Dumb and Dumbo: A Brief Review of the New York Photo Festival

You think the New York Photo Festival in Dumbo was bad last year: Be reassured, it was even worse this year. Last year was the premier for the festival, so we could understand that it was somewhat disorganized. But there can't be an excuse for the  amateurism and incompetence on display this year. On the opening night,last Wednesday, four exhibitions were closed, and one had still the prints on the floor. Most offensive were the portfolio reviews: If you were a starving artist or student, you had to pay $500 to have your portfolio looked at—far too much in the current economy. In France we describe this kind of proposal by saying, Do not shoot on the ambulance. The organizers may well be unable to find any wounded suckers next year.--Jean Jacques Naudet  

Avedon in Fashion: A Brilliant New Show

A long-awaited exhibition of Richard Avedon's fashion photography opens tomorrow at the International Center of Photography in New York City. Part of a series of exhibitions of fashion photography, the new show features wonderful prints of many of the Avedon images we have come to know so well over the years. More important than the show's range is its depth. The New York Times has a nice preview of the exhibition today, including an audio guide through the material by curators Carol Squiers and Vince Aletti. There is a great deal of interesting cultural history represented in the show, which Squiers admirably describes in the audio guide. In this particular case, the history is less important to me than the personality of Avedon himself—a personality that simply permeates the work in this show. In his fashion work, Avedon seemed to somehow transform energy into spectacle. The elegance, the beauty, and the physical description in the images are byproducts of this transformation. These are wonderful qualities for fashion images to have, and other photographers have copied Avedon in an effort to replicate his success. But the elegance and the beauty seem secondary in Avedon's own work, and not the primary quality. Fashion becomes a life force in his images, not simply art direction. He wasn't capturing a look, but the vibrancy of exquisite life itself. Squiers mentions that he became famous for having happy, smiling women in many of his pictures, and that is indeed where you can feel Avedon himself, at his most wonderful.--David Schonauer

Dangerous Mission to Save Hubble and the Art of Space

NASA is about ready to send seven astronauts into space on a dangerous mission to fix the Hubble Space Telescope. The goal of the mission is to replace a worn-out, piano-sized camera with a new one. Just a few days ago, on May 4, the old camera produced one of its last images, showing a nebula called Kohoutek 4-55 (above). The repair work will require five risky space-walks. This will be the last repair done on the aging Hubble, but it will allow the telescope to make even more awesome images than it already has. There are various "top-ten" Hubble Space Shuttle Atlantis.--David Schonauer

The Cat's Eye Nebula, NGC 6543 (because it's beautiful)

Saturn (because it looks like a great sci-fi illustration)

V838 Monocerotis Light Echo (because it's where no man has gone)

Sombrero Galaxy (because it's such a cool name)

Planetary Nebula NGS 6751 (because it looks like an eye)

Globular Cluster NGS 6093 (because it looks like warp drive)

Don't Sweat the Swine Flu: Picturing Childhood Horror

Swine flu might be a little scary, but at least it's real and something we can deal with. (Memo to Staff: I'll be at home today washing my hands.) Much scarier are the horrors we can only imagine. I was, admittedly, one of those kids who worried about a lot of things. Maybe that's why I liked Joshua Hoffine's depictions of childhood fears. He notes that he does this stuff by staging his sets like movies scenes, with props and makeup, and keeps Photoshop to the minimum.
      When I look at this image, I remember that as a kid I knew as well as the next person that the only thing under my bed were some dustballs and maybe an old comic book, but that knowledge just didn't matter. In the middle of the night I really didn't feel like looking under there to find out for sure.--David Schonauer

Seven Photographers Win Guggenheim Fellowships

The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has announced the recipients of its 85th competition. Among the 180 Fellowships to artists, scientists, and scholars, seven were awarded to photographers.

Thomas Joshua Cooper, Professor and Senior Reseacher in Fine Art, The Glasgow School of Art. Seen here: Broken Boulder in the Late Afternoon Sun (Remembering Timothy O'Sullivan) Along the Snake River, Pillar Falls Canyon, Jerome Co. Idaho, USA, 2003-2004

Osamu James Nakagawa, Associate Professor of Photography, School of Fine Arts, Indiana University. Seen here: Glory, 2003


Suzanne Opton, Photographer, New York City. Seen here: an image from her Soldier Series

Anna Shteynshleyger, Faculty Member, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Seen here: City of Destiny (Portrait with Mordechai)

Cheryle St. Onge, Photographer, Durham, New Hampshire. Seen here: An image from her Offerings series.

Brian Ulrich, Adjunct Faculty Member, Columbia College, Chicago. Seen here: An image from his Retail series.

Byron Glen Wolfe, Photographer, Chico, California. Seen here: An image done in partnership with photographer Mark Klett.--David Schonauer

How a Photo Became an Icon

Here is a history of how a picture snapped at a funeral became one of the best known images in the history of photography. The piece is a review of a new book, Che's Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image, by Michael Casey. In 1960, Cuban photographer Alberto Díaz Gutiérrez (better known as Korda) photographed Ernesto Guevarva at a funeral for victims of an explosion  aboard a freighter docked in Havana. Korda radically cropped his image to focus of the charisma of the revolutionary. Later, Andy Warhol turned the image into art (above). It's a fascinating tale of what can happen when a photograph is subsumed by cultural forces.--David Schonauer

Madonna 1979 Nudes To Be Featured at Brighton Festival

Thirty years ago, a struggling dancer named Madonna Ciccone made ends meet by working as an artist's model for a couple of photographers. One was Lee Friedlander, the other Martin Schreiber. Neither photographer did much with the resulting images, until Madonna became a big star in the mid 1980s. The rest is history—bidding wars erupted between Playboy and Penthouse, and the black-and-white photos were seen by millions. Meanwhile, Madonna morphed into any number of cultural shapes and is now busy competing with Angelina Jolie to see who can adopt the most children. This May, the images by Schreiber (in my humble opinion, they were the best) will be featured at the renown Brighton Festival—or, rather, at the Brighton Fringe Festival, which runs alongside the main Festival. —David Schonauer

Artist? Good Samaritan? Maybe Both!

My very intrepid colleague Phil Ryan from Popular Photography recently sent me a link to a website that has me fascinated. Is This Your Luggage is a fine-art project. But it is also meant to perform a public service. And in theory it could all work. Apparently the creator of this site is named Luna Laboo, which is pretty great all by itself. Said Laboo goes to auctions where lost luggage is sold. (Yes, that's what airlines do when they can't find an owner.) Laboo then photographs the luggage and its contents and posts the images, hoping that the rightful owner will spot the stuff and get in touch.The real fun is the voyeurism of looking through people's bags. At least it is for me and, I suspect, Laboo too. Go here  for an interview with the artist. --David Schonauer

2009 Griffin Museum Focus Awards Go to Some Friends of Ours!

The Griffin Museum in Boston has announced the recipients of his fourth-annual Focus Awards, which honor people who are not photographers but who have made important contributions to photography. And we're happy to report that two American Photo crew-members are on this year's list.
    Contributing Editor Eliane Laffont, the former president and guiding light of the Sygma photo agency, is receiving the Lifetime Achievement Award. And Executive Editor Russell Hart will be receiving the award for photographic writing.
    Other recipients are: Robert Haggart, founder of APhotoEditor.com; and  Rosalind Smith, a writer for Shutterbug, Photographer's Forum, and Black and White. The awards will be presented on May 7.--David Schonauer

Panorama: "We're All Gonna Die: 100 Meters of Existence"

I just ran across this image. It's an interesting use of panorama, because it is about people rather than landscape. Simon Hoegsberg stood at the same spot on a railroad bridge in Berlin and shot 178 people over a period of 20 days. Then he stitched the images together into an image than is 100 meters long. All but a few of the people were unaware that he was shooting. I found it fascinating--what do you think?--David Schonauer