[BOOKS] Naked Hollywood: Weegee in Los Angeles

In 1946, the tabloid photographer known as Weegee relocated from New York City to Los Angeles. Abandoning the grisly crime scenes for which he was best known, Weegee trained his camera instead on Hollywood celebrities, starlets, autograph seekers, and shop-window mannequins, sometimes distorted through trick lenses and multiple exposures. “Now I could really photograph the subjects I liked,” said Weegee of his newfound career in Los Angeles, “I was free.” Presenting approximately 200 photographs, many of which have never before been shown, the book, Naked Hollywood: Weegee in Los Angeles, explores Weegee’s related work as an author, filmmaker, and photo-essayist.  You can purchase the book here. 

Koto Bolofo: La Maison

Koto Bolofo is the first photographer to have been granted unlimited access to the secret workshops of Hermès, the house famous for its leather goods, scarves and other beautiful objects. La Maison, a new book by Steidl, itself an elaborate object comprising eleven volumes and the result of seven years' work, showcases Bolofo's painstaking documentation of the Hermès universe.

Corrine Day: The Face

It is testament of Day’s talent as a photographer that she was able to capture an air of informality in her images. Her photographs do not feel staged or posed, and the people she chose to work with do not feel removed from the everyday world. In their familiarity, Day captured the zeitgeist of early 90s Britain. As Sheryl Garrett editor of The Face explained, the magazine “set out a new editorial task of expressing the underground movements of the 90’s. Acid house, ecstasy and the massive, rapid rise of rave culture was the magazine’s inspiration. It felt like a time for smiling rather than pouting, for bright colours and openness and also for something more natural and real - which Corinne Day’s images tapped into very clearly”. Corinne Day’s daring and provocative images burst into collective consciousness through the pages of The Face magazine in the early 1990s. An exhibition Gimpel Fils gallery in London revisits some of Day’s earliest photographs created for The Face, providing an opportunity to assess the on-going artistic legacy of her exceptional vision. On view until October 1.

Art Meets Rock

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RICHARD KERN, Nirvana, Courtney Love
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left: WILLIAM ENGLISH, Vivienne Westwood in Sex, 1975, courtesy of Maggs Brothers, London right: URS LÜTHI, Un'isola dell'aria, 1975, particolare, 28 fotografie, cm60x50 cad, Collezione Fabio e Virginia Gori
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IAIN FORSYTH & JANE POLLARD, A Rock'N'Roll Suicide, 1998, Live performance, Photo: David Cowlard courtesy Kate MacGarry, London

Museo Pecci di Prato in Florence, Italy presents an exhibition entiled LIVE! Art Meets Rock. The exhibition, curated by Luca Beatrice and Marco Bazzini, adopts a suggestive perspective to show how the history of contemporary art and of rock music have followed parallel paths to contribute to the construction of the cultural universe of the last forty years. Music and the visual arts have crossed and overlapped, over time, engendering a unified and consistent landscape; what draws them together is the performative dimension, articulated according to the specific occasion within an exhibition or a concert. LIVE!offers a parallel and original reading of historic events by exhibiting paintings, sculptures, installations, video clips, artworks, LPs, graphic works, photographs, magazines and films. Artists include Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, William English, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Cindy Sherman, David LaChapelle and more. The exhibition will be accompanied by Live!, a book published by Rizzoli with contributions by Luca Beatrice and Marco Bazzini. LIVE! Art Meets Rock view at the Museo Pecci di Prato until September 16.  

1000 Kisses

On view now at The MAMBO (museum of modern art in Bogotá) – works by Colombian artist Ruven Afanador. The exhibition has been awaited for more than twenty years and features his greatest works. The exhibition, entitled “I’ll be your mirror, Ruven Afanador: 80 Portraits”, features pictures from the artist’s books: Torero (2001), Shadow (2004) and Thousand kisses (2009). In his last book, Thousand Kisses, the photographer drew his attention to various flamenco dancers. The artist is fascinated by staging the body, so he did not choose any old dance at random. Ruven Afanador was born in Columbia in the sixteenth century city fo Bucaramanga, La Ciudad de los Parques high in the scenic plateau above Rio de Oro. Afanador's photography is a celebration of the poetry of bodies motion. Exhibition is on view until October 9.

Causes and Spirits: William Carter

“Watch any mother kneeling beside her toddler, pointing and explaining what they are looking at. Our urge to see, and to connect, starts there.” William Carter.  This book is both an autobiography of William Carter and a study of people. Carter’s photographs, beginning in 1960, take the viewer on his travels throughout the world, from home to New York and Kurdistan, from Dublin to Gaza. Whether working as a photojournalist or purely for himself, Carter focuses on the gestures and expressions of people (sometimes charming, sometimes unsettling), and on streets and landscapes that often long for human presence. The subtitle “Photographs from Five Decades” might seem misleading as it implies a “typical” photobook where the sequence of images is primary. For Carter, however, it is the interplay between his photographs and writings that allows him to see into himself and his subjects: indeed he calls himself a “photographer-writer”. In Carter’s words, his work aims to capture the “hidden implications, eye-blink compositions, odd ironies and happy accidents” of the world. – Steidl

Room Editions

Los Angeles based photographer Patrick Hoelck's solo exhibition entitled “Room Editions” will open in Los Angeles this Thursday. “Room Editions” will showcase limited edition prints that have been hand picked from Hoelck's self-published book "Polaroid Hotel". The exhibition is curated by Daniel Salin and hosted by Stephen Webster. The opening will take place on August 25th between 7pm and 10pm at 202 N Rodeo Dr. Beverly Hills, CA 90210. The show will run through September 18th at Stephen Webster's private gallery in Beverly Hills.