tagged w/ Photo Gallery
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During the course of his artistic career, David LaChapelle was hired by Andy Warhol, fired by Madonna, photographed Pamela Anderson, Lady Gaga, and Hillary Clinton, and made a star of the transgender personality Amanda Lepore. He earned millions and spent much of that on his self-financed movie about an urban dance form created in the rough neighborhoods of South Central Los Angeles. When the film, “Rize,” failed to attract a large audience, the weary LaChapelle packed up his career and disappeared.
Now, many years later, LaChapelle is back in New York briefly, overseeing his one-man show at a Madison Avenue art gallery and a separate commissioned installation that is opening in the lobby of the Lever House on Park Avenue. With their erotic gloss, their sizzling aesthetics and their slick production values, the photographs at Michelman Fine Art are recognizably the work of a man who in his editorial work for “Vanity Fair,” “Interview,” “Rolling Stone” and others photographed David Duchovny dressed in Lycra bondage trousers, Kanye West as Black Jesus, a turbaned Elizabeth Taylor looking like a $5 fortune teller, Eminem naked but for a well-placed prop and other stars like Tupac Shakur (wearing soap bubbles), Angelina Jolie and Lady Gaga baring their souls for the camera, along with a good deal more.
At the Lever House, however, the artist has returned to techniques he employed when, at the very beginning of his career, long before he became the go-to video director for pop music divas, he used naïve, childlike forms like linked paper chains to make his work. In the space that in the past has presented exhibitions of works by artists such as Barbara Kruger and Damien Hirst, Mr. LaChapelle has hung the chains from walls and ceiling in looping festoons. At first glance, the stapled links only look like colorful decorations for a children’s party, but when viewed more closely they reveal images of naked bodies, as an allegory for human connection.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution color photographs, a photo-gallery and two music-videos with artwork by LaChapelle.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/05/29/david-lachapelle-the-fellini-of-photography-returns-to-fine-art/During the course of his artistic career, David LaChapelle was hired by Andy Warhol,... more
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“You Are Here: Architecture and Experience" is an exhibition of works by two contemporary artists at the Carnegie Museum of Art that examines the formative power of architecture, or how architectural environments influence our experiences and perceptions of the world. The exhibition brings together the photographs of German artist Candida Höfer and a video, photographs and etchings by French artist Cyprien Gaillard. Both artists express the formative power of architecture in ways that are different, but also complementary.
Candida Höfer’s lush color photographs of ornately palatial historical and contemporary interior spaces are usually devoid of humans, embodying a sense of peaceful quietude. Yet, they also reveal details that draw the viewer into considerations of what each place might mean. In Höfer’s photographs, the experience of each room becomes completely subjective: Is it stifling in its grandiosity, or perhaps enlightening in its lavish beauty? We see spaces as moments of history and definers of class, the anachronisms, vanities, and beauty of spaces; the humanity, in all its sins and glories, that can inhabit a built environment, without so much as a glimpse of any humans. Each space can help us decide our point of view, but Höfer seems to say that deciphering these spaces is a task ultimately left up to each of us.
Contrasting with Höfer, Cyprien Gaillard’s video “Desniansky Raion,” his photographs and meticulously detailed etchings all probe the human legacy of Modernist high-rise housing blocks. Constructed after World War II throughout the United States, Europe and the Eastern Bloc to provide decent housing, these buildings too often have become warehouses for the poor and incubators of crime and antisocial behaviors. While Gaillard’s video alternates between order and destructive violence, packing a powerful and direct emotional punch, Höfer’s photographs embody a kind of quietude that encourages slow, sustained exploration of meanings that build through the accumulation of detail. Nevertheless, both works are equally affecting and bring the viewer into the realm of architectural experience with compelling intensity. Höfer and Gaillard capture the constant vacillation between what we make of our architectural environments, and what they make of us.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution photographs, black-and-white etchings, a photo-gallery, a documentary short film and a music video.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/05/27/you-are-here-the-formative-power-of-architecture/“You Are Here: Architecture and Experience" is an exhibition of works by... more
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Arnold Schwarzenegger is a man whose a personality has always been driven to achieve international notoriety. Immediately after arriving in the United States, he curried the favors of anyone who could promote his ambitions, not infrequently extremely wealthy older men who were infatuated with his sturdy, muscular physique.
Another champion of his hunger for fame was Robert Mapplethorpe, the openly gay, lascivious photographer who was infamous, in part, for his body of porn/art photography. Mapplethorpe, enamored of Schwarzenegger, was quick to become one of the growing group of people who lionized and fawned over Arnold. And Schwarzenegger was quick to nourish those feelings in order to further his own career. The motivation for this posting is not simply a prurient one. Rather, it is to provide an illustration of one man’s calculated, seductive enshrinement of the worship of Flesh and Muscle.
This piece includes several high-resolution vintage photographs, a photo-gallery and the 1977 documentary, “Pumping Iron.”
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2005/12/30/arnold-schwarzenegger-baring-allalmost/?trashed=1Arnold Schwarzenegger is a man whose a personality has always been driven to achieve... more
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Although California is presently the only state with an official Harvey Milk Day, cities all across the country will be holding rallies and events today to honor the first openly gay man to be elected to public office and an icon of the gay-rights movement. Milk, who would have been 81 years-old, gave us his life 32 years ago, knowing that the first of any civil rights movement, who clearly and loudly proclaim their right to equality, most often meets a violent and sudden end. Harvey Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. He fought to end discrimination against gays and lesbians and built coalitions of gay-rights groups, labor unions and small-business owners. He was 48 when he was killed a year later by a former supervisor, Dan White.
“The Times of Harvey Milk,” a documentary film, won the 1984 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. The movie “Milk,” was released in 2008, directed by Gus Van Sant and starring Sean Penn as Milk and Josh Brolin as Dan White. “Milk” received two Academy Awards, for Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor. In August 2009, President Barack Obama posthumously awarded Harvey Milk the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his contribution to the gay rights movement stating, “He fought discrimination with visionary courage and conviction.”
This piece includes a number of high-resolution photographs, a photo-gallery and four videos, including the full version of the Academy Award-winning documentary “The Times of Harvey Milk.”
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/05/22/harvey-milk-day-2011-youve-got-to-give-them-hope/Although California is presently the only state with an official Harvey Milk Day,... more
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The French photographer Jeanloup Sieff (1933-2000) is a legend in fashion photography and one of the most prominent photographers of his generation. The Moderna Museet in Stockholm is presenting the first Nordic solo exhibition of Jeanloup Sieff’s work, which features a selection from Sieff’s photographic oeuvre.
Sieff began photography in the early 1950s as a contemporary of Helmut Newton and David Bailey, belonging to the generation succeeding Irving Penn. In the course of a long career, his photography spanned from fashion, advertising and portraits to reportage and landscapes. His images are often sensual and elegant, and in the 1960s he was much in demand as a fashion photographer, especially in New York City, where he lived for many years. Sieff was awarded several prizes, including the Prize Niepce, the Chevalier des Arts et Lettres in Paris in 1981 and the Grand Prix National de la Photographie in 1992.
Jeanloup Sieff had a huge popular appeal in France, the Unites States and elsewhere. His black-and-white photographs, always elegant and exquisitely printed, became his trademark style. Dancers and nudes were two recurring themes in his works. A trendy man about town all his life, early risers in Paris grew accustomed to seeing the long-haired, debonaire man driving a stylish vintage English sports car for his early morning breakfast in the St Germain district of Paris.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution black-and-white photographs, a photo-gallery and a documentary short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/05/20/the-photography-of-jeanloup-sieff-an-eternal-dandy/The French photographer Jeanloup Sieff (1933-2000) is a legend in fashion photography... more
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“Thank You for Smoking” is a wonderful series of color photographs that shows people hiding away to enjoy a smoke. But looking at these pictures, you might not even notice some of the smokers until the last second. The photographer who captured the images in this collection caught some very interesting stories of furtive smokers. But having to sneak their smokes in an atmosphere of such clandestine secrecy…really, have we come to that, guilt?
This piece includes a number of high-resolution color photographs, as well as a photo-gallery of additional color images.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/05/18/thank-you-for-smoking/“Thank You for Smoking” is a wonderful series of color photographs that... more
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Hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen put his iconic 1963 Andy Warhol silkscreen portrait of Elizabeth Taylor on the block at Phillips de Pury’s Manhattan auction house on May 12, 2011, and it sold for $26,962,500 Million.
“Liz #5” (1963) has been described as is a rare and exquisite example of the world renowned images of feminine grace that catapulted Warhol to prominence nearly 50 years ago. This glamorous portrait of the legendary actress, Elizabeth Taylor, embodies the most important themes of Warhol’s body of work, including his fascination with celebrity, real-life drama and the fleeting nature of beauty. One of the artist’s most instantly recognized images, “Liz #5” is said to be a testament to Warhol’s unique and unrivaled contribution to the visual arts. “Liz #5” was created at the height of the Taylor’s fame, which also coincided with the most significant and creative period of Warhol’s career. The epitome of old-world Hollywood style and glamor, Elizabeth Taylor, who died on March 23rd, was one of Warhol’s most famous inspirations, along with Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy.
Taylor captured Warhol’s attention early on with her life’s high-profile romances and tragedy, a vibrancy and pathos that so attracted Warhol to her and ensured she was a formidable influence on his work throughout his career. It has been said that the power of her attraction has never been as evident as it is in this Warhol painting, which is a dazzling tribute to Elizabeth Taylor. This striking portrait is a testament to the legend and beauty of one of the world’s most beloved and iconic actresses, both capturing her very essence and transcending the limits of time.
Warhol’s 1962 Elizabeth Taylor work, “Men in Her Life,” went for $63.3 Million, the highest auction price paid in 2010 for a contemporary artwork and the second-highest auction price ever paid for a Warhol painting, behind the $71.7 Million paid in 2007 for his “1963 Green Car Crash, Green Burning Car I.” In 2009, Andy Warhol’s 1962 silk-screen painting “200 One Dollar Bills” sold for $43.8 Million at Sotheby’s, more than four times its estimated selling price. Unfortunately, Warhol wasn’t around to enjoy the fabulous joke of his pictures of money grabbing so much money. The seven-and-a-half-foot-wide canvas, one of Warhol’s first silk-screen paintings, looks like just what you’d think: 200 one-dollar bills. Yes, if you just take a wide look at today’s contemporary art world, that confection of bucks, puff and street smarts, you realize anew that Andy Warhol was the big daddy of it all!!
This piece includes a number of high-resolution color photographs, a photo-gallery and three documentary short films.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/05/12/warhol’s-iconic-liz-taylor-portrait-gets-26962500-million-at-auction/Hedge fund billionaire Steve Cohen put his iconic 1963 Andy Warhol silkscreen portrait... more
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“Staging Action: Performance in Photography Since 1960” presents a wide range of images focusing on performance art that were expressly made for the artist’s camera, which was recently on exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Performance art is usually experienced live, but what documents it and ensures its enduring life is, above all, photography. Yet photography plays a constitutive role, not merely a documentary one, when the performance is staged expressly for the camera (often in the absence of an audience), and the images that result are recordings of an event but also autonomous works of art. The pictures in this exhibition exemplify the complex and varied uses artists have devised for photography in the field of performance art since the 1960s.
Many artists have experimented with the camera to test the physical and psychological limits of the body. Other artists have enlisted the camera as an accomplice in experiments with identity, suggesting the plasticity or mutability of identity itself. They have engaged the production of the self as positional rather than fixed and often played with shifting ideas of gender and/or sexual identity. The exhibition also includes both off-the-cuff and staged performative gestures of political dissent, as well as explorations of the dualities of consumerism and dispossession.
“Staging Action” demonstrates the complex ways in which photography, confronting us with its ability to both freeze and extend a moment in time, pushes against the grain of mere documentation to create performance art as a conceptual exercise that can be appreciated in the absence of a performing body. Often the technology of the camera is able to open up new space for performance, isolating exhibitionist, arresting, spectacular and just plain wacky moments. For every strenuous performance in this collection that challenges physical and psychological limits, there’s also a very playful one.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution vintage photographs, an engrossing photo-gallery and a documentary short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/05/07/performance-in-photography-since-1960-an-audience-of-one/“Staging Action: Performance in Photography Since 1960” presents a wide... more
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In August 1953, renowned American photographer Dorothea Lange traveled to southern Utah where she met up with her long-time friend Ansel Adams. The two photographers spent three weeks photographing the landscape and people of Toquerville, Gunlock and St. George. Lange’s enthusiasm for her subject yielded hundreds of photographs. Thirty-five of those photographs were published as “Three Mormon Towns” in the September 6, 1954 issue of Life Magazine.
Dorothea Lange’s “Three Mormon Towns” was recently displayed in exhibition at the Brigham Young University Museum of Art. “Three Mormon Towns” represents a bridge between Lange’s famous Depression Era photographs and her later detailed photographic essays of the 1950s. Known for her candid and sympathetic depiction of people, “Three Mormon Towns” presents a study of contrasts: of old and new, of quiet villages and a growing city, of deep roots and transient highways. In this series of photographs, Lange memorialized the dignity and simplicity of agrarian life in light of post-war urbanization.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution vintage black-and-white photographs, a slide show and a documentary short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/05/03/dorothea-lange-three-mormon-towns/In August 1953, renowned American photographer Dorothea Lange traveled to southern... more
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The most anticipated wedding of the year has come and gone. Prince William and Kate Middleton are officially a married couple. In a beautiful ceremony in Westminster Abbey among world leaders and close friends, the couple exchanged vows. After the ceremony, the couple made their way to Buckingham Palace where they shared the much-anticipated kiss. Following a ceremony hosted by the Queen in Buckingham Palace, the couple drove off in an Aston Martin with Prince William in the driver’s seat. Friday’s Royal Wedding may not have ushered in a new dawn for the royal family, but it certainly proved that the British still know how to combine pageantry, solemnity and romance better than anyone else in the world.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution color photographs, a photo-gallery and three videos, including “The Royal Wedding in 60 Seconds.”
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/05/01/the-royal-wedding-william-and-kate/The most anticipated wedding of the year has come and gone. Prince William and Kate... more
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Aside from its rain and coffee, Seattle, Washington is known for many things subversive, from Grunge music to the activist driven WTO riots. This region of America raised the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Bruce Lee. Today, there is a culture here that is only represented anonymously in the reclaimed public spaces of the city. Images dot the urban landscape in the typical street mediums that are used across the globe; spray paint, stickers, paste-ups, stencils, wheatpasting, posters, video projection, art intervention, guerrilla art, flash mobbing, installations, post-graffiti, mosaic tiling, murals, wood-blocking, LED art, reverse-graffiti and yard bombing.
You will see that these are not commercial enterprises or vandalism graffiti, but individual creative statements... something we can all relate to. Street art as a medium has been popularized internationally by the likes of Shepard Fairey, Banksy, D*Face, Paul Insect, Swoon, Twist, Neck face, Faile, Space Invader and WK Interact. It can take on many purposes and sometimes involves activism, phenomenology, repetition, attention capture, culture jamming, direct action, guerrilla messaging, propaganda, subvertising, decoration and territory claiming.
The following is a small window into this temporary world that's constantly being revised in a flux of new symbols. It's a snapshot of work on the Seattle streets over about a 3 year period, a visual capsule in time, not a comprehensive representation of Seattle street art and the people involved over the years. Some of the work only existed for a day before it was written over by other artists or removed by the city... a reminder that nothing is permanent, and control is an illusion in the chaos of a city. Enjoy.
http://seattlestreetart.com/Aside from its rain and coffee, Seattle, Washington is known for many things... more
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“Once a World’s Fair” is a collection of photographs by Jade Doskow; the series includes architectural images taken at World’s Fair sites all over the world, from both the 19th and 20th centuries. Doskow has been tracking down each site, one by one, to see how the once-grand spectacle sites exist today. She was interested in finding out about what happened to the World’s Fair as a concept, as well as in seeing how the old sites and structures are being used presently in their communities.
Doskow found that there has been considerable arbitrariness about how the sites and structures that remain from these large events currently exist in time. Often, the hosting city has used the fair as a purpose to turn an unused part of the city into a public park. Typically, it appeared that little foresight had been given to how the city could possibly afford to maintain these large and often strangely engineered buildings over time. In addition, she found that while the World’s Fair structures were meant to reference “the future,” in the actual future many of them appear poorly maintained, very outdated and quite odd.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution color photographs, a slide show and three documentary short films from other sources.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/04/14/once-a-worlds-fair-the-once-grand-spectacle-sites-today/“Once a World’s Fair” is a collection of photographs by Jade Doskow;... more
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“Three Giants of 20th-Century American Photography” is an exhibition that was presented recently at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. The exhibition featured Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, and Paul Strand, whose works are among the Metropolitan’s greatest photographic treasures.
Alfred Stieglitz was a photographer of supreme accomplishment, as well as a forceful and influential advocate for photography and modern art. Selections presented here from the exhibition include portraits, city views and numerous images from his composite portrait of Georgia O’Keeffe.
Stieglitz’s protégé and collaborator Edward Steichen was the most talented exemplar of Photo-Secessionist ideas, with works such as his three large variant prints of The Flatiron and his moonlit photographs purposely rivaling the scale, color and individuality of painting. Paul Strand’s photographs from 1915–1917 treated three principal themes: movement in the city, abstractions, and street portraits. Strands work pioneered a shift from the soft-focus Pictorialist aesthetic to the straight approach and graphic power of the emerging modernism.
This piece includes a number of vintage photographs, a slide show and three documentary short films.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/three-giants-of-20th-century-american-photography-stieglitz-steichen-and-strand/“Three Giants of 20th-Century American Photography” is an exhibition that... more
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“I came flying over in my P40 Warhawk, on fire, and saw a flat field below and I crash-landed in it. And when I walked into town, there was nobody there.” So begins Mark Hogancamp’s story of Marwencol, the small-scale fictional Belgian town and oasis of peace in the midst of the Second World War that he built in his yard.
On April 8, 2000, Mark Hogancamp was attacked outside a bar in Kingston, New York, by five men who beat him literally to death. Revived by paramedics, Mark had suffered brain damage and severe physical. After spending nine days in a coma and 40 days in the hospital, Mark was discharged with his memory wiped nearly clean of the details of his life, his early marriage, girlfriends, family, Navy service, thundering alcoholism, homelessness and jail time. He had to relearn how to eat, walk and think at the age of 38.
Unable to afford therapy, Mark decided to create his own. In the yard beside his trailer home near Kingston, he built Marwencol, a 1/6th scale World War II-era town that he populated with dolls representing his friends, family, and even his attackers. Made from scraps of plywood and peopled with a tribe of Barbies and World War II action figures, Marwencol was named after himself and Wendy and Colleen, two women on whom he had crushes. Narratives surrounding a downed American fighter pilot rescued by Marwencol’s all-female population began to unfold against a backdrop that was nominally a World War II setting, in Belgium. The themes, however, were Mr. Hogancamp’s own: the brutality of men, the safe haven of a town of women, the twin demons of rage and fear. Mr. Hogancamp captured his stories with thousands of photographs, shooting on an old Pentax with a broken light meter. The noirish images, complete with blood flecks in the snow, are riveting and emotional.
Mark started documenting his miniature dramas with his camera. Through Mark’s lens, these were no longer dolls. They became living, breathing characters in an epic WWII story full of violence, jealousy, longing, and revenge. And he (or rather his alter ego, Captain Hogancamp) was the hero.
Hogancamp’s work has been shown at Esopus Space in New York and is the subject of a documentary by Jeff Malmberg, which explores the way that Hogancamp’s fantasy world has changed and affected him.
This piece includes a number of color photographs, a slide show and a documentary short film.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/marwencol-a-tiny-fantasy-world-a-place-to-heal/“I came flying over in my P40 Warhawk, on fire, and saw a flat field below and I... more
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The 1910s was a dynamic and tumultuous decade that ushered in the modern era. “Our Future Is In The Air” is an eclectic centennial exhibition devoted to photography of the 1910s. The exhibition provides a fascinating look at the birth of modern life through photographs by some 30 artists, who include: Eugène Atget, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Eugène Druet, Lewis Hine, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Adolph de Meyer, Christian Schad, Morton Schamberg, Charles Sheeler, and Stanislaw Witkiewicz, among others.
As cameras became smaller, faster, and easier to operate, amateur photographers such as the child prodigy Jacques-Henri Lartigue pushed the medium in directions that trained photographers of the time shied away from. Since Lartigue was recognized much later as a key figure in photography, prints such as the ones showing speeding motorcar are exceedingly rare. Lartigue made one of his most memorable photographs, Le Grand Prix A.C.F. (1913), by swinging his camera in the same direction as the car, as it sped by. The camera also afforded access to the previously invisible, such as the trajectory created by simple changes in body position, shown in the motion studies by Futurist artist Anton Giulio Bragaglia.
At the same time, photography became an agent of democratic communication, and documentary photographers used its growing influence to expose degrading conditions of workers, the injustice of child labor, and the devastation of war. Beginning in 1908, Lewis Hine made 5,000 photographs of children working in mills, sweatshops, factories, and street trades.
During World War I, photography was utilized to document the mass casualties of mechanized warfare. The exhibition presents an evocative 1918 photograph of Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks entertaining a huge crowd at a war bonds rally on Wall Street.
The presentation is accompanied by video of Louis Feuillade’s Les Vampires, a 1915 serial about a brazen band of criminals, which was shot on the streets of Paris (silent film with music track).
This piece includes a number of vintage photographs, a slide show and Louis Feuillade’s 1915 film, “Les Vampires”
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/04/05/our-future-is-in-the-air-an-eclectic-centennial-exhibition-of-1910s-photography/The 1910s was a dynamic and tumultuous decade that ushered in the modern era.... more
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Norman Rockwell (1894–1978) became known as one of the most famous illustrators of his generation through his narrative paintings done in a readily recognizable naturalistic style, which appeared in national magazines reaching millions of readers. Born in 1894 on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, he left high school to study at the National Academy of Design and later the Art Students League of New York. By the age of eighteen he was already a published artist specializing in children’s illustration and had become a regular contributor to magazines such as “Boys’ Life,” the Boy Scouts of America monthly magazine, where he was soon named art director. In 1916 he painted his first cover for “The Saturday Evening Post,” beginning a forty-seven-year relationship that resulted in 323 covers and was the centerpiece of his career.
To create many of his iconic, quintessentially American paintings, most of which served as magazine covers, Norman Rockwell worked from carefully staged reference photographs that are now on view for the first time, alongside his paintings in “Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera.” The exhibition, which will be on view at the Brooklyn Museum from November 19, 2010, through April 10, 2011.
In his early career, Rockwell saw photographs as “a dishonorable crutch for lazy draftsmen,” but once he surrendered to the camera’s charms, photography transformed his art. Beginning in the late 1930s, Rockwell adopted photography as a tool to bring his illustration ideas to life in studio sessions. Rockwell relied on others to operate the camera; he focussed on posing his models. He created numerous photographs for each new subject, sometimes capturing complete compositions and, at other times, combining separate pictures of individual elements. Over the forty years that he used photographs as his guide, he worked with many skilled photographers, particularly Gene Pelham, Bill Scovill, and Louis Lamone.
This piece includes a number of photographs and color illustrations, a slide show and a documentary short film on Norman Rockwell's art.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/04/01/norman-rockwell-behind-the-camera/Norman Rockwell (1894–1978) became known as one of the most famous illustrators... more
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The iconic 1963 Andy Warhol silkscreen portrait of legendary actress Elizabeth Taylor will be auctioned on May 12, 2011, and is expected to sell for $20 Million to $30 Million. “Liz #5” was created at the height of the Taylor’s fame, which also coincided with the most significant and creative period of Warhol’s career. The glamorous portrait embodies the most important themes of Warhol’s body of work, which include celebrity, wealth, scandal, sex, death and Hollywood.
Elizabeth Taylor, the queen of American motion picture stardom, who enthralled generations of moviegoers with her stunning beauty and whose name was synonymous with Hollywood glamour, died on Wednesday in Los Angeles at the age of 79.
During a theatrical career that spanned six decades and more than 50 films, the legendary beauty won two Academy Awards as best actress, for her performances as a call girl in “BUtterfield 8” (1960) and as the acid-tongued Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (1966). Long after she faded from the motion picture screen, Taylor remained a mesmerizing figure. She was a child star who bloomed gracefully into an ingenue; a femme fatale both on the screen and in real life; a shrewd entrepreneur of high-priced perfume; and a pioneering activist in the fight against AIDS.
Taylor had many gay friends and, as the AIDS epidemic mushroomed, some of them were dying. In 1985, she became the most prominent celebrity to back what was then a most unfashionable cause. She agreed to chair the first major AIDS benefit, a fundraising dinner for the nonprofit AIDS Project Los Angeles. Taylor began calling her A-list friends to enlist their support, but many of Hollywood’s biggest stars turned her down. Undaunted, Taylor redoubled her efforts, aided along the way by the stunning announcement that Rock Hudson, the handsome matinee idol and her co-star in “Giant,” had the dreaded disease. She stood by Hudson, just as years later she would stand by pop-idol Michael Jackson during the latter’s struggle to defend himself against child abuse allegations.
Taylor went on to co-found the first national organization devoted to backing AIDS research, the American Foundation for AIDS Research, or AmFAR. In 1991, she formed the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, which directly supports AIDS education and patient care. Taylor’s AIDS work brought her the Legion of Honor in 1987, France’s highest civilian award, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ awarded her The Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1993. In 2000, Queen Elizabeth made her a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire, an honor on the level of knighthood. Through her various efforts she would eventually raise more than $270 Million for AIDS research, prevention and care.
This piece includes a number of high-resolution vintage photographs, a slide show and three documentary short films.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/warhols-iconic-liz-taylor-portrait-could-draw-30m-at-may-auction/The iconic 1963 Andy Warhol silkscreen portrait of legendary actress Elizabeth Taylor... more
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“The Taxi Lights of Tokyo” is a wonderful collection of color photographs by New York City street photographer Joseph O. Holmes. It’s an incredible series of images, which captures the spirit of a city that glitters and shines much like Times Square. The photographs reflect a nighttime urban mood that seems always the same, with scenes that are enhanced by the colorful out-of-focus background of other lighted signs.
This piece presents a number of high-resolution color photographs, a slide show and three documentary short films.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/03/21/photos-of-the-day-the-taxi-lights-of-tokyo/“The Taxi Lights of Tokyo” is a wonderful collection of color photographs... more
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“Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography” is an exhibition of photographs currently on view at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition presents a selection of outstanding photographs by women artists, charting the medium’s history from the dawn of the modern period to the present time. For much of photography’s 170-year history, women have expanded its roles by experimenting with every aspect of the medium. Including over two hundred works, this exhibition features celebrated masterworks and new acquisitions by such figures as Diane Arbus, Berenice Abbott, Claude Cahun, Imogen Cunningham, Rineke Dijkstra, Florence Henri, Roni Horn, Nan Goldin, Helen Levitt, Lisette Model, Lucia Moholy, Tina Modotti, Cindy Sherman, Kiki Smith, and Carrie Mae Weems, among many others.
This piece presents a number of high-resolution color and black-and-white photographs, and a photo-gallery.
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2011/03/20/pictures-by-women-a-celebration-of-great-women-photographers/“Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography” is an exhibition of... more
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Hungry people forage in the snow for scraps of food and firewood, 450,000 desperate people squat in makeshift refugee sheltersHungry people forage in the snow for scraps of food and firewood, 450,000 desperate... more
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