Photo Exhibit & Book: "Trading Traditions"

Excerpt from Inside Bay Area article profiling Oakland, CA photographer Lonny Shavelson.

"The photographs are hung from fabric panels to create a kind of soft-edged maze in one of the museum's big galleries. Most of the images require captions or more involved text to make their cross-cultural point — that, for instance, a Filipina is portraying the Hindu goddess Lakshmi in a Festival of Light event.

There are a number of intriguing photographs, however, bringing into sharp focus what many Bay Area residents take for granted on a daily basis. Among the subjects: Laotian-American athletes with cornrow hairstyles at predominantly black Oakland high school; a black teenager as a lion dancer at the St. Patrick's Day Parade in San Francisco; and the dragon boat races on the Oakland Estuary, complete with a blessing by Thai Buddhist monks."

Read more of the "Photo exhibits tap mystery of two places" article by Robert Taylor.

PHOTO: CAPTURING DIVERSITY: Laotian- American (Mien) athletes from a predominantly black high school are part of the Oakland Museum of California photography exhibit called Trading Traditions. (LONNY SHAVELSON Heyday Books)

Photographer Piper Carter

Excerpt from the interview with Piper Carter from Sylvia's "I Like Her Style" blog:

Would you say being a black woman has helped or hindered your career thus far?

Well, I would have to say hindered. Many times people see my website and don’t know if I’m a guy or girl nor what race I am because my name is not typical and sort of interesting. But then when I go into their office for a meeting they seem shocked! Many times editors will tell me to keep trying, keep shooting and come back. Sometimes they’ll say “well we don’t want hip hop this is a fashion story”. And I wonder why they are telling me this because I don’t have any hip hop images on my site nor in my portfolio. And when I try to get work from so-called Black publications I just get a smile. Many times they’ll tell me how much they love me and my work, but really never hire me and I see lots of mediocre images published and think, “Wow! How come this person is getting work from this publication and they tell me I have to go back to the drawing board?” I have gotten a lot of really cool assignments from major fashion institutions anyhow though because I just exercise my winning personality and lots of persistence.

Read the full interview.

Research: Ethnic Photography

I stumbled upon this blog entry and thought I might link to it as a view into the history of people of color/various ethnicities and their connection to photography - as subjects.

Reading this may infuriate many of you but it is a truth we cannot deny.

Excerpt:

"Ethnic photography originally began as "objective" photography. Early photographers traveled to exotic lands, studying the people and their environments, giving the everyday person a new photographic view of worlds, previously only known through paintings. This also gave researchers a chance to perfect the negative-positive photographic process. Little more than 100,000 ethnological studies were produced in the period between 1870-1898.

By 1900, world maps began to precisely indicate population density, race, religion, and commerce around the world. This information allowed travelers with cameras to easily find the least exploited people, offer them small amounts of money, and in return, take many photographs.

Refinement in the developing processes, allowed photographers to expand their camera visions to "erotic views" of exotic people. These exotic ethnic images became a very fashionable subject, influencing all areas of European culture."

Read the full blog entry here.

See examples of "ethnic postcards."

PHOTO: Sample "erotica" postcard, Danseuse mauresque, Verlag J. Geiser Alger -Rückseite beschrieben 1917

Women Photo Exhibition: Jakarta, West Java

Sometimes, when looking back in time, everyone had a specific role to play and things seemed to be a lot easier to cope with, compared with the more complex realities we face today. In a world in which traditional gender roles are mixed up by modern lifestyles, it’s tough to find ones own place in society.

For women, the Indonesian cultural stage does not help that much, as it does not leave much room for women Indonesian artists or photographers in particular.

Projects like Mata Perempuan, Seharusnya (Women’s Eyes, Apparently) provide the small steps that may result in an equal share of the cake for photographers of both genders.

Read more about this exhibition at the IndonesiaLogue Travel Guide online.

Photo Book: "Pop: A Celebration of Black Fatherhood"

In 51 visually stunning, emotionally compelling portraits, acclaimed photographer Carol Ross presents a hopeful, heartwarming, and caring view of black fatherhood in the United States. In an era that pays little positive attention to black fathers, Ross’s inspirational perspective on the relationships between black men and their children is vitally important—and long overdue.

Ross’s richly textured duotone photographs reveal a group of devoted fathers whose common bond is their profound love for their children. For her subjects, Ross has selected men from all walks of life—college professors, filmmakers, technicians, construction workers, and corporate executives—along with well-known music executives, directors, entertainers, and actors, such as Antonio L. A. Reid, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Funk Master Flex, Doug E. Doug, and Melvin Van Peebles. Film star Samuel L. Jackson, photographed with his daughter, provides the book’s foreword, and each portrait is accompanied by a poignant personal recollection by the father depicted.

Exquisitely designed, Pop: A Celebration of Black Fatherhood finally gives black men their own voice about their experience as fathers. Inspired by her own father, Ross’s book is, in her words, “a round of applause, a bow, a ‘God bless you,’” to all those fathers who “take their children to that place where, one day, they can fly on their own.”

About the Author
CAROL ROSS has been a portrait photographer for eight years in New York and Los Angeles. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Fresno Bee Article: "Saroyan in black and white"

By Felicia Cousart Matlosz / The Fresno Bee

For all his fame as a writer, William Saroyan also cut a compelling figure on film. In photographs, to be exact.

The dashingly handsome face of his youthful days aged into the countenance that many Fresnans remember from the writer's later years in his native city. The longish hair. The drooping, walruslike mustache. The long, wide sideburns. The deep, piercing eyes. The serious look of an artist.

It's that familiarity that makes a photo exhibit of Saroyan in Armenia an interesting insightful slice of the writer's life. The 40-plus black-and-white photos, displayed on the first and second floors at City Hall, were taken by Boghos Boghossian.

Read the full article.

PHOTO: Boghos Boghossian

Photos Of A Legend: "Delaware Art Museum Presents Frida Kahlo: Through The Lens of Nickolas Muray"

WILMINGTON, DE. - The Delaware Art Museum presents Frida Kahlo: Through the Lens of Nickolas Muray, an exhibition of nearly 50 photographs of Frida Kahlo, on view in the Brock J. Vinton Galleries February 2, 2008 - March 30, 2008. Known for the rich colors and deeply personal meanings of her paintings, Frida Kahlo was often her own subject as well as a subject for other artists. The photographs in this exhibition, taken by Nickolas Muray, date from 1937 to 1941.

Born in Hungary, Nickolas Muray (1892-1965) became a successful New York fashion and commercial photographer known for his portraits of celebrities. Having experimented with color in his work from early on, he found his most colorful model in Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), whom he met in Mexico in 1931. Muray photographed Kahlo more than any of his other subjects. His photographs of Kahlo celebrate her deep interest in her Mexican heritage, her life, and the people significant to her.

Read more at Artdaily.org

PHOTO: Nickolas Muray, 1892-1965, American (b. Hungary). Frida with Olmeca Figurine, Coyoacán. 1939, Carbon process print. Courtesy of the collection of the Nickolas Muray Archives. Tour Development by Smith Kramer Fine Art Services, Kansas City, Missouri.

Photo Exhibit: "Bare Witness: Photographs of Gordon Parks"

January 25 - March 30, 2008

This exhibition, comprised of 73 images selected by Parks himself, represents the greatest achievements of his long and distinguished career.

Chrysler Museum of Art
245 West Olney Road
Norfolk, VA
(757) 664-6200

GRACE Presents 2008 Focus Exhibition Featuring Photographer Sonya A. Lawyer

Through February 16, at Greater Reston Arts Center (12001 Market St., Suite 103 — the ground floor corner suite), Reston, Va . Gallery hours: Tuesday through Saturday 11 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Excerpt from the Falls Church News-Press online article by Kevin Mellema:

"Photographer Sonya A. Lawyer's current body of work deals with African American heritage on an individual level. She collects vintage black and white photos of anonymous strangers, which she uses as source material for her pieces. The work recalls the recent snapshot show at the National Gallery of Art, though the similarity departs there.

Lawyer scans the collected photos and prints them out digitally, then transfers that image into swatches of hand dyed fabric. The finished images on fabric are then stretched over backing boards and assembled in a sort of photographic quilt. Each piece generally features a repetition of one photo for emphasis. Sometimes working deliberately, but mostly working on an intuitive level, she chooses fabric colors she feels would represent that person's personality. In amongst these strangers are key members of her family, such as her grandfathers and great grandfather for example."

Read the full article or visit the Greater Reston Arts Center online.

New Photo Book: "Ghana: An African Portrait Revisited"

New Hampshire native, and award-winning photographer, Peter E. Randall and five other New Hampshire photographers visited and photographed Ghana in 2006, on the eve of Ghana's 50th anniversary as the first sub-Saharan colony to become an independent nation.

Following in the footsteps of photographer Paul Strand, who photographed Ghana 40 years earlier, this group of photographers has captured a rare present-day portrait of this colorful, friendly, and fascinating country. Six different photographers present six different styles and six different views.

Read more at the book's website.

New Photo Book: "Pop Latino" by Marcos López

In Pop Latino, photographer Marcos López presents a collection of surprising political photographs — whose bright colors disguise a somber reality.

Behind the images — whose colors seem artificially bright at times — are dark memories of Latin America's past. The caricatures, portraits and urban landscapes that Marcos López presents are Latin America's 1990s answer to Andy Warhol's "pop art" of the 1960s.

Read more on The Globalist.

Moneta Sleet: First African-American To Win A Pulitzer Prize In Photography

Sleet won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for his photograph of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s widow, Coretta Scott King, at Dr. King's funeral.

His major contribution to photojournalism was his extensive documentation of the Civil Rights movement. Born in Owensboro, Kentucky, Moneta Sleet's interest in photography began as a child. He pursued photography at Kentucky State College and received his master's degree in Journalism from New York University in 1950. He later joined Ebony Magazine as staff photographer.

Read a 1986 NY Times article on Sleet by C. Gerald Fraser titled "The Vision of Moneta Sleet in Show."

Photo Book Profiled In Albuquerque Herald Tribune Article: "Search for Crypto-Jews gave photographer insight into identity"

Here's a story and photography book that explores the search for identity. Many of us and those before us have experienced identity lost because of migration, acculturation, assimilation and the genuine passing of time.

"...the Crypto Jews, Sephardic (Spanish and Portuguese) Jews who converted to Catholicism 500 years ago to avoid prosecution, expulsion or even execution by the Inquisition."

Herz spent more than 20 years collecting stories and taking photographs for her book about the New Mexico descendents of Spanish and Portuguese Jews forced to convert to Catholicism.

Read the full article.

Exhibit: "The Goat's Dance: Photographs by Graciela Iturbide"

Through April 13, 2008 at The Getty Center

This exhibition loosely surveys more than 30 years of Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide's international career by highlighting major series produced in Mexico and the United States. The breadth and depth of the selection has been made possible through the generosity of the artist, who opened her personal archive, and the magnanimity of Brentwood collectors Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser.

They have followed Iturbide's work for more than 10 years and assembled a wide-ranging collection of her images, including many of the pictures created in the remote southern Mexican city of Juchitán, Oaxaca during the 1980s. Reflecting the extensive and discriminating Greenberg-Steinhauser collection, this important series, central to Iturbide's body of work, is a primary component of this exhibition.

Read more on this exhibition.

PHOTO: Danza de la cabrita, la Mixteca, Oaxaca (The Goat's Dance, La Mixteca, Oaxaca), 1992 © Graciela Iturbide

Gallery Hengevoss-Dürkop Presents Planet Africa - Photography

HAMBURG, GERMANY - Gallery Hengevoss-Dürkop presents Planet Africa – Photography, on view January 9 through February 29, 2008. This exhibition is part of the project "Planet Africa - Carte Blanche" and presents seven photographical positions of six countries. It reveals, how the traditional studio-portrait-photography has more and more given way to a dedicated young black author photography.

The majority of the selected photographers are autodidacts, who improved their skills in workshops or in a group.
Read more at Artdaily.org

PHOTO: Zwelethu Mthethwa, "Maidens Nr. 15", 80 x 100 cm, 2006, Diasec, Ed. 4

Ultimate Eye Foundation Photography Grant

Deadline: January 26, 2008

Ultimate Eye Foundation will present two grants for $5,000 each: one for digital photography using both a camera and a computer to create images realistic or fanciful, and one for figurative photography celebrating the human figure using a camera and any photographic or digital techniques.

AFGHAN STORIES: Giving Women a Voice

Multimedia Presentation by Photojournalist Paula Lerner
With Special Guest: Rangina Hamidi, Field Director of ACS in
Kandahar and CNN 2007 World Hero Award Finalist

Many news stories out of Afghanistan cover the ongoing insurgency and
the hardships of war. But few tell of how people are rebuilding
their lives in war's aftermath. Please join us for a lively
presentation and discussion.

WHEN:
Tuesday, Jan 15th, 2008
7:00 pm Gallery Opening Reception - 7:30 pm Program and Discussion

WHERE:
Belmont Gallery of Art
Homer Municipal Bldg /Town Hall Complex
19 Moore Street, 3rd Floor, Belmont, Massachusetts USA

Ongoing Photo Exhibit at the Belmont Gallery of Art through February
5th, 2008.

Gallery Hours: Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, 8 am - 4 pm.

PHOTO: KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - 4/23/2006: Girls in white head scarves make their way home from school on a Kabul street. During the time of the Taliban girls were not permitted to go to school, and since the fall of the Taliban they are a common sight in Kabul once again. (Photo by © Paula Lerner/Aurora)

Group Photo Exhibit: "Santiago de Cuba: ReBirth & Congas en la Calle"

Established in 2003, the McKenna Museum of African American Art, 2003 Carondelet St. (corner of St. Andrew Street), has not been open to the public since Hurricane Katrina. But that changes Saturday, with the opening from 6pm to 9 pm of the "Santiago de Cuba: ReBirth & Congas en la Calle," exhibit, featuring photos by Christopher Porche West, Diana Sanchez, Frank Stewart, Gayle Shearer, L.J. Goldstein, Libby Nevinger, M. Delos Reyes and Nancy Collins.

The show, sponsored by CubaNOLA Arts Collective, focuses on the cultural parallels between New Orleans and Santiago de Cuba.

Gallery hours are Thursday through Saturday, 11 am to 4pm. Exhibit continues through Feb. 23rd. Call (504) 586-7432.

For more information visit www.cubanola.org/SantiagoPhotos.

The Annual Gallup Inter-Tribal Indian Ceremonial

Held over 4 days during the summer in Gallup, New Mexico, every year this ceremonial features: dances, a Queen contest, all-Indian invitational rodeo, professional bull riding, a juried art show, downtown parades, Navajo Song & Dance and an all-Indian contest Pow-Wow.

Personally, I would be so in awe of the events and people in attendance that it would be hard for me to pick up a camera to shoot. Fortunately, photographer Daryl Custer doesn't have such problems. Check out his shots from the 2004 ceremonial.

Three Exhibits Explore African-American History at Hamilton College's Emerson Gallery

Three exhibits opening on Monday, Jan. 14, at Hamilton's Emerson Gallery explore key moments in African-American history through photography and political satire. Two photography exhibits are comprised of images of Underground Railroad sites and Civil War venues at which black soldiers fought. They were photographed by Hamilton alumnus and Haverford College professor William Earle Williams '73. The third exhibit explores the reality of life for many African-Americans in post-Civil War America as seen through images of political cartoonist Thomas Nast (1840-1902). The wood engravings are part of religious studies professor Jay Williams' collection. The three shows are open through April 13 and are free and open to the public.

Read more on these exhibits.

PHOTO: Jamestown battle site by William Earle Williams