During the summer and fall of 1950 Penn set up temporary north light studios in London, Paris, and New York.  He then sought out people going to and from work and invited them to come to his studio exactly as they were at that time, with the tools of their profession. They were firmly urged not to change anything or “make anything better”. Penn writes,

Jumping quickly from country to country gave me an especially clear look at national differences. The Parisians doubted that we were doing exactly what we said we were doing. They felt there was something fishy going on… But [to] the Londoners it seemed the most logical thing in the world to be recorded in their work clothes. They…presented themselves to the camera with a seriousness and pride that was quite endearing… The Americans as a group were the least predictable. In spite of our cautions, a few arrived for their sittings having shed their work clothes, shaved, even wearing dark Sunday suits, sure this was their first step on the way to Hollywood.

First an art director, then a painter, Irving Penn came to photography in 1944. For nearly fifty years he has excelled in many different genres, producing a body of work that has had a major impact on fashion, portraiture, nudes, still life, and advertising. Internationally recognized, his work is included in the collections of many major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the National Gallery, Washington D.C. and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

This exhibition runs concurrently with Nicholas Nixon: Bebe & Me

The post The Small Trades (1950) appeared first on Fraenkel Gallery.

Nicholas Nixon has been photographing his wife and children, in tightly-cropped, closely examined 8 x 10″ contact prints, since the birth of his daughter in 1985. In this exhibition of new photographs he has turned his large-format camera on its side, working for the first time in a vertical format and, also for the first time, turning the camera on himself. Always interested in the aging process, Nixon takes a hard look at himself and his wife as they reach mid-life: the way they are transforming physically and in their relationship with each other.

Close Gallery

Since the mid-1970s, Nixon has helped to lead a revival of the old-fashioned view camera with its precise photographic description. Nixon’s work has included early group portraits of the poor and working class in Boston, annual portraits of his wife and her sisters, portraits of the elderly, people with AIDS, and students in a variety of classrooms settings. Many of these projects have documented change over time in the lives of their subjects, and together they have described people of all ages.

Nixon has received two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as two Guggenheim Fellowships. One of the most influential contemporary photographers, his exhibition history includes one person shows at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among many others.

This exhibition runs concurrently with Irving Penn: The Small Trades.

The post Bebe & Me appeared first on Fraenkel Gallery.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Americans poured into the cities of the West, attracted by the natural beauty and quality of life found there. As populations ballooned, buildings, roads, telephone poles, supermarkets and billboards went up and the land became littered with the signs of civilization. These photographs, all made in the Denver metropolitan area, pinpoint a moment of major alteration in our culture’s values.

Close Gallery

Born in New Jersey in 1937, Adams has spent most of his adult life in the western United States recording in photographs the changing appearance as well as the enduring qualities of the landscape. In addition to being selected as a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, Robert Adams has been awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships and the Photographers’ Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 1989, he was the subject of a major retrospective organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art. His work and writings on photographs have appeared in numerous books and monographs.

What We Bought: The New World is accompanied by a 206-page hardcover catalog, which reproduces every image in the exhibition.

The post What We Bought: The New World appeared first on Fraenkel Gallery.

Joel-Peter Witkin’s most recent photographs, created since his retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum in 1996, continue to explore the spiritual realm as manifested within the physical realm and the structures – specifically religion, literature and the visual arts – with which humans have tried to understand those worlds. The grotesque, the bizarre and the shocking figures that populate his pictures are the means by which Witkin examines themes that persist throughout the history of art. The focus on various conditions and states of the physical forces us to consider the relative nature of beauty and hideousness, as well as laying bare our common mortality.

Often beginning with sketches and drawings, Witkin creates complicated scenes with backdrops and props before bringing his subjects into the highly choreographed studio environment. After shooting, Witkin scratches and draws on the negatives, then prints them through a tissue, selectively toning and bleaching the final prints, thereby producing a rich, baroque aesthetic.

Joel-Peter Witkin’s photographs have been exhibited in museums around the world, including the Louvre Museum, Paris, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. He is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including four photography fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The post Recent Photographs appeared first on Fraenkel Gallery.

The post Egypt, Sinai, and Jerusalem – 1858 appeared first on Fraenkel Gallery.

Nan Goldin’s pictures narrate her life, evolving from relationships rather than from observations. The artist has said “I sometimes don’t know how I feel about someone until I take his or her picture.” Out of the flux of experience, Goldin captures moments that cumulatively tell stories of love, friendship, desire, isolation, adoration and revelation. Her images are more than one-shot narratives; they are structured for the densest interaction of characters and themes—resulting in a resounding, almost musical creation that resonates with ambivalence and complexity.

Close Gallery

Beginning work in the early 1970s, Goldin has chronicled her life and that of her friends from the party years in Boston and New York and moving on to the euphoria and despair of widespread drug abuse, the burgeoning AIDS crisis, the collective will to survive, and the inevitable passage of time. Internationally recognized, her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography among many others.

This exhibition is presented in conjunction with J. John Priola: Saved.

The post Recent Photographs appeared first on Fraenkel Gallery.

Open Secrets was conceived as an exhibition that would examine the complex pleasures and challenges of looking at pictures. It focuses on works on paper – primarily photographs and drawings – media that embody an exceptional intimacy and immediacy of expression. This exhibition provides a rare opportunity to view pictures by photographers such as Diane Arbus, Walker Evans, Edward Weston and Eugene Atget alongside works by Henri Matisse, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol and Piet Mondrian. As stated in the exhibition catalogue, “This is an experiment, and our interest is less in direct correspondence between pictures than it is in how these disparate works can engage each other in dialogue – how they comment upon and shed light on each other… Perhaps these juxtapositions allow us to hint at those mysterious, ineffable aspects of pictures that will always defy being written about.”

Among the highlights are Pablo Picasso’s cubist study of a water pitcher, drawn in Paris in the Autumn of 1909 and Paul Outerbridge’s similarly cubist platinum print titled “Saw and Square” from 1921; Frida Kahlo’s only print, “El Aborto,” a lithograph from 1932, recently acquired by the Achenbach Foundation of the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco and being exhibited here for the first time; and a “spirit photograph” of soldiers faces floating in the Albert Hall, 1932, by the virtually unknown Mrs. Ada Deane.

The exhibition has recently been on view at Matthew Marks Gallery, New York and is accompanied by a fully illustrated 144-page catalog of the same title, published by Fraenkel Gallery and Matthew Marks Gallery.

The post Open Secrets: Seventy Pictures on Paper 1815 to the Present appeared first on Fraenkel Gallery.

Though these four artists are friends, and have been working along related lines for many years, this is the first exhibition to examine their work as a whole. In collaboration with each artist, seven exemplary pictures were selected, charting earliest successes through more recent projects. For the purposes of this exhibition and publication each artist agreed to release works considered pivotal in his or her evolution.

The pictures comprising Under the Sun seem unaligned to most photography of the past one hundred fifty years. They are characterized by a sense of photography distilled to its basic elements, and manifest a peculiar physical presence due in varying degrees to unfamiliar subject matter, assertive use of scale, and vibrant, dramatic color. Often made without a camera, sometimes of nothing more than paper and light, they are grounded in abstraction. But what most distinguishes the work of this “Gang of Four” — Bucklow, Derges, Fabian Miller and Fuss — is their conscious and deliberate engagement with the metaphysical possibilities of the medium.

Though all are British born, Christopher Bucklow currently lives and works in Venice and Adam Fuss in New York City.  Susan Derges and Garry Fabian Miller reside in Dartmoor, England.

The post Under the Sun: Photographs by Christopher Bucklow, Susan Derges, Garry Fabian Miller and Adam Fuss appeared first on Fraenkel Gallery.