Notes on art and culture by Ashley & Associates
Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, Prospect Mountain, Lake George, (1927), gelatin silver print
In 1927, Georgia O’Keeffe had her first museum show ever at the Brooklyn Museum; 90 years later, she returns. However, the focus of the exhibition Georgia O’Keeffe: Living Modern is not her paintings but her identity and persona as an artist. Read more...
Ed van der Elsken; Girl in the Subway, Tokyo, 1984.
The Dutch postwar photographer Ed van der Elsken lived with, and through, his cameras.
They came with him into his bedroom, capturing life with his first, second and third wives; they were slung around his neck and across his chest as he travelled to Paris, Tokyo, Chile, central Africa and back home to his native Amsterdam. They joined him in his deathbed, as he recorded his own slow capitulation to cancer in 1990.
He was “a man who would have liked to have transplanted a camera into his head to permanently record the world around him,” wrote Beatrix Ruf, the director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and Marta Gili, the director of the Jeu de Paume in Paris, who have collaborated to present a major retrospective of his work for both museums. Read more...
William Eggleston by Wolfgang Tillmans
Eggleston is impeccably dressed in what he wears every day: a dark suit that he tells me was made for him on Savile Row, highly polished black shoes, a white shirt and an untied bow tie around the neck. He smells like bourbon and body lotion. He wears a Cartier watch, two minutes slow. I ask if he likes to talk about photography. Eggleston closes his eyes. “It’s tricky,” he says. “Words and pictures don’t — they’re like two different animals. They don’t particularly like each other.” He speaks in almost a whisper, his dapper Southern drawl relaxed further with a slur. Read more...
Trevor Paglen, Untitled (Predator Drones), 2013. C-Print.
Sometimes even eavesdropping experts prefer to have their mobile phones turned off. There’s a place in the woods of West Virginia where there’s no reception at all. Absolutely nothing that can transmit or receive is allowed there, including radios and remote controls. Police check rigorously, driving around with radio detectors. It’s known as the National Radio Quiet Zone, and it houses a facility run by the NSA that mostly collects earthly signals from outer space.
Artist Trevor Paglen knows that astronauts are really there waiting to receive news from aliens, but he also knows that it’s not the whole story. So one night in 2010, Paglen—tall, athletic, and in his late thirties—drove as close as possible to the zone, where he climbed to the top of a mountain to identify what the large, no-reception complex seals off. And when the moonlight was most beautiful, Paglen took a picture using the strongest microscope camera. Read more...
Hanging out at our local skate spot, Stoner Park, which is actually its official name. It’s on Stoner Avenue. From left: Cooper, 16; Tristan, 15.
Watching a skate video during lunch. From left: Addison, 16; Logan, 16; Kalani, 16
On a Sunday afternoon in March, I received an email from Martin Ledford, a photography teacher at Santa Monica High School in California. Every fall, he explained, he has his students create a book on the theme of “portrait and identity,” and he wanted to call my attention to the work of a particularly talented 11th grader named Nico Young. He sent along Nico’s portrait book. After viewing the pictures, I agreed that they were exceptional, especially for such a young photographer. His photos were brimming with an uncommon authenticity and emotional depth. Read more...
