New York Photo Festival 2009 Rains Creative on International Audiences, Taking Brooklyn by Storm
For the second consecutive year, the New York Photo Festival (NYPH) took a small, arts-rich, Brooklyn neighborhood by storm (a push-the-envelope creative one at that) during four remarkable days in May, populating its streets and filling festival sites with tens of thousands of photographers and arts aficionados from all over the world. Against the grand and sheltering backdrop of one of the world’s most loved and mythologized Muses—the Brooklyn Bridge—the people came, setting aside worries about the recession, high prices, and dwindling incomes, to celebrate photography and partake of provocative, mind-expanding exhibitions, lectures, artist’s talks, panels, screenings, socializing and camaraderie at NYPH09: The Future of Contemporary Photography. though the Festival's neighborhood is DUMBO (down under Manhattan Bridge Overpass), the area’s real ambience comes from the nearby waterfront, the majestic Brooklyn Bridge, and Brooklyn Bridge Park. The variety of amenities, venues, and vistas prompt energizing wandering, socializing, and discovering, especially when a world-class photography event is going full tilt.
The passion and vision fueling the festival are that of co-founders and co-chairs Daniel Power, CEO and founder of powerHouse Books; and Frank Evers, founder of IAM, a new media startup. As the story goes, they had each been thinking about the idea of a New York photo festival such as the international festivals that take place over a short, concentrated period of time. Once they came together in 2007, it didn’t take long to agree on what would be the basis for a festival. In the NYPH09 program Evers writes: “Ideas and discovery are the two pillars upon which Daniel Power and I founded the New York Photo Festival back in early 2007.” To “enable a large-scale platform for learning and discovery,” they would entrust responsibility for the main exhibitions to talented, knowledgeable curators. Laying the groundwork for NYPH08, the inaugural festival, meant not only finding curators but also enlisting venue and festival sponsors, festival producers, and even The New York State Office of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation. The historic nature of some of the venues, such as St. Ann’s Warehouse and Tobacco Warehouse, once commercial buildings, adds special sociological appeal to the offerings. The temporary panels and casual surroundings place emphasis on the photographs.
Platforms to Learning & Discovery NYPH09 exhibitions and curators were “Gay Men Play,” curator Chris Boot, a London-based editor and photobooks publisher; “All Over the Place,” curator William A. Ewing, Director, Musee de l'Elysee, Lausanne, Switzerland; “Home for Good,” curator Jon Levy, Director of Foto8, the London-based photography publishing company, and creator of FOTO8, a multi-platform media organization; and “I Don’t Know What Kind of Girl I Am,” curator Jody Quon, photography director at New York magazine. Power sees the “thought-provoking selections and presentations” of the curators this year as “a fresh stimulus, a TARP bailout, if you will, of intellectual bank funds against which we draw inspiration and breathing space in order to further our goals and appreciation of one another and the art form.” Curators for NYPH09 also took a thematic step toward the personal.
Included in this mix were compelling pieces by Rene & Radka, a duo who live and work in Paris but come from Cologne and Prague respectively. They’ve been collaborating for eight years on work for fashion and advertising clients and branched out into the art world in 2006. Two bodies of work are dedicated to the mysterious world of children, including “Come and Play with Us” and “Under Water.” Photographer Valerie Belin, also Paris-based, shows a series of portraits of a dancer at the famous Paris cabaret, The Lido. Belin opens a large-scale show this fall at the Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. Hank Willis Thomas is known for his conceptual pieces that reveal, challenge, and comment on changing depictions of black people in advertising.
“Gay Men Play” For curator Boot, “Gay Men Play” is clearly exploratory: “I’m not sure what people will make of it, but I feel what’s happening is both relevant to the evolving story of photography and that there are social issues at play here that should concern and interest a wide audience.” Broadening the show’s context, several panels and talks featured photographers as well as gallerists including Brian Clamp and Bill Hunt. “The discussion aspect is really important. I’m thinking of my contribution as more of an event—a provocation for debate—than an exhibition.”
“Home for Good” Among Levy’s selections were family photos from World War Two kept in the scrapbook of an 84-year-old Chicago grandmother, Lorraine Grupe. These show how she and her six sisters used photography to send messages of support to U.S. troops in the Philippines.
Tim Hetherington’s “Sleeping Soldiers,” a film with stills, was one of the most visceral works at the Festival, recommended to me by several people. Presented in a makeshift area behind a curtain, and on a three-part screen, the piece required audience participation. The word “ENTER” was written on the floor, and only when the audience moved to that point, closer to the screen, would the film begin. Shot among U.S. servicemen on tour in Afghanistan, the work at the start, shows on center screen portraits of a soldier sleeping restlessly. On the adjacent screens live action footage and portraits of soldiers and citizenry in wartime conditions appear, punctuated with horrific sounds of war: the unending nightmares of the sleeping soldier. The two themes intermingle as the film unfolds. Taking off from the idea of wartime experience, Levy was inspired by Canadian photographer Louie Palu’s portraits of young U.S. Marines on the front line of war, to commission Palu to create a new body of work on the “front line” at home. Palu went to a small town in Pennsylvania where the work force has been hard hit by job cuts and photographed young men who have lost their jobs as factory workers.
“All Over the Place” What did he hope viewers would take away from the show? “I want them to feel they have discovered strong new voices or ideas.” One such strong voice to discover from Ewing’s exhibit: Jacob Holdt. Though this singular talent and great, compassionate citizen of the world is well known in Europe and has lectured at colleges and universities across the United States, Holdt remains largely unknown and overlooked by the photography community. Hopefully his appearance at this Festival will begin to change that. I’ll leave it to you to do your own homework on him—other than telling you that at one time Holdt sold his blood to buy film; that he used a $30 camera his parents gave him during his travels throughout America; and that he stopped Russian distribution of his book American Pictures when he learned the KGB was going to use it against President Carter because of its depiction of poverty, racism, intolerance, and the darker side of life in America.
True to his intent, Ewing’s exhibition brings together many intriguing and different works, so many, in fact, that his exhibition was divided among four locations. Actually, Ewing’s offerings occupied five locations when one counts “We Are All Photographers Now!,” a special curated slide show that ran in the powerHouse arena throughout the festival. Ewing’s invitation for the NY event was posted on the Festival site and in the program:
“Why not share one or more of your photographs with the festival’s visitors? They’ll be projected in the public arena, with your name clearly visible in the corner of each image. And afterwards, you’ll get back proof in the form of an email—your photo as it appeared on the festival screen!” Did this work? You bet: I couldn’t resist sending in images of my own and I was surprised to actually get the proffered emails soon after the time my image had screened. Ewing had curated a similar exhibition at Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne, and he and his team have the technology down pat.
Coming next: Fortunately for everyone, the NYPH website is loaded with information, with more promised in the future, including tapes of the panels and presentations. To explore further, just delve into that site every way you can possibly think of. Whenever I go to it I seem to find some other handy place to click that brings up something I missed. Meanwhile, check back for Part II in a few weeks, when we’ll present the winning images from the NYPH09 Competition, some works from the Satellite shows, and more. For information on Jacob Holdt: www.american-pictures.com
For information on NYPH Festival: www.nyphotofestival.com/site
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© Red Dog Journal, 2008 |