Honolulu, 1968. © Kenneth Josephson, courtesy Gitterman Gallery.

An exhibition on view at Gitterman Gallery in New York City through March 16 features rarely seen images by Kenneth Josephson. This early work of Josephson’s was influenced by Aaron Siskind and Harry Callahan and made while he completed his master’s degree at the Institute of Design in Chicago. The exhibition features two continuous themes that have appeared in Josephson’s work since the 1950s: His exploration of abstraction with light, and his dialogue with nature.

Though much of Josephson’s work deals with conceptual ideas, formal concerns are integral to his vision. His early images have a syncopated rhythm of light which is echoed in much of the work he made in the 1960s. It is in his exploration of the abstraction of light in nature that this rhythm becomes almost meditative. In his later work, nature’s palette becomes more subtle and seemingly infinite.

–courtesy Gitterman Gallery

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“Harlem, NY,” 1947. © Henri Cartier-Bresson

Though Henri Cartier-Bresson did not craft his photographic career by honing the advancements made to the medium by the advent of color film (he believed the color film of the 1950s to be too technically and esthetically limiting), other photographers carried the torch in understanding how to capture “the decisive moment” in hues that echo reality. “Cartier-Bresson: A Question of Colour,” on view until Sunday at the Somerset House in London, is a group exhibition that includes the work from photographers such as Ernst Haas, Fred Herzog, Joel Meyerowitz and Alex Webb, who brought Cartier-Bresson’s formal elements of photojournalism to life in vivid color. The exhibition includes ten photographs by Cartier-Bresson never before exhibited in the UK and 75 images from 14 internationally-recognized photographers.

–Lindsay Comstock

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© Christian Marclay, “Silence (The Electric Chair)”

Throughout photography’s history, photographers have strived to document a new perspective on the world around them. But an exhibition on view at the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco explores what gallery owner Jeffrey Fraenkel calls “a parallel history in which photographers and other artists have attempted to describe by photographic means that which is not so readily seen: thought, time, ghosts, god, dreams.” “The Unphotographable,” on view through March 23, features roughly 50 works by photographers from every era and genre who use a variety of techniques to depict the unseen, the hidden or the merely imagined. They include pioneers like Alfred Stieglitz, Clarence John Laughlin, Diane Arbus and Man Ray, contemporary photographers such as Adam Fuss, Idris Khan, Chris McCaw, Jay DeFeo, Wolfgang Tillmans and Paul Graham, and some photographers who worked anonymously. Their images range from the abstract to the spooky. (more…)

© Shadi Ghadirian. From the series Miss Butterfly, 2011.

The Fertile Crescent: Gender, Art and Society (Rutgers University Institute for Women and Art) presents the work of 24 contemporary women artists of Middle East heritage who examine matters of gender, homeland, geopolitics, theology, and the environment through painting, video, photography, sculpture, film, performance art, and multimedia. These artists challenge Western stereotypes of women in the Middle East, while acknowledging existing social and theological restrictions that have caused many of them to leave their homelands. The book presents artists well known in Euro-American countries such as Mona Hatoum, Parastou Forouhar, Shirin Neshat, Sigalit Landau and Shazia Sikander, but also artists whose work is primarily known only in the Middle East.

This volume is edited and with text by Judith K. Brodsky and Ferris Olin, co-directors of Rutgers University Institute for Women and Art with additional essays by Margot Badran, historian of the Middle East and Islamic societies, and a specialist in gender studies; author and curator Kelly Baum, and curator and writer Gilane Tawadros. The authors in this volume address trans-nationalism, the artists’ sense of unease about the world today, and their responses to the political uprisings and events in their countries of origin. The book also addresses the historic and contemporary impact of Middle East culture on black Africa and South Asia. The book is published in conjunction with a fall 2012 multivenue exhibition at Rutgers and Princeton Universities and the Princeton Arts Council/Paul Robeson Center for the Arts, among other locations.
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© Joel Meyerowitz 2012. New York City, Times Square, 1963. Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, NYC.

Here’s a view of New York, taken by Joel Meyerowitz, that we hope will bring some cheer to New Yorkers in the midst of difficult times.  Joel Meyerowitz’s playful street photography from the 1960s is on view at Howard Greenberg Gallery, 50 Years of Photographs. The image New York City, Times Square, 1963, shows a theater cashier,  her face obscured by a round ticket window speaker. The exhibition, in two parts — Part l -1962-1972 on view November 2–December 1, 2012 and and Part ll – 1978-2012 on view December 7, 2012–January 5, 2013 — includes seminal street scenes (both color and black-and-white), intimate images of American life, and landscapes exploring luminous scenes from Cape Cod to Tuscany. The exhibition coincides with the publication of a major book from Phaidon Press.