CARLO MOLLINO: POLAROIDS, ETC (1962-1973)

  In a career that spanned more than four decades, Carlo Mollino designed buildings, homes, furniture, cars, aircraft. One of the most dashing figures of mid-century Italy, Mollino was famed for his design finesse and his elegant organicism. In 1949 he published an important book on photography: Message from the Darkroom. Sometime around 1960, he […]

Lee Friedlander: “The New Cars 1964” (2011)

  In 1964, two young art directors at Harper’s Bazaar named Ruth Ansel and Bea Feitler hired the then up-and-coming photographer Lee Friedlander to photograph the much-anticipated new car models of that year. Friedlander’s jazz album covers had proven he knew how to work on assignment, and Ansel and Feitler realized that if Bazaarwas to […]

Mike Brodie: “Tones of Dirt and Bone”

The images in Tones of Dirt and Bone were made between 2004 and 2006, with a Polaroid camera and Time Zero film. Brodie used the characteristics and limitations inherent to this type of camera and film to his advantage. The portraits he made are further enhanced by the peculiar color palette of the film. Due […]

Seiji Kurata: Shashin Workshop No. 8 1976

            Excerpts from “Shashin Workshop No. 8.” Japan: Shashin Workshop Group, 1976, First Edition, PB, 72 pp, 28 x 14 cm, b/w photos, text in Japanese. Nobuyoshi ARAKI, Daido MORIYAMA, Shomei TOMATSU, Noriaki YOKOSUKA, Masahisa FUKASE, Eikoh HOSOE, Seiji KURATA, editors/photographers A rare volume from the scarce Photography Workshop Group founded […]

Lee Friedlander: “The American Monument” (1976)

Vince Aletti describes The American Monument as “almost maniacally inclusive, rounding up everything from Plymouth Rock to a plaque commemorating the Pony Express in Salt Lake City and treating them with the same nonchalance. The doggedness of Friedlander’s quest is at once astounding and hilarious… History stalks the landscape at every turn.” The American Monument. […]

Mark Ruwedel: Desert Houses

  Mark Ruwedel is an artist who has been photographing American deserts and other remote locations for over 25 years. With an affinity for stark, barren landscapes that are otherwise uninhabited, Ruwedel found the desert and it soon became his primary field of inquiry. Influenced by photographers Lewis Baltz, Walker Evans and Robert Adams, Ruwedel’s […]

Ed van der Elsken – “Love on the Left Bank” (1954)

  Dutch photographer and filmmaker Ed van der Elsken relocated to Paris in 1950. There he found a bohemian group and began closely following and photographing their everyday movements, intertwining fiction and reality in a new genre of photography book. The book focuses on the Left Bank of Paris at the time when the area was […]

Edward Hopper: “Survey” (1882-1967)

  Edward Hopper (July 22, 1882 – May 15, 1967) was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While he was most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching. Both in his urban and rural scenes, his spare and often melancholy renderings reflected his personal […]

ISSEI SUDA: “NITIZYOU”

  Issei Suda was born in Tokyo in 1940 and graduated from the Tokyo College of Photography in 1962. He worked as a freelance photographer from 1971 and taught for many years at the Osaka University of Arts. (All rights reserved. @ Issei Suda.)

Jean Depara: “Kinshasa” (1951-1975)

  Lemvo Jean Abou Bakar Depara, known as Depara (1928–1997), was an Angolan-born photographer who worked in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Depara purchased his first video camera to record his wedding in 1950; four years later, he was made official photographer to the Zairian singer Franco. In 1975 he became official photographer to the […]

Araki Loves Polaroids

“The time when a picture is taken is like an emotion, it’s like a sexual encounter. It’s like a fuck! So, timing is very important.”

JOHN BANASIAK: “GEORGE BROWN’S BAR” (1970-71)

From 1971-1981, John Banasiak photographed Chicago and surrounding areas at night. During that time, Banasiak would wander around the city at night, looking for quiet scenes he describes as “stage sets just waiting for the players to arrive.” http://www.josephbellows.com/ (All rights reserved. Images @ Joseph Bellows Gallery.)  

WALKER EVANS: “DRIVE-BY PICTURES”

Walker Evans, pictures taken from a moving automobile or train.   EXPLORE ALL WALKER EVANS ON ASX (© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.)

JO ANN CALLIS: “EARLY COLOR”

  Although my work outwardly seems to vary over many years, there are certain links running through all of it. I consistently want to make things that satisfy my sense of beauty. I respond to the tactile nature of things. Another element that pervades it is tension or anxiety. These elements always live within me […]

Dash Snow: “Polaroids”

    Dash Snow originally started taking photos when he was a teenager. Using Polaroids as a diaristic record of the many ‘nights before’ he couldn’t remember, his snapshots piece together a fragmented portrait of Nihilistic existence.     ASX CHANNEL: DASH SNOW (All rights reserved. Images @ the Estate of Dash Snow)

KEIZO KITAJIMA: “USSR 1991” (2012)

  In the fall of 1990, Keizo Kitajima received a commission from Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper to visit the Soviet Union, the opportunity to spend a year documenting both people and places in what was then a monolithic entity. 15 republics, 11 time zones, and thousands of miles spanning the two—the task was daunting in […]