B L A C K A N D W H I T E C I T I E S
inspiration
John Vachon was born in St-Paul, Minnesota, on May 19th, 1914. After graduating from Cretin High School he studied at the University of St. Thomas. After graduating in 1934, Vachon managed to find work as a filing clerk for the Farm Security Administration.
In 1936 Roy Stryker recruited him to join a small group of photographers working for the FSA. This group included Esther Bubley, Marjory Collins, Mary Post Wolcott, Jack Delano, Arthur Rothstein, Walker Evans, Russell Lee, Gordon Parks, Charlotte Brooks, Carl Mydans, Dorothea Lange and Ben Shahn. These photographers were employed to publicize the conditions of the rural poor in America.
During the Second World War he worked as a photographer for the Office of War Information in Washington, D.C. He was also employed by the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.
Vachon became a staff photographer for Life Magazine in 1947. In 1949, he starting working for Look Magazine where he remained for twenty-two years. After the closure of this magazine he became a freelance photographer and a visiting lecturer at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
John Vachon died in New York on 20th April 1975.
Above Brooklyn by Thomas Murphy
28 pages, 8.5 x 11
b&w digital print
edition of 75, each signed & numbered
$10 includes shipping in the US
ORDER HERE
Photos displayed in the show are now online for your viewing pleasure.
Thanks to everyone who came out last Friday.
Photos by graphite
Thanks to Jen, Deana & Sandy for constructing my books; Pat for the canvas prints; JP & Jade for the pins; Nico & Jeff for the Staple keychains; Kat for the awesome press release and Sixpoint hookup; Dust for the Bushmills; Shinya & Junko for doing all the painting; and to the pigeon fliers of Brooklyn for letting me on their roofs.
A few digi snaps
William Gale Gedney was born in Greenville, New York in 1932. During his lifetime, Gedney received several fellowships and grants, including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship from 1966 to 1967, a Fulbright Fellowship for photography in India from 1969 to 1971, a New York State Creative Artists Public Service Program grant from 1972 to 1973; and a National Endowment for the Arts grant from 1975 to 1976. He also taught photography at Pratt Institute and Cooper Union in New York.
Bill Gedney was an immersion photographer. He jumped into and shared the lives of his subjects to a level of intimacy that few photographers would dare to risk. Bill’s most recognized work stems from journeys he made away from his native Brooklyn to ever-further locales, documenting through his eyes those lives he shared if ever so briefly. Kentucky, San Francisco, and India — these were the three stops where he completed some of his most haunting work.
In 1966, Bill received a Guggenheim fellowship to photograph “American life”. Gedney left Brooklyn and drove cross-country to the West Coast, and ended up in San Francisco in October, 1966. He spent the next three-plus months in California, taking several thousand photographs of the people he met and the activities that he observed. As he did earlier when he traveled to Kentucky (in 1964) Bill lived as close to his subjects as possible. In Kentucky, he moved in with a coalminer family. In San Francisco, he moved in with a crash pad family. He followed this group of approximately six young street people as they moved through the Haight Ashbury. Through these experiences, Bill was exposed to the street life as no other photographer did.
William Gedney died of AIDS in 1989 in New York City and is buried in Greenville, New York, a few short miles from his childhood home. He left his photographs and writings to his life long friend Lee Friedlander.
Thousands of Gedney’s images are online at Duke University.
June 5 – 12, 2010 | Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico
Instructors: Emilio Bañuelos | Ibarionex Perello
The International Artist Collaborative 2010 will be working in Guadalajara, the cultural center of western Mexico, the village of Mazamitla, selected as a Pueblo Magico and visiting the country’s largest fresh water lake in Chapala, Jalisco.
Workshop sessions are designed for practical use centering on the work you create and focused on developing your personal vision. The workshop is a unique combination of one-on-one critiques with Emilio Bañuelos and Ibarionex Perello, classroom instruction, group discussions, independent fieldwork and presentations by local photographers specializing in Fashion, Music, Performance, Fine Art, and Publishing.
Many photographers of all levels have participated in this successful, seven-day intensive workshop multiple times. In order to make art accessible and return the images of the public to the public, the International Artist Collaborative culminates with a public art distribution project in Guadalajara’s Tianguis Cultural, a printed publication, and publication at www.blackbootsink.com.
Tuition: $1,550.00 USD
Limited Enrollment
Includes: All instruction, photographer presentations, workbook, information packet, ground transportation to working locations, airport transfers, 7-night hostal accomodations including continental breakfast, welcome and closing reception dinners. Not included: Roundtrip International Airfare from your home to and from Guadalajara, Mexico, meals, or gratuities
A deposit of $500 USD will be required at the time of reservation. Full payment will be due 30 days prior to departure date.
for more information please email: blackbootsink@gmail.com
Here are a few of my shots from this past weekend from the Black Boots Ink workshop. Unfortunately, developing Tri-X film in San Francisco is not as easy and quick as in New York City (thanks Lafayette Color Lab and sorry I take you for granted). And of course I didn’t realize this until halfway through the last day of shooting. I was still able to switch to Ilford and shot a few rolls. The following images are from the Ilford rolls. I’ll put up the other images once I scan the Tri-X.
This past weekend I was in San Francisco attending a workshop organized by Black Boots Ink. The organization was started by an amazing photographer, Emilio Bañuelos and his wife, Elena Carrasco. For the workshop this weekend, Ibarionex Perello of The Candid Frame came to town to also share his expertise. Ray Potes of Hamburger Eyes was also on hand during the workshop.
Both Emilio and Ibarionex were extremely helpful in improving how I capture images through my lens, as well as how to make a better narrative with my photos. They also helped me boost my confidence with photographing complete strangers. It was the first time that I’ve had someone critique my work in a long time. Getting feedback on my images from the instructors and other participants was extremely helpful. And going out and shooting with them was an amazing experience and made the whole trip worthwhile.
The workshop, Wandering in the Company of Strangers will be continuing in Guadalajara and also traveling to Arizona and New York City. I’ll write another post once the dates for the New York workshop is announced.
Born in 1948 in Syracuse, New York, Nachtwey is one of the most influential American photojournalists from the late 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. James Nachtwey grew up in Massachusetts and attended Dartmouth College from 1966 – 1970, where he studied art history and political science. Images from the Vietnam War and the American Civil Rights movement had a powerful effect on him and were instrumental in his decision to become a photographer. After graduating, Nachtwey had several different jobs. He worked aboard ships in the Merchant Marine, and while teaching himself photography, was an apprentice news film editor and a truck driver.
In 1976, Nachtwey started working as a newspaper photographer for the Albuquerque Journal in New Mexico. In 1980, he moved to New York to begin a career as a freelance magazine photographer. His first foreign assignment was to cover civil strife in Northern Ireland in 1981 during the IRA hunger strike. Since then, Nachtwey has devoted himself to documenting wars, conflicts and critical social issues. He has worked on extensive photographic essays in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, the Philippines, South Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Rwanda, South Africa, Russia, Bosnia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Romania, Brazil and the United States.
Nachtwey has been a contract photographer with Time Magazine since 1984. He was associated with Black Star from 1980 – 1985 and was a member of Magnum from 1986 until 2001. In 2001, he became one of the founding members of the photo agency, VII. He has had solo exhibitions at the International Center of Photography in New York, the Bibliotheque nationale de France in Paris, the Palazzo Esposizione in Rome, the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, Culturgest in Lisbon, El Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles, the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, the Canon Gallery and the Nieuwe Kerk in Amsterdam, the Carolinum in Prague,and the Hasselblad Center in Sweden, among others.
During has career, Nachtwey has received numerous honours such as the Common Wealth Award, Martin Luther King Award, Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award, Henry Luce Award, Robert Capa Gold Medal (five times), the World Press Photo Award (twice), Magazine Photographer of the Year (seven times), the International Center of Photography Infinity Award (three times), the Leica Award (twice), the Bayeaux Award for War Correspondents (twice), the Alfred Eisenstaedt Award, the Canon Photo essayist Award and the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Grant in Humanistic Photography. He is a fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and has an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the Massachusetts College of Arts.
More of James Natchwey’s work can be viewed at JamesNachtwey.com and at Fahey Klein Gallery.
Valladolid, named after the capital of Spain at the time, was first established by Spanish Conquistador Francisco de Montejo’s nephew on May 28, 1543. Originally, the city was some distance away from it’s current location, at a lagoon called Chouac-Ha. However, early Spanish settlers complained about the mosquitos and humidity at the original location, and petitioned to have the city moved further inland.
On March 24, 1545, Valladolid was relocated to its current location, built atop a Maya town called Zaci-Val, whose buildings were dismantled to reuse the stones to build the Spanish colonial town. The following year the Maya people revolted, but were put down with additional Spanish troops coming from Mérida.
Valladolid had a population of 15,000 in 1840. The city and the surrounding region was the scene of intense battle during Yucatán’s Caste War, and the Latino forces were forced to abandon Valladolid on March 14, 1848, with half being killed by ambush before they reached Mérida. The city was sacked by the Maya rebels but was recaptured later in the war.
Until the beginning of the 20th century, Valladolid was the third largest and most important city of the Yucatán Peninsula, (after Mérida and Campeche). It had a sizable well-to-do Criollo population, with a number of old Spanish style mansions in the old city. Valladolid was widely known under its nickname The Sultaness of the East.
Paulo Nozolino was born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1955. After training as a painter in Lisbon, Nozolino took up photography in 1972. In 1975, he moved to London and studied at the London College of Printing for three years before embarking on a period of worldwide travel. He travelled extensively throughout Europe, the Arab world, North and South America and Macao. Many of his photographs were published in numerous books, the most well-known being Penumbra (1996), a collection of pictures taken in countries including Syria, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt and Mauritania. Much of his work has focused on the traditional cultures of North Africa and the Middle East, but he has also produced urban images that seem reminiscent of Robert Frank.
I’ll be in Mexico for a few days, so there will be no posts until I get back.
Haruto Hoshi was born 1970 in Kanagawa, Japan.
Josef Sudek was born in 1896 in Kolin on the Labe in Bohemia. As a boy he learned the trade of bookbinding. He was drafted into the Hungarian Army in 1915 and served on the Italian Front until he was wounded in the right arm. Infection set in and eventually surgeons removed his arm at the shoulder. During his convalescence in an Army Hospital, he began photographing his fellow inmates. After his discharge, Sudek studied photography for two years in a school for graphic art in Prague. Between a disability pension and intermitment work as a commercial photographer, Sudek made a living. In 1933, he held his first one-man show in the Krasnajizba salon. Since 1947, he has published eight books. In the early 1950′s, Sudek acquired an 1894 Kodak Panorama camera whose spring-drive sweeping lens makes a negative 10 cm x 30 cm. He employed this exotic format to make a stunning series of cityscapes of Prague, published in 1959.
Sudek’s work first appeared in America in 1974 when the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, gave him a retrospective exhibition. The same year Light Gallery in New York City showed an exhibition of his photographs. On his 80th birthday in April, 1976, the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague inaugurated a comprehensive retrospective exhibition of Sudek’s work which later appeared at the Photographer’s Gallery, London.
In spite of his disability, Sudek always used large format cameras and from the 1940′s on he made only contact prints. He worked without assistants in the open air in city and countryside. His hunched figure supporting a huge wooden tripod was a familiar sight in Prague. Although he never married and was rather shy, he was not a recluse and was renowned for his weekly soirees for listening to classical music from his vast record collection. Sudek died quietly and without suffering or illness in mid-September 1976 in Prague. He published 16 books during his life.
Over a hundred of Josef Sudek’s photos can be viewed at artpages.org.ua.
Paul Strand was born in New York City in October of 1890. In his late teens, Strand was a student of renowned documentary photographer Lewis Hine at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School. It was while on a fieldtrip in this class that Strand first visited the 291 art gallery – operated by Stieglitz and Edward Steichen – where exhibitions of work by forward-thinking modernist photographers and painters would move Strand to take his photographic hobby more seriously. Stieglitz would later promote Strand’s work in the 291 gallery itself, in his photography publication Camera Work, and in his artwork in the Hieninglatzing studio. Some of this early work, like the well-known “Wall Street,” experimented with formal abstractions. Other of Strand’s works reflect his interest in using the camera as a tool for social reform. He was one of the founders of the Photo League, an association of photographers who advocated using their art to promote social and political causes.
More of Paul Strand’s work can be seen at photography-now.net.
Roy DeCarava, one of my Friday Inspirations back in August passed away this week at the age of 89.
Roy DeCarava trained to be a painter, but while using a camera to gather images for his printmaking work, he began to gravitate toward photography, in part because of its immediacy but also because of the limitations he saw all around him for a black artist in a segregated nation. Over a career spanning almost 70 years, DeCarava came to be regarded as the founder of a school of African-American photography that broke with the social documentary traditions of his time. He turned his neighborhood of Harlem into his canvas and became one of the most important photographers of his generation by chronicling its people
The NY Times has a slideshow and more information.
Sune Jonsson was born 1930 in Nyåker, Sweden. He studied English, Ethnology and the History of Literature at the Universities of Stockholm and Uppsala. In 1959, he published his first book entitled, Byn med det blå huset (The Village with the Blue House), which contained images of the people of his native village, Nyåker. He went on to publish more than twenty books before he died in January 2009.
