Friday, January 22, 2016

Visit us during Photo LA 2016 this weekend


photo l.a. celebrates super snapshots at The Reef from Jan. 22-24. (Photo: Stephen Wilkes, Serengeti, Tanzania, Day To Night, 2015, Courtesy of the Monroe Gallery of Photography)


January 21, 2016

Weekend: photo l.a.
Celebrated shutterbugs, collectors, galleries, and fans converge to buy, admire, discuss.


photo l.a.: The yearly gathering of galleries, fans, buyers, and lauded photographers who capture elaborate stories with one click has a big name for the bigness it encompasses. The Reef downtown is the setting for The 25th Annual International Los Angeles Photographic Exposition will be flush with photos and tours and panels and everything that has anything to do with the camera, the lens, and the eye. You don't have to buy or attend one of the programs to enjoy a day; a one-day ticket to the Jan 22-24 snapshot spectacular is twenty bucks.


Monroe Gallery is located in booth #205 /302, just to the right of the main fair entrance.
Friday, January 22, 11am - 7pm
Saturday, January 23, 11am - 7pm
Sunday, January 24, 11am - 6pm

More information here

Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Exhibit | They Broke the Mold



Via CraveOnline
January 19, 2016
By Miss Rosen

Janis and Tina, Madison Square Garden, November 27, 1969
©Amalie R. Rothschild: Janis and Tina at Madison Square Garden, November 27, 1969.
“Wrong is right,” observed Thelonious Monk. “I say, play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing? even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years.”

Musicians of the past were not only artists—they were visionaries. Before video killed the radio star and digital replaced the analogue world, musicians like Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, and David Bowie were changing the cultural landscape. “They Broke the Mold”, a collection of classic music photographs, is currently on view at the Monroe Gallery of Photography, Santa Fe, NM, through January 30, 2016.


The Supremes, Hitsville, Detroit, 1965
















©Art Shay: The Supremes, Hitsville, Detroit, 1965


Featuring photographs taken between 1931-1974, the exhibition begins with a work by Alfred Eisenstaedt, “Violinist Nathan Milstein, pianist Vladimir Horowitz & cellist Gregor Piatigorsky after a concert, Berlin, Germany.” The early formality of live performance is evident in other works, images of Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, and Sammy Davis Jr. wearing tuxedos, Eartha Kitt and Judy Garland draped in evening gowns.

As time goes by, we witness a radical cultural shift, perhaps beautifully exemplified by a photograph of the Beatles taken by Bob Gomel in Miami in 1964. Lying out on sun chairs, fully or partially dressed, the Beatles look like nothing so much as British lads unfamiliar with the idea of catching a tan. With this image, we see the British invasion in its most self-conscious form.


darry 2
©Eddie Adams: Louis Armstrong, Opening Night, Las Vegas, 1970

The times turn as a new, more radical era emerges, one beautifully rendered in Steve Schapiro’s 1965 photograph of Andy Warhol, Nico and the Velvet Underground in Los Angeles. Here we enter the age of the rock star and the freedom that is unleashed as the rise of pop culture dominates the world.

As the 1960s transform into the early ‘70s, a new kind of artist arrives in the form of Tina Turner, Janis Joplin, and Freddie Mercury. The diva incarnate returns to the stage, capturing our imagination. “I won’t be a rock star. I will be a legend,” Freddie Mercury said, playing the part to the hilt. He knew his time here would be brief, and like many others in “They Broke the Mold”, he lived it to the fullest. To one interviewer, Mercury replied, “What will I be doing in twenty years’ time? I’ll be dead, darling! Are you crazy?”

Such as it is with so many of the greats who live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse. But others live long and full lives, and it is here in the photographs that we can remember the very best of times.
They Broke the Mold” is currently on view at the Monroe Gallery of Photography, Santa Fe, NM, through January 30, 2016.
All photos courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography.

Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.


Sunday, January 17, 2016

Steve Schapiro remembers David Bowie, his muse

David Bowie
David Bowie in his dressing room while filming "The Man Who Fell to Earth" in 1975.
(Steve Schapiro)

The Chicago Tribune
By Rick Kogan
January 14, 2016

World-renowned photographer Steve Schapiro, who moved to Chicago with his wife, Maura, in 2007, has in his lengthy career taken millions of photos, many of them collected in stunning books.

He is in his early 80s, and the list of his subjects is almost surreal in its breadth: Marlon Brando, Robert Kennedy, Andy Warhol, Martin Luther King Jr., Chevy Chase (Schapiro and his wife are the godparents of the actor's daughter), Jerry Garcia, Barbra Streisand, Woody Allen, Orson Welles, Johnny Depp, Mae West, Satchel Paige, Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra, Ringo Starr, Ike and Tina Turner (together), Buster Keaton, Richard Pryor, Sophia Loren … It goes on.

He also shot David Bowie. One of his photos was used for the cover of 2014's "Nothing Has Changed" and, in the wake of the artist's death, Schapiro remembered:

"It was 1974 when I first photographed David. From the moment he arrived, we seemed to hit it off. He was incredibly intelligent, calm, and filled with ideas.

"He talked a lot about Aleister Crowley, whose esoteric writings he was heavily into at the time. And when he heard that I had photographed Buster Keaton, one of his heroes, we talked about him and immediately became friends.

"Our first session started at four in the afternoon. David would come out in incredible costumes, each seemingly turning him into a different person. I would raise my camera to shoot and he would say, 'Wait just a minute, I have to fix something,' and 20 minutes later he would come out in a totally different outfit.

"We decided to do a close portrait on a dark green background because we felt it would make the worst possible color for a magazine cover. We laughed about it, but eventually it did become a cover for People magazine (in September of 1976).

"That session lasted from four in the afternoon to four in the morning, and the last photograph of David was on his bike, lit by the headlights of a car.

"Over these many years I would find photos of David in my files, photos that I had totally overlooked, unexpected and pleasant surprises. Working with an amazingly talented person can be collaborative, often unspoken. The photographs I took were David's ideas, brought from his imagination into the real world. I was merely the conduit from genius into the light of day."

Copyright © 2016, Chicago Tribune

Steve Schapiro's photographs of David Bowie are included in the exhibition "The Broke The Mold", on view through February 7, 2016.

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

National Geographic PROOF Features Stephen Wilkes Day To Night Series


Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona, 2015
Photographing from the Desert View Watchtower, Wilkes made this image of the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in 27 hours. This vantage point allowed him to see the scale of the people along the overlook.


Via National Geographic PROOF Picture Stories
January 5, 2016

Piecing Together Time in the ‘Ultimate Brain Puzzle’

"A single image in Stephen Wilkes’s “Day to Night” series is composed of an average of 1,500 frames captured by manual shutter clicks over a period of anywhere from 16 to 30 hours. During this process, Wilkes must keep his horizon line straight and maintain continuity, which means keeping his camera perfectly still.

He then spends weeks in postproduction, piecing the best frames together into a final composite of layered images, essentially compressing time. For Wilkes, the excitement is in showing people something more than a photograph, something that provides a multidimensional experience, a window, as he describes it, into a world where the full spectrum of time, light, and experience plays across the frame. We’re treated to a view we’ve never seen before—one our eyes could never take in on their own." Full post here.

 Animals converge at a watering hole in Seronera National Park, Serengeti, Tanzania
Wilkes and his assistant spent 30 hours perched on a platform 18 feet in the air, behind a crocodile blind so the animals wouldn’t see them. The elephant family marched across the frame just as he and his assistant had resumed shooting after taking a break to backup their files (each shoot takes about 20 gigabytes of storage). Had they passed five minutes earlier, he would have missed them



Monroe Gallery will be exhibiting Stephen Wilkes’ "Day To Night" photographs featured in the January, 2016 issue of National Geographic during photo l.a. 2016, as well as selections from Wilkes' recent Remnants collection.



Related: Nationally recognized photographer Stephen Wilkes has turned his lens to our national parks, commemorating their 100th anniversary

             

Saturday, January 2, 2016

MONROE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY AT PHOTO LA 2016


Happy 2016!
We are delighted to return and be exhibiting at Photo LA, January 21 – 24, held again this year at The Reef/LAMart.

This year the fair celebrates its 25th annual edition, and Monroe Gallery will be in our same location, booth #205/302,  just to the right of the main fair entrance.
The gallery will be exhibiting a wide variety of classic photography, including never-before-seen historic vintage photojournalism prints and dramatic photographs documenting the Civil Rights movement in America from the 1950's to the present day. A special selection of Spider Martin’s photographic record of the pivotal “Bloody Sunday” will be included.
Monroe Gallery will also be exhibiting Stephen Wilkes’ "Day To Night" photographs from the January, 2016 issue of National Geographic, as well as Wilkes' recent Remnants collection.

We look forward to seeing you in Los Angeles!

Information, directions and ticket information.


Related: Nationally recognized photographer Stephen Wilkes has turned his lens to our national parks, commemorating their 100th anniversary