PHOTOAUTOMAT

Tim Hetherington. (5 December 1970 – 20 April 2011).

British-American photojournalist, filmmaker. 

If you've been following this past two week's Photoautomat you've probably already have a clear idea of Tim Hetherington's stand of war photography; about his urge to look further and add humanity and that day-to-day feeling to conflict. Maybe becuase that is exactly what conflict take away from us... it takes away our humanity and it takes away the sense, the possibility of doing anything aside from being in conflict.

Third Part.

Inner Light: Portraits of the Blind, Sierra Leone 1999- 2003

The civil war in Sierra Leone left many people with serious medical conditions. In 2004, Hetherington wrote that in addition to amputations, “the fighters of the Revolutionary Front (RUF) also terrorized people by cutting their eyes out. Others lost their eyes to shrapnel or as a result of being caught up in combat. Many simply lost their eyesight because they did not have access to a doctor and therefore a simple medical condition developed and went untreated.”

Born in 1970 in Liverpool, Tim Hetherington graduated from Oxford University and later studied at Cardiff University. A contributing photographer at Vanity Fair, Tim received numerous awards including a Fellowship from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (2000 – 2004), a Hasselblad Foundation Grant (2002), the 2007 World Press Photo of the Year, the Rory Peck Award for Features (2008), an Alfred I. DuPont Columbia Award (2009), as well as an Academy Award nomination and the Leadership in Entertainment Award by Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America for the film Restrepo(2011). Hetherington’s photographs are held in several museum collections, including Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO. After his death, the largest town square in Ajdabiya, Libya was renamed Tim Hetherington Square by anti-Qaddafi rebels.

Hetherington and fellow photographer Chris Hondros were killed while covering the conflict in Misrata, Libya on April 20, 2011.

This is the lik to his Trust: http://www.timhetheringtontrust.org/

An interesting arcticle in American Photo Magazine. Another one in The Guardian.

Trailer for documentary: "Which way is the front line from here?"

Trailer for "Restrepo".

Have a look at the previous posts on Hetherington here: Part I and Part II

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The PhotoAutomat section is edited by the Brooklyn-based photographer Andreína Restrepo.  

 

PHOTOAUTOMAT

Buno, Korengal Valley, Kunar Province, Afghanistan,2008.

Tim Hetherington. (5 December 1970 – 20 April 2011).

British-American photojournalist, filmmaker. 

Second Part.

When shooting the war documentary Restrepo with Sebastian Junger in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley. He created a series of photographs of man bonding and the sleeping soldiers. Most of these intimate photographs depict American soldiers in , while others capture images from the Liberian civil war. As Junger puts it, “the artistic choices he made were incredibly risky, but he was very sure of himself and wound up completely re-inventing his craft. The title of my film, Which Way Is the Front Line from Here?, refers as much to Tim’s artistic instincts as to any combat situation he may have been in.” (Read full article here).

"...the war machine is too put a group of man together in extreme circumstances, and get them to bond together and they will kill and be killed for each other"

"at the end of the day you realize that it was just a group of young men that were pout in this mountain and they are trying to do is survive just looking after for each (...), and that was it really, nothing to do with war, nothing to do with politics."

-What are you doing?

-Don't you get it?

-(...)this is what the american publics never gets to see, (...) we want to see the soldiers as strong, we don't wanna know that they are also this vulnerable boys."

Murphy, Korengal Valley, Kunar Province, Afghanistan, 2008.

Kelso, Korengal Valley, Kunar Province, Afghanistan, 2008.

The PhotoAutomat section is edited by the Brooklyn-based photographer Andreína Restrepo. 

PHOTOAUTOMAT

Tim Hetherington

Other side of war photography

Libya, April 9, 2011. (Self-portrait by Tim Hetherington. - ©TIM HETHERINGTON / MAGNUM)

Tim Hetherington (5 December 1970 – 20 April 2011).

British-American photojournalist, filmmaker. 

"Hetherington was known primarily for his coverage of conflicts in West Africa and the Middle East, employing photography, writing, and film to bring awareness to the human side of war and the suffering it invokes. His work was humanistic, foregoing any attempt at a holistic view of conflict. Instead, Hetherington worked to portray the lives of soldiers and civilians who were caught in the unfolding drama of political and social unrest." By Lindsay Comstock on April 12, 2012 for American Photo Mag. 

We are used to see very graphic images when we think of war photography, that somewhat dehumanizes people and make them fit into stereotypes of the good and the evil, and fulfill the characters everyone expect to see: the victims, the assassins, the corpses, the blood, the misery. What separated Tim Hetherington from this, was the urge to look further; to look deep into the life these people lived while surviving conflicts, find their humanity, show their routines. He looked for camaraderie in soldiers, for the human side of warrior children, the consequences of war in the series and how they overcame it.

This month will be dedicated to Tim Hetherington and in this first post I share with you one of the things that I consider helped him convey his message, his search: the used of medium format.

Photos taken in Liberia, 2003-2004. Via YOSSI MILO GALLERY, NEW YORK.

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The PhotoAutomat section is edited by the Brooklyn-based photographer Andreína Restrepo. 

PHOTOAUTOMAT

Francesca Woodman (April 3, 1958 – January 19, 1981) 

Was an american photographer born in a family of artists, she started taking pictures at the sweet age of 11, enrolled in the Rhode Island School of Design and lived in Italy for a year where she became hugely inspired. She returned to live in NYC, where she worked as an assistant to fashion photographers, while continuing to develop her personal and prolific body of work. 

Even though she tragically decided to end her life at the age of 22 (exactly 33 years ago this week), she left behind a very mature and insightful photographic legacy. Her most notable pieces are her self-portraits.

The first time I came in direct contact with Francesca Woodman's work, it was at the exhibit at the Guggenheim, a couple of years ago. These beautiful huge blueprints were my absolute favorite in the whole show, in them you can see the influence of the Italian renaissance art had on her.

“Caryatid” (1980). Credit: Courtesy George and Betty Woodman

 

The thing I like the most about her work is how mature it was for her age. Her photographs had a certain naive yet bold character that made them unique and absolutely personal. They are a reflection of that time in life, between childhood and adult life. That brief period when you are for the first time in real contact with true yourself, discovering who you are, and exploring your limits.

If you want to know and see more of her work, here the article in The New York Times and about the Guggenheim exhibit that I was lucky to visit; the official Guggenheim video about the exhibit called Through the Lens of Francesca Woodman that examines the relation between the still and moving image in Francesca Woodman's and other artists' production during the 1970s, particularly as associated with Post-Minimalism, performance, and video; and finally the  trailer of a documentary about her family entitled The Woodmans, describe as  an inspiring portrait of one family's fall and redemption in the often brutal world of art.

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The PhotoAutomat section is edited by the Brooklyn-based photographer Andreína Restrepo.    

 

PHOTOAUTOMAT

 

"The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention" Julia Margaret Cameron
British photographer, born in Calcuta India in 1838.

Cameron started her career as a photographer very late in her life after her daughter gave her a camera as a present. Even tho it only lasted over a decade she developed a style that is being imitated even know, specially her amazing soft portraits. She was consider part of the photographic movement called Pictorialism, under the influence of the Pre-Raphaelite but her work wasn’t recognized until she was already gone.

“It was this boldness of interpretation and confidence in treating a difficult subject which made Cameron not merely derivative as an artist. She created a style in which she could work out her cultural conflicts visually, and so offer imaginative solutions to moral and religious questions.”

She came from a very aristocratic family, and her great-niece was the writer Virginia Woolf.

Woolf's mother: Julia Jackson.

You can read more about her work in this article of Masters of Photography, and a very complete biography in this article in The Guardian.


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The PhotoAutomat section is curated by the Brooklyn-based photographer Andreína Restrepo.    

PHOTOAUTOMAT

Hello everyone. For this next three weeks of holiday procrastination this are some cool photo exhibits you can see in NYC in December/January. Hope to see you there!

ICP Museum   

1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street, New York, NY 10036 

Lewis Hine

October 4, 2013–January 19, 2014

 

The Future of America: Lewis Hine's New Deal Photographs

 October 4, 2013–January 19, 2014

 

 

JFK November 22, 1963: A Bystander's View of History

October 4, 2013–January 19, 2014

 

Zoe Strauss: 10 Years

October 4, 2013–January 19, 2014

 

​Yossi Milo Gallery. 245 Tenth Avenue, New York, NY 10001

Julie Cockburn, Slight Exposure.

December 12, 2013–January 25, 2014

  yossimilo.com

 

 

Robert Mann Gallery. 25 West 26th St. Chelsea, New York, 10001.

Chip Hooper: Surf​. 

December 8, 2013–February 8, 2014

robertmann.com

 

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​Bonni Benrubi Gallery. 41 E 57th St, Midtown East, New York.

Massimo Vitali: Between normalities. 

 December 12, 2013–February 1, 2014

 

Pace/MacGill Gallery. 32 E 57th St. ninth floor. Midtown East. New York

Emmet​​ Gowin: Landscapes Andalucía.

November 7, 2013–January 4, 2014

Photo via PaceMacGill

Aperture Foundation. 547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor. New York, 10001.

Prix Pictet: Power.

December 05, 2013–January 30, 2014

 

The Paris Photo–Aperture Foundation

PhotoBook Awards Short List. 

December 05, 2013–January 30, 2014

 

Murray Guy Gallery 453 West 17th Street, New York, 10011
Barbara Probst.

November 9, 2013–December 21, 2014

Edwynn Houk Gallery 745 Fifth Aver, Ste 407, New York, NY 10151

Elliott Erwitt. Platinum Prints.
November 7, 2013–January 4, 2014

 

MoMa 11 West 53 St, New York, 10019.

New Photography 2013

September 14, 2013–January 6, 2014

*The Robert and Joyce Menschel Photography Gallery, third floor​. But if you go to the MoMa you have to visit the permanent photography collection.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1000 Fifth Avenue. New York, New York 10028
Julia Margaret Cameron.
August 19, 2013–January 05, 2014

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The PhotoAutomat section is curated by the Brooklyn-based photographer Andreína Restrepo.    

 

PHOTOAUTOMAT

Jonas Barn Snow Disco, 2008

Ryan McGinely

Born in 1977 in Ramsey NJ, McGinely stand out in his ability for exposing a world that Nan Goldin before him and some many others have explored, but in a very special way; he manages to capture the freedom and youth around him creating very spontaneous, yet carefully choreographed images.

Ryan had his first solo art show at the Whitney at the sweet age of 25 (making him the youngest person to have had a solo show there).

Hanna's Hideout, 2008.

Cyclone, 2008.

His images are timeless. Naked beautiful young people in amazing locations, carefully composed, thought out and executed; full of energy and, I guess the word would be, FREEDOM. Everything about them is extremely powerful and beautiful. 

Jonas (Waterfall), 2008.

Tracy (Red, White & Blue), 2010.

Flash Flood (Gold), 2012.

 

He is definitely one of my favorite artist of this generation. And as most contemporary photographers, he is also making videos. Here is one for the band Sigur Rós, and for two for Nowness 1 and 2.

On top of that, he is responsible of pushing forward the careers of other artists/friends/muses around him. Something that definitely makes him even more special, or at least the NYtimes and I think so! Read the article about this here.

Parakeets, 2012.

India (Coyote), 2010.

 All images are from Ryan McGinely ®

​Finally you can see more of his work here; and read his essays here.​

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The PhotoAutomat section is curated by the Brooklyn-based photographer Andreína Restrepo.