Art Photo Collector

"To me, you have to declare yourself a Chicano in order to be a Chicano. That makes a Chicano a Mexican-American with a defiant political attitude that centers on his or her right to self-definition. I'm a Chicano because I say I am." --Cheech Marin

The new--and first of its kind--publication on Chicano Photography, Chicano Camera Culture: A Photographic History, 1966-2026 is a welcomed contribution to our shared visual history. As a self proclaimed Chicano myself, who has spent a lifetime exploring photography, this publication marks a new milestone. This is my first experience engaging with a monograph that specifically celebrates sixty years and over 45 artists--who have expressed, documented, probed, and wondered what it means to be a Chicano, and an American, in these United States. There is much to discover.

Edited by the formidable curator/writer Elizabeth Ferrer, whose introductory essay "Bringing Forth a History" builds the context and creates the space for the ensuing essays from noted Latinx art scholars and historians, Chicano Camera Culture lays a foundation for future research and study of Chicano Photography. Finally, a bold history, too often marginalized and ignored, is reclaimed.

For those in the Los Angeles area, the exhibition is currently at The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture (a/k/a "The Cheech") until September 6th. For those in other parts, I recommend seeking out this publication. For my fellow Chicanos, I say ¡Órale!—Lane Nevares

all images by © Helen Levitt

"It would be mistaken to suppose that any of the best photography is come at by intellection; it is like all art, essentially the result of an intuitive process, drawing on all that the artist is rather than on anything he thinks, far less theorizes about."--Helen Levitt (1913-2009)

To a 21st Century audience Helen Levitt's legacy is under appreciated. While well known and admired in her day, including a solo show at age 30 at the MoMA in 1943, this new publication, Helen Levitt, from Thames & Hudson USA offers a satisfying corrective. At last we have a monograph that draws on Levitt's entire archive, including her significant contribution to color photography, which deserves our renewed attention.

Helen Levitt was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1913. The daughter of Russian-Jewish parents, Levitt grew up with progressive, left-leaning values. Drawn to the arts, Levitt left High School early to embark on a trade/career as a working photographer, first learning her technical chops at a commercial photography studio owned by family friends in the Bronx. She would later study at the famed leftist photo & film documentary collective, Photo League, where in 1935 she met Henri Cartier-Bresson, recently back from Mexico. Her friendship with Cartier-Bresson inspired her to purchase a Leica camera, and to renew her dedication to becoming an independent photographer: “And then I saw pictures of Cartier-Bresson and realized that photography could be an art – and that made me ambitious.”

Levitt's work from 1938-1942 is her most celebrated. These are her street images of life (especially children) in the Bronx, Harlem, the Lower East Side, Hell's Kitchen and Brooklyn for which she is most remembered, including her book, "A Way of Seeing." Levitt's uncanny ability to tap into the quotidian and to reflect the evanescent beauty in the everyday make her black & white images as appealing today as they were in her time. Her 1948 film, "In the Street," done in collaboration with friend and writer James Agee, reveals this egalitarian eye.

Never satisfied, in the late 1950's Levitt eschewed black & white photography to pursue color photography. Her third attempt at a Guggenheim fellowship proved fruitful. The fellowship allowed her to explore the possibilities of color photography (and dye transfer printing) long before luminaries like William Eggleston impacted our idea of color photography in the 1970’s.

© All Images Courtesy of Thames & Hudson

"Without memory, we forget the histories that have shaped us, we forget all those things which made us."--Stuart Hall

"Every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own threatens to disappear irretrievably."--Walter Benjamin

The publication of Black Chronicles: Photography, Race and Difference in Victorian Britain comes at a potent time. In our current milieu, where the conversation around race and class is polarized and charged, the arrival of a deeply researched volume containing the most extensive gathering of images of Black people in 19th Century England is a noble enterprise. Inside we can pore over 400 portraits of individuals, who came from all over the British Empire, but who have been largely forgotten about and marginalized. This important volume seeks to reclaim from a Victorian Britain a past that does not, in its collective memory, include Black subjects.

The curator Renee Mussai, who edited this volume, has included the writings, lectures, and analytical texts from a range of scholars, including the notable, Stuart Hall, whose teachings and research were foundational to this project. These individuals offer a diverse (and sometimes clamorous) array of insights into the complexities of race, representation, class and who decides how the history is written and told.

© All Images Courtesy of Thames & Hudson

"My dream is of a place and of a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth."--Abraham Lincoln

With a week to go before the 2024 US Election, we are undergoing an unprecedented time here in the United States. The idea of what it means to be an "American" and the direction of this country are being redefined. I think it is fair to say; this is an extraordinary period in our history.

Everyone has their own idea of America. We are a nation of 335 million people with individual points of view. We each see the United States through our own experience. How we identify and feel as Americans is unique. "Photography, like experience, often defies neat narrative frameworks," Peter van Agtmael writes. He, along with fellow editor Laura Wexler pored through 227,450 images in the Magnum archive while asking themselves the question: What is "America?"

Their efforts, along with leading scholars and 80 Magnum photographers are presented here in Magnum America from Thames & Hudson. Offering more than 600 images, original portfolios from their vast archive, and probing essays, this epic volume takes us decade by decade on a sweeping, visual journey through our nation's history. This is a landmark photobook, singular, and a precious contribution to our collective memory--it will become a classic.

© All Images: The Peter Hujar Archive, Artists Rights Society

"When one has a picture taken, the photographer says 'Perfect' Just as you are! That is death." ..."LIfe is a movie. Death is a photograph."--Susan Sontag

In 1976, Portraits in Life and Death, by the artist Peter Hujar was published. The book was not well received at that time, and Hujar, who was never commercially successful or as well known as some of his contemporaries in the downtown NYC scene (e.g. Robert Mapplethorpe), struggled to make a living. To be gay, an artist, poor and living a marginal lifestyle was possible in the NYC of the 1970's and the 1980's. Now I'm not so sure.

The original monograph published during his lifetime would go on to become posthumously, especially for photography collectors, a sought after classic. Some books do. Some work stands the test of time.

Now, Liveright Publishing/W.W. Norton & Company, nearly fifty years later, have graciously reissued Portraits in Life and Death for a 21st Century audience. With fresh digital scans from Hujar's archive, a new essay by Pulitzer Prize winning author, Benjamin Moser along with Susan Sontag's original introduction, this new publication is a fitting tribute to Peter Hujar's legacy.

Appreciating Hujar's work, today, requires intention. We are all simply overwhelmed, saturated even, with images. This monograph takes time. It must be slowly savored to respect the intimacy and the connection Hujar had with his subjects. The careful composition of the portraits. The atmosphere. The openness. The longing.

© All Images: The George Hoyningen-Huene Estate Archives

"Texture, line, simplicity--these were the things he liked--the classic truth." Katharine Hepburn

As time goes past, and the history of photography becomes deeper, photographers such as George Hoyningen-Huene (b.1900-d.1968) remind us how rich that legacy grows. What is now more than 100 years ago, Huene (hoo-Nay), while standing on the shoulders of previous giants like Edward Steichen (who encouraged a young Huene in Paris in the early 1920's to pursue fashion photography), created timeless work that has helped to shape later generations' understanding of photography, fashion, film and Beauty.

A new book--the first publication in 40 years--on Huene is now out from Thames & Hudson. It is a timely reminder for us to rediscover Huene. In many ways the arc of his life as a Baron and Russian-born aristocrat in St. Petersburg in 1900, as well as being the son of an American mother, mirror the major events of the 20th Century. From WWI, to fleeing the Bolshevik Revolution, to life in bohemian Paris in the 1920's, to Golden Age Hollywood in the 1940's--Huene was a part of it all. His collaborations with the leading artistic and celebrity lights of the day and his relationship with the photographer Horst P. Horst only make his history richer.