In conjunction with the launch of Keliy Anderson-Staley’s online gallery, Light Work is teaming up with Flak Photo to give away FREE signed copies of Keliy’s Contact Sheet.
Visit our Facebook page for details on how to enter!
(DEADLINE: Thursday, February 2, 2012)
On the topic of the lovely wet-plate collodion process, don’t miss past AIR Joni Sternbach‘s “SurfLand” exhibition, opening this Friday at the Southeast Museum of Photography!
SurfLand
Joni Sternbach
January 27 – April 22, 2012
Southeast Museum of Photography
Daytona Beach, FL
Opening reception with artist talk and book signing: January 27 from 6-8pm
More great exposure for Keliy Anderson-Staley, as her work is featured in an online gallery on Flak Photo. Keliy’s tintypes are paired with an excellent essay by Geoffrey Batchen, from Contact Sheet 163 (available for purchase here).
We’re pleased see Keliy Anderson-Staley’s write-up in The New Yorker.
Her exhibition “[hyphen] AMERICANS” will be on view through February 9th at the Palitz Gallery at the Lubin House in NYC.
Amy Elkins & Jen Davis—looking & looking
Exhibition Dates: January 17–March 8, 2012
Gallery Reception: February 23, 5–7 pm
Light Work is pleased to announce the exhibition Looking & Looking, featuring photographs by Jen Davis and Amy Elkins. Both artists create work that focuses on gaze and identity, with Davis looking at herself and Elkins looking at young male athletes. The images in the exhibition explore the perception of how men and women are supposed to appear in society—men should be strong and confident, women should be beautiful—and the crafting of a self-image.
Jen Davis creates self-portraits that deal with issues surrounding beauty, identity, and body image of women, and challenges the perceptions and stereotypes of how women should look in their physical appearances. Amy Elkins depicts the more aggressive, competitive, and violent aspects of male identity in her series Elegant Violence, which captures portraits of young Ivy League rugby athletes moments after their game. Elkins’ images explore the balance between athleticism, modes of violence or aggression, and varying degrees of vulnerability within a sport where brutal body contact is fundamental.
Both artists focus on the construction of identity—the players are astutely aware of how they are presenting themselves while Davis draws attention to her own self-image in a more emotional way. Shown together, the works of Davis and Elkins urge the viewer to consider expectations and perceptions (both societal and individual) of identity.
About the Artists
Jen Davis received her MFA from Yale University, and her BA from Columbia College Chicago. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland; Joy Wei Gallery in New York; SI FEST: Savignano Immagini Festival in Italy; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Center for Photography at Woodstock; Stephen Daiter Gallery in Chicago, IL; Milwaukee Art Museum; and Galerie Priska Pasquer in Cologne, Germany, among others. Her photographs are in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Sir Elton John Photography Collection, and The Library of Congress. Davis is represented by Lee Marks Fine Art.
Amy Elkins received her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, including shows at Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna, Austria; The PIP International Photo Festival in Pingyao, China; Gallery Elsa in Busan, South Korea; National Arts Club, Tina Kim Gallery, and Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York, among many others. Amy Elkins and Cara Phillips co-founded wipnyc.org, a platform for showcasing both established and emerging women in photography. Elkins is represented by Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York.
Also on view at this time is the exhibition Wounding the Black Male, featuring photographs from the Light Work Collection. The exhibition was co-curated by Cassandra Jackson and Sarah Cunningham, both from The College of New Jersey in Ewing, NJ.
Gallery hours for these exhibitions are Sunday to Friday, 10 am–6 pm (except school holidays), and by appointment. To schedule an appointment, please call 315-443-1300. Both the exhibition and reception are free and open to the public. Paid parking is available in Booth Parking Garage.
Light Work invites groups and individuals to schedule tours and gallery talks of the exhibition and facility. Light Work is a nonprofit, artist-run organization dedicated to the support of artists working in photography and electronic media. Light Work is a member of CMAC, the Coalition of Museum and Art Centers at Syracuse University.
For more information, please contact Jessica Reed at Light Work, 315-443-1300 or jhreed01@syr.edu.
Photographs from the Light Work Collection—Wounding the Black Male
Exhibition Dates: January 17–May 31, 2012
Gallery Reception: Thursday, February 23, 5–7 pm
Light Work is pleased to bring the exhibition Wounding the Black Male to Syracuse. The exhibition was curated by English Professor Cassandra Jackson and Gallery Director Sarah Cunningham, both from The College of New Jersey (TCNJ). The exhibition was on view in the TCNJ Art Gallery in 2011.
The central ideas of the exhibit are rooted in Jackson’s most recent book, Violence, Visual Culture, and the Black Male Body (Routledge, 2010). Her book deals with the ways in which the black male body has been visually exploited, and the ways in which contemporary artists have called into question the paradigmatic construction of the black body in American society. The exhibit displays thirty-one photographs by nineteen contemporary artists of African descent, seventeen are from the United States, two from Britain. Their work comments on the various representations of black bodies in Western visual culture. These artists confront stereotypes about black male appearance, sexuality, violence, and family, and highlight the ways that visual culture has contributed to the marginalization and exclusion of the black community.
Violence, and more specifically the ways in which wounds have been used to control black masculinity, is central to Jackson’s research. The wounding and modification of the black body is a theme which runs throughout many of the photographs in the exhibit, most notably in the striking photographs of New York City based artist Hank Willis Thomas. Featured in the exhibit, Branded Chest (2003) from his Br@nded series, is a photograph of an anonymous African American male torso, with a scar of the Nike symbol etched on its left pectoral. Willis Thomas is commenting on the appropriation of the black body in American advertisement and consumer culture, and the implied values that American society assigns to the male body.
Gallery hours for these exhibitions are Sunday-Friday, 10am-6pm (except school holidays), and by appointment. To schedule an appointment, please call 315-443-1300. Both the exhibition and reception are free and open to the public. Paid parking is available in Booth Parking Garage.
Light Work invites groups and individuals to schedule tours and gallery talks of the exhibition and facility. Light Work is a nonprofit, artist-run organization dedicated to the support of artists working in photography and electronic media. Light Work is a member of CMAC, the Coalition of Museum and Art Centers at Syracuse University.
For more information, please contact Jessica Reed at Light Work, 315-443-1300 or jhreed01@syr.edu.
2008 Light Work AIR Deana Lawson‘s work has received critical acclaim in the New Photography 2011 exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition will be on view through January 16th, so be sure to stop in before it closes.
Collectors admiring her photographs will be happy to know that Light Work is offering a beautiful limited edition, signed print by Deana Lawson. The purchase of this print includes a complimentary, one-year subscription to Contact Sheet with five printed issues and access to the full digital archive of past issues.
Ken Schles: Four Books
Photographers + Publishing: SPE Joint Regional Conference
Hosted by Light Work
Filmed: Saturday, November 5, 2011
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See more videos from Light Work on our Vimeo page.
Light Work is excited to invite you to visit our booth at Photo LA!
January 12-16, 2012
Santa Monica Civic Auditorium
1855 Main Street
Santa Monica, CA 90401
Stop by Booth # 410 to meet Program Manager Mary Lee Hodgens, Promotions Coordinator Jessica Reed, and Associate Director Shane Lavalette to hear about our programs, and support Light Work and artists by buying a print, book, or subscription to Contact Sheet, our journal featuring emerging photographers. Every penny we make at Photo LA goes right back into our programming, which assists artists working in photography and electronic media through exhibitions, publications, artist residencies, and a community-access digital lab facility.
See you there!
We’re pleased to see The New York Time Magazine‘s Top Ten Photo Books of 2011 features two excellent titles by past Light Work Artists-in-Residence Christian Patterson and Brian Ulrich, who both participated in the residency program in 2010.
Redheaded Peckerwood (MACK, 2011)
by Christian Patterson
(Note: This video pictures the original artist book that Patterson produced in an edition of 10 copies during his residency at Light Work, not the version published by MACK.)
Patterson takes his inspiration from the story of Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, an Eisenhower-era teenage couple who murdered 10 people in Nebraska over three days before they were captured by authorities. Patterson, who approaches their story “as a poet and a gumshoe,” in the words of Luc Sante, whose essay accompanies the book, combines historical photographs, documents and his own creative wanderings into an unsettling dance between evidence and myth. – NY Times
Is This Place Great or What (Aperture/Cleveland Museum of Art, 2011)
by Brian Ulrich
A blunt assessment of Americans’ obsession with consumption. In 2001, after 9/11, Ulrich was struck by a speech in which President Bush linked “the vitality of the American economy” with “the willingness of Americans to spend.” The first two chapters, “Retail” and “Thrift,” of the ensuing project were photographed before the financial crisis of 2008. The final chapter, “Dark Stores,” which was started that year, examines the fallout of the Great Recession and serves as a sobering coda to the earlier work. – NY Times
See The New York Times Magazine‘s Top 10 here.