Newsletter
Alan Klotz Gallery proudly presents, Terri Garland: Southern Discomforts, comprised of some fifty recent photographs with “southern themes”, including race relations, storm destruction, some of its artifacts, and a stumbling reconstruction.
It’s hard to believe that in 2008, at a time when a black man is running for president of the United States of America, hooded figures are still running around the countryside burning crosses and intimidating their “non-Aryan” neighbors. It is hard to believe that after three years, and all the negative press attending the post-Katrina halting attempts at reconstruction New Orleans, Biloxi, Gulfport, and other gulf towns, punished by an impersonal Nature, simply because their residents wanted to live close to the water… That two populations, one white and one black, could exist side by side with little or no contact, with only the mutual destruction they experienced, along with landmarks testifying to hatred, murder, and the more recent indifference of the Federal Government to any of it. They don’t realize they are in the same boat and its sinking.
These pictures are about the sadness and the silliness of all this history, as well as current behavior. Where, with all that has occurred, and evolved, even into the 21st century, where man’s and nature’s scythe has cut down the cane, the protective marshes, a major American city, the seaside hovels of sticks and dreams, its churches and levees, and still manage not to unite its people suffering the same fate. The bitterly ironic words of the song and the stillness of Ms. Garland’s powerful images remind us that “King Harvest has surely come”.
"Philip's pictures are not like anyone else's.
They are like looking into a dream."
-- Helen Levitt
Alan Klotz Gallery proudly presents, The Sadness of Men, A major, 50 year, retrospective exhibition of the work of photographer Philip Perkis. The exhibition coincides with the publication of a major monograph on Mr Perkis' work, The Sadness of Men, with 125 duotone reproductions, and an introduction by the critic, Max Kozloff. The book is published by Quantuck LanePress, New York. Mr Perkis is one of the most widely respected American photographers, yet his work is little known outside of the demi-monde of the art world.The book, and this exhibition will no doubt change that, and he will take his rightful place in the pantheon of late 20th century photographers.
With a gift for capturing moments of heartbreaking honesty and unparalleled beauty, Perkis presents a world on the brink of transcendence. The photographs, in both the book and the exhibition have been carefully sequenced, to build upon each other like a visual fugue, an expression of the profound. The result is both universal and intensely personal, exalting and deeply humbling. It is impossible to step away from these pictures unmoved.
At a time when photography virtually assaults us with size and color and "concept", not to mention millions of little pixels, these deftly formed, traditionally crafted, and deeply felt images invite us in, asking that we meet them halfway, as viewers. We have to do some work while looking, but are amply rewarded with fresh insights. They are astonishing glimpses into some common yet profound mystery, by a true master, seen at the end of the photographic era.
Philip Perkis started photography in 1957 and studied with John Collier Jr., Dorothea Lange, and Minor White. His work can be found in the collections of many museums as well as private collections. He received two NY State Council Grants, two National Endowment Grants, and is a Guggenheim fellow. His monograph, Warwick Mountains Series was published by Nexus Press in 1978 and the Warwick Mountains Portfolio is published by Alan Klotz Gallery. His prose book, Teaching Photography: Notes Assembled, was published by OB Press in 2001 and is now in its fourth printing.
PREVIOUS EXHIBITIONS
The Alan Klotz Gallery presents “Andreas Feininger - New York”.
This exhibition of twenty-two vintage and modern gelatin silver photographs shows Feininger’s total involvement with New York, his adopted home since 1939 where he arrived at the age of 33. Born in Paris in 1906, the son of the painter Lyonel Feininger, Andreas trained as an architect in Germany, and worked for a year in France under the notable French architect Le Corbusier. Feininger, who had taken up photography in 1928, left France in 1933 and moved to Stockholm, Sweden to pursue a career as a photographer (see also a concurrent show of his Stockholm photographs at Scandinavia House www.scandinaviahouse.org).
In 1939 as WWII approached, Feininger moved to New York, and immediately began photographing all aspects of the city… its architecture, people, and atmosphere. To Feininger, traffic jams and crowd scenes were as important expressions of the city as was its skyline. He published a large compendium of this work titled New York in 1945. In 1942 he joined the staff of LIFE magazine and continued his involvement there until 1962. In 1966 he was given the coveted Robert Leavitt Award by the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP), and in 1991 he was awarded the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Lifetime Achievement Award. He published over 50 books of photographs in his lifetime. His photographs can be found in such prestigious public collections as: The Museum of Modern Art (NYC), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (NYC), The Museum of the City of New York (NYC), The National Gallery (Washington, DC), The George Eastman House (Rochester, NY), The Victoria and Albert Museum (London), and the Stockholm City Museum.
The Alan Klotz Gallery presents “Melissa Ann Pinney: Recent Work”. Melissa Ann Pinney photographs the suburbs and how they function as a nurturing growth medium, like agar in a Petri dish. There's hardly any irony here in the depiction of the place that Melissa has chosen to sink her roots and raise a family. In a real sense the photographs are about the growth and maturation of her daughter Emma, who we follow through seasons of change in the backyards of plenty...her friends, her father, the air they breathe, and the endearing ways they make a life, and of course the watchful mother's eye through which we see it all. There are rituals, and rites of passage, as well as glimpses into a world, though often prosaic on the surface, which can only be described, at times, and here in the moments of revelation, as magical.
Pinney's gaze is very quiet, but very intense, yet she forces no judgment on you as a viewer. Rather, she shows you relationships that define being...being a young girl who is starting to turn into a young woman in the loamy soil of Evanston, the sands of Maui, and the swimming pools of everywhere in between.
Melissa Ann Pinney received a 1999 Guggenheim Fellowship for her photographs of American women and girls. This project became the book, Regarding Emma: Photographs of American Women and Girls, published in 2003 by the Center for American Places in partnership with Columbia College Chicago.
In addition to the 1999 Guggenheim Fellowship, Pinney received a NEA in 1987 and Illinois Arts Council Grants in 1989 and 1987, among other awards. Ms. Pinney's photographs are included in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree in 1988 from the University of Illinois at Chicago, following her BA in photography from Columbia College Chicago in 1977.
Ms. Pinney has taught at Columbia College Chicago since 1984. She lives in Evanston, Illinois, with her husband and daughter. Ms. Pinney's photographs have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, DoubleTake, the Chicago Tribune, Ms. and U.S.News and World Report.
The Alan Klotz Gallery presents “The Good Books: Katrina Bibles and Prayer Books”, photographs by Terri Garland as well as some of the damaged bibles which are the subjects of the pictures.
Terri Garland, a photographer who specializes in photographs of the South, has visited New Orleans several times since the hurricanes of 2005. What she found in the course of wandering through the Central City and the Lower Ninth Ward was; among the chaos and destruction; sodden, decaying bibles on the floors of abandoned and condemned churches. She salvaged some of these bibles and scanned their ravaged pages thereby creating a series of some 30 images, 12 of which have been compiled into a limited edition portfolio, and 18 images that are available as individual prints. We are also displaying in our exhibition some of the original bibles which are not for sale.
Ms. Garland writes of this project: “As I entered the ruined churches of the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans, there was a vague familiarity, an equivalent of loss. Upturned pews, scattered tambourines and floors both crunchy and soggy met my tentative footsteps. I sensed myself as some irreverent archivist as I pried the bibles from their crusty moorings. The elements of water, earth and air have irrevocably altered these books. The paradigm of social neglect has obviated the congregations who valued them. For me, they are both beautiful in their decay and incendiary in their implication.”
For what happened to these bibles is what happened to the people who used them. They were washed away, abandoned and allowed to disintegrate. The books were once passed around reverentially, hand to hand, in a community of the faithful who shared these books as well as their lives.
Now they bear witness to the racial and class divisions in our society and to the failure of that society, of which we are all a part, to come to their aid. These books have been languishing for a year and a half, untouched. They are being transfigured, by chance and by the agents of decay, each, in their own way, to reflect both the promise of faith they contained, and the indifference of the forces of nature and humanity which destroyed them, and then left them to rot.
Ms. Garland has a MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and is a Professor of Photography at San Jose City College. She has been a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. Her work is in many public and private collections including: The Bibliotheque National, Paris; The Center for Creative Photography, Tuscon, AZ; The Art Institute of Chicago and The Cleveland Museum of Art.
Carl Mydans: Four Decades at LIFE
January 11 - arch 3, 2007
The Alan Klotz Gallery proudly presents “Carl Mydans: Four Decades at LIFE” an exclusive east coast exhibition of both vintage and modern photographs by one of America’s most famous and respected photographers
Carl Mydans (1917-2004) began his career as a journalist with freelance writing work for Boston newspapers. In 1931 Mydans bought a 35mm camera and entered the world of photojournalism, becoming one of the new breed of reporter: those who know how to handle the typewriter and camera alike.
Mydans’ first important photographic assignment came in 1935 after he joined what was to become the Farm Security Administration (FSA) under the leadership of Roy Stryker. Stryker assigned him to document the southern cotton industry. Besides recording the facts of the industry, Mydans photographed the lives of those who suffered, the dispossessed and the exploited, setting a pattern to be followed by many other FSA photographers.
Carl Mydans’ stay with the FSA was brief. In 1936 he joined the staff of LIFE magazine as the first issue went to press in November of that year. He remained an active staff photographer until 1972 when LIFE ceased weekly publication. During those 36 years Mydans covered major news events in the United States, Europe and Asia. He experienced first hand the ravages of World War II and the Korean War. When war broke out in Europe, Mydans and his wife, LIFE researcher Shelley Smith, became the magazine’s first husband and wife photographer-reporter team to be sent overseas. In the Philippines he and Shelley were captured by the Japanese and imprisoned for 21 months. They were released to American authorities in exchange for Japanese prisoners.
Subsequently, Mydans was sent back into war in Europe for the battles of Italy at Cassino, Rome and Florence and the American-Free-French invasion of southern France in August 1944. The following years saw him return to the Philippines covering General Douglas MacArthur’s landing. One of Mydans’ most celebrated shots was of this famous commander striding ashore at Luzon beach in January of 1945.
Mydans was not only a war photojournalist. His body of work spans many subjects. A master of portraiture, Mydans made studies of such artists and political figures as William Faulkner, Nikita Khrushchev, Harry Truman, Vladamir Nabokov, and Gable and Lombard. His photo essays include coverage of the town of Freer, Texas, unemployed workers on the east and west coasts during the Depression, sandhogs working under the East River in New York City, and migratory workers.
Mydans work shows he was comfortable with either the macro or the micro view of history. He could take the staged photo-op of MacArthur wading ashore in his pressed Khakis “returning” as promised to the Philippines at Luzon. He transformed this bit of theatre into a powerful and compelling national historical composition along the lines of “Washington Crossing the Delaware”. Or he could show you the deep suffering in the eyes of a depression era sharecropper. He was the photographer for all seasons. His photographs etched themselves into our collective psyches describing, explaining and sympathizing with all that life threw at us as individuals and as a nation.
28th Annual Holiday Sale
November 30 - December 23, 2006
Alan Klotz Gallery presents the “28th Annual Holiday Sale which, for over 25 years, has been a magnet for all photography fans, from novices buying their first photograph to some of America’s top museum curators looking for something really unusual. There are over 400 photographs for sale by such masters as Edward Curtis, Lewis Hine, Karl Blossfeldt & Ansel Adams, to the redoubtable anonymous vernacular photograph. Everything from the ridiculous to the sublime vies for the collector’s attention, with special groups of images purchased exclusively for this sale. Reductions up to 60%!
The show explores the pleasures of the inexpensive at a time when prices for collectable photographs are soaring. They often offer a wonderfully fresh vision which can still be found if you spend all year looking for them as we do. In fact some major museums have some of our “bargains” on display in their permanent collections. It’s all serious fun.
Corinne Mercadier: Recent Work - An American Debut
September 21 - November 18, 2006
Alan Klotz Gallery announces its first exhibition of the 2006/2007 season: “Corinne Mercadier: Recent Work – An American Debut”. Show dates are September 21st to November 18th 2006.
Corinne Mercadier is a mid-career French artist represented in Paris and Brussels by the Galerie Les Filles du Calvaire and now the Alan Klotz Gallery in New York. Her work appears in many public collections including the Maison Europeenne de la Photographie, Paris; FNAC, Paris; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; and Polaroid Corporation Collection, Cambridge, MA. She has published four books with Filigranes Editions and Actes Sud, Paris.
Corinne Mercadier has shown her work at Fotofest, Houston, TX; Foire Internationale d'Art Contemporain (FIAC), Paris; Paris-Photo, Paris; La Primavera FotoGrafica, Barcelona; and ARCO, Madrid. In 2001, she won the Altadis Prize from Galerie Durand-Dessert, Paris, and Galerie Juana de Aizpuru, Madrid. In 2003, the French Ministry of Culture commissioned her to do a series of works for the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie (RIP) in Arles, France; Galerie du Chateau d’Eau, Toulouse mounted an exhibition of new work in early 2006.
Corinne Mercadier’s works are photographs of photographs of photographs. What they lose in the degrading of the images they more than make up for in emotional impact.
“Corinne Mercadier's photographs are like memories: they evoke places, times, and moods that the mind's eye fuses into slightly faded compositions. There are often no people to serve as markers of space or scale, only the ambiguous play of surface and light, an insistently planar geometry at odds with hazy colors and tones. Unlike a sweeping postcard-panorama that places the viewer at the same obligatory distance as the camera lens, the very absence of context serves here to reinforce the sense of immediacy: like a film sequence that starts without an establishing shot, the railings, rocks, poles” [and artist manufactured pieces of sculptural forms] “random shadows that cut across the foreground project us right into the scenes we are looking at. Nor is this proximity strictly physical, for these are sites (and sights) that Mercadier has known since childhood. And it is this familiarity that she transforms into the paradoxical singularity, the ineffable particularity, of the everyday.”
- Excerpted from Miriam Rosen’s Artforum review of a Paris exhibition of Ms. Mercadier’s work -
Photography Is Not An Art
June 22 - August 19, 2006
Alan Klotz Gallery proudly presents “Photography Is Not An Art!”
What it is, is a phenomenon… something people do, often for very different reasons, only one of which is the creation of objects of esthetic value. But time, attitude and a change of context can imbue even the dumbest image, even an outright accident, with artistic merit. The impulse that causes an image to exist might be a purely scientific, certainly a non-aesthetic driven desire to accurately record the features of a person (mug shots) or a place (exploration photos, aerial reconnaissance). They might also come out of the desire to influence opinion (propaganda, advertising, the work of the picture press) or simply from a vernacular (again, not artistic) knee jerk response to subject matter (the common and not so common snapshot). “What a cute baby! puppy! boyfriend!, What a nice sunset! flower! condo!” – just check the appropriate box.
This show will concentrate on all this “other” activity, and how ultimately all this work, is as much about photographic seeing and why we turn to this medium as solution and as outlet for countless urges, drives, needs and satisfactions. They are a treasure trove of visions and ideas so often raided by the most shrewd and observant of artists – from Degas to Warhol, from Hine to Friedlander. The thief is greater than his loot!
The photographs are also about our curiosity about pictures themselves and the activity of picturing the whole obvious universe and our relationship to it. Once photographed, the resulting object/image/relic/evidence manages to confer an importance not always immediately apparent in its subject. Isolation, a clear view, changing attitudes and even a simple trick of the light, can take the mundane or trivial and confer on it import, gravitas and merit it might not immediately deserve. The prints in this show - news photos, snapshots, NASA photos, medical and science photos, postcards, advertising, vernacular and crime photos – will make you nod, scratch or shake you head or all of these in turn, but they will never bore you…
Alyson DENNY: The Seaweed Pictures
April 20 - June 17, 2006
Alan Klotz Gallery proudly presents “Alyson DENNY: The Seaweed Pictures”, an exhibition of approximately 30 unmanipulated chromogenic dye color photographs of seaweed in situ, printed by the photographer.
There are many things to like about Alyson Denny’s photographs – the two big ones are color and a focus-defined space. Most color photographers seem to be afraid of color; their colors are drab, inoffensive, unremarkable. Denny revels in it, worships it, ramps up the saturation and lets it sing. In the era of milky Euro-color this is a significant difference.
Ms. Denny’s images at first glance might seem like flattened abstractions, but are actually shallow, carefully crafted, 3-dimensional “landscapes”. Shooting with a tele-macro lens wide open will do that for you. The shapes and colors all have volume which can be placed in a world you could walk through… although admittedly it would be a short walk. How little selective focus seems to be employed these days, which is a pity since its selectivity allows us to simultaneously define with certainty and to suggest vaguely what is or isn’t there.
If you study these photographs you will see that the color only partially comes from the objects in focus (the seaweed); the rest comes from the adjacent unresolved ambiguous space. Is it more seaweed? the water? the rising sun? reflections? Irrelevant. The point is that delineated objects merge with those merely suggested to create a color saturated pictorial harmony rather than a literal taxonomy of seaweed.
Since Last You Saw Me…
New Work from Pavel Banka, Robert Richfield and Jonathan Torgovnik
New Work from Pavel Banka, Robert Richfield and Jonathan Torgovnik
February 2 - April 20, 2006
Alan Klotz Gallery proudly presents “Since Last You Saw Me…”, an exhibition of photographs by gallery artists Pavel Banka, Robert Richfield and Jonathan Torgovnik done since their last gallery shows. The work represents new projects they are currently working on… their next show in progress if you will.
PAVEL BANKA returns to the Oregon coast where he did his “Infinity Series” photographs which the gallery exhibited several years ago. This time he has shot this haunting landscape in color, emphasizing the spatial ambiguity in his subjects. He makes the viewer virtually fight their way into the picture.
ROBERT RICHFIELD is making 360 degree panoramas of Venice, Amsterdam, Brittany as well as several locations in England (Jersey and Manchester among them). A number of these images have been done at night (which is new to Richfield’s work) and these are positively iridescent. He is also exploring interiors now which often show the rhythmic interaction between the architecture and the way it resonates with the way Richfield breaks or sets up his frames.
JONATHAN TORGOVNIK’s previous series on the Bollywood craze in India was published by Phaidon Press in 2003. In this new work he returns to his native Israel to photograph Israeli army reservists both at home and on the job. They are at once troubling, funny, surprising and revealing in the transformation that takes place when the uniform is donned, the weapon picked up and “normal” life is left behind yet we still know who these soldiers are… a rare human view of the military.
PHILIP PERKIS at 70
- Recent Work -
November 15, 2005 – January 14, 2006
This exhibition is comprised of some 40 black and white traditional gelatin silver prints. All the work shown here has been done in the last three years since Mr. Perkis’ well received retrospective exhibition held at this gallery in 2003/4. This new work, done in his 70th year, after nearly 50 years in photography, is a medley of soft spoken observations, printed in Mr. Perkis’ almost endlessly long tonal range, so characteristic of this master printer. The photographs are not about the Wagnerian grandeur of an Ansel Adams, but rather they are subtle, elegant intimations about the almost invisible patterns which hold the world together and connect us to it, physically and spiritually.
It is the profound recognition of that connection which Mr. Perkis knows so well and gives us in each of these images, lovingly and darkly wrapped in his exquisite greys. At a time when photography virtually assaults us with size and color and “concept”, these deftly formed and deeply felt images lure you in, demanding that you meet them halfway. They ask us as viewers to do some work while looking, but then reward us with fresh insights, beautifully crafted. They are pure visual poetry seen at the end of the photographic era.
Philip Perkis started photography in 1957 while serving as a B-36 tail gunner in the Air Force. He spent hundreds of hours looking out the window of the airplane. Following that, he studied with John Collier Jr., Dorothea Lange, and Minor White. Since that time, he has been photographing pretty much in the same way, using small and medium format cameras, black and white film, and producing un-manipulated prints.
Mr. Perkis’ work can be found in the collections of many museums as well as private collections. He received two NY State Council Grants, two National Endowment Grants, and is a Guggenheim fellow. His monograph, Warwick Mountains Series was published by Nexus Press in 1978 and his prose book, Teaching Photography: Notes Assembled, was published by OB Press in 2001 and is now in its fourth printing. Mr. Perkis has been teaching photography at the college level since 1964 and chaired the photography department at Pratt Institute for eight years. He currently teaches at the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and the Graduate program at the School of Visual Arts.
CONTEMPORARY OBSCURISTS
The Camera Obscura in Contemporary Photography Featuring Stephen Berkman, Rebecca Cummins, Vera Lutter, Abelardo Morell Shi Guorui, Charles Schwartz and Bill Westheimer.
September 15 – November 12, 2005
OPENING RECEPTION
Thursday September 15, 2005 6-8pm
The beguiling image in the optical drawing device known as the camera obscura brought about the invention of photography. The many inventors of what would become known as photography were all trying to “fix” the illusive image they saw there. Today, with all of our mega-pixel super digitized computer enhanced images, it is reassuring (in a retro sort of way) to know that many seriously thought of contemporary artists/photographers are still looking with awe at that compelling luminosity and continuing to reshape and redefine its importance to contemporary vision.
The camera obscura (which literally means ‘dark room’ in Italian) started off as just that – a room made dark against the light save for a pin hole, later to be replaced by a lens. This aperture permitted a thin beam of light to come into the room and provide a perfect projection of all the objects of the outside world on a wall, or better yet, a piece of drawing paper. The wall or paper was placed opposite the pinhole or lens which allowed the image to be studied or traced either physically or, later, photochemically. It was an image of the world, but removed from it, reduced in dimension from 3 to 2, reduced in size and separated from its original context by the frame that defined its edges. It also glowed as light coming out of the darkness…it was mesmerizing to those who used it then: Durer, Vermeer, Canaletto, Reynolds, and it still is for us today. For artists such as Stephen Berkman, Rebecca Cummins, Vera Lutter, Abelardo Morell, Shi Guorui (in his US debut), Charles Schwartz and Bill Westheimer the camera obscura is still a source of both imagery and fascination. Only today that image is not simply used as a means of cataloging the whole obvious universe; today’s practitioners are more interested in using the images from the camera obscura as points of departure - reinventing the world by controlling the context, and focusing our attention on our relationship to it now, as well as refering to our experience and understanding of more historical image making.
Morell and Shu Guorui are out finding rooms-with-a-view, as of old, but with the twist of mixing images and objects as well as exploring positive and negative tone reversals and how that affects the way we perceive previously familiar objects. Vera Lutter turns these familiar items into objects of wonder: from parked cars to whole cities. Some of the artists still use room sized cameras, others make huge pinhole cameras out of commercial containers (Lutter); others incorporate the camera itself or surrogate parts of it into the work of art (Cummins, Berkman); and Charles Schwartz actually had an elaborate automated camera obscura room built on top of his apartment to create both permanence and flexibility. It also serves as his office!
The variety of this work is so surprising, considering the simplicity of the camera obscura as a device; it is limited only by the imagination of those employing it. For these artists it is as if the camera obscura was something new, something fresh on the scene, as opposed to the effect known since the Crusades and the device first described in 1553! Its image continues to fascinate those who see it and use it, those artists who can bend its image to their will, as the lens bends light, into the stuff of the uniquely personal.
THE WOMEN OF LIFE
An examination of the photography of the women photographers at LIFE magazine featuring works by Margaret Bourke-White, Martha Holmes, Lisa Larsen, Nina Leen, Marie Hansen and Hansel Mieth.
July 7 - August 13, 2005
Alan Klotz Gallery (formerly the Klotz/Sirmon Gallery) proudly presents "The Women of LIFE", a look at the work of the great women photographers working for America’s favorite magazine, LIFE. Photographers featured are: Margaret Bourke-White, Martha Holmes, Nina Leen, Lisa Larsen, Marie Hansen, and Hansel Mieth. This is the first show ever dedicated solely to the women photographers of LIFE.
Women photographers were often assigned to what was referred to as “gumdrop” assignments… the soft news from the home front as it were. Of course this policy did not apply to Bourke-White who, although she did her share of home front, was front line whenever she wanted. One can trace a pattern through the exhibition that mirrors, with great acuity, the evolving cultural milieu in America around the middle of the 20th century, especially by the foreign born photographers who could see us as an experimental phenomenon occurring outside of their experience, but also under their intense scrutiny. Their understanding and attention to detail was truly remarkable.
Everyone knows the work of Margaret BOURKE-WHITE (1904-1971), a documentary photographer who was second to none. She was a founding photographer at LIFE and her photograph of the Fort Peck Dam was LIFE’s first cover. We will have both rare vintage prints as well as more modern prints available.
Martha HOLMES, who will be present at our opening reception July 7th from 6 –8 pm, is from Louisville and specializes in photographs of the plastic and the performing arts. Her photographs of Jackson Pollock painting are perhaps her best-known work. The shot which shows Pollock engaged in his pouring technique (Number 1, 1949), was dramatized in the movie “Pollock” as well as being commemorated on a US Postage 33¢ stamp, but with Pollock’s ever present cigarette removed.
Nina LEEN (1914-1995), a native of Russia who grew up in Germany, Switzerland and Italy, was known for her understanding of fashion, cultural trends (particularly the activities and attitudes of teenagers), celebrities and animals… especially bats!
Lisa LARSEN (1925-1959), who unfortunately died far too early of cancer at age 34, was primarily a portrait photographer who rendered the famous as knowable and warm individuals. Ho Chi Minh once said to her, after a portrait session, “If I were a young man I would be in love with you”.
Hansel MIETH (1909-1998) escaped from Europe on the eve of World War II and became a social documentary photographer for the WPA before coming to LIFE. She is best known for her photographs of working conditions and laborers at work.
Marie HANSEN (1918-1969) concentrated on politics, the White House, Hollywood and the social/cultural scene. Once considered for the role of herself in a movie about women photojournalists, she declined stating she preferred to work on the other side of the lens.
A SENSE OF ABSTRACTION
An exploration of the abstract tradition in photography featuring works by Siskind, Callahan, White, Bullock, H.H. Smith, Siegel, Crawford, the Westons, Porter and Chiarenza.
May 19 - July 2, 2005
Alan Klotz Gallery (formerly the Klotz/Sirmon Gallery) proudly presents "A SENSE OF ABSTRACTION", an exhibition exploring American photographers’ penchant for the abstract. Artists featured in the exhibition will be Minor White, Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan, Henry Holmes Smith, Wynn Bullock, Eliot Porter, Arthur Siegel, Edward and Brett Weston, Carlotta Corpron, Ralston Crawford, Edward Quigley and Carl Chiarenza.
Photography is most often thought of as a medium best suited for the mirroring of the social landscape, or the natural one - People and, or in, their environment. Throughout its history photography has played tag with painting in the area of innovation and imitation of artistic concerns. In the case of Abstract Expressionism, photography - and the work of Aaron Siskind in particular - actually showed the way to most of the movement’s painters.
Photography's attachment to abstraction, in the middle of the 20th Century, is clearly linked to ideas coming from the reductivism of European Modernism as taught and espoused by its evangelical "American" church which was the Institute of Design in Chicago - Moholy-Nagy's transplanted emigré Bauhaus. Many of the artists represented in this exhibition were either teachers or students there, or were directly influenced by them.
The interest in abstraction comes from several sources. The intense study of architecture and architectural forms (Siskind, Callahan, Siegel), certainly the concern of the Institute of Design, while others (Bullock and Porter) evolved more from the nature studies of the influential Group f64 of Weston and Cunningham. Finally, there are those photographers whose work more directly relates to painters’ interest in the application of paint as color, and is re-presented in photography by photo-chemical constructions of light (Smith, Corpron, Quigley and Moholy-Nagy himself).
Whatever the source, the journey was much the same: getting away from the cataloging of the whole obvious universe (photography's traditional role), to a more poetic place where knowledge was more "felt" and less "known"…, where forms evoked a more emotional response than just naming the "stuff" within the picture.
The fact is that most fans of photography abhor abstraction and will not tolerate its use. Abstraction to them is the province of painting; photography must be more “real”. Today we are constantly being asked to acknowledge a blurring of distinction between photography and the rest of contemporary art. If the rules of separation are to be abandoned, so too should notions about what subjects or approaches are appropriate for one medium or another. Despite critical disdain, there is a large body of abstract photography which can not be ignored, and should further the fluidity and dialogue between media.
IMRE KINSZKI
An exhibition of vintage photographs from the 1920's & 1930's by this important Hungarian photographer.
January 27 - March 26, 2005
Klotz/Sirmon Gallery proudly presents vintage photographs by the important Modernist Hungarian photographer Imre Kinszki (1901-1945). There is little doubt that had Imre Kinszki left his native Budapest for the more active and noticed environments of Paris or Berlin, as did his more famous compatriots Andre Kertesz, Brassai or Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, we would know his work a lot better. Certainly it is worthy of attention as his imagery is full of wonder at the discovery of a modern world emerging from the picturesque trappings of old Europe.
This redirection of our attention is skillfully managed by Kinszki's shrewed and subtle vision, which is able to make us see what has been hidden in plain sight all along - form, line, abstraction, and vibrant kinetic excitement. All we needed to to do was to change the exposure or alter our viewpoint or redefine and reframe our subjects. Significantly, for us looking back at this highly charged era of experimentation is the fact that Kinszki does not represent a later generation's rehashing of breakthrough visions, but rather the first blush of that primary excitement which would see the world truly differently and set it on its ear forever.Kinszki was born in Budapest in 1901. It is known that his first photographs were taken in 1921. He was first published in News of the Photography in 1931 and in 1932 he wrote an article on the Bauhaus aesthetic. Kinszki also contributed extensively to the publication of American Photography and Popular Photography in London. In 1937, he was a founding member of the group Modern Hungarian Photographers, which was an informal circle of artists close in spirit to the New Objectivity. In 1939, they edited the first collaborative publication by the society, The Hungarian Photography. In 1927 he was among the founding members of the Modern Hungarian Photographers group and in the same year he organised, together with Erno Vadas and Gusztáv Seiden, the Daguerre centenary international photo exhibition.
We know from preserved correspondence that Kinszki was in contact with László Moholy-Nagy, Paul Wolff, Brassai and Albert Renger-Patzsch. His knowledge of languages, widespread correspondence, and friends (doctor Lajos Székely, philosopher Aurél Kolnai and art dealer Imre Róna) allowed him to stay abreast of world events and trends.
Imre Kinszki was born in a Jewish bourgeois intelligentsia family, which determined his future fate to an extent. He could not graduate from university even though he had published his natural philosophy writings in the Huszadik Század and the Századunk when he was only 18. After the so-called Jewish laws came to force in Hungary Kinszki wrote letters to his acquaintances living in the various parts of the world asking for help. He thought that professional and human respect he had enjoyed would suffice for him to survive. He was proved wrong. Kinszki died in Sachsenhausen in the early spring of 1945.
THE GREAT LIFE PHOTOGRAPHERS
September 29th - December 23, 2004
Klotz/Sirmon Gallery proudly presents an exhibition of some sixty classic photographs from the pages of LIFE magazine. This exhibition coincides with the re-publication of LIFE magazine in October (see “Related Events” at the bottom of this press release). We will feature signed limited editions and some vintage photographs by such renowned photographers as Cornell Capa, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White, W. Eugene Smith, Andreas Feininger, Peter Stackpole, John Loengard, Carl Mydans, John Dominis, Ralph Morse, Yale Joel, Ed Clark, Loomis Dean, Elliot Elisofon, Martha Holmes, and others.
It is a surprise for most of us that in this image conscious world there is no venue for seeing the images of our time, as we live it, that can compare with those photographs found in LIFE magazine starting in 1936. These dedicated photographers consistently presented us with powerful, unforgettable images like no other group of photographers before or since. Week after week, year after year, through victories, defeats, wars, disasters, stunning beginnings, joyous occasions and all the pivotal events that formed eras, and ideas and beliefs. Our identity as a modern nation was reflected in these photographs, but was also molded by them. We were moved, awed, outraged and ultimately galvanized, not by what we were told, but, in a real sense, by what we saw.
There are many fine photographers working today, but there is no group with the astute vision that this group had in their hey day, and perhaps more importantly, and more regrettably, there is no longer a publication willing to demand and pay for the kinds of images you will see in our exhibition. Also gone is the public who used to expect to be shaken out of their complacency on a regular basis by photographs. We have, as an audience, become too accepting of the mediocre stock photo op, and the same old tired video clips seen every night on television. Television was supposed to replace the still-picture press with the compelling addition of motion and sound. And although, sadly, T.V. has in fact supplanted the picture press as our major source for news, in no way has it equaled its force much less surpassed it. In other words, like so much else today photojournalism has been dumbed down.
There are so many familiar icons in this exhibition: flag raisings, and surrenders, devastation and rebuildings, sports and culture, famous faces, famous finishes and even some famous kisses, but there will also be some wonderful small moments, intensely seen, that will surprise and satisfy even the most jaded of cognoscenti.
So for those of you who love photojournalism, and remember how images can truly move you, for those of you still looking for that “real thing”, this exhibition will show you where it went.
We are fortunate to have a good number of vintage prints including Alfred Eisenstaedt's ever popular "Opening Night, La Scala" as well as a vintage contact sheet of this shooting. We also have a stunning vintage print of W. Eugene Smith's eerie "Explosion, Iwo Jima".
A significant feature of the exhibition, warranting its own gallery, are two extended vintage LIFE photo-essays. One features photographs from the W. Eugene Smith "Nurse Midwife" essay about the dedicated heroism of Maude Callen, an African-American nurse/midwife working in rural South Carolina.
Finally there is a poignant essay about Margaret Bourke-White's courageous battle with Parkinson's disease, photographed by her friend and co-founding photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt.
JONATHAN TORGOVNIK
Bollywood Dreams
June 5 - August 15, 2003
"Jonathan Torgovnik's pictures take me back to an India that thrives on pure cinema, perfectly capturing our need for innocent surrender to an unreal movie paradise. His photographs show us both the grit and the fantasy, the lurid and the sensual. Welcome to this unique, dusty, insightful journey."
~ Mira Nair
Klotz/Sirmon Gallery proudly presents: Jonathan Torgovnik "Bollywood Dreams". This exhibition contains 30-35 color photographs (sizes ranging from 20 x 24" to 30 x 40") documenting the phenomenon of the Indian film industry - affectionately known as Bollywood - and shows its influence and importance in the nation's culture and its daily life.
As the world's largest creator of feature films, India produces over 800 new films each year for a growing population of almost one billion. Song and dance - from a 3,000 year tradition - remain the bedrock of Indian cinema, and each film's plots are structured around elaborate musical numbers. Each day India's movie theaters are bombarded with over 14 million avid viewers, and the experience of going to the cinema is as much a part of the Bollywood phenomenon as are the stars themselves. Going to the movies is the only real cultural experience for the majority of the population, and the cinema is not just a form of entertainment, it is practically a religion. Movie stars in India are treated like gods - literally - no match even for American standards of celebrity obsession.
Torgovnik first went to India in 1992, and since 1997 he has traveled extensively throughout the country, capturing the entire spectrum of Bollywood. The films are full of color, light, and happy endings, yet his photographs show the radiance and beauty of a crumpled ticket stub, a ripped movie poster, and a cluttered cinema floor, alike.
Torgovnik presents not only the private dressing rooms of the stars, but also the distinct perspective of the theatergoers and intimate behind-the-scenes glimpses of men stationed in projector rooms. Bollywood Dreams begins with a vignette of the touring cinema caravans that bring Bollywood on the big screen - in portable tents - to India's villages. The journey continues with a visual narrative that reveals the many facets of the Bollywood film form. Seen is action on the movie set, up-close with the stars, directors, and crews; scenes from inside the editing chamber to out on the streets where huge promotional posters collage the towns and cities; and the multitude of both large and small cinemas around the country.
Born in 1969 in Tel Aviv, Jonathan Torgovnik lived in Israel until his early 20’s. He began his career as a combat photographer in the Israeli army. After completing his mandatory three-year service in 1991, he headed out on a major backpack journey through the Himalayas, Thailand, and India, which is when and how he discovered Bollywood. He experienced first hand how deeply cinema is rooted in Indian culture and how influential the medium is, and what an important part it plays in defining India’s social identity.
In 1992 he moved to New York and attended the School of Visual Arts, graduating with a BFA. In 1997 after winning a Kodak Professional Photographer’s Award, he decided to embark on his second trip to start the project of documenting the Bollywood demi-monde.
In addition to Bollywood, Torgovnik has completed several long-term documentary projects. He currently is based in New York and works on assignment for American and European magazines. His photographs have appeared in Newsweek, Smithsonian, Vanity Fair, Sunday Times Magazine (London), The Telegraph Magazine (London), Paris Match, Stern, and other publications.
His photographs have been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions in New York and throughout Europe, and his work has been acquired for the permanent collections of several major museums, including The Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), The Jewish Museum (New York), and Ellis Island Immigration Museum (New York).
Long Ago and Far Away: INDIA
A 19th Century Photographic Survey
A 19th Century Photographic Survey
June 5 to August 15, 2003
Klotz/Sirmon Gallery announces its upcoming exhibition: Long Ago and Far Away - India: A 19th Century Photographic Survey. The show is comprised of 30 vintage 19th Century views of India, the exotic to the prosaic, by such photographers as Felice Beato, Col. Thomas Biggs, Samuel Bourne, Dr. John Murray, Richard Banner Oakeley, Dr. W. H. Pigou, Charles Scowen, Shepherd and Robertson, Capt. Linnaeus Tripe and others.
The show will feature a triple plate panorama of the Taj Mahal by Dr. John Murray from March 1864 printed from waxed paper negatives, photography's first negative to positive process; the negatives as well as the positives will be on display. This alone would be a compelling reason to attend this exhibition, as you may never see a calotype this large again. But there is much more: Richard Banner Oakely was one of only four early photographers to make the 20 day trek to photograph the temples at Halebid. We have a stunning view of the High-Relief Sculpture and Temple Steps of the Hoysalesvara Temple, a salt print from a waxed-paper negative from 1856-57. We will also show rare and beautiful photographs by Samuel Bourne of Kashmir and the high plateaus and peaks of the Himalayas. We will also have a wonderfully modernist view of the Eliot Marbles by Capt. Linnaeus Tripe from 1858, and Botanical studies by Col. Thomas Biggs and by Charles Scowen. There will also be some charming views of an elephant attacking a tree, trunk up for good luck, a Lady's rowing team on Nynee Tal, the obligatory snake charmers and on a more dour note a rather graphic image of a pauper's funeral pyre. They are all part of the Victorians' curiosity over India, the Empire's Jewel in The Crown.
ROBERT RICHFIELD
April 3 - May 31, 2003
Our previous exhibition at the gallery is "A Look Around" Panoramic Views by Robert Richfield. These multiple panel, color, panorama photographs are of industrial, and industrialized sites, transportation portals, gardens and delicate cemetery ironwork. Richfield surveys his subjects with a series of large format negative views often showing a full 360º around the "point of view", so we are given not only a detailed view of his subject but also the entire contextual environment.
Richfield seems to love train stations, especially English ones. The structure of their aluminum or steel ribbed glass overhangs work perfectly, rhythmically, with the black lines which separate each of the panorama's panels. The architecture of the space and that of the picture support each other?s presence. Time is also a featured element in these images; as trains enter and leave the stations they often disappear between adjacent panels, reappearing as blurs further down the platform.
Cemeteries of France and England are Richfield's most recent interest, or more specifically, he is attracted to the memorial ironwork of angels and religious symbols used as graveside decoration. For these Richfield turns the path of his panoramas 90º to describe these decorative objects vertically rather than horizontally.
The photographs, only 14 to 20 inches high are long, some more than 10 feet in length. They all are imbued with Richfield's highly developed eye for exquisite detail and his observations tending toward the wry and the witty.
JAN STALLER
January 23 - March 29, 2003
Our first exhibition of 2003 was the work of Jan Staller, Found Sculpture: A Body of Recent Work. Mr. Staller has been photographing the urban and industrial environment for many years and has an established world-wide reputation. His newest work, done since his last monograph On Planet Earth (Aperture Foundation 1997) relates to the tradition of the found object in sculpture. At locations as far-flung as Korea, or as nearby as New Jersey, Jan makes his photographs at construction sites, landfills and the occasional military facility. Instead of presenting his subjects in the objective manner of documentary photography typified by the work of the Bechers or Walker Evans, Staller is more inspired by artists such as Robert Smithson, Andy Goldsworthy, Walter De Maria, Meg Webster and others.
His large format color work (up to 40 x 80 inches) shows a sensitivity to finding a sculptural essence in objects that others would see only as detritus, or as an ordinary construction site, and completely transforms it, revealing its true yet hidden nature. These visions prove to be, after this prince has "kissed the frog", graceful, bold but always compelling works of sculpture. After seeing his work you will never drive the West Side Highway or the Jersey Turnpike and feel the same way again. Rather than merely seeing the armpit of the nation you will now smile with satisfaction knowing that what is whizzing past your window, through the fumes of swamp and Diesel, is really the Storm King Sculpture Center on the hoof!
The show is accompanied by a 24 page catalog of this recent work, available from us exclusively, with an introduction by Gregory Volk.
PHILIP PERKIS
November 9 to December 21, 2002
Exhibition Receives Critical Acclaim
Exhibition Receives Critical Acclaim
Philip Perkis' exhibition received a considerable amount of attention. Before the show Black & White Magazine printed an interview with Mr. Perkis illustrated by a photograph from his fan and admirer Helen Levitt. The New Yorker said: "These black-and-white photographs simultaneously express the athos and humor we learned to see through Robert Frank's "The Americans." Here, a fly-fishing line lies at a river's edge, or the outline of a barren hill on the West Bank recedes seamlessly into the clouds, or a bungee jumper dangles weightlessly above Coney Island's ruins. The images resonate with an incredible lightness, and at the same time convey a sense of solitude and the inevitability of life's end." and there are articles coming in Art on Paper (March issue) and in Camera Arts magazine. Almost 100 of Perkis' book "Teaching Photography: Notes Assembled" (OB Press 2001 - now in its third printing) were sold at the gallery. It's become quite the little cultish collectors item.
Harry Lapow
Coney Island Beach People
Coney Island Beach People
July 11 to August 16, 2002
Coney Island Beach People: Photographs by Harry Lapow was an exhibition of 35 vintage black and white photographs primarily from the 1950's & 60's by New York photographer Harry Lapow (1909 - 1982). The photographs richly portray the demi-monde of the beach and its habitués. The photographs cover the scene from the water-borne to the denizens of the sand (both in it and on it) to the users of the boardwalk (both on it and under it) and then, of course, the rides: the roller coaster, the parachute jump and Steeplechase. Just enough time has gone by for us to see the subjects of these photographs as the truly unique characters that they are: Definitely of the era and yet familiar enough for us to see ourselves beside them on the sand even if our sand is now on a different beach. The photographs can be seen online in our 20th Century American Photography room.