Far Above The Crowd: Katrin Korfmann's Deceptive, Bird's-Eye-View of the World

Let's file this one under "simple photo concepts though not as simple as they might first appear.":

After Katrin Korfmann studied photography at Kunsthochschule Berlin and Rietveld Academie in The Netherlands, she settled down in Amsterdam, where she practices a style of photography that confuses perspectives and the spatial relationship between people and their surrounding environment. More specifically, this means she takes lots of wonderful bird's-eye-view photographs of people on the street from way up high above them.

"Stemming from her background in photography, Katrin Korfmann’s works in various media – photo works, videos and installations – are concerned with photographic concepts of framing, perspective, and the social dimensions of perception, such as the relationship between the observer and the observed, the effect of the camera on behavior and the social codes of looking in public environments."

In her latest series, "Count for Nothing," Korfmann documents her travels to places like Lisbon, Madrid, Berlin, Cambridge, Tehran and Pamplona, where we're treated to a bird's-eye-view of the Running with the Bulls. The images are actually photo collages made by layering several images taken over a series of time to give a sense of progression and movement.

"These monochrome surfaces place the events at first sight in a strikingly abstract context, against which people from disparate cultures seen from above do not necessarily appear so different. But when we scrutinize the figures and events more closely, details such as the goods carried on the heads of people in Luanda, the black robes of the women in Teheran or the slightly different attire of the academic students at the University of Cambridge, help us to localize different habits and rituals very precisely." 

One great feature on her website is the ability to zoom in super close, down past people's shoulders to the dirt in between the bricks they're walking on. 

Katrin Korfmann's solo exhibition at Galleri Andersson/Sandstrom in Umea runs from April 4 - May 25, 2012.

Think you can take on Korfmann's work? We do too. Check out 3rd Ward's Image Manipulation class.

-- Perrin Drumm

Documented Decay: Yves Marchan and Romain Meffre Photograph Detroit's Ruined Cityscape

A little over a year ago Steidl published the English edition of Yves Marchan and Romain Meffre's exquisite photographs documenting Detroit's rundown and derelict structures in "The Ruins of Detroit." In the past few decades, Detroit's economy has suffered more than any other major city in America, and now the landscape is plagued by rampant neglect and buildings left to decay. Still, it's difficult to understand how the city could allow beautiful, historic buildings like Michigan's Grand Central Station (above) or the United Artists Theater (after the jump) to fall apart.

According to Marchan and Meffre,

“Ruins are the visible symbols and landmarks of our societies and their changes, small pieces of history in suspension. The state of ruin is temporary by nature, the volatile result of the end of an era and the fall of empires. This fragility, the time elapsed but even so running fast, lead us to watch them one very last time: being dismayed, or admiring, wondering about the permanence of things. Photography appeared to us as a modest way to keep a little bit of this ephemeral state.”

"The Ruins of Detroit" is currently on exhibition Kuhlhaus in Berlin. Inspired by Marchan and Meffre's work? Check out 3rd Ward's Documentary Photography class.

 -- Perrin Drumm

Pictures of the Year Winners Announced

When the winners of the 69th Pictures of the Year International were announced recently, some people may have been surprised by the great differences between the two men who won Photographer of the Year in the newspaper and freelance/agency category. Craig Walker of The Denver Post won the former for his daily assignments as well for a photo essay about a veteran suffering from PTSD. Yuri Kozyrev, on the other hand, traveled extensively in 2011, moving from Moscow and Slovenia to Yemen, Bahrain, Egypt and Libya, covering the Arab Spring for TIME. You can see his winning photograph, "Shark," above. "I try to be on the road," he told The New York Times. "I try to follow the news."

Most of Walker's images were taken right in Denver, four within walking distance of The Denver Post. "Because of the amazing work done internationally this year by magazine and newspaper photographers, I feel humbled by the award," he said. "But it does say something about what you can do in your own backyard."

His PTSD photo essay, "Welcome Home: The Story of Scott Ostrom," was key to his win. In 2010 Walker was awarded with a Pulitzer Prize for "Ian Fisher: American Soldier," which follows a teenager as he joins the Army, deploys to Iraq and returns home.

You can read more about the winners on The New York Times excellent photo blog, The Lens, or check out some of 3rd Ward's photography classes to start working on your own Photographer of the Year award.

-- Perrin Drumm

Coffee Table Must-Have: Jorg Bruggemann's "Metalheads"

Photographer Jorg Bruggeman spent the last three years traveling between Argentina, Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the United States photographing fans of heavy metal. In many of the resulting photographs it looks as if he also traveled back in time about  thirty years. After getting into the mosh pit at trashed clubs and outdoor festivals the world over since 2008, Bruggerman learned that...

"Heavy metal is a phenomenon. Although this musical genre is still ridiculed by many, it is currently more popular and successful around the world than at its supposed peak in the 1980s. Today, so-called metalheads can be found worldwide. No matter who they are or where they come from, they are united by heavy metal across borders, generations, genders, religions, and social classes."

His book, "Metalheads: The Global Brotherhood" will be released by Gestalten books later this month along with a CD samples from Nuclear Blast, the world's largest independent heavy metal label. If you happen to be in Berlin, stop by Gestalten for the launch party, featuring a live performance by Berlin's own black metal band, SUN WORSHIP. Later in the month and into April, Bruggerman will be giving artist talks about his experience on the road and screening related films, like the 1986 cult classic, Heavy Metal Parking Lot.

Hit the jump for more of Bruggemann's images and get prepped to adorn your coffee table with some killer mulletts.

-- Perrin Drumm

3rd Ward Member Barnett Cohen Named A "Contender" For His Southern Gothic-influenced Photography

'Bust' by Barnett Cohen

3rd Ward member Barnett Cohen was recently named a "Contender" in Hey, Hot Shot!, an international photography competition presented by Jen Bekman Projects, so we asked him, how does it feel? "The opposite of Marlon Brando," he said. "I feel like a somebody."

In that witty and poignant response we see the spirit that makes Cohen's work so powerful and unique. The most frequent subject of his photographs is Oliver, who seems like a quintessential "Southern Eccentric," but Cohen's photographs don't simply affirm that stereotype. "They reflect an intimate relationship based on even needs: He wants to be seen and acknowledged, and I want to see him in the starkest of terms," Cohen says in his Contender post. Check out more of his photographs after the jump.

Here's how the Hey, Hot Shot! folks described Cohen's work:

In seeking out "eccentrics" from the South, Contender Barnett Cohen met and befriended a man named Oliver, the subject of much of his portfolio. Rather than creating images that focus on his subject's eccentricities and idiosyncrasies, however, the series offers an intimate look at a willing subject, complete with relics and glimpses at a past life.

While Cohen has been pursuing photography for a long time, he dispenses with any sort of myth-making or exaggeration in describing how he got started. I found a copy of COLORS magazine many, many years ago and was hooked," he says. "I did not grow up with a brownie box camera in my hand or drenched in processing chemicals."

Cohen continues to travel between Brooklyn and the South for his photography, and in June his will be featured in Small Works, a group show at Boston's Flash Forward Festival. "The show is curated by Jon Feinstein and Amani Olu of the Humble Arts Foundation in conjunction with the Magenta Foundation," he says. "I am pretty stoked about it." Then, in the fall he's headed for grad school to get his MFA in Photography. "No names just yet but I am going somewhere for sure," he says. "As always, stay tuned."

We will, and in the meantime we'll be rooting for him in Hey, Hot Shot! The competition's grand prize winner gets $10,000, a solo exhibition and two years of representation from Jen Bekman Gallery.

'Mailbox' by Barnett Cohen

"Oliver #1" by Barnett Cohen

'Oliver #8' by Barnett Cohen'Toothbrush Holder' by Barnett Cohen

'Present Tense' by Barnett Cohen

'Mark' by Barnett Cohen

'Shaka' by Barnett Cohen

-- John Ruscher

Kickstarter Pick: Afghan Box Camera Project

Last year Lukas Birk and Sean Foley's Kickstarter campaign made it possible for them to travel to Afghanistan for six weeks to document the dying art of box camera photography, a kind of instant photograph created in a handmade wooden box that acts as both a camera and a dark room. According to Foley and Birk, Afghanistan is one of the last places on earth where box camera photography is still practiced, but it's quickly dwindling. Worse, it's never been properly documented. 

Foley and Birk have made some basic information on the history and practice of box cameras available on their site, and they've even inspired more modern photographers to build box cameras of their own, but the most exciting news in their project so far is a new publishing deal to properly document Afghan box cameras and spread the word. To do this they need to go back to Afghanistan to deepen their research and cover more ground. Their new Kickstarter campaign asks for a meager $9,800 to pay for basic travel expenses like plane tickets, ground transport, translators and lodging for another six-week stint. They're very close to reaching their goal, and are offering some great incentives for you to pitch in, like signed copies of their upcoming book, original box camera photographs and even a box camera for your very own.

Meanwhile, peruse some of of 3rd Ward's photography classes, including Alternative Photographic Processes: The Four Color Gum Print and Cyanotype.

-- Perrin Drumm

XEX Magazine Expands Its Platform With Help From 3rd Ward Talent

Fashion and culture lovers take note: XEX Magazine has a new issue on the way tomorrow, March 29. The bold, cutting-edge mag (which is pronounced "X") was co-founded by 3rd Ward member and fashion extraordinaire Sailey Williams back in 2009. "I had recently come from being an associate editor for another publication and felt it was time to start my own path," he says. "We wanted to create a platform where we could showcase some of the top and rising creatives in the fashion industry."

And they've created quite a platform indeed. Starting off as a webzine, XEX now produces three print issues a year—two that coincide with the fall and spring fashion seasons and New York's corresponding fashion weeks, as well as an annual men's issue, "XEX-Y," which will debut this June. Many top-notch talents have contributed to XEX, including 3rd Ward members like Dallas Logan (who we featured last year), Adolphous Amissah, Shae Fontaine and Darryl Calmese, just to name a few. "3rd Ward has been a great source when it comes to finding amazing creative talent," Williams says.

Hit the jump for more on XEX, including the scoop on what's in store for their new issue, how to submit your own material as well as images of some of the magazine's sweet covers and spreads.

"As with every issue we focus on the best in fashion, art, photography, and bizarre topics," Williams says. "But this issue we have added some great entertainment features. This issue is celebrity filled, featuring 'XEXclusive' editorials & interviews with Nickelodeon’s own Victoria Justice, Steven Yeun of AMC’s The Walking Dead, Boo Boo Stewart of The Twilight Saga, Dillon Casey of The CW’s Nikita, Ryan Serhant of Bravo’s Million Dollar Listings: New York, Williamsburg’s own Justiin Davis of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and several other actors of television and film. We also have some great designer features with LARUICCI and Sammy B, and an extravagant art story with Sasha Meret."

In addition to upcoming issues, XEX is also the official media sponsor for Brooklyn Fashion Weekend, which takes place at Industry City from March 29 to April 1 and will benefit the MTV Staying Alive Foundation. They also helped keep New Yorkers warm this winter through the New York Cares Coat Drive.

Interested in submitting to (or being featured in) XEX? Hit up submissions@xexmag.com.

-- John Ruscher

Essential Event: Over 30 Years Of Cindy Sherman's Powerful Photography Comes To MoMA

Untitled Film Still #21, 1978 - Courtesy MoMA and Cindy Sherman

Here's the abbreviated version of this post: Cindy Sherman is amazing and you should go see the Museum of Modern Art's new retrospective of her work, which just opened this past weekend and is on view through June 11.

If you're not already out the door and on your way to West 53rd Street, let us elaborate. For the uninitiated: Born in 1954, Cindy Sherman was the youngest of five children. She started painting while attending Buffalo State College, but she ultimately discovered that photography was where it's at. Searching for a unique subject for her work, she didn't have to look far: herself.

To say that she is really the sole "subject" of her photographs, though, barely scratches the surface of her work. In her art Sherman takes on many different identifies, using wigs, wardrobe, makeup and more to pose as everything from a film noir heroine to a frightening clown to the subject of paintings by paintings by Caravaggio and Raphael. "I feel I'm anonymous in my work," she said in a 1990 New York Times article (which aptly opens by calling her "the woman of a thousand faces"). "When I look at the pictures, I never see myself; they aren't self-portraits. Sometimes I disappear."

Here's a choice description from Roberta Smith's Times review of the new retrospective:

Unfolding in discrete, chapterlike series, her work has proved to be as formally ambitious and inventive as it is psychically probing. Her photographs are inevitably skewed so that their seams show and their fictive, constructed nature is apparent; we are always in on the trick, alerted to their real-feigned nature. The rough, visible nonchalance with which they are assembled for the camera has expanded the boundaries of setup photography, incorporating aspects of painting, sculpture, film, installation, performance, collage and assemblage.

Smith goes on to say that MoMA's survey, while historic, could have been even more monumental. That's no reason to delay your visit, though. This is a rare chance see the singular work of an amazing and capital-I Important Artist at one of the world's top museums. So get on it folks.

Below, watch a video about the retrospective, and remember: MoMA admission is free on Fridays from 4-8pm. Oh right, if this makes you want to brush up on your photography chops, we've got classes for that!

-- John Ruscher

Visual Abyss: Brian Ulrich's Dead Shopping Malls

We'll be filing this one under "Photo projects we wish we'd come up with."

For the last decade photographer Brian Ulrich has been working on Copia, an exploration of America's addiction to shopping and how it went boom and then bust.

"Initially," Ulrich says, "this project began as a response to the heated environment of 2001. The communal sense of grieving, healing and solidarity that broke down social walls as our nation grappled to make some sense of the tragedy of September 11th was quickly outpaced as the government encouraged citizens to take to the malls to boost the U.S. economy thereby equating consumerism with patriotism."

So Ulrich took to the malls, camera in tow, to see if people were heeding the call to shop. But like the megastores and mall multiplexes themselves, Ulrich quickly realized that this project was really, really big. For Retail he surveyed the pervasive mall culture of the Midwest and traveled to the shopping meccas of the country: Las Vegas, Mall of America and New York City. All of which led him to investigate the second life of new goods in his series Thrift.

Now--after the economy's bottomed out--Ulrich is completing his cycle with Dark Store, Ghost Boxes and Dead Malls. As lovers of modern architecture, we don't know what's more depressing: looking at just how ugly these buildings really are without the distractions of signage and shoppers, or knowing that they will just be left to decay. Ulrich shot a lot of different locations, but he's just one man; imagine how many more there are just like these. The parking lots and exteriors are eerily post-apocalyptic, but it's the vacant interiors, all lit up but completely devoid of life, that scare us the most. See all the images on his website, and consider following through on that photo project you've been kicking around in your brain for the past however many years: check out one of 3rd Ward's 16 different photography classes.

Now for those images.

-- Perrin Drumm

Essential Event: 3rd Ward Member Matthew Murphy and Ryan Scott Oliver Combine Photography And Music For '35MM'

 

When 3rd Ward member and virtuosic dance photographer Matthew Murphy first told us about 35MM--an "evening-length multimedia musical" that he's been creating with composer Ryan Scott Oliver--the Kickstarter campaign for their project was around half of the way to its goal (and we were about the same distance from fully comprehending the unique and amazing production that they were putting together.)

Now that the Kickstarter campaign is finished, funded and then some, 35MM will take place on Wednesday, March 7 and Monday, March 12 at Galapogos Art Space in Dumbo. We caught up with Murphy again, and he helped us really wrap our heads around the piece. Read on below, check out some of Murphy's images and a video of one of Oliver's songs after the jump.

"We've lovingly coined the phrase 'Musical Exhibition' to describe 35MM," he says. The production brings the musical talents of Oliver, who is also currently writing the musical version of Freaky Friday for Disney Theatricals, and Murphy's photographic mastery, which we highlighted in January. "Full disclosure, we've been a couple for the past two-and-a-half years, so the evening really is a labor of love in the truest sense of the word," Murphy tells us.

"Originally Ryan went through my photos when we first started seeing each other and he was drawn to a handful of them so he created songs based on what he saw in the images," he says. "Sometimes the image would be literal and the story would connect immediately, while other times it would be a more abstract image that Ryan would spin a tale out of."

As those songs began to accumulate, Murphy shot more photographs for the project, and they presented the songs for the first time at Urban Stages in December of 2010. "A year later Ryan really began to shape the piece by adding musical transitions that reflect on the art of photography as a way of documenting time while also stopping time," Murphy says. "Each song is its own isolated story, but our hope is that the audience feels like for each four-minute burst they are immersed in a new world both visually and aurally."

"Some may be asking why we are doing a Monday and Wednesday evening and the reason is because we were determined to have some of Broadway's hottest young talent, which meant we had to work around their show schedules," he adds. And he's not kidding. 35MM's five-person cast features Lindsay Mendez (Godspell), Alex Brightman (Wicked), Jay Armstrong Johnson (Hair, Catch Me If You Can), Betsy Wolfe (Merrily We Roll Along, Everyday Rapture), and Ben Crawford (Shrek). "They are going to blow everyone's minds," he says.

"Our director, Jeremy Bloom, has been working with them over the past week and solidifying all of the ideas for how we will present the images," Murphy says. "We have a spectacular projection designer Aaron Rhyne who is creating an installation that will allow us to deconstruct some of the images when needed and present them in their full form at others."

Murphy himself will be finishing up the last images for the song "Why Must We Tell Them Why?" this week right here at 3rd Ward. Check out those images and video below and grab your tickets before they're gone.

-- John Ruscher