Gusmano Cesaretti

Roberts & Tilton gallery in Los Angeles presents an exhibition presenting new and vintage photographs by Gusmano Cesaretti, curated by Aaron Rose. The main gallery will feature work from the early period of Cesaretti’s career (1970s) in which he immersed himself in the East Los Angeles culture. His photographs of this era celebrated a sub-culture that had rarely been captured before. The exhibition will include twenty-four vintage, unique prints that have recently been discovered and will be shown for the first time in Los Angeles. An Italian immigrant who moved to Los Angeles in the 1970s, Cesaretti quickly became fascinated by East Los Angeles. Inspired by the colors, people and graffiti that populated the East Side, he began to capture the vulnerability and uncensored quality of this area. Always honest when shooting his subjects, Cesaretti presents them as they are: violent, loving, confident, scared, full of life. It is this energy and conflict inherent in those who occupy the edges of society that drives his photographic investigations. On view until February 18, Roberts and Tilton, 5801 Washington Blvd, Culver City, CA 

Coming of Age in America

Coming of Age in America: The Photography of Joseph Szabo is the first museum retrospective of this Long Island photographer whose work presents a dual portrait of adolescence on Long Island and summers on the Island’s iconic Jones Beach. Szabo poignantly portrays teens on the cusp of adulthood, documenting his subjects in moments of uncertainty, reflection, longing, bravado, and exuberance. The restless teens and unselfconscious bathers seen in Szabo’s black and white photographs evoke timeless memories of our own, similar teenage years and summers at the beach. This exhibition opens tomorrow January 14 at the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, New York and runs until March 25 (Heckscher Museum of Art 2 Prime Avenue Huntington, NY 11743).

Josef Koudelka's Gypsies

Aperture's new edition of Koudelka: Gypsies rekindles the energy and astonishment of this foundational body of work by master photographer Josef Koudelka. Lavishly printed in a unique quadratone mix by artisanal printer Gerhard Steidl, it offers an expanded look at Cikáni (Czech for "gypsies" )--109 photographs of Roma society taken between 1962 and 1971 in then-Czechoslovakia (Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia), Romania, Hungary, France and Spain. The design and edit for this volume revisits the artist's original intention for the work, and is based on a maquette originally prepared in 1968 by Koudelka and graphic designer Milan Kopriva. Koudelka intended to publish the work in Prague, but was forced to flee Czechoslovakia, landing eventually in Paris. In 1975, Robert Delpire, Aperture and Koudelka collaborated to publish Gitans, la fin du voyage (Gypsies, in the English-language edition), a selection of 60 photographs taken in various Roma settlements around East Slovakia. Gypsies includes more than 30 never-before-published images and a new text by Roma scholar and sociologist Will Guy, who also wrote the essay for the 1975 edition. Guy contributes a new, in-depth analysis of the condition of the Roma today, including the most recent upheavals in France and Europe. Find a copy here.

Diane Arbus: A Chronology

Diane Arbus: A Chronology is the closest thing possible to a contemporaneous diary by one of the most daring, influential and controversial artists of the twentieth century. Drawn primarily from Arbus' extensive correspondence with friends, family and colleagues, personal notebooks and other unpublished writings, this beautifully produced volume reveals the private thoughts and motivations of an artist whose astonishing vision derived from the courage to see things as they are and the grace to permit them simply to be. Further rounding out Arbus' life and work are exhaustively researched footnotes that amplify the entire chronology. A section at the end of the book provides biographies for 55 family members, friends and colleagues, from Marvin Israel and Lisette Model to Weegee and August Sander. Describing the Chronology in Art in America, Leo Rubinfien noted that "Arbus... wrote as well as she photographed, and her letters, where she heard each nuance of her words, were gifts to the people who received them. Once one has been introduced to it, the beauty of her spirit permanently changes and deepens one's understanding of her pictures." The texts in Diane Arbus: A Chronology originally appeared in Diane Arbus: Revelations. This volume makes this invaluable material available in an accessible, unique paperback edition for the very first time.

Photo50 at London Art Fair

Found photograph by Julie Cockburn

London Art Fair presents Photo50, its  annual showcase of contemporary photography at the  Business Design Centre, Islington, from 18–22 January 2012. With the title The New Alchemists: contemporary  photographers transcending the print, curator Sue Steward  has selected 50 works by contemporary artists whose practice sees them adorn, transform, subvert or deface the  photographic print. They are: Veronica Bailey, David Birkin, Aliki Braine, Julie Cockburn, Melinda Gibson, Noemie Goudal, Joy Gregory, Walter Hugo, Lesley Parkinson, Jorma Puranen, Esther Teichmann and Michael Wolf.  This exhibition focuses on new techniques and approaches to re-presenting the photographic image and how artists are involving other media. Whether reclaiming traditional techniques, exploiting digital developments or employing other forms of craft and media, the work presented in Photo50 challenges our assumptions about what a photograph is, or can be. London Art Fair is on view at the Design Center in Islington, London, January 18 to January 22, 

Classic Photographs Los Angeles

Los Angeles this weekend: Classic Photographs Los Angeles show. Pieces by master photographers such as Berenice Abbott, Ansel Adams, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Frantisek Drtikol, Elliott Erwitt, André Kertész, Wayne Miller, Joseph Sterling, Edmund Teske and Garry Winogrand. We'll have work contemporary photographers such as Raymond Meeks, Mark Steinmetz and Jason Langer as well as by a number of Japanese photographers including Emi Anrakuji, Yasuhiro Ishimoto, Daido Moriyama, Harry Shigeta and Issei Suda. On view January 14 & 15, 2012, Helms Daylight Studio, 3221 Hutchison Ave. #E, Los Angeles.

Zoe Strauss: Ten Years

Daddy Tattoo

Zoe Strauss: Ten Years is a mid-career retrospective of the acclaimed photographer’s work and the first critical assessment of her ten-year project to exhibit her photographs annually in a space beneath a section of Interstate-95 (I-95) in South Philadelphia. Strauss’s subjects are broad but her primary focus is on working-class experience, including the most disenfranchised people and places. Her photographs offer a poignant, troubling portrait of contemporary America. Strauss (American, born 1970) states that her ambition is “to create an epic narrative that reflects the beauty and struggle of everyday life.” Zoe Strauss: Ten Years will offer one version of that narrative, presenting approximately one hundred and fifty of her photographs, along with slideshows displaying more of her imagery, and installations on billboards throughout Philadelphia that will extend the exhibition beyond the Museum. Zoe Strauss: Ten Years is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from January 14 to April 22, 2012.

Bertien van Manen: Let's Sit Down Down Before We Go

"I have to like the people I photograph. I need to feel an attraction, a fascination." Bertien van Manen. Buried deep in Bertien van Manen's images is an intimacy between photographer and subject. The viewer trespasses on the private moments in the frame, catching a glare over breakfast, unheard words between friends, both party to the action and intruding on it. Between 1991 and 2009 van Manen travelled across Asia and Eastern Europe with a small, analogue camera, learning the local language and engaging with the people who would become the subject of this collection. Let's sit down before we go is a portrait of the places van Manen visited and the people she met, stayed with and became friends with during her travels across Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Siberia, Tatarstan and Uzbekistan. Across nearly two decades, with the exception of big cities, little about the scenery in van Manen's photographs has changed. The relative sameness of Russia's appearance binds the images together, leaving us no indication of the time lapse from one photograph to another. The title, Let's sit down before we go represents an old Russian tradition, the practice of taking a moment, stopping to think before embarking on a journey, to consider where we will be travelling to and why. A special edition of  Let's Sit Down Before We Go has recently been released by Mack Books and includes a hand made c-type print and first edition copy housed in a bespoke embossed linen clam-shell portfolio box.  Let's Sit Down Before We Go, the series, is also on view at the In Camera gallery in Paris until January 21. 

CATHERINE OPIE

Stephen Friedman Gallery presents an exhibition of early and recent work by Catherine Opie. Opie is considered to be one of the most important American photographers of her generation. This is her fourth solo exhibition at the gallery and follows her highly acclaimed solo mid-career surveys at the Guggenheim, New York in 2008-2009 and at the ICA, Boston, earlier this year. Shown here for the very first time is an early group of portraits from the artist's black and white 'Girlfriends' series and a major new body of landscape photographs, taken at sea. On view until January 23, Stephen Friedman Gallery, 25-28 Old Burlington Street, London.

New Photographers @ Danziger Gallery

Equanimous_danziger_gallery_chris_levine

New Photographers presents five artists exhibiting in New York for the first time. The artists are not linked thematically or stylistically, but what they have in common is their distinctive approach to photography and the originality of their images. In this show, each body of work creates its own context. Artists include CHRIS LEVINE, YUJI OBATA, SCHELTENS AND ABBENES, PATRICK SMITH, TEREZA VLCKOVA. New Photographers is on view at the Danziger Gallery, January 12 through February 25, 527 West 23rd Street, New York.

Distance is Where the Heart Is

ZACKARY_DRUCKER_AMOSMAC_distance_LUIS_DE_JESUS

“Distance is where the heart is, home is where you hang your heart” is an intimate collaboration between two near-strangers—Zackary Drucker, the LA-based photographer, video and performance artist, and Amos Mac—the creator and publisher of Original Plumbing. Executed over a long, snowed-in Christmas weekend at Drucker’s childhood home in Syracuse, New York, the images combine elements of personal history, performance documentation, and exhibitionism. The resulting intervention is also an experiment in cross-identity representation; a dialogue between Mac, a trans man, and Drucker, a trans woman. The exhibition marks the official release of this unique suite of 25 limited-edition photographs, a number of which appear in the first issue of Mac’s new publication, Translady Fanzine. "Distance is where the heart is, home is where you hang your heart" is on view at the Luis de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles until January 22.

The Protest Box by Martin Parr

Martin Parr’s collection of photobooks is one of the finest to have ever been assembled and The Protest Box, published by Steidl, is a box set which brings together five books from that collection as facsimile reprints. Parr has selected diverse books which each deal with the subject of protest in quite different ways. From the documentation of various protest movements to the actual book being a form of protest, all these reprints are gems within the history of photographic publishing. A few are known but many are new, even to the connoisseur of photography books. All these books are virtually impossible to locate, so these reprints will make a substantial contribution to our understanding of this sub-genre of the photobook. The box set is accompanied by a booklet which includes an introduction by Martin Parr, an essay discussing the wider context of these books by Gerry Badger, and English translations of all the texts in the books.

Younger Than They Appear

“RJ installed a mirror above his bed so he could watch himself fuck. In my opinion, any sane woman who came over to fuck would roll their eyes and leave but he fucks weirdos so I guess it’s par for the course. I think it’s pretty cheesy but to each their own, I guess. One thing he didn’t take into consideration was that our ceiling is slanted ‘cause it’s a converted attic. So, when he installed the mirror and laid on his bed, he looked up and because of the slant didn’t see the bed but instead saw the doorway on the other side of his room. Fucking hilarious oversight!!! So, he has to lie upside down on the bed so he can see himself. To demonstrate the needed position, Rob pretended to buttfuck Ledger on the bed. Because RJ fucks young girls, I installed a sign that said, “WARNING- Objects in mirror are younger than they appear.” He wasn’t impressed but everyone else in the house got a good laugh.” From the journals of photographer Ben Pobjoy