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Debbie Fleming Caffery

Until July 31, 2009

From the Gitterman Gallery website:

Gitterman Gallery is proud to present an exhibition of black and white photographs by Debbie Fleming Caffery. The exhibition will open with a book signing and reception for the artist on Thursday, May 21st from 6 to 8 p.m. and continue through Friday, July 31st.

Debbie Fleming Caffery has been photographing in Mexico since 1990. This exhibition focuses on the images Caffery made of women working as prostitutes. These photographs explore the complexities of their situation in life, showing their vulnerability and their strength. The exhibition is concurrent with the release of Caffery’s fourth major monograph, The Spirit & The Flesh (Radius Books, 2009), which spans her entire body of work in Mexico and includes an essay by Carrie Springer, Senior Curatorial Assistant at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

Gitterman Gallery
170 East 75th Street
New York, NY 10021
T: 212.734.0868

Posted by at 7:45 AM | Permalink

Bernd & Hilla Becher: A Survey: 1972 - 2006

7 May - 3 July 2009

From the Fraenkel Gallery website:
Through approximately twenty works in various formats, the exhibition will present a concise array of the subjects of primary importance to the Bechers over their ong career. At the same time, the works on view will highlight the artists' evolving modes of presentation, from their diptychs of the early 1970's, through ambitious multi-part typologies, and the large-format single images first introduced in 1990 in a renowned exhibition at the DIA Art Foundation in New York. The most recent works to be exhibited were made in 2006, the year of Bernd Becher's death.

Fraenkel Gallery
49 Geary Street
San Francisco, CA 94108

Posted by at 7:29 AM | Permalink

From The British Journal of Photography website:
American photographer Robert Adams has won this year's prestigious Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography

Adams wins approximately £40,000 for his work spanning more than four decades. 'Adams is one of the most important and influential photographers of the last 40 years,' says the Foundation. 'During that time he has worked almost exclusively in the American West, and, as photography has altered and fragmented, he has refined and reaffirmed its inherent language, adapting the legacies of nineteenth century and modernist photography to his own very singular purpose.

'Precise and undramatic, Adams' accumulative vision of the West now stands as a formidable document, reflecting broader, global concerns about the environment, while consistently recognising signs of human aspiration and elements of hope across a particular changing landscape.'

His prize, along with a gold medal, will be presented at a ceremony at the Hasselblad Centre in Gothenburg in November, where an exhibition of his life's work will go on show.

Posted by at 6:07 AM | Permalink

From the Fox News Website:

NEW YORK — A very early photograph of New York City in the 1840s has sold for $62,500.

The photo depicting Manhattan's Upper West Side as open countryside was sold Monday at Sotheby's auction house.

The photo is a daguerreotype, an early form of photography that was used mainly for portraits. It is believed to date from 1848 and shows a white house with shutters, a grassy hillside and a horse-drawn carriage.

Sotheby's said the photo was recently discovered in New England. Neither the buyer nor the seller was identified.

The auction house estimated the pre-sale value of the daguerrotype at $50,000 to $70,000.

Posted by at 6:25 AM | Permalink

August 31, 1913 - March 29, 2009

Helen Levitt, US photography legend has died.

From the British Journal of Photography website:
Levitt was considered one of the world's greatest street photographers, and the last living link with America's golden age of photography in the 1930s. Throughout her life, she worked in the streets of New York taking pictures of everyday things such as her most famous image, which depicts three children preparing to go trick-or-treating on Halloween in 1939.

Born in 1913 in New York City, Levitt left school to work for a commercial photographer and, by 1938, had started her seminal book, In the Street: chalk drawings and messages, New York City 1938-1948.

Levitt met Henri Cartier-Bresson in 1935 and even followed him when he photographed on the Brooklyn waterfront. She studied with Walker Evans, and in 1943, had Edward Steichen curate her first solo show at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1959 and 1960, she received two Guggenheim Foundation grants to take colour photographs in New York.

Levitt published her first major book, A Way of Seeing, in 1965, but in other respects photobooks were a later development for her. In the Street wasn't published until 1987, and her magnum opus, Crosstown, didn't hit the shelves until 2001. Slide Show, the Colour Photographs of Helen Levitt, which collected together her little-known colour work, was published in 2005.

Last year, Brooklyn-based Powerhouse Books published her last monograph, which saw Levitt handpick her eclectic mix of iconic and previously unpublished images, making this book her 'greatest hits' collection of personal bests.

Levitt died in her sleep in New York on Sunday.

Visit powerhousebooks.com for more details on her last monograph.

Posted by at 6:21 AM | Permalink

The Nikon F Mount Turns 50 This Year

From the Nikon site:
Longest history among lens mounts for 35mm-format SLR interchangeable cameras

TOKYO – Nikon Corporation is pleased to announce the 50th anniversary of its legendary F-mount lens-mounting system, employed on the company’s lens-interchangeable SLR cameras and NIKKOR lenses. Apart from Nikon, no other maker has been able to sustain its original lens mount for such an extraordinary period.* (Revised on March 11, 2009)

*Among lens mounts for 35mm-format SLR interchangeable cameras

The Nikon F-mount was first employed on Nikon’s earliest lens-interchangeable SLR camera, the Nikon F, released in June 1959. Nikon has consistently utilized the same mount without changing its basic structure, even as other SLR camera manufacturers found it necessary to alter their lens mounts in response to changing technologies, such as autofocus compatibility and digitalization.

One of the biggest advantages of lens-interchangeable SLR cameras is that users are able to choose from a larger selection of lenses. Maintaining the same basic structure of lens mount for a longer period means a broader, constantly growing array of compatible lenses. For this reason, the lens mount is an extremely important and symbolic element for both photography enthusiasts and professionals, who are able to benefit from ongoing use of their carefully selected collection of lenses. The Nikon F-mount, employed for even the latest, most advanced digital SLRs, has received and continues to garner the highest evaluations as a reliable, long-serving lens mount.

Evolution of the Nikon F-mount

* Introduced on Nikon’s first lens-interchangeable SLR, the Nikon F (1959)
* Auto aperture indexing enables automatic setting of maximum aperture (1977)
* Program auto exposure mode compatibility (1981)
* Aperture information exchange with the camera body through CPU communication (1983)
* Autofocus compatibility (1983)
* Digital SLR cameras compatibility (1995)

Posted by at 6:32 AM | Permalink