Friday Photo Quiz

We have to start by apologizing about last week's photo quiz. We just forgot to do it. (Spring Fever strikes deep.)

So here is the question of the week. We're a big fan of large-format photography, and the camera you see here is certainly large in format. What was the single use this camera was put to? And when was it used?
—David Schonauer

New Color Work from Robert Vizzini

Robert Vizzini is a New York-based graphic designer whom I’ve known for more than a decade. He’s also a very talented photographer who has just launched a website (see it here). Bob is one of those inspiring stories in photography—he has worked and worked at it, taking classes, attending workshops, stretching himself technically and artistically. In the late 1990s he figured out a way to make beautiful black-and-white images in very low-light settings. His latest work, which is color, is also often made at night. This image is from a series he did at Coney Island. I’ve seen way too many Coney Island pictures over the years. This one I love.
—David Schonauer

A Unique Photographic Tribute to Marilyn Monroe

This August will mark the 45th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe. There have been countless words written about her life and countless words written about her life in pictures, yet for me and I think a lot of other people there is still a mystery behind all the iconography. True Marilyn aficionados will want to make plans for a unique tribute to Marilyn at the Dayton Art Institute from April 28 to June 24. There will be an exhibition (blandly titled “Marilyn Monroe: Life as a Legend”) featuring a range of photography and other artwork by Andy Warhol, Richard Avedon, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and others.

Coinciding with the exhibition is a one-woman play, “Marilyn: Forever Blonde,” starring actress Sunny Thompson.

One of the photographers included in the show is Bert Stern, who photographed Marilyn famously. (Then again, what photographer of the era didn’t? You couldn’t lose with Marilyn.) For me, Stern’s pictures are the best, both sexy and tragic, and I’m including one here.
--David Schonauer

Where to Go and What to See

  This week I'm intrigued by two shows that each feature two photograpahers who study the space and/or moments between two extremes.

First we have the Jan Ebeling and Shauna Frischkorn exhibit at Peter Hay Halpert Fine Art in New York. Ebeling's diptych portraits of adolescent boys immersed in their respective worlds of sport (a Spanish Torrero, an Albanian wrestler) portray young men tottering between childhood and adulthood. The full-length image shows of their physical prowess and emphasizes their position as masters of their sport. But the other image, a close-up of the boy's face, often reveals the uncertainty and even fear that lies just below adolescent facades of bravado. Frischkorn's large portraits also capture adolescent boys, this time immobilized and nearly beatific as they stare at the video game their out-of-sight hands frantically control. As with Ebeling, a thoughtful commentary emerges from layered juxtapositions: inert faces vs. flying fingers, Carravagesque lighting vs. mundane subject matter, concentration vs. obliviousness.

In Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum's dual exhibit of photographs by John Humble and P.H. Emerson also deals in juxtaposition. Humble's work is contemporary, Emerson's from the last century; Humble captures Los Angeles, Emerson the marshes of England's East Anglia. But both examine the constantly evolving relationship between man and his natural/urban landscapes. During Emerson's documentation, East Anglia was undergoing what he saw as a culture-damaging change from traditional agriculture to industrialization and tourism. Humble likewise documents the city of Los Angeles as well as the Los Angeles river, often focusing on the polar experiences visible in both.

Follow the link below for details and more photography events.

~Miki Johnson

(Photo: "Spanish Torrero," © Jan Ebeling/Courtesy Peter Jay Halpert Fine Art)

America's Next Top Model Gets Violent--and Controversial

I don’t happen to watch America’s Next Top Model on the CW network. (Okay, I’ve seen it, but only because I was flipping past it to get PBS. I found it to be pretty mean-spirited and couldn’t figure out who would watch it.) So I didn’t see last week’s episode, which has infuriated feminists. (See a report on the reaction to the episode here.) In the show, hosted by Tyra Banks, contestants did photo shoots in which the would-be models posed as victims of various forms of murder, from strangulation or stabbing. The images, which you can see here, are graphic.

Normally, my default mode is to defend artistic freedom from critics—but I can’t find any justification here. This feels like exploitation. Thoughts?

In a related story about violence in fashion imagery, go here to read about the Dolce & Gabbana ad that was pulled from magazines after critics said it featured a “fantasy rape scene.”
—David Schonauer

Aperture Event: March 27

A talk and book signing by conceptual photo artist Marco Breuer will uncover and try to understand the artist's experimental process--which includes sanding away emulsion and exposing photo paper to heat and/or chemicals to create abstract pieces that push the limits of the "photography" category.

6:30 pm
Aperture Gallery
547 W. 27th St., 4th Floor
New York City

(Photo: "Tremors #3"/© Marco Breuer)

Life is Over, Again

This just in: Life magazine is dead. Again. The famed picture weekly folded in 1972 and was relaunched as a monthly in 1978, then folded again in 2000. In 2004 it was relaunched again as a Sunday newspaper insert. As you'll see here, the results were grim. In retrospect, launching a newspaper magazine at about the same time that the newspaper industry began imploding was...unfortunate timing. The newspaper version of Life was never much to speak of, but...boy, we'll never stop admiring that logo and all it has stood for. Here's a  question for everyone: Will Time Warner ever bring this title back again?
--David Schonauer

With Their Cameras on Their Sleeves

You know those days when you realize how woefully uninformed you are about a whole swath of culture? Well Tuesday was one of those for me.

On March 21, at the Soho Apple store, I caught the ninth in a series of presentation by photographers from NYCPhotobloggers.org (henceforth referred to by their own abbreviation NYCPB). Am I the only one who was previously unaware of this group? I sort of hope so, because it's great.

The idea is simple: Get a bunch of local photobloggers together so they can help each other, educate each other, support each other, and publicize for each other. And the execution is admirable, in the way you would expect from a bunch of technology-savvy New Yorkers: Nice, clean website including Yahoo Group postings, Flickr Group scrolling pics, Del.icio.us tags, and thoughtful posts from regular contributors.

Boston MFA to Open a Photo Gallery Named After Herb Ritts

Almost exactly 10 years ago, a landmark exhibition of photographs by Herb Ritts closed at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The show, called “Work,” featured 182 pieces by Ritts and was the first exhibition by a single photographer in the museum’s history. The show opened in 1996, and by the time it ended a quarter of a million people had come to see it. It elevated the reputation of Ritts even as it dramatically popularized the image of the MFA.

Now, a little more than four years after Ritts’s death, the MFA is teaming up with him again. We have heard that the museum  will be creating its first dedicated photographic gallery, and that it will be called the Herb Ritts Gallery. The space is scheduled to open sometime in 2010.

In addition, the Herb Ritts Foundation will giving 250 Ritts prints to the MFA’s permanent collection, making the museum the world’s larger holder of Ritt’s work.

A Tribute to Catherine Leroy

One of the most fascinating photographers I have ever met, Catherine Leroy, will be the topic of discussion at lecture on March 28 at the New School’s Tisch Auditorium at 66 West 12th Street in Manhattan. Organized by the Aperture Foundation. The title of program is “Women, War, and Photography: A Tribute of Catherine Leroy,” and the moderator is Robert Pledge of Contact Press Images. The panel also features photojournalists Carolyn Cole, Samantha Appleton, David Burnett, Carol Guzy, and Lynsey Addario, as well as Fred Ritchin, director of PixelPress.

Leroy was 21 and, as she once told me, “about 90 pounds, with blonde pigtails” when she took it upon herself to cover the Vietnam War in 1966.  She became something of a legend, not only for the images she made but for the danger she repeatedly put herself in. She was captured by the North Vietnamese Army during the Tet Offensive in 1968 and nearly killed while covering another battle. In a sense, the war haunted her for the rest of her life. Leroy died of cancer in July, 2006. Several months before that, American Photo ran photos from what turned out to be her last assignment—photographing several Vietnam vets who had likewise never completely gotten over the war. (Go here to read that story.) These were the same soldiers she’d once turned into icons of the war in her pictures.
—David Schonauer