Photographs from documentary photographer Joseph Rodriguez’s just-released e-book with FotoEvidence was featured in the New York Times Lens Blog on January 22, 2015. Rodriguez took these photos between 1990 and 1996, following the execution of Nicolae Ceausescu and sparking a revolution to overthrow one of the most brutal Communist regimes in the world. The photographs reflect the jarring industrial landscape; children in orphanages and psychiatric institutions; and — a “lighter side of Romania” — daily life in the countryside.

Rodriguez has been working as a photographer for over 25 years, and has published monographs about communities in New York City, Los Angeles, Sweden, Mexico City, and many other cities and countries around the world. He has published several books in addition to “Romania,” and is a faculty member at the International Center of Photography. Rodriguez recently had a show at Hardhitta Gallery featuring some of his photographs of inner-city life in New York and Los Angeles.

The e-book can be purchased via the FotoEvidence website or the iTunes bookstore.

Craig Highberger sent APAG some photographs of the Rhinovault Security Structure that he had installed to house the Jack Mitchell Archives in Alabama.

As per Craig’s email, the Rhinovault is made of welded insulated steel and can withstand extreme weather, falling debris, or even a fire (it is a ballistic protection system). It was delivered on a flatbed 18-wheeler truck and put into place on a concrete slab, and all archival shelving and storage has been installed inside of it.

The Jack Mitchell Retrospective Exhibition, curated by Eric Hornak Spoutz, opened at the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art in St. Joseph, MO.

A Dance of Rivers

By Chester Higgins, Jr. Dec. 18, 2014

Every photographer brings his or her unique experiences to an assignment — the lens through which we see the world. When I arrived at The New York Times in 1975, I felt the media was immune to any real comprehension of the world I knew well. I wanted to share the history and traditions of the people I grew up with — to help broaden the bridge of understanding between the majority and minority cultures in this country.

On my first trip to Africa in 1971, I fell in love with African people and their cultures. In 1974 I approached The Times with photographs of famine in the Sahel, and the Op-Ed page featured three of these photos. A few months later, I landed a staff position at the paper and continued my focus on issues of African and African-American culture.

In the 1980s, I introduced the newspaper to an ad hoc group of African-Americans, who came together annually at sunrise in Coney Island to honor Africans lost at sea during the Middle Passage. In 1995, I focused attention on an annual weeklong event, created by a Brooklyn church in East New York, to commemorate the untold millions of Africans forced to endure the Middle Passage and enslavement. When Kwanzaa was still a little-known, struggling celebration, I made numerous calls annually to seek out dramatic photographic possibilities.

For me, the focal point of African-American community life is often the church. Over the years I have photographed in many local churches, mostly in Brooklyn, Queens and Harlem, on Sundays to document what a powerful tool tradition can be in helping people maintain emotional and spiritual balance.

Throughout my career at The Times, I have worked to bring to my editors photographic opportunities that highlight ethnic identity. Many of the resulting photos have run in the newspaper and today reside in its archives. I like to think these photographs can work as catalysts for expanding and enriching our understanding of each other.

The origin of one of my favorites photos dates to when I was in high school, when my mother introduced me to the poems of Langston Hughes. In college, I came to appreciate the works of Amiri Baraka and then, later, I discovered Maya Angelou’s writings. So when I heard that the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture was honoring the memory of Langston Hughes in an evening ceremony, I reached out to the center’s then-director, Howard Dodson. Learning that Amiri Baraka and Maya Angelou were on the program, I knew I would go. I asked the newspaper’s night editor if there could be space for a photo of the event.

At the conclusion of the program, filled with poetry readings and accolades for Langston Hughes, a jazz combo livened the tempo. As I watched, Amiri Baraka asked Maya Angelou to dance and walked her to the “I’ve Known Rivers” Cosmogram — the focal point of the celebration, newly set into the floor over the ashes of Langston Hughes. As the two poets danced, the energy of the crowd focused on them. The room came alive as everyone applauded.

In this impromptu tribute to Langston Hughes, I believe these two African-American icons created a moment that reflected our collective love for poets of African descent and the continuity of African creative genius.

For 2015, we have produced not just one, but TWO collectible Wynn Bullock Calendars.

One features 12 of Wynn’s iconic black-and white images. The other showcases 12 of his stunning Color Light Abstractions.

Click to order your 2015 Fine Art Calendars

Along with our calendars, we have also added a new line of black-and-white notecards to our Wynn Bullock Card Collection.

Click here to order your new sets of Fine Art Greeting Cards

www.wynnbullockphotography.com

Photography

and push it through that opening

so small

who would have believed there could be a world on the other side?

The process of casting

sight into silver, the skin of plastic

to be redeemed by water, to cycle

from brilliance to blackness to brilliance –

the mechanics of seeing are everything;

and still the shadow of that cloud escaped me,

that light.

from: NOTEBOOKS FROM MYSTERY SCHOOL

Dear Friends,

My poetry collection NOTEBOOKS FROM MYSTERY SCHOOL, finalist for the New Women’s Voices Award, will be published by Finishing Line Press in February 2015. Finishing Line is an award winning small press dedicated to producing quality books spotlighting new poetry. I’m thrilled to be publishing with them.

Exploring themes of light and dark, some of the poems are inspired by my background in photography.

For my friends in the visual arts, chapbooks lend themselves to collecting because of their small press runs and resulting scarcity; for my literary and theatre friends, many of you have heard these poems read or performed and asked for them in print. I’m happy to offer you an affordable First Edition!

The book is now available for pre-sale through December 26th; books ship on February 6. The press run is limited, but determined by pre-sales; so your pre-orders are greatly appreciated! I hope many of you will want to reserve a copy of this first edition from this unique literary press, especially if you’re a collector or would like an affordable way to start collecting.

Pre-order on line by clicking here

Or download an order by mail form by clicking here

The pre-sale period (through December 26) is only 5 weeks; if you’ve received a similar email, I appreciate your understanding. Please feel free to forward this to friends you think might be interested. To those of you who have already ordered, my deepest thanks!

Margaret McCarthy

artist@margaretmccarthy.com
www.notebooksfrommysteryschool.com

ABOUT THE BOOK        ABOUT THE AUTHOR

NOTEBOOKS FROM MYSTERY SCHOOL by Margaret McCarthy

Poetry Chapbook; 24 pages

 

A coming of age journey told through poems; our rites of passage, with nature as our greatest school and teacher. A journey through shadow and light, arriving at the ultimate destination: the balance of opposites.

 

“…you yearn to follow into the labyrinthine mystic depths of these luxurious poems.”

–Richard Peabody, editor Gargoyle Magazine

 

“McCarthy’s photographic eye captures the remarkable beauty and resilience that carry us through the sorrows and mysteries of our days.”

–Michele Wolf, author of Immersion and Conversations During Sleep

 

“With the eye of a feminist, she asks what if, instead, it had been Icarus’s sister? Would she know how far to go? In her first collection, NOTEBOOKS FROM MYSTERY SCHOOL, McCarthy shows us that yes, she knows.”

–Susana H. Case, author of 4 Rms w Vu

https://mail.aol.com/38848-916/aol-6/en-us/mail/get-attachment.aspx?uid=29156151&folder=OldMail&partId=3&saveAs=Tice_-NJ_Monthly-.pdf

Here is the link to the trailer:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WtlIsSdj4w

Reception for the publication of WATER TOWERS BY RONNIE FARLEY
Wednesday, November 5, 2014
6 – 9 PM
SUPERFINE
126 Front Street
Dumbo, Brooklyn

Think of the movies, think of any photographic image of the New York skyline and there will undoubtedly be water towers; features that are as much a recognizable part of the city as the yellow taxi cabs and the street signs. Ronnie Farley has documented these New York monoliths for over 20 years from every angle and time of day; a beautifully photographed and original collection.

Info@ronniefarley.com
www.newyorkwatertowers.com

A 1977 assignment for Look magazine took award-winning photographer Stephen Shames to the Bronx, where he began photographing a group of boys coming of age in a neighborhood of the borough that at the time was among the toughest and poorest in the United States. The boys Shames documented lived on streets ravaged by poverty, drugs and violence. They bonded together and raised themselves in “crews” – adolescent families they created for protection and companionship. Shames’s empathy for the boys earned their trust and respect, and over the next two decades, as the crack cocaine epidemic devastated their community, they allowed him extraordinary access into their lives on the street and in their homes.

Bronx Boys (University of Texas Press, October, 2014) presents a collection of 123 duotone photographs made by Stephen Shames from 1977-2000. Shames captures the brutality of the period — the fights, shootings, arrests, and drug deals — that eventually left many of the boys he photographed dead or in jail. But he also records the joy and humanity of the young men, as they mature, fall in love, and have children of their own. Challenging perceptions of a place that was dismissed by many as irredeemable, Bronx Boys reveals that hope and redemption is possible everywhere.

Bronx Boys will have its official New York launch next week with an exhibition opening and book signing at Steven Kasher Gallery and a book party and signing at BronxArtSpace.

Bronx Boys was originally published as a digital photo monograph and e-book by FotoEvidence Press. The photo editing and sequencing for both the digital and print version of the book is by Regina Monfort.

www.stevenkasher.com
www.bronxartspace.com