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“Picture Gallery of the Soul” Exhibit at the Katherine Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota.

Picture Galley of the Soul Exhibition

A Picture Gallery of the Soul, is a group exhibition of over 100 Black American artists whose practice incorporates the photographic medium. Sampling a range of photographic expressions from traditional photography to mixed media and conceptual art and spanning a timeframe that includes the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, the exhibition honors, celebrates, investigates, and interprets Black history, culture, and politics in the United States.

Curatorial Team
Herman J. Milligan, Jr. and Howard Oransky started working on this exhibit in 2016. We asked Howard Oransky, the Director of the Katherine E. Nash Gallery,  if he would share the background story of the exhibit and some of the special challenges they faced.  His answers are below.
Herman J. Milligan Jr.
Herman J. Milligan Jr.
Howard Oransky
Howard Oransky

Background

In 2016 I contacted my colleague Herman J. Milligan, Jr. and invited him to join the project with me as co-curator.  Herman is a collector and curator of photography, with a special interest in Black photographers. He is President of the Givens Foundation for African American Literature. In addition to his work co-curating the exhibition and organizing the related events, Herman also curated a Soundscape comprised of over 100 musical selections, each one chosen in relationship to a specific image in the exhibition catalogue. It is a massive undertaking. You can listen to the Soundscape on the headphones in the center of the gallery, and we published the Soundscape playlist as part of the gallery guide, which is free and available to the gallery visitors.

How did the idea for the exhibit start?

In January 2014 I received an email from Jim Gubernick, who is an artist and the Facilities Manager at the Regis Center for Art at the University of Minnesota. The Regis Center for Art is home to the Department of Art and the Katherine E. Nash Gallery. Jim suggested that we should present an exhibition of the work of Louis Draper, who taught photography at Mercer Community College in New Jersey where Jim was a student in the 1980s. I had never heard of Louis Draper. At the time I was co-curating an exhibition of Ana Mendieta’s films with Lynn Lukkas. On one of my trips to New York for that project, I saw an exhibition of Draper’s work at the Steven Kasher Gallery. It was amazing. I asked the gallery director if she would loan some work by Draper for a group exhibition of Black American photographers at the University of Minnesota and she agreed. I then began the checklist for the exhibition with one name: Louis Draper.

From that point forward my work on the exhibition became a wonderful process of learning about Black American photographers. When I was on staff at Walker Art Center, I helped the great curator Kellie Jones with her 1995 Dawoud Bey Portraits touring exhibition. I knew about some of the more famous Black photographers like Bey, Gordon Parks, Lorna Simpson, James Van Der Zee, Carrie Mae Weems, and so on. But my knowledge was superficial, and I was totally ignorant of the long history of Black American photographers going back to the inception of photography. I had no idea that Frederick Douglass was the most photographed American of the 19th century. He gave four lectures on photography during the Civil War. I brought those lectures with me on the plane to Sweden when we installed the Ana Mendieta films exhibition at the Bildmuseet in 2017 and I read and reread them on the plane. The title of our exhibition comes from his Lecture on Pictures delivered in Boston in 1861.

Going back to Louis Draper for a moment, I learned that he was instrumental in the founding of the Kamoinge Workshop in New York in 1963. The Kamoinge Workshop was a collective of great Black American photographers, who also later initiated the Black Photographers Annual in 1973. Our exhibition includes work by some of the original Workshop members, including Anthony Barboza, Adger Cowans, Louis Draper, Al Fennar, Herb Robinson, Ming Smith, and Shawn Walker, as well as some other artists who joined the organization later including Salimah Ali, Lola Flash, Russell Frederick, and John Pinderhughes. We also have the first issue of the Black Photographers Annual in the exhibition. The great curator Sarah Eckhardt organized the 2020 touring exhibition Working Together: Louis Draper and the Kamoinge Workshop and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has all four issues of the Black Photographers Annual digitized and accessible on their website.

 

 

 

How did the pandemic affect the mounting of the exhibit?

Like many things in life, there was both a positive effect and a negative effect. On the negative side, we had to postpone the exhibition twice, from 2020 to 2021 and from 2021 to 2022. This was disruptive and made it difficult to proceed in an orderly fashion with the fundraising, the loans of artworks, and so on. However, on the positive side it gave me more time to work on the research side of the project which added to the depth and breadth of the curation, and it also provided more time for me to raise the money needed to publish the catalogue and finally negotiate a publication agreement with University of California Press.

 

 

 

Can you explain the process the university goes through to assemble the photos that will ultimately be in the exhibit?

It is a long and winding road! Herman and I would do our research, meet, review and combine our lists of artists, then go back and try and arrange the loans. We borrowed artworks directly from the artists, from museums, galleries, library, and archival collections. Some artists sent us prints which we framed. Some artists sent us digital files which we printed in the Department of Art, then framed. Galleries and museums typically sent the artworks to us already framed, but not always. There are 184 works in the exhibition by 111 artists and for each one of those artists there is a story about how we were able to include their work in the exhibition and catalogue. The owner of the artwork may or may not also be the owner of the copyright, so obtaining copyright holder permissions to reproduce the artworks in the catalogue is a whole other requirement that proceeds alongside the curation. Organizing an exhibition, the catalogue, and the related events is a long, laborious, detail-driven process. The only way to get through it is if you love the artworks. For Herman and me, it was a labor of love, from the very beginning to the very end.

It’s also important to mention that we are not working in a vacuum. Just as artists try to move their individual vision forward while learning from the artists who preceded them, as curators we are adding our brick to a road that came before us. Earlier I mentioned Kellie Jones and Sarah Eckhardt. I would also like to acknowledge the foundational contributions made to the field by Deborah Willis. She is University Professor and Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. I first learned about her work as a photographer and in 2016 I invited her to participate in the exhibition. Then, I began to learn about her scholarship, which is immense. Over the last 40 years she has published over 20 books and articles and curated numerous exhibitions on the history of Black American photography. A Picture Gallery of the Soul rests on the edifice of her monumental scholarship. Our exhibition includes her 2020 photographic installation Women’s work never praised, never done that honors Black women’s domestic labor and their political labor to secure and defend the right to vote. Our exhibition catalogue includes an essay she wrote. And on September 15 she presented a dialogic response to our exhibition in an online program.

 

 

 

It takes a village to produce a project of this ambition. Tells us about that.

It most certainly does, and I am deeply grateful for the help we have received over the years of preparation. A team of undergraduate and graduate students in the Department of Art helped with research, printing, framing and installation. Most recently and most intensively, Dez Bilges and Eleanore McKenzie Stevenson worked all summer installing the exhibition. They were led in this effort by our Assistant Curator Teréz Iacovino, who assisted with every aspect of the project and produced the playback system for the Soundscape in the gallery. We had funding from several sources. We are always grateful to our funders.  You can see the list of individuals,  foundations, and businesses  who helped support the exhibition and book in the acknowledgments pages of the catalogue and on our website.

Left to right: Robin Hickman-Winfield, Great-niece of Gordon Parks, Adger Cowans, Prof. Cheryl Finley at the program and opening reception for the exhibit.

 

 

 Can you talk about the exhibition catalog?

The Katherine E. Nash Gallery co-published the exhibition catalog with the University of California Press. A Picture Gallery of the Soul includes an image, caption, artist statement and artist biography for each of the 100+ artists in the exhibition, as well as essays by Cheryl Finley, Crystal Am Nelson, Seph Rodney, Deborah Willis and the co-curators. The book can be ordered directly from UC Press or from the University of Minnesota Bookstore. Within the first week of its release our catalogue was ranked as the #1 New Release in Art History on Amazon.

 

 

A Picture Gallery of the Soul
September 13 – December 10, 2022
Katherine Nash Gallery
University of Minnesota

 




Behind-the-scenes look at “André Kertész: Postcards from Paris”

IMG_7161 Planning and mounting an exhibition is always difficult. This one was made even more difficult because most of the work was done during the pandemic when the museum staff at the Art Institute of Chicago was working remotely or spending limited time at the museum.

 

We asked Elizabeth Siegel, the curator of the show if she would share the background story of the exhibit and some of the special challenges they faced.  Her answers are below. 1. An exhibit of this size normally takes how long? An exhibition like this usually takes several years. Each layer of complexity-research, travel, many to international lenders, planning for a tour, or publishing a catalogue-adds time to the project. But that doesn’t mean we are working on a single project for the entire time. I typically juggle different projects at different stages of completion. Things definitely heat up in the final stretch! 2. Was this exhibit planned before the pandemic started? Oh, yes. (See the answer to question #1 about how long a show like this takes!) The travel and bulk of the research was completed before the world shut down, but then we had the added complexity of doing much of the collaborative work remotely. 3. Did the funding come from one or multiple sources i.e. individual donors, foundations, grants, etc,

We had funding from several sources. We are always grateful to our funders, who help turn our ambitions into reality, and we always thank them wherever we can. You can see the list of individuals and foundations who helped support the exhibition and book in the acknowledgments pages of the catalogue, the exhibition credits on the title wall of the show, and on our website.

 

4. I know you used photos from the AIC collection and you were loaned additional photos from collectors, galleries, and museums in the United States, Canada, and Germany.  Can you explain the process the AIC goes through to assemble the photos that will ultimately be in the exhibit? Well, one thing that was definitely reinforced for me during the pandemic was the need to see photographs in person! One of my main arguments in this exhibition is that photographs are objects, not just images, and so I needed to go see each one to assess the quality of the print. (Fortunately, Kertész was a very good and consistent printer, so there weren’t many surprises.) And I was also trying to show a range of works he produced during this period (known and unknown), as well as make sure that really key photographs-such as Satiric Dancer, Chez Mondrian, and Fork-could be included in the show. The process is a bit of detective work, combing through old auction catalogues, relying on the terrific memories of dealers and colleagues, visiting museums, locating collectors. 5. Each lender was sent a complete frame package (frame, strainer, matboard, acrylic and backing board). They then framed their photos and shipped them back to the AIC. This, obviously, takes extra work and more time.  What is the reason you didn’t have them send you the photo unframed and had the framing done at the museum? As I mentioned, I wanted to make sure visitors understood these photographs as complete objects, not just images. That meant, to me, including all the blank space of the carte postale, which I believe Kertész included as a kind of built-in frame for the image. The way that the objects are framed is a crucial part of this argument: each photograph is floated in an 8-ply mat, which emphasizes the material qualities of the whole print. We also wanted a uniformity of appearance among the many lenders’ works, and so we devised a framing profile that just looks fantastic. (Thank you, Metropolitan Picture Framing!). Once we figured out how we wanted everything to look, we had to consider logistics of shipping (as well as the object’s return) and the safety of the art. Working with our registrar, preparator, and conservator, we decided it was best to ship the frames to each lender in advance and have the whole package sent back to us. ketertz frame 6. Working with multiple staffs and departments is always challenging. Doing this during a pandemic with reduced museum hours and many of the staff working remotely takes a Herculean effort. Can you discuss some of the issues that each had to address i.e.  curatorial,  marketing and communication , exhibition design,  installation, funding, public programming , interactive education, preparators, etc. It was quite an experience! To begin with, it helps to have a really top-notch team, and every single person working on the exhibition demonstrated creativity, resourcefulness, and personal pride in the project. One example I can speak to is the exhibition design process. Our designer, Samantha Grassi, worked with me over Zoom to iterate several designs (she is a whiz with changing things in the software on the fly). What we ended up with was a design that really speaks to the blank and negative spaces of the paper and the individuality of the photographic object, all in a beautiful setting for viewing. We had one bang-up, four-hour design session in which we laid out every single object in the exhibition. After that, there were small tweaks but we basically got it. If only I could be that productive in other areas of my life! IMG_7141

André Kertész

Photographer André Kertész (American, born Hungary, 1894-1985) arrived in Paris in the fall of 1925 with little more than a camera and some savings.

By the end of 1928, he was contributing regularly to magazines and exhibiting his work internationally alongside well-known artists like Man Ray and Berenice Abbott. The three years between his arrival in Paris and his emergence as a major figure in modern art photography marked a period of dedicated experimentation and exploration for Kertész. During this time he carved out a photographic practice that allowed him to move between the realms of amateur and professional, photojournalist and avant-garde artist, diarist and documentarian.

For those three years only, Kertész produced most of his prints on carte postale, or postcard, paper. Although his choice may have initially been born of economy and convenience, he turned this popular format toward artistic ends, rigorously composing new images in the darkroom and making a new kind of photographic object. The small scale of the cards also allowed them to circulate in a way befitting an immigrant artist-shared with a widening circle of international friends at the café table or sent in an envelope to faraway family.

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André Kertész. Satiric Dancer, 1927. Family Holdings of Nicholas and Susan Pritzker. © Estate of André Kertész 2021

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André Kertész. Mondrian’s Pipe and Glasses, 1926. Family Holdings of Nicholas and Susan Pritzker. © Estate of André Kertész 2021.

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André Kertész. Hilda Daus, 1927. Private collection, courtesy Corkin Gallery, Toronto. © Estate of André Kertész 2021.

André Kertész: Postcards from Paris

Oct 2, 2021 – Jan 17, 2022

Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, IL




Brian Dailey WORDS: A Global Conversation at Baahng & Co in New York City

WORDS is the artist’s investigation into the impact of globalization and its effect on key human structures of language, society, culture, and environment. In each country, Dailey set up his camera with green-screen backdrop and invited random individuals.  Participants were asked 13 words in their native languages: peace, war, love, environment, freedom, religion, democracy, government, happiness, socialism, capitalism, future, and United States.  Each person responded—in a single word—with a first impression and selected a background flag reflecting his or her societal allegiance.  WORDS MULTIMEDIA is a time-based art and engages the viewers in present day issues while invoking a communal sense among global citizens.  In WORDS on WORDS, distinct single-word responses are layered in an immeasurable array of colors enhanced by the lenticular 3D effect. Interjecting his voice in a collaborative manner with the project’s participants, Dailey creates iconoclastic yet playful statements reminiscent of Dada and Surrealist word play.

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WORDS on WORDS, 2019
Set of 13, Solos, Lenticular Prints 20 x 40 in

About the artist

Born 1951 in California, Brian Dailey earned MFA from Otis Art Institute in 1975 and Ph.D. from University of Southern California in 1987 and participated in the pioneering creative experimentation defining the prolific artistic milieu in California in this era.  His early career launched him on a path that—before his full circle back to his arts in 2008—took him through a twenty-year interlude working on arms control and international security.  These unusual experiences were a fertile source of inspiration in his idiosyncratic art practice. With dual citizenship of USA and New Zealand, He lives and works in the Washington D.C. and in Woodstock, Virginia.  His selected solo exhibitions include at Katzen Arts Center, American University Museum in Washington D.C., in 2018 and his mid-career retrospective at Bulgaria’s National Art Gallery in Sofia in 2014. The evocative videoJIKAI was screened on multiple synchronized monitors in New York City in February, 2014, as the featured video in the Times Square Midnight Moment series; a project of ART PRODUCTION FUND. Brian Dailey is represented by Baahng Gallery.

Brian Dailey

WORDS: A Global Conversation

February 11 – March 17, 2020

Baahng & Co New York City, NY

Framing Specifications

BDailey_WORDS_2sm
Painted maple frame with dolphin finish, matching spacer, and strainer

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Profile: 101
Type: Standard Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: maple frame with painted dolphin finish
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame
Custom Wood Spacer: 1/2″ wood frame spacer
Custom Wood Strainer: 3/4″ wood frame strainer




Dave Shafer “Through an Artist’s Lens” at Davis and Blevins Gallery in Texas

Dave Shafer’s photographic art work is strongly rooted in Americana themes, adventures and totems. The images for this exhibit have all be captured with film and a 50+ year old 4×5 format camera. No matter the camera or subject, Dave’s devotion is to capture the fleeting moments of gesture and light.

Shafer_Cowboy_Boot_2rev2

Cowboy Boot No. 2, 2019 4″ x 5″ archival pigment ink in acrylic – photograph reverse gilding with gold leaf

Shafer_Somberorev

Sombrero, 2015 24″ x20″ archival pigment ink – Photograph Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 100% Cotton/Acid-Lignin Free

Shafer_Cattlerev

Cattle, 2015 24″ x20″ archival pigment ink – Photograph Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 100% Cotton/Acid-Lignin Free

Shafer_Feb_Napping_Cowboyrec

Napping Cowboy 24″ x20″ archival pigment ink – Photograph Hahnemühle Photo Rag 308 100% Cotton/Acid-Lignin Free

About the artist

Born and raised in the hard working steel country of Western Pennsylvania, his father at an early age introduced Dave to the camera and magic of the darkroom.

For 20 plus years his eye has been focused on commercial, advertising and magazine editorial pursuits. Dave has been recognized with some of the most prestigious awards in the industry, including two Communication Arts – Award of Excellence and just recently a Gold Medal from the International Regional Magazine Association

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Dave Shafer 

“Through an Artist’s Lens”

February 29, 2020 – April 25, 2020

Davis and Blevins Gallery

St. Jo, Texas

Framing Specifications

nielsen 117 profile black  nielsen 117 profile white

NIELSEN METAL GALLERY FRAME

Profile: 117
Finish: black
Finish: white
Custom Frame Mat: 8 ply white museum mat
Custom Cut Matboard: 8 ply white museum matboard
Custom Frame Custom Frame Acrylic: 1/8″ UV acrylic cut to size




Stephen Mallon “Passing Freight” Front Room Gallery in New York City


Front Room Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of photographs by Stephen Mallon. “Passing Freight” is a visual celebration of the unique beauty and function of freight train cars in United States. In 2018 there were 1,637,000 freight cars in operation across North America, each distinctive in their construction, markings and utility. Time and human contact add to each train car’s individuality: all carrying a vast, and sometimes surprising array of goods and resources. This series of photographs captures the still active rail lines that carry freight to destinations across the country. Mallon’s industrial landscape photographs isolate freight cars within this iconic transportation system, which has played a critical role in supply infrastructure across the continent for hundreds of years.

 

Mallon has been finding locations from New York to California, patiently waiting for the combination of light, subject and environment to capture unique images where they intersect. He has chosen the “decisive moment” to capture these speeding boxcars photographically. There is an intersection of mechanical and natural worlds, singular encounters where the trains activate the landscape, which for Mallon are fleeting and hard to predict. Patience leads to the essential moment when these elements come into position: the points in time where the colors and shapes of each railcar, all of the nuances of the light reflecting from the loads of steel, wood, and everything else are composed and captured.

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RenderedImage
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copyright  Stephen Mallon Images courtesy of Stephen Mallon & Front Room Gallery

About the artist

Stephen Mallon is a photographer and filmmaker who specializes in the industrial-scale creations of mankind at unusual moments of their life cycles. Mallon’s work blurs the line between documentary and fine art, revealing the industrial landscape to be unnatural, desolate and functional yet simultaneously also human, surprising and inspiring. Mallon’s work has been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally, and his work has been written about in many publications, including National Geographic, The New Yorker, New York Times, Vanity Fair, Wired, Stern, PetaPixel, Viral Forest, BuzzFeed, New York Magazine, The Huffington Post, and featured on CNN, CBS, MSNBC and NPR.
STEPHEN MALLON

PASSING FREIGHT

February 13 – March 15, 2020

Front Room Gallery

New York, NY

usa flag image

copyright  Stephen Mallon Images courtesy of Stephen Mallon & Front Room Gallery

Framing Specifications

Capture0018-431-101MP04_50-SPACER_STRAINER

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Profile: 106
Type: Standard Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: maple frame with pickled white finish
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame
Custom Wood Spacer: 1/4″ wood frame spacer
Custom Wood Strainer: 1/2″ wood frame strainer
Custom Frame Acrylic: 1/8″ acrylic cut to size




ALEJANDRO CARTAGENA: PHOTO STRUCTURE / FOTO ESTRUCTURA at Eastman Museum

For this latest body of work, Cartagena spent time sifting through landfills on the outskirts of Mexico City to collect thousands of discarded photographs—portraits, snapshots, and tourist views. Cartagena excises figures, faces, or other details from the found photographs and reconfigures the original compositions by either moving the cut fragments or removing them entirely. The altered photographs remain strangely whole and strikingly familiar, compelling the viewer to consider what gives a photograph meaning. His arrangements reveal that seemingly crucial aspects of an image are both central and incidental to our ability to understand the works.

Cartagena is producing works of art specifically for this exhibition, giving visitors to the Eastman Museum the first opportunity to see the newest photographs in his most recent body of work.

 

StudioSession-849.jpg
Alejandro Cartagena (Mexican, b. Dominican Republic, b. 1977). Detail from Narciso / Narcissus, 2019. Altered gelatin silver print. Courtesy of the artist. © Alejandro Cartagena
StudioSession-849
Alejandro Cartagena (Mexican, b. Dominican Republic, b. 1977). Detail from Narciso / Narcissus, 2019. Altered gelatin silver print. Courtesy of the artist. © Alejandro Cartagena
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Alejandro Cartagena (Mexican, b. Dominican Republic, b. 1977). Detail from Rostros / Faces, 2019. Altered gelatin silver print. Courtesy of the artist. © Alejandro Cartagena

StudioSession-904
Alejandro Cartagena (Mexican, b. Dominican Republic, b. 1977). Detail from Rostros / Faces, 2019. Altered gelatin silver print. Courtesy of the artist. © Alejandro Cartagena

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Alejandro Cartagena (Mexican, b. Dominican Republic, b. 1977). Detail from Vacaciones familiares (después Roma) / Family Vacation (after Roma), 2019. Altered gelatin silver print. Courtesy of the artist. © Alejandro Cartagena

StudioSession-901
Alejandro Cartagena (Mexican, b. Dominican Republic, b. 1977). Detail from Vacaciones familiares (después Roma) / Family Vacation (after Roma), 2019. Altered gelatin silver print. Courtesy of the artist. © Alejandro Cartagena

About the artist

Cartagena lives and works in Monterrey, in northeastern Mexico. His projects employ landscape and portraiture as a means to examine social, urban, and environmental issues. His work has been exhibited internationally and is part of public and private collections, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, and the George Eastman Museum.

Cartagena is also a self-publisher and co-editor of photobooks and has been published internationally in magazines and newspapers such as the New York Times, Le Monde, and the New Yorker. He is the recipient of several awards, including the international Photolucida Critical Mass Book Award, the Lente Latino award in Chile, and the Premio IILA-FotoGrafia Award in Rome.

ALEJANDRO CARTAGENA: PHOTO STRUCTURE / FOTO ESTRUCTURA
January 31, 2020 - June 28, 2020
George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY
ALEJANDRO CARTAGENA: PHOTO STRUCTURE / FOTO ESTRUCTURA
January 31, 2020 – June 28, 2020
George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY
ALEJANDRO CARTAGENA: PHOTO STRUCTURE / FOTO ESTRUCTURA
January 31, 2020 – June 28, 2020
George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY

Framing Specifications


eastman frame
Capture0002-712_114MP01_spacer700

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Profile: 114
Type: Thin Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: unfinished ash frame
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame
Custom Wood Strainer: 1/2″ wood frame strainer




Chuck Koosmann “Landscapes”

Iceland is a place I didn’t know much about before travelling there. It is small, isolated and full of my imaginings. I had heard many stories about it from travelers I’ve known but didn’t have a sense of it really.

The reality was unexpected. Too many tourists in Reykjavik, glaciers of immense size, a dramatic terrain that led to the sea and a presence that talked of creation and the formation of the Earth.

The photos in this exhibit represent the images of my unexpected experience. Long cooled volcanic magma flows, extinct volcanoes, man’s adaptation to its surroundings and settlement. A story of growth and progression.

 

Highway 1
Iceland, 2017
Archival Pigment Print
21 X 28”
Highway 1
Iceland, 2017
Archival Pigment Print
21 X 28”
Volcanic Flows
Iceland, 2017
Archival Pigment Print
21 X 28”
Volcanic Flows
Iceland, 2017
Archival Pigment Print
21 X 28”
Glacial Outflow
Iceland, 2017
Archival Pigment Print
21 X 28”
Glacial Outflow
Iceland, 2017
Archival Pigment Print
21 X 28”
kossman install

About the exhibition

This exhibition is a collaboration of my photography and Tiit Raid’s  paintings.

Our approach to our art is quite different. As a photographer; I see, I compose, and I make. A fairly straight forward process. In my understanding of Tiit’s process, he sees, he composes, and he interprets. To my mind there is an important and distinctive difference: objectivity vs. subjectivity.

Our collaboration piece, my photo “Volcanic Aftermath” and Tiit’s interpretive paintings of it, is the expression of how we see.

Chuck Koosmann / Tiit Raid

November 15, 2019 – December 28, 2019

Gallery Reception November 22, 2019 5-7 pm

Center for Visual Arts

Wausau, Wisconsin

Framing Specifications

Volcanic Aftermath
Iceland, 2017
Archival Pigment Print
21 X 28”
Volcanic Aftermath
Iceland, 2017
Archival Pigment Print
21 X 28”
102AH13A copy

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Profile: 101
Type: Standard Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: ash frame with black finish
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame
Custom Wood Spacer: 1/2″ wood frame spacer with white finish
Custom Wood Strainer: 3/4″ wood frame strainer
Custom Frame Acrylic: 1/8″ UV acrylic cut to size




R. J. Kern – The Best of the Best

“The Best of the Best” records champion animals at the 2018 Minnesota State Fair, one of the most competitive animal contests in the world. Animal breeding, like photography, has been an area of both technical and material evolution. This series explores the relationship between the present and the past, drawing parallels between early animal contests at agricultural fairs and the first major exhibition of photography at the 1851 World’s Fair in London.

“In The Best of the Best, I wanted to document an event in which 12 pairs of animal species are judged supreme champion- the best of the best. Using a digital camera, I photographed winning exemplars of domesticated animals then combined 19th-century salt printing techniques and contemporary inkjet technology into images that emphasize changes in breeds over time and advances in photographic technology. It is science and art; it renders both an objective typology of animal husbandry and commentary on animal contests at this time and place. The hand-crafted portraits reference similarities between the history and development of photography and the advent of animal contests.”

 

Supreme Champion Boer Goat Male / Female PairMinnesota State Fair, salt print over archival pigment print, 20 x 24 inches, 2019
Supreme Champion Boer Goat Male / Female Pair
2018 Minnesota State Fair, salt print over archival pigment print, 20 x 24″  2019
Supreme Champion Turkey Male / Female Pair, 2018 Minnesota State Fair, salt print over archival pigment print, 20 x 24 inches, 2019
Supreme Champion Turkey Male / Female Pair,
2018 Minnesota State Fair, salt print over archival pigment print, 20 x 24 inches, 2019

The color red is a unifying element and a nod to French photographer Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, 1820–1910), who used the color in marketing his work. Historically, the color red has represented life, health, and victory. It also symbolizes a shared characteristic between the animals: the color of blood, whose principal ingredient is salt- an essential element for mammals and birds, that also propelled the evolution of photography.

Salt prints, a photographic process popular between 1839-1860, connects to photography’s historical roots; printing on them digitally connects to the present. The subtle tones of salt printing express mood and emotion, a contrast to the sharpness of a digital print. Subject, process, emotion, science, and combine to make both an immediate document and a comment on photography’s past, present, and future.

Supreme Champion Swine Male / Female Pair, 2018 Minnesota State Fair, salt print over archival pigment print, 20 x 24 inches, 2019
Supreme Champion Swine Male / Female Pair,
2018 Minnesota State Fair, salt print over archival pigment print, 20 x 24 inches, 2019

About the artist

R. J. Kern (b. 1978) is an American artist whose work explores ideas of home, ancestry, and a sense of place through the interaction of people, animals, and cultural landscapes.

His work has been exhibited in a number of notable exhibitions, including the Museum of Modern Art (Tbilisi, Georgia), the National Portrait Gallery (London, UK), the Yixian International Photography Festival (Anhui, China), and a solo exhibition at the Griffin Museum of Photography (Boston, MA). Awards and accolades include PDN’s 30 2018, Critical Mass 2018 Top 50, CENTER 2017 Choice Award Winner (Curator’s Choice, First Place), the 2017 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize (Finalist), and two Artist Initiative Grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board (2016, 2018).

Public collections holding his work include the Center for Creative Photography, the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art, the Plains Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg.

R.J. Kern – The Best of the Best
August 8 – 31, 2019
Burnet fine Art & Advisory
Wayzata, MN

Framing Specifications

kern geese a

Supreme Champion Goose Male/Female (wing detail)

2018 Minnesota State Fair, salt print over archival pigment print, 20 x 24 inches, 2019

102WA_maple splines_strainer

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Profile: 102
Type: Thin Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: walnut frame with clear finish
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame – contrasting maple splines
Custom Wood Strainer: 3/4″ wood frame strainer
Custom Frame Mats/Sized Boards: 4 ply white mat
Custom Frame Backing Board:  3/16″ acid free foamboard cut to size




Being There: Photographs by James P. Blair at Middlebury College Museum of Art

This exhibition takes an intimate look at the work of renowned photographer James P. Blair, who for more than thirty-five years traveled the world for the National Geographic Society. His images not only transport us to places most of us will never visit, the best of them have become part of our visual lexicon and remind us that the world is a varied and stimulating place, sometimes breathtaking in its beauty and at other times heartbreaking in its degradation.

Ketelie Regis and her baby, Haiti, 1987. Photo: © James P. Blair.
Ketelie Regis and her baby, Haiti, 1987. Photo: © James P. Blair.
Coal Miner, South Africa, 1976. Photo: © James P. Blair.
Coal Miner, South Africa, 1976. Photo: © James P. Blair.
Wild Goose and Kili Monastery, Russia, 1991. Photo: © James P. Blair.
Wild Goose and Kili Monastery, Russia, 1991. Photo: © James P. Blair.

About the photographer

James Blair prepared for a photographic future by studying with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind for a bachelor of science degree in photography at the Institute of Design of the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Between semesters he also photographed for Roy E. Stryker (director of the Farm Security Administration Photographic Documentation of the Depression) at the Pittsburgh Photographic Library. After graduation in 1954, he spent two years as a lieutenant (j.g.) in the Navy, part of that time assisting refugees from North Vietnam in Operation Passage to Freedom. He joined WIIC-TV in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1958 as a reporter and film photographer.

As a freelance photographer, Blair had commissions from the U.S. Information Agency, TimeLife, and National Geographic magazine. He also put together a one-man show at Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, and co-authored Listen With the Eye, a book of photographs and poems, with Samuel Hazo.

Success with National Geographic assignments brought him to the staff of the magazine in 1962. He has had more than 45 stories published in the magazine, including major coverages of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ethiopia, West Africa, Iran, Russia, and Greece, and various parts of the United States, as well as articles on agriculture, coal, astronomy, and uses of photography in science. He covered southeast China for the book Journey Into China, published in 1982. He was the chief photographer for the National Geographic book on environment, As We Live and Breathe, and then continued his special interest in the environment with coverage of the disappearing rain forest, environmental pollution, and World Heritage sites.

There have been one-man shows of his work in Teheran, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C., and he has been included in group shows in Atlanta and Washington. He is represented in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery (Washington D.C.), Canegie Mellon Museum (Pittsburgh), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), and the Portland Museum of Art (Maine). National Geographic’s 1988 Centennial Exhibit “Odyssey” included several of his photographs. Blair is a regular instructor at the Maine Photographic Workshops, the Smithsonian Institution, and numerous other workshops, and has taught at the International Center of Photogarphy, New York. He was the first Distinguished Visiting Professor of Photojournalism at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism for the year 1992

Being There: Photographs by James P. Blair
May 24, 2019 – August 11, 2019
Middlebury College Museum of Art
Middlebury, VT

Framing Specifications

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METRO GALLERY FRAME

Profile: 114
Type: Thin Gallery Frame
wood & finish: maple frame with clear water base finish
purchasing option: joined wood frame
custom wood strainer: 1/2″ wood strainer
custom frame mats/sized boards: custom cut 8 ply mat/4ply backing
custom frame acrylic: 1/8″ UV acrylic
Custom frame backing boards: 1/8″ archival coroplast

 




Geraldo de Barros at Document in Chicago

Document is presenting their second solo exhibition of the photographs of Geraldo de Barros.  The exhibit will be of a selection of earlier photographs the artist took between 1947 and 1954.

The Fotoformas of Geraldo de Barros (1923-1998) were created from the late-1940s through early 1950s, largely in São Paulo. As fitting this period of intense urban growth and industrialization, de Barros’ series of photographs captures a city in flux. But this was not a heroic, productivist vision of a mechanized city. Instead, the Fotoformas present a strangely heterogenous array of subjects: a torn and stitched canvas loosely hung across the picture plane, a graffito of an angel, spiraling geometries of iron and glass, a woman’s bare derrière, balloons caught in wires against a clouded sky.

EMBODIED EXPERIMENTS — Unlike New Vision photographers such as Bauhaus master László Moholy-Nagy, de Barros treated the camera not as an extension of human vision, but as a manifestation of human embodiment. De Barros’ body was central to his photographic process. De Barros’ Fotoformas were rarely the result of instantaneous, mechanical snaps, but were composed from sequences of images produced as he physically rotated his heavy camera and exposed the same object(s) multiple times on a single negative. Turning his camera in his hands, de Barros took repeated images of model airplane parts, chair caning, or doors or shutters left ajar on the same negative, to create a number of Fotoformas in 1949.

Geraldo de Barros, Untitled (Tatuapé, São Paulo), 1948, 20h x 24w
Geraldo de Barros, Untitled (Tatuapé, São Paulo), 1948, 20h x 24w
Geraldo de Barros, From the series Fotoformas (São Paulo), 1949, 20h x 24w
Geraldo de Barros, From the series Fotoformas (São Paulo), 1949, 20h x 24w
Geraldo de Barros, From the series Fotoformas (São Paulo), 1949, 20h x 24w
Geraldo de Barros, From the series Fotoformas (São Paulo), 1949, 20h x 24w
DeBarros_DOCUMENT_2019_07-web-1000x667
Geraldo de Barros
March 1, 2019 – April 1, 2019
Document
Chicago, Illinois

About the Gallery

DOCUMENT is a commercial gallery located in Chicago that specializes in contemporary photography, film and media based art. The gallery has organized more than 40 solo exhibitions since its opening in 2011 and actively promotes the work of emerging national and international artists. Operating conjointly as a professional printmaking studio, DOCUMENT facilitates the production of works by artists from Chicago and the US.

Framing Specifications

102UTWA
METRO GALLERY FRAME
Profile: 102UT
Type: Ultra Thin Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: Walnut with clear finish
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame with matching splines
Custom Wood Strainer: 3/4″ wood frame strainer