Sunday Salon index

Alessandra Sanguinetti spent a period of nine years getting to know the Argentine farm families that are featured in her two best known photographic series. She became familiar with the ebb and flow of farm life; she came to understand and appreciate the matter-of-fact relationship between the farmers and the animals they raised. Sanguinetti’s chronicle […]

We’re doing something a tad different this week. Last week we took a look at Alessandra Sanguinetti’s series On the Sixth Day ; this week we’re going to look at the same photographer, but a different series. Sanguinetti photographed The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of Their Dreams during the same […]

Jan Saudek and his twin brother Karel were born in 1935 in the city of Prague in what was then called the Republic of Czechoslovakia. Four years later, Adolf Hitler’s army entered the city. Along with nearly 150,000 other Jews, most of Saudek’s family were sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, where many of them […]

I wonder, sometimes, if there is something about a childhood spent away from ‘home’ that instills in one a desire to travel. Sebastian Schutyser, for example, was born in the city of Bruges in 1968—but he spent his childhood in Zaïre (what was once called the Belgian Congo and is now the Democratic Republic of […]

“An artist photographing her child can invite ridicule.” That’s what photographer Robin Schwartz says in her artist’s statement. And ain’t it the truth. The operative term in that sentence, I think, is “her.” An artist photographing her child. That’s the Flickr cliché, isn’t it—the ubiquitous mom with camera? It’s a trope we’ve all heard—a woman […]

He was born to an affluent family in Warsaw in 1911 and given the name Dawid Szymin. His father, Benjamin, was a publisher of books in Hebrew and Yiddish. The family fled Warsaw after the city was bombed during the First World War. The next few years were spent in Minsk, Belarus and Odessa (Poland, […]

Fazal Ilahi Sheikh came by his interest in displaced people naturally. You could say it was the family business. He was born in New York City in 1965. His father, though, was born in Nairobi, Kenya and his grandfather was born in a part of Northern India that is now known as Pakistan. After obtaining […]

Cindy Sherman’s photography comprises an aesthetic of questions. What’s going on here? What is she saying—or trying to say? What does all this mean? And then, of course, there’s the question that underlies all the other questions: just who the hell IS Cindy Sherman?   Untitled Film Still #22, 1978  She is, surprisingly, a 56 […]

When looking at Stephen Shore’s photographs for the first time, I suspect the reaction of most people (and I include myself in that group) would be some variation of WTF? For a lot of folks, that’s also the second and third reaction, and for many it’s their final view. Really, WTF? It’s a perfectly understandable […]

We tend to list and classify photographers according to vaguely cultural categories. Irish photographers, gay photographers, African-American photographers, women photographers, Buddhist photographers. The underlying idea is that these categories all have a distinctive sensibility—an ability or capacity to view the world and express that view in a way that’s different from those who don’t fall […]

“Perhaps it’s good for one to suffer,” said Aldous Huxley. He asked “Can an artist do anything if he’s happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?” I can’t entirely agree with Huxley, but it cannot be denied that a lot […]

There is a romantic tradition in American popular culture of the itinerant adventurer. A man alone, traveling around the country, meeting people, becoming involved in their lives for a short time, then wandering off again. They travel by horse (Have Gun, Will Travel), by car (Route 66), by motorcycle (Easy Rider), on foot (Kung Fu). […]

Traditional portraiture is about the subject of the photograph…sometimes it’s intended to be an accurate portrayal of the subject, sometimes a celebratory portrayal, sometimes a portrayal that’s revelatory. Australian photographer Vee Speers doesn’t take traditional portraits. It’s very clear that she’s intensely aware of the subject of the photograph, but her primary interest isn’t in […]

If you want to understand the photography of Joel Sternfeld, you have to first understand this: his work has always been about color. I don’t mean ‘color’ in an abstract, purely compositional sort of way; I mean ‘color’ as informed by science and theory. If that sounds painfully dull and devoid of passion, just look […]

The name of Jock Sturges will always be interlinked with accusations of child pornography. It’s impossible to discuss his photographic career without making mention of the 1990 FBI raid on his studio and the resulting criminal charge of child pornography, or without the 1998 child pornography indictments in Alabama and Tennessee against Barnes & Noble […]

He eventually became known as the Poet of Prague, a rather grand title for the son of a house painter. Josef Sudek was born in 1896 in the town of Kolin in what was then called Bohemia, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father died when he was two, leaving his mother with two small […]

He calls it “situational photography” and describes it as “as a combination of street photography and portrait photography.” In essence, it involves the photographer visibly loitering in a specific, clearly identifiable location, taking candid surreptitious photographs of ordinary people engaged in an ordinary situation. Getting on an elevator, for example, or passing through a subway […]

She was born Gerta Pohorylle on 1 August, 1910 to a proper upper middle class Jewish family in Stuttgart, Germany. For most of her life, she lived a proper upper middle class life: a good education in Leipzig and at a Swiss boarding school, elegant balls, earnest discussions about art and politics with intelligent and […]

We’ve just finished Fashion Week in New York City—the event at which designers and fashion houses introduce their latest collections. It seems appropriate, then, to look at the life and work of one of the most influential modern fashion photographers—Juergen Teller. His story is, in many ways, unremarkable. It may be that what distinguished Teller […]

Miroslav Tichý was a 22 years old when the Soviet Union annexed Czechoslovakia in 1948. Tichý, student of drawing and painting at the Academy of Art in Prague was very vocal in his opposition to the new regime. He was eventually detained and spent the next eight years in various jails, detention centers and psychiatric institutions. […]