Cig Harvey in The New York Times

Fairytale Photos of Everyday Life

By Jonathan Blaustein

Ask anyone who’s been in a serious car accident, and they’ll swear that reality moves in slow motion as metal crumples, glass shatters and bones break.

That kind of event can change one’s perspective, and for the photographer Cig Harvey, her brush with vehicular death in 2015 inspired her new series “You an Orchestra You a Bomb,” recently released by Schilt Publishing, which also opens as a solo exhibition at Robert Mann in New York on December 7. With its strong emphasis on evocative color and objects culled from the natural world, the project touches upon magic, mystery and fairy tales. One easily imagines Narnia just through the wardrobe door or Hogwarts awaiting at the end of the train ride. (Surprisingly, Ms. Harvey, who was born in England, has never read the Harry Potter books.)

As is her custom, the series features Ms. Harvey’s six-year-old daughter, Scout, along with other relatives and friends. And the narrative is clearly propelled by the motivations of a mother, one enraptured by life after a near-death experience.

Click here to continue reading. 

Holly Andres in Photo District News

ON LIGHTING STYLES: HOLLY ANDRES BREAKS DOWN HER PAINTERLY APPROACH

By Brienne Walsh

Holly Andres approaches lighting with the eye of a painter. “I studied painting, and I look through the lens like a painter,” she says. “I oftentimes shoot on a tripod. I’m considering all the entirety of the frame and looking at the way the positive form interacts with the negative space.”

She creates dramatic imagery on location, and while she sometimes mixes her light sources, she prefers artificial to natural lighting. “When natural light cooperates, it’s great, but otherwise, it’s so anxiety-producing,” she says. “Strobes, lanterns, reflectors—they take you much further in any direction you want your lighting to go.”

Andres made a name for herself with her fine-art photography series such as “The Fallen Fawn” and “Summer of the Hornets” that depict eerie scenes reminiscent of the photographs of Gregory Crewdson and the films of Todd Haynes. Her images are flush with color, and beautiful, but still transmit a sense of impending horror. Her distinct style has won over editorial and commercial clients including The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, New York, TIME, Refinery29, Saks Fifth Avenue and Facebook.

Click here to continue reading. 

Jennifer Williams' Installation at Lily's Bar in the Roger Smith Hotel

Check out Jennifer Williams' piece, New York - City of Tomorrow: Billionaire's Row that is on view, originally installed at the Queens Museum in the Panorama of the City of New York for QI 2016. It's been reconfigured to fit Lily's Bar at the Roger Smith Hotel, situated a few blocks below Billionaire's Row, aka 57th street.

Read more on the artist and work here. 

Announcement of Representation

Mirror 12, 2017

Robert Mann Gallery is pleased to announce the representation of Murray Fredericks.

Murray Fredericks is an internationally recognized and multi-award winning artist and filmmaker. Graduating with a Bachelor of Politics from the University of Sydney in 1992, Fredericks subsequently spent extended periods traveling alone in the Himalaya and Middle Eastern deserts. During this time he became aware of the profound effect that time spent in isolation – particularly in powerful landscapes – can have on the mind and one’s sense of self.

In the almost 20 years since, Fredericks has taken prolonged solo journeys to isolated and extreme locations, to produce large-scale photographs that capture the overwhelming emptiness and powerful emotional resonance of remote land and sky. His highly-acclaimedSalt series commenced in 2003 and has seen the artist complete more than 20 trips to Lake Eyre–Kati Thanda in South Australia, living alone for up to five weeks at a time. A conceptual exploration into the emotional qualities of ‘space’, the original Salt series has been exhibited and acquired by major institutions and galleries worldwide.

Blouin Artinfo: Top 15 Shows to See in New York This Week

Herman Leonard at Robert Mann, New York

By Blouin Artinfo

Robert Mann gallery is hosting the exhibition “Herman Leonard: The Rhythm of Old New York” at the gallery’s New York location.

The exhibition presents a collection of images by American photographer Herman Leonard (1923-2010), known for his iconic works on the New York jazz scene. Born in a Romanian immigrant family in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Leonard found his fascination toward photography upon witnessing an image being developed in his brother's darkroom when he was only nine years old. He then went on to pursue Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography from Ohio University in 1947. From there, he worked as an apprentice under the mentorship of esteemed Canadian portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh for one year, and later in the 1950s, he worked as a personal photographer for Marlon Brando in East Asia and as a correspondent for Playboy and Time magazines in Paris. Part of many major public collections including Smithsonian Institute, Lincoln Center, and George Eastman House, as well as the private collections of Sir Elton John, Bruce Bernard, and President Bill Clinton, the most quintessential motif of Leonard’s works has been the jazz scene of New York.

Click here to continue reading. 

Robert Mann Gallery in Photofairs Shanghai 2017

PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai 2017 is Most International Fair to Date

By Nicholas Forrest

PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai returns for its fourth edition in 2017 from September 8-10 at the Shanghai Exhibition Center with a lineup of 50 galleries and institutions from 16 countries and 28 cities. Widely recognized as Asia Pacific’s most authoritative platform on contemporary photography, PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai is a key driver of China’s maturing photography market.

This year’s edition of PHOTOFAIRS Shanghai welcomes a number of new galleries, including Tasveer (Bangalore), who will present Karen Knorr, Longmen Projects (Taipei, Hong Kong & Shanghai) showing Daniel Lee Postaer, as well as Robert Mann Gallery (New York), showcasing artists including Richard Misrach, Jeff Brouws, and Paulette Tavormina.

Click here to continue reading.

I Scream, You Scream in New York Magazine's The Cut

This New Exhibition Will Satisfy Your Summer Sweet Tooth

By Sarah Nechamkin

As the sweaty days of mid-summer approach, the allure of an ice-cream cone becomes ever more tempting. The bells that signal the Mister Softee truck parked on the curb instantly evoke nostalgia for those longing to escape the air-conditioned office and enjoy the simple pleasure of a cold cone. If you can’t, though, at least escape to Robert Mann Gallery, where the newly opened exhibition “I Scream You Scream” promises to satisfy at least some of your cravings.

Click here to continue reading.

NY Times Features Swale by Mary Mattingly

A Forest Floats on the Bronx River, With Free Produce

By Alexandra S. Levine

In a South Bronx forest, the ground sways as visitors collect blueberries, onions and wild carrots. The plants bob up and down as guests gather oregano or basil to add to their next meal. The floating forest on the Bronx River has one main purpose: to engage New Yorkers in a conversation about the benefits of shared, public food by offering crops to pick and eat.

“Not everyone has a garden, or access to earth, and it’s expensive. So how do we work together to get around that?” said Marisa Prefer, who manages the public programs for Swale, the floating forest project by the artist Mary Mattingly that started a year ago.

The artist transformed a 130-foot barge, once used for hauling sand to construction sites, into a public food forest with free edible and medicinal treasures. Last week, the floating green space moved from Pier 6 in Brooklyn Bridge Park to Concrete Plant Park in the South Bronx, one of the largest food deserts in the country, where healthy, fresh options are hard to come by, and on Friday afternoon it opened to the public.

Click here to continue reading.

Review: Julie Blackmon

Art Review: Photographer Julie Blackmon's Memories of Home 

By Meg Brazill
June 28, 2017

A mother's back is turned to her three small children while she searches deep in a car trunk for something out of view. Behind her, one of her children spins around a loading zone sign, while her baby brother picks at cracks in the sidewalk outside a boarded-up building, and their toddler sister clutches a purse as she crosses the street alone. The scene is ominous yet strangely carefree — if trouble is on the horizon, it hasn't happened yet.

Julie Blackmon's photographs, including "Loading Zone," suggest a delicate balance between freedom and responsibility, chaos and order. They provide a glimpse into the artist's world and, sometimes, right into her backyard.

Ten of Blackmon's large-scale color photographs from her most recent series, "Homegrown," are on exhibit in "Julie Blackmon: The Everyday Fantastic" at the Hood Downtown gallery in Hanover, N.H.

Click here to continue reading.

Photo District News Photographer Interviews: Cig Harvey

Cig Harvey: Through Mother's Eyes

By Brienne Walsh

Cig Harvey didn’t know that her new series was about the serious car crash she survived in August 2015 until she showed the photographs to a friend. “He said, ‘The accident is literally all over these,” she recalls. Harvey was psychologically scarred, but rarely ever talked about it. “We’re often the last ones to know what our work is about,” she muses. The fact that the series was born of trauma was no surprise to Harvey, however. “Whenever something massive happens in my life, I make pictures as a way to respond to it,” she says. “I’m the most productive when something derails me, or I don’t understand, or [something] floors me. It could be an amazing thing or it could be a terrible thing. I use art as a way to slow the world down and better understand it.”

Click here to continue reading.