Margaret Horan, November 1, 1935, © Edward Steichen

Exhibition on View:
Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, The Condé Nast Years, 1923-1937
Friday, January 16–Sunday, May 3, 2009
The International Center of Photography
1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street
New York, New York
(212) 857-0000

If you are interested in fashion photography, don’t miss Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, The Condé Nast Years, 1923-1937 at the International Center of Photography.

This exhibition is the first to showcase the range of Steichen’s fashion work, and it features 175 vintage photographs mainly drawn from an extensive archive of original prints at Condé Nast, as well as a selection of prints from the George Eastman House Museum.

When Steichen, already an established Pictorialist photographer, accepted editorial positions at Vogue and Vanity Fair, his peers in the art community thought he was damaging the hard-fought respectability of their work. Nevertheless, Steichen’s inspired approach to fashion photography revolutionized the field by changing the soft-focus image of the fashionable woman from a distant romantic creature, to that of a much more direct and independent individual.

A selection of affordable limited-edtion prints from Steichen are available from Aperture Foundation.

A Night at the Met with Larry Fink
Friday, April 24th, 2009, 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm
Reception from 6:00–7:00 pm
Lecture from 7:00–8:30 pm

Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley
105 North Gate Hall
Berkeley, CA
(510) 642-3383

The West-Coast based Fotovision invites all who share the love and passion for photography to an exclusive cocktail party and lecture launching photographer Larry Fink’s new Blurb book,  A Night at the Met.

Fink’s photography has been described as displaying the sensitive core of interpersonal-relationships, and the playful and visually beautiful photographs in A Night at the Met capture the ritual of the donor party at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Larry Fink has been honored with several awards, including two Guggenheim Fellowships and two NEA grants. His work spans across various spectra in the world of photography including documentary, commercial, and art photography, but he is best known for his “snapshot” aesthetic.

A gelatin-silver print of Sarah Vaughan, New York City, November 1988,  is available from Aperture.

Opening in Washington D.C.’s National Building Museum this Saturday is Richard Ross’s exhibition, The Architecture of Authority. With this body of work, American photographer Richard Ross presents unsettling pictures of architectural spaces that each exert a kind of power over the individual. From a Montessori preschool to churches and mosques, to an interrogation room at Guantánamo and segregation cells at Abu Ghraib, Ross’s photographs reflect the state of our post 9/11 world—one in which he believes the public has become accustomed to the abuse of power, erosion of individual liberty, illegitimate authority, and constant surveillance.

In this video, Richard Ross highlights the physical relationship between the viewer and his images. Ross also gives insight into his new project, Suitable Placement: Juvenile Justice in America.

Click here to view more artist interviews from Aperture.

Untitled, © Gregory Crewdson, 2001–2002

Exhibition on view:
Wednesday, February 25–Saturday, April 25,  2009
Columbus College of Art and Design
Bureau for Open Culture
107 N. Ninth St.
Columbus, OH

Do you by instinct start whispering when you enter the archways of museum galleries?  Does the mere sight of the white walls in a hospital cause you to feel nauseated? Do you instantly straighten your spine when you walk in to a school?

These are the types of questions that the exhibition Of Other Spaces is trying to address. It is presented by the CCAD’s Bureau for Open Culture, and is inspired by Michel Foucault’s philosophy on social relations and cultural practices expressed in the intersection of space, architecture and history. Foucault presented the idea that spaces, also called heterotopias, are charged with socio-cultural authority and have an impact on our actions. Of Others Spaces wants us to consider the ways in which space is loaded with authority, and explores how it controls our behavior, activates memory, provides insight, and stimulates imagination under the influence of social-cultural conditions.

The group exhibition presents work from several artists, including Gregory Crewdson, who was featured in the spring 2008 issue of Aperture magazine.

Thursday, April 16th, Dawoud Bey’s successful traveling exhibition Class Pictures opens at the Milwaukee Art Museum after making several stops in New York, Houston, Indianapolis, and Baltimore.

The exhibition and accompanying book feature striking, large-scale color portraits of students at high schools across the United States from a wide economic, social, and ethnic spectrum. In this video excerpt of a talk with Carrie Mae Weems from February 2008, when the exhibition was on view at Aperture Gallery, Dawoud Bey explains how the portraits in Class Pictures result from a close collaboration with his subjects. His directions were made to highlight the gestures, looks and how the teenagers were posing within the classroom. Bey also speaks about the relevance of the subjects’ written testimonies and how they complete and deepen the portraits.

Dawoud Bey will give a talk and book signing at the museum during the opening reception on Thursday, April 23rd and on Tuesday, April 28 in a discussion with curator Lisa Hostetler.

Click here to watch an extended version of the talk.

Since 1925 the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has annually offered Fellowships to artists, scholars, and scientists in all fields. This year, after considering the recommendations of panels and juries comprised of hundreds of distinguished artists, scholars, and scientists, the Board of Trustees has granted 180 Fellowships. Guggenheim Fellows are appointed on the basis of impressive achievement in the past and exceptional promise for future accomplishment.

Congratulations to Brian Ulrich the recipient of a 2009 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Photography. Ulrich will be using this award to continue his Copia project which addresses one of the biggest challenges at the dawn of the 21st century: our relationship to  consumption and the potential reassessing of its role and purpose in our lives.

Join Brian Ulrich at Art Chicago, where he will be signing copies of his book MP3: Midwest Photographers Publication Project at Aperture’s booth.

View event details here.

Colorado Springs © Robert Adams

Tomorrow morning [7:30 a.m. Central European Time (CET), corresponding to 1:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time], the Hasselblad Foundation will announce that Robert Adams is the recipient of the 2009 Hasselblad Award. Following the official announcement, they’ll be conducting a live chat with Adams at 2:30 a.m. EST. Take advantage of a rare opportunity to talk to this celebrated master photographer by entering the chat room here.

Previous Hasselblad Award winners include Graciela Iturbide, Nan Goldin, David Goldblatt, and Lee Friedlander.

Above image from The New West, photographs by Robert Adams.

Now available on eBay, a first-edition signed copy of Katy Grannan’s best-selling Aperture monograph, a signed, limited-edition Eikoh Hosoe, and a limited-edition print from contemporary photographer Edgar Martins.

Click here to shop Aperture Foundation’s official eBay store!

Bid now – auction ends Friday!

Untitled 9, 2006 © Michael Corridore

Congratulations to Michael Corridore, the winner of the 2008 Aperture Portfolio Prize. From over 1,000 entries, the judges awarded the top prize to this Australian photographer for his project Angry Black Snake. Five runners-up were also selected: Saudi Arabia’s Jowhara AlSaud; Colin Blakely of Ann Arbor, Michigan; Columbia, Missouri’s Joe Johnson; Los Angeles–based Peruvian artist Hector Mata; and Elizabeth Pedinotti of San Francisco.

Aperture Foundation is also delighted to announce, for the first time ever,  a special series of limited-edition prints by the Portfolio Prize winner, Michael Corridore, and runners-up: Jowhara AlSaud; Colin Blakely; Joe Johnson; Hector Mata; and Elizabeth Pedinotti. Affordably priced, the purpose is to encourage the collection of work by emerging artists.

Click here for information on entering the 2009 Aperture Portfolio Prize.

Take Care of Yourself (Proof-reader), 2007 © Sophie Calle

Exhibition Opening:
Thursday, April 9, 6–8 pm
Paula Cooper Gallery
534 West 21st Street
New York, New York
(212) 255-1105

Exhibition on view:
Take Care of Yourself
Thursday, April 9–Saturday, May 23, 2009

FREE

French artist Sophie Calle is often inspired by her own emotional and psychological experiences in life, and her work addresses topics of how to deal with private issues, examining the conditions and possibilities of human emotions and creating ideas about love and heartache, gender and intimacy, labor and identity.

This body of work, Take Care of Yourself, is an examination of the different ways in which women respond to a breakup letter. The exhibition includes photographic portraits and multimedia video work and textual analysis by 107 women from different professional backgrounds, such as anthropology, criminology, philosophy, psychiatry, theater, opera, and beyond. They were asked to read the letter, re-read and address the matter in their own personal way by performing, transforming, and reacting on the emotions they feel in the process.

Take Care of Yourself was first presented at the French Pavillion in the 2007 Venice Biennale. It will also travel to São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Salvador de Bahia, Brazil.

Aperture 191, summer 2008 , featured Take Care of Yourself. Calle’s work also appeared in issue 142, winter 1996.