Basil Jones (2011) © Gary Schneider

This Fall, many works by Aperture-featured photographers are being exhibited in New York City. Here is our run-down of this season’s must-see shows.

Gary Schneider: HandPrints, Johhanesburg at David Krut Projects. Made by hands’ sweat and heat interacting with film emulsion, these unusual portraits of friends and family will be on view September 8 – October 22, 2011.

Hellen van Meene at Yancey Richardson Gallery, September 8 – October 22, 2011, will exhibit the photographer’s distinct style of portraiture.

Vik Muniz at Sikkema Jenkins & Co., September 9 – October 15, 2011, focusing on paintings by the Brazilian artist.

Edward Steichen: The Last Printing at Danziger Projects, September 15 – October 29, 2011. Photographs made by George Tice, renowned photographer and Steichen’s last printer.

Social Media at Pace/MacGill, from September 16 – October 15, 2011, featuring work by Penelope Umbrico & others. Detailing the rise of social media in our visual culture, it includes Umbrico’s work Sunset Portraits From 9,623,557 Sunset Pictures which was meticulously culled from the photo-sharing website Flickr.

Simon Norfolk: Burke + Norfolk at Bonni Benrubi Gallery, September 14 – December 3, 2011, features a visual dialogue between nineteenth-century British photographer John Burke and contemporary photographer Simon Norfolk, centered in Afghanistan.

The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936 – 1951 at The Jewish Museum from November 4 – March 25, 2011. Featuring work by Lisette Modell, Aaron Siskind, Weegee & many other photography legends.

There are also many gallery openings that are showing artists featured in our 2011 Benefit, Auction & SNAP! Party:

Sara Greenberger Rafferty at Rachel Uffner Gallery, September 7 – October 23, 2011.

Charlotte Dumas: Retrieved at Julie Saul Gallery, September 8 – October 15, 2011.

Click here to start bidding online for work by these artists and others!

By Anna Carnick

Mask Self-portrait by Gary Schneider, 1999

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For our latest SNAPSHOT installment, we sat down with South African-born, New York-based photographer Gary Schneider. For the past two decades, Schneider’s dramatic work has examined the concept of identity through studio portraits, fragmented face portraits, and handprint photograms, earning him a reputation as both an artist and a master of chemical darkroom printing.

Last year, Handbook, Schneider’s stunning, print-on-demand artist book, earned a Kassel Photo Book Award. This limited-edition book is the culmination of seventeen years of Schneider’s commitment to making portraits of hands without the use of a camera. Describing the work, Schneider says, “I have made handprint-portraits since 1993. I consider them to be as expressive as any portrait of a face, more private, and possibly more revealing.” Handbook represents one of the first collaborations between Aperture, a photographer, and a print-on-demand press (Blurb). The book is available now through Aperture.

AC: What do you believe is your greatest achievement as an artist so far?
GS: Exploring the intimate portrait.

What is the greatest challenge you’ve faced as an artist to date?
Remaining focused on my desire to understand the portrait.

What is the biggest life lesson you’ve learned?
Affirmation comes from a private place.

If you weren’t a photographer, what would you be?
I’m not certain I am a photographer.

Who is your favorite artist, of any genre?
Leonardo Da Vinci.

What is your favorite photograph?
Mask Self-Portrait. It is all of my desire for my work.

What was the last book (photo or other) you really enjoyed?
Jill Bolte Taylor’s Stroke of Insight.

Name a person—living or dead—you’d really like to meet.
Leonardo da Vinci.

Do you have a mentor?
Had. Peter Hujar then Helen Gee, now Peter Hujar again (printing his work).

The natural talent you’d like to be gifted with?
Quiet brain.

What qualities do you appreciate most in friends?
Ethics.

Opening next week at Mount Holyoke College Art Museum is Lisette Model and Her Successors, featuring work from the last century’s most significant photographers. Lisette Model (1901–1983) was a woman whose images and eloquent teachings influenced her students Diane Arbus, Larry Fink, and a host of others, many of whom went on to leave their own marks on American photographic history.

Model, born in Vienna, arrived in New York in 1938, a few years after Alexey Brodovitch art director of Harper’s Bazaar, and like him, had resided in France for some fifteen years before settling permanently in the United States. An influx of Continental artistic impulses increasingly pervaded the cultural milieu of New York in the 1940s and 1950s, which may have made it difficult for some photographers to find their own voices. For her part, Model embraced the life and values of the American artistic vanguard, while remaining always and to everyone who knew her somehow different, just slightly mysterious and completely unique.

This exhibition consists of 145 vintage photographs by 13 artists: Diane Arbus, Bruce Cratsley, Elaine Ellman, Larry Fink, Peter Hujar, Raymond Jacobs, Ruth Kaplan, Leon Levinstein, Eva Rubinstein, Gary Schneider, Rosalind Solomon, and Bruce Weber.

Lisette Model and Her Successors
Tuesday, September 1—Sunday, December, 13 2009
Mount Holyoke College Art Museum
Lower Lake Road, South Hadley, Massachusetts
(413) 538-2245

Click here to purchase your copy of Lisette Model from Aperture.

Aperture artist Gary Schneider’s exhibition, Flesh: The Portraiture, is now on view through September 14, 2008 at The Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego.

The Aperture limited-edition print Ellen, signed and numbered by Gary Schneider and accompanied with a signed hardcover copy of his monograph Nudes, is available for 20% off the regular price throughout the duration of the exhibition. 

More information on the exhibition here.

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