Victoria Olsen's Blog, page 10

One Woman, Two Women

[image error]Henri Cartier-Bresson, "Cordoba, Spain," 1933.I saw the massive, impressive Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibit at MoMA this weekend. On display until June 28, it was eye-opening in many ways. I thought I knew Cartier-Bresson's best work, but there was much that was new to me there -- the frankly emotional war work, the photo-essays for '50s magazines, and even some lovely landscapes. Cartier-Bresson, the detached photojournalist best known for his formal "decisive moment," suddenly seems the...

In Sickness and In Health

[image error]Nina Berman, "Marine"This image by Nina Berman is from her well-received series called "Marine Wedding," which is featured in the Whitney's biennial until May 30. She documents the re-entry of an injured Marine from the Iraqi war and then his marriage to the fiancee who waited at home for him. I first saw Berman's work when one of my students brought one of these photographs to class to discuss. It was the couple's wedding portrait and it showed the Marine's disfigured and reconstructed face ...

Light Box

[image error]Kim In Sook, "48 Bond Street, 2009."I stumbled on this image when I was looking for exhibits currently in NYC. It's by Korean photographer Kim In Sook and on display at the Gana Gallery until May 8.  So go now. The exhibit is called "Inside Out" and that's what it's about: lovely images like this one of glass buildings viewed from without and lit up from within.

The color here is an unexpected touch that only appears in a few photographs. Mostly the photographs are minimal and quite literally ...

Women of the Year

2010 marks the 90th anniversary of the passing of women's suffrage and it's a good year to commemorate[image error] two remarkable women: Susan B. Anthony, founder of the National Women's Suffrage Association, and her portraitist for this image, photographer Frances Benjamin Johnston. Two more energetic examples of women's potential would be hard to find. Anthony held a fragile coalition of women's rights activists together for nearly fifty years. Johnston trained as a painter in Paris, then transformed h...

Litter Art

I was struck by these images on the New York Times website today. They were posted in honor of Earth Day by photographer Bryan Graf, who collected plastic bags that littered his neighborhood and made these airy sunprints of them. The refuse is lovely now, like mysterious jellyfish floating in a tea-stained sea. Set as a series the proliferation and ordinariness of garbage is also made rare and unique in subtle ways, each bag dancing to its own private tune. Graf states that he is...

Litter Art

[image error]I was struck by these images on the New York Times website today. They were posted in honor of Earth Day by photographer Bryan Graf, who collected plastic bags that littered his neighborhood and made these airy sunprints of them. The refuse is lovely now, like mysterious jellyfish floating in a tea-stained sea. Set as a series the proliferation and ordinariness of garbage is also made rare and unique in subtle ways, each bag dancing to its own private tune. Graf states that he is...

City Story

The Flatiron building is an irresistible object for photographers.  With its triangular shape thrusting forward, it is ready for studies in depth and dimensionality. This image by Edward Steichen from 1904 adds color and the city's own reflective surfaces as more formal elements to play with. Dusk becomes an unnatural shad of teal, emphasizing the unnatural shape of the building. The structure, like the photograph, is distinctly man-made, as the tree in the foreground reminds us with its...

City Story

[image error]The Flatiron building is an irresistible object for photographers.  With its triangular shape thrusting forward, it is ready for studies in depth and dimensionality. This image by Edward Steichen from 1904 adds color and the city's own reflective surfaces as more formal elements to play with.  Dusk becomes an unnatural shad of teal, emphasizing the unnatural shape of the building.  The structure, like the photograph, is distinctly man-made, as the tree in the foreground reminds us with its...

Light and Motion

In 1909 Thomas Edison visited Mark Twain at his house in Connecticut and made the film you see before you. The intersection of these two great men, and their respective fields, at the same place and time is tantalizing. You see the familiar figure of Twain shambling around his house, then playing cards with his daughters. He could be talking, but the film is silent, and he moves with the herky-jerkiness of a Charlie Chaplin. The quality is terrible, but Twain in motion is irresistible.

There i...

Body Art

[image error]Catherine Opie, "Hand (Pig Pen)," 2009I saw Catherine Opie's retrospective at the Guggenheim last year and liked some of it very much, especially the portraits of suburban houses and ice fishermen.  But the work she's best known for--high definition, large format portraits of subculture communities-- sometimes seems too obvious to me.  The piercings, the full-body tattoos, the shaved heads, and combat boots just reinforce what we think we know about those bodies.

The image at right comes from ...