Weegee

Jumping Tiger (Triptych)

1950

Edward Weston (1886-1958) is one of the most revered and influential pioneers of modern photography in the 20th century. Renowned for his technical prowess and artistic innovation,...

Diane Arbus (1923-1971) is one of the most influential and daring photographers of the 20th century. Arbus is best known for her unique form of documentary portraiture. She explored the uncanny, the marginalized, and the idiosyncratic characters who defied mid-century conformity. Her work has influenced some of the most renowned photographers of our time including Nan Goldin. While her career launched in the fashion world, it was years after quitting commercial photography (circa 1956) that she found her voice as an artist. With camera in hand, she followed her fascination with the eccentric individuals and oddities of New York City. Ultimately rejecting her affluent, sheltered upbringing and the mainstream fashion industry to create her own definitions of beauty. Arbus’ portraits were considered incredibly provocative for their bold representations of sexuality, chaos, and grit. She fully immersed herself within the queer and alternative communities she documented, engaged with a curious balance of mystery and homage. Shot in 1966, "Groom Kissing His Bride" is a prime example of her uncanny ability to capture even the most traditional moments (a wedding) through a lens of surrealism. Love and tension confront each other as the groom kisses the bride with an attacking passion. Her likeness disappears behind his embrace and their newlywed bodies merge together. This work also contains Arbus’ visual trademarks – a black and white palette, a square crop, and a hard flash that flattens the aesthetic wonderland of New York. Today, Arbus' work is celebrated in many major museum collections including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Art Institute of Chicago, National Museum of Modern Art (Tokyo), and Centre Pompidou (Paris). "Groom Kissing his Bride, NYC" USA, 1966 Gelatin-silver print Printed by Neil Selkirk Stamped 'A Diane Arbus photograph...

While many first associate Weegee (aka Arthur Fellig) with New York City crime scenes, perhaps a broader and more consistent theme is that of spectacle and/or urban entertainment. The origins of his nick-name and reputation date back to the 1930s when he became the first New York City press photographer to obtain permission to install a police radio in his car. Following the city's first responders and documenting their duties, Weegee had unprecedented access to New York’s fires, crimes, debaucheries and of course, murders. During the first decade of his career these unflinching urban tragedy or crime images paid Weegee's bills, but as he became more financially independent he was more inspired to pursue photographs on his own agenda. While his oeuvre is vast, Weegee was especially drawn to entertainment: nightlife, circuses, the theatre, showgirls, city thrills, the cinema etc. Some of Weegee's most dynamic and tender (and under-appreciated!) images are related to simply having fun (in a crowd). He was not confined to one neighbourhood or demographic. He captured action, faces and events from Coney Island to the Bowery and Greenwich Village, to Times Square and Harlem. In “A Trip To Mars,” Weegee depicts a multi-generational group crowding around a large telescope...

Weegee (1899-1968) was equally fascinated and inspired by cinema and all of its tangents, from Hollywood movie stars to ordinary civilians going to the movies. While Weegee is typically associated with crime/disaster images, the broad theme of "entertainment" is a major component of his oeuvre. An interesting and provocative sub-genre of his cinema-related work are his images of couples (often heavy-petting) in movie theatres. Recent scholarship has established that many of Weegee's supposed clandestine images were actually staged or arranged with friends or co-operative strangers. Nevertheless, Weegee created these photographs in the dark with an array of clever techniques including infrared film, filtered flashbulb and triangular prism lens. Employed in shots such as this one, the prism lens would allow the artist to “see around corners,” useful at times when his subjects were in compromising locations. These images of kissing couples, Weegee wrote in 1959, were “his best seller, year in and year out.” "Sailor and GIrl at the Movies...

Silver gelatin print, studio stamp (verso), 20cm x 23cm, (45cm x 46cm framed). The photographed behind museum quality, UV and non-reflective glass. A titan of American 20th century photography, Platt Lynes took his first photographs as a young artist living in New York and Paris in the 1920s. He maintained an interest in the male figure throughout his career and was part of a close-knit group of artists, including Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French...

NYC 1939 World's Fair 5 - 8 x 10 photographs Mid 20th Century WPA Architectural Underwood and Underwood 1939 World’s Fair Photographs 8 x 10 inches each All five prints are stamped...

"Natalia Makarova " is an gelatin print , silver bromide, numbered and signed photograph offered to " serge Lifar " by Max Waldman . Artist proof . Ser...

New York #121 Silver Gelatin print, 1980 Signed in ink below the image (see photo) Annotated verso in pencil: "New York #121 ©, New York, 1980" (see photo) Provenance: Reader's Digest Association Collection #23214 (label) Condition: Excellent Image size: 12-5/8 x 18-3/4" (32 x 47.6 cm.) Mat size: 19-1/2 x 25-1/2" Photographs by Fielding are in the collections of: Museum of Modern Art Brooklyn Museum International Center of Photography (New York) Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago) Art Institute of Chicago Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) Center for Creative Photography (Tucson) Fielding was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He attended the Rhode Island School of Design, where he studied with photographers Aaron Siskind and Harry Callahan; he received his BFA in 1975. He received his MFA in 1980 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where he studied with photographer Kenneth Josephson. He has photographed in such countries as Italy, Peru, Spain, Greece, Egypt, Mexico, Portugal and the United States. His work has particularly concentrated on the Italian cities of Rome and Naples, as well as Mexico City. Of Fielding's City of Secrets, critic Vince Aletti wrote: [Naples'] citizens, from wiseass kids in diapers to weathered old men, loom into the frame like characters out of Fellini, bursting with antic, earthy energy. Fielding confronts and embraces his subjects, building up a portrait of a place that's as visceral as it is cinematic--a true theatre of the streets. Photography curator and collector W. M. Hunt wrote about the book: Jed Fielding is from the old school: a photographer with vision and technique. I've been to Naples twice in my lifetime; once by ship, and, even more lastingly, through Jed Fielding's astonishing images. At the time of a 2009 New York City exhibition of Fielding's photographs from Look at me, a New Yorker review[who?] said: Fielding's photographs of the blind children he met at schools in Mexico City are not in the tradition of photojournalistic muckraking. Like his terrific earlier series from the streets of Naples, these images are vivacious, audacious, and in your face. His subjects are not pitiable victims; they're rambunctious, apparently happy kids at play, responding to Fielding's attention with curiosity and delight. They may be cut off from the visual world, but they relish physical contact, both with one another and with the patient photographer. The best of the work was made at close range, where that connection was most tangible, and young faces fill the frames with fragile, vivid life. He has had solo exhibitions at venues including the Andrea Meislin Gallery...