“Vogue was honored for overall excellence in magazine photography, although its spooky Steven Klein-lensed “Lady Be Good” portfolio, singled out as a finalist for best feature photography, was bested by those “Vamps, Crooks, and Killers” at The New York Times Magazine.”
— via mediabistro
Image courtesy of VIIJoin Phaidon at VII Gallery on Thursday, May 3rd during the exhibition of Questions Without Answers to celebrate the launch of the long-awaited book of the same name, published in conjunction with the 10th Anniversary of the founding of VII agency.
This major work presents a remarkable sequence of photo-stories from pioneering photo agency VII, documenting world history as we have experienced it since the end of the Cold War. The 11 extraordinarily talented photographers who are part of this agency work at the cutting edge of digital photojournalism, committed to recording social and cultural change as it happens around the world. Each brings an individual vision to the agency – some choosing to tackle dramatic events head-on, others pursuing more idiosyncratic, personal projects – but all share a commitment to their individual subjects and to their belief that the act of communication provides hope even in the most extreme situations.
Questions Without Answers is an ambitious book featuring a strikingly broad selection of photo stories. Photos documenting Barack Obama giving a speech on Afghanistan to American troops sit alongside a collection of portraits featuring famous cultural figures such as David Bowie and Bernardo Bertolucci. We move from an exploration of the spread and impact of AIDS in Asia to dispatches from the current economic crisis and its effect on those working in finance. The crucial work done by VII in documenting conflict – environmental, social and political, both violent and non-violent – is also represented, including stories from the war in Iraq, the crisis in Darfur and the terrible events of 9/11.
With an introduction by the eminent David Friend, the former director of photography at Life magazine, this book is an important, moving and compelling record of the world we live in.
The book includes work by Stephanie Sinclair, and Lynsey Addario, both of whom have been featured in Aperture Magazine and The New York Times Magazine Photographs (Aperture 2011).
Questions Without Answers
Book Launch and Reception
Thursday, May 3, 2012, 7-9pm
VII Gallery
Brooklyn, New York
›› Buy The New York Times Magazine Photographs for 30% off.
2011 © Simon Norfolk
The Crawford Art Gallery presents Photographs from the War in Afghanistan by John Burke and Simon Norfolk. Burke was the first photographer to make pictures in Afghanistan while accompanying British forces in the late 1880’s. Fast forward to present day, Norfolk’s work follows the footsteps of Burke. His images are a contemporary response to Burke’s war scenes, presented alongside one another, modern parallels and similar vantage points included.
Accompanying the exhibition is a short film by Simon Norfolk, which discusses John Burke’s photography and both of their relationships with Afghanistan.
Simon Norfolk has appeared in Aperture issue 188 and is featured in The New York Times Magazine Photographs (Aperture 2011).
Photographs from the War in Afghanistan by John Burke and Simon Norfolk
April 20–June 30, 2012
Crawford Art Gallery
Emmet Place
Cork City, Ireland
+353 (0)21 480 5042
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›› Buy The New York Times Magazine Photographs ($52.50, available here)
›› Order Aperture 188 ($14.80, available here)
Aperture aggregates the best posts from this past week in the photography blogosphere.
Perpetual Photo No. 210, 1989 © Allan McCollum
Exhibition on view:
March 12–April 12, 2012
Blondeau Fine Art Services
5, rue de la Muse
Genève, Switzerland
41 (0)22 544 95 95
Challenging ideas of originality, a group of appropriation artists share the common thread of relating to images in a newfound way. Earlier exhibition’s, Pictures (Artists Space, New York, 1977) and The Pictures Generation (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2009) pioneered the way for ‘appropriationist’ practices, advocating the importance of painting as a medium and the borrowed, sampled, and recycled aspects of our visual culture.
Last Exit: Pictures, curated by Lionel Bouvier, seeks to articulate the can of worms ‘re-presentation’ tends to open. Understanding the picture itself, whatever the sources used, becomes inherently important rather than attempting to absorb an alternate or lost reality beyond the image. Despite generational or aesthetic differences, the heart of this exhibition is to display pictures in every state: appropriated, displaced, painted, re-photographed, and combined.
Featured artists: Troy Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo, Allan McCollum, John Miller, Steven Parrino, Richard Prince, David Robbins, David Salle, Laurie Simmons, Alan Vega, and James Welling.
Allan McCollum contributed to Words Without Pictures. Louise Lawler is featured in Aperture issue 145. Laurie Simmons has an Aperture published book, Walking, Talking, Lying, she is featured in The New York Times Magazine Photographs, and has a print available. James Welling is featured in Aperture issue 190 and contributed to Words Without Pictures. Aperture, in association with the Cincinnati Art Museum, will publish a survey of James Welling’s work in Spring 2013.
The ASME (American Society of Magazine Editors), earlier this week, announced the National Magazine Awards 2012 finalists, a list representing fifty-two national magazine titles nominated in twenty categories. Leading the pack in 2012 are New York and The New Yorker, both with six nominations overall, as well as the New York Times Magazine, with three nominations in the categories of news and documentary photography, feature photography, and feature writing.
Aperture is please to announce that our own Aperture magazine has again been nominated as an ASME finalist, in the General Excellence category of Though-Leader Magazines, honoring literary, scholarly and professional publications, as well as general interest magazines. View the full list of 2012 finalist and honorees here.
The 2012 National Magazine Awards will be presented on May 3rd, at the New York Marriott Marquis in New York City. The 2012 judges include 345 magazine editors, art directors and photography editors as well as journalism educators.
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››The ASME and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism announced the winners of the 2012 National Magazine Awards for Digital Media on March 20, 2012. More than 300 editors, publishers and guests attended a lunch at the Grand Hyatt New York to honor the fifty-five finalists and eleven winners. View the winners’ gallery for the Digital Media honorees here.
››The latest issue of Aperture (#206) is now available.
››Buy The New York Times Magazine Photographs, edited by Kathy Ryan, award-winning editor of the New York Times Magazine, for 30% off, here.
Aperture aggregates the best posts from this past week in the photography blogosphere.
Much of the work on view in Alfred Seiland’s current solo exhibition, Photographs 1979 – 2000 on view at Galerie Johannes Faber, has origins in the Austrian-born photographer’s repeated east coast/west coast tours of the American landscape. Often interrogating the particularities of a site multiple times in the course of journey, Seiland’s photographs extract the essential details of color, light, and shadow, of line and surface lying beneath the thematic dryness of his domestic landscapes.
The photographer’s brief foray into the—some would suggest, antithetical—realm of fashion photography with New York Times Magazine‘s 2004 photo series, “Hanging Gardens: When the Bloom Is on the Line,” is not a complete departure.
With Dress by Nicholas Ghesquiere for Balenciaga, Seiland “plays with the façade of [a] colorful dress against an equally bright and textured background of orange and red flowers.” The flattening of surface, the rendering of foreground and background elements along a shared visual plane, all executed through the manipulation of color and contrasting elements is consistent with Seiland’s broader photographic language. The image suggests a pictorial narrative of its own, surrendering its subjectivity in favor of “a mood and space that seems to exist only in and for that picture.”
Kathy Ryan, long-time Director of Photography for the New York Times Magazine, targeted Seiland specifically for the 2004 Style shoot:
My first instinct often is to bring in photographers who might not normally be shooting a particular kind of work. There were a lot of beautiful flowered prints that season, which led me to think of Alfred Seiland… I remembered seeing a picture by him of sheets hanging on a clothesline, years before, and that was a direct inspiration. I love the pattern on pattern here, and the fact that, even though there’s nobody there, the dresses themselves clearly have personality.
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Alfred Seiland’s Dress by Nicholas Ghesquiere for Balenciaga, from “Hanging Gardens: When the Bloom is on the Line” is available from Aperture in a limited-edition of 25 ($650, available here).
Alfred Seiland is also featured in The New York Times Magazine Photographs (Aperture, 2011), edited by Kathy Ryan ($52.50, available here).
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His current exhibition, Alfred Seiland: Photographs 1979 – 2000, is now on view at Galerie Johannes Faber, Vienna, through June 2nd.
Galerie Johannes Faber
Dorotheergasse 12
1010
Vienna, Austria
+43 1 512 84 32
Join us for a panel discussion with longtime photo editor Kathy Ryan. She will discuss her new book, The New York Times Magazine Photographs (Aperture, 2011) at Barnes and Noble, along with photographers Gregory Crewdson and Taryn Simon.
The book reflects upon and interrogates the nature of both photography and print magazines, at this pivotal moment in their history and evolution. It presents some of the finest commissioned photographs worldwide of various types, including reportage, portraiture, style, conceptual photography, and photo illustration. Also addressed are issues of documentary photography in relation to more conceptual photography; the efficacy of storytelling; and what makes an image evidentiary, objective, subjective, truthful, or a tool for advocacy; as well as discussion of whether these matters are currently moot, or more critical than ever. As such, The New York Times Magazine Photographs aims to serve as a springboard for a rigorous, necessary, and revitalized examination of photography as presented within a modern journalistic context.
Kathy Ryan (editor) is the award-winning photo editor of the New York Times Magazine. Ryan was recognized as Canon Picture Editor of the Year in 1997 at the Visa Pour l’Image festival in Perpignan, France, and in 2003 was named Picture Editor of the Year by the Lucie Awards.
Thursday, November 17, 2011
7:00 pm
FREE
Barnes & Noble Bookstore
150 East 86th Street
New York, New York
(212) 369-2180
