Complex Heritage

Posner Menorah Nazi Flag 1932

see also

The Guardian, December 2022: Photo taken by rabbi’s wife in 1931 symbolising Jewish defiance of the Nazis comes home

Holocaust Education Companion Guide

Still More - Under the L

Larry Wolf, Seed 3.1 (2023)

Larry Wolf, Seed 3.2 (2023)

Larry Wolf, Seed 3.3 (2023)

see also the project Under the L

More Seeds

Larry Wolf, Seed 2.1 (2023)

Larry Wolf, Seed 2.2 (2023)

Larry Wolf, Seed 2.3 (2023)

Larry Wolf, Seed 2.4 (2023)

Larry Wolf, Seed 2.5 (2023)

Larry Wolf, Seed 2.6 (2023)

Larry Wolf, Seed 2.7 (2023)

Larry Wolf, Seed 2.8 (2023)

Larry Wolf, Seed 2.9 (2023)

Larry Wolf, Seed 2.10 (2023)

Larry Wolf, Seed 2.11 (2023)

Larry Wolf, Seed 2.12 (2023)

Some Seeds

Larry Wolf, New Moon in Leo (2023)

Larry Wolf, Morning Light (2023)

Larry Wolf, Under the L (2023)

Larry Wolf, Lunch with John (2023)

Larry Wolf, Eric in Toronto (2023)

Larry Wolf, Young Kim - Shall We Go To The Happy Land? (2023)

Larry Wolf, Queer Blue Love - Backpack (2023)

Larry Wolf, Queer Blue Love (2023)

Larry Wolf, CAT Scan (2023)

Larry Wolf, Toronto (2023)

Larry Wolf, Business Card Surveillance Photo (2023)

Larry Wolf, Jewish Cemetery (2023)

Larry Wolf, The Sexual Organ of Fungi (2023)

Paul Strand

His modernist landscapes and stunning portraits, stun me, stop me in my tracks. I stare in wonder. With these in particular, I'm drawn back to the years I lived in Vermont (1976-1982, 1985-1994). 

... to show specifics and generalities together and his resolve to present these components in formally innovative ways.  ... combining the concrete and the universal is at the center of what makes art important. ... if generalizations are in a sense the final reward for our attention, it is the specifics that are the pleasure.

Robert Adams, Why People Photograph 1994

 

Paul Strand, Mr Bennett, Vermont 1944
in Robert Adams, Why People Photograph 1994

Among the greatest architectural pictures ever made

Paul Strand, Church, Vermont 1944
in Robert Adams, Why People Photograph 1994

... he off-centered symmetrical buildings occasionally going so far as to frustrate simplistic documentary expectations by shaving away the smallest edge of the subject, as in the view at the end of the book for the Vermont church in 1944 (it is, I think, among the greatest architectural pictures ever made).

Robert Adams, Why People Photograph 1994

 

 It changed my life as a photographer

Paul Strand, Toward the Sugarhouse, Vermont 1944
in Robert Adams, Why People Photograph 1994

... other pictures surrender a significant part of their foreground to what looks to be, by common standards, not the subject .. not to mention pictures framed by large quantities of the apparently irrelevant, as with the photograph of the little fragment of a view of birches seen from inside what appears to be a barn. The photographer seems not to have taken the necessary step to get close enough to the opening and for his laziness gotten a picture two-thirds board (and what a wonderful picture it is ... I think it changed my life as a photographer).

Robert Adams, Why People Photograph 1994

Robert Adams - Why People Photograph

Robert Adams, Why People Photograph 1994

Could anyone have loved this sad country with its unnumbered ironies so much that a regard for it wold be the foundation of a life's work?

Robert Adams, Why People Photograph 1994

Biographical Note

Born Nathaniel Paul Stransky in Brooklyn (October 16, 1890) to Jewish Bohemian immigrants, Paul Strand attended the Ethical Culture Fieldstone School where Lewis Hine was a teacher, and on a photo club outing, was introduced to Alfred Stieglitz et al at the 271 Gallery. Strand became one of the leading Modernist photographers. ... In 1950, Strand left the United States for Europe as the House Committee on Un-American Activities was sweeping many of Strand's associates into its web.

Scott Fortino - Museum of Contemporary Photography

I am taken by how evocative these highly formal photographs are. Captivated by what I see, I imagine the photographer carefully composing each image, simultaneously minimal and visually complex. The photographs, while showing no person, are filled with the presence of those who built the space, lived or worked or visited there, and the photographer, seeing what was there and making the photograph. They invite me to look ever more closely at the world around me.

 

I discovered Scott Fortino's work when browsing the MoCP on-line catalog. I then saw them in person, as physical objects. What a great resource. Many many thanks.

These are a few screenshots from the MoCP Collection. 

Scott Fortino, Chicago (moving water) (1999)

Scott Fortino, Chicago (black sea wall, red fence) (2000)

Scott Fortino, Bedroom, CHA Public Housing (2005)

Scott Fortino, Faculty Lounge Kitchen, IIT (2006)

Scott Fortino, Holmes Place Health Club (2005)

Queer Blue Love

Inspired by Derek Jarman's Blue

Larry Wolf, Queer Blue Love (2023)

Larry Wolf, Queer Blue Love (2023)

Larry Wolf, Queer Blue Love (2023)

Larry Wolf, Queer Blue Love (2023)

Larry Wolf, Queer Blue Love (2023)

Larry Wolf, Queer Blue Love (2023)

Larry Wolf, Queer Blue Love (2023)

Larry Wolf (2023)
Quote from Derek Jarman - Blue (1993)

David Zwirner Books (2023)