New Photography Shows and Books: September 2009

This month Dodge & Burn kicks off a monthly series of posts about new photography books and shows. Feel free to send me any tips or announcements to contribute.

Mil Besos: 1,000 Kisses (Rizzoli)
This book is a must-have for your coffee-table collection, featuring dramatic photographs of the flamenco women of Spain shot by Colombian-born Ruven Afanador with an introduction by Christian Dior's head designer John Galliano plus contributions from fashion icons Diane Von Furstenberg, Iman and Heidi Klum.

You may recognize Afanador's unique style from his many editorials in Vogue, Vanity Fair and Italian Elle, among others.

Preview these gritty yet elegant black and white fashion portraits: watch this video of a public exhibition of Ruven Afanador's Mil Besos in Sevilla Spain on the Avenida de la Constitución, with music by the brilliant duo Bebo y Cigala. The book will be released on September 29, 2009.



If you like this work, you might also like Afanador's debut book Torero, portrait series of bullfighters from Spain and Latin America.

Laogai: The Machinery of Repression in China (Umbrage Editions)
Released to coincide with the 60th anniversary of Communist rule in China, edited by Nicole Kempton and Nan Richardson, with essays from renowned dissident Harry Wu and eminent China scholar Andrew Nathan.

An eloquent and vivid summary in shocking, never-before-seen photographs smuggled out of the People Republic of China, LAOGAI exposes the human rights record of the world’s most authoritarian state—a nation whose own remarkable transformation has not extended to the basic demands of its people’s freedom.

Watch a slide show of the photographs on the Umbrage Gallery blog.



Samaná: Images of the Dominican Republic @ Hostos Art Gallery, Bronx, NY
Sept 28 — Nov 7, 2009
Opening Reception: Oct 7, 5 - 9 pm ET

An exhibition of photographs by José Bermúdez, Marino Corniel, Wallace Edgecombe, Elaine Eversley, Ryan Mann-Hamilton, Carlos Sanabria and Sterling Wadsworth.

In other photography news, congratulations to photojournalist Lynsey Addario who has won a MacArthur grant for her depiction of contemporary life in Darfur, Afghanistan and Iraq.

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Photographer Interview: Elia Alba

Elia Alba received her BA from Hunter College in 1994 where she graduated magna cum laude and completed the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in 2001.

Alba is a multi-media artist whose work has been exhibited and screened at various national and international institutions, including Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; El Museo del Barrio; The RISD Museum; Valencia Institute of Modern Art, IVAM, Spain; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; ARCO, Madrid; Jersey City Museum; Science Museum, London; and ITAU Cultural Institute, Sao Paolo, Brazil, and most recently the 10th Havana Biennial.

Her awards have included the Whitney Museum Van Lier Foundation Fellowship 2001; Studio Museum in Harlem, Artist in Residence Fellowship Program (1998-1999), New York Foundation for the Arts Grant (Crafts 2002 and Photography 2008); Pollack-Krasner Foundation Grant (2002) and Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant (2002 and 2008). Her work has been reviewed in the Art Nexus, The Guardian, Time Out, FlashArt, Tema Celeste and The New York Times. She lives and works in Queens, New York.

EA: Where are you from?
EA: I was born and raised in New York City but my family is from the Dominican Republic.

D&B: What kind of photography do you shoot and how did you get started - any
"formal" training?
EA: I really don't have any formal training. I started combining sewing with
photography and ultimately created photo-based masks.

These masks, created through a photo-transfer process from an actual photograph I have taken on fabric, are worn not by the bearer of the masked image but by other individuals. These in turn are re-photographed with wigs and other props and re-contextualized in different environments and settings.

My photographs are a combination of still life, documentation, performance and portraiture.

Animalia, © Elia Alba

D&B: What cameras or techniques do you use?
EA: I use the Bronica SQ. A medium format film camera. I prefer film over digital.

D&B: Who are your mentors (in photography)?
EA: Manuel Acevedo, my husband, who is an excellent photographer.

D&B: Have you experienced any setbacks or different treatment along your photography career that you would attribute to being a woman and/or photographer of color? (this question is optional)
EA: Not really.

D&B: When did you realize you could have a career in photography? Describe your journey towards becoming a working photographer.
EA: Back in the late '80s I started photographing my friend's small dance company which lead to photographing other smaller dance and opera companies throughout New York City.

While I enjoyed shooting these environments, I really didn't feel I was creating in the same way. The actors, stage sets, etc., really was all there for me. I considered it more of a documentation. A few years after I started doing sculpture.

When I would take pictures of the sculpture, especially the close-ups, friends really liked those images as actual photographs and persuaded me to re-consider photography as medium. At around the same time I was collecting and photographing peoples faces and began experimenting with blending these 2 mediums which ultimately came together as photographic objects.

At first the objects were stand alone, but then became props for photographs. I feel like I have somewhat returned to my theater roots, where my current photographs not only merge photography and sculpture but "form" sets, use props to create alternative realities.

Water Tree, © Elia Alba

D&B: What do you hope to achieve with your photography?
EA: My current images deal a lot with blending and merging of peoples; creating new ones that defy classification. I hope to continue creating a cohesive body of work that continues to question and challenge our preconceived notions of people and place.

DB&: What's your dream photography project?
EA: Traveling to Ireland and Scotland to create a mask project on faeries. In this case these faeries will resemble more faeries of non-Western folklore than
typical Irish faeries. Well, this is more of a plan, the dream would be to work
for a couple of months straight throughout the UK.

What's the biggest (life) lesson you've learned through photography?
EA: My work deals alot with identities in flux and how identities are intertwined. It never ceases to amaze me how 2 people from different ends can have so many similarities. Its a constant reminder of how we all come from the same place.

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Photographer Interview: Jaime Permuth

I found photographer Jaime Permuth through our mutual friend, curator Lisa Henry.

Recently one of Jaime's images was nominated for an award at the 2009 New York Photography Festival. The image is part of a series is entitled The Completely Visible World, which is part of his graduate thesis work as a candidate for a Masters of Professional Studies in Digital Photography at the School of Visual Arts.

D&B: Where are you from?
JP: I am a Guatemalan photographer based in New York since the early '90s.

D&B: What kind of photography do you shoot and how did you get started - any "formal" training?
JP: My grandmother, Annie Listwa, was the first photographer in the family. She taught my father, Mario, and gave him his first camera. He in turn continued the tradition with myself and my younger brother, Igal.

Growing up, I fell in love with the photographs of Robert Capa and then moved onto Cartier Bresson and Kertesz. However, without a doubt my greatest influence was the work of Manuel Alvarez Bravo.

When I completed my high-school education in Guatemala I moved to Israel to attend the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where I studied Psychology and English Literature. I had my first solo exhibitions in that city, started working as a freelance shooter and came to the conclusion that photography was my true calling.

My next move was to NYC where I completed an MFA in Photography at the School of Visual Arts. That was fifteen years ago. Last year, I returned to the School of Visual Arts for a one-year intensive Master of Professional Studies in Digital Photography.

D&B: What cameras or techniques do you use?
JP: I’ve shot with just about every type of camera and format. These days my camera of choice is a Nikon D700 and my workflow is almost exclusively digital.

© Jaime Permuth

D&B: Who are your mentors (in photography)?
JP: When I first graduated from SVA in ’94 I had an opportunity to go to work for some of New York’s most amazing photographers: Lois Greenfield, Gilles Peress, Rosalind Solomon and Patrick Demarchelier. I am also constantly inspired by friends and colleagues such as Gerald Cyrus, Vince Cianni, Kristin Capp, Paula Gillen, Edwine Seymour and Elizabeth Young.

D&B: Have you experienced any setbacks or different treatment along your photography career that you would attribute to being a photographer of color? (this question is optional)
JP: Well, growing up in Guatemala, camera perpetually slung from my neck, I was always taken for a “gringo”. Later, in Israel, I was always a “Diaspora Jew”. Coming to the USA, I seem to have finally made it into the Latin American category... with all the immigration issues that entails.

In the African-American/Caribbean neighborhood of Brooklyn where I live, most people tag me for an undercover cop. Is all of this a setback? Hard to say, but it has made me somewhat of an outsider all of my life.

D&B: When did you realize you could have a career in photography? Describe your journey towards becoming a working photographer.
JP: When I was ten years of age I took my first snapshot with a pocket-sized Kodak Instamatic. It was love at first sight. Although I could not have put it into words back then, the idea that you could manage the complexity of the world in that small rectangular frame was a true epiphany. I was hooked the moment I clicked that shutter.

As I mentioned before, I come from a family of very talented photographers. However, I am the first to embrace photography as a career and livelihood. As a photographer, my practice is in Fine Art. My projects tend to be long-term and are most often presented in museums. I am also an educator and have taught in many of New York’s regional colleges as well as in the framework of national and international workshops.

© Jaime Permuth

D&B: What do you hope to achieve with your photography?
JP: For me, photography is a way of being in the world. It allows me to engage my intellectual and creative energy to it’s fullest capacity. Also, I choose my own projects. In practice, this means that I have the great liberty to explore what is most relevant to my development as a human being.

I hope that when I look back at my life’s work I see a clear, organic link that leads from one project to another, and that the sum of all projects is greater than any one of its parts.

D&B: What's your dream photography project?
JP: For the past seven years I’ve been at work on a trilogy of family projects in collaboration with my father and brother. To date we’ve completed the first two installments in book and exhibition format: Family Portrait (2004) and Tarzan Lopez (2007). I’d love for us to conclude the final installment of the trilogy in the coming year.

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Photographer Interview: William Vazquez

In keeping with the theme of "diversity", I like to interview photographers of all levels in their professional and artistic careers. Photographer William Vazquez is Chairman of APA | NY and probably one of the most experienced shooters I've interviewed on this blog - even though as you'll later read, his parents think he's unemployed. Follow Willam Vazquez on Twitter.

D&B: Where are you from?
WV: I was born, and raised in NYC of Puerto Rican parents so that makes me Nuyorican. I have pretty much lived in every borough of the city at one point or another except Staten Island.

D&B: What kind of photography do you shoot and how did you get started - any "formal" training?
WV: I don’t feel that my work really falls into one category except for the fact that there usually is a person or people in them. My main objective is for my photos to have some level of emotion to them.

I do advertising, documentary, conceptual, and fine art. I don’t like to box myself in to a particular place if possible. I like to try different techniques, and approaches. Although if you look at my work as a whole there definitely feels like there is a common thread to them.

I like to say that I do really nice snapshots, but in reality that is a style. I put a lot of effort into creating photographs usually by using lots of production, looking for the right environment, or inspiring people to get them to react in a way I would like.

In the beginning photography was a hobby for me as a teenager. It wasn’t until I met a real photographer who asked me if I wanted to learn more was I hooked. I ended up going to Parsons School of Design in Manhattan.

Puerto Rican girls © William Vazquez

D&B: What cameras or techniques do you use?
WV: I use a Canon 1ds mark II for a good portion of my projects. Although I don’t have any particular techniques that I usually use. It depends on my subject matter, what I want to accomplish, and sometimes what the clients need as an end result. These are the things that decide what equipment, and approach to use.

Anything that needs high resolution or better color fidelity I rent either a Leaf or Phase One back with an H2 camera. I also use a 4x5, and shoot black and white film. At the moment I am contemplating getting an 8x10. I find that large format helps me slow down, and focus. Also I love Type 55 Polaroid, but it doesn’t exist anymore.

D&B: Who are your mentors (in photography)?
WV: I feel my mentors are the photographers I had assisted in the past. Photographers like William Abranowicz, and Peter Ogilvie; good working photographers who showed me how things were done, and took the time to teach me. Also Franchesco Scavullo, who showed what it, was like to work at a higher level.

I do like looking at great photography. I just don’t necessarily feel that I have to emulate anyone. I find my inspiration in the people I meet, the places I go, movies, and art, most anything.

D&B: Have you experienced any setbacks or different treatment along your photography career that you would attribute to being a photographer of color? (this question is optional)
WV: I have never felt any difference in treatment because of my heritage. If anything being multi-cultural has been an advantage to me. I am able to communicate with more people, and make them feel comfortable with me. Not to mention sometimes I have a better understanding of where someone is coming from.

Geisha © William Vazquez

D&B: When did you realize you could have a career in photography? Describe your
journey towards becoming a working photographer.
WV: It really started when I started assisting for professional photographers when it dawned on me that this is a real career. Growing up I was not exposed too much art or anything really creative.

Where I come from being successful meant being a doctor or a lawyer not anything artistic. So as I started to work for different photographers I saw my potential as a photographer. I worked very hard in creating the network of people I needed to help me move forward as well as working on my craft. My parents still think I don’t have a job though.

D&B: What do you hope to achieve with your photography?

WV: One of my dreams as a child was to travel. I collected stamps form all sorts of exotic places, and imagined going to them. Now I get to go to many of those exotic places, meet the people, and get to share a moment in their lives. To me photography is more than a job or a career. Photography is how I communicate, and I want to communicate with as many people as possible!

D&B: What's your dream photography project?
WV: My dream project is to be able to travel without the pressure of deadlines, and collect people’s stories.

D&B:What's the biggest (life) lesson you've learned through photography?
WV: The biggest life lesson I have learned is to not have any preconceived notions of people, and how they live. We are all much more similar than we think.

STAY IN TOUCH
Get updates on new photographer interviews plus news on contests, art shows and informed commentary on what's happening with diversity in photography. Subscribe to Dodge & Burn Photography Blog: Diversity in Photography by Email

Follow me on Twitter @mestrich for more on photography