© The Irving Penn Foundation. Above: 20 Metal Pieces, New York, 1980.

Opening tonight at the Pace/MacGill Gallery is Irving Penn: Archæology, an exhibit featuring over twenty platinum still lifes.

Penn’s archaeology pictures investigate the visual intrigue of seemingly inconsequential debris and junk — plumbing fittings, steel fragments, bolts and bones — in the exquisitely executed medium of platinum.  Dedicated to the art of meticulously handcrafted prints, Penn is reputed to have spent nearly 50 hours on the production of a single platinum print.  He reflected on this work in his 1991 book, Passage: “For some years I had been accumulating scraps of material that obsessed me: bits of glass, metal, and bone; a human cranium; old sewing machines; a variety of dusts.  In 1979 I acquired an early twelve-by-twelve-inch banquet camera and had it altered. . . We made thirty-two negatives between 1979 and 1980.  The platinum prints themselves however took a year of work.”

Rich in tonal distinction and elemental in construction, these photographs demonstrate Penn’s deep regard for the print as a physical object, as well as his extraordinary ability to create striking compositions with the most unsuspecting of materials.

Irving Penn: Archæology will be on view from October 28, 2010 through January 15, 2011. To find out more about the exhibit click here.

© Stephen Mallon

Next Stop Atlantic – an exhibition of Stephen Mallon’s work is opening at the Front Room gallery on September 10th, 2010. This stunning series features the process of artificial reef building off the East Coast in the U.S. The exhibit will be running September 10th through October 3rd.

See more of Stephen Mallon’s work here.

© Jeff Bark. Lucifer Falls. Plate IV, 2010.

Lucifer Falls is an exhibit of Jeff Bark’s new body of work opening at the Haster Hunt Kraeutler Gallery on September 9th and through October 16, 2010. The series of photographs of waterfalls is a departure from his earlier series for which he constructed elaborate sets in the studio. See more of Jeff Bark’s work here.

© Fondazione Sella. Courtesy Panopticon Gallery/Decaneas Archive, Boston, MA.

Pictured here is Vittorio Sella on the Highest Peak of the Rouies as seen from the Chardon Glacier, August 3, 1888. Vittorio Sella’s home was in Biella, Italy – he began his career in 1879, climbing and photographing the nearby Alps with his 11×14 large-format field camera and wet plate collodion glass negatives. The great Italian photographer passed away on this day, August 12, in 1943.

The exhibit, Heights of Observation: The Photographs of Vittorio Sella (1859 – 1943), will open on September 9 and run though November 8 at the Panopticon Gallery.

More from the gallery here.

© Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison. Courtesy Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago.

Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison, the husband and wife team whose photographic tableaus address the triangular relationship of humans, technology and nature, return to Chicago with “Beginnings,” an exhibition of collages they made when working on pieces for The Architect’s Brother. These never-before-seen images reveal the ideas and concepts that went into making some of their best known works. The exhibition opens on September 10 at the Catherine Edelman Gallery and closes on October 30.

To see more of Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison’s work click here.