Exhibit This: June’s Photography Shows and Book Releases

Exhibition: “Facades”
Venue: New-York Historical Society
Date: present to June 15, 2014

“Editta Sherman on the Train to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, ca. 1972.” All Photos © Bill Cunningham/Courtesy of New-York Historical Society, Bill Cunningham

Bill Cunningham’s “Facades” Exhibition
The fabled fashion photographer behind The New York Times’ “On the Street” section has gotten his own exhibition at the New-York Historical Society museum highlighting his eight-year project documenting the rich architecture and fashion history of New York City. Though Bill Cunningham is most famous for his candid street photography today, “Facades,” which began in 1968, was a staged project—the street shooter sifted through thrift shops, auction houses and street fairs on his hunt for vintage clothing and, having scouted locations on his bicycle, posed models (including his long-time muse Editta Sherman, pictured here) donning period costumes in front of historical buildings. 

“Federal Hall (built ca. 1842, costume ca. 1910), ca. 1968-1976.”

While some of the photos may cause the viewer to momentarily question in which era they were shot, others create an interesting juxtaposition between prim aristocracy and urban grit. Cunningham donated 88 silver gelatin prints from “Facades” to the New-York Historical Society back in 1976, so the museum has put together a show to honor his work almost four decades later. The exhibition is currently on view through June 15.

Book Title: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Here and Now
Publisher: Thames & Hudson
Price: $70

The cover of Henri Cartier-Bresson: Here and Now. All Photos © Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos, courtesy of Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson

Iconic Street Photography in Book
Henri Cartier-Bresson, the legendary candid street photographer, will be having another posthumous book release dedicated to his vast repertoire of work, called Henri Cartier-Bresson: Here and Now (Thames & Hudson). It’s hard to believe that Cartier-Bresson, who famously coined the term “the decisive moment”—the precise moment when all of the esthetic and compositional elements come together within a frame—still has work out there that is largely unseen, but printed in the 416 pages of this photographic compilation are familiar and unknown pieces, printed in color and in Cartier-Bresson’s signature black-and-white. 

“Course cycliste, Les 6 jours de Paris, vélodrome, Paris, France, November 1957.”

Tracing Cartier-Bresson’s roots as a photographer to his role as a journalist, activist and artist, readers can expect the shooter’s early explorations around the streets of Paris in the 1920s and Africa in the ’30s. No matter where this pioneering photojournalist traveled, he went beyond mastering skillful technique to embodying an innate understanding of how to compose powerful coherence from chaos.

Exhibition: “Now You See It: Photography and Concealment”
Venue: The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Date: present to September 1, 2014

“Jimmy ‘One Eye’ Collins After Arraignment, 1946.” Photo © Bill Wasilevich/Courtesy of Twentieth-Century Photography Fund and The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Met Reveals “Now You See It” Exhibition from Century of Photographs
One of photography’s deceivingly simple-seeming purposes is transformed into a photo exhibition: to reveal something previously unseen. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is putting on “Now You See It: Photography and Concealment,” highlighting photographs that showcase the hidden, obstructed or otherwise secretive. “Some of the artists featured here use the camera to reveal subjects or places ordinarily hidden, as in Vera Lutter’s majestic view of the interior of a Pepsi-Cola bottling plant or Miguel Rio Branco’s lush image of a tapestry’s seamy underside,” reads the exhibition’s statement. “Others address instances of geopolitical obfuscation: Fazal Sheikh’s aerial photographs of the Negev desert in southern Israel record the traces of Bedouin villages that have been transformed into forests or farmland, while Mishka Henner collects images of stylishly censored high-security sites on Google Earth.” 

Works on display have been curated from more than 100 years of photographs; the oldest includes a photo taken by late 19th-century shooter Pierre-Louis Pierson as well as a contemporary piece by Thomas Demand called “Vault (2012)” of a storeroom in Paris full of paintings and sculptures recently discovered from a 2011 police raid—and perhaps pointedly, the paintings face the wall, hidden from view. “Now You See It,” which will feature 25 works from Diane Arbus, Lutz Bacher, Jack Pierson and more, is showing at the Met through September 1, 2014.

Book Title: Julian Wasser: The Way We Were 
Publisher: Damiani Editore
Price: $60

Photo © Julian Wasser/Courtesy of Damiani Editore

Julian Wasser’s Timeless Photography
In the days before celebrity culture took over newsstands and entertainment platforms, Julian Wasser was there with his camera capturing both the public and private lives of stars in 1960s- and ‘70s-era Los Angeles. Starting as a copy boy for the Associated Press in Washington, D.C., Wasser became a contract photographer for TIME magazine for decades, and his photos have adorned the covers of LIFE, Vanity Fair, ELLE, Vogue, GQ and more. In a recently released book titled Julian Wasser: The Way We Were (Damiani Editore), the photographer has gathered some of his most well-known work, such as the 1968 photo of Joan Didion leaning against a Corvette Stingray in Hollywood, as well as his less familiar photographs, like the image of the Fonda family sitting and talking together on their family sofa and that of a young Jodie Foster playing basketball. Fascinated by California’s counterculture, Wasser includes both posed portraits and candid shots of pop culture icons such as Elton John, Jayne Mansfield, Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese, Joni Mitchell, the Beatles and Steve McQueen (shown on the cover above).

Did you miss last month’s Exhibit This? “Home Truths: Photography and Motherhood” is still going on, as is the Smithsonian’s “American Cool” exhibit. 

See this story in the Digital Edition.