Matias Aguilar 1_2008, 3_2008_1

Copyright Matias Aguilar
...more winter 2008 images here

Thomas Steinert

Copyright Thomas Steinert

Courtesy of Der Spiegel this web gallery features the work of East German photographer Thomas Steinert... here ...It gives us a glimpse of daily life in the GDR before the fall of the Mauer.

Dietmar Gottschall

Copyright Dietmar Gottschall

Juri Gottschall, the son of late German Photographer Dietmar Gottschall put up a site featuring his father's work that until now has been unknown to the public. On view are excellent pictures taken from the sixties to the eighties; street photographs, portraits and selections from journalistic assignments of Dieter Gottschall, who died in 1997.

here

Masahisa Fukase

Copyright Masahisa Fukase

more of MASAHISA FUKASE Bukbuku pictures here

Masahisa Fukase was born in Hokkaido, Japan in 1934. In 1952 he enrolled in the Photography Department of Nihon University in Tokyo. After graduation in 1956 he was hired at Dai-Ichi Advertising Company, where he began working as a commercial photographer while he pursued his artistic career. Two solo exhibitions followed in quick succession. 1974 marked several important events in Fukase's life. He established a photography school called The Workshop with his colleagues Shomei Tomatsu, Eiko Hosoe, Noriaki Yokosuka, Daido Moriyama and Nobuyoshi Araki. The same year, his work was included in the exhibition New Japanese Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, curated by John Szarkowski and Shoji Yamagishi. Despite these professional accomplishments, his unstable marriage of the past ten years had begun to dissolve; he returned to his birthplace of Hokkaido seeking solace. At this time, Fukase began to photograph the black birds that would become emblematic of his finest work. Sadly, on June 20, 1992 a severe accident prematurely ended Fukase's artistic career. Although he was among a generation of young Japanese artists struggling with the constraints of their society, Fukase strayed from the cultural concerns and nihilistic expressionism of his colleagues, focusing instead on a deeply personal meditation on human existence. The somber beauty of his raven photographs reflect his lonely, troubled life and reveal his appreciation of the defiant isolation of these creatures.

(Courtesy of Robert Mann Galllery)

more MASAHISA FUKASE here

Miwa Yanagi

Copyright Miwa Yanagi

White Casket. Photographs by Miwa Yanagi. Nazraeli Press, Tucson, 2003. 72 pp., 48 color illustrations, 13x12".

In our present age of supreme mobility, differences of culture with other industrialized nations are rarely shocking; things seem to stay in the realm of being an oddity at most. The tradition of employing 'elevator girls' in upscale Japanese department stores is definitely in this category. Assigned the role of hostess, the coveted position of 'elevator girl' brings an aura of elegance to the shopping experience. Miwa Yanagi flips this world on its head in The White Casket, a body of work that casts groups of elevator girls into elaborate fictional scenes. Both the photographs and the book are immaculate—large format, crisp design with seamless digital renderings.

(Courtesy of Photo-Eye)

here for the Book Tease

Publisher's Description:

White Casket. In The White Casket, Japanese artist Miwa Yanagi has created a bizarre fantasy world inhabited by department store “elevator girls.” In upscale Japanese department stores, the elevator girl performs the role of a hostess, directing customers to their destinations while lending an aura of elegance to the shopping experience. The position of elevator girl is a highly-prized one; those holding this position are selected by management, and are expected to exude youth, innocence and beauty. In The White Casket – the collective title for the work as presented here – Yanagi takes advantage of digital technology to create virtual spaces composed of elements from several different locations, creating elaborate settings in which the elevator girls live as “prisoners in paradise.” Miwa Yanagi is a pioneer in contemporary photo-based art. Her work is included in important public and private collections throughout Japan, the US, and Europe. The White Casket documents this well-known body of work in a large-format, beautifully-reproduced monograph.

Miwa Yanagi Interview @ JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ART- online here

Matias Aguilar 2/2008/02, 03

Copyright Matias Aguilar

more here

Matias Aguilar - 2/2008

Copyright Matias Aguilar

here for more

Brian Finke

Brian Finke’s subjects depict archetypes of modern culture, such as cheerleaders, bodybuilders or flight attendants. By infusing the iconographic into social documentary these pictures give you a fresh new look at a popular culture that is almost overly familiar to us. Although this particular use of artificial lighting in combination with available light is more common in commercial styles of photography his pictures remain within the borders of documentary. Mainly you do get to witness authentic stories, private and intimate views of the photographer’s characters. By emphasizing the seductive element of popular culture through outlining uniformity, however Finke’s pictures serve as a mirror. As ambivalent as it may be we all have an attraction to it. Our culture plays a significant role in our daily dramas as individuals.

more Brian Finke here


Untitiled, 2006
Copyright Brian Finke

Untitiled, 2002
Copyright Brian Finke

Untitiled(Bodybuilding#36) 2004
Copyright Brian Finke

Sid Avery

An accomplished photographer depicting actors of the golden age of Hollywood’s 1950s and '60s is Sid Avery. With the film studios more and more courting the mass media to promote movies, Avery was often hired to shoot for magazines such as Life and Look to portray celebrities of that time in private surroundings. Gaining the trust of his subjects, the photographer never showed unfavorable sides of the actors. Translating the celluloid proven qualities of his characters into his pictures, Avery’s iconic photography was born out of the growing demand of feeding the public seemingly private glimpses of their favorite star.

more here and here


copyright Sid Avery
Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and their son, in their home, Los Angeles, 1952

Find Sid Avery’s advertising photography here


Copyright Sid Avery
Couple on motorcycle - Honda ad

Floyd McCarty

Copyright Floyd McCarty


Copyright Floyd McCarty

Being Warner Brothers set photographer in the golden age of Hollywood movies Floyd McCarty has shot some of the most memorable film still photography you can imagine. We all know the pictures he took of James Dean at the sets of the movies East of Eden, Rebels without a Cause and Giants.
Although you can see a lot his his great pictures here and here I am really stunned and disappointed that my online search at google brought about only this short bio at mptv.net

He was born on June 22, 1913
Dates of professional Activity 1929 - 1975
Attended school up until the 7th Grade.
Worked for Various Newspapers and Magazines including New York Times, L. A. Examiner, (old) Dailey News, Chicago Sun (L.A. Bureau) Member of local 659 photographer’s union.
Worked for various film studios including Warner Brothers, Columbia and Universal.
Most prominent photographic subjects include James Dean, Bogart & Bacall, Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, Paul Newman, Debbie Reynolds, Natalie Wood, Henry Fonda, John Wayne, Doris Day among many others.
He was a still photographer for many films including East of Eden, Rebel Without A Cause, Sayonara, The Left Handed Gun, Baby Doll, The Illustrated Man, Bonnie & Clyde and The Wrong Man and many more.- died October 5, 1999

Brian Wilson

Beach Boys by Peter Blake, 1964. Screenprint on paper. 53 x 30.8cm. Tate © Peter Blake

The Guardian has a little web gallery that features artwork from the exhibition If Everybody Had an Ocean - Brian Wilson: An Art Exhibition at Tate St. Ives here

Kishin Shinoyama

Kishin Shinoyama Twin, 1969

Jousse Entreprise in Paris has a nice link of fantastic black and white photographs of Japanese Photographer Kishin Shinoyama...here.

Matias Aguilar - Untitled No.1

Copyright Matias Aguilar

for more pictures here

Matias Aguilar - Rink (Part 5 ) - 2008

Copyright Matias Aguilar

here for more pictures from my Rink series

Susan Carr

Lincoln Relief, Mervin and Jean Jackson Home, Leesburg, Virginia, 2001

Copyright Susan Carr

At the site of The Museum of Contemporary Photography’s permanent collection in Chicago I came across Susan Carr's Personal Spaces series. Her artist statement reads as follows...

Personal Spaces: Details of American Homes

In early 2000 I began photographing the homes of people who have lived in the same place for forty years or more. The impetus for this work was a visit to my Aunt's childhood home in Jackson, Mississippi. Sitting in Mildred's dining room in a home she has lived in for forty-nine years, I realized that this kind of personal space was fast becoming one of our few remaining unique environments. Jackson, like so many other American cities, is plagued with urban sprawl that has deadened the city center and homogenized the surrounding landscape. In a country that prides itself on individualism, it is now possible to buy the same cup of coffee, the same clothes, and the same meal from one coast to the other.

Shortly after my visit to Jackson, I set out to photograph the details of American homes. I have long been fascinated with the way objects and places resonate and reveal the depth of a given moment...more here

Jeremy Blake

Video Still from Glitterbest, Jeremy Blake
Copyright Jeremy Blake

I am glad that the Jeremy Blake Memorial Show @ Kinz, Tillou & Feigen will be extended for two additional weeks. That gives me enough time to catch it next Saturday. I am excited to see all of Jeremy Blake's major video works together in one show. Also, it will be great to catch a glimpse of the unfinished Glitterbest, sadly the last work of the Artist who committed suicide last summer. The NY Times has an interesting feature about David Sigal(a friend of curator Jonathan P. Binstock) preparing the unfinished piece for the show. Of the intended 11 minutes only five minutes could be found on Blake's computer. To fill the remaining 7 minutes of voice overs on the timeline they had to track down missing image files and add them to the video file, at the same time trying to maintain the integrity of the work....

After Death, Unfinished Artwork Gets a Life , By Dan Levin.....here

Music to the Eye
Jeremy Blake's 'Moving Paintings' Are a Brilliant Coda to a Life That Ended on a Sad Note
By Chris Richards......here

Cus (Part3)

Copyright Matias Aguilar

here for more pictures of my Cus Series...

1001(Part 7)

copyright Matias Aguilar

...for more pictures of my 1001 series...here

Jon Kessler

copyright Jon Kessler

I still fondly remember an exhibit I watched sometime in the 90's at Kestner Gesellschaft in Hannover, Germany, entitled Jon Kessler's Asia . Being from New York, Kessler would go to Chinatown and buy all sort of objects, figurines, etc. used as decor for Chinese restaurants and then playfully remix these found objects in his studio, making mechanical kinetic sculptures out of them. I recently looked up John Kessler at Google and came across his site here. Fortunately, there are little videos of the work that can be found on his site as well....

There is an article @ Frieze about this body of work here

Recently Kessler has been channeling his focus as the Drawing Center puts it on..."the mass media's infatuation with disaster, war, sex, and celebrity. In his new series of drawings, Kessler creates portraits by taking found representations culled from the worlds of fashion, celebrity culture, and contemporary politics and reconfiguring them to reflect on the spectacle of American power and the instant access to images of objectification and violence. Based on the idea of “the portrait as a metaphor for captivity,” Kessler's new body of work confronts the convergence of advertising, propaganda, surveillance, and technology that threatens to undermine democratic politics. "
...review of Drawing Center here
...Web Gallery courtesy of Drawing Center here

Matias Aguilar - Cus (Part 2) - 2007

Copyright Matias Aguilar

here for more pictures of my Cus Series