If You Don’t like the Picture, Blame the Ass

Tijuana Donkey Show

For over a century, millions of Americans have put on sombreros and posed for tourist photographs on top of donkeys in the border city of Tijuana, Mexico. For almost as long, one of the greatest urban legends in all of California history has been the Tijuana donkey show, the much-rumored, often-referenced, but never proven south of the border sex show that is perpetually re-invented in American high school locker rooms. The Donkey Show explores the border’s intersection of myth and reality through a blend of over 200 rare tourist photographs, vintage nightlife ephemera, and pop songs born of American myths of Tijuana. The exhibition is guest curated by cultural anthropologist and graphic design historian Jim Heimann and author and music critic Josh Kun.  On view at the Santa Monica Museum of Art until April 16th, 2011. www.smmoa.org

Chasing Mirrors Through A Haze

'Graham Nash, NYC' © Graham Nash, Date Unknown

Sir Graham Nash was not only a prolific singer-songwriter, as the proverbial "and," in the band Crosby, Stills, and Nash,  he was also a brilliant photographer who, for the last five decades, has captured beautiful, haunting imagery of his own life with his camera.  Nash was born in Blackpool, Lancashire, England in 1942 at the tail end of World War 2. In the early 1960s Nash inadvertently entered the musical phenomenon known as the British Invasion with the band The Hollies.  In 1968, upon a visit to Los Angeles, Nash would meet David Crosby in Laurel Canyon and the rest was, as you say, history.  Looking through Graham Nash's photography I am reminded of thefragility of a true artist - an artist that seems entirely unaffected by his fame.  In the miasma of chaos and casualty, Nash is constantly asking himself questions, what with the common denominator reliant on self portraiture, his photographs seem more of a personal odyssey; a forty days and forty nights trek through the barren desert of queries about our own mortality.  Through the love and terror of a universe that does not answer back, there is a sense of acquiescence and peace in the not knowing, that gives Nash's images a tremendous aura of existential tranquility.  Last night, Graham Nash's song 'Simple Man,' from his first solo album Songs for Beginners (1971), came on the shuffle at around midnight, at random, from my vast library of music. Its a sad tale of love, woe, and heartbreak, written by someone way more than just a simple man - Sir Graham Nash - who turns 69 today. Text by Oliver Maxwell Kupper / Images by Graham Nash

Our Future is in the Air

Adolph de Meyer 'Dance Study' 1912 - Alfred Steiglitz Collection

Adolph de Meyer - who would become Vogue magazine's first official fashion photographer, 1913 - photographed the dancer Ninjinsky and other members of Sergei Diaghilev's troupe when l'Apres Midi d'Un Faune was presented in Paris in 1912. It has been suggested that the above photograph, the only nude by de Meyer, has some connection to the Russian ballet, but if so, remains mysterious.

It has been commonly remarked that the 20th century didn't really begin until 1910. The above photograph and a selection of other  incredible photographs from the 1910s are on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for the exhibit "Our Future Is In The Air": Photographs from the 1910s. On view till April 10, 2011.

Steven Klein: Your Hallucination Is Now Complete

Video still, Courtesy © Steven Klein Studio 2010/ Hyères Festival

Foam presents Your Hallucination Is Now Complete by fashion photographer Steven Klein as part of Amsterdam International Fashion Week. Your Hallucination Is Now Complete is a new video work by Steven Klein specially compiled for Hyères annual fashion and photography festival in 2010. This multimedia presentation is presented in the Westergoud building at Westergasterrein, near the catwalk shows. On view until January 30, 2011. www.foam.nl

Vivian Maier: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star...

#60 Undated, New York

Between January 27 and April 28, 2011, Hilaneh von Kories Gallery in Hamburg is going to show “Twinkle, twinkle, little star”, an exhibit of more than eighty images by Vivian Maier from the 50’s and 60’s. Maier, who in her life time did not publish any of her pictures, has been recently discovered as an enormously talented “street photography” artist who saw the world through the lenses of a Rolleiflex camera and captured hundreds of thousands of telling moments in the gritty streets and shops of Chicago and New York. The show is only the third of her work worldwide and the first in Germany. www.hilanehvonkoriesgallery.com

Naked Study #55

Étude de nu n°577 Print on salted paper from a collodion glass negative Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1855

Very little is known about mid-19th century photographer Louis-Camille d'Olivier.  After the the 1860s the history of this prolific photographer of early erotica simply vanished. We do know he was a progenitor of a nascent art form considered mechanical and superficial. Today, d'Olivier's multiple images of the female form are widely sought after by collectors.

Big Shots

Paloma Picasso by Andy Warhol

"Big Shots: Andy Warhol Polaroids of Celebrities" provides a look at a lesser-known but seminal body of work by the artist who was dazzled by celebrity and found much of his inspiration in the photographic image. Comprised of over thirty Polaroids of subjects ranging from Debbie Harry to Yves St. Laurent and Giorgio Armani to Yoko Ono, the pictures were taken between 1970 and 1986 on Warhol's favorite camera - the Polaroid Big Shot. Created by Polaroid for practical purposes like the quick creation of I.D. cards and passport pictures, the camera's fixed focal length and point-and-shoot mechanism were perfect for the snapshot-loving artist. www.danzigerprojects.com

Gaël Turine: Voodoo

Voodoo originated in slavery and was declared the official religion of Haiti in 2003. The belief came into existence in the sixteenth century and is based upon a merging of the beliefs and practices belonging to the vodun cult from of West African Benin with the beliefs and practices associated with Roman Catholic Christianity. Voodoo was created by African slaves who were brought to Haiti in the 16th century and still followed their traditional African beliefs but were forced to convert to the religion of their slavers. From Haiti voodoo gradually spread to the United States and the Caribbean. Voodoo practitioners, who are commonly described as vodouisants, aim their prayers to a rather large number of spirits known as Loa, or Mistè. These spirits all have their own, distinct preferences and are honoured with specific rituals, symbols, dances and music. The Loa enable the vodouisants to contact the world of the dead, amongst whom deceased relatives and ancestors. This contact is highly important because respect for, and listening to what it is that these spirits and ancestors are conveying is absolutely quintessential if one wants to attain a better and more peaceful life on earth. Between 2005 and 2010 Turine took photographs of several ceremonies, pilgrimages and rituals connected with voodoo religion. These photographs are on display at the Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdam - in the Netherlands - until March 13th 2011. More info here.

Brass Tears: Experpts from the Travel Diaries of Dustin Lynn

Brass Tears: Dustin Lynn
Brass Tears: Dustin Lynn

"And with a soft kiss I bid my adieu to Casa Voyageurs and Casablanca, speeding galliantly towards the Atlas Forrest and the ancient Medina of Fes (Fez) with the Brass Tears of Ted Curson in my ear, seat 5f, compartment 1, express train 119. Enshallah."

Text by Dustin Lynn

Tableau Vivant: Ulla von Brandenburg

Ulla von Brandenburg, 'Geister Ghosts,' Image Courtesy of Chisenhale Gallery/ Studio Voltaire

Ulla von Brandenburg's artworks are within the penumbra of tableau vivant, or 'living picture,' a nineteenth century mode of image making that includes costumes, elaborate lighting, and the immutable stillness of one or more actors. Brandenburg was born in Germany in 1978, but now lives and creates in Paris. "Working with drawing, painting, textiles, film and installation von Brandenburg investigates historical socio-cultural practices including the occult, magic, early psychoanalysis and modernist theatre..." Her works are now on display at the London Art Fair - through the 23rd. www.londonartfair.co/uk

The Lost Rolling Stones Photographs

A revealing look at the earliest days of the legendary band, captured in a collection of personal, never-before-seen photographs—the largest single trove of such important rock images ever uncovered. You can find The Lost Rolling Stones Photographs: The Bob Bonis Archive, 1964-1966 here.