Rodney Graham: Rodney Graham

January 11 - February 23

303 Gallery is proud to present our ninth exhibition with Rodney Graham, centering on a new series of photographic lightboxes.

Contemplating the View: American Landscape Photographs

September 8, 2018 - March 3, 2019

This exhibition highlights one of the Addison collection’s great strengths–images of the American landscape, both natural and manmade. Whether historical or contemporary, fact or fiction, abstract or representative, celebratory or critical, private exploration or social document, all of the photographs assembled in this exhibition comment to one degree or another on the overlapping and often contesting powers of culture and nature. The complex dialogue these images foster prods us to consider the contrast between our myths and realities. Featuring works by photographers such as Carleton Watkins, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Robert Adams, Lois Conner, Marcia Resnick, and Katherine Wolkoff, these photographs present more than mere description. As vehicles for artistic, personal, and cultural expression they challenge us to examine and reflect upon who we are.​

Diane Arbus: Diane Arbus: A box of ten photographs

April 6, 2018 - January 27, 2019

In late 1969, Diane Arbus began to work on a portfolio. At the time of her death in 1971, she had completed the printing for eight known sets of A box of ten photographs, of a planned edition of fifty, only four of which she sold during her lifetime. Two were purchased by photographer Richard Avedon; another by artist Jasper Johns. A fourth was purchased by Bea Feitler, art director at Harper’s Bazaar, for whom Arbus added an eleventh photograph.

This exhibition traces the history of A box of ten photographs between 1969 and 1973, using the set that Arbus assembled for Feitler, which was acquired by the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) in 1986. The story is a crucial one because it was the portfolio that established the foundation for Arbus’s posthumous career, ushering in photography’s acceptance to the realm of “serious” art. After his encounter with Arbus and the portfolio, Philip Leider, then editor in chief of Artforum and a photography skeptic, admitted, “With Diane Arbus, one could find oneself interested in photography or not, but one could no longer. . . deny its status as art. . . . What changed everything was the portfolio itself.”

In May 1971, Arbus was the first photographer to be featured in Artforum, which also showcased her work on its cover. In June 1972, the portfolio was sent to Venice, where Arbus was the first photographer included in a Biennale, at that time the premiere international showcase for contemporary artists. SAAM organized the American contribution to the Biennale that year, thereby playing an important early role in Arbus’s legacy.

Ka-Man Tse: narrow distances

December 8, 2018 - February 2, 2019

Join Aperture for the opening receptions of both the 2018 Portfolio Prize Winner Ka-Man Tse’s exhibition, narrow distances, and the 2018 Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards Shortlist. Ka-Man Tse’s project explores the intersection of Asian and Pacific Islander and LGBTQ communities in Hong Kong and New York City. The PhotoBook Awards Shortlist comprises thirty-six volumes, celebrating the book’s contribution to the evolving narrative of photography.

Ka-Man Tse is a photographer, video artist, and educator. She received an MFA from Yale University and a BA from Bard College, and has exhibited her work both internationally and across the United States. Tse was a SPARC artist in residence through the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, and completed the Artist in the Marketplace Program through the Bronx Museum of the Arts. She is the recipient of the 2014–15 Robert Giard Fellowship, and a 2017–18 Yale University Fund for Lesbian and Gay Studies Research Award. In spring 2018, her photographs were featured in Queering Space at Alfred University, Alfred, New York, and at the WMA Masters exhibition, Transition, in Hong Kong, and she cocurated Daybreak: New Affirmations in Queer Photography at the Leslie-Lohman Museum, New York. Tse’s first monograph, narrow distances, was published by Candor Arts in July 2018. She teaches at Yale University and Parsons.

Carol Henry: Spellbinding Light — The Art of Analog Photography

January 19 - March 2

Reception: Sat January 26, 4-7pm

This exhibition presents an experience of Carol Henry’s unique and beautiful images, painstakingly handcrafted in the darkroom in a style and using processes that make them all editions of one. The main body of work that kept Carol Henry in the darkroom for decades was direct printing on positive print, color paper Cibachrome, later called Ilfochrome. Since the material was sensitive to all ranges of light and had a deep emulsion with reflective backing, it beckoned her to experiment with translucent objects directly transmitted onto the surface.

With CIbachrome no longer available after 2012, Carol now uses the cyanotype process to continue the exploration of botanicals and found objects of all shapes and sizes exposed under the rays of the sun or moon. Three life size cyanotype banners in the exhibition refer to the women’s movement of 2018 and were exhibited at the Monterey Museum of Art in conjunction with Year of the Woman where she had a solo cyanotype exhibition in July 2018 titled Indigo.

Image credit: Carol Henry

Roberto Huarcaya: Amazogramas

November 15, 2018 - January 27, 2019

Japan Modern: Photography from the Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck Collection

September 29, 2018 - January 21, 2019

Celebrating the Freer|Sackler’s recent acquisition of a major Japanese photography collection, this exhibition features a selection of works by groundbreaking twentieth-century photographers. Whether capturing evocative landscapes or the gritty realities of postwar Japan, this presentation focuses on Japanese artists’ search for a sense of place in a rapidly changing country. The images highlight destinations both rural and urban, in styles ranging from powerful social documentary to intensely personal. A selection of photobooks and experimental films adds to this multifaceted exploration. Complemented by Japan Modern: Prints in the Age of Photography

La Raza

March 30, 2018 - February 10, 2019

Various: Time Frames: Contemporary East Asian Photography

November 4, 2018 - March 24, 2019

This exhibition features approximately 30 photographs by artists born in Vietnam, China, Japan, and Korea between 1929 and 1980. Each work explores a time of day, a reflection on legend or history, a past remembered and missed, or a future imagined and anticipated. The images also explore suspended time, periods of waiting or boredom. Some of these works are real-time images, others were created as a result of the time an artist spent immersed in the world of the image—the time required to manipulate the subject or to capture the image. The artists represented include Naoya Hatakeyama, Eikoh Hosoe, Daido Moriyama, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Sze Tsung Leong, Chen Jiagang, Wang Qingsong, Don Hong-Oai, Liu Bolin, Liu Zheng, Lu Yao, Bae Bien-U, Noh Suntag, Le Van Khoa, An-My Lê, Koichiro Kurita, and Toshio Shibata.

Peter Turnley: Refugees

October 27, 2018 - March 23, 2019

Elliott Jerome Brown Jr.: a simple song

January 9 - February 16

Baxter St at the Camera Club of New York is pleased to present a simple song by 2018 Workspace Resident Elliott Jerome Brown Jr., opening January 9, 2019 and running through February 16, 2019. This exhibition comprising of multimedia photographic and photo-sculptural works, draws influences from Billy Preston’s 1971 album, I Wrote a Simple Song, in which the named track describes working on a straightforward song for an intended person and having the song embellished for radio success, leaving this special gesture now stripped of its intimacy and privacy.

In Brown Jr.’s portrait photographs, the pictured individuals are often obscured or located residually within the image. In Sssummmmmwhhhhhhhhhhere, a site-specific installation in which Brown Jr. has created a woven awning in front of a photograph, some areas of the image are obscured completely, while others are slightly visible. The work is less concerned with representation, more often rendering private moments and discourse with reserve.

Brown Jr. has been interested in the photographic history of black representation and how intimate experiences are revealed as both personal artifacts and sociopolitical stimulus. However, in subverting the biographical context in which his images are made, he creates photographs that are open-ended in a literary sense. Using the pictured environment, objects within the space, or the margins of the frame itself to disguise or reference an individual, Brown Jr.’s photographs become a prime space for curiosity and refusal.

In the work titled, He gave and he gave, but he wouldn’t have given at all if I didn’t let him in, if I didn’t cover my body in soap three times, swish oil between my teeth 47 minutes ahead of the time, that I expected him (Wounded), Brown Jr. depicts a traditional family picture frame, but instead of showing familial experiences, the structure fractures and compartmentalizes happenings within individual photographs. Through the framework, some details are revealed while others remain unknowable to the viewer, further accentuating the limits of voyeurism when observing private interactions.

The works in a simple song offer a visual exercise for the viewer through Brown Jr.’s photo-structural works that use public space to further obscure private moments. The viewer is allowed to be a part of this intimate experience, yet through the constructed space is asked to maintain a respectful distance to gain access to the pictured environment or individual.

As a Baxter St Workspace Resident, Brown Jr. was awarded three months access to the International Center of Photography, Baxter St facilities, an artist stipend and a solo exhibition at Baxter St. Brown Jr. is the second 2018 Workplace Resident to have a solo exhibition at Baxter St, after Arash Fewzee and will be followed by Zalika Azim in February and Tommy Kha in May.

MEDIA CONTACT: Third Eye, Morgan Potts, morgan@hellothirdeye.com, 212-355-9009

Katherine Wolkoff: The Critical Zone

January 10 - March 2

Reception: Thurs January 24, 6-8pm