After a fight, Die Lane, Beaufort West, 2006. © Mikhael Subotzky/Goodman Gallery, Cape Town

Mikhael Subotzky‘s After a fight is part of our Benefit Silent Auction. South-African photographer Subotzky’s Beaufort West series captures a rural, impoverished, and crime-ridden South African town. Beaufort West is a town which sits off of the longest highway in South Africa and is host to a small prison. As Jonny Steinberg describes, in the afterward to Subotzky’s book Beaufort West (Chris Boot, 2008), the prison is often ignored by the average city-dwelling South African passerby, but is so devastatingly resonant in the minds of Beaufort West residents: “here is somewhere increasingly forgotten by post apartheid South Africa. And yet those who inhabit the country’s metropolis pass through in their millions; and those who are failing most miserably here, who wind up again and again in the town’s jail, get to rotate between a life in the township and a life in the middle of the highway, quite literally listening to the traffic of an economy in which they can find no place. It is as if a never-ending jamboree is passing through Beaufort West, and those most embittered by the spectacle have been sentenced to sit in front-row seats.”  Subotzky’s work aids the inhabitants of Beaufort West in their attempt to reclaim their voice within their society’s culture. Or as Steinberg concludes, his photographs “give expression to something one understands – even while choosing to forget.”

Mikhael Subotzky (b. 1981, Cape Town) is a member of Magnum Photos and is represented by Goodman Gallery and Studio La Citta. Subotzky’s work has been exhibited widely in major galleries and museums, and his prints are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the South African National Gallery, Cape Town; the Johannesburg Art Gallery; and FOAM (FotoMuseum Amsterdam). He currently lives in Johannesburg.

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Untitled, 1971. © Kohei Yoshiyuki

Kohei Yoshiyuki: The Park

Exhibition on view:
September 10–October 30, 2011

Presentation House Gallery:
333 Chesterfield Avenue
North Vancouver BC V7M 3G9
Canada
(604) 986-1351

Presentation House Gallery is currently exhibiting Kohei Yoshiyuki‘s photograph series, The Park. Taken in Tokyo during the 1970s, the series captures nighttime sexual encounters in public spaces. Born and currently living in Japan, Yoshiyuki’s work explores the voyeuristic aspect of photography. His photos are included in the Brooklyn Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Museum of Modern Art collections. Yoshiyuki’s work was featured in Aperture issue 188.

© Christopher Anderson/Magnum Photos

Parsons Artist Talk with Christopher Anderson:
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
6:30 pm

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

FREE

Join Christopher Anderson at Aperture to kick off our ongoing Parsons Artist Talks series. Born in Canada and raised in Texas, Anderson is known for his emotionally driven photography, which he refers to as “experiential documentary. ” Winner of the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award,  Kodak Young Photographer of the Year Award and the Picture of the Year Award, and a member of Magnum Photos, Anderson’s photography will be featured in Aperture’s upcoming publication The New York Times Magazine Photographs.

Grande Hotel, Beira, Mozambique, 2008. © Guy Tillim

Appropriated Landscapes

Exhibition on view:
June 16th, 2011–May 13th, 2012

The Walther Collection:
Reichenauerstrasse 21
89233 Neu-Ulm / Burlafingen
Germany
+49 731 1769 143

The Walther Collection’s Appropriated Landscapes is a group exhibition focusing on contemporary landscape photography. The exhibit explores a wide range of issues—including war, colonization, and ideology—and their effects on the Southern African landscape. Appropriated Landscapes attempts to expand the definition of  “landscape” beyond geographical or physical space, by looking at it as a mental and social construct that influences individual and cultural identity. The exhibit features fourteen artists, including three photographers who have been previously published in Aperture: Mitch Epstein, Mikhael Subotzky, and Guy Tillim were featured in issues 168, 188, and 193, respectively.

Trying to Protect Emmanuelle, 2006. © Elinor Carucci

Born

Exhibition on view:
September 15th–November 5th, 2011

Sasha Wolf Gallery:
548 West 28th Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY
(212) 925-0025

Born is the upcoming Elinor Carucci exhibition at Sasha Wolf Gallery. Using herself and her family as the main subjects, the exhibit intimately captures Carucci’s pregnancy and early years of motherhood. Winner of several awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, her photographs are included in the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection and were recently displayed there in the Pictures by Women exhibit. Born in Jerusalem, Carucci currently lives in New York City and teaches at the graduate program at the School of Visual Arts. She was featured in Aperture magazine issue 182.

Elinor Carucci is also one of the many artists featured in our upcoming 2011 Benefit & Auction. Click here to preview artworks and start bidding!

Western Costume, 2011. © Sara VanDerBeek

Hammer Projects: Sara VanDerBeek

Exhibition on view:
September 10, 2011–January 8, 2012

Hammer Museum:
10899 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA
(310) 443-7000

This Fall, Sara VanDerBeek’s work will be on exhibit at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.  As a part of Hammer’s Artist Residency Program, VanDerBeek spent time in Los Angeles taking photographs, working on sculptures, and creating an installation for the exhibit. The result is a collection which continues her work in exploring the relationship between image and form, while also representing her perspective on the city of Los Angeles. VanDerBeek’s photos were featured in Aperture issue #202.

BBVenice_5.26.11_3851 (2009-11) © Doug and Mike Starn

The 2011 Benefit Patrons’ Weekend on October 15 & 16 features many exciting and exclusive activities including a day trip to Beacon with a director-led tour of Dia:Beacon by Susan Batton and a tour of Doug and Mike Starn‘s laboratory studio at the former Tallix foundry spectacular space! The Starn’s moved to this studio to make the first Big Bambú experiment. This piece is formed by a network of more than 2,000 bamboo poles lashed together and is 40′ across 80 feet long and 50′ high. This installation creates a compelling dialogue with some of their current and early works articulated throughout the working space.

Shown above is a photograph of the Brother’s installation in progress, at the 54th Venice Biennale (May/June 2011). This original artwork is included in our Benefit Live Auction. In Venice, the Starns created a 50′ tall hollow tower of bamboo with a trail within its walls spiraling up to the top. The artists used as stem-cells, some fragments of their installation “Big Bambú: You Can’t, You Don’t, and You Won’t Stop,” which grew over 6 months on the roof of The Metropolitan Museum of Art last summer. That exhibition had ranked 4th in the world in 2010 for total attendance of contemporary art exhibitions and was the 9th most attended exhibition in the Museum’s history. Throughout the Met exhibit, the Starns and their crew of rock climbers continuously lashed and sculpted over 7,000 bamboo poles, a performative architecture of randomly interconnected vectors forming a section of a seascape with a 70-foot cresting wave above Central Park. Big Bambú suggests the complexity and energy of an ever-growing and changing living organism.

Doug and Mike Starn are identical twin American artists. First receiving international attention at the 1987 Whitney Biennial, the Starns are primarily known for working conceptually with photography for the past two and a half decades. They are largely concerned with chaos, interconnection and interdependence, time, and physics, and they continue defying categorization, effectively combining traditionally separate disciplines such as photography, sculpture, architecture and site-specific projects. The Starns were represented by Leo Castelli from 1989 until his death in 1999. Their art has been the object of numerous solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries worldwide. They have received many honors including two National Endowment for the Arts Grants in 1987 and 1995; The International Center for Photography’s Infinity Award for Fine Art Photography in 1992; and, artists in residency at NASA in the mid-1990′s.

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

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Fruit, 2008. © Krista van der Niet

Still/Life – Contemporary Dutch Photography

Exhibition on view:
September 9th–October 26th, 2011

Foam Amsterdam:
Keizersgracht 609
1017 DS Amsterdam
+31 (0)20 5516500

In celebration of the organization’s 10-year anniversary, Foam will be hosting the group exhibition, Still/Life at Foam Amsterdam.  The exhibition is a modern take on the classic genre of still life. It features a large group of contemporary Dutch photographers, including Aperture-published artists Melanie Bonajo, Anne de Vries, and Marnix Goossens. Bonajo and Vries were featured in Aperture issues 199 and 195, respectively, and Goossens was featured in the Aperture book Photo Art: Photography in the 21st Century.

Automaton #06, 2010. © Paolo Ventura

The Automaton of Venice

Exhibition on view:
September 8th–October 15th, 2011

Hasted Kraeutler:
537 West 24th Street, Ground Floor
New York, NY
(212) 627-0006

The Automaton of Venice by Paolo Ventura is the upcoming exhibit at the Hasted Kraeutler gallery. Using his own hand-made miniature sets and figurines, Italian photographer Paolo Ventura creates fictional photographic narratives set in his native country. Ventura’s series Winter Stories is a staged narrative revolving around a carnival set in a Northern Italian village.  Aperture published Winter Stories as a monograph and a limited-edition book and print box set. Ventura’s work was also featured in Aperture magazine issue 203.

Paolo Ventura is also one of the many artists featured in our upcoming 2011 Benefit & Auction. Click here to preview artworks and start bidding!

Yakubu Al Hasan, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana, 2009. © Pieter Hugo

Permanent Error

Exhibition on view:
September 8–October 29, 2011

Yossi Milo Gallery:
525 West 25th Street
New York, NY
(212) 414-0370

Pieter Hugo’s color photographs will be on display at Yossi Milo Gallery’s new exhibit Permanent Error. The exhibit focuses on Agbogbloshie, a large landfill for technological waste in Ghana, and the citizens who work on and live near the dump site. Throughout his career, Hugo’s photography has focused on capturing the people, culture, and landscape of Africa. Born in Johannesburg, he currently lives and works in Capetown. Hugo’s work was featured in Aperture magazine issue 186 and in the book reGeneration 2: Tomorrow’s Photographers Today.