In Art, I am generally not a fan of beautiful landscapes. That is not to say that I do not appreciate the inherent splendor of nature, it just always seems too picturesque and subsequently too easy. The source of my aversion is popular visual culture’s inundation of images showing over-saturated suns rising or setting, paths and docks receding into the distance, and natural monuments impressing[…..]
The journalistic expression “If it bleeds; it leads” is particularly resonant in Mexico, where an entire subgenre of daily tabloids, devoted to crime and disaster, cover train wrecks and murders in lurid detail. Enrique Metinides made a career as a crime photographer for these nota roja (“bloody news”), earning the sobriquet the “Mexican Weegee” for his obsessive chronicling of accidents and crime scenes throughout Mexico[…..]
Born in 1962 of parents who were attached to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, Geng Jianyi grew up in a country shaped by rigid, state-mandated structures that had, by the late 1960s to the early ‘70s, fallen a long way short of the idealistic socialist Chinese state that Mao Zedong had envisioned. Where solidary socialism was intended to create commitment to the system by way[…..]
Due to several recent shows on the subject, I have lately been pondering the enduring yet amorphous allure of landscape in photography. Among the exhibitions currently on view, Pictura Gallery’s exhibition of photographs by Adam Thorman and Laura Plageman offers an especially engaging encounter with the genre. Displayed on opposite sides of the bisected space, each artist’s series—Thorman’s What Light Remains in the Absence and[…..]
Wafts of ginger and cilantro from the nearby Vietnamese eateries swirls around the propelling bus exhaust as I walk through London’s funky Shoreditch on an overcast day. Though I (embarrassingly) have not yet visited before, the unexpected island of pristine glass of the Flower’s Gallery is not hard to miss among the rickety cheap shoe shops and tabacs littered with half-shredded ice cream posters. A[…..]
A visually compelling, conceptually provocative consideration of the photographic medium, American View: Landscape Photography 1865 to Now is anything but the kind of straightforward overview such a title suggests. Showcasing works drawn primarily from the Rhode Island School of Design’s rich photography collection, American View shifts deftly between and among periods and styles and, in so doing, illuminates the ever-evolving relationship between landscape and photographic image. Upon entering the[…..]
On a Tuesday morning in September, I met with sculptor and photographer Susan Graham at Lux Art Institute in Encinitas, California. Graham was more than halfway through her five-week artist residency and opened her studio to me, allowing an up-close view of her sugar and porcelain sculptures in the process of assembly. Graham shared stories from her childhood in Ohio, articulated her thoughts about working,[…..]
