Photo of the Week: Hunter, Wheeling, WV

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© Amy Stein 2006

Children of Men

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Saw the new Alfonso Cuaron movie, Children of Men, last night. What an amazing film. Cuaron and cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki, have created a visually stunning and politically charged film that moves forward with a fevered energy. Think Brazil meets 28 Days Later meets Regarding the Pain of Others broadcast live on CNN sometime in the near future. Go see this film.

Photo of the Week: Woman with M16, Las Vegas, NV

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© Amy Stein 2005

Busy as a Bee

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Leaving New Orleans this Thursday and heading back to New York for a short holiday stint living my real life as a photographer, wife, friend, cat owner... Friday I hit the NY pavement and scramble to get my prints ready for the 3 x 5 show at Paul Kopeikin Gallery. Saturday we are traveling to Washington, DC, for a Danish Jul celebration with friends. Grod and glogg for everyone! While we are in DC we are going to finally see my work in the No Fancy Titles show at Randall Scott Gallery. We get back to New York on Tuesday and have a small window to relax, make fun of tourists, and celebrate the new year before we leave for SoCal to visit the inlaws and attend the opening of the 3 x 5 show. Sadly, my travel schedule is forcing me to miss the opening of Brian Ulrich's Copia show at Julie Saul, but you shouldn't. Go see this show!

I hope the holidays (and every day) find you peaceful, creative, and among friends and loved ones.

Sophia Peer Reviewed in the New York Times

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You know you are a hotshot artist when you are included in the paper of record. Fellow SVA MFA alum, Sophia Peer, got a very favorable write-up of her video piece, Everyday, in the New York Times review of the Queens International 2006. Congratulations, Sophia!

Where this exhibition can feel more provincial than shows like P.S. 1’s “Greater New York” or the Whitney Biennial is in its attempt to balance the interests of the art crowd while staying “close to the heart of many local residents,” according to its brochure. Sometimes these concerns dovetail nicely, as in Sophia Peer’s quick-cut video “Everyday.” She captures her aging parents moving around their cramped home in Queens like latter-day, empty-nest Bunkers burrowed in a row house amid a social landscape turned virtually unrecognizable.

Also in the exhibition and worth checking out is Rebecca Roberton's Queens Vernacular series. Rebecca is another kickass MFA grad from the School of Visual Arts.

Wooster on Spring

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Judith Supine & Rekal

Today is the first day to view the Wooster Collective's inspired Wooster on Spring project. If you don't know what all the hubbub is about, read up on how the project came together, and then get your arse to the corner of Elizabeth and Spring and take in the 30,000 square feet of art before it's walled up and renovation begins on the building. If you can't make it to Soho during the next three days, all hope is not lost. According to the Wooster Collective you may get another chance to view the work in the year 2206.

As many of you know, there's a tradition in construction to leave a newspaper in a wall during the construction process to create a sort of time capsule. Most people who have renovated a home or building have great stories about finding things from decades, or even centuries before, in the walls of their buildings.

So after the Wooster on Spring exhibition, all of the interior walls of 11 Spring will be covered during the construction process. 11 Spring will become one of the most fascinating art time capsules in history. We love the fact that two hundred years from now, a brick might fall out to reveal an original piece created by Lady Pink, Shepard, Swoon and 35 other incredible artists.

Pretty in Pink

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I have never been a pink girl. Growing up I didn't own a My Little Pony, I never wanted a Hello Kitty backpack, and I may have even rooted against Molly Ringwald finding love with Andrew McCarthy. This is not to say I am a tomboy -- I still enjoy girlie things and I believe my autopsy one day will show I was made of mostly sugar and spice -- I just wasn't wrapped in a pink blanket when I was born. As a photographer I am drawn to any discussion of the cultural significance and deeper meanings of color, so imagine my delight when I came across these two passages that reveal the capriciousness of our pink/blue gender tradition:

"If you like the color note on the little one's garments, use pink for the boy and blue for the girl, if you are a follower of convention." [The Sunday Sentinal, March 29, 1914.]

"There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is pertier for the girl." [Ladies Home Journal, June, 1918]

When I read this I immediately thought of Jeongmee Yoon's wonderful photo series, The Pink Project...

© Jeongmee Yoon 2005

...and the video piece Charlie White did for Adidas, Pink.

Photo of the Week: Pool, Bear Mountain, NY

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© Amy Stein 2005

Interviewed by The Intrepid Art Collector

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The wonderful Lisa Hunter interviewed me for her Intrepid Art Collector site. Lisa is one of the leading authorities on the contemporary art market and the author of a great new book, but what I find most impressive is that she managed to escape from New York and transplant herself to the Great White North. There is something very inspiring about that.

The Trail of Spears

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Saturday we drove north from New Orleans to a small town near the Mississippi border called Kentwood. In better years Kentwood was called the Dairy Capital of the South, but its recent claims to fame include a brick factory and a bottled water that goes by the brand name Kentwood Springs. Oh, Kentwood is also the hometown of Britney Spears and the reason for our trip, the Kentwood Britney Spears and Military Museum. Now, I am not a fan of Britney Spears or military action, but put the two together and you have a recipe for a kitsch pie that I want to eat with an oversized novelty fork.

Museum curator, Hannah M. Schwartz, does a wonderful job of setting a dynamic tone for the tour. She escorts you into a dark room and asks you to wait near a white wall. Don't move away from the wall or Hannah will bristle you back in place to maximize the dazzling impact of what's to come. She disappears into the dark and then with the flip of a switch the first beats of "Oops!...I Did It Again" drop as the lights of a small-scale replica of the stage Britney performed on for her HBO Concert Special come on. The story behind the making of the stage is more fantastic than the stage itself and I urge you to read about it if you can't make your way to Kentwood to hear it in person. After the stage and light show you are lead through a hall of gold and platinum records, autographed posters, Hummel figurines, and some of Britney's lesser awards to a very special place. Kid you not, they have transported Britney Spears' childhood bedroom to the museum and lovingly reinstalled every dirty stuffed animal and doll and every overly sexed junior high school photograph tacked to her full-length mirror. Tragically, Hannah does not allow you to take pictures inside the museum, so Dave LaChapelle's photo of Britney in her bedroom will have to suffice.

© David LaChapelle

We stayed and soaked up the greatness for a while and then headed over to the military wing of the museum. Somehow the images of Kentwood’s war dead wasn't exactly a fitting digestif after the three course sugar fest that was the Britney wing. We decided to grab the RZ and the 5D and explore Kentwood in the hopes of capturing a little bit of the local flavor that spawned America's favorite pop tart. Sadly, most of Kentwood looks like an open casket funeral for William Eggleston's south.

Photos to come soon...

Photo of the Week: Spike and China, Coney Island, NY

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© Amy Stein 2003

Heckuva Job, George

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© Rick Wood

This Wednesday I will be traveling back to New Orleans to continue my work with the Do You Know What It Means project. I love everything about New Orleans, so I was taken aback when I came across this troubling bit of news in the Saturday Times-Picayune:

St. Paul Travelers Cos. Inc., Louisiana's largest commercial insurance provider, plans to cancel all its commercial property policies in the New Orleans area next year, sparking fears that other insurers will follow and slow the region's economic recovery...

State Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon, who was tipped off about Travelers' plans Wednesday night by the Business Council of New Orleans and the River Region, said he was stunned by the news. When he met with Travelers on Thursday, he was equally stunned by the stated reason for the company's retrenchment.

"They cited the state of the rebuilding of our levee system as the primary reason for their decision," Donelon said.

This is a devastating turn of events for a city and a community that was just beginning to embrace a cautious optimism about their future. That the levees are not reliable should come as no surprise given the White House's own ironically triumphant assessment that "today, almost the entire flood protection system around New Orleans has been restored to its pre-Katrina level."

A Very New York Saturday

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Most days in New York are uniquely New York. It's a rush and a bump, an odd random smell, and then sweet relief when you finish your work and finally get to go home. There are other days in New York that are equally, uniquely New York. The sun shines, your obligations are few, and you are able to take leisurely allowance of the wealth of exceptional opportunities that are individually New York. Saturday was just such a day.

After a wine indulgent Friday night we rolled out of bed and caught the F train to the 6 train and headed to the galleries on the Upper East Side. First we went to Gitterman Gallery to see the exhibit of Charles Traub's vintage black and white photographs from the 1970s. Charlie is an amazing photographer who is enjoying a small renaissance of popularity with concurrent New York shows at Gitterman and Daniel Cooney Fine Art. The photos at Gitterman are the very best example of what street photography should be: voyeuristic, immediate, and uncomfortably intimate.

© Charles Traub

We then made are way up the street to Skarstedt Fine Art to see Gregory Crewdson's Fireflies exhibit. The Crewdson photos were taken in 1996 and share the same mystical and mysterious qualities as his large scale cinematic explorations of spaceship suburbia, but with Fireflies there is a romance and humanism that is missing from his later work. Do yourself a favor and see these photos.

Later in the evening we traveled down to Tribeca for Charles Traub's holiday party. The evenings festivities were organized around a toy drive for the Delmont Service Center in Baton Rouge and the The Good Shepherd School in New Orleans. Good people, good booze, and a good cause. How can you go wrong?

The party ended and we made our way to the subway for the long journey back to Jackson Heights for some late night street tacos. It was truly a great day in the greatest city on earth.

Photo of the Week: 4th of July, Old Orchard Beach, ME

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© Amy Stein 2004