Cool Hunting

MoCP 2008 Fine Print Editons
by Laurice Parkin Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Photography recently announced the editions for their 2008 Fine Print Program. The program offers the opportunity to collect contemporary photographs by internationally recognized artists while supporting the Museum. Definitely a win-win for all involved. This year's diverse selections feature the work of KayLynn Deveney, Greta Pratt, Simon Roberts, New Catalogue and Jan Theun van Rees. From Deveney’s...

Whitney Biennial 2008
This time around we chose to cover the Whitney Biennial with help from the museum's exhibition designer, Mark Steigelman. Last week's video on Olaf Breuning included a glimpse of his Biennial installation at the Park Avenue Armory (an off-site component that's new this year) and this episode is a select survey of the works by the 50-odd artists showing at the Whitney. Mark explains the...

Gus Powell
The midday meanderings of New Yorkers on their lunch breaks, famously captured by Frank O'Hara in his 1964 collection "Lunch Poems," are the inspiration for "Manhattan Noon," the first large-scale New York presentation of works from Gus Powell. When writing his book, Frank O'Hara would step out of his mid-town office at lunch time and walk his way to the Olivetti typewriter showroom where...

Sarah Pickering: Fire Scene
Sarah Pickering's photographs belong to the magical space that exists between reality and illusions. Capturing the unique bursts of smoke and light that resulted from detonating certain types of bombs including land mines, artillery, air fuel and even napalm, I was completely dazzled by her earlier photos of explosions taken during military training exercises. Her most recent body of work called "Fire Scene," now...

Peter Ross: Spiritualists, Healers, Mediums and Psychics
Freelancer Peter Ross is a 41-year-old year old portrait photographer in Manhattan who makes his living taking pictures of celebrities. His latest offering deals with spiritual mediums in two communities connected by the spiritualism movement of the 1800s. Today, mediums live together in communities in Florida and western New York which were both founded by early founders of the 160-year-old spiritualism movement. Ross spent...

Pieter Hugo: The Hyena Men
Pieter Hugo is a South African photographer who has set out to photograph groups of people that have a distinct presence across Africa. His images of traditional healers, wild honey collectors, taxi washers, and albinos are strong and beautiful, but my favorite series is The Hyena Men which opened last week at Yossi Milo Gallery in New York. Pieter Hugo created the series The...