Susie Smoking 1998/2011, © Nick Knight

Exhibition on view through June 2, 2012.

Christophe Guye Galerie
Dufourstrassse 31
8008 Zurich, Switzerland
+41 44 252 01 11

Photographers such as Nick Knight, David LaChapelle, and Terry Richardson all straddle the fence between commercialism and fine art. The practice of fashion photography is highlighted with international stars at the Christophe Guye Galerie, where a group of artists known as the Icons of Tomorrow, embraces their subject matter using compelling conceptual ideas and provocative, colorful approaches.

The allure behind this type of photography is investigated by these nine renowned photographers that have shaped the genre, to see where it falls between art and commerce.

Featured artists: Miles Aldridge, Kate Bellm, Guy Bourdin, Ina Jang, Nick Knight, David LaChapelle, Walter Pfeiffer, Terry Richardson, and Albert Watson.

Nick Knight appeared in Aperture issue 197.

Untitled Film Still #14, 1978 © Cindy Sherman

Exhibition on view:
Present–June 11, 2012

The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St
New York City, NY
(212) 708-9400

Cindy Sherman, a traveling exhibition of one of the most important contemporary artists, is being presented in New York City, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Dallas.

Cindy Sherman has built an international reputation, photographing herself in a variety of semblances and personas. Her subject matter is topical, humorous, and confrontational. She holds a mirror up to contemporary society, referencing visual culture: movies, magazines, television, the internet, and art history.

The exhibition features 150 photographs from public and private collections, some over-sized and site-specific and others never-before-seen. One of the highlights is her black-and-white body of work, Untitled Film Stills, where the artist became the stereotypical female featured in 1950s and 1960s Hollywood and film noir. An illustrated catalog accompanies the show along with a series of films that were of great artistic influence to Sherman.

The next stops for Cindy Sherman will be The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (July 14–October 7, 2012), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (November 10, 2012–February 17, 2013), and The Dallas Museum of Art (March 17, 2013–June 9, 2013).

Sherman is featured in Aperture issues 200 and 169. Her photographs can also be seen in The New York Times Magazine Photographs.

Over the course of twelve years the Affordable Art Fair has transformed the model of the traditional art fair, driving the notion that fine art is within everyone’s reach, showcasing new and emerging artists, galleries, and must-see installations in 11 locations around the world. To date, the roster includes editions in Amsterdam, Bristol, Brussels, London, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Milan, New York, North London, Singapore, and Sydney.

Will Ramsay founded the fair in 1999 as an extension of the ‘accessible’ marketing drive evolved from Will’s Art Warehouse, the UK gallery that he has maintained since 1996, and today specializes in selling a wide range of contemporary art priced between £40 and £4,000. In an interview with Table Talk, Ramsay notes, “My aim, when founding the Affordable Art Fair was to break down the barriers of the sometimes stuffy and intimidating art world — giving ‘the terrified’ the opportunity to enjoy and collect art in a fun and informal atmosphere.” He often relays an experience of entering galleries and being met with “frosty reception”, a fear factor that he sought to eliminate in launching the first Affordable Art Fair in London, 1999. This first fair, an instant hit, attracted 87 galleries, 10,000 visitors, and grossed £1 million in sales. Now, a bit more than a decade since its founding, the Affordable Art Fair is an internationally-recognized and leading showcase for contemporary art, having welcomed more than one million visitors as of 2011, and sold over $270 million worth of art.

NEXT WEEK, the UK-based fair makes a return to the art capital of the US for its third annual spring edition, hosting more than seventy unique exhibitors over five days at 7W in New York City. Browse the full list of exhibitors here.

Wednesday through Sunday, join Aperture at the Affordable Art Fair to browse and buy a selection of just-published books, bestsellers, and new limited-edition prints, plus take advantage of a special offer on Aperture-magazine subscriptions.

Thursday, April 19, Aperture will present a talk and walk-through with W. M. HUNT, curator, collector, consultant, teacher, fundraiser, and author of the new Aperture book The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious ($52.50, available here). Join Bill, who is known for his wit and larger-than-life personality, for an entertaining presentation on the art of collecting.

Aperture Booth and The Insider’s Eye:
A Talk and Walk-through with W. M. Hunt
Wednesday, April 18, 2012–Sunday, April 22, 2012

Admission Required

The Affordable Art Fair
7 West 34th Street
New York, New York
(212) 255-2003

Israeli Soldiers Playing Cards, 1997 © Collier Schorr

Exhibition on view:
December 22–June 30, 2012

The Jewish Museum
1109 5th Ave at 92nd St
New York, NY
(212) 423-3200

The politics of desire, in public and private, and the search for national, ethnic, and sexual identities are investigated throughout Composed, a permanent exhibition at The Jewish Museum. The show features seven photo-based contemporary artists. Using conventional forms of photography including, portraiture, photojournalism, and online profile pictures, the artists illuminate the complex identities of a wide range of characters, emphasizing stereotypes, in order to obscure individual differences.

Artists featured: Marc Adelman, Gloria Bornstein, AA Bronson, Debbie Grossman, Adi Nes, Collier Schorr, and Rona Yefman.

Collier Schorr appeared in Aperture issue 202 and The New York Times Magazine Photographs.

Nan as a dominatrix, 1973 © Nan Goldin / Matthew Marks Gallery

Exhibition on view:
March 29–June 4, 2012

Malba – Fundación Costantini
Avda. Figueroa Alcorta 3415
Buenos Aires, Argentina

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Larry Clark, Nan Goldin, Jenny Holzner, Barbara Kruger, Paul McCarthy, and Cady Noland. Seven controversial American artists are featured in Bye Bye American Pie, an exhibition exploring the ever-evolving facets of American culture: economics, politics, and America as an ideal.

Curated by Philip Larratt-Smith, the work resonates and critiques the changing state of U.S. culture from the 1970s to the present. With these world-renowned artists together in a single exhibition, a provocative survey of American cultural history is offered, celebrated, and gives way to analyze the deconstruction of multiple subcultures reinforced by television and Hollywood.

Nan Goldin’s Aperture published book, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency is available here and was most recently featured in Aperture issue 197. Barbara Kruger was featured in issue 138.

Perpetual Photo No. 210, 1989 © Allan McCollum

Exhibition on view:
March 12–April 12, 2012

Blondeau Fine Art Services
5, rue de la Muse
Genève, Switzerland
41 (0)22 544 95 95

Challenging ideas of originality, a group of appropriation artists share the common thread of relating to images in a newfound way. Earlier exhibition’s, Pictures (Artists Space, New York, 1977) and The Pictures Generation (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2009) pioneered the way for ‘appropriationist’ practices, advocating the importance of painting as a medium and the borrowed, sampled, and recycled aspects of our visual culture.

Last Exit: Pictures, curated by Lionel Bouvier, seeks to articulate the can of worms ‘re-presentation’ tends to open. Understanding the picture itself, whatever the sources used, becomes inherently important rather than attempting to absorb an alternate or lost reality beyond the image. Despite generational or aesthetic differences, the heart of this exhibition is to display pictures in every state: appropriated, displaced, painted, re-photographed, and combined.

Featured artists: Troy Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo, Allan McCollum, John Miller, Steven Parrino, Richard Prince, David Robbins, David Salle, Laurie Simmons, Alan Vega, and James Welling.

Allan McCollum contributed to Words Without Pictures. Louise Lawler is featured in Aperture issue 145. Laurie Simmons has an Aperture published book, Walking, Talking, Lying, she is featured in The New York Times Magazine Photographs, and has a print available. James Welling is featured in Aperture issue 190 and contributed to Words Without Pictures. Aperture, in association with the Cincinnati Art Museum, will publish a survey of James Welling’s work in Spring 2013.

The ASME (American Society of Magazine Editors), earlier this week, announced the National Magazine Awards 2012 finalists, a list representing fifty-two national magazine titles nominated in twenty categories. Leading the pack in 2012 are New York and The New Yorker, both with six nominations overall, as well as the New York Times Magazine, with three nominations in the categories of news and documentary photography, feature photography, and feature writing.

Aperture is please to announce that our own Aperture magazine has again been nominated as an ASME finalist, in the General Excellence category of Though-Leader Magazines, honoring literary, scholarly and professional publications, as well as general interest magazines. View the full list of 2012 finalist and honorees here.

The 2012 National Magazine Awards will be presented on May 3rd, at the New York Marriott Marquis in New York City. The 2012 judges include 345 magazine editors, art directors and photography editors as well as journalism educators.

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››The ASME and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism announced the winners of the 2012 National Magazine Awards for Digital Media on March 20, 2012. More than 300 editors, publishers and guests attended a lunch at the Grand Hyatt New York to honor the fifty-five finalists and eleven winners. View the winners’ gallery for the Digital Media honorees here.

››The latest issue of Aperture (#206) is now available.

››Buy The New York Times Magazine Photographs, edited by Kathy Ryan, award-winning editor of the New York Times Magazine, for 30% off, here.

1929 © August Sander / 2008 © Boris Mikhailov

Exhibition on view:
March 22–May 5, 2012

Pace/MacGill Gallery
32 E 57th Street
New York City, NY
(212) 759-7999

Two seminal practitioners of the camera are side-by-side in Pace/MacGill’s current exhibition, German Portraits.

From 1910 through 1956, documentary photographer August Sander, strove to make a visual index of the population classifying Germany’s most conventional groups: The Farmer, The Skilled Tradesman, The Woman, Classes and Professions, The Artist, The City, and The Last People. This monumental project turned into the masterpiece, People of the 20th Century, featuring over 600 images. Twenty portraits by Sander will be shown in this exhibition, each striking a rare symmetry of the individual and an illustration of the archetype, forming a sincere social portrait of the time.

Ukrainian-born Boris Mikhailov has photographed Germany’s middle class. Nearly a century after August Sander, Mikhailov focuses on the distinct appearance of the individual and the transmission of physical traits from parents to offspring. He captures his subjects against a dark backdrop, taken in profile, inviting us to contemplate line and form and what it means to be German in a literal and physical sense.

Mikhailov is featured in Aperture issues 190 and 158. Aperture also published August Sander: Masters of Photography.

Room of the Ninja Turtles, 2003, © Roger Ballen

Exhibition on view:
March 22–May 11, 2012

North-West University Gallery
Potchefstroom Campus
548 West 28 St
018 299 4341

Playpen by Roger Ballen is a compilation of over thirty years of documentation of children, the environments they inhabit, their toys, and drawings. These images, a new body of work, Asylum, and an installation constructed specifically for the gallery will be exhibited at North-West University. Ballen’s Playpen explores photography as an art form as it takes on painterly yet sculptural roles and interacts with the viewers own childhood memories and adolescent dreams.

Children’s faces hidden by masks and crude wall drawings eerily linger throughout the black and white images by the South African photographer.

Ballen is featured in Aperture issues 201 and 173. His work also appears in The New York Times Magazine Photographs (Aperture, 2011).

Tautira, Tahiti (4510702), 2010, © Guy Tillim

Exhibition on view:
Through March 17, 2012

James Harris Gallery
312 2nd Ave. S.
Seattle, WA
(206) 903-6220

South African photographer Guy Tillim is appearing in his first solo exhibition in the United States at the James Harris Gallery in Seattle, WA. Second Nature synthesizes the beauty of the French Polynesian landscape and discerning art historical references such as Paul Gauguin’s Tahitian ‘primitive’ paintings.

Tillim has deviated from his background documenting the effects of South Africa’s apartheid, child soldiers, famine, death, and decay. He now provides us with idealistic, romantic views of sprawling landscapes bestrewn with a contemporary human presence contradictory to the environment. Panoramic views and day-to-day minutiae make up this exhibition of six, large-scale photographs.

A book of these photographs titled Second Nature will be published by Prestel.

Tillim was featured in Aperture issue 193.