Expressions of Life Ruth Orkin Fotografiska NY Sept 2 – Dec 5
From the Fotografiska website:
Expressions of Life is an emotional, inspiring, and romantic chronicle of the pioneering photographer and filmmaker Ruth Orkin. Featuring landmark photographs from her work across Hollywood, New York City, Israel and Italy, the exhibition celebrates the Orkin’s centennial, and showcases her as a master of intimacy, warmth, and boldness behind the camera.
From photographs of her monumental cross country bicycle trip at age 17 and behind-the-scenes of MGM Studios as the first “messenger girl” in 1941, to European adventures and spontaneous, cinematic New York City moments – Expressions of Life spotlights some of her most renowned photographs: American Girl in Italy (1951), Bernstein in Green Room, Carnegie Hall, NYC, (1950), and Einstein at Princeton luncheon, NJ (1953), among others.
Ruth Orkin:An American Girl in Italy, 1951
We’ve been working directly with Mary Engel, the director of the Ruth Orkin Photo Archive (and Ruth’s daughter!) for the past year. LTI-Lightside contributed a number of silver gelatin prints printed directly from Ruth’s original negatives as well as hi-resolution scans for wall installations in the exhibition space.
Ruth Orkin:Expressions of Life opening reception at Fotografiska NY, Sept 2021
For more on Expressions of Life at Fotografiska NY click here
For more on Ruth Orkin and Mary Engel’s photo archive click here.
Lastly: for information on Mary Engel’s American Photography Archive Group click here
DICKERING Talia Chetrit Hannah Hoffman Gallery June 19 – Aug 14
Talia Chetrit: Pearls and Baby from DICKERING at Hannah Hoffman Gallery 41″ x 27″ archival pigment print
From the Hannah Hoffman press release:
Talia Chetrit’s latest images bring the camera home. Created over the last two years, the works in DICKERING unfold in the spaces where we loosen up and allow the coherent personas we craft for the outside world to melt away. Chetrit trains our attention on the intimate sites where personal boundaries dissolve, roles are negotiated, and power fluctuates moment-to-moment.
In Chetrit’s portraits of domestic life the cast of characters includes herself, her boyfriend, their child, cat, and a selection of props that intermingle with the quotidian routines of child rearing and the home. In Untitled, (Family #1), 2021, her boyfriend, dressed in women’s designer clothes, feeds their child without breaking his piercing gaze. And in Untitled (Family #2), 2021, wearing nothing but a blousy vest, he smiles cheerily at the camera while their child pokes at an uncovered electrical outlet. Despite the pretense of self-exposure in these and so many of Chetrit’s images, few of her works disclose much about the actual structure of her life, the nature of her habits, or her internal sense of self. Even in her self-portrait, in which Chetrit poses pregnant and draped only in a white button down shirt, the vulnerability of the image is undermined and refracted by her distorted face, covered with smeared makeup and a nylon stocking.
The power of Chetrit’s latest images hinges on an odd ambivalence between their banal settings and the presentations adopted by the adults within them. The characters’ gender contrivances and charms shift circumstance to circumstance and image to image, adding intrigue to the trappings of a middle-class life that serve as background. The posed postures and direct stares assumed by Chetrit and her boyfriend are less clues to their inner natures and more regular reminders of the camera’s presence, as well as the person behind it. These images revel in the fact that they are constructions, and as such they beg the question: who’s calling the shots in this drama? We imagine conversations about clothing, props, choreography, lighting, and setting, and the dialogue about what is presentable when first looking at the film. These works present a new set of negotiations between photographer, camera, and subject.
Talia Chetrit:Pregnant (Corey Tippin Make-up #1) from DICKERING at Hannah Hoffman Gallery. 40″ x 60″ archival pigment print
Talia ChetritUntitled (Family #2) from DICKERING at Hannah Hoffman Gallery. 40″ x 60″ archival pigment print
Talia Chetrit:DICKERING at Hannah Hoffman Gallery. June 19 – Aug 14
This is the first exhibition of Chetrit’s work we’ve helped produce for the Hannah Hoffman Gallery. We’ve been working with Talia since 2009.
Corey, Donna, Jane, Daphne, Giuliana, Ever, Jochem, Eric, Chris, unknown, and myself is an exhibition of portraits taken from 1995-2019 by Talia Chetrit. Spanning several decades these eight photographs move us across an uncanny breadth of staged and unstaged portraits— a test photo from a fashion shoot, a portrait of a body-cast from an ancient archeological site dated 79AD, self-portraits in the artist’s home, legendary muses backstage. The edit of these photos for the participatory space of the gallery functions as an analog to the contemporary conditions of image-making and image-viewing, a grouping for which a single time-stamp can open our curiosity, and also lay flat against a network of unrelated meanings, both within the exhibition itself and within photography itself.
Talia Chetrit: from Corey, Donna, Jane, Daphne, Giuliana, Ever, Jochem, Eric, Chris, unknown, and myself, Sies + Höke, 2019/2010 L: Self Portrait (Mesh Layer) 2019: 32 x 48 archival pigment print / dibond mounting R: Ever, Cory Tippin Make Up, 2018: 10 x 14 archival pigment print / dibond mounting
This is the forth exhibition of Chetrit’s work we’ve helped produce for Sies + Höke. We’ve been working with Talia since 2009.
For more on our projects with Talia click here For more on Talia with Sies + Höke click here