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

—

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”

Brian Ulrich’s photographic investigation of the American consumer psyche has for the past decade examined the complex relationships consumers form with the industries that seek their consumption (Copia, 2002-2006), the trickle-down movement of consumer goods (Thrift, 2005-2007), and the end remains of dead malls and big box stores, stripped of product and identity (Dark Stores, 2008-2011).

Ulrich’s upcoming exhibition at Julie Saul Gallery looks at this decade-spanning body of work, juxtaposing photographs with artifacts from the past (a vintage sign in florescent italics announcing Fast Food), objects culled from an expansive archive, amassed by the photographer in simultaneity with the development of his images.

—

Is This Place Great Or What: Artifacts and Photographs opens Thursday, March 22^nd at Julie Saul Gallery, New York City.

This exhibition coincides with Ulrich’s first published monograph, Is This Place Great or What, published by Aperture Foundation, with an essay by Juliet B. Schorr and 95 plates ($35, available here).

Also consider Ulrich’s limited-edition, “Chicago, Illinois, 2005,” from the series Thrift ($600, available here).

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 is delighted to honor 2011 Portfolio Prize winner—Sarah Palmer—as well as four runners up: Thibault Brunet, Lisa Lindvay, Andrew McConnell, and Louie Palu. The work of these exceptional photographers has been chosen from nearly one thousand portfolio entries from around the world.

The 2011 Portfolio Prize site is now live, featuring five full slideshow galleries featuring the work of this year’s finalists, biographical notes, and elucidatory statements written by members of the judging panel—including Publisher, Lesley A. Martin, and Editor, Denise Wolff—casting an editorial eye on the work of each 2011 finalist.

We are also pleased to offer new limited-edition prints by winner Sarah Palmer, and finalist Andrew McConnell in our online shop.

Featured at top: The Bomb (Also) is a Flower by Sarah Palmer, $600, available here.

Last month, renowned Swedish photographer J.H. Engström was awarded the Goldene Letter first prize in the Stiftung Buchkunst Best Book Design From All Over the World competition, the Frankfurt-based art foundation’s annual review.  His book La résidence was selected by an independent international jury from a pool of 540 photo books from 31 countries. They call it “a fascinating, eye-opening book – interaction without anything having to be plugged in.”

La résidence is comprised of 29 snapshot-like triptych gatefolds interspersed with his typically restrained pictorials on borderless double-page spreads and brief bursts of diary comments. The selection committee writes:

Nothing dramatic takes place, no lessons are being taught – but as each sequence elicits greater curiosity, for the spectator, browsing and folding his or her way through the pages, a personal individual story emerges, like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Engström has been featured in an interview with Anders Petersen in Aperture issue 198. Aperture Foundation also presents a limited edition print and portfolio.

The haunting, painterly print “CDG/ JHE #41, 2006,” originally featured in Aperture magazine issue 190, shows his efforts at capturing the atmosphere and ambiance of Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris, where much of his childhood was spent, and which he calls a “fantasy landscape”. The series from which it comes, CDG/JHE, “provides an almost abstract definition of the existential homelessness and displacement that is at the heart of J.H. Engström’s work—the source of its tenderness and beauty, as well as its power to unsettle,” writes Martin Jaeggi in his commentary for Aperture.

Three other untitled prints are available as part of the Trying to Dance Portfolio, a selection from the series which comprises a photojournalistic ‘diary’ of his life: landscapes, still-lives, self-portraits, and snapshots of friends produce a loose narrative, recording not only the artist’s individual experiences, but a sensitive and provocative engagement with the world at large.

Engström’s tendency to utilize small moments in the construction of wide-reaching narratives is recurring in much of his work.

Dee and Lisa on Mott Street, Little Italy, NYC 1976 © Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos

On view from March 8–11, 2012, Through Our Lens: Photographers Reflect on Empowerment is a charity photography exhibition and auction benefiting Man Up, a global initiative launched by award-winning journalist Jimmie Briggs, aimed at mobilizing youth worldwide toward the prevention of violence against women and girls. Through Our Lens assembles the work of 50 notable photographers, ranging the worlds of fashion, documentary photography, and contemporary art, in an exhibition/auction event hosted by honorary chairs Gloria Steinem and Harry Belafonte, and curated by Whitney Johnson of The New Yorker, Bess Greenberg, Yukiko Yamagata, and JB Reed.

Among the works on view and available for auction are Susan Meiselas’ 1976 Dee and Lisa on Mott Street Little Italy (pictured above), and Hank Willis Thomas’ 2011 After Identity What?, a work pulled from the artist’s socio-politically and identity driven 1969 series.

Through Our Lens: Photographers Reflect on Empowerment is open to the public March 9th–11th, offering a weekend of FREE public programming which includes a film screening with activist Christy Turlington Burns, and talks with author Jill Iscol.

The ticketed reception and auction kicks off Thursday, March 8th at 25CPW with hors d’oeuvres, open bar and a guest DJ set by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson of The Roots. Tickets are $150 in advance, $175 at the door.

Through Our Lens: Photographers Reflect on Empowerment
Ticketed Reception and Auction
Thursday, March 8, 6:30PM–11:00PM

Public Viewing w/ Additional Weekend Programming
March 9-11, 2012

25CPW
25 Central Park West
New York, NY 10023
212.203.0250

For more information, contact 25CPW at: 212.203.0250. For the full weekend schedule and for tickets visit: http://manupphoto.eventbrite.com/.

Armory Week is almost here. Join us on Saturday, March 10 for our annual all-day Armory Collectors Brunch to mix and mingle with friends and colleagues in the heart of Chelsea’s art district. The event will include a special walk through of the current exhibition Shared Vision, with Marcelle Polednik, Director MOCA Jacksonville and collectors Sondra Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-Falla at 11:00 am, followed by book signings with Aperture artists including Bruce Davidson, Richard Mosse, Brian Ulrich, Penelope Umbrico, collector Bill Hunt.

Saturday, March 10, 10:00 am–1:00 pm
FREE

Aperture Gallery and Bookstore
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
New York, New York
(212) 505-5555

During Armory Arts Week, you can also visit Aperture at the eleventh annual SCOPE New York Art Fair. You can see some of our newest limited-edition prints from artists Hank Willis Thomas’ “After Identity, What?, 2011,” Lars Tunbjork’s “42nd Street and Eighth Avenue, from the Times Square portfolio published May 18, 1997” and Richard Mosse’s “Débris, North Kivu, Eastern Congo, 2011.”

This year, SCOPE’s VIP first view will take place on Wednesday, March 7 at an exciting, high profile location across from The Armory Show. The 35,000 square foot pavilion and its dramatic glass box entrance on 57th Street and 12th Ave will host 50 international galleries and museum-quality programming highlighting groundbreaking, emerging work in contemporary art and beyond.

First View:
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
3:00 pm–9:00 pm

Fair Continues:
Thursday, March 8, 2012-Sunday, March 11, 2012

Admission required.

SCOPE Pavilion
57th St & 12th Avenue
New York, NY 10019
212-268-1522

“Invented worlds” or “ir-realities” are what Paolo Ventura calls the elaborately constructed dioramas that fill the frame of his brooding, dream-like photographs. The Italian-born artist, of the Aperture monograph Winter Stories (Fall 2009), has a new exhibition The Future of the Anarchist opening Saturday, February 25, 2012 at Obsolete Gallery in Venice, CA showcasing his fantastical, moody and meticulously staged images.

In the clip above from 2009, Ventura explains the origin of his project as well as his various inspirations. He also shows the different steps of his work leading to the final photograph–from sketching, to crafting the characters and sets, to setting the lights and taking the polaroids.

A deluxe, limited edition book and print set of Winter Stories is still available for purchase at Aperture. The clothbound collection features 65 four-color images and one unique drawing tipped in, signed and numbered by the artist, alongside an 11 1/2 x 14 in. signed Digital C-print of The Show.

Opening reception:
Saturday, February 25, 2012
6:00-9:00 pm

Exhibition on view:
Saturday, February 25-Saturday, March 24,2012

Obsolete Gallery
222 Main Street
Venice, CA 90291
(310) 399-0024

Ventura has also been featured in Aperture magazine issues 203 and 180.

Join us on Monday, March 5, 2012 at 6:30 pm at Aperture Gallery for an artist talk with photographer Richard Mosse , followed by a book signing and reception for his new book Infra.

Aperture Gallery and Bookstore
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
Between 10th and 11th Avenues
New York, New York
(212) 505-5555

Over the course of two years, Mosse documented the ongoing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo using a discontinued type of color infrared surveillance film called Kodak Aerochrome to offer a stunning and radical rethinking of how to depict a complex and intractable conflict.  With film that is extra sensitive to green light, he renders the rich typography of the country as well as the camouflage of the Congolese army and combative rebel groups in vivid hues of lavender, crimson, and hot pink.

This is Mosse’s first monograph, co-published by Aperture and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.  These improbably colored images underline the growing tension between art, fiction, and traditional photojournalism as a way of portraying and communicating the impact of war. Mosse states that the collection works “through shocks to the imagination,” using photography’s unique ability “to make visible what cannot be perceived.”

Select large format prints from the collection are currently on view at the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC through April 15, organized by Xandra Eden, Curator of Exhibitions.

Weatherspoon Art Museum
500 Tate St
Greensboro, NC 27412
336-334-5770

Mosse’s limited edition print “Débris, North Kivu, Eastern Congo,” is also now available for purchase at Aperture. Mosse calls the ethereal shot a “surprising” double-exposure that came about by accident in March 2011. “‘Débris ‘pushed me to embrace failure and let go of certain ways of seeing.”

Photographs by Richard Mosse have been featured on the cover of Aperture magazine #203.