Peter Galassi to leave MoMA

NEW YORK— In a major shakeup of the museum world, Peter Galassi, the longtime chief curator of the Museum of Modern Art's photography department, has suddenly retired, leaving a gaping vacancy for a keeper of that institution's world-class holdings.
Galassi, at 60 a prolific writer and noted scholar of the medium, organized or co-organized more than 40 exhibitions at MoMA, where he began as a curatorial intern in 1974, including "Pleasures and Terrors of Domestic Comfort" in 1991, a survey of Andreas Gursky in 2001, a Lee Friedlander exhibition in 2005, a Jeff Wall show in 2007, and "Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century" in 2010.
He was named director of that department in 1991 at the age of 40, after ten years as associate director, taking over the reins long held by John Szarkowski, another bright beacon in the photography world. In fact, Galassi is only the fourth curator to hold that director post since the department was formed in 1940 by Beaumont Newhall. Edward Steichen, meanwhile, lorded over the department from 1947 to 1962, the year Szarkowski's stewardship began.
Galassi was part of the museum's vanishing old guard, cultivated by former MoMA director Richard Oldenburg before Glenn Lowry took over the Modern's direction in 1995. It is unclear why Galassi retired, though officially he is on sabbatical until the end of June, according to a statement released by the museum.
"Over the course of his long career at the Museum of Modern Art," Lowry said in announcing the retirement, "Peter Galassi has applied passion, commitment, and exemplary scholarship to further our understanding of photography as an art form that is central to modern and contemporary art." Lowry also lauded Galassi for leading "the growth and transformation" of the museum's photography collection, which had more or less languished during Szarkowski's tenure, a golden period when masterpieces were more widely available, and at prices which were scant fractions of today's values.
In terms of photography holdings, MoMA is among the top four museums in the world. Its only rivals are the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Getty, and the Victoria & Albert. Galassi enhanced its standing further through such acquisitions as the purchase of Cindy Sherman's entire "Untitled Film Stills" series, for which the museum payed a reported $1 million in 1995 — a current market day steal for the 69 prints from the photographer's collection. The curator also beefed up the museum's Modernist holdings with a sweeping, multimillion dollar acquisition of some 300 photographs in 2001 dating from the 1920s and 30s from German collector Thomas Walther.
"While he kept MoMA completely in the loop with what was going on in contemporary photography," said Peter Cohen, a New York-based photography collector who recently gave the museum a large group of vernacular snapshots. "At the same time he made substantial progress in filling gaps in MoMA’s collection."
Efforts to reach Galassi for comment were unsuccessful, though the curator sent out a private email blast to friends and colleagues in the field on Friday, with the subject line "Leaving MoMA."
"I've had a fabulous time at MoMA, and I've always felt enormously lucky to work here," Galassi said in his casual cyberfarewell. "As the wise men said, though, the graveyards are filled with indispensable people. Before I get there, I want to make room for ambitious writing projects that have been taking shape in my head for a long time but which have quite properly taken back seat to projects that I felt were more important for the museum."
MoMA will begin a talent search for a new chief curator in the coming months, according to a spokesperson who affirmed that no one from the photography department would be appointed as a fill-in chief curator.

ARTINFO May 3, Photo by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.

Boltanski books at Florence Loewy, Paris

Since 1969, Christian Boltanski has published more than 80 artist books, an occupation conceived as integral part of his artistic practice, and the perfect medium for his relentless investigation of memory. Their conceptual evolution takes on the artist’s approach, and are usually divided in different obsessional issues: the pseudo autobiographical reconstitutions of childhood, the inventories and lists testifying to the life of anonymous, the obsession of death, the impossibility to distinguish victims from tormentors.
So far, two catalogues raisonnés are dedicated to Christian Boltanski’s artist' books, an essential aspect of his work : the first one, published in 1993 by Walther Koenig and edited by Jennifer Flay, and the second one edited in 2007 by Bob Calle in collaboration with the artist.
In its gallery space, Florence Loewy bookstore will show a chronological and non-exhaustive reconstitution of this artistic journey, critical to the understanding of Boltanski’s oeuvre.

CHRISTIAN BOLTANSKI, BOOKS - May 7 – July 9, 2011
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florence loewy... by artists
9 rue de thorigny fr-75003 paris
t: 01 44 78 98 45 f: 01 44 78 98 46
www.florenceloewy.com info@florenceloewy.com
ouvert du mardi au samedi de 14h00 à 19h00

Mari Mahr: Two Walking

Following its run at the City Gallery Wellington, Mari Mahr: Two Walking (with poems by Gregory O'Brien and Jenny Bornholdt) opens at Auckland's Gus Fisher Gallery this Friday.

Photography is often spoken about in relation to memory or the past; in this exhibition two series by Hungarian photographer Mari Mahr catalogue a place outside of time. Two Walk in Paris and Two Walk in Edinburgh—sixteen photographs, each accompanied by text from Wellington poets Gregory O’Brien and Jenny Bornholdt—are about the acts of walking and talking, and most significantly, looking through cities together.

Acutely observed and elegiac, these works continue the autobiographical pursuit which characterises Mahr’s photographic practice. They are inventories of conversations, tools and objects intimately known, as well as a record of the watchfulness inherent in all close relationships. While these images adopt the intimate perspective of places explored on foot, they do not present recognisable locations. Rather, they bring together constructed scenes in which each element is drawn from the lexicon of a longstanding personal relationship.

These are all recent works, dating from the time when Mahr’s late husband Graham Percy first became very ill. Percy was a New Zealand-born artist, illustrator, typographer and designer, and many of Mahr’s images directly reference his graphic work, incorporating tools or materials he used. These are re-phrased in the context of the two cities of Paris and Edinburgh, positioned as private monuments to his presence and work. Much of Mahr’s photographic work is concerned with architectural forms and constructions; here it is the architecture of grief at stake. Collage-like, Mahr’s methodology is one of salvage, holding on to and making visible that which remains.

Artist's Biography

Born in Santiago de Chile in 1941, Mahr studied and worked as a press photographer in Hungary, before moving to London in 1973. She now divides her time between there and Berlin. In 1989 she received the Fox Talbot Award. She has exhibited widely and produced a number of books, A Few Days in Geneva published in 1988, and the retrospective volume Between Ourselves in 1998. Her work is in many collections, including the V&A, London; the National Media Museum, Bradford; Kettle's Yard Gallery, Cambridge; the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; the National Museum of Photography, Hungary; the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, Japan.

art agenda has an all new website

Seems I'm not the only one to have redesigned their website, art agenda New York have done so too.... they have this to say:

We have redesigned Art-Agenda's website, featuring a new review layout, larger images, and a comments feature. We hope you enjoy it. Our first comment sees curator Adriano Pedrosa respond to Adam Kleinman's review of Zona Maco Sur, Pedrosa's curated section at the recent art fair Zona Maco, Mexico. Enjoy exploring the new site and feel free to note your thoughts on any of our past reviews, including the most recent texts noted below.

New reviews on the way focus on the solo show, of both established artists and those in the beginning stages of their careers: Colin Chinnery on Liu Wei at the Minsheng Art Museum, Beijing; Filipa Ramos on Neil Beloufa at Galleria Zero, Milan; Michelle Grabner on Rinus Van de Velde's "Dear David Johnson" at moniquemeloche, Chicago; and Tyler Coburn on Walead Beshty at Regan Projects, LA. This month also sees the spotlight on two new curatorial collaborations in New York, with Karen Archey reporting on Mario Garcia Torres's "Cover Letter" presented by the intriguing partnership of Rose Lord and Mari Spirito, and Antek Walczak on Murray Guy's "Vision is elastic. Thought is elastic" curated by Moyra Davey and Zoe Leonard.

You can have a look here: http://www.art-agenda.com/

The image:
View of Bernadette Corporation's "Stone Soup" at Galerie Meyer Kainer, Vienna, 2011.

Boltanski at the Venice Biennale

Christian Boltanski, a leading figure in the international art scene, is representing France at the 54th International Art Exhibition at the Venice Biennial; for the French pavilion, he is featuring a spectacular installation entitled "Chance." It deals with a theme that is dear to him: luck, bad luck and chance, forces that fascinate us and impose their own laws. As curator, the artist has chosen Jean-Hubert Martin, honorary director of the Georges Pompidou Musée National d'Art Moderne.

"Chance" marks an important stage in the evolution of Christian Boltanski's work. Unlike the rest of his work, which is dominated by disappearance and death, here he opens himself up to a broader examination of fate. The unfolding of life and the rhythm of births and deaths raise the question of the universal and the individual in a new form, of what distinguishes one being from another. Far from being grim, the ambience here is welcoming. Even though the brutality of an industrial and mechanical system serves thwarts the building's Neoclassical harmony, here filtered light illumines the faces of newborns. Periodically, one of them is chosen, and, if nothing distinguishes him from the others in appearance, he may yet be the one whose power and fame leave their mark on history.

An impressive demonstration on the part of an internationally recognised artist, whose formal grammar and presentation techniques enable him to create on both the conceptual and formal levels. His experience in theatre opened up a unique path for him, and even without putting himself on stage Christian Boltanski knows how to make his exhibits theatrical and get the audience intimately involved.

Martin Parr brings us some Will and Kate Kitsch

 

Wedding bells have chimed for Prince William and Kate Middleton, and coins are clinking for royal wedding memorabilia vendors. Here, Martin Parr assures us that everybody can own a piece of royal history.

 

 

© Martin Parr / Magnum Photos for Time magazine

The Film Show - portraits from the 60's

Here is a whole new category of the photobook, the Hollywood Film Star Annual. I found this blast-from-the-past 60's film book at my local thrift shop. Not only a time capsule as to how colour was printed forty, fifty years ago but a nostalgic look at how portraits were made back then. Subtlety was not an option. And with a great graphic on the cover.

Photographers whose work I like - No 12/ Simon Kossoff

Simon Kossoff is a British photographer who lives in Kansas City. Like many of the photographers I've got to know I've never met Simon, but I feel I know him through his work which is always perceptive, challenging, and hard-edged. Work you can't walk away from. Simon's blog, Altered States of Agoraphobia is well worth a look. Simon and I are both members of the Paris based collective get the picture.fr

Simon say this about his States of Grace series:
The work is in two parts and was made during my immigration process. Made between two dates in time, from my first initial application until the final arrival of my Green card - from Tourist to Illegal Alien to Permanent Resident. During this period I felt like very much like I was living on borrowed time. It was an extremely stressful period for my wife and I and we lived almost from day to day and could not make any solid future plans or put down any roots. Because of this I traveled and as much as possible and wanted to see as much as I could of America, just in case I was deported, because my case was complex. It was an interesting time for America too, it was an election year and in the middle of a recession. While making the work I felt in many ways that my own anxiety and hope during this period felt at times like an echo of the anxiety and hope of the nation I arrived in. 'States of Grace' is my personal document of this time, a mosaic, a diary and also poem of sorts. These images come from part two of this series.

You can see more of Simon's work here: http://simonkossoff.blogspot.com/

Lewis Baltz - CANDLESTICK POINT

A copy of Lewis Baltz's new, reprinted edition of CANDLESTICK POINT arrived in my mail box today. A profound and compelling look at man in conflict with nature. Landscapes of destruction where there is no deliverance, where life no longer stirs. But wait, these photographs underline why we consider the human condition. Why we look, why we photograph. Thank you Lewis Baltz for that.

The New York curator Marvin Heiferman characterized Lewis Baltz’s landscape photography as a “topography of the emptiness of random, damaged, remote places”. The images in his 1989 series Candlestick Point show Californian fallow land, where piles of rubble and waste accumulate in the middle of the prairie. Traces of technical land development – drainage channels and water dams – are visible, becoming a typically American theme: the development of a territory in the almost infinite prairie. Baltz’s photographic record of the development at Candlestick Point combines sociological and analytical rigour and is strongly oriented towards the tradition of Land Art, and retrospectively pays tribute to its crucial influence on conceptual art since the 1970s.

Candlestick Point was first published in 1989 and has been unavailable for decades, other than as an expensive collectible on the secondary photobook market.  

CANDLESTICK POINT - Photographs by Lewis Baltz.
Steidl, 2011. 128 pp., 12 color and 72 tritine illustrations, 12½x9¾".

Harvey Benge - All New Website

At last I have an up-to-date all new website which actually reflects what I'm doing now!

You can have a look here:  http://harveybenge.virb.com/

Jim Goldberg wins Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2011

The winner of the prestigious Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2011 has just been announced as Jim Goldberg. He was presented with the £30,000 award by broadcaster and critic Miranda Sawyer at a special ceremony at Ambika P3.
The three other shortlisted artists, Thomas Demand, Roe Rtheridge and Elad Lassry have each been awarded £3,000. You can view the exhibition until May 1 at Ambika P3 at the University of Westminster, London.

Amsterdam Art/Book Fair 2011

The first Amsterdam Art/Book Fair will take place the 14 & 15 of May 2011, presenting a high end international selection of art publications. The fair aims to reflect on the emerging practices and new development in art, through a selection of publishers from 16 countries. Printed matter and digital media edited by independent publishers and artists, magazines and institutions, art schools and graphic design studios are featured in this first edition.

Conferences and talks by keynote speakers, book launches, artist talks and performances will take place during the Amsterdam Art/Book Fair. Guests include Kenneth Goldsmith, Metahaven, Clive Phillpot, Mathieu Copeland. A unique series of curated tables will offer a selection of publications and posters. Book trading and signing, encounters and conversations will take place at ‘Black Market’, an informal meeting place for artists, designers, publishers and collectors.

The Amsterdam Art/Book Fair is initiated and organised by Delphine Bedel (Monospace Press) and Yannick Bouillis, and is hosted by the Flemish Cultural Centre De Brakke Grond. The Amsterdam Art/Book Fair aspires to be a meeting place during the Amsterdam Art Week. The entrance to the AA/BF is free.

Further information here: http://www.amsterdamartbookfair.com/

Amsterdam Art/Book Fair 2011
Saturday 14 & Sunday 15 May
De Brakke Grond
Amsterdam, NL

Cologne workshop at the Lichtblick School

I will be teaching a workshop at the Lichtblick School in Cologne over the weekend of May 28 and 29. Lichtblick has this to say about it:

Killing Time in Paradise - Workshop with Harvey Benge
Harvey Benge is one of the few photographers that today work with poetics and the philosophy of photography. Benge journeys through Europe and Asia, and his more than 25 photo-books help to further expand our understanding of visual language.

"Harvey Benge is a photographer with an eye for non-places. He finds them in diverse world cities such as London, Paris, Bangkok and Melbourne. At spots, which many would walk right past, he photographs details for his investigation into universal urban life. A doorbell, neon lights, a shop window - they are what he calls 'parallel signs' which occur everywhere in the world. Sporadically they betray something of their geographic location, but for the most part there appear to be hardly any cultural differences among world cities." Noorderlicht

In the workshop with Harvey Benge you will learn a lot about creating your own visual language. You start with generating visual ideas, followed by the editing and sequencing of the photographs found in urban life and finally the presentation of the series in exhibitions or in publications. Harvey Benge has a lot of experience in creating and publishing photo books and has exhibited his work all over the world in galleries and museums. With pleasure he will be giving workshop participants inspirational and practical advice for the progress of their photographic practice.

He conducted workshops in the past with: Antoine d’Agata, Peter Bialobrzeski, Louis Baltz, Slavica Perkovic, Alec Soth, John Gossage, Rineke Dijkstra, Paul Graham, Todd Hido.

Information about the workshop:
* weekend seminar: May 28th/29th 2011, 10–6 p.m. * maximal attendance: 12
* English speaking workshop. Fee for the workshop: 220.- Euro including 19% tax

You can see more here: http://www.lichtblick-school.com/

Alec Soth and friends are on the road....

This May in the first of a series of trips around America, five Magnum photographers, Christopher Anderson, Jim Goldberg, Susan Meiselas, Alec Soth, Mikhael Subotzky and writer Ginger Strand will be traveling from San Antonio to Oakland on a unique documentary experiment: Postcards From America.

You can follow them on their tumblr blog, postcardsfromamerica.tumblr.com

...and there is the opportunity to buy various publications and prints:

FIVE POSTCARDS
Pictures taken and printed on the trip and a message from each photographer, $125

LIMITED EDITION BOOK
Edition of 500 signed books documenting the journey from which only 250 will be made available at this time. Printed using HP Indigo technology. Includes a suite of five postcards, $250

PRINT PORTFOLIO
Five Signed Archival 11x14 inch HP inkjet prints, one by each photographer. Edition of 25. Includes a copy of the book and a suite of five postcards, $3000

EAT ME - my new bookwork

EAT ME is my latest bookwork. It's about perception. And with one recipe. Some might say the work is a typological homage to Hermann Rorschach.

This artist's book is 300 x 200 mm, 28 pages with 14 photographs and is printed on a 120 gsm stock with a board cover. The edition is limited to 75 copies, each signed and numbered.
Copies can be obtained directly from me: €26 / £22 / US$38 / NZ$45, this includes postage.

Photographers whose work I like - No 11/ Philippe Spigolon

Philippe is a French photographer who lives in Albi, France. He writes this about his new series Spigolon & Sons Furniture.

"Long ago, my father had hoped to bring me into his small woodworking business - now defunct - and later, perhaps, to have left it me to run. I said no; he was disappointed, but never let it be said that the sign " Spigolon and Son, Furniture " never existed."

Here are some of the pictures from the series.

You can see more here: http://www.philippespigolon.com/

Auckland, a beach walk today

It's school holiday time here in Auckland and this afternoon my daughter Zoe and I walked at low tide, under the soft crumbling cliffs from Takapuna Beach to Narrow Neck. We talked about the idea of making something out of nothing. And how things change. Here are some pictures I made.

Tim Hetherington 1970-2011

Award-winning filmmaker and photographer Tim Hetherington died yesterday in the besieged Libyan town of Misrata. Hetherington's recent Oscar-nominated war documentary Restrepo won an award at the Sundance Film Festival and his book Infidel has been highly acclaimed.
Getty photographer Chris Hondros is in critical condition in intensive care, doctors at the hospital where he was being treated said. He had suffered brain injuries.
The photographers were among a group caught by mortar fire on Tripoli Street, the main thoroughfare leading into the center of Misrata, the only major rebel-held town in western Libya and besieged by Muammar Gaddafi's forces for more than seven weeks.

Since I made this posting, it has been confirmed that Chris Hondros has also died.

Serrano's Piss Christ hits the headlines again!

If making art these days is as much about getting attention than anything else then nobody does it better than Andres Serrano.
Andres Serrano (born August 15, 1950 in New York City) is an American photographer and artist who has become notorious through his photos of corpses and his use of feces and bodily fluids in his work, notably his controversial work Piss Christ, (1987), a red-tinged photograph of a crucifix submerged in a glass container of what was purported to be the artist's own urine.

The Piss Christ work was vandalised in Australia, and neo-Nazis ransacked a Serrano show in Sweden in 2007. And last Sunday, Piss Christ and The Church, were attacked at the museum housing the works, Collection Lambert in Avignon, France. After two weeks of protests and a campaign of hate mail and abusive phone calls to the gallery, orchestrated by groups of French Catholic fundamentalists, a thousand people marched through the streets of Avignon to protest outside the museum on April 16. On Sunday several people entered the museum, threatened the guards and proceeded to vandalize the works in question.

But it's not only Christian fundamentalists from the religious right who have questioned Serrano's work. Following his retrospective at the Barbican in 2001, The Guardian's art critic Adrian Searle wrote, "He is the artist who outraged America with Piss Christ. But has Andres Serrano run out of ideas? .....In the end, the show is all surface, and looking for hidden depths does no good. I keep thinking Serrano can do better than this, but then again, maybe he can't."

At the V&A, contemporary South African photography

The Victoria & Albert Museum presents Figures and Fictions, which opened April 12 and runs until July 17. This show of contemporary photography highlights the work of 17 South African photographers, all of whom live and work in the country and whose images were made between 2000 and 2010. Each photographer is represented by one or more projects that are linked by the depiction of people and a self-conscious engagement with South Africa’s political and photographic past.

Photographs showing figures raise pertinent issues of identity: how the gaze of the camera, photographer and viewer is returned by the subject, and the balance of power which that interaction implies. The ‘figure’ also implies not only the human figure but also the metaphorically figurative. Photographs can be like a ‘figure’ of speech, composed of familiar words but containing an ambiguity between literal and figurative interpretation.

As the Fictions part of this exhibition’s title suggests, it points not just to the geographical and social specificity of these photographs but also to the enigmatic relationship with the ‘real’ world that they seem to depict. A photograph is always a translation, distillation or filter of reality seen from the physical and conceptual standpoint of the person creating the image – as well as that of the viewer.

Many of the works shown in the exhibition are extracts from extended essayistic sequences, but can nevertheless be understood as fragments containing the essence of the whole. Many of the photographers’ series address, among other concerns: the threshold between documentary photography and fine art practice; the balance of the specific and the universal and the dialogue between the local and the global.

The excitement and urgency surrounding photography in South Africa today is partly explained by its local context: embedded in colonial history, ethnography, anthropology, journalism and political activism, the best photography emerging from the country has absorbed and grapples with its weighty history, questioning, manipulating and revivifying its visual codes and blending them with contemporary concerns. Post-Apartheid, complex and fundamental issues – race, society, gender, identity – remain very much on the surface. This is reflected by image makers who harness the resulting scenes as a form of creative tension within their personal vision. Here, distinctive photographic voices have emerged: local in character and subject matter, but of wider international interest because of their combined intensity.

The photograph: ‘Babalwa’, (from the series Real Beauty), Jodi Bieber, 2008.