Are we still doing these? And did we belated-April-Fools you? We're still excited about Instagram, and we're still excited about photographers using the "platform" to make meaningful work that breaks the clichés of so many best-of lists. These fourteen photographers and "photo-based-artists" have spent week-long residencies with us since the beginning of the year and continue to inspire us daily, on and off Instagram. So spend a few minutes, familiarize yourself with their work, and give them a follow. If you'd like to be considered for a Humble IG takeover, details are HERE.

PostedApril 12, 2017

AuthorJon Feinstein

CategoriesArtists, Galleries

TagsTatum Shaw, Amak Mahmoodian, Serrah Russell, Barr Faber, Chris Maggio, Henrik Hansen, Joe Lingemann, Katie Riep, Maela Ohana, Christopher Hutchinson, Pietro Cocco, Patrick Gookin

Binocular Tropical © Joseph Desler Costa — *Binocular Tropical* © Joseph Desler Costa

Last summer I visited Foley Gallery in New York City’s Lower East Side to see High Summer, an exhibition curated by Joseph Desler Costa and Jeremy Haik, and had the chance to interview both artists about their work and approach to art-making. Desler Costa, who is represented by Michael Foley, recently celebrated the opening of a solo exhibition of his own work, Particle Paradise, a display of seventeen new photographs and sculptural pieces. I visited the gallery on an overcast afternoon and was met by the artist for a private tour of the show. Continuing our conversation later, we discussed some of the finer points of his new work.

PostedApril 5, 2017

AuthorAdam Ryder

CategoriesExhibitions, Artists, Galleries

TagsJoseph Desler Costa, Jeremy Haik, Adam Ryder, Michael Foley, Foley Gallery, New Photography

Jeff Sessions' top selling photograph: "Untitled (Freedom Clouds), 2017" *

Who knew that Jeff Sessions was such a talented shutterbug? The 84th US Attorney General surprised the art world recently with his penchant for producing striking, and sales-fetching fine art photography.

Sessions' simple, yet elegant large scale black and white photograph of clouds caught multiple collectors' eyes at Phillips' 20th Century and Contemporary Art Evening Sale last month in London, approaching six-figure bids, unheard of for an artist of his age. The image, ["Untitled (Freedom Clouds), 2017"] ultimately sold for £89K to an anonymous collector.

PostedApril 1, 2017

AuthorEditors

CategoriesArtists, Galleries

TagsOutsider Art, Jeff Sessions, Outsider Art Photography, Photography Auctions

Surface Relations, a new photobook by Patrick Gookin turns Los Angeles' clichés into low-fi dreamscapes. Isolation in sunlight, failed ambitions, smoggy strip malls, commuters trapped in their cars, and billboards juxtaposed with sulking trees provide a pastiche of ongoing trepidation. Using various i-Phones, often shooting from the safety of his car, Gookin photographs anonymously as he passes through, his frame tangled, at times out of focus, nodding equally to the influence Lee Friedlander, as to the ever-present Google-cam. I've been drawn to Gookin's work since including it in Humble's 2014 online exhibition Tough Turf: New Directions in Street Photography, and have been following its evolution since. I recently spoke with Gookin about his book, LA car culture, and a hint of existential relationships. PS - for our friends in Brooklyn, NY, Gookin will be having a book signing and one-day exhibition at Sunday Takeout, this Sat, April 1st from 1-5pm.

PostedMarch 30, 2017

AuthorJon Feinstein

Tagsiphoneography, Street Photography, photobooks, Patrick Gookin, Los Angeles Photographers

Photo Courtesy of Shutterstock / Everett Collection

"Beauty" is a loaded, complicated, and occasionally so-overused-it's-neutralized term in photography and beyond. A quick Google search turns up everything from On Beauty, Zadie Smith's 2005 novel, to Robert Adams' classic photography book of the same title. A likely first thought for fellow visual literacy junkies might be the ever-present "male gaze" -- the idea, described by John Berger and officially coined by Laura Mulvey decades ago-- that every aspect of visual media and history has been filtered through a heterosexual male lens. While our thoughts bounce from slick, and often damaging fashion campaigns to countless cinematic tropes, they also toggle between hackneyed photographs of sunsets and flowers, and early ennobled American landscape photographs that fueled Manifest Destiny. Idealization at its imagined finest.

Where are we going with this?

For Group Show # 53: On Beauty we'd like to see photographs, gifs, photo-based collage and a range of other light-sensitive media that address and dissect how beauty is represented and understood. How has rapidly shifting image-culture influenced our perceptions of the visual ideal? Like most of our open calls, the conceptual guidelines are open to interpretation. We invite you to get crazy, think outside expectation, and subvert our minds.

We're excited to welcome one of our favorite writers and curators Roula Seikaly to co-curate the exhibition with Humble's co-founder Jon Feinstein.

Submission Details:

PostedMarch 28, 2017

AuthorEditors

CategoriesOpen Call, Exhibitions

Tagsopen call, male gaze, beauty in photography, Jon Feinstein, Roula Seikaly

14 Photographers You Should Never Ever Follow on Instagram (Part Two)

Joseph Desler Costa: Repackaging Commercialism, Slaying the Sublime

Jeff Sessions' Surprising "Outsider-Art" Cloud Photograph Sells for £89K at Recent Art Auction

Patrick Gookin's Low Fidelity Los Angeles

Open Call - Group Show # 53: On Beauty