[Toward the tail end of my decade as the photography critic for the New York Observer I had the opportunity to review the Museum of Modern Art’s celebration of Cindy Sherman’s “Untitled Film Stills” series, a complete set of which they had recently acquired and were showing for the first time, in an exhibition sponsored […]
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Collectively, Arbus, Friedlander, and Winogrand revised the ways in which photographers used their cameras, which changed the look of the resulting photographs, and that they made the photographer’s participatory role in the photographic event a foregrounded given, which transformed both the behavior of photographers and the way we interpret their work. […] This non-political, anti-theoretical posture denies categorically and consistently that such photographs are in any way about their literal subject matter, insisting instead that photographs are entirely about themselves and in no way concerned with either the photographer’s inner life or whatever took place in front of the lens at the moment of exposure. As a stance, it became not just widespread but almost mandatory among practitioners of this genre of photography. […] By energetically promulgating the Capa D-Day myth, disregarding contrary evidence in its own holdings, obstructing independent research about Capa, and falsely claiming not to possess key archival materials that it has held for years (among other sins), ICP has besmirched its reputation as a responsible repository and a credible research institution. […] |
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In Memoriam: Liu Xiaobo
Chinese poet, dissident, and 2010 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo died of acute liver cancer on Thursday, July 13, 2017 while in police custody. Liu Xiaobo’s wife, the noted poet and photographer Liu Xia, has been under extralegal house arrest since Liu Xiaobo received the Nobel prize. Liu Xia’s whereabouts are currently unknown. With her husband now dead, she has become de facto the most internationally recognized symbol of opposition to the oligarchy that rules mainland China. […]