May/June 2007
(8.25 x 11.25 inches, 114 pages)
(8.25 x 11.25 inches, 114 pages)
Love and a very special thanks to Ann in SA for feeding my interests.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
David Goldblatt, Part 4
Here's a little trifle, interesting only because it seems incongruous for David Goldblatt's work to appear in a magazine with such a cover. Pix is a South African version of Popular Photography--tricks in PhotoShop, lenses to use, equipment reviews, etc. The text about Goldblatt is mostly platitudes and information about equipment and film.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Richard Misrach
Show and Tell today features gallery announcements for shows of Richard Misrach's work. They tend to be more graphically interesting than most.
The title of this first show is From My Front Porch. I don't really know what to say about having a view like this from one's front porch. Had I such a view from my front porch, I'm not sure I would ever leave the porch. For any reason. Might miss something.
There was a book of this work called Golden Gate, produced by Arena in 2001 and reissued in 2005 by Aperture.
This show was held in conjunction with the release of his book, The Sky Book, Arena Editions.
The On The Beach series was published in book form in 2007 by Aperture. It's huge: 20 inches wide by 16 inches. This trend toward huge books is a little disconcerting. Where do you put these in a studio apartment? I feel like I need a bookstand just to go through the book.
I looked into bookstands a couple of years ago and found that most are custom made these days (those that are of any interest stylistically or of any useful size for photography books.) But to get one big enough to hold this--40 inches across when open--would be prohibitively expensive.
Again, Chronologies was mounted concurrent with the release of a book of the same name, an overview of Misrach's career. And again, it's big--12.5 x 15.5 inches and weighs over 8 pounds--with, according to the back of this show announcement, 125 "extraordinary" reproductions. It is a nice book.
Detail of signature
Opened once
Fully opened
The title of this first show is From My Front Porch. I don't really know what to say about having a view like this from one's front porch. Had I such a view from my front porch, I'm not sure I would ever leave the porch. For any reason. Might miss something.
There was a book of this work called Golden Gate, produced by Arena in 2001 and reissued in 2005 by Aperture.
1999 - Robert Mann Gallery, NYC
(26 x 5 inch heavy glossy paper, folded three times to produce a 6.5 x 5 inch pamphlet
that opens once to a double gate-fold )
Front
(26 x 5 inch heavy glossy paper, folded three times to produce a 6.5 x 5 inch pamphlet
that opens once to a double gate-fold )
Front
Back
Opened once
Both gatefolds open
This show was held in conjunction with the release of his book, The Sky Book, Arena Editions.
2000 - Curt Marcus Gallery, NYC
(6 x 4.25 inch, stiff card, printed one side)
(6 x 4.25 inch, stiff card, printed one side)
2002 - Robert Mann Gallery, NYC
(10.5 x 8.5 stiff card)
Front
(10.5 x 8.5 stiff card)
Front
Back
The On The Beach series was published in book form in 2007 by Aperture. It's huge: 20 inches wide by 16 inches. This trend toward huge books is a little disconcerting. Where do you put these in a studio apartment? I feel like I need a bookstand just to go through the book.
I looked into bookstands a couple of years ago and found that most are custom made these days (those that are of any interest stylistically or of any useful size for photography books.) But to get one big enough to hold this--40 inches across when open--would be prohibitively expensive.
2004 - Pace/MacGill, Chelsea, NYC
(35 x 16 inch glossy poster, folded three times to produce a 8 x 8.75 inch pamphlet)
Front
(35 x 16 inch glossy poster, folded three times to produce a 8 x 8.75 inch pamphlet)
Front
Back
Opened
Again, Chronologies was mounted concurrent with the release of a book of the same name, an overview of Misrach's career. And again, it's big--12.5 x 15.5 inches and weighs over 8 pounds--with, according to the back of this show announcement, 125 "extraordinary" reproductions. It is a nice book.
2006 - Pace/MacGill, Chelsea, NYC
(20 x 16 inch heavy glossy poster, folded twice to produce a 10 x 8 inch pamphlet)
Front
(20 x 16 inch heavy glossy poster, folded twice to produce a 10 x 8 inch pamphlet)
Front
Back
Detail of signature
Opened once
Fully opened
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
David Goldblatt, Part 3
From The Star, a daily newspaper in Johannesburg, South Africa:
The Star, March 10, 2006
Goldblatt Honoured
For his Acute Perception
SA photographer wins award for his portrayal of social and political life in country of his birth
By Demian Van Der Reijden
SOUTH AFRICAN PHOTOGRAPHER David Goldblatt (75) has been awarded the 2006 Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography, the organisation announced yesterday.
"I feel honoured," Goldblatt said. "But I feel strange as well. Many people who won this prize before me are great photographers I've admired all my life. Being among the greatest in my profession is...strange."
Goldblatt won the prize for his lifelong portrayal of the social and political life in South Africa, the Hasselblad Foundation said.
"His acute historical and political perception provides a sense of the texture of daily life, and an important piece of missing information regarding life, under apartheid in South Africa," the citation noted.
He will receive his prize, a golden medal and 500,000 krona (almost R400,000), at a ceremony in December in Goteborg, Sweden. The award will be made by a member of the Swedish royal family.
The winner of the prestigious annual prize is disclosed on March 8, the anniversary of the birthday of the founder of the Hasselblad camera equipment company, Victor Hasselblad.
"I knew I won for a couple of months already, but I had to keep it a secret," Golblatt said.
"I held an exhibition on Reunion Island last December, when I got a call from Sweden. Of course there were some people close to me who also knew."
Goldblatt, who lives in Johannesburg, ventured into photography during high school. Several collections of his photographs have been published as books, and his works have been displayed at museums all over the world.
"This is actually the third prize in photography I have won, as far as I can remember. The first I won when I was only 16--it was a Meccano photography prize. The second one was in the late eighties, the Camera Austria prize. And now this. I was really surprised, because the nominees are never revealed," a happy Goldblatt concluded.
The Erna and Victor Hasselblad Foundation promotes scientific education and research in natural sciences and photography.
The Hasselblad Foundation's citation reads: "David Goldblatt's work is a life-long observation of the social and political developments within South African society.
"He has been concerned to explore the relationship between individual subjects
and the structures within which they live.
"His interest in the violent history of his country, and his awareness of the symbolic significance of architecture, form an extraordinary statement both personal and socio-political.
"Photography," in the words of David Goldblatt, reveals "something of the subtlety and ambiguity of our shifting and frequently contradictory perceptions of reality".
"The reason why Goldblatt has been chosen for the Hasselblad Award is because his photographs are acute in historical and political perception."
© The Star 2006
The Star, March 10, 2006
Goldblatt Honoured
For his Acute Perception
SA photographer wins award for his portrayal of social and political life in country of his birth
By Demian Van Der Reijden
SOUTH AFRICAN PHOTOGRAPHER David Goldblatt (75) has been awarded the 2006 Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography, the organisation announced yesterday.
"I feel honoured," Goldblatt said. "But I feel strange as well. Many people who won this prize before me are great photographers I've admired all my life. Being among the greatest in my profession is...strange."
Goldblatt won the prize for his lifelong portrayal of the social and political life in South Africa, the Hasselblad Foundation said.
"His acute historical and political perception provides a sense of the texture of daily life, and an important piece of missing information regarding life, under apartheid in South Africa," the citation noted.
He will receive his prize, a golden medal and 500,000 krona (almost R400,000), at a ceremony in December in Goteborg, Sweden. The award will be made by a member of the Swedish royal family.
The winner of the prestigious annual prize is disclosed on March 8, the anniversary of the birthday of the founder of the Hasselblad camera equipment company, Victor Hasselblad.
"I knew I won for a couple of months already, but I had to keep it a secret," Golblatt said.
"I held an exhibition on Reunion Island last December, when I got a call from Sweden. Of course there were some people close to me who also knew."
Goldblatt, who lives in Johannesburg, ventured into photography during high school. Several collections of his photographs have been published as books, and his works have been displayed at museums all over the world.
"This is actually the third prize in photography I have won, as far as I can remember. The first I won when I was only 16--it was a Meccano photography prize. The second one was in the late eighties, the Camera Austria prize. And now this. I was really surprised, because the nominees are never revealed," a happy Goldblatt concluded.
The Erna and Victor Hasselblad Foundation promotes scientific education and research in natural sciences and photography.
The Hasselblad Foundation's citation reads: "David Goldblatt's work is a life-long observation of the social and political developments within South African society.
"He has been concerned to explore the relationship between individual subjects
and the structures within which they live.
"His interest in the violent history of his country, and his awareness of the symbolic significance of architecture, form an extraordinary statement both personal and socio-political.
"Photography," in the words of David Goldblatt, reveals "something of the subtlety and ambiguity of our shifting and frequently contradictory perceptions of reality".
"The reason why Goldblatt has been chosen for the Hasselblad Award is because his photographs are acute in historical and political perception."
© The Star 2006
Love and a very special thanks to Ann in SA for feeding my interests.
Monday, February 23, 2009
David Goldblatt, Part 2
In 2006, David Goldblatt was given the Hasselblad Award. The local papers and magazines in South Africa took the opportunity to write about what the photographer had been up to. Here is one of those articles from a magazine called Style; and luckily for us, this interview appeared just before the magazine folded. I'll post one tomorrow from a newspaper.
Style, June 2006
And The Guru Sails On
Why older bodies fascinate South Africa's most famous Photographer
Why he sometimes employs an armed guard
And what David Goldblatt will wear to the Hasselblad Foundation Award in Sweden
By Hilary Prendlnl Toffoll
Photography by Nick Aldridge of Hurricanes
THE BODY ON THE COVER of Antjie Krog's latest volume of poetry, Body Bereft, belongs to a woman in her 60s. You can't see her face. What you can see are her surprisingly young-looking boobs. The photograph was taken by David Goldblatt, who is more renowned for his unsettling portraits of ordinary South Africans in ordinary situations, clothed. Those iconic images, layered with meaning, are on another stretch of more political turf altogether from these ambiguous shots of naked people past their youth.
"As a photographer l have always been aware of our bodies," he says during a visit to Cape Town, where he has his prized printmaker, Tony Meintjies. "The marks that life leaves on our bodies, the tensions that exist between the various parts...It's something I have pursued over the years. When Antjie Krog wrote to me, wanting photographs of older people, we found a shared interest."
The interest did not, however, lead to a collaboration, as it had earlier in his career with Nadine Gordimer, whose short stories inspired two of Goldblatt's 10 books. "Suddenly I was reading in the most precise pungent way about the Witwatersrand we grew up on..."
Ironically, most of his books, though sought-after collector's items, have been commercial disasters. "Copies of In Boksburg now go for about R3,000, but at the time the book just about bankrupted my friend Paul Alberts who published it. I can't live off my books. Royalties bear no relation to what goes into them.
"On the other hand, what have become ridiculously lucrative are my print sales to collectors and museums. The art market for photographs has really taken off, though I suspect it might be based on fashion. It's a bubble. The people at Michael Stevenson and Goodman Gallery work very hard on my behalf. So here I am on the doorstep of dotage actually earning a living."
He turns 76 on November 29, when he'll be in Sweden collecting the 2006 Hasselblad Foundation Award from a member of the Swedish royal family'd0the kroner equivalent of R400,000. With him will be his wife Lily, a social worker with whom he lives in what he describes as "a comic book Cape Dutch house built in 1938 on the wrong side of the tracks, in a suburb called Fellside next to Houghton." They have three children'd0Brenda, the filmmaker, in Britain, and his sons, Steven the advocate and Ronnie the website designer, in Johannesburg.
Though South Africa's most famous photographer says he hasn't received many prizes, he's been the subject of two documentaries and 13 international exhibitions, as well as endless local ones. Between 2001 and 2005 a David Goldblatt retrospective was shown in New York, Barcelona, Rotterdam, Lisbon, Oxford, Brussels, Munich and Johannesburg, and he currently has work in major public collections in New York, San Francisco, Paris, Cologne, Vienna, Perth and London. Not bad for a Randfontein boykie whose Lithuanian Jewish father had a men's outfitting store. Goldblatt worked there till the age of 32, when his father died and he sold the business to devote himself full time to photography.
It was at the height of apartheid. "I had a sort of missionary zeal to tell the world what was happening here, but I soon realised I couldn't be an activist with a camera. I'm physically a coward. I shy away from confrontation. What I'm most interested in is photographing the underbelly of society."
The pioneer of this type of reportage in his homeland, he remains careful not to exploit his subjects. "As a photographer you have considerable power. You can see what your subjects look like but they can't. You can do a hatchet job, which I confess I have done in some of my political portraits in Leadership magazine. My overriding wish is to present the complexities of reality. We're all a mixture, not wholly good or wholly bad. The challenge is to allow the viewer to find his own way into the photograph, unless it's a shot like the one I did of a Pretoria policeman in Church Square. There's no way you can read anything but evil into that face."
He's been mugged twice while working. "Now, when I work in central Johannesburg and the townships I have an armed guard. Thabo works quietly, doesn't make himself obvious. But still it's a step backwards. I always felt if I showed people I trusted them, they'd trust me."
Though he attended tbe openings of his retrospective he tends to find overseas travel disruptive. "The threads that you work with, that exist in your conscious mind, are fragile. They get lost, buggered up by air travel."
More rewarding is driving around South Africa, capturing his visions upside down and the wrong way round on large-format film. Often alone.
Though the Hasselblad invitation says 'black tie' he feels he's entitled to a certain amount of license. "I have reduced my life to the bare essentials, nothing I regard as fat." So he might opt for something traditional, like a Mandela shirt.
Style, June 2006
And The Guru Sails On
Why older bodies fascinate South Africa's most famous Photographer
Why he sometimes employs an armed guard
And what David Goldblatt will wear to the Hasselblad Foundation Award in Sweden
By Hilary Prendlnl Toffoll
Photography by Nick Aldridge of Hurricanes
THE BODY ON THE COVER of Antjie Krog's latest volume of poetry, Body Bereft, belongs to a woman in her 60s. You can't see her face. What you can see are her surprisingly young-looking boobs. The photograph was taken by David Goldblatt, who is more renowned for his unsettling portraits of ordinary South Africans in ordinary situations, clothed. Those iconic images, layered with meaning, are on another stretch of more political turf altogether from these ambiguous shots of naked people past their youth.
"As a photographer l have always been aware of our bodies," he says during a visit to Cape Town, where he has his prized printmaker, Tony Meintjies. "The marks that life leaves on our bodies, the tensions that exist between the various parts...It's something I have pursued over the years. When Antjie Krog wrote to me, wanting photographs of older people, we found a shared interest."
The interest did not, however, lead to a collaboration, as it had earlier in his career with Nadine Gordimer, whose short stories inspired two of Goldblatt's 10 books. "Suddenly I was reading in the most precise pungent way about the Witwatersrand we grew up on..."
Ironically, most of his books, though sought-after collector's items, have been commercial disasters. "Copies of In Boksburg now go for about R3,000, but at the time the book just about bankrupted my friend Paul Alberts who published it. I can't live off my books. Royalties bear no relation to what goes into them.
"On the other hand, what have become ridiculously lucrative are my print sales to collectors and museums. The art market for photographs has really taken off, though I suspect it might be based on fashion. It's a bubble. The people at Michael Stevenson and Goodman Gallery work very hard on my behalf. So here I am on the doorstep of dotage actually earning a living."
He turns 76 on November 29, when he'll be in Sweden collecting the 2006 Hasselblad Foundation Award from a member of the Swedish royal family'd0the kroner equivalent of R400,000. With him will be his wife Lily, a social worker with whom he lives in what he describes as "a comic book Cape Dutch house built in 1938 on the wrong side of the tracks, in a suburb called Fellside next to Houghton." They have three children'd0Brenda, the filmmaker, in Britain, and his sons, Steven the advocate and Ronnie the website designer, in Johannesburg.
Though South Africa's most famous photographer says he hasn't received many prizes, he's been the subject of two documentaries and 13 international exhibitions, as well as endless local ones. Between 2001 and 2005 a David Goldblatt retrospective was shown in New York, Barcelona, Rotterdam, Lisbon, Oxford, Brussels, Munich and Johannesburg, and he currently has work in major public collections in New York, San Francisco, Paris, Cologne, Vienna, Perth and London. Not bad for a Randfontein boykie whose Lithuanian Jewish father had a men's outfitting store. Goldblatt worked there till the age of 32, when his father died and he sold the business to devote himself full time to photography.
It was at the height of apartheid. "I had a sort of missionary zeal to tell the world what was happening here, but I soon realised I couldn't be an activist with a camera. I'm physically a coward. I shy away from confrontation. What I'm most interested in is photographing the underbelly of society."
The pioneer of this type of reportage in his homeland, he remains careful not to exploit his subjects. "As a photographer you have considerable power. You can see what your subjects look like but they can't. You can do a hatchet job, which I confess I have done in some of my political portraits in Leadership magazine. My overriding wish is to present the complexities of reality. We're all a mixture, not wholly good or wholly bad. The challenge is to allow the viewer to find his own way into the photograph, unless it's a shot like the one I did of a Pretoria policeman in Church Square. There's no way you can read anything but evil into that face."
He's been mugged twice while working. "Now, when I work in central Johannesburg and the townships I have an armed guard. Thabo works quietly, doesn't make himself obvious. But still it's a step backwards. I always felt if I showed people I trusted them, they'd trust me."
Though he attended tbe openings of his retrospective he tends to find overseas travel disruptive. "The threads that you work with, that exist in your conscious mind, are fragile. They get lost, buggered up by air travel."
More rewarding is driving around South Africa, capturing his visions upside down and the wrong way round on large-format film. Often alone.
Though the Hasselblad invitation says 'black tie' he feels he's entitled to a certain amount of license. "I have reduced my life to the bare essentials, nothing I regard as fat." So he might opt for something traditional, like a Mandela shirt.
Love and a very special thanks to Ann in SA for feeding my interests.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Margaret Bourke-White
While we're on the subject of Maggie Bourke-White, here are some gallery invites and booklets that accompanied shows of her work.
The first may be from an exhibit held at the George Eastman House in 1956. It doesn't say so, and the copyright is "Time, Inc.", but I've seen references to a booklet produced for the Eastman House show and it's description matches this one exactly.
Bourke-White bequeathed a collection of prints, negatives, and personal papers to the Bird Library at Syracuse University. This next booklet was produced for a show at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse. The images were culled from 2500 negatives in the library's holdings and printed by some of the students in the Photography department.
The first spread is not an optical illusion but is instead a rather significant design flaw. The first page is a half page which obscures some of the text below but not in a way that makes any sense. Type from the half page reads into the text on the next page. (Students, will they never learn?) Furthermore, the headline typeface is too cutesy next to photographs of deprivation and hard work.
Let's digress for a moment and address that photo of Maggie on the second spread where she manages to out-swashbuckle even Robert Capa. This photo reminds me of a Far Side cartoon. The idea of the cartoon was an archeologist's Indiana Jones fantasy: an Australopithecus skull in one hand and a hot babe in the other. In my younger days, I'd look at that photo of her--where you could be forgiven for thinking she had been piloting the plane behind her--and think: yes sir, that's what being a photojournalist is all about. Zipping around the globe from conflict to conflict, bringing the truth back to an eagerly waiting audience and looking great all the way.
Later, I heard Don McCullin talk about his life and that was end of that daydream.
The last ephemeral item I have is a 1975 show announcement from the Robert Schoelkopf Gallery.
Between 1966 and 1979, Schoelkopf's gallery was the only gallery in New York City that showed painting and sculpture with photography as fine art. He represented the work of Brassai and Cartier-Bresson though he was primarily interested in antiquarian photography and the work of 19th and 20th century masters such as Atget, Brady, Watkins, and Cameron.
Schoelkopf's first show of photography was of Walker Evans' work and between 1966 and 1977, the gallery held five solo exhibits of Evans (including one concurrent with the 1971 MoMA retrospective of Evans' work.) Given the economy of the 1970s, by 1979, Schoelkopf decided to more narrowly focus the gallery on painting and sculpture exclusively. He died in 1991.
And finally, moving from the ephemeral to the substantive, here is an example of her signature, in this case from a copy of Portrait of Myself.
She started the book in 1955, soon after was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, and didn't finished it until 1962. I suspect her pre-Parkinson's signature is bolder but I've not seen one so can't say for certain. The book was published in 1963 and was popular. So popular that it's a very common book. The reproductions in the book are nice. They look like gravures but I don't think they can be. Also, very nice typeface on the cover.
I respect Bourke-White's work and like quite a bit of it. During World War II she was "as close" as Capa or Smith, besides which I think that anyone who covered that war had to be brave or they had to do their reporting from another continent. An excellent overview of her work is the volume UTC published for the 1988 ICP touring show. Gorgeous binding, tipped in photo to the cover, excellent reproductions.
In the same vein (work not production values), I recently saw the powerHouse book of Wayne Miller's work. I was unfamiliar with his work and that was a revelation. Wonderful stuff. His images from aircraft carriers during WWII are very good--a bit heroic at times, but generally gritty and intimate.
The first may be from an exhibit held at the George Eastman House in 1956. It doesn't say so, and the copyright is "Time, Inc.", but I've seen references to a booklet produced for the Eastman House show and it's description matches this one exactly.
(10.5 x 7 inches, 8 pages of stiff card, saddle-stiched)
Front
Front
First spread
Second spread
Third spread
Back cover
Bourke-White bequeathed a collection of prints, negatives, and personal papers to the Bird Library at Syracuse University. This next booklet was produced for a show at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse. The images were culled from 2500 negatives in the library's holdings and printed by some of the students in the Photography department.
The first spread is not an optical illusion but is instead a rather significant design flaw. The first page is a half page which obscures some of the text below but not in a way that makes any sense. Type from the half page reads into the text on the next page. (Students, will they never learn?) Furthermore, the headline typeface is too cutesy next to photographs of deprivation and hard work.
Let's digress for a moment and address that photo of Maggie on the second spread where she manages to out-swashbuckle even Robert Capa. This photo reminds me of a Far Side cartoon. The idea of the cartoon was an archeologist's Indiana Jones fantasy: an Australopithecus skull in one hand and a hot babe in the other. In my younger days, I'd look at that photo of her--where you could be forgiven for thinking she had been piloting the plane behind her--and think: yes sir, that's what being a photojournalist is all about. Zipping around the globe from conflict to conflict, bringing the truth back to an eagerly waiting audience and looking great all the way.
Later, I heard Don McCullin talk about his life and that was end of that daydream.
(9.25 x 8 inches, stiff card cover plus 8 pages, saddle-stiched, back cover blank)
Front
Front
First spread
Second spread
Third spread
Fourth spread
Fifth spread
The last ephemeral item I have is a 1975 show announcement from the Robert Schoelkopf Gallery.
Between 1966 and 1979, Schoelkopf's gallery was the only gallery in New York City that showed painting and sculpture with photography as fine art. He represented the work of Brassai and Cartier-Bresson though he was primarily interested in antiquarian photography and the work of 19th and 20th century masters such as Atget, Brady, Watkins, and Cameron.
Schoelkopf's first show of photography was of Walker Evans' work and between 1966 and 1977, the gallery held five solo exhibits of Evans (including one concurrent with the 1971 MoMA retrospective of Evans' work.) Given the economy of the 1970s, by 1979, Schoelkopf decided to more narrowly focus the gallery on painting and sculpture exclusively. He died in 1991.
(8.5 x 11 inch stiff card folded once to produce a 5.5 x 8.5 inch card, back cover blank)
Front
Front
Open
And finally, moving from the ephemeral to the substantive, here is an example of her signature, in this case from a copy of Portrait of Myself.
She started the book in 1955, soon after was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, and didn't finished it until 1962. I suspect her pre-Parkinson's signature is bolder but I've not seen one so can't say for certain. The book was published in 1963 and was popular. So popular that it's a very common book. The reproductions in the book are nice. They look like gravures but I don't think they can be. Also, very nice typeface on the cover.
I respect Bourke-White's work and like quite a bit of it. During World War II she was "as close" as Capa or Smith, besides which I think that anyone who covered that war had to be brave or they had to do their reporting from another continent. An excellent overview of her work is the volume UTC published for the 1988 ICP touring show. Gorgeous binding, tipped in photo to the cover, excellent reproductions.
In the same vein (work not production values), I recently saw the powerHouse book of Wayne Miller's work. I was unfamiliar with his work and that was a revelation. Wonderful stuff. His images from aircraft carriers during WWII are very good--a bit heroic at times, but generally gritty and intimate.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
A Life in the Glare of Celebrity
Let's talk about David Bailey for a moment.
I never quite understood how big a deal he was in London in the 1960s and 70s. He was actually a celebrity.
So? One could be forgiven for asking. You'll die not knowing a lot of things so is this really one of the most important bits of knowledge for you to die owning?
No. But the guy's kind of interesting.
Of course, I've always known he was the model for the lead character in Blow Up, which I saw again within the last couple of years and was pleasantly surprised at how well it held up.
I certainly knew he had photographed most everyone who was anyone in those days, and that should have been a clue as to the degree of his own fame. (But then, Irving Penn did as well, in his day, and Fred Astaire never played him in a movie.)
But I didn't know he was married to Catherine Deneuve (her only marriage.) It was only for a minute or two as in the end they realized they didn't speak the same language and therefore could not communicate. Stuff like that happens I suppose when one marries and divorces more genetically-gifted women than can be found in the average September issue of Vogue. (If I was pressed for the truth I would admit they were actually married for 5 years.)
Further, he claims to have slept with 350 of the models he photographed. Well, I don't know...that's so far afield my ken that all I can imagine is that those photo-sessions must have been so exhausting and what he meant was that they were compelled to take a nap.
Be that as it may, this is all by way of presenting a couple of press photos I found of Bailey and his women. (Yes, yes, a very slight post.)
First, we have him in 1969 at the publication party for Goodbye Baby and Amen with his then-girlfriend Penelope Tree, who was a pretty big deal in her day. According to the caption, everyone who was anyone showed up.
And in 1975 with his then-wife Marie Helvin, another well-known model at the time. (Looking at this photo, I wonder: why the walking stick?) Helvin is the subject of all the images in David Bailey's Trouble and Strife, which, as a model, must have been difficult shoots for her. There aren't enough clothes in the whole book to fill Carl Perkin's Matchbox.
So given those two images, I decided to make this a "way of all flesh" sort of a rumination. The guy was handsome young and his face is pretty interesting as it ages. So here is a portrait from a 1988 article in American Photo. (Note the author.)
Here's a later pic. Same pose.
Finally, this is his publicity photo that runs in all the "contributors" pages of magazines he shoots for. This one is in Vanity Fair, edited by the above noted author.
And for goodness' sake, he still hasn't finished that cigar.
Coming up, in no particular order, some Bourke-White booklets, the 1936 Artists' Congress, and Misrach announcement cards and posters.
I never quite understood how big a deal he was in London in the 1960s and 70s. He was actually a celebrity.
So? One could be forgiven for asking. You'll die not knowing a lot of things so is this really one of the most important bits of knowledge for you to die owning?
No. But the guy's kind of interesting.
Of course, I've always known he was the model for the lead character in Blow Up, which I saw again within the last couple of years and was pleasantly surprised at how well it held up.
I certainly knew he had photographed most everyone who was anyone in those days, and that should have been a clue as to the degree of his own fame. (But then, Irving Penn did as well, in his day, and Fred Astaire never played him in a movie.)
But I didn't know he was married to Catherine Deneuve (her only marriage.) It was only for a minute or two as in the end they realized they didn't speak the same language and therefore could not communicate. Stuff like that happens I suppose when one marries and divorces more genetically-gifted women than can be found in the average September issue of Vogue. (If I was pressed for the truth I would admit they were actually married for 5 years.)
Further, he claims to have slept with 350 of the models he photographed. Well, I don't know...that's so far afield my ken that all I can imagine is that those photo-sessions must have been so exhausting and what he meant was that they were compelled to take a nap.
Be that as it may, this is all by way of presenting a couple of press photos I found of Bailey and his women. (Yes, yes, a very slight post.)
First, we have him in 1969 at the publication party for Goodbye Baby and Amen with his then-girlfriend Penelope Tree, who was a pretty big deal in her day. According to the caption, everyone who was anyone showed up.
1969
(6 x 8 inches)
Front
(6 x 8 inches)
Front
Back
And in 1975 with his then-wife Marie Helvin, another well-known model at the time. (Looking at this photo, I wonder: why the walking stick?) Helvin is the subject of all the images in David Bailey's Trouble and Strife, which, as a model, must have been difficult shoots for her. There aren't enough clothes in the whole book to fill Carl Perkin's Matchbox.
1975
(6 x 8 inches)
Front
(6 x 8 inches)
Front
Back
So given those two images, I decided to make this a "way of all flesh" sort of a rumination. The guy was handsome young and his face is pretty interesting as it ages. So here is a portrait from a 1988 article in American Photo. (Note the author.)
1988
(8 x 10.5 inches)
Cover
(8 x 10.5 inches)
Cover
Here's a later pic. Same pose.
Finally, this is his publicity photo that runs in all the "contributors" pages of magazines he shoots for. This one is in Vanity Fair, edited by the above noted author.
And for goodness' sake, he still hasn't finished that cigar.
Coming up, in no particular order, some Bourke-White booklets, the 1936 Artists' Congress, and Misrach announcement cards and posters.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Lee Friedlander at Janet Borden
For years, the Janet Borden Gallery, at Prince and Broadway in NYC, has put out some nice bits of printed matter to advertise their upcoming shows. Of course, they have the images from a prestigious group of photographers to work with: Robert Cumming, Martin Parr, Larry Sultan, John Pfahl and Jan Groover to name a few.
They've also rep'ed Lee Friedlander for many years and have managed to build an impressive gallery of cards and booklets from just his shows. I'll present them chronologically, most recent to oldest, just to save the best for last. They start roughly around the time I moved to NYC and end about the time my kids got big enough that I couldn't spend all my free time wandering around town looking at art.
First up is an announcement card for a show that coincided with the mammoth retrospective of Friedlander's work at the Museum of Modern Art, NY. That show was exhaustive and exhausting but his work is some of my favorite so I'm always happy for an excuse the revisit it. The real treat--and for that matter, totally unseen by me up until then--were the portfolios and specially bound editions of his books. (Now those would be fun to collect. Maybe my next life...)
One more digression and I promise to get to the imagery.
The MoMA show closed at the time Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Friedlander has a history with the city so he and the Borden Gallery put together quite a few prints--all shot in New Orleans--that hung in the entrance area of the museum. They were for sale, the proceeds donated to disaster relief. I remember at the time thinking that the prices were cheap but not being a print-buying sort, I was probably just unaware of the retail value of his prints. I don't know if or how much money was raised but I thought it was a nice gesture.
This show coincided with the publication of Friedlander's book American Musicians. Looking through it got me pawing through boxes of LPs to discover that I had Coltrane album with a cover shot by Friedlander. He's even credited on the jacket.
Finally, here's a cool little booklet published in conjunction with a show of self-portraits. The show was up a couple of months before the release of the second edition of Self-Portraits, published by the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco.
The scribble above his name on the second spread is his signature. You wouldn't think you could duplicate that but it's remained consistent over the years. For those not familiar with Friedlander's autograph, I've included an enlarged detail.
First spread
And before we leave the subject of Lee, there's this item from the Hindustan Times:
Nude Madonna pic nets $37,000
A nude photograph of Madonna, taken when she was a struggling dancer in 1979, was sold for $37,000 at auction - more than double the $15,000 it was expected to fetch, Christie's auction house said Friday.
The buyer was identified as a European collector.
The picture, was taken by Lee Friedlander, who found then 20-year-old Madonna after placing an ad in a local paper. The explicit black- and-white picture and six others from the session appeared in a 1985 issue of Playboy.
Another risque photograph of Madonna by Helmut Newton sold for $18,750 at the auction. The image, which shows Madonna in lingerie next to a kneeling man, had been expected to fetch $15,000. © Copyright 2007 Hindustan Times
On Valentine's day...
I didn't realize that some of the images ran in Playboy but by following the links you can see the image that sold and the ones that ran in that issue as well as 40 more from the shoot. By the way, these are definitely NSFW.
That's it for now. Next posting is going to be an attempt to draw the fashion crowd. I figure, if I could get the fashion houses advertising here I could probably retire. Or at least get some new clothes. And brother, we're all going to need some help before this downturn is over.
They've also rep'ed Lee Friedlander for many years and have managed to build an impressive gallery of cards and booklets from just his shows. I'll present them chronologically, most recent to oldest, just to save the best for last. They start roughly around the time I moved to NYC and end about the time my kids got big enough that I couldn't spend all my free time wandering around town looking at art.
First up is an announcement card for a show that coincided with the mammoth retrospective of Friedlander's work at the Museum of Modern Art, NY. That show was exhaustive and exhausting but his work is some of my favorite so I'm always happy for an excuse the revisit it. The real treat--and for that matter, totally unseen by me up until then--were the portfolios and specially bound editions of his books. (Now those would be fun to collect. Maybe my next life...)
One more digression and I promise to get to the imagery.
The MoMA show closed at the time Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Friedlander has a history with the city so he and the Borden Gallery put together quite a few prints--all shot in New Orleans--that hung in the entrance area of the museum. They were for sale, the proceeds donated to disaster relief. I remember at the time thinking that the prices were cheap but not being a print-buying sort, I was probably just unaware of the retail value of his prints. I don't know if or how much money was raised but I thought it was a nice gesture.
2005
(5.5 x 8.5 inch stiff card)
(5.5 x 8.5 inch stiff card)
One side only
2002
(13 x 6.25 inch stiff card, folded once to produce a 6.25 square, that opens horizontally)
Front
Opened
Back
2000 (7 x 5 inch stiff card)
Front
Back
1999
(6.5 x 4.5 inch stiff card)
Front
Back
This show coincided with the publication of Friedlander's book American Musicians. Looking through it got me pawing through boxes of LPs to discover that I had Coltrane album with a cover shot by Friedlander. He's even credited on the jacket.
1998
(4.5 x 6 inch stiff card)
Front
Back
Finally, here's a cool little booklet published in conjunction with a show of self-portraits. The show was up a couple of months before the release of the second edition of Self-Portraits, published by the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco.
The scribble above his name on the second spread is his signature. You wouldn't think you could duplicate that but it's remained consistent over the years. For those not familiar with Friedlander's autograph, I've included an enlarged detail.
1997
(7 x 7.5 inch stiff card cover with 8 glossy pages, saddle stitched)
Front
First spread
Signature detail
Second spread
Third spread
Fourth spread
Fifth spread
Back
And before we leave the subject of Lee, there's this item from the Hindustan Times:
Nude Madonna pic nets $37,000
A nude photograph of Madonna, taken when she was a struggling dancer in 1979, was sold for $37,000 at auction - more than double the $15,000 it was expected to fetch, Christie's auction house said Friday.
The buyer was identified as a European collector.
The picture, was taken by Lee Friedlander, who found then 20-year-old Madonna after placing an ad in a local paper. The explicit black- and-white picture and six others from the session appeared in a 1985 issue of Playboy.
Another risque photograph of Madonna by Helmut Newton sold for $18,750 at the auction. The image, which shows Madonna in lingerie next to a kneeling man, had been expected to fetch $15,000. © Copyright 2007 Hindustan Times
On Valentine's day...
I didn't realize that some of the images ran in Playboy but by following the links you can see the image that sold and the ones that ran in that issue as well as 40 more from the shoot. By the way, these are definitely NSFW.
That's it for now. Next posting is going to be an attempt to draw the fashion crowd. I figure, if I could get the fashion houses advertising here I could probably retire. Or at least get some new clothes. And brother, we're all going to need some help before this downturn is over.
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