Images from Bruce Davidson's classic Subway series, first published in 1986.
The book has recently been re-released with 25 previously unpublished images, and next Wednesday night at Aperture Gallery in New York, Davidson will be discussing his work and signing copies of Subway.
The excellent new issue of Aperture, with a cover image by Collier Schorr (Lisanne and Aleks, 2009). Vince Aletti wrote the cover story.
Click here for info.
Eadweard Muybridge: Cockatoo: Flying; Plate 759, 1887 (collotype on paper) from a review in the current issue of Aperture magazine of Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change, a traveling exhibition currently on view at Tate Britain, and moving to SFMoMA February 26–June 7, 2011.
William Christenberry: Double Cola Sign, Beale Street, Memphis, TN, 1966 – featured in Kodachromes, a new book featuring Christenberry's previously unpublished work shot on Kodachrome 35mm slide film. Get more info and order from aperture.org.
Keliy Anderson-Staley Hanson's Tent at the Common Ground Fair, Unity, Maine, 2008 – from Anderson-Staley's Off the Grid series, documenting the dwellings of people living in the Maine woods. A limited edition print of the photo shown above is available from Aperture and you can see more at andersonstaley.com.
We've already posted a few times about The Gentlewoman, which is my favorite magazine to come out in quite awhile (in Seattle you can pick it up for $10.95 at Elliott Bay Books), but here are some other current magazines that I recommend.
032c – based in Berlin, always worth picking up for smart fashion, art and design.
25 – a great looking new title, edited by Anja Rubik (pictured above left as well as on the cover of 032c) and her boyfriend Sasha Knezevic.
The Last Magazine – co-founded by Tenzin Wild, with whom I collaborated on several projects at Visionaire. Folded out, it's the size of a big poster, which forces you to lay it out on the table and really experience turning the beautifully printed pages. Content-wise it's kind of all over the place, like a Sunday afternoon where you don't have any plans but to walk around and see what happens.
Aperture – a much more dense issue than usual, with expansive features on too many great photographers to name here. Also included is a Polaroid-sponsored supplement featuring Mary Ellen Mark, Chuck Close, Joel Meyerowitz, and others discussing the merits of instant film.
Self Service – I've mentioned it before – it's maybe my all-time favorite magazine, and this is one of their best recent issues. Yes, it's $32, but you're not going to throw it out, so on that level you should consider it an inexpensive photography book (and it is hardback, if that helps). The front section has an extended series of fashion photographs, all mixed together, by Daniel Jackson, Roger Dekker, Richard Burbridge, Max Farago, and others, and the entire well is made up of polaroids of a variety of people by Ezra Petronio. Here are some of those:
Some day I'll have my own newsstand.
An image by Australian photographer Michael Corridore, from the series Angry Black Snake – on display through April 8th at Aperture Gallery in New York. Corridore describes the series thusly:Angry Black Snake presents specific scenarios where crowds have gathered to participate in and watch various leisure activities and spectacles. I photographed people during moments of excitement and enjoyment as they celebrated the events they had come to experience. I wanted, however, to portray individuals or small groups of people seemingly out of context with their existing environment and the surrounding events, so that the various scenes appear suspended in a dreamlike state, whether pleasant or post-apocalyptic.Aperture is holding an artist's reception this Thursday, March 11th, from 6–8pm. More info about the show at aperture.org. See more images from Angry Black Snake at michaelcorridore.com.
Eirik Johnson: Scrapped train, Arlington, Washington, from Sawdust Mountain – Johnson's series of photographs exploring man's impact on the Northwest's natural environment. A selection of photographs from the series is on view at the Henry Art Gallery (opening party tonight!) and a book is available from Aperture:
Images from UNCOVERED: Photographs by Thomas Allen (Aperture, 2007, forward by Chip Kidd). Signed copies are available directly from Foley Gallery.
Allen precisely cuts and juxtaposes the covers of vintage pulp novels, and then photographs them; the resulting images have been featured in Harper's, The New Yorker, GQ, Esquire, The New York Times and elsewhere. This show, Epilogue, signals the end of the series.Allen’s final foray finds the characters that he has so effectively brought to life entering reluctant tableaux that heralds their demise. Whether it is death, the end of love, a showdown or a last curtain call. His unmistakable talent for creating the illusion of 3D with deft cuts and crimps allows us to see cowboy’s guns floating in mid air, spacemen taking their last gasp and an aerialist taking a death defying plunge.Epilogue is up through October 10th – definitely check it out if you're in NYC. More info and images at foleygallery.com
Inspired by the View-Master and “pop-up” books from childhood, Allen became interested in combining these viewing experiences with his adult interests in pulp fiction paperbacks as still life subjects. In this new series of work, the narrative is reduced to the final scene, often the scene of the crime. How and why these characters have come together in their drama is up to us to decide.
I can't recommend Photography After Frank highly enough. Philip Gefter was a photography critic at The New York Times for many years and was also the art director responsible for picking the main front-page image for the paper everyday; he has an extraordinary knowledge of photography from a multitude of angles. I've been plodding along slowly with this book because I'm trying to write down the name of every photographer he mentions and research the ones I don't know. Read a good review at The Year In Pictures and buy it directly from Aperture.
Susan Sontag's On Photography is kind of the classic in the field and I'm just now getting around to reading it. It's a little stinging in parts because she makes some sharp psychological observations about this desire/need that certain people (ahem) have to, uh, document everything. That she was writing long before cell phones, digital photography, and the web makes them all the more true now. Still, I'm finding that it makes me look at photography in different ways and I appreciate that.
Emily knows me really well. For our January Xmas, as I mentioned before, she got me a set of maps for finding all the ghost towns of Washington State, and she also got me the beautifully packaged Criterion DVD Two-Lane Blacktop. But I think the coolest thing she came up with was this first paperback edition of Paul Fusco's self-published book RFK Funeral Train.
Fusco, a staff photographer for Look magazine, traveled with Robert F. Kennedy's body as it made its way from New York to D.C. in 1968. Fusco documented the journey with pictures of the people who stood at the side of the tracks to pay their respects. (Click to enlarge.)
Aperture published a new version of the book last year, including many previously unpublished photos – you can get it at aperture.org for $35.
