Larry Fink

2011-10-18T11:49:00.001-07:00

Larry Fink: Attraction and Desire – 50 Years in Photography

Limited Edition Catalogue with Print:
Includes signed, 11 x 14 inch inkjet print:
Martha, Lola, Max and the House, 2008 (unframed)
and portfolio box with colophon
Edition of 25, printed on Museo silver rag paper
$1,500

Signed Deluxe Edition:
includes special 8 x 10 signed laid-in image and dedication. 9 x 12 inches, 190 pages. $115.00

Regular edition, signed:
$70.00

Total Edition Size: 200
To order go to: http://www.thesheldon.org/pdf/finkorderform.pdf

Olivia Lahs-Gonzales, Director
The Sheldon Art Galleries
3648 Washington Boulevard
St. Louis, MO 63108
314.533.9900 x31
www.thesheldon.org/galleries.asp
Gallery Hours: Tuesdays, 12-8; Wed-Fri, 12-5; Sat 10-2

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Vanities Opening at Schmidt Dean

2011-10-11T09:54:00.000-07:00

Please join us for the opening reception!!

Larry Fink's Interview with Blurb Books

2011-06-24T09:25:00.000-07:00

Larry is a judge for Blurb's Photography Book Now 2011, which is an International Juried Competition.

http://photographybooknow.blurb.com/

An interview with Larry is featured on Blurb's Blurberati blog where he discusses book projects

http://blog.blurb.com/index.php/2011/06/08/interview-with-pbn-juror-larry-fink/

Check it out, and do not forget to submit your own work to the competition!

LARRY FINK IN BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

2011-05-25T07:05:00.001-07:00

Larry is currently in Brussels with his show Beautiful People at the Box Galerie. He is showing work from The Vanities, Social Graces, and much more. Larry will be present in the gallery on May 26, from 6-9 pm and May 28, from, 2-6 pm. If you happen to be in Belgium or even Europe, anytime between now and July 2, do yourself a favor and stop by!

Box Galerie

88 rue du mail, 1050 Brussels

+32 02 537 95 55

info@boxgalerie.be

www.boxgalerie.be

Interviews with Larry Fink

2011-05-11T06:49:00.000-07:00

Larry, March 1962

Larry on his role as a photographer @ The Sheldon Art Galleries

Retrospective discussion @ The Sheldon Art Galleries

Larry on how music influences his photography @ The Sheldon Art Galleries

Larry on why he chose photography @ The Sheldon Art Galleries

Larry @ Contact Festival in Toronto

2011-05-05T09:30:00.000-07:00

Larry will be in Toronto from May 4-7 for the Contact Festival. His series "The Beatniks" is showing and he will also be giving a speech tonight at 7pm. Please stop by and check it out.

5 Brock Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Visons of 66'

2011-04-22T09:41:00.000-07:00

Larry in a head shop in the East Village, NYC, 1966

Article in Nomad Editions... Wide Screen

2011-03-21T08:22:00.001-07:00

Larry has a portfolio out this week with Nomad Editions. The link is below, do yourself a favor and check it out.

https://nomadeditions.com/wide-screen/2011-03-09/all-is-vanity.html

Larry Fink: Attraction and Desire

2011-02-22T14:52:00.001-08:00

My life in Politics

2011-02-11T11:29:00.001-08:00

Finally at long last we are blasting off into blogging once again…. As promised my life amongst politics and we shall include bankers… these picture are certainly not comprehensive and do not address the dark dread I have for the reality that exists in the world culture.. that reality is that these men, and sometimes women are seen as the leaders of the world and in fact since they own most everything or if not own, appropriate it…. These are the heros of advanced capitalism.. heros with very little moral guidance and less heart for others troubles.. they peddle fiscal abstraction to the demise of souls and bodies… by being as depersonalized as could ever be they have to freedom to wreck ruin over the majority of people on earth.. and the ruins will be forthcoming….. Where are the hero’s.. the visionaries.. the profound thoughts for unity… unfortunately they are floating without impact or mooring within the void created by bean counting imperialism and power…. Alaas..

Enjoy the images fight for a more diverse world… thanks

Black Rock Offices, 9/2010

Pete Buterokus, 4/1990

Tom Donahue, 12/2009

Senator Bernie Sanders, 12/2006

Mike Allen, 4/2010

Bill Braton, 3/2010

Jamie Dimon, 2/2006

Ed Rollins, 7/2006

Brooklyn, 9/1987

Cleveland Clinic, 10/2005

John Corzine, 4/2010

Hilary Clinton, 5/2008

Herbert Allan, 8/2001

Joe Lieberman, 8/2008

Mayor Bloomberg, 11/2007

Mayor Rudy Giuliani, 9/1997

Democratic Convention 7/1988

Easton Project Police Chief, 10/1985

Merrill Lynch, 4/1985

Ralph Reed, 9/1994

Right Wing Christian Coalition, 9/1997

Joe Lieberman, 8/2008

Arlene Violet, 3/1987

Bear Sterns, 4/1991

Bill Bratton, 3/2010

Cleveland Clinic, 10/2005

Stewart Levy, 10/2008

Wall Street, 4/1991

Jacob Welch, 3/2005

Ed Rollins

Pete Buterokus, 4/1990

Mike Allen, 4/2010

Senator Bernie Sanders, 2/2006

Wall Street, 3/1994

Coffee Exchange

Soloman, 4/1991

Wall Street, 3/1988

a wedding between pictures and the past

2011-02-10T11:58:00.001-08:00

Larry Fink: Hollywood 2000-2009 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

2011-02-08T07:50:00.000-08:00

Larry Fink: The Vanities @ Fahey/Klein Gallery

2011-02-03T09:37:00.000-08:00

2011

2011-01-20T07:19:00.000-08:00

2011 is turning out to be quite the year for Larry. Not only does he have 4 shows coming up within the next 2 months, he also has a booked entitled, "The Vanities" being published by Schirmer/Mosel.

Below is some information to keep you posted on Larry's movements in the upcoming months.

Larry Fink: Hollywood, 2000-2009

The Vanities

The Vanities at Fahey/Klein Gallery

If you are in the Los Angeles, St. Louis, or Lehigh Valley areas in the upcoming months, please stop by one of Larry's shows to see this great work in person.

Black Mask: 1967

2010-08-11T13:16:00.000-07:00

Good morning. Funny things happen when you get out of bed and you go to your computer. Questions come along, facts and fantasies, information and energy of all kinds. A request came in the other day from a professor of Art History at Columbia University, asking if I had photographed a protest group called Black Mask on their way to Wall St in the winter of 1967. It turns out that I had. Their emblem for the march was “Wall St is War St.” So while we have no protests moving towards Wall St in this day and age, I think that this Dadaistic manifestation of protest makes as much sense in the summer of 2010 as it did in the winter of 1967.

Enjoy the pictures.
Honor the sentiment.

-Larry Fink

“My Life Within Politics” soon to come.

Over the Weekend Many Things Can Happen

2010-07-26T11:33:00.000-07:00

Visit to the Gastro Dr.

Blood work

Surprise visit

Landscape

Sunset with harmonica

Monsters in your I.V. sack

Frank Gehry in a Kleenex box; not to mention a sperm whale.

White on white and a touch of blue

Back home

Max the dog

Give & take

Gas station fill up

Who would ever know what lurks in the eye of the sky, goodbye.

I love my point and shoot.
Thanks Canon G10.
-Larry

Soon to come "My Life With Politicians."

Welcome to the Family

2010-06-29T10:15:00.001-07:00

Bernard (Larry's Father), 1960.

Sylvia (Larry's Mother), 1966.

Thanksgiving with Joan Snyder's Family, 1972.

On BomBom's Death Bed.

Papa responding to BomBom's demise, 1966.

Sylvia & Stepfather Irving, 1983.

Maggie Kuehn & Sylvia Kleinman, 1991.

The Unspoken Word Within Me

2010-06-14T11:39:00.000-07:00

Enamored: An exhibition about women featuring Larry’s work at the Museum of Modern Art Carlos Merida in Guatemala City.

When Adriana Teressa, publisher of Visura Magazine, approached us about making an edit of Larry’s work for a show about women the task seemed daunting. How does one shave down fifty years of work into fourteen images? What exactly about women was she looking for, the independent woman who shows her prowess in the work force, the femme fetal from cinema, or something more innate and unsaid within women? When Adriana sent over this statement the images that needed to be in the show stood out clearly:

“Enamored is about the unspoken word in a woman, the force within which ties our strength with our passion, intelligence with our body and healing power with belief; that which makes us conquerors and fearless without always having to retaliate. On the contrary, many times a strength, that is revealed in our silence.

I want to address that force that connects me with woman all over the world, transcending social, cultural and economical barriers. The feminine within. The force within. One that crucifies and crowns. Through images, let this intangible thing become tangible for an instant. Maybe this may inspire change.”

–Adriana Teressa

2/2009

1960

9/2008

4/2010

1/1990

5/1999

7/1988

9/2003

5/2008

1960

11/1988

6/1977

7/2008

-Written by Dani Bogenhagen & Sasha Phyars-Burgess. Edited by Bill Lowenburg

Response:

2010-06-14T11:01:00.000-07:00

Larry, you are so right on with your writing about film vs digital,

that lag thing is a missed heart beat!

-Best Jeff Mermelstein

Bathing with Primal Intensions: Martha's Vineyard 1985

2010-06-04T10:14:00.000-07:00

Film vs. Digital

2010-05-26T08:56:00.000-07:00

These images are four well known examples of my work which serve as a preamble to a group of concerns regarding the differences between digital and film.

The primary difference for me is this- with film there is one brain which is being stimulated by factors which concern empathy, structure and on the deepest level the revelations of chance. The film camera is the instantaneous servant of the extemporaneous impulse. So often with digital, which brings another electric brain into play, there is a incremental time lag which is the difference between a miracle and a well crafted observation.

To be continued...

The Work of Martha Posner

2010-05-18T12:13:00.000-07:00

During the course of our relationship- I have been drawn to and inspired by my wife Martha Posner's sculpture and mixed media work. The impact her work has on its viewer is dominated by an ongoing battle to capture the visceral; its theater of transformation and its life-force full of dread and emotive courage. What is ongoing is Martha's magnified impulses and the way she has mastered so many aspects of form and texture to extend the life of these works beyond the present while informing the present. Nevertheless, the act of photographing Martha's work is as if I was making love with the mysteries of her soul...

Martha's Work is being shown at Dalet Art Gallery in Philadelphia until June 6th, 2010 and at Heidi Cho Gallery in Chelsea NYC fro May 27th - June 27th, 2010.

To see more of Martha's work check out her website.

Back by Popular Demand!

2010-04-29T07:54:00.001-07:00

Lizzie Grubman's Wedding, 10/1995

New York Times Magazine feature on Mike Allen

2010-04-26T10:30:00.001-07:00

Larry shot images of Mike Allen for The New York Times Magazine's April 25th issue. To see more check out this link:

The New York Times Magazine Online

Stranger in a Strange Land

2010-04-23T18:40:00.000-07:00

Surrealism attempts to bring the illogic of the dream to the waking world. In this attempt the traditional association of absurdity with our sleeping-lives is broken. Absurdity floods the ‘real’ world.

Cutting through cultural contexts, absurdity is the closest thing we have to a universal truth. When the context of the everyday, the social world, breaks down, breaks out of itself, each situation, no matter how different or mundane, is revealed to contain the germ of a singular truth. This truth recognizes reality as it has been shaped by the social world and the depths of that reality beyond the limitations of convention.

Everything is suspect, nothing is safe. We are entering a realm past morality, past history; a realm in which the seeming totalities of morality and history are but facets of a much larger picture. The best that can be done is to try and see it as it flits past. Colors and lines and form; in a word, composition. Photography.

Because the instant is the context, photography can access the absurd. In a flash, the form of the world is revealed. The photographer plays the crucial role in this drunken dance. The whole fabric of fate and karma which has determined the course of their lives, including the minutiae of where they stand and how high they hold their camera, all combine to create the moment of the click, the millisecond in which chance and choice lock, merging beyond recognition.

-M.C. Newton & Dani Bogenhagen

Tuscany, Italy, 7/93

Europe, 5/86

Europe, 7/87

France, 7/88

France, 7/89

Italy, 7/90

Portugal, 7/96

Italy, 8/94

Planning a Workshop with Larry

2010-04-16T12:32:00.000-07:00

Larry would like to hold a photography workshop on his farm in Martins Creek PA. There are no set dates as of yet, but if you contact us at lfink@ptd.net we will coordinate a date that works with everyone’s summer schedule. The workshop will be one weekend and will consist of portfolio critiques and general fun.

Bring your portfolio, bring a camera, and some sunscreen!

Pricing for the weekend workshop is $435. This includes one sumptuous home cooked diner at the farm and snacks throughout. This price does not include accommodations. Dates and accommodations will be hammered out later.

Polaroids

2010-04-12T11:37:00.000-07:00

We found a box of Polaroids in the darkroom. Larry took them nearly 30 years ago. Through their curious magic, we became nostalgic about the content, which we had never actually encountered. When asked about the pictures, all Larry had to say was that Polaroid had long ago given him a free camera and tons of film, and that he had a lot of fun with it.

Polaroid has recently experienced a large resurgence in popularity. We spoke with three fiercely emerging photographers, Mike Brodie, Ying Ang and Annalisa Gonnella, who are working on projects involving Polaroid. Using their impressions of and feelings about the medium, we attempt to explore the nature and popularity of the Polaroid.

Photo ©Mike Brodie

Everyone agrees that Polaroid's recovery is tied to two factors. One is a general desire in the culture for products, which have the mark of the old, of time. "People really like clinging on to old stuff" (Mike Brodie). The second was the decision by PLR IP Holdings, LLC., Polaroid's parents company, to begin producing the film again. This decision placed Polaroid in a position to profit from the ongoing debate in the photographic world between analog and digital technology.

Perhaps Polaroid's greatest strength is its familiarity, an analog landmark in an increasingly digital market. The company is one of the most famous camera brands in the world. Moreover, the form of the photographs, the square and the color as well as the speed with which they develop, combine to create a photographic experience familiar to almost anyone.

This photographic experience is rooted in a very specific materiality. The Polaroid is an object of satisfying immediacy. Within minutes, the subject is captured and developed into a hard copy, a tangible artifact. We see an image emerge from chemicals, mimicking the darkroom; a magic act that proves to us that time exists, placing the Polaroid instantly into the category of memory. These artifacts are fun and as they accrue, stuffed into shoe boxes, they develop into powerful, disjointed, narrative sequences. "They stack up like playing cards, and you shuffle through them and look back on photos you took" (Brodie).

Photo ©Mike Brodie

The structural limitations of the Polaroid, the square format and lack of zoom, create formal parameters, which challenge and stimulate photographers. "With the Polaroid, I get much closer and shoot in a more subjective, intimate way... I've realized that the square format forces me to truncate my subjects in unusual ways to compose a dynamic frame, or at least an unexpected one" (Ying Ang).

Photo ©Ying Ang

In addition to forcing angles and compositions photographers would normally not employ, the Polaroid's lack of focus creates an inherent element of chance. "To me, this means the possibility to be free in a kind of vision whereby the image must take care of itself" (Annalisa Gonnella).

Photo ©Annalisa Gonnella

Another familiar and important aspect of Polaroid's is their color palette. "Muted palettes, creams, burgundies and jade green- what's not to like" (Ying Ang)? The color combines with soft focus to create images existing in the suspended time of a dream. The everyday appears to us as if from a great distance. Through "this faded, dull tone, you are instantly presented with the reverse of your vision, that is, with a memory" (Annalisa Gonnella).

All things considered, Polaroid's aesthetic features have cracked the code for producing a sense of remembrance and nostalgia. In a world where technology has compounded and destabilized the categories of identity and memory, PLR IP Holdings, LLC., is betting that people will continue to respond to Polaroid as a means of creating connections to their own lives.

-M.C. Newton & Dani Bogenhagen

Photo ©Ying Ang

To see more work by the interviewed artists check out the following links:

Ying Ang
Mike Brodie

If you're interested in seeing more work by other photographers who work with Polaroids check out the work of Lucas Samaras and Les Krims.

To see more of Larry's Polaroids check out our blog post "Contents of a Box."

Contents of a Box

2010-04-12T09:37:00.001-07:00

Civil Rights Coda

2010-04-05T10:46:00.000-07:00

“I claim my birthright! A lone man talking to myself, no house in the brown vastness to hear

imagining the throng of Selves

that makes this nation one body of Prophecy.”

-Allen Ginsburg, Wichita Vortex Sutra

"A politics of solidarity…must inevitably run up against the hard facts of political economy…As we’ve seen, black America isn’t just as fissured as white America; it is more so…As economic differences increase, the need to maintain the appearance of cultural and ideological conformity also increases. But it is these fake masks of conformity that disguise how very vast black class differentials really are…Black America needs a politics whose first mission isn’t the reinforcement of the idea of black America; and a discourse of race that isn’t centrally concerned with preserving the idea of race and racial unanimity. We need something we don’t yet have: a way of speaking about black poverty that doesn’t falsify the reality of black advancement, a way of speaking about black advancement that doesn’t distort the enduring realities of black poverty. "

- Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Parable of the Talents from The Future of the Race.

Larry took the image of Obama parting the crowd on the 2008 campaign trail. This picture fulfills Allen Ginburg's quote. Raised from a long lineage of civil rights activists, Obama is speaking a language of hope. During his campaign, he transformed into an icon for America to reach towards or reject.

He is forcefully parting the crowd to offer us a path to follow, a path that affirms change.

-M.C Newton & Dani Bogenhagen

Part III

2010-03-25T12:29:00.001-07:00

Aesthetics / Sociology

***

“Nonstop imagery (television, streaming video, movies) is our surround, but when it comes to remembering, the photograph has a deeper bite. Memory freeze-frames; its basic unit is the single image. In an era of information overload, the photograph provides a quick way of apprehending something and a compact form for memorizing it. The photograph is like a quotation, or a maxim or proverb. Each of us mentally stocks hundreds of photographs, subject to instant recall.”

-Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others, pg. 22

“All of Harlem is pervaded by a sense of cognition, rather like the insistent, maddening, claustrophobic pounding in the skull that comes from trying to breathe in a very small room with all the windows shut. Yet the white man walking through Harlem is not at all likely to find it sinister or more wretched than any other slum.”

-James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son, Pg.47

***

Normalcy is a public mask, a necessity, a means of navigating the often perverse conditions of social life. It covers over the tragic and obvious truth implied by James Baldwin in his quote, that social inequality has produced a reality in which one event, say a walk through Harlem, is experienced in two different forms, which are dependent on ethnicity.

Acknowledging racially coded experience as a social reality leads to the question of the degree to which art/photography is able to present social truth? To what degree is the creator of such art able to act as a transmitter of truths beyond their immediate experience and social consciousness?

The sense of narrative created by a sequence of photographs is only the beginning of the story. We must remember that the lives and memories of the photographed subjects did not freeze in the frame. We must be willing to consider outcomes we can never truly know. Beyond art, the life of the subject pulses as deeply as our own.

-M.C. Newton & Dani Bogenhagen

Malcolm X

Part II

2010-03-23T10:08:00.000-07:00

"I tremble for my country."

-Thomas Jefferson

***

"America became a country that was a nation because it had made a covenant with itself...The promises...were so great that their betrayal was part of the promise. The betrayal of that ideal became the national drama, the engine of American history—the discovery that the promises one had been made were false, the attempt to make them true, battles over slavery and suffrage, property and speech, for all time. As it was inevitable that the promises the nation had made would be betrayed, it was inevitable that America would produce prophetic figures of its own."

-Greil Marcus, The Shape of Things to Come, pg. 11

***

The contradiction embodied in the contrast between promise and betrayal is the true reality of the American Dream. The goal of the American national narrative is to render this contradiction unproblematic. Harnessed as a tool by the power structure, the national narrative is used to enforce standards of conduct and patterns of behavior beneficial to the status quo. However, the national narrative can never be totally controlled by any one party or group of individuals. Ultimately, it is a mirror, which shows the true conditions of the country. The reflection of race reveals a deep gulf between the reality of American life and the rhetoric of the American Dream.

We see here faces of intolerance and struggle. Despite their difference both are grounded in some form of vision of an ideal America. The meeting of these two forces produces an uneasy mixture, a beginning born in violence, where the stakes are the form of the Dream and the question of who will have the ability to add their voice to it.

-M.C. Newton & Dani Bogenhagen

Coretta Scott King

Part I

2010-03-18T14:02:00.000-07:00

R i g h t s

Essentially a portraiture study, this post is the first in a three part series profiling Larry’s documentation of Civil Rights and Racism in America.

The face is the subject of these photographs. Through them we are allowed entrance into stories of progress and it's abrupt limits. The sum total of all these studies is the creation of the larger character of America; an America both integrated and segregated, in which equality is the law if not the spirit of the country. The characters of these photographs live within this reality. Their faces are the mark of their reaction to it. We see tiredness and sorrow. We see innocence and creativity. The mystery of possibility emerges; intangible hope drawn from the depth of the soul. It is bitter, long in coming and brutalized on arrival.

The mystery of hope, and the reality of society where hope merges with oppression, are given voice through faces which themselves remain silent. Though their expressions betray some measure of the truth of experience, the real story, the whole truth, cannot be known. Personal subjectivity, ideological interpretation, unwillingness to tell, and an unwillingness to look, mark some of the reasons why these stories, which are out in the open remain untold. The face tells us what we cannot know, do not want to know.

-M.C. Newton & Dani Bogenhagen

2010-03-15T12:18:00.000-07:00

S p r i n g

Human clocks are set forward,
wild grasses push through the crust.
Rain washes winter's debris
and every day is an enterprise with potential rapture.
Turbulence shows its muscle and improbability invades the process.
Violent up turnings of temperament.

After all good things are always won from bad.

These pictures are an offering to the next seasons thrust and logic, incrementally they ease the grist of frozen days and call out unabashedly for the sun...

-Larry

Fink Farm, 1975

Fink Farm, 2006

Fink Farm, 2005

Fink Farm, 2006

Fink Farm, 1985

Martins Creek, 2007

2010-03-11T13:06:00.000-08:00

B i r t h

Larry would like to celebrate his Birthday with you by sharing a few images.

5/1992

1979

2010-03-10T07:39:00.000-08:00

D E A T H

Death is silent. The body, sodden, is swept up in decompositions quiet process.

This renders deaths grave message as part of the organic nature of all physical things but doesn't take into consideration memory, which is based on life's movement. Life has a miraculous power to transform the everyday into tides of spiritual intelligence. The soul lives on within the memory of the living. Memories do not decompose, they transform within time and the spirit floating through interpretative cognition. Memory is held for as long as those living are allowed to live. In each aftermath we have more and more souls to care for.

Eternity is never cheap.

-Larry

France, 7/1988

Sylvia and Norman, 9/1997

Portugal, 6/1991

France, 7/1988

1/2010

2010-03-07T16:55:00.000-08:00

R E L I G I O N

These eight images were taken abroad, over a large span of time.

Religion is a construct, a metaphor for making sense of and orienting to the world. It is a story, and it also plays out in our lives. As such, religion is simultaneously spiritual and physical. The images religion produces are but descriptions of an intangible. Yet, the bodily presence can become even grotesque; the statue spewing vomit, a memory that intrudes.

We are in a cathedral kneeling with mother at the pew. With this action of kneeling, we enter into the process of generations, we can not ever fully understand. When an image recurs in this manner our instinct is to speak about it, but we are never able to fully describe it, and our speech becomes tangled.

The two most satirical pictures in this series, 'one way' and the umbrella-refraction-before-cathedral, puncture the solemnity of the religious feeling. We stumble on humor in the unexpected place.

The constant contrasting of religion's contexts of pure-innocence and guilt causes the conversation to slip, into an unnameable other real, an existence which cannot be named.

And the photographer throws up a mirror, creating refraction.
An echo, hall of mirrors, Borges infinite Library.

-M.N.

Rome, 1967.

Portugal, 1991.

Unknown.

Rome, 1966.

Mexico, 1963.

Florence, 2007.

Portugal, 1991.

Rome, 1966.

Portugal.

Portugal, 1991.

ANDY WARHOL

2010-03-05T11:27:00.001-08:00

These are some recently rediscovered images taken while Larry lived in New York in the mid 60s.

Andy Warhol, taken 1964-67

Left to Right: Gerard Malanga
Ingrid Superstar
Andy Warhol

Front to Back: Ingrid Superstar,
Gerard Malanga,
Andy Warhol

Left to Right: Andy Warhol, Ingrid Superstar

Front to Back: Gerard Malanga, Ingrid Superstar, Andy Warhol

Left to Right: Lou Reed, Andy Warhol, Ingird Superstar

Left to Right: Gerard Malanga
Ingrid Superstar, Andy Warhol

Left to Right: Gerard Malanga, International Velvet

Left to Right: Gerard Malanga, Andy Warhol

FUN FILES

2010-03-05T07:57:00.000-08:00

Hello-

Just a contemporary inclusion thanks to digital. Two images from the Armory Show in NYC this week and two abstracts. From the never world of forever.

-Larry

Armory Show, 3/3/10

Armory Show, 3/3/10

Help needed to find title for Larry's new book project

2010-03-02T10:44:00.000-08:00

CELEBRITIES

Proposed cover image: Oscars 2002

Larry is currently working on a book comprised of selections from over 10 years of images documenting celebrities. The publisher will be the historically important Schirmer/Mosel.

Originally conceived of as a book solely about the Oscars, the project has branched out to cover celebrities in general.

Larry is known for his sociological exposes of wealth and power (Social Graces).

This new project is of a similar vein. The key difference is that it points to the fact that being wealthy is not the same as being a celebrity. Social Graces portrays an anonymous world of wealth. The figures are unknown to us and therefore easier to criticize, a more abstract representation of class. The figures in Social Graces (the wealthy not the poor) coalesce into a mass; whereas the figures of this new project remain individuals by virtue of their notoriety.

This factor of recognition is perhaps the most important part of the new book. When people look through it they are likely to say, 'hey, I know that person.' Celebrities are familiar to us, we like them, we hate them, we have opinions of their lives and actions about which we might know more than our own neighbors. This recognition complicates the photographs critique of wealth by drawing attention to own participation and complicity with the social systems which have produced such celebrated people.

The funny thing about all this is that Larry often does not even know which star is which. The pictures are picked for their structure and how they impact a certain inner-energy, which is discovered by the instantaneous transference of searching for fire in a darkened room, not the celebrity.

As the book is still untitled, we are announcing an informal blog competition -a "blog-etition" as Larry likes to call it- soliciting your suggestions for what to name the book.

Here is a sneak preview:

Kate Winslet, Oscars 2009

Donatella Versace

David Duchovny, 3/97

Elton John & David Furnish, Oscars 2009

Mitch Glazer & Kelly Lynch, Oscars 2009

The Beats

2010-02-28T18:49:00.000-08:00

"Photographing the stylized gestures of two young men in a park, Fink is already anticipating his later interest in the way bodies in three dimensions relate graphically in the flattened space of the photograph. In the years to come, Fink would continue to deepen his feeling for the expressive content (here, the serio-comic, self-assured posturing of young hipsters) while also strengthening the visual impact of the full photographic frame, in particular by learning how to avoid dead space and activating the corners of the picture." -Laurie Dahlberg, "Larry Fink"

One of Larry's earliest and until recently unpublished series about the Beatniks can be seen at the Armory Show in New York City this August 3rd. They will be shown by James Fuentes Gallery.

See the following links:

http://www.thearmoryshow.com/cgi-local/content.cgi

http://www.jamesfuentes.com/exhib_frameset.html

This series was Visura magazines main focus last month and a good starting point for the blog, as it was one of Larry's first serious and extensive photography projects.

To read Larry's words about this series and take a deeper look at the images in the project, check out Visura Magazine

http://www.visuramagazine.com/vm/the-beats-larry-fink

From the Studio to You

2010-02-28T18:34:00.000-08:00

Hello Everyone!

Old dogs sometimes can learn new tricks. Larry Fink, that bastion of the photography world is being re-born on the web.
This blog has been created in order to provide information about what Larry is currently working on. It will also bring to light images, many previously unseen, that have been pulled from his archives. These images, dating back to the 1950's, are intended to provide new perspectives on the history of the country and photography, and the place of Larry's work within that history.

-Brought to you by Larry and his super-studio team(Dani Bogenhagen & Michael Newton).