To peer into one’s refrigerator is to peer into one’s soul — at least, that’s the premise of You Are What You Eat, a photography series by San Antonio–based photographer Mark Menjivar, on view at Boerum Hill’s delightful micro gallery 0.00156 acres. The seven photographs featured in the exhibition depict the interiors of refrigerators in various US households, images Menjivar took over three years spent traveling across the nation, curious about America’s eating habits.
Photography
Posted inArt
Populating the Empty Spaces of Detroit
What’s most often missing from pictures of Detroit are people. They don’t quite work in the landscape of ruin porn, enamored as it of empty, decaying spaces that seem beautiful precisely because they’re devoid of the life they once had. Showing people would suggest that Detroit is more than just a string of abandoned tableaux waiting to be photographed by the next person passing through.
Posted inArt
Our Selfies, Ourselves
There was a period when I didn’t know what, exactly a “selfie” was. It sounded like a euphemism for something. Now I know that it’s just a self-portrait — our medium of choice for Facebook and Instagram (RIP). Two recent phenomena, faked selfies and art critic Brian Droitcour’s #artselfies, take the format to the next level.
Posted inArt
Staging Childhood Through a Nostalgic Lens
No holiday season is complete without a viewing of Home Alone, the classic film in which a young Macaulay Culkin is left to watch mob flicks by himself while his family heads to Paris for Christmas. Though few of us can boast of having fended off a couple of crooks from the family mansion, we all cherish our own childhood memories of times when distracted parents or inattentive babysitters allowed us to act on our imaginative impulses. Day Tripping, photographer Julie Blackmon’s stunning new show at the Robert Mann Gallery, captures the mischief and magic that brew when adult backs are momentarily turned.
Posted inOpinion
Is Flickr’s New App an Instagram Killer?
I was working on this review of Flickr’s new smartphone app when the online world started to grumble about Instagram and some matters that should concern us all.
Posted inArt
Small Town Gay Community
CHICAGO — Johannesburg-based South African artist Sabelo Mlangeni’s photographs depict a celebratory, positive, and campy-funny queer life in the countryside.
Posted inArt
Contemporary Photographers Remix Modern Masters
The Aperture Foundation, created in 1952, did much to alter photography’s reputation at a time when it was not yet considered art. Sixty years later, for the current anniversary exhibition, Aperture Remix, the foundation commissioned ten photographers — Rinko Kawauchi, Vik Muniz, Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs, Martin Parr, Doug Rickard, Viviane Sassen, Alec Soth, Penelope Umbrico, and James Welling — to revisit and respond to one of its publications, an issue of Aperture magazine or a photography book, that inspired their own work.
Posted inArt
Images from Inside Hurricane Sandy
Below are some of the notable images I encountered tonight, and I consider them a photo essay of sorts even though many of the images are not mine, but they are what I will remember about Sandy, more than the hundreds of news stories that will come out tomorrow and try to fashion a narrative for me.
Posted inOpinion
Spectacular Living Pictures
Yesterday on my rounds of Chelsea, I stumbled upon three amazing photographs on the walls of Andrew Edlin gallery. Included as part of Collectors of Skies, a wonderfully eclectic if somewhat theoretically abstract group show, each is a photograph of thousands of soldiers brought together to form a larger image — so for instance, 25,000 officers and men forming “The Human Liberty Bell.”
Posted inArt
Secret Dildo Sculptures and Abstract Neon Erotica
CINCINNATI, Ohio — The doors at the top of the gallery steps swing open with a crash. The touring Broadway show is over at the adjacent performing arts hall, and the matinee crowds pour into the Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery, a massive glass box situated on a busy street corner in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio. They’re in a hurry, these Blue Man Group faithful, heading to nearby garages, but many stop for photos and others stay and linger over Taint, a sprawling exhibition by artist Anthony Luensman featuring large-scale sculpture, photography, and video spread over the gallery’s two floors.
Posted inArt
Dreaming in Argentina When Juan Perón Was President
There are a many reasons to go see Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop, curated by Mia Freeman, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Yves Klein leaps into the void and Lyndon Johnson’s nose grows long and pointed (would that this would happen to all politicians who lie to their constituents!). Freeman presents the work in thematic groups, such as “Politics and Persuasion” and “Novelties and Amusements.
Posted inOpinion
Fleeting Glimpses of Scientific Knowledge, Turned Into Art
Words and writing, even those you’re seeing here, are an imperfect vehicle for communication. There’s always a disconnect between the writer and their audience; meaning is translated through a medium that’s easy to misunderstand or misinterpret. Spanish photographer Alejandro Guijjaro’s Momentum series proves that point with poignant photos of partially erased chalkboards.
