News
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harlan erskine
An early critique at the Camera Club of NY
Last weekend, I looked through the Camera Club of New York's historical archives. They are safely kept in 18 boxes under Bryant park at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, also known as New York Public Library's main building. I will return over the next few months to dig around and choose a few pieces from the archive for this blog.
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harlan erskine
Openings and Events this week – October 19 – 23
Thursday, October 20 Alessandro Zuek Simonetti, Andrea Sonnenberg, Dave Potes, Lele Saveri, Lisa Weiss, Patrick Griffin, Yuri Shibuya "The Inferno" curated by Hamburger Eyes + Ed. Varie Ed. Varie 208 East 7th street, 7-10pm [caption id="attachment_1156" align="alignnone" width="240" caption="Bill Jacobson"][/caption] Bill Jacobson, "Into the Loving Nowhere (1989 till now)" Julie Saul Gallery 535 West 22nd street,
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harlan erskine
Cycles of the new and the old
Hi Camera Club and blog readers, My name is Harlan Erskine, and I'm happy to be the new guest blogger. Over the next few months I will be writing about the art of photography as it relates to our contemporary culture and the history of the Camera Club. I'm looking forward to digging into the club's archives
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Gail Quagliata
Ending at the beginning
Man Ray was the photographer who made me want to be a photographer when I was a 15 year old who had just enrolled in Photography and was trying to make sense of my grandmother's well-worn Olympus. I think I liked him so instantly because his work seems exotic and intangible when you're 15 and
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Gail Quagliata
Costumes are weird.
Estelle Hanania has a brilliant series of images from Purim she took in one of London's largest Hasidic communities. I found the work fascinating because I've lived in Williamsburg for about 6 years and I still find it nearly impossible not to gawk at the strict religious community plunked smack in the midst of our
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Gail Quagliata
I love you, Martin Parr.
It's easy to get old and crotchety and cynical when you're a. actually rather comparatively old (because you spend most of your time on a college campus and the rest of your time student teaching in an elementary school) and/or b. running on very little sleep and surrounded by peppy kids who think they've got
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Gail Quagliata
“If your photos aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”
...or so said Mr. Robert Capa, born Endre Friedmann, died stepping on a landmine in 1954 clutching a Contax and a Nikon S in pursuit of that very closeness. After lamenting the fact that, due to statistics frowning at me (plus my lack of buying a lottery ticket ever), I haven't hit the Powerball jackpot
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Gail Quagliata
DOCUMERICA, and why we should do this constantly, part 2.
Documerica was a project launched by the EPA in the early 1970s to call attention to the pollution problems plaguing the U.S. in the same way the FSA photographers had so famously revealed the plight of the rural poor during the Depression. But why don't we (not the royal "We," of course, but people like me, let's say), as products of an American public education or even simply as photographers born into the Reagan era, know the furrowed brow of John H. White's "Black Youngster Taking Out the Trash On Chicago's South Side," like we know the furrowed brow of Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother"?
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Gail Quagliata
DOCUMERICA, and why don’t we do this anymore, part 1.
From 1971-1977, The Environmental Protection Agency employed nearly 100 freelance photographers to "photographically document subjects of environmental concern" around the United States. This ambitious (if ambiguous) project, which, to me seems so similar to the iconic photographic work undertaken by the "Information Department" of the Farm Security Administration from 1935-1944, yielded some amazing work that really should be seen more. The U.S. National Archives made much of the work available online, oddly, through its Flickr account. Here are some of the images taken by Michael Philip Manheim,