HOT SUMMER, COOL JAZZ – HERMAN LEONARD

Posted on 2013-07-29

Considered one of the most prominent jazz photographers, Herman Leonard was born the son of Romanian immigrants in Allentown, Pennsylvania and first picked up a camera at the age of nine. Shy by nature, Leonard found photography to be a way of connecting with those around him—from his high school peers to famous figures like Harry Truman and Martha Graham, whom he photographed as an assistant to master Canadian portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh. Later assignments would take him to East Asia, where in the 1950s he served as Marlon Brando’s personal photographer, and Paris, where he worked as a correspondent for Playboy and Time magazines.

Leonard’s most enduring pursuit was quintessentially American: jazz. He established a studio in the heart of Greenwich Village in 1949, and with his passion for the music and kind respect for those he photographed, he was accorded an unprecedented inside view of the New York jazz scene. Making use of techniques like backlighting, strobe lighting, and smoke, his photos dissolve the space between subject and lens, ensconcing the viewer in ambient gradations of shadow and light. Within his illuminated figures, Leonard exacts moments of delicate detail—an upturned lip and crinkled eye, the glint of a spotlight on a microphone—to grasp energy and emotion. Off-kilter framing accentuates the here-and-now feeling of the photographs: it’s as if we’ve been dropped into the scene, hiding in the hazy dark at the base of the microphone or blasted with the trumpet’s effervescent air.

Exhibition runs through till August 23rd, 2013

Robert Mann Gallery
525 W 26th Street
New York
NY
10001

www.robertmann.com

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MARK NEVILLE – DEEDS NOT WORDS

Posted on 2013-07-29

Deeds Not Words is an experimental documentary and an urgent intervention. For 18 months Mark Neville photographed the town of Corby in Northamptonshire: its people, its culture and the effects of environmental pollution that led to several babies being born with serious birth defects. Neville followed the ‘Corby 16’ as they fought, successfully, to indict the local council for negligent disposal of waste from the town’s steel mills which had closed in the 1980s. In 2011 Neville produced a book, comprised of his photographs, scientific findings and a summary of the case. This was not for sale but was sent to each of the 433 local authorities in the UK, and to environmental agencies internationally, to raise awareness of issues around the handling of toxic waste and the reuse of contaminated land.

The photographs present the community as a whole, not simply the families at the centre of the case. They show the persisting Scottish identity in the English town, even amongst third and fourth generation families, and on various manifestations of ‘beauty’: young women at nightclubs, entrants in a beauty contest, children dressed for the town’s Highland Games. It’s a story of industrial growth and decline, regeneration and solidarity. Two boys involved in the court case, George Taylor and Ben Vissian, both born with fingers missing, are given a context, surrounded by other members of their community whose lives have been shaped by some of the samesocio-economic factors.

Exhibition runs from August 2nd to September 29th, 2013

The Photographers’ Gallery
16 – 18 Ramillies Street
London
W1F 7LW

thephotographersgallery.org.uk

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SUSANNAH RAY – WHAT ARE THE WILD WAVES SAYING

Posted on 2013-07-29

The show examines the effects last year’s hurricane had on the community of the Rockaways in New York, both on the lives of people who have chosen to call the area home, and on the environment itself.

Last year, hurricane Sandy’s seventeen foot surge pushed across the peninsula of the Rockaways, leaving behind water-logged basements and first floors, their remnants piled in front of home after home, block after block. The boardwalk, which nearly ran the length of the peninsula, was severed from its concrete foundation, slammed into shorefront homes and deposited on cars. It was an unprecedented disaster in the Rockaways and countless other coastal communities, where the scale and scope of the trauma, suffering and uncertainty would unfold slowly in the following weeks and months.

People told tales of survival, digging out, rebuilding, and hoping for things to get back to normal. Each person’s story reflects a long history of settlement along the peninsula, from the close-knit Breezy Point community on the west end all the way to Far Rockaway on the east. The floodwaters united the disparate populations of the peninsula through shared trauma and struggle, yet as they receded and the clean-up dragged on, longstanding differences resurfaced. What are the Wild Waves Saying documents the lingering aftermath of the storm and the individuals that comprise the complex community of the Rockaways. The audio interviews and photographic portraits delve into each subject’s storm story and uncover the deep connections to the land and the sea.

Exhibition runs through till September 7th, 2013

Bonni Benrubi Gallery
41 E 57th Street
Midtown East
New York
10022

www.bonnibenrubi.com

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