585.427.9848 – Stoney’s Plaza, 2852 West Henrietta Road, Henrietta, NY 14623-2020

Eric Kunsman’s photographs of “dated” technology – on view at Buffalo, New York’s CEPA Gallery through June 5th, convey an important public utility and its implications in the age of smartphone ubiquity.

Who uses payphones?

That was my first question when looking at Eric Kunsman’s series Felicific Calculus. Since relocating his studio from a well-heeled Rochester, NY neighborhood to one described by concerned colleagues as “a war zone” in 2017, the artist and educator has photographed public phones throughout the city in an attempt to answer that critical question.

Kunsman’s black and white compositions elegantly convey neighborhoods throughout Rochester, centering the public utility even when the phones are not at the center of the images. Some hold space in the middle and background planes, requiring us to look closely at their surroundings. As Kunsman explained in our 2020 PhotoNOLA portfolio review, payphones serve crucial social needs; connecting job seekers with potential employers, communicating with distant loved ones, and as COVID-19 blazed across the country, calling emergency services.

Kunsman’s immersive ongoing documentary project goes well beyond a time-limited installation by providing audiences with overlapping statistics including payphone use, economic status, ethnicity, age, gender, race, and crime. Read on to learn more about this important project, and if you can’t make it to Buffalo for the closing, follow this link to see a VR tour.

Roula Seikaly in conversation with Eric Kunsman

PostedJune 2, 2021

AuthorRoula Seikaly

Categoriesinterviews, Exhibitions, Artists

TagsEric Kunsman, Felicific Calculus, CEPA Gallery, Payphone typologies, social documentary photography, conceptual photography, conceptual documentary, contemporary black and white photography, photos of public payphones, who uses payphones?

Virginia Wilcox's new book Arboreal, published by Deadbeat Club shows a sinewed relationship between Los Angeles trees and the sprawling landscape they inhabit.

Spidery branches look over and onto highways, pointing and wrapping like withered fingers. Their power is in the space around them, their conversation with the land, the occasional person sitting for a portrait, or the built human presence for which they continue to make space.

“These images present a survey of trees inhabiting a mangled urban landscape that looks something like wilderness,” writes Wilcox. The work does more than simply note urban development's impact on nature - it portrays a melancholic meditation on coexistence. A mirror leans against a palm tree reflecting bramble and sky behind it; a stand of baron trunks mimics a distant downtown skyline; a pathway stretches to reveal an anonymous figure on a park bench who almost disappears in their knotty camouflage.

As a collection of images, Arboreal is a quest for coexistence in an increasingly hostile world, and Wilcox’s soft, wistful way of seeing creates entry points from many angles.

I spoke with Wilcox to learn more about the book and her life within it.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Virginia Wilcox

PostedMay 12, 2021

AuthorJon Feinstein

Categoriesinterviews, Artists, Photobooks, Publications

TagsVirginia Wilcox, Arboreal book, tree photography, Photo series about Los Angeles, 2021 photobooks, Deadbeat Club publisher, large format photography, contemporary black and white photography

Bread (Cross), 2017. Archival Pigment Print. 24 x 30” © Eli Durst

Eli Durst’s ”The Community” hovers a haunting line between what is real, what is imagined, and what falls somewhere in between.

Photographers often consider themselves storytellers. Amongst many photographers of his generation, the work of Eli Durst proposes a new definition of narrative and the documentary photograph; one more sprawling and supple and interpretive without the self-imposed ethic of ‘objectivity, without pious obligations to fact. The work slithers through loopholes of fact and fiction, and with disarming sleight of hand and stealth presence, accumulating evidence and masking visible purpose.

Looking at a photograph from The Community can feel as if walking into the wrong apartment, suspended in a social fabric without clear definition (nor even the certainty that one is still in the general present). The work disorients while seeming very, very familiar. Durst is a folklorist of our self-absorbed, flattened, culture; the eternal middle-brow.

Durst’s solo exhibition of The Community is on view at Foley Gallery through April 4th.

Stephen Frailey in conversation with Eli Durst

PostedApril 2, 2021

AuthorStephen Frailey

Categoriesinterviews, Exhibitions, Artists, Art News, Galleries

TagsEli Durst, photographic truth, Narrative Photography, contemporary black and white photography, Stephen Frailey, Foley Gallery, Michael Foley, photographic tableaux, religion and photography

Shortly after Anna Grevenitis’ daughter Luigia was born, she was diagnosed with trisomy 21 - Down Syndrome. For many parents, such news challenges the hopes they harbor that their child will live a “normal” life. By her mother’s account, the now-15-year-old Luigia is a thriving teenager. As her parent and primary companion, Grevenitis knows this better than anyone in her daughter’s life.

Through their ongoing series Regard, Grevenitis invites us to observe choreographed, routinized domestic acts - bathing, grooming, preparing for bedtime - as they unfold between mother and daughter, a loving caregiver and her charge. Our welcome is conditional, though, and requires us to consider who we are looking at, and why. I spoke with Anna and Luigia about this project, and its potency as a visual exploration of spectatorship, collaboration, vulnerability.

Roula Seikaly in conversation with Anna and Luigia Grevenitis

PostedJanuary 30, 2020

AuthorRoula Seikaly

CategoriesArtists, Portfolio

Tagsphotography and down syndrome, self portraiture, self portrait photographers, documentary photography, concerned photography, photography and empathy, contemporary black and white photography

The Scraggly Poetic Life of Los Angeles Trees

A New Photo Series Embraces The Curious Loopholes Between Fact And Fiction

A Mother and Daughter Use Photography to Challenge the Stigmas of Down Syndrome

Photos of Public Payphones Mark Race, Class and Socioeconomic Status

The Scraggly Poetic Life of Los Angeles Trees

A New Photo Series Embraces The Curious Loopholes Between Fact And Fiction

A Mother and Daughter Use Photography to Challenge the Stigmas of Down Syndrome