Category Archives: Culture

Glen E. Friedman: My Rules

“Fuck You Heros” – now there is a title for a book. A title for a photo book, to be precise, by Glen E. Friedman, a photographer who first got into a cop’s face to protest his arrest as unconstitutional at the age of 12, had his first photo published in SkateBoarder magazine at the age of 14, immortalized the skating scene around Dogtown in Los Angeles, discovered and produced the punk band Suicidal Tendencies, and photographed the Los Angeles hardcore and punk scene and the New York hip-hop scene, among other subjects, with equal zest. A title of a book that Friedman, in a meta-fuck-you gesture to the world, produced and printed himself because no major publisher would touch it in the 90s.

Keiichi Tahara

If in Paris you would be well served to stop by the new outpost of Taka Ishii Gallery Photo where a solo exhibition of vintage prints by Keiichi Tahara recently opened. Tahara, now in his 60s, learned photography from his grandfather in his early teens and has pursued an exploration of light as material – in photographs, installations and light sculptures – tenaciously since.  The show at Taka Ishii Gallery presents works from two photographic series, Fenêtre (1973-1984) and Éclats (1979-1983), both of which Tahara completed early in his career shortly after moving to Paris.

Bruce Davidson: England/Scotland 1960

After spending the year 1959 taking pictures of a Brooklyn youth gang has taken an emotional toll, the American photographer Bruce Davidson was looking for a change of scenery. He got this, literally, when Magnum, his photo agency, sent him to Great Britain to photograph the country’s everyday life. The photographer spent several months roaming the streets of London and the English and Scottish countryside. The photos were originally published in Queen magazine. They first appeared in book form, titled England/Scotland 1960, in 2005. Now, Steidl Verlag printed its second edition, in an expanded, larger format.

Manifesta 10 Biennal

Despite the ongoing political and social difficulties in Russia, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg is hosting the tenth iteration of Manifesta, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art, which runs from June 28 through October 3, 2014.

Parallel to the main program, the city is dotted with carefully selected gallery exhibitions that aim to further broaden the public view of current artistic activity in St. Petersburg, a city long considered to be the cultural capital of Russia.

IMAGE AND MATTER IN JAPANESE PHOTOGRAPHY FROM THE 1970s, CURATED BY YUMIKO CHIBA

Those of you without easy access to New York galleries can secretly cheer this missive: this show at Marianne Boesky closes in a couple of days and, thus, it is of little use as “timely news” to those who do enjoy such access.  That said, “Image and Matter in Japanese Photography from the 1970s” merits attention, even if delayed, not so much for introducing us to a fascinating and pretty much unknown array of photographers (invaluable in itself) but for presenting them in the context of an intellectual proposal – the show presents itself more as a question than as an answer, or an unearthing – and that is bracingly refreshing.