Peter Funch, Babel Tales, Exigent State. Photo courtesy of the artist

These artificial communities constructed by Peter are surreal and often whimsical, but can be deeply unsettling to someone that questions the hive mentality. Peter has created street scenes that never actually existed in reality and at first glance you’re convinced that they are simple street shots, but nothing could be further from the truth.  I came across Peter’s work in Chelsea on one of my random art walks around New York City. Peter answered my questions via email.

Peter Funch, Babel Tales. Following the Followers. Photo courtesy of the artist

What kind of boy were you?
As I young boy I was extremely curious. I would tear everything apart just to figure out how it was made. I was looking at the technology behind the userface. Then for a while I became quite a trouble maker. If nothing was happening I would try to make it happen. It was at times a very restless energy.

When did the camera come into your life?
My Dad took lots of pictures so there was always a camera in the house. When I was about 18 or 19 I started to become very interested in using the camera myself. At that point I had no idea where I was going with my life, but I really enjoyed taking pictures and fell into studying photojournalism at university. Photography was the first thing I was excited about in my school time.

Peter Funch, Babel Tales, Informing the informers. Photo courtesy of the artist

How do you decide on a street location in NYC?
Sometimes I choose very specific locations to get one image. In many of the images it is the location that defines the scenario. Others are more open. I usually pick places that are very crowded with a diverse set of characters and an interesting aesthetic. For Babel Tales, I decided that the project should be done in Manhattan. I make rules for every project that I do. Choosing Manhattan was a good way of defining an area. It’s an island with so many stories, references, history, and mystery.

How long did it take to finish the Babel Tales series?
I spent four years working on the series. It was quite a long and consuming process but on the other hand it was interesting to work with one idea over  a longer time. The same principle of shooting where the content develops.

On average how long did it take to compose a single photograph?
Typically 10 to 15 days of shooting on the street, but the most time goes into categorizing the images and putting together the final product in my studio. Some took a month and some took years. I usually work on 5 or 10 different images at a time. Some of my latest images are derived from raw material that was shot three summers ago. At the time I thought it didn’t work, but seeing it with fresh eyes has helped.

Peter Funch, Babel Tales, Memory Lane. Photo courtesy of the artist

Are you subverting the individual in the Babel Tales series?
It’s more about indicating a relation between individuals as a group. Babel Tales is about the relations that we aren’t aware of or do not usually pay attention to.

Do you celebrate the hive mentality?
Yes I think it’s very interesting to view all levels and collective groups of society as a large moving organism and breaking that down to the image of a single person walking on the street – his/hers p.o.v. and narrative.

What does it mean to be an artist?
To be an artist is a position in society where you comment, reflect, study, break down and build up. It is not a position you can apply for since you define it yourself.

(Inaccurate information has been removed from this post).

ICA appoints new curator

Anthony Elms. Photo by Erin Leland.

The Institute of Contemporary Art has appointed Anthony Elms as a new Associate Curator. Elms has worked as an  independent curator and writer, and he was Assistant Director of Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois at Chicago for six years. He replaces Jenelle Porter who has taken a position at ICA Boston.

Is Going to College Worth It?
President Obama just announced his plan for student debt relief. Many artists are college educated and in debt. Many readers of this blog are likely strapped with student loans too. University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business recently published an article questioning just such a system: “While more U.S. students are enrolled than ever before, a perfect storm of soaring costs, rising student debt and shrinking job prospects have led critics to increasingly challenge whether college remains a worthwhile investment.”

Phone cameras vs. point-and-shoot

Comparison between an 8 megapizel digital camera (left) and iPhone 4S (right). These images were taken at the same time and distance at Chinatown Coffee in Washington D.C. (Mallory Benedict and Cristina Fletes/NPR)

An article on NPR also raises some value questions. With the advancement of technology in smart phones marching steadily forward, is it cost effective to purchase a separate camera? For amateur photographers, the choice may become more and more clear as smart phone technology develops and the convenience of quickly sharing images trumps the need for a point-and-shoot camera.

Josh Mosley video art history lecture at PAFA

Bill Viola, "Ocean Without a Shore", 2007, video and sound installation, running time: approx. 90 minutes.

As part of its Art at Lunch series, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts will be holding a lecture about the history of video art on November 2 at 12 noon. The speaker will be Joshua Mosley, artist and Associate Professor of Fine Art at UPenn. The lecture anticipates the arrival of one of PAFA’s newest acquisition – video artist Bill Viola’s “Ocean Without a Shore” to be installed more or less permanently in the Morris Gallery, according to Curator of Contemporary Art, Julien Robson.  Look for regular Morris gallery programming to continue, but in other parts of the building.  (It might cost to get in to see it, too, whereas trips to the Morris Gallery itself previously were free).

Fleisher Wind Challenge trick-or-treat closing reception
The 34th season of the Fleisher Wind Challenge Exhibition Series closes on October 30 with a reception from 4 – 6 PM. Artists Alana Bograd and Jennie Thwing will premiere a painting exhibition and a stop-motion animation completed with teens from Fleisher’s Youth programs. Halloween costumes are encouraged and the artists will have plenty of candy available for all!

Knight Foundation gains tech guru board members
Facebook is coming to the Knight Foundation.  That is, Chris Hughes, Facebook co-founder will now be on the board of trustees of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. The foundation’s tech coup for its board also includes Joichi Ito, director of MIT’s Media Lab and John Palfrey, professor at Harvard Law School and co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society.

Opportunities

Performers wanted for… City Hall? That’s right, the Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy is now seeking talented performing artists and organizations for City Hall Presents, a new series of free concerts highlighting Philly’s rich performance offerings.

InLiquid membership applications are due by October 30. That’s right around the corner, but worth the consideration. A membership promotes and supports the work of visual artists with an extensive online artist portfolio page including credentials, statements, contact information, and exposure.

The egg theory.

Late architect Cedric Price theorized that cities are like eggs – boiled, fried, or scrambled – but Philadelphia doesn’t quite fit the bill. Hidden City is hosting a contest to find a better theory for Philly’s formation. Visit the contest page to learn more!

The Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts is seeking artists for solo shows in 2013. You must be a DCCA member and you may not have had a solo show in the past four years. Visit their opportunities page for more info.

F&N Gallery at 2009 Frankford Avenue seeks submissions for a juried art show.  The show will open on January 6 and run for one month. The show will highlight Women artists exhibiting a theme of Cultural Awareness and/or Social Enlightenment. Interested artists should submit five images of their work to fngallery.coh@gmail.com for consideration.

Artist News

Jayson Musson‘s alter-ego Hennessy Youngman will enter the hallowed halls of PAFA to hilariously critique the collection of art by dead white guys. The snarky show is called The Grand Manner and opens on November 5.

Matt Bollinger, "Locker Room", flashe and acrylic on cut and pasted paper, 60" x 48", 2011.

Matt Bollinger, a former Philly artist that showed at the Rodger LaPelle Gallery now has a solo show in NYC at Galerie Zürcher.

Barry Parker, "Etruscan Places IV", 2009.

Barry Parker, retiring head of the sculpture department at UArts has a solo show at Medialia in New York that opens on November 5.

Gerard Brown who is the head of foundations at Tyler School of art and the scholar in residence at the Center for Art in Wood has an upcoming show at Tiger Strikes Asteroid starting on November 4.

Brandon Cox is a UArts grad now living in NYC. He recently had a solo show at UArts and he’s definitely on a roll!

Kaitlin Pomerantz had a recent DIY curating project “Wish You Were There” at Green Line Cafe that has been picked up by the University City Arts League.

Larry Louie, from the A Working Day in Dhaka, Bangladesh series, 2010

Our first stop is in a most unlikely place–the office of an optometrist named Larry Louie. There we find treasure. The office turns out to to be a gallery with an office attached. The main gallery space is right off the entryway. And more spaces are upstairs. All of them are beautiful white box spaces.

Larry Louie, from the A Working Day in Dhaka, Bangladesh series, 2010

Louie as an ethnographic documentary photographer. His wife, who runs the gallery spaces, said she goes with him on his trips around the world (Turkey, Tanzania, and Tibet for example). Her role in the enterprise is to hang back, watchful, as he befriends people who might not be so welcoming or kind. “I have his back,” she says. Eventually, though, Louie gains enough trust so his subjects allow him to record them with the camera.

The resulting photos, mostly black and white, have velvety darks and luminous lights and midtones. The people in them are compelling. The images do not have the political edge of say Sebastiao Salgado. Rather the message is social without the isms–clear-eyed explorations of people’s lives in context. Louie has a sympathetic eye, at the same time that his photos record the harsh realities.

Larry Louie, Campfire Under the Bridge, Kathmandu, 2010

One of the images reminds me off Jeff Wall’s posed images of people living their lives invisibly, under an overpass. Then I decide many of them have that feel–of a nether world the middle class never touch, never notice.

The group shots have the gravitas of history paintings, hugely ambitious in their sweeping descriptions of people’s lives, Louie’s exquisite management of details filling the picture frame.

Louie does dodge and burn his images in PhotoShop. The resulting images have won Louie awards including the IPA Lucie Award and National Geographic Photo Essay Award. He had a solo show at the Royal Alberta Museum in Edmonton in 2010 and has shown in the UK and Spain as well as around the US. Louie also supports SEVA Canada and its Vision 2020, a global initiative for the elimination of avoidable blindness, and the battle for gender equality in eye care. His photos also document some of the group’s work and have that same passion for people and social issues.

After that beginning, the other galleries we visited are a bit of a comedown. We walk down empty streets, and the August art scene there is a bit scaled back, just like everywhere else.

Barry with camera. He has become an avid photographer.

Louise at the Reynolds Alberta Museum

Fortunately Edmonton has other charms–besides of course Barry and Louise, who live in a large suburban house, the back wall of windows overlooking a large park area. Interestingly enough, this suburban house is a twin, really, but the partner house falls away thanks to some smart design. I don’t really understand the thinking. Is it for heat retention? Nah. They like burning oil in Edmonton, where oil is king–oil from the ground and Canola oil.

Edmonton sunset seen from Barry and Louise's deck

The house’s surrounding land is minimal, which strikes me as funny in a place that has so much land to burn; even the McMansions in the development (and there are some horrifyingly large ones) have minimal land. But Barry and Louise’s place looks out on communal park land. Nice view, nice place to walk.

Wally, an Aussie, entertains a street crowd with tricks and insults.

Another charm in Edmonton is the Fringe. Edmonton was the first North American city to host a Fringe Festival, and it seems as if all Edmontonians come out for it. We certainly did, going to four plays, five performances.

The highlight was The Surprise, a funny, sad monologue by a guy from New York named Martin Dockery, who tells about how his family has a don’t ask don’t tell policy of non-relating. Dockery tells all, fortunately, as he tells on his father, his girlfriend and of course himself! If you see his name somewhere, buy tickets.

The Fringe up there gets good newspaper coverage, with a daily growing list of performances ranked via a ranking system that’s really helpful in making choices. The Edmonton Journal must deploy a huge posse of of people to help them sort through the volume of shows.

The aircraft annex of the Reynolds-Alberta Museum. The museum is located on ultra-flat prairie in the middle of nowhere. There's a race track on the right.

The show wasn’t the only surprise of the trip. Another was the Reynolds-Alberta Museum with its rehabbed Model T, Duesenberg and an array of cars and planes you never heard of.

Murray with a simple weight-lifting machine at the Reynolds-Alberta Museum, which had lots of basic mechanics demonstrations.

The museum crops up like a giant airplane hangar in the middle of the ultra-flat prairie fields in the town of Wetaskiwin. It is the outgrowth of a private collection–one man’s passion for collecting machines. Picture him running around from farm to farm, taking off people’s hands their old rusting vehicles, parked in the back 40 (sort of like my old printers, scanners and VCR–call me up if you’re interested in these). Reynolds is still alive and still collecting–and donating to the museum.

1918 Snow Flyer Conversion Kit--Take your 4-wheeled vehicle and turn it into a whatchamacallit.

The highlight for me–well there are numerous ones. Here’s my short list:

• The grain elevator gizmos. Now I get it! I never before understood how they worked
  

  A restored Duesenberg is a thing of beauty. There were also cars we'd never heard of--a Winton for instance?

  .

• The retrofitted cars with skis instead of wheels and other redesigns by farmers and others who needed their car to work in a variety of ways. There were even kits to turn cars into flat beds, for instance.
• The way that cars affected how the whole region (and by extension, the whole world) developed and grew. That social history was pretty darned great, with cars affecting the culture and the culture affecting the cars.
• The interaction between social class interacted with car history.

My brother is like a pig in shit in this museum. He loves cars. He takes me for a ride in his little sports car, an old Honda sports car in mint condition, top down. I hang on for dear life, although the prairies don’t exactly offer much by way of curvy corniche roads to dazzle me with. Louise does not like the sports car. She likes her Element. They also share an Explorer, which also likes burning through fuel.

Athabasca River (I think; so many rivers, and they all seem to criss cross)

Murray and I begin the vacation driving the Explorer into Jasper. The fuel costs us an astonishing amount of money. (Well, we do drive a Prius in real life, so we’re spoiled). We’ve been to Jasper before. And we find our decision-making brings us to the same places we visited last time we went there–same hotel, Becker’s Chalets, near The Whistlers and same day-hike into Maligne Canyon. It seems insignificant that we’d been there before. The elk in Becker’s parking lot probably are different elk from the last time.

Elk in the Becker's Chalets parking lot, after snacking on the greens at right

And the canyon cannot grow old. Second to second the water is new.  It gushing down the narrow canyon, slows to a swift slide where the canyon widens, and then resumes its whitewater descent.

Springs from inside the rocks, feeding into the Maligne River

We find something new to us at the Jasper-Yellowhead Museum and archives–an explorer and mapmaker named David Thompson, a native of England whose maps of the Canadian West were both political and geographical wonders, mapping the tribal spheres of influence, the mountains, the rivers.  He’s a hero in Canada. We never heard of him of course, in our usual American-centric know-nothing way. I don’t think this was the huge map of his on the wall at the museum, but they did have on loan an original map of his (maybe 8 feet wide) on the wall. I found this one on Thompson’s Wikipedia page, which states, “Thompson’s 1814 map, his greatest achievement, was so accurate that 100 years later it was still the basis for many of the maps issued by the Canadian government. It now resides in the Archives of Ontario.”

Map of the North-West Territory of the Province of Canada, stretching from the Fraser River on the west to Lake Superior on the east. By David Thompson, 1814.This media file is in the public domain in the United States.

Barry has been taking photographs lately in a very focused sort of way. He snaps and then he photoshops–he has taken some courses and says he still has a long way to go in knowing all the things he can do. But some of his results are swell. He’s still in the playing/learning phase. He gives me a photo (of me); Louise gives me one of her paintings! Lucky me. And soon they will be in Philadelphia for Alex’s wedding!

Thanks to Barry and Louise for great cooking, great company and great love. And to Hani for the fire pit visit!

Untitled, From the Series Periphery, Lisa Boughter, 2010

Some of the most curious and formally-potent images in PPAC’s second annual juried group show are by Lisa Boughter. The environments Boughter captures are sparse and often in some degree of disrepair. They depict locations that are brimming with synthetic and strangely familiar objects: a garage door, a parking lot, a brick wall, and a deer-shaped lawn-ornament.  Yet all are presented in a way that verges on the surreal.

Boughter’s untitled photos are both minimal and complex. Bathed in a sea of brick-red, for example, the perceived urban bustle outside the frame in “Untitled,” from the series Periphery, is entirely silent and allows us time to reflect. As a viewer closely examines the patterns, the nearly infinite subtleties of the wall crawl out from their hiding places.

Adam, Maureen R. Drennan, 2008

Maureen Drennan takes us for a stroll to greener pastures in her series of photos from an outdoor marijuana growing operation. Politically and socially a hot topic, the plants portrayed in her photo The Garden grow in rows, and appear as benign as cornstalks.

And what garden would be complete without its Adam? In this photo, one of the workers gently holds the buds of a live plant in his hand and breathes in the odor. For many people, this is quite the dream(y) job – a true Eden for those in the cannabis culture. Awash in natural greens and browns, these photos make one wonder why the harvest of this plant carries such a harsh stigma.

Moving Day, Steven Beckly, 2009

Moving Day by Steven Beckly appears candid at first, but the crisp lighting and deliberate composition lead the viewer to believe otherwise. In this photo, a couple lies on the floor behind cardboard boxes in a sparse room, as they share an exhausted embrace. People’s familiarity with the process of moving day makes the weary nostalgia of this observation quite universal, and many of Beckly’s photos share the qualities of bright highlights and some portion of exposed human skin. These traits serve to reinforce the personal and interpersonal play apparent in the situations Beckly illustrates.

Edge of Darkness, Gina Delia, 2011

Gina Delia digitally stitches together opposing scenes, connecting them by only their shared darkness. While the lighter areas are heavily saturated and beautifully textured, the deep chasms of darkness, which both separate and connect her scenes, make these photos a wonderful contrast to Beckly. In Edge of Darkness, the cliff-like corner of a stone falls off into pitch blackness. The shadows divide two very different, yet structurally exquisite forms: the close-up of an insect exoskeleton and the self-lit scene of a street light and power lines.

The other artists in the show are also notable in their own respect. Daney Saylor‘s bright, yet barren landscapes, Emily Rooney and Andrew Burgh‘s dark abstractions, and the work of Sebastian Collett and Gregory Davis round out A Love Supreme‘s sampler package.

If this show has one major downside it is the fact that it is more of a tasting menu of photographers and appears somewhat staccato in its transitions. This is undoubtedly the intent of the show – to provide a sampling of various images – but many of these bodies of work could probably have filled the space on their own. If PPAC’s intent was to drive visitors to the websites of participating artists, then they definitely succeeded.

Jennifer Williams, inkjet ink on Photo-tex paper (that's Murray in the foreground)

New York artist Jennifer Williams’ installation photographs splayed on the gallery walls are spectacular. The one resting in a corner delights with the way it engages the viewer physically in its vertiginous urban spaces, delivering a sensation of instability, and at the same time trumpeting the architectural triumphs of the cityscape. The cityscape is a big theme in this show, from Arden Bendler Browning’s now familiar mural-size urban swirls, to Tim Portlock’s digital urban disaster zones, to Noah Addis’ Trump Plaza towering over urban decay (a straightforward photo).

Allison Kaufman, Trust Falls, Five Channel Looped Video Installation, Silent, 2011, Edition of 5. detail shows a woman shaving an elderly man

The vulnerability of buildings becomes a metaphor for the vulnerability of living things in this show. And that’s part of Allison Kaufman’s subject–the human need for companionship and loving care, in a series of five silent video loops by the New York artist. Her horizontal lineup of the video screens add up to a strong presence in the Gray Area foyer to the Ice Box. The tactility of a man braiding a woman’s hair or a young woman shaving an elderly man deliver the intimacy between people and show up-close people’s physical and emotional vulnerability. The intimate scale of the videos seems just right given the subject matter–at home with our good friend the telly.

Kimberly Witham, Still Life with Steak and Fox, Digital C Print, 20 x 26 inches, 2010, image © Kimberly Witham at www,kimberlywitham.com

Death and denial are what make Kimberly Witham’s beautiful still-lifes serious. Previously I had dismissed them as slight, based on Internet images. But with a look in the real world, I’m all aboard. These C-prints of road kill in decorative settings hark to the Vanitas tradition and William Harnett’s dead-critter still-lifes all gussied up with Ann Craven-like wallpaper paintings. The fiercest of Witham’s photos, Still Life with Steak and Fox, conflates beauty with bestiality, the red meat a perverse splash of delicious red caught on a hook!

Kimberly Witham, Still Life with Two Squirrels, Digital C Print

My other favorite of hers is a pair of squirrels floating in front of a blue sky filled with a pattern of white puffy clouds. The giddiness of the squirrels dancing in their blue heaven almost–but not quite–overcomes the questions of how dead the squirrels are–and how far we can delude ourselves as we enjoy their–and our–dance of death.

Bohyun Yoon's glass helmet is scheduled for a 2012 show at the Smithsonian

Installation and lighting conditions in the Gray Area take a toll on two video pieces. I had trouble seeing Bohyun Yoon’s marvelous Sound of Helmet Instrument, a video of a sort of tea ceremony with glass teapot-helmets, and Ana B. Hernandez’s Still Life With Figs, a projection of a performance with a lineup of sexy fruits.

Opening night, installation shot. Work by Jennifer Williams high on walls.

Others in the show are Lewis Colburn (I missed his performance), Don Edler, Laureen Griffin, Jordan Griska (his Oil Barrel), Mami Kato, Daniel Kornrumpf, Maggie Mills and Alison Stigora. The exhibit had a full house opening night.

The exhibition is open to June 29, 2011.

Gabriele Schor and Abigail Solomon-Godeau Birgit Jürgenssen (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz and Vienna: Sammlung Verbund, 2009) ISBN 978-3-7757–2461-6 (English edition)

Birgit Jürgenssen’s education, teaching career and exhibitions took place primarily in the very small and in-bred art community of post-WWII Vienna. She created drawings, photoworks and objects exploring the social and personal construction of the feminine, and particularly woman’s body — often costumed, bound or distorted, sometimes in fragmentary form or as an icon, and often using herself as subject. It is an extraordinarily intelligent, imaginative and compelling body of work that deserves to be more widely known.

This book, the first on Jürgenssen in English, is extensively illustrated with more than 350 full-color images and articles by five scholars, as well as a list of the artist’s exhibitions and bibliography. Gabriele Schor looks at Jürgenssen’s evolving ideas about identity throughout her career, situating the artist on the threshold between modernism and post-modernism. Jürgenssen’s use of self-irony as a necessary tactic in her construction of self is the subject of Elizabeth Bronfen.

Birgit Jürgenssen 'Pregnancy Shoe' (1976) leather, wood, tull, lace, 25 x 10 x 18 cm

The first of Abigail Solomon-Godeau’s pieces looks at femininity, sexuality, gender, and subjectivity as problems of representation that are the chosen terrain of Jürgenssen’s art, analyzing the drawings and the photoworks, which she characterizes as a form of performance minus the audience. The second of Solomon-Godeau’s articles focuses on the Shoeworks and Jürgenssen’s unveiling of what fetishism seeks to repress. Two further articles examine specific subjects which Jürgenssen explored in series: Sigrid Schade on the Dance of Death photographs (1979-80) within the European tradition of the subject, and Geraldine Spiekermann on Jürgenssen’s use of water in various photographic works.

Birgit Jürgenssen untitled (1979-80) Polaroid photograph

It is significant that, despite the fact that most of Jürgenssen’s oeuvre involved her own body and the suggestion of psycho-drama, the authors avoid discussion of biography other than her artistic training, practice and exhibitions. While this is a corrective to the tendency to frame women in terms of their personal lives, the catalog unfortunately omits situating the artist within art in Vienna from the 1970s to the turn of the twenty-first century, or discussing any feminist activity with which she might have been involved (with the single exception of her involvement with a group, DIE DAMEN, which is mentioned but not explored). To the outside world, Vienna of this period is associated only with the work of the Actionists (an entirely male group) and with Valie Export.  Only recently has widespread attention been given to Maria Lassnig, a painter of an earlier generation than Jürgenssen and still active; Jürgenssen taught under Lassnig’s direction at the School of Applied Arts. Still, this is an important exploration of an under-known artist and will be of interest to students of European art of the late Twentieth Century and to anyone interested in international feminism.

Birgit Jürgenssen Nest (1979) photograph

Christopher Lyon Nancy Spero; the work (Munich: Prestel, 2010) ISBN 2010930006

Lyon was a friend of the artist, who invited him to write a critical survey of her work, made her archives available, and had numerous conversations with him over many years. The result in no way reads like an authorized biography where the writer tiptoed around difficult aspects of his subject.  Lyon has produced a monograph that amply rewards her trust, placing her work firmly within the history of the art of her time, her extensive research (in history, literature, and art, particularly Neolithic and Ancient art), and the evolving feminist response to the status quo – a response wherein  her work was central. This beautifully-designed, oversized book, with copious illustrations, has two gatefolds that allow long, frieze-like works to be illustrated in their entirety; it is a fitting record of Spero’s ambitions and achievement.

Nancy Spero 'The First Language' (1981) detail, panels 7 and 9, cut-and-pasted handprinted and painted paper with handprinting, overall 22 panels, 20 in x 190 ft

Nancy Spero (1926-2009) wanted nothing less than to re-insert women into history. Lyon discusses how her decision in 1966 to reject painting on canvas in favor of working on paper (in a variety of techniques, from gouache and ink to collage, stamping and handprinting) was a rebellion against the history of painting and the male power structure that supported it.  Her decision in 1974 to represent women, and only women, was intended to recover the many female figures from history and myth that had dropped from view, as well as to posit women, not men, as the default mode for representing mankind.Lyone also describes the increasing debility of Spero’s arthritic hands, and its implications for her transition to printing to create her images.

Nancy Spero 'Marduk' (1986) cut and pasted typed text and handprinting on paper, 3 panels, 24 in x 30 ft.

Spero created work on a monumental scale in a format and technique entirely of her own making. Lyon’s carefully-researched text is a valuable guide to the ideas behind her many visual and verbal references (Spero’s texts were always citations), and to the evolution of her career in the context of increasing acceptance of work by women in major museums and galleries. This later is still not fully appreciated by younger artists. Her entire career was a heroic struggle to be heard.  Spero’s work deserves the careful explication and generous reproductions of this volume, which is certainly the definitive text on an important, if under-acknowledged leader in activist art.

Nancy Princenthal Hannah Wilke (Munich: Prestel, 2010) ISBN 978-3-7913-3972-6

Princenthal has done an admirable and fascinating job of documenting the career of an artist whose work was often a lightening-rod for her viewers.  She describes Wilke (1940-1993) as an artist who maintained the weakest of boundaries between her art and her life, and was often dismissed because of this, as well as because of her frequent use of her own nude and spectacularly beautiful body within her performances and photographic work.

Hannah Wilke 'Marxism and Art; Beware of Fascist Feminism' (1977) silkscreen on plexiglass, 36 x 27.5 in.

Princenthal makes a persuasive case that, despite whatever subconscious motivations might have supported these decisions, they were artistic decisions. Wilke’s work was an exploration of beauty, of women’s bodies and the boundaries between public and private, and just as importantly, the reception of these topics within the art world.  Wilke could not escape her beauty and the tendency of others to allow it to obscure her artistic production. Her art was intended to provoke its viewers. One of the strengths of this book is that Princenthal documents Wilke’s various  and changing critical reception throughout her career.

HannahWilke 'Untitled (vaginal box)' (c. 1970) latex and ceramic, 6 3/4 x 10 1/2 x 5 in

Wilke’s earliest exhibited work was a series of ceramic pieces she called one-folds – sometimes shown singly, sometimes en mass on the floor. She produced these subtle, slightly abstracted but obviously vaginal forms before Judy Chicago created her lurid, vaginal plates as part of The Dinner Party (1974), and more than 25 years before Eve Ensler’s Vagina Dialogs – whose title was considered too explicit for many newspapers to publish in the late 1990s.  Her art was in ongoing dialog with popular culture and with art history, most notably, her artistic dialog with Duchamp.

Hannah Wilke still from'Throught the Large Glass' (1976), a live performance filmed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

The reception of Wilke’s work is particularly interesting because of the about-face of many critics after viewing her final, posthumous work, Intra-Venus (1992), which documents the physical effects of her fatal cancer and its treatments. She was as unblinking in presenting her approaching death as she had been in her previous art, which was an ongoing challenge to everyone who assumed that a beautiful woman must be dumb. She was never dumb, in either meaning of the word. She was provocative, in-your-face, unguarded, funny, literate, bold, an artist whose important and very individual career still awaits inclusion in standard art histories. This book will certainly make that more likely.

Hannah Wilke 'Intra-Venus #5', June 10, 1992/May 5, 1992 , two chromatogenic prints, 71.5 x 47.5 in

Issue 1 of the brand new LPV* Magazine looks like a soft-cover book, and when it arrived in my mailbox in April, I immediately questioned its designation as magazine. The 54-page photography publication, which you can order through Magcloud, is a like a small cocktail table book devoted to street photography. With its perfect binding, nice photo spreads inside and minimal amount of writing: It’s a keeper.

A project of Bryan Formhals, photographer, writer and internet community organizer, LPV is a curated publication with photos selected from among various Flickr communities like the LPV group and another group, HCSP**:  There are 21 photographers included in the debut issue, three of them given in-depth spreads of around 10-13 pages each and 17 artists in a “group show” in the middle.

William Rugen, photo from the "group show" section of LPV Magazine, issue 1

The magazine’s photo placement is somewhat free-form. The photos are not consistently sized or consistently placed on the page. I’m not sure that it  matters, but in a book-like publication without much text, you notice the white space when it varies from page to page. Most of the photos are mid-sized, fitting two to a page, although in a couple cases a picture is allowed to sprawl over two pages, centerfold-style. Formahls has added red-pencil editing marks here and there, underlining a name; circling a phrase, putting an “x” next to a photo. The marks imbue the magazine with a sense of urgency and hint at incompletion,  as if you’re seeing the editor’s mark-up copy and not your own.  It doesn’t add to the experience of the photos is all I want to say.

But these are small complaints for such an earnest labor of love that’s committed to offering street photographers exposure to new audiences. Basically, this magazine is based on the proposition that the internet (and Flickr in particular) is a hotbed of great new photographers.  It’s also based on a desire  to bring new thoughts, ideas and energy to photography in general. Formhals studies the artists he’s selected and has interviewed a bunch of them.  The interviews are online only, although they would make a wonderful addition to the magazine’s print edition.  (True confession: This issue showcases my friend Chuck Patch‘s work, of which I’m wildly enthusiastic, so I am very up on this publication.)

Simon Kossoff, photo from the "group show" section of LPV Magazine, Issue 1

Formhals, who is himself a photographer, picked work for the first issue that skews to the humorous and deadpan. Pictured over and over, in works by many different artists, are those moments in life that are odd  and evocative, like the cover image by Chuck Patch of a barn on fire in an otherwise pastoral setting where you question what the hell happened and where is everybody; or the photo by Simon Kossoff of an office whose walls are covered to the ceiling with Native American artifacts — hatchets and arrowheads — and almost completely invisible amidst the aggressive wall display is a woman at a computer, a historian, presumably, dwarfed by history.

Chuck Patch, image from LPV Magazine, Issue 1

As with much street photography, the images are human-focused, with people, house/habitat and pet pictures predominating. This is recent color photography and it looks like it could have been snapped anywhere in America.

Mark Alor Powell, image from LPV Magazine, Issue 1

Mark Alor Powell, one of the artists featured in depth, is a portraitist. His portrayals are both empathetic and quizzical. The images range from people to a non-human odd couple (a purple house almost swallowed up by the enormous evergreen next to it). A photo of a youngster smoking a cigarette with smoke coming out of his open mouth and little puffs of smoke covering up his eyes is striking, in spite of the “smoke gets in your eyes” reference.

Chuck Patch, image from LPV Magazine, issue 1

Chuck‘s photographs stand out for their beauty and for the ease with which they haunt you. That cover photo, from 1981 — a rare instance of early color photography by Patch — is full of death in rural America or maybe the death of rural America.  Following the recent spate of twisters in the  Midwest, Plains and South, this image of what probably is a disaster (do people intentionally burn down barns to get rid of them?) achieves that rare sublime beauty that horrifies as well as seduces.

Blake Andrews, image from LPV Magazine, Issue 1

Blake Andrews‘ photos are highly interiorized views of people, places and things.  They are like snapshots, with flash, of small moments or things that may not seem important to you, but might have been important if you were there. A shot of disembodied hands (and a foot) coming together around a beer bottle is part of a larger scene but you don’t get to see the big picture; that’s irrelevant in Andrews’ almost secret-coded enterprise.  The pictures don’t feel like “bad” photos or toss-offs that wouldn’t make it in your photo album, however.  They are deliberative, and each has something weirdly expressive of the human condition that keeps you looking.

The idea of a DIY curated magazine like this is very exciting. With print on demand venues like Magcloud and free digital layouts keeping the costs of production/distribution down, publications like this could be the beginning of a whole new level of “exhibiting” and distributing art to a wider audience.

Single issues of LPV magazine are available from Magcloud for $14.99 plus shipping. Or you can subscribe at their website and get 3 issues in 2011 for $49.99.  Photographers, if you want to be considered for LPV Magazine, submit through La Pura Vida Flickr group or email editors@lpvmagazine.com. Guidelines for submission here.

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*If you’re wondering, as I was, what LVP stands for, the initials stand for “la pura vida” the idiomatic expression of Costa Ricans that means “full of life,” “going great,” “cool!” and is used as a greeting, farewell or thanks.

**HCSP is the Flickr group Hard Core Street Photography. Here’s how Chuck, who participates in the group, describes the work selected for the highly selective HCSP: “…small camera, off-the-cuff, straight shooting with a good dose of humor and a sense of complexity, without being doctrinaire.”

Lorenzo Triburgo, Tranquil Dawn (Burton). digital print. Photo courtesy of the gallery

Like all contemporary portrait photographers, Triburgo, the documentarian, owes much to Cindy Sherman, whose faux-realist costume-drama self-portraits took the genre into a realm it hadn’t been before. Her photographs have always served to reveal a larger truth behind the image.

Like Sherman’s works, Triburgo’s “Transportraits” have an element of tall-tale telling—Paul Bunyan-style. There is truth here but it’s steeped in irony: Each portrait captures a likeness, but taken as a whole, the pictures are actually quite fantastical. And what’s refreshing about “Transportraits” is that it focuses on heroism, not pain.

Lorenzo Triburgo, Lake in the Valley, (KC). Photo courtesy of the gallery

Triburgo’s 14 archival digital prints at Gallery 1401 in Center City present a group of transgender men, each of whom pose in front of a painted, nature-centric background. The men are captured from the waist up, dressed casually, each in a mock-heroic stance—eyes trained upward and focused on a point in the far distance. No one looks at the camera; no one smiles; and there is no attempt to deliver each person as an individual beyond the surface of hair, piercings, tattoos, ear plugs and clothes. They are one man, every man, every transgender man.

Lorenzo Triburgo, Sunset Aglow (Glenn), digital print. Photo courtesy of the gallery

It’s the kitschy backgrounds—the purple mountains majesty, bursting sunsets, glorious deep forests and waterfalls, the pumped-up nature you find in cheesy greeting cards and wallpaper backgrounds for your K-Mart or Sears portrait studio pictures—that really clinch this show. Triburgo successfully pokes fun at the American Dream by combining these transgender heroes with images of nature at its most sublime. Even the titles of the works serve as punchlines in this wry, Steven Colbert-like opus: “Tranquil Dawn (Burton),” “Sunset Aglow (Glenn),” and “Valley Waterfall (Erin).” Triburgo’s point about the truth beneath the picture is as clear as can be. The American Dream is valid for these men even if it doesn’t comply with the red-state vision of heroism.

Lorenzo Triburgo, Valley Waterfall (Erin). digital print, Photo courtesy of the gallery

Harris Fogel, curator of Equality Forum exhibits at University of the Arts for the last nine years, says that Triburgo—himself a transgender man—has a sense of humor about the works. “The works are kitschy, wonderful and vibrant … and the students love it,” Fogel says. He adds that the goal of Equality Forum shows is to showcase the best LGBT artists, some of whom deal with gender issues in their works (Triburgo), and others who don’t (Imboden).

Connie Imboden, untitled 04-14-09-462. archival pigment print. Photo courtesy of the gallery

And speaking of Imboden, the artist and longtime teacher at Maryland Institute College has been photographing nude models in the studio for 25 years. Imboden, who follows in the tradition of nude photography that dates back to the camera’s invention, shoots digitally with studio setups that include color gels, strobe lights, mirrors and water. She achieves multi-hued effects, which are both beautiful and slightly scary. In her archival digital prints, figures are set against velvety black backgrounds that suggest the depths of Hades. The figures twist and turn like elves and fauns and move, half in water, half out, or duplicated in part by an unseen mirror. Like characters from a Caravaggio painting, the figures seem to pop out of the inky background and threaten to invade your space. In these poetic works, beauty is fragile and fleeting; life and death are very close partners.

Framed well and printed beautifully, these two shows span the range of what’s being done in contemporary photography. You may respond to one body of work more strongly than the other, but both shows are full of heart.

Read this at Philly Weekly. More photos at flickr – Lorenzo Triburgo Connie Imboden

Lorenzo Triburgo: Transportraits, Through May 1. Gallery 1401, 211 S. Broad St. 215.717.6300.

Connie Imboden: Reflections, Through May 1. Sol Mednick Gallery, 211 S. Broad St. 215.717.6300.

Chad Gerth, "Division & Latrobe," Photograph behind plexiglass, image courtesy the artist

Gerth’s photographs of vacant lots in Chicago make clever use of such uncertainty. A recent M.F.A. graduate from the Art Institute of Chicago, the artist went to impressive lengths to make his images, hiring a camera-equipped drone helicopter to hover above desolate parts of the city.  Viewing flat parcels of land straight on from a distance of approximately 80 feet above, depth and scale suddenly evaporate. Are we seeing tall grass on ground, or fuzzy moss on wood?

Glancing at the work on the walls, you might miss the fact that two of the images represent the exact same lot. They are both titled Division & Spaulding, but their appearance is different in every respect. Photographed at mid-day, a vertically-displayed view of this location shows an even bright green covering and could easily have been called View inside a Terrarium. In a horizontal version, much of the lot is in shadow, and different lighting reveals different details. Fence posts along the outer edge of this long rectangle resemble the diagonal hashes that once bordered airmail letters. A set of grassless tire ruts form a kind of mysterious writing on that envelope. The artist reminds us that each photograph is its own object, independent of what was photographed.

Every one of Gerth’s images, in fact, is rich with graphic detail. Without vertical reference points, shadows read as flat diagonals. Tire tracks in gray sand in Lake & Costner look like the frenzied scribbles of a child as she draws the same circle over and over. In Chicago & Avers, cracks in a cement slab form a rectangular grid that resembles a miniature street grid. The alternating pink-and-black parquet from a leftover patio supplies a splash of warm color amidst green and gray. Lifted from the most mundane of urban realities, these images are quite pleasing as abstract art.

Lydia Jenkins Musco, "Surrounding Walls," Paper pulp, image courtesy the artist

If Gerth’s images turn reality into drawing, Musco’s sculptures make the immaterial concrete—literally. Also a recent M.F.A. graduate (Boston University, 2007) Musco was the recipient of a Pollack-Krasner award for sculptures that play with architectural forms and hard-soft dualities. What seems like a tower of mortar-caked terracotta tiles in Surrounding Walls is actually molded paper pulp. Adding to the deception is the stack of thick timbers that serves as the sculpture’s plinth—as if paper needed a heavy-duty support. In Three-sided Square on Four Walls the same paper pulp poses as a heavy pile of felt sheets, each in a different shade of pink or red.

What is most satisfying about Gerth’s photos is that they transcend the game of disguise that is the basis of their creation. The process of discovering tire tracks, poles, and grass that makes for good visual fun in Gerth’s work also reveals of years of fighting between humankind and nature. The art is not only about how humans form a concept of their world, but also the struggle between human conceits and the natural surroundings that always seem to get the better of them.

Our series sponsor is Fleisher Art Memorial.

Daniel Traub’s photographs of overgrown lots in North Philadelphia where rowhouses once stood have a mournful feel.  In Traub’s photos, on view at the Print Center until March 5, indomitable nature grows up tall where people once lived.  But the works are not so much about the man-nature struggle in the built environment.  They’re more about entropy and the way things are, the rub of time and place.  Traub spent the last nine years in China where he observed the building boom of gated communities rising next to shanty towns.  He talked with us about Philadelphia and China and about growing up with parents who are both activists.

Daniel Traub at the Print Center after our interview

First, a short sample from the interview; and below that the full 15-minute episode.

Download audio file (danieltraubpromo.mp3)
27-second Daniel Traub sample

Download audio file (danieltraubfinal.mp3)
Right click to download full 15-minute interview with Daniel Traub

This episode is edited by Peter Crimmins. The music is by Eric Biondo. Thanks to the Knight Foundation and our series sponsor, Fleisher Art Memorial, for their support of this project.  You can subscribe to artblog radio on iTunes. And thanks to our partner WHYY, which shares artblog radio episodes on their community news site NewsWorks.org.