Aperture Gallery was abuzz Wednesday evening, hosting the much-anticipated New York City launch of Delpire & Co., the citywide, multi-venue retrospective of the life and work of legendary editor, curator and publisher, Robert Delpire. Following presentations in Arles and Paris, Delpire & Co. arrives to New York City with representation at six venues throughout Manhattan.

Aperture’s Wednesday opening was the first of the week (followed by Thursday night openings at the French Embassy, and Gallery at Hermes), welcoming a strong roster of photography legends and pillars of the photographic community. Sarah Moon, Mary Ellen Mark, and Josef Koudelka were in attendance, standing alongside their own seminal works on view, as well as celebrated photographers Bruce Davidson and Susan Meiselas. Multiple films by filmmaker/photographer Sarah Moon were on screen, including 1970’s TV spots directed by Moon for Cacharel (7 min), as well as “Le Montreur d’images (The Go-Between)” (2009), her feature length documentary on husband Robert Delpire.

Peter Barberie, Curator of Photographs for the Philadelphia Art Museum was in attendance Wednesday evening, as well as Jeff Hirsch of FotoCare, and Wendy Byrne, former designer for Aperture Foundation. Special thanks to exhibition producer Mike Derez, and Project Coordinator Agnès Gagnès of Idéodis.

Delpire & Co. runs through June at venues throughout the city. Like us on Facebook to view a full album of photos from the opening.

›› Click here for details on all the exhibitions and events.
›› Join the conversation on Instagram and Twitter using #Delpire
›› The New Yorker presents a stunning and concise slideshow summary of books and photographs from among the displays at Aperture, Hermès, Pace/MacGill, and Howard Greenberg.

Aperture aggregates the best posts from this past week in the photography blogosphere.

• LightBox presents an essay written by Tim Hetherington, who was featured in Aperture issue 204, from the new book Photographs Not Taken, one year after the photographer’s death in Libya. The collection, compiled by Will Steacy (one of Aperture’s Green Cart Commissioned photographers), also features essays by Roger Ballen, Ed Kashi, Mary Ellen Mark, Alec Soth, Peter van Agtmael and more. Additionally, PDN features an 8 image retrospective by Hetherington, whose work is now on view at Yossi Milo Gallery in New York (through May 12, 2012).
• This week in commentary: LPV Magazine  digests Instagram articles by Om Malik, the New Yorker’s Ian Crouch and New York Magazine’s Paul Ford, finds out, “Facebook Buys Instagram, Some Photographers Sad.” APhotoEditor reads Paul Melcher‘s poignant article on La Lettre de La Photographie alongside Marc Andreessen‘s WSJ piece “Software Will Eat The World,” and explores “how a company with 13 employees and no profits [Instagram] can replace a now bankrupt company [Kodak] that once employed over 120,000 people with annual sales of $10 billion as the ‘manufacturer’ of a device to bring photography to the masses.” In related news, NPPA opens a mobile phone photo contest, calling for entries through Sunday, April 22, 2012, while Magnum Photos has deployed another team to Rochester to document the once-vibrant home of Kodak as part of their Postcards From America series.
• Poynter investigates the controversy over the Pentagon delaying the LA Times from publishing photographs of US soldiers posing with the body parts of Afghan corpses, a story which has since elicited over 2000 comments on the Times’ website.
• Sophie Calle, featured in Aperture issues 191 and 142, talks to the Guardian about her best shot from the series Voir La Mer, in which she “took 15 people of all ages, from kids to one man in his 80s, to see [the sea] for the first time.” She photographed them from behind so as to not obstruct their initial encounter, and she captured the entire process, including their reactions, on video. Her current exhibition, Historias de Pared (at Museo de Arte Moderno Medellín through June 3, 2012) is reviewed on Fototazo.
• In honor of Albert Hoffman’s infamous Bicycle Day (April 19), LIFE Magazine shares a number of never-before-published dream-like photographs that were to accompany an original 1966 article titled, “New Experience That Bombards the Senses: LSD Art.”
• American Suburb X shares journal entries from William Gedney on “Kentucky, Sex and Diane Arbus,” alongside scans of the archival material culled from the Duke University Rare Books and Manuscript Library.  Speaking of rare books, ICP Library profiles some of the innovative and experimental photobooks they found and photographed at the New York Antiquarian Book Fair last week.
• Time Magazine releases their annual list of “The 100 Most Influential People in the World,” alongside a portrait gallery of 24 of the honorees.  Included this year is artist Christian Marclay, of the monumental video installation recently purchased by MoMA, The Clock, and the 2007 Aperture monograph Shuffle, which takes the form of a deck of cards. The Clock will be shown for free this summer from the middle of July to mid-August at Lincoln Center’s David Rubenstein Atrium. Stake out your places now!

Aperture aggregates the best posts from this past week in the photography blogosphere.

• The New York Times covers Mary Ellen Mark’s series Prom, first featured in Aperture issue 187, now a monograph by Getty Publications, and shares a trailer from Martin Bell’s accompanying documentary. The Sunday Review publishes an essay by Mark, “Prom Night,” and posts a slideshow of images from the series. LensBlog follows up with a Q&A with the photographer on shooting with one of five existing, finicky, but rewarding 20×24 Polaroid Land Cameras for this series and her earlier monograph Twins (Aperture 2005).
• In their weekly Modern Art Notes Podcast, ArtInfo‘s Tyler Green talks to Mitch Epstein, who he calls “one of America’s most prominent and most honored photographers,” about shifting focus from American Power to trees in New York City, now on view at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. in Chelsea. Epstein will be in conversation with Sondra Gilman and Celso Gonzalez-Falla of the Shared Vision collection at Aperture on Wednesday, April 11, 2012.
• “Is your phone’s camera the only camera you need?” asks the Wall Street Journal, profiling new apps and accessories that make that possible. They also share cell phone snapshots by professional photojournalists, and invite readers to do the same.
• “In an environment where seconds count, there are glorious triumphs and heartbreaking defeats,” writes Michael M. Grynbaum for LensBlog on staff photographer Richard Perry‘s hectic images from the New York City subway. Can’t help but think back to Bruce Davidson’s series from the 1980s and resulting monograph Subway (Aperture 2011), save for the striking dissimilarities between now vastly different transit systems.
• Simon Bray shares a few key points on Phototuts+ on “Why Returning To A Photographic Location Is Such A Good Idea,” whether it’s months, weeks, days, or hours apart. It’s something Richard Misrach did when he began a three year project photographing the same scene from his from porch at all hours of the day for the monograph Golden Gate, which is soon to be released by Aperture as a stunning 16×20″ oversized edition.
• Fototazo interviews Luca Desienna, Chief Editor of Gomma Magazine, on the occasion of the announcement of the eight winners of the call for entries for their exciting new publication of black and white photography MONO, Volume 1 (November 2012). Lightbox at Time shares a slideshow of images by the winners and explains briefly what entailed Gomma’s “search for the best  new black-and-white photographers.”
• The National Press Photographers Association launched a new blog, Ethics Matters, opening up the often circular discussion on how much image manipulation is too much, focusing specifically on new HDR technology which allows cameras to combine multiple frames into a single image, often for a more saturated color effect. This, as Aperture is in the process of acquiring a HDR camera for our own digital media reporting purposes. Stay tuned!

Zen Photography workshop at Apeiron, ca. 1979. Front row, 3rd from left: workshop leader John Daido Loori; 5th from left (hand above eyes): Apeiron founder Peter Schlessinger, who later helped Loori found the Zen Mountain Center in Woodstock, New York. Both were students of Minor White. (Photograph courtesy Apeiron archives)

Forty years ago, shortly after working for a year and a half as an editorial assistant at Aperture (and using many of the contacts he’d made there), Peter Schlessinger opened a photography-workshop center called Apeiron Workshops. Located two hours north of New York City in Millerton, N.Y., and based on methods of focusing attention taught by Aperture’s editor, Minor White, Apeiron offered immersive residential programs of various lengths. Its summer programs offered workshops with an A-list of creative photographers of the time, including Berenice Abbott, Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Paul Caponigro, Linda Connor, Judy Dater, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Ralph Gibson, Emmet Gowin, Robert Heinecken, Elaine Mayes, Lisette Model, Aaron Siskind, Frederick Sommer, and Garry Winogrand, plus Magnum photographers Charles Harbutt, Mary Ellen Mark, Susan Meiselas, Gilles Peress, and Burk Uzzle. Eventually, Apeiron would also run longer (three-month) spring and fall programs, teach in the public schools, offer a selection of traveling exhibitions, run specialized workshops for teachers, and offer theoretical conferences. During its 12-year tenure, Apeiron published Linda Connor’s first book, Solos, and mounted one of the largest NEA-funded photographic surveys, The Long Island Project. Always run on a shoestring and the heroic commitment of its near-volunteer staff, it closed in 1982 as interest rates hit 18 percent and President Reagan slashed the NEA’s funding.

This coming Labor Day weekend, a reunion open to all who ever participated (as staff, students, workshop leaders, artists-in-residence, or special-project staff) is being held at a conference center in the mountains outside Asheville, North Carolina. Anyone who falls into one or more of the aforementioned categories is encouraged to contact Benjamin Porter at apeironreunion@gmail.com or call him at 828-281-1825 for full information.

Tiny Holding Her Dog (During Streetwise), 1983, © Mary Ellen Mark

Tiny, Mary Ellen Mark

Exhibition on View:
Wednesday, March 2—Saturday, April 2, 2011

Patricia Conde Galeria
Lafontaine 73
Col. Polanco, Mexico City
Telephone: (52+55) 5290-6345

Mary Ellen Mark’s series Tiny documents the lives of children and young adolescents living on the streets of Seattle in 1983. The companion documentary film, Streetwise, premiered in 1985 and brought audiences deeper into the lives of Tiny and her friends.

Aperture magazine, issue 181 featured an interview with Tiny (real name Erin Charles) by Mary Ellen Mark and Martin Bell 20 years after they first met her at age 13. In the 2005 interview, Tiny (age 35) discusses motherhood, aging, and the surprise of survival.

Mary Ellen Mark contributed to Aperture’s anthology Things as They Are: Photojournalism in Context Since 1955 as well as being featured in Aperture issue 146 and  187. Aperture also published Mary Ellen Mark’s monograph Twins, which is available with Martin Bell’s documentary film of the same name.

Aperture is honored to have Mary Ellen Mark’s limited-edition print, Heather and Kelse Dietrck, 7 years old, Kelsey older by 66 minutes, 2002, available for purchase.

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.

Last week, Aperture’s work scholars had the profound pleasure of touring Mary Ellen Mark’s studio and getting a chance to view prints from her extensive archive. Mark’s Studio Manager (and former Aperture Workscholar) Meredith Lue, took out prints from many of Mary Ellen’s major projects including some made with analog printing processes such as Cibachrome prints and Dye transfer prints. The group looked at images from Mark’s Streetwise series, the now infamous portrait of the Damm family, Falkland Road and portraits from her ongoing High School prom portraits. Mark answered questions about her career, the current state of photography and the ways things have changed since she started out.

To learn more about the Aperture Work Scholar Program click here.

Read past posts on Exposures about work scholar experiences from exhibition tours with Humble Curator Jon Feinstein, artist Hank Willis Thomas to a visit at the Starn Brothers Beacon Studio.

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

Aperture, Pratt, and the Strand Book Store are pleased to announce the winners of the Eye on the Strand photography contest, which kicked off last fall and concluded March 31, 2009. The winners were chosen by a prestigious panel of judges from over 500 submissions featuring unique and creative photo representations of the Strand Book Store. The Grand Prize Winner will get to have lunch at New York City’s famous Balthazar Restaurant with world-renowned photographer Mary Ellen Mark, and receive a collection of Aperture books, among other prizes.

The work of the grand prize, second and third place winners and twenty finalists will be featured in a special exhibition to open at the Pratt Institute CCPS Gallery on July 16, 2009. An opening reception will take place Wednesday, July 15 from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. To read about contest details, including prizes awarded, and to view the winning images, click here to visit The Strand’s online photography gallery.

Grand Prize Photo Winner: Josh Robinson/“Strand Shadows”
Second Place Photo: Cary Conover/“Upside Down”
Third Place Photo and Viewers’ Choice Winner: Manjari Sharma/“Strand, The dreamer’s land”

Opening Receptions with the Winners and Finalists
Wednesday, July 15, 2009  6:00–8:00 pm
Pratt Institute CCPS Gallery
144 West 14th Street, 2nd floor, New York
(212) 647-7199

World renowned photographer Mary Ellen Mark’s exhibition titled Seen Behind the Scene is currently on display at both the  Staley-Wise Gallery in New York and Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles. This show features candid photographs of many top actors, actresses and directors. In awe of the work that so often goes unseen, Mary Ellen Mark strives to document the hard work and dedication she witnesses both on and off set. Her images transcend her approach from those of mundane paparazzi shots to complex provocative works that truly shed light on her subjects.

Mary Ellen Mark’s extensive career as a photographer includes over 15 publications including Mary Ellen Mark: Twins, published by Aperture in 2003. Additionally, she has contributed works to magazines such as Vanity Fair, New York Times Magazine, Life and Rolling Stone. A recipient of five honorary doctorates, Mark has also won numerous awards, including the acclaimed Cornell Capa Award from the International Center of Photography.

Don’t miss your chance to see this world-class exhibit from an artist American Photo readers named as the most influential woman photographer of all time.

Mary Ellen Mark: Seen Behind the Scene

December 4-January 17, 2009
Fahey/Klein Gallery
148 North La Brea, Los Angeles
323-934-2250

January 8-February 14, 2009
Staley-Wise Gallery
560 Broadway, 3rd Floor, New York
212-966-6223