Catskill Creek, New York, 1845, Thomas Cole

Nature and the American Vision: The Hudson River School at the New York Historical Society, opens September 15, with more than 100 famous paintings by artists of the Hudson River School, including Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, John F. Kensett, Jasper F. Cropsey and Albert Bierstadt.

I just found out about this show and I’m looking forward to it. A lot of these paintings are a bit too romantic for me, but they’re beautiful just the same, and I do enjoy looking at and studying them. I’ve been planning to start working in the Hudson Valley again later this month, and I think this show will be an inspiration.

There’s an accompanying book as well.

If this isn’t the sort of thing that floats your boat, you could try Ofer’s list of shows that will open over the next month or so. Simon Roberts, Todd Hido, Sally Mann, and Jeff Wall all look like good bets to me.

Sunburned GSP#164(Mojave), 2007, Chris McCaw

I loved Chris McCaw’s work at this summer’s Transfiguration show at Michael Mazzeo.

Speaking of Michael Mazzeo, be sure to catch the online-only show Arbor, currently on view on the gallery website. I recommend watching it in fullscreen mode, and just let it play. Between this and the last few shows I’ve seen at the gallery, Michael Mazzeo is quickly becoming one of my favorites.

A note to my friends in Montreal: if you haven’t already, be sure to see Expanding Horizons before it closes on September 27. It looks like an outstanding survey of turn-of-the-century Canadian and American landscape art, and I really wish I could see it in person.

Timothy O’Sullivan; A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; 1863; Albumen print

Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté; Bend in the River Gosselin at Arthabaska

Alexander Henderson; Victoria Bridge, Grand Trunk Railway; About 1878; Albumen print;

I didn’t hear about this show until yesterday, and then completely by chance. I came across the exhibition catalog in a used bookstore. It was calling out my name from across the room—it’s absolutely gorgeous. I wondered why I had never seen it before and so I looked up the exhibition when I got home; it turns out the book won’t be released for another month. How it ended up in a thrift store in SoHo I’ll never know, but it’s mine now.

Unfortunately I am leaving for a big trip tomorrow and won’t have time to really go through it in depth, but I will report back in September.

I stopped by Michael Mazzeo Gallery the other day based on Jörg Colberg’s recommendation. Transmutations is a group show of contemporary abstract photography featuring the work of Caleb Charland, Christian Erroi, Yong Hee Kim, Sebastian Lemm, and Chris McCaw.

The show is cohesive and the work is excellent. Of the five, however, Sebastian Lemm’s Strata series stood out for me. His black and white images are beautifully intricate and invite repeated viewings. I love the way the multiple exposures reinforce the natural patterns of the work. I paid a visit to Sebastian’s website and also found the images from his Schattenseite to be quite impressive, and hope to see more of his work soon.

strata # 1, by Sebastian Lemm

strata # 6, by Sebastian Lemm

See more from Strata here.

I was also extremely interested to see Chris McCaw’s work in person. The reproductions I have seen online and in magazines have been intriguing, but they don’t tell the whole story. McCaw uses extreme exposures of the sun made directly onto silver gelatin paper to create one-of-a-kind original works. The physical aspect of the process includes burned holes, charred edges, and vintage paper, and seeing them in person made me see them in a new light. In the wrong hands this process could easily become a gimmick, but in this case, the process is integral to the work, and it feels very authentic to me.

More of Chris McCaw’s work can be found online at chrismccaw.com.

The show is open until June 20th, if you are in the metro area during that time I strongly recommend a visit.

James Danzinger has posted a nice selection of photos from the Robert Frank show currently at SFMoMA. These are photos that didn’t make the cut for the book but are being used as an example of the editorial process Frank went through while putting it together. I am really looking forward to seeing this show when it comes to the Met.

Next Thursday marks the opening of a new gallery in Dumbo, and with it, a show from Corey Arnold. It seems that I have been hearing a lot about Corey’s work lately, and with good reason: it is completely, jaw-droppingly amazing. Be sure to check out his website.

Opening Reception: Thursday, May 14, 6:30-8:30 PM

Caption Gallery
55 Washington Street, Suite 802
Brooklyn, NY
718-504-7991

Piazza, by Beth Dow
from the show Ruins, at Jen Bekman Gallery

Ruins
Photographs by Beth Dow
At Jen Bekman Gallery
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 9, 2009 from 6:00 – 8:00 p.m
On View: April 9th – May 16th, 2009

Be there or be ☐.

I’ve mentioned Women in Photography before, because they have been promoting some wonderful work, and now Cara and Amy have something new up their sleeves. Women in Photography, along with Lightside Photographic Services and LTI (my lab of choice in NYC), are sponsoring a $3000 grant to fund a new or ongoing photographic project. Application is open now through May 1.

Oh yeah, and if you’re curious about their spiffy new site, Amani Olu did the design and I did the web development.

I have written previously about photographs made at the sites of famous paintings, and about using Google Maps to investigate and record the locations of well-known photographs. A similar mash-up of art and technology has been developed by the Tate and Google, which demonstrates just how much the British landscape has changed since the time of Turner and Constable.

This article in the Guardian tells the story, or you could just skip straight to the slideshow. Seeing one of Constable’s pastoral images followed by the contemporary view is jarring, to say the least.

That moment of recognition reminded me very much of the feeling I got when I first saw these two photographs from Frank Gohlke’s Aftermath series.

Aftermath: The Wichita Falls, Texas, Tornado No. 10A and 10B - Maplewood Avenue, near Sikes Senter Mall, looking east, 1979/1980. Photography by Frank Gohlke

Within the context of the entire Aftermath series, these two images have an even stronger impact. Gohlke’s recent book Accomodating Nature features several photos from this series, and is very much worth a visit to the library.

If you’re bored of thinking of time on a scale of years and centuries, how about moving to a geological scale, as in Jem Southam’s Rockfalls of Normandy?

Vaucottes, November 2005, Vaucottes, February 2006, by Jem Southam

OK, that last pair are only a few months apart, but you get my drift.

Many thanks to Dr. Steven Zucker from the wonderful smarthistory.org for the heads up on the Guardian article.

I wanted to take a moment to highlight the work of a couple of friends who have prints for sale in Daniel Cooney’s third Emerging Photographers Auction. There is only a week left to get into the action on these affordable prints.

Berkley, 2007, Ellen Rennard

I first came across Ellen Rennard’s work on the Women in Photography website, and was pleasantly surprised when she dropped a line in the comments on my New Years post in 2008. We have since struck up an online friendship, and I highly recommend taking a look through the portfolios on her website. I am particularly fond of the “Horses on the Backside” series.

Tourists, Inlet, Point Wolfe, Nova Scotia, 2008, by Alexi Hobbs

I have been following Alexi Hobbs for a couple of years now, having first discovered him on Flickr. I was very happy to find that he had an image in the auction as well. And what a beauty, too; it reminds me a bit of the work of Timothy O’Sullivan, a modern yet timeless landscape image.

A few more photographs from the auction are posted below:

House Number, 2007, by Alan George

Spirit of Life, Wilmington in Jell-O, Elizabeth Hickok

Quilotoa Crater Lake, 2007, Ani Kington