Stan Raucher in Black & White: January 2011

Faces of China at Clarridge Gallery

Eight prints from my series Faces of China will be on display at the Group f/5.6 Clarridge Gallery from January 29 through February 25, 2011. All of these portraits were created in 2009 during a month-long trip I took to the Zhejiang, Yunnan and Guangxi provinces in southeastern China. The gallery is located in the office of the East Shore Unitarian Church, 12700 SE 32nd Street, Bellevue, WA. Gallery hours are weekdays 9am to 5pm. Call (425) 641-3146 for weekend hours.

Musician - Baisha, China

Old Woman - Baisha, China

At the Chinese Opera - Lishui, China

Man in Market - Dali, China

Vegetable Oil Vendor - Xizhou, China

Man with Portraits - Xizhou, China

Repairman - Xizhou, China

Man with Tea - Anren, China

Henry Horenstein PCNW Workshop

I just completed an excellent two-day workshop with Henry Horenstein at Photo Center NW. He was in Seattle for the opening of his exhibition at PCNW on Friday, and he gave an interesting talk at the University of Washington on Thursday. In the workshop on Saturday, he reviewed participants portfolios and everyone had the opportunity to comment on the work. This morning we met at Woodland Park Zoo to photograph for several hours, and we then returned to PCNW to edit, review and critique our work. Although I live quite close to the zoo, this is the first time I've photographed there. One of my new year's resolutions was to do more photography in Seattle, and since there are plenty of my favorite bipedal subjects wandering around the zoo, I'm sure I'll be back soon.

Viridian Artists’ 1st International Juried Photography Exhibition

I'm honored that two prints from my Sidewalks of New York series were selected for the Viridian Artists’ 1st International Juried Photography Exhibition. The exhibition includes work by 26 photographers from the United States and abroad. It will be on display at the Viridian Gallery located at 530 W 25th Street in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan from January 18 through February 5, 2011. There will be an opening reception at the gallery on January 22 from 4-7pm.

This exhibition was juried by Elisabeth Sussman, Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art. In her curatorial statement, Sussman talks about the breadth of photography today and says, "all the photographers, I think share a basic concern, which I would describe as a conviction that photography has a dual role: that a photograph is both an aesthetic object and a conveyor of information."

I'm delighted that I'll be able to stop by the gallery to see the show when I visit New York for the PowerHouse Portfolio Review.

Fifth Avenue and East 77th Street, Manhattan

Coney Island Boardwalk, Brooklyn

Pier 24 - An Amazing Photographic Venue

Last Monday I was fortunate to be able to visit Pier 24, the largest photographic venue in the United States - 28,000 square feet - located in a recently renovated warehouse underneath the San Francisco Bay Bridge. The venue has been open to the public since 2010 and houses the permanent photography collect of The Pilara Foundation. It is open Mondays through Thursdays by advanced appointment and admits only 20 visitors for two-hour self-guided tours three times each day.

The current show is From the Collection of Randi and Bob Fischer and runs through February 28. This exhibition features hundreds of prints by over twenty renowned photographers in seventeen separate rooms. The show includes silver gelatin prints - with the approximate numbers shown in parentheses - by Edward Weston (11 prints), Diane Arbus (18 prints), Robert Frank (17 prints), Garry Winogrand (30 prints), Lee Friedlander (over 65 prints), Walker Evans (over 80 prints), Harry Callahan (23 prints), Aaron Siskind (15 prints), Helen Levitt (3 prints), Paul Strand (4 prints), Alfred Stieglitz (6 prints), Harry Callahan (23 prints), Man Ray (8 prints), Robert Adams (26 prints) and the Bechers (over 125 prints). Also included in the show is color work by William Eggleston, Andreas Gursky, and Richard Misrach. If you plan to be in San Francisco, a visit to Pier 24 should be on your agenda, but be sure to make your plans early since advanced reservations fill up early.

An interesting video of Bob Fischer discussing his philosophy of collecting and walk through of a portion of the exhibition is posted on You Tube.

Entrance to Pier 24

San Francisco Photo Safari

I had a fantastic time on my three-day photo viewing safari visit to San Francisco last weekend. I arrived on Saturday afternoon in time to visit some galleries before they closed. My first stop was at 49 Geary which held a number of interesting exhibits. My first stop was the Robert Koch Gallery with an exhibition of prints by Yamamoto Masao. I then headed down to the Modernbook Gallery to view Floating World by Brigitte Carnochan, a display of beautiful warmtone pigment prints on handmade Kozo paper. I also got a chance to look at their newly-published book of works by Jerry Uelsmann. The Fraenkel Gallery was showing Boulevard by Katy Grannan, which consisted of large color portrait of anonymous passers-by taken outdoors in bright sunlight outdoors against stark white walls in LA and San Francisco. My final stop at 49 Geary was the Scott Nichols Gallery to see An Aerial Aesthetic by William Garnett. I then head over to Gallery 291, which was unfortunately between shows, but I did get a chance to see some prints by Beth Moon. I then walked down to RayKo Photo Center for a look at the Last Kodachrome Show.

After an early stop for dim sum on Sunday, I headed to SFMOMA to view the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibition The Modern Century, which runs through January 30. This was the main reason for my visit and I was not disappointed. I spent over three hours wandering though the thematically arranged room that display nearly 300 of his prints, from the iconic to the obscure. It was interesting to see the difference between the early work, printed in the 30’s by Cartier-Bresson, with the richly-tone but low contrast work printed by Pictorial Services in the 40’s, and the higher contrast work they produced in later years. The evolution of his style and subject matter was also nicely revealed in the exhibition. I’ve always enjoyed Cartier-Bresson’s portrait work, and it was delightful to see prints of Henri Matisse, Martine Franck and John Huston.

Even after the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibition closes, there is good reason to visit SFMOMA, namely the show Exposed - Voyeurism, Surveillance, and the Camera Since 1870, co-organized by SFMOMA and Tate Modern, which runs through April 17, 2011. This exhibition contains over 200 photographs and is organized around five themes (The Unseen Photographer, Voyeurism and Desire, Celebrity and the Public Gaze, Witnessing Violence, and Witnessing Violence) and includes work by Brassaï, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Paul Strand, Weegee and many other. There are also several video presentations, including a 45 minute slide show The Ballad of Sexual Dependency by Nan Goldin. I found this exhibition to be even more compelling than the Cartier-Bresson show, and the four hours I spent viewing it were not sufficient to assimilate everything.

My visit to SFMOMA ended with a trip to the gift shop, where excellent catalogs of both exhibits were available. As I left the museum, I thought that nothing could top the last two days of photographic viewing. Little did I know what was in store for me the following day - a visit to Pier 24.