Cindy Sherman and (current) Guest: David Byrne

At Creative Time’s annual gala
At the Webby Awards
At the Marc Jacobs Fashion Show

Fried on Sugimoto

Sugimoto's Vision: A special lecture by Michael Fried
Wed, Mar 22 2006
Join art historian Michael Fried for a discussion of the artist's work in the context of new “art” photography, which includes such artists as Bernd and Hilla Becher, Jeff Wall, Thomas Ruff, Andreas Gursky, and Thomas Demand, many of whom are represented in the Hirshhorn's collection.
Length: 57:28

Click HERE to listen

Page from a photo album Sherman made as child

As time goes by

I am an unreliable witness. Television footage was shot at the same time Eddie Adams took his photo but his image is not a film still. This photo gallery includes another moment from his reel. A new documentary about Adams was released earlier this month.

Susan Sontag Interview

street action

Edward and H.T. Anthony publisher, Broadway on a Rainy Day from the series Anthony's Instantaneous Views, 1859-65

Talbot, View of the Boulevards of Paris, May 1843

"The weather is hot and dusty, and they have just been watering the road, which has produced two broad bands of shade upon it, which unite in the foreground because, the road, being partially under repair (as is seen from the two wheelbarrows, etc. etc.), the watering machines have been compelled to cross to the other side. By the roadside a row of cittadines and cabriolets are waiting, and single carriage stands at a distance a long way to the right. A whole forest of chimneys borders the horizon: for, the instrument chronicles whatever it sees, and certainly would delineate a chimney-pot or a chimney-sweeper with the same impartiality as it would the Apollo Belvedere."

Daguerre, Boulevard du Temple, c. 1839

a shimmer of possibility

Inspired by Chekhov’s short stories, Paul Graham’s a shimmer of possibility comprises 12 individual books, each volume a photographic short story of everyday life in today’s America. Whilst the twelve books are all an identical size, they vary in length from just a single photograph, to 60 pages of images made at one street intersection. The radical form of this multi volume book embraces the unique nature of Graham’s work, giving the flow of life precedence over conclusiveness, where nothing much happens, but nothing is foreclosed either. http://www.paulgrahamarchive.com/possibility.html

Photographic Gun of Marey

Étienne-Jules Marey (March 5, 1830 – May 21, 1904) was a French scientist and chronophotographer. This 1882 invention allowed for the capture of 12 consecutive frames per second.
Abstract from the patent:
Photographic gun
United States Patent 4907022
A hand held weapon simulating a rifle, shotgun or pistol having a camera pivotally mounted in the area of the usual projectile insertion and ejecting mechanism which has its shutter, focus and f adjustment means mounted in or adjacent the firing chamber which camera is actuated by trigger action of the weapon for taking pictures through the barrel of the weapon.

THE OCTOROON II

THE OCTOROON

Susan B and Susan B (and Bobby Indiana)

Dorothy Dow as Susan B. in the original Production of The Mother of Us All (1947)

Mignon Dunn as Susan B. in The Santa Fe Opera Company's production of The Mother of Us All (1976)


.... and ... some of Robert Indiana's artwork from the 1976 production:

Stein & Thomson

Two images of Gertrude Stein with Virgil Thomson:

$62,500 Daguerreotype of New York

From the New York Times, Tuesday, March 31st, 2009:

A photo believed to be one of the oldest ever taken in New York City was sold on Monday at Sotheby’s for $62,500, the auction house said. The pre-auction sales estimate was $50,000 to $70,000.

This daguerreotype, of a house on what is now the Upper West Side, is believed to be one of the oldest taken in New York City.
The winners were Billy and Jennifer Frist of Nashville. “It’s a very unique, historically significant daguerreotype,” said Mr. Frist, who has been collecting photos since 1993 and is a nephew of Bill Frist, the Tennessee Republican and former Senate majority leader.

The picture, believed to date from October 1848 or earlier, shows a white house on a hill with a white picket fence, next to what is believed to be the old Bloomingdale Road, the continuation of Broadway, in what is now the Upper West Side.

The photo was discovered at a small New England auction, and the date and location of the image were taken from a note that was in the daguerreotype’s case. The note — misspelling the word “magnifying,” among other irregularities — is written in a neat, cursive hand, in dark ink on pale blue paper:

This view, was taken at too great a distance, & from ground 60 or 70 feet lower than the building; rendering the lower Story of the House, & the front Portico entirely invisible. (the handsomest part of the House.) The main road, passes between the two Post & rail fences. (called, a continuation of Broadway 60 feet wide.) It requires a maganifying glass, to clearly distinguish the Evergreens, within the circular enclosure, taken the last of October, when nearly half of the leaves were off the trees.

May 1849. L. B.

“It took a tremendous amount of research to establish where it was,” said Denise Bethel, director of the photography department at Sotheby’s New York

Bloomingdale Road, often referred to as “continuation of Broadway” in the city directories of the day, was one of two main roads that ran up and down Manhattan in the 1700s. Bloomingdale Road was named for the Bloemendael area, now the Upper West Side, and cut from Union Place to Manhattanville.

Stein

Installation shot of Picasso's portrait of Stein at the Met:

Passport photos:

George R Lawrence

George R Lawrence (February 24, 1868 – December 15, 1938) was an Illinois photographer best known for panoramic and aerial shots.                  

        George's huge camera:

George:

San Francisco photographed with an aerial camera:

Charo's music video from 2008. So many layers. Make sure to watch the end with her bottle feeding the bull. Brilliant.

Theatricality & Performance

Visit the Symposium Website

Index (finger) by Tim Hawkinson

Anthropologist Franz Boas posing for diorama

Diorama:

Poses:

Link to Jstor article

Artists Making Photographs

This looks like a must-see exhibit at the Whitney. Text from the website is copied below.

Artists Making Photographs: Chamberlain, Rauschenberg, Ruscha, Samaras, Warhol
On view at the Whitney through Spring 2009

Writing about the ascension of photography as a legitimate art medium, Andy Grundberg offered three simplified narratives: "the history of photographers making art, the history of artists making photographs and the history of hybridity in contemporary art." This Gilman Gallery installation focuses on the category of artists making photographs and features works from the Whitney’s collection made between the 1930s and the 1960s. Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Ed Ruscha are three of the artists whose photographs are displayed alongside examples of their work in other mediums.

Significant support for the Whitney's photography exhibitions is provided by The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, Inc.

100 Special Moments

Jason Salavon superimposes groups of photographs (kids with santa, wedding photographs, Playboy centerfolds, yearbook headshots, real-estate ads, internet porn) to derive blurred "averages" that trace conventions of photographic portraiture.

The Women Project

The Women Project by J.R.
This French photographer, who is hiding his full name in case of prosecution, is taking portraits of women in various poverty-stricken and war-torn parts of the world (parts of Africa and Brazil so far, with Cambodia, India and Laos on the way). While the large scale photos are going on exhibition in Europe, the more interesting thing is that he is also pasting huge copies of them around the communities of the models, including some that are meant to be seen by satellite. Apparently the photos are even printed on water resistant materials and help stop erosion as well.

The Website

The Death of an Archive

The Archive collapses in Cologne Germany

Thomas Demand

Click HERE to go to Demand's website. He is known for creating empty 'sets' that look like real places. 

Animals on the street!

Click HERE for NYTimes Article

More indexin'

Mmmmmm: a link to the entirety of Fritz Lang's "M"

(watch above YouTube portion (1/11) and follow to the rest)

Snow's So Is This (part 1/5)

Bazin reading for indexicality class

In case you have not read Bazin's short piece on the Ontology of the Photograph:

CLICK HERE

THIS PIECE by Bazin is also worth reading in relation to cinema and ideas of temporality, duration, repetition, and death (to no one's surprise).

Stih & Schnock at Brown in April

The following workshop and lecture are being sponsored by the JNBC/Public Humanities people, again partly in concert with the Art + History group. It seems like it might be something we should consider.


lecture April 16:
Art Goes Public - Memorials and Interventions
Lecture, Thu (1-2 hours, including Q & A)


“Art Goes Public – Memorials & Interventions”


This lecture explores how memory functions in the social sphere
and how it is reflected symbolically in the space of the city.
Conceptual artists Stih & Schnock will discuss how the intrusion
of art in public space affects everyday life in memorial projects
including “Places of Remembrance”, “BUS STOP”, Rosa Luxemburg and
interventions like the Sarajevo-project and “Invitation” at
Berlin-Alexanderplatz. Collections as containers of memory will be
explored in “Who Needs Art – We Need Potatoes”, “The Art of
Collecting - Flick in Berlin”, and, most recently, “The City as
Text” and “Show Your Collection”.



workshop April 17:
LIFE~BOAT - Collections and Hybridity
Workshop, Fri 10-12 (lunch break) 1.30 – 3.30 pm


“LIFE~BOAT – Collections and Hybridity”


LIFE~BOAT explores our relationship to and obsession with boats
and the sea. The physical aspects of the uncontrolled, often
dangerous, bodies of water are ever present as they create the
psychological need to overcome nature’s force and to develop
survival strategies. This workshop will reflect how the arts
create metaphors for longings and projections, where dreams and
nightmares fuse into each other and touch social and political
topics. The participants will encounter elements of familiar
places in the most unlikely of territories and discuss cultural
conversion in relation to cultural mobility. *The *encounter of
maritime topics and objects will create a model of the world en
miniature, *which exposes cultural hybridity in an* abstract kind
of travel, visualized in a multi-media installation as combined
result of the workshop.

CV

Stih & Schnock are conceptual artists who explore how memory functions
in the social sphere and how it is reflected symbolically in urban
spaces. Their intrusion of art in public space affects everyday life in
projects like "Places of Remembrance" (1993), "BUS STOP" (1994/95), "The
City as Text - Jewish Munich" (2007), "Invitation - Berlin
Alexanderplatz" (1997/98).
They also focus on art collections as places of collective memory.
Examples include: "Show Your Collection" (2008), the environment at the
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart "Who Needs Art, We Need Potatoes" (1998), "The
Art of Collecting - Flick in Berlin" (2004).

Renata Stih has taught art and technology, film and media at the
University of Applied Sciences in Berlin for many years.
Frieder Schnock received his PhD in art history and is a former curator
at the Museum Fridericianum in Kassel.
Together they have taught at numerous American universities, including
Princeton, Harvard, SAIC Chicago and MICA Baltimore.
They live in Berlin.

Exhibitions (selection):
Deutschlandbilder. Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin (1997)
CTRL Space. ZKM Karlsruhe (2001)
Signs from Berlin. The Jewish Museum New York (2003)
Die zehn Gebote. Deutsches Hygiene Museum, Dresden (2004)
Schrift Bilder Denken. Haus am Waldsee, Berlin (2005)
Die RAF- Ausstellung. Kunstwerke, Berlin (2005)
Berlin Messages. Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale (2005)
Displaced. Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin (2005)
Reality Bites. Mildred Lane Kempner Art Museum St. Louis (2007)
Modelle - Materialisierung von Konzepten. Deutscher Künstlerbund, Berlin
(2008)
(Keine) Angst / (No) Fear. Kunstverein Ludwigshafen (2008)