SUSAN RESSLER – EXECUTIVE ORDER

Posted on 2018-11-19

The photographs that form the exhibition depict corporate America between 1977-80, mostly in Los Angeles and the Mountain West. Unlike many of the other photographers of the 1970s who primarily photographed outdoors, Ressler brought the “New Topographics” aesthetic inside, to survey the environments that lay within. There, she found signifiers of the new American economy at every turn – symbols of class, gender and racial hierarchies. Her 35mm camera recorded the wall hangings, furniture styles and various totems of success that surround the rich and powerful. Visualized to emphasize cool geometric sterility, these photographs critique the underlying social structures enabling wealth and power.

Susan Ressler is a renowned artist, author, and educator who has been making social documentary photographs for more than forty years. She is a recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) fellowships, and is currently Professor Emerita, Purdue University. Ressler continues to make photographs that critique consumer culture and other socially relevant issues that shape the world, as we know it today.

Opposite – System Development Corporation, Santa Monica, 1980

Exhibition runs through to November 30th, 2018

Joseph Bellows Gallery
7661 Girard Avenue
La Jolla
92037 CA

www.josephbellows.com

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NORMAN SEEFF – SESSIONS IN SOUND

Posted on 2018-11-19

Norman Seeff was born in South Africa in 1939 and trained in emergency medicine before moving to the US to embark on a career in photography 30 years later. Whilst living in New York, Seeff’s photographs were discovered by the former Vice President of Creative Services at Columbia Records, Bob Cato, who went on to introduce him to personalities such as Andy Warhol, Debbie Harry and Robert Mapplethorpe. Gaining popularity, Seeff opened his own studio in Sunset Boulevard and began conducting photography sessions which soon became legendary for drawing crowds of up to 200 people. At 78, Seeff continues to work on dynamic photographic and film shoots in LA.

Opposite – Blondie, New York 1975, ‘Chelsea Hotel Colour’

Exhibition runs through to January 13th, 2019

Proud Central
32 John Adam Street
London
WC2N 6BP

www.proudonline.co.uk

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MILES ALDRIDGE AND TODD HIDO

Posted on 2018-11-19

This Side of Paradise: Narrative, Cinema and Suburbia in the Work of Miles Aldridge and Todd Hido presents twenty large-scale colour works demonstrating how these two contemporary artists investigate the concept of suburbia.

Though works by Aldridge and Hido are visually dissimilar, both artists are recognisable for their distinctive cinematic colour palettes, lighting and compositions, and the suggestion of narrative possibilities beyond the edge of the frame. Whereas Hido presents a shadowy, empty, exterior suburban world, Aldridge presents the viewer with brightly lit, garish interiors, focusing on the imagined lives of the women who inhabit them.

Hido’s works in the exhibition are from his ongoing Houses at Night series, depicting isolated suburban homes in America, photographed at night, replete with voyeuristic undertones and implied narrative. Hido’s work is concerned with themes of urban isolation and interior lives, lived separately from outward appearances. His compositions are often bereft of human presence, although a singular lit window or an empty car become signifiers of stories left untold.

Opposite – I Only Want You To Love Me #1, 2011

Exhibition runs through to December 15th, 2018

Huxley-Parlour
3-5 Swallow Street
London
W1B 4DE

huxleyparlour.com

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