January 7 - February
 13

Two concurrent photography exhibitions featuring, respectively, a selection of rarely shown photographs by Diane Arbus and new work by William Eggleston. The installation of Arbus's work, In the Absence of Others, brings together a group of photographs of empty interiors and artificial landscapes spanning the 1960s. The Eggleston exhibition is titled 21st Century.

Cheim & Read
547 West 25th Street
New York, NY 10001

'Weegee-It's a crime to take photographs this good...'

11.25.09 - 01.09.10

From the Michael Hoppen Gallery website:

An exhibition of early photographs by Weegee the Famous and selected artists.

Always in the right place at the right time, Weegee’s lense was perpetually aimed the visceral and sometimes violent city of New York. In 1993, Wilma Fellig, Weegee’s widow, bequeathed his entire archive of original prints to the ICP in New York, and we are delighted to offer selected pieces of this unique photographers work which includes many images never previously seen in the UK.

Weegee photographed New York in the 1930s and 1940s in the same iconic and instantly recognisable way Woody Allen was to film the city in the 1970s. Weegee’s voyeuristic eye sought out theharsh realities of the urban experience, but also the joie de vivre and carefree attitude which typified the years between the wars.

Born in 1899 in the Austrian province of Galicia, which is today part of Ukraine, Weegee (real name Usher, then Arthur Fellig) was the second of seven children from Jewish parents. Weegee's family left Europe in 1910 for the Lower East Side ofManhattan, where Weegee grew up. He left home at 15 and in 1917 got a job in a photo studio and became assistant to a cameraman. In 1921, he got a part-time position at the New York Times and its legendary agency Wide World Photos, soon afterwards switching to Acme News pictures. Eventually, frustrated with the lack of recognition for his work, and not having his name on photographs, he became a freelance news photographer by late 1935.



Weegee’s images bridge the gap between art, evidence and photojournalism. His nickname was a phonetic rendering of ouija,as in ouija board, due to his sixth sense of being able to arrive at a scene minutes after the occurrence of a crime. In 1938, Fellig was the only New York newspaper reporter with a permit to have a portable police-band short wave radio. The trunk of his car was a carefully maintained darkroom, to enable himto deliver his freelance images tothe newspapers as speedily as possible. He worked predominantly at night listening closely to radio broadcasts, often beating the NYPD to the scene. It also meant he was on hand to document the raucous night life in the Bowery, Harlem and The Village, and he went on to document the society events and functions of the era.

Hisphotographs were taken with the very basic press photographer equipment, a Graflek and blue flashbulbs which gave his work such graphic qualities. He had no formal photographic training being entirely self taught, and was a relentless self-promoter.

As an adjunct to Weegee’s work, we will also be showing further images by Sergei Vasiliev, and Stan Healy.

Sergei Vasiliev's graphic and unflinching photographs show the grim reality of the Russian prison system and some of the characters that inhabit it. The tattoo motifs which Vasiliev was helping to document for the KGB represent the uncensored lives of the criminal classes, ranging from violence and pornography to politics. This was an underclass with its own caste and judicial system, and the history of each individual was instantly recognizable to the other.

Edward ‘Stan’ Healy was born in Missoula, Montana and as a local newspaper photojournalist documented crime scenes and local news stories. Healy has been praised for anability to capture a story in a single image and do so with an eye for composition. However, he also had a taste for the provocative and disturbing, and his images can be shocking. all the more so because of the parochial backdrop of mid 20th century Missoula- a small Midwest city whose boom years at the forefront of the logging industry were sadly over.

We strongly advise early viewing of this unique exhibition. Prepare to be shocked, amused and informed!

All pictures will be for sale.

National Public Radio features the work of Roy DeCarava, who died recently at the age of 89, with Black-And-White America, an online gallery plus an interview and audio about the man and his work.

At The Metropolitan Museum of Art

September 22, 2009–January 3, 2010

From the Met website:
This exhibition celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of The Americans, Robert Frank’s influential suite of black-and-white photographs made on a cross-country road trip in 1955–56. Although Frank’s depiction of American life was criticized when the book was released in the U.S. in 1959, it soon became recognized as a masterpiece of street photography. Born in Switzerland in 1924, Frank is considered one of the great living masters of photography. The exhibition will feature all 83 photographs published in The Americans and will be the first time that this body of work is presented to a New York audience. In addition, the exhibition includes contact sheets that Frank used to create the book; earlier photographs made in Europe, Peru, and New York; a short film by the artist on his life; and his later re-use of iconic images from the series

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street
New York City

The Joy of Portraits

September 9 - November 7

In 1976 Keizo Kitajima made his impressive debut with photographs capturing Koza in Okinawa, a town near the US military base, in the period just after the end of the Vietnam War. Subsequently, he expanded his purview to include Tokyo, New York, Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union, just as that nation was on the verge of collapse.

The Joy of Portraits, featuring portrait work from each of these series, presents the most complete picture to date of the extraordinary photographer Keizo Kitajima's work from 1975 - 1991, including many previously unseen images.

Amador Gallery
41 E. 57th Street
New York, NY 10022

212 759 6740

Harman Technology is introducing a new online print service aimed at black-and-white shooters. The service is available for UK and European customers. For more details, visit ilfordlab.com.

Ilford Lab Direct allows photographers to upload their digital files and receive back silver gelatine prints, using Ilford's black-and-white chemistry and paper.

Film photographers can also use the site to download order forms for 35mm and 120 film processing to be used with Ilford Photo's direct mail order service. The service is operated from the Ilford Photo's manufacturing site in Mobberley, Cheshire, and processing of digital files takes up to five working days.

From the online British Journal of Photography:
The German manufacturer responsible for 6x6 format camera bodies for both Leaf and Sinar is to close. The firm broke the news to its 131 employees earlier this week. The closure could dramatically affect the medium format camera market, days after Phase One announced it would buy Leaf's assets

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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)

6 March - 18 April 2009

Leica Gallery
670 Broadway
New York, NY 10012 USA

"As a true lover of photography, I always find it fascinating when looking at works such as those of Erich Lessing, the Austrian doyen of photography, to realize how the photographer’s eye can open up new perspectives and perceptions for the viewer. Photographs – a cross between what is transient and what can be captured and recorded – can tell their own stories, beyond any historical or geographical boundaries. Erich Lessing’s photographic oeuvre conveys in its own particular way this visualization of time, the portrayal of a subjective section of the world… Erich Lessing has always been especially fascinated by the world of art and the artist, by the challenge of demonstrating the creative process, of choosing a specific art of documentation as an approach to discovery. This ambition to realize the unreal – culture and concepts – is the underlying quality in his series of photographs taken from the artistic career of Herbert von Karajan. In dynamic, sometimes anecdotal pictures, the encounter between the young photojournalist Erich Lessing and the conductor on the threshold of world fame reflects the highest professional aspirations of both men. Erich Lessing’s oeuvre is closely linked with Leica and the Leica camera. Most of the photographs in this volume were taken with a 1950s M3 camera (still extant); its technical sophistication and lenses enabled him to capture the immediacy and intensity which still draw us under the spell of events and situations.”

- Dr. Andreas Kaufmann, Chairman of the Board of Management and Chief Executive Officer, Leica Camera AG, from his preface to Erich Lessing’s Herbert von Karajan (Metamorphosen, Vienna, 2008)