I could not be more thrilled to discover my feature on Ryan Weideman’s vintage taxi cab photos made in the 80s and 90s has been selected for the cover of the new issue of Huck Magazine.
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Ryan took me back to the nights when the “Speed Deman” cruised the streets of New York. His stories had me holding on to the edge of my seat, and when it was all said and done he imparted a classic bit of taxi cab wisdom that concludes our wild ride.
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New York City, 1974. © Joel Meyerowitz
At 80 years old, American photographer Joel Meyerowitz is still going strong, forging a singular path that has taken him around the globe several times over. Hailing from East Bronx, Meyerowitz began his career as a street photographer, capturing the curious, quirky moments that reveal themselves as quickly as they disappear.
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Today, Meyerowitz now finds himself living on a farm in Tuscany, amassing an archive of 50,000 photographs in just about every genre imaginable. “How come I found myself here, living in Italy and making still lifes when I am a street photographer Jew form New York City? What am I doing here?” Meyerowitz laughs.
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He set out to answer this question in Where I Find Myself (Laurence King), a career retrospective presented in reverse chronological order. Here, Meyerowitz takes us on a magical journey from the present into the past, guiding us through the many chapters of his well-lived life.
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Read the Full Story at Huck Online
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Elias, Provincetown, Massachusetts, 1981. © Joel Meyerowit
New York City, 1963. © Joel Meyerowit
Copyright Ming Smith
Copyright Ming Smith
Pioneers are often so far ahead of the curve that few know who they are and what they accomplished though we may all benefit from their work. Many simply live their destiny, leading quiet, humble lives, bearing the stripes and scars of the struggle while their legacy allows generations to succeed because they refused to fail.
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In 1973, Ming Smith moved to New York. A recent graduate of Howard University, Smith took up modelling to support herself, working alongside Grace Jones, Bethann Hardison, Toukie Smith, Sherry Bronfman, and Barbara Smith – the first generation of African-American women to break through the colour barrier which had kept them out of the fashion and beauty industries.
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Living in a studio apartment on Carmine Street in the West Village long before gentrification had set in, Smith invested all of her earnings into her true passion: photography. She carried her camera wherever she went, taking photographs while working in Paris and on assignment in Africa. Photography was a means to survive the challenges of daily life, providing a space where she could integrate with her authentic self, combining the profound power of the black experience with the universal beauty of humanity.
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A woman of principle, poetry, and poise, Smith is a true pioneer in every sense of the word. The first woman member of Kamoinge, the African-American photography collective established in 1963, Smith is the first black woman to have work included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art – the very establishment that championed the transformation of photography from a vernacular activity into a fine art.
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Despite her historic achievements, Smith never pushed herself into the public eye. It is only in 2017 that the world is catching up with her. Smith kicked things off with a solo exhibition at Steven Kasher Gallery, New York; is featured in the landmark exhibitions We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85; Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power; and Arthur Jafa’s recent show at Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London; and is wrapping things up with a big bow, as Karl Lagerfeld personally selected her photograph of Sun Ra for Paris Photo (Steidl).
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Below, Smith shares her journey as an artist and model, reflecting on the challenges of breaking boundaries in fashion and art, and the importance of staying true to yourself while navigating this thing called life.
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Copyright Ming Smith
Cybill Shepherd, Reclining, Los Angeles, 1986Matthew Rolston © MRPI, Courtesy Fahey/Klein Los Angeles
Anitta, Flower Gown, The Surreal Thing, Series, New York, 1987Matthew Rolston © MRPI, Courtesy Fahey/Klein Los Angeles
The magical grandeur of Hollywood glamour first came into vogue when Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich fled their native Germany in the 1930s and brought the aesthetics of the Weimar Republic stateside. Together they made six films at Paramount Studios, and introduced an innovative look using the spotlight on the face to create a luminous mask that stood in sharp contrast to the dark shadows it cast, emulating the aesthetic of 1920s Berlin.
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By the early 1960s, the look had run its course and faded away, until Andy Warhol and Helmut Newton resurrected it in the late 1970s. Los Angeles native Matthew Rolston got his start at this time, shooting for Interview before rising to the heights of celebrity photography as a new Golden Age of Hollywood photography took shape. Working for Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Esquire, Rolston embraced the aesthetics of George Hurrell and Irving Penn, creating timeless portraits of the era’s greatest icons from Prince, Michael Jackson, and Madonna to Christian Lacroix, Yohji Yamamoto, and Mikhail Baryshnikov.
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In celebration, Hollywood Royale: Out of the School of Los Angeles opens tomorrow at Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles, in conjunction with the recent publication of a magnificent monograph by the same name from teNeues featuring works made between 1977 and 1993. Here, Rolston speaks with us about the timeless allure of the glamour photo.
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Read the Full Story at AnOther Online
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Don Johnson, Polo Clothes, Miami, 1986Matthew Rolston © MRPI, Courtesy Fahey/Klein Los Angeles
Couple with Glasses. (Arlene Gottfried / Courtesy of Daniel Cooney Fine Art)
American artist Arlene Gottfried was a quiet storm of power, beauty and strength. She traversed the streets of her native New York, photographing the heart and soul of the people who have made the city a wholly original place.
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Over her 50-year career, Gottfried saw New York through its ups and downs. Hailing from Brooklyn, she moved to the West Village in her early 20s, hitting the nightclubs during the era of Studio 54 and Plato’s Retreat, hanging out on New York’s Lower East Side and singing in an African American gospel choir. Whether photographing seminal figures like activist Marsha P. Johnson and poet Miguel Piñero or three generations of women in her Ashkenazi Jewish family, Gottfried had the empathetic eye, imbuing understanding, warmth, and humor into every picture she made.
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After a long battle with breast cancer, Gottfried died in August, and in celebration of her life and work, Daniel Cooney Fine Art in New York is opening “A Lifetime of Wandering” (Feb. 28 to April 28, 2018). The exhibition features a selection of work made throughout her career, including never-before-seen black and white, color, and Polaroid photographs made on the streets, the beaches and in the parks of her beloved New York.
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Read the Full Story at The Lily
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Woman on Subway. (Arlene Gottfried / Courtesy of Daniel Cooney Fine Art)
Marsha P. Johnson (Arlene Gottfried / Courtesy of Daniel Cooney Fine Art)
Andy Warhol with Pat Cleveland. Photography Christopher Makos
Back in 1971, Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey purchased Eothen, a 12-hectare oceanfront estate on the Long Island shore for $225,000. A true East End landmark, Eothen was built in 1931 by American architect Stanford White as a fishing camp for the Church family of Montana, who used it for two weeks in September when the striped bass were running.
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Comprised of four individual cottages, a three-bedroom main house, a stable, a three-car garage, and nearly a kilometer of uninterrupted coastline, Eothen boasts a fabled pedigree that continues to the present day. In 2017, Mickey Drexler, the CEO of J. Crew, sold the property to Adam Lindemann, a private investor and influential collector of contemporary art and design.
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Eothen is one of the crown jewels of Montauk, a town that has evolved into a destination locale. But back in the 1970s and 80s, during the Warhol era, it was a still tiny fishing town populated by local craftsman, property maintenance people, and a smattering of wealthy people like writer Tennessee Williams and talk-show host Dick Cavett, who sought out sanctuary from the madness of New York City.
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Read the Full Story at AnOther Man
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Andy Warhol photographing Halston. Photography by Christopher Makos
© Daido Moriyama Photo Foundation. Courtesy of Michael Hoppen Gallery
“Pachinko”, 1982. © Daido Moriyama Photo Foundation. Courtesy of Michael Hoppen Gallery
Born in 1938 in Osaka, Japan, Daido Moriyama has become one of the pre-eminent fine art photographers of our times. As witness to the changes that transformed Japan after World War II, Moriyama used the camera to expose a side of his native land that few outsiders know, creating a body of work that is gritty and jarring, yet profoundly beautiful.
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Moriyama first arrived in Tokyo in 1961 and began working as a freelance photographer in 1964. It was during the ’60s that he developed his distinct style, stripping the photograph down to its bare bones, embodying the pure D.I.Y. ethos of punk in visual form and providing a fresh new way of seeing the world.
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He first came to the attention of the world in 1974, when his work was included in the New Japanese Photography exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Since then, his profile has continued to grow, with his work influencing generations of artists who can’t help but imitate the iconoclastic master of the form.
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Read the Full Story at Huck Online
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Hawaii, 2007/2008 © Daido Moriyama Photo Foundation. Courtesy of Michael Hoppen Gallery
Photo: Guilda, [one of a triptych]. New York, United States, circa 1950.
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Over the years, Lifshitz haunted flea markets, garage sales, junk shops, and eBay, amassing an impressive collection of amateur photographs of mostly anonymous men and women from Europe and the United States that date between 1880 and 1980. A selection of these works is on view in Under Cover: A Secret History of Cross-Dressers at The Photographer’s Gallery (February 23 – June 3, 2018).
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“The subject of gender non-conformity and trans identity is something that feels very urgent right now: in our press, our social consciousness,” observes Karen McQuaid, Senior Curator at The Photographers’ Gallery. “We live with socially cultivated assumptions that men are one way and women are another when it comes to our dress, our actions, our accessories, our ambitions even – and historically there hasn’t been a lot of freedom in how we respond to these things. The more these issues are discussed openly, the more we educate each other and see gender as a spectrum.”
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René Boivin photographer, Paris, France, circa 1930.
“YOCKS”, 1975© Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks. Courtesy of the artist’s estate and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
In October 1968, Bobby Seale, the co-founder of the Black Panther Party, made it plain in a court of law, when he faced conspiracy charges as part of the Chicago 8, stating: “We’re hip to the fact that Superman never saved no black people. You got that?”
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Seale gave voice to a fact that was widely understood. So long as black folks are denied the opportunity to share their vision with the world, their lives and stories would be marginalised, misrepresented, or eradicated from the historical record.
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Seale’s words were not lost on African American artist Barkley L. Hendricks (1945-2017), who donned a novelty Superman t-shirt, sunglasses, and nothing else for a self-portrait titled “Icon for My Man Superman (Superman Never Saved any Black People – Bobby Seale)” in 1969. The North Philadelphia native embodied the height of cool, a sensibility that dates back to 15th-century Nigerian Empire of Benin and has found its way across the African diaspora for six centuries.
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Adopting the “cool pose,” with his arms folded across his chest against a simple grey backdrop framed in red, white, and blue, Hendricks tells it like it is. He is calm, fearless, and aloof, fully in control, poised, and dignified. Such is the strength of the painting that it was chosen as one of the primary images to promote Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, the landmark traveling exhibition which originated at Tate – opening just a couple of months after Hendricks’ death on April 16 at the age of 72.
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“If you’re gonna do it, you might as well be memorable,” Hendricks told Thelma Golden, the Director and Chief Curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, in the seminal 2008 monograph, Birth of the Cool (Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University), which has just been republished to include a memoriam to the artist and a selection of new images from his oeuvre.
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The book, edited by Trevor Schoonmaker, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Nasher, brilliantly presents a masterful look at the figurative painting, a selection of which can be seen in the next iteration of Soul of a Nation, which opened earlier this month at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, as well as in the exhibition catalogue, available from the Tate, which features Hendricks’ painting “What’s Going On” (1974) on the cover.
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But Hendricks’ genius goes far beyond the known. In his death, a wealth of previously unseen works have been revealed. Today, at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, will present Barkley L. Hendricks, Them Changes, the first ever exhibition of newly discovered works on paper made contemporaneously with his famous portrait paintings.
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These works take us inside Hendricks’ process, giving us a look at the way he crafted and mastered a visual language entirely his own. “While best known for his bold life-sized portraits, Hendricks is also an accomplished photographer, landscape painter, watercolourist, draftsman, assemblage artist, carpenter, and jazz musician,” Schoonmaker wrote in the introduction to Birth of the Cool, reminding us that the man behind the easel was just as fascinating as the subjects he painted.
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Here Elisabeth Sann, Director of Jack Shainman Gallery, shares insights into Hendricks’ singular career that never fails to surprise and delight people from all walks of life.
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Misc. Tyrone (Tyrone Smith)”, 1976© Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks. Courtesy of the artist’s estate and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
“Noir”, 1978© Estate of Barkley L. Hendricks. Courtesy of the artist’s estate and Jack Shainman Gallery, New York
“Michael Chow, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Basquiat’s mother and friends” (1984). Silver gelatine print; 77/8 x 97/8 inches.Artwork by Andy Warhol. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
“Portrait of Michael Chow” (1984). Polymer silkscreened on canvas; 80 x 80 inches.Artwork by Andy Warhol. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Restauranteur. Designer. Architect. Art Collector. World Traveler. Icon of style and substance Michael Chow – or M, as he is known – has transformed fine dining into an art at Mr Chow, providing a magical bridge between the East and the West for the past fifty years.
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M was born Zhou Yinghua in 1939 in Shanghai to Zhou Xingfang (1895-9175), a leading figure in the Peking Opera who wrote and acted in more than 650 titles during his illustrious career, and Lilian Qui (1905-1968), who hailed from a wealthy family whose fortune was made in tea.
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At the age of 13, everything changed when M was sent to boarding school in London. What he didn’t know at the time was that he would never see or communicate with his father again. “Suddenly there was a void within me,” M reveals.
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Into that chasm, M plunged – first in despair, then finding himself in art. He studied at St. Martins and went on to paint for a decade before the market forces made it apparent that it was not receptive to a Chinese artist. Once again, M turned to art to guide the way, launching the very first Mr Chow in Knightsbridge in February 1968.
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From the very outset, Mr Chow was not just a restaurant – it was theatre: a stage for pleasure, passion, and intrigue, where Italian waiters served fine Chinese cuisine to sophisticated clientele and artworks by Allen Jones, Peter Blake, Patrick Caulfield, David Hockney, and Jim Dine became an integral part of the experience. He established three restaurants in London before setting a course to conquer America.
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Over the past half-century, M has opened restaurants in Beverly Hills, New York, Miami, and Las Vegas, always bringing glamour and theatre to the dining experience. Now, on the occasion of Mr Chow’s golden anniversary, M has released, Mr Chow: 50 Years (Prestel/Delmonico), a beautifully illustrated volume that explores a singular life in art, architecture, design, and cuisine, combining the very best of the east and the west.
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Featuring works by Helmut Newton, Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Kenny Scharf, Francesco Clemente, and Ed Ruscha, just to name a few, the book reveals the significant role Mr Chow has played in the art world over five decades. Here, M speaks with us about a life in art: the past, present, and future vision of a man whose magic has touched countless hearts.
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“Michael Chow, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Basquiat’s mother and friends” (1984). Silver gelatine print; 77/8 x 97/8 inches.Artwork by Andy Warhol. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
M. Lamar, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, 1993. © Lyle Ashton Harris.
In the early morning on 17 October 1997, Lyle Ashton Harris wrote a poem “For Lawrence,” which he printed out and pasted into his journal, asking, “is there other ways to know thyself? / I guess in a sense I am still waiting / peaking through / I cry / fear, wondering, what, if I let it go, / to discover, to unveil another, to write, / to share myself with another, to trust myself. / i am still that little boy.”
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The poem goes on to reflect on dying and death, on fear and desire, on the nerve it takes to be true to one’s self. It is something we all face in one way or another in this life – though the artist may grapple with these issues openly in their work, taking vulnerability to new heights of the sublime.
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For Harris, the ascent began in 1993, when his exhibition Face: Lyle Ashton Harris opened at the New Museum. Here, he used photography, video, and audio to examine race, sexuality, and gender during a period when multiculturalism, globalisation, and AIDS activism dominated the world stage, transforming the conversation around black masculinity to expand beyond the rigid boundaries proscribed for African-American men.
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The following year, Harris exhibited The Good Life, his first solo show, at Jack Tilton Gallery, New York, where he subverted markers of identity to show just how vast blackness is when seen from the inside looking out. The show solidified Harris’s place in a new generation of artists transforming the art world.
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Essex Hemphill, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, 1992. © Lyle Ashton Harris.
“Altar, Koreatown (Journal #1)”, 1997. © Lyle Ashton Harris.