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Embarrassment at the Met

It’s an embarrassment of riches for photography at The Metropolitan Museum right now - two amazing shows and a scattering of riches as you walk along the hallway of the Prints & Drawings galleries. (There’s always an interesting selection of works from the collection here – a visual diversion or appetizer for what’s to follow.)

First up you are met with a large close-up of Pierre-Louis Pierson’s peek-a-boo portrait of the Contessa Castiglione – the perfect precursor for the contemporary show to follow. Ovcr a period of six or so years in the late 1860s, Pierson and the Countess produced more than 700 images of her. In a shocking reversal of convention, however, it was the sitter who directed every aspect of the picture, from the angle of the shot to the lighting, using the photographer as a simple tool in her pursuit of self-expression.

A few steps further takes you into the new Tisch gallery for contemporary photography and “Photography on Photography: Reflections on the Medium since 1960”. This exhibition – only the second to display the Met’s new-found interest in contemporary work – presents four decades of photography by artists who have turned the camera on the medium itself. Richard Prince, Sherrie Levine, and a host of lesser known names make for a interesting meditation on appropriation, authorship, and conceptualism. The show’s signature image, made by British photographer Janice Guy in 1979 is a slick turn of the tables on the viewer’s preference for the nude female form.

Last but not least, stretching over half a dozen galleries, is “Framing a Century: Master Photographers, 1840 – 1940”. Aside from its clunky title, this exhibition tells the story of photography’s first 100 years through the work of 13 key photographers - Gustave Le Grey, Roger Fenton, Carleton Watkins, William Henry Fox Talbot, Julia Margaret Cameron, Nadar, Édouard Baldus, Charles Marville, Eugène Atget, Walker Evans, Man Ray, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Brassaï.
It’s a little like showing off as you pass by one master print after another of some of photography’s most iconic images – but hey, it’s the Met!

Janice Guy. Untitled. 1979

Sherrie Levine. After Walker Evans, 1,2,4,&7. 1981

Richard Prince. Detail from "Untitled" (three women with their heads cast down). 1980

Lutz Bacher. Detail from "Jackie & Me". 1989

Nadar. Nadar with his wife, Ernestine, in a Balloon. c. 1865

Roger Fenton. Reclining Odalisque. 1858

Gustave Le Gray. Cavalry Maneuvers, Camp de Chailons, 1857

Carleton Watkins. Cape Horn near Celilo. 1867

Julia Margaret Cameron. Sappho. 1865

Edouard Baldus. Group at the Chateau de la Faloise. 1857

Walker Evans. Room at Louisiana Plantation House. 1935

Brassai. Introduction at Suzy's. 1932-33

P.S.
As I was walking away from the museum, there was an unusually talented caricaturist creating gentle watercolor likenesses. I didn’t want to interrupt the work in progress but I did find out he’s there Wednesdays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

Alternate U.

The new China Central Television headquarters building in Beijing. The spectacular 230 meter building, one of Beijing's tallest, will house more than 10,000 staff and is one of a series of landmark futuristic designs built for the Olympics Games.

Do we all live in different worlds? Has the internet created parallel or alternate universes where we sometimes but rarely intersect? I ask these questions because having never spent any time on the Yahoo website I recently set my home page to Yahoo and then went on to personalize it to “My Yahoo”. I was particularly intrigued by what photographs the approximately 150 million unique monthly viewers were most taken by and how it differed from the kind of pictures those of us with a fine art predisposition are drawn to.

For those who follow the “Most Emailed Photos on Yahoo” section, it’s a wild and wacky world out there. Spectacle, novelty, freakishness, and animals rule. Subject trumps all. Artlessness is a virtue. I say this without snobbishness because as readers of this blog know, I’m fascinated by pictures that have a purely visceral impact without any connection to aesthetics. And if the “Most Emailed Photos on Yahoo” doesn’t get to you – how about ”The Daily Puppy” link, or ”OMG”?

I’m intrigued to know what readers of this blog set their home pages to and what kind of pictures they hope to see. Please comment. In the meantime, a selection of popular Yahoo pictures:

Kim Taylor of Stewartstown, PA, thought she had set the emergency brake, but her wayward red convertible nonetheless rolled downhill, crashed through a fence, and plunged into her neighbors' in-ground pool.

Toes are nibbled on by a type of carp called garra rufa, or doctor fish, during a fish pedicure treatment at Yvonne Hair and Nails salon in Alexandria, Va.

From "The Daily Puppy", Tek, the Australian Shepherd puppy, who was named after Jason Varitek, the captain of the Boston Red Sox.

From the "OMG" section of Yahoo - Diane Keaton.

The International Center of ....

It’s no longer a shock to open your e-mail and receive solicitations for different kinds of porn, but it’s somewhat surprising when the purveyor is that august New York institution – The International Center of Photography. Still all’s fair in love and photography and I hope they’re having a rollicking good time on the corner of 43rd and 6th.

In all seriousness, ICP has one of the best photography bookstores in New York (the other being Dashwood Books) and offer both a great selection and guilt-free browsing – a nice combination. And if you feel like it, you can also take in three interesting shows right now -Heavy Light:
Recent Photography and Video from Japan; Arbus/Avedon/Model:
 Selections from the Bank of America LaSalle Collection; and Bill Wood’s Business (Diane Keaton’s latest archive discovery). I particularly recommend Heavy Light.

But back to the bookstore and their e-mail offering, in addition to selections from British collector/dealer Danny Moynihan’s private collection of pornographic photographs, you can find more porn in a rare limited edition set of playing cards featuring images from Daido Moriyama's "Kagero & Colors". if you’re looking for respectable fare, there’s a brand new monograph on Hannah Starkey (one of England’s most interesting photographers but rarely seen Stateside); a republished version of Peter Beard’s seminal "End of the Game" designed by Ruth Ansel; and a new monograph by the Dutch stylist/photographer Erwin Olaf. Enough to make venturing into midtown where the temperature is well into the high 90s as we speak worthwhile.

Weekend Video

At a charity auction a couple of weekends ago I bid for and won three nights in Las Vegas! So to inspire my wife I thought what could be better than finding some songs from Elvis’s “Viva Las Vegas”. Needless to say there were plenty on YouTube and iTunes and I was particularly struck by the energy and brightness of the film, not to mention a title track that has been recorded by everyone from Bruce Springsteen to ZZ Top.

Released in 1964, “Viva Las Vegas” was Elvis's 17th of 31 movies he made in 11 years (for an average of three a year)! “Viva Las Vegas” is generally considered to mark the end of the better films (by Elvis standards) and the beginning of an overall decline in quality. Nevertheless, “Viva Las Vegas” has a lot going for it. The director, George Sidney, was a man with serious musical credentials (“Anchors Aweigh”, “Annie Get Your Gun”, “Show Boat”, “Kiss Me Kate”, “Pal Joey” and “Bye Bye Birdie”) and he surely knew how to shoot wide screen color and stage a dance number.

“Viva Las Vegas” makes ample use of real Vegas locations at a time when The Strip was only about a mile long with headliners playing in low-lying hotels in a fairly unphotogenic part of the city. But above all, “Viva Las Vegas” has a stunning Ann-Margret who steals the show. Colonel Parker (Elvis’s manager) was particularly concerned with this, and from then on Elvis movies had no competing female leads. The movie has the usual early 60s political incorrectness with Elvis walking a fine line between girl-chasing and stalking, but as a cheerful period piece, and not discounting Elvis's enduring appeal, it’s a hoot.

Below: Elvis' friend, George Klein, discusses the making of the film.

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I know what I’m looking forward to! And I’m not usually a fan of summer action movies, but the recent Batman films directed by Christopher Nolan are done with such care, skill, and creativity that they truly are works not just of commerce but of art. The cinematography in particular is just gorgeous – every frame darkly and richly lit, the color balanced beautifully for the dark palette the filmmakers are working in. Just watch the trailer.

I’ve also particularly enjoyed the design and roll-out of the posters – a brilliant blend of photography, photoshop, and graphic design.

There’s a rumor on the web that this could be the first film to gross $200 million on its opening weekend. Let’s see if all this care, commitment, and chutzpah pays off!

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La Vie En Tulip

As I mention frequently, I am always interested in when vernacular, or press photographs transcend the everyday to have some greater visceral impact. Sometimes it’s the subject, more often it’s the composition, and sometimes as in these photographs it’s a combination of both. And originality is always key. These three images, via London’s Daily Mail and AP, but uncredited, are pictures of the northern Netherlands in the middle of the tulip season. (Planted in the fall, the bulbs bloom in the spring, after which the land is cultivated for a rather more mundane crop of vegetables.)

A Google image search of “tulip fields” will yield plenty of mediocre pictures of this scene, but these, to me, have a conciseness and a lack of sentimentality which make them memorable.

My Life as a Model