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 […]

Todd Hido: “House Hunting” (2001)

“Todd Hido’s large color photographs of suburbia are lonely, forlorn, mysterious… and strangely comforting. Hido photographs the interior rooms of repossessed tract homes, and the outsides of similar houses at night whose habitation is suggested by the glow of a television set or unseen overhead bulb. Seldom does the similar evoke such melancholy. Yet rather […]

Harry Callahan Loved Eleanor, Barbara and Chicago

  “He just liked to take the pictures of me. In every pose. Rain or shine. And whatever I was doing. If I was doing the dishes or if I was half asleep. And he knew that I never, never said no. I was always there for him. Because I knew that Harry would only […]

Andreas Gursky and ‘The Iron Cage of Boredom’

The Rhine II, 1999 There is something very straightforward about Andreas Gursky’s photographs. It is as though he holds up a peopled landscape or a building or a workplace for our inspection, saying simply, ‘here it is’.   The Iron Cage of Boredom By Julian Stallabrass There is something very straightforward about Andreas Gursky’s photographs. […]

Christoph Gielen – “Ciphers” (2014)

Christoph Gielen’s new photo book “Ciphers”. Worth a thousand words, at least. Book review by Raphael Shammaa. April 25, 2014 It’s 2003; a building is scheduled for implosion by a demolition company. Perched atop a nearby public housing tower, Christoph Gielen is poised to record the event – his first ever aerial shot… ahem… his […]

ASX Interviews James Welling (2014)

 Meriden, 1991   “To be an artist in 1974-75 interested in conceptual art, there was a tremendous amount of freedom in the early 1970’s.”   James Welling. Enthralled by the possibilities. A conversation with Raphael Shammaa. April 9, 2014. Raphael – At the ripe old age of 12 you started studying art. At 14 you […]

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. […]

William Gedney: “Houses at Night” (1960-1973)

    William Gale Gedney (October 29, 1932 – June 23, 1989) was an American photographer whose work did not gain momentum until after his death.  Gedney died of AIDS in 1989, aged 56, in New York City and was buried in Greenville, New York, a few short miles from his childhood home. He left his photographs and […]

VENTURI, SCOTT, BROWN: “LEARNING FROM LAS VEGAS”

    In 1968, American architects Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, together with students from Yale University, made the city of Las Vegas the object of their study. Their findings, published in the 1972 book, Learning from Las Vegas, are legendary, extending the categories of the ordinary, the ugly, and the social […]