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One Hour Photo

April 11, 2010 – 5:32 pm

I’m happy to have a photograph of mine included in One Hour Photo, a unique exhibition that will be held from May 8th – June 6th at the American University Museum at Katzen Arts Center in Washington, DC.

The premise of “One Hour Photo” is simple: project a photograph for one hour, then ensure that it will never be seen again.

Created by Adam Good and curated with Chajana denHarder and Chandi Kelley, the exhibition brings together 128 artists including Noel Rodo-Vankeulen, Tim Davis, Charles Benton, Nicola Kast, Andraya Parlato, Brian Ulrich, Gregory Halpern, Nigel Shafran, Lucas Blalock, Jason Lazarus, Shane Lavalette, Penelope Umbrico, Matthew Gamber, Ann Woo, and many others.

All of the artists including myself signed a release form stating that our images will never be published or exhibited anywhere, meaning that the one hour projection is the only place/time to see these works.

My photograph will be on view from 11am – 12pm on Wednesday, June 2nd.

View the full schedule here.

Posted in Events, Exhibitions, News, Personal

Sam Falls: Nothing is Revealed

February 2, 2010 – 5:13 pm


Return to the Alps (3), 2009
© Sam Falls

Nothing is Revealed, a solo exhibition of work by Sam Falls, opens with a reception this Thursday, February 4th from 6-8pm at Higher Pictures. If you miss the opening, the show will be on view from February 4th – March 10th, 2010.

Congrats, Sam!

Posted in Events, Exhibitions

“America Now” at Montserrat Gallery

February 2, 2010 – 1:43 pm


Untitled, 2007 [from "Northeast"]
© Shane Lavalette

I’m honored to have a selection of my photographs included in America Now, an exhibition opening this week at Montserrat Gallery. From the press release:

America as seen through the eyes of six American photographers: Daniel Cheek, Ben Huff, Shane Lavalette, Laura McPhee, Alec Soth and Zoe Strauss. The work is based in five regions of the US, including Alaska, the West, the Mid-West, the Northeast and the Southeast.

An opening reception for will be held this Thursday, February 4th from 6-8pm and the exhibition will be on view from February 5th – April 10th, 2010.

More information can be found here.

Posted in Events, Exhibitions, News, Personal

Ladies and Gentlemen

October 10, 2009 – 11:43 am


[from "Ladies and Gentlemen"]
© Shane Lavalette

From November 2nd through the 29th, 2009, my found photo project Ladies and Gentlemen will be displayed in the photography cases of the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts at Harvard University (curated by VES faculty Chris Killip).

From the Carpenter Center’s website:

“Ladies and Gentlemen” consists of a selection of found studio portrait cards – 12 women and 12 men, each measuring approximately 4.5 x 6.5 in. – as collected by photographer Shane Lavalette. The cards were produced in the late 19th Century by various photographic studios around New England, many in Vermont where Lavalette is originally from. The images often depict subjects gazing out of the frame, frozen and lost in thought. Brought together, the photographs ask us to consider the personalities and roles of these individuals as well the blurred line of femininity/masculinity that exists on their surface.

In his text titled Out of the Ordinary, Martin Parr puts forward a case for taking more seriously such everyday objects: “Spend some time looking,” he begs, “…At their design, their shape, their individual characteristics. Think ahead and imagine their significance…” It seems that Lavalette, too, understands the notion of taking these objects more seriously and believes in the potential (and indeed pleasure) of viewing them in splendid isolation.

More info here or see the entire project on my website.

Posted in Exhibitions, News, Personal

Mus-Mus: @Paris

September 28, 2009 – 12:42 pm

Some time ago the collaborative photography space Mus-Mus (perhaps you’ve seen their project @600?) got in touch with me about contributing to their @Paris project, which was later juried by photographers Stephen Shore and Gil Blank along with Denise Wolff (Editor, Book Program at Aperture). Since I was at the time traveling in France, I was excited about the opportunity and was sure to send them my contribution after leaving Paris.

The project launched earlier this month and is now available to view in its entirety online. Included are images by a selection of fantastic photographers (such good company!):

Alec Soth, Bertien van Manen, Beth Dow, Corinne Vionnet, David LaSpina, Georg Parthen, Gil Blank, Gus Powell, Hin Chua, Jason Fulford, Louis Porter, Lucas Blalock, Mark Steinmetz, Matthew Spiegelman, Michael David Murphy, Mike Slack, Paul Schiek, Richard Renaldi, Shane Lavalette, Simon Roberts, Stephen Shore, Thobias Fäldt and many, many more.

Here’s a screenshot of my contribution:


Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, Paris, France, 2009
Photograph © Shane Lavalette

Along with the photographs, Mus-Mus published two interesting texts: Abdu’l-Baha in Paris by Darius Himes and Paris and Photography as the Promise of Possibility by Ulrich Baer – both worth a read.

View the @Paris project here.

Posted in Exhibitions, News, Online, Personal

“Simply the Best” at the MFA, Boston

August 18, 2009 – 9:40 am


installation shot of “Simply the Best”, on display at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
© Shane Lavalette

A selection of photographs from my project Slí na Boirne are on display in the Courtyard Gallery at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston through October 18th, 2009. Titled “Simply the Best,” the exhibition presents selected work by students at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston who received special recognition during the last academic year. For my photographs in the show, I was awarded the Yousuf Karsh Prize in Photography back in February.

More info about the exhibition can be found here.

Posted in Exhibitions, News, Personal

“Photography Now 2009″ Opens at CPW

June 12, 2009 – 3:32 pm


Stone Wall on Cappanawalla, 2008 [from "Slí na Boirne"]
© Shane Lavalette

Tomorrow night I’ll be at the Center for Photography at Woodstock celebrating the opening of Photography Now 2009, juried this year by Charlotte Cotton (Curator and Head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department, Los Angeles County Museum of Art). Along with my own photographs from my project Slí na Boirne, the exhibition will feature work by Alex Aristei, Clint Baclawski, Yijun Liao, Betsy Seder, Lacey Terrell, Stacey Tyrell and Toshihiro Yashiro.

Those of you in the area (or driving distance) should head to Woodstock, NY for a night of good photography and food! Hope to see you there.

Photography Now 2009
June 10th – July 26th, 2009
Center for Photography at Woodstock
Woodstock, NY

Opening reception: Saturday, June 13th from 5-7pm

More info here.

Posted in Events, Exhibitions, News, Personal

“After Color” at Bose Pacia

June 10, 2009 – 12:10 pm


New Horizons, 2006
© Michael Vahrenwald

Amani Olu of Humble Arts Foundation has put together what looks to be a nicely-curated group exhibition titled After Color. The exhibition includes black and white photographs by Michael Bühler-Rose, Talia Chetrit, Matthew Gamber, Stephen Gill, Adrien Missika, Pushpamala N, Arthur Ou, Noel Rodo-Vankeulen and Michael Vahrenwald. From the press release:

After Color examines how artists employ conceptual black-and-white photography to strengthen their ideas and how such usage comments on the dominance of large-scale, color photography as seen in the contemporary art world over the last 25 years.

The show is on display from July 8 – August 21, 2009 at Bose Pacia in New York. An opening reception will be held on Wednesday, July 8th from 6 to 9pm.

More info here.

Posted in Exhibitions

Laurel Nakadate: Fever Dreams at the Crystal Motel

May 4, 2009 – 8:15 pm


Lucky Tiger #1, 2009 (4×6 in. type-c print and fingerprinting ink)
© Laurel Nakadate

Laurel Nakadate (previously mentioned on the blog here) has some new photo and video work in an exhibition titled Fever Dreams at the Crystal Motel opening Thursday, May 7th and running through July 24th at Leslie Tonkonow. From the press release:

The exhibition features a new series of short videos projected or displayed on a monitor. In these works, ritualized exorcisms are performed by Nakadate and her cast of amateur actors. Locations shift from dingy, claustrophobic motel rooms to the majestic open spaces of the American West. There are ecstatic dances, woodland walks, train travels, and reluctant stripteases. Unwanted feelings and bad memories are cast away.

The show also includes two groups of photographs: the Fever Dreams series, large images that Nakadate shot while making her videos; and the Lucky Tiger series, small snapshots in which she appears in suggestive poses inspired by 1950s-style cheesecake and camera-club photos. These snapshots were completed during a “performance” in which the artist and anonymous middle- aged men, enlisted via Craigslist.com, covered their hands with fingerprinting ink and touched the photographs together. Sitting in a circle, on the floor of one man’s living room, they passed the snapshots around like trading cards.

More info and images can be found here.

Posted in Exhibitions, Other Art, Photographers

A Twilight Art

February 9, 2009 – 4:23 pm


Installation view of “A Twilight Art” at Harris Lieberman Gallery

If you have already seen the group show at Andrew Kreps and are interested in discovering more artists that are responding to issues of photographic process and media specificity, check out the exhibition currently on view at Harris Lieberman Gallery entitled A Twilight Art. From the press release:

A Twilight Art attempts to expand thinking about photography beyond
what is within photographs to the way photographs are made. Digital technologies are quickly subsuming traditional photographic techniques and the impending obsolescence of many conventional photographic technologies has led to a renewed interest in looking at how meaning is produced though and from image making. A Twilight Art represents a diverse perspective of artists working through these questions, across generations, geographies and through both abstract and representational modes.

The work in this exhibition points towards how the changes in the way photography is practiced have not diminished or narrowed the medium. On the contrary, they have opened up a generative space in
which artists are looking deeper into the ways pictures are and have been produced, disseminated and thought about.

Until February 28th, the works of Markus Amm, Tauba Auerbach, Armando Andrade Tudela, Osh Brand, David Batchelor, Sarah Charlesworth, Anne Collier, Liz Deschenes, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Barbara Kasten, Annette Kelm, Lorna Macintyre, Allan McCollum, Carter Mull, Lisa Oppenheim, Anthony Pearson, Matt Saunders, Wolfgang Tillmans and Erika Vogt will be on display.

More info and installation shots can be found here.

Posted in Exhibitions