Palermo Publishing announces its first monograph of photography, Whereupon, a selection of images by New York photographer Allen Frame, from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, in black and white and color. Whereupon expands the premise of Allen Frame’s recent book Fever (color photographs of 1981, Matte Editions, 2021) to show a broader time period with the same subject: his artist friends in their apartments and lofts and on the streets and beaches of New York. Also included are scenes from theater rehearsals from Turmoil in the Garden, a series of monologues from David Wojnarowicz’s Sounds in the Distance which Frame co-adapted and co-directed, with Kirsten Bates, in 1983 and 84 in New York and Berlin.
Like photographers from his generation, such as Cindy Sherman, Nan Goldin, and Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Frame uses a highly cinematic style, but in his case, the framing and mise en scène have also been influenced by his experiences in theater. As Mark Alice Durant writes “His images are not decisive moments, they are not exactly portraits, or figure studies either. They exist interstitially. A quiet intimacy and muted staging share the proscenium, as friends, acquaintances, and strangers pause and proceed through the mostly nocturnal tableaux. Allen’s photographs are unique in their elegant understatement, they observe without judgment, are melancholy but not sentimental, smolder without clamor.”
Allen Frame’s first photography monograph, Detour (KEHRER), was published in 2001, followed by Fever (Matte Editions) in 2021. His book Innamorato (Meteoro Editions) was published in 2023. He won the Rome Prize in photography in 2017/18, and spent a year in Italy at the American Academy in Rome. After residencies in St. Petersburg and Ekaterinburg, Russia, through CEC Artslink in 2019, he returned to Italy in 2021 as a Director’s Guest at Civitella Ranieiri in Umbria. Much of his recent work has been made in Italy. Last year he co-curated, with Antonio Sergio Bessa, an exhibition called Luxe, Calme, Volupté about New York in the 1980s with 75 artists, a satellite show at Candice Madey Gallery coinciding with the exhibition Darrel Ellis: Regeneration, presented at the Bronx Museum. Darrel Ellis is featured both in Whereupon and in Fever. Other notable artists depicted in the two books include Peter Hujar, Bill Rice, Cady Noland, Robert Gober, Siobhan Liddell, Frank Moore, and Nan Goldin. Frame is an Adjunct Professor of Photography at Pratt Institute (MFA) and also teaches at the School of Visual Arts, the International Center of Photography in New York, and for Strudelmedia. He grew up in Mississippi and graduated from Harvard. His work is represented by Gitterman Gallery.
A limited edition fanzine Whereupon, Turmoil (Palermo Publishing, 2024) is also released in May 2024 that includes screenshots of performers in Turmoil in the Garden, from a 1983 super 8 film by Frank Franca, along with posters from the production in New York in 1983 and a subsequent production in a loft in Berlin in 1984. The zine also reproduces memorabilia from Allen Frame’s private collection from that period, along with postcards and posters of other events. At Leporello, a space dedicated to independent publishing and photography in Rome (IT), there will be an installation of photographs and ephemera from the book Whererupon and the fanzine Whereupon, Turmoil, published by Palermo Publishing, till July 25th 2024.
Allen Frame : Whereupon, Turmoil
Installation of photographs and ephemera from the book Whererupon by Allen Frame (Palermo Publishing, 2023) and the zine Whereupon, Turmoil curated by Allen Frame (Palermo Publishing, 2024)
May 29th – July 25th 2024
Leporello – photobooks et al. via del Pigneto 162/e, Roma
Palermo Publishing
www.palermopublishing.com
