Little visual miracles. For more than forty years that most American of photographers,
Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters Lee Friedlander, has recorded
modern American urban life -- with its
jumble of
people,
signs,
buildings, and
cars, and
television sets. He likes to turn
a common blunder of amateurs -- photographing something nearby
with one's back to the sun -- into a
leitmotif.
His shadow plays the role of alter ego, sticking to the back of a woman's fur collar, clinging to a lamppost as a parade of drum majorettes passes by, reclining like a stuffed doll on a chair. Clever jigsaw puzzles, his pictures frequently reveal themselves to be
laconic, austere poems to what
Friedlander has termed "
the American social landscape',' meaning mostly ordinary places and affairs. "Friedlander,"
an exhibition of more than 480 photographs and 25 books covering decades of work, runs at MoMA through Aug. 29, before traveling to Europe until 2007. More inside.
posted by matteo
on Jun 14, 2005 -
8 comments
Thomas Demand is a photographer with an interesting working process. He starts with an image of a location, and then carefully reconstructs the location in his studio using cardboard and paper. His photographs of these reconstructions have an almost painterly quality, reminiscent of the work of
Gerhard Richter. Demand has a
mid-career retrospective opening at the
MoMA. (NYT link, among others.)
posted by grapefruitmoon
on Mar 4, 2005 -
12 comments
"Taryn Simon: The Innocents" Is an
exhibition at MOMA's P.S.1 Contemporary Arts Center, of large color photographs of innocent men jailed for crimes they did not commit, exonerated by DNA evidence. For most of the photographs Ms. Simon posed each man at the scene of the arrest, the scene of the crime, the scene of misidentification or the scene of the alibi.
posted by jdaura
on Jun 24, 2003 -
6 comments
The Russian Avant-Garde Book is an online version of the MoMA exhibit, featuring 112 books originally published in Russia during the intensely creative period between 1910 and 1934, before Stalin outlawed any style but social realism. The site is separated into three chronological themes and includes examples of futurist works, constructivist graphic design, children's books, propaganda, photography and photomontage, revolutionary imagery, architecture and industry, war themes, folk art and judaica...
posted by taz
on Oct 8, 2002 -
16 comments
