The fashion photographer Andrea Blanch will now cover the openings of New York galleries, here are her first two.
“The Yancey Richardson Gallery has two shows running concurrently. Bryan Graf a Yale M.F.A. graduates exhibition called Wildlife Analysis uses black & white film ( surprise ), then takes unexposed color film to record the direct contact of ambient light flooding onto the film without the use of the lens. Graf then uses the exposed color film as a composite layer in the darkroom which produces hallucinatory and intoxicating hues washing over the color prints. One would never suspect these splendid results come from photographing the swamps and woods around New Jersey.
Melanie Willides, also an M.F.A. graduate from Yale, her exhibition called Sleeping Beauties appear old and new all at once. They are carefully constructed “artificial artifacts” imagined narrative moments addressing themes of memory, authenticity and mortality. Presented as intimate portraits the artist uses text from love letters received or sent by the artist and her family members, then dissected and recorded to fit the imagined narrative. The “front side” image reminded me of Egon Von Schiele’s erotic nudes lying down. These works took four years to complete, the results are seemingly personal, intimate, and feminine.
New Yorker Fiction/Real Photography at the Steven Kasher Gallery is a show by Elizabeth Biondi the New Yorker Visuals Editor. Viewing this exhibition one couldn’t help but marvel and say thank you to Biondi for the caliber of photography that she has brought to the magazine. In addition to the 40 plus photographs and excerpts from the fiction pieces which accompanied them, the exhibit also features QR codes that enable smartphones and iPad users to access links on newyorker.com to the fiction pieces. Many of Elizabeth’s colleagues and friends from the photographic community and Conde Nast came to honor and pay tribute to this talented editor and curator.”
Andrea Blanch
