Roxanne Lowit's Nightlife Diary

For the last 30 years Roxanne Lowit has been taking backstage and nightlife photographs of some of the biggest luminaries in the world of fashion, culture and art. Lowit started taking pictures in the late 70s with her Kodak 110 Instamatic, photographing her own designs at New York fashion shows. She was soon covering all designers in Paris where her friends — models like Jerry Hall — would sneak her backstage. It was there that she found her place (and career) in fashion. On view now at the members only Parlor Club in New York, where Lowit recently celebrated a birthday, are 26 of her photographs and coming up at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art in April she will have her firs solo show in Russia. See more photographs after the jump. Roxanne Lowit: Iconic will be on view at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art from April 12 to May 15, 2012

Nick Haymes' Unflinching Portrait of Teenage Angst

Selections from the book - email correspondence between Gabe Nevins and Harmony Korine

Nick Haymes first met Gabe Nevins on an editorial assignment in the summer of 2007. Gabe had just wrapped up his lead role in Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park, in which he had played a teenage skateboarder who accidentally kills a security guard. Gabe had never acted prior to starring in the film; he had heard about Van Sant's casting call from a skateboard store and initially auditioned as an extra. Meeting the teenager, Haymes recalls: "Initially, Gabe was fairly shy, but it quickly transpired that he had seen some of my skateboarding images online and an instant friendship was struck. When the assignment was over, I approached Gabe about the possibility of working on more photographs as there was something entirely captivating about him and his energy." A new volume, published by Damiani Editore, tracks the highs and lows of Gabe's teen years, from stardom to emotional breakdown and homelessness. On Wednesday, March 1st, from 6.00 to 8.00 pm, Haymes will be signing the volume at Dashwood Books in NYC.

Patti Smith by Judy Linn

Linn's images of Patti Smith range from the vulnerable to the iconic, focusing on shifting influences and relationships with artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe and Sam Shepard.  The black-and-white photographs capture Smith in the intimate and grainy atmosphere of a bygone New York when Smith--a struggling poet, pre-rock'n'roll--agreed to pose for Linn. A new exhibition, entitled Patti Smith: 1969-1976,  of photographs by Linn opens at LUAG (Lehigh University Art Galleries) February 20 and runs until May 25, 2012. 420 E. Packer Avenue Bethlehem, PA

The Aesthetics of The Photobooth

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When the first photobooths were set up in Paris in 1928, the Surrealists used them heavily and compulsively. In a few minutes, and for a small price, the machine offered them, through a portrait, an experience similar to automatic writing. Since then, generations of artists have been fascinated by the concept of the photobooth. From Andy Warhol to Arnulf Rainer, Thomas Ruff, Cindy Sherman and Gillian Wearing, many used it to play with their identity, tell stories, or simply create worlds. Behind the Curtain - the Aesthetics of the Photobooth, an exhibition created by the Musée de l’Elysée, is the first to focus on the aesthetics of the photobooth. It is divided into six major themes: the booth, the automated process, the strip, who am I ?, who are you ?, who are we ?. Provider of standardized legal portraits, it is the ideal tool for introspection and reflection on others, whether individually or in groups. By bringing together over 600 pieces made on different media (photographs, paintings, lithographs and videos) from sixty international artists, the exhibition reveals the influence of the photobooth within the artistic community, from its inception to the present day.

Obscenity

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Bruce LaBruce's gallery exhibition Obscenity opens February 16 at La Fresh Gallery in Madrid. Obscenity will offer a variety of images - some gentle, some romantic, some spiritual, some grotesque – that attempt to refine and redefine the nature of the fetish and the taboo, to sanctify this imagery and position it more closely to godliness. The lives of the saints are full of ecstatic acts of sublimated sexuality that are expressed in the most startlingly sexual and perverse ways. OBSCENITY presents a series of portraits that illustrate this most holy convergence of the sacred and the profane. Obscenity will be on view from February 16 to April 4, La Fresh Gallery, Conde de Aranda, 528001 - Madrid, Spain. 

American Ecstasy

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"It’s hard to imagine now, but in 1982 when I started working on porn movies, we shot real 35mm film on big movie cameras.  Home video cassette players had barely been invented.  There were no DVD’s, no home computers, no Internet.  People went out to downtown movie theaters and watched sex movies on the silver screen." American Ecstasy is the photographic memoir of Barbara Nitke who over 12 years shot publicity stills during the golden age of porn. "My images reveal the contradictions inherent in the business – great beauty, tinged with sadness, punctuated by surreal silliness." Nitke is currently raising funds to publish a book of "....seventy color plates, a selection of my written stories of life on the movie sets, and short excerpts from tape recorded interviews [she] conducted with the porn stars at the time." There are currently 11 days left to complete funding for the publishing of American Ecstasy.