photography
SIGHTS UNSCENE
GALLERY ROUNDS: LACMA Review of Vera Lutter and "Acting Out"
For a museum that has torn down all of the buildings on its original campus, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art has been putting up some pretty interesting exhibitions in one of only two exhibition spaces that are left. The two photography exhibitions I’m thinking...
SIGHTS UNSCENE Birth of a Foothill Fire, San Gabriel Valley, CA, 2019
Remarks on Color: Lachrymose Lemon August's Hue
Lachrymose Lemon cannot stop weeping. She sobs uncontrollably at everything all the time: the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace, softball games, dinosaur conventions, the day her favorite chicken finally laid an egg. From the moment the sun rises to the last...
GALLERY ROUNDS: Vera Lutter Los Angeles County Museum of Art
One of the most uncanny things about the photographs in Vera Lutter's exhibition Museum in the Camera, is the fact that many of the galleries depicted, as well as the buildings themselves are no longer there. Lutter shot on site at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art...
Suitcase Joe and the State of Homeless Photography Sidewalk Champions
Sidewalk Champions By Suitcase Joe Burn Barrel Press In the wake of the unprecedented court decree issued in April by a federal judge ordering the city of Los Angeles to provide shelter for the 4,600 souls currently living in downtown skid row by this October, the...
SIGHTS UNSCENE The Reader, Los Angeles, circa 1990
Books: Jona Frank and John Divola SoCal Photographers Cover It All
Jona Frank’s new book, Cherry Hill, came out this spring almost simultaneously, but coincidentally, at the same time as another book, Terminus, by another SoCal photographer, John Divola. The coincidence is as fortunate as it is fortuitous because their subjects and...
SIGHTS UNSCENE Untitled, Los Angeles, 2020
Sherrie Levine: Sherrie Levine, Sherrie Levine Exhibition at Xavier Hufkens, Brussels
Part I: Lana Del Rey Some claimed that Lana Del Rey’s 2017 song “Get Free” was a rip-off of Radiohead’s iconic and self-masturbatory indie ballad “Creep,” which led to a rather unhinged and masculinist lawsuit. It seems that for women artists, homage or...
Pick of the Week: Joni Sternbach Von Lintel Gallery
In 1839, the very first portrait photograph was captured of (and by) Robert Cornelius. It must have been a difficult – albeit likely humorous – process, as Cornelius set up his camera before hurriedly running to sit motionless in front of it, arms crossed and hair...
Farrah Karapetian
Farrah Karapetian's current show, "The Photograph is Always Now," is a touching rumination on the loss of her father, who died of cancer last year. Furthering her ongoing exploration of photography's potential for semi-fictionally recasting bygones into the present,...
Christopher Russell
"Photography is dead," Christopher Russell declares in the statement for his current show, arguing that with the ease and popularity of digital manipulation, "there is no longer a belief that the captured image is anything more than a record of personalized fictions."...
Eileen Cowin; “Group Show: Drawings and Other Works on Paper”
Eileen Cowin's solo exhibition at As Is comprises eight photographic works chosen from two series, "Mad Love," and "Kafka's Diary." Each of Cowin's pictures cleverly pairs two disparate photos whose strange vertical abutment evokes emotion and suggests open-ended...
Graciela Iturbide
The black-and-white magic of Graciela Iturbide's photography is difficult to capture in words. Through her lens, quotidian moments acquire an iconic, spiritual quality as life's dichotomies and death's mysteries lyrically play out in light, shadow, pattern, and...
Justice Howard’s Voodoo
Major religions don’t do much image control; with his long hair and white skin, the hippyesque Jesus of the 21st century looks identical to the savior of the 11th century. The Buddha is also presented as the same old, same old; hair or no hair, it’s the smilin’ guy...
Lousy Lighting and Not Well-Hung
Clearly I am both not from LA and do not run in VIP circles because I had never heard of the Soho House prior to my invite to see photographer Kourtney Roy’s new collection of works on display there. I mistakenly assumed it was just a cheeky name for a gallery, so was...
Jane and Louise Wilson
Can the aftermath of a nuclear disaster or any other kind be measured or quantified? Certainly not with a handmade yard-stick. British twins Jane and Louise Wilson ponder these questions in their compelling exhibition “Imperial Measure.” The installation of...
