’ at the Laurence Miller Gallery, New York

24th November, 2009 – 9th January, 2010

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Philadelphia, 1963
1963
Gelatin silver print

The early photographs from the 1960’s are stupendous!

The pre-visualisation of the final photograph shows rare talent. The use of deep chiaroscuro is handled so adeptly, so confidently. The photographer is in full control of the modelling of the spaces and contours of the objects within the photographic frame. Metzker’s drawing with light surely comes from an enlightened mind. Magical. Wonderful.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to Laurence Miller Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014) 'Philadelphia, 1963' from the exhibition 'Ray K. Metzker: Automagic' at the Laurence Miller Gallery, New York, Nov 2009 - Jan 2010

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Philadelphia, 1963
1963
Gelatin silver print

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Philadelphia
1963
Gelatin silver print

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Philadelphia, 1964
1964
Gelatin silver print

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Chicago, 1958
1958
Gelatin silver print

From November 24 through January 9 Laurence Miller Gallery celebrates Ray K. Metzker: AutoMagic. This exhibition features over fifty black-and-white photographs taken by this 78-year old master photographer over the past fifty years in which the automobile plays a pivotal role in the contest between light and shadow. Forty of the photographs have never been exhibited before.

From his earliest street pictures taken under the El in Chicago’s Loop in the mid-Fifties, to his most recent highly abstract views of reflections on Philadelphia car windows, Ray K. Metzker brings an exuberance of vision rarely found among today’s photographers. In total control of his camera and craft, Metzker transforms the mundane in daily urban life into intense images that sizzle, and delight the eye.

In the darkest recesses of a parking garage, we discover a single shimmering tail fin of a late 50’s Cadillac. In a scene more Orson Wells than Woody Allen, we witness a menacing shadow figure approaching a parked car, intent unknown. In a blizzard, we join the photographer and a single figure as they look at one another wondering why each other is standing there in the cascading snow.

The show also reveals a more tender side of Metzker, as we peer into car windows to see folks uninhibited within their mobile shelters, including a sleeping man with a medallion, head resting on the door; a man reading at the wheel of his damaged white coupe; and a man at the end of long day, hand upon his head.

Metzker’s work of the last few years, fondly nicknamed Autowackies, are a brilliant extension of his earlier forays into abstraction, and are only made possible by the contours of our newest cars and SUV’s, which wildly warp the architecture and cloud formations reflected on their glossy surfaces.

Text from the Lawrence Miller Gallery website [Online] Cited 12/12/2009. No longer available online

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Philadelphia, 1963
1963
Gelatin silver print

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Philadelphia, 1964
1964
Gelatin silver print

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014) 'Albuquerque, 1971' solarized vintage silver print

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Albuquerque, 1971
1971
Solarized vintage silver print

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Philadelphia
1963
Gelatin silver print

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Philadelphia, 2009
2009
Gelatin silver print

Lawrence Miller Gallery

Lawrence Miller Gallery is now operating as a private dealer and consultant. The gallery is no longer hosting a physical exhibition space.

Lawrence Miller Gallery website

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Exhibition: ‘The Eventuality of Daybreak’ by Alex Lukas at Glowlab, New York

Exhibition dates: 12th November – 6th December 2009

Alex Lukas (American, b. 1981)
Untitled
2009
Acrylic and silk screen on two book pages

These are terrific – I want one!

A big thank you to Alex for allowing me to reproduce the images.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Alex Lukas (American, b. 1981)
Untitled
2009
Acrylic and silk screen on two book pages

Glowlab is pleased to present The Eventuality of Daybreak, a solo exhibition by Alex Lukas featuring a new series of post-apocalyptic urban landscapes that blur the visual boundaries of fiction and reality.

Lukas’ work explores the existence of disaster, be it realised or fictitious, in contemporary society. Hyper-realistic motion pictures and unforgiving news footage depict seemingly identical – and equally riveting – facades of tragedy. The artist recognises that relentless visual bombardment has resulted in society’s desensitisation to the aesthetics of destruction.

For The Eventuality of Daybreak, Lukas has selected photographic spreads of well-known metropolises from vintage publications and uses them dually as canvas and unlikely subject. Through a deft handling of paint and carefully placed screen-printed passages, the artist pushes these ageing illustrations in futuristic contexts. Submerging these cities conceptually and physically, Lukas inundates images of American cities with layers of media representing cataclysmic floods and crippling overgrowth.

Also included in the exhibition are works on paper depicting near-future scenes of devastated landscapes – crumbling infrastructure, overturned trucks and telling signs of human despair. As a counterpoint to the underwater cities, these darkly atmospheric and barren vistas signal devastation through an unsettling sense of absence.

Lukas’ intentional use of dated imagery presented in tandem with contemporary situations forces the viewer to reconcile two differing ideologies of urban space. The artist’s work calls into question society’s collective acceptance of the urban environment as an arena of destruction, once thought unthinkable and now seemingly inevitable.

The Eventuality of Daybreak is Lukas’ first solo exhibition with Glowlab. Lukas’ work has also been exhibited in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Stockholm and Copenhagen as well as in the pages of Swindle Quarterly, Proximity Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Village Voice, The Drama and The New York Times Book Review. Lukas is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design and currently lives and works in Philadelphia, where he is a member of the artist collective Space 1026.

Press release on the Glowlab website [Online] Cited 20/11/2009 no longer available online

Alex Lukas (American, b. 1981)
Untitled
2009
Acrylic and silk screen on two book pages

Alex Lukas. 'Untitled' 2009. Acrylic and silk screen on two book pages

Alex Lukas (American, b. 1981)
Untitled
2009
Acrylic and silk screen on two book pages

Glowlab

This gallery has now closed

Alex Lukas website

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Exhibition: ‘William Christenberry: Photographs, 1961-2005’ at the Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia

Exhibition dates: 12th September – 8th November, 2009

Many thankx to the Morris Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016) 'Green Warehouse, Newbern, Alabama' 1997 from the exhibition 'William Christenberry: Photographs, 1961-2005' at the Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia, Sept - Nov, 2009

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016)
Green Warehouse, Newbern, Alabama
1997
Dye coupler print

Widely recognised as a pioneer in the field of colour photography, William Christenberry has used this expressive medium to explore the American South for forty years. While pursuing this artistic quest he has drawn inspiration from Walker Evans, and influenced a generation of emerging photographers. William Christenberry: Photographs, 1961-2005 surveys his poetic documentation of southern vernacular architecture, signage, and landscape using a wide range of cameras, from his earliest Brownie photographs of the early 1960s to his later work with a large-format camera. Combining never-before-seen photographs, both old and new, with images that are now iconic, this exhibition comprises fifty vintage photographic works and one sculpture. Together, they convey the breadth of his singular photographic vision. Discuss the artistic objectives of his long-term interpretation of the Southern landscape with Michelle Norris of National Public Radio, Christenberry explained: “What I really feel very strongly about, and I hope reflects in all aspects of my work, is the human touch, the humanness of things, the positive and sometimes the negative and sometimes the sad.”

Text from the Morris Museum of Art website [Online] Cited 15/10/2009. No longer available online

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016)
House and Car, near Akron, Alabama
1981

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016)
Kudzu with Storm Cloud, near Akron, Alabama
1981

“William Christenberry Photographs, 1961-2005, a phenomenal retrospective exhibition of Christenberry’s photographs, opens to the public at the Morris Museum of Art on September 16, 2009. The Morris Museum is the only Georgia venue hosting this exhibition.

“‘William Christenberry Photographs, 1961-2005’ is an overview of the career of one of the South’s most important living artists,” said Kevin Grogan, director of the Morris Museum of Art. “Organised by the Aperture Foundation, this exhibition brings to Augusta a body of work like no other. No one has so scrupulously and attentively captured a sense of place and time in quite the way that Bill Christenberry has. He is a remarkable artist, as is proven by this extraordinary body of work. He is America’s Proust.”

Since the early 1960s, William Christenberry has plumbed the regional identity of the American South, focusing his attention primarily on his childhood home, Hale County, Alabama. Widely recognised as a pioneer in the field of colour photography, Christenberry draws inspiration from the work of Walker Evans, while paralleling the work of such international practitioners as Bernd and Hilla Becher. Ranging from his earliest Brownie photographs to his later work with a large-format camera, William Christenberry Photographs, 1961-2005 is a survey of the artist’s poetic documentation of the Southern landscape and vernacular architecture that surrounded him as he grew up. The exhibition, coupling never-before-seen photographs with images that are now iconic, reveals how the history, the very story of place, is at the heart of Christenberry’s ongoing project. While the focus of his work is the American South, it touches on universal themes related to family, culture, nature, spirituality, memory, and ageing. Christenberry photographs real things in the real world – ramshackle buildings, weathered commercial signs, lonely back roads, rusted-out cars, whitewashed churches, decorated graves. Dutifully returning to photograph the same locations annually – the green barn, the palmist building, the Bar-B-Q Inn, among others – he has fulfilled a personal ritual and documented the physical changes wrought by every single year. Straddling past and present, Christenberry’s art suggests the gravity and power of the passage of time.

The exhibition is accompanied by a stunning monograph entitled William Christenberry, published by Aperture in cooperation with the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The book, a comprehensive survey, presents all aspects of the artist’s oeuvre as he intended it to be viewed and considered. More than half the work reproduced has not been previously published.”

Text from the press release on the Morris Museum of Art website [Online] Cited 15/10/2009. No longer available online

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016)
Sprott Church in Alabama
1971

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016)
T.B. Hick’s Store, Newbern, Alabama
1976

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016)
Farmhouse, Hale County, Alabama
1977

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016)
House and Car, near Akron, Alabama
1978

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016)
Palmist Building, Havanna, Alabama
1980

The Palmist Building is one of the most iconic structures in Christenberry’s extensive body of work. When he was a child, the clapboard building was a general store operated by his great uncle, but it was later home to a palm reader. The inverted hand-painted sign that covers a broken window initially enticed him to photograph the building in 1961. His earliest photographs pinpoint the sign itself and the peeling whitewash around it. As he became more engrossed in the project, Christenberry carefully examined the relationship of the building to its surroundings, particularly the chinaberry tree that eventually engulfed it.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016)
Rabbit Pen, near Moundville, Alabama
1998

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016)
Old House, near Akron, Alabama
1964

Morris Museum of Art
1 Tenth Street
Augusta, Georgia 30901
Phone: 706-724-7501

Opening Hours:
Tuesday – Saturday: 10.00am – 5.00pm
Sunday: 12 – 5.00pm
Closed Mondays and major holidays

Morris Museum of Art website

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Exhibition: ‘Proud Flesh’ by Sally Mann at Gagosian Gallery, New York

Exhibition dates: 15th September – 31st October, 2009

Sally Mann (American, b. 1951)
Memory’s Truth
2008
Gelatin silver print
Contact print from a wet-plate collodion negative

“I can think of numberless males, from Bonnard to Callahan, who have photographed their lovers and spouses, but I am having trouble finding parallel examples among my sister photographers. The act of looking appraisingly at a man, making eye contact on the street, asking to photograph him, studying his body, has always been a brazen venture for a woman, though, for a man, these acts are commonplace, even expected.”

Sally Mann

Many thankx to Gagosian Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on some of the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Proud Flesh is for me an emotionally exhausting work about withering. It has elements of 19th century clinical photography done with absolute loving care for the subject. Its factual surface is quickly replaced by metaphor and the haze of imperfection from the wet-plate collodion negatives she employs. In a few of the images, due to the choice of striped bedding on which the figure lays, we might be looking at a historical photograph take from Auschwitz or Bergen Belsen. With Larry’s thin and seemingly weak legs dangling over the edge of a wooden cot, the soiled bedding following the contour of his legs, it is difficult for me to see this image without this harsh historical reference. The following image in the book, he is turned into a martyr – arms out stretched – the sheet underneath him now sharply crinkled like a bed of straw (or an imagined crown of thorns).

The surface texture plays such a strong role in these photos much of the seduction of these photos comes from the beauty of those imperfections. At times they can be nauseating, for their liquid streaks ooze over the images of aged flesh keeping viscera and bodily fluids as a second metaphoric subject. On the cover image, the disturbed collodion emulsion leaves a pattern which seems to be both looking at, and looking inside, the torso standing before the camera. Like Lee Friedlander’s shadow self-portrait (see the cover of Like a One-eyed Cat) where his organs are replaced with a jumble of rocks and his head is filled with straw, Mann’s image turns Larry’s insides into a mix of man and machine – collodion cogs and gears. This is the most wishful, as it portrays the strongest sense of life and the perhaps even the possibility of escaping its mortality. He stands at table’s edge with a steadying hand and a closed fist.

The most remarkable image for me appears as plate 20 and is captioned Time and the Bell (2008). Like the aforementioned cover image, this is an ideal as Mann has turned her husband’s head and shoulders into a profile bust of marble – the washed out light tones give way to a few angular shapes of rich shadow. It could be a still life of artefacts from an artists work space, a table and a sculptural work in progress. The surprise of the photographic description, which is present in most of the photos in Proud Flesh, is so complex and engaging for me it is difficult to not have it outshine all of the rest.

Text from 5B4: Photography and Books blog October 1, 2009 [Online] Cited 28/04/2019. No longer available online

Sally Mann (American, b. 1951)
Semaphore
2003
Gelatin silver print
Contact print from a wet-plate collodion negative

Sally Mann (American, b. 1951) 'Hephaestus' 2008 from the exhibition 'Proud Flesh' by Sally Mann at Gagosian Gallery, New York, Sept - Oct, 2009

Sally Mann (American, b. 1951)
Hephaestus
2008
Gelatin silver print
Contact print from a wet-plate collodion negative

Sally Mann’s poignant image of her husband, Larry, symbolises both his illness and his skill as a blacksmith.

Sally Mann (American, b. 1951)
The Nature of Loneliness
2008
Gelatin silver print
Contact print from a wet-plate collodion negative
15 x 13 1/2 inches

Sally Mann (American, b. 1951)
Somnambulist
2009
Gelatin silver print
Contact print from a wet-plate collodion negative

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present “Proud Flesh”, a series of new photographs by Sally Mann.

Children, landscape, lovers – these iconic subjects are as common to the photographic lexicon as light itself. But Mann’s take on them, rendered through processes both traditional and esoteric, is anything but common. From the outset of her career she has consistently challenged the viewer, rendering everyday experiences at once sublime and deeply disquieting.

In previous projects, Mann has explored the relationships between parent and child, brother and sister, human and nature, site and history. Her latest photographic study of her husband Larry Mann, taken over six years, has resulted in a series of candid nude studies of a mature male body that neither objectifies nor celebrates the focus of its gaze. Rather it suggests a profoundly trusting relationship between woman and man, artist and model that has produced a full range of impressions – erotic, brutally frank, disarmingly tender, and more. While the relation of artist and model is, traditionally, a male-dominated field that has yielded countless appraisals of the female body and psyche, Mann reverses the role by turning the camera on her husband during some of his most vulnerable moments.

Mann’s technical methods and process further emphasise the emotional and temporal aspects of these fragile life studies. The images are contact prints made from wet-plate collodion negatives, produced by coating a sheet of glass with ether-based collodion and submerging it in silver nitrate. Mann exploits the surface aberrations that can result from the unpredictability of the process to produce painterly photographs marked by stark contrasts of light and dark, with areas that resemble scar tissue. In works such as Hephaestus and Ponder Heart, the scratches and marks incurred in the production process become inseparable from the physical reality of Larry’s body.”

Text from the Gagosian Gallery website [Online] Cited 10/10/2009. No longer available online

Sally Mann (American, b. 1951)
Kingfisher’s Wing
2007
Gelatin silver print
Contact print from a wet-plate collodion negative

Sally Mann (American, b. 1951)
The Quality of the Affection
2006
Gelatin silver print
Contact print from a wet-plate collodion negative

Sally Mann (American, b. 1951)
Ponder Heart
2009
Gelatin silver print
Contact print from a wet-plate collodion negative

Sally Mann (American, b. 1951)
Was Ever Love
2009
Gelatin silver print
Contact print from a wet-plate collodion negative

Gagosian Gallery – Madison Avenue Gallery
980 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10075
Phone: 212.744.2313

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 6pm

Gagosian Gallery website

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Exhibition: ‘Doug Aitken’ at Regen Projects, Los Angeles

Exhibition dates: 12th September – 17th October, 2009

Many thankx to Regen Projects for allowing me to publish the art work in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968) 'The handle comes up, the hammer comes down' 2009 from the exhibition 'Doug Aitken' at Regen Projects, Los Angeles, Sept - Oct, 2009

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968)
The handle comes up, the hammer comes down
2009
LED lit lightbox

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968) 'Free' 2009 from the exhibition 'Doug Aitken' at Regen Projects, Los Angeles, Sept - Oct, 2009

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968)
Free
2009
LED lit lightbox

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968) 'Start Swimming' 2006 from the exhibition 'Doug Aitken' at Regen Projects, Los Angeles, Sept - Oct, 2009

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968)
Start Swimming
LED lit lightbox
2006

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968) 'Start Swimming' 2006

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968)
Start Swimming
LED lit lightbox
2006

Installation view of Doug Aitken at Regen Projects, Los Angeles

Regen Projects is pleased to announce an exhibition of new works by Los Angeles artist Doug Aitken. This exhibition will present a series of new text-based light boxes and will feature the west coast debut of the film migration. Aitken explores the themes of temporality, space, memory, movement, and landscape in his work. History and themes of both the past and present are interwoven and reconfigured. His work deconstructs the connection between idea and iconography allowing each to reinvent itself.

Doug Aitken’s new light boxes combine image and text in a collision that creates a rupture in which alternate connections are presented. The work frontier depicts a destroyed property on the water’s edge, redefining expectations of what a frontier may hold. The images within some of the light boxes are a photographic collage that references Aitken’s photographic oeuvre and aesthetic. Experimenting with font, borrowed images, and his own photographs, the light boxes will be presented in the darkened gallery, glowing and playing off of one another. The disjunction of word, image, and light in these works also moves toward a cinematic whole, creating panoramic landscapes through text.

Presented alongside the light boxes will be Aitken’s first large scale public installation in Los Angeles, migration. The film, the first instalment in a three-part trilogy entitled empire, debuted at the 2008 Carnegie International. This hallucinatory epic depicts the movements of migratory animals as they pass through vacant and deserted hotel and motel rooms, delineating a nomadic passage across America from east to west. Fittingly making its first appearance on the west coast, this large-scale cinematic installation will be presented to the public on Santa Monica Boulevard projected onto the courtyard of Regen Projects II; visible only at night from sunset to sunrise. In addition to the nighttime public presentation, migration will also be exhibited at the 633 North Almont Drive space on an indoor billboard accompanied by its original score.

Settlers who met the untamed wilderness to forge new ways of life defined westward expansion. Aitken’s migratory landscape in migration is the opposite; it is a landscape completely devoid of human presence. His non-linear narrative presents a series of different sequences in which the animals and their actions are unique while the rooms and their components are indistinguishable. Hotels such as these offer a sense of both security and isolation and while some animals adapt to these surroundings, others seem conspicuously strange. Rarely do we get to examine these creatures so closely. Their movements and presence make the viewer acutely aware of scale, calling into question various relationships; the most apparent of which is the relationship of the natural and the man-made. In this encounter between the urban and the indigenous the viewer gets a sense of both displacement and habituation. As one critic describes:

“One by one, at different hotels, the animals behave as they behave, sniffing the air, twitching their noses to orient themselves in the desolate human habitat. Imbued with Aitken’s usual intimations of planetary solitude, his sense of spatial dislocation, and gorgeous formalised perception, these images … have the quality not so much of a nonlinear narrative as of a mirage.” (Kim Levin, Artnews, January 2009, p. 110.)

Aitken’s work has been exhibited extensively at museums and galleries worldwide, including his 2007 exhibition “sleepwalkers,” a large-scale outdoor installation at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He has had numerous solo exhibitions including shows at the Serpentine Gallery, the Kunstmuseum Wolfsberg, the Kunsthaus Bregenz and the Kunsthalle Zurich. Aitken was awarded the international prize at the Venice Biennale in 1999 and was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial.

Text from the Regen Projects website [Online] Cited 01/11/2009. No longer available online

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968) Still from 'Migration' 2008

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968)
Stills from Migration
2008
Single video projection with billboard (steel and PVC projection screen)

In Migration, peacocks, deer, and beaver are filmed occupying motel rooms in vignettes that strike a poignant, provocative chord: talk about unexpected guests. Nevertheless, the work isn’t funny; it’s too frank in its beauty, too finely and respectfully wrought to be a joke.

Aitken’s animals are frequently shot in close perspective, which enhances their beauty in a way that is mesmerising. We’re not looking through them as much as we’re looking alongside them, ingesting the utter foreignness of their environs. As evening falls, we see an owl, an already otherworldly creature whose glowing eyes appear extraterrestrial, blinking at us from its perch on a king-size bed. Against the singsong of chirping birds, the camera pans away from the stationary owl as the room fills with thousands of downy feathers. Light is a powerful character in the film, whether gently filtered through sheer curtains or spilling onto carpeted hallways. Rather than highlighting imperfections or ugliness, the light is salvic, evincing a limbo that’s illuminating and warming. In one way or another, all of Aitken’s animals are drawn to light, whether toward a blinking lamp, the refracted surface of a swimming pool, or even the glow of an opened refrigerator door.

Extract from Iris McLister. “Motel chronicles: Doug Aitken,” on the Pasatiempo website October 6, 2017 [Online] Cited 28/04/2019

Regen Projects
6750 Santa Monica Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90038
Phone: (310) 276 5424

Gallery hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 5pm

Regen Projects website

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Exhibition: ‘Ansel Adams: A Life’s Work’ at Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego

Exhibition dates: 23rd May – 4th October, 2009

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) 'Monolith - The Face of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park' 1927 from the exhibition 'Ansel Adams: A Life's Work' at Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, May - Oct, 2009

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Monolith, The Face of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park
from the portfolio Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras
1927
Gelatin silver print

Some well known Ansel Adams images below with some less well known photographs from the Manzanar Relocation Center photographic series of 1943.

Marcus

Many thankx to the Museum of Photographic Arts for allowing me to publish the three photographs, Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada from Lone Pine, California (1944), Mount McKinley, Alaska (1948) and Aspens, Northern New Mexico (1958). Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) 'Marion Lake, Kings River Canyon, California' c. 1925 from the exhibition 'Ansel Adams: A Life's Work' at Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, May - Oct, 2009

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Marion Lake, Southern Sierra
from the portfolio Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras
1927
Gelatin silver print

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) 'Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico' 1941 from the exhibition 'Ansel Adams: A Life's Work' at Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, May - Oct, 2009

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico
1941
Gelatin silver print

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Birds on wire, evening, Manzanar Relocation Center
1943
Gelatin silver print

The Museum of Photographic Arts (MoPA) in Balboa Park is pleased to present Ansel Adams: A Life’s Work. The exhibition includes over 80 photographs by the 20th Century master, and celebrates Adams as an artist and conservationist. A Life’s Work will be on view May 23, 2009 through October 4, 2009, and features an overview of Adam’s work from his early years in the Sierra Nevadas and Yosemite Valley to his work in the Japanese Internment Camp at Manzanar, as well as his well-known masterpieces.

Ansel Adams: A Life’s Work will be running concurrently with Jo Whaley: Theater of Insects on view from May 16 through September 27, 2009, as well as Picturing the Process: Exploring the Art and Science of Photography on view through July 25, 2009.

The exhibition begins with survey of Adams’ early years with the Sierra Club (1920s-1930s), where his photographs and essays were first published in the Club’s Bulletin. 1927 marked a pivotal point for Adams, where he participated in the Sierra Club’s annual High Trip, which took him to the high country of the Sierra. It was during this trip that he exposed the negative of the iconic image Monolith, the Face of Half Dome. Adams describes this photograph as “my first conscious visualisation; in my mind’s eye, I saw the final image.”

It was during this first High Trip that Adams met San Francisco-based arts patron, Albert Bender. Bender took immediate interest in Adam’s photographs, and published Adams’ first portfolio, The Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras (1927). The publication included an edition of 100 portfolios of 18 prints each, 75 were printed.

The exhibition features 15 of the rare Parmelian vintage prints, as well as eight photographs from the 1929 Sierra Club Portfolio.

The exhibition continues with a wide range of representative works from the 1930’s and 1940’s, including commercial work that the artist did for the YPCCO (Yosemite Park and Curry Company). From 1931 to 1937, Adams was hired by YPCCO, a group of businesses in Yosemite Valley, to photograph various winter sports for an advertising campaign. This opportunity provided a much needed source of income for the artist during the Great Depression. The exhibition also includes other various commercial assignments throughout his career, which Adams clearly separated from his fine art photography, but notes as a vital aspect of his career. In his Autobiography he wrote: “I have little use for students or artists who scorn commercial photography as a form of prostitution … Let them pay the bills! … I struggled with a great variety of assignments through the years. Some I enjoyed, some I detested, but learned from them all.”

A Life’s Work also includes the powerful and poignant images from the Manzanar Internment Camp. In late 1943 through 1944, Adams visited the camps in central California, where over 10,000 Japanese-Americans were interned during World War II. Adams’ intention for this self-assigned project was “to interpret the camp and its people, their daily life and their relationship to their community and their environment,” wrote Adams in his Autobiography. “As my work progressed, however, I began to grasp the problems of the remarkable readjustment these people had to make… With admirable strength of spirit, the Nisei rose above despondency and make a life for themselves… This was the mood and character I determined to apply to the project.”

A Life’s Work will feature many of his iconic masterworks, including Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, as well as his works in colour, which he experimented with beginning in the late 1940s.

Press release from the Museum of Photographic Arts website [Online] Cited 15/09/2009

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
View south from Manzanar to Alabama Hills, Manzanar Relocation Center
1943
Gelatin silver print

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
View SW over Manzanar, dust storm, Manzanar Relocation Center
1943
Gelatin silver print

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) 'Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada from Lone Pine, CA.,' 1944

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada from Lone Pine, California
1944
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy of the Museum of Photographic Arts.
Copyright © 2009 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust