Dave Anderson has photographed in tough places—a surviving Ku Klux Klan bastion in Texas, New Orlean’s post-Katrina Ninth Ward—but his photographs are rarely gritty. His Aperture monograph One Block, which documents the rebuilding efforts of one block of Ninth Ward residents, focuses less on the neighborhood’s despair and more on its hopes for renewal. Anderson knew that to photograph amidst such hardship he would have to tread lightly: “I was super-cognizant of ‘photographers fatigue’–people were sick of photographers showing up night and day and making grand promises,” he mentioned in a Color magazine profile. That Anderson spent time living and forming relationships with the residents he photographed is evident in the work—the subjects appear at ease, comfortable sharing their struggle to rebuild with Anderson and his lens.

Anderson produces videos as well as photographs—he is the man behind Oxford American’s SoLost web series, a video exploration of “the side roads, backrooms, cellars and psyche of the modern South,” which so far features 29 four-to-seven minute mini-documentaries on subjects ranging from a couple constructing a medieval castle in Arkansas, to Alabama menswear designer Billy Reid, to photographer William Eggleston. SoLost is a one-man operation, which accounts for the easy rapport between Anderson’s camera and his subjects, and why these videos feel like privileged glimpses into the richness and diversity of life in the American South.

Anderson will give a lecture about his image-making projects at The Center for Photography at Woodstock, this Friday, July 13 at 8pm. If you’re in the area, it will be worth checking out.

›› Watch a video of Anderson speaking about One Block with Aperture, and head to the Aperture store if you’re interested in purchasing a copy.

Aperture Foundation and the Photography Program at the School of Art, Media, and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design are pleased to present a lecture with artist Shirin Neshat, the Iranian born and New York-based photographer, filmmaker, and video artist, whose controversial work has received international acclaim for its exploration of the complex socio-political discourse surrounding the female experience in Iranian society.

Born in Qazvin, Iran before immigrating to the United States in 1974, Neshat has been called “artist of the decade” by G. Roger Denson of the Huffington Post “[because her work is] chronically relevant to an increasingly global culture,” exploring our “convergence and collision of values.” Often through the use of multi-channel video and sound installations, her exacting iconography turns to historical and contemporary sources to create technically beautiful and richly provocative portraits, often addressing the deep-rooted resilience and determination of women in Muslim societies.

Beginning in the nineties with the provocative portrait series Women of Allah (1993-1997)—“the stark photographs of Iranian women in chadors, some brandishing guns, others with skin covered by Persian script that few people outside Iran can read”— Neshat’s artistic practice has focused on the myriad dualities inherent in Iranian gender structures. She explains in an interview with Studio Banana, that the interrogation of such dualities is inherent to her work, both in the content and form.

Neshat’s 1998 Turbulent utilizes two opposing projections, two singers (one male, one female) to create a striking visual and audible metaphor for the complexity of gender and social power within the framework of ancient Persian music and poetry. Necessary viewing.

In conversation with Heyoka Magazine, Neshat remarks, that in order to properly analyze her body of work, a viewer must always consider both its personal and social context that always run parallel:

“My themes always seem to develop as a personal inquiry toward certain issues that I am faced with as an individual; for example my resentment and questions toward political powers or events such as the Islamic revolution (1979) that has determined the course of my life and so many other Iranians’. Consequently this path naturally has pulled me toward a larger cultural investigation.”

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›› Neshat has most recently addressed the Arab Spring and the momentum of these uprisings in a photography and video installation at Gladstone Gallery (2012).

›› Released in 2009, Neshat’s feature-film debut, Women Without Men, is an “exquisitely crafted view of Iran in 1953, when a British- and American-backed coup removed the democratically elected government.”

Artist Talk: Shirin Neshat
Tuesday, May 1, 6:30PM
FREE
Aperture Gallery and Bookstore
New York, New York

All photography is a kind of step away from reality. Few photographers within the documentary genre have gone further to embrace this notion than Richard Mosse, whose current photo project exploring armed conflict in the eastern province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Richard Mosse: Infra, opens today at Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool.

“Documentary photography is now at the moment where it has to change,” says Mosse. “It is behind the times – the forms of modern conflict are profoundly complex; their narratives are impossibly difficult to convey.”

Investigating a fresh form to represent the continued hostilities surrounding the deadliest war in human history—a very old and ongoing conflict that had gone stale in popular consciousness—Mosse toured eastern Congo between 2010-11, armed with two cameras and a supply of Kodachrome film, rendering the characters of this war in vivid hues of lavender, crimson and hot pink. The tension between the hot pink-tinted worlds rendered on film and the devastating subject of the photography is what makes Mosse’s work so compelling. In taking a step away from the standard visual language of photojournalism, Mosse is producing unimaginable images that effectively underscore the truly unimaginable reality of the conflict they capture, a modern conflict too opaque for standard methods of representation.

»Read Richard Mosse’s interview with Liverpool Daily Post on his Infra series and exhibition
»Watch Richard Mosse discuss the stories behind Infra, and preview the Open Eye Gallery installation

Richard Mosse: Infra will be on view March 30 through June 10, 2012

Open Eye Gallery
Liverpool, United Kingdom
+44 (0) 151 236 6768

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Also consider Richard Mosse’s first book, Infra: Photographs by Richard Mosse (Aperture 2012), or a limited edition print from the Infra series, “Debris, North Kivu, Eastern Congo, 2011″

Richard Mosse is also featured in Aperture Magazine # 203, “Richard Mosse: Sublime Proximity interview with Aaron Schuman”

Aperture aggregates the best posts from this past week in the photography blogosphere.

• Art Nouveau magazine interviews artist Hank Willis Thomas, of the monograph Pitch Blackness (Aperture 2008) whose transmedia installation Question Bridge: Black Males is still on view at three different locations around the country, on his latest body of work Strange Fruit which makes ”vivid comparisons of black perception between the pre-slavery era and post-Civil Rights Movement.”
• Joerg Colberg posts on Conscientious Extended about “How To Make a Photobook,” though he admits early on, “My headline is slightly disingenuous: There actually is no simple recipe for photobook making.”
• New York Times‘ Lens blog does a Q&A with Mexico City-based photographer Dominic Bracco II about one of his images “showing death with humanity and dignity,” as well as the Eugene Richards’ photograph from the series “Below the Line: Living Poor in America,” which inspired him.
• Jess Dudley, Wonderful Machine Producer, posts a very informative piece on APhotoEditor, “Pricing and Negotiating – Non-Fiction Book Cover,” in an attempt to elucidate the often murky realm of reproduction rights through a real-life annecdote.
• New Yorker‘s Photobooth profiles “Lost & Found: Salvaging Snapshots in Japan,” with a slideshow of the recovered family photographs from the Japanese town of Yamamoto devastated by the tsunami one year ago, featured in Aperture issue 206, and on view at Aperture Gallery April 2, 2012 – April 27, 2012.
• Time’s Lightbox profiles the independent photo project on Afghanistan (Danger and Aftermath, on view at Museum London in Southwestern Ontario through April 1, 2012),  by Magnum photographer Larry Towell, who’s work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine Photographs (Aperture 2011) and Access to Life (Aperture/Magnum Photos/The Global Fund 2009).
• NPR’s The Picture Show takes “A Peak Inside the Copy Cat Building: Where Baltimore Artists Work – And Live.” Alex Wein and Rob Brulinski’s photographs portray the living spaces of over 100 eclectic new tenants of a building which once housed Copy Cat printing, and was the birthplace of the Crown Cork bottle cap, “a worldwide standard for the beer and soda industries.”

Rinko Kawauchi in Conversation with Martin Parr, Courtesy of Photoworks

Rinko Kawauchi‘s photographs are set apart by their remarkable consistency. Nuanced but never repetitive, each 6×6 frame seems to capture the same frail, effervescent color palette, each, in her typical manner, flooded with light. It’s her attitude toward the photograph and the subject, however, not necessarily the technique that stays the same.

In the clip above, Kawauchi in conversation with Magnum photojournalist Martin Parr, who wrote on the work of Rimaldas Vikšraitis in Aperture issue 204, discusses the first transition she made from her usual Rolleiflex film camera to digital during the Brighton Photo Biennial 2010 when a certain subject called for it. The results were stunning, though not unexpected. She says she hopes in the future to use both formats together using a consistency of approach–not necessarily a conscious one, though as she suggested in an interview for Kopenhagen. “Whenever I’m taking pictures,” she says in the video, “I need to discover something. I want an impression from the object.”

Kawauichi, who was just nominated for the 2012 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, first came to prominence in 2001 when she published three photobooks–Utatane, Hanabi, and Hanako–simultaneously during a time when she was still pursuing commercial work. Her acclaim rose rapidly as she went on to put together over a dozen monographs, most recently Illuminance, published by Aperture in Spring, 2011, of which several signed copies are still available for purchase in our bookstore. Also available is the Illuminance Limited-Edition Box Set featuring two untitled 8×10 prints from the series and a signed copy of the text presented in a beautiful clothbound clamshell box. A larger, dizzying 20×20 untitled C-print (pictured left) is also now available for purchase at Aperture.

Aperture’s 2011 Benefit and Auction catalog is now online and open for bidding! This year’s catalog features many talented artists, from emerging to established photographers. You can bid online through our website, and at the event on Monday, October 17th. The proceeds from our 2011 Benefit, Auction, and SNAP! Party—our most important fundraising event of the year—are essential for Aperture’s publications, exhibitions, and public programs, which provide unmatched exposure for artists and scholars working in photography.

In this clip, auction-featured photographer Sasha Rudensky explains how her work is related to her personal history. She describes her practice as being in between documentary and staged photography in a “loose way.” Rudensky also speaks about the polished, aesthetic style that emerges from the reGeneration2 artists, and her experience being a part of the group.

Rudensky’s image Red Square is part of our SNAP! Benefit Party Emerging Artists Auction. She writes, of the image:

Red Square was taken from a friend’s window in January of 2010. Initially I wanted to climb out on the roof deck in order to shoot from outside but due to heavy snowfall, the door has been barricaded. As it often happens, limitation became a source of strength, so when I set up to have the view framed by the window I realized it clarified the ideas behind the work. The iconic glitter of the red square presented as a projection, rather than a real space, sets up for the underlying theme of the project, an interweaving between illusion and fantasy as well as every day reality in post-Soviet Russia.

Stay tuned for weekly blog posts giving insight into select items from our Benefit’s Live, Silent, and Emerging Artists Auctions!

Click here to start bidding online for this work and others!

Click here for more information about our 2011 Benefit & Auction.

Julie Saul © Elliot Black Photography

Art dealer Julie Saul was honored for her contributions to photography at last year’s Aperture’s 2010 Benefit. This year she commemorates her gallery’s 25th anniversary with the exhibition 25 Years/25 Artists and an accompanying catalogue. The show features a single photograph from each year of her gallery’s history and will be on view through Friday, August 26th. Among the artists include Luigi Ghirri, Maira Kalman, Sally Gall, Penelope Umbrico and James Welling.

What are some of your favorite photobooks?

Some of the earliest books when I first became interested in photography. There were very few books published on photography so you could virtually own all of the photography books back in the 70s. There was Diane Arbus, there was George Platt Lynes there was Danny Lyon…but there were very few books so you ended up spending a lot of more time really scrutinizing the individual images than you do today because now there are so many you can barely flip through the books that you own. Perhaps my favorite photobook was one given to me when I left the Met’s department of 20th century art where I interned in 1982. They gave me this gorgeous huge George Platt Lynes book that I think was one of the first books published by Jack Woody with Twin Palms, and I loved that book. Then I did a show of his work later at my gallery and somebody stole it! It had been signed by everybody in that department and that was truly one of the worst losses that I have had.

What has been your favorite show you’ve seen this summer?

La Carte D’Après Nature at Matthew Marks, curated by Thomas Demand. I love the fact that it was curated by an artist. I think shows curated by artists are very interesting and it gives me a whole new insight into Thomas Demand’s work. It also includes 50 prints by one of my favorite photographers who I have shown a couple of times over the years- Luigi Ghirri.

You were the first American dealer to show Ghirri’s work, correct?

I was. And I still think that he is a completely brilliant and under-recognized (although probably not for long) European artist. He’s sort of the William Eggleston of Europe in the 70s, and from what I’ve seen from European work of that time, particularly of Italian work, it was very romantic, it was black and white. Ghirri had this very conceptual point of view and worked in color and really understood media so I think that it’s great that he’s finally getting the attention he deserves. Seeing his work in the context of the Matthew Marks exhibition will really be an important step for him.

What are some of your most meaningful relationships that you have had with artists over the years?

Often a long relationship is a good relationship and you can get used to each other and you get closer to each other just like a long term [romantic] relationship. If you look at my 25th Anniversary show, the first artist I ever showed, Andy Bush, is still with the gallery and we’ve certainly had our ups and downs over the years but I’ve been able to gain an understanding of the way he works and thinks by having such a long term relationship. I would say that what makes a good relationship is the artist’s ability and willingness to really collaborate with you. Not to see the gallery as a battlefield, but see it as a matrimonial bed, a place of collaboration, sharing resources and ideas. One of the more fun things I’ve done is working with Maira Kalman who had never really had gallery representation before because she normally does books, theater design, textile design and applied arts. So for her it has been a great adventure, and for me to figure out how to promote some of these works, because she has never thought about trying to fit within the traditional gallery system, its been really fun.

Although you represent artists working in a variety of media, what made you want to specialize in photography?

I started with a specialization in photography because I felt like it was important to have a distinct identity within the larger New York art world. Within my larger academic studies in art history I did my thesis on a Bauhaus photographer, but as you know the Bauhaus is about work in many different media. Moholy Nagy believed that every medium has its proper application so he thought for representational art, photography was the medium and for abstract art, painting was the medium. I identify with, and show a great deal of, photography but my interests and enthusiasms are by no means limited to strictly photography. And furthermore a lot of the artists I represent, actually enjoy working in the way that I described, different media for different projects. I’m very interested in artists who take a very freewheeling approach to the medium.

What are some of things you are most proud of exhibiting over the past 25 years?

Well I think the 25th Anniversary show itself is a good example of that. We do eight or nine shows a year and I’ve had the difficult task of choosing one work from one show during a year where literally hundreds of works have been exhibited.

More information about Julie Saul Gallery.

Click here to buy tickets to Aperture’s 2011 Benefit and Auction, honoring Bruce Davidson, Gerhard Steidl and Robert Anthione.

Interview by Aperture Work Scholar Aliza Sena.

If you have trouble viewing the video, please click here.

In this clip, Finnish photographer Kalle Kataila explains the importance of contemplating the world today, facing the changes that man has made on the landscape. Kataila portrays his subjects alone in a wild or urban landscape, emphasizing the power of the environment, and the littleness of the human.

ReGeneration2: tomorrow’s photographers today exhibition and accompanying publication, was presented by Aperture Foundation from January 20 through March 17, 2011, in collaboration with the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland, and with the support of Pro Helvetia and the Consulate General of Switzerland in New York.

Click here to purchase the accompanying publication regeneration2: Tomorrow’s Photographers Today