Boxer’s Hands, 1933 © Willard Van Dyke

Exhibition on view:
June 16–September 30, 2012

Monterey Museum of Art
559 Pacific Street
Monterey, CA
(831) 372-5477

Group f/64 was a pioneer photography crew of seven residing in northern California. They abandoned the soft-focus, pictorial style of photography popularized in the early twentieth century and instead promoted “straight” photography, communicating by means of realism, high contrast, and extreme detail. Monterey Museum of Art presents In Sharp Focus: The Legacy of Monterey Photography, which examines Group f/64 and their successors. Legendary artists Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Alma Lavenson, Willard Van Dyke, and Edward Weston are included in the exhibition. These photographers transformed American photography by relinquishing interpretive manipulation by progressing towards pure, sharp images with a maximum depth of field. Joining these legendary artists will be works by: Henry Gilpin, Rod Dresser, John Sexton, and Michael Kenna.

One of the founding members of Aperture and Group f/64 Ansel Adams is featured in Aperture issues 169 and 168. Cunningham’s work can be seen in the Aperture published, The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious. Weston is featured in Aperture issues 188 and 140, appears in Aperture published The Edge of Vision as well as Edward Weston: Nudes.

Young Girl, 1962. © Dorothea Lange

The Summer Show

Exhibition on view:
July 7–September 3, 2011

Scott Nichols Gallery:
49 Geary Street
Fourth Floor
San Francisco, CA
(415) 788-4641

The Scott Nicholas Gallery is currently exhibiting photos from their own collection. The Summer Show features works by legendary and contemporary photographers, including many published by Aperture: Wynn Bullock, Imogen Cunningham, Dorothea Lange, Edward Weston, and (Aperture founding member) Ansel Adams. Aperture books from these photographers include Wynn Bullock: Masters of Photography and Edward Weston: Nudes. The second photogravure edition of Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother is available from Aperture. Many of these artists’ works can also be found in Aperture’s golden anniversary book, Photography Past/Forward: Aperture at 50.

Photo by Paul Strand

In Focus: Still Life, a survey of still life’s in photography will be exhibited this fall at The Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The exhibition will explore innovative and transformative still life’s from the history of photography, pointing to examples of experimentation as well as conventions of the form. The show will feature images by such seminal photographers as Paul Strand, Josef Sudek, Paul Outerbridge who was featured in Aperture magazine issue 152, Hans Bellmer who was featured in Aperture magazine isssue 189, Edward Weston and more.

In Focus: Still Life
September 14, 2010 – January 23, 2011

The J. Paul Getty Museum
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 400
Los Angeles, California
310-440-7360

As the son of pioneer photographer Edward Weston, Brett Weston has made his own mark in the field as witnessed by a recent show at the Santa Barbara Museum this summer, spanning his nearly seventy year career. Brett Weston’s brilliance as a photographic visionary and master-printer is well known. A maker of luminous and lasting works of photographic art, he worked in the darkroom from the very early hours of the morning whenever he was not photographing, but he made very few large-format exhibition quality prints.  Shortly before his death Brett Weston burned many of his negatives, asserting that he alone could print from them as intended.  In 1991-1992, when Aperture published a revised edition of his classic Voyage of the Eye, Brett selected a number of  these exhibition prints and  authorized Aperture to sell them  to support the foundation. In honor of the recent restrospective show at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art,  Aperture is pleased to offer a selection of these remaining prints to our collectors. All bear the intense beauty and masterful craftsmanship of one of the photography’s greatest artists. Each  unique gelatin-silver print is made and signed by Brett Weston and dry mounted on archival board. Inquiries can be sent to prints@aperture.org.

Clouds, Death Valley, 1938 © Edward Weston

Exhibition on view:
Through April 25
Silverstein Photography
535 West 24th St.
New York, New York
(212) 627-3930

This is your last chance to see Cloud 9, a group exhibition displaying the work of renowned photographers Imogen Cunningham, Alfred Stieglitz, and Edward Weston. The exhibition is a collection of nine original, vintage photographs of the sky, seen through the lenses of these great masters.
The abstract formation and fleeting nature of clouds, which comes into play in these photographs, evokes dreamy emotions and ideas, and creates a sense of mystery.

Untitled Film Still #43, 1979, © Cindy Sherman

Exhibition on view:
Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West

Sunday, March 29–Monday, June 8, 2009

MoMA
Special Exhibitions Gallery, third floor
11 West 53 Street
New York, New York
(212) 708-9400

Into the Sunset: Photography’s Image of the American West is now on view at the Special Exhibitions Gallery at MoMA. The exhibition’s theme evolves around the importance of photography in shaping our collective imagination of the West.

Since 1850, photography has certainly played a fundamental role in the revolution of the American West, and has helped form and change our perception and image creation of the West’s physical and social landscape, through a variety of photographic traditions and genres.

Into the Sunset brings together over 120 photographs, dating from the ninetieth to the twenty first century, that integrate a range of different artistic strategies and motifs. The photographs, which are organized thematically, illustrate a piece of cultural heritage, and help us understand how general ideas about the West, as Manifest Destiny and the “land of opportunity,” have evolved through the years.

The exhibition features work of approximately seventy renowned photographers including Aperture-published Robert Adams, Katy Grannan, Dorothea Lange, Timothy O’Sullivan, Cindy Sherman, Joel Sternfeld, Edward Weston.

In conjunction with the exhibition, MoMA also holds lunch lectures and discussion panels on Monday, April 6 and Thurday, April 9 both at 12:30 p.m.

In addition, the museum offers a special lecture for deaf and hard-of-hearing visitors, as a part of Interpreting MoMA, on Thursday, May 14, at 5:30 p.m. 

Legendary photographer Pirkle Jones died on Sunday, March 15 at the age of 95. Noted for his documentation of the people and changing landscape of Northern California and his controversial series on the Black Panther Party, he was part of the first class of photographers to enter California School of Fine Arts after WWII. There, he studied with Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lange, and Minor White, all who later went on to help establish Aperture magazine in 1952.

Death of a Valley, a collaboration between Jones and Dorothea Lange which chronicled the disappearance of the Berryessa Valley in California as a result of the Monticello Dam, was published as a single issue of Aperture magazine in 1960. Jones later described the project as “one of the most meaningful photographic experiences of my professional life.”

In 2001, Aperture published Pirkle Jones: California Photographs. Featuring his portraits, landscapes, and architectural photographs, Jones documented everything from flea-market finds to some of the most important American social movements of the twentieth century. The same year, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art hosted the companion exhibition, Pirkle Jones: Sixty Years of Photographs.

Tim B. Wride, curator of the exhibition and author of the book essay, wrote:
“Pirkle’s visual legacy is one that can be characterized as masterful, meaningful, and ethical. His talent was singular, prodigious, and honorable. His eyes beheld an abundance of beauty, wisdom, curiosity, and commitment. His heart was open, enfolding, and comforting. A gift. “

Aperture also remembers Jones’s generosity of donating prints to the foundation to help raise funds. His dedication, vision, and love of the craft will be missed. For more information on his life and work, click here.