Rogério Reis

Rogério Reis  was born in 1954, was educated at the Museum of Modern Art in Rio de Janeiro, among others. He has worked as a photographer since 1977. For the last 17 years he has spent a lot of time documenting , amongst other things, the various facets of the carnival in Rio de Janeiro. The carnival photographs have attracted a huge amount of attention in Brazil and abroad and have resulted in several exhibitions as well as a book titled “Na Lona” (On Canvas).

 

 

 

 

 

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houdinismother

Roger Ballen

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Wisconsin Death Trip

Michael Lesy’s book of the same name was first published in 1973. Lesy discovered a striking archive of black and white photographs in the town of Black River Falls dating from the 1890s, the photogrpaher was Charles Van Schaickand. Lesy married a selection of these images to extracts from the town’s newspaper from the same decade. The effect was enchantingly disturbing. The town of Black River Falls seems gripped by some peculiar malaise and the weekly news is dominated by bizarre tales of madness, eccentricity and violence amongst the local population. Suicide and murder are commonplace. People in the town are haunted by ghosts, possessed by devils and terrorized by teenage outlaws and arsonists. A wonderful tale about the art of documentation.The case has also been turned into a film.

Studio portrait of deceased twin infants in coffins. They are Robert and Janet Fitzpatrick, born July 5, 1885, and died April 20, 1886, children of Robert and Martha Fitzpatrick.

 

A medical student plays with electric shock equipment as Dr. Eugene Krohn, sitting at his desk with his feet up, looks on.

 

Studio portrait of William Tennant, standing with short pants that reveal his prosthetic legs.

 

Studio portrait of William Tennant, a magazine and newspaper agent in Black River Falls, sitting in a chair holding a magazine. His artificial legs are propped on either side of him, the stumps of his legs exposed. Copy beneath the image reads, ""Mr. E. H. Erickson of Minneapolis, Minnesota made me these legs on credit, August 1, 1908. Since then I have made nearly every county in the state, and a good many in Minnesota, selling magazines and newspapers. My credit is good wherever I am known, and my legs have carried me thru a great many counties during the last four years."

houdinsmother

Small Trades, by Irving Penn

Irving Penn started the small trades project in Paris in 1950 while he was working for vogue magazine. In between fashion shoots he found time to capture disappearing occupations. Inspired by the old ways of people whose era was almost over he created an amalgam of portraiture, fashion and documentation. He continued the series the September of the same year in London and later in New York.

 

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houdinismother

Bruce Davidson

 

 

 

 

 

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Maeterlinck’s Premiere

In 1908, Maeterlinck premiered Blue Bird at Constantin Stanislavski‘s Moscow Art Theatre. Little remains but these stunning cartes de visite.

I asked Stanislavsky eagerly for photographs of scenes from “The Blue Bird” or else for the original designs of the scenic artist so that I might have them copied… the photographs, I was told, were not available – except those of the players themselves – for the originals had been made by Fischer, a German, and had been destroyed in the pogrom at the beginning of the war in 1914. And in the difficult times Russia has undergone since then, no others have been made. When I pressed my point and asked about the orignal designs, the firm, square but kindly face of my host carried a passing glance of embarassed modesty and then admitted that there were no designs. He had conceived them himself and had personally directed the artist, V. E. Yevgenoff, in the execution of the settings.

The Russian Theater Under the Revolution by Oliver Sayler,1920

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houdinismother

Jeff Bark

This part of Jeff Bark’s work feels a lot like leafing through a diary of vices next door human beings indulge in.

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dmtls

Claude Cahun

Born Lucy Renee Mathilde Schwob (1894-1954) in Nantes, Cahun was raised primarily by her grandmother as her mother was incapable to take care of hair due to mental problems. She began making self portraits at the age of 18, and continued making those intricate pictures throughout the thirties.

Changing through a set of gender ambiguous names, she settled down to Claude Cahun at around 1919. A year later she settled in Paris, along with her life long partner (and step sister) Suzanne Malherbe, where they continued to work on various art forms including writing, collage and photo-montage.

 

, Mostly remembered for her staged self portraits and surrealist tableaux, Claude Cahun challenged perceptions of sexuality, gender,beauty and realism; an important addition to the Parisian surrealist movement who, unlike her male counterparts, represented the female form ambiguous and diverse rather than as a pure symbol of eroticism. (I don’t mean this to sound like feminist propaganda, I’m just pro diversity)

 

1929

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Robert and Shana Parkeharisson

 

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Christer Strömholm

Fiddling with the strange,the grim or the plainly beautiful, he forces the eye to stare at his pictures just for a little bit longer.

 

 

 

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