Aperture's Blog, page 170

Anne Wilkes Tucker on Ray K. Metzker (1931-2014)

Ray K. Metzger, 'City Whispers, Philadelphia 1983.' All photographs: Estate of Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy Laurence Miller Gallery.

'Chicago 1959.'

'Couplet, Atlantic, 1968.'

'Pictus Interruptus, 1980.'

'Pictus Interruptus, 1978.'

'Couplet, 1968, NYC'

'Valencia, 1961.'

'City Whispers, Philadelphia, 1981.'

'Autowacky, Philadelphia, 2009.'

'Composites: Nude, 1966.'

'Chicago 1958.'

'Philadelphia, 1963.'

Few artists can boast five decades of works so consistently exquisite, formally innovative, and intellectually challenging as those made by Ray K. Metzker, as well as a well lived, comtemplative life, rich with friends and family.

Metzker was an attentive teacher whose demands as well as generous encouragements were warmly remembered through social media after his death. Established photographers who only met him once, but early enough in their careers, acknowledged his lasting impact. And I have a similar acknowledgement to make. Unknown Territory: Photography by Ray K. Metzker, 1957-1983, was the first mid-career retrospective that I curated. Ray made the distinction between fun and joy: fun was carefree and irresponsible, a respite from one’s endeavors. (Anyone who saw him smile knew his capacity for fun.) But joy was “full of body, encountered only from intense endeavor.” Our project included plenty of both fun and joy. I temporarily moved to Philadelphia so we could work every day, which was a huge sacrifice for Ray: he was uncomfortable devoting so much time to looking back rather than making new pictures. I slowly realized the complex patterns of his practice, and our exhibition became the first to group and identify his pictures into projects. He devoted himself to the goals we collaboratively defined, thinking through each step, especially the details– every detail. I learned not just about Ray Metzker and his work, but about working.

His career began when as a graduate student at the Institute of Design in Chicago. Studying with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind, he produced a photographic series on the Chicago business district that the legendary curator Hugh Edwards selected to exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1959. After that show, Metzker produced two other complete series, and then created his best-known project, Composites (1964-66, resumed through 1984). Composites arose from his realization that a single work could be created from an entire roll of film. Employing bold graphic designs, deep shadows, clean highlights, and repeated motifs to investigate “the possibilities of synthesis,” he mounted his contact strips on boards four feet square or larger. A viewer could find a wealth of everyday information, but had no particular point of entry into the picture, so Metzker used his proclivity for humor and word play to nudge viewers’ perceptions, with titles like Hot Diggidy, Leapin’zz, and A Maze N Philadelphia. John Szarkowski presented the series in a one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art in 1967.

Again and again, Metzker would invent formal problems that led to extensive series on subjects as diverse as prone bodies, lush landscapes, pedestrians in skyscraper canyons, and reflections off of cars. His city views convey isolation, longing, and anonymity as well as formal beauty and empathy. In his project Sand Creatures, he followed beachgoers as they carved out their spots, oblivious to whatever this process exposed about their bodies, dreams, or desires. In Pictus Interruptus, he partially blocked the camera’s lens with simple objects, recording both sharp and out-of-focus forms, creating a provocative tension between photographic representation and abstraction.

Like any great artist, he kept returning to ideas and reinventing the ways to present them. Always, he balanced formal solutions with social ideas and tributes to art from many media. Though it may have cost him widespread recognition, he never played to the public or the critics, only to his own vision. He kept his life simple, reserving complexities as an option in his images. His student and later colleague Tom Goodman once asked Metzker how he worked, to which Metzker replied, “One day I would walk out the door and turn to the left; the next day I would turn to the right.”

_____

Since 1976, Anne Wilkes Tucker has been the Gus and Lyndall Wortham Curator of Photography at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston where she has curated exhibitions ranging from retrospectives such as “Unknown Territory: Photographs by Ray K. Metzker” and “Robert Frank: New York to Nova Scotia ” to historical surveys including “Czech Modernism: 1900-1945,” “This History of Japanese History,” and “WAR/PHOTOGRPAHY: Images of Armed Conflict and its Aftermath.”

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LaToya Ruby Frazier in Conversation with Dawoud Bey (Video)

On Wednesday, October 15, Aperture Foundation, in collaboration with the department of photography at Parsons The New School for Design, presented a conversation between photographers LaToya Ruby Frazier and Dawoud Bey, followed by a book signing.

The recipient of a 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship, Frazier creates work that offers an incisive exploration of the legacy of racism and economic decline in America’s small towns, as embodied by her hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania. Her work also considers the impact of that decline on the community and on her family, and creates a statement both personal and truly political: an intervention in the histories and narratives of the region. Frazier and Bey, well-known for his community-based portraiture work, discussed  Frazier’s first book, The Notion of Family (Aperture, 2014), and the ideas and issues that inform her practice, along with the ways in which photography can provoke an active conversation in the larger social world.

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‘Picasso and the Camera’ Opens at Gagosian Gallery

Photographer unknown, 'Picasso with Bob (the Great Pyrenees), Château de Boisgeloup, France,' 1932 © Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte (FABA). Courtesy Archives Olga Ruiz-Picasso and Gagosian Gallery.

Photographer unknown, Olga Picasso, Villa Belle Rose, Juan-les-Pins, France, summer 1925 © Fundación Almine y Bernard Ruiz-Picasso para el Arte (FABA). Courtesy Archives Olga Ruiz-Picasso and Gagosian Gallery.

Pablo Picasso, 'Le réservoir (Horta de Ebro),' 1909. © 2014 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY. Photo: Michele Bellot. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery.

Pablo Picasso, Autoportrait avec Portrait d’homme, 5 bis, rue Schoelcher, Paris, 1915–16 © 2014 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Maurice Aeschimann. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery.

A new exhibition at Gagosian Gallery, Picasso and the Camera, curated by Picasso biographer John Richardson, pulls together hundreds of photographs, paintings, and even pieces of furniture that braid together the precise realities of film with the prismatic, painted world of Pablo Picasso. Including never-before-seen archival images, the exhibition traces Picasso’s life through the means of the photograph, drawing from records of his works’ progress to images taken by the women in his life to studio stills by the top photographers of the day (Brassaï, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Man Ray are just a few who visited). Through this documentation and personal ephemera, these photographs reveal some of Picasso’s most experimental projects as well as his personal life.

Bernard Ruiz-Picasso, grandson of Picasso and his first wife, Olga Khokhlova, organized the exhibition in partnership with the gallery. Snapshots offer fragmented views of the artist’s life—many taken by his first wife and subsequent lovers (and vice versa) on holiday, at home, and at work—and appear on rows sliced by soaring, blown-up images of these figures, reaching the 21st Street gallery’s massive ceiling. But, perhaps most importantly, many of the images offer insight into how Picasso made his work, at a time when artists were just starting to experiment with photography.

“For Picasso, photos were very important in the sense that he was modern—he was not having models in his studio. He would do things by memory or because he had books, newspaper, or photographs, as well as objects that he cherished,” Ruiz-Picasso says.

Many of the images come from Ruiz-Picasso’s grandmother’s archive. In one, the former ballerina stands en pointe, smiling devilishly; adjacent is Picasso’s 1932 painting Le repos (1932), a Cubist imagining of ballet’s fifth position, the dancer bearing a similar grin. (However, the photographer of the original image—most likely Picasso or Khokhlova—is unknown.) Most photographs taken by Picasso were used as studies of work, or as a jumping-off point. One tableaux tracks the progress of a painting in his Montmartre studio from 1908 to 1910; another wall pairs landscape photographs taken by Picasso with the Cubist landscapes they inspired.

“Who was taking those photographs?” Ruiz-Picasso explains of these connections. “We knew that Picasso was taking photographs. We were confident. Only in the 1930s did he ask different photographers like Brassaï to do for him what he was already doing himself.”

A 1922 portrait by Man Ray finds the artist stoic yet relaxed in his Paris studio; Brassaï’s images depict Picasso’s countryside studio filled with sculptures of the 1930s in moody lighting; and in 1944, Cartier-Bresson took a photograph of the artist’s crowded Paris studio—the artist nowhere in sight. Throughout his life, Picasso maintained close, collaborative relationships with a number of photographers, namely Lucien Clergue, Edward Quinn, and André Villers.

Villers and Picasso worked together on a 1962 project in which Picasso’s cutouts of animals, faces, and masks were overlaid on landscape photographs taken by Villers. The thirty works, which span a gallery wall, make for one of the exhibition’s most striking moments, and they appear just as contemporary today as they did when they were made. As Ruiz-Picasso notes, today artists’ lives  and practices are constantly being photographed; this expansive show, which runs through January 3, 2015, offers a rare look at one of twentieth-century art’s most monumental figures.

–Alexandra Pechman 

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Jason Fulford on Visual Language: How Pictures Speak to Each Other

Jason Fulford, Scranton, PA, 2009

“Everywhere there is a grammatical mysticism. Grammar. It is not only the human being that speaks—the universe also speaks—everything speaks—unending languages.”

—Novalis

The single photograph, despite its specificity, remains ambiguous. The image is always relative to something else: another image, the mode of presentation, text, or the viewer’s own mood and memory. For this reason, context is an important tool for the photographer. Context can be used either to play on the photograph’s inherent ambiguity, or to clarify the photographer’s message. In this hands-on workshop, participants will discuss and experiment with visual language and the relationship between images. On day one, participants engage in a series of games and exercises that will teach them conceptual editing tools using found imagery. On day two, participants will work on their own and each other’s personal work.

In advance of the workshop, participants must send twenty-five found photographs and twenty-five of their own photographs, the latter preferably from a single body of work. Images may be sent to education@aperture.org.

Jason Fulford is a photographer and cofounder of J&L Books. He is a contributing editor to Blind Spot magazine and a frequent lecturer at universities. Monographs of his work include Sunbird (2000), Crushed (2003), Raising Frogs For $$$ (2006), The Mushroom Collector (2010), and Hotel Oracle (2013). He is coeditor with Gregory Halpern of The Photographer’s Playbook (Aperture, 2014), and coauthor with Tamara Shopsin of the photography book for children This Equals That (Aperture, 2014). Fulford is also a 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship recipient.

Tuition: $500 ($450 for currently enrolled photography students and Aperture Members at the $250 level and above)

This workshop has been filled. Please click here to explore more workshops. Contact education@aperture.org with any questions.

General Terms and Conditions

Please refer to all information provided regarding individual workshop details and requirements. Registration in any workshop will constitute your agreement to the terms and conditions outlined.

Aperture workshops are intended for adults 18 years or older.

If the workshop includes lunch, attendees are asked to notify Aperture at the time of registration regarding any special dietary requirements.

 

Release and Waiver of Liability

Aperture reserves the right to take photographs or videos during the operation of any educational course or part thereof, and to use the resulting photographs and videos for promotional purposes.

By booking a workshop with Aperture Foundation, participants agree to allow their likenesses to be used for promotional purposes and in media; participants who prefer that their likenesses not be used are asked to identify themselves to Aperture staff.

 

Refund/Cancellation Policy for Aperture Workshops

Aperture workshops must be paid for in advance by credit card, cash, or debit card. All fees are non-refundable if you should choose to withdraw from a workshop less than one month prior to its start date, unless we are able to fill your seat. In the event of a medical emergency, please provide a physician’s note stating the nature of the emergency, and Aperture will issue you a credit that can be applied to future workshops. Aperture reserves the right to cancel any workshop up to one week prior to the start date, in which case a full refund will be issued. A minimum of eight students is required to run a workshop.

 

Lost, Stolen, or Damaged Equipment

Please act responsibly when using any equipment provided by Aperture. We recommend, for instance, that refreshments be kept at a safe distance from all electrical appliances.

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Dawoud Bey: The Portrait in a Community Context

Dawoud Bey, DeMarco, South Shore High School, Chicago, 2003

 

 

 

 

In Dawoud Bey’s portraits, he depicts both individuals and communities. Through series such as Class Pictures, Character Project, and most recently, The Birmingham Project, Bey explores collective individuality while guiding viewers through social and historical spaces.

Join Bey for a workshop on how to create effective portraits within a community context. The workshop will begin at Aperture, with an introductory review of students’ portfolios. In addition to providing personalized feedback and tasks for improvement, Bey will present his own work and experiences as an artist. The discussion will present conceptual and practical strategies for making new work, followed by a full-day site visit to a church, school, community center, or shelter where students will work directly with subjects to photograph them in the context of their shared environment and community. Students should have a strong working knowledge of their cameras, as well as basic working knowledge of artificial lighting.

Topics for discussion will include:

• What is your interest in the subject(s)?

• What is it you want to say about your subject(s)?

• What is the relationship between the subject(s) and the space you photograph them in?

• How do you establish narrative in the photographic portrait?

• How to collaborate with and direct your subject(s)

• Location setup and lighting: what works and how to do it

Dawoud Bey (born in New York, 1953) began his career as a photographer in 1975 with a series of photographs called Harlem, USA, which was later exhibited in his first one-person exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1979. He has since had numerous exhibitions worldwide at such institutions as the Art Institute of Chicago; Barbican Centre in London; Cleveland Museum of Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Detroit Institute of Arts; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; GA; National Portrait Gallery, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among many others. The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, organized a mid-career survey of his work, Dawoud Bey: Portraits 1975–1995, which then traveled to institutions throughout the United States and Europe. A major publication of the same title was also published in conjunction with that exhibition. Class Pictures was published by Aperture in 2007, and a traveling exhibition of this work toured to museums throughout the country from 2007 to 2011.

“I like when people look at this picture of me and be like, ‘Oh, he looks like he’ll do something bad like this.’ Some people might be like, ‘Oh, he looks like a bad kid,’ or . . . like, ‘I can picture him beatin’ up somebody or taking something from somebody,’ whereas that’s not me at all. I guess there is a certain look, ’cause I’ve experienced it before. Like, teachers in school, they’re like, ‘Oh, I thought you was a bad kid, but you’re all right,’ you know. ’Cause I like to prove people wrong so I can make me look better in the end. ’Cause as they get to know me, then they’ll see—like I said, I’m a funny person—and they’ll see I’m a funny person.”

Tuition: $500 ($450 for currently enrolled photography students and Aperture members at the Dual/Friend level and above)

herRegister here

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Contact education@aperture.org with any questions.

General Terms and Conditions

Please refer to all information provided regarding individual workshop details and requirements. Registration in any workshop will constitute your agreement to the terms and conditions outlined.

Aperture workshops are intended for adults 18 years or older.

If the workshop includes lunch, attendees are asked to notify Aperture at the time of registration regarding any special dietary requirements.

 

Release and Waiver of Liability

Aperture reserves the right to take photographs or videos during the operation of any educational course or part thereof, and to use the resulting photographs and videos for promotional purposes.

By booking a workshop with Aperture Foundation, participants agree to allow their likenesses to be used for promotional purposes and in media; participants who prefer that their likenesses not be used are asked to identify themselves to Aperture staff.

 

Refund/Cancellation Policy for Aperture Workshops

Aperture workshops must be paid for in advance by credit card, cash, or debit card. All fees are non-refundable if you should choose to withdraw from a workshop less than one month prior to its start date, unless we are able to fill your seat. In the event of a medical emergency, please provide a physician’s note stating the nature of the emergency, and Aperture will issue you a credit that can be applied to future workshops. Aperture reserves the right to cancel any workshop up to one week prior to the start date, in which case a full refund will be issued. A minimum of eight students is required to run a workshop.

 

Lost, Stolen, or Damaged Equipment

Please act responsibly when using any equipment provided by Aperture. We recommend, for instance, that refreshments be kept at a safe distance from all electrical appliances.

The post Dawoud Bey: The Portrait in a Community Context appeared first on Aperture Foundation NY.

Stephen Shore in Conversation with Peter Schjeldahl (Video)

On Tuesday, October 7,  Aperture Foundation hosted a conversation with photographer Stephen Shore and acclaimed critic Peter Schjeldahl in conjunction with Shore’s forthcoming book, Stephen Shore: Survey.

The two discussed the work that spans Shore’s impressive and productive career, in light of his first-ever retrospective at Fundación MAPFRE this fall, which includes his series Early Works, Amarillo, New York City, American Surfaces, and Uncommon Places as well as Shore’s significant contributions and influence on photography over the past four decades. Shore and Schjeldahl took questions from the audience following their discussion.

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Stephen Shore: Survey




$65.00



Add to Cart

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Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb: Finding Your Vision

Alex Webb, Havana, 1993, and Rebecca Norris Webb, Blue Secondhand Prom Dress, Rochester, NY, 2012

Do you know where you’re going next with your photography—or where it’s taking you? This intensive weekend workshop will help photographers begin to understand their own distinct way of seeing the world. It will also help photographers figure out their next step photographically, from deepening a unique vision, to discovering and completing a long-term project, to translating a body of work into books and exhibitions. This is a workshop for serious amateurs and professionals alike, taught by Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb, a creative team which often edits projects and books together. This includes their two recent joint books Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb on Street Photography and the Poetic Image (Aperture, 2014) and Memory City (2014); Alex’s The Suffering of Light (Aperture, 2011); and Rebecca’s My Dakota (2012).

 

This weekend workshop will begin with reviews of each participant’s work on Saturday morning, a process that will spark a larger discussion about various photographic issues, including the process of photographing spontaneously and intuitively; how to edit photographs; how to work in cultures different from one’s own; and how long-term projects can evolve into books and exhibitions. The first day will end with a group editing exercise and an optional photography or editing assignment. Sunday will be dedicated to reviewing each participant’s assignment, as well as a series of presentations about bookmaking and exhibitions that will end with an informal Q&A session with the Webbs. Lunch will be served both days.

 

Alex Webb is best-known for his vibrant and complex color photography, often made in Latin America and the Caribbean. He has published eleven books, including Violet Isle: A Duet of Photographs from Cuba (with Rebecca Norris Webb, 2009) and The Suffering of Light (Aperture, 2011), a collection of thirty years of his color work. Webb became a full member of Magnum Photos in 1979. His work has been shown widely, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. He’s received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, and GEO, among other publications.

Rebecca Norris Webb, originally a poet, has published three photography books that explore the complicated relationship between people and the natural world: The Glass Between Us (2006), Violet Isle: A Duet of Photographs from Cuba (with Alex Webb, 2009), and My Dakota (2012). Her fourth book, Memory City (with Alex Webb, 2014), is a meditation on film, time, and the city of Rochester, New York, in what may be the last days of film as we know it. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; Ricco/Maresca Gallery, New York; and Robert Klein Gallery, Boston. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Time, National Geographic, and Le Monde Magazine.

Tuition: $600 ($540 for currently enrolled photography students and Aperture members at the $250 level and above)

Contact education@aperture.org with any questions or to register now.

General Terms and Conditions

Please refer to all information provided regarding individual workshop details and requirements. Registration in any workshop will constitute your agreement to the terms and conditions outlined.

Aperture workshops are intended for adults 18 years or older.

If the workshop includes lunch, attendees are asked to notify Aperture at the time of registration regarding any special dietary requirements.

Release and Waiver of Liability

Aperture reserves the right to take photographs or videos during the operation of any educational course or part thereof, and to use the resulting photographs and videos for promotional purposes.

By booking a workshop with Aperture Foundation, participants agree to allow their likenesses to be used for promotional purposes and in media; participants who prefer that their likenesses not be used are asked to identify themselves to Aperture staff.

Refund/Cancellation Policy for Aperture Workshops

Aperture workshops must be paid for in advance by credit card, cash, or debit card. All fees are non-refundable if you should choose to withdraw from a workshop less than one month prior to its start date, unless we are able to fill your seat. In the event of a medical emergency, please provide a physician’s note stating the nature of the emergency, and Aperture will issue you a credit that can be applied to future workshops. Aperture reserves the right to cancel any workshop up to one week prior to the start date, in which case a full refund will be issued. A minimum of eight students is required to run a workshop.

Lost, Stolen, or Damaged Equipment

Please act responsibly when using any equipment provided by Aperture. We recommend, for instance, that refreshments be kept at a safe distance from all electrical appliances.

The post Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb: Finding Your Vision appeared first on Aperture Foundation NY.

Larry Fink: Choreographing Miracles

Larry Fink, Donald Antrim, 2014

“My picture-making process is not so much about making a photograph as it is about paying extreme attention to what I’m most attracted to, what is drawing my interest. For the most part, I’m hyperstimulated at all times; my life is a massive run-on sentence of stimulation. I’m always aware of what’s holding my interest while I’m shooting, but I’m not analyzing my desires to the point of cooling things down—just to the point of understanding impulses as they come.”

—from Larry Fink on Composition and Improvisation (Aperture, 2014)

Larry Fink’s photographs merge style, vision, and content so seamlessly that their meaning strikes us as given: something known and shared—an unequivocal truth about what things looked and felt like there in front of the camera. The art of this lies in Fink’s ability and willingness to penetrate the scene at hand, even when the politics may not be to his liking. Join Larry Fink for this workshop to explore the relationship between subject and photographer, luck and happenstance, style and meaning, and the logic of geometry.

Included in the workshop will be a portfolio review followed by an individualized assignment. Students will have three weeks to complete the assignment before returning for a group critique led by Fink.

Larry Fink has been a professor at Yale University School of Art, New Haven; Cooper Union School of Art and Architecture, New York; Parsons The New School for Design, New York; and Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia. Currently, he is a tenured professor of photography at Bard College. His work has been widely exhibited in the United States, including solo exhibitions at Light Gallery, New York; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Tuition: $500 ($450 for currently enrolled photography students and Aperture members at the $250 level and above)

Contact education@aperture.org with any questions or to register now.

General Terms and Conditions

Please refer to all information provided regarding individual workshop details and requirements. Registration in any workshop will constitute your agreement to the terms and conditions outlined.

Aperture workshops are intended for adults 18 years or older.

If the workshop includes lunch, attendees are asked to notify Aperture at the time of registration regarding any special dietary requirements.

Release and Waiver of Liability

Aperture reserves the right to take photographs or videos during the operation of any educational course or part thereof, and to use the resulting photographs and videos for promotional purposes.

By booking a workshop with Aperture Foundation, participants agree to allow their likenesses to be used for promotional purposes and in media; participants who prefer that their likenesses not be used are asked to identify themselves to Aperture staff.

Refund/Cancellation Policy for Aperture Workshops

Aperture workshops must be paid for in advance by credit card, cash, or debit card. All fees are non-refundable if you should choose to withdraw from a workshop less than one month prior to its start date, unless we are able to fill your seat. In the event of a medical emergency, please provide a physician’s note stating the nature of the emergency, and Aperture will issue you a credit that can be applied to future workshops. Aperture reserves the right to cancel any workshop up to one week prior to the start date, in which case a full refund will be issued. A minimum of eight students is required to run a workshop.

Lost, Stolen, or Damaged Equipment

Please act responsibly when using any equipment provided by Aperture. We recommend, for instance, that refreshments be kept at a safe distance from all electrical appliances.

The post Larry Fink: Choreographing Miracles appeared first on Aperture Foundation NY.

The Icons by Inez & Vinoodh

This piece was originally published in Aperture Magazine issue 216, Fall 2014, Fashion. 

Every fashion designer is consistently delving into the past, basing a collection on a string of memories, like shoulder pads worn by clubbers in the ’80s or the platform shoes David Bowie put on when he performed as Ziggy Stardust. Our photography stems from a similar nostalgia. Fashion is a language made up of a visual code of status symbols. We play with this code, and sometimes subvert it; without this play on references the images become too abstract. Building a character based on myriad elements—paintings, movies, music videos, pictures of your mother—is what keeps the process exciting. You might feel the references but you can’t determine their source. What follows is a selection of images by some of fashion photography’s giants, whose work has influenced four decades of fashion, photography, and advertising and has been important to the development and motivation behind our own work. One might say that in today’s professional climate, in which clients want to see their campaign images before they are even shot, you’re only as good as your references.

 

Richard Avedon, Verushka, dress by Bill Blass, New York, January 4, 1967 © The Richard Avedon Foundation

 

 

Richard Avedon, Nadja Auermann, Christy Turlington, Claudia Schiffer,
Cindy Crawford, and Stephanie Seymour, Versace Fall/Winter 1994–95 Campaign, New York, April 14, 1994 © The Richard Avedon Foundation

Richard Avedon

Avedon had a brilliant way of turning everyone he photographed into a hero. It was not necessarily about beautifying people, but about making them into iconic versions of themselves. He was attentive to proportion and body positioning, and able to find that one quality of someone’s physiognomy that is remarkable, whether grotesque or elegant, and bring it to the foreground. No photographer controlled body language better. Everyone is inspired by this series with Verushka, which is the epitome of movement in the studio. Almost every studio shoot today is orchestrated this way.

Avedon could translate the mood of a period but never lost his own voice. His collaboration with Versace over many years, similar to that of Yves Saint Laurent and Helmut Newton, was one of the most incredible between a designer and a photographer in which both the people and the clothing look larger than life. This photograph of five of the most beautiful women in the world is so stylized and glamorous (down to their ankle socks), yet he manages to keep their exaggerated gestures feeling candid and humorous. Apart from, of course, having the best lighting in the world, you immediately know that it’s an Avedon because the people appear magnificent. He must have been truly interested in everyone he photographed.

 

 

Guy Bourdin, Charles Jourdan, Spring, 1978 © Estate of Guy Bourdin; courtesy Michael Hoppen Gallery, London; and Art + Commerce, New York

 

Guy Bourdin, Charles Jourdan, Spring, 1979 © Estate of Guy Bourdin; courtesy Michael Hoppen Gallery, London; and Art + Commerce, New York

Guy Bourdain

Growing up with a mother who went to Paris twice a year to see the runway shows and who brought back issues of Vogue Paris, I (Inez) flipped through the magazine at an early age and thought that the way Helmut Newton and Guy Bourdin portrayed women was the way women were meant to be: bold, strong, wild, erotic, and independent. Bourdin definitely informed pretty much all of my early photography.

We’ve all heard the stories of how precise and demanding he was. You can tell that everything was preconceived, that it must have started with a sketch somewhere. This in-camera collage, in the picture opposite, shows how he merged abstraction with content like no one else. His consistent use of strong pink and red makeup, pale skin, and super curly hair (ideally red) has influenced many hair and makeup artists and is basically an industry standard.

Bourdin pushed his models to assume really wild expressions; sometimes he actually scared them. He must have been reacting to the ’50s, when everything had to be very perfect, proper, and clean, and then the ’60s, when everything was “peace and love.” In his work from the ’70s you feel something dubious is happening outside the frame. That dark side is inspiring, and his use of bodies, color (his painterly approach), lighting, and humor has been a big influence, especially this image, one of Bourdin’s most genius, in which a photograph of John Travolta is propped between the model’s legs. We love the use of color along with her body position. And, as in all his pictures, your eye immediately goes to the shoes.

Annie Leibovitz, Anjelica Huston, 1985 © Annie Leibovitz / CONTACT PRESS IMAGES

 

Annie Leibovitz, Brad Pitt, Las Vegas, 1994 © Annie Leibovitz / CONTACT PRESS IMAGES

 Annie Leibovitz

We saw this image of Brad Pitt for the first time at Annie’s exhibition in Stockholm, and were struck by the audacity of the leopard-print pants, the boots, the pajama shirt, the red blanket on the bed, and the nasty carpet—the sharp contrast between him and his surroundings. Annie pushes her subjects to become part of a scene or plot. Others might photograph Pitt, a male superstar, as heroic and strong, whereas here he’s passive but dressed so flamboyantly. On the other hand, Anjelica Huston wears a riding costume, looking very masculine, especially with her almost crotch-grabbing hand gesture. Anjelica has been hugely inspiring in our world, in fashion and fashion photography, for her work with Guy Bourdin, Helmut Newton, and Bob Richardson. These pictures are both portraits and fashion images. There is a simplicity to the images and their production, but the people are absolutely magnificent.

 

Bruce Weber, Talisa, Bellport, New York, 1982 © Bruce Weber

 

Bruce Weber, Gustav, Room 500, Copacabana Palace Hotel, Rio de Janeiro, 1986 © Bruce Weber

 

Bruce Weber

Bruce makes the most masculine men on earth look as elegant and beautiful as the most beautiful women, and he makes the most feminine women look like the strongest boys. It’s androgynous without being obviously androgynous. This image at right of Talisa, in her boxing stance, is the ultimate version of that. There is a generation that is absolutely inspired by Bruce and Herb Ritts for their interpretation of this sort of androgyny. You could say Bruce comes from the line of thought that Helmut Newton started with Yves Saint Laurent, when he set women free by using masculine codes, dressing them in tuxedos and pantsuits. We’re always trying to find a duality in a person: half male, half-female, a blurring of identity.

Bruce’s 1986 book O Rio de Janeiro has been a huge influence. His documentary approach is liberating and even stimulating. You’re in a place, you have an incredible subject, the light is the light that’s there. Now make that person incredible. That’s what we admire in Bruce’s work, that there’s no artifice. But we think that’s the bottom line for every photographer: when you’re really interested in the people you’re photographing, you get more than just the registration of someone.

David Bailey, Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski, 1969 © David Bailey

 

David Bailey, Jane Birkin, 1969 © David Bailey

 

 David Bailey

Bailey was a master of freezing a moment and registering energy. In this image of Jane Birkin, the lighting is harsh and unsubtle. Bailey went after people he really wanted

to meet, or he found models on the street if he couldn’t find the right one at an agency. Humor, bravado, and flamboyance all come through in his raw, unapologetic portraiture—you sense that his models made themselves vulnerable to him. This directness is the most honest way of working with a subject. For example, if we want to shoot someone naked, we will tell them immediately. You feel that kind of directness in his work. It’s like: “This is what it is. Are you going for it? Are you submitting yourself to it? Here we go.”

 

 

Deborah Turbeville, Parco, Paris, 1986. Courtesy Staley-Wise Gallery, New York

 

Deborah Turbeville, Valentino, Vogue Paris, 1977. Courtesy Staley-Wise Gallery, New York

Deborah Turbeville

This image above has been in my scrapbooks ever since I (Inez) can remember looking at photography. The way the model’s head is wrapped. This decaying environment. The broken-doll position; the faded, uncanny romantic atmosphere that seems based on an old painting; the way Turbeville would lay out her books with pieces of tape stuck to her photographs—all of that influenced me. There’s a series that we did for The Face, with the model Maggie Rizer, based on this image; she had a headwrap like this girl’s.

Group shots, like the one above, are so difficult to do, at least successfully. Turbeville was a master at using negative space and catching everyone at the right moment. She must have been amazing at directing people in such a way that they would let go. Her models are often a little bit neurotic, a little on the verge of falling apart. They are unsure and unavailable, which we find attractive, but there is an incredible delicateness. We’re always amazed at how she manages to construct these group shots so beautifully, which is again a hard thing to do because you’re setting up a fashion photograph. You’re dealing with shoes and clothes. It’s incredible how she directed her subjects, and found a way to make things feel personal, as though there is complicity among the women.

 

Hans Feurer, Stern, 1978 Courtesy Hans Feurer / The Licensing Project

Hans Feurer

In the 1970s, Feurer opened up a studied, controlled idea of the fashion photograph while shooting for Kenzo. He worked with a long lens, at a distance, directing models with a megaphone in the early morning and at the end of the day when the light was the right temperature. Maybe using the long lens had to do with him not really wanting to engage with the women in the photographs but rather capturing them voyeuristically. The energy and the movement of the women in his photographs is sexy and creates a very unexpected body language. Women float in space in such an incredible way, showing the clothes so beautifully. When he worked with Kenzo it was a time in fashion that mixed utilitarian clothes and elegance. In this photograph at right, you’re not sure what’s going on: she’s wearing a very folkloric outfit with a military hood and gloves and mountain-climbing shoes. There are all these different messages.

This image above we honestly thought was by Guy Bourdin. But then we found out, along the way, that this was a Feurer. Let’s say there is his work with Kenzo, and then there is his work that has a sporty, fitness side to it. With this image, because of the contorted bodies and the strangeness of the composition, there is eroticism, but in his work it’s never obvious nor cheap.

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Inez & Vinoodh are a photography duo based in New York. They guest-edited Aperture‘s “Fashion” issue.

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by Inez & Vinoodh appeared first on Aperture Foundation NY.

The Open Road Aperture Foundation Benefit Party and Auction

Event co-chair and trustee Sarah Gore Reeves, Juan Carlos Castro, and Delphine Gesquiere. Photo by Max Campbell

Alec Soth and Joe Purdy. Photo by Max Campbell

 

Darius Himes and Allison Hadar. Photo by Max Campbell

 

Jock Reynolds and Board of Trustees Chair Cathy Kaplan. Photo by Max Campbell

David Campany, Denise Wolff, and Executive Director Chris Boot. Photo by Max Campbell

Bob Gruen and Elizabeth Gruen. Photo by Max Campbell

 

Kate O’Shaughnessy, Chris Denny-Brown, and Lauren O’Shaughnessy. Photo by Max Campbell

More than 800 guests attended The Open Road, Aperture Foundation’s Benefit Party, on Tuesday, October 21. The event, a tribute to Robert Frank, took its theme from the newly released Aperture book of the same title, in which David Campany chronicles the uniquely American tradition of photography about, or taken on, the road.

Photo by John Stillman

Guests register to bid through Artsy for the Open Road Aperture Foundation Benefit silent auction. Photo by Katie Booth

 

Designed by Merissa Lombardo Studios. Photo by John Stillman

A flatbed truck served as a photobooth, designed by Merissa Lombardo Studios. Photo by Katie Booth

 

At Terminal 5, vintage neon signs for “No Vacancy” as well as “Cocktails,” stripped right from the road, decorated the hangar-like space, alongside gas pumps and a pick-up truck photo booth, designed by Merissa Lombardo Studios. In the downstairs space, the Artsy-powered silent auction was well underway at 6 p.m., with more than 50 lots on sale that took the open road as cue. From a 1970s Patti Smith on the Bowery by Godlis to a near-abstract image of birds in the sky by Richard Misrach, the small works, “Postcards from the Road,” expanded on the theme of travel; souvenir postcards by Instagram and Aperture were given to guests to trade throughout the night.

Event co-chair Eve Reid, Courtney Joyner, Richard Joyner, and Cheryl Joyner. Photo by Katie Booth

Trustee Celso Gonzalez-Falla, Robert Frank, and Sondra Gilman Gonzalez-Falla. Photo by Katie Booth

Event co-chair and trustee Melissa O’Shaughnessy and trustee Annette Friedland. Photo by Katie Booth

Julie Saul, Mary Sliwa, Yancey Richardson, trustee Elaine Goldman, and Rita Galliani. © Patrick McMullan

Elizabeth Kahane and Kellie McLaughlin. Photo by Katie Booth

Lesley A. Martin, Bill Hunt, Melissa Harris, and Paul Kopeikin. Photo by Katie Booth

 

Trustee Michael Hoeh and trustee Jessica Nagle with guest. Photo by Katie Booth

 

Trustee Stuart Cooper, Tierra Dorsey, and Regina DeLuise. Photo by Katie Booth

Cory Jacobs, Justine Kurland, Jason Schmidt, and guest. Photo by Katie Booth

 

Jock Reynolds, Deputy Director Sarah McNear, Ian Wardropper, trustee Celso Gonzalez-Falla, and Sondra Gilman Gonzalez-Falla. Photo by Katie Booth

 

Executive Director Chris Boot, Bruce Davidson, Emily Davidson, and Joe Purdy. Photo by Katie Booth

 

Kristin Doggett, Olivia Bee, and Drew Doggett. Photo by John Stillman

 

Photographers from Mary Ellen Mark to Paul Graham to Aperture magazine’s fall 2014 issue guest editors Inez & Vinoodh were in attendance to celebrate. Also among the crowd were photographers Justine Kurland, featured in The Open Road, Bruce Davidson, Bob Gruen, and Instagram influencer Olivia Bee. From the world of media, Aperture was joined by Kathy Ryan of the New York Times Magazine–her book Office Romance is published by Aperture this month.

Chris Boot, Pierre-Alexis Dumas, and Board of Trustees chair Cathy Kaplan. Photo by Katie Booth

 

David Campany. Photo by Katie Booth

 

Robert Frank seated among guests. Photo by John Stillman

Before the start of the evening’s program, a new programmatic alliance between Aperture Foundation and the Hermès Foundation was announced, to begin in 2015. The two will work together to commission, exhibit, publish, and promote the art and craft of contemporary French and American photography, said Aperture Executive Director Chris Boot. In attendance was Pierre-Alexis Dumas, President of the Hermès Foundation and Artistic Director of Hermès, who gave a speech focused on the context of the partnership.

To begin the Open Road program, Chris Boot made a celebratory toast to Leica’s 100th anniversary of its original model. Author David Campany then paid tribute to Robert Frank with a moving speech about the importance of Frank’s contribution to the history of photography. “When I look at those photographs, I can feel an artist trying to give his whole nervous system to what he’s trying to do, and who can ask for anything more than that,” he said. “In a world of false confidence, what I respond to is Robert’s skepticism and his open heartedness. ”

Joe Purdy, Billy Bragg, and Alec Soth. Photo by Katie Booth

The program centered on a performance of words, photographs, and video from Alec Soth, Billy Bragg, Joe Purdy, and Isaac Gale, created for Aperture on a road trip down the Mississippi in August.

August Uribe of Phillips. Photo by Katie Booth

The Kills. Photo by Max Campbell

The Kills. Photo by Max Campbell

 

At the anticipated live auction, auctioneer August Uribe, worldwide co-head of contemporary art at Phillips, presided over the sale of 9 commissioned works by photographers, including Justine Kurland, Alex Prager, Todd Hido, and Joel Meyerowitz. Just before the bidding for the premier lot–a print by Robert Frank donated by the artist–the crowd went nearly silent; after rigorous bidding, the work fetched $95,000.

Once the sales had been set, The Kills took the stage, as guests sipped on Goose Island beer, Perrier, and Espolòn tequila cocktails, followed by a DJ set by AndrewAndrew.

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The Open Road Aperture Foundation Benefit Party was made possible with the generous support of presenting sponsor Leica Camera AG. Additional support provided by: Turon Travel, Preferred Aperture Foundation travel agency.

Supporting Sponsor: Pinch Food Design

Associate Sponsor: Phillips

Friend Sponsors: Hahnemühle USA, Fotocare, LTI Lightside Photographic Services, Espolòn Tequila, Perrier, Goose Island Beer Company, Merissa Lombardo Studios, Wölffer Estate Vineyard,

Media Sponsor: Patrick McMullan Company

All photographs by Katie Booth, Max Campbell, and John Stillman © Aperture Foundation. 

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