The Eye Photography: World Photography Art History, Latest News and Photography Events

George Holz counts among the very few classic Hollywood star photographers still around. After studying at the Art Center College of Design, he became one of the “disciples” of Helmut Newton, first as an assistant and then as one of the “Three Boys from Pasadena”. After stints in Paris and Milan, Holz settled down in New York City, founded his studio, and joined the who’s who of portrait & celebrity photographers of the 1990s and 2000s. From Madonna, Angelina Jolie, and Jennifer Aniston to Brad Pitt, Joaquin Phoenix, and Jack Nicholson to Jada Pinkett-Smith, Mariah Carey, and Britney Spears – Holz has portrayed them all. Later, he moved upstate where he has focused more on his fine art nudes. To trace and track this eventful life, we got together with George Holz to discuss his highlights and find out what’s new?    Nadine Dinter: Born in Tennessee, you studied in California and spent some years in Europe, before settling down in New York City. You got your first camera as a gift at the age of 15 – shortly after […]

This is the twelth installment of the online series by Peter Fetterman Gallery called the Power of Photography highlighting hope, peace and love in the world. We invite you to enjoy and reflect on these works during this time.   George Tice (b. 1938) Petit’s Mobil Station, Cherry Hill, New Jersey, 1974 (Printed 2007) © George Tice/Courtesy Peter Fetterman Gallery George Tice is one of the true greats in American photography and this image is one of the all time great Classic American photographs. I have loved it since I first arrived in America in 1979. The subject may seem commonplace. A gas station in New Jersey, where most of his great images have been shot, but it is compelling and haunting. George has not travelled much in his career. He has found a wealth of subject matter right on his doorstep. This image emanates a great feeling of mood and layers of meaning and even a slight melancholy and sense of loneliness in the same way that Edward Hopper’s best paintings affect you. It is in the physical beauty of the print. George […]

There is something jarring about having Martin Parr select the photographs in Tom Wood 101 Pictures. It is not so much his patronising words (‘he is Irish and let’s face it we all love the Irish’) but the memory of his own photographs in his Signs of the Times (1992): staged scenes showing people in their homes and items of their domestic décor. The accompanying quotations make clear the book’s intent to ridicule ordinary people and expose what the photographer sees as laughable examples of uncultured taste and pretensions. The best thing that can be said about Parr’s work is that he is a documentarist but such a methodology is alien to Wood. He is close to the people he photographs because, while he does not know them personally, he is of them. For a long time, Liverpool was the port of choice for Irish and other emigrants and Wood himself came to Merseyside from Ireland in the late 1970s, staying for quarter of a century. His familiarity with the place and its proletarian heritage provides the essential context for […]

As a member of Magnum Photos, Paolo Pellegrin has travelled to some of the Earth’s harshest and most extreme environments, to bring back photographs which speak to a profound communality of human experience. Working within a tradition of photography that transcends easy definition Pellegrin has received numerous accolades including the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography, the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award and 11 World Press Photo Awards over the course of his three decade long career. In this online exhibition, we celebrate the impressive diversity and scope of Pellegrin’s career and present available works. Curated by Lucrezia di Martino, with text by Lucy Fleming-Brown. “You want to be more vulnerable because that’s how your photography becomes more human. In a sense you want to become a totally blank canvas so the subject or situation reflects him or itself upon you.” – Paolo Pellegrin   Online Exhibition https://michaelhoppen.viewingroom.com/viewing-room/14-paolo-pellegrin-the-beauty-in-our-fragile-ecosystem/   Michael Hoppen Gallery 3 Jubilee Place London, SW3 3TD www.michaelhoppengallery.com          

The 11th Carmignac Photojournalism Award—which, this year, focuses on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)—was awarded to British-Canadian photographer Finbarr O’Reilly. His reportage started in January 2020, before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. Due to the swiftly worsening global health situation and the gradual closing of international borders, finding a different way of working became essential. Finbarr O’Reilly and the Award team—in close collaboration with the jury of the 11th edition—reframed their approach to this work. One laureate’s project turned into “Congo in Conversation”, a collaborative reportage with eleven Congolese photographers and journalists, who documented for six months the human, social and ecological challenges that the Congo faces today, within the context of the current global health crisis. First published on a dedicated website and social networks, “Congo in Conversation” provided an uninterrupted and unprecedented stream of articles, photo reportages and videos, which visitors can consult by theme or by contributor. The collaborative reportage is now presented in Congo in Conversation, a bilingual monograph co-published by Reliefs Editions and Fondation Carmignac. The images are accompanied by a conversation with Mark Sealy, curator and Director of Autograph ABP in […]

Massimo Leardini is an Italian photographer who has been based in Norway for the past 30 years where he works with a small number of models on extended collaborations. This new publication ELV (Norwegian for River) explores Leardini’s fascination with the body and the landscape. Presenting a series of transcendental images of contorted fragments of the female body, set deep within in the primordial forests of Scandinavia. The map that Leardini unfolds is not built, but behaves like a puzzle in the imagination. The photographs were made in summers between 2014 and 2019 when the Scandinavian light lengthens the shadows due to the obliqueness with which the sun reaches this part of the world. This causes the light to draw the silhouettes of the subjects on the background with high but delicate contrast. “We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not.” Heraclitus of Ephesus   Massimo Leardini : Elv  Published by Stanley Barker Pages — 104 Cover — Hardback / 3/4 bound boards / foil stamped / Dust jacket Size — 335x236mm ISBN — […]

Hello! To support the lifting of the lockdown and the opening of galleries, museums, bookstores … which finally seems to be happening all over the world: we have decided to lower the prices of our premium agendas over the next two months. Premium agendas, present for one month on the site and also supported on social networks, will be billed 150 euros. For all demands, please contact Anna Reverdy at  anna.reverdy@loeildelaphotographie.com  

Denis Piel is an astonishing character and he occupies a special place in photography. Born in Brisbane, Australia, he moved to a small studio at Sutton House on George Street in London in 1966, finally settling in New York where he became one of the most sought-after fashion photographers of the 70s and 80s.  His recipe: his cinematic approach – asking his subjects to play a role in the same way a director would work with his cast. He suggested that I choose the images. I did. He didn’t like my selection, and added some of his favorites. For me his color images and their sensuality are what touch most. – Jean-Jacques Naudet   Denis Piel : Exposed Limited edition of 500 Hardcover : 280 pages ISBN-10 : 1647134145 ISBN-13 : 978-1647134143 Publisher : dpi; 250th edition https://www.denispiel.com/photodetail.php?id=2708

The title of the show is a play on words that hints at the content: for Grey Le Gray, Elger Esser for the first time and in his own subtle way, explores the work of Gustave Le Gray, the preeminent landscape photographer of the mid-19th century. The technological limitations of the day – including the inability to reproduce genuine color and the long exposure times necessitated by the quality of the emulsions – prompted Le Gray (1820-1884) to draw on his own resourcefulness and ingenuity as he experimented with innovative techniques and processes to advance the state-of-the-art. But the uniqueness of his work stems mainly from the fact Le Gray, an academically trained painter, always maintained his identity as an artist, although in that period photography was not deemed a fully-fledged art form equal to painting. Le Gray’s artistic sense of composition is most clearly displayed in his work series ‘Marines’ (seascapes). With the carefully considered combination of two different negatives, each from a separate exposure – one of the sky, one of the sea – he created stunning visual […]

During the 1920s the New Woman was easy to recognize but hard to define. Hair bobbed and fashionably dressed, this iconic figure of modernity was everywhere, splashed across magazine pages or projected on the silver screen. A global phenomenon, she embodied an ideal of female empowerment based on real women making revolutionary changes in life and art—including photography. This book looks at those diverse “new women” who embraced the camera as a mode of expression and made a profound impact on the medium from the 1920s to the 1950s. Thematic chapters explore how women emerged as a driving force in modern photography, bringing multiple perspectives to artistic experimentation, studio portraiture, fashion and advertising work, scenes of urban life, ethnography, and photojournalism. This is an in-depth look at the many ways women around the world shaped modern photography from the 1920s to the 1950s as they captured images of a radically changing world. Published in advance of 2021 exhibitions at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.   National Gallery of Art The […]