The Skirball Cultural Center | Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement | 1956–1968

LOS ANGELES - The largest exhibition in more than twenty years devoted to photography of the Civil Rights Movement opened at the Skirball Cultural Center on November 19, 2009, in its West Coast premiere. Organized by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Road to Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1956–1968 features images that helped change the nation: they shed light on injustices prevalent in America at the time, promoted solidarity among citizens, and dramatically increased the momentum of the struggle for equal rights. Road to Freedom will remain on view at the Skirball through March 7, 2010.

The exhibition displays approximately 170 photographs by more than thirty-five photographers drawn primarily from the High’s permanent collection, which includes one of the most comprehensive holdings of civil rights–era photography in the country; many have never before been displayed to the public. Exclusively for this Southern California presentation of Road to Freedom, the Skirball has developed a new section focusing on Los Angeles civil rights history, with new loans from the Los Angeles Times Photographic Archive in the Department of Special Collections at the Charles E. Young Research Library at UCLA, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the Getty Research Institute. Among the local events portrayed are the picketing of Kress Store in Pasadena in 1960, the march on Pershing Square on March 14, 1965, and the Watts Riots of 1965.

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Howard Greenberg Gallery | Bruce Davidson | 1970s photography

NEW YORK, NY.- Howard Greenberg Gallery and Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery are presenting simultaneous exhibitions of the photographs of Bruce Davidson. The exhibition at Howard Greenberg Gallery, entitled East 100th Street, The MoMA Show as Curated by John Szarkowski in 1970, is a re-creation of The Museum of Modern Art’s groundbreaking 1970 exhibition of forty-two photographs by the highly regarded Bruce Davidson. The photographs in the exhibition are the actual prints, presented in the exact manner in which they were shown at MoMA in 1970. On view through 2 January, 2010.

Davidson’s East 100th Street constitutes a significant social document. During 1967 and 1968, Davidson photographed on a New York block that in the 1950’s had the reputation of being one of the worst in the city. He was first attracted to the area because of the work of the Metro North Association, a committee of residents that were actively involved in trying to improve their neighborhood. Through this association and with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Davidson gained access to the people on the block. About this work Szarkowski wrote, “He has shown us true and specific people, photographed in these private moments of suspended action in which the complexity and ambiguity of individual lives triumph over abstraction.” In appreciation for their cooperation, Davidson gave prints of his photographs to hundreds of residents of the block. Many of these people attended the opening of the exhibition at the museum.

The exhibition at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery celebrates the fifty-year career of Bruce Davidson, with representative works from many of the artist’s well-known essays. Photographs from Time of Change (1961), Brooklyn Gang (1959), Circus (1958), Subway(1980) as well as recent images will be exhibited. For this exhibition, Davidson has produced large format prints, many for the first time. The scale and position of the new Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery provides an opportunity to re-contextualize Davidson’s work. Of his show Wolkowitz said, “Bruce Davidson has had a profound influence on contemporary photography over the last five decades. We are excited to have the opportunity to showcase this legendary photographer’s work in the heart of Chelsea’s contemporary art district and to introduce it to a much wider audience.”

Both galleries are also celebrating the Steidl publication of the three volume opus entitled Outside/Inside containing over 800 photographs that span Davidson’s entire career.

Also on exhibit at the Howard Greenberg Gallery are the recently published limited edition portfolio entitled Bruce Davidson: Central Park in Platinum. The fourteen images in the portfolio were made during many of Davidson’s explorations of the park that began in 1991 and continue to this day.

Bruce Davidson was born in Oak Park, Illinois in 1933. He attended the Rochester Institute of Technology and Yale University. When he completed military service in 1957 he worked as a photographer for Life Magazine and in 1958, became a member of Magnum Agency. He has had one-man exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, The Smithsonian Museum of American Art, The Walker Art Center, The International Center of Photography, The Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego, The Aperture Foundation, and The Foundation Cartier-Bresson in Paris He has received numerous grants and awards including two grants from the National Endowment of the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, The Lucie Award for Outstanding Achievement in Documentary Photography in 2004 and the Gold Medal Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Arts Club in 2007. His photographs have appeared in numerous publications and his prints have been acquired by many major museums worldwide. He has also directed three films.

Davidson continues to lecture, conduct workshops and produce astounding images.

Source: AKN

JOSE CENDON | Valencian Institute of Modern Art | Photography

VALENCIA, SPAIN - José Cendón's photographic exhibition "Fear in the Great Lakes" emerges from the collaboration between the Fundación por la Justicia and the IVAM. It gathers photographs that show the work of this Galician photographer in psychiatric hospitals in the African Great Lakes region. José Cendón tries to show to society the consequences of war in civil population by means of these photographies. He obtained the World Press Photo 2007 Award (category of Contemporary Issues) and the Pictures of the Year Awards. The exhibition will remain opened until the 3 January, 2010 at the Valencian Institute of Modern Art.

"Fear in the Great Lakes" portrays the difficult helping circumstances in developing countries, discussing the mental illness as the theme. These snapshots depict stories of solitude and suffering, and catch our attention towards the lives lived by those patients somewhere around the world.

Photojournalism but also 'photo protest' which would never run the risk of becoming sensationalist images, but being in clearly support of the portrayed patient driving the attention of the international community to these practices.

The Great Lakes region has been deeply marked by a history of ethnic conflicts due to a large extent to the colonial heritage and the natural wealth a country situated in the heart of Africa possesses: Democratic Republic of the Congo. Western companies mostly and countries like the Rwanda of Paul Kagame stock up illegally of any kind of minerals such as gold, diamonds, cassiterite, coltan (essential for the manufacture of computers and cell phones), etc. in the former Zaire without leaving any profit to their inhabitants. On the contrary, this unmerciful practice has rekindled a conflict whose effects are 38,000 deaths a month transforming the former domain of Mobutu Sese Seko in the country with the largest number of deaths because of war.

Despite the bleak numbers the Great Lakes region shows, there are no statistics about the number of people who could be mentally affected as a consequence of those conflicts. Only a Belgian catholic congregation, "Brothers of Charity", regularly treats mental patients in Rwanda, Burundi and Democratic Republic of the Congo. Their hospitals receive former soldiers and rebels, also men, women and children victims of the war. 'That's why I chose these institutions for the photographic work, as a metaphor of the collective insanity that has devastated this region during the last decades, also reflected in the patients' eyes. I took these photos in 2006. Nevertheless, I still can smell the foul, infected and unbreathable smell.' Cendón relates.

José Cendón is a freelance photojournalist. Nowadays he lives in Ethiopia and he has just published the book: . He has worked in Colombia, Venezuela, Israel, Palestine, Darfur and from 2005 until 2009 he has been working as a freelance photographer for the AFP (Professional Photographers Association in Spain) and other international media mainly in East Africa.

The objective of the IVAM, the Valencian Institute of Modern Art, is the investigation and diffusion of twentieth-century art. Its programme of activities offers permanent collections, temporary exhibitions, talks, courses, workshops and publications. It has two premises: the Centre Julio González, opened in 1989, and the Sala de la Muralla opened in 1991. Visit : http://www.ivam.es/

Source: AKN