Kale Road (2010, printed 2011) © Rachel Barrett

Immediately following the 2011 Benefit Dinner and Auction,  SNAP! New Collectors Program Benefit Party will kick off with live jazz by DW-40, spinning by Japanster, and a Fuji Instax Cameras Photo Op. This event is co-chaired by artist Jowhara AlSaud, Peter Berberian of Gotham Imaging, Emily Bierman of Sotheby’s, and actor Ken Triwush. The party’s main event will be an exciting Emerging Artists Auction including up and coming photographers such as Rachel Barrett whose piece Kale Road (above) will be up for bidding. Rachel Barrett writes, of her work:

“In recent years I have shifted attention to iterations of communal life among my peers for whom there is a resurgence of back to the land ideologies. Initially I was intrigued by the social and political significance of this movement and wanted to investigate further, exploring the ways in which individuals shape their own understanding of self within the context of coherence among others and among the land. This photograph is from my series “Bolinas” which delves into the small, unincorporated and largely off-the-grid community of the same name in Northern California, resting precariously on the coast of the Pacific. Dirt roads with hand-painted signs mark the pathways between a notoriously reclusive population with a rich cultural and agricultural history dating back to the 1920s, with a flowering in the late 1960s after the Summer of Love. A collective effort to clean up after an oil spill brought the people of Bolinas together, and the desire to live an intrinsically shared existence with one another and closely to the land on their own terms is how they decided to stay.

There are no longer any true communes in town but that same sharing mentality of perpetual exchange and engagement persists. My point of entry and access to the town was through a friend who started sharing a home with seven others in late 2008. Created over two years during many extended stays in which I lived in their house, I was struck by the intricacy and complexity of interconnectedness, the near seamless relationship between humans and nature, the invisible web binding moments together. I was interested primarily in the dynamic between the young women in the house and in town and the spiritual, perhaps even near religious connection they have with the landscape of this mystical place straddling two geographic plates, the past and the present, and two worlds.”

Rachel Barrett (b. 1981) received her BFA in Photography & Imaging from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2003 and her MFA in Photography, Video & Related Media from the School of Visual Arts in 2008. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, PDN, Russian Esquire and other publications. She is represented by the Jennifer Schwartz Gallery in Atlanta and Gallery Stock in New York and London.

Click here for more information and to buy tickets to our 2011 SNAP! Benefit Party

Click here to preview Auction artworks and to bid online

Join Aperture this weekend at the New York Art Book Fair, Printed Matter‘s annual fair of contemporary art books, catalogs, artists’ books, periodicals, and ‘zines offered for sale by over 200 international publishers, booksellers, antiquarian dealers, and independent artist/publishers representing the best in contemporary art publications. Philip Aarons, Chair of the Board for Printed Matter, Inc., says: “The NY Art Book Fair remains the premier venue to find what’s new in art publishing. This year’s focus on artists’ photography books, and the addition of more than 60 zinesters in an outdoor tent, will make this year’s edition of the Fair the best so far.”

Visit our booth featuring books such as Penelope Umbrico (photographs), Handbook by Gary Schneider, and The Reconsidered Archive of Michelle duBois by Zoe Crosher and also now available is our new Aperture Tote!

Preview: Thursday, September 29, 2011
6:00 – 9:00 p.m.

Friday, September 30, 2011–Sunday, October 2, 2011
11:00 am–7:00 pm

This event is free and open to the public.

MoMA PS1
2225 Jackson Ave
Long Island City, New York

Basil Jones (2011) © Gary Schneider

This Fall, many works by Aperture-featured photographers are being exhibited in New York City. Here is our run-down of this season’s must-see shows.

Gary Schneider: HandPrints, Johhanesburg at David Krut Projects. Made by hands’ sweat and heat interacting with film emulsion, these unusual portraits of friends and family will be on view September 8 – October 22, 2011.

Hellen van Meene at Yancey Richardson Gallery, September 8 – October 22, 2011, will exhibit the photographer’s distinct style of portraiture.

Vik Muniz at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., September 9 – October 15, 2011, focusing on paintings by the Brazilian artist.

Edward Steichen: The Last Printing at Danziger Projects, September 15 – October 29, 2011. Photographs made by George Tice, renowned photographer and Steichen’s last printer.

Social Media at Pace/MacGill, from September 16 – October 15, 2011, featuring work by Penelope Umbrico & others. Detailing the rise of social media in our visual culture, it includes Umbrico’s work Sunset Portraits From 9,623,557 Sunset Pictures which was meticulously culled from the photo-sharing website Flickr.

Simon Norfolk: Burke + Norfolk at Bonni Benrubi Gallery, September 14 – December 3, 2011, features a visual dialogue between nineteenth-century British photographer John Burke and contemporary photographer Simon Norfolk, centered in Afghanistan.

The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936 – 1951 at The Jewish Museum from November 4 – March 25, 2011. Featuring work by Lisette Modell, Aaron Siskind, Weegee & many other photography legends.

There are also many gallery openings that are showing artists featured in our 2011 Benefit, Auction & SNAP! Party:

Sara Greenberger Rafferty at Rachel Uffner Gallery, September 7 – October 23, 2011.

Charlotte Dumas: Retrieved at Julie Saul Gallery, September 8 – October 15, 2011.

Click here to start bidding online for work by these artists and others!

© Diane Arbus

Aperture and the School of Visual Arts BFA and MFA Photography, Video and Related Media and MPS Digital Photography present: A Slide Show and Talk by Diane Arbus [1970] and a screening of Who is Marvin Israel? [2005]. Read the article by Hilton Als titled Arbus Speaks from The New Yorker’s Book Bench column.

Who is Marvin Israel? [2005] is a short documentary on the life and work of the enigmatic Marvin Israel (1924–1984), artist, designer, art director, and teacher. Israel’s influence on Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, and Lee Friedlander, among others, is explored in the words of those who knew him. Directed by Neil Selkirk.

The Slide Show and Talk by Diane Arbus is an original audio recording of a 1970 slide presentation by Diane Arbus in which she speaks about photography using her own work and other photographs, snapshots and clippings from her collection. Compiled and edited by Neil Selkirk, Doon Arbus, and Adam Shott.

This program coincides with the release of Diane Arbus: A Chronology and newly reissued Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph and Untitled: Diane Arbus on the fortieth anniversary of Arbus’ death.

Thursday, October 6, 2011
7:30 pm
This event is free and open to the public.

SVA Theatre
333 23rd Street (between 8th and 9th Avenues)
New York, New York

Suns from Flickr © Penelope Umbrico

Aperture Foundation and Dear Dave, Magazine present a conversation with artist Penelope Umbrico and Cay Sophie Rabinowitz, cofounder and Editor of Fantom magazine. This event coincides with the recently released Aperture book Penelope Umbrico (photographs), which offers a radical reinterpretation of everyday consumer and vernacular images.

Penleope Umbrico (born in Philadelphia, 1957) graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, and received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York. She has participated extensively in solo and group exhibitions, including at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York. Umbrico is core faculty at the School of Visual Arts MFA Photography, Video, and Related Media Program. She lives in New York City.

Cay Sophie Rabinowitz is a contemporary art writer, curator, and educator, based mostly in New York and sometimes in Berlin. She became well-known and respected as the Senior Editor of Parkett and Artistic Director of Art Basel. After almost a decade of service to Parsons The New School for Design’s graduate program of photography, she recently moved on to teach in the MFA program at Columbia University. Among the many international exhibitions and programs of contemporary art, she co-curated the 2nd Athen’s Biennale and a number of projects for Art Production Fund Lab in New York. She is cofounder and Editor of Fantom, a quarterly of photography, and In 2011 Ms. Rabinowitz launched together with designer Sofia Sizzi the brand Giulietta, applying her extensive background in art to a fashion context.

Tuesday, October 4, 7:00 pm

This event is FREE and open to the public.

SVA Theater
333 West 23rd Street
New York, New York
(212) 592-2000

Buy the book Penelope Umbrico (photographs) for 30% off

Click here to read Penelope Umbrico on Artfoum’s 500 Words

© Magnum/Bruce Davidson

In 1986, Aperture first published Bruce Davidson‘s Subway—a ground-breaking series that has garnered critical acclaim both as a document of a unique moment in the cultural fabric of New York City as well as for its phenomenal use of extremes of color and shadow set against flash-lit skin. In Davidson’s own words, “the people in the subway, their flesh juxtaposed against the graffiti, the penetrating effect of the strobe light itself, and even the hollow darkness of the tunnels, inspired an aesthetic that goes unnoticed by passengers who are trapped underground, hiding behind masks, and closed off from each other.”

Accompanying the third edition of this classic of photographic literature, Aperture Gallery will present Subway, an exhibition of the iconic color images that move the viewer through a landscape at times menacing, at other times lyrical, soulful, and satiric. The images include the full panoply of New Yorkers—from weary straphangers and languorous ladies in summer dresses to stalking predators and the homeless.

There will also be a Talk and Book Signing event at Strand Books on Monday, September 26, 2011. Buying a copy of the new edition of Subway, or a $10 Strand gift card will get you into the event. Although tickets are sold out online, more tickets will be sold at the door the night of the signing.

Bruce Davidson (born in Oak Park, Illinois, 1933) is considered one of America’s most influential documentary photographers. He began taking photographs when he was ten, and studied at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the Yale University School of Design. In 1958 he became a member of Magnum Photos, and in 1962, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to document the civil rights movement. After a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1963, followed by a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1967, Davidson spent two years photographing in East Harlem, resulting in East 100th Street. In 1980, after living in New York City for twenty-three years, Davidson began his startling color essay of urban life in Subway. Davidson received a second National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1980, and an Open Society Institute Individual Fellowship in 1998. His work has been shown at the International Center of Photography, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Museum de Tokyo, Paris; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Museum Rattu, Arles, France; Burden Gallery (Aperture), New York; Parco Gallery, Tokyo; and New-York Historical Society.

Exhibition on view:
Tuesday, October 4, 2011–Saturday, October 29, 2011

Opening reception:
Thursday, October 13, 2011, 6:00 pm

Artist Talk:
Wednesday, October 26, 2011, 6:30 pm

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

Pat Meinzer, Cowboy, Benjamin, Texas 2009 © Jane Hilton/ Nailya Alexander Gallery

Jane Hilton is one of the many great artists featured in our 2011 Benefit and Auction. Her photograph Pat Meinzer, Cowboy, Benjamin, Texas will be up for bidding during the evening’s Live Auction. Inspired by a commission in 2006 to photograph a 17 year old cowboy, Jeremiah Karsten, who traveled 4,000 miles on horseback from his native Alaska to Mexico, Jane set off on her own four year pilgrimage, criss-crossing the cowboy states of Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Texas, New Mexico and Wyoming to capture America’s 21st century cowboys which has culminated in her recently published book – Dead Eagle Trail. This particular image was nominated for the 2010 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize and exhibited at The National Portrait Gallery as a runner up. She writes, of the image:

“This portrait is one of a series of cowboys I photographed in their homes, from the buckaroos of Nevada to the cowpunchers of Arizona and Texas. The paradox of photographing a cowboy at home, and showing their obsession with the lifestyle was much more fascinating to me, than photographing them on a horse.

A window acts as a constant reminder to the outside world. All of them were shocked that I wanted to go inside their houses, and sometimes even their bedrooms where they spend the least time. But it was much more interesting to see them in less familiar territory, revealing their softer and possibly more feminine side. They were always immaculate despite the harshness of their working environment. It is the contradictions that are infinitely more enlightening.

Pate’s bedroom clearly demonstrates a feminine touch by his wife, with their wedding photographs and religious icons on the walls. Most of the cowboys I photographed had a strong sense of spirituality. As one cowboy told me, “I don’t need to go to church. My horse is my church and I am out with God everyday.”

Freedom is a cowboys’ life. Most were brought up on ranches where it was always hard work and never particularly profitable. Even today a cowboy can expect to earn only a few dollars an hour, but this is not what drives them. Real cowboys boast of never having met a stranger, most can’t swim. All of them have a John Wayne story they love to share. This series is a celebration of The West as it is now. Nobody can predict whether in a hundred year’s time the cowboy will still be around.”

Jane Hilton is a photographer and filmmaker living in London. The contradictions in American society and the American dream are recurring themes in her work. She filmed a documentary series for the BBC, “The Brothel / Love For Sale,” as well as a series of exhibitions on desert landscapes, pimps and prostitutes. Jane’s work is regularly published in The Sunday Times Magazine and The Telegraph Magazine.

Click here to preview Auction artworks and to bid online

Click here for more information and to buy tickets to our 2011 Benefit & Auction

Hosts: Fred Ritchin, Deborah Willis, Stephen Mayes, Melissa Harris (Wafaa Bilal, not pictured)

Aperture’s inside-out  exhibition in-progress What Matters Now? opened in its final form last Saturday night. The five Hosts: Wafaa Bilal, Melissa Harris, Stephen Mayes, Deborah Willis and Fred Ritchin, had two weeks to transform the blank walls of their areas into Proposals for a New Front Page. Their collaborative efforts yielded thought-provoking, outrage-inducing and even hopeful statements about the current state of media and photography. In addition to discussions led by the Hosts, public involvement truly made the exhibition a community effort. The Public wall currently exhibits over one hundred submissions from people worldwide, and those that could not attend the Aperture Gallery space for events and lectures joined the conversation through Twitter, Facebook and the website. The unusual form of  the What Matters Now? exhibition was an experiment on Aperture’s part, but one that produced fascinating results. Using Aperture Gallery as a meeting hub, the goal of the exhibition was to start a conversation about what we are looking at, as a society, and why. The weeks’ events and Saturday’s well-attended opening demonstrates that many are concerned with issues regarding the media: particularly trust, engagement and active readership. Fred Ritchin, the creator of What Matters Now?, even plans to continue working on creating a new way of reading, collecting disseminating information.

Although the hosts are no longer adding to their walls, the Public Wall will continue to grow. You can submit images and text online here until Thursday, September 22, 2011.

What Matters Now?: Proposals for a New Front Page
through Saturday, September 24, 2011
10:00 am – 6:00 pm

Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street, 4th floor
New York, New York

Singer at Café Metropole, 1946. © Lisette Model

Self Reflections: The Expressionist Origins of Lisette Model

Exhibition on view:
September 22–November 12, 2011

Bruce Silverstein Gallery
535 West 24th Street
New York, NY
(212) 627-3930

The works of Lisette Model will be featured in the exhibition Self Reflections: The Expressionist Origins of Lisette Model at Bruce Silverstein. Her photography will be presented alongside the works of European Expressionists Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, George Grosz, Jeanne Mammen, and Lyonel Feininger. Influenced by Expressionist artists, the revered Model was herself a significant influence on other photographers, including Diane Arbus. Her photography is in the collections of many museums including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Getty Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art. See the Aperture-published monograph, Lisette Model, here.

Mermaid swimming away, Weeki Wachee, 2003. © Lisa Kereszi

The Role of Women in Photography: Are We There Yet?
Thursday, September 22, 2011
6:30 pm

School of Visual Arts
209 East 23 Street
3rd floor amphitheater
New York, NY

Free with a valid college ID, $10 for general public

Elisabeth Biondi, former visuals editor at The New Yorker and currently an independent curator, will be moderating a discussion panel on the current role of women in photography at SVA. The panel includes photography critic and Aperture magazine contributing editor Vince Aletti, Aperture contributing writer Lyle Rexer (whose book The Edge of Vision was published by Aperture), as well as photographers Martine Fougeron, Lisa Kereszi, and Sarah Silver. The event is being presented by SVA’s MFA Photography, Video, and Related Media Department, in partnership with Professional Women Photographers.