tagged w/ Slideshow
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“Rolling Stone and the Art of the Record Review” is an exhibition of over 80 original illustrations presently on view at New York City's Museum of American Illustration. If landing on the cover of “Rolling Stone” is a perennial dream for rock musicians, a close second would be getting their likenesses on the front page of the review section, where for decades the lead review has been accompanied by a distinctive illustration of the artist.
The art featured in this exhibition spans four decades, representing music legends such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Steven Tyler, Whitney Houston, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and many others. It has from the very beginning been a belief at “Rolling Stone” that art is the best way to present new and legendary albums and their reviews to the world. These are artists who continue to highlight the history of the music industry.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution color illustrations from the exhibition, as well as a gallery of additional illustrations.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/09/04/an-artistic-history-of-music-rolling-stone-and-the-art-of-the-record-review/“Rolling Stone and the Art of the Record Review” is an exhibition of over... more
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In 1970, Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris, presented a selection of competition cars, “Bolides Design.” A special jury chose the models with the idea of the car as a design object, a work of art, showing that “art and technique, each at their own level, are the expression of man and his relationship with design.” The Ralph Lauren collection can be seen from the same perspective.
For its first presentation in Europe, the Ralph Lauren Car Collection was recently on exhibition at Les Arts Décoratifs. Among the major car collections in the world, that of iconic American fashion designer Ralph Lauren stands out more than any other as synonymous with excellence. With this collection of the most prestigious sports cars from the 1930s to present day, Ralph Lauren shows that the automobile is a major art form created by the industry’s biggest names: Bugatti, Alfa Romeo, Bentley, Mercedes-Benz, Jaguar, Porsche and of course, Ferrari, the high point of this unique collection.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution photographs, a photo-gallery and two videos of the collection, “The Art of the Automobile: Speed, Style and Beauty.”
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/08/31/the-art-of-the-automobile-speed-style-and-beauty/In 1970, Les Arts Décoratifs, Paris, presented a selection of competition... more
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“Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945” is a new exhibition of once-classified images of atomic destruction at Hiroshima presently on display at New York City’s International Center of Photography. The collection of photographs both repels and fascinates the viewer, with its powerfully ugly portraits of an unpeopled and obliterated city. The photographs were originally part of a governmental analysis of the atomic bomb’s effect on concrete, wood and steel, and this catalog of devastation was meant to be seen only by postwar architects and engineers tasked with erecting the “bombproof” cities of the future.
The Hiroshima photos have a strange and contorted history. In the mid-1990s, the owner of a diner in Watertown, Massachusetts, was walking his dog when he spotted a beat-up suitcase sitting in a pile of trash. It turned out that the photographs inside had once belonged to Robert L. Corsbie, an engineer and expert on the effects of the bomb. Just how those photos wound up in his possession remains unclear. Corsbie belonged to a cadre of ordnance experts, engineers, photographers and draftsmen who were sent by President Truman to analyze the nuclear devastation.
The Hiroshima photographs are fundamentally different from the more familiar World War II pictures of European cities, such as Cologne, where the stones of the cathedral rise from the debris, and blown-out buildings loom like hollow-eyed zombies. Those ruins have a perverse but palpable grandeur, a gothic desolation that is missing from the scenes of Japan’s ravaged emptiness. In hauntingly stark contrast to the images of European destruction, the Hiroshima photographs are eerily mute. There are no people, only twisted metal, blistered walls and miles of rubble. Except for a few skeletal structures poking out of flattened wreckage, the city simply vanished. Hiroshima didn’t look like a bombed city; it looked instead as though a monstrous steamroller had passed over it and just squashed it out of existence. The Japanese city centers, constructed mostly of wood, simply went up in smoke when bombed.
Wary of the conquered people’s anger and grief, the US government imposed strict censorship in September 1945, confiscating pictures and ordering that no image be printed which might, directly or by inference, disturb public tranquility. It was not until 1952 that “Life Magazine” published a handful of photographs taken in the first days after the attack. Even now, such images are rarely displayed. That is why this cache of photographs is so important. Once part of a classified archive, then buried in a basement, thrown away and resurrected, it counteracts the universal tendency to aestheticise violence. There is nothing awe-inspiring here, or even poignant, just plain devastating facts.
This piece includes a number of photographs from the exhibition, a photo-gallery, a documentary short film and the acclaimed Japanese animated film, “Grave of the Fireflies.”
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/the-hiroshima-photographs-ground-zero-1945/“Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945” is a new exhibition of once-classified... more
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Jerome Liebling, a pioneering socially conscious documentary photographer and teacher for more than half a century, died on July 27th in Northampton, Mass., at the age of 87. Mr. Leibling’s subtly powerful pictures influenced a generation of socially minded photographers and documentary filmmakers.
Along with a wave of pioneering photographers who included Walker Evans, Paul Strand, Berenice Abbott, Helen Levitt and Gordon Parks, Jerome Liebling helped define the look of 20th century documentary photography. Leibling took to the streets of New York in the 1940s to make art by turning his camera onto corners of urban life that had too often been ignored by many photographers before him. He captured the lives of ordinary people on the streets of New York, including in his childhood neighborhood of Brighton Beach, as well as around the world.
Most of Mr. Liebling’s life was spent teaching. He started a photography and film department at the University of Minnesota in 1949, and taught at Hampshire College from 1970 to 1990. The school’s photography building is named in his honor. A number of of Mr. Liebling’s students became professional photographers and filmmakers, receiving Academy Awards, Emmys and Peabody awards for their work.
Liebling received numerous awards and grants, including two Guggenheim Fellowships, a National Endowment for the Arts Photographic Survey Grant, and a fellowship from the Massachusetts Council on the Arts. His photographs are in the permanent collections of many museums, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Fogg Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution photographs, a photo-gallery and two documentary short films.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/08/19/jerome-liebling-a-documentary-photographer-whose-camera-captured-the-human-spirit/Jerome Liebling, a pioneering socially conscious documentary photographer and teacher... more
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Our blazing, red-hot summer is finally on the wane, and the clock is ticking down on some big summer events, including one last chance to catch the old Coney Island before the lazy, hazy days of summer are over. One by one, the venerable institutions of old Coney Island are vanishing: Ruby’s, the last of the boardwalk-facing bars, has served its final drink; Shoot the Freak, one of the most popular game booths, won’t reopen in the spring. And this week, demolition began on the old Shore Hotel. It’s all part of a development plan to replace the area’s old (and historic) buildings with retail stores and entertainment facilities. In addition to the Shore Hotel, destruction is imminent for a number of other structures, as local preservationists have run out of options in court.
Sitting on the outskirts of New York’s five boroughs, Coney Island’s world famous pleasure beach has been the summer destination for New Yorkers since its early heyday in the 1890s. Towards the end of the 1960s, one year after he first picked up a camera, Bruce Gilden began taking the subway train through Brooklyn to capture the sunbathers, the weekenders, the sideshow booths and the Cyclone roller-coaster. Coney Island’s reputation has steadily slipped since Gilden started to photograph there, and it’s now known as a place where the poor who cannot escape the summer city heat go for thrills. Regardless of this reputation, Gilden’s ability to capture Coney Island’s characters and eccentricities give the beach and its surrounding neighborhood a humorous view of daily life from the sixties through the late 1980s.
You won’t see any of the usual iconic images of Coney Island in Gilden’s collection of photographs: no parachute jumps, Cyclone roller coaster thrills, or mermaids on parade. What you will see is a view of Coney Island that is up close and personal. Very close-in-your-face personal, and mostly confined to the beach. Gilden’s black and white images of Coney Island cover a period of about 16 years. Most of them are of beach people, New York locals who are just out for a day in the sun. Old guys, some flabby middle-aged women, the kind of characters you’d like to photograph if you only had the nerve. There are a number of must-see photographs in this collection that provide a pleasant way to end our scorching-hot summer.
This piece includes a number of black-and-white photographs, a photo-gallery and a documentary short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/one-last-chance-to-catch-old-coney-islands-eccentric-characters/Our blazing, red-hot summer is finally on the wane, and the clock is ticking down on... more
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Amy Winehouse, the iconic British soul singer, was found dead on Saturday in her London home. She was 27. The English singer found international fame with her smoky, hip-hop take on retro-soul, but she soon became a fixture of tabloid newspapers as her problems with drugs and alcohol brought about a strikingly public career collapse.
Ms. Winehouse became one of the most acclaimed young singers of the 2000s, selling millions of albums, winning five Grammy Awards and kicking off the British trend of retro-soul and R&B that continues today. Ms. Winehouse had a public image that seemed almost defiantly self-destructive. In her songs, Winehouse sang alcohol-soaked regrets of failed romances, and for many listeners the lyrics to the song “Rehab,” which won her three of the five Grammy Awards she received in 2008, crystallized her public persona: “They tried to make me go to rehab,” she sang, “I said, No, no, no.”
Ms. Winehouse had not released an album since “Back to Black,” but recently she appeared to be trying to revive her career. However, last month she canceled a brief European comeback tour after a last-ever disastrous performance in Belgrade, during which she appeared too intoxicated to perform properly.
This piece includes color photographs, a photo-gallery and two music videos, “Rehab” and her last-ever 2011 performance of “Back to Black” in Belgrade.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/07/23/amy-winehouse-iconic-british-soul-singer-dies-at-27/Amy Winehouse, the iconic British soul singer, was found dead on Saturday in her... more
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“A Thousand Little Suns” is a series of landscape photographs by Swedish-Finnish artist Martina Lindqvist. Landscape photography, though often lovely, is rarely very exciting, but Lindqvist has produced a number of twilight landscapes of ethereal beauty. “A Thousand Little Suns” offers a contemplative look at the northern landscapes of Ostrobothnia in central Finland, which during the autumn and winter months should be shrouded by an impenetrable darkness. However, in this instance the landscapes find themselves lit by a thousand glowing lights.
The lights in these landscapes are neither natural nor intentional, but rather a by-product of a number of industrial sized greenhouses scattered around the area. The glowing lights smooth grey luminescent skies into superficial, dreamy backdrops that gently involve the viewer in landscapes of brooding pathetic fallacy and solitary introspection.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution color photographs and a photo-gallery.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/07/19/new-landscape-photography-a-thousand-little-suns/“A Thousand Little Suns” is a series of landscape photographs by... more
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In the photo-series “Texters,” street photographer Joseph Holmes captures amazing, wondrous images of texters in NYC, encouraging you to have a little peek. Have you ever texted on the street, in the park, at the beach or in a coffee shop? This collection of photographs shows people who look mesmerized as they pull out their phones and text, tweet and connect to something other than the world all around them. The pictures show a number of individuals who seem to be shockingly focused on whatever they’re texting: a young woman texting while walking in the rain, a businessman in a park and a women looking frozen in time as she gazes into her phone.
This piece includes a number of wonderful high-resolution color photographs, a photo-gallery and a very funny animated short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/07/12/a-photo-series-the-busily-diligent-texters/In the photo-series “Texters,” street photographer Joseph Holmes captures... more
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“Interlacing” is the first major exhibition of collected works by China’s renowned dissident artist Ai Weiwei, currently on display at Zurich’s Fotomuseum Winterthur. The collection consists of an extensive selection of photographs, videos and explanatory essays that present the interweaving artist as a network, company, activist, political voice, social container and agent provocateur.
Ai Weiwei is a generalist, conceptual, socially critical artist dedicated to creating friction with/and forming reality. As an architect, conceptual artist, sculptor, photographer, blogger, Twitterer, interview artist, and cultural critic, he is a sensitive observer of current topics and social problems: a great communicator and networker who brings life into art and art into life. Ai Weiwei deliberately confronts social conditions in China and in the world in ways that have captured an international audience.
In 2003, Ai Weiwei played a major role, together with the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, in the construction of the Olympic stadium, the so-called “Bird’s Nest.” Subsequently, he publicly repudiated the project and the whole Olympic buildup as a preposterous fraud to put on a “good face” for the international community. In 2007, 1001 Chinese visitors traveled, at his instigation, to “Documenta 12” (Fairytale) in Kassel, Germany. In 2010, the world marveled at his large, yet formally minimal carpet of millions of hand-painted porcelain sunflower seeds at the Tate Modern.
Chinese officials announced in May, 2011, that the authorities were investigating Ai Weiwei on suspicion of tax evasion, after police officers had taken him from the main Beijing airport on April 3rd as he prepared to board a flight to Hong Kong. A global outcry went out, blasting the Chinese government for what was deemed a politically motivated move, claiming that the tax inquiry was a pretext to silence one of the most vocal critics of the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese legal authorities finally released Ai Weiwei on June 22nd, after a three-month detention, apparently ending a prosecution that had become a focal point of criticism of China’s eroding human rights record. Nevertheless, the terms of his release may silence him for months or even years.
This piece includes a number of photographs, a photo-gallery and three documentary short films.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/ai-weiweis-interlacing-a-chinese-activists-photographs-and-videos/“Interlacing” is the first major exhibition of collected works by... more
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Cy Twombly (1928-2011), whose spare, delicate scratching and scribbling, odd marks, raw smudges, and gorgeous visceral color with intimations of myth, narrative and poetic engagement with antiquity left him often ignored by the movements of postwar American art, even as he eventually became one of the era’s most significant painters, died on Tuesday in Rome. He was 83.
His artistic career roguishly subverted Abstract Expressionism, dipped briefly into Minimalism, barely acknowledged Pop art, but anticipated some of the concerns of Conceptualism, Mr. Twombly was a polarizing figure in the art world almost from the beginning. His work has been described by one important art curator as “influential among artists, discomfiting to many critics and truculently difficult not just for a broad public, but for sophisticated initiates of postwar art as well.”
Twombly left New York City and moved permanently to southern Italy in 1957 and paid little heed to his many critics, who constantly questioned whether his work really deserved a place at the forefront of 20th century abstraction. The low point for Twombly probably came after a widely panned 1964 exhibition in New York, which one critic described as a blatant fiasco. However, he lived long enough to see his work receive new-found attention and a degree of critical favor he had never enjoyed before. By the 1990s, he had become highly sought after not only by European museums and collectors, who had appreciated his work early on, but also by those back in the United States who had not known what to make of him two decades before.
During the final decade of his life, Twombly surpassed his earlier body of work, making tremendous late abstract works telling tales of ancient armies, otherworldly invasions of burning suns and radiating chrysanthemums. His works from this later period invoked twelfth-century dynasties, exoduses, love, loss and longing. He had launched upon a creative journey to some artistic place where the deepest of feelings, experiences, expectations, dreams, and love become one.
This piece includes a number of colorful pictures, a gallery and two documentary short films.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/07/07/cy-twombly-scratching-and-scribbling-to-the-heights-of-abstract-expressionism/Cy Twombly (1928-2011), whose spare, delicate scratching and scribbling, odd marks,... more
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“Oakridge Road” is a series of paintings by Jessica Rohrer, which is currently on exhibition at New York City’s PPOW Gallery. The paintings are meticulous, stylized portraits of her home’s interiors and domestic commodities, which have the visual lure of advertising, but they’re not selling anything, merely asking you to look.
A highly organized closet filled with clothes, a collection of every brand of cleaning product you can imagine, a totally antiseptic kitchen, the cornucopia of processed foods in the refrigerator, the dining room and its empty furniture, views out windows of the perfect neighborhood: all this and much more Ms. Rohrer paints with an almost eerie objectivity. In this vacuum-sealed artificial paradise, utopia turns into dystopia, the American Dream becomes a consumerist nightmare.
This piece includes a number of colorful high-resolution pictures, as well as a gallery.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/07/04/a-home-full-of-art-a-consumerist-nightmare/“Oakridge Road” is a series of paintings by Jessica Rohrer, which is... more
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This is the Fourth of July Weekend, and while many people might be taking advantage of the long weekend to visit amusement parks all across our great nation, Six Flags New Orleans is still a wasteland of rubble. Six Flags New Orleans, formerly known as Jazzland when it first opened in 2000, is located in Eastern New Orleans, and the park was completely flooded and closed when Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005. Six years later, it remains closed, a desolate victim of both political fighting and the elements.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution color photographs, a photo-gallery and a wonderful documentary short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/07/03/the-sad-ghost-of-an-abandoned-new-orleans-amusement-park/This is the Fourth of July Weekend, and while many people might be taking advantage of... more
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“Tribute to René” is a two-minute animated short art film, a collaborative creation by Box of Toys Audio with flipEvil design studio. The composition is a tribute to the Belgian surrealist artist, René Magritte, which is a bespoke piano piece in and around the dream-like state of the visuals.
Magritte became well known for his paintings that challenged observers’ perceptions of reality and forced viewers to become more sensitive to their surroundings. His works constantly play with reality and illusion, displaying a juxtaposition of ordinary objects in an unusual context and giving new meanings to familiar things.
This piece includes colorful pictures, a photo-gallery and the short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/tribute-to-rene-playing-with-reality-and-illusion/“Tribute to René” is a two-minute animated short art film, a... more
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“Series of Portraits: A Century of Photographs” is an exhibtion of 20th century portrait photography, which is presently on display at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg. Portraiture is one of the traditional genres in art and was a driving force behind the invention of photography in the 19th century. Portrait photography continually redefines itself, between dissolution of the traditional concept of the subject in the masses, toward the pursuit of individuality and identity. The image of the human being is subject to constant change, which is also reflected in photography, sometimes with spectacular results.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution photographs and a photo-gallery.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/06/30/series-of-photographic-portraits-a-century-of-photographs/“Series of Portraits: A Century of Photographs” is an exhibtion of 20th... more
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“American Dreams” is a wonderful exhibition that provides a survey of the great American photographers of the 20th century. The exhibition consists of of photographs from arguably the world’s most important photographic museum, George Eastman House, and is currently being shown at Australia’s Bendigo Art Gallery.
The works highlight the pioneering role these American artists have had on the world stage in developing and shaping photography, and the impact these widely published images have had on the greater society. Their far-reaching images helped shape American culture, and had an impact on the fundamental role photography has in communications today. Even more than this, we can see through these artists the burgeoning love of photography that engaged a nation.
These images show us not only the development of photography, but also provide some of the most powerful social documentary photography of the last century. We see extraordinary moments captured in the lives of a wide range of Americans, works that distil the dramatic transformation that affected people during the 20th century: the affluence, degradation, loss, hope and change, both personally and throughout society.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution vintage photographs, a photo-gallery and a documentary short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/06/24/american-dreams-iconic-images-of-20th-century-life/“American Dreams” is a wonderful exhibition that provides a survey of the... more
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Shanghai-born photographer Shen Wei has developed an international reputation, with numerous awards and exhibitions to his credit. Shen says he was bought up “strictly and conservatively,” in Mainland China, but since relocating to New York City, his desire for self- expression has grown. His earlier collection of photographs, “Almost Naked,” was a series of portraits and occasional still-life images that explored how others have dealt with the emotionally complex issue of identity.
America primarily knows China as a far-away giant, a distant country of industrialism and gigantic cities. Shen Wei’s new series of photographs, “Chinese Sentiment,” provides us with new views and brings China closer, with more mystery and less smog. Shen commented on this collection, saying “The scale of the ultra-modern China is obviously quite pictorial and stunning. But China is much more than just skyscrapers and the Yangtze River. I am interested in seeking a poetic, intimate, and romantic China. Since 2008, I’ve traveled to numerous cities and villages all over China, with a goal of finding my authentic China.”
This piece includes a number of high-resolution color photographs, a photo-gallery and the documentary short film, “Almost Naked.”
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/chinese-sentiment-a-poetic-and-intimate-view-of-china/Shanghai-born photographer Shen Wei has developed an international reputation, with... more
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Hey, look who it is! It’s Arnold and he’s back, and with more energy! This time, he’s accompanied by a groovy disco-funk backdrop and teaches us the proper rhythm to his muscle-strengthening push-ups. Luke Million makes this track real fun. Get those hand-claps going!
This piece includes a number of high-resolution vintage photographs, a photo-gallery and a music video.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/arnold-gets-cheeky-pumping-iron-to-disco-funk-tunes/Hey, look who it is! It’s Arnold and he’s back, and with more energy! This... more
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Shanghai-born photographer Shen Wei has developed an international reputation, with numerous awards and exhibitions to his credit. Shen says he was bought up “strictly and conservatively,” in Mainland China, but since relocating to New York City, his desire for self- expression has grown. His collection of photographs, “Almost Naked,” is a series of portraits and occasional still-life images that explore how others have dealt with the emotionally complex issue of identity.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution color photographs, a photo-gallery and a documentary short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2007/12/11/photos-of-the-day-almost-naked/Shanghai-born photographer Shen Wei has developed an international reputation, with... more
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The 2011 Mermaid Parade took place on Saturday, June 18th in New York City’s Coney Island. The annual event first took place in 1983 and has been a very popular area attraction ever since. The Mermaid Parade draws a huge crowd of celebrators who don wild and outrageous costumes, with the parade’s naughty marchers wearing sea-themed outfits that often leave little to the imagination.
This piece includes a number of beautiful high-resolution color photographs, a photo-gallery and a documentary short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/06/19/those-crazy-coney-island-dayze-the-mermaid-parade/The 2011 Mermaid Parade took place on Saturday, June 18th in New York City’s... more
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“A Brooklyn Summer, 1974” is a beautiful collection of vintage photos of Brooklyn taken in the summer of 1974 by photographer Danny Lyon, and the vintage tone of these summertime photographs makes everything look so much hotter. Lyon spent two months snapping pictures of the daily life in the borough, exploring Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Fort Green, Park Slope and other neighborhoods. Lyon captured the photographs of inner-city life while on assignment for Documerica, a project of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that hired freelance photographers to capture images relating to environmental problems, EPA activities, and everyday life in the 1970s.
Born in 1942 in Brooklyn, Danny Lyon received a BA from the University of Chicago in 1973. In the 1960s and 1970s, Lyon made a name for himself covering life in Chicago’s impoverished Uptown Appalachian-migrant neighborhood and the Southern Civil Rights movement. Lyon went on to give the world three incredible works: “The Bikeriders,” in which he chronicled his travels as a member of the Chicago Outlaws Motorcycle Club, “The Destruction of Lower Manhattan,” documenting the large-scale demolition of our country’s greatest city back in 1967, and “Conversations with the Dead,” in which he photographed and wrote about Texas inmates in 6 different prisons.
Lyon’s work has been frequently exhibited and collected; he is the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and National Endowment for the Arts grants in both film and photography.
This piece include a number of vintage color photographs, a photo-gallery and a documentary short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/the-americans-a-brooklyn-summer-1974/“A Brooklyn Summer, 1974” is a beautiful collection of vintage photos of... more
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