Social / Political

Alexis Penney – Sore, 2014

“Well, I got in trouble for putting naked photos on the Internet when I was seventeen.”   Alexis Penney, Sore, 2014 “Well, I got in trouble for putting naked photos on the Internet when I was seventeen,” Alexis Penney told me, when I asked how long he’d been taking photos. Penney, who told me she […]

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 […]

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 […]

LUIGI GHIRRI: “KODACHROME”

    Luigi Ghirri (1943 – 1992) was an Italian photographer who, beginning in the 1970s, produced pioneering color photographs of landscape and architecture within the context of conceptual art.   (All rights reserved. Images @ the Estate of Luigi Ghirri.)

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 […]

Bill Ray: “Hells Angels” (1965)

  Explore more here: http://time.com/3506839/life-rides-with-hells-angels-1965/ (All rights reserved. Images @ Bill Ray and LIFE Magazine.)

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 […]

COLITA: “SPAIN”

Isabel Steva Hernández, “Colita”, was born in Barcelona in 1940. After finishing her pre-university studies she moved to Paris to study at the Sorbonne. On her return to Barcelona, she learned the photographer’s trade from Oriol Maspons, Julio Ubiña and Xavier Miserachs. In 1962 she worked on the film “Los Tarantos” and became friendly with […]

Berenice Abbott – The Photographer of New York City

Berenice Abbott can be considered the photographer of New York City. A revolutionary documentary photographer, Abbott was born in Springfield, Ohio, in 1898, and studied for one year at Ohio State University, Columbus, before moving to New York in 1918.

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.)  

Vietnam Zippo Lighters (‘DEATH FROM ABOVE’)”

    Vietnam War-era Zippo lighters featuring personalized and anonymous engravings chosen by U.S. soldiers, sailors, and airmen during deployment. The collection has been compiled individually by American artist Bradford Edwards over several years in the 1990s, on-site in Vietnam. (Images @ Cowan Auctions)

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 […]

Jerry Brendt: Scene from 1960’s Boston – ‘The Combat Zone’

                ‘The Combat Zone’ was the name given to the roughest area in Boston at the end of the 1960s, full of violence, sexual exploitation and racial war. In 1967, Harvard University commissioned Jerry Berndt to explore this Boston of shadows and vice. Like a war reporter, the […]

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 […]

“WISCONSIN DEATH TRIP EXCERPTS”

  A selection of photographs produced by Charles Van Schaick between 1890 and 1910 that were used in the book Wisconsin Death Trip by Michael Lesy (1973). There are approximately 5,600 glass plates in the Charles Van Schaick collection preserved at the Wisconsin Historical Society and the Jackson County Historical Society.

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)

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 […]

Helmut Newton: Evi in Beverly Hills

      Evi, Beverly Hills, 1996 “I like the idea of trespassing. I got to write that down too. It’s quite true that what I am aiming at, even when I take portraits, is to get a scandalous picture. I would love to be a paparazzo.” – Helmut Newton EXPLORE ALL HELMUT NEWTON ON […]

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 […]

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.”

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.

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 […]

Dorothea Lange: “Portraits” (1935 – 1939)

  American photographer. From 1914 to 1917 she attended the New York Training School for Teachers and there decided to become a photographer, partly influenced by visits to the photographer Arnold Genthe. From 1917 to 1918 she attended a photography course run by Clarence H. White at Columbia University, NY. Lange moved to San Francisco […]