Aperture's Blog, page 171

Meatyard’s “Ghosts” On View at Team Gallery in New York

Untitled, ca. 1957 / printed ca. 1957 (all images courtesy of team (gallery, inc.), fraenkel gallery, and the estate of ralph eugene meatyard)

Untitled, ca. 1959 / printed ca. 1959

Untitled, ca. 1959 / printed ca. 1959

Untitled, 1959

Untitled, 1961

Untitled, ca. 1968-72 / printed ca. 1968-72

A new exhibition at New York’s Team Gallery, titled “ghost outfit,” sets the eerie and enigmatic work of Ralph Eugene Meatyard in conversation with that of Dan Flavin and Robert Janitz, as organized by director Todd von Ammon. Through sculpture, painting, and photography, the show brings together disparate artists who all “made drawings with light,” as von Ammon put it.

Little recognized in his lifetime, Ralph Eugene Meatyard became widely known during the 1970s photo boom, shortly after his death at age 46. Born in Normal, Illinois in 1925– a detail critics often point out, given the self-taught photographer’s macabre imagery– Meatyard alternately experimented with early photographic techniques of abstraction and staged scenes rife with literary allusion.

Von Ammon first discovered Meatyard’s work as a child, in an Aperture Foundation monograph published in 1974 that his family owned. As the exhibition began to materialize around Flavin and Janitz, he felt the spot for a third dominant medium should belong to Meatyard, with “light on water as a formal corollary” uniting the three artists. He saw Meatyard as, “the opposite of Flavin, who was slouching toward this metaphysical purity while Meatyard was muddying his hands.”

Photographs in the front gallery represent the abstract, more ethereal version of Meatyard, with motion blurs, swirling perspectives, and scattered light, alongside Janitz’s painterly streaked canvases. In the back gallery, a darker image of the photographer emerges; the cool green neon of a Flavin glows against Meatyard’s black-and-white gelatin prints of skull masks, dolls, and a zombie hand reaching out from a grave.

“What ultimately happened is that the show grew this extra limb and became about the ghost, the mask, or obscurity in terms of light,” von Ammon adds, noting themes commonly attributed to Meatyard’s work. The photographs came directly from Madelyn Meatyard, the artist’s widow, who relayed to von Ammon that the show marks one of the few occasions Meatyard’s work has been shown in such a decontextualized setting, among the likes of artists such as Flavin.

“The show is about stripping these artists of their previous associations,” von Ammon says, “Giving it some kind of elevated strangeness. We don’t mitigate that, we want to amplify that.”

The show, which opened on October 19, runs through November 16– overlapping Halloween. To follow, von Ammon adds, “I didn’t plan on the show being so goth.”

–Alexandra Pechman

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The Howard Chapnick Legacy (Video)

On Monday, September 22, Aperture hosted a special evening to honor Howard Chapnick (1922–1996), a legend of photography, long-time head of the Black Star Agency, and author of The Truth Needs No Ally: Inside Photojournalism. The evening was hosted by Michael Itkoff of Daylight Books, a 2006 recipient of the Smith Fund’s Howard Chapnick Grant. Past Chapnick grantees Marie Arago, Ryan Libre, Liza Faktor, and Richard Steven Street shared some insight on their projects, with additional remarks by Smith Fund board members John Morris and Rich Clarkson, and trustees Aaron Schindler and Phil Block.

The evening was one of the W. Eugene Smith Talks, a series of collaborations between the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund and Aperture Foundation.

For more information about the Howard Chapnick Grant, visit smithfund.org.

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Bernard Plossu on Movies and Mexico

 

Bernard Plossu from the Fresson Color series, from ¡Vámonos! Bernard Plossu in México (Aperture, 2014). © Bernard Plossu.

French photographer Bernard Plossu has traveled extensively throughout his life, visiting the jungles of Chiapas in Mexico, the American West, India, the Aeolian Islands, and Niger. From the 1960s through the ’80s he made four extended trips to Mexico to photograph people, landscapes, and a culture in flux. ¡Vámonos! Bernard Plossu in México, published by Aperture this spring, captures the bohemian adventure of this traveler’s journeys. In France, his pictures have transfixed generations of young people, who cherish him much in the same way young Americans celebrate Jack Kerouac.

Regarded as a leading figure in French photography, Plossu’s photographs have been exhibited internationally, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Valencia, Spain; and Strasbourg Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, France. He has published numerous books, including Le Voyage Mexicain: L’integral, 1956–1966 (1979), African Desert (1987), Forget Me Not (2002), Bernard Plossu’s New Mexico (2006), and Europa (2011). In 2008 he was the recipient of the CRAF International Award of Photography.

Paula Kupfer spoke with Plossu earlier this year about the experience of reliving his trips to Mexico through his pictures, the influences of his youth, and the importance of cinema in his work.

Paula Kupfer: Your career has involved traveling and photographing all over the world. What is it like to revisit your work from Mexico through the publication of ¡Vámonos!?

Bernard Plossu: When I started photographing in Mexico in 1945, I was twenty years old. I was taking lots of pictures but I had no idea that it would be my future job. Looking at the book now is revealing: I see the way I was influenced by cinema, especially Westerns—especially Vera Cruz (1954), by American filmmaker Robert Aldrich. Veracruz takes place in Mexico and it was filmed on location; I didn’t know this until I traveled there myself. I think I was looking for the landscape I had seen in the film: the scenery, the marketplace. Some of my photographs seem straight out of the film.

Bernard Plossu from the series From The North Mexican Tropics, 1981, from ¡Vámonos! Bernard Plossu in México (Aperture, 2014) © Bernard Plossu

The question is: have I changed in half a century? I may have changed age-wise, but style-wise I still use only a 50 mm lens, which is a very sober vision. I still take my pictures without gimmicks.

PK: Do you continue to have a rapport with Mexico today?

BP: I’m constantly connected with all my friends from Mexico by mail. I left Mexico in 1981 and the United States in 1985; I haven’t been back since then. I got very involved working in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Poland. But I stayed in touch with all my friends—Mexicans and Americans. A few years ago, I had a show at the Monet Museum in Giverny. Many friends came from America; we had a big meeting and we decided to meet every year. This year we went to Scotland. We’re trying to stay in touch and not disappear. By now some of our children know each other, also.

Bernard Plossu from the series Mexican Journey, from ¡Vámonos! Bernard Plossu in México (Aperture, 2014) © Bernard Plossu

PK: Do you have any plans to visit Mexico again?

BP: Yes. I am planning a trip to Mexico in October. The whole gang wants to come along.

PK: What was the influence of the original photography book Le voyage mexicain when it was published in 1979?

BP: Many young people have told me they traveled with the small edition of Le voyage mexicain in their pocket—it was a small paperback. They looked to it as a model. But it wasn’t a fine-art book on Mexico; it was a book on being twenty and traveling and going anywhere and doing anything. Although it’s an important book for me, I didn’t take it that seriously. More than an art style, it was a lifestyle.

Bernard Plossu from the series Mexican Journey, from ¡Vámonos! Bernard Plossu in México (Aperture, 2014) © Bernard Plossu

PK: What was the most influential aspect of your Mexico travels?

BP: It was the discovery of some of the Mexican painters. When I was in France I had no idea about painters like Siqueiros, Orozco, and Goitia. We all know about Diego Rivera in France—he’s big like Matisse, very decorative. Siqueiros, Orozco, and Goitia are more like German Expressionists, they’re earthier. Their paintings are less beautiful; they’re rougher and better at capturing the Mexican land. These painters really changed my taste in art. I went from very traditional French paintings to very gutsy painters and this is one of the lessons—one of the influences—that I got from my Mexican travels. And photography of course, with Álvarez Bravo . . .

PK: . . . and Tina Modotti?

BP: I’m very fond of Tina Modotti—I was just going to say that. To me, she’s the lady of the twentieth century. Not only a great photographer, she was also a very strong-minded woman. Her statements, her life, her involvement, her politics—she’s an amazing figure. How do I say this without being negative? Everyone talks about Frida Kahlo. Of course, she’s special, but I wish people would talk more about Modotti.

Bernard Plossu from the series The Border, from ¡Vámonos! Bernard Plossu in México (Aperture, 2014) © Bernard Plossu

There are a couple photographers, Héctor García and Nacho López, who impressed me. They have the same style as Robert Frank, but I don’t think they’re known here in France. They’re known in Mexico; they’re major photographers—very, very strong.

PK: People have written that your work falls somewhere between two Bressons: photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson and filmmaker Robert Bresson. Where do you see yourself?

BP: What means most to me is the influence of cinema. To make it short, I’m much more interested in the mood of the photographs than in the composition of the photographs. With all respect to Cartier-Bresson, many people tell me,“You are the ‘non-decisive’ photographer.” I don’t mean to pun the master—I’m not doing a copy of Cartier-Bresson. I’m more interested in the non-decisive: the little nothings that may not be very important, apparently, but that are important, in life and in seeing with the camera.

Bernard Plossu from the series Mexican Journey, from ¡Vámonos! Bernard Plossu in México (Aperture, 2014) © Bernard Plossu

PK: ¡Vamonos! includes 35 mm black-and-white and color Fresson prints. What are your preferred types of film and processes now?

BP: In my days, in the ’60s and ’70s, I used the same film I use now: Kodak Tri-X. But the color we used was slides, Kodachrome. Very good quality, but there’s no Kodachrome left, so I use negative film. I use, like many people, Fujifilm 200 ISO. The printing is still traditional black-and-white, no gimmicks, no black skies, nothing fancy—when something is gray, it has to be gray.

Bernard Plossu from the series Mexican Journey, from ¡Vámonos! Bernard Plossu in México (Aperture, 2014) © Bernard Plossu

In color, I’m very faithful to Fresson printing. I don’t know how much you know in the States about Fresson printing. It’s a fourth-generation darkroom in Paris, in the suburbs, with charcoal prints—very matte, very grainy. They give a mood to the photograph that is similar to that of black-and-white. This is why I don’t hesitate mixing them. Now I’m working with the grandson, who is forty years old. Before that I worked with the father, and the grandfather. It’s a mystique, the Fresson prints. The people who know about it and print with it know. It’s very special.

PK: How did your childhood lead you to a career in photography?

BP: I was born in Vietnam; in those years, there were many people living in the colonies and abroad. Some people need it—like me. I could’ve never spent my whole life living in France. The world is way too big. We returned to France after the Second World War, and I was raised in Paris, on the right bank.

When I was thirteen, my father took me to the African desert, the Sahara, and it opened my eyes—the different scenery, people, smells. He bought me a small Brownie camera and I began to experiment.

From sixteen to nineteen, I didn’t go to school very much. I spent my time at the cinémathèque in Paris. I was very attracted by the imagery of cinematography, so instead of working on math, I went to see movies. I got to see all the films by Bresson, Mizoguchi, Carl Dreyer, Buñuel. I learned about images at the cinémathèque.

Bernard Plossu from the series Mexican Journey, from ¡Vámonos! Bernard Plossu in México (Aperture, 2014) © Bernard Plossu

At this time, my mother had one good book of photography, by Izis [Israëlis Bidermanas]. It’s a book about Paris, black-and-white pictures. And my godfather was married to a painter and for my birthdays, I got art books on Klee, Mondrian, Kandinsky. I made some oil paintings—they were not good. They were copies of Mondrian. Instead, it’s cinema culture that gave me my photo roots. All these together made Le voyage mexicain.

PK: Did you make any films yourself?

BP: I’ve made little films with 8 mm and Super-8 cameras. In Mexico, I filmed the markets, Oaxaca, the people. Before Mexico, in Paris, I filmed my girlfriend. She was very beautiful; she was my Monica Vitti, my Anna Karina—the actresses of nouvelle vague. I spent a lot of time with a great movie-maker my age; his name was Étienne O’Leary. He died a while ago, but was well-known. The Pompidou recently showed a retrospective of his experimental films.

He was making very abstract movies, influenced by contemporary music, like Karlheinz Stockhausen. I was just filming the streets of Paris and my girlfriend. But when I look at them now—the extracts from the films—they’re very good. I made a little book called 8 Super 8, published by Yale. I wish I could show you the book. It shows how my stills from my movie camera are just like my photographs.

Bernard Plossu, The Return, from ¡Vámonos! Bernard Plossu in México (Aperture, 2014) © Bernard Plossu

——-

Paula Kupfer is managing editor of Aperture magazine.

¡Vámonos! Bernard Plossu in México




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Photography at London’s Frieze Art Fairs

 

Ed Ruscha, Parking Lots, 1967–1999, on view at Bruce Silverstein Gallery.
Courtesy Stephen Wells/Frieze (Photograph by Stephen Wells)

Frieze London and Frieze Masters opened yesterday in London, with nearly three hundred booths spread out between two respective tents in stately Regent’s Park: the former focused on contemporary art, the latter on works ancient to modern. Large-scale photography dominated many booths, from Thomas Struth’s monumental scenes of museum gallery-goers to Andreas Gursky’s Superman diptych SHII (2014) at White Cube, or Anne Hardy’s sparkling, nearly abstracted installation scenes at Maureen Paley.

Installation by Anne Hardy, on view at Maureen Paley. Courtesy Maureen Paley, London

Other photographs popular among fair booths were portraits by Wolfgang Tillmans, including a large portrait of his former partner Isa Genzken, and still lifes and portraits by Christopher Williams, coming off the international attention given to his current MoMA retrospective.

 

Wolfgang Tillmans, Haircut, 2007. Courtesy David Zwirner, New York

A Wolfgang Tillmans portrait of Isa Genzken at Galerie Daniel Buchholz (Photograph by Alexandra Pechman)

Christopher Williams, Mustafa Kinte (Gambia), Shirt: Van Laak Shirt Kent 64 41061 Mönchengladbach, Germany Dirk Schaper Studio, Berlin, July 20, 2007, 2008. Courtesy Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne

Stylish, kitschy booths characterized this year’s edition: there was a faux collector’s living room at Helly Nahmad, while Salon 94’s booth was lemon-yellow and painted with smiley faces. A number of photo-works also acted as framing devices to differentiate the standard makeshift spaces—the set design technique used to grab the attention of over-traveled fairgoers has almost become an art form in itself. Esther Schipper Gallery, from Berlin, bedecked one side of their booth in floral wallpaper photographed by Thomas Demand, whose work was also on display at Sprüth Magers.

Thomas Demand, Hanami, 2014 (wall). Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin (Photograph by Andrea Rossetti)

Thomas Demand, Stove, 2014. (c) Thomas Demand, courtesy Sprüth Magers, London and Berlin

At Kate MacGarry, a black-and-white Goshka Macuga living room served as a backdrop while gallerists sat on lucite chairs shaped like her portrait subjects, as if populating the frame. Galleries with a strong roster of photographers such as New York’s 303 Gallery and Berlin’s Wien Lukatsch Gallery devoted most of their wall space to photo-works, from Jane and Louise Wilson to Stephen Shore to Florian Maier-Aichen.

Goshka Macuga works on view at Kate McGarry Gallery. Courtesy Stephen Wells/Frieze (Photograph by Stephen Wells)

Florian Maier-Aichen, Halbes Bild, 2014. Courtesy 303 Gallery, New York

Frieze Masters offered a historic look at the last century of photography: legs captured by Herb Ritts, a Man Ray bust, and Sally Mann were all on display at Edwynn Houk Gallery, while Sprüth Magers, for their Masters booth, highlighted multiple of Bernd and Hilla Becher’s solemn series of facades. Skartstedt showed untitled film stills by Cindy Sherman from 1980.

Bernd and Hilla Becher, from the Industrial Facades series, 1970-1996, on view at Sprüth Magers (Photograph by Alexandra Pechman)

Installation view: Work by Cindy Sherman at Skarstedt at Frieze Masters, 15 – 19 October 2014. © Cindy Sherman. Courtesy the artist and Skarstedt.

 

Cheim & Read dedicated their entire booth to William Eggleston’s “Troubled Waters” portfolio. In the fifteen dye-transfer prints taken in 1980, his subjects range from a dog hazily captured mid-stride to a brown-gold slice of field. But perhaps most attention-grabbing was the apt Freezer: on a frosty blue ledge, banal pastel foods look almost gemlike in their overflowing piles.

William Eggleston
, Freezer, 1980, from the series “Troubled Waters”
 © Eggleston Artistic Trust and courtesy Cheim & Read, New York

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Joachim Schmid Artist Talk (Video)

On September 30, 2014, Aperture Foundation, in collaboration with the Department of Photography at Parsons The New School for Design, presented a talk with artist Joachim Schmid. For decades Schmid has appropriated thousands of photographs, discovering new meanings in the currents of digital photography. For series such as Archiv (1986–99) and Estrelas amadas (2013), Schmid sourced imagery from the public sphere, using flea markets and Flickr as tools to understand trends in contemporary photography, including our fascination with constantly redocumenting the same occurrences in the same way. Schmid’s collection highlights the rapid image economy that is characteristic of the digital age, providing a real-time glimpse of culture at large.

 

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Jeff Liao in Coversation With Sean Corcoran (Video)

On Monday, September 29, Sean Corcoran curator of prints and photographs at the Museum of the City of New York joined Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao for a discussion of Liao’s new book, Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao: New York. Over the past ten years, Liao has crafted exhilarating panoramas of New York City with painstaking care and technological precision. Shooting primarily with a large-format film camera, then scanning and digitally editing the negatives, he creates enormous, detail-driven panoramas of the social and urban landscape of the city.

Assembled Realities, an exhibition of Liao’s work curated by Corcoran, opens October 15, 2014.

Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao: New York




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i-D, Jill, and The Face: Fashion’s Maverick Magazines

by Phil Bicker

Pages from i-D no. 1, August 1980, “Straight-Up.” Photographs by Steven Johnston

 

The year 1980 saw the birth in London of The Face and i-D, two independently published and quintessentially British magazines. i-D was the invention of former British Vogue art director Terry Jones, and The Face was created by former NME (New Musical Express) editor Nick Logan. These new publications signaled a bold, catalytic moment in magazine publishing, offering an escape from the constraints of mainstream media for their founders and a platform for instinctive self-expression for their contributors. As the last vestiges of punk waned and transitioned to New Wave and then New Romantic, the first issue of The Face was produced and launched by Logan using his personal savings, and i-D’s early landscape-format issues (with silk-screened graphic covers) were designed and distributed in small runs in keeping with punk’s DIY mantra and post-punk aesthetic. Both magazines covered similar facets of youth culture; however, given the respective backgrounds of their founders, it was unsurprising that from the outset The Face was music focused, while i-D was more interested in fashion. The first issues of i-D introduced the “Straight-Up”—formal full-length street portraits photographed against blank urban walls—that documented the personal and individual style of British youth. While many of the photographers responsible for those early images remain as little known as the majority of the passing strangers they documented, the names of other early contributors would become more familiar. As i-D’s format rotated from landscape to portrait, Nick Knight made its first “photographic” cover, featuring Sade, and Marc Lebon made the second, featuring Madonna.

Both photographers would become i-D regulars, integral to the magazine’s evolution. Lebon’s work was raw and visceral, an experimental mash-up, fashion photography without boundaries. Knight’s tireless creative contribution—one of his stories, art-directed by Marc Ascoli, was aptly titled “In Pursuit of Excellence”—was as inspiring as it was pivotal. For the magazine’s fifth anniversary issue, Knight created a series of one hundred portraits, a styled topology of Britain’s rich history of tribal youth culture, signaling the photographer’s constant inventive hunger; he continued to produce dozens of fashion stories, more often than not made with his trusted collaborator, stylist Simon Foxton. Along with the contributions of stylists Judy Blame, Caroline Baker, and Ray Petri, these and other stories over the next halfdecade augmented and magnified street style, taking the magazine to another level.

Pages from The Face no. 26, November 1990, “Back to Life.” Photographs by David Sims, styling by Melanie Ward

Pages from i-D no. 83, August 1990, “Romania—Paradise Lost?” Photographs by Juergen Teller; styling by Venetia Scott

Pages from i-D no. 110, November 1992, “Like Brother Like Sister: A Fashion Story.” Photographs and styling by Wolfgang Tillmans

Pages from i-D no. 39, August 1986, “Pose!” Photographs by Nick Knight, styling by Simon Foxton

The early issues of The Face inherently touched on style in their portrayals of musicians, but the magazine’s fashion coverage was, at least in its formative issues, less overt. While the irreverent i-D embodied the spirit of its logo—a wink and a smile—The Face took a more classical approach to cool. As the publication found its audience and confidence, the experimental graphics and custom typography of designer Neville Brody defined the magazine’s identity, framed its content, and spread its influence. As the publication moved beyond its music roots, it took more risks. The Face chose “style” over “fashion,” and stylist Helen Roberts initiated the magazine’s evolution with photographer Jamie Morgan. Other stylists followed—Joe McKenna, Michael Roberts, Caroline Baker, and Debbie Mason among them—but none would have the impact or lasting influence of Ray Petri, or “Sting Ray,” as he first chose to be credited. Petri was the godfather and unquestionably the leader of the creative West London “Buffalo” collective, a group of photographers (including Jamie Morgan and Marc Lebon), stylists (including Mitzi Lorenz), musicians (Neneh Cherry, Nick Kamen), artists (Barry Kamen), and models (including a fourteenyear-old Naomi Campbell), who brashly defined the look of ’80s youth culture.

Petri made the MA-1 bomber jacket ubiquitous and mixed secondhand clothes and Army surplus, skiwear, sportswear, and accessories to create a brave new world of street style, urban cowboys, rude boys and ragamuffins, men in boxer shorts, collaged gangsters, and even men in skirts. He made the radical desirable and the outrageous believable, until his career was cut short when he died in August 1989 of AIDS. His legacy would include his later work with photographer Norman Watson for Arena, but it was his original vision and idiosyncratic styling, photographed by Jamie Morgan, that provided The Face with its first “style” cover—a photograph that publisher Nick Logan would later describe as a “fuck-off image from another planet”—and some of the magazine’s most memorable stories, iconic covers, and “Killer” images. “New,” “Hard,” “Bold,” the cover lines rang out; “Buffalo: The Harder They Come the Better,” one portfolio’s introductory text announced.

While Petri reimagined British style, the short-lived Jill magazine in Paris, under the direction of stylist Elisabeth “Babeth” Dijan, also embraced liberty, and the spirit of the new. As French as i-D and The Face were British, the independently published Jill was more fashion-centric but no less influential. The magazine was alternately at times a little softer and romantic, and at times a little darker and fantastic than its English counterparts. In its short run of eleven issues, published between 1983 and 1985, Dijan’s inspired vision and styling and the photography of her contributors, including Peter Lindbergh, Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Jean-François Lepage, and a young Ellen von Unwerth, embraced the work of Jean Paul Gaultier and his generation of young French designers who turned the fashion world’s attention once more firmly back to Paris.

Pages from The Face no. 32, May 1991, “Slapheads.” Photographs by Corinne Day; styling by Melanie Ward

Pages from i-D no. 88, January 1991, “Teenage Precinct Shoppers.” Photographs by Nigel Shafran; styling by Melanie Ward

i-D no. 1, August 1980. Cover design by Terry Jones

A year after Jill folded, Dijan’s distinctive styling was featured in a special Paris issue of The Face. By the end of the ’80s Dijan had contributed a series of highly stylized fashion stories to the magazine, including the twenty-six-page comic-bookinspired opus, “Fashion Heroes,” with photographer Stephane Sednaoui. The story featured designers Jean Paul Gaultier, Thierry Mugler, Martine Sitbon, Vivienne Westwood, Azzedine Alaïa, and a fantastical, intricately collaged series of images that preempted the digital era.

As the decade turned, a new generation of photographers, including David Sims and Corinne Day, and stylists, including Melanie Ward, emerged. Both Knight as photo editor at i-D and I as art director at The Face, nurtured and published their work. Inspired by rave music and, later, “grunge,” the pared-down photographs related more to personal style and self expression than to manufactured fantasy for commercial ends.

The images that appeared in The Face and i-D at the time were an antidote to fashion’s high glamour and excess. In the summer of 1990, The Face ran an eight-page black-and-white story featuring a sixteen-yearold, then-unknown model, Kate Moss, and put her on the cover. The antithesis of the supermodel, the thin and refreshingly natural Moss stood just five-foot-seven. Photographed by Corinne Day and styled by Melanie Ward at England’s Camber Sands beach, in feather headdress, Birkenstocks, cheesecloth, and daisy chains, Moss challenged the prevalent concept of beauty and, in doing so, embodied a new attitude and spirit for the age.

Simultaneously, David Sims further challenged mainstream ideals and archetypes, photographing a story for The Face in 1990 that featured a lank-haired, unlikely “model” named Rev against a stark white studio background. Styled by Ward and choreographed by Sims, Rev looked like a gypsy, clad in his own ill-fitting secondhand pinstripes and knitwear, as he alternately floated, posed, and cut a graphic figure. In another key 1990 story that ran in i-D, stylist Venetia Scott and photographer Juergen Teller traveled across Romania, dressing and photographing real people of various ages they encountered to produce a wonderfully nuanced, understated, and ultimately unfashionable fashion story. And, recalling and refining the simple approach of i-D’s early “Straight-Ups,” Nigel Shafran in 1991 photographed the personal style of “Teenage Precinct Shoppers” unadorned.

Pages from The Face no. 22,
July 1990, “The Daisy Age.” Photographs by Corinne Day; styling by Melanie Ward

Pages from The Face no. 59, March 1985, “The Harder They Come.” Photographs by Jamie Morgan; styling by Ray Petri

Pages from Jill no. 8, February 1985, “ J’suis snob” (I’m a snob). Photographs by J.-J. Castres; art direction by Mitzi Lorenz

 

Jill no. 7, and Jill no. 10

These photographs, especially those by Day and Sims, made waves. A startled fashion world—unable to comprehend the casting, styling, or aesthetic—was at first caustic and dismissive. But the work could not be ignored. It was exciting, new, and challenging. Eventually the contagious individual visions of nonconformity made an impact on the mainstream and became a fashionable way of photographing fashion.

Both i-D and The Face continued their creative celebration of intuition, instinct, and individuality; Wolfgang Tillmans emerged through the pages of i-D in 1992 to blur and break down the boundaries between art and fashion photography, and The Face published pioneering stories by Inez & Vinoodh in 1994 and Elaine Constantine in 1997, before eventually folding in 2004. But despite both magazines’ years of commercial and cultural success, the spirit of originality and global influence that defined their work in the late ’80s and early ’90s would never be surpassed.

_____

Phil Bicker, a creative director, designer, and photography editor, was the art director of The Face from 1987 to 1991. 

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Fashion’s Maverick Magazines appeared first on Aperture Foundation NY.

Elinor Carucci: Finding the Universal in Photographic Narratives

Elinor Carucci, The woman that I still am 2, 2010

 

Join Elinor Carucci for this critique-based workshop designed to aid those who wish to observe, consider, and respond to the world around them with a camera—creating work that, while specific to the story at hand, is also universal. This workshop will enable students to enhance their vision and style while delving deeper into the emotions, layers, and nuances of their images. On the first day, Carucci will briefly introduce her own approach to storytelling in both her personal and editorial work, followed by a critique and discussion of each student’s current portfolio and recommendations for how to bring their project to the next level. New directions will be identified and assignments given for the next class meeting, occurring four weeks later to allow time for each student to make work in response to their particular assignment. Subjects and styles distinct from Carucci’s own work are very welcome, as is commercial/editorial work.

Please bring one or more bodies of work that can serve as a starting point, or that you want to expand and develop. Please bring a minimum of 25 prints or digital files.

Elinor Carucci (born in Jerusalem, 1971) graduated in 1995 from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design with a degree in photography, then moved to New York that same year. She has had solo shows at Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York; Gallery Fifty One, Antwerp; and James Hyman Gallery and Gagosian Gallery, both in London, among others. She has also been included in group shows at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and The Photographers’ Gallery, London. Her photographs are included in the collections of institutions such as MoMA, Brooklyn Museum, and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, Details, New York, W, Aperture, ARTnews, and many more publications. She was awarded the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Award for a Young Photographer in 2001, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in 2010. Carucci has published three monographs to date: Mother (2013), Diary of a Dancer (2005), and Closer (2002). Carucci currently teaches at the photography graduate program at the School of Visual Arts, New York, and is represented by Edwynn Houk Gallery.

 

Watch Elinor Carucci’s Artist Talk, which she presented at Aperture Gallery on March 6, 2014.

Contact education@aperture.org with any questions.

Terms and Conditions

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 Elinor Carucci: Finding the Universal in Photographic Narratives appeared first on Aperture Foundation NY.

Workshop: Finding the Universal in Photographic Narratives with Elinor Carucci

Elinor Carucci, The woman that I still am 2, 2010

 

Join Elinor Carucci for this critique-based workshop designed to aid those who wish to observe, consider, and respond to the world around them with a camera—creating work that, while specific to the story at hand, is also universal. This workshop will enable students to enhance their vision and style while delving deeper into the emotions, layers, and nuances of their images. On the first day, Carucci will briefly introduce her own approach to storytelling in both her personal and editorial work, followed by a critique and discussion of each student’s current portfolio and recommendations for how to bring their project to the next level. New directions will be identified and assignments given for the next class meeting, occurring four weeks later to allow time for each student to make work in response to their particular assignment. Subjects and styles distinct from Carucci’s own work are very welcome, as is commercial/editorial work.

Please bring one or more bodies of work that can serve as a starting point, or that you want to expand and develop. Please bring a minimum of 25 prints or digital files.

Elinor Carucci (born in Jerusalem, 1971) graduated in 1995 from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design with a degree in photography, then moved to New York that same year. She has had solo shows at Edwynn Houk Gallery, New York; Gallery Fifty One, Antwerp; and James Hyman Gallery and Gagosian Gallery, both in London, among others. She has also been included in group shows at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and The Photographers’ Gallery, London. Her photographs are included in the collections of institutions such as MoMA, Brooklyn Museum, and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and her work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the New Yorker, Details, New York, W, Aperture, ARTnews, and many more publications. She was awarded the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Award for a Young Photographer in 2001, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002, and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in 2010. Carucci has published three monographs to date: Mother (2013), Diary of a Dancer (2005), and Closer (2002). Carucci currently teaches at the photography graduate program at the School of Visual Arts, New York, and is represented by Edwynn Houk Gallery.

 

Watch Elinor Carucci’s Artist Talk, which she presented at Aperture Gallery on March 6, 2014.

Contact education@aperture.org with any questions.

Terms and Conditions

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 Workshop: Finding the Universal in Photographic Narratives with Elinor Carucci appeared first on Aperture Foundation NY.

Joel Meyerowitz on The Open Road (video)

Hear from photographer Joel Meyerowitz, whose photographs are featured in Aperture’s forthcoming publication The Open Road: Photography and the American Road Trip. From his backyard in Tuscany, Meyerowitz reflects on his time on the road as a photographer.

The Open Road shares its theme with The Open Road Aperture Foundation Benefit Party and Auction, an evening of art and entertainment in tribute to Robert Frank, which will take place on October 21, 2014, at Terminal 5 in New York City.

The post Joel Meyerowitz on The Open Road (video) appeared first on Aperture Foundation NY.