Photo shows I'd see if I was in town

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I plan this as a continuing thread for myself and others to add to about photography shows they'd like to see and would see if they were in that city or place at that date.

For example, here is one in my old neighborhood area, Santa Monica, at the Frank Pictures Gallery in Bergamot Station.
The show is on Theo Westenberger's photography of the LA area in the seventies.

http://artscenecal.com/Announcements/2008/0908/Frank0908b.html

the announcement -

THE LATE THEO WESTENBERGER'S HAND-PAINTED, VINTAGE PHOTOGRAPHS
“FLAVORS IN 1975”
PRESENTED BY COLLEEN KEEGAN AND CREATIVE CAPITAL
September 14 " October 7, 2008
Opening Reception: Sunday, September 14, 6:30 " 9:30PM

Frank Pictures Gallery
Begamot Station A-5, 2525 Michigan Avenue Santa Monica, CA 90404
Web site, http://www.frankpicturesgallery.com
Gallery hours, Tuesday " Saturday, 11:30am-6:30pm

http://artscenecal.com/Announcements/2008/0908/TWestenberger0908a.jpg

Theo Westenberger, “Flavors in 1975”, Unique Hand-Painted Silver Gelatin Print, 16" x 20"
quoting the announcement -

This body of work, which captures an iconic party-colored, slightly skewed and awesomely beautiful view of Southern California of the seventies is a departure for Westenberger, who during her short creative life was an award-winning magazine photographer. Westenberger passed away this past February and was noted for her many magazine covers including Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, Life, Entertainment Weekly, and National Geographic Traveler where she was a contributing editor for several years. She was selected by the Academy of Motion Pictures Art and Sciences to take a group photo of all the women who have ever received an Academy Award. The U.S. Postal Service chose two of her photographs of Native American dancers to reproduce on stamps. Westenberger attended Dartmouth and earned her MFA at Pratt Institute. She also taught workshops in lighting and portraiture. In a time when female commercial photographers were virtually non-existent, Theo had shot three presidents and an award-winning array of covers of actors like Clint Eastwood, Meryl Streep, and Jennifer Aniston for the best magazines in the world. Flavors in 1975 marks her debut as a fine art photographer.

Westenberger grew up in a Richard Neutra house in La Canada-Flintridge and these are the photographs of a homegrown eye. They are exquisite perceptions of a specific moment and a particular place, so captivating of that time and that place that the fact that a look from our vantage point from the twenty first century backwards to the used car lots, miniature golf courses, detritus of the Rose Parade, Goodyear blimp, and Cinderella's castle doesn't render them clichés, is almost an impossibility. Each photograph holds a particular surprise, a pop and a power that blows them out of the ball park (even if it is Disneyland). There was no Photoshop in 1975, the happy incongruities had nothing to do with iPhoto or even luck, just everything to say about Theo Westenberger's gift and her sense of humor. Using Marshall's oil paints on black and white prints, she radically recreated her environment to realize her very own private left coast, a gorgeous place in living color that is to be her living legacy.

http://artscenecal.com/Announcements/2008/0908/TWestenberger0908b.jpg

Theo Westenberger, “California Neutra Poolhouse II”, Unique Hand-Painted Silver Gelatin Print, 16" x 20".

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@ossobuco,

You're welcome to comment on this thread.

For example, I'd say that I'd like to see this show I posted on above because of the photographer's technique and the subject matter. I'm interested in pools myself for a lot of reasons, including that I've saved photos of ugly pools in my painting files. I've done a few pool paintings and find the damn things move as I walk by them.. not the paintings, of course, but the pools, in some kind of optical illusion phenomenon.

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@ossobuco,

A show I won't get to see in Santa Monica, CA, nor when it travels to Locks Gallery in Philadelphia in November:

Jeff Charbonneau & Eliza French
MASSILLON
New Large-Scale Black & White Photographs
October 4 " November 4, 2008
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 4, 5-7pm

Robert Berman Gallery
Bergamot Station Art Center
2525 Michigan Avenue, C-2, Santa Monica, CA 90404
Phone: (310) 315-1937, Fax: (310) 315-9508
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.robertbermangallery.com
Gallery hours, Tuesday through Saturday from 11am until 6pm

http://www.artscenecal.com/Announcements/2008/0908/JCharbonneau0908a.jpg

Jeff Charbonneau, "Traction", 2008, Chromogenic Print, 40 x 40 inches.

Santa Monica, CA " Robert Berman Gallery is pleased to present MASSILLON: the first exclusive presentation of large-scale photographs by Jeff Charbonneau & Eliza French. On view 04 October " 04 November, 2008.

Trained as an anthropologist/musician, and an art historian respectively, artists Jeff Charbonneau & Eliza French collaborate to produce staged photographs that transform personal family folklore and childhood reminiscence into scenes rich in fantasy, melancholy and seduction.

Massillon is the true story of ancestor Zeta Eliza Woolley, transposed through the surreal imaginings of the artists into a fairy-tale of suffering and unpredictable beauty. Each photograph is part of an unraveling narrative, derived from the memories and dreams inspired by Woolley's life and death in Massillon, Ohio in the late 1800's.

Combining a love for Victorian era aesthetics and 19th century craftsmanship, the artists produce large-scale photographs of rare texture and depth using medium and large format film, and traditional black and white darkroom techniques.

Jeff Charbonneau & Eliza French, writes critic and curator Peter Frank,

"have compiled an impressive body of work brimming with mystery and sensuality, self-consciously but elegantly Gothic " stills, it would seem, from an Edgar Allen Poe film adaptation directed by Ingmar Bergman, or Fellini's take on Lewis Carroll."

Massillon will travel to the Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, in November, 2008. A Los Angeles Reception for the Artists will be held Saturday, 04 October, 2008 from 5 " 7pm.

Robert Berman Gallery is located at Bergamot Station, Santa Monica, 2525 Michigan Avenue, Santa Monica, CA 90404, Galleries D5/C2. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 6pm. For additional information, please contact Robert Berman Gallery at 310.315.1937 voice, 310.315.9688 fax, or [email protected].

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link - Shadows and Light in the Niger Delta: photographs by Ed Kashi

http://artscenecal.com/0109/EKashi0109a.jpg

Ed Kashi, "Baking Tapioca by a Gas Flare", 2004, archival inkjet print.
view the artist's work at http://www.edkashi.com

San Diego Mesa College Art Gallery, D101
7250 Mesa College Dr., D-101, San Diego, CA 92111
Art Gallery hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, 12-5 pm; Thursday, 12-8pm; and by appointment. Closed on Mondays, Weekends and School Holidays.
Closed on Mondays, Weekends and School Holidays.

Citing from the announcement -

This series of compelling photographs by award winning photojournalist Ed Kashi shines a light on the devastating effect of half a century of oil exploration and exploitation in the Niger Delta. The twenty-six images in this exhibition make up a powerful and vivid inventory of the reality of oil’s catastrophic environmental and social impact in the region.

More than 500 billion dollars of oil have been pumped out of the Niger Delta. Paradoxically, while most of Nigeria’s wealth comes from this region, these communities are the poorest in the nation as the harvesting of petroleum has replaced fulfillment of basic needs. Traditional fishing and agriculture have disappeared and local people are unable to feed themselves. Incessant gas flaring and oil spillages have contributed to undeterred environmental degradation of the delta, while rampant abuse and corruption exist at all levels.

Ed Kashi learned about the Niger Delta’s plight through the work of Berkeley scholar Michael Watts. Kashi first visited the country in the summer of 2004 and returned the following year. In 2006, he was awarded a commission from National Geographic; the status of this publication afforded him access to areas and subjects that had been previously inaccessible. In June 2006, Ed Kashi and his assistant were illegally detained by the Nigerian military for four days. They were freed thanks to the perseverance and commitment of Nigerian friends, human rights workers, the media and Kashi’s wife, Julia. This event compelled him to create a body of visual work that would expose the true conditions of the Niger Delta. The images in the gallery are a portion of the photographs featured in Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta, a book that Kashi published in 2008 and that is accompanied by essays by Michael Watts.

Ed Kashi is a photojournalist, filmmaker and educator dedicated to documenting the social and political issues that define our times. In 2002, Kashi and his wife, writer/filmmaker Julie Winokur, founded the non-profit Talking Eyes Media. They produce short films that explore social issues.

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nice

a lot of the photo stuff i post comes from this site Yewknee

yewknee: yoo·ne: n.
a. imaginary word with absolutely no literal meaning but an extremely nerdy etymology.

b. Personal website of Nashville resident Michael Eades; web designer employed at KNI, misc screenprinter, We Own This Town curator and a man with his hand in many pies.

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@djjd62,

Lots of stuff to check out there, thanks for the link, dj.

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@ossobuco,

he's very big on graphic design as well, not just photography

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@djjd62,

I just looked at some of them quickly, enough to find I'm interested..
and the remix comment - that has some relevance re some paintings recently too.

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http://www.newyorker.com/images/2009/09/14/p233/090914_r18793_p233.jpg

Last week's New Yorker has a review of a showing of Robert Frank's photography at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. Not only would I like to see the exhibit, I'd love to get my hands on the catalog for it, as apparently it includes contact prints from which he culled his published photos.

The writer, Anthony Lane, whom I generally enjoy reading, had a take about Frank's work that he described as differing from the opinions of the catalog writers and other critics, pro or con, of his work: that is, he thinks that Frank was not being critical of America with his photography.

Here's the catalog link -
http://store.metmuseum.org/Looking-In-Robert-Franks-The-Americans/Looking-In-Robert-Franks-The-Americans-Expanded-Edition/invt/80002448

Here's the Met announcement - the exhibit opens September 22nd -
http://www.metmuseum.org/special/se_event.asp?OccurrenceId={1FD57D4D-FE17-41FA-9025-E2667E36AD27}

Read more here: Road Show, by Anthony Lane

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@ossobuco,

Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans
Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Ave (at 82nd St)

Through January 3, 2010

http://gemmalou75.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/robert_frank_americans_p37_500px.jpg

http://www.metmuseum.org
Description
The entire contents of the famous Swiss photographer’s influential book, created after a road trip across the U.S. in the ’50s, will be on view here. Through Jan 3.
When
Sundays 9:30am"5:30pm , Tuesdays 9:30am"5:30pm , Wednesdays 9:30am"5:30pm , Thursdays 9:30am"5:30pm , Fridays 9:30am"9pm , Saturdays 9:30am"9pm Through Jan 3 2010.

http://newyork.timeout.com/events/museums-institutions/302861/looking-in

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@tsarstepan,

Thanks, Tsar. Looks like I got Tko to pay attention to it, though he already planned to get to the met for his first visit.

Do you remember yours?

I don't. I was there, I'm guessing, in 1950 as a kid for x number of minutes. I was there at 27, 1969, for - again, mere minutes, as I had my mother with me who had alzheimer's but I didn't know it then. Couldn't leave her, couldn't take her around, all a surprise to me at the time. We were out of the building in a quarter of an hour. That killed me, sort of, personally, but I was much more out of my mind about my mother.

I was there in 2003, off and on for four days, in art tharn. A happy goat (see Dagmaraka's threads about happy goats).

So.... I'll be interested to see if TKO likes the museum.

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@tsarstepan,

An addendum to my post:

Quote:

Robert Frank's Elevator Girl Sees Herself Years Later

NPR posted a followup investigation to one of Robert Frank's iconic photographs...
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112389032&sc=nl&cc=es-20090927

Enjoy!

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@ossobuco,

My first visit to the Met? Hmmm.... Incidentally and coincidentally, it was a weird day in 2002. Went to the museum to cool off after a particularly bad argument with a friend. The visit to the museum already planned days before the argument of course.

Its an overwhelmingly bizarre experience to have a panic attack (caused by the emotional residual effects of the argument) when surrounded by one of the world's greatest collection of fine art. Let me suggest if you find yourself in the MET with this emotional state of mind, steer clear of the modern art and abstract expressionist section. Mind blowing but in a bad way!

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@tsarstepan,

A radio interview of the photographer, Robert Frank, coinciding with a documentary and an exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of his most acclaimed published work, The Americans.

Quote:

Photographer Robert Frank and Jeff Rosenheim, curator of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Photographs, discuss "Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans," celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Americans, Robert Frank’s suite of black-and-white photographs made during a cross-country road trip in 1955"1956. The exhibition also includes contact sheets that Frank used to create the book; photographs made in Europe, Peru, and New York; and a short film he made on his life. "Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans" is on view at Metropolitan Museum of Art through January 3, 2010. More information about the exhibition and its public programs is available here.

An exhibition of some of Robert Franks's photographs are also on view at the Robert Mann Gallery in Chelsea.

The documentary about The Americans, "An American Journey," directed by Philippe Seclier is playing at Film Forum September 30th through October 6th

http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/episodes/2009/09/29/segments/141587
A prepared slide show by New York's NPR radio station WNYC:
http://www.wnyc.org/slideshows2/robertfrank

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@tsarstepan,

Oh, good, I'll check that out.

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