© Emmet and Edith Gowin. Courtesy Etherton Gallery

Emmet Gowin’s “Nancy and Dwayne, Danville, Virginia,” 1970, seems at first like the camera’s casual glance at an intimate family scene: Gowin’s niece and nephew, Nancy and Dwayne, rolling around in the grass on a warm summer day. But the shutter remains open just long enough that the image begins to make the viewer feel a little uncomfortable, with memories of what it was like to roll around in the grass half-naked, appearing afterwards at the kitchen door, more grass stain than child. –Courtesy of Etherton Gallery

Etherton Gallery is one of 75 galleries showcasing photography during the AIPAD Photography Show New York from March 29 – April 1.

All photos © Stan Douglas. Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York. Above: Capoeira, 1974, 2012.

Fine art photographer Stan Douglas assumes the character of a fictitious photojournalist for his latest body of work, called Disco Angola, now on display at the David Zwirner gallery.  The exhibition presents eight works from the project, which explores the transformative foreign influences of New York City’s 1970s disco culture and the liberation in 1975 of Angola from Portuguese rule. Researching archival photographs, period costumes, and decor, Douglas meticulously recreated historical moments from the two locations that tie them together, and in the process, he probes questions about the veracity of photojournalism and the “decisive moment”.  This year Douglas will receive the ICP Infinity Award for Art.

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All photos © Jordan Matter. Above: Summer in Harlem.

To create this body of work, Jordan Matter traveled the US photographing top professional dancers in everyday situations. Most of the locations and poses are discovered through a spontaneous collaboration with the dancers. Matter relies heavily on serendipity. He chooses a general area to meet, and asks the dancers to bring several clothing options. They walk around until something catches his eye and then improvise a scenario together. This project, titled “Dancers Among Us”, has been viewed tens of millions of times online, and featured in newspapers, blogs, magazines and television segments around the world. The book will be released nationally by Workman Publishing in the fall of 2012. See the full gallery, along with behind-the-scenes videos and press coverage here.

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© Lauren Hermele

The image above is part of Lauren Hermele’s series, “On Different Ground”. It was taken on ‘The Cobble’ overlooking Mettawee Valley in Pawlet, Vermont. Hermele says, ” When I got up there I thought, what a great classroom! It was spring after a long winter, and I remember sitting at the desk for a long time after I made the photo. The inside of the desk was full of pine needles and leaves.”

“On Different Ground” follows a family’s transition from New York city, post 9-11, to Pawlet,Vermont. Hermele describes how this series “deals with the idea of home and a sense of being in the right place,” concepts that are hard to define, let alone convey visually. “Over the years, as both this project and this family’s life have  evolved, these photos continue to move beyond the boundaries of their initial post-9-11 framework onto contemplating a transplanted life and the idea of home in rural America,” says Hermele, who was recently named one of PDN’s 30: New and Emerging Photographers to Watch.

© Sophia Wallace. Above: DeVohn’s Beauty Shot

The following images are from Sophia Wallace‘s portrait series about the contemporary dandy. Wallace took grand prize in the Portraiture/Nudes category of the 2011 PDN Curator Awards. The deadline for the 2012 Curator Awards is 3/26/12 at midnight, PST.

Wallace explains how the dandy is conventionally defined as a “strikingly attractive man whose dress is immaculate and manor is dignified‹has been around since the late eighteenth century. Often misunderstood as superficial, the dandy is rather a space of creative possibility where men and women can perform a persona in ways that reach far beyond the narrow binary constructs of masculine and feminine. Indeed artists like Oscar Wilde, Charles Baudelaire, H.H Monro and less recognized women such as the American painter Romaine Brookes and her cohorts found Dandyism to be a liberatory space not only for appearance but more importantly, for a life of independence that did not necessarily adhere to a deterministic heterosexual model of marriage and children. Examples of modern dandies include Andy Warhol, Quentin Crisp, Grace Jones, Tilda Swinton and Janelle Monae. My many years focusing on gender, race and constructions of beauty led me to dandyism as a radical position for art making and social critique. Indeed, dandyism’s subversive aesthetic of beauty disrupts normative gender in fascinating ways. Beauty is defined in almost all contexts as the domain of femininity which is commonly understood as frivolous, weak and passive. The dandy is neither traditionally feminine or masculine. Rather, the dandy is an aestheticized androgyny available to men, women and transgender individuals. Herein lies its power and its danger.”

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