Untitled (Rainbow, Snow, Burnt Brush, Mountains), 2008
© Mark McKnight

Mark McKnight, who I recently mentioned on the blog, is having an exhibition that all of you in San Francisco must check out!

Iceberger Gallery, a new project space designated to collaboratively work with emerging and established artists, is opening up with Many Meanings are Attached to Mountains, Mark’s most recent work. An opening reception for the show will be held on Saturday, February 23, 2008 from 6-8pm. Stop by and tell Mark I say “hi.”

See some of the photographs in the exhibition on the gallery website or in Mark’s portfolio over on Tiny Vices.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Tall Grass, 2005 (from “Domesticated”)
© Amy Stein

Caged, 2005 (from “Domesticated”)
© Amy Stein

Amy Stein just landed herself a nice solo show of her Domesticated series at Paul Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles. Those of you in L.A. should drop by to see the work.

An opening reception will be held on February 16 from 6-8pm and the photographs will remain up through April 26, 2008. Congrats, Amy!

Popularity: 16% [?]

Untitled, 2007 (from “Inscape”)
© Ahndraya Parlato

Humble Arts Foundation announced the selected photographers for 31 Under 31: Young Women in Art Photography today:

Alana Celii, Amy Elkins, Ahndraya Parlato, Allison Grant, Ashley Lefrak, Alejandra Laviada, Alex Van Clief, Catherine Maloney, Dina Kantor, Dru Donovan, Elaine Stocki, Hannah Whitaker, Helen Maurene Cooper, Jaimie Warren, Jessica Bruah, Jessica Roberts, Ka-Man Tse, Kate and Camilla, Kelly Kleinschrodt, Manya Fox, Marta Labad, Mary Mattingly, Molly Landreth, Nadine Rovner, Rachael Dunville, Reka Reisinger, Sara Padgett Heathcott, Sarah Small, Sarah Sudhoff, Tealia Ellis Ritter, and Talia Chetrit.

Nice to see a few friends in there. Congrats to everyone. An exhibition of work by the selected photographers will span the month of March, with an opening reception on Saturday, March 1st at 3rd Ward in Brooklyn.

Popularity: 24% [?]

Friend and photographer Brad Troemel (VYM) just announced another group show that he curated at his Chicago gallery, Satin Satan, which I believe is also his apartment. The show, titled “Fun Gun,” features a number of excellent photographers and if you’re in the Chicago area I’d say it’s worth stopping by for the opening on February 16th.

I’m guessing it’s at party o’clock?

Satin Satan is located at 1918 N. Wood, Chicago, IL.

Popularity: 22% [?]

Railway Station, Tomsk, Siberia, 1991 (from “A Hundred Summers, A Hundred Winters”)
© Bertien van Manen

Now up at Yancey Richardson is Dutch photographer Bertien van Manen’s A Hundred Summers, A Hundred Winters. From the press release:

Photographing in the former Soviet Union between 1990 and 1994, van Manen provides windows into Russian lives after years of struggle under the regime. Leading Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński, who died last year, noted in his introduction to van Manen’s work that her lens stands apart from the typical journalistic report on Russia, capturing the “most inaccessible of places – the homes of ordinary people – in order to show us how millions of Russians live and sleep, what they eat, what they look like in their everyday life, in their flats, at their tables, in their beds.”

I’m looking forward to seeing the show before it comes down February 16th.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Simon and Jessica kissing in the pool, Avignon, 2001
© Nan Goldin

If you’re in the Boston area, you have until tomorrow to see “People Take Pictures of Each Other” before it closes at LaMontagne Gallery. The title of the show is borrowed from a song written by Ray Davies for his band The Kinks.

People take pictures of each other,
Just to prove that they really existed,
Just to prove that they really existed,
People take pictures of each other,
And the moment to last them forever,
Of the time when they mattered to someone.

The exhibition was full of photographers that I admire:

Richard Aldrich, David Armstrong, Gil Blank, Larry Clark, Anne Collier, Philip-Lorca di Corcia, William Eggleston, Roe Ethridge, William Gedney, Nan Goldin, Wayne Gonzales, Dana Hoey, Peter Hujar, Alex Katz, Judy Linn, Tim Lokiec, Ryan McGinley, Mark Morrisroe, Alice Neel, Catherine Opie, Paul P., Elizabeth Peyton, Walter Pfeiffer, Jack Pierson, Torbjorn Rodland, Tom Sandberg, Collier Schorr, Stephen Shore, Shellburne Thurber, and Wolfgang Tillmans.

In addition to photographs, there were also drawings and paintings of people with whom the artists were close to. A very simple concept that made for a really nice, intimate group show.

And I’ll say this: it was worth biking through bad weather for.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Danish photographers Nicolai Howalt and Trine Søndergaard have so many interesting and beautiful images that I couldn’t decide which to share here. Howalt’s projects 3×1 (2001) and Boxer (2003) are both worth seeing – as are Søndergaard’s Now That You Are Mine (1997-2000) and Versus (2003).

Untitled, 2001 (from “3×1”)
© Nicolai Howalt

Boxer #13, 2001 (from “Boxer”)
© Nicolai Howalt

Untitled, 1997-2000 (from “Now That You Are Mine”)
© Trine Søndergaard

Untitled, 2003 (from “Versus”)
©Trine Søndergaard

Most intriguing however might be the collaborative work between the two photographers. One of these projects, titled How to Hunt (2005), caught my attention right away.

Skov II / Wood II, 2005 (from “How To Hunt”)
© Nicolai Howalt / Trine Søndergaard

Kromanns Remise II, 2005 (from “How To Hunt”)
© Nicolai Howalt / Trine Søndergaard

Nordvest Såtten / The Northwest Beat, 2005 (from “How To Hunt”)
© Nicolai Howalt / Trine Søndergaard

From the artist statement:

Hunting today can be seen as a ritualized performance of something that was once a basic human need. It’s also a classical theme of art history, from cave paintings to the Renaissance. We wanted to locate this historical theme in a modern context, where – at least in the affluent post-industrial West – it can be seen as a symbol of ‘the good life’ and the longing for some kind of authentic relationship to nature.

This thread is central to How to Hunt. There’s no blood, no guts – the kill itself is not in focus. Just as modern society chooses to elide the actual reality of slaughter, so our images are an aestheticised rendition of the hunt, reflecting its recreative rather than essential nature.

Dying Birds (2006) is another collaborative endeavor by Howalt and Søndergaard. This project, unlike How to Hunt, seems to concern itself more directly with what they refer to as “the kill itself.”

Untitled, 2006 (from “Dying Birds”)
© Nicolai Howalt / Trine Søndergaard

Untitled, 2006 (from “Dying Birds”)
© Nicolai Howalt / Trine Søndergaard

Untitled, 2006 (from “Dying Birds”)
© Nicolai Howalt / Trine Søndergaard

I have to say, it’s been quite a while since I’ve been this taken by a photographer (let alone two at the same time). Both of their portfolios are consistently engaging, visually intriguing, and smart. In November, Howalt and Søndergaard will be showing these two collaborative projects at Silverstein Gallery in New York.

Not to be missed.

Popularity: 18% [?]

L: Entrance to Women’s Bathroom, Mercado Flores Magón, Naucalpan, Mexico State, 2005
R: Entrance to Men’s Bathroom, Retiro Train Station, Recoleta, Beuneos Aires, 1987
© Jim Dow

If you’re in the Boston area tonight, don’t miss photographer and Museum School professor Jim Dow’s opening for Capital Architectures, photographs from Buenos Aires and Mexico City. Jim has been working on this project for over ten years, having made in those years fifteen trips to Argentina and Mexico. The show will be on display at Harvard’s DRCLAS.

Jim will be giving a brief talk at 6pm followed by the opening with music by Sol y Canto. If you miss tonight’s event, the work will still be up all the way through January 31, 2008.

Jim Dow: Capital Architectures (Buenos Aires / Mexico City)
David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies
CGIS South Building, Second Floor
1730 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA

Popularity: 35% [?]

Self-Portrait in My Room, NYC, 1983
© Nan Goldin

Brian Clamp was kind enough to send me a few images (one of them above) from the new show opening at ClampArt in New York on September 6, Friends from the Boston School.

A 1995 exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston grouped Nan Goldin, David Armstrong and fellow photographers and friends Philip-Lorca DiCorcia, Mark Morrisroe, Jack Pierson and several others, dubbing them the “Boston School.” This name stuck, and the photographers have since been referred to by this title.

Working some years after these artists (and currently attending the same school that Goldin went to in the ‘80s), I’ve naturally found myself interested in what this group of individuals were doing and, also, how their careers and relationships panned out.

From Collier Schorr in a March 2003 issue of ArtForum, “The 1980s”:

In the ‘80s it seemed all the pictures had been taken. If you were talking about issues of representation and how they played out in popular media, about the effect of Calvin Klein, then the best place to go was Herb Ritts or Bruce Weber. So many ideas were bound up in the “popular” image, and it seemed natural that one’s own commentary could be marshaled with someone else’s pictures. But once the idea of having ideas went out the window, you could take your own pictures—because you weren’t necessarily trying to say something about the world; you were just talking about yourself. The Boston School people took their own pictures; they broke a double spell in photography, against the anti-sentimentality of the ‘80s and the patriarchal technicality of the ‘70s.

Friends from the Boston School brings together Nan Goldin, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Jack Pierson, David Armstrong, Tabboo!, and Gail Thacker. The show will be located in ClampArt’s “Project Room” and will remain up from September 6 – October 6.

Popularity: 32% [?]

Yesterday I was able to stop into the Museum of Modern Art to see Present Tense, the exhibition of photographs by JoAnne Verburg. What I knew of Verburg’s work before visiting MoMA was very minimal. In fact, I hadn’t even heard of her until Alec made a post last October which described her as another underappreciated womam photographer – “Among the endless list of women who deserve more attention,” he said, “I’d like to highlight JoAnn Verburg.”

Moraines on Clear Creek, Valley of the Arkansas, Colorado, 1873
© William Henry Jackson

Clear Creek Reservoir, Colorado, 1977
© JoAnne Verburg / Mark Klett

Verburg first made her name in the 1970’s when she took part in the Rephotographic Survey Project along with Mark Klett and Ellen Manchester. The team set out to revisit the exact sites documented in historic images of the American West. Rephotographing these locations one hundred years later and pairing these contemporary images with those from the 19th century cause the viewer to think about the change in the landscape over time, but also the photographic objects before them (time itself).

Exploding Triptych, 2000
© JoAnne Verburg

Time also seems heavily present in the paneled photographs of olive trees where Verburg has shifted the planes of the view camera to create a sense of motion. The blur, or “movement,” in the images changes the environment to feel as if it’s all very fleeting.

Untited (Marvin and Maurice), 1995
© JoAnne Verburg

I wasn’t as enthralled as some people have been by the large-scale olive tree photographs or the David Hilliard-esque narrative scenes (many of which depict her husband, and poet, Jim Moore) displayed salon style in the gallery.

However, I absoultely fell in love with the selection of black and white photographs from her pool series. If anyone can find more of these online, please let me know.

Untitled (Sally + Ricardo), 1983
© JoAnne Verburg

After Giotto, 1983
© JoAnne Verburg

What I suggest, as JoAnne is often considered to be one of those photographers that makes work which need to be viewed in the flesh, is that you stop into MoMA and see it all for yourself.

Until then, take a look at what the New York Times had to say about the exhibition (don’t miss the audio slideshow by Philip Gefter).

Popularity: 29% [?]