News

Doc NYC is happen from now until November 9th.

Lost Souls and Light Matter is an artist talk by Len Herzog about her recent work Lost Souls and previews her latest work Light Matter. Lost Souls and Light Matter will be conducted on Nov 7th, 1:30pm.

Turtle: The Incredible Journey, directed by Nick Stringer, is a gorgeously photographed journey through the ocean world follows the life of a loggerhead turtle, starting as a baby on a Florida beach and migrating from the Sargasso Sea to the Gulf Stream to the shores of Africa and back to Florida to lay its eggs. This film screens on Nov 6th at 11:30am.

ANPO Art x War, a Linda Hoaglund film, efers to the US-Japan Mutual Security Treaty, which has justified the presence of 90 US military bases in Japan for six decades. There will be two showing of this film, one on Nov 6th at 2pm and the other being Nov 9th at 12pm.

On Fri. Nov. 5 (10am – 6pm) the festival will conclude with Doc Convergence, a day-long symposium bringing together documentary makers from diverse disciplines – film, photography, radio, prose, illustration, performance – for a unique exchange of ideas.

Tickets are $16 for the films and talk, $150 for the convergence, and can be purchased via the DOC NYC website, www.docnyc.net

Lee Friedlander (b. 1934) has long been recognized for his compound street photographs, which document "social landscapes" through a complex arrangement of reflections, shadows, street signs, and self-portraits. For his latest book and current exhibition, "Lee Friedlander: America by Car," the photographer went on a decade-long succession of road trips driving on US highways, city streets, country roads, and thoroughfares. In the tradition of other itinerant street photographers, such as Robert Frank and Garry Winogrand, Friedlander's work examines the expanse of infrastructures and social constructs that pervade the United States. And now, at age 76, Friedlander is still demonstrating his ability to revisit, challenge, and extend his well-established photographic vocabulary.

By photographing through car windows with a Hasselblad Super Wide, Friedlander uses his camera's foreshortening perspective to methodically construct images that operate as a frame-within-a-frame (often with rear-view mirrors and side-view mirrors acting as additional frames). The photographs focus on the makes, models, and hardware of his rental cars while also considering the environments beyond the cars' interiors. As consistent with his past work, Friedlander is not at all timid about including himself in these photographs either. Whether it is the flare of his flash or his reflection in a mirror, his presence is felt in every image.

Pictured beyond many of Friedlander's cars' windows are especially bleak locales such as dilapidated Rust Belt factories, suburban homes in California, and a car graveyard in Arizona. In this context — when gazing through a rental car window — the visual contrast trades cynicism for wit. And even though each photograph is muddled with information, Friedlander is still able to establish a compositional order. The physical and figurative relationship that coexists between the car interiors and the momentary scenes beyond each window provides a timely, often-satirical commentary on contemporary America.

Recently the Yale Medical School opened the doors to a permanent, brand-new exhibition in a converted sub-basement underneath the research library. You pass through a series of hallways and doorways and access points, down winding stairs, past a giant's skeleton, and swipe a card the librarian has given you, and enter a darkened room; motion detectors sense your presence, and lights fade up. You are surrounded by brains in jars, punctuated with amazing photographs made from glass plate negatives not by a professional photographer, as far as we know, but very likely by the very doctor who collected the specimens in formaldehyde.

Dr. Harvey Cushing was a pioneer in neurosurgery who created the Brain Tumor Registry, 2,200 case studies of people tissue samples, notes, brains, fine anatomical drawings and 15,000 negatives. He was professor of surgery at Harvard until 1932, then at Yale, where he and his massive collection ended up. It sat largely un-used for decades, and even ended up in a dormitory basement. Luckily, a med student in the Nineties rediscovered the collection and wrote his thesis on it. The new space finally gives the fascinating archive its due. In a case near the front door are stacks of large-format 5x7" negatives made from 1903-1930, many glass, but also some are very damaged flexible cellulose sheets. Luckily, the obviously intelligent doctor hired photographers* who shot 80% of these portraits on glass, even after the photographic world had moved on to the new film base. He possibly had a sense that this new way wouldn't be as archival - save the chance of the glass breaking due to mis-handling, of course.

The photographs are of patients both pre and post-op. They are hauntingly beautiful and sad. Some of the poses and gazes seem incomprehensible and utterly strange to today's viewers. They are raw, yet elegant, windows into the world of madness. They are also clearly the work of a true artist, a great mind.* Perhaps the great mind was that of the photograher, or, perhaps more likely that of the doctor/director, who was also a skilled and sensitive draftsman. In a recent lecture about Brassai just a few blocks away at the Art School, Tod Papageorge spoke of that artist's other feats in writing and painting, and pointed out that, "Great photographs come from a great mind." The Cushing Collection clearly proves this to be true.

Though it is completely worth the trip to New Haven, a few photographs are available for viewing online at:http://opa.yale.edu/images/slideshow/Slideshow-Cushing-Center/slideshow.... andhttp://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/08/24/health/20100824brain.html For information on directions, hours and tours: http://www.med.yale.edu/library/about/cc.html The exhibition is on view in the Medical research Library at the Yale School of Medicine, 333 Cedar Street, and is free and open to the public.

*This article has been updated to include information that has arisen that photographers were hired, and that the images were not made y the doctor himself.

On November 3rd "Be Thankful – A Benefit for Scott Andresen" will take place at the Collette Blanchard Gallery on the Lower East Side of NYC. "Be Thankful," the title of the famous William DeVaughn track, and Scott’s favorite song, seemed a fitting title for the evening. An amazing selection of art generously donated by his friends and peers will be auctioned to help defer his medical expenses. The National Transplant Assistance Fund, a non-profit that assists with fundraising for catastrophic injury, has offered their support; this partnership will allow all auction items to be tax deductible. People from all aspects of Scott's life have pooled their talents to make this event a success. It will be a night that should not be missed and an opportunity to help someone who has continually been there to help others. Artists include: Ka-Man Tse, Mickey Thomas, Johannes deYoung, Wangechi Mutu, Kevin Cooley, Kehinde Wiley, Rochelle Feinstein, Sam Messer. http://be-thankful-benefit.com/home.html

JOHN LEHR "STET" OCTOBER 28 - DECEMBER 4, 2010 OPENING THURSDAY, OCTOBER 28TH FROM 6-8 PM KATE WERBLE GALLERY 83 VANDAM STREET NEW YORK, NY 10013 From the press release: "John Lehr's first solo exhibition at Kate Werble Gallery is titled Stet, the proofreading term meaning let it stand. Stet presents Lehr’s new series exploring the border between the straight photograph and the constructed image. Lehr's meticulous attention to the photograph translates into a series of works with hyper-real clarity and movement. His work maintains an illusion of stability, but the tension between materials captured within each picture creates a subtle unease, a record of the failed attempt of commercial language to reward desire. In Marquee, the emptiness of the soft, black felt of the blank marquee versus the surrounding plastic tile is highlighted by the detail of a single piece of hair and dust caught on the surface of the felt. Through formal manipulation, Lehr captures the vernacular of the American consumer landscape and moves it to an abstract plane. The duality of photography made from taking a photograph of a print - often the desecrated signage within his image is itself a digital print – further complicates the idea of a straight photographic process. Lehr makes his work in his studio using a pigmented inkjet printer. The ink quality, surface of the print and paper texture are critical within the piece as a whole, giving the process of printing his photograph an individuality within an artistic medium that tends towards a denial of the unique object." www.katewerblegallery.com