Untitled, 2007
archival pigment print mounted to Dibond
62 3/4 x 82 1/2 inches

Copyright Richard Misrach
Courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Photographer Richard Misrach, who has spent much of his career capturing the American landscape, will be exhibiting photographs previously featured as a portfolio in Aperture issue #193 at a solo show opening tonight at the Pace/MacGill gallery in New York City.

The exhibition features work from Misrach’s 2007-2009 series “Untitled” in which the artist presents prints of digital images as they appear in positive capture – the digital equivalent of an analog color negative. The result is a new series of landscapes pictured in a reversed color spectrum, examining both the progression of photographic technologies as well as the visual expectations of images of the natural world.

Make sure to stop by the gallery and take in this surreal set of large-scale prints.

Richard Misrach
Pace/MacGill Gallery
Opening reception: 6:00pm – 8:00 pm, Thursday, January 14th, 2010

534 West 25th Street
New York, New York

Click here to purchase Aperture issue #193 featuring Richard Misrach’s new  ”Untitled” series

Gerald Slota and Neil LaBute met by email, hoping to collaborate on a project. Throughout their rough correspondence, the pair hit upon the notion of a series of strange greeting cards, so beginning a journey where LaBute would attempt to strike the deepest and darkest chords of Slota’s psyche with his words. LaBute would feed the photographer twisted or sad lines and Slota would take inspiration, scratching out eyes, photocopying faces, and so on. Nothing was taboo or off-limits.

Fulfilling the duo’s original intentions for the project, Aperture is pleased to present the Because the Darkness Feeds My Soul limited-edition postcards. These were created in conjunction with an article of the same name published in Aperture magazine, issue 196 (Fall 2009), where the work was originally published.

Click here to purchase your set of Because the Darkness Feeds My Soul exclusively through Aperture.

The winter issue of Aperture magazine, #197, explores the important relationship between photography and the performative. Writer Greil Marcus looks at that relationship as he considers the score for Nan Goldin’s seminal slide show, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency.  Carrie Mae Weems’s projects are just as personal; she uses her films and photographs to express the nuances of her existence as a black woman and explore the undercurrents of power.

Richard Brody, staff writer at the New Yorker, examines the photographs of Raymond Cauchetier, the renowned photographer whose documentation of the French New Wave scene offered behind-the-scenes looks at Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, and other groundbreaking directors.

Francine Prose speaks with Maira Kalman about the artist’s use of photography and illustration; Anthony Downey discusses contemporary Iranian photographers; photographer Andrew Moore reports on the decline and decay of the city of Detroit and its surrounding areas; and innovative fashion photographer Nick Knight is interviewed by Diane Smyth on his career and process.  Also, Robert Adams revisits his classic series of nocturnes featured in his newly published edition Summer Nights, Walking, in an interview with Joshua Chuang.

Click to view web-exclusive: Anthony Downey on the June 2009 Green Revolution in Iran.

**  Reader challenge:  In which year did Nan Goldin present her groundbreaking slide show, Ballad of Sexual Dependency? **

Pick up your copy of Aperture magazine at newsstands nationwide, order issue #197,  or subscribe here.

To order a one-year gift subscription to Aperture magazine for a family member or friend at 50% off the regular price, click here!

To help support and educate young photographers by donating a one-year subscription to a school or library at 50% off the regular price, click here!

Aperture would like to extend our grattitude for Aperture magazine’s nomination for Photography Magazine of the Year in the Seventh Annual Lucie Awards.  Click here to view full list of nominees.

For the first time ever, the cover of Aperture features a drawing, not a photograph, as the cover image. In issue #196, these vibrant abstract works from William Eggleston are published for the first time and showcase a rarely seen part of the artist’s career. Also featured is a selection of William Klein’s work from 1956, soon-to-be-published in Rome (Aperture, October 2009), an examination of the role of monuments in photography by Mark Alice Durant, a review of ICP’s Year of Fashion from Holly Brubach, and Luc Sante‘s investigation into the early-twentieth-century photographic postcard. Philip Lopate also examines Sally Gall‘s new images of insects, Rob Hornstra documents less-than-fortunate Russians, photographer Gerald Slota and playwright Neil LaBute collaborate to create some very chilling scenarios, Debbie Fleming Caffery documents her native Louisiana, and more.

Pick up your copy at newsstands nationwide, buy the issue here, or click here to subscribe to Aperture.

Reader challenge: What exact medium does William Eggleston use to make these drawings?

In their Beacon studio, twin brothers Mike and Doug Starn house their massive installation Big Bambú. Utilizing over 2,000 bamboo poles, the artists have created an extraordinarily intricate network system that bridges architecture and performance. The installation continues to evolve and adapt in the vein of a living, self-healing organism as the work takes on a life of its own, rather than a static creation directly from the artist.

According to the Starn brothers, Big Bambú is connotative of an autonomous, spontaneous, self-governing, disorganized network responding to itself to better navigate the environment. “It represents me – in that I am who I was, and, I am completely different than I was when I was a little boy,” Doug Starn writes.

Click here to view Big Bambú on facebook.

Click here to read the New York Times Magazine feature on the Big Bambú.

Click here to view the Starn brothers in Aperture magazine, issue 175.

Big Bambú will be open to visitors the 4th weekend in August  from 11AM to 4PM.

Should you plan to visit, kindly e-mail at: bb@starnstudio.com
Starn Studio Beacon (former Tallix Foundry)
310 Fishkill Ave
Beacon, NY 12508

Aperture, Pratt, and the Strand book store present an exhibition featuring the winners and runners-up of the Eye on the Strand photography contest. A special exhibition on view at the Pratt Institute CCPS Gallery will showcase the winning images of grand prize winner Josh Robinson Strand Shadows, second-place winner Cary Conover Upside Down, third-place winner and viewers’ choice winner Manjari Sharma Strand, The Dreamer’s Land, as well as the work of twenty finalists. The winners were selected by a prestigious panel of judges from over five hundred submissions of unique and creative photographic representations of the Strand book store. As the grand prize winner, Josh Robinson will receive a collection of fifty Aperture photography books, lunch with internationally renowned photographer Mary Ellen Mark courtesy of Balthazar Restaurant, a $100 Blurb Gift card, a one-year subscription to Aperture and New York magazine, and his photograph on exhibition at Pratt CCPS Gallery as well as the Strand’s online Photo Gallery.

Click here to view the winners’ images, as well as those of the twenty finalists, at the Strand’s online photography gallery.

Eye on The Strand
Opening reception: Wednesday, July 15, 2009, 6:00–8:00 pm
Exhibition on view: Wednesday, July 15, 2009—Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Pratt Institute Center for Continuing and Professional Studies Gallery
144 West 14th Street, 2nd floor
New York, New York
(212) 308-7720

The Summer 2009 issue of Aperture, #195 from Aperture Foundation on Vimeo.

Presenting Aperture magazine’s Summer preview video, with music by Brooklyn-based Sad Red. This issue features genre-bending fashion photographers, Jeffrey Fraenkel and Robert Adams on Edward Hopper’s influence, Daniel and Geo Fuchs in the Stasi, a look at gay sexual identity explored via the Web, an interview with Don McCullin (video here), and more.

Sad Red’s lead singer, Jake Bloomfield-Misrach, is photographer Richard Misrach’s son, whose latest work was featured in the Winter 2009 issue of Aperture magazine.

Don McCullin is the acknowledged dean of war photographers, although it is a designation he does not easily accept. Working since the 1960s in Biafra, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Cyprus, Lebanon, Northern Ireland, Vietnam, and elsewhere, he has created a body of images that reveal in intimate detail many of the agonizing ways in which atrocity can be visited. Today in his early seventies, McCullin is not content with his decades’ worth of photographs: in particular he decries their insufficient role in diminishing the very violence they depict—as evidenced by the title of one of his books on the Vietnam War, Is Anyone Taking Any Notice?, published in 1973. Although haunted by revulsion and guilt, he remains fascinated by photography and is driven to continue working. Recently married and with a young son, McCullin has lately been photographing landscapes in his native England as well as depicting the remains of the Roman Empire for a large-scale documentary project.

Part 1: Don McCullin and Fred Ritchin; from Aperture Foundation on Vimeo.

Fred Ritchin spoke with the photographer last September in New York City; here we present behind-the-scenes documentary clips of their conversation. A condensed version of this interview appeared in the Summer 2009 issue of Aperture.

Camera and editing by Dennis Nazarov
Sound by Hannah Weddel

Click more to view the entire interview.

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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.