Posts from the “Photography” Category

The Best Photo Stories of 2020, Documenting Youth Culture

Posted on December 16, 2020

Text: Orla Brennan— The halcyon years of youth have long captivated image- and film-makers. Shaping the cultural landscapes of their respective eras, the euphoric freedoms and inherent pains, counter-cultural ideals and rebellious fashions of communities of young people have continually offered us bold new ways of seeing the world.

During this dystopian year – when we retreated indoors, and nightlife venues, galleries and shops all shuttered – youth culture photography has offered a visual escape from our isolated lives, allowing us to dream of coming together and letting loose once again. Here, our round up of the most inspiring youth-focused photography published on AnOther in 2020 – from the dancefloors of 1980s Ibiza to the secret parties of 1990s rural Lithuania.

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*Tyler Mitchell. Still from Idyllic Space, 2019.*

Categories: AnOther, Art, Books, Fashion, Photography

Samuel Fosso: Autoportrait

Posted on December 15, 2020

In the mid-1970s, at the same time Cindy Sherman started making self portraits to explore the construction of white female identity, half way around the globe, Nigerian photographer Samuel Fosso opened his own studio at the tender age of 13. Casting himself as the subject of his work, Fosso used photography to stake his claim in the world.

Born in 1962, Fosso was sick and partly paralyzed as a child. Although Nigerians traditionally commission a portrait of their child at three months, his father saw it as a waste of money. Fosso wasn’t photographed until he was 10 — a void that shaped his vision from the very beginning. Growing up in Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War, Fosso fled to Bangui, Central African Republic, to live with an uncle after his mother died. He apprenticed at a local photo studio for just five months before opening Studio Photo National in 1975.

“In Africa we say to become a real photographer you have to take the picture and then make the print yourself; that’s how you establish your professional credentials,” Fosso says in the new book, Autoportrait (The Walther Collection/Steidl), which brings together five decades of Fosso’s self portraiture.

Read the Full Story at Blind

Categories: 1980s, 1990s, Africa, Art, Blind, Books, Photography

Janette Beckman: The MashUp 2: Punk Photographs Remixed

Posted on December 14, 2020

Tim Kerr – Don’t let your heroes get your kicks for you © Janette Beckman

Many people associate graffiti with hip hop because of Charlie Ahearn’s 1982 film,Wild Style, which brought the underground art to the global stage for the very first time. Fab 5 Freddy, who starred in the film, understood the importance of introducing a codified culture to the world. In a series of vibrant tableaux, Wild Style presents what is now referred to as the “four elements of hip hop”: DJs (music), MCs (literature), B-boy (dance), and graffiti writers (visual art).

But true graffiti heads know the art predates the advent of hip-hop by half a decade, developing in tandem with but often times separate from rap music, Early graffiti writers were huge fans of rock and funk music. Some fell in love with the emerging punk scene of the mid-70s, as it encapsulated the same raw, anti-establishment ethos that graffiti required of its practitioners.

By the late 1970s, graffiti transformed the New York City landscape as writers painted masterpieces across the side of an entire subway car, simultaneously filing the insides with marker tags, turning every bare surface into a page from an autograph book. Meanwhile across the pond, British photographer Janette Beckman was getting her start at the Kingsway Princeton School for Further Education, teaching photography to a group of teen just a few years younger than she was. The year was 1976 and a student named John Lydon had just left the school and joined the Sex Pistols. Change was in the air.

Read the Full Story at Blind

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Blind, Graffiti, Music, Photography

The Best Photos of 2020: Portrayals of Womanhood by Female Photographers

Posted on December 13, 2020

*Dry Campos, Cerquilho, São Paulo, 2019 © Luisa Dörr*

Notions of the “female gaze” and the “woman artist” are often in flux, a reflection of ever-shifting cultural mores of the times in which we live. The enduring need to claim and assert one’s identity after it has been marginalised, oppressed, and erased reveals the space where the personal and the political have become one.

In 2020, we find ourselves in highly factionalised times, divisions so deep and tensions so high, a hair trigger could set things off at any time. Into this morass, artists offer a balm, a space for meditation and mediation on transcendental truths about the sanctity of life and the fragility of it all. Their work reveals a profound desire to uplift, protect, and honour womanhood in all its forms. Here we reflect on the work of ten women artists who explore ideas of gender within the complex terrain of the female mind, body, and soul in the infinite splendor of limitless charms.

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*© Yurie Nagashima, Courtesy of Dashwood Books*

Categories: AnOther, Art, Books, Exhibitions, Photography, Women

Alys Tomlinson: Lost Summer

Posted on December 11, 2020

A century ago, Gertrude Stein coined the term “lost generation”, referring to the innocence stolen by the shadow of World War I. It was this same generation which roared into the 1920s, chasing the flower of youth that had been mowed down before it had a chance to bloom.

As 2020 comes to a close, so many have experienced profound loss on every level of their lives. For Gen Z, who are just now coming of age, the pandemic has robbed them of the opportunity to debut their talents on the world stage. Schools have closed, jobs disappeared, and social outings are fraught with danger at every turn.

British photographer Alys Tomlinson recognizes the toll the pandemic has been taking on the youth. “Exams cancelled, no chance to say goodbye to friends, end of year proms shelved and nothing to mark this significant stage of growing up and moving into adulthood,” she reflects.

As her commissioned work dried up amid the pandemic, Tomlinson decided to make black and white portraits of teens in her diverse North London neighborhood. From June through August 2020, she photographed some 44 teens using a 5×4 camera for a series of portraits collected in Lost Summer – a new book and exhibition.

Read the Full Story at Huck

Categories: Books, Huck, Photography

Janette Beckman: El Hoyo Maravilla

Posted on December 2, 2020

While staying at the Beverly Hills bungalow of Go-Gos manager Ginger Canzoneri during the summer of 1983, British photographer Janette Beckman read a story in LA Weekly about a gang war happening on the streets of East Los Angeles.

“The article described this culture going on half an hour drive from where I was staying,” says Beckman, who was shooting music and underground cultures for Melody Maker and The Face. “I needed to go and check it out. It described them, what they wore and I was like, ‘Where are the photos?’”

Beckman got in touch with the journalist and he brought her out to Maravilla Park, home to El Hoyo Maravilla – a Mexican-American gang that got its start in 1935. “People told me it was a dangerous neighbourhood but I just went. I am really a believer that people are basically good,” Beckman says.

Read the Full Story at Huck

Categories: 1980s, Art, Huck, Photography

Dustin Thierry: Opulence

Posted on December 2, 2020

*Opulence, Wolkoff and Wickid from the House of Garçon with the Grand Prize for Tag Team All American Runway at The United States of Africa Ball Pt.III © Dustin Thierry*

“O-P-U-L-E-N-C-E: Opulence! You own everything. Everything is yours,”Junior LaBeija declares with a heady mix of authority and aplomb, delivering one of the most iconic lines Paris Is Burning, Jennie Livingstone’s landmark 1991 film documenting the New York City Ballroom scene. His words evoke the spirit of the culture — one that first took root in Black American culture after the Civil War, when William Dorsey Swann, known to his friends as “the Queen” began organizing drag balls — and has since gone on to become a global phenomenon celebrating Black queer pride, resistance, and style.

Opulence is not a luxury; it’s a necessity in a world that systematically denies Black LGBTQ people their universal human rights. It is a state of mind born of desire and dreams, an inspiration to folks determined to make a dollar out of fifteen cents; Opulence is the spirit of Ballroom, a place where Black queer youth gather to celebrate themselves, a space for love and healing in a world that would sooner see them dead. To do anything less would be a denial of the grandeur that lies within.

The beauty of the Ballroom, of the majestic people who walk its hallowed floors, is the subject of self-taught photographer Dustin Thierry’s new exhibition Opulence. His luxurious portraits occupy the extraordinary place where fashion and documentary photography intersect, creating a space for contemplation, veneration, and exaltation of Black queer identity

Read the Full Story at Blind

Categories: Blind, Exhibitions, Photography

Tony Vaccaro at 98

Posted on December 1, 2020

*Leslie Uggams, Gold Metal, 1963 © Tony Vaccaro / Courtesy Monroe Gallery of* Photography

After a lifetime behind the camera, Tony Vaccaro is still going strong. After recovering from COVID-19 earlier this year, the Italian-American photographer, who turns 98 on December 20, has resumed his workout routine. On an unseasonably warm late November morning, he ran a 12:54 mile; not bad for the high school athlete who shaved 42 seconds off the record in 1943. “I plan at 100 to establish a new record for running a mile,” Vaccaro says from his home in Long Island City, Queens.

It’s more than a notion; Vaccaro is a survivor par excellence. Born Michelantonio Celestino Onofrio Vaccaro in Greensburg Pennsylvania, in 1922, Vaccaro was just four years old when both his parents died while the family was relocating to Italy. The horrors of his childhood linger to this day, as the photographer recounts the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father’s brother while growing up in Italy.

“My uncle and his wife never had children and they didn’t know how handle them,” Vaccaro says. “Because of this, I was punished every day. I was black and blue for 15 years of my life, until I got in the Army. They looked and asked, ‘What happened to you, son?’ I couldn’t tell the truth, that people were beating me for everything I did wrong.”

Though the bruises have healed, the memories remain tempered by a love his discovered as a teen. After World War II broke out in Europe, Vaccaro fled to the United States, and enrolled in Isaac E. Young High School in New Rochelle, New York. The young artist dreamed of being a sculptor but fate had other plans.

“Mr. Louis, a teacher, told me, ‘Tony, these sculptures are pretty good but you are born to be a photographer.’ I had never heard the word photography before,” Vaccaro says. “He told me, ‘You will make a great life with it,’ and by God he was right. I was then 14, 15. I’ve been a photographer for 85 years and I still feel very good.”

Read the Full Story at Blind

*Gwen Verdon for LOOK, New York, City, 1953 © Tony Vaccaro / Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography*

*After Degas, Woman and Flowers, New York City, 1960 © Tony Vaccaro / Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography*

Categories: 1960s, Art, Blind, Exhibitions, Fashion, Photography

Margaret Durow

Posted on November 29, 2020

Without thinking we find ways to distance ourselves from the discomforts and indignities of life, denying the horrors that befall strangers, downplaying those may touch our lives, for trauma is one of the most difficult tragedies to manage and heal when it befalls our lives.

Though it surrounds us in countless forms, we seek ways to buffer its relentless effect, trying to mediate the toll it takes on our physical, psychological, and spiritual state. Whether we keep ourselves disconnected and numb or become volatile and reactionary, the wound often goes untreated, festering and growing worse while the pain seeps deeper into our being with the passage of every day, month, and year.

It is only when we have the courage to expose our most vulnerable selves that we may begin to transform the harrowing nightmares we have lived into something greater than ourselves for understanding requires mutuality. We must lay ourselves open to other people’s pain if we ever hope to heal our own.

Read the Full Story at Feature Shoot

Categories: Art, Books, Feature Shoot, Photography

Celebrating the Overlooked Legacy of Downtown Artist Jimmy DeSana

Posted on November 27, 2020

*Diego Cortez, Anya Phillips, 1977 © Jimmy DeSana. Courtesy of Daniel Cooney Fine Art.*

By the late 1970s, New York’s downtown avant garde rejected the corporate efforts to capitalize on the rebellious spirit of punk rock. Desperate to distance themselves from the horrific death of the Sex Pistols groupie Nancy Spungen at the hands of Sid Vicious at Chelsea Hotel, music industry executives attempted to rebrand the anarchistic music as “New Wave.”

In turn, art radicals adopted the moniker “No Wave” to assert the independence and integrity of the movement. No Wave became an integral part of the burgeoning East Village art scene that emerged in the 1980s as a new generation came of age. Intoxicated by the sweet elixir of fresh blood, MoMA PS1 opened New York/New Wave, a landmark group show organized by Diego Cortez showcasing the work of 118 artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Stephen Sprouse, FUTURA 2000, and DONDI in February 1981.

As soon as that show came down, Couches, Diamonds and Pie went up. Curated by Carol Squiers, the exhibition embraced the emerging photography movement known as the Pictures Generation. Featuring Robert Mapplethorpe, Duane Michals, Sheila Metzner, Richard Prince, William Wegman, Cindy Sherman, and Laurie Simmons, the show also included the work lesser-known artists like Nan Goldin and Jimmy DeSana, both of whom were name checked by Andy Grundberg in his review for The New York Times.

While most of the artists would go on to international success, Jimmy DeSana (1949-1990) never quite received his proper due. Described as “anti-art,” DeSana’s work was extremely classical at a time when such a style had become démodé among vaunted members of the Pictures Generation.

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*Ronnie Cutrone, 1979 © Jimmy DeSana. Courtesy of Daniel Cooney Fine Art.*

*Eric Mitchell, 1978 © Jimmy DeSana. Courtesy of Daniel Cooney Fine Art.*

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Blind, Photography

Alan Lodge: Stonehenge

Posted on November 26, 2020

The Free Festival Movement of the 1970s took the UK by storm, offering a mélange of music, arts, and cultural activities at no cost. Beginning with Woodstock in 1969, the possibility of creating a mini utopia became a dream come true – that was until they became too popular, and the state got involved.

“’Free Festivals’ developed from people being fed up with the exploitation, rules, squalor and overall rip-off that so many events had become. They discovered something… a powerful vision,” says British photographer Alan Lodge, author of the new book Stonehenge (Café Royal Books).

“People lived together: a community sharing possessions, listening to great music, making do, living with the environment, consuming their needs and little else,” Lodge says. “Life on the road in an old £300 1960s bus, truck or trailer seemed like a bloody good option, weighed against the prospect of life on the dole in some grotty city under the Tory Government.”

Read the Full Story at Huck

Categories: 1970s, 1980s, Art, Books, Huck, Photography