8/14/2014

// Charles H. Traub - Dolce Via \\




























Italy has been through so much history that anything you say about the land and its people is doomed to repeat what has been said at least once before. And what may no longer be true was once true—and may be true one day again. But if there is a perennial aspect of Italy, it is the pursuit of la dolce vita, the sweet life of pleasure that the director Federico Fellini embodied with both sensuality and irony in his 1960 classic of the same name. The photographer Charles Traub alludes to Fellini in his collection of photographs from Italy in the 1980s, Dolce Via—the Sweet Way. Indeed, the Trevi Fountain in Rome, where the actress Anita Ekberg famously cavorted in the movie, is the backdrop of a number of Traub’s images. But there is something else Dolce Via shares with La Dolce Vita—not quite Fellini-esque but nevertheless slinky and sly in a distinct way. That is the omnipresence and perhaps omnipotence of sex. Nothing is overt but every photograph is suffused by subtle and not-so-subtle sensualities pressing themselves forward. Even images of the innocent and the chaste, when set in context with the rest of the collection, evoke the urge and the idea of procreation in all its physicality and metaphysicality. Sex emerges not just from the act of kissing or from the exposure of skin or depths of a look—but from color. Traub’s Italy bursts with the colors of life. And that is why it is so sexy. It has ever been thus. The ancient Roman poet, Lucretius opened his wondrous philosophical poem The Nature of Things with a celebration of Venus—the goddess of sex (or love, as we can call it euphemistically) and also the mother of Aeneas, the founder of Rome. It is how everything in the universe is touched by Venus, everything is a sensual pursuit of union, be it animals or clouds or the invisible atoms that come together to form the basis of life and existence itself. Traub, who is now the chair of the photography department of the School of Visual Arts in New York, presents an Italy that came two decades after Fellini. Yet both artists have portrayed a world that is in a continuum with that perceived by Lucretius back in the First Century B.C.—sensual and sad, bursting with color and pleasure, magnificent even in its melancholy. That is eternal nature of Italy, the very nature of everything.

Charles H. Traub is the founder and chair of the MFA Photography, Video and Related Media program at the School of Visual Arts. He has published seven books. Dolce Via is available now from Damiani. Traub has a book signing at International Center of Photography in New York, April 18, 2014. Read more: Living La Dolce Vita: Vibrant, Colorful Photos of Italy in the 1980s 

traub studio

5/19/2014

--__ Daesung Lee​ - On the shore of a vanishing island __--











On the shore of a vanishing island

Ghoramara island is located on a delta region in West Bengal. Due to the dramatic increase in sea level, resulting from the effects climate change. Since the 1960’s, the shores of this island are being perpetually washed away. And since the 1980’s, more than 50% of the territory has vanished due to erosion by the sea. As a result, two-thirds of the population have moved away from the island.

5/06/2014

-\-_ Frank Relle _-\-










Award-winning night photographer, Frank Relle, prepares a new collection to be hosted at the Old Felicity Church on October 19th 2013, from 6 PM to 10 PM. The event will feature 22 limited edition photographs from his latest project: NIGHT SHADE, Exploring Natural Spaces. Relle’s photographs, illuminated and shot at night, range from civilized to wild depictions of nature. The photographer’s work reveals the contrast between chaotic natural areas and formal urban landscapes. This collection includes the carefully spaced oak trees and familiar public structures of Audubon Park and City Park, alongside the chaotic overgrowth of unmanaged nature in Couturie Forest, Brechtel and John Lafitte National Park. The tamed, manicured landscapes highlight harmonious relationships between nature and man, while the captured chaos of nature evokes memories of Grimms’ Fairy Tales. Relle’s use of theatrical lighting maximizes the visual pleasure across his range of subjects.
-- 

3/18/2014

:::: alexia webster ::::












Alexia Webster is a South African freelance photographer born in Johannesburg.
She has traveled widely through the African continent as a documentary photographer.
Her work has been published in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, The Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Sunday Telegraph, The Age Australia, the Sydney Morning Herald, This Magazine Canada, Marie Claire and SonntagsZeitung Switzerland.
In 2007 she received the Frank Arisman Scholarship at the International Center of Photography in New York City where she completed the program in Documentary Photography and Photojournalism.