New York Now | Home: A Photography Triennial

Opening March 10 at Museum of the City of New York and inspired by the Museum’s landmark presentation of the same name in 2000, this series will occur every three years and engage different themes and issues of the contemporary city.The first installment examines the idea of “Home.” At its most practical, “Home” refers to the literal places we dwell. Yet it can also stand for family, or the communities of which we choose to be a part. This vital and complex concept arises in often surprising ways in our urban context, from highly personal experiences to debates over public policy. This exhibition aims to look at how artists have responded to and interpreted these issues. Above: Xyza Cruz Bacani,  Liberty, from the series "We Are Like Air: NYC", 2022. 

This exhibition includes photography and video work made over the past several years that creatively documents and interprets this changing cityscape, impacted by ongoing dynamics of economic and racial inequality, and  the COVID-19 crisis.The selected work encompasses a variety of perspectives—as diverse as the city itself—and consider a range of picture making approaches. From the personal and intimate to the monumental and collective, the photographs in this exhibition invites viewers to see the city they thought they knew through fresh perspectives.

Participating artists: Ariana Faye Allensworth, Xyza Cruz Bacani, Roy Baizan, Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, Sara Bennett, Amarise Carreras, Cinthya Santos-Briones, Alan Chin, Sally Davies, Maureen Drennan, Nona Faustine, Naima Green, Diana Guerra, Gail Albert Halaban, Chantal Heijnen & Lou van Melik, Ramona Jingru Wang, Anders Jones, Jamel Shabazz, Neil Kramer, Dean Majd, Alan Michelson, Paul Moakley, Cheryl Mukherji, Ian Reid, Richard Renaldi, Irina Rozovsky, Geralyn Shukwit, Laila Annmarie Stevens, Joana Toro, Linda Troeller, Nolan Trowe, Elias Williams, and The Anti-Eviction Mapping Project.

 Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Info

The idea of “home”, so prevalent in contemporary photography, prompted me to check the DART archives. Following are a few excerpts and links

May 22, 2008: Going Over Home, by Fred Woodard

When Fred Woodward was art director of Texas Monthly the task of supplying photographs for articles sometimes fell into his hands. Shortly before he moved to New York to become the AD of Rolling Stone, he was commissioned by The Atlantic Monthly to accompany a friend, who was a journalist, on a freelance photo assignment. The pictures he made in Canton, Mississippi and Chicago, Illinois in 1986 are now on view at 401 Projects gallery.

In an email exchange this week, Fred [who in 2008 was design director of GQ] shared with me his thoughts on the origins of the photographs and how they came to have such meaning for him….Above: Two photographs by Fred Woodward from the series, "Going Over Home," 1986

"During the course of the interviews [by Nicholas Lemann], he was intrigued to meet so many residents who had all come north from Canton, a town of 27,000 people in Mississippi. He then decided to make the trip there to find out why they'd left. The northerly migration of these African-American southerners became the core of his story and the basis for my photos. The Atlantic ended up running a handful of my photographs; then I filed the negatives away and rarely looked at them again.

"I had been planning for the better part of a year to do a completely different show at 401 Projects - my first photography exhibition - but a few weeks ago, I changed my mind. Driving home one night, I was listening to a discussion on the radio about Barack Obama and religion when I heard it said that maybe part of the problem was simply that most people in this country had never been inside an African-American church.” Read the entire feature here

October 17, 2007: Making a Home and Opening Doors

Japan Society Gallery, a quiet spot near the United Nations where East meets West, is celebrating its centennial this year. But with the installation of Making a Home: Japanese Contemporary artists in New York, an exhibition of work by 33 Japanese-born artists who have moved to New York to pursue their dreams, the place rocks. Above: Photo © Takahiro Kaneyama

The exhibition, curated by Eric Shiner [later, Director of the Andy Warhol Museum], includes work by well-known artists, some of whom arrived in New York during the 1950s and ‘60s, including Yoko Ono and Ushio Shinohara….In the section called The Process of Making is an exact replica of Satoru Eguchi's studio, constructed of cardboard, paper, glue and paint. Not only does it include furniture and artwork; it also contains art materials, tools and brushes, potted plants, a scale model of the studio, an air conditioner, a vacuum cleaner, wall to wall drawings, a bottle of Windex, a copy of National Geographic and, touchingly, a pair of well-worn slippers nested in a little heap of paper scraps under the desk.

There is much to see and experience here, from a group of nine photographs by Takahiro Kaneyama of his mother and two aunts who raised him in Japan, made over the course of a decade; an eight-by-twelve-foot painting which is vision of upstate New York from above by Junko Yoda, one in a family of three artists included in the show; …and ON megumi Akiyoshi's FLOWER gallery, a psychedelic red room designed to induce giddiness. Read the entire feature here

March 9, 2018: Home | 12 Magnum Photographers in NYC

What is home? Is it a place? An Idea? A state of mind? Ask around and you’ll probably get into the most interesting conversations of your week. Pauline Vermare, [then curator at Magnum Photos], had the rare opportunity to explore this complex subject through the eyes and minds of 16 photographers who dug deeply into their experiences to convey the inherently intimate and introspective sentiments it conveys. Above: © Mark Power, Brighton. England, GB. September 2017; courtesy Magnum Photos

The project, which was done in collaboration with Fujifilm, finally resulted in images by the 16 photographers, which are currently on view at Milk Gallery in New York. Photographs of the familiar and familial that look inward and outward to the geographical space of home; perceived as a spiritual journey or an existential road trip, the intricacies of family bonds, past and future generations make beautiful tributes to these close connections, often coming together in an elemental and peaceful way.
 Seen together, Pauline adds, “these photographs also offer a contemporary take on the legendary exhibition The Family of Man, that presented an idyllic humanist vision of the world after the trauma of World War II. These photographs show us how dramatically the world has evolved since 1955, and, with it, the notions of family, home, motherhood and fatherhood.”

Home features work by Antoine d'Agata, Olivia Arthur, Jonas Bendiksen, Chien-Chi Chang, Thomas Dworzak, Elliott Erwitt, David Alan Harvey, Hiroji Kubota, Alex Majoli, Trent Parke, Gueorgui Pinkhassov, Mark Power, Moises Saman, Alessandra Sanguinetti

Read the entire feature here

 
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