NoteWorthy PhotoBooks, 2021

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

Oh, what would my life have been like these past almost 2 years without books? In a world without people, social events, or much else that most people considered regular parts of daily life “before,” I, like everyone else, was left to make the most out of what we had left, and make no mistake about it- I was, and am, grateful for what was left.

Though things returned to a semblance of what used to be called “normal” in the PhotoBook world in 2021, it was only that- a semblance. While the publishers somehow managed to hold up their end with the bigger houses announcing ambitious release plans with about the same amount of books as seen before 2020, things were a bit rockier elsewhere. The bigger book shows in NYC and the rest of the US were cancelled for 2021, so once again, retailers were the best way to actually see books in person, carefully. Things were still challenging for retail, and a number of independents I visited had cut down on their purchases, hours of operation, even whole departments, in order to survive. Hard to argue with that. So, it was still hard to see anywhere near as many new PhotoBooks as in years past. (Standard Disclaimer- As in years past, I have seen no one else’s list or reviews of books.)  Speaking of past years, I should mention that I have now been doing this list for four years. You can see the the prior installments for 2018 here, 2019 here, and 2020 here (I also looked at NoteWorthy Art Books in 2020 here and 2021 here). None of my pieces have sales links. As in past years, please note that publication dates are one thing, but I go by the dates I actually saw a book available for purchase- online or at retail, to include it in a specific year. Of those I saw this past year, these stood out as those I’d most highly recommend, which I call “NoteWorthy,” since there is no such thing as “best” in the Arts.

NoteWorthy Photobooks, 2021- Most Highly Recommended-

Gilles Peress, Whatever You Say, Say Nothing and the accompanying Annals of the North. Modified Steidl Photo

Gilles Peress, Whatever you say say nothing, Steidl- After 30 years in his archive, Mr. Peress has collaborated with Gerhard Steidl and the brilliant book designer Yolanda Cuomo on a book that many have already hailed as a PhotoBook for the ages. Indeed it is, but it also strikes me as a book for right now. At a time of so much strife here at home, it’s hard for me, for one, not to see elements of that in Mr. Peress’s strife filled work from a distant place and a another time.

Are there lessons from the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland in 1972 and 1980 when Mr. Peress took these Photographs we can use now? That’s for others to say. What I am sure of is that those killed remain dead. Does anything change? Well, there has been peace for almost 15 years now. While some might want to see more conflict documented among these 1,295 images, it is the images of courage to continue daily life in the midst of a world gone mad, to keep calm and carry on, as the catchphrase originally meant, that strike me just as much. Then there’s the Artistry.

Whatever you say is a master class in composition, street Photography/conflict Photography and immediate reaction, even though Mr. Peress was only in the early days of his illustrious career. So many times it seems that he anticipated an image the way Wayne Gretzky knew where the puck or his teammates would be seconds before they were. At close to 30 pounds with a wingspan when open close to 29 inches(!), it might not find its way into many homes, but every serious or institutional Art or Photography library needs it, and the accompanying 900 page annals of the north, on their sturdiest shelf.

Sara Cwynar, Glass Life, Aperture- In the world of surveillance capitalism we live in (but not here!), Sara Cwynar’s book looks and feels like a report card from the future, but it’s really a snap shot of the right now and recent past. Remember the marketing hubbub around the debut of the “Rose Gold” iPhone? Sara Cwynar made a film inspired by it called Rose Gold that’s now in MoMA’s Permanent Collection. Most of us are living in “Glass Life,” where much of our information, and some/many/most/all of our “personal connections” come from something with glass on it, which takes a good deal of our privacy in the process, providing a poor substitute for real intimacy. Her work has been most notably seen in a series of films (Soft Film, 2016, Rose Gold, 2017, and Red Film, 2018) that have been shown at MoMA and elsewhere. Stills from the films, and some of her portraits are collected in Glass Life. “But I now consider photography more of a tool in my work than a medium that I am totally devoted to,” she explained1. Though not a traditional “PhotoBook” per se, I find Glass Life stunning and ground-breaking.  

Sara Cwynar has been busy cataloging and connecting the various ways beauty and desirability are used by those in power to maintain or grow it, building a substantial image archive that, along with images she takes herself, she mines for her pieces. She first came to prominence for her eye-catching designs for the New York Times T Magazine, and has progressively built a major Art career this past decade with her Films and shows all over the world. As she approaches 10 years of solo shows, Ms. Cwynar has arrived as a doer and shaker in the Art world. Glass Life is a major, seminal, work of this young decade. 

Arthur Jafa, MAGNUMB, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark- Another Artist mostly known for his work in realms other than Photography, though in Mr. Jafa’s case, he works in a very wide range of mediums. MAGNUMB is an overview of his work with revealing interviews with the Artist included. From his sculpture of Ex-Slave Gordon on the cover, every page inside feels like it’s on fire.

Stills from his Films, and works in other medium, including his Photographs are included in one of the most important books of the year. After being called to work with Stanley Kubrick (on Eyes Wide Shut) and Spike Lee (he shot Crooklyn), Arthur Jafa has finally garnered recognition for his own work, something I don’t see that ending any time soon.

Unboxing my copy of American Geography…

Matt Black, American Geography, Thames & Hudson- Magnum Photos Member Matt Black (B. 1950) has been visiting & documenting American centers of poverty for the past six years, beginning with those around him in central California, where 1/3 of the population lives in poverty. During this time he has logged over 100,000 miles traveling to places with a poverty rate over 20% in 46 states and Puerto Rico. What he has brought back is body of work that is nothing short of comparable with that of the legendary Farm Security Administration (FSA) Photographs of Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Arthur Rothstein, Marion Post Wolcott and the rest in the 1930s, in my view, which are now icons of Photography and history.

Many of Mr. Black’s images are so stunning visually and Artistically they might be accused of distracting from their point- to show the rest of us how too many of us live. For me, it’s too hard to deny their status as Fine Art, but Mr. Black’s skill is such that he drives his point home in spades no matter the stunning Art of his craft. Lauded as a “future classic of photography” by the publisher, I’ve been watching this body of work being built the past five years and have been both stunned and mesmerized by each succeeding black & white image he has presented, so I knew this book would be a classic, without their words, the moment I learned of it. It’s not only a “future classic of photography,” it’s a classic right now.

NoteWorthy PhotoBooks, 2021- Excellent & Under The Radar-

Elliott Verdier from Reaching for Dawn. Elliott Verdier Photo.

Elliott Verdier, Reaching for Dawn, Dunes- After bringing the world A Shaded Path in 2019 on Kirghizistan, the French documentarian who has been featured in the New York Times (including this recent historic event he covered), among other outlets, turned his large format camera on the rarely seen country of Liberia in 2019, scene of a horrific civil war from 1989 to 2003. Mr. Verdier spent two years traipsing the country far and wide creating two different bodies of work- one, of landscapes in black & white, the other of color portraits. The results are published by Dune, the imprint he co-founded, in a book in a few different kinds of paper, and some pages in silver ink, like the books of that other great documentarian, Richard Mosse. The images are accompanied by texts by singer/songwriter Gaël Faye and 2011 Liberian Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Leymah Gbowee. Reaching for Dawn makes a powerful counterpoint to Whatever you say, showing how the scars of war never really go away even though the conflict may be no longer seen. A remarkable PhotoBook and accomplishment on every level, that conveys a portrait of the land and the stoic resolve and dignity of the people who call it home.

Rosalind Fox Solomon, The Forgotten, Mack Books- Another Artist who has been on my list before- for her last book. In 2018, the instant classic Liberty Theater appeared here. This one is exceptional as well. It’s so easy to get caught up in imaginary narratives as you move from page to page to not fully appreciate how remarkable the passing Photos are. The Forgotten is another book in what is now an exceptional string of PhotoBooks by Rosalind Fox Solomon published by Mack Books, joining Them, in 2014, Got to Go, 2016, and the aforementioned Liberty Theater in 2018, each of which is highly recommended. At 91, it’s hard to think of any other Photographer who’s created so many excellent books the past 5-7 years besides Ms. Fox Solomon and Gregory Halpern. Find them while you can.

A sealed copy of Electronic Landscapes. Something that is going to be very rarely seen in the future, unless it’s reprinted.

Isaac Diggs and Edward Hillel, Electronic Landscapes, +Kris Graves Projects- I live in a city where great Music was has a long and storied history. Maybe you do, too. I bet for both of us, and probably almost every other place where great Music was made, almost no documentation of it exists, particularly of its beginnings. Isaac Diggs and Edward Hillel have seen to it that when people look back and want to know more about the beginnings of Detroit’s house, techno and hip-hop resurgence in 20 or 30 years the documentation will be there. And blessed they will be to have such a well-done and extremely well-organized book to refer to. +KGP was my NoteWorthy PhotoBook Publisher for 2020, when in spite of the pandemic and the worldwide shutdown, Kris Graves & Co. managed to publish 18 books! AND Mr. Graves created work, himself, that found him on the cover of National Geographic’s Photos of the Year Issue. This is Mr. Diggs third excellent book with +KGP. Only one, his equally excellent Middle Distance, is still available. Electronic Landscapes is just about sold out as I write this.

NoteWorthy 1st PhotoBooks, 2021-

Rahim Fortune, I can’t stand to see you cry, Loose Joints- Mr. Fortune’s debut is centered around his trip home to care for his ill father. The resulting book is a poignant meditation on life and its fleeting moments captured in black & white. Having had a parent who was sick for 6 years before passing, I am unfortunately acquainted with this. Mr. Fortune’s images don’t hide the worry, but his images are full of dignity and strength, while they meditate on life, death, love and loss. A remarkable debut.

Philip Montgomery: American Mirror, Aperture. 2021 saw a number of fine books that looked back at America either the past two years, or over the past few decades, by Mitch Epstein (Property Rights), Ken Light (Course of Empire), Robert Adams (American Silence) and Peter Van Agtmael (2020 and Sorry About The War), and others. For me, Philip Montgomery: American Mirror stood out for me among them, particularly because it’s a first PhotoBook. Mr. Montgomery’s style is stark, economical and direct all the while being beautiful, regardless of his subject. At just 33, his work has already been featured in the world’s most prestigious publications from The New York Times & The New York Times Magazine, to The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair, among many others. Here you can see why. While he Photographs other subjects, it only takes one look at American Mirror to see that Mr. Montgomery has all the makings of a major voice in what used to be called “Documentary Photography.” American Mirror screams “auspicious.” It’s one of those books people will be referring to while others will be desperately trying to find if it goes out of print.

NoteWorthy Retrospective, 2021-

Michael Schmidt: Photographs 1965-2014- The late German (1945-2014) is another of the many excellent Photographers who are not nearly as well known in the USA as they are in Europe. Michael Schmidt had a show, Michael Schmidt: U-NI-TY (EIN-HEIT), in 1996 at MoMA. It featured one of his most important bodies of work, created in response to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of the two Germanys. It’s not the only excellent book Michael Schmidt produced. Waffenruhe (Ceasefire) is widely recognized as a 20th century classic. The fine softcover reprint is gradually disappearing, so be forewarned to get it soon. Michael Schmidt: Photographs 1965-2014 provides a very well done look at all of his books and his entire career, much of which will be new to PhotoBook aficionados in the USA. Check it out and don’t wait long if you want it. It will be very expensive after it goes out of print.

Eikoh Hosoe, Mack Books– Largely a contemporary of Michael Schmidt, though on the other side of the world, Eikoh Hosoe (B.1933) is something of a well-kept secret outside of his native Japan. Inside Japan, he’s known for his fine work over a 65 year career as a Photographer in helping to create post-war Japanese Photography, and as a teacher, who counts the world-famous Photographer, Daido Moriyama, among his students. For those looking to see where Mr. Moriyama’s signature high-contrast style came from, Eikoh Hosoe will prove most illuminating. Mack has outdone themselves with this excellent, 400 page, retrospective in which everything (the layout, the covers, the inclusion of a chronology, the quality of the binding and the printing) is first rate, especially the content. It’s now possible for those of us outside Japan to get up to speed on Mr. Hosoe’s accomplishment and follow his career step by step in this beautiful book, which is likely to stand as “definitive” for at least the near future.

NoteWorthy Reissued PhotoBook, 2021-

Jason Ezkenazi, Wonderland, Red Hook Editions- I’d given up hope of seeing this book, which quickly sold out, after achieving near legendary status. Then, earlier this year Jason Ezkenazi reissued his classic, in a larger size, and I immediately jumped on the chance to get it. Now, I come to it backwards, Wonderland being Book 1 of a trilogy. I was able to get the excellent Black Garden, Book 2, and Departure Lounge, Book 3 (see NoteWorthy PhotoBooks, 2020) last year, which only served to heighten my desire to see Book 1, Wonderland. It certainly holds up to both its reputation and the passage of time. Don’t miss it this time.

NoteWorthy Exhibition Catalog, 2021-

Zanele Muholi, Tate- The renowned Photographer, Painter & Activist received a Retrospective at the Tate, London this past year that included about 260 pieces covering her entire career. The only thing missing were her Paintings, who’s debut I recently looked at. For those of us not able to see the show, the Tate’s catalog is an essential book especially when you consider that some of her earlier books, like the excellent Faces & Phases 2006-14 and Only Half The Picture, are out of print and hard to find reasonably priced. At the moment, it’s the only way to see her early work and an overview of her whole accomplishment to this point.

NoteWorthy Photobook of 2018 I Missed- Mea Culpa!-

A word of warning- New, sealed copies, like this one, are getting quite hard to find.

Zanele Muholi, Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness, Aperture, 2018- Speaking of Ms. Muholi, HOW did I not include this in my 2018 NoteWorthy PhotoBooks, 2018 piece?

Zanele Muholi, from Brave Beauties and Somnyama Ngonyama (‘Hail, the Dark Lioness’), at Yancey Richardson, October, 2017

I had seen some of the work included in it at Yancey Richardson in 2017 and been stunned by it. The answer- the first printing sold out before I could get a copy. Suffice it to say that it is one of the masterpieces of the PhotoBook genre published this past decade. Though she has done other books and they are all worth seeking out, if she had only done this book, it would be sufficient to secure her place among the world’s great living portraitists- in any medium. Still, that only enhances the value of her ground-breaking work as an activist documenting over-looked and at risk communities.

NoteWorthy PhotoBook After My Own Heart, 2021-

Ahndraya Parlato, Who is Changed and Who is Dead, Mack Books- Parents aren’t supposed to leave their kids. At least that’s what their kids believe. Even into adulthood. So, few kids think about the death of their parent, none are prepared to lose one, or both. In my experience, even after a long terminal illness, the passing comes as a big shock. When one’s parent commits suicide, it can feel like abandonment. The “victim” in this case is NOT the deceased. It is those Mom or Dad left behind. Being an offspring of one parental suicide, I am one of those victims, like Ahndraya Parlato is. No one has spoken for us- writer, novelist, or Artist, until Ms. Parlato braved this minefield, accompanied by her children, to create a book that is at once extremely personal, yet expresses the permanence of loss that all parental suicide victims live with. Her wonderful Photography (most recently seen in 2016’s excellent A SPECTACLE AND NOTHING STRANGE), is here accompanied by her writing, the two dialoging with, and enhancing, the other at every turn of the page. The loss is tinged with a longing I know too well, in the form of a light from a distant star, or creating work with her mother’s ashes.

Her children provide another dimension, and something more- hope. Had they been absent, the book might have been darker, but more narrowly focused. Instead, they show that Ms. Parlato is not alone in this struggle to survive and overcome the past that never ends. Yet, with them comes fear. While all of us live with fear in our daily lives (my big one is being hit by an ever-present bike on the sidewalks or streets of Manhattan). In both our cases, it is the unexpected sudden and life-altering event that would seem to lie underneath them. I have no idea what it’s like to have and to raise kids. I’ve never even held a child. Yet, I can’t help but wonder if both our fears are born in the wake of the trauma of losing a parent so suddenly and horrifically. Ahndraya’s book is THE most personal PhotoBook I saw in 2021. I applaud her courage wholeheartedly, and if creating Who is Changed… was, in part at least, an act of therapy, I only hope it helps. 

NoteWorthy PhotoBook Issued Before 2021 First Seen in 2021-

The seven volumes of Robert Frank’s Visual Diaries, 2010-17, six in a similar design- a softcover in a slipcase. The seventh is Household Inventory Record, 2013, right, designed to look like the original which was created in an actual Household Inventory Record book, so it looks different.

Robert Frank, “The Visual Diaries,” Steidl- As I wrote in my piece, The “Other” Robert Frank, I was one of the many who best knew Robert Frank from The Americans (though I had London/Wales, Moving Out, and Looking In, the latter two are not “by” Mr. Frank), before launching into trying to see as many of his “other” books as possible during the shutdown, like most of the books on this list, thanks to the USPS! The Visual Diaries is not an official title but the title the publisher, Steidl, refers to the group of seven books Mr. Frank created between 2013 and 2017 by. Now having seen about 20 of his “other” books, they each have a good deal to recommend them, and they are essential for Photographers or anyone who is trying to get an overview of Modern & Contemporary Photography, post-the publication of Mr. Frank’s The Americans in 1958 and 1959. And oh yeah, anyone trying to get a more complete picture of Robert Frank’s seminal career & accomplishment. These are as personal as one would expect from a “diary.” Filled with unpublished and familiar images over Mr. Frank’s long and productive life (he never stopped creating, which will come as news to many Americans fans), they are master classes in “How to make a great PhotoBook,” from their arrangement, page layout, and of course, the uncompromising Photos, which often seem to go out of their way to break every rule anyone else holds dear. And, unlike 99% of the other PhotoBooks I saw in 2021, the images are marvelously chosen and beautifully sequenced. None are superfluous. None weaken, or even bring down, the whole. If there is one thing most PhotoBooks I see continually fall short in, that’s it.

*- Soundtrack for this Post is “Diggin The New” by Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros as heard on their album Rock Art & The X-Ray Style.

The Old Chelsea Post Office, May 29, 2020, fittingly half in shadow, during the height of the pandemic in NYC and during the height of the discussion about cutting the funding of the USPS. Yet, through it all, Manager Miss Lloyd and her staff showed up almost every day and persevered throughout.

This Post is dedicated to Miss Lloyd & the Staff of the Old Chelsea Post Office, NYC, which not only got books to me, but also were my first source of masks and alcohol, when there were none to be found anywhere locally. Miss Lloyd, the overall manager of this Post Office, recently retired, but not before getting her staff and her customers through the worst of the very, very dark days of the early pandemic. Thank you for your service, Miss Lloyd & Staff!

November 26, 2021- I started this post in better times and have worked on it all year. I mysteriously fell ill in September and I have been in and out of the E.R. and the hospital since. While the 21 doctors I’ve seen thus far are still trying to get to the bottom of it, some progress has been made, and my life altered as a result. I’m being monitored 24/7 as I write this, (but Sara Cwynar might remind me that we all are. ; ) ) I want to extend my thanks to everyone involved with my treatment and the staff of Mount Sinai’s Emergency Room & Hospital for their truly amazing care. Yes, even to the nurse who chastised me for working on this piece while I was hospitalized!

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free for over 7 years, during which over 275 full length pieces have been published! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate to allow me to continue below. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art & Photography books, and Music from my collection! Books may be found here. Music here and here. 

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

  1. https://bombmagazine.org/articles/sara-cwynar/ ↩

John Chamberlain’s Twisted Dreams

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

After seeing innumerable shows of Art that doesn’t speak to me, seemingly from out of the blue, comes a John Chamberlain show that feels like a pipe cleaner going from ear to ear, right through my brain. It’s happened three times thus far, actually. First, in 2012, when John Chamberlain: Choices rocked me at the Guggenheim. Then, in 2019, John Chamberlain: Baby Tycoons, which I wrote about, was a breath of fresh air at Hauser & Wirth uptown, and now with John Chamberlain: Stance, Rhythm, and Tilt, at Gagosian, West 21st. The effect of each was similar, though the work was different- Baby Tycoons featured Mr. Chamberlain’s rarely seen smaller works, which proved every bit as wonderful as his familiar larger pieces, Choices was a Retrospective, and Stance, Rhythm, and Tilt, a selection ranging from 1957 to 2010, by Susan Davidson, the same curator who brought us Choices. 

I’m not sure what this says about the plethora of shows I’ve seen these past 9 years (I haven’t written about) that silently built up this numbness in me that it took wildly bent steel with factory, or added, paint mostly from junk cars to wash away, but it’s now been three times his work has served to cleanse my system. 

Each time, it has also looked fresh to me, even shockingly so, regardless of the date the work was created. A byproduct of living in the big city? Perhaps. Wrecked or damaged cars are here to be seen on the streets fairly often, where a close look reveals the incredible force they suffered was extreme. Too often, horrific. There is violence, too, in the work of John Chamberlain. The metal in his work has been bent, 3, perhaps 4, times. Once to create the original vehicle, once, possibly if it was damaged or destroyed in an accident, once if was compressed it when it was junked, and finally, when it was reshaped by the Artist, to which he adds the key differences between mayhem and Art- finesse and vision. It is these latter that I choose to focus on when I see them, and not their possible history. This, and the poetry Mr. Chamberlain permeates them with along the way.

 

Though he works in steel, his work often reminds me of Painting. For that matter, so do the Photographs of Aaron Siskind, a Chamberlain contemporary, particularly those of found walls that have seen a variety of forces work on them, which were somehow branded “abstract expressionist” by some (not by me). Though Mr. Chamberlain’s pieces are round, squarish, somewhat rectangular, or hung on a wall (coming as close to two-dimensional as his work gets), his compositions work in the same way that the best Abstract Paintings do- Kandinsky, Rothko, Pollack, De Kooning, whoever you’d care to put on the list, though in 3 dimensions. Throughout, they defiantly speak their own language. A language that John Chamberlain, with acknowledgements to Picasso and Surrealism, owns. Wait. How many Artists, particularly Contemporary Artists, “own” a visual language? Mondrian…Basquiat…Keith Haring? John Chamberlain, 1927-2011, outlived both of the latter. I am sure there are others, but not many. 

Seeing his work now, I wonder…Is Mr. Chamberlain “commenting” on the disposability of cars or other vehicles? The violence in modern life? The disposability of so much of our “stuff?” (or, the unintended permanence of it). That there is beauty in destruction? Or, is he just after new ways of creating and expressing himself? I haven’t wanted to stop my imaginings long enough to read the texts in the books I have on him- John Chamberlain: Choices, the catalog from that Guggenheim Retrospective by curator Susan Davidson, and John Chamberlain: A Catalogue Raisonne of the Sculpture 1954-85. Frankly, I’m just enjoying having those jaded metallic edges scrape the insides of my brain clean as I ponder new shapes, jarring combinations and tastefully wild color combinations. I’m still lost just looking at his work to have spent any time reading what the Artist has said about it or what he wants us to know about it. I’ll get there. 

These works in found metal by Robert Rauschenberg, from his late Gluts series, were on view at the same moment 4 blocks away at Pace.

I’ve wondered if that other titan of his time, along with Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, himself a master of the found object, was influenced by John Chamberlain with his late, metallic, Gluts, series, examples from which were coincidentally on view 4 blocks away simultaneously.

One thing that struck me looking at  John Chamberlain: Stance, Rhythm, and Tilt was that I’ve also become jaded in other ways. As time has gone on, it’s become increasingly hard for me to find Art I REALLY want to hang on my walls (whether or not I could actually afford to do so- I always assume I can’t). I need Art that will continue to speak to me, or say something different to me each time I look at it. I so rarely get that feeling making the rounds of shows, increasingly these past 10 years, that it suddenly hit me that John Chamberlain is one such Artist. Of course, I can’t afford to own a John Chamberlain, nor do I have anything close to the space it deserves, but it was nice to see something and say, “I could live with that.” 

Mostly, I’ve come to think that the reason John Chamberlain’s work hits me as it does is because it’s unexpected and it’s freshness speaks to more possibilities- no matter the medium, or no medium- everywhere. Reminiscent of what John Cage said, who was also associated with Black Mountain College, like Mr. Chamberlain- there is Music everywhere. Art can be made out of anything, if one has the vision and the skill to realize it. Just when you, or I in this case, think you’ve seen it all, and everything has already been done, John Chamberlain reminds me that there’s still a universe of “stuff” out there with untapped, even infinite, possibilities.

Thanks, John. 

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free for over 7 years, during which over 275 full length pieces have been published! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate to allow me to continue below. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art & Photography books, and Music from my collection! Books may be found here. Music here and here. 

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

Tyler Mitchell: Bringing Joy Back To Art

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

Born in Atlanta in 1995, Tyler Mitchell gained recognition when he became the first Black Photographer to shoot the cover of Vogue in 2018. Last year, he released the PhotoBook, I Can Make You Feel Good, one of my NoteWorthy PhotoBooks of 2020, which was, as he has said, his exploration of a “Black visual utopia1.” This fall his work was the subject of no less than two simultaneous shows filling both of Jack Shainman’s Chelsea galleries.

Both galleries were full of work showing people doing things that seemed alien to me, and alien to much of the Art I’ve seen these past many years- People enjoying every day life…living life…and experiencing joy! Both the book and the shows ooze joy.

Perhaps unintentionally, as I continued through the shows, they are also a reminder of what life was like, “before” the pandemic hit, or what life is like at its best. I was struck by how different life looked “before,” and reminded by what it can and should look like, and feel like. A remarkable thing for an Art show or a PhotoBook to do. Yes, I actually had to be reminded of it.

The shows also left me wondering why more Artists don’t express joy in their work. Then again, times are hard everywhere.

Joy may seem very hard to find right now, but is often found in the simple things in life as Mr. Mitchell reminds us. Joy IS a kind of utopia. For anyone.

*-Soundtrack for this post is “Joy To The World,” by Hoyt Axton.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded & ad-free for over 7 years, during which over 275 full length pieces have been published! If you’ve found it worthwhile, PLEASE donate to allow me to continue below. Thank you, Kenn.

You can also support it by buying Art, Art & Photography books, and Music from my collection! Books may be found here. Music here and here. 

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

  1. https://www.tylermitchell.co/about ↩

Art Is Back In Chelsea

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

One of the most astounding works in Western Art history. Albrecht Dürer’s, Melencolia I, 1514, right? No! Read on…

There were some dark times in Chelsea’s (unofficial) Art district these past 18 months, like there was everywhere on planet earth. Some galleries went out of business, many gallery staffers lost their jobs, some galleries moved elsewhere. Early this year, things were slow. There were some shows here but not nearly as many as the pre-covid norm, and few here had been vaccinated at that point making it tricky for gallery staff and would-be visitors. I stayed away until I got vaccinated.

Going, going…Metro Pictures on West 24th Street. I have seen many memorable shows here, including the fine Louise Lawler show that’s up now inside that open door. They said they decided to close because of the globalization of the Art market, which doesn’t suit their model. I’ll miss them. Seen in October, 2021.

In March, legendary Metro Pictures on West 24th Street, an anchor of the neighborhbood since 1996, announced they would close this year, for reasons unrelated to the pandemic, they said1.

Don’t believe the hype. Real New Yorkers never went anywhere.

This whole summer there had only been two shows on my list- Richard Estes: Voyages and the blockbuster Cèzanne Drawing at MoMA, which I wrote about here. As the summer wound down I was curious to see what the fall season, the busiest of the year in Art, would bring. What would the “new normal” look like in the galleries & museums? Around Labor Day, I suddenly found myself with something I hadn’t had in 18 months- a list of shows, numbering 20, to see- carefully.

(Not) Coming (anytime) Soon. An abandoned sign outside a former Chelsea gallery on West 25th Street, October, 2021. A few of these on this block are an eerie reminder of what once was.

As I made my way down into the all too familiar West Side canyons very curious about what I would find, indeed, there was much that was different. Some familiar spots were gone, (most) others remain and virtually all of those were open, with varying degrees of precautions. Most surprisingly of all, a number of new galleries opened in spaces that had been under construction before the virus hit the fan around the High Line, and under it. Given I don’t generally attend openings (even pre-covid), and avoid going during the busier times (like weekends), I cannot attest to the level of foot traffic, a main reason galleries are here. 

Forecast- cloudy. New and old on an appropriately grey day. The new skyline of Hudson Yards just north of Chelsea dwarfs the 100 year old buildings that have housed galleries for the past 30 years or so in better times, seen through the closed shades on the top floor of Pace’s new mega-plex gallery in October.

What I can say is that I notice there has been no slowing in the sheer mountain of new work that’s been created during these dark times, just as it was ever increasingly so as this new millennium has worn on. (Geez, it already feels like it’s worn on in 21 years?) Yet, in spite of the endless volume of Art for sale I have only seen a slight softening of prices, which I find surprising, and telling. Then again, these are usually “asking” prices. Actual “sold for” prices could be (and probably are) lower by an unknown amount. On the Art front, it turns out there are a number of good and very good shows up in Chelsea this fall. While there are still some on my list I haven’t gotten to see, of those I’ve seen thus far, some highlights include (in no particular order)-

Installation view. Untitled (The Cauldron), 2021, Charcoal mounted on paper, 70 x 120 inches, left.

Robert Longo: I do fly / After Summer Merrily, at Pace, West 25th Street-

Untitled (Robert E. Lee Monument Graffiti, Richmond, Virginia), 2021, Charcoal mounted on paper, 96 by 146 inches, and Dûrer’s Solid, Stainless Steel, 2021. See following picture.

This is Robert Longo’s first show with Pace, after being represented by Metro Pictures for an unheard of 40 years, until they announced their plans to close. Famously part of the so-called “Pictures Generation” with Cindy Sherman, et al, Mr. Longo is one of the finest practitioners of the rapidly becoming lost Art of Drawing we have. I’ve been surprised with his choice of subjects, but always impressed by his new work with every succeeding show I’ve seen going back well over 20 years. They always leave me marveling.

Untitled (Nascar Crash, Daytona), 2021, Charcoal mounted on paper, 70 x 120 inches. Keep reminding yourself that these are Drawings.

His new show, I do fly / After Summer Merrily, kicking off a run of Robert Longo shows around the world over the next few years, is equally impressive. Most of his pieces are Drawings in charcoal, though in this show he also shows off his remarkable skill with graphite.

Robert Longo, Untitled (After Dürer’s, Melencolia I, 1514) 2021, Graphite on paper(!), 12 3/4 by 9 15/16 inches. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I first saw this. My jaw was open to the bottom of my mask.

In addition to creating new works often based on Photographs of recent events, the other thread in Mr. Longo’s work these past many years has been painstaking creation of his own versions of masterpieces of Painting, most notably his Gang of Cosmos works, monochromatic charcoal copies of Abstract Expressionist masterworks, which filled an entire show at Metro Pictures in 2014. Now, he has turned his eye and hand to Albrecht Dürer’s Melencolia I, 1514, which is an engraving. Mr. Longo has done his version in graphite! While the more unforgiving engraving may be the more challenging technique, to translate Dürer’s marvel to this level of detail is astounding. It appears every single line has been replicated, down to Dürer’s famous “AD” monogram signature in the shadow above the tools to the right. As if this wasn’t enough, he’s also created a Sculpture of his imagining of the famous “Solid” seen to the left of center, which was also on view a few feet away, as I showed earlier.

Untitled (Baseball Stadium, 2020), 2021, Charcoal mounted on paper, 78 by 125 inches(!)

After all the work shown in his Metro Pictures shows this century, as well as museum shows, like Proof: Goya, Sergei Eisenstein, Robert Longo, which opened at the Garage, Moscow, then travelled to the Brooklyn Museum, the time has come for a full Retrospective of his work in this country. The last one was at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1989. One is opening in Europe in 2024. I hope it makes it here.

Zanele Muholi, Itha, 2021, Acrylic on canvas, from the first show to include her Paintings along with her Photographs in the second gallery.

Zanele Muholi, Awe Maaah! at Yancey Richardson- Zanele Muholi has established herself as one of the world’s great portraitists. Though she’s done far more, for my money that claim was sealed with Zanele Muholi: Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness, a book of Self-Portraits, published by Aperture in 2018, a masterpiece among PhotoBooks of the past decade. Now, for the first time, Awe Maaah! shows there is more to the renowned Photographer and visual activist. Stepping into the show, a fan of Ms. Muholi’s black & white Photographs might be shocked by seeing something new- color! It turns out she Paints, too! And quite well indeed as the debut selection of her Paintings in the show reveals.

Somile, 2021, Acrylic on paper

Known for her gorgeous black & white Photographs, her Paintings are FULL of bright, vivid colors. Zanele turned to Painting during the pandemic when Photographing others was not possible. Though in color, her Paintings share familiar elements with her Photographs. First, these were all portraits, of one or two sitters. Second, in many of her Paintings, the Artist is depicted, like her Photographs, n a variety of guises. Then, the eyes are the focus of both bodies of work. In some of her Photographs, they almost look like they are Painted. Compositionally, they both feature empty backgrounds, though some of the Paintings were colored. I was impressed with the range of approaches. Each Painting is different. Quite an auspicious first showing.

Zimpaphe I, Parktown, 2019, Gelatin silver print

But, for anyone new to her work, or in need of a refresher as to why she is one of the most respected Photographers working today, all that was needed was to take a few steps into the second gallery.

The second gallery of Awe Maaah! contains 8 stunning Self-Portrait Photographs (the one just shown is behind me in this shot)

There, a gorgeously selected group of her Photographic Self-Portraits was all the reminder needed. Not surprisingly, the entire show was sold out. Already one of the most vital Artists working in Photography, today, Awe Maaah! announces there are more sides to Zanele Muholi to recon with than we’ve seen thus far.

Looking in at a gallery of “hooded”/klan Paintings outside Philip Guston 1969-79 in October.

Philip Guston: 1969-79 at Hauser & Wirth- With a large, street-facing, gallery featuring Philip Guston’s “klan” Paintings I wondered if this show was a sort of “test balloon” after the controversial postponement of Philip Guston Now museum show. They certainly served to stop people on the street, who seemed perplexed as to what they were, and what they were about, from the conversations I heard walking past.

I think that many who are familiar with Philip Guston’s work wonder about them, too. Delving into their history sheds some light on them. I wrote about the history of Philip Guston’s hooded/klan (lower case, mine) works, saying- “I think it’s important to remember that they go back to when the Painter was about 18. In Philip Guston Retrospective, the backstory is relayed on pages 16 & 17. It begins by quoting Mr. Guston- ‘I was working at a factory and became involved in a strike. The KKK helped in strike breaking so I did a whole series of paintings on the KKK. In fact I had a show of them in a bookshop in Hollywood, where I was working at that time. Some members of the klan walked in, took the paintings off the wall and slashed them. Two were mutilated. That was the beginning.'”

Riding Around, left, and The Studio, both 1969, Oil on canvas, left

“(The text then continues) ‘The Ku Klux Klan, also known as the Invisible Empire, had a significant membership in California in the 1930s and 1940s, and Los Angeles County was its most active Klavern. Guston and several other of his friends also painted portable murals for the John Reed Club on the theme of ‘The American Negro.’ Guston’s submission was particularly volitile. Based on the Scottsboro case, in which nine black men were sentenced (many said on false and circumstantial evidence) to life in prison for raping a white girl. Guston’s mural depicted a group of hooded figures whipping a black man. The murals were eventually attacked and defaced by a band of ‘unidentified’ vandals. The experience of seeing the effect of art on life and life on art never left Guston, and the unsettling image of the hooded figure was branded into his visual imagination.’ In the 1930s, in addition to strike breaking, the klan also targeted Jews. Philip Guston, originally Philip Goldstein, was Jewish. Of course, their main target were Blacks…Philip Guston lived long enough to see that racism was deeply embedded in the fabric of American life, possibly even in his own life.” (End quote.) So, circa 1970, when he moved away from pure abstraction, he began including hooded figures in his work again.

Scared Stiff, 1970, Oil on canvas. Shocking, damning, incredibly daring. and unprecedented in Art.

This time, it seems to me, he was looking inside for signs of prejudice in himself as well as society at large. And so, these are somewhat unique works in Art history. Not many other Artists have been as open, daring, or had the courage to lay themselves so bare as Philip Guston may have been doing in them. And, they are part of his enormously fresh late period, a real breakthrough for the Artist stylistically, which was met with puzzlement when they were new.

Ancient Wall, 1976, Oil on canvas

A very nice selection of “other” work from 1969-79 was on view in the large, second gallery. Today, they have become hugely influential, though the hooded figure works remain puzzling or misunderstood by some. (My pieces on prior Philip Guston shows in NYC are here, on the 1950’s abstractions, and here, on his Poor Richard Nixon Drawings.)

Hung Liu, Portrait: Sharecropper, 2018, Oil on canvas. Hung Liu lived and worked among country laborers for 4 years after being sent there by Mao Zeodong’s government for “re-education.” As a result, Hung Liu shared a special bond with the work of FSA legend Dorothea Lange dust bowl Photographs, upon who’s work Hung Liu based some of her Paintings. Ms. Liu emigrated to California in 1984, where she lived & worked for the rest of her life.

Hung Liu: Western Pass at Nancy Hoffman Gallery- Beautiful, and bitter sweet is the only way I can characterize this wonderful show, which the Artist worked on with Nancy Hoffman Gallery right before her tragic passing on on August 7th. It opened a month later, on September 9th. Along with the major retrospective up as I write at the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian in Washington, it will serve as a fitting tribute to this terrific Artist who was just beginning to gain the wide recognition and acclaim I believe her work deserves when she passed away. Long a champion of the late Chinese-American Painter, Nancy Hoffman has been showing her work going back to at least 2010 as far as I can tell and they have published some exquisite catalogs for each of them which are still available.

Western Pass, 1990, Oil on canvas, silver leaf on wood, ceramics. I asked Phil Cai what was going on in this work. He spoke about how we’re seeing two prisoners about to be executed with an ancient Chinese poem between them. The poem speaks of having another glass of wine before you pass beyond the western pass where you won’t have any friends. Two empty wine bowls sit in front.

This show is a beautifully chosen selection of 31 years of her work, right up to earlier this year. It’s possible to watch her style change and evolve over time, a testament to her flexibility and talent. Her subject matter, however, doesn’t change. Like Alice Neel, “people come first” for Hung Liu, too, and much of what she shows us is based in the Photographs of Dorothea Lange, found Chinese Photographs, or her own Photographs taken during the 4 years after she spent in the countryside laboring in rice and wheat fields as part of her agrarian “re-eduction” under Mao Zeodong. So, it is easy for her to related to the FSA work of Dorothea Lange, and the lives of is based on her own personal experiences. Haunting and powerful work that effortless cuts across place, cultures and time. Work that will be around for the long haul, in my opinion. I was lucky enough to see this show with Phil Cai, Director of Eli Klein Gallery, who’s remarkable Cai Dongdong show I wrote about in 2018. Phil, one of the rising stars in the Art world, met Hung Liu and visited her studio in Oakland. He provided fascinating insights into her work that he has been looking at for almost a decade. “I hope to wash my subjects of their ‘otherness’ and reveal them as dignified, even mythic figures on the grander scale of history painting,” she wrote.

Leonardo Drew, Detail of Number 305, 2021, Mixed Media. Just one corner, plus, of this piece installed on all 4 walls of the large room.

Leonardo Drew at Galerie Lelong- I wrote extensively about Mr. Drew’s last two NYC shows in 2019, during which I met and spoke with the Artist. He returns this fall with his first show since, with all the work on view created in 2021. It says a lot to say that it took 5 people 4 days to install this show! The endless details in his work is only equalled today in Contemporary “Sculpture,” in my experience, by the shows of his great contemporary, Sarah Sze. Mr. Drew continues to reinvent Sculpture and to push the limits and the boundaries of what it can be including another work that seems to explode from the corner as his last show here had one exploding from the rear wall. Both “explosions” frozen in time. Whereas in his last show, he introduced color to his sculpture, which had been black & white to that point, here, he continues that with supreme taste in works that almost look like a new take on Abstract Expressionism, if I believed in such terms. I don’t, so the only term that remains applicable to this major Artist remains- Leonardo Drew. And, if this wonderful show of terrific new work isn’t enough, Mr. Drew’s Prints are on view at Pace Prints nearby. I have not as yet seen them. 

Number 294, 2021, Wood, paint and sand

At this moment, I imagine that the “bleeding” is going to continue in Chelsea, as it is in far too many other places and in many other fields, for some time. More galleries will close, consolidate or move. Yet, it seems to me that the mega-galleries building their own buildings in the neighborhood may actually draw other galleries here, depending on the asking prices for space. Maybe things are at or near the bottom? It’s too early to tell. 

After what I wrote during the shutdown last year, it seems that at least things have begun to bounce back after a very slow spring. But, Art is not life. Many other things have to be in place for anyone to be able to, or want to, see Art. It’s taken a long time for many of those things to get back into place here. I hope things are getting better where you are.

*-Soundtrack for this post is “How Can You Be Sure?” a B-side by Radiohead from The Bends Collector’s Edition-

“Seen all the good things and bad
Running down the hill
All so battered and brought to the ground

[Pre-Chorus]
I am hungry again
I am drunk again
With all the money I owe to my friends

[Chorus]
When I’m like this
How can you be smiling, singing?
How can you be sure?
How can you be sure?”*

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  1. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/arts/design/metro-pictures-gallery-close.html ↩

Cézanne’s Other Revolution

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

“I will astonish Paris with an Apple,” Paul Cézanne said. And, he did.

What came first? The Artist, or the apple? Many Painted apples & fruit before Cézanne. None created a revolution in Art with them. Self-Portrait and Apple, 1880-84, Pencil on paper. The Cézanne quote above comes from the wall card for this Drawing. It goes on to say the work “establishes an equivalency between the Artist’s head and the fruit he so often depicted.”

Ways of seeing and the Art of Drawing are two of my bigger interests in Art. Both are combined in the landmark Cézanne Drawing show which closed this week at MoMA, and was, most likely, a “once in a lifetime” show. I’ve never heard of anything close to the 250 works on paper on view in it by the French master being exhibited anywhere previously. As big a revolution as his daring approach to Art, most widely known to this point through his hugely influential Paintings, his Drawings and works on paper have been seldom exhibited. Possibly their fragility and light-sensitivity has something to do with that, though the pieces on display seemed to be in remarkably good condition. As a result, they are far lesser well-known even 115 years after the newest of them was created. Yet they take things even further, and reveal more of his remarkable & unique vision, than even his remarkable Paintings, in my view.

One of those shows I’ll long walk around in my mind, continue to think about, and be inspired by. Late masterpieces, Still Life with Blue Pot, left, Still Life with Milk Pot, Melon and Sugar Bowl, right, both 1900-6, Pencil and watercolor on paper.

As a young Musician or Artist, many pupils are taught “Master the rules, first. Then, you can break them.” In Art, the theory is to gain a firm grounding in technique, composition, color, line and form, to have something to build your own style on. In Cézanne Drawing we get to follow his evolution & creative journey over half a century.

Umm…yeah he could Draw. From early on, as seen here. Detail of Standing Male Nude: Academic Study, 1862, Pencil on paper.

Cézanne applied to attend the Ècole de Beaux Arts in Paris, though he was rejected. He proceeded to take lessons at the Atelier Suisse, where they were offered free, a studio Courbet studied at. Early critics, including the great James McNeill Whistler, thought he couldn’t Draw. Evidence of his studies of the classical tradition were on display and show otherwise.

A gallery full of Cézanne’s figure studies contains numerous works taken from his Sketchbooks that belie his daily dedication to the craft & Art of Drawing throughout his life.

He drew every day for much of the rest of his life. In the next gallery, we are treated to numerous examples of his Sculpture studies. Ah…Drawing Sculpture. Something many students, including this one, get caught up in. Its allure never lessened for Cèzanne.

After the Ecorche of Michelangelo, 1881-4, Pencil on paper, from a Sketchbook. Cèzanne kept a plaster cast of this work in his studio.

Per the wall card- “According to a friend…’To the last day of his life, every morning as a priest reads his breviary, he spent an hour drawing Michelangelo’s plaster figure from every angle.”

And here it is-

Cèzanne’s personal plaster cast of Michelangelo’s Ecorche, seen in Cezanne’s Studio in 2017!  Photograph by Joel Meyerowitz from his PhotoBook, Cezanne’s Objects, 2017.

Soon he was Drawing like this-

Page of Studies, including a Centaur after the Antique, Pencil on laid paper, 1897-82. A drastic departure from the academic Standing Male Nude, shown earlier. No part of any of this is defined by the Artist with one line. His future is coming.

He took what he learned, and used it as a jumping off point. He began to loosen up  his approach. Much experimentation followed, as we see as this very large show progresses, until “he had discovered his own personality,” as Cézanne scholar Roger Fry put it 1.

Bathers, 1900-06, Watercolor on wove paper, page from a Sketchbook that measures 7 1/16 by 9 13/16″. This late work shows how far he took his figure Drawing. Though the figures almost seem to dissolve right in front of us, then almost seeming to be vibrating en masse from a short distance. Still, the composition miraculously holds wonderfully together

He developed a style of Drawing the figure that used multiple lines to “hone in” on the form, as seen in the Page of Studies with the Centaur, just shown, and, even more radically, the Bathers, here. He called his style couillarde (ballsy)2, indicative of his “attacking” approach to every aspect of his Art. Like his early subjects seen in the first gallery.

The Murder, 1874-75, Pencil, watercolor, and gouache on paper. In this small work (5 3/4 by 6 7/8 inches), the knife is held high amidst an idyllic landscape based on a real place, with an ominous cross lurking above.

Murder, abduction, rape, orgies, Drawn with passion, or Painted in oils at the time with a palette knife, all seemed created to grab the attention, shock and horrify. His whole career can be seen as one long attack on the rules, tradition and the status quo in Art.

Still Life with Apples and a Pot of Primroses, ca. 1890, Oil on canvas, in The Met, and not included in Cèzanne Drawing. Met Photo.

Along with all of that, there is that eye, the way he sees things, and that unfailing sense for, and mastery of, color he had all along. Over time, his later Paintings achieve an almost surreal polish and finish, and achieve a complete solidity that is utterly convincing. Meanwhile, his Drawings often seem to delve into other dimensions. Objects are placed on seemingly impossible surfaces, or hang in space. The white of the paper becomes a star, an element the equal of any other in many works. These will seem a complete revelation to those who only know his Paintings, like me when I first walked in.

Rocks near the Chateau Noir, 1895-1900, Peincil and watercolor on paper. There is little in the world more solid than rock, but you’d never know it if you had only seen Cézanne’s series of Drawings of them near the Chateau Noir from 1895-1900. To me, they are a revolutionary marvel. Surface and forms dissolve right in front of our eyes.

As he put it all together, a MoMA wall card proved to be a revelation, particularly when thinking about his early training. In learning to draw the human body, one is taught to start by learning anatomy. Cézanne apparently applied this to his landscapes. “In order to paint a landscape well,” he is quoted on a wall card, “I first need to discover its geological structure.” It continues, “Cèzanne explored the relationship between rock and body throughout this series (of Drawings of rocks), in which the slabs take on the appearance of human bones and a cavern resembles the profile of a face.” And in this work, I see just that. The black lines form the “skeleton,” giving the piece a structure. Otherwise, the colors would be hanging in space.

Foliage, 1895, Watercolor and pencil on paper. At first glance it looks like an unfinished jumble of lines and colors with a lot of empty white space. Here, Cezanne is depicting leaves blowing in the wind. in so doing, he’s also blurring the line between representation and abstraction, which was a good decade off. Nearby, a full room of Still Lifes take things to the height of immateriality.

Still Life with Cut Watermelon, c.1900, Pencil and watercolor on paper. Of all the pieces on view, I’ve spent the most time studying this one. The table is “defined” with two brief lines, one a bit faint, on the right. The background is completely invisible and even the bottles in the back seem to be dissolving into space. Then, there’s the split open watermelon. At times it reminds me of an open heart.

His landscapes and his still lifes, with those famous arrangements of fruit on tables, have rightly garnered much of the attention and acclaim. They might originate from the gift of a basket of apple from his friend, Émile Zola in gratitude for Cèzanne’s rising to his defense against critics3, which would shed an entirely different light on them.

Wanna know why I still live in NYC? The chance to see incredible Art like this in shows like this. One of 4 walls in a large gallery of Cèzanne Still Lifes with fruit, including the one shown above, second from left here- some of the most innovative, visionary Drawings I’ve ever seen. (In some questionable frames.)

Seeing a large gallery full of them in 2021, they still seem completely fresh. As timeless as they are, Cézanne Drawing shows us there is much more to marvel at. Like his Portraits.

4 Portraits of the Gardener Vallier, 1904-6, Oil on canvas, 2nd from left, Pencil and watercolor on paper, the others. Endlessly fascinating, these 3 studies show remarkably similar poses to the Painting, yet with different backgrounds. They all share surprisingly undefined, nebulous, faces- unheard of in a traditional “Portrait.”

Though there are not many of them here, what is here makes a powerful impression, especially when seen along side, and in context with, his Drawings. Some years ago (in 2014), there was a show at The Met of Cézanne’s Portraits of his wife, Hortense Fiquet, aka Madame Cézanne, which captivated and mystified me at the same time.

On loan from The Met, Madame Cèzanne in the Conservatory, 1891-2, Oil on Canvas, right, with a Study of her, from 1885-6, on loan from The Guggenheim, NYC, left. Cèzanne was very uncomfortable around female models (especially undressed) and rarely used them. He was very comfortable, however, having his wife pose for him. She patiently sat for him often and he created a fascinating body of work depicting her, these two examples rarely seen together.

The woman we see in those works was inscrutable. Yet the technique and use of color also fascinate, particularly in relation to his other work. I came away finally feeling that his portraits deserve more attention, even though they are “different” from what many expect from a “Portrait,” and not necessarily as accessible as his ever-popular Still Lifes or Landscapes.

Unknown Photographer, Untitled (Portrait of the Model for The Bather), 1885, Albumen silver print.

Also, regarding Cèzanne’s Portraits, the show touches on the Artist’s use of Photographs, particularly as source material for MoMA’s famous Painting, The Bather.

The Bather, 1885, Oil on canvas.

He was far from alone in doing this at this time, yet he and the work he created using them have entirely escaped any sort of negative connotations for doing so that so many more recent Painters have suffered, including the recently passed Chuck Close. Which makes me wonder why it suddenly matters. It doesn’t! Photographs are, and have been for many Painters, something akin to a sketch. It’s plain to see Cèzanne didn’t slavishly copy the Photograph as much as it became a reference.

The Bridge of Trois-Sautets, 1906, Pencil and watercolor on paper. This late work is unlike anything in Art history to its time (even by Kandinsky or Munch), especially his own Oil Paintings. Compare it with Monet’s Footbridges around the same time. Its atmosphere stands diametrically opposed to those of the great Painters of atmospheric skies, Turner or Whistler, and different even from Van Gogh, and strikes me as a work that has much to offer Artists today4.

While his Paintings are seen as the precursors of Cubism, Abstraction and a number of other “isms” I don’t subscribe to, Cézanne’s remarkable Drawings are impossible to simply characterize. Why are they so different than his Oil Paintings? I wonder if it had something to do with his lifelong disappointments in having work accepted by the Salon, the yearly Paris Art show. One observer noted Cèzanne carrying his canvases on his back like Christ carrying the cross to be seen by the judges2. He was rejected by them early and often. So, how would work like these late Watercolors be received by them? Well over 100 years later, they still have yet to have their day, particularly as influences on other Artists. Perhaps, Cèzanne Drawing will turn out to be that day. However, one great Artist has not only already been influenced by these works, he’s put his money into them. No less than 12 of the pieces on view in Cézanne Drawing are somewhat surprisingly labelled “Collection Jasper Johns”! Extraordinarily astute acquisitions that add yet another dimension to our appreciation of this legendary Painter who will be receiving his (covid-delayed) 90th Birthday Retrospective at The Whitney Museum shortly.

Self-Portrait, No date, Pencil on laid paper, One work from the Collection Jasper Johns.

Now that they’ve seen the light of day, perhaps Cézanne Drawing will inspire some to build on the Drawing’s ahead-of-their-time innovations and help them achieve some of the wide-spread influence on Art his Paintings have had. Their time has come.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “I Remember The Sun” by XTC from The Big Express, 1984.

“Squinting at the sun through eyes
Screwed up by a fireball
Tarmac on the road is soft
Chaff burns in a smoke wall
Yes, I’m weeping, a teardrop attack
I give emotion at the drop of a hat
When I remember days at school
I remember many things
But most of all, I remember the sun
Most of all, I remember the sun
Most of all, I remember the sun
Sun that worked on overtime
Fueled our bodies, kindled fire in our minds”*

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Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

  1. Roger Fry, Cèzanne- A Study of His Development, P.3 ↩
  2. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/cezanne-107584544/ ↩
  3. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/cezanne-107584544/ ↩
  4. I must admit, having had glaucoma in both eyes, that in looking at later Cèzanne or Van Gogh I can’t help but wonder if either or both suffered from vision problems. Most likely it was just sheer genius at work. Given how much speculation surrounds Vincent, in particular still, I think we would have heard more about this by now. ↩
  5. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/cezanne-107584544/ ↩

Remembering 9/11

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Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

Preface- I lived in Manhattan through September 11, 2001 unscratched. I lost no one I personally knew in the attacks (as far as I know), but we all lost 2,713 irreplaceable New Yorkers. 20 years later, 9/11 remains one of the most unforgettable days in my life. My days in the World Trade Center area go back to before the construction of the Twin Towers. Then, the weeks after the attacks were equally gut-wrenching. In Remembrance of the victims on the 20th Anniversary of the 9/11 attacks I decided to share my experiences and the pictures I took of the World Trade Center before, on 9/11, and after, for the first time, not because I think they are anything outside of the ordinary, but because they are just that- the memories of one average person living in Manhattan on September 11th, 2001, of the World Trade Center, the attacks, and the weeks immediately after. 

Facing south, looking up at Tower 1 on the right, Tower 2 on the left over World Trade Center 6, the black shape, right, and a piece of World Trade Center 5, on the left. Vesey Street, June 20, 1998. Click any picture for full size.

1- Witness to Unspeakable Horror

September 11th, 2001 marked the first of the “life will never be the same” moments that have characterized the first century of the new millennium, the latest of which we are all still living, wherever we are. Wherever we were that September morning 20 years ago as this was happening here, in Washington DC, and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, I doubt many of us had any idea what was really happening and how all of our lives would change.

I didn’t.

Just unimaginable. The view from my window shortly after 9:05am on 9/11/2001 showing the North Tower, 1 World Trade Center, on fire.

I woke that morning at 9:05am. I switched on NY1, the local news station to get the weather, as was my habit each morning. When the set came on, I saw a stunning image through my waking eyes. Smoke coming out of the top of the World Trade Center! What? HOW is that possible? They were saying “a small plane” had crashed into it. As we know now, at 8:46am, hijacked American Airlines Flight #11 had been purposely crashed in to the North Tower.

Dwarfing everything. The Twin Towers and 7 World Trade Center, the taller brown building in front of them, seen on June 20, 1998. I remember the neighborhood before the WTC, and the white College of Insurance in front of it, were built. It all looked like the rest of the buildings in the picture. For a look at the destruction of the area to build the WTC check out Danny Lyon’s PhotoBook The Destruction of Lower Manhattan.

A little over 8 months earlier I had been to the Windows On The World Restaurant at the top of Tower 1 (the North Tower, the first to be hit on 9/11, the Tower on fire in the picture earlier) for a company holiday party, the second time in 3 years the company had held it there. For those who never set foot inside either Tower of the World Trade Center, I’m sorry. You really can’t begin to imagine it. From a distance, the WTC is the highest thing in sight, visible in almost every picture of the NYC skyline. It was visible for almost an hour away on various roadways approaching Manhattan. As you moved closer and closer to it on the street, it’s height went from gigantic (above), to overwhelming (as in the first picture in this piece) to impossible, as in the following picture-

Standing at the base of World Trade Center Tower 2 with Tower 1 looming above on June 28, 1998. If I lowered my head, at eye level was a magnificent Tapestry by Joan Miro on display right beyond the girders in the lobby. Created in 1974 by the great Spanish Artist himself by hand for the building, it was also destroyed on 9/11.

Each building contained 110 stories! Looking up, you couldn’t see the top. As if 110 stories in each Tower, wasn’t enough, each floor was an acre in size. That fact still staggers me.

Riding up to the top was a special experience, even here, in the land of very tall buildings. With “local” and “express” elevators, it was a little like taking a vertical subway. When I got to Windows On The World, of course, I had to look down from those windows, though I’m deathly afraid of heights. I never made it to the roof, but this was close enough. Looking down, at night, was like being in an airplane and looking down on dots of light far below you. I really couldn’t make much else out. 

The World Trade Center and I went back a long way, to before there was a World Trade Center when it was “Radio Row.” My father had an office two blocks from the WTC for 45 years. He used to take me to work there on Saturdays and in the summer as a kid, which I absolutely hated. We used to park under the old West Side Highway at Vesey Street and I’d walk along the site of the WTC as the towers and the complex were being built after the area had been demolished to make way for it. I went to work, two blocks away, the day of Philippe Petit’s incredible walk between the two Towers on August 7, 1974. Over the years, I frequented the legendary J&R Music World on Park Row, one block east of the WTC, and I was there two and a half weeks before 9/11. I lived about a mile and a half from the Trade Center.

That morning, after seeing the smoke on TV, I opened my curtains and, sure enough, I could see from my windows the North Tower was on fire! After dressing, I walked out of my building heading east. As I got to 7th Avenue, I asked someone what happened. He said a plane had flown down 7th and crashed into the World Trade Center! So much happened that day, and the weeks after, that thought didn’t really hit me right away. Later, as I put the whole thing together, I got it-

The first plane (American Airlines Flight #11) on 9/11 had flown down my block!

People frozen in their steps in disbelief, unable to tear themselves away from the horror unfolding in front of them to the left on 6th Avenue around 9:30am on 9/11.

In the months that followed, somehow my sleeping mind grasped this thought my conscious mind had forgotten and concocted a nightmare in which the passengers of the first plane, Flight #11, realized in those final minutes what was going to happen, and jumped the hijackers (no doubt influenced by what really happened to Flight #93 in Pennsylvania) causing it to crash early- into my building!

On the corner of 6th Avenue, there were crowds of people looking at the Towers directly down the street. I pressed on to get to work. On 5th Avenue, that scene was repeated with many more people who lined the Avenue on both sides as far as I could see down. 

The view down 5th Avenue with both Towers on fire just before 10am on 9/11.

By now, it was close to 10am and BOTH Towers were on fire, the second plane having hit the South Tower, a bit lower than the first had hit the North Tower. 

On 5th Avenue, people strain to watch a tiny TV set perched on the widow of a truck, just visible beyond the woman’s blue blouse, as the horror was unfolding to their left at about 10am, 9/11.

I checked in at work. Other staff members were there but most were listening to the radio. Nobody was working. I went back out to 5th Avenue to watch again. When I got there, I immediately realized the South Tower was gone! It had collapsed!

The South Tower had just collapsed leaving something I could never imagine seeing- only one Trade Center Tower standing. Seen on 5th Avenue.

As I said, unless you’d been to the WTC, you have no idea how immense they were. HOW could one collapse?? As it turned out, most New Yorkers, including the first responders, apparently had no idea the Towers being about the biggest thing in NYC could ever collapse. It’s hard to articulate the feeling of seeing something impossible right in front of you. The fires looked like terrible fires, but I’m sure most people felt they would be put out. But, no! That MASSIVE building had collapsed! 110 acres of steel, glass and people were somehow just gone. That was the first realization that our long-held unassailable assumptions were assailable. I remembered hearing someone say years ago that if one of those buildings ever fell it would destroy everything for blocks around in that direction. Having lived for must of my life with those Twin Towers defining the famous skyline of Manhattan. Now, there was only one!, it too was on fire, and had been for longer than Tower 2 was!

A few minutes later, as I stood there in a crowd of fellow New Yorkers, I saw THE most horrific thing I’ve ever seen in my life happen right in front of my eyes.

Tower 1 collapsed.

The North Tower, World Trade Center 1, in the midst of collapsing at 10:28am.

It looked like it happened in slow motion. A huge, eerie, grey cloud slowly rose where it had stood, and kept rising. I stood there open-mouthed watching in utter horror. How many people did I just watch die? 

After watching Tower 1 collapse, my immediate thought was – What’s gong to happen next? I immediately turned around 180 degrees. There, 13 blocks behind me, straight up 5th Avenue, stood the Empire State Building. In 1945 a B-25 Bomber, a large plane indeed, had accidentally crashed into it. Yet, it remained standing after that, and it was still standing now.

The scene after both Towers had collapsed around 10:45am leaving billowing clouds of smoke that would last for days.

Numb, and in a state of shock, I headed back to my office. We closed for the day. Some of my co-workers began the walk over the Brooklyn Bridge. I headed back across town. I dropped my bag off and headed back out with my camera. 

West Side Highway at Houston Street as far as the NYPD was letting pedestrians go on the afternoon of 9/11.

I walked over to the Hudson River, where you could see the WTC all the way down. As I started walking along what is now Hudson River Park, a steady stream of Emergency & construction vehicles sped past me on the Highway. At Houston Street, a bit north of Canal Street, all pedestrian, and non-emergency related traffic was stopped. I stood there for a few hours, most of which was spent watching the biggest cloud of smoke I’d ever seen rising up then bending over east towards Brooklyn (which was a lucky thing, for me, at least, as it turned out).

7 World Trade Center collapses at 5:20pm. Seen from Greenwich Street, September 11th.

Finally, I headed inland. As I reached Greenwich Street, it was now 5:20pm. Just as I got there, 7 World Trade Center collapsed! 7 WTC was a nondescript brown square building across Vesey Street from the Twin Towers. It would have seemed to be a fair distance away from them, but given the immensity of each Tower, not far enough. There was also a huge shopping center under the Towers and other, lower, buildings and a hotel I once stayed in, as part of the main complex. ALL of it was destroyed in the 9/11 attack. 

Wow. I had personally witnessed TWO of the three main World Trade Center complex buildings collapse! 

I found out later, 7 WTC had been evacuated. Unfortunately, as we all know, that wasn’t the case for 1 or 2 WTC, the Twin Towers. 

After watching 7 World Trade go down, I began making my way home. I walked through Greenwich Village. There, I came upon an incredible sight that has stayed in my mind along with the collapses as indelible.

The heartbreaking scene outside of Saint Vincent’s Hospital. Doctors, nurses and staff wait for the arrival of victims. Before 6pm, September 11th.

As I came upon Saint Vincent’s Hospital, the closest hospital to the WTC, I saw their side of 7th Avenue lined with green hospital scrubs, with a few white coats mixed in, doctors, nurses and hospital staff, all of who were standing alongside empty, clean gurneys. 

It took me a moment to realize what that meant. And that moment was the moment I lost it. 

NO ONE was coming to be treated. 

EVERYONE was dead. 

2- Union Square

That night, I went to my local watering hole and commiserated with friends and neighbors. As the hours and days passed, you could not go anywhere around here and not see “MISSING” fliers posted on every available space. These were often unlike most of the typical “MISSING” fliers that pop up from time to time. Many of these went beyond the basic stats needed to identify a missing person, into the realm of biography & memorial. A few days after 9/11, I walked with 2 acquaintances heading south. We passed through Union Square. I was stopped dead in my tracks. The central lawn area is rung with a brick wall all around it, and there was a fence inside that protecting the grass. There, on every square inch of this wall and fence were MISSING fliers! In front of them, spontaneous memorials, with thousands of candles burning bright at 3am. I parted from the couple and went home to grab my camera then walked back. I stayed until after 7am. It was just overwhelming to walk among so much loss, to get a tiny sense of who someone was, from a smile, from a few words, from someone else’s pain who was left behind.

Blurry night photo of Union Square, September 19, 2001. The entire Park was blanketed with MISSING fliers, candles and remembrances left by the constant stream of visitors, here ringing the entire lawn to the right and all the way in the back. Never, before or since, have I seen such a huge outpouring of love, loss and incalculable pain.

I found out in the week following 9/11 that two people I knew had been in the Towers that day. Both got out. To this day, I’m not aware of anyone I personally knew who died. Of course, many, many “MISSING” fliers were NYFD, NYPD, PAPD, EMTs, and other first responders. Those that got me hardest were those seeking everyday people. People who either just happened to be there, or who worked there.

MANY of the MISSING fliers were so poignant they stopped me in my tracks, like this one. When they talk about 9/11 heroes, and there are many, people like Mayra Valdes, who served as a Fire Warden for her company on the 103rd floor of the South Tower, deserve to be counted highly among them, “…last seen screaming to her co-workers to get off the floor, to get out…” Ms. Valdes left a 12 year old son. Union Square Subway Station, September 19, 2001.

Imagine just going to work on a Tuesday morning only to be the target, and the victim, of the biggest terrorist attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor, and the biggest targeting civilians? I thought back to the staff members of Windows On The World, who would have had ZERO chance of getting out if they had been there when the 1st plane hit1, and those others I’d seen who worked at the WTC. 

3- Christmas at Ground Zero

Having no family, I’m alone most holidays. It’s never easy when everyone else is with someone. Hell, no one had called me on 9/11 to see if I was ok. Christmas, 2001, was particularly hard because of what had happened that September day and after. Starting to feel depressed Christmas afternoon, I realized I need to stop that in its tracks. I decided to walk down to the World Trade Center site, by then, commonly called Ground Zero. 

I walked down along the West Side Highway, revisiting my youth when I had to park the car there often in gale force winds whipping off the Hudson. This was a particularly cold night. I was frozen to the core, but I was determined to get there and meditate on what had happened and those lost. I walked along the highway and as I approached Vesey Street, I saw some faint lights in the distance. No one was around. My only companion was the wind, the coming dark, and the cold. 

A Christmas Tree installed by construction workers on the West Side Highway at Ground Zero with the Overpass to the World Financial Center behind, the severely damaged World Financial Center to the right. Christmas Day, 2001.

As I approached Vesey Street, I could make out a Christmas Tree with some lights on it. I imagine the construction workers had set it up. No one else was around. Whoever had put it here was off somewhere else with his or her others. It was fitting it was here. Off to my 10 o’clock “the pile” of debris from the collapse sat, the smoldering finally ended, containing the remains of who knows how many in complete stillness in the dark. I stood there letting ALL of this wash over me for a few minutes, staring over at the dark emptiness that had been the World Trade Center complex. I had stood on this very spot before the World Trade Center was built. I was here when they were being built. Now, I am standing here after they were gone, something I never imagined possible. Though there was a lot of damage and destruction to the surrounding buildings, it always felt like if the WTC Towers had ever fallen over entire City blocks would have been taken out by them. But no. It wasn’t like that for the most part. Most of the buildings right around them, including 3 landmarks, were still there. It struck me standing there that what happened was like a giant hand had come down and lifted the Towers clean out the damage from two such immense collapses was so confined. While it was happening, then as I stood there on Christmas, and to this day 20 years later, when I look out of my window, it’s still very hard to believe they’re gone. But it happened, largely right in front of me.

A woman walking around keeping the candles lit. Union Square, September 19, 2001

I said a silent prayer for all of those we lost, and realized that things could ALWAYS be worse. Then, I turned around and walked home.

The view from my window, tonight, September 10, 2021, with the Tribute in Light just behind where the Twin Towers stood.

This Post is dedicated to all those lost on September 11, 2001, and those who continue to be lost since the attacks due to related illnesses.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “Life In The Air Age,” by Bill Nelson of Be Bop Deluxe and recorded on their classic Lps Sunburst Finish, 1976 and Live! In The Air Age, 1977, below-

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  1. It turns out the Restaurant was open at the time, and the staff members and guests who were there all died. ↩

Don’t Call Chuck Close A “photorealist”

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

“Nothing irritates Close more than referring to his early portraiture as ‘photorealism’…” New York Times, 2016.

The last time I saw Chuck Close, I ran into him while we were both out making the rounds of gallery late one Thursday eve in October, 2017. Here, in a small basement gallery in Chelsea, he studies a work past my left shoulder. It was fascinating to watch him study Art he (or I) had never seen before and hear his comments. The work was by the same Artist who created the work behind him, who’s name escapes me.

I met Chuck Close, who died Thursday, 3 or 4 times over the years. He and I shared a distain for the term, photorealism. My problem with, beyond a disdain for virtually all “isms” and boxes in the Arts, it is that it has been used to categorize Artists without their consent, thereby potentially limiting and possibly damaging their career and livelihood. Further, I don’t find it fits the work of a number of those so boxed, as many other boxes and isms don’t fit those included in them. It’s high time the entire range of isms in Art be done away with!

Does this look like a photograph to you? Chuck Close, Detail of a Self-Portrait, seen in 2012.

In fact, Chuck Close was the only Artist who managed to have been so boxed early in his career that managed to escape it as his style changed and evolved numerous times over his long career. Even quadriplegia in 1988 didn’t stop him. Virtually nothing he Painted after 1988 could be construed by anyone as being “photographic.” His late work positively burst with surreal and Day-Glo color

Or, so I thought…

I was extremely disheartened to see these as the titles of his obituary in various newspapers and even the Art media, who you would think would know  better!-

“Chuck Close, Artist of Outsized Reality, Dies at 81. He found success with his large-scale Photorealist portraits…” New York Times nytimes.com

“Chuck Close, renowned photorealist painter, dies at age 81 news.yahoo.com

“Chuck Close, artist known for photorealist portraits, dead” nypost.com

“Artist Chuck Close, known for photorealistic portraits,” UPI.com

“Chuck Close Dead: Photorealist Painter Dies at 81” artnews.com

“Chuck Close, renowned photorealist painter, dies at 81” NY Daily News nydn.com

It just goes to show how few of these people actually paid attention to how the Artist himself saw his work. 

WHO approves this stuff? What are their qualifications? The New York Times published that quote expressing Mr. Close’s irritation of having his work referred to that way, yet THEY used that term in the banner of his obituary!! Seriously? 

Chuck Close was one of the most famous living Artists in the world. If he, with his resources, wasn’t able to manage the conversation around his Art better than this, what chance does almost any other Artist have? 

Portrait of Philip Glass, seen in 2012. The way the white rectangles stop at the shoulders strikes me. It’s something you’d never seen in a photograph. Mr. Close Painted the same subjects, especially himself, repeatedly. Yet, no two are alike, as his style continuously evolved. This is best seen, perhaps, in his amazing Prints, which are done in more media than, perhaps, any Artist before him. His work looks completely different at arm’s length, and again from 25 feet away. Something I find endlessly amazing.

These isms are generally coined by people who had nothing to do with creating the Art. All they really serve to do, in my view, is prevent viewers from seeing the Art for themselves. “Oh…this is ‘Pseudoconceptualexpressionism.’ I know what that is.” So, they don’t look at it for themselves.

“Don’t believe the hype
Don’t—
Don’t—
Don’t—
Don’t believe the hype*”

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “Don’t Believe the Hype” by Chuck D & Public Enemy from It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, 1988.

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Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
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The Met’s Alice Neel Love Letter To NYC

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava
NYC has seen innumerable rough times. Too many for me to list here. Some of them I’ve lived through. During many of the hardest times the past 151 years The Metropolitan Museum of Art, founded in 1870, has stood at 1000 Fifth Avenue where it remained open allowing countless citizens and tourists the opportunity to walk up its famous staircase and take respite in its hallowed halls among its countless masterpieces, a beacon of culture and a repository of some of the greatest achievements of creative mankind over the past 5,000 years.

Until March 12th, 2020, that is.

Home, again, for the first time in over a year. The Met’s Grand Staircase, March 27, 2021. Up to the left. Down to the right, please.

At 6pm that day The Met closed due to the coronavirus pandemic shutdown1. It remained closed until August 29th. Five and one half months. Unprecedented in its history. Unwilling to risk being indoors until I could be vaccinated I missed the shows The Met held during the first six months after its reopening.

When it announced Alice Neel: People Come First, conceived by Sheena Wagstaff, would open on March 22nd, 2021, I thought back to what I had said about Alice Neel: Uptown, one of my NoteWorthy Shows for March-May, 2017- “…the breath of fresh air it provided only hints at how much pent-up longing I think there is to see more of her work. The time has come!”

The entrance. The show opens with a nude. Pretty daring, but given how often Alice Neel asked her sitters to pose nude, fitting.

On March 27th that time did indeed come. Seeing the show a few weeks later once the vaccine kicked in I had one primary reaction-

What a terrific love letter to New York City! At a time when one may never have been needed more.

March 27, 2021.

Fittingly, when I went in March, only fellow New Yorkers were my fellow visitors. In Alice Neel: People Come First’s parade of over 115 works the endless variety of people from all races, colors, orientations, and occupations that makes New York City great and unique is what is REALLY on view in this show.

“For me, people come first. I have tried to assert the dignity and eternal importance of the human being.” Alice Neel2.

Yes, Alice Neel’s place among the Masters of 20th century Art, established, at long last, in her Whitney Museum Centennial Retrospective in 2000, is reaffirmed. Yes, there are facets of her work that have been overlooked and are now getting attention, like her use of abstraction. But, it’s all secondary to the first theme- as she, and the show’s title says, people come first. Alice Neel Painted “pictures of people,” as she said. She spent about 60 years doing just that and the show draws on her entire career in the generous 115 or so works on view.

Carlos Enriquez, 1926, left, and French Girl, 1920s, right. Mr. Enriquez, a legendary Painter in his own right, was Alice Neel’s first husband and father of her first child, Santillana, who died of diphtheria as an infant daughter, and her second child, Isabetta, to whom she would be estranged for much of Isabetta’s short life.

How was she able to have this career? Born and raised in Pennsylvania, after marrying Carlos Enriquez, who went on to become one of the most renowned Cuban Artists of the century, in 1925, Alice Neel moved with him to Cuba from 1926-7, then returned to Pennsylvania, where they broke up. From there she moved to NYC in 1927. Both of these early, marvelous, works strike me as standing apart from typical student efforts, showing the young, mid-20s, Painter breaking free to seek her own style, finding her essence, and achieving success as captivating works. Phillip Bonosky wrote of her in his Journal in 1957, “She’s worked out her own code of behavior, whose cornerstones are two: 1) her freedom to paint; 2) the well being of her 2 boys. For 1, she will surrender everything else, and what other people place high- the sanctity of one’s flesh in bed- she subordinates to this superior law of her life. And the second also comes lower- but higher than anything else but the first. What other people strive for and cannot live without- good furniture, good clothes, a conventional acceptance by society, etc., etc.- she gives up without any sense of loss whatsoever3.”

On this spot, behind the car, a brownstone stood in the 1930s where Alice Neel lived during the Depression, a few blocks from where I am writing this piece. It’s now part of a school building.

“Lived in a brownstone, lived in the ghetto. I’ve lived all over this town,*” as David Byrne wrote in the lyrics for the Talking Heads song “Life During Wartime,” the SoundTrack for this post.

She spent time living in  the Bronx and a few neighborhoods in Manhattan over 54 years here, including one a few blocks from where I am now, before moving uptown for good, first to East Harlem, and finally to West Harlem. She Painted wherever she was. Street scenes, still lifes, and “pictures of people,” related to her and not. No matter when, where or who she Painted, her work has the remarkable quality of both looking of its time and not looking dated now. That said, never fond of discussing possible influences, her style was always wholly her own and it evolved over her career.

“I sleep in the daytime, I work in the nighttime. I might not ever get home,*” from “Life During Wartime,”

Ninth Avenue El, 1935. Night on West 14th Street at Ninth Avenue Painted at the peak of the Depression, the figures seem to carry the weight of the world with them. Looking at this now, and living in this area today, it’s hard for me, or no doubt most of my neighbors, to believe there was an elevated subway train here 90 years ago. It closed in 1940, only 5 years after this was Painted.

Standing on the same spot today in daylight. West 14th Street & Ninth Avenue, July 28, 2021, looking across to the Meatpacking District. The area is undergoing hard times, again. All the stores to my immediate left are For Rent, a large Apple store stands to my right. Today, there is not a hint that an elevated subway was once here.

“There isn’t much good portrait painting being done today, and I think it is because with all this war, commercialism and fascism, human beings have been steadily marked down in value, despised, rejected and degraded,” she explained in 19504.

Elenka, 1936, is a work that shows the way for much the Artist did the rest of her career with its subtle complexity. It’s a daring picture of a strong woman with an intense gaze reinforced by the strong colors and shapes surrounding her, contrasted with the femininity of what she wears. The background is partially nebulous and partially furniture or building. The somewhat straightforward pose gives the feeling of being caught off guard, which of course Elenka wasn’t.

It’s interesting that during her “today,” Artists including Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, to name two, were Painting portraits, though not nearly as well-known as they would become. Still, no matter what they, or anyone else was doing, Alice Neel, a humanist to the last, remained true to herself.

Futility of Effort, 1930. Alice Neel described this as one of her most “revolutionary” Paintings. Partily inspired by the death of her young daughter Santillana, partly by a news account of another infant death where the child choked on the bars of the crib while her mother ironed in the next room. It was shown on a wall by itself at the far end of a rectangular gallery.

She was also a survivor who persevered as a Painter as a single mother, virtually unprecedented among major Painters of the 20th century, or before, and a mother who lost an infant child,

Alice Neel, Nancy and Olivia, 1967, left, Vincent van Gogh, Madame Roulin and Her Baby, 1888. One of the highlights of the show was a gallery showing Alice Neel’s work in dialogue with Met Museum masterpieces by other Artists including Jacob Lawrence, Helen Levitt, Mary Cassatt, among others including Van Gogh, here. Alice Neel lost an infant daughter, and Vincent longed for a family fruitlessly his entire life. Knowing that, it’s hard not to read both of these works as autobiography, poignantly hung side by side.

But there were other sides to Alice Neel, the woman, besides the mother.  “I’m cursed to be in this Mother Hubbard body. I’m a real sexy person,” she once said[Met Alice Neel: People Come First Exhibition Catalog, P.2]. One way it came out is her penchant for asking her sitters to undress for their “picture.” A good number of them complied- men, women, pregnant women, and couples. Even Andy Warhol.

“This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco. This ain’t no fooling around. This ain’t no Mudd Club, or C.B.G.B. I ain’t got time for that now,*” from “Life During Wartime,”

Andy Warhol, 1970, Oil and acrylic on linen. Alice Neel is revolutionary for the consciously “unfinished” look of a number of her Paintings, including this one, one of  masterpieces. Done less than 2 years after the assassination attempt on his life, according to Phoebe Hoban, the two Artists discussed doing the picture this way (half undressed) with eyes closed, making it close to an actual collaboration5.

The show featured a number of the nudes, including Alice Neel’s daring nude Self-Portrait, 1980, at age 80! She also trail blazed Painting pregnant women nude, and some of them were on view as well. Finally, there were numerous pictures of children, both hers, and neighborhood kids, as shown earlier.

“We dress like students, we dress like housewives. Or in a suit and a tie. I changed my hairstyle so many times now, I don’t know what I look like,*” from “Life During Wartime.”

Marxist Girl (Irene Peslikis), 1972, all works are Oil on canvas, unless specified. “This captivating portrait …depicts artist and activist Irene Peslikis—a member of a new generation of revolutionary feminists that Neel began to paint in the early 1970s. Alice Neel’s relationship with second-generation feminism was sometimes strained, but she nonetheless supported—and was supported by—the movement.” @metmuseum.

Further to that quote from @metmuseum, I find the piece daring and free with a power that exudes from Ms. Peslikis’s gaze in a pose that is at once natural and ground-breaking, matched by an extraordinarily daring and free background. Alice Neel had gone on record6, powerfully, against Abstract Expressionism in its heyday. Her views changed over time. Here she is, using its techniques to marvelous effect in the background, as she does in a number of other works of the 1970s. She said then, “I don’t think there is any great painting that doesn’t have good abstract qualities.7.” I’ve been thinking about those words since I read that quote…

“I don’t know what you expect to do in the world, Alice. You’re only a girl.” Alice Concross Hartley Neel (1868-1954), Alice Neel’s mother8

Last Sickness, 1953, left, and City Hospital, 1954, Ink and gouache on paper. Alice Neel’s mother, was no fan of her daughter becoming a Painter, as the quote from her, above, shows, yet Alice never turned her back on her. She died of cancer shortly after the Painted picture. City Hospital shows her mother at the bottom with an overworked nurse looking over other patients at her.

Her mother, who took her to cultural events, Alice describes as “intelligent and well read” continued, “None of us will be remembered.” “Well, I am not so sure about Alice,” Alice remembered her father saying9.

Richard Gibbs, 1968- Everything about this work strikes me as daring. The pose looks like a very casual take on Rodin’s The Thinker. Mr. Gibbs’ shirt is a riot of color with lines that go in the opposite direction to the path laid out for the eye to follow from front to back. That path, itself, is an adventure. We are seemingly inside and outside at the same time. Part of a room or building occupies the right part of the piece, a sudden landscape occupies the left, leading to a shining sun high up top. This inside-outness reminds me a bit of Dali or de Chirico, but for Alice Neel, who is known as being a somewhat traditional Painter of portraits, or pictures of people, as she preferred, it’s quite daring. The shadows under the chair leave me wondering, too. What are they of? Then, there’s the skin tones. Marvelously flat on Mr. Gibbs’ legs, feet, arms and hands, and more layered and nuanced on his face.

Many of Alice Neel’s non-family subjects were people fighting for causes, people who lived what they believed, and that is what comes across in her “pictures” of them. Taken as a whole one of the things her work is is a miniature picture of New York during her lifetime. While there are some cityscapes, Alice Neel’s New York City consists of its people in all their ages, sizes, shapes and variety.

“Heard about Houston? Heard about Detroit? Heard about Pittsburgh, PA?,*” from “Life During Wartime10.

James Farmer, 1964. The year this was Painted, the civil-rights leader was among those arrested at the 1964 World’s Fair for protesting segregation and racial violence.

Mostly an outsider to the big NYC museums and larger Art world during most of her lifetime (though she attended them and marched in protests of some of their more controversial shows), Alice Neel fought for her Art most of her life. She had to. She didn’t find a lot of supporters in the Art word until late in her life (the Whitney held a Retrospective in 1974, when she was 74, and the posthumous Centennial show in 2000, her last big NYC museum show before this one). Phoebe Hoban says that between 1927 and 1964 she had about 6 solo shows. From 1964 to 1984, she had over sixty11. The first full-length monograph of her work was finally published in 1983, a year before she passed (see BookMarks, below).

James Hunter- Where are you? Black Draftee-James Hunter, 1965. One of the most compelling works in Alice Neel’s career, Mr. Hunter appeared for one sitting and never returned. Alice Neel declared the work finished and its gone on to spellbind viewers ever since. (Including me, when I saw it last at Unfinished at The Met Breuer in 2015.) Drafted for Vietnam, his name does not appear on the Wall in Washington, DC. To this day, what happened to him remains unknown.

Listening to her recorded interviews she always makes a compelling case for work and anyone interested in her Art should seek them out online and watch or listen to those first before reading anyone else speak about her work. In this interview, I love how she immediately corrects anything the interviewer says about her Art that she doesn’t agree with!

“Transmit the message, to the receiver. Hope for an answer some day,*” from “Life During Wartime,”

The line for Alice Neel: People Come First on March 27th. I imagine it’s significantly longer now.

Standing in line at The Met, in the very halls she frequented, I couldn’t help wonder what she would have felt seeing the line of visitors stretching all the way down the long hallway waiting to see her work. The same work she mostly kept in her archives, as a picture in the show, below, depicts.

The archive of her work lining the walls of her apartment. Alice Neel hated to part with one of her Paintings and was known to Paint a copy when she did.

“The sound of gunfire, off in the distance. I’m getting used to it now,*” from “Life During Wartime.”

Living in Manhattan these past 30 years, it’s easy to relate to the solitary, single-minded sense of purpose her life exudes. “Tough times don’t last. Tough people do,” the age old quote goes. Alice Neel survived a lot of tough times. Now her Art is helping New Yorkers survive this horrible time by reminding us of who we are and what our strength is.

BookMarks-

The poignant inscription in a signed copy of Patricia Hills’ monograph says it all. Alice Neel died the following year. Photographer unknown.

The Alice Neel bibliography is relatively small but growing. Here are a few recommendations based on living for at least a year with each recommended book, each  used in preparing this piece.

Alice Neel: People Come First, Met Museum Exhibition Catalog, is the most up to date monographic overview of her work and career. It features the most current research and has the most images currently (mostly the works in the show which were exceedingly well chosen) in very good quality on good paper, many in a large size. Recommended as a first, or go-to, monograph on Alice Neel until a more complete look at her whole career is published.

Alice Neel, by Patricia Hills, will always be NoteWorthy for being the first full length hard-cover monograph on Alice Neel and the only one released during her lifetime. Many good sized illustrations in color. It was also done with cooperation with the Artist. It holds up well today and copies in Very Good or better condition are still reasonable. Recommended as a 2nd monograph on Alice Neel, it remains a valuable reference book for the reasons I mentioned.

Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty, by Phoebe Hoban is another Art biography from Ms. Hoban. I found this one better than her Jean-Michel Basquiat bio, particularly when it comes to addressing the Art (a serious weakness of the J-M Basquiat book in my opinion). At the moment, there is no other full-length Alice Neel biography. Given Alice Neel’s steadily increasing popularity, and her increasing stature as an Artist, a woman and an influence, I suspect that will not be true indefinitely and a more definitive biography may be still to come. Done after the Artist’s passing it does not have Alice Neel’s input but it does have quotes from family members. Includes 23 pages of small illustrations in color and black & white. The binding is exceptional- rare for a large 500+ page paperback. Recommended, for now.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “Life During Wartime,” with lyrics by David Byrne by Talking Heads from Fear Of Music, 1979. Regarding the references used above, check out the annotated lyrics on genius.com. Here it is performed live, at The Mudd Club, LA, of all places, on August 13, 1979-

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Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here.
Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them.
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  1. The PBS series Inside The Met shows behind the scenes leading up to, during and after the shutdown. ↩
  2.  Mike Gold, “Alice Neel Paints Scenes and Portraits from Life in Harlem,” Daily Worker, December 27, 1950, p.11 ↩
  3. Phoebe Hoban, Alice Neel: The Art of Not Sitting Pretty, P.236 ↩
  4. Mike Gold, ibid, p.11 ↩
  5. Phoebe Hoban, ibid, P.310 ↩
  6.  “I am against abstract and non-objective art because such art shows a hatred of human beings. It is an attempt to eliminate people from art, and as such it is bound to fail.” Mike Gold, ibid, p.11 ↩
  7. Met Alice Neel catalog, P. 104 ↩
  8. Met Exhibition Catalog, P.12 ↩
  9. Met Exhibition Catalog, P.18. ↩
  10. See the annotated lyrics, here. ↩
  11. Phoebe Hoban, ibid, P 254 ↩

The “Other” Robert Frank

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

Barbershop through screen door-McClellanville, South Carolina, from the Scalo edition of Robert Frank’s The Americans.

Almost every piece I read on Robert Frank begins the same way. Take the 14,999 word obituary The New York Times published after Mr. Frank passed away at 94 on September 9th, 2019 for example. The body of their piece begins-

“Robert Frank, one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century…”

Stating succinctly what I’ve heard said about him most often. In the 3rd para it adds-

“He was best known for his groundbreaking book, The Americans…1”

A copy of the 50th Anniversary edition of The Americans, published by Steidl in 2008 in close collaboration with Robert Frank, and so this will remain the  definitive edition.

Again, summing what seems to be the consensus I’ve encountered as I’ve explored the world of Modern & Contemporary Photography (which for me, means the world post the publication of said The Americans in 1958, in France, and 1959 here). Yet lurking in that sentence is a problem.

Good days quiet, 2019, with its slip case above, Robert Frank’s final PhotoBook.

While he is indeed “best known” for The Americans, nowhere in the entire 14,999 word obit is there mention of any other PhotoBook by Robert Frank! That’s typical, too. It seems that for many people Mr. Frank’s exalted reputation rests on that one book. But, Robert Frank, didn’t stop working after publication of The Americans in 1959. He created and published Photobooks regularly over the following SIXTY YEARS! His last one, Good days quiet, was published in April, 2019, shortly before his passing. Yet, it seems to me that this single-book focus also monopolizes the conversation around Robert Frank’s work.

Want proof of that? Quick- name five other books by Robert Frank. [“Final Jeopardy!” Music plays…] Ok. Three.

It all began here. Robert Frank, Portfolio, Steidl facsimile edition. Containing a selection his early work, 1941-46, Mr. Frank presented the original to prospective clients after arriving in New York from Zurich in 1947.

The Americans singlehandedly created the genre of Contemporary Photography spawning countless thousand of books in its wake. Yet, given his reputation, it’s kind of amazing Robert Frank’s “other” books have received so little attention. Especially after you see them. It would be easy to account for that saying, “Well, there are more PhotoBooks published today than ever before.” Most PhotoBooks come and go  having only created a ripple in the vast world of human awareness. True, but, these are different. Full of poignancy, daring, surprising juxtapositions of the new and the old, they don’t hesitate to break rules. And, they are the work of Robert Frank, “one of the most influential….” oh, you know. Whereas The Americans, and his prior books, like London/Wales (another masterpiece in my view), contain work that looks at the world, his subsequent books largely look inward. In a number of the images a sense of loss is palpable.

Fourteen “other” Robert Frank books. The 7 on the bottom are his late Visual Diaries, discussed further below. Good days quiet is above them. Robert Frank: In America, not by Robert Frank per se,contains about 100 Photographs that are not in The Americans. And so it provides an excellent chance to study Robert Frank’s image selection, invaluable for anyone considering making a PhotoBook.

Without having familiarity with most, if not all, of Robert Frank’s PhotoBooks, it’s not possible to have an understanding of him or his accomplishment. Given his key position in Photography of the past 60 years, by extension, it’s pretty hard to be able to understand the accomplishment of anyone else working in this era. Realizing that I, too, was in this boat, seemingly adrift in the fog of ignorance, I decided to do something about it last year during the lock down. I began hunting down every OTHER Robert Frank book I could find. What I found was, frankly (sorry), astounding, but, I really shouldn’t have been surprised.

Robert Frank: Moving Out, 1995-6 Exhibition Guide.

In 1995 I saw the Robert Frank: Moving Out Retrospective at the “old” Whitney Museum. At that point, I had a copy of The Americans, but knew nothing more about his work. What I saw that day was indelible. The greatest (of the few) Photography shows I’d seen before 2005’s Diane Arbus: Revelations at The Met. It showed me that Mr. Frank never stopped creating or exploring his vision. Later in his career (as it was in 1995), he had taken to writing on is prints and I was stunned by them. They were “raw,” yes, but they were also revolutionary. I immediately ran out and bought the exhibition catalog, unheard of for this Painting guy at that point. The impact of those later Prints, and the retrospective as a whole has stayed alive with me ever since.

Robert Frank: Moving Out Exhibition Catalog. Ostensibly not “by” Robert Frank, is still a spectacular book, and the best overview of his work to 1995 there is with excellent, informative essays and gorgeous reproductions (it was printed by Steidl). Copies in Very Good, or better, condition trade quite reasonably as I write this.

But, I still hadn’t seen his other PhotoBooks, and as we all know, a PhotoBook is a unique way of presenting Photographs that has proven itself to be every bit as vital and effective as hanging them on a wall- even on the walls of the Whitney. Mr. Frank is, perhaps, the master of image selection, and laying out & sequencing a PhotoBook, skills that are apparently in short supply based in many of the books I see each year. If they have no other values (which they definitely do) they are portable “master classes” in the Art of making a PhotoBook. 

The Table of Contents for Steidl’s overview (shown 2 pictures down) turned into my checklist of books seen so far. Some of the uncheck entries are essays in the book.

To date, I still haven’t seen all of his books. I’m up to 22 of them. Luckily, almost all of Robert Frank’s books have been reprinted over the years and most remain in print, due to his relationship with the renowned Gerhard Steidl of Steidl, making the newer editions relatively affordable. After publishing the terrific Storylines in 2004, the pair began work on the 50th Anniversary Edition of The Americans, which is the version that will now remain Robert Frank’s final word on the classic.

Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans: Expanded Edition accompanied the show of the same name honoring The American’s 50th Anniversary I saw at The Met in 2009. And so, it is the final word on The Americans during Robert Frank’s lifetime and the ultimate reference on it. Another book not “by” Mr. Frank it is exceptionally thorough and the hardcover Expanded Edition seen here contains the 83 contact sheets the images in The Americans came from! (NOT included in the softcover edition.) It’s also enough of a “making of” book for students to study how The Americans came into being. Highly recommended.

Since those two volumes Messers Frank & Steidl have produced a steady stream of books.

Robert Frank: Books and Films Published by Steidl, 2020. The best place to start exploring Robert Frank’s “other” PhotoBooks.

In 2020, Steidl honored and revisited their collaborations with an overview of all the books titled Robert Frank: Books and Films Published by Steidl. Succinct and well-produced it is the best place to start exploring the PhotoBooks of Robert Frank and the best place to determine where to turn next in your own journey through them (with the Moving Out catalog the best place to explore his work: his Photography & Film to 1995). Each book is shown chronologically and gets a section of its own by Steidl publication date with thumbnails and historical & publishing info. Here, you can get a taste of each book before diving in.

Robert Frank: Storylines, 2004, the first Robert Frank/Steidl publication is auspicious given what followed, and remains the best retrospective of his work. Steidl is preparing to reprint it.

From what I’ve seen thus far, after The Americans, he turned his camera inward. His later work, renowned for its “rawness” as the NY Times obituary put it, often feature poignantly “raw” images of his life and feelings. This is seen best, perhaps, in his late 7 volume Photo Diary series. They are a truly unique body of PhotoBooks that at once look back (by including vintage Photographs- some familiar, some not), and more recent shots, brilliantly laid out, with each book not containing too many Photos. This gives each book an internal sense of space that allows the Photos room to breathe. The book design, by Messers Frank and Steidl, with assistance and input from Mrs. Frank, the under-appreciated Artist,  June Leaf, is simple and clean, but fresh and new at the same time, as  you’d expect from two master craftsman who each bring a lifetime’s experience to each book. Mr. Frank began with a book dummy and the feel and design of these has been pretty faithfully reproduced by Steidl. These are not luxury items. They are produced to be picked up and looked through in functional yet non-pretentious materials.

Little known is that Robert Frank was commissioned to shoot catalogs for Milan designer Albert Aspesi titled Aspesi Ideas. This is a copy of the 2nd of the 3 he did. We shouldn’t be surprised by this. After his arrival from Zurich, he did over 150 fashion shoots for Harper’s and Junior Bazar. Even great Artists have to pay the bills.

I’m not going to give a book by book breakdown here. It would take a book to do so. And now, there is a book that does just that, Steidl’s tribute/overview Robert Frank: Books and Films Published by Steidl, 2020,, traces the entire history and legacy of the German publisher’s work with Robert Frank, including both books it republished and brand new PhotoBooks. It’s the best place to start for anyone looking to get an overview, or to choose where to go next in exploring the published work of Robert Frank.

The six volumes of Robert Frank’s Visual Diaries, 2010-17, six in a similar design- a softcover in a slipcase, left, with Household Inventory Record, 2013, designed to look like the original which was created in an actual Household Inventory Record book.

Highlights? For me, it’s very very hard to single any of them out. They are part of a continuum that spans and tells the story of one extraordinary Artist’s life. Luckily, as I write this, virtually all of them are still in print and available at or close to list price. Assuming you have The Americans, I would recommend starting with Steidl’s overview. Look through it, read the introductory summary about each book, look at its thumbnail images and see which one(s) speak to you. Storylines, which accompanied a 2004 European touring retrospective exhibition, is Robert Frank’s look at his own career in a book he obviously had (from the look at the making of it in Steidl’s overview book) a central role in designing as well as a close involvement with the underlying show (we’re told in the introduction). And so it remains the best place to see his career through his eyes. It also set the stage for what would follow from the Frank/Steidl collaboration. Also essential in my view is the early London/Wales, which Steidl reissued, and which sets the stage for The Americans. Of the books after Storylines, the “Visual Diaries,” were the big surprises for me. Tal uf Tal ab (2010), You Would (2012), Park / Sleep (2013), Partida (2014), Was haben wir gesehen/What we have seen (2016), and Leon of Juda (2017) strike me as being akin to as close to a “PhotoBook Autobiography” as we’re likely to get. Household Inventory Record was released in 2013, a reproduction of the actual Household Inventory Record book Mr. Frank created it in. A mix of new and old Photos, typically brilliantly sequenced, they break more rules than they follow. Six of the seven are identically sized and come in matching slipcases, as shown above, while Household Inventory Record is a reproduction of an original created in a standard Household Inventory book. It’s pretty hard for me to single one of these out, so I decided to start with the first volume,Tal Uf Tal Ab. They contain between 29 and 68 Photos each. Good days quiet, 2019, being his last book is also essential in my view. Not part of the Visual Diaries per se (it is the same size as the 6 Visual Diaries, though in a different format), it nonetheless carries some of the feeling and style. Intended as a “final” book, or not, it nonetheless is a moving work showing that Robert Frank had lost none of his considerable skills as a Photographer, editor or book creator.

From Storylines. Pieces like this seem to meld Film and Photography as Robert Frank continually stretched out the ability of Photographs to tell a story.

While a biography of Mr. Frank has already been published, the time is here for the critical studies of his entire body of work to begin. Given Moving Out was 26 years ago, and Storylines, which never traveled to the US, 17, the time is also here for a full scale retrospective. The Americans continues to receive the attention it’s earned. No PhotoBook or Art Book collection should be without it. Yes, no library of any kind of books should be without it. Robert Frank’s “other” PhotoBooks created in the following sixty years shows us a different, inner, landscape- its depths, its wonder, its beauty, poetry and tragedy are no less compelling. They complete the picture Robert Frank showed us, and the journey he took us on.

Robert Frank, from Good days quiet, 2019.

Meanwhile, his Art continued to grow and expand, in my view. It’s full of innovations that have largely flown under the radar compared to his early work. But those innovations are not lost on Artists & Photographers who have been creating along side, or since he created them.

Sick of Goodby’s, 1978, from Robert Frank: Moving Out.

In much of later Robert Frank I get the feeling that he was crossing the boundaries between Photography & Film, with his writing on his prints and especially his collages, which are daring and almost completely overlooked. While his early work already looks timeless to us, there is much else in his oeuvre that remains to be discussed, understood and appreciated. This is like the late work of a number of other Artists from Picasso to Rauschenberg. Luckily, much of this work is there to be seen by all of us right now in the books he created.

Having seen 22 so far, I look forward to seeing those I haven’t yet seen. And then, there are his Films…

Robert Frank, from Good days quiet, 2019, his final book.

*-Soundtrack for this Post is “The Other End (of the Telescope)” Written and performed by Elvis Costello on All This Useless Beauty, 1996, performed in the UK that year here-

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Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited. To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here. Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them. Subscribe to be notified of new Posts below. Your information will be used for no other purpose.

  1. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/10/arts/robert-frank-dead-americans-photography.html ↩

Gilles Peress’s Silent Movie

Written & Photographed by Kenn Sava

Gilles Peress, Whatever You Say, Say Nothing, with Annals of the North. Steidl Photo

Henri Cartier-Bresson in the newly liberated Nazi Concentration Camps…

Robert Capa in Paris during its Liberation…

Robert Franks- London & Wales…

Robert Franks- The Americans…

Larry Burrows- Vietnam…

Gilles Peress- Telex Iran…

These were some of the images and PhotoBooks that flashed through my mind while looking through a copy of the newly released two-volume Whatever You Say, Say Nothing by Gilles Peress published by Steidl. I don’t think this will be the last time it’s spoken about with those monuments of Photography. Even though the Photographs in it were taken 50 years ago next year, I believe Whatever You Say, Say Nothing will be included when the list of THE Books of this Decade is finalized.

Steidl Photo.

It comes in a strong tote bag (it better be- the set weighs almost 30 pounds!). The two PhotoBooks contain 1,960 14 3/4 by 10 inch pages with 1,295 images, including some amazing wide-angle shots that will look like panoramas to iPhone users. These are often shown on a 2 page spread that’s almost 30 inches wide! The first volume has “Whatever You Say” in silver letters on the spine, Volume II has “Say Nothing” on it. Each set is accompanied by the “text and image almanac,” The Annals of the North, itself 900 pages.

Steidl Photo.

Billed as “A Documentary Fiction” on the title page, the word “Fiction” allows me to bring it into the world of “Art,” though everything it shows us was actually witnessed by the Photographer in Northern Ireland. In 1972, at age 26, he witnessed the “Bloody Sunday Massacre,” then returned to continue shooting there over the next decade. Whatever You Say, Say Nothing marks the first time most of this work has been seen. 

Steidl Photo.

Per Steidl-
“Whatever You Say, Say Nothing, a work of “documentary fiction,” organizes a decade of photographs across 22 fictional “days” to articulate the helicoidal structure of history during a conflict that seemed like it would never end—where each day became a repetition of every other day like that day: days of violence, of marching, of riots, of unemployment, of mourning, and also of “craic” where you try to forget your condition.
Held back for 30 years and now eagerly anticipated, this ambitious publication takes the language of documentary photography to its extremes, then challenges the reader to stop and resolve the puzzle of meaning for him or herself.”

Steidl Photo.

It’s fitting I’m seeing this on the heels of having seen and written about Francisco Goya’s Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War) at The Met, which left me pondering so-called “documentary” Photography and Goya’s possible influence on Artists & Photographers.

Steidl Photo.

Culling down a decade’s worth of work to 1,295 images must have been incredibly difficult, but there’s no evidence of that to be seen in the books where there are no “weak” images and those chosen are brilliantly sequenced in service to the “22 Day” concept. I particularly admire the image layout- not full bleed but with the slimmest of margin, maximizing the available real estate. It was too hard for me to think of a fictional narrative to accompany the images as they went by. I was too gripped by what’s depicted in the Photos themselves. Gilles Peress’s remarkable images have lost not one bit of their power in the intervening 3 decades since he took them. They are a part of history that has much to teach us now, and no doubt will in the future. But those are just two of the innumerable levels of this monumental work.

*- Soundtrack for this Post is “Sunday, Bloody Sunday,” by U-2 from War, 1980. After its release, I saw them at The Ritz, NYC, on their first US tour.

My thanks to Monika Condrea.

BookMarks-
Gilles Peress’ Whatever You Say, Say Nothing is about to be released in the US.

For a compelling look at events in Northern Ireland in 1981 check out the excellent Yan Morvan’s Bobby Sands, Belfast Mai 1981 (French Edition) from Andrew Frerer Editions. (Note- My copy is French & English. There is only one edition as far as I know.) Mr Morvan was also about 26 or 27 when he shot in Northern Ireland.

If you buy from these links NighthawkNYC may earn a small commission which will enable me to continue to keep this site up, with my Thanks.

NighthawkNYC.com has been entirely self-funded and ad-free for over 6 years, during which over 250 full length pieces have been published. If you’ve found it worthwhile, you can donate to keep it going & ad-free below. Thank you!

Written & photographed by Kenn Sava for nighthawknyc.com unless otherwise credited.
To send comments, thoughts, feedback or propositions click here.
Click the white box on the upper right for the archives or to search them.
For “short takes” and additional pictures, follow @nighthawk_nyc on Instagram.

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