Colonialism, feminism, gender and the human body: photographs of Yoruba and other African cultures by Gloria Oyarzabal Here, Spanish photographer Gloria Oyarzabal (born 1971) explores the permeation of colonial gender norms in Yoruba and other African cultures. Oyarzabal's project aims to decolonize feminism, questioning the Eurocentric theoretical frameworks that construct universalistic gender categories.
As a crucial extension of its ongoing investigation of vernacular photography, the Walther Collection has collaborated with key scholars and critical thinkers in the history of photography, women's studies, queer theory, Africana studies, and curatorial practice to interrogate vernacular's theoretical limits, as well as to conduct case studies of a striking array of objects and images, many from the collection's holdings.
The “astonishing” (People) and definitive biography that unlocks the “riveting” (Vogue) story of Vivian Maier, the nanny who lived secretly as a world-class photographer, featuring nearly 400 of her images, many never seen before, placed for the first time in the context of her life. Vivian Maier, the photographer nanny whose work was famously discovered in a Chicago storage locker, captured the imagination of the world with her masterful images and mysterious life. Before posthumously skyrocketing to global fame, she had so deeply buried her past that even the families she lived with knew little about her. No one could relay where she was born or raised, if she had parents or siblings, if she enjoyed personal relationships, why she took photographs and why she didn’t share them with others. Now, in this “thorough, fascinating overview of an artist working for art’s sake” (The New York Times), Ann Marks uses her complete access to Vivian’s personal records and archive of 140,000 photographs to reveal the full story of her extraordinary life. Based on meticulous investigative research, the “compelling and richly detailed” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review) Vivian Maier Developed reveals the story of a woman who fled from a family with a hidden history of illegitimacy, bigamy, parental rejection, substance abuse, violence, and mental illness to live life on her own terms. Left with a limited ability to disclose feelings and form relationships, she expressed herself through photography, creating a secret portfolio of pictures teeming with emotion, authenticity, and humanity. With limitless resilience she knocked down every obstacle in her way, determined to improve her lot in life and that of others by tirelessly advocating for the rights of workers, women, African Americans, and Native Americans. No one knew that behind the detached veneer was a profoundly intelligent, empathetic, and inspired woman—a woman so creatively gifted that her body of work would become one of the greatest photographic discoveries of the century.
This volume explores the making of Gordon Parks' first photographie essay for Life magazine in 1948, "Harlem Gang Leader". After gaining the trust of one particular group of gang members and their leader, Leonard "Red" Jackson, Parks produced a series of photographs that are artful, poignant, and, at times, shocking. From this large body of work (Parks made hundreds of negatives) the editors at Life selected twenty-one pictures to print in the magazine, often cropping or enhancing details in the pictures. Gordon Parks : The .Making of an Argument traces this editorial process and parses out the various voices and motives behind the production of the picture essay. This volume. together with an exhibition of the same name at the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA), considers Parks' photographic practice within a larger discussion about photography as a narrative device. Featuring vintage photographs, original issues of Life magazine, contact sheets, and proof prints, Gordon Parks : The Making of an Argument raises important questions about the role of photography in addressing social concerns, its use as a documentary tool, and its function in the world of publishing. The book includes contributions from Susan M Taylor, The Montine McDaniel Freeman Director of the New Orleans Museum of Art ; Péter W Kunhardt, Jr., Executive Director of The Gordon Parks Foundation ; and Irvin Mayfield, Artistic Director of the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra.
The Mongrel Mob of Aotearoa New Zealand is notorious for extreme violence, and they have long been regarded as the nations monsters. In layers of apparent contradictions, their icon is the British bulldog wearing a Nazi helmet, while their members are largely indigenous Maori. The Mongrel Mobs symbols arose as both a goading response to a history of colonial subjugation of Maori, and a proclamation of war against the (white) state. Mongrelism offers a communion with this impenetrable fraternity. Monumental portraits illustrate Mob members assertion of membership and pride in their identity. Artefact studies and brutal first person narratives are drawn from the Mob corpus, mirroring the landscapes that bare the brooding environments where Mob members live. Mongrelism examines how the gang brands itself to itself to uphold its hierarchy and history, and find core values usually lauded by society: perseverance, resilience, and loyalty. The publication takes the form of a gang handbook. The order and grouping of images is the result of consultation with members and hews to their geographic, familial and hierarchical relationships. An unedited Mob voice dominates the written section. Rotmans images have become a part of Mob history and their visual mythology. Ongoing consultation and engagement has been integral. Rotman is a fourth generation white New Zealander, his forebears were among the first to settle in the region that became the epicentre of the Mob genesis. The process of colonisation and the atomisation of indigenous communities can be argued to have resulted in the Mongrel Mob. IMongrelism, as in the history of the nation, the narratives intertwine.
A lavishly illustrated history of photography in essays by the author of Otherwise Known as the Human Condition See/Saw shows how photographs frame and change our perspective on the world. Taking in photographers from early in the last century to the present day—including artists such as Eugène Atget, Vivian Maier, Roy DeCarava, and Alex Webb—the celebrated writer Geoff Dyer offers a series of moving, witty, prescient, surprising, and intimate encounters with images. Dyer has been writing about photography for thirty years, and this tour de force of visual scrutiny and stylistic flair gathers his lively, engaged criticism over the course of a decade. A rich addition to Dyer’s The Ongoing Moment, and heir to Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida, Susan Sontag’s On Photography, and John Berger’s Understanding a Photograph, See/Saw shows how a photograph can simultaneously record and invent the world, revealing a brilliant seer at work. It is a paean to art and art writing by one of the liveliest critics of our day.
We live in an age of the mobile image. The world today is absolutely saturated with images of all kinds circulating around the world at an incredible rate. The movement of the image has never been more extraordinary than it is today. This recent kinetic revolution of the image has enormous consequences not only for the way we think about contemporary art and aesthetics but also for art history as well. Responding to this historical moment, Theory of the Image offers a fresh new theory and history of art from the perspective of this epoch-defining mobility. The image has been understood in many ways, but it is rarely understood to be fundamentally in motion. The original and materialist approach is what defines Theory of the Image and what allows it to offer the first kinetic history of the Western art tradition. In this book, Thomas Nail further develops his larger philosophy of movement into a comprehensive "kinesthetic" of the moving image from prehistory to the present. The book concludes with a vivid analysis of the contemporary digital image and its hybridity, ultimately outlining new territory for research and exploration across aesthetics, art history, cultural theory, and media studies.
