laurieopal: opal (Default)
2020-01-07 09:49 pm

My Photograph in ‘The Art of Photography' at Valid World Hall Gallery (Barcelona)

Cross posted from Body Impolitic
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My portrait of Frank Brenes from Familiar Men is being exhibited in Barcelona, Spain as part of ‘The Art of Photography,’ a collaboration between PH21 Gallery (Budapest) and Valid World Hall Gallery (Barcelona) a renowned center for the visual arts.

It runs from from January 6 – 13, 2020. I'm delighted that my portrait received an Honorable Mention from the jury.
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Although photography first emerged as a technological invention, it was also quickly conceived as an artistic practice as well. Pictorialist photographs in the nineteenth century were created to look like paintings, while advocates of straight photography in the first part of the twentieth century strived for the purely photographic means of creating photographic meaning. Street photographers devoted the medium to capturing the fleeting moment, while in the last part of the twentieth century many photographers turned to staging and directing in order to utilize photography for artistic visual communication. Art photography also includes numerous genres and creative practices from portraiture, landscape and still life to abstract and conceptual photography. In this call we ask contemporary photographers to show how they understand art photography in the twenty first century. -

PH21 Gallery has all of the images from the exhibition on it's website. They are really worth looking at. It is an extremely striking show!

laurieopal: opal (Default)
2017-02-06 09:08 pm

Valentine's Day Sale on Our Photography Books

Deb and i posted this on Body Impolitic.



As our regular readers know, we don’t usually use this blog as a vehicle to sell our books, and we very rarely hold sales. But this was a good moment to make it easy to give a gift of beauty in hard times.

Familiar Men Gallery and Women En Large Gallery.



So: our Valentine's Day sale, from February 5 to February 28 half-price on Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes and Familiar Men: A Book of Nudes.

Enjoy!
laurieopal: opal (Default)
2014-07-13 09:31 pm

Off in the Morning

Leaving in the morning. As always, bless my cat sitter.

I have 3 photos in the art show 2 of Bernadette Bosky from Women En Large (she's one of the guests of honor), and one of Samuel R. Delany from Familiar Men. His is the photo that was in the National Queer Arts Festival exhibition that closed recently.

I'm moderating the panel "Fat, Feminism and Fandom Revisited." How have things changed since fannish feminists and fat activists first started this panel series? What did it accomplish, within fandom and outside of it? Panelists are Rachael Acks, Arthur D. Hlavaty, Eva Whitley and Bernadette Bosky. It's pretty close to the 30th anniversary of the first panel that Debbie Notkin and I did in 1984 in Los Angeles.

Conversation will be about the history both in fandom and the larger world, and also very much about now.

I think I've mentioned that I'm going to be able to go to the Sojourner Truth Museum on Tuesday in Battle Creek and see the archive of her photographs. This started with this blog on Body Impolitic "Sojourner Truth: I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance" Geri Sullivan wrote that she might be able to have me see the archives and that's what happened!!


"Sojourner Truth, according to the Willis/Krauthamer book Envisioning Emancipation: Black Americans And the End of Slavery, understood the power of photography, and actively distributed photographs of herself:

“Those pictures were meant to affirm her status as a sophisticated and respectable “free woman and as a woman in control of her image.” The public’s fascination with small and collectible card-mounted photographs, allowed her to advance her abolitionist cause to a huge audience and earn a living through their sale. “ I Sell the Shadow to Support the Substance,” proclaimed the famous slogan for these pictures."

I'll write about seeing the archive when I get back.

Still have boxes to rope and tape. Really looking forward to seeing folks in Detroit.
laurieopal: opal (Default)
2012-12-15 02:53 pm

Natonal Museum of Art Essay

As I've written, my photo of Bob Guter was chosen my the National Museum of Art in Osaka to represent my work in the 35th anniversary catalogue of their permanent collection, issued in 2012. They have 12 of my photos in their permanent collection, and this was their choice for the catalogue. Each artist had a page with one work and a curator's essay.




I thought the essay about me and my work by Mariko Takeuchi was both thoughtful and interesting:

Laurie Toby Edison was born in New York in 1942. She moved to San Francisco when she was 38, and while becoming involved with the feminist movement, began to make the Women En Large series in which she captured the beauty of fat women. Through these women who face the camera with dignity and grace, the series examines the common assumption in our society that thinness is the ideal form of beauty. The work received a tremendous response through out the world. In 2001, Edison held a solo exhibition at the National Museum of Art, Osaka.

This photograph is part of Edison's subsequent Familiar Men series. The naked man with the leg impairment lingers next the stair case landing with his back to the camera in an image that emphasizes with the delicacy and tranquility of the subjects rather than it's power. The man, Bob Guter, is the founder of the online magazine Bent, which targets handicapped gay men.

In this series, Edison shot a variety of men of different races and ages with different occupations and physiques. All of the men are depicted with such gentle facial expressions and poses as too seem somewhat defenseless, embodying a powerful antithesis to the standard social notion that "manliness" is founded on being strong and sturdy. In this way Edison confronts society with a radical challenge in terms of what is considered to be masculine and feminine, and attempts to capture humans as a freer form of being.