Books
Danny Lyon Lived His Photography
The photographer's autobiography takes us on a long voyage from East to West and back again without smoothing over the potholes in the road.
Julia Curl
Art
How Robert Frank Pushed the Boundaries of Photography
A refreshing retrospective demonstrates that, far from being overshadowed by The Americans, Frank was only getting started with it.
Books
Eileen Agar’s Surrealist Sea
“Surrealism for me draws its inspiration from nature,” writes Eileen Agar in her memoir A Look at My Life.
Art
How Commercial Photography Sold Modernism
The Real Thing at the Met Museum shows that the advertising tactics of commercial studios were in dialogue with avant-garde art in the 1920 and ’30s.
Art
Stan VanDerBeek’s Virtual Windows on the World
A cacophony of life, death, and perfume ads, transmitted across the same frequency, VanDerBeek’s fax collages captures an “international picture language.”
Film
The Surreal Realism of Buñuel’s Mexican Films
Luis Buñuel believed that surreal moments were necessary to achieve a true documentary style, as they reflect the fantastical, mysterious nature of everyday reality.
Art
Takako Saito Made Fluxus Fun
“I don’t want people to be an audience,” the artist explained in a 2014 interview, “I want everybody to be participants. Everybody involved!”
Art
How peter campus Changed the Video Art Game
“Three Transitions” from 1973 depicts a slippery reality that thwarts the notion of video as an inherently “documentary” medium.
Art
Carla Williams Takes Ownership of the Gaze
Williams’s scholarly interest in the Black female form paralleled a decades-long private photographic practice that began in the 1980s.
Books
Jay DeFeo Put a Lens Up to the World
Recently discovered work demonstrates DeFeo's status as a major contemporary photographer.
Books
A Global History of Women's Photography Includes Over 300 Artists
This book unearths a trove of unseen images from the past two centuries.
Art
The “Society Photographer” of NYC’s Downtown Underground
Jimmy DeSana’s work remains transgressive, even by today’s standards.