I am delighted to announce that British photographer Martin Parr will be the next New Pictures artist at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts this spring.  Martin will cross the Atlantic in a few weeks to shoot photos covering the wealth of winter activities in Minnesota, from pond hockey to ice fishing. Given Martin’s track record of capturing the British middle class and international wealth, we expect a unique and foreign take on cultural and athletic life in our state.

A member of the esteemed Magnum Photos, an international photographers’ cooperative, Parr is one of the most renowned and celebrated photographers working today. He is known for his innovative use of color photography and his humorous approach to documenting the daily rituals of life. Parr is also recognized for his work as an editor of photo-based publications, and is credited with more than twenty compilations of his own work. In 2008, he was awarded the Royal Photographic Society Centenary Medal and the Baume & Mercier award for his career contributions to contemporary photography.

New Pictures 6: Martin Parr opens April 20, 2012 and runs through the summer.

In the spring of1933, Ansel Adams traveled from Santa Fe, New Mexico to the east coast to visit New York City for the first time in his life. In a series of interviews conducted by The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, Adams recounts a number of important meetings with leading art figures, such as photography impresario Alfred Stieglitz, painters Marsden Hartley and John Marin and critic Paul Rosenberg. One of his most memorable and humorous is with documentary photographer, Doris Ulmann, whose photograph “Two Men at Work (c. 1916-1925) is in the MIA’s collection. http://www.artsconnected.org/resource/10965/two-men-at-work

“She was the one that did a lot of photography in Appalachia and of the Negroes in the South. A very wealthy woman with an old Mercedes car and a German chauffeur. Took pictures of everybody who came to see her. Had this great eight by ten camera and a flimsy tripod. And while her exposure of me was going on, I could see the camera swaying [Laughter] So, I said, “You know, Doris, really, your tripod’s terrible.” [She said,] “You know, I just can’t get sharp pictures. I thought it was the lens.” I said, “It’s the tripod.” [She said,] “Well, will you help pick one out?” So the next day I was picked up in the car and we went down to Willoughby’s and all the other big photography stores; finally got her a tripod that would hold her eight by ten monstrosity up. And then she’d go to the lens cases in the store and said, “ I want that one and that one and that one.” God knows how many lenses that woman had. She just would buy lenses like Virginia [Adams’ wife] would buy, “Cool and Creamy” at the Safeway. [Laughter] But she had a very fine feeling and did many fine things. She had book[s] publish.  We have several [of her] books.

Stop by the Target Wing atrium at the MIA to see a selection of photographs dealing with typecasting.  The show features work by August Sander, Pieter Hugo, Richard Avedon, and Xavier Tavera.

When I began to discuss a “New Pictures 5” exhibition in the Linda and Lawrence Perlman Gallery (262) with Jason Fulford, featuring mushroom photographs he found at a flea market, I never imagined that the mushrooms would accumulate and spread. By the time we finished the installation, the mushrooms were located throughout the MIA’s collection. This caused a bit of confusion, a great deal of enthusiasm, and even a little bit of trouble. What would you expect from mushrooms?

There are 13 mushroom photographs sprouting among works of art in the Asian, African, decorative arts, and contemporary collections at the MIA. Some are hidden and others are more obvious. Each mushroom picture marks what might be called a twist in the perception of the permanent collection. I don’t want to explain what these mushrooms produce because how can you explain mushrooms? I might be better off explaining pictures to a dead hare.  But below are a few images of the mushroom installations. You decide whether you want to pick them, eat them, or just walk on by.

Jason Fulford

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Pillsbury Auditorium

A few years ago, a friend gave artist Jason Fulford a manila envelope, found at a flea market. The envelope contained 80 photographs of mushrooms, each composed and annotated with the care of someone who just had to be a mushroom collector. These anonymous photographs inspired Fulford to create his own collection of photographs, publications, sculptures, and performances, all under the umbrella of the Soon Institute. Similar to the lifecycle of mushrooms, the project goes underground and periodically sprouts up in various artistic forms (including The Mushroom Collector, a book he published in 2010), in unexpected locations, such as New York, California, and Amsterdam.

Fulford’s pictures appear to be unremarkable shots of commonplace objects, people, and places. Yet a closer look reveals humorous and subtle oddities. Fulford’s images reveal themselves through repetition, sequences, and relationships between form and shadow, abstraction and reality. His work is now on view in “New Pictures 5″ in Gallery 262.

Fulford is a photographer and co-founder of the publishing house J&L Books in Atlanta / New York, and the author of several titles. He has lectured widely, and is a contributing editor to Blind Spot magazine. Fulford’s photographs have been featured in magazines and books.

$15; $10 MIA members, free to members of the Photography and New Media Affinity Group

To reserve tickets, call (612) 870-6323 or reserve tickets online »

Image: Jason Fulford, American, b. 1973, Untitled, 1967-72, Chromogenic print

Angela Strassheim’s series, Evidence, is on view now in the Linda and Lawrence Perlman Gallery (262). Come see it in person!

New Pictures 4: Angela Strassheim, Evidence
On view now through October 9th, 2011
The exhibition is free and open to the public.

Check out the latest addition to the New Pictures channel on YouTube:

Listen to Angela Strassheim discuss her series Evidence. The video is a great introduction to the current New Pictures exhibition. New Pictures 4: Angela Strassheim, Evidence is on view now through October 9th, 2011. Free exhibition.

Angela Strassheim
American born 1969
Evidence No. 2 (Blue Star), 2009
Archival Pigment Print

Angela Strassheim’s new series, Evidence, features photographs that bring together her forensic photography training with her long-standing investigation of the dark undercurrents of American domestic life. The New Pictures series, now in its second year, features experimental photography and new media art by artists from around the world.

Opens this Thursday, March 17th and runs through Sunday, October 9th, 2011

Linda and Lawrence Perlman Gallery (262)

Free Exhibition

Check out the link in Art in America to this story on New Pictures 3 artist, James Welling, with a mention of the MIA’s show.  New Pictures 3, Glass House, closes on March 6th, so don’t miss it.

Angela Strassheim, the featured artist in “New Pictures 4,” on view the Perlman Gallery (262), will discuss her photographic series on domestic murder scenes, Evidence, with David E. Little, MIA curator of Photography, at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, 2501 Stevens Ave. S., Minneapolis, 55404. Auditorium 150, 6:30 – 7:30 p.m.