Saturday, October 31, 2020 at 5:00AM Recently my friend photographer Barron Claiborne sold the crown he made for Notorious B.I.G at Sotheby's. The iconic crown fetched a hefty $600,000 at final sale. The photos below were taken by Barron 20 years apart. The moon was taken this year and the crown exactly 20 years ago.
Wednesday, March 18, 2020 at 11:11PM I once said in an interview that I would continue doing what I was doing until it was not fun anymore. When it stopped being fun that I would stop and do something else. I kept my word, I just had not realized that the something else would be my bucket list item of being a hermit. I suppose I should do a post about what I've been up to but that's not what this note is about. I guess I'm sharing this note to say that as a person who has been self-isolating for several years now I can offer a small bit of my experience. You will get bored, you will get creative, you will freak out and you will find your composure. If you allow for all of the things that make up you to be present in real time you'll begin to understand who you are to yourself and others.
don’t be afraid to let your light glow
Photographs taken by Michelle Joan Papillion in Joshua Tree National Park
Saturday, June 22, 2019 at 5:00AM 
Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith in Queen & Slim Photo: Andre D. Wagner (Courtesy of Universal Pictures)
Friday, January 22, 2016 at 5:00AM The documentary about the life and work of Chinese artist Cai Guo-Qiang makes its debut at Sundance this year. It centers around his 2015 project where he created a firework installation of a 1650ft ladder leading up to the sky.
Tuesday, December 22, 2015 at 5:00AM The San Francisco Foundation has awarded Suné Woods the 2015 John Gutmann Photography Fellowship
The San Francisco Foundation Names Woods and Donovan Recipients of the 2015 John Gutmann Photography Fellowship
The San Francisco Foundation announced today that Suné Woods of Los Angeles and Dru Donovan of Brooklyn, NY are the recipients of the 2015 John Gutmann Photography Fellowship. The annual award is given to an emerging artist who exhibits professional accomplishment, serious artistic commitment, and financial need in the field of creative photography.
The prestigious award, established by the late photographer John Gutmann (1905-1998) and administered by The San Francisco Foundation, brings with it $5,000 each to support the development of Woods’ and Donovan’s creative work. Eminent photographers and curators Jim Goldberg, Reagan Louie and Leland Rice were this year’s jurors.
“This year’s nominees were all impressive and strong, making our choices difficult, as reflected in the decision to split the grant. I was impressed by the accomplishment and ambition of Suné Woods’ and Dru Donovan’s work. What ultimately persuaded me was both their work is at a tipping point. I am confident that the award will help them realize the full potential of their work,” said Reagan Louie, Gutmann Fellowship juror and photography professor at San Francisco Art Institute.
Suné Woods is interested in how language is emoted, guarded, and translated through the absence/presence of a physical body within cultural and social histories. Her work takes the form of multi-channel video installations, photographs, and collage. She also uses microsomal sites such as family to understand larger sociological phenomenon, imperialist mechanisms, and formations of knowledge. “Suné Woods’ deeply personal and transformative work is revelatory in its quietude,” said Jim Goldberg, photographer and member of Magnum Photos. “Her multimedia montages navigate presence and absence with touching directness and perceptive complexity, creating a new language that captivates through empathic synthesis.”
Woods received her BFA at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, 1997 and an MFA in photography from California College of the Arts in 2010. She has participated in residencies at Headlands Center of the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and The Center for Photography at Woodstock. Woods is a recipient of the Visions from the New California initiative and will be in residence at Light Work in 2016.
“I’m thrilled and honored to receive the John Gutmann Photography Fellowship. This award will assist me with research materials and equipment for my practice. I am extremely grateful for this timely support”, said Woods.
Sunday, August 23, 2015 at 5:00AM Today I will be at LA Artcore discussing the work of multi-disciplinary artist Kathie Foley-Meyer, her current exhibition is a short film and photo documentary series of the MLK Day parade on the commencement of President Barack Obama's election in 2008 and reelection in 2012.
Today Sunday afternoon 3pm - 5pm - LA Artcore (Little Tokyo) 120 Judge John Aiso St. LA 90012
Friday, June 5, 2015 at 5:00AM LA Times gave Andre D. Wagner a favorable review!
By Leah Ollman
Andre D. Wagner is a young photographer with an old soul. He shoots black-and-white film and prints his pictures, by his own hand, on a scale (11 x 14 and 16 x 20 inches) that, these days, is conspicuous in its modesty.
The intimate size matters. It matches the tenderness of his approach toward his subjects, mostly fellow residents of Brooklyn. Wagner practices a quiet, lyrical kind of humanism that comes straight out of the traditions of mid-20th-century street photography and the social documentary photo-essay. "Tell It Like It Is," his show at L.A.'s Papillion, is invigorating.
Photography excels at showing us what we can't see -- motion too fast, views too distant or specimens too small for the eye to perceive -- but it also shows us what we don't see, realities made invisible by familiarity, veiled by bias or strategically suppressed.
Wagner's work comes out of his respect -- awe, even -- for the value of ordinary lives playing out in ordinary ways. His focus on African Americans in his community affirms that value, pithily summed up by the meme Black Lives Matter. Wagner's pictures help correct the record, flesh it out. They serve as counterbalance, antidote to injustices perpetrated in the realm of representation.
He shows us older women out shopping, little girls having a laugh on a stoop and little boys in playful camaraderie, mothers with their kids on the bus, a shoeshine man on a break. Nothing of conventional consequence happens during these interstitial moments, but meaning is vested in them and Wagner's keen eye seizes upon the rich, spontaneous choreography of gestures, shadows and signage perpetually staged on city streets.
He homes in on the exquisite visual dynamism energizing even the quietest of scenes.
Consider his picture of three young boys sharing two seats on the subway. The station is a blur out the window, and fragments of bodies on either side frame these innocent souls in their gleaming white T-shirts, hands folded on their laps. Two succumb to motion-induced slumber and the third sits silently observing. Their heads align like adjacent frames in a stop-motion photograph. Wagner edits out all but the bottom word, "History," in the poster mounted above them, as if to acknowledge the ever-present bearing of the past on their unknown future.
American flags crop up everywhere in these pictures -- on shirts and patches, in the hand of a pensive girl at a meat counter, on the exterior of a subway car whose window frames the sober, level gaze of a black passenger, echoing Robert Frank's powerful photograph of a segregated trolley in the '50s. Along with the lucid beauty and honesty of work by Roy DeCarava, Helen Levitt and Gordon Parks, Frank's "The Americans" is a clear antecedent to Wagner's work.
Wagner hasn't so much "sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film," as Jack Kerouac wrote of Frank, but his everyday epic, too, is dense and necessary, an affirmation that everything -- and everyone -- matters.
Wednesday, June 3, 2015 at 5:00AM The Great Discontent magazine featured Andre D. Wagner in their third issue, The Possibility Issue. Andre Wagner is currently in our solo exhibition, American Survey Part II "Tell It Like It Is." The The Great Discontent quotes Andre, "..Ive dedicated myself to noticing what everybody else is missing. I show people what the world actually looks like. Street photography is so special because it's about capturing everyday moments. It's not produced." You can find out where to buy a copy or order online HERE
Monday, May 25, 2015 at 5:00AM Very honored to be the cover girl for issue 2 of Correspondence Magazine by Citizens of Culture...a site I have great respect for. You can find out where to buy a copy or order online HERE
Monday, March 30, 2015 at 5:00AM "She's changing the art world" was the subject line in millions of inboxes this morning as The Coveteur talks about my interview on art x style x and all things LA.
"I'm an art dealer and a gallerist. I run a contemporary art space here in L.A. where I show emerging artists. Part of what I do, and what my specialty is, is that I develop artists and I develop collectors. I find people who are interested in getting into the art world by buying art works and becoming an arts patron, but don't necessarily have a direct connection in doing that. I facilitate that entry point for new people to be in the mix. Same thing for artists: for artists that I think have an immense amount of talent and skill and could be very successful, we help to build a good foundation for them to become the next great art star."
Saturday, March 14, 2015 at 5:00AM Kenturah is using her instagram to take some rad imagaery from Accra...everything is coming up #pink <3
Sunday, November 24, 2013 at 5:00AM My latest obsession is with Brooklyn based shooter Andre Wagner.
"Brooklyn based, originally from Omaha, Nebraska. I received my BFA in Social Work and Digital Media in 2010 and now focus my passion on portrait and street documentary photography. My work is a juxtaposition of finding ways to preserve the sensitive moments of life that take me back to my social work roots, while capturing the richness of the human experience.
My photos are poetic and show images of human beings in a vulnerable yet strong way. The love I have for film is not solely based on the tangible textures and grains, but in the reality of shooting individuals who have different backgrounds, and expressions and using a medium of photography that is just as unpredictable as people are."
abstractelements.com
Wednesday, September 18, 2013 at 5:00AM Last night I attended the art auction for the Anti Defamation League LA at the home of Jeanne and Tony Pritzker. The host was Eli Broad and there were tons of awesome pieces up for grabs! Kehinde Wiley, Gary Baseman and Kenturah Davis were just a few of the talents involved. Kenturah made a drawing for the occasion. A portrait of Alpha Robertson, the mother of Carole Robertson the 14 year old girl that was killed in the 1963 church bombing. Read the article published in the Jewish Journal which features a quote from Kenturah about her art practice.
Saturday, September 7, 2013 at 5:00AM The trip to Paris was for the opening of Metamorphose which is sponsored by Architectural Digest France. It launchs design week in Paris and honors the top 10-15 architects and designers in Europe you should be working with.
Elliott Barnes is one of the designers picked for the top honor! He along with the others were invited to design a room in a classic old Parisian mansion. Elliott commissioned 5 hand written drawings from Kenturah to display in his "Le Salon de Compagnie" The exhibition is on view September 7 - 22, 2013 at 47 quai de la Tournelle 75005 Paris
Kenturah sharing a moment with Padma Lakshmi
A view of the room Elliott Barnes designed
Saturday, August 24, 2013 at 5:00AM
#SANDY is a book of iPhone Photos by acclaimed photographers who captured the tragic devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy in New York City, New Jersey, and Connecticut. #SANDY will be published by Daylight Books in 2014 but when you purchase now, you will get an early copy in October 2013!
100% of the royalties from the book will be donated to Occupy Sandy to support the rebuilding efforts in New York City and the Sandy Storyline project.
The book is only available for purchase through our IndieGogo campaign and you will receive it by the first year anniversary of Hurricane Sandy in Late October 2013. If we do not meet our funding goal, the book will not be published.
Featured photographers include Benjamin Lowy, Stephen Wilkes, Ed Kashi/Vll, Richard Renaldi, Hank Willis Thomas, Lyle Owerko, Wyatt Gallery, Ruddy Roye, Craig Wetherby, Andrew Quilty, 13th Witness, Michael Christopher Brown, Yosra El-Essawy, Erica Simone, Giles Clarke, Sam Horine, Stanley Lumax, Dylan Chandler, Brent Bartley, and Nicole Sweet.
This book is the first of it's kind to showcase the impact of the iPhone combined with Social Media to inspire others to make a difference while simultaneously reporting the news.
Photo by Ruddy Roye
Photo by Wyatt gallery
Photo by Benjamin Lowy
Tuesday, August 6, 2013 at 5:00AM YarT Photography offers a scholarship available to cover 50% of the workshop fee for young photographers under 30 years old. Scholarship application deadline is August 15 2013.
The workshop is open to all ages and nationalities!
For information about the workshop and registration (with o without scholarship): info@yartproject.com
Sunday, July 28, 2013 at 5:00AM Senegalese photographers Omar Viktor Diop and Antoine Tempe reimagine American cinema with Onomolliwood, a series that shows what some of the biggest Hollywood films would have looked like if shot in Africa.
American Beauty, Frida, Breakfast at Onomo's, The Matrix, Thelma and Louise
Tuesday, July 23, 2013 at 5:00AM The photography duo from Amsterdam are at Gagosian Beverly Hills now!
Basically every picture we take is a self-portrait—a picture of how we feel at that moment in our lives.
—Inez & Vinoodh
Monday, June 10, 2013 at 5:00AM We've got some goodies on our instagram account...are you following?
Urs Fischer sculpture in front of the Geffen
Snap shot of an Antonio Lopez illustration
Collage of Kathie Foley Meyer's work at LA Artcore
Snap shot of a piece of a larger mural in Estrada Courts
Saturday, May 25, 2013 at 5:00AM Photographer Nan Goldin is showing at Matthew Marks LA space. She is one of our favorites.
