Antaeus Theatre Company on Monday 9th September 2019 between 7pm - 9pm
Rory's Selah exhibition will take place at the Antaeus Theatre Company (Kiki & David Gindler Performing Arts Center 110 E. Broadway Glendale, CA 91205) on Monday 9th September 2019 between 7pm - 9pm.
Limited Tickets are available all the proceeds will be donated to The Antaeus Theatre Company. Rory will also be offering a series of limited edition prints of his work.
The Neophyte (First Experience of the Monastery) was painted by Gustave Doré in 1866-68. He took his subject from George Sand's contemporary novel Sipiridion, in which a young novice, Brother Angel, bemoans his isolation behind the cloister wall. Doré heightens the youth's desolation by contrasting his tense posture and youthfulness with the row of bent and decrepit old men. Doré himself noted the grim humor of the young man's predicament and quipped, He will be over the wall tonight.
Roy Lewis explains the project and sitting with the group.
I'm currently working on a new series entitled Selah, taking its inspiration from master artists such as Caravaggio, Ribera and Gustave Doré. The exhibition features famous actors and interesting faces. The collection will be exhibited in London and Los Angeles in 2019-20.
The Neophyte Gustave Doré
Gustave Doré (1832-1883), throughout my career has continued to inspire my work. I even wrote my dissertation on his illustrations of The Crusades. One of his most famous pieces The Neophyte shows a young man in a monastery with other monks who are much older and appear to be worn out or suffering. During my last working visit to Los Angeles, I had to chance to recreate the painting with six remarkable actors, Tony Amendola, Peter Van Norden, Leo Marks, Bo Foxworth, James Sutorius and Frank Weitzel.
Before the age of 30 Doré created over 100,000 pieces. His art spread to an unprecedented degree in Europe and the United States, both during his lifetime and after his death. He was one of the great purveyors of European culture with his illustrations of major classics.
There seemed to be no limits to Doré's creative talents; a draughtsman, caricaturist, illustrator, water colourist, painter and sculptor, he was a protean artist who worked in the main genres and formats of his era, ranging from satire to religion, and from sketches to monumental canvases.
The painting tickles the imagination, what is in the mind of the Neophyte. Is he young and idealistic? Is he wise beyond his years? Is he arrogant? What is the nature of the other monks. Are they burned-out? Disillusioned?
The portrait photoshoot enabled me to create a living depiction of the work. I chose for the Character of The Neophyte. the very talented Leo Marks. Initially I placed in his mind the character of a young monk and in the minds of the others the roles of the older monks, either sleeping, concentrating or reading. However, I decided to simplify my direction by asking the actors to imagine that they are not priests, but instead that they are waiting at a bus stop. Each with a different reason to be sitting, directing Leo. I said imagine you are a wanted man and that myself the photographer has recognised you. This allowed us to create the facade he was the odd one out, just as Doré had created in his depiction. It is my belief that art should be simple, keeping your direction uncomplicated and straightforward.
All about Rory Lewis
Rory Lewis is a dedicated portrait photographer who has spent over a decade capturing many of the world's most recognised faces. Sitters have included the likes of William Shatner, David Cameron, Sir Derek Jacobi, Iain Glen and Natalie Dormer. Rory's images have been exhibited on both sides of the Atlantic, and several of his iconic portraits have been acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in London. His recent project, 'Soldiery', which documented the British Army of the 21st Century, was completed over a two year period and has been hailed as a national success story, named by the BBC as 'The changing face of the British Army'. Rory divides his time between London and Los Angeles, working with a wide variety of clients. In addition to his projects and private portraits, his photography has been commissioned by Pepsi, Universal, the British Army, The Times, The Guardian and Cancer Research UK, among others. Rory draws immense inspiration from the masters of art including Hans Holbein the Younger, Titian, Caravaggio and Jusepe de Ribera.
An expanded chronology charting Todd Hido's career, with ten years of new work.
Well known for his photography of landscapes and suburban housing, and for his use of detail and luminous color, acclaimed American photographer Todd Hido casts a distinctly cinematic eye across all that he photographs, digging deep into his memory and imagination for inspiration. Newly revised and expanded, Intimate Distance: Over Thirty Years of Photographs, A Chronological Album includes ten years of new work since the book's first publication, including breathtaking new images from his travels to Iceland, Norway, and Japan, where he brings both a familiar eye and an expansive new vision.
Though Hido has published many smaller monographs of individual bodies of work, this gathers his most iconic images, along with many unpublished works to provide the most complete and comprehensive monograph charting his career. The book is organized chronologically, showing how his series overlap in exciting ways. David Campany introduces the work and looks at the kind of cinematic spectatorship the work demands. And Katya Tylevich muses on the making of each of Hido's major monographs, "The photographs lead as far as human-made roads go. They reach the periphery of utility wires, footprints, and paths already taken." From exterior to interior, surface observations to subconscious investigations, from landscapes to nudes, from America and beyond, this midcareer collection reveals how his unique focus has developed and shifted over time, yet the tension between distance and intimacy remains.
The fourth chapter of the celebrated series The Day May Break by the renowned photographer Nick Brandt, featuring Syrian refugee families, displaced by climate change in water-scarce Jordan
This is the fourth chapter of The Day May Break, photographer Nick Brandt's global series portraying people and animals impacted by climate change and environmental degradation. The series was photographed in Jordan, one of the most water-scarce countries in the world. It features rural Syrian refugee families currently living there, whose lives have been seriously impacted by droughts intensified by climate change. Living lives of continuous displacement, they are forced to move their homes up to several times a year, moving to where there is available agricultural work, to wherever there has been sufficient rainfall to enable crops to grow. The photographs show the families' connection and strength in the face of adversity, that when all else is lost you still have each other. The boxes on which the families gather aim skyward, pedestals for those in our society that are typically unseen and unheard.
Photographer Ed Kashi’s passion is long-term documentary projects that immerse him in issues that need attention or people’s lives whose struggles warrant concern. He has had a lengthy and varied career with National Geographic and other major magazines, traveling around the world to tell visual stories.
Kashi’s archive, now housed at the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, houses many of his personal memories and the experiences attached to the creation of those images. More than a simple repository of images, the archive is a growing, thriving, and continually evolving organism, a living library with immense value.
Through his photography, Kashi has had an intimate, front-row seat to witness and record major events in history. His work has been a passport to worlds unseen, unveiling issues that need illumination, documenting history in the making, and capturing the human experience and the many awe-inspiring places in our fragile world. A Period in Time is a testimony to some of Kashi’s most memorable stories—people he has been privileged to observe and learn from and the places and narratives that have shaped his life, all captured one moment at a time.
Nearly four decades of unpublished works from a master of documentary photography
Consisting solely of previously unpublished photographs, The Way Back is a deep dive through Bruce Davidson’s more than 60-year career. The book chronologically presents photos made between 1957 and 1992, showcasing Davidson’s exceptional versatility―from his earliest assignments to later seminal bodies of work including his yearlong study of teenage members of a Brooklyn Gang (1959), his extensive coverage of the American Civil Rights Movement in Time of Change (1961–65) and his breakthrough portraits of the residents of a single block in Harlem in East 100th Street (1966–68). Series such as Subway (1980) and Central Park (1992) confirm Davidson as a quintessential chronicler of New York City.
What emerges through this retrospective is Davidson’s overt sensibility and empathy for his subjects and his commitment to documenting them in depth over time. Unlike his peers who photographed historical events, Davidson focused on the people within these histories. Now, drawing near the end of his long career, Davidson offers this book as a parting look at his artistic passage, an elegiac goodbye as well as a requiem.
Bruce Davidson (born 1933, Oak Park, IL) became a member of the Magnum Photos agency in 1958; since then his photographs and photo series have been widely published to great acclaim. At Yale University, he studied under photographer Alexey Brodovitch and artist Josef Albers, the latter of whom encouraged him to pursue his work among marginalized people and communities. His artistic influences include Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson.
