"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.

"Black and White" Is Vermont PhotoPlace Gallery's New Online Exhibit

Ice Skating, Lake Peekskill, NY 2004     ©Robert Forlini

My photograph, Ice Skating, Lake Peekskill, NY 2004, has been selected by juror Dan Burkholder, to appear in and exhibition entitled "Black and White" at Vermont PhotoPlace Gallery's Online Gallery Annex. To quote from the juror's statement,   "

The images thrust me onto another plane of appreciation for those practitioners who have honed their vision into shades of gray, embracing one of photography’s earliest and most honored ways of expressing the photographic image...t

he black and white photograph distills our range of perception, forcing a contemplation of the shapes, the light, and the stories behind the image before us...

 Put simply, it’s magical!" In addition, the picture will be published in an exhibition catalog which will be available through the gallery web site.

"Fair Play" Photos Featured on Leica Website for 2011 Oskar Barnack Award

Dunk the Clown, Peekskill, NY 2010
© Robert Forlini

Selections from my portfolio, "Fair Play", a series depicting country fairs, carnivals and amusement parks, have been posted on the Leica camera website. The pictures are contenders for the 2011 Oskar Barnack Award. An international jury awards the Leica Oskar Barnack Award to photographers whose unerring powers of observation capture and express the relationship between man and the environment in the most graphic form in a sequence. Entry submissions must be a self-contained series of images in which the photographer perceives and documents the interaction between man and the environment with acute vision and contemporary visual style – creative, groundbreaking and unintrusive. All photo series submitted will be displayed in a special online gallery in the "Contest" section. The award is named after photographic pioneer Oskar Barnack (1879–1936), the inventor of the Leica.

Calf Feeding, Rhinebeck, NY, 2008            © Robert Forlini

"Home is Where the Camera Is" at Vermont PhotoPlace Gallery, March 1-26, 2011

Mother's Day, Lake Peekskill, NY 2004       ©Robert Forlini

I will be exhibiting Mother's Day, Lake Peekskill, NY 2004 in an exhibition entitled "Home is Where the Camera Is" at the PhotoPlace Gallery in Middlebury, Vermont. The exhibition runs from March 1-March 26, 2011, with a reception on Friday March 18 from 5-7pm. The exhibition was juried by photographer Julie Blackmon, and sets out to explore how we use the camera to record our lives and the lives of others. There will also be a full color catalog available for purchase. To quote from the Juror's Statement, "When it comes down to the themes of family life and home. . . some things never change. The intimacy, the tenderness, the passion for life and those we love, the small stories found in the most ordinary everyday moments, and even the sometimes inescapable angst built into all of it, are the same things that have defined "home" long before our digital cameras and computer software came along." The PhotoPlace Gallery is located at 3 Park Street in Middlebury, Vermont, just a few doors down from the Sheldon Museum in the center of town.

• Contact information for the PhotoPlace Gallery is: 3 Park Street,  Middlebury, VT 05753. Telephone (
  

  802)989-2359; 

  email: photos@vtphotoworkplace.com
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  Exhibition dates: March 1- March 26, 2011. 
  

  Reception: Friday March 18, 5-7 pm.
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  Gallery hours: Tuesdays through Fridays 11-4; Saturdays: 10-2. 
  

  By appointment only on Sundays and Mondays.

"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

2010: The Year in Pictures

Midtown Shoppers, NYC, 2010 © Robert Forlini

Mother's Day, Elmsford, NY 2010
© Robert Forlini

The pictures in this case are not newsworthy, but they are new and noteworthy. I have just posted Recent Work from 2010 on my website, Robert Forlini Photographer. Please have a look, and as always I welcome everyone's interesting comments and general greetings and salutations. Happy viewing and Happy New Year!

Prize Winner, State Fair, Syracuse, NY, 2010
© Robert Forlini

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