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Archive for the ‘Article’ Category

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Notable: “What happened when leading photographers including Thomas Struth, Jeff Wall and Josef Koudelka came together to discuss art, Israel and bear costumes?” Financial Times

In Article, Photographer on February 9, 2012 at 12:45 pm

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Photographer Jeff Wall on location in Israel

You don’t often see collaborations among the great contemporary fine art photography set. See how one determined man pulled it off:

Slim, tanned and dressed in a flapping white shirt and the kind of tight swimming trunks only Frenchmen can wear with confidence, Brenner has spent three decades attempting to create what he describes as “the most extensive record of Jewish life ever”. The project, mostly in a black and white documentary style, has taken in 40 countries and formed the basis for numerous exhibitions and photobooks, most notably 2003’s two-volume Diaspora: Homelands in Exile. But what Brenner initially thought of as a personal quest has become a group endeavour. “Israel is both place and metaphor, a land of radical otherness,” he explains as we walk by the pools. “And to explore that, I needed others.”

Find out who joined in on the project: Documenting Israel

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In Passing: Jan Groover, Postmodern Photographer, Dies at 68

In Article, Black and White Photography, Photographer on January 16, 2012 at 12:14 am

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Jan Groover, an untitled platinum-palladium print from 1978

A photographer that was instrumental in putting photography on the postmodern art map …. Jan Groover has died.

Instead of feast tables or objects in the rooms of the wealthy, the still-life tableaus that first brought Ms. Groover to prominence in the late 1970s focused on the everyday implements of the kitchen, arranged in the sink: fork tines, spatulas, butter-knife blades, whorled and scalloped cake pans, shot in such a way as to confound perspective and to transform light into a kind of object itself in the reflective surfaces.

The pictures resonated not only as subtle documents of feminism but also as unusually beautiful investigations of the fictions that are inseparable from facts in the conventions of photography – inquiries being similarly undertaken by other artists of the time, like Tina Barney, Laurie Simmons, Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince

For more information: NY Times Obit

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Favorites: “Best of the Best” Emerging Fine Art Photographers of 2011

In Art Museum, Article, Black and White Photography, Exhibits, Gallery, Photo Print Collector, Photographer on January 2, 2012 at 2:15 pm

Lauren E. Simonutti

The most popular article in our 2011 fine art photography coverage was the list of photographers we chose as the “Best of the Best” for 2010. The interest in this group of evolving artists at different stages in their careers exceeded our expectations many times over … but provides us encouragement to put together “the list” yet again for 2011.

The contributors to this website viewed thousands of fine art prints, attended dozens of galleries, museums and fairs throughout the year. To boil all that activity into a single brief list is obviously a difficult (but enjoyable) task and should foster days of discussion by visitors to BWGallerist.

So with that, here is the the 2011 “Best of the Best” list in no particular order:

1. Rita Bernstein

2. Hiroyasu Matsui

3. Mariana Cook

4. Michael Kirchoff

5. Tami Bone

6. Juliet Harrison

7. John Mack

8. Kelly Fitzgerald

9. Gary Salazar

10. Lauren E. Simonutti

We thank these artists for their continued progress and integrity of their work.

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Favorites: Jerry Uelsmann’s Analog Dreams

In Article, Black and White Photography, Photographer on December 12, 2011 at 10:53 am

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Jerry Uelsmann

One of our favorite artist photographers is interviewed in the NY Times today.

Q. How do you create these images?

A. When I was a graduate student, I was still trying to find this ultimate, complete, meaningful image. I would walk around with my camera and I would find something and if I thought too much, God herself could appear, and I would think, what does that mean? You’ve talked yourself out of it.

But I began finding that I had elements that I thought were interesting, but not quite interesting enough. So initially, it began with foreground/background relationships being put together. And once I accepted that idea, in my mind, that it was O.K. to do that, that really expanded the vocabulary, and it freed me up, in terms of taking pictures.

Q. There were a lot of people working visually in surrealism in the 20th century. Why photography instead of painting or collage?

A. In my case, all of my technical skills were in photography. I had taken basic painting and drawing courses, but I felt much more comfortable with photography. I began to realize that there was an incredible psychological dissonance created by combining images, because all photography has an inherent believability. Even when you look at Magritte you realize this is a painting. But from the time you’re a child, a photograph represents a specific time and place.

For more : NY Times

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Notable: ”Why Choose B&W?”, Outdoor Photographer Magazine

In Article, Black and White Photography on July 18, 2011 at 3:25 pm

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Jason Bradley

The latest issue of Outdoor Photographer has multiple articles on Black and White photography covering technique, software and hardware. One of the articles is by Jason Bradley:

In the spirit of full disclosure, I’m not opposed to color. In fact, I love my big-screen color television and color photography. But there are some subjects that are best revealed when we transform them into monochrome images.

For many, the days of Ansel Adams are remembered and revered as a time of high-art photography, and black-and-white imagery recalls a lost era of the craft. The tools have changed, but the same sense of craft endures. Instead of the wet darkroom with all the chemicals and mechanical tools, we have a digital version that makes black-and-white photography more accessible while maintaining the need to be a craftsman.

For more: Outdoor Photographer

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Notable: T. Lux Feininger, Photographer and Painter, Dies at 101

In Article, Black and White Photography, Photographer on July 14, 2011 at 11:35 am

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T. Lux Feininger’s 1927 photo “Charleston on the Bauhaus Roof,” showing the artist Xanti Schawinsky with Clemens Röseler on banjo.

Photography as art also serves a documentary purpose such as that contained in T. Lux Feininger’s recording of happenings, moments and events during the age of Bauhaus.

Influenced by the New Vision principles articulated by the Bauhaus teacher Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Mr. Feininger chronicled daily life at the Bauhaus in images that showed a playful, spontaneous spirit and a keen sense of new formal developments in photography.

“He captured what the student life was like there in a sophisticated, innovative way, even though he was totally untrained,” said Laura Muir, assistant curator of the Busch-Reisinger Museum at Harvard. “He merged photojournalism with the New Vision aesthetic of exaggerated angles, extreme close-ups and cropping.”

For more information: N Y Times

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Notable: See In Black & White, Digital Photo Pro

In Article, Black and White Photography, Software on July 8, 2011 at 3:17 pm

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In an article in the current issue of Digital Photo Pro,  George Jardine relates a methodology for preplanning your conversions from color to Black and White.

Fortunately, today’s digital processes are infinitely more flexible. Not only do we have the complete freedom to choose black-and-white rendering at anytime, but now we also have very precise control over color contrast after the fact. This is a relatively recent development, even relative to the digital revolution. Because the digital process gives us such great control over every aspect of our tones and textures (can you say, grain?), there has been an explosion of new tools specifically built to help us create any sort of look that our heart desires. But I believe that, after you have the basics of good tonal correction under your belt, it’s managing color contrast that will separate merely average black-and-white photographs from truly great interpretations. And so, color contrast in the black-and-white process is where we focus our discussion for this article.

For more on the article: Digital Photo Pro

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Preview: The Rolling Stones in Pictures, Zebra One Gallery, London

In Article, Black and White Photography, Photo Print Collector on April 18, 2011 at 8:05 am

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Keith Richards, Anita Pallenberg and their son, Marlon, in Cannes, 1971. Photograph by Dominique Tarlé

Black and White photography and the Rolling Stones seem to go together. The collection of Raj Prem contains a terrific visual record of an era now past but remaining a legend of rock and roll history.

Well, walk through the door of Prem’s Regent’s Park flat-cum-studio and one thing is clear: this man loves the Rolling Stones, and photography. Exile on Main Street is rocking out of the speakers, and on a wall in front of me is a beautiful sepia-toned print by Michael Joseph of the debauched Beggars Banquet set-up, vestigially different from the one that appeared on the 1968 album’s inner sleeves. To the right is a clutch of black-and-white photographs of the Stones by Michael Cooper, including one of Cecil Beaton in teensy shorts snapping Keith Richards by a pool in Marrakesh in 1967, and another, by Dominique Tarlé, of Keith, Anita Pallenberg, Gram and Gretchen Parsons lolling in front of an ornate mirror at Nellcôte, the villa on the Côte d’Azur where the Stones recorded Exile on Main Street in 1972. At Richards’ feet is “the Telecaster Eric Clapton had sent Keith that morning”, Prem tells me in his public school accent; his thick black hair, skinny jeans and cool cardigan belying his mid-fiftyish years. Prem knows his guitars: in a corner of his cluttered room is an original Epiphone Casino, from 1962 – “it’s the same model played by Keith Richards and John Lennon. Exactly the same. I bought it for a song when I lived in Cirencester in the early 1980s. I think it used to belong to Steve Winwood – he lives near there.”

An exhibition of photographs, ‘The Rolling Stones Come to NW3′ is at the Zebra One Gallery, 1 Perrins Court, London NW3, May 1-14

For more : Financial  Times

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Preview: Harry Calahan and Jackson Pollock, Photographs and Drawings, Pace MacGill, NYC

In Article, Black and White Photography, Exhibits, Gallery, Photo Print Collector, Photographer on April 4, 2011 at 9:35 am

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An intriguing “small show” of small works … by two giants.

The New York Times reports:

During this decade they were exploring their chosen mediums’ potentials for abstraction, all-over composition and randomness. In drawing, which admittedly was not his main mode of expression, Pollock pursued these elements in small notational images. Those here alternate between impatient riffs on Picasso and schematic renderings of natural forms, including grass, all the while flirting with Surrealist automatism.

Calahan’s 1943 photographs of light rippling across dark water – in circling lines that resulted from extended exposures – are as classically “all-over” as the drip paintings that Pollock began making several years later. Callahan went on to produce strikingly calligraphic white-on-black works by photographing the beam of a flashlight in the dark while moving his camera, as well as delicate linear tangles achieved by taking multiple exposures of bare tree branches overhead.

Through April 16.

For more information: Pace MacGill

The New York Times article: NYT

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Notable: Ansel , We Hardly Knew Ye – The Lost Negatives Update

In Article, Black and White Photography, Photo Print Collector, Photographer on March 16, 2011 at 2:52 pm

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“The Lost Negatives” of Ansel Adams will remain lost under an out of court settlement just released. As described in the New York Times today:

The parties released a statement late on Monday that called the settlement terms “confidential.” But it said the parties to the suit, filed in California, had agreed that the man, Rick Norsigian, cannot use Adams’s name in selling prints from the negatives. He can continue to sell such items “subject to a disclaimer approved by the Trust.”

“Both parties have agreed not to make any defamatory statements about the other,” the statement said.

No mention was made of what the disclaimer might say or, more important, whether any agreement was reached on how to determine if the glass negatives found at a garage sale by Mr. Norsigian 10 years ago are actually Adams’s work.

To view the negatives and the press release: Lost Negatives

To read the NY Times article: NYT

Read our prior coverage: BWGallerist

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