Displaying items by tag: photography

There is very little about Picasso that John Richardson, his longtime biographer, doesn’t already know. As a friend of Picasso’s during the 1950s, while the artist was living in the south of France, Mr. Richardson saw more than most.

He can reveal juicy snippets about Picasso’s sexual escapades and recall many of his personal quirks: How Picasso would rub a concoction of oil heated with sticks of lavender into his scalp to make his hair grow; his passion for salt cod purée; his loathing of classical music. Mr. Richardson can also describe in riveting detail Picasso’s methods of painting, sculpting and drawing.

The Swiss photographer René Burri, celebrated for his portraits of Che Guevara and Pablo Picasso, died on Monday in Zurich aged 81, the Magnum Photo agency said.

Burri, who lived between Zurich and Paris, had been suffering from a long illness, Magnum said.

Martin Parr, president of Magnum Photos, said: “Not only was he one of the great postwar photographers, he was also one of the most generous people I have had the privilege to meet.”

In photographic wanderings around New York City, Paul Strand sometimes used a fake lens so his subjects wouldn’t know their pictures were being taken.

Partly by this means, he brought greater spontaneity and realism into the photographer’s worldview circa World War I, leading an art form that had recently imitated painting into the modern age on its own terms.

Until his death in 1976, Strand, whom the Philadelphia Museum of Art regards as “one of the greatest photographers in the history of the medium,” produced work infused with left-of-center social views and curiosity about people and localities all over the globe.

After two years of fundraising, Oxford’s Bodleian Libraries have finally secured the £2.25 million (approx. $3.6 million) necessary to buy the personal archive of early photography pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot. Although Daguerre is often credited with the invention of photography, Fox Talbot’s book “Pencil of Nature” was an early development for paper-based processes and the first photographically-illustrated book. The archive includes objects photographed in the book, documents relating to both his work and his personal life, and many other items. The Bodleian Libraries have several plans in the works for the archive including a 2017 exhibition, a catalogue raisonné of his work, and an online archive for scholarly research.

The Royal Academy of Arts presents the first major retrospective of Anselm Kiefer’s work to be held in the UK. Considered to be one of the most important artists of his generation, the exhibition spans over forty years from Kiefer’s early career to the present time, bringing together artwork from international private and public collections. The exhibition has been arranged chronologically, presenting the epic scale of his artwork and the breadth of media he has used throughout his career, including painting, sculpture, photography and installation. Kiefer has also created a number of works conceived specifically for the Royal Academy’s Main Galleries, showcasing his continued interest in seeking new challenges and producing ever more ambitious artwork.

The Whitney Museum of American Art announced that New York collectors Sondra Gilman Gonzalez-Falla and Celso Gonzalez-Falla have promised the institution 75 iconic photographs from their collection. The generous gift will dramatically impact the museum’s photography holdings. Adam D. Weinberg, the Alice Pratt Brown Director of the Whitney, said, “The works are classics of twentieth-century photography that enable us to tell the story of twentieth-century American art.”

Among the works are twelve photographs by Walker Evans, including “Kitchen Wall, Alabama Farmstead,” which was published in Evans’ and James Agee’s seminal book on tenant farm families, “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.”

Most of us agree that hospitals are inherently stressful and it's pretty bleak to stare at a blank wall or wait for a doctor in a cramped, dark room. Sick or not, we'd prefer a sunny view or a Monet watercolor. Yet in an era of escalating healthcare costs, it's important to justify spending on aesthetics and design.

Can an attractive drawing or photograph reduce pain or anxiety? Do patients with art in their environment heal faster?

More and more hospitals think so. And they're putting big money behind it, transforming what were once cold, sterile spaces into mini-museums and contemporary art destinations, complete with audio guides and video installations.

A rare negative of legendary movie star Marilyn Monroe, taken during her first professional photo shoot when she was 20 years old, has been sold at auction.

The photograph was taken when the unknown Norma Jeane Baker was a factory girl hoping to become a model.

The picture, along with the negative and copyright, was sold for £4,250. It had been expected to fetch between £5,000 and £8,000.

The New York Times has a thorough rundown of a very messy battle over the estate of the late reclusive photographer Vivian Maier, whose talent only came to light after her death in 2009, aged 83, and “nearly penniless and with no family.” Maier spent most of her life working as a nanny for wealthy Chicago families, quietly pursuing her passion for photography out of the public eye and producing poignant, documentary scenes of everyday life in Chicago, New York, and other American cities.

Since 2007, John Maloof, a former Chicago real estate agent who purchased tens of thousands of negatives for under $400, has been actively promoting and overseeing her work through commercial galleries (most notably with the prestigious Howard Greenberg Gallery), exhibitions, books, and a recent documentary that he helped direct, Finding Vivian Maier.

“Bruce Davidson/Paul Caponigro: Two American Photographers in Britain and Ireland,” at the Yale Center for British Art, is a strange but memorable pairing. It joins the Magnum photojournalist Bruce Davidson, best known for his aggressive New York street and subway photography, to a spiritually minded landscape photographer in the mold of Ansel Adams and Minor White. And although its title suggests some shared expatriate experience, a split quickly develops.

The curators, perhaps acknowledging as much, divide the third-floor galleries neatly down the middle. At times, it seems as if Mr. Davidson and Mr. Caponigro are re-enacting a classic contest in 20th-century photography, a competition between the meticulously technical, landscape-driven Bay Area School of Adams and Edward Weston, and the spontaneous street photography of Mr. Davidson’s mentors, Cornell Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson (who is said to have remarked, “The world is falling to pieces, and all Adams and Weston photograph is rocks and trees.”)