MICHAEL KENNA POP PHOTO INTERVIEW

LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHER MICHAEL KENNA ON VIEWING OLD WORK WITH FRESH EYES, AND THE JOYS OF THE ANALOG PROCESS

By Kirk McElhearn

In March 2020, when COVID-19 led to worldwide lockdowns, Michael Kenna had a full calendar of trips and exhibits planned for the months to come. Instead, he found himself stuck at home with nowhere to go. Rather than taking new photos, he went back into his archive to look with fresh eyes at some of his earliest work. The result is Northern England 1983-1986, a book of photos from the area around where Kenna was born and grew up.

Read the full interview here.

COLLECTOR DAILY ON ZONE ELEVEN

MIKE MANDEL, ZONE ELEVEN

At the 1975 annual meeting of the Society for Photographic Education, as part of his remarks to the assembled crowd, Ansel Adams made an announcement that he had given his entire archive to the Center for Creative Photography. The newly formed organization, housed at the University of Arizona at Tuscon, opened later that year with five anchor tenants: the archives of Adams, Wynn Bullock, Harry Callahan, Aaron Siskind, and Frederick Sommer, all of whom were still alive at the time. And while photographers (and their families) had been donating their archives to museums and libraries since the advent of the medium, this felt like something different. From the ground up, the CCP was designed to offer the potential for more in-depth study and engagement with its key (and growing) photographic holdings. The fact that Adams, the crowd-pleasing patriarch of environmentally-conscious straight photography, had contributed his vast holdings to this new effort was the ultimate sign of validation.

Read the full article here.

BLUE VIOLET

CIG HARVEY’S BLUE VIOLET

Limited copies of Cig Harvey’s monograph, Blue Violet, are available. Please email mail@robertmann.com to order your copy.

Read more about the monograph here.

MICHAEL KENNA: NORTHERN ENGLAND 1983-1986

ROBERT MANN GALLERY PRESENTS MICHAEL KENNA: NORTHERN ENGLAND 1983-1986

Robert Mann Gallery is pleased to present the works of celebrated photographer, Michael Kenna, known for his beautiful and sensitive black and white landscapes.

This series concentrates on the interaction between the transient conditions of natural landscapes and man-made structures. A Nazraeli Press book, with an introduction by Dr. Ian B. Glover, accompanies this exhibition. Signed copies are available from the gallery.

Please contact the gallery to arrange a viewing, or view the exhibition online, from February 3, 2022. For additional information and press materials, please contact the gallery by email (mail@robertmann.com).

Read the press release here.

CIG HARVEY IN LAS VEGAS

STORIES — THE WORK OF CIG HARVEY AT FAS44

Robert Mann and Michael Frey present Cig Harvey's Stories — The Work of Cig Harvey. The exhibition will be on view at Freyboy Art Salon (4044 Dean Martin Drive, Las Vegas, Nevada 89103). The exhibition builds upon her previous bodies of work by focusing on the intersection of magic and nature. Her photographs are abundant with over saturated colors and vibrant floral motifs, playing in the space between fragility and intensity. The exhibition's opening reception is January 27, 4:30-7:00 pm, following this the show will be on view January 28 - 29 from 11:00 - 6:00 pm, and then by appointment through February 26th.

The Eye of Photography on Michael Kenna

ROBERT MANN GALLERY : MICHAEL KENNA : NORTHERN ENGLAND 1983-1986

By The Eye of Photography

Robert Mann Gallery presents the works of photographer, Michael Kenna, known for his beautiful and sensitive black and white landscapes. Made over forty years ago, many stored away in a series of negative files, come rediscovered images that reveal a Northern England from Kenna’s youth that has drastically changed over time. While Kenna normally spends his time traveling extensively making work, the COVID pandemic afforded Kenna the time to revisit and print images from 1983-1986 when he made a series of trips to explore the areas where he grew up.

Read more here.

Lucy Gray on FotoFiber

POWER=ENERGY=AMERICA

By Lucy Gray

And feeling refreshed after a couple of hours of being able to concentrate there I walked a half a block over from the MET to the Robert Mann Gallery. He is having a show called Fotofiber of embroidered photographs. It’s a surreal art form so the pictures were like leftovers after the feast, sometimes some of them look even better. It was a day of original art, one-offs which feel rarer every day. Even so, embroidery is still an art form in need of respect. Happily, Robert Mann is the one to take on that kind of challenge.

Read more here.

Mike Mandel's Zone Eleven Coming Soon

From Mike Mandel, one half of the dynamic duo (Larry Sultan) that brought you the seminal body of work Evidence, comes Zone Eleven…

“Over the past three of years I visited the various archives of Ansel Adams and viewed some 50,000 images with the intention of realizing a very different body of work that one might expect from the celebrated photographer. The book connects to Evidence in its design. But instead of images made by nameless photographers who were unknowingly documenting a dystopic, technological future, I’ve chosen unrecognized, even vernacular, images that were made by one of the most recognized nature photographers when he was working on assignment.” -Mike Mandel, on the upcoming release of Zone 11

And *WAIT* there’s more…. Stay tuned for a limited edition offering from Zone Eleven exclusively through RMG!

Get more details here.

Cig Harvey Feautred in The Telegraph

'As she loses her senses, I take pictures for her': photography to console a dying friend

By The Telegraph

When Cig Harvey's friend was diagnosed with leukemia, she resolved to help her the best way she could – through her art

In 2017, my friend Mary is diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. She is 34 years old. She has a bone marrow transplant, lives in a bubble, and goes into remission. But the disease comes back.

As Mary’s world becomes more and more restricted, she texts and FaceTimes, asking me to send pictures. Each day I go out and make something to send her. Each day she asks me to send more.

It is late spring and then summer in Maine – glorious. As she loses her senses, I want her to experience them through my pictures. I finally feel useful.

There is precedence for being drawn to colour and nature when dying or surrounded by death. Josef Albers dedicated his last years to the study of colour, publishing Interaction of Color in his mid-70s. Derek Jarman wrote Chroma, a journal of his garden through colour, while dying of Aids.

On one visit to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, I hang prisms in the window, and in the afternoon, for a brief 20 minutes when the sun moves between the two high-rises opposite her hospital bed, Mary’s room fills with rainbows. A gift of light. It becomes her favorite time of day.

Read the full article here.

5 6TH AVENUE WEST

For the past four months, American artist Mary Mattingly has been constructing a free public art installation at 5 6th Avenue West in Kalispell. Limnal Lacrimosa is a contemplative exhibition that celebrates the rich histories of the area, from the natural histories of the glaciers and lakes to the cultural histories of art and ceramics, and the economic importance of breweries in Kalispell before, during and after prohibition.

5 6th Avenue West was the original home of the Kalispell Malting and Brewing Company, founded in 1892 as the Kalispell Brewing Company. According to Montana beer historian Steve Lozar, prohibition caused the brewery to be creative: they malted their own grain onsite, made and sold assorted beverages.  

When Mattingly was invited to visit 5 6th Avenue West, the roof was leaking from the winter snowpack and beams of light were streaming in through crevices in the roof. Pigeon feathers blanketed the floor and the mountains of Glacier National Park could be seen on the horizon through the old brewery’s windows. She describes it as unpredictably beautiful. 

For Limnal Lacrimosa, rainwater is collected on the second floor and sent through tubing to recreate rain drops entering the building through the roof. The drips are collected in larchmatory vessels while the sounds of the droplets hitting the containers echo throughout the building. Eventually the vessels fill, water spills onto the floor, and the cycle repeats itself, inspired by Kōbō Abe’s novel Women in the Dunes and the sped up change of geological time in Glacier National Park with increasingly warming summers. 

Over the course of the 9 month exhibition, the space will transform. Events include a vessel exchange where people are asked to bring their own vessels to be included temporarily in the exhibition (and then returned), as well as music and events that celebrate the history of the brewery.

Mattingly is known for her large-scale installations that address ecology like a mobile free public food forest on a barge in New York City and an education center for estuarial plants on the Thames in London. Her photographs and sculptures are represented by the Robert Mann Gallery in New York. She visited Kalispell for the first time in 2020.