Urban Color Fields by Dennis Church

Ornithographies reveal the hidden beauty of bird’s flight paths, stitching several seconds into a single image. Although Ornithographies is a current project, it has a somewhat distant origin, since it is born from the innocent and restless gaze of the child, who once was Xavi Bou. The photographer’s admiration for nature, especially for birds, arose during his childhood thanks to unforgettable long walks with his grandfather. Since then, the photographer’s interest in birds has continued to grow, eventually becoming the focus of his project Ornithographies. Ornithographies arises from the artist’s concern for capturing those unnoticed moments and from the interest in questioning the limits of human perception. Xavi Bou focuses on birds, his great passion, in order to capture in a single time frame, the shapes they generate when flying, making visible the invisible. Unlike other motion analyses which preceded it, Ornithographies moves away from the scientific approach of chronophotography used by photographers like Eadweard Muybridge and Etienne-Jules Marey. The approach used by Bou to portray the scene is not invasive; moreover, it rejects the distant study, resulting in organic form images that stimulate the imagination. Technology, science, and creativity combine to create evocative images which show the sensuality and beauty of the bird’s movements and which are, at the same time, clues for those wishing to identify or recognize them. In Ornithographies, the skill envied by men, the long-lasting shared yearning of flying, is presented to us, extending our visual perception. Art and science walk hand in hand to create images, which are no longer a single portrait of reality but become a witness of the instants that, for a moment, were past, present, and future all at once. Ornithographies is a balance between art and science; a nature-based dissemination project and a visual poetry exercise but above all, an invitation to perceive the world with the same curious and innocent look of the child we once were. Image: © Xavi Bou

Ides of Gender is a photo series celebrating everyone under the trans umbrella – binary and non-binary. Since 2017, I set out to document the rich diversity within the trans community and have had the privilege of photographing over 650 trans folx in all 49 continental US states, as well as Hawai’i, Puerto Rico, and Washington D.C. There’s an obsession with trans bodies that society often feels entitled to – objectified and scrutinized to the point of physical harm. Being cisgender, I had a responsibility to photograph each person honestly and with utmost integrity. From the very beginning, the series has been a collaborative exercise in trust – trusting that a complete stranger will show up and share their authentic self. Extracting their own truth and facing my camera intimately, I never had to take anyone’s photograph. It was generously given to me. Since moving to the US, my pursuit of community and self-expression has been constant. Being on the road working on Ides of Gender for the past seven years, ended up – unexpectedly – validating my own queerness and intersectionality. I see myself in all of these portraits. I hope you see your own journey mirrored back within these lives. Each portrait in this space represents trans visibility in a different state. Representation matters. Visibility matters. Image: © Zach Oren

Frida Kahlo, who lived from 1907 to 1954, and who spent nearly her entire life in Mexico City, was a visionary artist. She remains enigmatic, yet her paintings, and her views of art, continue to inspire and influence all of us. Her art was deeply personal, but she illuminated emotional issues that resonate widely. Frida’s fears, pain, dreams, and surreal trances evoke empathy and curiosity. She spoke the language of the calle and the cantina, but she was also cosmopolitan, able to engage Leon Trotsky and Henry Ford, as well as André Breton and Lola Álvarez Bravo. And she enraptured Diego Rivera. After divorcing Frida, Diego missed her so much that he asked her to marry him again (which she did). Frida was intense and she was authentic. So many different emotions, all deeply experienced, infused her art: passion, intuition, intellectual acuity, loneliness, pain, cruelty, sorrow, remorse, love, jealousy, loneliness, and fear. The intensity of Frida is captured in this important exhibition of photographs of Frida. Many of the photographs shown were taken by Frida’s friends and lovers; other images are from celebrated photographers. This exhibit at Throckmorton Fine Art is fascinating: it is the creation of a visual biography using photographs of her by those who she trusted. The earliest photographs of Frida were taken by her father, Guillermo Kahlo, who fondly called her Friducha. Later photographs were taken by friends, lovers, artists, and some of the most renown photographers in the history of world photography. Frida understood these photographs were creating not only a personal record of her life, but also documenting the art community in Mexico in which she played a pivotal role. Her understanding of the power of photography was certainly heightened by her father being a well-known photographer in Mexico City. Indeed, she assisted him by retouching images in his studio. Frida curated her copies of photographs taken of her, building a collection that documents important chapters in her life. Spencer Throckmorton, the principal of Throckmorton Fine Art, has spent the better part of forty-five years building a complementary collection of photographs of Frida. Spencer has spent time in Mexico City, beginning decades ago, looking widely for photographs of Frida, with some found in the most unlikely of places, from flea markets to used bookstores to dealers in photographs and graphic art. Spencer has also availed himself of the auction houses. He slowly, but steadily, built what must be the finest and most complete private collection of photographs of Frida. The photographs of Frida in the exhibit document her life from two years of age to just before her death at the age of forty-seven. There are photographs of Frida taken by family members, friends, and lovers, ranging from Guillermo Kahlo to Rosa Covarrubias. There are also photographs of her taken by celebrated photographers, who often went to great lengths to photograph Frida. The roster of these well-known photographers include: Fritz Henle, Lucienne Bloch, Bernard Silberstein, Leo Matiz, Nickolas Murray, Gisele Freund, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Lola Álvarez Bravo, Leon de Vos and Edward Weston. Frida is a twentieth century icon, and her fame has only grown in the twenty-first century. Indeed, she is no longer referred to as the wife of Diego Rivera, instead Diego Rivera is now known as the husband of Frida Kahlo. Her paintings hang in the most revered room on the fifth floor of the Museum of Modern Art, the room housing masterpieces by Salvador Dalí and René Magritte. Frida never adopted a particular school of painting; the Surrealists adopted her. Her paintings, her writing, and even photographs of her, capture a stirring passion, intellectual honesty, and bravery that continue to inspire. Her personal mythos led to an original magical realism, one that remains relevant as a creative impulse for contemporary artists, and even for all of us just trying to make sense of our place in the world. The photographs of Frida exhibited at Throckmorton Fine Art demonstrate how this cultural icon used herself as an ongoing and never-ending performance, but one of utter seriousness of purpose. Frida’s uncensored life, so ably documented in photographs, is a great legacy, just as are her paintings.

Our annual Member, Staff & Volunteer Show portrays the current look at what is being created in our darkrooms and digital lab here at the Harvey Milk Photo Center. This exciting exhibit is showcasing each photographers chosen and personal best. It has been curated by the staff, members and our generous volunteers and encompasses a wide and exciting range of subject matter. Show Participants: Aaron F. Anderson, Adam Cavan, Adam Goldring, Alan Kikuchi, Allan Barnes, Amanda Chi, Aviv Delgadillo, Bernardita Ried Guachalla, Bill Swerbo, Bryan Yasukawa, Charlotte Seekamp, Chris Cummins, Chris S A Gould, Christian Perez, Courtney Liss, David Gutierrez, David Rizzoli, Deepak Talwar, Eli Woo, Elijah Martin, Eric Lam, Erin Rademacher, Forrest Bottomley, Garrett Schmid, George Clapper, Grahame Lesh, Grant Rusk, Hugo Wehner, Irina Levental, Irwin Lewis, James Estevez, Jane Waterbury, Janett Perez, Jazmin Manchester, Jennifer Simon, Joel H. Davidson, John Longyear, Justin Pham, Katherine Akey, Kelsey Bower, Libby Keesor, Louise Matsushima, Lucia Rosenast, Madison Blanchard, Magali Gauthier, Marcus Oringer, Marcus Valderrama, Marilyn Montúfar, Mark Heija, Martin Strauss, Matt Schaefer, Matthew Silvey, Max Otake, Melissa Castro Keesor, Mia Nicolacoudis, Mike Albertson, Mike Nelsen, Mitsu Yoshikawa, Nick Dean, Nick Stewart, Nick Sylva, Nina Phillips, Omar Matias, Oz Skinner, Parker Mosby, Pavel Guevarra, Pedro Lange-Churion, Peter Cihon, Peter Kupfer, Qin Bian, Robert L. Elvin, Roger Thoms, Ross Tinline, Roz Plotzker, Ryan Jacobs, Sophia Grimani, Stuart Goldstein, Theodore Maider, Thomas Back, Toby Watters, Val Kai, Victor de Fontnouvelle

"Before I depart I rest my body in the place the lighthouse misses, the dark swaths of grass (missed too by the man who mows the lawn every other Wednesday) on the slope of the small hill behind the keeper’s house. This place is made darker still as the eyes adjust unwillingly to the circle of light that sprints along the tops of the black pines that crown the hill, anointing each for just a moment; tonight I pick You. I pick you, and then you and then you, and then you and then you and then you. The only thing I can hear is the quiet squeal of the island’s generator a hundred yards away, the gears working slowly, smallest to largest, pulling a swath of indigo cotton across the sky inch by inch, the stars and their small sounds curled in the dark spaces between the bayberry leaves." - Neville Caulfield Amy Wilton Andrew O’Brien Brandon Simpson Cole Caswell Chelsea Ellis Dave Hanson mathis benestebe Jack Montgomery Jan Pieter van Voorst van Beest Jason Freeman Jodi Colella John Woodruff Lynn Karlin Melonie Bennett Neville Caulfield Mona Sartoveh Robert Tomlinson Susan Rosenberg Jones Thomas Whitworth Nancy Grace Horton Barbara Peacock Image: Neville Caulfield, The Lighthouse, At Last, 2024

Born in New York in 1926, Vivian Maier spent her early years in the Bronx. Throughout her years in New York City, she began to photograph and build her visual language, all while working as a nanny. Nearly a century later, Maier now figures in the history of photography alongside the greatest masters of the twentieth century. Unseen focuses on the whole of her work, from the early 1950s to the mid-1980s, through around 200 works, vintage or modern prints, color, black and white, super 8 films and soundtracks, offering a complete vision of the dense, rich and complex architecture of this archive that provides a fascinating testimony to post-war America and the hell of the American dream. The exhibition is organized by diChroma photography and Fotografiska New York, in collaboration with the John Maloof Collection, Chicago, and the Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York. Presented for the first time at Musée du Luxembourg, Paris, from September 15th, 2021 to January 16th, 2022, the exhibition was co-organized by diChroma photography and the Réunion des musées nationaux Grand Palais. The exhibition is supported by Women In Motion, a Kering program that shines a light on the talent of women in the fields of arts and culture.

Bruce Gilden: Why These? surveys Gilden’s oeuvre of gritty, true-to-life street photography through choice works hand-selected by the artist himself. A combination of large-scale color portraits as well as black-and-white photos taken all over the globe will give viewers an intimate glimpse into the unvarnished worlds of street life that Gilden has been documenting for decades. "Bruce Gilden’s often-disquieting photos dig deep into the psyches of everyday people. By revealing what’s just beneath the surface, he captures the fear that underlies so many of our thoughts about ourselves and those around us." – Jessica Jarl, Global Director of Exhibitions at Fotografiska Bruce Gilden is a self taught photographer, born in Brooklyn, NY in 1946. His photographic style is defined by the dynamic accent of his pictures, his special graphic qualities, and his original and direct manner of shooting the faces of passers-by with a flash. Gilden joined Magnum Photos in 1998, and has received a multitude of awards for his work, including the European Publishers Award for Photography, a Japan Foundation Artist Fellowship, a Villa Medicis Hors les Murs Artist’s Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. Image: Coney Island, New York City, USA. 1982 © Bruce Gilden / Magnum Photos

In the last days of August, we long for that last bit of summer warmth, to connection with family and hold close that moment of peace and quiet before we all head back into the fall with darker days, colder weather and dispersed family. Time vanishes here, days don’t matter, with days filled with kids splashing in the pool and the nights filled with BBQ, s’mores and ghost stories. Backyards are the American dream, a patch of land we can call our own. Backyards become the gathering space, the place we live outside and filled with individuality. This Griffin @ Lafayette City Center exhibition in the last days of summer features two artists whose work revolves around the gathering place we call home and the intersection of natural and familial landscapes, urban and suburban living. David Oxton and Gary Beeber create an oasis of color, life and connection to nature in a confined space, suburban backyards. These two artists have given unique vision to how we inhabit the patch of land, urban or suburban. Image: © Gary Beeber

Exposure 2024 celebrates 28 years of the Photographic Resource Center’s annual national juried exhibition. This year’s juror is Samantha Johnston, Executive Director and Curator, Colorado Photographic Arts Center. Exposure 2024 will be on view from August 9 – September 29, 2024, in the VanDernoot Gallery at Lesley University (1815 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA). There will be a closing gallery reception, with the Juror, on Saturday, September 29, 5-7pm. The PRC has been educating and inspiring photographers and photo-enthusiasts since its founding in 1976, and for almost 30 years has been providing this unique juried exhibition opportunity for member photographers. Most member exhibitions display one image per artist, but Exposure features several works each, thus offering an opportunity to showcase bodies of work at a deeper level, for a more enriching experience. From nearly 200 submissions, 13 photographers have been selected for this much anticipated annual exhibition, hailing from New England and around the United States: Amy Giese (Allston, MA), Abbey Hepner (St. Louis, Missouri), Jeffrey Heyne (Boston, MA), Kim Llerena (Miami, Florida), Greer Muldowney (Somerville, MA), Laura Beth Reese (Boston, MA), Astrid Reischwitz (Bedford, MA), Anastasia Sierra (Cambridge, MA), J. David Tabor (Phoenix, AZ), Lisa Tang Liu (Stoughton, MA), Dean Terasaki (Phoenix, AZ), Suzanne Theodora White (Appleton, ME), Elizabeth Wiese (Duxbury, MA), and Andrew Zou (Jamaica Plain, MA). Andrew Zou, Self-portrait with Chinese Calligraphy, 1 of 3, 2023 In 2021, to commemorate 25 years of Exposure and further our support of the photography community, the PRC Board of Directors initiated the PRC Choice Awards with the top award of $500 and two additional awards of $250. These awards will be announced at the Exposure 2024 reception on Saturday, September 29th.

Florence Henri: 1928 - 1933 is an exhibition that brings together a selection of work from the multidisciplinary artist’s portfolio, “12 Fotografien,” published in 1974 by Galerie Wilde in Köln, Germany. Born in 1893 in New York, Florence Henri immigrated to Europe at the age of two, living amongst family members in numerous locales including London, Vienna, Paris, Munich, and eventually Rome, where she lived with her aunt and was exposed to the avant-garde by her uncle, the Italian Futurist, Gino Gori. By the age of eighteen she became a skilled pianist under the guidance of composer Ferruccio Busoni. Around 1912, Henri relocated to Berlin to continue her music studies and after the outbreak of WWI found herself trapped in Germany where she began composing music for silent films. In 1914 she enrolled at the Academy of Art in Berlin beginning her career as a painter, studying under Johannes Walter-Kurau, and continuing her studies at the Académie Moderne in Paris. In 1927 Henri returned to Germany to enroll at the Bauhaus in Dessau, where she studied painting with Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, and was introduced to photography by Bauhaus professor, László Moholy-Nagy. By 1928, Henri, encouraged by Moholy-Nagy’s wife, photographer Lucia Nagy, abandoned painting and turned to photography, creating abstract constructivist photographs that became associated with the “Neues Sehen” (New Vision) movement lead by Moholy-Nagy and Alexander Rodchenko, among others. In 1929 Henri returned to Paris to open her own photography studio where she earned a living doing freelance commercial work and teaching photography. Among her students were photographers Lisette Model and Gisele Freund, both of whom would become renowned artists in their own right. During this time she developed close connections with Man Ray and André Kertész, and an exhibition of her work was of great influence to Ilse Bing. Due to the Nazi occupation of Paris that began in 1940, photographic supplies became increasingly unavailable and her experimental work was in danger of being labeled “degenerate” by the fascist regime. After this period she once again returned to painting. In the post-war period Henri’s work fell into obscurity until a renewed interest in the 1970s by feminist scholars, leading to her first solo exhibition in over forty years at Galerie Wilde in Köln, Germany, the occasion of which the prints included in this exhibition were published. Fifty years later, Abakus Projects is proud to celebrate the publication of these important works. Image: Obst (Fruit), 1929 © Florence Henri

All About Photo proudly presents an exclusive online exhibition featuring the work of the British photographer Matthew Portch. On view throughout September 2024, this captivating showcase includes twenty street photographs from his acclaimed series ‘Lost America’ Lost America Lost America examines a quiet stillness in a forgotten landscape that is, in a sense, ‘on pause’. Backwater towns and rural corners are juxtaposed with the ambiguity of detached suburbia. Places appear frozen in time, their inhabitants absent or long since departed. Ardently stagnant in appearance, the spaces yearn to instil a melancholic feeling of familiarity. One might not notice the scenes when viewed within the vast stretch of America’s panorama. Yet, framed as a vignette, each could appear to echo a moment of mournful reverie and reflective contemplation.

Lisandra Alvarez Valdés, Josh Bergeron, Melissa Breyer, Vanessa Charlot, Farnaz Damnabi, Armando Geneyro, Natela Grigalashvili, Hiroko Hirota, Yojimbo Jack, B Jane Levine, Gulnara Lyabib Samoilova, Anthony Maes, Rudy Ortega, Stephen W. Podrasky, Matthew Steaffens, Jeff Tidwell, Regula Tschumi, and Kenneth Wajda. “Views From the Street” presents a curated group exhibition featuring 18 photographers, including nine local artists from Denver and nine international members of the Women Street Photographers group. Street photography has historically been associated with urban environments like New York City, notably through the work of photographers like Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand, Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, and Helen Levitt. Today, the genre remains immensely popular. Advancements in technology, particularly the widespread adoption of smartphones and Internet access, have significantly broadened the definition of “the street.” From Natela Grigalashvili’s quiet depictions of Georgia’s rural Adjara region to Farnaz Damnabi’s poignant portrayal of Iranian women, the exhibit offers insights into varied cultural landscapes. Similarly, the local contributions from Denver photographers such as Rudy Ortega and Josh Bergeron offer fresh interpretations of familiar urban scenes, infused with elements of playfulness and profound observation. While curating this show, I was interested to see these two perspectives – local and global – together in a visual conversation. Like most photographic genres, street photography has been traditionally male-dominated. In recognition of the genre’s traditional gender disparity, we collaborated with Women Street Photographers in New York, to highlight the diverse and compelling perspectives of women photographers worldwide. Each photograph in this exhibition not only captures candid moments of everyday life but also expands the conventional boundaries of street photography, showcasing a heightened spatial awareness and innovative approaches. As articulated by Ana F. Martín in her essay “In Defense of Street Photography,” these images help to remind us that “we are all human, that under our apparent differences we all like to laugh, talk, enjoy the sun and the rain, and everything else that drives us out in the streets to enjoy this life.” Image: Red Orange Glove © B Jane Levine