Musée Magazine No. 4

MUSﾃ右

DAVID LACHAPELLE LAUREN GREENFIELD GREGORY CREWDSON YALE MFA GRADUATES BRYAN GRAF SZE TSUNG LEONG RALPH GIBSON DEBORAH BELL HENRY BUHL WWW.MUSEEMAGAZINE.COM INTERNATIONAL EDITION NO. 4 CONNECTIONS

www.museemagazine.com International Edition No. 4 Connections Est. 2011 Issue No. 4

Editorial Office Founder / Editor in Chief Andrea Blanch Editorial Director Ellen Schweber Editorial Director Ann Schafer Creative Director Marsin Mogielski Production Manager Chris Talbot Assistant to the Editor in Chief Claire Banks Editorial Interns Christine Lee

Hyeri Choi

Teda Kokoneshi

Art Out Photographers Miguel Gesso Jenna Saraco Lauren Taubenfeld

Writers Diane Echer Nic Viollet

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Cover By © David Lachapelle, Courtesy of Fred Torres Collaborations, New York “Wilting Gossip” Photo of Andrea Blanch by Marsin Mogielski Editorial page spread (pg 1-6) Courtesy of Edward Wallace 2012 Musée Magazine | Reproduction without permission is prohibited

www.museemagazine.com International Edition No. 4 Connections Est. 2011 Issue No. 4

4

Editor’s Letter

5

Know the Team

9-22

David LaChapelle

23-36

Lauren Greenfield

49-64

Gregory Crewdson

65-74

YALE MFA Graduates

75-78

93-108

by Andrea Blanch

by Andrea Blanch

by Sabrina Wirth

by Sabrina Wirth

Bryan Graf

by Walker Waugh

Sze Tsung Leong

by Chris Talbot

119-132

Ralph Gibson

146

by Andrea Blanch

Maud

by Nic Viollet

147-158

Deborah Bell

by Andrea Blanch

171-176

Henry Buhl

194

by Andrea Blanch

Fuga

by Diane Echer

209-222

Editors’ Picks

223-224

Next Issue: Fashion

For my father.

“Big Ed”

February 3rd 1922 - July 1st 2012

I MISS YOU

Editor’s Letter

This issue of Musée is about connections.

Connected online, connected emotionally, connected thoughts, places, or things. For me, a connected life is a successful one.

David LaChapelle, in his series “Earth Laughs at Flowers,” combines the traditional motif of flowers with cell phones and popular culture, showing us connections to the past, present, and future. His series Awakened is connected to the biblical narrative of the Great Flood, referencing the past once again. Lauren Greenfield’s photos require an intimacy that can only be gotten by her having a close connection with her subjects. This is evident in all of her work, including books Girl Culture and Thin, and her latest film The Queen of Versailles. Ralph Gibson’s early connection to Dorothea Lange and Robert Frank not only taught him about the technical aspects of photography, but to “stay pure” on his road to becoming the medium itself.

In this issue and subsequent issues, we will be highlighting different MFA programs. After choosing Yale as our first school, I contacted Sabrina Wirth, who was the curator for the Yale MFA exhibition of recent graduates this past summer. I asked her to choose four photographers whose work she felt related to our theme. While speaking with her, she also let me know that she and Gregory Crewdson were great pals. When I expressed an interest in having him in the magazine, she offered to interview him and has also selected images that are featured in this issue. Crewdson graduated from the Yale MFA program and is now an adjunct professor there. “The program is not interested in repeating an established aesthetic,” Crewdson says. His own work is a dramatic narrative, connected to his childhood and other moments in his life.

Since graduating, Brian Graph, another Yale MFA graduate, has explored different image making techniques. He uses both old and new photographic processes to convey the intention of his images. Walker Waugh, Director of the Yancey Richardson Gallery, who also represents Graph, writes Graph’s work.

Being the director of Yancey Richardson, Waugh has cultivated an unerring eye and a finely tuned aesthetic.

With the photo auctions beginning in October, Musée speaks with Deborah Bell, the Head of the Photography Department at Christie’s. Deborah talks about her transition from gallerist to being the Head of the Photo Department, while also talking about the auction house itself. Collector Henry Buhl has amassed an important photographic collection of hands, four hundred of which will be auctioned off at Sotheby’s this December. It is a wonderful collection, enormous in scope, yet specific; one of quality and diversity, while adhering to its theme.

I would like to extend a thank you to the artists for their generosity and support, making Musée No. 4 happen. I am also grateful to all of the contributors, including our two creative writers, Nic Violette and Diane Echer, whose work is featured in this issue. And of course, thank you to the Musée team.

KNOW THE TEAM Ann Schaffer has been collecting cutting edge contemporary art since the early 1980’s. In addition to collecting, she is an advisor and teacher of young collectors.

A current trustee to the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, she also shares her passion for art as their guest curator to the Blank Canvas Benefit: For Arts Sake.

Furthermore, Ann is an officer of the Contemporary Arts Council of the MoMA, a trustee and chair of the Art Committee of the Montclair Art Museum, and a member of the Photography Committee of the Guggenheim Museum. Ann sits on the National Advisory Council and the Acquisitions Committee of the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, and is a trustee, executive committee member and exhibitions partner of Independent Curators International (ICI).

Ellen Schweber has been closely involved in every aspect of the contemporary art scene over the last thirty years. She has worked as a consultant of art, a collector and a teacher. She founded the Contemporary Collectors Circle at the Nassau County Museum of Art and was its chair for its first eight years. She also served on the Rose Art Museum acquisition community at Brandise University. In 2000, she created a unique class that offered aspiring young collectors the skills required to create their own exciting art collections for a range of both private and corporate clients. Over the span of the next ten years, Ellen featured this class in both New York and L.A, introducing her students to the inside track of the art world while taking them behind the scenes of galleries and museums. Her personal collection spans many decades and styles, from Minimalism, Graffiti, Neo Geo and everything in between.

Marsin Mogielski has been the Creative Director of Musée since the first issue.

He is involved in the photography selection process, creative layout and flow of the magazine, as well as interviews with featured artists. Working with Andrea Blanch the Editor In Chief, photographers, curators, writers, collectors and the Musée team to make each issue as fabulous as the next. Marsin began his path towards photography as a fashion model where he learned valuable techniques from the different photographers he has worked with. During that time, he also studied media communications at the City University of New York, as well as photography and typography at the New York School of Visual Arts. Marsin is on the advisory board for Lakewood High School in New Jersey. His creative eye and artistic mind also create Marsin Digital. Let’s make magic happen!

Chris Talbot graduated Savannah College of Art and Design in 2011 with a B.F.A. in Photography, Chris Talbot aspires to bring back imagery from various cultures around the world for others to experience. He strives to show the passion, motivation, and dedication within various cultures to show that the human species, whether through joyous or rough events; still have a significant amount of drive and passion for their own heritage. Currently, Chris resides in New York City working for Musée Magazine as Production Manager.

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Walker Waugh is a male human.

Sabrina Wirth is the director of Wirth Art Advisory, a company that represents emerging artists and curates exhibitions in various locations around New York City. Having grown up in New York City, Sabrina visited museums and galleries from an early age, and interned at the Metropolitan Museum of Art during High School. She has since worked at the American Academy in Rome, as a graphic designer at the NY Daily News, Sotheby’s, and as chief curator for the art startup IndieWalls, and is now part of the newly formed Junior Board at El Museo del Barrio.

Every year, Sabrina loves to curate the thesis show for Gregory Crewdson’s MFA photography class at Yale, and to collaborate with arts organizations to create unique opportunities for artists.

She has a BA from Williams College in Art History and a Masters from Sotheby’s Institute of Art in Art Business.

© Jerry Zalez

WRITERS

Diane Echer is a French-American who spent most of her life in Europe, where she practiced law. She now lives and writes in the United States. An alumna of the Writer’s Institute at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and was selected to be part of the inaugural term at the Center for Fiction’s Crime Fiction Academy.

Nic Viollet was born to French parents in Manhattan, New York and lived in Williamsburg his entire life. He went to high school on the Upper East Side, during which he fostered an interest in creative writing, beginning to write short stories inside and outside of classes. He is currently a sophomore in Bard College, located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York, potentially double majoring in Written Arts and Art History.

© Ralph Gibson

DAVID LACHAPELLE SURREAL TO

SUBLIME

David LaChapelle is inspired by everything from art history and street culture to the Hawaiian jungle in which he lives, projecting an image of twenty-first century pop culture through his work that is both loving and critical. He has an exceptional talent for combining a unique hyper-realistic aesthetic with profound social messages. His career began in the 1980’s when he started showing his artwork in New York City galleries. Catching the eye of Andy Warhol, who offered him his first photography job at Interview Magazine, LaChapelle gained recognition by shooting memorable photographs of celebrities. Later in his career, his striking images graced the covers and pages of Italian Vogue, French Vogue, Vanity Fair, GQ, Rolling Stone and i-D. He has photographed personalities as diverse as Tupac Shakur, Madonna, Lance Armstrong, Elizabeth Taylor, David Beckham, Leonardo DiCaprio, Hillary Clinton, and Muhammad Ali. LaChapelle has also branched out to direct music videos for artists to live theatrical events, and direct documentary films. His directing credits include music videos for artists such as Christina Aguilera, Moby, Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears, stage work for Elton John’s The Red Piano and the Caesar’s Palace spectacular, and Sundance award winning Krumped documentary film.

He has had record breaking solo museum exhibitions at the Barbican Museum, London (2002), Palazzo Reale, Milan (2007), Museo del Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, Mexico City (2009), the Musee de La Monnaie, Paris (2009), and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel. http://www.davidlachapelle.com/

Musée Magazine What’s the smartest thing you’ve ever done for your career?

The smartest thing that I’ve ever done was really follow my gut, my heart, and not just rely on my intellect. We all have the answers, you know? It’s just sometimes we can’t hear them with all the noise of the world. So, yeah, the smartest thing I ever did in my career was really trust my intuition.

Who do you think was most helpful to you during your career?

Oh God, so many people. It’s such a collaboration. There was Louis - who was my student manager - who passed away ten years ago. He worked with me for 17 years.

We started out when we were both 17. He died when he was 34 –heart failure – in my studio. He was incredible.

He worked for two years for free for me, because I was just starting out in the East Village. I didn’t have a studio; I was just working out of my apartment – a semi-squat apartment. I mean, paid rent, but no electricity. It was a leaky little place, but we loved it. And then he managed my studio and he was at the end of his life, but he was just running my shit. There was also Fred Torres. He was incredible to me. So many people, my “art people” I call them. I worked closely with Chrystal Ballow, Annie Sperling. They were the people I worked with the most on the sets and all the scenery. Also the stylists, the models, the subjects… Then there’s been this group of people that I’ve worked with for twenty years or more, and while there hasn’t really been this continuity in my life, with all the traveling, and moving around, the one thing that always remained were the people. It feels like family almost. You make this work together. It’s collaborative and everyone’s invested in it, and those relationships are priceless.

me. But once there was this really dear friend who was working for me, who helped me get my first book published, Sandy. She came from working with Irving Penn, which was like a laboratory, you know you had to wear uniforms, and it was very quiet. So she comes into this circus, and I was apologizing to her for some kind of freak out or something, and she was like, “I didn’t think that freak out would just end with the photo. I just knew there would be some kind of spill over, so I was kind of expecting. But yeah, don’t let it happen again.” You have to have people around you that can talk straight with you, and that’s what happens when you have people in your life for a long time: you get the best. Because you create an atmosphere where everyone feels like they can contribute. Even an intern can make a comment, and it will help to make the image better in the end. Like somebody brought an artichoke to the shoot, which was a staple in a lot of the old master’s still life’s, and I was like, “Yeah, we need an artichoke.”

What caused you to change your career path?

Starting at galleries as a kid, and then working for magazines, where the magazines became my gallery in a sense, I wanted to make a real impact. So I tried putting my own subtext, my own meaning into my photos, and it was really fulfilling. But at a certain point, you grow up. I really love fashion and beauty, its something that people are just really attracted to, but I just didn’t love the fashion world or the celebrity world. At a certain point my pictures didn’t feel like they were meeting the needs of the magazine and stories were becoming more difficult to get published. I was really getting feedback that they were nervous working around me. It was just a lot of pressure, and was no longer a fit as it had been, so I just stopped.

So after the third book came out, I really felt like the series was completed. I always thought it as a trilogy and really didn’t feel like I had anything left to say.

Is procrastination your friend or your enemy?

When it comes to my pictures there is never any procrastination. I mean I’m really passionate when it comes to my work, so I’m really over-aggressive. So there’s no procrastination there. When it comes to sorting my clothing drawer or junk drawer, that’s a whole other story. It’s a disaster. A lot of things get a little bit neglected. I haven’t been as good of a partner romantically as maybe I could have, because I’m so in love with what I do. I mean I haven’t written a thank you note. I have this list of people that I have to write “thank you” notes to, for little gestures or work that they’ve done, and I just don’t. I’m just consumed.

Once there was this major chaos going on in the studio, and I was just having this total meltdown. I was under a lot of pressure with deadlines and stuff, so I would take that pressure and transfer it to my crew, and they always understood, because they loved me. And I always felt bad afterwards if I lost my shit. And they would forgive 11 Musée Magazine No. 4

If a magazine came to you today - an editorial magazine - and said you could do whatever you want, would you do it?

No, not really. Because I’m doing really what I want to do. When you look at a photograph hanging in a gallery or museum, they’re exactly how I want them to be seen, they’re the size I want them to be. They’re the exact print – not a third generation or second generation print. It’s not on a video screen. It’s not a reproduction of the image: it is the image. There’s a freedom, but it’s also more challenging when you have to come up with your own parameters. The nature of a fashion shoot is always limiting. But when I do work for myself, I can do whatever I want, so I really have to bring myself in, and give myself guidelines or rules that I need to follow. We can’t make nature, which is the only other place where you can find the sublime, but rarely in art. Every once in a while, you can find the sublime in art.

I know you’re used to working with a big crew on fashion shoots etc. Is it more isolating working on your own stuff?

It’s less hectic. I mean fashion shoots are a lot more chaotic, but I really work with the same group of people.

I mean, those relationships I created through working on magazines, I’ve really carried them on into my fine art work. It’s really not that much of a leap for them because they always came from more of [an art], not a pure fashion background. I was never a real fashion insider.

“Late Summer” © David LaChapelle, Courtesy of Fred Torres Collaborations, New York

And I don’t really want to be an art world insider either because I don’t really want to make art just for the art world. I want to make it for the world in general.

What did you learn from working with celebrities?

Magazines - for twenty years - were really my education, they were my college. I had a really great quote, he said, “When you’re really ready to have your own show, wait two years,” and I feel like I waited twenty. I had those early shows in the 80’s, and then I kind of took these twenty years to work in magazines, and I really learned, I really grew up. And then now I actually came back to those themes, those ideas that were important to me when I was younger, once I started working again for galleries.

There’s much more expected of a photograph hanging in a gallery or museum wall than there is of one in a magazine, and I take that seriously. I want to give people that sustenance, that nourishment that people are looking for.

I really think there is just way too much art for the art world.

“You really need to focus. You can’t just sort of do music, or sort of be a photographer. There are too many people that are passionate about it.

You can’t really dabble too much in a lot of things. You really need to devote yourself.”

-David LaChapalle

What advice would you have for a photographer just starting out?

Turn off your personal devices: cell phones, computers.

You need to get away. For me, getting away was always in nature. I was always lucky because when I was growing up, my parents had this great house in Connecticut, a two and a half hour bus ride from Port Authority. So luckily, I could go home. And my parents lived in the woods, on this beautiful mountain surrounded by reservoirs. And I would go there and figure out my life’s problems, and direction, by sitting in the woods, and praying and meditating, and really trying to get answers. Answers would come, but it was in stillness. And it was all alone. It was a really difficult time. AIDS was killing a lot of my friends.

I thought I was going to die. And I just can’t say enough how important it is to rely on your inner voice, your gut, whatever you want to call it. I truly believe the answers are inside of us, so making quiet time.

to devote yourself. I mean look at Francesca Woodman, she died so young, but that girl was – that’s obsession.

So if you’re going to just dabble it’s not going to work, unless you just want it to be a hobby, which is fine, but those are things you need to figure out. And those are things you can’t ask someone else. You can’t ask your teachers, or your friends. You have to go inside of yourself.

I think art versus fashion, for a young photographer to get published or get out there and see. I mean I was doing weddings. My first real gig was with Condé Nast Traveler for ten years. I wanted to see the whole world, and I really got to. It was the first ten years with the magazine, and I got to go everywhere. I took friends with me, and talk about what an incredible opportunity. I mean when you’re traveling when you’re young, with your friends, what are you going to fight about? It’s always going to be money, but here we are with an expense account.

I mean I was in my twenties and traveling around the world with my friends. And this was before the Internet, so we would just call up and be like, “It’s been raining all week.” And so we would get an extra week to be in these places. But I think you have to, I mean, let’s say you want to be a photographer. You have to diversify yourself as much as you can. Unless you come from money, you have to work. I mean weddings taught me something, travel photography taught me something, and they all lead into what I’m doing today.

What inspired this [current] show?

I just really wanted to do this series of flowers inspired by the old masters, and take their idea of the narrative, where all the objects in the image helped tell a story. I wanted to do it as a photograph, but I wanted the photographs to feel like paintings. Like the Photorealists, who made paintings that looked like photographs, I wanted these photographs to feel like paintings. I really wanted to engage the conversation that these Old Masters were in, where every object had symbolism. We really live in a disposable society. In these old paintings the objects were of great value, so now these objects no longer have the same symbolism. So, I used these disposable objects to really communicate that. n Interview by Andrea Blanch Photograph of David LaChapelle by Andrea Blanch All other photographs Courtesy of Fred Torres Collaborations, New York

Also, when you’re young you can be so good at so many things, music, art. You really need to focus. You can’t just sort of do music, or sort of be a photographer. There are too many people that are passionate about it. You can’t really dabble too much in a lot of things. You really need

No. 4 Musée Magazine 14

“Early Fall” © David LaChapelle, Courtesy of Fred Torres Collaborations, New York

“Risk” © David LaChapelle, Courtesy of Fred Torres Collaborations, New York

“America” © David LaChapelle, Courtesy of Fred Torres Collaborations, New York

“Springtime” © David LaChapelle, Courtesy of Fred Torres Collaborations, New York

“Ruth” © David LaChapelle, Courtesy of Fred Torres Collaborations, New York

“Jesse” © David LaChapelle, Courtesy of Fred Torres Collaborations, New York

“Delilah” © David LaChapelle, Courtesy of Fred Torres Collaborations, New York

“Abram” © David LaChapelle, Courtesy of Fred Torres Collaborations, New York

Acclaimed documentary photographer/filmmaker, Lauren Greenfield is considered a preeminent chronicler of youth culture, gender and consumerism, as a result of her monographs “Girl Culture,” “Fast Forward,” “THIN” and other photographic works, which have been widely published, exhibited, and collected by leading museums around the world.

Her latest feature-length documentary film, “The Queen of Versailles” was selected as the Opening Night film of Sundance 2012 where it garnered critical acclaim and won the Best Director Award. It opened to critical acclaim in theatres nationwide in July, 2012.

In addition to “The Queen of Versailles,” Lauren has previously directed three award-winning documentary films – “THIN,” “kids + money,” and “Beauty CULTure.” “THIN” was selected for the Official Competition at Sundance in 2006, was nominated for an Emmy for Best Direction, and received the prestigious John Grierson Award for Best Documentary at the London Film Festival in 2006. “kids + money,” also selected for the Official Shorts Program at Sundance 2008, won several Best Doc Awards (AFI, Ann Arbor, Gold Hugo), and was selected as one of the top five nonfiction shorts in the world by Cinema Eye Honors 2009.

“Beauty CULTure” had its festival premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival and is part of Docuweeks 2012. It was the featured documentary of the record-setting exhibition at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles (Summer 2011), which received the Lucie Award for Exhibition of the Year.

American Photo named Lauren one of the 25 most influential photographers. Her work was showcased in the Getty Museum’s historical exhibition, “Engaged Observers: Documentary Photography Since the Sixties” (2010).

AUREN GREENFIELD

Musée Magazine

Would you explain Visual Environment Studies to me?

That’s the name of the art department at Harvard. It’s called Visual and Environmental Studies and it basically encompasses painting, sculpture, photography, filmmaking, and history of film, etc. What I did in that department was fairly specific: I did photography and filmmaking, and I also really focused on visual anthropology. I spent my

third year with this program going around the world with some of my professors from my department and thirty students, traveling to nine countries in nine months, staying with families in each one. We studied at the film institutes, ethnographic institutes, and anthropology museums in each of those countries. That was my focus, but when I was back at Harvard, I did mostly photography and filmmaking. I studied with this photographer named Barbara Norfleet who started the Harvard Archive and did this book called All the Right People about the world of the WASPs in the Northeast, which really inspired me to do my first photo project about the French aristocracy. I recently showed The Queen of Versailles in Boston and Barbara Norfleet, who is eighty-six now, came. It was re-

© Lauren Greenfield / Institute

ally fun to talk to her about that journey because in a way The Queen of Versailles was going back to some aspirational American aristocracy with money rather than heritage, and the French aristocracy had the heritage but no money. The thing about the title is that it got more layered with nuances and became more meaningful as the project went on. The movie really grew into the title because when I started it, Jackie was a beauty queen who was building Versailles and it was only at the end

that these references to the French Revolution and Marie-Antoinette came about.

How did you find the story for your movie?

I had been working for a number of years on a longterm project on wealth, consumerism, and the American Dream. My work with consumerism started back with Fast Forward in the ‘90s and has been part of this continuous journey. I met Jackie while I was photographing Donatella Versace. I was following her in Beverly Hills where she was opening a new store, and Jackie came to t

Š Lauren Greenfield / Institute

Musée Magazine

the party because she was one of Donatella’s best customers at the time. I made a still life photograph of purses including Jackie’s very “blingy” gold Versace purse, and that photo was in Time Magazine’s 2007 “Pictures of the Year.”

The caption said “The High Life” and it explained how the picture represented what the people were calling the “New Gilded Age” of 2007. In a way that turned out to be prescient: she really represented the high life at the time and she told me how she was building the biggest house in America, which I didn’t even believe when I first heard. At the time, I had been getting interested in this connection between the American Dream and home ownership. Her building the biggest single-family home was fascinating! It started with a photo shoot: she invited my assistant and I to stay at her home. In fact, I remember my assistant in L.A., who was helping me set it up, sent me a Google satellite photo of her house showing her already huge house with all of the guest houses around it. One of the things that really drew me in the beginning was this openness, generosity, and down-to-earth quality she had, even though she lived this life of stratospheric proportion. My teacher Barbara Norfleet started her All the Right People project because she started the Harvard Archive and found very few documentary photographs of rich people. Most documentation of rich people was either commissioned portraiture or society pictures, which tend to be flashed or have a blank wall, with no cultural context whatsoever. That is why Barbara started the book, and when I started The Queen of Versailles, I thought there would be a real cinema verité look at the lives of the very wealthy with the backdrop of building the biggest house in America. This would be something in contrast to the packaged, idealized, aspirational look at wealth that we often see in advertising or reality television. That’s how it started, and I was also interested in the upstairs-downstairs structure of their house that seemed like a microcosm for American society. They had this big, extended family filled with domestic help from all these different countries in South America, the Philippines, etc., and even family members that were not really rich. There was so much diversity in this single-family house! It started like this, but a year into filming they very suddenly had to put their house on the market because David’s business was severely affected by the crash and the bankers told him to do that in order to raise some cash. Even after the crash, I never thought that a family like that would be affected by it. It was clear that when they had to put their house on the market around 2010 that they had to give up their dream and look at the prospect of a very different life, involving eventual bankruptcy and foreclosure. At that point I realized that this was an allegory about the overreaching of America, a supersized version of what was happening to so many Americans. Around that time in my photography work, I had already documented foreclosed cities in California and the crash in Dubai, making this all eerily familiar with much larger proportions.

At the beginning of the film in the theater, some people were laughing at the family’s most outrageous things, but by the end—at least for myself— I felt compassion for these people. Did you have

© Lauren Greenfield / Institute

that intention when you went in to do that or did it develop?

I think that’s a through line in all of my work, and the thing with a film like The Queen of Versailles, or even my other one Thin, is that it’s such a long period of time and you get to know the people and have such an intimate access that having compassion and empathy comes out of that relationship. I showed the film a couple weeks ago at a screening where Anne Tucker, the curator of the Museum of Fine Arts at Houston, was there, and said that for her, the scene in the beginning where I’m photographing all of them is so important, as well as the way my voice carries through in some of the interviews, because my relationship with them is at the core of the film. I think it’s that kind of embedded access over time that is always what I’m doing, but in film it’s always been much deeper and much longer than in photography, which I always thought of as being very intimate. Compared to filmmaking, however, photography spends much less time with the subject. The thing about doing a family like David and Jackie is that they are so extreme and there are so many things in their lives that trigger certain stereotypes, but the fun thing about this, and the compelling piece of this and their story, is that nothing is what it seems. It’s constant revealing.

“I think there are different parts of me that identify with all of them [my subjects].”

- Lauren Greenfield

How did you feel when you were shooting child pageants?

I made a film called Beauty Culture last year, which has Eden Wood from Toddlers and Tiaras in it, and that then led me to be able to photograph the beauty pageants. In a way it was long overdue because my book Girl Culture explores how the body has become the primary expression of identity for girls and women. Girls learn at any early age that their beauty is a source of power and currency, and therefore how to use and manipulate that. I think that beauty pageants really speak to that and it is no coincidence that Jackie Siegel is a beauty queen. I’m fascinated by that because not only is she a beauty queen, but she is a beauty queen by design in the sense that she was an engineer who realized that her beauty could get her further in terms of where she wanted to go in life as opposed to her engineering degree. There’s a reputation that the mothers always push the daughters to do it, which is true, but sometimes the girls want to do it, too! They both get a sense of power from that because of the way beauty is held in our culture. I have two boys, but what I’ve heard from other mothers who have daughters is that often times on the street someone will say, “Oh, she is so cute” or “Oh, she’s so beautiful.” I think that’s something that has been of interest to me: how girls learn from an early age that their external is important and has value, and changes the way people interact with them. In a way, beauty pageants are not just about beauty pageants and whether they are good or bad, but really are a metaphor for the beauty contest that life is for women. That’s what my film Beauty Culture is about, looking at the precautious sexuality of childhood in little girls, which is best represented by the beauty pageant scene. In Beauty Culture, Eden Wood is wearing a showgirl outfit, which was very controversial. A lot of times in my w 31 Musée Magazine No. 4

© Lauren Greenfield / Institute

A lot of the work I’ve done, Fast Forward and Girl Culture in particular, really came out of my own childhood and my own teenage years. The passion and early research for those books came from my own experience. I’ve never had an eating disorder, I’ve never shopped excessively, but I have shopped for pleasure and I have dieted. I’ve done all of those things, but in a more measured way.

I definitely draw on those experiences and insecurities for all of this work; it’s been very cathartic. I definitely thought like that in high school too, about what I was going to wear or what I should eat, and it doesn’t ever go away completely, but at this point in my life I have tons of work to do, which I love, and I have kids; I’m too busy to let my vanity take too much of my time.

You have boys, and most of your work is focused around girls. Do you feel differently when you photograph boys than when you photograph girls?

I just haven’t had as much experience with boys. My next book and show is about wealth, which includes both boys and girls, men and women. I am definitely getting more interested in boys because I see with my own kids that instead of getting better for girls, it’s getting worse for boys in terms of the commercialization of culture, which is making them constantly think of six packs and abdominal muscles, for example. My son buys those Axe products that advertise that boys who wear it will smell good and get pretty girls. This $350 billion beauty No. 4 Musée Magazine 32

Š Lauren Greenfield / Institute

industry is helped by female insecurity. If you feel like you need these products to be beautiful or be okay or even just normal, then it’s really a great way to create a huge market. There’s no limit to what people want to sell, and I think boys and men are another frontier for selling products. I’m very interested in this, but I don’t have that much experience with it. I also may not have the same natural relationship with men that I do with women.

The one thing that has really been at the core is my relationships with my subjects. I think that’s what you do as a documentarian: you build these relationships.

I think I can do it with boys too, but I just might need that extra step, and I might need to see my kids grow up a little bit more in order to gain that experience.

Is there any subject in any of your work that you’ve particularly identified with?

I think there are different parts of me that identify with all of them. There were definitely certain qualities with Jackie, and even David, that I identified with, such as how I’m a workaholic. Shelley, one of the main characters of Thin, who was anorexic, used to say that work was my addiction. In a way, Thin, Queen of Versailles, Kids + Money, and Beauty Culture are all about addiction in some way or another.

You use Los Angeles in a lot of your work. Why is it so unique and why does it have so much to do with your work?

The society there speaks louder to what I’m trying to show than anywhere else. Los Angeles has been a really inspirational place. The big revelation I had doing that work was coming from this visual anthropology background.

I started as an intern at National Geographic and then went to Mexico where I did my first project on the Maya in the highlands of the Chiapas. As I struggled with access to a very foreign culture, I started thinking about the culture I grew up in, and about how what comes out of Hollywood and Los Angeles in general, is influential both nationally and internationally. In this homogenization of culture that was coming from popular culture, television, music, and movies made me realize that my own hometown and its culture was worthy of documentation. L.A. has always been that place where I feel comfortable, yet in my work I always feel on that line between an insider and an outsider. However, I moved here when I was six and my parents are not from here, nor were they ever in the entertainment business. I also spent my tenth grade in France and then came back to a different high school.

I really was an outsider in L.A. and when I went to the

East Coast for college, I felt much more comfortable. I never expected to come back until my boyfriend, who is now my husband, wanted to move back, and when we did I went back to my high school and started making Fast Forward. Exploring this sense of not fitting in was cathartic! As my interests have become more about popular culture, the body, and consumerism, L.A. is really the capital of all that. The work for me has never been about Los Angeles, but really as a place of extremes, where you can see how the extreme manifestations of popular culture affect its population. You have to be in the extremes to see how it affects the mainstream. That’s how The Queen of Versailles works: it’s an extreme family with these larger-than-life realities; it doesn’t look like how anyone that we know lives. And yet, in this big version, it allows us to see ourselves because we know we’re not seeing ourselves, but their behavior mirrors what we all did and how we are all complicit in all this.

Is Wealth going to be a book or a film, or both?

Wealth is going to be a book and an exhibition in late 2013, but not a film.

What advice do you have for emerging photographers or filmmakers?

The advice I got in college that I like to give is “Follow your heart.” I’ve always pursued my own stories, and whatever I’ve done for money, I’ve never let that dictate the stories that I tell. I’ve tried to make a life where I could follow my own stories.

You didn’t go to grad school. Do you recommend it to people?

I think it’s fine if it’s a safe place to do your work. I didn’t do it, and I think the most important thing is doing your own projects and having a place where you can do that without having to make money. For example I did a project when I was a waitress. I just stayed around Harvard and was able to use their darkrooms. The thing about photography is that there isn’t one way to do it. At the end of the day, you just have to just do it. n Interview by Andrea Blanch Photograph of Lauren Greenfield by Roxanne Lowitt All other photographs Courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

No. 4 Musée Magazine 34

Š Lauren Greenfield / Institute

Heath Braun Untitled Contact: www.thegreatwhitebison.com/images/anamnesis

Xavier Avila Untitled Contact: http://www.xavieravila.com

Jon Damaschke Title: Chasing Shadows Contact: http://www.jondamaschke.com

Pedro Abreu Untitled Contact: pabreuart@aol.com

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Pedro Abreu Untitled Contact: pabreuart@aol.com 41 Musée Magazine No. 4

Jon Damaschke Title: No Business Contact: http://www.jondamaschke.com No. 4 Musée Magazine 42

Linda Weiss Title: Mutual Contact: linda.wei7@googlemail.com

Linda Weiss Title: Mutual Contact: linda.wei7@googlemail.com

Lluis Busse Title: Tweens 5 Contact: http://lluisbusse.wordpress.com

Kimberly Warner Untitled Contact: www.kimberlywarner.com

GREGORY CREWDSON By

SABRINA WIRTH Gregory Crewdson has been one of my favorite photographers ever since I first saw an exhibit of his at Mass MOCA in North Adams, Massachussetts.

I felt what I am sure most people feel when they see his pictures, and that is of being a voyeur into an alternate world frozen in time where dozens of scenarios seem possible. His pictures depict moments that leave questions unanswered and the narrative up to the viewer. Several years after I first encountered Gregory’s photographs, I was in Rome, Italy, and through a series of fortuitous events was able to join him and his crew during a shoot for his new series in Cinecittá. I cannot express the excitement I had in being able to finally meet Gregory, and speak to him about his work. We quickly became friends, and for the past few years I have had the honor of curating the thesis show for the MFA photography students he teaches at Yale.

Gregory Crewdson received a B.A. from the State University of New York at Purchase in 1985 and an M.F.A. in photography from Yale in 1988. He has exhibited widely in the United States and Europe and is represented by Gagosian Gallery in New York City. He is Professor Adjunct in Graduate Photography at the Yale University School of Art. Crewdson’s work has been included in many public collections, most notably the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. He has received numerous awards including the Skowhegan Medal for Photography, the National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship and the Aaron Siskind Fellowship.

He has published several books of his photographs with national and international publishers including Hover, Dream of Life Twilight and Beneath the Roses with and a retrospective book of his work, entitled Gregory Crewdson from 1985 to 2005. Crewdson’s newest body of work, Sanctuary, premiered at Gagosian Gallery in New York in 2010, it then traveled to White Cube in London and Gagosian Gallery in Rome. This new work was featured in a book published in 2010.

“Untitled (25-35)”, 1996 © Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

Your photographs are very cinematic, and I know you love movies. Which ones do you think have inspired your artwork the most?

Well, there is a long list of movies. I would say… Alfred Hitchcock films, but I would point out especially Vertigo, it’s one of the most beautiful movies ever made.

And maybe Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind... which has a direct reference to my work and David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. Which is the film that chiefly inspired me when I was in graduate school.

What is the most important lesson you learned from grad school?

That’s really where I began attempting to combine different elements of documentary and cinematic production.

It was an important time in that it was really the place where it all came together. And it was when I first started thinking about lighting and other cinematic production for my work. If you look back at my earlier pictures, they are all in a very early way showing an interest that I’m still concerned with so many years later.

When I look at your photographs, I feel like I’m inside a whole other world—an altered reality. The images seem to be capturing a scene that is neither in the beginning nor the end, but rather in a state of limbo—in the middle. What draws you to these types of images?

The films that I mentioned, they all in different ways very much shaped my pictures, but in as many ways as my pictures are similar to movies they are also very different.

Unlike a movie, as I should point out, that moves forward in time, a still photograph is just present at each moment.

So there is no before and after in the photographs. In that way, any story can be told in a photograph, condensed, and remain elusive in a way. But rather than that being a limitation, I try to make that the meaning of each picture.

In other words, I am interested in moments that don’t resolve and remain open-ended questions.

Is there any connection between the types of photographs you create and your personal life?

My pictures aren’t autobiographical in a literal sense, in that, they’re not directly related to actual things that happen to me, but that being said, there’s always a relationship between life and art, and so in a more kind of elusive or psychological way, my pictures reflect my ephemeral psychological anxieties or desires, or whatever might be.

And particularly, an overarching theme in the work is a sense of loneliness or of being alone. But also of wanting to make a connection.

You used a crew?

I wasn’t working with production crews. But narrative and story telling, and lighting and color were still major parts of my work.

What were your photographs like before Yale?

Rudimentary, elemental. It wasn’t until Yale that they came together aesthetically.

You have about, I think, four different styles of photography that you have done in the past. Your early work, with the tableaus, the dioramas you’ve created, then your Fireflies, the cinematic work- Close Encounters and Twilight- and then you have your most recent photographs from Rome, which are a huge departure since they are not even in the United States. Would you say that each of the changes in those styles directly correlate with different points in your life or were you experimenting with different styles?

I think that it’s part of the artist’s job to continually try to reinvent yourself and to try and dramatically change the nature of your work. But that being said, I think that all the ways of making pictures or the different series are all connected despite the surface differences and photographic styles and production value. I would say that all the pictures respect a different versions of the same story. They’re all interested in exploring the uncanny and they’re all interested in the psychological exploration of place. As much as you try, you can’t ever quite get away from yourself.

No. 4 Musée Magazine 52

Musée Magazine

You have about, I think, four different styles of photography that you have done in the past. Your early work, with the tableaus, the dioramas you’ve created, then your Fireflies, the cinematic work- Close Encounters and Twilight- and then you have your most recent photographs from Rome, which are a huge departure since they are not even in the United States. Would you say that each of the changes in those styles directly correlate with different points in your life or were you experimenting with different styles?

I think that it’s part of the artist’s job to continually try to reinvent yourself and to try and dramatically change the nature of your work. But that being said, I think that all the ways of making pictures or the different series are all connected despite the surface differences and photographic styles and production value. I would say that all the pictures respect a different versions of the same story. They’re all interested in exploring the uncanny and they’re all interested in the psychological exploration of place. As much as you try, you can’t ever quite get away from yourself.

When people think of your photographs they think of your use of light and the cinematic quality and a sense of eeriness. And then your black and white photographs are so different. The production level is much lower. I know you had a crew in Rome, but you didn’t have a crew when you created Fireflies.

How did you feel when you created those?

I love black and white photography in general, and particularly the history of photography. I think that there’s something very elemental or basic in the two groups of black and white pictures I was trying to get at. In the fireflies, I was really trying to make the most elemental pictures possible. With the black and white film exposed to light of the fireflies. And the pictures in Rome were very self-consciously using black and white as a reference to documentary photography like Walker Evans and Eugène Atget. But they’re both for very particular reasons. But I think mostly in terms of color in making my pictures. I use black and white in those occasions because they were very specific to the projects.

So are you going to continue with color or will you explore black and white some more?

The next body of work is definitely in color.

You already know what you’re going to do next?

I’m very much in the early stages, but I have a pretty clear understanding of what the next pictures will be.

I’m not going to ask you what the next project is, because I’m sure you don’t want anyone to know yet, but do you think you’ll try creating work outside of the US again, or was this a one-time thing?

No. You know, since I’ve returned back to MA, and have now been living in this church here, I’m definitely very excited about making pictures here. Which now feels very much like my home. It will be interesting to make pictures in this area now that I’ve returned back here.

And lived here. I think they’re going to feel very different.

That’s exciting! So, besides photography, what else are you passionate about? I know you love swimming…

I guess one of my absolute favorite things to do in the world is to walk up the Appalachian trail to this secluded lake called Upper Goose Pond, and go for very long open water swims there and that is really great to have that structure and to have that time to think, and think about my new pictures. During the summer I try to do that daily.

Do you think that if you had not grown up in Brooklyn, you wouldn’t have this desire to go towards nature? Or to be in nature?

Yeah, It’s so hard to say, but …

Because you’re a city boy but you love to be away from the city!

Yes! No, as you know I’ve grown up in Park Slope in Brooklyn, and I still have an apartment in Brooklyn, but I really feel like this is where I love to be and where I love to make pictures.

How did you find your Church in Massachusetts?

It’s interesting actually because I found my church through Dan Karp’s (production crew member) ex-girlfriend. They broke up and I ended up renting it from her and then I fell in love with it and ended up buying it. My Sanctuary.

Ok, I’m going to ask you a few quick questions now.

Your favorite color?

Blue

What kind of music can you be expected to be listening to?

Hmmm… well, I love Wilco and Radiohead and the Beatles of course.

Are you teaching your kids how to be in a band?

We are in a band! The Straws.

The Straws!

Yeah. Walker plays the drums, I play guitar and Lily plays electric piano.

And who came up with the name?

Walker came up with the name. Brilliant.

Do you think he’ll follow a similar path as you?

I think he absolutely seriously has extraordinary intuition for music. Truly does. So, I know he’ll wind up playing music in one way or another.

I expect to see him on America’s Got Talent soon!

So, back to Yale. Are you doing anything differently with the Photography MFA program now that you are the director?

What I’m attempting to do is to open up the concepts and make it more diverse- Trying to make it more current without changing the core of the program. We’ve always had contemporary artists come in, but I’m going to focus on make it as interesting and as vital as possible.

I’ve always been drawn to photography because it’s always been connected to everything else. And I’m doing everything I can to bring out those connections.

What advice would you give to young, emerging photographers?

Of course!

To be honest to their story. Follow their particular view of the world. And protect that story. Everybody works and has some kind of story, doesn’t have to be literal- it can be abstract. The photograph must reveal something about the maker. Just like any novel or movie would- really any work of art. n

Does he imitate you?

Interview by Sabrina Wirth

He’s destined to be a rock star so he of course loves it.

Photograph of Gregory Crewdson by Andrea Blanch

Has Walker seen your YouTube video of you when you were part of The Speedies?

“Untitled (28)”, 2009 © Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery

All other photographs Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery

“Untitled (Bird with loaves)”, 1998-2002 © Gregory Crewdson, Courtesy Gagosian Gallery.

“Untitled (Spooky Garage)”, 1998-2002 © Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery.

“Untitled (Shane)”, 2006 © Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery.

“Untitled (19)”, 2009 © Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery.

“Untitled (Ophelia)”, 2001 © Gregory Crewdson. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery.

YALE M

Musée Magazine

Every year, about nine students begin a journey together in pursuit of their MFA degree in Photography at Yale University, one of the best art programs in the country. They start off

as strangers and end up as a family. With access to mentors such as Tod Papageorge, the former director of the graduate photography department, Gregory Crewdson who is Papageorge’s successor as director, Philip Lorcia di Corcia, and guest critics like Jeff Koons, the two years spent together could be one of the most influential periods of their lives.

Thomas Gardiner

Born and raised in Western Canada. He began his undergrad studies at Emily Carr Institute in Vancouver then transferred to The Cooper Union in New York where he graduated in 2008. Having just recently finished his MFA in photography at Yale in 2012, Thomas has mainly been interested in using an 8x10 camera to photograph working class urban areas in the North Eastern United States. He is the recipient of the 2011-2012 Tierney Fellowship as well as the Leeds-Marwell Photography Scholarship. He also received the Schickle-Collingwood Prize for 2010-2011 from the Yale School of Art and in 2009 was a top 10 finalist for the OjedePez Prize for Human Values.

Katie Koti

Grew up in Greenfield Massachusetts. Her work to date has focused on identity, desire, and embodiment, often using landscape to explore visceral connections between bodies, culture, and nature. Koti is a member of the Yale MFA Photography class of 2012. She earned a BFA in Photography and Graphic Design (2010) at the Rhode Island School of Design. Before attending RISD, Koti graduated with Honors from Greenfield Community College, Massachusetts, where she studied Liberal and Media Arts. Koti shoots with both an Ebony 4x5 field camera and a Canon Mark II.

Kate Merrill

Born in 1980, Kate is an American photographer raised in rural Maine. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Marlboro College in 2002 and her MFA in photography from the Yale University School of Art in 2012. She currently resides in Western Massachusetts.

Felix R. Cid

A visual artist born in Madrid, Spain in 1976. He started working as a photographer during summers in Ibiza while at winter he studied at “Escuela de Arte Numero 10” in Madrid where he graduated in 2002 moved to New York and study a full time program in the International Center of Photography. He graduate in 2005.

After several international group exhibitions and two solo in New York and Arles, France, he was accepted in the MFA program in Photography at Yale University where he graduated last May 2012. He was recently nominated for the Toby Devan Lewiss Fellowship 2012.

MFA’S For the class of 2012, much of the work is a continua- her family portraits creates an interesting sense of distion of ideas touched upon before entering Yale, but the resources made available to them have made it possible to make in-depth explorations into the art of photography. Whether the images are as personal as Kate Merrill’s “Family Portrait” or as removed from the individual identity such as Felix R. Cid’s “Bull Fight”, each photographer has a unique connection to their subject matter.

Four artists whose works I would like to discuss are Tom Gardiner, Felix R. Cid, Katie Koti, and Kate Merrill.

Tom Gardiner is from Western Canada, and is probably the most technically advanced photographer in the class.

He uses an 8 x 10 camera to create large-scale portraits of people within their own environment. Although many of his photographs appear to be staged, Gardiner’s photographs are almost documentary in style- capturing the essence of the subject without having to direct them in any particular way. Before entering Yale, Gardiner mainly photographed in Canada, but the subsequent work he created while at school still has a similar feel. Gardiner is interested in finding the connection between a person and the place- how connected a person is to their surroundings.

In a way, each of the artists has a strong connection with their subjects. Katie Koti’s photographs, for example, are all about her role within her girlfriend’s family. An unconventional family that is not her own, but that she has adopted- or that has adopted her. Each photograph is rich with saturated colors and, except for the color, is highly reminiscent of Sally Mann.

Kate Merrill also chose her family as the subject of her thesis presentation, but unlike Koti did not include herself in any of the photographs. Removing herself from

connect. Merrill wants to show the viewer her family in their natural setting, yet excludes herself. The focus on her family’s mundane activities shows their clear relationship, and her absence from the images allows the viewers to see her family through her eyes as well. Merrill is inviting viewers into her home and in a way, by removing herself from the camera lens, makes the viewer feel less of a voyeur but rather as a participant.

Felix R Cid’s photographs are possibly the most unique out of all the MFAs in that his subject matter is distinctly European and rejects the notion of the individual, whereas the rest of the class focused on identity. It makes sense though, that Cid’s photographs should be this way; they are very reflective of his personality. Having grown up in Spain, the connection to his country and its history is very present in his imagery; in Spain, the idea of the individual is overpowered by the notion of group and collective ideals. His photograph “Bull Fight” was taken over a period of days at different hours from different angles, and then pieced together to create a masterful image of the shared experience of the bullfight in Madrid.

Although the nine students in the MFA class of 2012 started off as strangers, the title of their thesis show was “Group Portrait”, after the article novelist Rick Moody wrote in the introduction to their catalogue. Although individually, each artists’ work is very distinctive and reflective of their personalities, when shown in a group setting, each artists’ images complement each other to create a very cohesive and strong show. Perhaps the two years spent working together enabled subtle ideas and characteristics to rub off each other and slip into their photographs. n

Article by Sabrina Wirth All other photographs Courtesy of the Artists

Thomas Gardiner

Katie Koti

Kate Merrill

Felix R. Cid

WALKER WAUGH on

BRYAN GRAF BRYAN GRAF IS SENDING SIGNALS FROM THE 4TH DIMENSION

NO(W)HERE Bryan Graf is out there now, wandering the north woods like Emerson’s transparent eyeball. His traverse guided by surface winds and shadow lengths, he pauses to collect the weightless, hollow feather from off the ground.

And like Emerson - an ecstatic dutifully anchored to his pen - Graf too is a translator of nature. He collects his evidence daily and returns to a darkened laboratory to illustrate his gestural vernacular. Or else he translates in situ, out among the excesses of open air. Nature is not a spectacle, but a specimen. Not a distant sublimity for exaltation, rather an intimate tactility for exhumation, turned over like so much soil, for this is the science of nutrient growth, as any farmer will tell you. Graf, the farmer artist, plowing the soil, encamped on the periphery of our sight lines, producing field recordings of the still-unknown and oft forgotten.

This story begins in 2008, when Graf has passed through Yale University and returned to his home in New Jersey. Here, he delivers his opening salvo, a photo-based communiqué from the derelict swamplands of the post-industrial New Jersey landscape. His four year WILDLIFE ANALYSIS project is a series of repetitious black and white images shot from within this contaminated habitat: fields and streams, butterflies perched on tree limbs, deers darting through tall grass. Known, almost predictable accounts of the remaining natural order act as a foundational (control) layer of visual record.

A second (variable) layer is introduced by deliberately

exposing color film to direct sunlight in the field, which he then processes in the darkroom. In the same way the physical landscape of the Meadowlands has been irreversibly corroded by chemical runoff, Graf’s color film is literally eaten away, burned and blurred into a florid excess of greens and reds, yellows and blues. Graf goes about layering these hallucinogenic flourishes of pure color directly onto the repeated black and white images he’s made of field, butterfly, deer. Viewed in a row, the random abstraction of color moves across the repeating landscape like a weather front. Control and variable; stasis and movement; repetition and randomness: this is the tension implicit in Graf’s practice, and what has led him into the woods for further collaboration.

Fast forward to the present, and north to Portland, Maine. Graf has relocated his practice, refocused his methods of recording. He is working on two bodies of work presently, one in the field and one in the darkroom.

He calls the series in the field SHOT/REVERSE SHOT, explaining the origins of the idea and his interest thusly: The SHOT/REVERSE SHOT diptychs stemmed from a desire to make photograms outside my studio, en plein air, without having to decontextualize the materials from the landscape by bringing them into the darkroom.

Around the same time I read an Interview with Jean-Luc Godard who spoke about the shot/ reverse shot technique in cinema being all wrong - the person speaking

Š Portrait of Bryan Graf by CJ Heyliger

“L(A) set 5 #3” © Bryan Graf, Courtesy of Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York

should be filmed over the listener’s shoulder for the shot and the reverse shot should rotate to film the listener’s reaction. After reading this I became occupied with how to make a shot/reverse shot with still images, whilst simultaneously pursuing the desire to make a photogram outside. As a result, the shot/reverse shot produces two unique images simultaneously - a photogram, and the polaroid image that captures the process of the photogram being made. The two unique prints are mirror images of subject/object, mise en abyme. The camera’s flash takes the place of the enlarger bulb in this circumstance, simultaneously linking the signifier and the signified, the image and the object.

Graf calls the darkroom series LATTICE (AMBIENT). He has abandoned the camera entirely for this work. I tell him this seems about right, because I see him turning the soil, see him searching for immediacy. I mention a transparent eyeball. I ask if he sees himself as a vessel through which information passes. He responds: Fitzgerald would call it his flow. So I mess with the levels, plug everything in, try a few arrangements, fuck with more levels, lay down the rhythm, mess with more levels, overdub some mistakes, overdub some more, you get the idea. The rhythm of the jungle passes through and evaporates into my consciousness like a six sided cicada. I am nature. The quartz alters and sites are older than the limestone and granite ruins, yet they are still regarded as middle kingdom ruins and no one knows. No one knows the full implications of their structure, placement and useful significance, or their true origin. Form

is generated through seemingly random actions of the subconscious. Controlled chance, making music with time, even though time itself does not exist.

Later, he continues: As I write this correspondence the blind is down, covering the window to my right. The window is open and the screen projects a moire patterned shadow onto the fabric of the blind that fluctuates in and out of focus as it breathes with the wind. Focus. The screen is a filter. The screen is a camera. The LATTICE (AMBIENT) work is made with a screen and light and paper, nothing more.

The screen is used for registration of visual information, silkscreen, offset and other imaging devices both handmade and automated. Simultaneously it can cause visual noise, interference, disturbance. The screen is a grid: repetition, order, control, habits to counteract the inevitable lack of control in our daily lives. Folded warped and tangled it becomes a dragnet, a visualization of chancebased actions within a repetitious structure. The grid is a lattice. A support system for nature; an armature of order. A guide for the blind, mindless, persistent activity that surrounds us.

And with that, this program ends.The signal from this broadcast will bounce around in your retina, turn upside down in your mind until we begin again. This is a taste of things to come, an offering pulled from the soil. Travel well my friends. n

“In the Trees” © Bryan Graf, Courtesy of Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York

“Shot/Reverse Shot #4, April 4, 2009” © Bryan Graf, Courtesy of Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York

April-lea Hutchinson Title: Melbourne Series Contact: http://aprilleaphoto.carbonemade.com

Margaret McCarthy Title: Between Lives Contact: www.margaretmccarthy.com

Sara Fileds Title: Let Me Go Contact: http://www.sarameganfields.com

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Anna Bloda Untitled Contact: www.annabloda.pl

Anna Bloda Untitled Contact: www.annabloda.pl

SZE TSUNG LEONG Sze Tsung Leong is an British-American artist based in New York. Born in Mexico City in 1970, he spent his childhood in Mexico, Britain, and the United States. He attended Art Center College of Design from 1987 to 1989, and received a B.A. and the Eisner Prize in Photography from University of California at Berkeley in 1993. He went on to complete his graduate studies at Harvard. In 2005, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2006, his book History Images was published by Steidl. Mr. Leong’s work includes the series “Cities,” a detailed depiction of urban formations throughout the globe that together form a picture of the world at this particular moment in time at the beginning of the twenty-first century; “Horizons,” an international collection of images of natural terrains and urban landscapes that considers the relationships between far and near, foreign and familiar; and “History Images,” which examines the erasure of history and the reshaping of society through the built environment. Works from these series are included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Galleries of Scotland, the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Deutsche Börse Art Collection, and the Yale University Art Gallery, among others. http://www.szetsungleong.com/

From the series History Images © Sze Tsung Leong, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York Why Large-Format Imagery?

I aim for a great amount of detail and complexity in my images, and try to make images that continue to give upon sustained and repeated viewings.

What was your selection process like for the locations of your Horizons series?

I wanted to create a series of images that portrayed a wide spectrum of contrasting landscapes, from glaciers to deserts, from urban sprawl to open pastures, from ancient sites to new constructions, etc. In other words, to create a small slice of our multilayered world.

An ominous “Fog” Is prominent in a lot of your imagery. Why is that?

Sometimes it’s fog, others it’s pollution, and most of the 95 Musée Magazine No. 4

time it’s an overcast sky or scattered sunlight. I aim for diffuse light, which helps clarify the visual detail of the image but also lend it an emotional quality.

What was the original idea for these projects?

Underlying these projects is an effort to create an experience of looking at the world from a more encompassing perspective than we would normally see.

During your development of the History series, how rapid of change was there between the destruction of earlier architecture styles to the new modernized style?

As compared to how long these historic buildings had existed, the speed of change is almost instantaneous.

What advice would you give an emerging photographer?

Be skeptical of generalized advice.

What is the duration of time one of your projects usually take?

I usually work on series for an extended period of time.

History Images was about three years, while I have been working on Horizons and Cities for about a decade.

Has there ever been a photograph you wish you had taken but didn’t?

The exciting thing about the world is that it is vast enough to be filled with untaken and missed photographs.

How many sheets of film do you take for each shot?

Depends really, sometimes I’m lucky to get it in a sheet or two, sometimes it takes more.

Do you ever think of having people in your photographs or photographing people alone?

There actually are many people in my photographs, you just have to look very closely.

What locations are you drawn to and why?

Sometimes I’m drawn to locations that have an interesting layering of histories or cultures, sometimes to locations that have a meaningful relationship to other photographs I’ve taken, sometimes the place has a beauty that I can’t describe in words but can in an image, most of the time it’s a combination of these three.

What light do you favor (exposure) north, east, south, west?

How did graduate school help you with your work?

It exposed me to new levels of seeing. Having the opportunity to learn from thinkers such as James Ackerman, Norman Bryson, and Yve-Alain Bois was very valuable.

Who has helped you most in your career?

Yossi Milo’s support and belief in my work has been very important to me.

Are aesthetics more important than content?

For me, both are inseparable.

Which photographers do you admire & have been an influence on you?

The early large-format photographers such as Felice Beato and John Thomson who pictured the larger world have been very influential. But also I am influenced by early Northern European painters that painted sweeping landscape views, such as Breughel and Patinir.

What do you hope others get out of your art?

Something meaningful and personal.

What is an artist’s responsibility in society?

To help others see more thoughtfully. n

Interview by Chris Talbot Photograph of Sze Tsung Leong by Judy Chung All other photographs Courtesy of Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

The more I photograph, the more I get to appreciate all kinds of light.

For you, what is the most difficult part of your process?

Being one’s own critic.

No. 4 Musée Magazine 96

From the series History Images Š Sze Tsung Leong, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

From the series History Images Š Sze Tsung Leong, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

From the series History Images Š Sze Tsung Leong, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

From the series Horizons Š Sze Tsung Leong, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

From the series Horizons Š Sze Tsung Leong, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

From the series Horizons Š Sze Tsung Leong, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

Kimberely Stirk Title: Garland Greene Contact: caramelizedtongues@gmail.com

Zoe Kahlert Title: Eye Contact: www.flickr.com/photos/zoyabandita/

Neil Craver Title: Exits or Entrances Contact: www.PhotonOrganon.com

Neil Craver Title: Intrinsic Lnundation Contact: www.PhotonOrganon.com No. 4 Musée Magazine 112

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Pascale Weber Title: Andalousie/Algeziras, 2008 Dieppe/Genes, 2004-2009 Contact: pascale.weber123@orange.fr 113 Musée Magazine No. 4

Pascale Weber Title: Butcher’s Shop in Tunis/Bar in Montreal, 2010 Dieppe/Parade of the National Holiday in Montreal, 2004-2010 Contact: pascale.weber123@orange.fr No. 4 Musée Magazine 114

Adrian Albrecht & Ann-Kathrin Ziegar Untitled Contact: anncut@gmx.de

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Julio Gamboa Untitled Contact: www.juliogamboa.com No. 4 Musée Magazine 118

RALPH GIBSON A BREED APART

Ralph Gibson is an American photographer born in 1939 in L.A. He has received over 15 international photography awards. He studied photography while in the US Navy and then at the San Francisco Art Institute. Gibson’s professional career began as an assistant to Dorothea Lange. He later went on to work with Robert Frank on two films. The photographer has maintained a lifelong fascination with books and book-making. Since the appearance in 1970 of THE SOMNAMBULIST, his work has been steadily impelled towards the printed page. Gibson’s latest photo-book, Passée Imparfait was published this year, making him a published photographer of 40 books. His photographs are included in over one hundred and fifty museum collections around the world, and have appeared in hundreds of one man exhibitions.

What is your background?

I grew up in Los Angeles in the ‘40s and ‘50s. My father worked at Warner Brothers. He was Assistant to Alfred Hitchcock and I’ve been in a lot of movies as an extra.

I was sixteen when my parents separated, and I went into the Navy. The Navy is where I learned photography and I took it very seriously. At 21 I left the army and went very briefly to the San Francisco Art Institute. Learning photography in the navy gave me an extremely strong technical background. There, it was all about resolution and sharpness and grey scale.

My first real break came working in San Francisco as an assistant to Dorothea Lang. Being with her in the dark room all day I learned a tremendous amount about content. This was in the 1960s and America is just raging across the horizon… Many of my generation were totally taken by it. I wanted to be a photojournalist and that’s what I did…. I bought a trench coat and came to NY. But it was not for me.

Why didn’t you like it?

I didn’t like somebody telling me what to photograph and then subsequently determining whether or not it was a good photograph. Usually, their ideas were quite stupid.

My own ideas were stupid enough, but at least they were mine.

interested in the “good luck” sort of photograph. I want to be fully conscious of my work. I want to take all the credit or all the blame for the picture.

So how would you define your photography?

I never thought about that. I always wanted to make photographs for myself and impress myself more than anybody else. I’m always in search for that feeling of knowing how to make a photograph that will interest me to look at. I spend an awful lot of time looking at my work.

Anyway, photography has always been a very amorphous, broadly defined medium. Nobody has ever really pinpointed the Canon and said, “This is photography.”

Tchaikovsky may have tried but the medium just moved too fast and it defied definition.

What is the subject of your photography?

Well the subject of my photograph is always photography itself. I am interested in the perceptual act. I am not waiting for the great event. The content of my photograph happens whenever my perception and awareness is high enough that I can make a still image of something. Sometimes the definition of my photographs is of interest to me because I put everything in a book and the title of the book becomes a proscenium for my work. The only definition of what I do would be could be the photographs themselves.

What was your next call?

After I dropped out of my photojournalism job I started working with Robert Frank on some of his films. Like working with Dorothea, working with him impressed upon me the incredible importance of having your own theme and not emulating somebody else’s ideas as your own. It was a very productive period and in 1978, I made a book called Somnambulist. Before publishing it I owed 3 months rent for my apartment in Chelsea and I had left two of my three Leicas in pawn. After publishing the book I became recognized immediately—in a very small field—but around the world. I felt I had arrived. Since then, I just do my own projects. I would shoot a job every five or ten years if I was really interested in it.

Looking at your photography, spontaneity is not what comes to mind. Is this a remnant of your photojournalistic days?

Well, there is always an act of discovery. It could be on the street, or it could be in the studio, or when I’m photographing the news. The subject might be predetermined, but I never know what the results are going to be. I have to really start looking through the viewfinder. I’m not very

Are there living photographers that you like?

Definitely. I thought I knew Cindy Sherman’s work very well, and then I saw her incredible perspective at the MoMA and I found her even greater than I thought she was. I just saw an exhibition in Long Island by Adam Bartos and I congratulated him on the purely photographic look. I’m still in love with the medium itself. I’m still attracted towards the alchemy of light on silver suspended in gelatin.

Do you do your own printing?

Yes, in my studio. I have a very helpful assistant too, and we do everything here.

I always disliked the darkroom.

That’s where you face your failure.

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Musée Magazine Tell me about your new book.

Claude Nori, the editor, asked me to do a book on my early work. And laying it out I was reminded of the dissatisfaction I felt with my early photography. I was looking for something that I eventually found in my later photography. However the value was that they were harbingers of what was to come. I noticed that my eye was fully aware before it understood what it was seeing and photographing, always wanting to form a visual signature. Noticing this made me feel very good. Most great photographers have an indelible, instant vividly perceivable visual signature. You don’t need a byline for a Cartier-Bresson.

You can tell from across a parking lot that it’s a CartierBresson. And so, the eyeball being a self-monitoring organ seemed to be already in command. My early book Passé Imparfait held the origins, roots, and inclinations of my later work. This is one of the important messages of my book. Another one is that photography changes with time. Its content and context changes. So in doing the layout for my new book, I learned something about my work that only making a book can teach you.

What interests you in photography?

Staring power. I want the pictures to be looking at me. Essentially the pictures will recognize that low frequency that I yearned towards.

phy and the prices are astronomical. If you are very good you will make a career.

Can you spot talent?

When people come in here, I can tell how good they are before they go past that door.

Is it their energy?

Whatever it is, it’s like the first page of The New York Times for me.

Do you like doing workshops?

Yes. I like doing them in some exotic part of the world where I can immerse myself in the language of the region. I like seeing how language affects the content of photography, and of the practitioners over there. I had one in Bangkok earlier this year, a lecture in Istanbul, and I am going to do two more in October. I do it because I feel compelled to answer questions people might want to ask me, and I’ve been very lucky in having time to reflect long on the nature of the medium.

So would you say that you can learn photography?

Years ago I used to be very close with Kertész. The doorman at his apartment knew me, and I would go visit him two to three times a week. I couldn’t let a chance like that go by. Observing him, and other masters of photography I made a realization: When you are young, you try to learn photography. And then you devote most of your career to the media in a sensual way. But in the old “types,” I noticed that they actually become photography.

When André Kertész died, he was photography. CartierBresson was photography and so were Dorothea and Helmut. These people take photography and they transcend the conventional semiology of words to become something much more vast and profound. They become the medium itself. I would never be so presumptuous as to assume I would arrive at such a place, but I would certainly strive for it.

What advice would you give to young photographers?

Stay pure. It’s never been easy and it’s probably becoming harder. However when I was debuting in the field, there were barely any art galleries. The Witkin was barely open. Now there is a tremendous market for photogra123 Musée Magazine No. 4

“I am interested in photography from the inside out.”

- Ralph Gibson

You don’t have any curiosity at all experimenting with the digital technology in our phones?

One thing to be said about digital technology is that it has this incredible ability to transfer information. With photography I am not interested in transferring, but rather transcending the object. I am interested in photography from the inside out. I use HD video for the films I do. I’m not against it. Believe me, if I thought it was good for my photography, I would use it. I believe that a person, who is probably still in the womb, will one day pop out a digital image that will actually tell me what digital is all about.

I admire your tenacity in staying pure to yourself and not falling under the pressure of the commercial market.

I feel no pressure whatsoever. When I was young I set out to be so successful and recognized that I would be able to photograph whatever I wanted.

Going back to the books, do you self-publish?

Not for thirty years. I make the dummy, give it to the publisher and that’s it.

And which one was the most difficult to assemble?

My first one, Somnambulist, was my baptism of fire.

Because a book is a very defined medium, I am always looking for new forms within it, be it in type, form, or layout.

And now back to our undefined medium of photography. Do you crop your images?

No, I don’t. I do most of my shooting on a 50 mm.

125 Musée Magazine No. 4

You do? You’re very good with the 50 mm.

I’ve been messing with this since 1961 when I got my 1st Leica. And I believe that if you do it really well, you cannot tell what lens it is. I can make a 35 mm look like a 50, and a 90 look like a 50, but I still prefer a 50. I like its limitations, and the feeling of having to make everything fit.

Do you go to art history for inspiration?

Oh, absolutely. Look at all the books I’m reading right now. I’m deep into Kline. I exhausted my photographic inspiration in the early stages, and now I hunt the art museums and galleries of the world.

Working with Avedon, I remember that Avedon really liked Robert Frank, but Robert Frank didn’t have much like Avedon.

I will tell you a story. I was at a movie theater with Robert Frank around Carnegie Hall, and Frank and Richard Avedon ran into each other. They both raised their right hands simultaneously and said, “Rob. Dick,” at the same time. I think that Avedon had a very creative start in his early career, as well as in fashion photography.

However, his later career became very commercial. And being very close to Helmut [Newton], I know that Helmut considered himself to be Avedon’s peer, if not slightly better. He considered [Irving] Penn to be above them all. He managed to do his commercial work and his personal work and he was Penn-squared. Avedon was very pleased with himself and had this kind of smugness that I never admired. You wouldn’t call anything about him humble. But he certainly conquered the page at one time and he set the bar high for young artists to come.

I remember when Helmut published a photograph of a voluptuous woman on a staircase. Avedon said he thought Helmut was the best fashion photographer living today.

Oh, Helmut would tell me about when he was a little boy in Germany and his mother would be talking to him in the kitchen. He would look up and notice the light coming in from the window and it fell on her green, pleated felt skirt. He said he could see the light going in and out of the flutes of her skirt. Now that’s a born fashion photographer. I shot fashion. I can do it, but I’m not a believer. Not the same as the little kid looking up, fascinated by the way the fabric contours the figure.

And yet, he matured at fifty.

Well he was not the only one. Bill Grant told me he got good at fifty too.

Yes, however, it’s not only a matter of getting good. I think there was a shift in photographic style.

We owe that to Madame. His wife June did that. Davé in Paris was very good friends with them when they were struggling. I personally only met Helmut in ‘74. He took my portrait that day and that’s when he told me that he got good only at 50. I and Helmut are both from the old school. And when you come from that discipline you’re going to relate to the medium in a different way.

It will impact form and content. Form is what you know about light caressing the film and heating the particles and silver gelatin. And it will impact the content. Helmut was very aware of this. Although he had his printers he always got the look he wanted. He was in control. He shot everything in film and he didn’t shoot much film at all. He would shoot one roll and leave 10 frames unexposed.

I teach at ICP and my students want to become fashion photographers. And I tell them to become fine art photographers, because they will have the chance to switch to the other side. But it’s a one way shift. From fashion photography you can rarely go to fine arts photography. You were wise to make the choice of fine art photography providing yourself with the opportunity to do a range of things, always within your style, but different subjects.

Absolutely. Whatever it is about my work, I can say that I have the broadest subject-matter of all of my contemporaries. I want to photograph everything. My subjectmatter is humble. I want to photograph everything as

long as I get my awareness to a sufficiently high point.

It’s a form of broadening my vocabulary and speaking photographically.

So nudes are one more avenue to broaden your vocabulary?

I’ve done them for all different reasons. The first one was of the first girl I lived with in 1961. You see, photography is not about how. It’s about what. And when the subject is given, like a nude, then you have to work extra hard. And in a 400 page book of nudes, when you move from one page to the next, I better provide for something to really captivate you. It is the oldest subject - the Willendorf Venus from 24000 BC. Therein lies the creative challenge.

I wrote in my preface that we like to star into the psychological mirror of the human body. And that’s one of my many subjects comprising 20% of my overall work.

What is your next project?

I have several ones. For years I’ve been photographing in color around Manhattan for a project called the Gotham Chronicles. It’s very streety but abstract. And color is a challenge because it’s not as good as black and white. Reality exists in 100% scale. It has colors. So in black and white you reduce reality and are two steps away from it.

Do you always shoot in 50?

Yes, and 90. Urban scale. I love urban scale.

Any special time of the day, for the light?

No.

Do you strive to capture perfection or imperfection?

The concept of perfection and imperfection is only interesting to the extent that the photography is better than the photographer. I would say the photographer is imperfect and s/he strives towards perfection.

You have such an understanding of the art.

I am not a photographer. I am something through which photography speaks, like the radio that plays the music.

I know that I’m very fortunate. n Interview and Photograph of Ralph Gibson by Andrea Blanch All other photographs Courtesy of the Artist

No. 4 Musée Magazine 126

Jannis Schulze Schulze Jannis

Untitled Untitled Contact: www.jannisschulze.com Contact: www.jannisschulze.com

Jannis Schulze Untitled Contact: www.jannisschulze.com

Jannis Schulze Untitled Contact: www.jannisschulze.com

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Geraldine Lozano Title: Genetica Contact: www.geralozano.com

Geraldine Lozano Title: Thinking Flow Contact: www.geralozano.com

Stephen Prince Title: Couple Contact: http://afterhourssleazeanddignity.com

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Alicia Collins Title: Ava Contact: http://www.aliciacollins.net/index.html

MAUD

BY NIC VIOLLET

Maud probed the tips of her fingers into the container of wax in front of her, trying to collect as much as she saw fit to style her hair. Gently spreading the wax throughout her hair, she thought of every strand that needed to be hardened, every strand that needed to beautiful.

“Babe…”

Startled, her fingers stopped glazing her hair for a few seconds, but as she let out two breaths, Maud continued. The candles spread around her room burned lazily, melting slowly, the breeze coming from her slightly open window swaying them back and forth. A lone bee buzzed around the room, bopping up and down in the air, flying mindlessly, at least in Maud’s opinion. She caught glimpses of the flames’ gentle swaying, and the bee’s buzzing journey, however not allowing herself to get distracted from the priority of her hair.

A few out-of-place hairs stuck out of her otherwise sleekly waxed head, plucking them out immediately. Maud stared at the dead hairs lying in her right hand, tiny white clumps of wax hanging awkwardly off of them. Grabbing the dead hairs with her left hand, she rubbed them against her lips, sticking her tongue out to get a taste, wrapping it around the strands as she slowly sucked them in, allowing the saliva and wax to mix.

“Babe we gotta get going!”

Her taste buds ecstatic upon consumption, while her eyes shut in order to truly savor the taste. Opening them again, she stared at herself in the mirror, her hardened hair, the flames of the candles swaying, the wax dripping. She thought of her restless boyfriend, too anxious to allow her privacy, inconsiderate of the needs he did not know existed. The bee landed in the container of half-empty wax, sucking, in search of nutrients; the wax trapped it instead. One steady finger slipped through the air petting the bee on its back, massaged its wings, pushing it into the wax further, and further, and further, swallowing it into the white mixture, forming a clump that Maud withdrew and spread all over her hair, rubbing its body around her hair.

“Babe!”

“I’m ready!” she called back, staring at her reflection, “I’m ready,” she whispered.

DEBORAH

BELL Internationally renowned in the art world today, Deborah Bell is the head of the Photography Department at Christie’s Auction House. Growing up in Minnesota, she developed a passion for photography early on while volunteering at Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center. There, she was exposed to avant-garde artists, including Twyla Tharp and Merce Cunningham. After earning a B.F.A. in photography from the Minneapolis College of Art & Design and an M.A. in Art History from Hunter College, Ms. Bell began her career as an art dealer.

Her once eponymous art gallery in Chelsea, New York, lauded for its exquisite range of 19th and 20th century photographs, as well as works by contemporary photographers, has made her recognizable in the global art arena. During her career as a gallerist, she represented photographers including Dag Alveng, Per Bernsten, and Marcia Resnick. In addition to her roles at Christie’s and as a gallerist, Ms. Bell was also a professor of History of Photography at the School of Visual Arts for several years.

Musée Magazine

How does it feel to be the head of Christie’s Photography Department as opposed to being a gallery owner?

Well it’s a great honor to be at Christie’s and I really love working with the people here. I’m working on a completely different kind of schedule.

With my gallery I was pretty much a one-person band, except for my part-time assistant, the occasional intern, and the artists and estates I represented. Here, there are so many more people to work with on a daily basis and there are different departments. There’s a constant intersection of people, emails, and

communication. There are so many differences. The things that have stayed the same are that it’s basically the same group of clients—I know many of them. But I’ve found that in an auction house there are a lot of clients that I never would have met otherwise. There are many clients who like to buy mainly from auction and who do not forge relationships with dealers. This could be because people don’t always have a lot of time to run around and see exhibi-

Are people who go to auctions more spontaneous in their choices, given the broader array, or are they still very specific?

There are examples of both. This might sound like I’m advertising, but the Christie’s name is absolutely huge.

It’s historic, it connotes elegance, and its high stature is renowned. It’s such a fun place to come and visit and see the previews for different auctions. For example, while you’re seeing a preview for a photograph sale, you could very likely see another preview of nineteenth century furniture or musical instruments or manuscripts or some other medium, which is fun for people. And while at the photography preview, you also learn so much by seeing the whole history of photography, so that appeals to people, too. When it comes to the sale, I find that there is a great deal of spontaneity. Buyers might come thinking they are going to bid on one particular piece, or three, or ten, and then they’ll see another piece and think, “Hm, that one’s kind of nice, too…” And then they’ll get into it and make a judgment on it, and they might just end up jumping in and getting it.

Do the higher prices at auction draw different clients than a gallery draws?

First, I think the opportunity to get good prices at auction still exists. But sometimes you see pictures going for more money than they would if you were to buy them from a dealer. Sometimes the informed person will know that they can’t get a certain piece from a dealer anymore so their only option is to get it at auction. I think a lot of buying at auction also has to do with time and people not always having it. Some people think, “Okay I’ve seen the picture, or my consultant has, and I want it,” so they 149 Musée Magazine No. 4

tions. They might have an advisor they work through and that person would do all of that work and make recommendations, but whether they do that or not, they are still going to include the auction market. The auction world has such a cornucopia of offerings, and it’s more than any one dealer could have in his inventory.

That means there is a broader array of clients here than I would have met before given the material that I handled and that I offered.

just go for it and purchase it. Other times buying at auction is not a spontaneous situation; for instance, in cases where clients have done research or have set a limit on how high they are willing to go. I have a client for whom I used to bid and when she decided she really wanted something, we would talk about how high it might go for and how high she would have to go in order to obtain the piece. And then, when it came down to the last minute, she would instruct me to just get it, no matter what the price was.

How do your credentials as a gallerist translate to your role as the head of the Photography Department of Christie’s?

In terms of sales, the function is still very much the same; I just get to handle more pictures and offer more things than I would have been able to do in my own gallery. I also get to meet new clients, while continuing to work with those that I’ve already known. The idea here is still to procure material for auction, to get inventory, and then to sell the work. The basic function is still very much the same, and the analogy between running a department and running a gallery are similar, too. I was running a gallery before and managed maybe just a couple of people, whereas now there is a little bit more management involved and more interaction with more people. Essentially, I think the Photo Department at Christie’s is just the gallery magnified tremendously. I feel lucky because I have been interested in more of the history of photography than I ended up being specialized in as a dealer. And in coming here, I feel I get to use knowledge that I didn’t always have the chance to apply with my own inventory at the gallery.

Robert Mapplethorpe Self Portrait as a Transvestite, 1980 gelatin silver print $30,000 - $50,000

Robert Frank Newburgh, New York (Route 40) gelatin silver print $60,000 - $80,000

Do you select the photos that are going to be in the auction?

As a team we decide what’s going to be in the sale.

There are four specialists in the department and offers can come to any one of us. There is myself, Specialist Head of the Department; Stuart Alexander, International Specialist; Laura Paterson, Specialist; and Elizabeth Eichholz, Junior Specialist. We also have a department administrator and an intern. This is just the American team, though. Christie’s is unique in that we are a global team, which means that we are in contact with the specialists and department heads in London and Paris, for instance, and are all sharing information.

What about the layout process?

Again, we do the layout together as a team. We’ll think about the different rooms and the groups of work that we have. We’ll work it out together and then we have an installation team to hang the work.

So your specialty is nineteenth and twentieth century photography. Who is the specialist for contemporary photography at Christie’s?

We all need to know and be able to weigh in on everything that we’re offered. The reason we make decisions together is so that we can all get behind something, be supportive of it, and be able to offer it properly.

But some people have certain strengths. Here in New York, Elizabeth is particularly good with contemporary photography. In Paris, Matthieu Humery is great with contemporary. And then in London there is Alexander Montague-Spary and Philippe Garner, who is actually the International Head of Photographs and Decorative Arts and Design. I don’t want to generalize too much, though, because there might be a contemporary artist that somebody knows really well, even if they aren’t as good with the broad strokes. We all have a way of complimenting each other that’s really good.

Why do you think auction houses are doing better than galleries?

I think that auctions and art fairs have become events.

Fifteen years ago auction houses in nearly every medium used to be considered wholesale instead of retail.

Now, though, it really is a retail market. I have a theory that this has more to do with the world at large, and how we’re communicating and shopping today, than it has to do with just art. People are more knowledgeable about art today and so any venue for art, be it a museum or a gallery or an auction house, will attract more people. And the way we communicate now has really broadened. Starting with catalogues, and now with computers and the Internet, people are staying in more and doing their shopping from home. There are even online galleries now and as a result, the opportunities for buying at auction have really broadened. People can

still come to the saleroom and bid in person, but they can become aware of what’s being offered by looking at the catalogue online. Before the Internet, people could place an order bid by sending or faxing in the lot they were interested in and their maximum bid. And then, as the auction business grew more internationally, more people started bidding over the phone. And now, in addition to people bidding over the phone, there is the option to bid live over the Internet during the auction. As more countries have opened up their borders, Western interests have spread, and developing markets have gotten to the point where they are buying art now, more and more people are paying attention to auctions.

You have explained why auction houses have become more popular, but why do you think auction houses are doing better than galleries right now?

It goes back to the idea of auctions and art fairs as events. Many of my colleagues who have galleries or are private dealers say that after they do an art fair, it’s dead and there is not much happening in their galleries.

With the breadth of auction house offerings, it makes it fun for people to pick things that they might be interested in. Some people like the anonymity of the auction process, too. Auction houses give them the opportunity to opt out of mailing and calling lists while still being proactive at auction. The art market has changed too, so there may be fewer relationships with dealers right now. People don’t necessarily feel a need to learn from a dealer today the way they might have in the past. For instance, at auction there are often very good catalogue essays to accompany pieces, so people can teach themselves as much as they want or need to know to make a decision without having to rely on someone else.

What do you think about Damien Hirst just going straight to auction?

I thought it was a very bold move. I’m not saying it was admirable, just bold. I remember Roberta Smith writing about and criticizing Damien Hirst for doing this. I cut out one particularly great quote from her article and taped it to my computer in my gallery, and it went something like this: “No one, other than the artist, takes as many risks and has as much to lose as the art dealer.”

In other words, she recognized that the art dealer has no particular security, not necessarily any more than the artist does. She also said something to do with the fact that the art dealer, when representing an artist, will really put himself out there for the artist and will support the artist in many different ways, from financial support to proactive promotion. And I thought that was great of her to say; it really put some balance into her argument.

I don’t mean to put words in her mouth, but part of her implication seemed to be if Damien Hirst doesn’t think he needs an art dealer, good luck to him!

No. 4 Musée Magazine 152

Peter Beard Orphan Cheetahs Triptych gelatin silver print with collage and manuscript additions $100,000 - $150,000

Why do you find that so many artists change galleries? It seems less loyal in my mind. You have someone that’s helped build your career and then all of a sudden it’s gotten to this level and you want to change to someone else.

There are so many different reasons. It can be a simple as having a good job and then being contacted by someone, like a headhunter, and being offered the opportunity to come there.

Do gallerists try to take artists from other galleries?

I don’t know of any instances in my particular experience where that has happened outright. But I think sometimes an artist working with a gallery that represents many other artists might feel like they are lost in the shuffle, and consequently decides to pursue other opportunities elsewhere.

Musée Magazine So what makes a good gallerist?

Somebody who is doing their best to be as proactive with the work as possible. That not only means showing the work in exhibitions or when you do an art fair, but just the day-to-day offering of the work. This means knowing your clients and offering the work wherever you think you can. And making the work visible. Maybe you can’t give a show of that person’s work for a year or so, so instead you put some of their work in your office.

“Always remember the work you have.”

in the gallery before. There are these crescendos and it gets quiet for a little while. But we also have private sales, too.

Why do you have private sales at Christie’s?

Sometimes it behooves somebody to sell something privately rather than have it at auction. It might be something that would be so clearly identifiable as to its source or it might die at auction, but maybe we’d have a buyer for it instead. On the other hand, when I was still a dealer, sometimes a client would ask me to sell a picture for them and I would say, “I think I could, but I honestly think it would do better at auction,” and I would recommend them to take it to Christie’s where it would sell really well.

So it can be the converse, too. It can also be for the sake of the privacy and anonymity of the seller.

-Deborah Bell

What do you think about the practice of guarantees?

What do you miss most about being a gallerist?

I have to admit that I miss my physical space there. It was a big square room with a wall in the middle and a doorway to the back room. The front half was just for looking. There were high ceilings and in the back I had four windows with southern light flooding in. I had those mesh window shades and you could see the silhouettes of the buildings outside. And the light changed all day long. I had a blue linoleum floor, called “Cadet Blue,” and it was always really well polished, so it shown. I had a great sense of satisfaction in that I made all of those choices and designed it with my architect. That was very much part of my identity, so I miss that physical space because it was a wonderful space to work in. The antidote to that is that there are lots of terrific people here that I have met and that I keep on meeting within Christie’s. I was pretty much alone at my gallery. It wasn’t as busy on a daily basis as it is here at Christie’s.

How does your work and schedule at Christie’s differ from that of your gallery?

This is a steep learning curve. There is a lot of stimulation at Christie’s, which there always will be, but there is the added anxiety of trying to learn my job. I may know many of the clients and I may know who to call and how to offer something, but I still don’t know exactly what to do in all situations. And I don’t have the auction clock in my psyche yet. I had no particular clock before at the gallery. I was always working on lots of shows at once, with lots of balls in the air. But here it’s all roads lead to this one auction. It’s very cyclical and I had no such cycle

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I’ve learned since I’ve been here that they are not as beneficial to the seller as they sound. Sometimes you have to give some of the percentage away in order to get the guarantee, so it can defeat the purpose in the long run. I think it’s very situational. The whole concept can be a little bit misleading and has to be figured out carefully.

And it may not apply. It’s a case-by-case basis.

How do you think Christie’s is positioned to deal with twenty-first century image making? Photography isn’t the same anymore. For instance, now there are photographers who use drones or satellites to take images; it’s not just about the camera anymore.

Auction is not about making a career for an artist. It is not doing the traditional dealer’s job of promoting an artist.

It’s strictly resale, like a secondary market; though auction certainly does have a big affect on an artist’s career.

I think Christie’s is anticipating changes in the way art is made. And it is positioning itself to be able to handle those works, but I can’t think of any instances in photography where this applies yet.

Tell me about your upcoming auctions.

We have three sessions and two sales. We have a single-owner sale of Richard Avedon photographs, twentyeight lots, on Thursday, October 4, 2012 at five o’clock.

Depending upon what happens, it shouldn’t take more than forty-five minutes. Right after that we have a big various-owners sale, with a session of about forty lots.

The works are selected to follow on the heels of the

Tell me about your upcoming auctions.

We have three sessions and two sales. We have a single-owner sale of Richard Avedon photographs, twentyeight lots, on Thursday, October 4, 2012 at five o’clock.

Depending upon what happens, it shouldn’t take more than forty-five minutes. Right after that we have a big various-owners sale, with a session of about forty lots.

The works are selected to follow on the heels of the

Avedon session. We have a couple of Guy Bourdin photographs, a Peter Beard, and even another Avedon in the sale. Since we’re on catalogue deadline right now, I shouldn’t say more because we may be changing a couple of things around! Then on Friday, October 5, we have two sessions of various-owners.

Robert Adams Colorado Springs, 1968 Gelatin silver print Estimate: $12,000-18,000

Any works that are particularly outstanding in these upcoming sessions?

I’m not sure which session it will be in yet, but we have a terrific Francesca Woodman photograph, a self-portrait. It was exhibited in the San Francisco Museum of Fine Art show that traveled to the Guggenheim, and it’s in the catalogue. I’d never seen it before I saw it in that show and it is quite remarkable. It is such a wonderful and arresting composition. In contemporary work, we have a beautiful Thomas Ruff photograph of what looks like a starry night sky. We have some early nineteenth century works that are pictorialist and modernist at the same time, by Pierre Dubreuil, a French pictorialist who really became a modernist. We have one group of terrific Eugène Atget photographs that were deaccessioned by the Museum of Modern Art. This is really a single-owner sale within our various-owner sale of thirty-two Cartier-Bresson photographs that were gifts from Cartier-Bresson to this printer, Voja Mitrovic. The prints were bought from Mitrovic by the photographer Peter Turnley, who is now auctioning them off. It’s very exciting!

What is your biggest challenge as the Department Head for the next few years?

The most important challenge that affects all of us is the ability to bring in fresh and good material. And old favorites, things that I know our clients love. The ability to get collections is also a challenge, because there is competition for single-owner and museum collections. Very often the client feels that they must do diligence for their boards, their trustees, their organizations, and go to all of the auction houses and see what each one will do. So a big challenge really is dealing with the competition.

Are there photographers who have come directly to Christie’s?

There are. Murakami and Edgarson have come directly to us as well as others. Both of these artists already had a very well developed resale market, though, so it wasn’t so much about us launching an artist or promoting someone who was lesser known.

The relationships you have with artists are completely different now.

Do you miss the closeness of these relationships that you had while working as a gallerist?

I do miss it. I’m not saying at all that I have any reservations about my decision; I love being here. But one thing I enjoyed very much was always talking with my artists and always being in the now with everything that was happening. I would learn a lot about what processes they were working in and whether they worked with a new printer or got a new camera or new scanner. Whatever it was, it was always art talk and banter. Most of my day here is more business, which is very rich in itself; but there, I was always in constant contact with people and had more interaction with the rest of the art world. But I think that’s where I am now with learning my job, too. I’ve been in the art world a lot, and as time goes on I will know the rudiments and the cycle of my job well enough that I can be circulating more.

What do you think of an artist’s work changing over the course of his career?

If you know who you are as an artist, then it’s almost involuntary whether you stay the same or you change.

Do you think photography will ever be considered high art?

I think we’re definitely over the hump of having to justify photography as art. More and more collectors of other media are starting to collect photography. I don’t see a big division anymore; it’s joined the blue chip market! I think that the appreciation of photography will only grow from here. n

Interview and Photograph of Deborah Bell by Andrea Blanch All other photographs Courtesy of Christie’s Auction House; Christie’s Images Ltd. 2012

Imogen Cunningham Magnolia Blossom, 1925 gelatin silver print $70,000 - $90,000

Kimberely Warner Untitled Contact: www.kimberlywarner.com

Kimberly Warner Untitled Contact: www.kimberlywarner.com

Denis Mähne Title: Janocsh Contact: denis-darkstar@gmx.de 161 Musée Magazine No. 4

Volker Eichenhofer Title: Internet Killed Romance Contact: www.volker-eichenhofer.com

Volker Eichenhofer Title: Internet Killed Romance Contact: www.volker-eichenhofer.com

Denis Mähne Title: Oliver Contact: denis-darkstar@gmx.de No. 4 Musée Magazine 164

Fred Cray Title: Untitled Contact: http://www.fredcray.com

Fred Cray Untitled Contact: http://www.fredcray.com

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Natalya Abilova Title: White Contact: natalya.abilova@yandex.com 167 Musée Magazine No. 4

Natalya Abilova Title: Yellow Contact: natalya.abilova@yandex.com No. 4 Musée Magazine 168

Nuno Renato Title: Asparagus - Peru Contact: www.nunorenato.com

Nuno Renato Title: Bean - Kenya Contact: www.nunorenato.com

HENRY BUHL HANDS ON

The Buhl Collection began in October 1993 when Henry M. Buhl purchased Alfred Stieglitz’s photograph of Georgia O’Keeffe’s hands, entitled “Hands and Thimble,” 1920. Inspired by this picture, the Buhl Collection has since developed around the theme of hands and has grown to include over 1,000 photographs.

Encompassing a broad history of photography, the collection has works dating from 1840 to the present and includes some of the most recognized masters of the medium, as well as lesser-known and emerging artists.

The metaphorical theme of the Buhl Collection – hands, combined with the commitment to represent as many artistic styles as possible, has contributed to it being regarded as a unique example of the vast spectrum of 19th and 20th century photographic art. Photographs from the collection have been exhibited in museums around the world, including in the Guggenheim Museums in New York and Spain, the Folkwang Museum in Germany, and the State Russian Museum and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art in Russia. Currently, the Buhl Collection is touring with exhibitions in Korea and Taiwan and is expected to continue traveling throughout Asia.

http://thebuhlfoundation.org/collection.html

Musée Magazine In your opinion, what makes a good art collection?

That’s a very hard question to answer; there are all kinds of good art collections. I’m not an expert in that area, so I don’t know if I’m the right person. I got lucky that I started on one theme because everyone asked me, “Why don’t you have a theme or a period?” I eventually, by accident, chose hands and the history of photography, which I thought would be interesting through the medium of hands.

How did that “happy accident” with the hands occur?

I was a wedding photographer for quite a long time.

While doing that I collected photographs, very insignificant photographs. A girlfriend called me up one day and asked me if I want to see the “Georgia O’Keeffe Hands” taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1920. I said, “Why would I want to see it?” and she responded, “Oh, it’s owned by Doris Bry, the assistant of Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, and she wants to sell it.” I never studied art or photography in college, and therefore I went and got an expert on Stieglitz, an art dealer named Howard Greenberg, who is one of the more knowledgeable ones I know. Together we went up to Doris Bry’s apartment and we examined the silver gelatin print, which he authenticated. He said there was only one in the world of the silver gelatin and eight of the palladium platinum prints, and Doris Bry told us about the identical size and image being sold at Christie’s, but it was a palladium platinum print. Platinum is very expensive to make and produce a film in, usually taking eight to twelve hours to make your first print, while silver is quite cheap. The rule of thumb is that a platinum print is double what a silver gelatin print is of the same size and same image. So we went back to Doris Bry and she wanted to sell her picture before the Christie’s auction. In their catalogue, the price was between $100,000 and $150,000. I did buy it two days before the Christie’s auction, but surprisingly, what happened was the palladium platinum print sold for $398,000 and was the highest priced photograph for six years after that. Theoretically, my print that I paid $75,000 for became $200,000 two days later. Having been a mutual fund manager for quite a few years before that, I had never made such a huge profit in my life, so I was very thrilled with myself.

And that’s why you started collecting?

I didn’t exactly start collecting then. I bought that print on October 6 and the Christie’s auction was October 8, 1993. It was six months until I collected my second “hand” picture because it struck me that it was so beautiful. It took time for the gears to evolve in order to collect, and then I started collecting only well known names like Avedon, Penn, Mapplethorpe, and even a Chuck Close early on, as well as a few others. I bought quite a few on my own for the first two or three years, and then I hired someone, Marianne Courville, who had studied photog173 Musée Magazine No. 4

raphy at the Rhode Island School of Art, and knew much more than I did! Together we decided to put a collection together, which started with an 1840 William Henry Fox Talbot’s first picture of Lord Byron’s own handwriting for the 1811 Ode to Napoleon. We went on with the second photographer in the world, Mr. Daguerre from Paris, and obviously bought some daguerreotypes, and continued to have almost every famous photographer right up until 2009 or 2010, when I stopped collecting photographs.

Why did you stop collecting?

Well, I had almost everything. The reason I stopped is because my show had been to the Guggenheim and then in four major museums in Europe. Next, the collection started traveling to the Far East, and when it came back here it started traveling with hand sculptures that I began to collect before that. I was giving a lot of the money to the charity I run, and so I was running out of money. Everything had happened and been done by then. I still collect sculptures of hands: I just bought a Michael Jackson glove that has Swarovski crystals all over it.

“I love the different forms of hands, and when I was collecting it was very interesting to see.”

- Henry Buhl

How important is it for a collection’s value to have a theme to it? Does it matter?

It might if you sold the whole collection as one. I would’ve been glad to sell the whole collection and not give it away to a museum where it would probably sit in a warehouse somewhere for most of its life. Nobody seemed willing to buy my whole collection and so we put it up for bidding with Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips – Sotheby’s won the bidding. It may be very beneficial to have it traveling all over the place to different countries of the world and college museums. I think that will help the value of it. Each piece is going to be sold individually.

We have 1,100 pieces of which on December 12th and 13th, Sotheby’s is going to offer about 550 of what they consider the major pieces, most of which are owned by the Buhl Foundation. The money made will be sent to the Buhl Foundation, which will in turn be given away to other charities.

Tell me about your experience of being a wedding and event photographer? Why did you start doing it?

It was purely by accident that I became a wedding

photographer. I was invited to go to a wedding in Southampton and I didn’t really know the bride, just the hostess, her mother. I called the hostess, thinking I would be bored at the wedding, and told her that I bought a new camera and asked if I could take photos of the wedding.

She said, “It’s fine by me, just ask the professional photographer, who is coming to take the photos.” I brought my little camera with the flash and asked the photographer, who agreed and said, “Just stay out of my way.”

A few days later the hostess called me and asked how the wedding photos were, to which I responded that they were okay. She was hoping they were okay because the professional photographer’s camera jammed and none of her pictures came out.

What advice would you give to someone who has just starting a collection?

The thing you should do is buy what you like, and it is probably better if you specialize in something. I know people who buy all over the lot, and it’s so hard to get to know some artist and whether it’s a good piece or a bad piece. Unless you have an assistant or someone else who can look up the artist or piece’s provenance and how important it is. I was fortunate in having someone help me do that, so I was able to get important pieces from each artist. That’s why I think Denise Bethel, head of the Photography Department at Sotheby’s, is so excited because she said, “You can’t find these pieces anywhere and they’re some of the best.” Most of the best

pieces end up in museums, which means that very few come out for sale, unless they somehow have a duplicate.

How important is it for a collector to collect from an artist who went to grad school?

It doesn’t matter. I know lots of people who never went to college and are great artists! A lot of people who never studied photography turned out to be great photographers.

Do you think there is an intersection between art and philanthropy?

I would guess yes, look at the museums! They’re charities, and where they get a lot of what they hang is from donations from collectors. There is an enormous amount of art being given to museums.

How did you start your foundations, especially your foundation for the homeless?

Well that’s a different thing. There is the Buhl Foundation, which is private and owns most of the pieces being sold at Sotheby’s. In 1992, I started what was called the SoHo Partnership at the time, and then the TriBeCa Partnership, the 123rd Partnership, and the Hudson Square Partnership, which we converted to the Association of Community Employment (ACE) Program for the No. 4 Musée Magazine 174

Homeless, around 2010. It saves money on uniforms and accounting, and it streamlines the whole operation; everything is now under the heading of ACE. I started it by accident too! It was the summer of 1992, which was when we had our photographic studio on 114 Greene Street in SoHo with its four shooting studios. There were about eight or so artists in the studio, and when we all went out to lunch we would see a guy sweeping the sidewalk, and when we came back from lunch he would often be sound asleep in a doorway. One day he came up and asked if he could borrow twenty dollars, and I said, “Well, why should I lend you money? You have a job!” He said, “No, I was just fired,” and I asked him what for, to which he responded, “Sleeping on the job.” I spoke to the twelve stores on the street that he swept for, and they all said that they wanted him to continue sweeping.

I also went to go speak to the Executive Director of the Bowery Residency Committee, who spent an hour and fifteen minutes speaking about their operations. I asked him if he had anybody who could sweep the sidewalks on Greene Street, and said that if he did a good job, I could potentially reference him to the other stores. The director threw his hands up in the air and said, “Hallelujah! You might be my savior.” He explained all of the costs necessary for taking in these men fresh out of jail and trying to get them back on their feet. It started with one man, and then two, and then eight, and it just continued to grow. I stopped my photography, sold the floor below, and that’s how it started.

Was there ever a time while you were collecting your hand collection that you questioned yourself and asked, “Why hands?”

No, I was always happy after I got going. I really started in 1994, and by 2002 the Whitney came to me wanting to put on a show for the hand collection. It took me only about eight years to get the collection together and I didn’t spend that much money on the collection because the photography was fairly cheap at the time. This Georgia O’Keeffe was the only one I really spent a lot on, but others were more expensive later on. The Whitney didn’t want to show my non-American pictures, and I said, “No, this collection is based off the history of photography and you have to show the early pieces by non-American artists!” So, I turned down the Whitney. Two weeks later, Tom Krens of the Guggenheim told me he heard what happened with the Whitney and offered to show the whole collection! The Whitney turning me down was a lucky thing because the Guggenheim has three times as many paid visitors on a yearly basis and has much more of an international connection. Therefore, so many more people saw my collection. You’ve got to stick to your guns sometimes with what you think is right. n

Interview and Photographs by Andrea Blanch

Are you thinking of expanding your programs any time soon?

We’re starting a new program called the “greening” of SoHo, where we sign contracts with the city to water parks using the homeless men and women that we know, giving them another notch on their résumé.

What do you think about art education in schools?

I think it’s very important. I understand most schools have cut out art education and I think they should still have it.

You can’t always be doing English, math, and science.

It’s all important: it makes you a more rounded person!

How do you feel about the shift in photography from traditional cameras to “image making”?

I think it’s fine. It’s made a lot of amateur photographers much more professional, and makes them take more pictures. Everyone has an iPhone and takes photographs like crazy. It’s all a new world to me. I would collect them; I don’t think we have many digital prints in our collection.

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Jacqueline McCullough Title: Diana and Roy Contact: http://www.jacquelinemccullough.com

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Shay Stelzer Title: Nana Contact: sstelz20@student.scad.edu 179 Musée Magazine No. 4

Shay Stelzer Title: Nana Contact: sstelz20@student.scad.edu No. 4 Musée Magazine 180

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Chantal Fournier Title: NYC GCT - Transit Between Work & Home Contact: http://chantalfournierphotographies.zenfolio.com

Julie Bergonz Untitled Contact: www.facebook.com/JulieBergonzPhotography

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Olivia Callender Title: Crumbs Contact: www.oliviacallender.com 185 Musée Magazine No. 4

Olivia Callender Title: Breakin Contact: www.oliviacallender.com No. 4 Musée Magazine 186

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Olivia Callender Title: Caught Snooping Contact: www.oliviacallender.com 187 Musée Magazine No. 4

Olivia Callender Title: Mimicking Application Contact: www.oliviacallender.com No. 4 Musée Magazine 188

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Peter Schafer Title: Williamsburg 2 Contact: www.peterbrianschafer.com 189 Musée Magazine No. 4

Peter Schafer Title: Williamsburg 4 Contact: www.peterbrianschafer.com No. 4 Musée Magazine 190

Jacob Ritts Untitled Contact: Ritts.Jacob@gmail.com

Mercedeh Mirshamsi Title: Clair Obscur Contact: www.mercedehs.com

FUGA

BY DIANE ECHER

“I can’t do this anymore,” he says.

She thinks it’s a coward excuse for leaving her. She takes the blow, curling around her gut, and closes her eyes. He just said something that killed part of her. She can see herself in the room, close to him. Next, she sees their story like a movie. *** They met five years ago, during a layover in Paris. He was en route to Mumbai, she was headed home to Minnesota.

There was an airline strike and a shortage of cabs. With a voucher to the same hotel, they shared a car. He smelled of cedar and musk, pointed shortcuts to the driver in French and carried her suitcase to her room. Their eyes met twice and twice she felt delicious guilt. He kept a respectful distance in the elevator, a step behind her. But all along the ride, he was detailing her silhouette. When their eyes crossed again in the side mirror, she gave him a shy look and straightened her shoulders, just enough to stretch her silk blouse.

Two hours later, they were on the dance floor of the underground hotel bar, Besame mucho playing at his request. His hand hardly left the small of her back, his eyes stroked her neck, and in the stuffy Paris night her dress crept high on her thighs. He pulled her against him and said, “Do you know how to tango? Just look into my eyes and let me do the rest.”

Weeks later they would be married.

But not to each other.

She never told him she was engaged, but he did, early the next morning in his room, his finger tracing her curves .

“I’ll be stuck with the same person all my life now.” And he made love to her again, with a rage close to desperation.

She too felt hopelessness creeping in. She would soon marry her brother’s best friend, a man she’d known all her life, honest and solid and faithful. They had shared everything from the sandbox to the discovery of sex. Their starter furniture was ordered, their apartment freshly painted. It was as if her life had built up to this culminating moment: this marriage.

Now, in the arms of the stranger, the comfort of suburban predictability colored her future in nightmarish hues. Nothing new would happen.

Yet it was the life she wanted, and she would not change it. Its problem was blandness: The solution was spice. The stranger was easily convinced to at least try it.

In the years that followed they escaped their everyday lives for the excitement of the forbidden and the value of the rare.

The affair became the lifeline by which she survived routine and disillusions without resorting to chemicals or alcohol or therapy the way most of her friends did. *** “I can’t do this anymore,” he just said, pulling her back into the present. Now he cups her face in his hands. “Tomorrow, I’m telling her.” It’s the first time he alludes to his wife. They lived their parenthetical story in a bubble, never telling one another about the rest of their lives.

Her nail traces his lips, as if to commit them to memory. She allows a tear to roll down her cheek. She can be tough, but she’s not cold.

“Then I’m leaving her. Packing my stuff and leaving.”

Her fingernail claws on his cheek. For a while, there will be a tiny scar there.

He’s not done. “It’s with you I want to be. All the time.”

Surely she misunderstood.

He goes on, “I want to fall asleep each night on your bellybutton and wake up next to you every morning.” His breath caresses her dreamy eyes. “You’ll have a good life. You won’t have to travel anymore…” care… every day… no more travel… just the two of us… His words echo like footsteps in a death row, each of them stabbing the life in her.

But she’s a fighter, and he’ll get over it.

She’ll find another lover.

Arielle Kramer Title: Fountain Contact: a.kramerphoto@yahoo.com

Brittany Callahan Untitled Contact: bcalla20@student.scad.edu No. 4 Musée Magazine 196

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Ossian Fraser Title: Untitled, 2011, Water, National gallery Berlin Contact: www.ossianfraser.com 197 Musée Magazine No. 4

Ossian Fraser Title: Untitled, 2011, Water, National gallery Berlin Contact: www.ossianfraser.com No. 4 Musée Magazine 198

Todd Gieg Title: City Point Tunnel Contact: www.toddgiegphoto.com

J.T. Liss Title: Interconnection Contact: jtlissphotography@gmail.com

Sara Fields Title: Blue Birds Contact: http://www.sarameganfields.com

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Jon Damaschke Title: Elated Motion Contact: http://www.jondamaschke.com 205 Musée Magazine No. 4

Jon Damaschke Title: Taking Flight Contact: http://www.jondamaschke.com No. 4 Musée Magazine 206

Pedro Abreu Untitled Contact: pabreuart@aol.com

EDITORS’ PICKS

Cristina Venedict Lives in Romania , Botosani city, Cristina has a degree in psychology, and completed high school of art. “With photography I learned to smile when I see a happy face, to cross the street as if I am “floating” on air, to be happy when a flower is blooming…to see the beauty when sadness surrounds me.” Her works speak of a dream world. A world where everything is possible and “unusual” real life is simplebanality.

Heike Buelau Heike Buelau grew up in Bremen, Germany, where she was trained as a classical singer. After starting her career in Europe, she moved to New York City. “I was a singer and performer in opera from a very early age, which has left its indelible mark on my soul and subsequently my journey as a visual artist. When I decided to leave the music behind, photography came to me like a long lost love. It rescued me from an enormous creative hole and in no time I realized that I could continue my music on canvas. And that is what my work is today: my perception of sound, which has always been experienced mainly in the moments of silence, translated into my predominantly minimalist work and manifested in this body of work: “The Challenge of Silence. Inexorable…Irresistible”, which has also just been completed as a video installation piece, interlacing my images with my voice.” For the first time, combining the two creative forces of her life and the exploration of empty space vs. silence. “It is a beautiful, ongoing artistic process as well as a sort of homecoming for me. Profound connection to the self.”

Jason Bryant Jason Bryant’s paintings explore his fascination with film, skateboarding culture and the presentation of the self. He was born in 1976 in Wilson, North Carolina and lives and works in New York City. Jason Bryant received his BFA in Painting from East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina in 1999, before completing his MFA at Maryland Institute College of Art in 2004.

Cristina Venedict Title: I Take Care of My Heart Contact: www.cristinavenedict.ro

Cristina Venedict Title: A Little Help Contact: www.cristinavenedict.ro

Cristina Venedict Title: In a Moment of Harmony Contact: www.cristinavenedict.ro

Cristina Venedict Title: Divorce Contact: www.cristinavenedict.ro

Cristina Venedict Title: Back to Freedom Contact: www.cristinavenedict.ro

Cristina Venedict Title: Drawing Dreams Contact: www.cristinavenedict.ro

Cristina Venedict Title: Revelation Contact: www.cristinavenedict.ro

Heike Buelau Untitled Contact: studio@heikebuelau.com

Heike Buelau Untitled Contact: studio@heikebuelau.com

Heike Buelau Untitled Contact: studio@heikebuelau.com

Heike Buelau Untitled Contact: studio@heikebuelau.com

Jason Bryant Title: A Crack In His Faux Finish Contact: www.portercontemporary.com/jasonbryant/

Jason Bryant Title: Fabulously Flawed Contact: www.portercontemporary.com/jasonbryant/

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