Love On The Bus. Chicago, IL 1967. © John Simmons

John Simmons has been photographing the daily experiences of African Americans in (predominantly) Chicago and the American South since the 1960s. His latest exhibition, No Crystal Stair, currently on view at The Museum of African American Art in Los Angeles, focuses on his work from the 60s and 70s. Intimate portraits volley against photos that capture the period's charged racial segregation. Iconic images of pivotal civil rights activists like Angela Davis sit beside candid photos of everyday life: a young girl eating an ice cream cone, two lovers on a bus, a woman playing tambourine in church.

Simmons notes a heartfelt nod to Roy Decarava’s classic The Sweet Flypaper of Life and the poetry of Langston Hughes, reflecting the era’s many moments as often turbulent, often beautiful visual poetry. We recently connected to discuss his exhibition and work as a photographer and Emmy Award-winning cinematographer.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with John Simmons

PostedJanuary 23, 2020

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesExhibitions, Artists

TagsJohn Simmons, Black and White Photography, Roy DeCarava, Langston Hughes, No Crystal Stair

© Tania Franco Klein Contained (Self-portrait), from Our Life in the Shadows, 2016 63 x 42 inch Archival Pigment Print. Courtesy of ROSE Gallery.

For Edgar Allan Poe, there was nothing as “poetical” as the death of a beautiful woman. For the past eighty years, Los Angeles’ creative minds have taken this musing from the Baltimore-based poet and splashed it into the popular imagination through noir and detective films. The beautiful dead woman—or, depending on the example, the beautiful sad woman who is not yet dead—is a hallmark of the (often misogynist) genre and a staple in Proceed to the Route, Tania Franco Klein’s solo exhibition at Rose Gallery through February 15, 2020, at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, California.

Exhibition Review by Deborah Krieger

PostedJanuary 14, 2020

AuthorDeborah Krieger

CategoriesExhibitions, Artists, Portfolio

TagsTania Franco Klein, female tropes, Female Gaze, Deborah Krieger, Rose Gallery

Humble editors recommend standouts in 2019 (online) photography writing

How often do you read – beyond a quick skim – the text accompanying a gut-heavy photo essay someone you respect shared on some social network? One that happened to algorithmically line up to your endless scroll? What was the last piece of writing on photography that truly made you stop, think, and maybe twitch for more than a few seconds or the “five minute read?” What writing sat with you for more than a glance?

As photography writers and quotationally proclaimed “critics,” we try to read as much as we can to keep us both pulsed and pleasantly distracted. But it’s more than that. Great photo writing, whether it’s an honest Q+A or a thoughtfully researched essay or even an inspired exhibition review, can help us wade deeper, can help clarify, and in many cases, can change how we see what we see.

The following list barely nicks the skin of all the inspiring photography writing in 2019, but we hope will help move, distract, change your view of the world. In some cases, they may even help you navigate your own process of shooting, editing, curating, or making a living from making pictures.

In 2017, Brad Feuehelm spent three days wandering around Berlin. He photographed various scattered symbols of capitalist modernity – billboards, television stations, satellite dishes, and contemporary office buildings – with no specific beginning or end in sight. And then he stopped.

Rather than painting a linear narrative of the city, its people or cultures, Feuerhelm cropped, collated and reorganized these often blurry, grainy black and white photographs into Dein Kampf, his disorienting 2019 photobook published by MACK that emphasizes the equally disorienting, blurry and anxious ways we navigate history and political ideology.

For Feurhelm, whether it's on the left or right, nothing is clear, everything is broken and whichever direction we turn, we confront a mess of cacophonous gray. I spoke with Feuerhelm to learn more.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Brad Feuerhelm

PostedJanuary 3, 2020

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesPhotobooks, Artists, Portfolio

Tagsphotobooks, Brad Feuerhelm, Dein Kampf, Mack Books, black and white photography, new photography, conceptual photography

Christmas Polaroid snapshots courtesy of Robert E. Jackson

If you’ve been reading Humble’s blog for the past few years, you’ll recognize our penchant for Robert E. Jackson’s curious collection of American snapshots. With more than ten thousand vernacular photographs in his collection, it’s a constant trove for the peculiar, hilarious, and unintentionally artful. Christmas-themed images have a special place in Jackson’s archives – a few years ago, we featured outer-space themed Christmas cards, and this year, we’re following the tradition with some Polaroids.

Not all of these images are “loud” in their strangeness – many are even boring at first glance. But they each offer a glimpse into the sometimes earnest, occasionally off-moments, personal documentation and celebration of the holiday before the digital age.

PostedDecember 23, 2019

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesVernacular Photography

TagsRobert E. Jackson, american snapshots, vernacular photographs, Polaroid Photography, Christmas snapshots, Christmas Vernacular

John Simmons' "No Crystal Stair" Pays Homage to Langston Hughes and Roy DeCarava

Channeling Cindy Sherman, Tania Franco Klein Reclaims the Trope of the “Beautiful Tragic Woman”

Reading (Still) Isn’t Dead. 22 Essays, Interviews, and Other Online Photography Writing You Should Have Read in 2019

Brad Feuerhelm's New Photobook Navigates the Anxieties of History and Ideology

Weird Christmas Polaroid Snapshots