Courtesy Market Street Productions

“While photography is the easiest medium in which to be competent,” Chuck Close says in the clip above for the “Artists & Alchemists” documentary feature, “I think it is the hardest medium in which to have a distinctive personal vision.”

Known for his unparalleled attention to detail in hyperrealist portraiture, Close explains in conveying that vision his predilection for using immensely revealing daguerreotypes, plates that capture just about the widest possible range of highlights and shadows with the use of strobe lights that capture quite literately the power of the sun.

This clip offers a bit of background on the labor intensive process that went into his series A Couple of Ways of Doing Something, on view at the Wichita Art Museum through this Sunday, April 15, 2012. The series features fifteen massive prints of the artist’s world-renowned friends (Cindy Sherman, Philip Glass, James Turrell, Laurie Anderson, to name a few) presented with microscopic intimacy, each alongside a poem by Bob Holman. The work was inspired in part by a collaborative series of lithographs done by poet/curator Frank O’Hara and artist Larry Rivers in the late 50s, as Close explains briefly in the accompanying interview from the 2006 Aperture monograph A Couple of Ways of Doing Something with Lyle Rexer, author of the Edge of Vision.

As photography moves forward becoming more widespread and accessible, in an era when the premium put on absolute originality is largely in question, sometimes reaching back for precedent can be as fruitful as rediscovering archaic technology. Or as Close puts it, “In 1840 virtually everything I love about photography was already there.”

Chuck Close: A Couple of Ways of Doing Something
Through Sunday, April 15, 2012
$7 adults, $5 seniors, and FREE for children

Wichita Art Museum
1400 West Museum Boulevard
Wichita, Kansas
(316) 268-4980

Aperture has long been recognized as an excellent source for quality traveling exhibitions to museums, university galleries, libraries, and art centers around the world.  The foundation has a prestigious roster of exhibitions available at any given time, currently there are ten different exhibitions moving around the world and another four that are currently in development. These exhibitions reflect the diversity of our book program including monographic exhibitions from masters of the medium such as Bruce Davidson and Alex Webb to exciting group shows including The New York Times Magazine Photographs, a never before seen collection of some of the greatest photography ever published in the Magazine and reGeneration 2 a  introduction to the most promising photographers of the next generation. See below for more details on where our exhibitions are currently on view.

Dawoud Bey: Class Pictures

Dawoud Bey’s Class Pictures are portraits of American adolescence across the social, economic and racial spectrum. Now on display at Silver Eye Center for Photography in Pittsburgh, PA, the 40 x 30 inch color prints are paired with page-long statements written by the subjects–sometimes touching, sometimes funny, sometimes harrowing–that deepen our understanding of the most awkward age.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012–Saturday, March 10, 2012

Silver Eye Center for Photography
1015 East Carson Street
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
(412) 431-1810

The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Contemporary Photography

The Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, OR presents The Edge of Vision: Abstraction in Color Photography. Photographs and photo-based installations, many exhibited for the first time, “explore the territory of ‘undisclosed’ or abstract imagery in all its forms.” Single-artist installations examine the photographic process and visual culture in an effort to discover new optical possibilities and meaning-making.

Thursday, January 19, 2012–Sunday, March 18, 2012

Ronna and Eric Hoffman Gallery, Lewis and Clark College
0615 S.W. Palantine Hill Rd.
Portland, Oregon
(503) 768-7687

Chuck Close: A Couple of Ways of Doing Something

In Witchita, KA, the Witchita Art Museum presents A Couple of Ways of Doing Something—fifteen of Chuck Close’s intimate daguerreotype portraits of influential contemporary artists alongside Bob Holman’s beautifully typeset poems.  In addition, Close a curator has included examples of his other works taken from each daguerreotype in a variety of media, including tapestries and photogravures.

Sunday, January 29, 2012–Sunday, April 15, 2012

Wichita Art Museum
1400 West Museum Boulevard
Wichita, Kansas
(316) 268-4980

We update all traveling exhibition schedules on a regular basis on our website here and here.  Please feel free to contact Annette Booth, Exhibitions Manager at 212.946.7128 or at abooth@aperture.org for further information on hosting an exhibition at your venue!

Through the end of January, the advertising billboards of 500 taxi cabs will be reinvigorated by Chuck Close and Kehinde Wiley’s artwork.

Chuck Close is an American artist primarily known for his photo-realist portrait paintings, but has also worked in the field of photography for many years. His daguerreotypes, done in collaboration with Jerry Spagnoli, an extensive photographic process giving images a silver luminescent affect, were featured in Aperture magazine # 160, then published in book format in 2006 titled, “A Couple of Ways of Doing Something”.

Close has chosen to crop details of these larger portraits for the “Art Adds” public art campaign.

This is “Art Adds” second annual collaboration between “Show Media” and the non-profit “Art Production Fund,” a fund dedicated to “producing ambitions public art projects, reaching new audiences, and expanding awareness through contemporary art.”

Self portrait by Chuck Close

Now on view at the National Portrait Gallery is an exhibition titled, Americans Now featuring portraits of various mediums and subjects from their permanent collection. On display are portraits of many of America’s famous leaders and professionals, by a diverse roster of artists including works by Dan Winters, whose book Periodical Photographs was released by Aperture, Chuck Close, whose Aperture monograph A Couple Ways of Doing Something presents his daguerrotype portraits, and Kehinde Wiley and Mickalene Thomas whose work will be included in Aperture’s upcoming  2010 Benefit & Auction!

Americans Now
On view August 20, 2010 – July 10, 2011

National Portrait Gallery
Eighth and F streets, NW
Washington D.C.

Opening this weekend at the Austin Museum of Art, A Couple Ways of Doing Something features Chuck Close’s intimate portraits of leading contemporary artists, paired with Bob Holman’s witty and beautifully typeset poems. The daguerreotypes offer an extremely revealing study of the subjects, extending the hyperrealist tradition of portraiture for which Close is renowned. In keeping with the exhibition title, Chuck Close has included examples of his other works taken from each daguerreotype in a variety of media, including photogravures, digital pigment prints, and large-scale tapestries. In an additional departure for Close, many of the portraits were produced in tandem with praise poems by Bob Holman, founder of the Bowery Poetry Club.  Together, they form composite portraits of their subjects—an influential and highly creative circle of friends and colleagues—from Andres Serrano to Cindy Sherman. An opening reception will be held Friday, August 21 from 6:00 to 9:00, open only to museum members. The museum will screen a film about the artist and his peers in early September as well as a Slide Lecture by Art Historian Richard Shiff early November.

Chuck Close: A Couple of Ways of Doing Something
Saturday, August 22—Sunday, November 8, 2009
Austin Museum of Art
823 Congress Avenue
Austin, Texas
(512) 495-9224

Film: Portrait of Close’s Creative Circle
Thursday, September 10, 2009  7:00 pm
In her film Chuck Close (2007), director Marion Cajori examines the appeal of the human face by interviewing the artist and his circle of creative friends, including Philip Glass, Robert Rauschenberg, and Kiki Smith. Film introduction by Austin photographer George Krause.

Slide Lecture: Realism of Low Resolution
Thursday, November 5, 2009  7:00 pm
Art Historian Richard Shiff will put the portraits of Chuck Close in context with the slide lecture Realism of Low Resolution: Chuck Close (and Others).

Click here to purchase your copy of A Couple of Ways of Doing Something, published by Aperture.