NOT ONE MORE
Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
James Baldwin
Janet Russek (b. 1947)
Not One More, 2017
This week brought back so many memories. In our youth we learned that taking to the streets does make a difference. We made great strides to address segregation in our country and helped end a war. We fought for the rights of Farm Workers and Equal Rights for women, marching in the streets of our cities and then on Washington. We did much to bring attention to issues, but how much has actually changed is still being weighed. Although we felt pride at what we had achieved, we knew there was still much to do to address the root causes of so many of the issues we fought for and are still fighting for.
The horrid events of the past few weeks, with the deaths of Tony McDade, Sean Reed, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, to name a few, have brought us back to the streets. It feels different, it is different! It feels like, in the words of Bob Dylan that maybe The Times They Are A-Changin.
Thinking about our weekly emails, many artists and images have flooded my mind. I’ll attempt to share some of them with you today.
The photograph above, Not One More, is part of a series of work by Janet Russek. The feminist art historian Lucy Lippard writes, …Not One More can be read as a plea or demand for an end to either rape, suicide, racist cop killings, the separation of children from families at the border, military casualties, or mass shootings. The images are both pointed and ambiguous. The irony of a brown pieta labeled this way is unexpected and complex. In each case, the interactions between text and image (as well as the changing typefaces) are subtly provocative, demonstrating the power of words to change the way we see... By working with classical sculpture and Renaissance paintings we are faced with the reality that many of these issues are those addressed hundreds of years ago. When will we learn?
John Reekie (1829 - 1885)
A Burial Party, Cold Harbor, Virginia, April 1865
One of the first images to come to mind this week was a photograph by John Reekie taken during the Civil War. Matthew Brady, a successful photographer with studios in Washington D.C. and New York, knew many politicians whom he had photographed. He sought the permission of Abraham Lincoln to photograph the war. Brady and his staff headed to the battlefields with equipment and wagons that served as their darkrooms. Although Matthew Brady initiated the project, it was his “assistants” who for the most part did the actual photographing. They later split with Brady over receiving credit and rights for their work and set out on their own. Alexander Gardner, one of Brady’s former assistants, published a two-volume set entitled The Sketchbook of the Civil War which includes, what many feel, are the most powerful images of the war. The Sketchbook is as much documentation as it is an anti-war statement.
This gruesome photograph, A Burial Party, Cold Harbor, Virginia, April, 1865, by John Reekie, was later printed by Gardner and was included in the Sketchbook. The Union soldier’s bodies lay unburied for nearly 10 months. The task of gathering the bones fell to a group of black men doing the menial work while a white man acted as an overseer.
Gordon Parks (1912 - 2006)
Gordon Parks (1912 - 2006)
American Gothic, Washington D.C., 1942
This photograph, “American Gothic, Washington D.C.” of Ella Watson was posed to emulate the Grant Wood painting of the same name. Ella Watson worked in the cleaning crew of the FSA building. Upon viewing this photograph, Stryker said it was an indictment of America that can get them all fired, but he urged Parks to keep photographing Ella Watson, which led to a photo essay of her daily life. This photograph has become symbolic of poor black workers for its duality of portraying his subjects as both victims and survivors.
Gordon Parks is best known for his iconic images from many projects that he worked on during his lifetime: his photographs from the 1940s of America’s poor, his work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) under its director Roy Stryker, and his essays done for Life Magazine. He is also recognized as a pioneer black filmmaker credited for creating the “blaxploitation” genre with his films such as his 1971 Shaft.
Since Gordon Parks’ death in 2006, there have been a number of major exhibitions of his photographs. We include a PBS short video that was made in connection to his exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in 2019. Also included is a link to curator Barbara Tannenbaum discussing his work during his exhibit at The Cleveland Art Museum. Enjoy these two short pieces on Gordon Parks’ life and work.
Roy DeCarava (1919 - 2009)
Roy DeCarava (1919 - 2009)
Man Coming Up Subway Stairs, 1952
In an interview with Terry Gross from the NPR show Fresh Air….
Terry spoke with him in 1996. One of his Harlem photos from 1952 is called "Man Coming Up Subway Stairs." The man looks like he's returning from a long hard day of work. He's wearing a rumpled shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the top button opened. He's carrying his jacket. He's biting his lower lip as he walks up the stairs. Terry asked Roy DeCarava what led to that picture.
Mr. ROY DECARAVA (Photographer): I used to work - I was working nine to five and I used to - with like everybody else, I woke up in the morning and went to work and came home and I was tired. And I was very much aware of my fellow riders and their appearances and their feelings, and I thought in a sense that this was a remarkable experience, in the sense that these were the people who went to work every day, worked hard, and their lives were rather circumscribed. And in many ways, they were borderline in a sense in how they lived. And in a way, I thought that their consistency and their perseverance was, in itself, a rather heroic thing.
And so, that this - with that picture, which I sort of planned. I planned in the sense that I'd seen these kinds of images every day for years and there was no doubt that I would, when I decided to take a picture, that I would find one that would come along. And so what I did, I established the hours from four to six, so I had to find a place. So I opted for the entrance or the exit of a subway.
But it had to be a - one of those subway stations that have disappeared. But they had a kiosk, which is this overhead covering and the walls were made of glass - wide glass. And I managed to find one - believe it or not - with a hole in it so that I could stand on the side and wait for this gentleman, or person, or woman to come up the stairs. And he eventually did, and he was perfect.
GROSS: What made him perfect?
Mr. DECARAVA: Well, he had all the things that one associates with being tired.
Mr. DECARAVA: And yet, constant. I mean he was determined. I mean, either he was determined to get home or maybe he was just determined to get up at the top of the stairs, because he was very tired. And to prove it, when he got to the landing, he rested, which gave me a chance to put another roll of film into the camera; because at that time, I only had one exposure left and I was debating whether I should wait until he got there or put in another roll.
So when he stopped to rest on the landing, I was able to put another roll of film in, and so when he got there, I had plenty of film to in case I need to take more than one. But fortunately, I only needed that one anyway.
As a student at Brooklyn College in the late 60’s early 70’s the photography faculty consisted of two former Photo League members, Barney Cole and Walter Rosenblum. Our History of Photography teacher was Murray Weiss, who at that time commuted back and forth to Philadelphia where he also taught. His class met twice per week and as was/is common in History of Photography courses the final assignment was to present the work of a photographer to the class in the form of a lecture. For my first semester “my” artist was Eugene Atget, and I remember being horrified when Murray, from the back of the room, corrected my pronunciation while I uttered my first sentence, pronouncing Atget’s name At-Get. It all went downhill from there. The second semester my chosen artist was Roy DeCarava. Again I was horrified to find DeCarava sitting in the back of the classroom with Murray for my talk. I did OK. Roy DeCarava was the photography teacher at Hunter College and would come to our class to critique our work on a regular basis, as I assume Murray Weiss was in his. When I started my Hip Hop photography project, DeCarava’s book, The Sound I Saw was my touchstone.
Roy DeCarava (1919 - 2009)
No Work Today, 1940s
Roy DeCarava (1919 - 2009)
Self Portrait, 1940s
In 1987 a neighbor came by Scheinbaum & Russek and introduced herself to us. Her name was Anne Kurakin. She was Roy DeCarava’s first wife and together they ran The Photographers Gallery in a brownstone at 48 West 85th Street in Manhattan from 1955 to 1957. During those years they exhibited the work of Harry Callahan, Ruth Bernhard, Van Deren Coke, Sid Grossman, and Minor White, among many others. Roy DeCarava also exhibited his photographs and some of his serigraph prints, which he had made in earlier years and eventually gave up when he turned to photography. These examples of his silkscreen prints lay the groundwork for his concerns and subject matter which he goes on to explore in his photography. There is a group of his serigraphs in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art and were exhibited in the Roy DeCarava retrospective curated by Peter Galassi in 1996.
Roy Rudolph DeCarava (December 9, 1919 – October 27, 2009) was an African American artist. DeCarava received early critical acclaim for his photography, initially engaging and imaging the lives of African Americans and jazz musicians in the communities where he lived and worked. Over a career that spanned nearly six decades, DeCarava came to be known as a founder in the field of black and white fine art photography, advocating for an approach to the medium based on the core value of an individual, subjective creative sensibility, which was separate and distinct from the "social documentary" style of many predecessors. (Wikipedia)
Please read his NY Times obituary here to glean more of an introduction to DeCarava's life and work. His importance and contributions to the history of photography is undeniable. We suggest you read a copy of The Sweet Flypaper of Life that he produced with Langston Hughes.
Carrie Mae Weems (b. 1953)
Carrie Mae Weems (b. 1953)
God Bless the Child, from the series: Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried, 1995
In this photograph, Carrie Mae Weems reminds us of the beauty of the child as well as the history of racial injustices, both historical and contemporary.
In a New York Times review from January 23, 2014, written by Holland Cotter, this photograph: God Bless the Child, and the series it is a part of, is described as follows:
“The fullest development of this investigation of racism and its consequences comes in the extraordinary and now classic pictorial essay called “From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried,” which makes as powerful an impression today as it did when it was new in 1995.
In this work, made up of 33 separate prints, all of the images are lifted from found sources, the main one being an archive of 1850 daguerreotype images of African-born black slaves in South Carolina. The portraits were commissioned by the Harvard scientist Louis Agassiz to prove his theory that blacks constituted a separate and inferior race, and the men and woman presented, stripped to waist or naked, were intended to be evidential specimens, nothing more.
Ms. Weems adds the more. She has tinted all the pictures blood red and printed words over the images, some descriptive (“A Negroid Type”), others in the form of a direct address (“You became a scientific profile”), still others passionately tender (“You became a whisper, a symbol of a mighty voyage & by the sweat of your brow you labored for self, family & other”). The work is both an indictment of photography as enslavement, and a homage to long-dead sitters, transplanted Africans, who, under unknowable duress, gave their bodies and faces to the artist, to us, and to history.”
Carrie Mae Weems is considered one of the most influential contemporary American artists working today. She has investigated family relationships, cultural identity, sexism, class, political systems, and the consequences of power. Determined as ever to enter the picture - both literally and metaphorically - Weems has sustained an on-going dialogue within contemporary discourse for over thirty years. During this time Carrie Mae Weems has developed a complex body of art employing photographs, text, fabric, audio, digital images, installation, and video.
Carrie Mae Weems is a recipient of the 2013 MacArthur Fellowship Award, explores the borders of race and class, as it exists in American culture.
Thank you all again for writing to us with your comments and encouragement each week. Please stay healthy and safe.
BLACK LIVES MATTER
We’ve been reminded of this powerful quote much posted on social media this week:
“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
Toni Morrison
And WE PHOTOGRAPH!
Please visit our website www.photographydealers.com to view our current inventory.
Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
James Baldwin
Janet Russek (b. 1947)
Not One More, 2017
This week brought back so many memories. In our youth we learned that taking to the streets does make a difference. We made great strides to address segregation in our country and helped end a war. We fought for the rights of Farm Workers and Equal Rights for women, marching in the streets of our cities and then on Washington. We did much to bring attention to issues, but how much has actually changed is still being weighed. Although we felt pride at what we had achieved, we knew there was still much to do to address the root causes of so many of the issues we fought for and are still fighting for.
The horrid events of the past few weeks, with the deaths of Tony McDade, Sean Reed, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, to name a few, have brought us back to the streets. It feels different, it is different! It feels like, in the words of Bob Dylan that maybe The Times They Are A-Changin.
Thinking about our weekly emails, many artists and images have flooded my mind. I’ll attempt to share some of them with you today.
The photograph above, Not One More, is part of a series of work by Janet Russek. The feminist art historian Lucy Lippard writes, …Not One More can be read as a plea or demand for an end to either rape, suicide, racist cop killings, the separation of children from families at the border, military casualties, or mass shootings. The images are both pointed and ambiguous. The irony of a brown pieta labeled this way is unexpected and complex. In each case, the interactions between text and image (as well as the changing typefaces) are subtly provocative, demonstrating the power of words to change the way we see... By working with classical sculpture and Renaissance paintings we are faced with the reality that many of these issues are those addressed hundreds of years ago. When will we learn?
John Reekie (1829 - 1885)
A Burial Party, Cold Harbor, Virginia, April 1865
One of the first images to come to mind this week was a photograph by John Reekie taken during the Civil War. Matthew Brady, a successful photographer with studios in Washington D.C. and New York, knew many politicians whom he had photographed. He sought the permission of Abraham Lincoln to photograph the war. Brady and his staff headed to the battlefields with equipment and wagons that served as their darkrooms. Although Matthew Brady initiated the project, it was his “assistants” who for the most part did the actual photographing. They later split with Brady over receiving credit and rights for their work and set out on their own. Alexander Gardner, one of Brady’s former assistants, published a two-volume set entitled The Sketchbook of the Civil War which includes, what many feel, are the most powerful images of the war. The Sketchbook is as much documentation as it is an anti-war statement.
This gruesome photograph, A Burial Party, Cold Harbor, Virginia, April, 1865, by John Reekie, was later printed by Gardner and was included in the Sketchbook. The Union soldier’s bodies lay unburied for nearly 10 months. The task of gathering the bones fell to a group of black men doing the menial work while a white man acted as an overseer.
Gordon Parks (1912 - 2006)
Gordon Parks (1912 - 2006)
American Gothic, Washington D.C., 1942
This photograph, “American Gothic, Washington D.C.” of Ella Watson was posed to emulate the Grant Wood painting of the same name. Ella Watson worked in the cleaning crew of the FSA building. Upon viewing this photograph, Stryker said it was an indictment of America that can get them all fired, but he urged Parks to keep photographing Ella Watson, which led to a photo essay of her daily life. This photograph has become symbolic of poor black workers for its duality of portraying his subjects as both victims and survivors.
Gordon Parks is best known for his iconic images from many projects that he worked on during his lifetime: his photographs from the 1940s of America’s poor, his work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) under its director Roy Stryker, and his essays done for Life Magazine. He is also recognized as a pioneer black filmmaker credited for creating the “blaxploitation” genre with his films such as his 1971 Shaft.
Since Gordon Parks’ death in 2006, there have been a number of major exhibitions of his photographs. We include a PBS short video that was made in connection to his exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in 2019. Also included is a link to curator Barbara Tannenbaum discussing his work during his exhibit at The Cleveland Art Museum. Enjoy these two short pieces on Gordon Parks’ life and work.
Roy DeCarava (1919 - 2009)
Roy DeCarava (1919 - 2009)
Man Coming Up Subway Stairs, 1952
In an interview with Terry Gross from the NPR show Fresh Air….
Terry spoke with him in 1996. One of his Harlem photos from 1952 is called "Man Coming Up Subway Stairs." The man looks like he's returning from a long hard day of work. He's wearing a rumpled shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the top button opened. He's carrying his jacket. He's biting his lower lip as he walks up the stairs. Terry asked Roy DeCarava what led to that picture.
Mr. ROY DECARAVA (Photographer): I used to work - I was working nine to five and I used to - with like everybody else, I woke up in the morning and went to work and came home and I was tired. And I was very much aware of my fellow riders and their appearances and their feelings, and I thought in a sense that this was a remarkable experience, in the sense that these were the people who went to work every day, worked hard, and their lives were rather circumscribed. And in many ways, they were borderline in a sense in how they lived. And in a way, I thought that their consistency and their perseverance was, in itself, a rather heroic thing.
And so, that this - with that picture, which I sort of planned. I planned in the sense that I'd seen these kinds of images every day for years and there was no doubt that I would, when I decided to take a picture, that I would find one that would come along. And so what I did, I established the hours from four to six, so I had to find a place. So I opted for the entrance or the exit of a subway.
But it had to be a - one of those subway stations that have disappeared. But they had a kiosk, which is this overhead covering and the walls were made of glass - wide glass. And I managed to find one - believe it or not - with a hole in it so that I could stand on the side and wait for this gentleman, or person, or woman to come up the stairs. And he eventually did, and he was perfect.
GROSS: What made him perfect?
Mr. DECARAVA: Well, he had all the things that one associates with being tired.
Mr. DECARAVA: And yet, constant. I mean he was determined. I mean, either he was determined to get home or maybe he was just determined to get up at the top of the stairs, because he was very tired. And to prove it, when he got to the landing, he rested, which gave me a chance to put another roll of film into the camera; because at that time, I only had one exposure left and I was debating whether I should wait until he got there or put in another roll.
So when he stopped to rest on the landing, I was able to put another roll of film in, and so when he got there, I had plenty of film to in case I need to take more than one. But fortunately, I only needed that one anyway.
As a student at Brooklyn College in the late 60’s early 70’s the photography faculty consisted of two former Photo League members, Barney Cole and Walter Rosenblum. Our History of Photography teacher was Murray Weiss, who at that time commuted back and forth to Philadelphia where he also taught. His class met twice per week and as was/is common in History of Photography courses the final assignment was to present the work of a photographer to the class in the form of a lecture. For my first semester “my” artist was Eugene Atget, and I remember being horrified when Murray, from the back of the room, corrected my pronunciation while I uttered my first sentence, pronouncing Atget’s name At-Get. It all went downhill from there. The second semester my chosen artist was Roy DeCarava. Again I was horrified to find DeCarava sitting in the back of the classroom with Murray for my talk. I did OK. Roy DeCarava was the photography teacher at Hunter College and would come to our class to critique our work on a regular basis, as I assume Murray Weiss was in his. When I started my Hip Hop photography project, DeCarava’s book, The Sound I Saw was my touchstone.
Roy DeCarava (1919 - 2009)
No Work Today, 1940s
Roy DeCarava (1919 - 2009)
Self Portrait, 1940s
In 1987 a neighbor came by Scheinbaum & Russek and introduced herself to us. Her name was Anne Kurakin. She was Roy DeCarava’s first wife and together they ran The Photographers Gallery in a brownstone at 48 West 85th Street in Manhattan from 1955 to 1957. During those years they exhibited the work of Harry Callahan, Ruth Bernhard, Van Deren Coke, Sid Grossman, and Minor White, among many others. Roy DeCarava also exhibited his photographs and some of his serigraph prints, which he had made in earlier years and eventually gave up when he turned to photography. These examples of his silkscreen prints lay the groundwork for his concerns and subject matter which he goes on to explore in his photography. There is a group of his serigraphs in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art and were exhibited in the Roy DeCarava retrospective curated by Peter Galassi in 1996.
Roy Rudolph DeCarava (December 9, 1919 – October 27, 2009) was an African American artist. DeCarava received early critical acclaim for his photography, initially engaging and imaging the lives of African Americans and jazz musicians in the communities where he lived and worked. Over a career that spanned nearly six decades, DeCarava came to be known as a founder in the field of black and white fine art photography, advocating for an approach to the medium based on the core value of an individual, subjective creative sensibility, which was separate and distinct from the "social documentary" style of many predecessors. (Wikipedia)
Please read his NY Times obituary here to glean more of an introduction to DeCarava's life and work. His importance and contributions to the history of photography is undeniable. We suggest you read a copy of The Sweet Flypaper of Life that he produced with Langston Hughes.
Carrie Mae Weems (b. 1953)
Carrie Mae Weems (b. 1953)
God Bless the Child, from the series: Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried, 1995
In this photograph, Carrie Mae Weems reminds us of the beauty of the child as well as the history of racial injustices, both historical and contemporary.
In a New York Times review from January 23, 2014, written by Holland Cotter, this photograph: God Bless the Child, and the series it is a part of, is described as follows:
“The fullest development of this investigation of racism and its consequences comes in the extraordinary and now classic pictorial essay called “From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried,” which makes as powerful an impression today as it did when it was new in 1995.
In this work, made up of 33 separate prints, all of the images are lifted from found sources, the main one being an archive of 1850 daguerreotype images of African-born black slaves in South Carolina. The portraits were commissioned by the Harvard scientist Louis Agassiz to prove his theory that blacks constituted a separate and inferior race, and the men and woman presented, stripped to waist or naked, were intended to be evidential specimens, nothing more.
Ms. Weems adds the more. She has tinted all the pictures blood red and printed words over the images, some descriptive (“A Negroid Type”), others in the form of a direct address (“You became a scientific profile”), still others passionately tender (“You became a whisper, a symbol of a mighty voyage & by the sweat of your brow you labored for self, family & other”). The work is both an indictment of photography as enslavement, and a homage to long-dead sitters, transplanted Africans, who, under unknowable duress, gave their bodies and faces to the artist, to us, and to history.”
Carrie Mae Weems is considered one of the most influential contemporary American artists working today. She has investigated family relationships, cultural identity, sexism, class, political systems, and the consequences of power. Determined as ever to enter the picture - both literally and metaphorically - Weems has sustained an on-going dialogue within contemporary discourse for over thirty years. During this time Carrie Mae Weems has developed a complex body of art employing photographs, text, fabric, audio, digital images, installation, and video.
Carrie Mae Weems is a recipient of the 2013 MacArthur Fellowship Award, explores the borders of race and class, as it exists in American culture.
Thank you all again for writing to us with your comments and encouragement each week. Please stay healthy and safe.
BLACK LIVES MATTER
We’ve been reminded of this powerful quote much posted on social media this week:
“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
Toni Morrison
And WE PHOTOGRAPH!
Please visit our website www.photographydealers.com to view our current inventory.
