All photos © Matt Siber. Above: Untitled #1, 2002.

Matt Siber’s Untitled Project transforms images made in the traditional documentary style by stripping away the text of all visible signage, and digitally reconstructing it in an adjacent frame. The photographs, taken in North America, Europe and China over the past nine years, leave only visual (non-text) forms of communication such as colors, graphics, logos and architecture. The adjacent compositions of the text elements are based on how that text was found in the original photograph.

Siber explains the Floating Logos work, which grew out of The Untitled Project, eliminates the support structures of tall roadside signs, drawing the viewer’s attention to them “while leveling a humorous but pointed critique at the absurd power of the entities that put them there.  None of these signs are super-imposed.  They appear where they were found.”

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All photos © Lynn Saville. Above: West 125th Street.

After publishing NIGHT/SHIFT (Random House/Monacelli), a monograph of her color night photographs of overlooked urban zones, Lynn Saville embarked on a new but related series entitled “Vacancy.” This project enabled her to continue exploring fringe areas but also took her back to the city center, where, at night, stores shuttered by the Great Recession emanate a disquieting beauty. Saville’s Brooklyn Bridge work is part of a group exhibition, Brooklyn’s Bridges: Engineering As Art & Inspiration, on view at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Grand Lobby until September 18, 2011.

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© Arthur Griffin.  Courtesy of the Griffin Museum of Photography, Winchester, MA. Above: Ted Williams, 1939.

In 1939, Eastman Kodak had just introduced a new color film to the market. The company contacted photographer Arthur Griffin, who was working for the Boston Globe on a story about the Boston Red Sox then rookie, Ted Williams, to experiment with the new color film. After fulfilling his assignment for the paper, Griffin photographed Williams with a large format 4×5 camera as he practiced his batting stance and swing. Unseen for close to a half century, Griffin’s images represent the first color photographs ever taken of Williams, and comprise one of the largest collections of photographs of the Red Sox great early on in his storied career. Let’s Play Ball, an exhibition celebrating our national pastime and the boys of summer, will be on view at the Panopticon Gallery from July 14 – September 6, 2011. This exhibition will feature photographs by David Levinthal, Arthur Griffin, Ernest Withers and others.

-courtesy Panopticon Gallery

© Wilma Hurskainen. Invisible (from the series No Name), 2011.

The Christophe Guye Galerie in Zurich, Switzerland will mount an exhibition of various “Helsinki School” works beginning on July 7. The concept of the “Helsinki School” is not defined specifically by discipline, nationality or style, but rather an approach that has evolved out of a process of teaching at the Aalto University School of Art and Design in Helsinki. Its members are conceptual artists who express their artistic vision through the use of the photography with film cameras or just light sensitive materials. The Helsinki School is influenced by Finnish lighting conditions, ranging from almost complete darkness to nearly endless days that result in a distinctive social culture. The show will include 21 works by 11 artists that emphasize a common thread through distinctly original and individual styles.

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© David Goldblatt. Above: Waitress, Bezuidenhout Park. November 1973.

TJ Johannesburg Photographs 1948-2010/Double Negative is a joint project by photographer David Goldblatt and writer Ivan Vladislavic.  The result is an exceptional dialogue between Goldblatt’s 270 images taken over more than 60 years of photographing Johannesburg, a metropolis scarred by the consequences of apartheid, and Vladislavic’s narrative fiction.
TJ & Double Negative, published by Contrasto, recently won the “Best Photography Book 2011” at the Kraszna-Krausz Book Awards.

- courtesy Contrasto.

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