Tender presents a segment of contemporary Czech photography with deliberately wide range of photographic strategies – from snapshot-like images that have appeared in the context of fashion editorials to post-conceptual works by artists skeptical of the very photographic medium. Curated by Michal Nanoru. Tender is on view through March 28 at The Czech Center 321 East 73rd Street, New York. photographs courtesy of Czech Center
Swingers is a group show featuring seven artists who explore structures of desire within the context of the culture industry. Taking its title from Lutz Bacher’s 2018 series, the exhibition focuses on artists who use photography and video to scrutinize how desire has been calculated, monetized, and leveraged by consumer culture. While some works target the modern subject’s participation in a neoliberal paradigm where individuality and desire are harnessed as forms of capital, other artists pursue more personal approaches to mine the ways one’s subjectivity can merge with its own objectification. Aware of their status within this creative economy, the works in Swingers take different approaches to uncover how the representation and commodification of desire in turn mediates the relationship between self and other. Swingers is on view through December 15 at Greene Naftali 508 West 26th Street Ground Floor & 8th Floor New York. photographs by Emma Orfield Johnston
The landmark, decade-long project, ‘Analogue’ (1998 – 2009) is comprised of 412 photographs arranged in grids and organized into 25 chapters. Originally conceived as a chronicle of the rapidly changing Lower East Side, where Leonard once had her studio, ‘Analogue’ evolved into a parable of cultural production, touching on issues of gentrification and the exchange of commodities as an extension of colonialism. The images in this installation depict storefronts and objects on the brink of obsolescence due to an expanding global economy and rapid technological advancements emerging at the turn of the millennium. An allegory for globalization, Leonard’s photographic series is the result of a peripatetic process that led her from the declining mom and pop shops of New York City to roadside markets in the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, Cuba, and Mexico, tracing the circulation of recycled merchandise. The exhibition is on view through January 20, 2019 at Hauser & Wirth 901 East 3rd Street, Los Angeles. images courtesy of Hauser & Wirth
Manifesto (2015), the 13-channel film installation by visual artist Julian Rosefeldt. Manifesto pays homage to the moving tradition and literary beauty of artist manifestos, ultimately questioning the role of the artist in society today. ‘Manifesto’ draws on the writings of Futurists, Dadaists, Fluxus artists, Suprematists, Situationists, Dogme 95 and other artist groups, and the musings of individual artists, architects, dancers and filmmakers. Passing the ideas of Claes Oldenburg, Yvonne Rainer, Kazimir Malevich, André Breton, Sturtevant, Sol LeWitt, Jim Jarmusch, and other influencers through his lens, Rosefeldt has edited and reassembled thirteen collages of artists’ manifestos. Manifesto is on view through January 6, 2019 at Hauser & Wirth 901 East 3rd Street, Los Angeles. images courtesy of Hauser & Wirth
Beach Therapy is the first solo exhibition in Italy based on the series of the same name by British photographer Martin Parr. During his long career as a photographer, Parr has always photographed on beaches, particularly in the UK. He has often used the beach as a laboratory to experiment with new cameras and techniques. So, for example, when he changed from black and white to medium-format colour in the early 1980s, his first major project was about New Brighton, a run-down seaside resort near Liverpool. In recent months, he has started exploring the beach with the aid of a telephoto lens. This lens is rarely used in the world of art and documentary photography so it is a challenge to find new ways of using it. Often, this involves incorporating the vegetation on the perimeter of the beach as a backdrop, both in and out of focus. Over his long career he has thus tried everything from a close-up macro lens, a medium-format wide-angled camera and, finally, this latest offering with the telephoto.
On the occasion of the exhibition, a major monograph entitled Beach Therapy was published by Damiani. The book is also available in a special Collector’s Edition of 90 copies that includes the book and a pigment print entitled St Ives, Cornwall, England, 2017 each numbered and signed by the artist. In addition, there is also an even more special Collector’s Edition of 20 copies. It comes with a fabric cover and 5 prints signed and numbered by the artist. After Think of Scotland, Beach Therapy is the second monograph by Martin Parr published by Damiani.
Beach Therapy is on view through February 8, 2019 at Spazio Damiani, Via dello Scalo 3/2 ABC 40131, Bologna. photographs courtesy Spazio Damiani
Zoe Crosher, enamored by Los Angeles, has an obsession that began during her time receiving her MFA from CalArts. Here, she has reimagined her “Day for Night” photographic works. In “Day for Night,” Crosher uses a photography technique used during the Film Noir days of Hollywood, by shooting images in such a way that they look like they were taken at night. She documents the disappearance of the Los Angeles River, using the sunlight to spotlight the image in frame. For this show, she has taken that process a step further and made light boxes out of the photographs, further emulating the film-like aspect by placing light behind the image, creating, in essence, a single-shot movie. Sunlight as Spotlight is on view through November 24 at Patrick Painter B2, 4031, 2525 Michigan Avenue, Santa Monica.
When asked to picture the streets of Paris, it might be challenging to deviate from images of the crowded boulevards, full of the café-concerts made popular by the end of the nineteenth century, with bodies dancing through the streets to the notes of Joe Dassin’s Les Champs Élysées or Edith Piaf’s La Vie en Rose. Arturo Oliva Pedroza’s Kissed Face offers something else. Instead, Pedroza gives calm, straightforward shots of hangouts in Paris—the romance of dimly lit spaces, of an evening’s early stages of debauchery, and of a slice of pizza.
These photographs emerged from Pedroza’s studies in Paris during 2009 and 2010. While photography itself functions in degrees of stillness—capturing, suspending, and depicting moments for infinite pictorial existence—Pedroza’s photographs have an echo to them. These sounds reverberate in the washed-out backgrounds of Pedroza’s nightly strolls, in the objects once loved, but set aside, and in the fleeting engagements with strangers. There is a softness in each frame that invites a viewer to stay awhile, to share a drag of a cigarette, and to watch the smoke make its way quickly into the sky.
Opening Reception Thursday, October 4th 5-10PM
Closing Reception Saturday, October 20th 5PM
Book & Job Gallery 838 Geary St, San Francisco, CA 94109
Chris Engman’s Containment (2018) is a site-specific installation created as a part of the FotoFocus Biennial 2018, which starts today. The piece is part of a larger exhibition, titled Chris Engman: Prospect and Refuge at Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery. This is the largest biennial for photography and lens-based art in the country. This edition counts over 400 artists, galleries, museums, and cultural partners across Cincinnati, Dayton and Columbus, Ohio. As part of the Biennial, LA artist, Chris Engman creates a new site-specific installation for the Biennial, accompanied by a selection of his mind-bending photographic constructions of landscapes. Curated by Carissa Barnard, FotoFocus Deputy Director, Containment is on view through November 18 at Weston Art Gallery 650 Walnut Street, Cincinnati, Ohio. photographs by Tony Walsh
Glass Sabbath, a solo presentation of new works by Melanie Schiff is the artist’s first exhibition at the gallery. Schiff’s photographs revel in an assertion of the physicality of objects. Isolated from their use value, items are connected by an attention to shape and texture that nods to the tradition of still life painting. Glass Sabbath is on view through October 6th at Night Gallery, 2276 East 16th Street, Los Angeles, CA, 90021. photographs by Lani Trock
How likely is it that only I am right in this matter? is an exhibition of new and recent work by Wolfgang Tillmans. Tillmans here eschews his signature style of floor-to-ceiling installations in favor of a more minimal, linear presentation concise in subject matter as well as scope. Featuring photographs, video and sound, and a spoken-word piece, the show revisits themes explored by the artist throughout his thirty-year career, but also initiates a subtle reevaluation of how to portray a world consistently in flux. How likely is it that only I am right in this matter? is on view through October 20 at David Zwirner 519, 525 & 533 West 19th Street, New York. photographs by Adam Lehrer
Taking the name from the second chapter of Germaine Greer’s landmark text “The Obstacle Race” from 1979, “How They Ran” brings together a selected group of LA-based artists whose diverse practices represent the heartbeat of the Los Angeles art scene today. Greer’s book presented an art historical account of artists who are missing from academic literature and how they overcame historical obstacles to achieve notoriety anyway. Through this lens, Over the Influence will present a group exhibition of LA-based artists from different backgrounds, practices, and generations. "How They Ran" is on view through September 5th at Over The Influence 833 East 3rd Street Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock
Scott Nichols Gallery will be presenting a delicious display of rock n' roll photography from the likes of Ebet Robert. Michael Zagaris, Jim Marshall, Baron Wolman, Linda McCartney, Bob Gruen, Brad Temkin, William Coupon, and more. A highlight from this exhibition is Bob Seidemann's controversial, banned photo artwork for Blind Faith's 1969 self-titled EP. Opening reception for It's Only Rock and Roll will be held on August 6th and the exhibition will run until September 16, at Scott Nichols Gallery. 49 Geary St # 415, San Francisco, CA
Rita Lino is a photographer that Autre has been following for a little over five years now. The first picture she ever sent us is a photograph of her reading a National Geographic atlas with a hand down her panties. We've also featured editorials and an exclusive short video feature. What we didn't know is that Lino was in the process of a decade long photographic exploration of her own sexuality and femininity through a series of self portraits that are captured in a gorgeous and provocative new monograph called Entartete (German for Degenerate) – published by Éditions du LIC. "Despite their raw unselfconsciousness, Lino’s images are more than mere snapshots; touching simultaneously on voyeurism, loneliness, the manipulative power of the camera, and the urge to connect with others, through, within, and apart from technology and media. Repeatedly concealing their message, necessarily strange and ambiguous, Lino´s images construct a self that is mutable and elusive." With Entartete, it is proof that this emerging Portugese photographer is moving to a newer, more mature chapter of her artistic career. Click here to purchase.
Magnum photographer Bruce Davidson is most known for his photographs of the teenage gangs of New York City in the 1950s. In 1964, Esquire magazine commissioned him to take photographs of Los Angeles. For whatever reason, the photographs were rejected. In Davidson's own words: "Esquire’s editors sent me to Los Angeles, and when I landed at L.A. International Airport I noticed giant palm trees growing in the parking lot. I ordered a hamburger through a microphone speaker in a drive-in called Tiny Naylor’s. The freeways were blank and brilliant, chromium-plated bumpers reflected the Pacific Ocean, but the air quality was said to be bad. People looking like mannequins seemed at peace on the Sunset Strip while others were euphoric as they watered the desert. I stood there ready with my Leica, aware of my shadow on the pavement. I walked up to strangers, framed, focused, and in a split second of alienations and cynicism, pressed the shutter button. Suddenly I had an awakening that led me to another level of visual understanding. But in the end, for some unknown reasons, the editors rejected the pictures, and I had to return home with a big box of prints, put them in a drawer, and forgot all about the trip." Today, venerable publishing house and champion of print, Steidl, is releasing the photographs in beautiful book form. You can purchase here.
Casemore Kirkeby presents its inaugural exhibition, Todd Hido: Selections from a Survey, which is currently being held at the gallery's interim project space in San Francisco's Mission District. This installation, drawn from Oakland-based Hido's ever-expanding archive, invites viewers to dwell on the images and ideas that have followed him throughout his career, continually finding new manifestations in his work. This selection focuses on Hido's primary model Khrystyna - a tacit partner in his cinematic narratives, and a shape shifter in the nightscapes, interiors, and psychological landscapes that she haunts. The result is a deeply personal collection of imagery, often drawn from Hido's own biography and his childhood home of Kent, Ohio - the place that has guided his sustained inquiry into the darker aspects of American suburban life, investigated through the lens of his own imperfect memory. The selection includes several new, never before published works by Hido, along with classic pieces that become elements in the carefully composed sequences of this exhibition. Todd Hido: Selections from a Survey will be on view until August 15, at Casemore Kirkeby, 3328 22nd St. at Valencia in San Francisco.
J.W. Anderson is currently hosting an exclusive, online exhibition and print sale of photographs by English photographer Ian David Baker. Baker's intimate, black-and-white portraits and collages offer a rare glimpse into gay youth subculture of 1980s England. The 50 images displayed in the exhibit have been personally curated by designer Jonathan Anderson and selected from Baker's archive. Many of the negatives no longer exist, making these original prints the last remaining copies of Baker's early work. Visit J.W. Anderson's website to view the exhibition and purchase prints.
What happens in New York definitely doesn't stay in New York thanks to Patrick McMullan. With a career spanning over three decades, McMullan is one of the world’s most celebrated party, fashion, and society photographers on the New York beat. Currently, Salomon Contemporary is presenting Pictures from the Patrick McMullan collection. The eclectic ensemble of over 200 artworks ranges from his own prized photographs, those from renowned photographers David LaChapelle, Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, Steven Klein, Peter Beard, Harry Benson, Mary Ellen Mark, Todd Eberle, Kelly Klein, Michael Thomson, Roe Etheridge, Jessica Craig-Martin, Scavullo to Salgado to outsider art, Hollywood studio shots, and familiar kitsch. Some were gifts, some were trades, some were purchased from charity auctions, which he often photographed. Each of course has a story and a sentiment. Pictures will be on view until July 31, 2015 at Soloman Contemporary, 525-531 West 26 Street, 4th Floor
Started in 1970 by the late Arles based photographer Lucien Clergue, the writer Michel Tournier and the historian Jean-Maurice Rouquette, Rencontres d'Arles Photography Festival in the South of France has become a preeminent photography festival. The festival is on view now and runs until September. Here are Autre's picks for the must see exhibitions at this year's festival: 1. The Discovery Award honors photographers who deserve to be discovered - one of this year's highlight nominees is Delphine Chanet, who was once a student of legendary fashion photographer Frank Horvat 2. Stephen Shore will be showing off an extensive exhibition of his American backdrops in glorious saturated colors the Espace Van Gogh 3. Eight Japanese photographers will be presented in an exhibition called Another Language at the église Sainte-Anne 4. The Musée Réattu shows off its impressive collection of photography that it has been building over the last 50 years in an exhibition called Daring Photography 5. Check out Guy Bourdin's photography work for Boz Scaggs' album Middle Man and more in an exhibition of album cover photography on view Ateliers des Forges
"Opening Night" is the latest sexy, sleek and glamorous photo book by Imperial Pictures Publishing and Paperwork NYC. The book features never before seen photographs by Elliott Landy who is known for his photographs of Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Hendrix and more. In this gorgeous edition, you'll be able to find images of Elizabeth Taylor, Barbara Streisand, Faye Dunaway, Marlene Dietrich, Dustin Hoffman, Andy Warhol and more, all dolled up to the nines and ready for the flash bulbs. “My pictures reflected the aspects of those events that impacted me the most—the falseness and superficiality,” writes Landy in the intro. “They were a reflection of my inner feelings toward what was happening—a flow of energy, channeled and filtered through my own person.” Even though Landy has moved on from the world of celebritydom, he will get his fair share of the limelight tomorrow night at the Jane Hotel Ballroom, starting at 10pm, to celebrate the launch of Opening Night. You can also purchase Opening Night here.
