Rinko Kawauchi: Book Signing and Reception - Aperture Foundation NY
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Aperture Gallery and Bookstore547 West 27th StreetNew York, NY
Life’s a Beach: Opening Reception - Aperture Foundation NY
Life’s a Beach: Opening Reception
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Aperture Gallery and Bookstore547 West 27th StreetNew York, NY
Join Aperture and Martin Parr for the opening reception forLife’s a Beach, featuring the best selections from Parr’s beach photography, presented in conjunction with the May release of the beach-bag-size edition of Life’s a Beach. Parr has been photographing beaches for thirty years, documenting all aspects of them, including close-ups of sunbathers, rambunctious swimmers caught mid-plunge, and the eternal sandy picnic underway. This selection brings to the fore Parr’s engagement with a cherished subject matter—that rare public space in which general absurdities and local quirks seamlessly fuse together.
Announcing the 2013 Aperture Portfolio Prize Finalists - Aperture Foundation NY
Congratulations to all the finalist for this years Aperture Portfolio Prize!
“We are delighted to announce the following finalists, one of whom will be selected as the winner of the 2013 Aperture Portfolio Prize: Clare Carter, Corey Escoto, Akihiko Miyoshi, Bryan Schutmaat, Pacifico Silano and Eva Stenram
COMPILATION TOKYO: REMIX
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
6:30 pm - 9:30 pm
Aperture Gallery and Bookstore
547 West 27th Street New York, NY
FREE
Join Aperture’s PhotoBook Review and Self Publish, Be Happy for COMPILATION TOKYO: REMIX, a launch party for the Self Publish, Be Happy mash-up and the PhotoBook Review 004, edited by Charlotte Cotton.
Artist Charlie Engman will work in situ to create a new artist zine by remixing COMPILATION TOKYO, a recent Self Publish, Be Happy / Goliga Books publication of work by young Japanese photographers, Go Itami, Koji Kitagawa, Taisuke Koyama, Shinryo Saeki, Masafumi Shirakami, Hiroshi Takagi, Hiroshi Takizawa, Nerhol, Kenji Hirasawa, Daisuke Yokota, and Anne Schwalbe. This screen-printed, zine-like publication was originally created during a live event in Tokyo on April 7, 2013.
Engman will cut apart, re-photograph, and digitally modify photographs in order to create an entirely new body of work. These new works will be printed and photocopied on site to create a signed and limited-edition artist publication. The signed and limited edition publication will be available for sale after 8:30 pm at the Aperture Gallery and Bookstore.
Charlie Engman’s remix performance will begin promptly at 6:30 and will last approximately 2 hours; printing and book-making will continue throughout the evening.
Image © Charlie Engman
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Charlie Engman is an American artist and photographer. Engman received a BA First Class in Japanese and Korean studies from the University of Oxford in 2009, where he also studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art. There he began working as a commercial photographer and exhibiting his artwork, most notably in the 2009 exhibition Boule to Braid, curated by Richard Wentworth for Lisson Gallery. Upon graduating, Engman returned to his home country, where he began integrating his commercial, fashion, and art practices. His publications include FIELD(Hard Workers Club Press, 2011) and Flounder (Pau Wau Publications, 2013). Engman lives in New York
Self Publish, Be Happy was founded in 2010 with the aim of celebrating, studying, and distributing self-published photobooks. Its London-based collection contains more than one thousand publications; with an extensive series of workshops, talks, and projects, the organization has become a platform for a worldwide community of contemporary photographers.
Working in Tokyo under the imprint GOLIGA, Ivan Vartanian produces, edits, and publishes limited editions, experimental book works, and photography-based events. The principal objective of GOLIGA is to experiment with innovative ways of disseminating and engaging with photography.
Thinking in Color: A Conversation with Bill Armstrong and W. M. Hunt
Monday, March 18, 2013
6:30 pm
Aperture Gallery and Bookstore547 West 27th StreetNew York, NY
$5 DONATION
This event is free for students with I.D., and Aperture supporters at the $250 level and above.
Join Bill Armstrong and W. M. Hunt for a conversation on color photography. Taking inspiration from the book I Send You This Cadmium Red, which features correspondence between critic John Berger and artist John Christie, Hunt and Armstrong have initiated a dialogue about color in photography. Starting with Armstrong’s technical overview of color photography and its history, as well as Hunt’s observations about color and its empathic power, the exchange is a means for the longtime friends to challenge each other through their ideas.
For their conversation at Aperture, they will offer thoughts about how color behaves; read from some of their written exchanges with each other; and take the audience on an unexpected and fresh journey through interpreting color in photographs.
TODAY Tuesday, March 12, 2013
6:30 pm
Aperture Gallery and Bookstore
547 West 27th StreetNew York, NY
$5 DONATION
Aperture Foundation, in collaboration with the School of Art, Media, and Technology at Parsons the New School for Design, is pleased to present an artist talk with Hank Willis Thomas. Appropriation and juxtaposition are two of many strategies with which Thomas orchestrates his interdisciplinary practice. His series Unbranded (2008) uses advertisements lifted from the pages African-American interest magazines; Thomas subtly reworks them, removing key text, logos, and/or products. The skeletal remains betray immediately the subliminal prejudice common throughout consumer culture. Another series, Branded (2011), adopts a commercial vernacular to decry the commodification of African-Americans, both in contemporary sports and in the historical slave trade. A basketball player dunks into a noose, for example, or a Nike swoosh is branded onto a man’s head. Thomas’s images confront our difficult history through the universal legibility of advertising.
Walker Evans and the Magazine Page
Monday, March 11, 2013
6:30 pm
Aperture Gallery and Bookstore547 West 27th StreetNew York, NY
$5 DONATION
“Photography writer and historian David Campany will give an illustrated talk about the little-known magazine work of Walker Evans. Working as writer, editor, and designer as well as a photographer, Evans carved out a space for himself in the American press as unlikely as it was extraordinary. Setting his own assignments on everything from Sundays in London and shop displays to graffiti and unemployment, Evans made dozens of poetic and polemical photo-essays.”
Brian Sholis is one of the most recent teachers to join the Pratt Photography Department. As a historian and art critic, Sholis has previously worked at Artforum and is currently a contributing editor at Aperture magazine. Recently I had the opportunity to interview Brian about his experiences at Aperture and his views on the current state of photography. -Max Branigan
MB: Could you talk a little bit about your education, what brought you into this field and why photography?
BS: My education in art has been informal; I used to joke that I earned my M.A. on the streets of Chelsea. My undergraduate degree is in Urban Studies and Public Policy, and while in school in Boston I thought I wanted to be an architect. A summer-school architecture program taught me I didn’t have the manual skills—or, indeed, an ardent desire—to become one, so my college advisor tried another route: an internship at a university art museum. I enjoyed the work, and after graduating I moved to New York. I delved into the art world, working in the curatorial department at P.S.1 and in a commercial gallery, now closed, called D’Amelio Terras. I began writing while at the gallery, and left my job there to join the staff of Artforum in the summer of 2004. I have concentrated my attention on photography only during the past few years, and have done so for a few reasons. I’ve always been drawn to the medium, but one thing I particularly appreciate is that writing about it often allows me to write about subjects beyond the art world. This is not to deny the importance of philosophical, technical, or other questions. It’s just that you can be aware of those and still choose to write about the subjects of a picture or group of pictures.
MB: How did you find yourself at Aperture? Please describe the steps that brought you from graduation to your current position. Was it a long term goal or a serendipitous opportunity?
BS: It was a serendipitous opportunity; a friend alerted me to a position at Aperture Foundation last summer. I have been fortunate that my skills and experience have proven useful, and I’ve had already had the chance to do far more than what I was explicitly hired to do.
MB: Where else have you taught? Is Pratt different in any immediate way?
BS: I have taught at New York University; Lehman College, which is part of the City University of New York; and Parsons The New School for Design. The first experience was too brief to merit comparison. I was teaching American history, not art or photo history, at Lehman. The Pratt community seems broadly comparable to that at Parsons, though as an adjunct/visiting professor my experience of the broader culture of each school is limited.
MB: Given a time machine, which now dead artist would you visit?
BS: These questions are always difficult. In recent years I tried offhandedly to find a venue in New York that would exhibit Arnaud Maggs’s photographs. He had not had a solo exhibition in the city since the late 1980s, despite being widely celebrated in his native Canada. He died last November at age eighty-six. If I had a time machine, let’s say I would go back a few years and work much harder to secure wider exposure for his work.
MB: Who has you really excited in the world of photography today?
BS: Some of my favorite currently active photographers include—in alphabetical order— Liz Deschenes, Barney Kulok, Luisa Lambri, An-My Lê, Jochen Lempert, Sharon Lockhart (more filmmaker than photographer), Lisa Oppenheim, Mark Ruwedel, Melanie Schiff, and Sara VanDerBeek. I’ve had the pleasure of writing about nearly all of them. You’ll note that these are all photographers whose images circulate in the art world; I’m slowly bringing myself up to speed on documentary, editorial/journalistic, and other kinds of photographic work.
MB: How about in the world of editing and curation?
BS: For reasons obscure to me, I read nonfiction almost exclusively, so my “editing” choices all relate to nonfiction work put out by these publishers and periodicals. I tend to like books from Farrar, Strauss & Giroux (and its Hill & Wang imprint); W.W. Norton; Knopf; Harvard University Press; and the University of Chicago Press. If I had more money I would spend it on the line of “Faber Finds” put out by Faber & Faber in the UK. I read about art less often than I used to, but I always keep tabs on what’s published in Artforum, Frieze, Art in America, the three magazines aside from Aperture that I contribute to fairly regularly. I subscribe to and read more magazines than is probably healthy: the New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, the Nation, the New Republic, the Times Literary Supplement, n+1, Raritan.… I also read the New York Times each morning.
MB: Do you have any advice for photo majors who are interested in writing critically?
BS: Read a lot, write often, see as much photography in person as possible.
MB: Obligatory Instagram/Social Media/Death of Photography question. If you do instagram, what’s your username?
BS: I did use Instagram, under my own name, but I’ve deleted the app from my phone and have stopped looking at it. I encounter enough images in an average day, and somehow I had ended up following too many people whose decisions were seemingly based on what would make their lives look charming.
MB: How has the screen affected the way we read photographs?
BS: This is too big of a question for a quick answer …
MB: How is Aperture approaching the recession of mainstream print and the rise of boutique publication? Should a young photographer produce their own photo book, approach a small run publisher, etc?
BS: You can see how Aperture is approaching changes in the publishing environment at the end of February, when the newly re-conceived and redesigned Aperture magazine hits newsstands and subscribers’ mailboxes. I’m not sure that the magazine was ever part of the “mainstream print” environment, but it is embracing the profile of a boutique publication: more writing, more nicely designed, more lavishly printed—all for a higher price. It’s meant to capitalize on all of the advantages of print. At the same time Aperture (the foundation) is working on digital strategies (its website, redesigned last summer; e-books; apps) to ensure we meet photography enthusiasts wherever they are. The key is to ensure that the same editorial standards apply across these different platforms. I wouldn’t presume to tell a young photographer how to publish their work, but I would say that he or she should also ensure that rigorous editorial standards apply. The ease with which you can print photobooks has led to a glut of photobooks that would benefit from drastic editing and a clearer sense of purpose. If the work is good, it doesn’t matter whether it’s published by Aperture or by the photographer him/herself.
Make sure to check out the latest issue of Aperture.
Larry Fink Artist Talk
Larry Fink’s photographs merge style, vision, and content so seamlessly that their meaning strikes us as given, something known and shared—an unequivocal truth about what things looked and felt like in front of the camera. The art of this lies in Fink’s ability and willingness to penetrate the scene at hand, even when the politics may not be to his liking. Join Larry Fink for an artist talk that will explore the relationship between subject and photographer, style and meaning, followed by a reception with the artist.
Saturday, February 23
2:00 pm
$5 Donation
FREE for workshop participants and students with I.D.
Aperture Gallery
New York
Join Aperture for the opening reception of 101 Tragedies of Enrique Metinides. This exhibition, in conjunction with the release of the book of the same name, features the photographer’s choice of the key images from over fifty years of photographing crime scenes and accidents in Mexico for local newspapers and the nota roja crime press.
Opening Reception:
Wednesday, February 20, 6:00 pm–8:00 pm
Exhibition on View:
Wednesday, February 20–Saturday, April 20, 2013
FREE
Aperture Gallery
New York
Head over to the Opening reception of the new exhibit Photography at Aperture Gallery and Bookstore January 31st this Thursday from 6-9pm
“Photography presents the work of William Eggleston, Nan Goldin, Ryan McGinley, Martin Parr, Terry Richardson, and Stephen Shore, six of the most important image-makers working today. For the exhibition, curated by Ken Miller for Gallery Target, Tokyo, each photographer created images using Fujifilm X-Series cameras. Though the tools were the same, the resulting photographs represent unique and personal expressions.”
Apply now for the Aperture Portfolio Prize! To Submit
“The purpose of the Aperture Portfolio Prize is to identify trends in contemporary photography and highlight artists whose work deserves greater recognition. When choosing the first-prize winner and runners-up, Aperture’s editorial and curatorial staff look for innovative bodies of work that haven’t been widely seen in major publications or exhibition venues. Previous winners and runners-up include Michal Chelbin, Latoya Ruby-Frazier, Alexander Gronsky, Sarah Palmer, and Jordan Tate, among others.
The first-prize winner receives $3,000 and has his or her work exhibited at Aperture. The winner and up to five runners-up are featured on Aperture’s website, accompanied by a brief statement written by Aperture’s staff. All winners are announced in the foundation’s e-newsletter, which reaches forty thousand subscribers, including writers, critics, and other members of Aperture’s global community. The winners also have the opportunity to offer their prints for sale to Aperture’s collectors and patrons through our limited-edition print program.”
“Listen to Taryn Simon present and discuss her work with Lisa Hostetler, McEvoy Family Curator of Photography at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, in this audiocast recorded Tuesday, November 27, at Aperture Gallery.”
