Howard Greenberg Gallery presents Beyond Words: Photography in The New Yorker, curated by Elisabeth Biondi, the former visuals editor of the magazine.
The New Yorker Magazine began to publish photographs in 1992, under the editorial direction of Tina Brown. At that time, the only staff photographer the magazine employed was Richard Avedon. The first Avedon photograph that the magazine ran was his iconic 1963 portrait of Malcolm X. The exhibition opens with this photograph and from that, an enlightening, visual history of photography in the magazine ensues.
In 1996, Elisabeth Biondi arrived at The New Yorker with a mandate to expand the presence of photography in the magazine. She contracted a small group of photographers to shoot on a regular basis, employed numerous others on an occasional basis and drew from a multitude of esoteric, often historical sources to locate images that richly illustrate the magazine’s multi-faceted content. For fifteen years, Biondi presented photographs that heightened the experience of reading the articles for which the magazine has been respected, treasured and enjoyed.
The work of staff photographers Ruven Afanador, Mary Ellen Mark, Gilles Peress, Platon, Robert Polidori, Steve Pyke, Martin Schoeller, and Max Vadukul, are all represented in the exhibition. From Afanador’s whimsical portrait of Mario Batali, published in the popular “Food Issue” to Polidori’s hauntingly beautiful Havana, Cuba interior and Gilles Peress’ wrenching coverage of Kosovo, these photographers produced pictures that, through publication in the magazine, became permanently etched in our collective, visual consciousness.
Also present in the exhibition are compelling portraits by Irving Penn, William Klein, Duane Michals, Harry Benson, Brigitte Lacombe, Ethan Levitas, and others.
The exhibition includes powerful images by some of the boldest photo-journalists of our time: Thomas Dworzak’s work from Afghanistan, Benjamin Lowy’s from Iraq, Marcus Bleasdale’s from Darfur, Samantha Appelton’s from Lagos, Joao Pina’s from Brazil and Ami Vitale’s from Kashmir.
The historical section of the exhibition includes rarely seen photographs from the former Soviet Union, the Time Life Archive, Martin Munkasci, Robert Doisneau, Lord Snowdon, Alexander Liberman, and Horst P. Horst, among others.
The third section of the exhibition includes images from the page at the front of the magazine’s opening section, “Goings on About Town,” which, each week, features a color photograph that in a delightful and quirky manner, illustrates an event occurring in New York City that week. Photographers in this section include Sylvia Plachy, Lisa Kereszi, Brian Fink, Landon Nordeman, Gus Powell, Yola Manakhov, Martine Fougeron and Martynka Wawrzyniak.
Beyond Words:
Photography in the New Yorker
Until October 22, 2011
Howard Greenberg Gallery
41 East 57th Street
New York, NY 10022
