From Shanghainese artist Fan Shisan’s series titled “Two of us.” The series is made up of more than 50 photographs. In each a young Chinese person is shown with an alter ego, a double posing in a different position — a commentary on China’s one-child policy.
Lotte Jacobi… Klaus and Erika Mann (c. 1928–1932, gelatin silver print, Dietmar Siegert Collection).
black and white portrait of Australian artist Mirka Mora taken by the Italian born, Melbourne based fashion photographer Bruno Benini, in 1974. via Powerhouse Museum – Photo of the Day
(via » Faraway, So Close: ’80s L.A. Photos)
“May Day in Los Angeles, 1980” - Mark Vallen. 1980 ©.
This photograph was taken in L.A.’s MacArthur Park just moments before the Los Angeles Police Department attacked a large crowd celebrating International Workers Day. The rally had been the first significant May Day demonstration to take place in L.A. since the 1960s. On view at the Morono Kiang Gallery’s “Faraway, So Close” exhibit.
Arthur Renwick sat his subjects in front of his camera and he talked with them about identity, asked them to think about the historical relationship between photography and the “Indian,” and then he told them to make a face.
The result: Mask, Renwick’s portrait series that documents First Nations authors and entertainers who have faced cultural assumptions about their heritage throughout their careers. The relationship between First Nations people and the camera extends from the mid-1800s into the present. Early photographs created the image of the Plains Indian in a feathered headdress, the noble savage from a vanishing race. The legacy of these early photographs continued in Hollywood cowboy-and-Indian movies and permeated American popular culture.
Throughout history, artists have often depicted the face of First Nations culture as both awesome and terrifying. For the most part, these enduring stereotypes have rendered individual First Nations people invisible. The Mask portraits are of people like Fernando Hernandez, a Mayan actor who played an evil shaman in Mel Gibson’s 2006 film Apocalypto; Carla Robinson, the cover girl of this issue of FACE and a news anchor for CBC Newsworld, and her sister, Eden Robinson, author of Monkey Beach, Traplines and Blood Sports (they both grew up with Renwick in Kitamaat, B.C.—they are all Haisla, and the women are also part Heiltsuk); Tom Hill, a Governor General’s Award–winning artist who was the first Aboriginal art curator in Canada; and Jani Lauzon, a Metis singer, actor and puppeteer. They have all combated stereotypes to establish and retain their own identities….
Renwick’s portraits subvert expectations and offer a new representation of First Nations people to the history of portraiture. They depict an Aboriginal culture that is alive, reactive and comfortable with challenging and mocking the norm.
Coney Island, 1947. © Sid Grossman The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936-1951 Exhibition on view: November 4, 2011–March 25, 2012
The Jewish Museum of New York will be exhibiting The Radical Camera, a collection of photographs from the influential Photo League. Based in New York City, The Photo League consisted of young, politically progressive artists (many of whom were first generation Jewish Americans) that were shooting from the mid 1930s to the early 1950s. Interested in capturing their direct surroundings, League members documented the urban landscape of New York City during the turbulent times of the late Depression, World War II, and early Cold War eras.
via Exposures » Blog Archive » New York’s Photo League at The Jewish Museum)
India’s first woman photo-journalist Homai Vyarawalla dead
India’s first woman photo-journalist Homai Vyarawalla died at a private hospital here this morning at the age of 98.
She fell from her cot three days ago and was hospitalised at a private hospital, officials said.
Her husband Maneckshaw Vyarawalla predeceased her in 1970.
Born on December 9, 1913 to a Parsi family, Vyarawalla grew up in Mumbai and moved to Delhi in 1942 where she photographed events leading to Independence, as an employee of the British Information Services.
She took photographs of key events that would have a decisive impact on Indian history, including a meeting where leaders voted for the June 3 plan for India’s partition.
She also photographed the first flag hoisting ceremony at Red Fort on August 15, 1947, the departure of Lord Mountbatten from India and the funerals of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri.
She was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in January last year.
(via Flavorwire » 100-Year-Old Color Photos from the Russian Empire)
Peasant girls with berries, around 1909-12. Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii
Christian Thompson is an aboriginal artist of the Bidjara people from the Carnarvon Gorge Springsure region of South West Queensland and has lived in Melbourne since 1999. For Emotional Striptease, Thompson presents studio-based portraits of young Kooris in front of backdrops of iconic Melbourne cultural institutions. The models are armed with Indigenous weapons based on those held in museum collections, and pose in incomplete costumes reflecting the fragmented picture of Indigenous culture that such collections traditionally present. Directly referencing the nineteenth-century ‘noble savage’ portrait, these images question the relevance of these institutions to aboriginal people. Christian Thompson is represented by Gabrielle Pizzi Gallery, Melbourne
image credit:Christian Thompson, Emotional Striptease, 2003 via Traffic (Room Notes
