Cover of Robert Heinecken: Object Matter, published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Robert Heinecken: Object Matter, the first retrospective since the artist’s death in 2006, contains over 100 photo-based works created by Heinecken between 1962 and 1999. Heinecken was best known for working in the medium of photography and with manipulating images, but surprisingly, he seldom used a camera,
Installation view of A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio, The Museum of Modern Art, February 8–October 5, 2014
“Coming into Brancusi’s studio was like entering another world.” – Man Ray, 1963
Man Ray. Laboratory of the Future. 1935. Gelatin silver print, 9 1/16 x 7″ (23.1 x 17.8 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of James Johnson Sweeney. © 2014 Man Ray Trust/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris
Illustration from Girls Standing on Lawns by Maira Kalman. © 2014 Maira Kalman
Maira Kalman—much-beloved artist, illustrator, writer, designer, and New Yorker—has been collecting vintage photographs for 30 years, seeking them out at antique shops, flea markets, and countless other places in the city and during her travels.
A scene from MoMA Design Store’s spring catalog cover shoot featuring Seletti Wears Toiletpaper, a suite of dishes, mugs, and tablecloths created by Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari for Seletti
This season the MoMA Design Store is pleased to announce the launch of an exclusive new series of artist-produced wares. To celebrate these artistic collaborations we’re going share with Inside/Out readers a behind-the-scenes look at the process of designing these exciting products, and background about the artists involved.
“This is real time, it is modern history in the making.”—Sarah Charlesworth on her work, Movie-Television-News-History, June 21, 1979
Walker Evans. House in New Orleans. 1935. Gelatin silver print, 3 5/16 x 5 5/16″ (8.5 x 13.5 cm). Anonymous Fund. Evans gave this print to MoMA in the spring of 1938, and the cropping matches the one in the original exhibition.
In 1938, 75 years ago this fall, MoMA installed its first one-person photography show, comprising 100 prints by Walker Evans, with the self-consciously ambiguous title American Photographs. (After all, what exactly makes a photograph American?)
Cover of the exhibition catalogue Bill Brandt: Shadow & Light, published by The Museum of Modern Art
MoMA’s new book Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light by Sarah Hermanson Meister, curator in the Department of Photography at MoMA, is a fresh look at the work of an iconic British photographer. The exhibition currently on view isn’t the first time MoMA has presented Bill Brandt’s work to the public—the last Brandt retrospective was in 1969. Since then, the Museum’s perspective of Brandt’s work has evolved into a more complete consideration of the nuances and variations in Brandt’s own photo-historical approach.
Brandt’s photography is traditionally presented in thematic groupings at the artist’s own request, but this view alone simplifies a body of work that is multifaceted and far-reaching in style, influence, and subject matter. Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light is the most comprehensive overview of Brandt’s work to date, and it attempts to create a coherent trajectory across five decades of his career.
Beyond the 160 tri-tone reproductions of his photographs, the book features a rich appendix that illuminates different aspects of Brandt’s oeuvre. A section on Brandt’s photo-stories from 1939 to 1945 reproduces spreads from the publications in which they originally appeared, and a detailed survey of his methods for retouching his photos is especially fascinating in today’s world of digital cameras, smart phones, and instant photo filters. Brandt often spoke about how important the retouching process was in his work, and by looking at the various tools and techniques he used to edit and perfect his final images, photo conservator Lee Ann Daffner’s illustrated glossary dives deep into Brandt’s working process. As discussed in a prior INSIDE/OUT post, Dating Brandt, the same negative can look completely different depending on when Brandt retouched it.
Sample of Bill Brandt’s published photo-stories in the exhibition catalogue, Bill Brandt: Shadow & Light. The photo-stories are organized chronologically to suggest the breadth of Brandt’s artwork
I believe this power of seeing the world as fresh and strange lies hidden in every human being. In most of us it is dormant. Yet it is there, even if it is no more than a vague desire, an unsatisfied appetite that cannot discover its own nourishment….This should be the photographer’s aim, for this is the purpose that pictures fulfill in the world as it is to-day. To meet a need that people cannot or will not meet for themselves. We are most of us too busy, too worried, too intent on proving ourselves right, too obsessed with ideas, to stand and stare.
Bill Brandt took the time to “stand and stare” in many different ways. Whether through juxtapositions of class structure, wondrous nudes, inventive portraiture, or unearthly landscapes, Brandt’s far-reaching inspirations and approaches generated arresting imagery that still holds magic and wonder today.
From left: Bill Brandt. Francis Bacon Walking on Primrose Hill, London. 1963. Gelatin silver print, 91⁄4 x 71⁄2″ (23.5 x 19.1 cm). Collection David Dechman and Michel Mercure. © 2013 Bill Brandt Archive Ltd.; Bill Brandt. The Pilgrim’s Way, Kent. 1950. Gelatin silver print, 9 x 75⁄8″ (22.9 x 19.4 cm). EHG. © 2013 Bill Brandt Archive Ltd.
One of the underlying principles of Bill Brandt: Shadow and Light, currently on view in MoMA’s third-floor Photography Galleries, is the importance of vintage prints to understanding Brandt’s oeuvre—and by vintage print I mean a photographic print that was made around the same time as its negative. Anyone who visits the exhibition will surely be impressed by the fine quality of prints
Portrait of Sean Vegezzi. Photo by Andrew Kass
Sean Vegezzi is a 22-year-old alumnus of our In the Making program, which offers free art classes to NYC teens. Like many students attending public schools here in the city, Sean came to us as a high school student who was seeking an outlet for his creativity as well as a public platform to showcase his work.
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