THE NEW BLACK VANGUARD: PHOTOGRAPHY BETWEEN ART AND FASHION

Posted on 2019-12-16

Photographs by Campbell Addy, Arielle Bobb-Willis, Micaiah Carter, Awol Erizku, Nadine Ijewere, Quil Lemons, Namsa Leuba, Renell Medrano, Tyler Mitchell, Jamal Nxedlana, Daniel Obasi, Ruth Ossai, Adrienne Raquel, Dana Scruggs, and Stephen Tayo.

The New Black Vanguard: Photography between Art and Fashion presents fifteen artists, whose vibrant portraits and conceptual images fuse the genres of art and fashion photography in ways that break down long-established boundaries. Their work has been widely consumed in traditional lifestyle magazines, ad campaigns, and museums, as well as on their individual social-media channels, reinfusing the contemporary visual vocabulary around beauty and the body with new vitality and substance. The images open up conversations around the roles of the black body and black lives as subject matter; collectively, they celebrate black creativity and the cross-pollination between art, fashion, and culture in constructing an image. Seeking to challenge the idea that blackness is homogenous, the works serve as a form of visual activism. It’s a perspective often seen from this loose movement of emerging talents, who are creating photography in vastly different contexts-New York and Johannesburg, Lagos and London.

Opposite – Micaiah Carter, Adeline in Barrettes, 2018

Exhibition runs through to January 18th, 2020

Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street
New York
10001 NY

aperture.org

  

PETER YDEEN – DREAMS: SELECTIONS FROM EASTON NIGHTS

Posted on 2019-12-16

Dreams features a selection of works from Peter Ydeen’s Easton Nights series. Ydeen has been photographing the Easton, Pennsylvania area since 2015. He takes inspiration from the work of noted American photographer George Tice, who captured images of American life and landscape.

Ydeen explores the Easton area at night, discovering the ethereal presence of contrasts and colors. As if lighting a classical still life or stage set, Ydeen takes advantage of the lights in the city which highlight his subjects. Bathed in the pink light emitted by the sodium vapor streetlights, Easton becomes a silent city lit in unreal color.

These scenes share a familiarity with countless American cities during the quiet of night. The temporarily abandoned spaces reflect the citizens who built and occupy them during daylight. The remnants of decades of development offer a portrait of a community in absentia. For Ydeen, creating the series was both addictive and cathartic. What started as a photographic exercise became an intimate interaction with the quiet shapes and exotic lights of a sometimes-forgotten American city.

Opposite – Its a Nice Night for a Picnic

Exhibition runs through to January 12th, 2020

Susquehanna Art Museum
1401 North 3rd Street
Harrisburg
17102 PA

www.susquehannaartmuseum.org

  

ANN WEATHERSBY – THERE IS A CODE OF BEHAVIOR SHE KNEW

Posted on 2019-12-16

In Ann Weathersby’s work, the page reflects and the glass absorbs. Books close and harden, like sewn-up wounds. Pulp fossilized. Stripped of language, the women on their covers float, putting down their meanings with a sigh, as one would a bag or a baby. Arched backs, open mouths, closed eyes. Found photographs are pressed into flat translucent weights. You could fill your pockets with these palm-sized memories, or throw them with ease, watch them shatter. Some of the women in the room we know, some are nameless. But they are all familiar, known in a quiet stomach sense, similar to how you could still find the home of your middle school best friend with no address. She moved towns away, decades ago, but you half expect to see her face in the window.

Weathersby mixes the colors in her painterly glass sculptures, pressing kinetic hues into stillness. No wonder this is how people used to evoke divine presence: a pool of pink light stains the empty floor. Here, shadows fall golden. Lilac glows. Without the tangle of girls and history intruding, it could be a room of minimalist sculpture, pure form, boy heaven. But instead, they lean on the shelf together, milky obelisks and reclining limbs. Both seem precarious and ancient. Wooden boxes open to reveal a different kind of precious relic: Judy Blume, Go Ask Alice, found self-portraits, angled and curious. Blume enters another pantheon of women writers, (Woolf, Duras, Lessing, etc.), worshipped by way of citation. Weathersby creates a palimpsest, sanding down the ink on familiar texts so that the words gently lift from the page, and then printing her own surreal narratives in their place.

Exhibition runs through to January 19th, 2020

Fortnight Institute
60 East 4th St.
NYC 10003

fortnight.institute

  

THE MAN WHO KILLED DON QUIXOTE

Posted on 2019-12-16

Toby, a cynical advertising director, finds himself trapped in the outrageous delusions of an old Spanish shoe-maker who believes himself to be Don Quixote. In the course of their comic and increasingly surreal adventures, Toby is forced to confront the tragic repercussions of a film he made in his idealistic youth – a film that changed the hopes and dreams of a small Spanish village forever. Can Toby make amends and regain his humanity? Can Don Quixote survive his madness and imminent death? Or will love conquer all?

In theatres January 31st, 2020

quixotemovie.com

  

QUEEN & SLIM

Posted on 2019-12-16

While on a forgettable first date together in Ohio, a black man (Get Out’s Daniel Kaluuya) and a black woman (Jodie Turner-Smith, in her first starring feature-film role), are pulled over for a minor traffic infraction. The situation escalates, with sudden and tragic results, when the man kills the police officer in self-defense. Terrified and in fear for their lives, the man, a retail employee, and the woman, a criminal defense lawyer, are forced to go on the run. But the incident is captured on video and goes viral, and the couple unwittingly become a symbol of trauma, terror, grief and pain for people across the country.

In theatres January 31st, 2020

www.queenandslim.com

  

BALENCIAGA SKI SUNGLASSES

Posted on 2019-12-16

Inspired by winter snow goggles worn while skiing or snowboarding, the slim acetate frame eyewear features a one-piece mirrored lens with white text branding just above the nose piece. Branding also appears at the temple tips and on the inside of the temple.

Available in both black and tortoise shell, these Italian-made sunglasses offer 100% UV protection.

www.balenciaga.com