Madgalena Wosinska: Fulfill the Dream

Celebrate this groundbreaking, internationally renowned photographer and painter whose remarkable Richmond-based career spans over six decades. Presenting 63 photographs and 9 paintings by the Richmond native, born in 1924, this is the first major exhibition to explore the trajectory of her impressive 60-year career. From playful and irreverent scenes of everyday life to ethereal evocations of the past, Willie Anne Wright’s experimental paintings and photographs examine pop-culture, feminine identity, the pull of history and the shifting cultural landscape of the South. With a focus on photography’s role in shaping collective understandings of history, place, and gender, the exhibition draws from VMFA’s recent acquisition of Wright’s work, including more than 230 photographs and 10 paintings, as well as a comprehensive artist archive. Image: Anne S at Jack B’s Pool, 1984 © Willie Anne Wright

Gestures of Refusal: Black Photography and Visual Culture is no ordinary investigation of how we experience and render blackness visible. Gestures of Refusal: Black Photography and Visual Culture is an exercise in the unconventional and the splendid—bringing attention to the ways that contemporary photographers wield the visual power of the camera to discern, behold, celebrate, and document people, places, events, collective memories, encounters, and other ever-present moments of blackness that refuse erasure. From the invisible to the obvious, the mundane to the spectacular, the overlooked to the known, the erased to the remembered—the artists in this exhibition explore a range of photographic frequencies, styles, tenses, punctuation, and rhythmic scores creating new visual vocabularies for futurity. Curated by Shana M. griffin, Gestures of Refusal will feature five immersive installations and over 180 photographs and objects covering a spectrum of narrative styles, compositions, techniques, and approaches, showcasing the photographs of nearly one hundred contemporary Black photographers with ties to New Orleans from the 1950s to the present.

Exhibition coincides with the publication of Metamorphosis, a monograph published by The Grenfell Press with an Artist Conversation with Lesley M. M. Blume and a short story by Colm Tóibín. “I’m interested in what makes up our essence as human beings and what the person on the outside sees. If people are placed in a safe emotional space, often a complex interior world will reveal itself'' - Elizabeth Heyert Known for her groundbreaking photographs of the interior lives of others, most famously The Sleepers and her controversial series of postmortem portraits The Travelers, American fine art photographer Elizabeth Heyert delves once again into the deepest emotional landscapes of strangers in Metamorphosis, a provocative, and visionary new exhibition and book about the power of transformation. Heyert takes the viewer on a fascinating journey into the transcendent worlds of her subjects who after being hypnotized in her studio by a trained hypnotherapist are then photographed naked, acting out childhood memories or transforming themselves emotionally into animals, birds, or other creatures unique to their subconscious fantasies.

This new photography exhibition brings together the unique perspectives of two distinguished photographers, Jamie Johnson and John Day. This showcase, running from February 2nd until April 20th, delves into the heart of Ireland’s history, presenting two distinct approaches to documenting a culture through the lens of monochrome photography. “The Travelers and The Troubles” presents a unique journey through time as well as a poignant reflection on Ireland’s past. JAMIE JOHNSON Jamie Johnson has spent her photographic career traveling the world to document children. This current body of work, ‘Growing Up Traveling’, focuses on the Irish Travellers who live in caravans along the roadside and in open fields across Ireland. The Travelers are a community of oral tradition, and Johnson’s work will help to visually document their rich culture. She returns frequently to record these families as they grow up, forging generational connections with this historically misunderstood community. JOHN DAY John Day spent the summer of 1972 in Belfast, Ireland, armed with newspaper press passes and a dream to become a journalist. He was there to write about The Troubles, and just happened to bring his Leica M2R along for the ride. After immersing himself in the community, it became clear this story was meant to be told on film. Capturing the atmosphere of daily life during this conflict, Day brings the viewer back in time with compositions full of joy hidden around corners alongside the tension. Day was in the area with his friend, Richard Dunne, on July 21st, now called Bloody Friday. After seeing the aftermath and following the victims to the hospital, Day vowed to become a doctor. For the last forty years, he worked as a Pulmonary and Critical Care Physician and now is happily retired in Woodstock, CT.

All About Photo is pleased to present 'Child Labour' by Hana Peskova Part of the exclusive online showroom developed by All About Photo, this exhibition is on view for the month of April 2024 and includes twenty photographs from the series ‘Child Labour’ Child Labour The collection has been gradually forming since 2018, when I first visited Bangladesh and saw child labour with my own eyes. Child labour is common worldwide, with an estimated 170 million children working across our planet, most notably in Asia. This isn't just about occasional help for parents, but in some countries, it's about consistent, everyday, often hard work. Child labour is defined as work that deprives children of their childhood, potential, and dignity, and that is harmful to their physical and mental development. The sight of hard-working children who are proud to help their parents is often pitiful. Instead of play, they only know hard toil; instead of attending school, they have working hours. They can still play and laugh, but more often, sadness is seen in their eyes. In this collection, I wanted to show the work of children from various perspectives, not just the hard labour, but also the common work, which is also an integral part of their childhood world. Some forms of work may at first glance be mistaken for begging or acrobatics, but the children have no choice, contributing significantly to the family budget. The photographs are from Asia - Bangladesh, India, Kyrgyzstan, and Iran. Finally, it's worth mentioning that June 12 is World Day Against Child Labour.

Robert Mann Gallery is pleased to present Cig Harvey’s exhibition, FEAST, opening on Saturday, February 10, and on view through April 5, 2024. The exhibition approaches the heart of the human condition, where stories hold secrets as dark as a chocolate-frosted cake pressed with blackberries. FEAST becomes a sensory experience of apples gracefully descending the tree and wisteria engulfing a lady swaying in satin. Harvey delves into the science of color and explores taste and perception. The result is a photographic experience of wonder, unraveling the intricacies of how we engage with sight, light and feeling. Rooted in specific moments, her work transforms the mundane into a captivating conversation, for instance by exploring the quiet life of the coy and poisoned red berries no one dares to pick, while their color and texture tempt us to do just that. Harvey introduces a delectable discourse in FEAST with the inclusion of cake—a staple at gatherings ranging from birthdays to weddings and funerals—encompassing time, mortality, and the senses. She joyously celebrates maximalist cakes, drawing inspiration from the imaginative, homemade creations of loved-ones. These cakes boast multiple layers, lavish frosting, and a decadent overflow of fudge. Within FEAST, Harvey plays with the placement of this treat, whether stowed inside a trunk floating down the river, passionately smashed upon a table, or glowing warmly with flickering candles amidst the embrace of darkness. Concurrent with her solo exhibition at Robert Mann Gallery, Harvey is featured in a group exhibition at New York’s Fotografiska entitled Human / Nature. This exhibition delves into the complex and symbiotic connection between humanity and the
natural world. Harvey's work is included in permanent collections of major institutions including the Library of Congress, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; the International Museum of Photography and Film at the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine; and the distinguished corporate collection of JPMorgan Chase. Harvey earned distinction as one of the 2021 recipients of the Farnsworth’s Maine in America Award and was also awarded the title of the 2018 Prix Virginia Laureate, a prestigious international photography accolade in Paris. In 2023, Eat Flowers, a documentary film about Harvey by River Finlay, premiered at film festivals worldwide winning the Special Jury Prize at the Santa Fe International Film Festival for Documentary Short. In FEAST, Harvey aspires for viewers to share in her initial experience upon discovering the images—the sensation that accompanies bearing witness to something rare. The palpable blend of desire and neon vigor in photographs encapsulates a lifetime of journeys, hopes, and perpetual curiosity.

Movie studios have long employed professional photographers to document film sets for continuity. In the 1930s and 40s, these photographers used eight-by-ten cameras and contact printed each photo directly from the negative. The resultant photos were sharp and unusually striking for such pragmatic pictures, with every detail rendered visible. But with no practical value after production wrapped, these utilitarian images were discarded, ending up in second-hand stores, flea markets, memorabilia shops, and dumpsters. That’s how they got into the hands of Robert Cumming and John Divola, who discovered them separately in the 1970s and 80s and found in them a deep connection to their own bodies of work. Curated by California photographer John Divola, Hollywood: Robert Cumming and John Divola showcases the work of two artists who reference or use studio continuity photography as art material. In an extension of his Continuity (1995-) series, Divola presents four new arrangements of found stills, organized and grouped thematically. In a selection from his 1977 Studio Still Lifes, Robert Cumming’s photos of the backlot of Universal Studios capture film production materials and locales as surreal scenes and sculptural tableaux. Divola (b. 1949) began collecting continuity stills in the 1970s, amassing thousands, primarily from the pre-war golden age of the studio system. He was drawn to the enigmatic aura of these images, their strange stillness, pristine legibility, and their uncanny resemblance to real life. “Even the most mundane and generic rooms were previsualized, constructed, and completely artificial,” writes Divola. “I am interested in how these stills collectively construct a fictive sense of the normal.” Though innocuous at first, the presence of a clapper board across many of the stills becomes destabilizing, reminding us that the images are simulacra. To the artist, they function almost like crime scene photographs: haunting and filled with clues to decipher. Thematically and aesthetically, Divola’s Continuity groupings align with his own photo works: abandoned spaces left with remnants of actions past (Zuma series, 1977/78), film sets shot to expose their artificiality (MGM Backlot, 1979/80), and anonymous figures immersed in the scenery (As Far as I Can Get, 1996/97). In the early 2000s, partially inspired by his stills collection, Divola photographed abandoned sets of the television series The X-Files (X-Files, 2003), embodying the role of a continuity still photographer himself. Painter, sculptor, and conceptual artist Robert Cumming (1943-2021) was equally drawn to the strange and staged artificiality of old Hollywood continuity stills. To Cumming, the mundane subjects of these found stills were made absurd by their obviously fabricated qualities: optical tricks, backdrops, and forced perspective architecture, all constructed for the movie camera’s lens. He drew inspiration from what he called their “language of rebuilt reality,”creating staged, surreal, and often humorous tableaux that played with scale, materiality, and the illusion of motion. In 1977, Cumming was invited by the studio executive and photo collector Al Dorskind to photograph Universal Studios. For six months, Cumming freely traversed the backlot with his eight-by-ten camera. He found scenes similar to his sculptures but on a much grander scale–readymade rather than fabricated by the artist: an elevated boat and dummy fisherman created for the Universal Studios Tour attraction, a cross-section of a submarine for the naval drama Grey Lady Down (1978). These studio elements became sculptural once photographed. To Cumming, they were akin to “involutions,” puzzles inviting a viewer to untangle, and “documents of the hardware employed in the ultimate illusion.” In both artists’ series, there is a playful tension between artifice and reality. In movies, illusions encourage viewers to suspend their disbelief. But in these works by Divola and Cumming, artificiality is the central subject, and the viewer becomes complicit in the ruse.

PDNB Gallery presents its second iteration of DEEP DIVE. A new group exhibition opens March 30th, DIVING DEEPER, which includes more treasures from deep inside portfolio boxes and flat files that have not been exhibited in recent years. In the 1990’s, Dutch artist, Jan van Leeuwen, was featured in an exhibition at PDNB. Van Leeuwen created still lives, influenced by early Dutch master painters, He also photographed himself in allegorical images. His preference was to work with early photo-based print processes including cyanotype and kallitype. A stunning sunflower image by van Leeuwen is included in this exhibition. Neal Slavin, a photographer, and filmmaker, was commissioned by England’s National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, to photograph groups in Great Britain. Slavin had already made a splash in the 1970’s contemporary art scene with his series, When Two or More are Gathered Together. The project in England was co-sponsored by Polaroid, by lending their large format camera. One of these extraordinary Polaroid prints is included in this exhibition, a jovial group of Channel Swimmers from 1984. An early iconic photograph by Argentine artist, Esteban Pastorino Diaz, illustrates the artist’s keen sense of awe for flying. Early in his career, he would attach a handmade box camera to a kite to create aerial photographs. Later he would take photographs from his ultralight flying machine. The 2006 photograph included in this exhibition is from his series of bullfight images at the famous Las Ventas bull ring in Madrid, Spain. Many other PDNB treasures will be included by the famous Native American tribe documenter, Edward S. Curtis, Spanish surrealist, Chema Madoz, New York artist Chris Verene and Dallas artist, Chris Regas. Image: Neal Slavin, Channel Swimmers, 1984

At the turn of the twentieth century, photography was just beginning to alter forever the way we perceive, engage, and understand the world. Though not always credited, women played a vital role in framing the modern experience—the here and now—through the lens of the camera. Histories of photography long ignored or underrepresented women’s contributions to the medium’s development as both fine and applied art. In truth, women have embraced photography since its introduction in 1839. From 1900 onward, women negotiated waves of social, political, and economic change, increasingly leveraging the camera as a means of creativity, financial independence, and personal freedom. Disrupting longstanding constraints placed on women’s social behavior and roles, these early trailblazers helped establish photography as a vital form of creative expression. They also laid the groundwork and served as role models for subsequent generations of artists. Drawn from Bank of America’s extensive photography collection, Modern Women / Modern Vision presents more than one hundred images made between 1905 and 2015. Diverse in style, tone, and subject, these images range from spontaneous to composed, detached to empathetic, monumental to intimate. The exhibition reveals the bold and dynamic ways women have contributed to the development and evolution of photography from the early twentieth century to the present.

International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF) Ceremony (BDC Annex, 364 E. 151st St.) Introduction by co-curator Kathy Gannon, followed by words from Associated Press Senior Vice President, Jessica Bruce, co-curator Ami Beckmann, Anja's sister Elke Niedringhaus-Haasper, Christine Longiere, and BDC Founder/Creative Director, Mike Kamber. The IWMF will then announce the winner of the 2024 Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Photojournalism Award. Q&A to follow with co-curator/photographer Muhammed Muheisen and the awardee. “I do my job simply to report people’s courage with my camera and with my heart.” Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Anja Niedringhaus died on April 4, 2014, killed by an Afghan police commander, who emptied his AK-47 rifle into the car in which she was sitting. It occurred in eastern Afghanistan on the eve of a critical vote for president, an event Anja knew would test the courage of Afghans. She was ready with her camera and with her heart. A collection of Anja’s powerful images from Afghanistan and Pakistan will be on display at the Bronx Documentary Center from April 4, 2024, 10 years to the day since her death. They will also be featured in a book accompanying the exhibition. In the course of her work, Anja traveled through some of the most difficult years of the protracted Afghan war, reaching deep into the soul of Afghans, her pictures often serving to remind us of our own humanity. The exhibition offers rare glimpses into lives seen by few, such as pictures taken during a first-ever embed with the Pakistan army in the freezing Hindu Kush Mountain peaks on the border with Afghanistan. Among the images to be displayed is a simple, yet powerful reminder of the innocence of children, even as war surrounds them. In the photograph, children play amid mesh-encased blast-proof Hesco bags, designed to protect them from feared terrorist attacks against an election commission office in the eastern Afghanistan town of Khost. The picture was taken the day before Anja died. The exhibition and the book serve to remind us of the extraordinary sacrifices journalists make to keep us all informed. This is a particularly powerful lesson at a time when journalists are dying, suffering life-changing injuries, being targeted, or being imprisoned at an alarming rate. v Anja received the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) Courage in Journalism award in 2005. After her death, through a generous grant from the Howard G Buffett Foundation, the Anja Niedringhaus Courage in Journalism Award was established and is awarded annually to an extraordinary woman photojournalist, whose images reflect Anja’s commitment to reporting the courage of others. The exhibition is curated by Ami Beckmann, Kathy Gannon, and Muhammed Muheisen.

CP's survey of the work of David Seidner (1957–1999) reintroduces this important and rarely exhibited artist of the 1980s and 1990s whose work has largely faded from view since his passing from AIDS-related illnesses in 1999. Primarily drawn from Seidner's archive, which has been a part of ICP’s collection since 2001, highlights include David Seidner’s early fine art photography and fragmented portrait studies, vibrant fashion and editorial photography, images of groundbreaking dancers and choreographers, portraits of well-known contemporary artists and their studios, and works from his final project, abstracted studies of orchids. During his life, David Seidner was a notable fashion photographer, photographing for designers like Yves Saint Laurent--with whom he had an exclusive contract at the age of just 22—Azzedine Alaïa and Madame Grès among many others. David Seidner also was a prolific editorial photographer for publications such as Harper's Bazaar, Harper's & Queen, The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, and international editions of Vogue. His magazine work crossed over into the art world, where Seidner frequently contributed to BOMB Magazine as a photographer, interviewer, and guest editor. Much of David Seidner's photography and subjects defy easy categorization, like Seidner himself, who now might be referred to as multi-hyphenate for his work across different fields. Similar to many young artists working today, David Seidner pushed the boundaries of the photography industry, collapsing the often unnecessary distinctions between disciplines. In addition to images made for fashion houses and editorial assignments, Seidner maintained a robust personal practice throughout his career. His interest in visual experimentation through techniques like fragmentation, reflection, and double exposures are often seen in both his personal work and his commissions. Join us at the International Center of Photography to explore the versatile and boundary-pushing work of famous fashion photographer, David Seidner.

Kicking off ICP's 50th anniversary year, ICP at 50: From the Collection, 1845–2019 is a thematic exploration of the many photographic processes that comprise the medium’s history, presenting works from ICP’s deep holdings of photography collected over 50 years since ICP was established in 1974. As a renowned NYC historical museum and one of the top photography galleries in NYC, the exhibition includes work from the 19th century to the present, featuring photographs by well-known artists that ICP has in-depth holdings of—such as Robert Capa, Weegee, Francesco Scavullo, and Gerda Taro among many others—as well as lesser-known and vernacular works and recent acquisitions including images by Jess T. Dugan, Nona Faustine, Deana Lawson, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, and Guanyu Xu. Other photographers featured include Henri Cartier-Bresson, Samuel Fosso, Robert Mapplethorpe, Susan Meiselas, Louise Lawler, Gordon Parks, Laurie Simmons, Lorna Simpson, Mickalene Thomas, Carrie Mae Weems, and more. The exhibition will also offer insight into the breadth and depth of ICP’s collection with historically critical images and media that include images taken of the surface of the moon by NASA in 1966, as well as activist posters from the 1980s and ‘90s groups ACT UP, Gran Fury, and fierce pussy. ICP’s founder Cornell Capa created ICP in 1974 in honor of his brother Robert Capa, a preeminent photojournalist of his day, who died in 1954. Robert's archive became a key early piece of ICP’s collection, alongside work by other important photojournalists and documentarians. In the ensuing five decades, the collection has expanded to include early photographic works, vernacular images, fashion photography, and fine art photography among many other types of photographic production, leading ICP to become one of the many famous museums in NYC. Dissolving and challenging boundaries between categories—technological, aesthetic, conceptual, and beyond—the collection is a celebration of image culture and the medium’s ability to reflect the values and interests of its time. ICP at 50 is not only a significant milestone for the institution but also stands as a must-see art exhibit in NYC. It's the first overview collections show since the institution’s move to 79 Essex Street in January 2020. The exhibition will reintroduce the depth and breadth of the ICP holdings to audiences, celebrating 50 years of photography’s evolution.