Anne Noble: At the End of the Earth Opens at Stills Gallery in Sydney

SYDNEY.- At the End of the Earth continues Anne Noble’s fascination with the continent of Antarctica. White Lanterns showed at Stills Gallery in May 2006. This work depicted the surreal way the Antarctic was portrayed in museums and research centres around the world and tapped into our fascination with this vast place. At the End of the Earth takes a similarly oblique approach in its refusal to romanticise the landscape, by focussing on manmade interventions into the pristine terrain. The [...]

Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery Presents “Americans Now”

WASHINGTON, DC.- “Americans Now,”drawn from the National Portrait Gallery’s collection, features portraits of outstanding individuals in the realms of science, business, government and the arts. The exhibition opens Aug. 20 and will be on view through July 10, 2011. The show includes such familiar names as Erykah Badu, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Tom Hanks, Tony Hawk, Jay-Z, LL Cool J, Willie Nelson, Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison and Martha Stewart. It also features those who are less widely known but are leaders [...]

Josef Koudelka’s Testimony of the Prague Invasion Opens in Buenos Aires

BUENOS AIRES.- Fundacion OSDE opened the exhibition, Invasion 68 Prague. The show is comprised of images personally selected by Josef Koudelka from his extensive archive, and is co-produced with Magnum Photos. Conceived as an installation it features large-scale, ink-jet prints as well as related texts. In 1968 Josef Koudelka was thirty years old. He had committed himself to photography as a full-time career only recently, and had been chronicling the theater and the lives of gypsies, but he had never [...]

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to Feature Elvis 1956 Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer

CLEVELAND, OH.- The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum will unveil its latest exhibit devoted to the King of Rock and Roll as a part of the Museum’s 15th anniversary celebration this September. ELVIS 1956: Photographs by Alfred Wertheimer will open to the public on Monday, September 13, in the Circular Gallery of the Main Exhibit Hall. Taken during the year Elvis turned 21, Alfred Wertheimer’s photographs are a remarkable visual record of a defining time for rock [...]

Oil-Inspired Spread for August Issue of Vogue Italia Stirs Muck

MIAMI (AP).- The model is in black, prone and dirty on jagged rocks, netting draped around her legs like a dead sea creature. There she is again, lying on her back in a feathered dress, and in close up, her hair and face sleek with oil. A stirring photo spread in the August issue of Vogue Italia was inspired by the Gulf oil spill, leaving readers wondering if the magazine crossed from evocative to insensitive. Editor-in-Chief Franca Sozzani understands the [...]

Richard Avedon’s Lively Images at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

BOSTON, MA.- Richard Avedon (1923–2004) was the man who brought fashion photography to life. Instead of perpetuating static images of human mannequins posing stiffly in magazines, Avedon depicted his models as real women whose energy and exuberance complemented their modern lifestyles. Considered one of the great image-makers of the 20th century, he redefined fashion photography and his lasting contributions are explored in the traveling exhibition Avedon Fashion 1944–2000, a major retrospective devoted exclusively to his work in this medium. On [...]

Priceless Record of Native American World on Brink of Change at Bonhams

LONDON.- A series of fascinating and important 19th century portraits of Native Americans by the pioneering German/American photographer, John Karl Hillers are for sale in Bonhams India and Beyond sale at Knightsbridge on 5 October 2010. Hillers emigrated with his family to the USA from his native Hanover in 1852 when he was just nine years old. He fought on the Union side in the Civil War and re-enlisted in the army once the conflict was over. On leaving the [...]

Ellis Island Experience is Focus of Exhibition at Michener Art Museum

DOYLESTOWN, PA.- For twelve million people, Ellis Island was the doorway to a new life, with the hopes and dreams of several generations of immigrants beginning and sometimes ending there. Understandably, this American landmark in New York Harbor has deeply inspired many artists. Most notably, the legendary photographer Lewis Hine (1874-1940) documented the human drama as it unfolded at the immigration center in the early 1900s, while the acclaimed contemporary photographer Stephen Wilkes captured the long-abandoned buildings of the island’s [...]

Richard Misrach: After Katrina Marks Gift of Katrina Photographs Series to MFAH

HOUSTON, TX.- American photographer Richard Misrach (b. 1949) gave 69 Katrina photographs to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in May 2010, which will be on view for the first time this summer. Focusing on the graffiti left by New Orleans evacuees, Richard Misrach: After Katrina reveals a range of individual reactions, giving a human face to the wreckage. Misrach shot the Katrina photographs between October and December 2005 with a 4 MP pocket camera. Richard Misrach: After Katrina, on [...]

Whitney Museum Extends John Jonas Gruen Exhibition

NEW YORK, NY.- Located in the Museum’s Lower Gallery, this exhibition of John Jonas Gruen’s portraits of notable artists, all of whom are represented in the Whitney’s collection, has been extended to September 5, 2010. The exhibition is curated by Elisabeth Sussman. Writing in the volume of photographs from which this exhibition takes its title, art historian Justin Spring notes: “John Jonas Gruen has made it his business to be in the right place at the right time. During his [...]

Cartier-Bresson Exhibit Tells Stories in Decisive Moments

CHICAGO, IL (AP).- Henri Cartier-Bresson famously said a good photograph captures the “decisive moment,” but the comment is often misunderstood. Cartier-Bresson, who traveled the globe shooting many of the 20th century’s major events, was less interested in capturing an incident than in using photographs to convey its significance, curators of a new retrospective of his work said. When Cartier-Bresson documented refugees coming to the United States after World War Two, he focused his camera not on their arrivals, but on [...]

Limited Edition Photograph Art of Hollywood Stars Before they Were Legend

LOS ANGELES, CA.- Long before Brad Pitt, Sandra Bullock, Johnny Depp, Keneau Reeves to name but a few of the “A” list stars had landed in the red carpet circle of fame they were struggling actors with little but a dream. While these young stars were in pursuit of careers on the big screen, a visionary blond photographer artist by the name of Karen Bystedt arrived in Hollywood fresh out of New York Film School. Bystedt was in search of [...]

Stunning Nudes by Photographer Rankin at Annroy Gallery, London

LONDON.- Rankin blurs the boundaries of fashion, photography and fine art in Painting Pretty Pictures, a collection of painterly studies of feminine beauty. Using digital retouching as a tool for artistic effect, stunning nudes of some of the world’s top models, including Yasmin Le Bon, Heidi Klum and Lily Cole, are transformed into apparent oil paintings. Always keen to explore the limits of his chosen medium, Rankin reframes the debate surrounding the use of digital image manipulation, creating a new [...]

National Portrait Gallery Announces Exhibition by Dmitri Kasterine

LONDON.- Photographs by Dmitri Kasterine will be on display for the first time in the United Kingdom at the National Portrait Gallery. Since the early 1960s Kasterine has photographed some of the most eminent cultural figures of the twentieth century. In September, twenty newly-acquired photographs, including studies of Samuel Beckett, Francis Bacon, Stanley Kubrick and David Hockney, will be shown here for the first time. Samuel Beckett, 1965 by Dmitri Kasterine. © Dmitri Kasterine / National Portrait Gallery, London One [...]

Marlo Pascual and Sergej Jensen Open Solo Exhibitions at Aspen Art Museum

ASPEN, CO.- The Aspen Art Museum’s third Jane and Marc Nathanson Distinguished Artist in Residence is New York-based artist Marlo Pascual. Pascual combines glamorous photographs of women from the 1940s and 50s with found objects and light sources to create brooding, psychologically charged work. Pascual’s elegant installations and theatrical lighting—varying from old lamps and candlelight to fluorescents and colored theater gels—animate the women in the photographs, enacting the dramatic potential frozen in the still frames of a bygone era. The [...]