Blog Posts by Subject: Photography

(with apologies, in advance, to the amazing Chris Raschka.)

"Google can bring you back 100,000 answers, a librarian can bring you back the right one." —Neil Gaiman

In September 2015 the Picture Collection, which is located on the third floor of the Mid-Manhattan Branch of The New York Public Library, will celebrate its centennial.

Part photography program. Part exploration of personal history. All teenagers. The American Teenager Project has combined photographic portraits with oral histories of hundreds of teenagers over the last several years, and now is the chance for YOU to participate in this unique program at the Kingsbridge Library in the Bronx.

Hispanic Heritage Month is observed in the U.S. each year from September 15 to October 15. This year's national theme is "Diversity United, Building America's Future Today." At the Bronx Library Center - NYPL's premier Latino/Puerto Rican Heritage Center, we have a variety of programs and events to learn and celebrate the Hispanic experience. Listed below are just a few of them:

Pretty blonde British lass Jill Haworth sadly passed away last year on January 3, 2011. But the actress lives on as the original Sally Bowles in the hit Broadway musical Cabaret with many photos by Friedman-Abeles of her in this monumental show at The New York Public Library.

One of the treasures of the New York Public Library is the photographic publication "Fifth Avenue, New York, From Start to Finish." Luckily for us, this rare and beautiful collection of photographs has been digitized for anyone to view at any time — with the added advantage of being able to zoom in and truly examine the world in 1911 all up and down New York City's central avenue. Let's take a walk up Fifth Avenue in 1911 and see what kind of interesting things there are. You can click on any image if you would like to zoom in for more details. In the above panorama, you can see the Washington Square Arch at the far left.

Mulberry Street Library is proud to present the art exhibition "Beauty in Reading," featuring the photography of Kamia J. Funchess and the watercolors of Mychel Russell-Ward. The works are on view throughout the library through June 30th, 2012, and capture people caught in the act — of reading.

Early into my project, I opened a box and found a folder that caught my eye. It was labeled “Minor White.” A famous American photographer (b. 1908, d. 1976), White is known for his work with Aperture Magazine, the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco and the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. Most research libraries and museums with major American photography collections own his works, including the NYPL Division of Arts, Prints and Photographs.

On View at Mulberry Street Library from March 5 through April 28, 2012 are paintings by the artist Rebecca Memoli. The series, called Evaluation, is influenced by Dutch Golden Age still life. Evaluation is a visual meditation on an emotional state or situation in the artist's life. Although still-lives are traditionally created void of narrative, these pieces infer a subtle narrative using everyday objects. Often dirty, used, dank, or broken, the objects resonate with emotion and history. The combination of photography and painting allows these mundane objects to be romanticized, giving them a radiance that did not originally exist. Although the symbolism is personal, the emotions 

Every week the Teen Advisory groups from Jefferson Market Library and Muhlenberg Library take a photo of what's happening during their meeting. Here's last week's photos:

Happy New Year!

Just as a new chick emerges from its shell, so does the new year come upon us. This polka was composed by Francis H. Brown (1818-1891), one of numerous and forgotten 19th-century American composers of popular music.

Most New Yorkers, when asked to name NYC landmarks, will conjure up the familiar array of iconographic symbols that make up our city: the Statue Liberty, the Empire State Building, Times Square, the Ground Zero Memorial, etc. — but having grown up in Washington Heights, I can’t help but place the George Washington Bridge among the great monuments of Gotham pride. Ever since its completion in 1931, this stunning suspension bridge has remained a sight that never gets old, one which seems so in harmony with its surroundings, and whose effortless beauty belies a remarkable feat of engineering.

Learning to write through photography is one of the goals of Sol Aramendi, a photographer/educator who is currently leading a nine week "Literacy through Photography" class at Aguilar Library's Center for Reading and Writing.

Lincoln Center is all abuzz as it ramps up for another Fashion Week. Fashion luminaries, hovering press reps, and harried show staff walk briskly across the Plaza towards the next scheduled event. The sense of anticipation is accompanied by the throbbing bass from the show tent, where models strut their stuff. For the in-crowd, the new look of tomorrow eclipses the desire to reflect on what has come before. But the scholars just next door in The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts relish the past. While Lincoln Center has always been considered the locus of cultural history as-it-happens, it also harbors cultural artifacts of yesteryear stored nearby in the archives of LPA. 

On view at Mulberry Street Library in the Great Room is Harry Newman's photographic series, de-composition. Newman has presented in group and solo shows in New York and California, and his images were recently acquired for the permanent collection of the Dave Bown Projects. His most recent show, Last Woods, was presented in September 2010 by the Open Space Gallery in Brooklyn. This is the first exhibition of his latest series, de-composition.

One hundred years ago this month people lined up at the Louvre to see an empty space on a wall.

On August 21, 1911 a guard at the Louvre noticed a painting was missing. He initially thought nothing of it, assuming it was behind the scenes being photographed. It soon though became apparent what had really happened.

Someone had stolen the Mona Lisa.

There is something about a photograph that speaks of permanence, but what it captures is the quintessence of the ephemeral — a moment in time.

Recent Acquisitions: Prints and Photographs is on view in the Print and Stokes Galleries at The New York Public Library's Stephen A Schwarzman Building through June 30, 2011.

Presented in honor of the 100th birthday of NYPL's landmark building on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, Recent Acquisitions: Prints and Photographs features an exceptional collection of print and photographic works by contemporary artists acquired by the Library within the last decade.

About a week after my most recent post, something extraordinary happened. Regina Fiorito, a representative of the Estate of Martin Kippenberger (represented by the Galerie Gisela Capitain in Cologne) contacted the Library about it. "We would like to be in touch with Kathie Coblentz from the Spencer Collection, we read her blog today about a Kippenberger book. We (The Estate of Martin Kippenberger) were thrilled and have a missing piece of information for her." 

When is a book not a book? For this month's Spencer Collection Book of the Month, I have a couple of answers in mind.

From the point of view of contemporary art, the answer might be, "When it's a book object."—"Art which makes use of the book format or the structure of the book; typically ... unique sculptural works that take the form of, or incorporate, books but that do not communicate in the ways characteristic of a conventional book." The Spencer Collection and the Library's other special collections possess a number of such works, and like snowflakes or unhappy families, no two are alike.