News

China Between is a photographic exploration of the modern city culture of contemporary China.

When the Peoples’ Republic set up its Special Economic Zones in the 1980s communist China entered into global trade and international capital. The goal was financial but new money also brought new values and new ways of life. Polly Braden’s photography is an intimate response to the material and psychological effects of the changes experienced by the country’s new urban class. Shot over three years in Shanghai, Xiamen, Shenzhen and Kunming, China Between is a revelatory portrait. No longer will images of epic scenes dominate our view of this country. Braden shows how a casual glance, a moment of doubt or a quick trip to the shopping mall can tell us as much about modern China as any image of a dam, a protest or a teeming workforce.

… anthropological documents and a personal travelogue; a series of intimate portraits and, more generally, studies of a country undergoing a massive transition from a predominantly agrarian to an urban culture. – Jennifer Higgie, editor of Frieze magazine

A winner of the Jerwood Photography Prize (2003) and The Guardian Newspaper Young Photographer of the Year (2002), Polly Braden has exhibited at venues internationally including the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London) and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago (USA). In recent years she has produced extended photo-essays in the UK, the Middle East, Morocco, Kenya and China and her photography has appeared in The Guardian, The Saturday Telegraph magazine, Ei8ht magazine, Portfolio, ICON, Photoworks, Frieze, The Sydney Morning Herald and D Magazine (Italy). Now based in London, Polly has lived in China and photographed the country over the last decade. The book is accompanied by texts by David Campany, Reader in Photography at the University of Westminster, London and by Jennifer Higgie, editor of Frieze magazine.
 

Twice a year The Exhibition Lab gathers a few of the greats in the field to host portfolio reviews. The review will consist of four 20-minute reviews with four of the 10 reviewers listed above. 

A "Free Pass Award" based on merit will be given by The Exhibition Lab staff to one applicant which will waive the tuition for the portfolio review.  Two "Reviewers' Choice" scholarships will be awarded at the end of the review good for one complimentary Seminar at The Ex Lab.

To apply, please provide the following materials via info@theexhibitionlab.com

1.  A written description of your work, no more than 100 words
2.  10 jpegs sent either in a zip file or attached to an e-mail )jpegs should be 72 dpi and 6 inches at the largest dimension.

Deadline for submission will be  June 12th.  Artists will be notified of acceptance by June 14th.  Payment is due upon acceptance.  There is no cost to apply.

June 27 / 11:00 – 6:00 / $325

Honore Brown, Associate Picture Editor, The New Yorker
Stacey Clarkson, Art Director, Harper’s
Kris Graves, Director, Kris Graves Projects
Jackie Ladner, Assistant Photo Editor, New York Magazine
Russell Lord, Fellow, Department of Photographs, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Andrea Meislin, Director, Andrea Meislin Gallery
Tracey Norman, Director, Yancey Richardson Gallery
Amy Stein, Photographer
Sasha Wolf, Director, Sasha Wolf Gallery
Denise Wolff, Editor, Aperture

I was recently fortunate enough to be able to spend some time at the Macdowell Colony in Southern New Hampshire. The first medium people think of with this particular artist residency is writing, and then people think of music. Visual artists come next, and within that genre, there are the photographers, but only a relatively small number over the years. At residencies I often feel a bit like the odd man out - literally out, as in outside. Since I only use a studio space to print, edit and reflect, I spend most of my time out exploring and shooting - on foot or in a car, sometimes aimlessly, following instinct, or sometimes with at least an end-point in range, like some tourist attraction, taking back roads to get there. I get to know the general local outside world pretty well, but not so much the four walls and beautiful grounds that typically frame an artist's stay at the Colony.

 This is not the case for every photographer, though, and they provide two spaces that contain darkrooms. Putnam/Graphics, my studio, is essentially two studios in one building - a traditional printmaking area as well as a black-and-white darkroom. The building itself is from about 1910, the old pump house, and the interior adaptation looks like Sixties or Seventies to me. The other one, Nef, was only built in the early Nineties, and is an ideal, dream space, with living loft, very high ceilings and nice light, as well as a huge darkroom. It's a one-person wet darkroom that is the size of a typical college gang lab. You could comfortably make 20x24's there, and even 30x40's.

 One of the great things about working in any of the spaces is the weighty sense of history that preceded you. There are wood boards on the wall in each studio, aptly called "Tombstones," that every artist working there signs. In Nef, some of the illustrious names are Stephen Shore, Justine Kurland and very recently, Matt Connors. In my studio, which has names going back over thirty years, the boards read Barbara Ess, Zeke Berman, Peter Garfield, Stephen Tourlentes, Lynn Geesaman, and most poignantly, Francesca Woodman in July 1980, who committed suicide less than a year later back home in NYC. There is definitely at a (ghostly) presence of photography at Macdowell.Visit http://www.macdowellcolony.org/artists-indexfellows.php for a complete list of fellows.

Lee Friedlander, Robert Frank and Harry Callahan were all awardees at the annual Medal Days over the years, with Friedlander being the very first photographer in1986. This current year's recipient is musician Sonny Rollins. All are welcome to attend the event. To register:http://www.macdowellcolony.org/transactions/index.html

 And just a few years ago, a handsome book was produced featuring commissioned photos by Vicky Sambunaris. The library of Congress page for the book gives a great history of the place:http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0703/macdowell.html

Go for the lunch baskets, but stay for their trademark "Freedom to Create."To apply: http://www.macdowellcolony.org/apply.html

Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement
Danny Lyon

In Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement, Danny Lyon tells the compelling story of how a handful of dedicated young people, both black and white, forged one of the most successful grassroots organizations in American history. The book depicts some of the most violent and dramatic moments of Civil Rights Movement, including Black Monday in Danville, Virginia; the aftermath of the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham; the March on Washington in 1964; and the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1962. Lyon¹s photos were taken when he was the first sta‡ photographer for the StudentNonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The book also includes a selection of historic SNCC documents such as press releases, telephone logs, letters, and minutes of meetings. Pictures, eyewitness reports, and text take the reader inside the Civil Rights Movement, creating both a work of art and an authentic work of history.
 

After graduating from the University of Chicago in 1963, Danny Lyon joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). As their star photographer he made photographs that proved to be an important historical record of the Southern Civil Rights Movement. Lyon subsequently gained broad recognition as a photographer, filmmaker, and writer. Working in the style called New Journalism, which involved immersing himself and becoming a participant in a given subject, Lyon photographed motorcyclists in the Midwest and documented life within the Texas prison system. Lyon¹s talent was recognized by the Guggenheim Foundation, which awarded him a fellowship in photography in 1969 and another, in film, a decade later. Lyons has had one-person exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Center for Creative Photography at the University
of Arizona.

If you are in Vegas, please join in celebrating the start of Burlesque Hall of Fame Weekend 2010-and a thrilling new chapter in the Hall of Fame's history: the grand opening of the new E. Fremont mini-museum and gift shop. Photographs by yours truly and many others. As part of the Weekend's many exciting festivities and performances, on exhibit will be  "SEQUINS IN THE SAND: Celebrating 20 Years of Miss Exotic World," the inaugural exhibit iof the Burlesque hall of Fame at Emergency Arts, a downtown adaptive re-use of the former Fremont Medical Center. The center has plans to be an artists' collective with with artwork even in old exam rooms. From their facebook page: "The aim is to bring working artists, writers, photographers, clothing designers, musicians, film-makers, artisans, graphic designers, dancers, retailers, actors, and start-up non-profit organizations together to synergize as a creative collective or co-op. Visitor traffic will be fueled by the destination of the variety of tenants, special events, exhibitions, and an “anchor” tenant." What is also really interesting is that this is a brand new home for the former museum of burlesque, Exotic World, which has been in limbo since water damage and volunteer efforts to put everything in storage. It was the kind of place you read about in the Roadside America books. You'd drive out on Route 66 to an oasis in the high desert in Helendale, Calif., toot your horn as you pulled in the gate of an old goat farm, and out would pop the former Marilyn Monroe of burlesque, the octogenarian Dixie Evans! It was fantastic.

SEQUINS IN THE SAND: Celebrating 20 Years of Miss Exotic World
Inaugural exhibit curated by Laurenn McCubbin
FIRST FRIDAY, JUNE 4, exhibition on view through July 31st, 2010
Opening Reception, 4p-6p
Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony with Mayor Oscar Goodman, Reigning Queen of Burlesque Kalani Kokonuts Dixie Evans, 5p (sharp)
http://bit.ly/BHoFweekend2010
The Burlesque Hall of Fame: Where the Strip Meets Tease

Emergency Arts
520 Fremont Street, #120
Las Vegas, Nevada 89101
www.burlesquehall.com

http://www.emergencyarts.blogspot.com