PHOTO & ART EXHIBITS IN SAN FRANCISCO 07/14/2011
Today I went to 49 Geary, SF, with a new artist friend who is a painter and textile artist. I am a photographer, and sometimes I do un-glamorized portraits in a natural setting. I also like architecture and I shoot a great deal of it whenever I feel inspired. So today we took BART over to SF and went to see the great Irving Penn exhibit at Frankel Gallery 49 Geary St. Sf frankelgallery.com. The show is called Radical Beauty 1946-2007. Irving Penn was a fabulous studio photographer.....he like Francesco Scavullo, Annie Leibovitz, Diane Arbus, Bert Stern, and Richard Avedon photographed people of character, with interesting faces, wardrobes, and bodies. These photographers worked for Vogue, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone Magazines. They also had accounts with make up companies, perfumes,and shot celebrities, models, musicians, authors,etc. They have all earned a great deal of money from photography, have books, and huge retrospectives at various museums and galleries around the world. Penn's work is interesting and very stylized technically, a master of studio lighting, and design. One photograph was selling for $425,000.! In my humble opinion, it wasn't a photo that I thought was his best work. Curiously, I asked someone in another photo gallery how do they come up with these prices??? It is what is trendy at the time, what the market will bear, how famous a photographer is, if its cutting edge, different from their other work. What type of print is it, B &W silver gelatin, Platinum, is it printed on aluminum, watercolor paper, is it a dye transfer? How many prints from the negative were made? Did the photographer print it herself? You can bet it's an archival print, matted archivally etc to last for at least a century or longer. There was one photo that I particularly liked. It was of a model wrapped in fabric, face hidden. Because I like fabric and texture, don't sew (tho my ancestors earned their living in sewing factories in NY), Being Italian American I have a good eye for fine threads. I liked the way Penn lit this piece, showing the folds, the shadow, this reminded me of my class with Mark at BCC. Attempting to paint in watercolor the folds of cloth, I loved that best. The other shot I liked was of a african women with tribal scarring all over her torso. Question...was it a hot brand of this design? I like photos that cause you to think. On the other walls were photographs by Diane Arbus. The lady nudist with sunglasses, swimming cap of sorts, and slippers. She was tall, had a shapely body.. Penn like Arbus had some interesting characters. He also had a sketch book of his plans for photos, planned out like a story board for a movie. I also like the shot of a nude Mama Cass Eliot, with her overly abundant body. Mama Cass was the lead singer of the Mamas and Papas and I believe she passed on from choking on a chicken bone. R.I.P, Cass you were a great singer in your day. That is courageous to be a celebrity, to have less than a perfect body and yet pose nude for a great fashion photographer and then have it in the public eye. Now that is gutsy! Did she sign a model release? Probably so! In the other gallery there were two large scale Richard Misrach photos of sun bathers. I love Misrach's work. Large scale landscapes that cause you to think. The bigger prints the better for landscape photography. This way you can almost feel the grandeur of the landscape. I say almost because how many times have I've been in magical spaces and photographed them only not to capture the essence of it photographically, the camera not capturing the subtle nuance of light and energy... How can it really?....on rare ocasions it does and then I am very pleased with the outcome. Like standing underneath a tree in a forest in Napa, listening to the rain, the rustle of trees, the whispers of the ferns, the stillness in all things living...raindrops on leaves, the smell earth and wood, cool mist in my hair....dew on my eyeglasses... I stand in silence, with my camera around my neck, trying to capture what I am feeling and experiencing. It is a time, not to be preserved really, just to imprint these moments in my cells, my brain, my body. In these moments I believe that this is what we call GOD. I have been given the grace of touching the DIVINE. Yes, for others who know what I am talking about, it is called BLISS of the DIVINE. The embrace of serenity, the kiss of unconditional love. Not many people know my thoughts on my photography. Only when I am at my exhibits and talking to my guests, or to my photo students or to other artists do I get to express my feelings and thoughts. Photography like writing and other arts is a solitary activity. It is always fun to go on field trips with my students and be in the same place and come out with very different images....of course, we all have different view points, I encourage their unique visions... try something different, think out of the box. They are often too new to photography, struggling with angles and other technical aspects of their cameras. Fan Ho- A Hong Kong Memoir B & W Photographs at Modernbook Gallery, 49 Geary St. SF 4th floor www.modernbook.com These photographs are fabulous! Light fog, dark moody images of people, the sea, sail boats, the mountains, printed darkly creating more moody photos. This reminded me of Henri Cartier Bresson, W. Eugene Smith's work. Lewis Hines.... Emotionally stirring.. I LOVED THEM! By far the best show I've seen in a long while and I've seen many! Danny who works at the gallery told me a little bit about photographer Fan Ho, actor, a well known director in China. I know that Asia creates beautiful dramatic films like Italians from studying Asian filmmaking and watercolor painting ,caligraphy, and haiku....so Fan Ho captures these in his photographs.. a man in his boat, a wisp of the outline of mountains in the fog in the background. People in between buildings, reminds me of the closeness of the alley ways in Venice. Just exquisitely executed, each photo more than a document of Chinese life. We Westerns need to see these things. I have visited Chinatown in American cities, shooting colorful architecture, daily activities of the bustling commerce. Yes, Fan Ho is a master of bringing life in Hong Kong to others. I am glad to have experienced a bit of arm chair travel. 65 vintage b & w Prints priced from 950.00 to 15 K. I would buy this work for sure when I come into some extra funds. Paintings by Scott Yeskel "Mapping California" @ Jack Fischer Gallery jackfischergallery.com Desert Airstream.....I loved the movement in these paintings. I will post some images of what I am talking about soon. Commentscallie 07/14/2011 19:05
Fran, i love ur thoughts on things. Thanks for leaving me a few kongs with Leave a Reply |
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