"La Festa: Italian Festivals in America" Photo Book by Robert Forlini Now Available

You don't have to be Italian to love a feast! I have just published the long awaited book of images from my Italian-American Festivals series entitled La Festa: Italian Festivals in America. It is 44 pages and contains 41 black and white and color photographs, many of which have not been previously seen in exhibitions or on my website. I feel that these pictures really capture the spirit and "Italian-ness" of the Festa. It's just like being at the Feast except without the sausage and peppers! You will enjoy returning to its pages again and again. It is beautifully printed and available softcover for $31.95 and hardbound with image cover for $44.95. Preview and purchase directly online from Blurb Books at the link below:

• Click here to preview and purchase La Festa: Italian Festivals in America, Photographs by Robert Forlini

Feast of the Giglio, Brooklyn. NY 1999
© Robert Forlini

Feast of St. Anthony, New York, NY 2000
© Robert Forlini

"Core Curriculum, Writings on Photography" by Tod Papageorge

It is humbling to be reviewing the book of such a brilliant writer on photography as Tod Papageorge. Well known as a photographer and teacher of photography (he has held the Walker Evans chair at Yale since 1979), Core Curriculum, Writings on Photography, (Aperture, 2011) presents Papageorge's collected essays from the last 35 years in one volume. As Papageorge himself declared at a recent reading and book signing, he does not consider himself primarily to be a writer, and the relatively small output offered here would seem to bear this out. However, what is perhaps a low quantity of words for the time span represented is nonetheless dense in quality. Papageorge is an immensely profound thinker on the subject of photography, and a keen and opinionated observer of the photography scene, perhaps second only to the late John Szarkowski of the Museum of Modern Art in his insight and originality. It is not only his wisdom which keeps us engaged in the text, but his well crafted language is also a pleasure to read (this makes sense: Papageorge began his academic career as an English literature major before becoming enthralled with photography). Many of the writings will be familiar: (his essay for The Snapshot (Aperture #19:1), the introduction to Garry Winogrand's Public Relations and his treatise for Walker Evans and Robert Frank: An Essay on Influence, for example); they are all welcomed re-reading in this new context. There are also many newly published entries, including impassioned tributes to the photographers Atget, Brassai, Cartier-Bresson, Winogrand and Koudelka (with many plates of the referenced pictures), several sharp interviews with Papageorge himself, and my personal favorite, "An Unfinished Poem in Response to Susan Sontag's On Photography". Unlike writers such as Sontag, who seem to have contempt for the medium, Papageorge postulates in one interview that the best writing about photography has been penned by those involved in its actual practice, giving Szarkowski and Robert Adams as illustrations. With his deep understanding and love for photography, I would add Tod Papageorge to that pantheon.

Man and Eye Chart, Central Park, New York, 1989
© Tod Papageorge

Tod Papageorge Book Signing,
Aperture Gallery, NYC, 6/29/2011
© Robert Forlini

• Core Curriculum, Writings on Photography by Tod Papageorge, is available online from its publisher, the Aperture Foundation, and at bookstores and online everywhere.

"Steiglitz, Steichen, Strand" Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Alfred Steiglitz, The Terminal, 1893

The exhibition, "Steiglitz, Steichen, Strand", on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York through April 10, 2011, presents the work of three pioneers of Modern photography at the turn of the 20th Century. While not a comprehensive survey of the innovations of these artists, the show does succeed in capturing the spirit and significance of their respective accomplishments. Alfred Steiglitz (1864-1946) was the charismatic elder statesman of the group, a photographer and art dealer who championed the acceptance of photography as an art form and introduced many emerging European painters to the United States through his galleries. Edward Steichen (1879-1973) was an early disciple of Steiglitz and a master craftsman who experimented with many methods to achieve his artistic vision, including early color processes. Both at first worked in the Pictorialist style, which attempted to gain legitimacy by obscuring photography's detail and sharpness through imitating the conventions of painting, softening the image with focus and printing techniques. Steiglitz, in part influenced by the European art he was showing, eventually grew tired of this fashion and sought a new and fresh approach. Enter the youngest member of this triumvirate, Paul Strand (1890-1976). On advice from Steiglitz, Strand went forward and created a body of work which exploited photography's hard edges and sharp focus into a new, purely photographic and modern statement. Strand was also a socially conscious artist (he had studied with Lewis Hine at the Ethical Culture School), and he included more human content in his work. Steiglitz embraced this new style, showing Strand's work at his "291" Gallery and publishing it in the lush Camera Work journal. These collaborations and cross influences heralded the inception of Modern photography. For me, it is Strand who emerges from this exhibition as the foremost visionary. In the hindsight of a century passed, his pictures remain as timeless and relevant as any great work of art.

Edward Steichen, Rodin-The Thinker, 1902

Paul Strand, Blind, 1916

• "Steiglitz, Steichen, Strand" is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through April 10, 2011. The Met is located at 1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St. in NYC. Info (212) 535-7710 or visit www.metmuseum.org.
• The beautifully printed exhibition catalog, Steiglitz, Steichen, Strand (Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, publishers), with an informative essay by curator Malcolm Daniel, is available from the Museum or at amazon.com.

"Street Photography Now": A New Book Featuring the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Street Photography Now, edited by Sophie Howarth and Stephan McLaren (Thames & Hudson, London, 2010) is a recent compendium of street photography which features some excellent photographers of the genre but is inconsistent in the quality of the work presented. "Street photography" itself is an imperfect definition. It is a term that Garry Winogrand despised ("Just because I did a book about zoos doesn't make me an animal photographer," he said). For him, still photography was the distinctive term. And so arises one of the problems of trying to put together a collection of so-called street photography. As is true with so many areas of photography, it places a misleading emphasis on subject matter and literalness, rather than on artistic approach and underlying meaning. As Richard Lacayo aptly put it in Time magazine, "I'll call it, imperfectly, subjective street photography, though nearly all photography is to some degree subjective and this kind doesn't have to take place in the streets." So right off the bat, you're constraining yourself based on subject and perhaps including work of lesser merit simply because it took place in the street. Another limitation of this book is that it seems to draw heavily upon photographers who happen to be members of the iN-PUBLIC web site. We are informed in the accompanying essay that street photography is enjoying a Renaissance, perhaps because of interest generated on the Internet. Well, I'm glad it's getting attention, but for some of us it never went away. What this book really needed was some stricter editing. Many of the pictures are trite and cliched, or too easy (what Phil Perkis has called "shooting fish in a barrel"). Some of the photographers are outstanding, however, in both their styles and messages. The stand-out bodies of work for me include those of Richard Kalvar, Trent Parke, Martin Parr, Raghu Rai, Otto Snoek and Ying Tang. Others, such as Cristobal Hara and Alex Webb, have some brilliant individual images but lack a sustained vision. The accompanying essay does provide some insight into the historic traditions, even if incomplete (it seems to start with Walker Evans and has many glaring omissions). A cogent analysis of the pitfalls of practicing street photography in these paranoid times is also provided, although the text is sometimes prone toward hyperbole ("Street photographers still wait patiently on dismal street corners while gales of diesel fumes clog their lungs and sting their eyes.") All in all, this is a book worth having; you'll just find yourself skipping around a bit.

• Street Photography Now is available at amazon.com and elsewhere.
• Many of these photographers' work can be seen at the iN-PUBLIC: The home of street photography website.

Qibao, Shanghai, 2007  ©Ying Tang

A rickshawman taking a nap in Jama Masjid Market, Delhi, 2005
© Raghu Rai

Paul McDonough Exhibit at Sasha Wolf Gallery Showcases New Book

Three Musicians, 1978 © Paul McDonough

For me, Paul McDonough is one of the unsung heros of photography. Although he has been creating images of keen observation and wit for many years, his work has remained largely under appreciated. Now, his second exhibition at Sasha Wolf Gallery in New York is accompanied by his first published book, hopefully bringing him more widespread notoriety in order to help correct this oversight. The exhibition entitled New York City, 1973-1978, together with the photographs from Paul's previous show at the gallery, comprise the work included in the monograph Paul McDonough: New York Photographs, 1968-1978 (Umbrage Editions, Fall 2010), which includes an essay by Museum of Modern Art curator Susan Kismaric. The book covers Paul's early work in photography when he was a new arrival in New York City. He was introduced to Garry Winogrand by childhood friend Tod Papageorge, and was soon inspired to switch from easel painting to street photography as a mode of expression. The pictures themselves not only capture the essence of the City during a time of turmoil and ferment, but have a timeless quality and irony found in spontaneous human drama. Paul has an eye for strange juxtapositions and split second coincidences which are simultaneously poignant and funny. His cast of characters include a encounter between a blind beggar and a hare krishna, three hungry car salesmen waiting for their next prey, a group of Japanese tourists at an exhibit of the first atomic bomb and a crazy collection of tree-climbing kids, bicycles and lovers (among others) in Central Park. The sum total effect of the work is bittersweet. Paul was a teacher of mine at Pratt Institute in the 1980's, and I remembered much of this work from exhibitions back then, an indiction of how well these photographs have endured the test of time. It was a pleasure to be able to experience them again, along with seeing the newly edited pictures for the first time. As Susan Kismaric concluded in her appreciation in the book, "In these pictures, working within a revered tradition so suitable for the pace of modern life, McDonough has applied his finely tuned intuition to show us nothing less than the poetry of daily life." 

War Museum Display-West Point 1975 © Paul McDonough

• The exhibition at Sasha Wolf Gallery runs through January 8, 2011. The gallery is located at 548 West 28th Street in the Chelsea section of Manhattan and is open Tuesday through Saturday 11am-6 pm. Phone 212-925-0025, e-mail info@sashawolf.com.
•  The monograph, Paul McDonough: New York Photographs, 1968-1978, is available from amazon.com.

Central Park Pond-Kids in Tree 1973 © Paul McDonough