Aperture magazine Co-Publisher Dana Triwush with Sylvia Plachy

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A full house within the Levi’s© Photo Workshop on Thursday evening was expanded by over 30,000 people on Facebook who experienced Bruce Davidson’s guided tour through his last 50 years of photography. The Q&A portion of the evening was lively, with Workshop programming director Emma Reeves fielding questions both in person and online. Bruce has clearly influenced many generations of photographers, and it was wonderful to see a vibrant and diverse crowd gathering to celebrate him and his work. After a brief book signing the Workshop staff presented Bruce with a Falcon candid camera from their vintage camera rentals area, which he’d told them was one of the first cameras he ever used. He’s tracking down film for it now, always in pursuit of the next photograph.

Slideshow photographs courtesy of Brandon Remler.

Courtesy Martin Parr

Aperture, a television series created and produced by Susan Kravitz, in collaboration with Aperture Foundation, as part of VOOM’s GALLERY HD programming, has been nominated for a New York Emmy award in the category of  Interview/Discussion. The winners of the 52nd Annual New York Emmy® Awards will be announced on Sunday, March 29, 2009 and broadcasted on NYC TV Channel 25, Thursday, April 9, 2009. This acclaimed series features Aperture artists in candid conversation with celebrities who admire their work; each interview takes place in the studio space of the artist offering an intimate behind-the-scenes portrait.  Artist/celebrity pairings include Catherine Chalmers with Rosario Dawson, Vik Muniz with David Byrne, Donna Ferrato with Ally Sheedy, and Justin Guariglia with Lou Reed.

Episodes soon to be available at www.aperture.org.

Aperture Foundation is pleased to announce this nomination and would like to thank all those who made this enriching program dedicated to fine art photography possible.

Catherine Chalmers: American Cockroach

Exhibition on View: Saturday, July 12, 2008 — Sunday, November 09, 2008

Gallery Talk with the Artist: Thursday, August 7, 2008, 5:30 PM

Boise Art Museum
670 Julia Davis Drive
Boise, Idaho
(208) 345-8330

In her American Cockroach project, Catherine Chalmers records the half-imaginary life of the domestic pest known as the cockroach. The exhibition at the Boise Art Museum highlights the Chalmers’ photographs, sculpture, and video work. Chalmers explores the question of what it is to be human and what is man’s relationship to the insect world, examining preconceived notions about insects and specimens. As Chalmers notes, “Today, people tend to deny the obvious fact of death and violence in their world.” And this is especially true with regard to animals, which tend to fall into the category of either pests or pets. Our connection to nature and the animal world has been domesticated. “In the past, animals had a much higher value in peoples’ understandings of themselves.”

Chalmers’ series theatrically dissects the life of the prehistoric cockroach and the sometimes-surreal operations of nature that deposited the creature plunk in the middle of modern kitchens and bathrooms. American Cockroach offers up an ecosystem where the laws of roach life and survival become strange and distorted human manifestations, not so much a biology but a mythology of the common house roach. Her eco-system is at once natural and exquisitely overwrought, seen schizophrenically from behind the lens of a camera as well as shot from the one-on-one perspective of the roach itself.

View installation images here.

The related book, American Cockroach, published by Aperture, can be found here.

Catherine on ArtDaily.com

Read all about Aperture artists Catherine Chalmers and Charles Lindsay ‘s upstate hideaway located in Rensselaerville, New York, where they go to relax and create their stunning visual art, featured today in the Away section of the The New York Times. Read the article here.

From the Aperture publication American Cockroach © Catherine Chalmers

Brown Trout, California, 1996 © Charles Lindsay

Limited-Edition photograph available.