Sad news from my Karsh colleagues is that dancer, actress, early Karsh subject and friend Betty Low has died. Betty performed with the Colonel de Basil's Ballets Russes de Monte Carlo as Ludmila Lvova, before appearing in several films, including "84 Charing Cross Road." This portrait was made in 1936 when Karsh, ever the improviser, took down the nets from the window and used them to make this beautiful photograph. I was fortunate to meet Ms. Low many years later in Washington, DC, as the National Portrait Gallery celebrated Mrs Karsh's donation of 100 original Karsh fine art photographs. She was as poised and beautiful as ever.
Here is Ms. Low in "The Lesson" with Solange Gauthier Karsh, Mr. Karsh's first wife. You can read more about Ms. Low's life over at the
Ballets-Russes.
The Lesson, 1940, Betty Low and Solange Gauthier, by Yousuf Karsh
Robert Mapplethorpe, American, 1946-1989
Identical self-portraits of Robert Mapplethorpe with trip cable in hand, 1974
Gelatin silver print. Sheet (each): 9.3 x 11.6 cm (3 11/16 x 4 9/16 in.)
Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Held at the Getty Research Institute, 2011.M.20.24
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
The first photography exhibition I ever saw was Robert Mapplethorpe, in London, and I have always said it ruined me for life. In my memory the exhibition was at the Festival Hall, but the web won't support this and insists it was the National Portrait Gallery, 'The Perfect Moment' retrospective, 1988/89. Regardless, I remember staring endlessly at one of his highly sexual portraits and listening to the outrage of the person viewing next to me. I felt happy.
Robert Mapplethorpe
Ajitto, 1981
Gelatin silver print. Image: 45.4 x 35.5 cm (17 7/8 x 14 in.)
Jointly acquired by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, with funds provided by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the David Geffen Foundation, 2011.7.13
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
That Mapplethorpe-related happiness has carried me through my journey in the world of photography so I was beyond thrilled when a review copy of
Robert Mapplethorpe: The Photographs (J. Paul Getty Museum, March 2016) arrived. What a book!
Mapplethorpe's most recognizable and less-known images, both the graphic and the gorgeous, are drawn from the J. Paul Getty Museum's own collection, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, and Mapplethorpe Archive housed at the Getty Research Institute.
Robert Mapplethorpe
Grapes, 1985
Gelatin silver print. Image: 38.5 x 38 cm (15 3/16 x 14 15/16 in.)
Jointly acquired by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, with funds provided by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the David Geffen Foundation, 2011.7.20
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
Robert Mapplethorpe
Thomas, 1987
Gelatin silver print. Image: 48.8 x 48.8 cm (19 3/16 x 19 3/16 in.)
Jointly acquired by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, with funds provided by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the David Geffen Foundation, 2011.7.31
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
"This publication is issued on the occasion of the exhibition Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium on view at both the J. Paul Getty Museum and at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art from March 15 and March 20, respectively, through July 31, 2016; at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montreal from September 10, 2016, through January 15, 2017; and at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, from October 28, 2017, through February 4, 2018."
Let it be known that the young me spent not inconsiderable time wondering if she could scrape together the £1,500 that a print was going for back then. They say one only regrets the things one did not do... But then, how would I have chosen?
Robert Mapplethorpe
Calla Lily, 1988
Gelatin silver print. Image: 49 x 49 cm (19 5/16 x 19 5/16 in.)
Jointly acquired by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; partial gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation; partial purchase with funds provided by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the David Geffen Foundation, 2011.9.26
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
Robert Mapplethorpe
Derrick Cross, 1983
Gelatin silver print. Image: 48.5 x 38.2 cm (19 1/8 x 15 1/16 in.)
Promised Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, L.2012.88.910
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
Robert Mapplethorpe
Flower Arrangement, 1986
Gelatin silver print. Image: 49 x 49 cm (19 5/16 x 19 5/16 in.)
Promised Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, L.2012.89.566
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
Robert Mapplethorpe
Self-Portrait, 1980
Gelatin silver print. Image: 35.6 x 35.6 cm (14 x 14 in.)
Jointly acquired by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; partial gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation; partial purchase with funds provided by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the David Geffen Foundation, 2011.9.21
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
Robert Mapplethorpe
Self-Portrait, 1985
Gelatin silver print. Image: 38.7 x 38.6 cm (15 1/4 x 15 3/16 in.)
Jointly acquired by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, with funds provided by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the David Geffen Foundation, 2011.7.21
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation
We might all be taking photos of just about bloody everything, all the time, but not everyone then laboriously makes one story out of literally thousands of them.
Meggan Joy embarked on a marathon digitization of her daily shots.
"A couple years ago I started to slowly collect individual pieces of the world around me. The orange placed before me for breakfast, I took a photograph before I ate it. The leftover flowers from a friend's wedding were quickly shot the day after. The empty nut found while walking my dog, captured and left in its place... I started pulling these images together into one single form. And after working on the project irregularly, in the early winter of 2016, I finished; almost 2 years after starting." Phew!
Please also check out Meggan's more serious project "
She."
There are several frames of Yul Brynner in the Karsh digital archives but this is my favourite!
Chris Killip
From the series In Flagrante Two
Two girls, Grangetown, Middlesbrough, Teeside, 1975
Gelatin Silver Print
© Chris Killip, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York
Last month, I was talking to a photographer I admire enormously and he told me had just seen one the best photographs of his life, at
Yossi Milo here in NYC. It turned out to be the above 'Two Girls' by Chris Killip, whose photos I have much admired after embarrassingly only discovering him rather late in life. The exhibition was ending the following day so I bunked off work for the afternoon and headed to Chelsea.
Yossi Milo Gallery's presentation of fifty gelatin silver prints from the photographs that constituted his book 'In Flagrante' (Secker & Warburg, 1988) hand-printed by Killip, is the first time since 1988 that the series has been exhibited in its entirety and the first time ever in the United States. The images are culturally familiar and endearing to me and it was interesting to talk to some of the American viewers about the miners' strike and the Queen's silver jubilee street parties I remember so well.
The unassuming photographer has been working at Harvard as professor of visual and environmental studies for many years and apparently will soon retire and cease printing his negatives. So if you're thinking about purchasing a print, now is the time to do it.
Yossi Milo is pleased to announce that the J. Paul Getty Museum now owns a set of all 50 of Killip's prints and will mount an exhibition in the coming months. The book,
In Flagrante Two, is out now from Steidl.
"Nothing Gold Can Stay is a body of work about the fleetingness of youth. My photographs of the boys of Branch Brook Park in Newark, New Jersey describe this ephemerality, and through these photographs I intends to access a sense of memory and vulnerability to create an experience of love amid life's chaos and uncertainty."
Just because... here's Betty! Karsh photographed her and Gerald Ford, one of 12 US Presidents immortalized by Karsh, in 1977.
What a gorgeous portrait of Ray Tomlinson by the lovely
Henry Horenstein. Ray Tomlinson died last week. He created the first email system and has us all using the @ sign. Big up, Mr. Tomlinson!
"It takes a lifetime to be a new discovery, I guess." So said Ms
Arlene Gottfried this week (speaking to David Schonauer over at
AI-AP) in the run-up to her second solo show, 'Bacalaitos & Fireworks', at
Daniel Cooney Fine Art, in Chelsea, New York, which opened March 3, 2016 and runs till April 16th.
The show at Cooney features images originally collected in Arlene's 2011 book Bacalaitos & Fireworks, printed from her rich, orangey Cibachromes.
From the press release "Growing up, Gottfried was fascinated with the culture around her, learning to Salsa dance and to love the music, food and language. As an adult living in Manhattan she embraced the Puerto Rican community and they embraced her, sharing their lives with her and her camera. Gottfried says, "From my window on the Lower East Side I could look out and see the Puerto Rican culture I encountered over 30 years earlier. "One night I heard a street vendor on the corner of Avenue C and East 3rd Street calling, "bacalaitos and fireworks", bacalaitos, a fried cod fish indigenous to Puerto Rico and fireworks, for the Fourth of July weekend. This juxtaposition became etched in my mind - representative of an immigrant population on the streets of America."
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These are but a small sample of the colour prints on show. Run don't walk!
All images © Arlene Gottfried courtesy Daniel Cooney Fine Art
