All Photos © Kevin Cooley.

Skyward  is Kevin Cooley’s new video installation project portraying Los Angeles’ manufactured landscape and its relationship to the natural world. Presented as a projection on the ceiling, the work is a metaphysical gaze skyward – past the gridlock of street-level to the pristine blue sky promising freedom and limitless possibility.

Shot entirely in L.A. County, the work is comprised of hundreds of individual shots, presented in one continuous sequence. Cooley explains the visual narrative: ”We begin downtown near Bunker Hill and make stops through various parts of the city. Flurries of overlapping flight paths, of birds, helicopters and more, are punctuated by the brief appearance of iconic southern California structural elements such as freeway interchanges and rows of palm trees and we discover interdependent ecosystems largely overlooked in everyday life.” Cooley’s installation is on view  at YOUNGPROJECTS, a contemporary gallery for moving images, until March 9, 2012. (more…)

All photos © Julia Fullerton-Batten. Above: The Departure.

In her latest project, called Mothers and Daughters, Julia Fullerton-Batten portrays the complex and sometimes challenging relationship between mothers and their daughters. Both documentary and biographical, these images illustrate the artist’s memories of her two sisters’ and her relationships with their mother and in turn, their mother’s relationship with their grandmother.

Choosing to work with real mother and daughter pairs in their own environments, the subjects create their own world together while at the same time revive the artist’s personal memories through staging. Over the course of their lives the dependence switches from the child’s need for security and nurturing to the mother’s dependence on the daughter to satisfy emotional needs. In the adult relationship, the intimacy of the bond is established by the love, struggle and acceptance of each other.

-courtesy Randall Scott Projects.

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"Daddy Tattoo, Philadelphia," 2004 © Zoe Strauss/Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art

Photographer Zoe Strauss, who from 2001 to 2010 installed her work on pillars below an I-95 overpass in South Philadelphia and hosted an annual day-long exhibition, is getting a mid-career retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The survey includes 150 images and extends beyond the museum with the Billboard Project, a series of 54 billboards throughout the Philadelphia area that will each display one of Strauss’s photos, blown up to 12 x 25 feet, without any text, logos, etc. A self-taught photographer who focuses on the “the beauty and struggle of everyday life,” Strauss is a true testament to DIY ingenuity. The exhibit runs through April 22, 2012.

"South Philly (Mattress Flip Front)," 2001 © Zoe Strauss/Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art

"Vanessa, Philadelphia," 2006 © Zoe Strauss/Courtesy of Philadelphia Museum of Art

© Ryan McGinley. Above: Brennan (Blue), 2007.

Ryan McGinley’s premier retrospective monograph, You and I recently released by Twin Palms Publishers creates a portrait of a generation that is savvy about visual culture and acutely aware of how identity can be communicated through photography.

-courtesy Twin Palms Publishers.

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All photos © Erika Larsen.
Erika Larsen’s long term project ‘Sami: The People Who Walk With Reindeer’ will be on exhibit at The Half King Gallery in NYC with an opening reception on Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 7:30pm. Shot from 2007-2011, the project is an intimate look at one of the oldest nomadic herding cultures in the world. Larsen says, “I came here to understand the primal drive of the modern hunter and to find a people who, when the land spoke, could interpret its language. I also came in search of silence so I could begin to hear again.”

The reception will feature a film screening and slide-show with a discussion moderated by Erika and Sarah Leen, senior photo editor at National Geographic Magazine. The exhibit will run until March 13th. To see a more intimate glimpse of Larsen’s project, watch this short video.

-courtesy Redux.

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