Eihoh Hosoe: “Photographs”

“To me photography can be simultaneously both a record and a mirror or window of self-expression… the camera is generally assumed to be unable to depict that which is not visible to the eye and yet, the photographer who wields it well can depict what lies unseen in his memory.” – Eikoh Hosoe ASX CHANNEL: […]

Roswell Angier: “Combat Zone”

  In the 1950s, when Boston was a major Navy port, the area around Washington Street became known as the Combat Zone; the name derived from the Shore Patrolmen, who prowled the rock-and-roll bars, busting the heads of sailors. By the 1970s, when Angier spent two and half years (1973-1975) photographing the area, the sailors […]

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 […]

HELEN LEVITT: “COLOR” (1971-1981)

Helen Levitt (August 31, 1913 – March 29, 2009) was an American photographer. She was particularly noted for “street photography” around New York City, and has been called “the most celebrated and least known photographer of her time.”   ASX ARTIST CHANNEL: HELEN LEVITT (All images @ and courtesy of Helen Levitt Estate)

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 […]

LARRY SULTAN & MIKE MANDEL: “EVIDENCE”

  From 1975-1977, Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel selected photographs from a multitude of images that previously existed solely within the boundaries of the industrial, scientific, governmental and other institutional sources from which they were mined.  The project, “Evidence”, was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, and was one of […]

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 […]

America’s Race Riots of the Sixties

In the early 1960s, African Americans in cities nationwide were growing frustrated with the high level of poverty in their communities. Since the years immediately following World War II (1939–45), middle-class white Americans had been leaving the cities for nearby suburbs. Businesses that had once provided jobs and tax funding in the cities were leaving […]

Araki’s Chiro, Yoko, Death and the Baring of a Soul

  In Sentimental Journey and later in Winter Journey Araki documented both the intimate and the mundane from his honeymoon and his wife’s terminal battle with cancer. By blurring the boundaries between life and art Araki’s work becomes uncomfortably candid, presenting death with a reverence as shocking and graphic as any of his more erotic […]

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. […]

KARLHEINZ WEINBERGER: “REBEL YOUTH” (1950-1960’s)

  (Images © The estate of Karlheinz Weinberger) For decades the work of Swiss photographer Karlheinz Weinberger was shrouded in obscurity. In the 1950s he published numerous homoerotic photographs under the pseudonym “Jim” in Der Kreis (The Circle), the legendary international gay magazine that featured highly sophisticated photographs by, among others, George Platt Lynes and […]

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.”

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 […]

MARGUERITE BAKER JOHNSON: “AMERICAN LIFE” (1952-1964)

Marguerite Baker Johnson, a native of Brussels Belgium was a noted female photographer noted as the first woman to take photographs inside the arena at “Cheyenne Frontier Days”, a task formerly conducted by men due to the dangerous setting. Her photos appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Automotive Periodicals, London Times, Daily Mirror, […]

Man Ray – “Rayographs, Etc.”

    Man Ray made his “rayographs” without a camera by placing objects-such as the thumbtacks, coil of wire, and other circular forms used here-directly on a sheet of photosensitized paper and exposing it to light.

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.)