The Polaroid camera combined two of Andy Warhol's obsessions--the disposable nature of modern consumerism and the photograph as readymade. An inveterate and relentless user of Polaroid cameras, he made tens of thousands of instant photographs during the 1970s. Many of these were made over a short time span and focused on one individual or subject, sometimes a formal sitting for a portrait, an informal event with friends, or a party at The Factory. Between 1970 and 1976, Warhol established a rigorous system of cataloguing. He would take home the Polaroids, edit and sequence them, and then enter them in individual red Holson Polaroid albums. These albums, with Warhol's original sequence and themes, have remained intact. Red Books is a red wooden box containing 11 of Warhol's Holson Polaroid albums. Each book contains a facsimile reproduction of Warhol's sequence. The themes include a study of Paloma Picasso, a day trip to Montauk, Mick Jagger, the "Asshole" painting, and John and Yoko. In addition to the 11 red books, a black book is included which contains a text by François-Marie Banier explaining the significance of these albums within Warhol's oeuvre and how they act as a visual diary of his work, offering unrivaled insight into his creative process.

Andy Warhol: Red Books

Reference

Steidl/Pace/MacGill Gallery

Whether photographing the residents of working-class Freeland, Pennsylvania, former Ugandan child soldiers in New York City's Washington Square Park or anti-war protestors, Judith Joy Ross's photographs always reveal her distinct vision of people and place, and the ensuing story each captured image reveals. Ross's most recent work is a series of photographs of people in Pennsylvania protesting the war in Iraq, the majority of which were taken at a protest called "Eyes Wide Open," organized by the Quaker community. The personal connection Ross forges with her subjects is palpable and results in pictures that are sensitive reflections of both empowerment and vulnerability. With a remarkable ability to navigate socio-economic boundaries with ease, Ross creates touching portraits characterized by their candor, naturalism and fidelity to each subject's sense of self. They are revelations not only of the individuals but of humanity at large.

Judith Joy Ross: Protest the War

Arts & Photography

Szegedy-Maszak, Andrew

Individual Artists

Sometimes resembling a river of grass, sometimes more like the wheat fields of the Canadian prairies, the High Line is a unique ruin that simultaneously permits contemplation of nature and the city. Since March 2000, photographer Joel Sternfeld has been documenting the abandoned elevated railway line which runs for 1.5 miles along the West Side of New York City, from 34th Street down along the edge of the Hudson River, through West Chelsea's tree-lined blocks and art galleries, and into the heart of the Meat Packing District. Walking the path of this real-time landscape, Sternfeld has created a suite of images in which the landscape is read as both a social and cultural indicator.

Joel Sternfeld: Walking The High Line

Gopnik, Adam

Stilgoe, John

For more than a year, David Byrne has been employing the ubiquitous sales and presentation program PowerPoint as an art medium. E.E.E.I (Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information) is a book of images and essays, plus a DVD which plays 5 of his PowerPoint presentations accompanied by original music. The book component contains a dozen new exploratory texts and a whole lot of bold, graphic images created with the help of PowerPoint's built-in tools and visuals--not to mention the fun of plastic overlays and nifty foldout pages. And you may ask yourself, what is the meaning of this? And you may ask yourself, what is this about? It is about taking subjective, even emotional, information and presenting it in a familiar audiovisual form--using a medium in a way that is different, and possibly better, than what was intended. It is about appropriating a contemporary, corporate staple and making something critical, beautiful and humorous with it.

David Byrne: E.E.E.I. (Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information)

Byrne,David

History & Criticism

In the 11 days following the Chernobyl catastrophe on April 26, 1986, more than 116,000 people were permanently evacuated from the area surrounding the nuclear power plant. Declared unfit for human habitation, the Zones of Exclusion includes the towns of Pripyat (established in the 1970s to house workers) and Chernobyl. In May 2001, Robert Polidori photographed what was left behind in the this dead zone. His richly detailed images move from the burned-out control room of Reactor 4, where technicians staged the experiment that caused the disaster, to the unfinished apartment complexes, ransacked schools and abandoned nurseries that remain as evidence of those who once called Pripyat home. Nearby, trucks and tanks used in the cleanup efforts rest in an auto graveyard, some covered in lead shrouds and others robbed of parts. Houseboats and barges rust in the contaminated waters of the Pripyat River. Foliage grows over the sidewalks and hides the modest homes of Chernobyl. In his large-scale photographs, Polidori captures the faded colors and desolate atmosphere of these two towns, producing haunting documents that present the reader with a rare view of not just a disastrous event, but a place and the people who lived there.

Zones of Exclusion: Pripyat and Chernobyl

The Lower East Side between 1972 and 1985―filled with artists, wannabe artists and hangers-on―was a community of the misbegotten gathered from every town in America and relocated in the mean streets between Broadway and the Bowery, and Peter Hujar was right in the midst of it. Nothing but talent, flamboyance, rank gender-bending mockery and arch irony supported these artists: some made their names, many came to grief and a few made art. In those days, the gutted streets of the Lower East Side resembled a war-zone. Though some established artists had passed through―Rauschenberg and Johns, John Cage and Merce Cunningham―almost everyone lived and worked on the extreme outer margins of money and art, penniless and unknown. As a community, downtown New York was a counterstatement to the rich New York of the banks, museums, media, corporations and the art world itself. That downtown New York is gone: time, gentrification, disease and death have taken their toll and turned this vibrant epoch into a chapter in art history. But before it vanished, its extravagant cast sat for Peter Hujar’s camera, and with this volume, that community is vividly brought to life. Featured are Charles Ludlam, David Wojnarowicz, Edwin Denby, Susan Sontag, Paul Thek, Divine, Robert Wilson, John Waters, William S. Burroughs, Ray Johnson, Fran Lebowitz, Remy Charlip, Joe Brainard and many others. Peter Hujar (1934–87) was born in Trenton, New Jersey, and moved to Manhattan to work in the magazine, advertising and fashion industries. He documented the vibrant cultural scene of downtown New York throughout the 1970s and 1980s. In 1976 he published Portraits in Life and Death, with an introduction by Susan Sontag. Hujar died of AIDS in 1987.

Peter Hujar: Lost Downtown

Photography & Video

Tod Papageorge: Dr. Blankman´s New York documents a brief but critical moment in the photographer's early career, the two years Papageorge shot in color in New York in the late 1960s. Black-and-white photography was still the "serious" medium, and color reserved for commercial applications; Papageorge--25 years old and newly arrived in New York City--was encouraged by his fellow photographers to seek paying magazine work by developing a body of work in color. In some ways it was a failed experiment: Papageorge mostly approached color in the same way as he approached black and white, except that he also began to intuitively produce still-life pictures with little commercial appeal, spotlighting canned hams in shop windows and political posters. But color offered Papageorge the opportunity to work in a new medium at a time of great social, political and cultural change. "I’d like to think that, in Dr. Blankman´s New York, you’ll find a persuasive account of what it meant for me to be free with a Leica in the streets of my newly adopted home of Manhattan," writes Papageorge, "a record drawn with Kodachrome film and its rich, saturated colors." Tod Papageorge (born 1940) picked up photography for the first time as a student at the University of New Hampshire. He is the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships. From 1979 to 2013 Papageorge served as Yale University’s Walker Evans Professor of Photography and Director of Graduate Study in Photography.

Tod Papageorge: Dr. Blankman´s New York

Campany, David

One of the foremost American photographers of the 20th century, Harry Callahan (1912–99) explored the expressive possibilities of both color and black-and-white photography from the outset of his career. Following his retirement from teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design in 1977, however, he decided to dedicate his practice exclusively to color and pursue travel to foreign locales. The 23 photographs in this publication, taken in Morocco in 1981, are the product of Callahan’s shift to a strictly chromatic palette and demonstrate his continued interest in the visual intrigue of the everyday urban landscape and the passersby who occupy it. Depicting his familiar subjects of architectural facades, random patterns of street activity and isolated figures lost in thought, the images transcend Morocco’s exoticism by exploring the formal and pictorial potential of the country’s environment.

Harry Callahan: Morocco

Robert Heinecken (1931–2006) seldom used a camera. A self-described “para-photographer,” he repurposed found imagery to explore the underpinnings of daily life. He cut into periodicals―snipping heads from lithe bodies and slicing rouged lips from smiling cheeks―and reorganized these fragments into collaged wholes that reveal the greed, hypocrisy and misogyny behind traditional depictions of America.
This book presents Heinecken’s Periodicals (1969–72) and Revised Magazines (1989–94) as 25 facsimiles. Originally conceived as insertions into everyday life, these collage-publications were taken from newsstands, altered and then returned to be purchased by unsuspecting consumers. By pasting a Vietnam War image into fashion magazines or a dominatrix into Time, Heinecken created serials that are disturbing yet familiar; known cultural referents now oppose their presumed functions.

Robert Heinecken: Magazines

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