The Imprint, 2010. © Niloufar Banisadr — *The Imprint*, 2010. © Niloufar Banisadr

The Seattle Art Fair returns this year with a strong overall program and consistently compelling photography-based work.

Yes, I know – hyperbolic headlines are a bit rich. I wrote this one a bit hesitantly after missing last weekend's Seattle Emerging Art Fair – a one-night popup exhibition at Canvas Space which I, unfortunately, learned about too late. So much for being on the pulse of art in a tech-drenched city. Digress and ramble on...

I'm also quietly mourning the (hopefully temporary) departure of Seattle's famously "more punk" biennial on-ramp "Out of Sight." There are rumors circulating about what caused this, but the general talk and suspicions center around gentrification and concrete-condo-jungle real estate boom making art space less affordable. Let's hope it returns next year.

Digressing again.

As sad as Out of Sight's departure is, The Seattle Art Fair - open through Sunday, August 5th at 6pm, continues to improve and impress, especially around photography. Now in its fourth year, it's become an annual tradition for Humble to highlight some of the fair's photo-related standouts, so here goes. If you're in the area, be sure to check these out and be ready to liquidate your bank account on work ranging from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars.

Without further ado....

Lack of cultural and gender-based diversity has been a problem in the art and photography world for years. Despite many positive, forward-thinking exhibitions, programs, and platforms dedicated to changing this, many of the major photo competitions, "photographers-to-watch" lists, and photographer mastheads in major publications are overwhelmingly white and male. Sure, there are exceptions – and a number of ongoing efforts to change this – but the scales, especially in magazine publishing and major commercial shoots, are still tipped.

Frustrated with the slow pace to progress, photographer, writer, and curator Oriana Koren, alongside her collective The Authority Collective, developed "The Lit List," a merit-based, 30-strong selection of female, trans, non-binary, people of color, and otherwise marginalized photographers who they believe are not getting the attention they deserve. To be announced in August 2018 and exhibited at Photoville in Brooklyn, NY, the final list of 30 will be pared down from a 50-photographer shortlist based on 200 initial nominations made over the past few months. The jury is comprised of industry decision-makers of color and allies including Zora J Murff of Strange Fire Collective, Paloma Shutes of California Sunday magazine, Siobhán Bohnacker of The New Yorker, and Noelle Flores-Theard of Magnum Foundation.

Excited, hopeful, and equally frustrated with Humble's own tortoise-crawl towards equal representation, I spoke with Oriana Koren to learn more about the inspiring project. Throughout this interview, we've included some of our favorite images from the photographers being considered.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Oriana Koren.

PostedJuly 12, 2018

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesPortfolio, Publications, Galleries, Artists

TagsThe Lit List, The Authority Collective, New Photography, Best photography of 2018, diversity in photography, Jessica Pettway, Aisha Mugo, Eloisa Lopez, Maria del Rio, Gabriella Angotti Jones, Jared Soares, Kayla Reefer, Tavish Timothy

In her latest exhibition, Midst, Megumi Shauna Arai uses soft, subtle metaphors to address the many, often ambiguous layers of her Jewish and Japanese heritage.

While trained as a photographer, Megumi Shauna Arai often combines sculpture, fibers, and exercises with culturally significant materials to emphasize this splintering complexity. Her latest exhibition, Midst at Seattle's Jacob Lawrence Gallery is a series of photographs of bodies suspended in water exhibited amidst three installations referencing Japanese folk practices for honoring sacred space. In a piece in one room titled "did you not know, I was waiting for you?" a hobo bag with elements of Japanese stitching stands propped up in cinder blocks like flowers in a makeshift vase. In another piece titled "Interior Frontiers," sets of rice straw rope resembling a crown of thorns hang from the ceiling and entryway and wrap around the entire space. In another piece, " simultaneously (the border of a great belonging)," a similar rope connects two small boulders like a tin can telephone, but hangs loosely without the tension one might expect.

While each piece in the show has a very specific origin, there is an open-ended-ness that allows viewers to float through the gallery and gather their own meaning. I spoke with the artist to learn more about her process of making the work, and how her own sense of identity fits into it all.

PostedJune 28, 2018

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesExhibitions, Artists, Galleries

TagsMegumi Shauna Arai, New photography, Seattle Photographers, Seattle Artists, Jacob Lawrence Gallery

© Daniel W. Coburn, Untitled, work from “Becoming a Specter”, 2018, Archival pigment prints, 16” x 20”, Edition of 12, The Print Center, Philadelphia

Daniel W. Coburn's photographs confront the tension between the artist's inner narrative what's projected to the outside world.

Daniel W. Coburn’s Becoming a Specter, on view at Philadelphia’s Print Center through August 4th, is purposefully restrictive and subtle. The artist demonstrates how the elimination of color in a photograph can make the deepest blacks and brightest whites – and everything in between – so vivid and tactile that you don’t miss color at all. And that's exactly what Becoming a Specter does.

The exhibition consists of twelve untitled photographs, four to a wall, in an alcove gallery space on the second floor. Predominantly images of people, they all seem to deliberately capture the split-second moment where nothing looks particularly real as if the subject and photographer have come together on an inhalation.

Exhibition review by Deborah Krieger

PostedJune 21, 2018

AuthorDeborah Krieger

CategoriesExhibitions, Artists, Galleries

TagsDaniel W. Coburn, The Print Center Philadelphia, Contemporary Photography, Photography and the self, 2018 Photography exhibitions, Photography exhibition reviews

© Robert Wade, California, 1969-1970, courtesy of the photographer, from "All Power: Visual Legacies of the Black Panther Party," PCNW 2018

Seattle exhibition traces the visual descendants of the Black Panther party

All Power: Visual Legacies of the Black Panther Party, organized by Michelle Dunn Marsh at Seattle's Photographic Center Northwest – as well as an abridged (expanded) version at AIPAD earlier this spring – is an exhibition drawn from a book of the same name and showcases a select group of contemporary black artists, whose work has been informed or influenced by The Black Panther Party. Timed to the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Seattle chapter – the first outside of California – the exhibition looks to how the Panthers' visual codes and social platforms play out in contemporary African American photography. I spoke with curator Michelle Dunn Marsh to learn more about the book, exhibition and plans to take the Panther's legacy into the future. The exhibition is up at PCNW through June 10th, 2018.

Jon Feinstein in conversation with Michelle Dunn Marsh

Photography Highlights from Seattle's Last Art Fair Left Standing

"The Lit List" Presents a Diverse List of 30 Photographers to Watch, Exhibit, and Hire Right Now

Artist Combines Photography, Sculpture and Japanese Rope Straw as an Open-ended Metaphor for her Bi-racial Identity

Becoming a Specter: Daniel W. Coburn's Photographs Present a Shadowy Image of Fear, Longing and Self Preservation

A (photographic) Legacy of the Black Panther Party: In Conversation With Michelle Dunn Marsh