DUMBO PHOTO FESTIVAL

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New York Photo Festival May 12-16, 2010
NYPH dates and curators have been announced for 2010. It’s always nice to wander around Dumbo on a sunny May afternoon, especially when there’s good photography hanging. There’s also the NYPH Awards which are worth entering.
The New York Photo Festival is pleased to announce—after a very successful and critically acclaimed recession-year festival edition in 2009, and its splendid 2008 debut—the festival curators and exhibition dates for 2010.

New York City’s premier photography festival will take place May 12–16, 2010; the main festival sites will return to the Brooklyn waterfront community of DUMBO for the third straight year, and the festival will also expand its programming and pre-festival activities, for the first time, into other parts of the city.

Dedicated to the mission of pushing the boundaries of contemporary photography and showcasing ideas of our collective photographic future, the New York Photo Festival and its organizers and co-founders Daniel Power and Frank Evers will be forging down this path once more: NYPH’10 will feature the personal visions of curators Vince Aletti, Erik Kessels, Fred Ritchin, and Lou Reed as they take hold of the many indoor and outdoor sites in the formerly industrial neighborhood.

NYPH’10 will also see new initiatives in programming, including later and extended exhibition hours; reduced fare and open attendance hours for the public; special New York Photo Awards featured presentations; and expanded site programming.




PRESENTING THE NEW YORK PHOTO FESTIVAL 2010 CURATORS:



Vince Aletti reviews photography exhibitions for The New Yorker’s Goings On About Town section and writes a regular column about photo books forPhotograph. He is the winner of the 2005 Infinity Award in writing from the International Center of Photography, where he is currently an adjunct curator. Aletti co-curated “Weird Beauty: Fashion Photography Now” with Carol Squiers and is the curator of “This Is Not a Fashion Photograph,” both at ICP; he and Squiers worked together on “Richard Avedon Fashion,” the museum’s summer 2009 exhibition, as well as on the catalog published by Abrams.

Male, a book of photographs and other artwork from Aletti’s personal collection, was published by PPP Editions at the end of 2008. The Disco Files 1973-78: New York’s Underground, Week by Week, a compilation of record reviews and club scene roundups by Aletti, was released by DJHistory.com in 2009.





Erik Kessels is a photography curator, writer, and picture anthropologist, and a founding partner and creative director of KesselsKramer, an independent, international communications agency located in Amsterdam. He has curated exhibitions such as “Loving Your Pictures” at the Centraal Museum Utrecht, The Netherlands and at Les Rencontres d’Arles Photographie, France, and has published several books of his images—including the In Almost Every Pictureseries. Since 2000, he has been one of the editors of the alternative photography magazine Useful Photography.

Kessels is an editorial contributor for both BON International and Identity Matters, and he has lectured at the D&AD President’s Lecture and at several international design conferences in Singapore, Goa, Toronto, and Bangkok. He has taught communication at Hallo© in Amsterdam and photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, also in Amsterdam. In 2008 he was an artist in residence for the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, where he curated a celebration of amateurism. For the opening of the world’s first graphic design museum, in Breda, Erik organized an exhibition entitled “The European Championship of Graphic Design.” For the DVD art project Loud & Clear he worked with artists such as Marlene Dumas and Candice Breitz. Kessels has made commercial work for national and international clients such as Nike, Diesel, J&B Whisky, Oxfam International, Ben Mobile, and the Hans Brinker Budget Hotel, and has won numerous international design awards.




Fred Ritchin is professor of Photography & Imaging at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He is the author of After Photography (W. W. Norton, 2009) and In Our Own Image: The Coming Revolution in Photography(Aperture, 1990), and has co-authored books such as An Uncertain Grace: The Photographs of Sebastião Salgado (Aperture, 1990), In Our Time: The World As Seen by Magnum Photographers (W. W. Norton, 1989), and Mexico Through Foreign Eyes: Photographs, 1850–1990 (W. W. Norton, 1993). His essays have appeared in many other books, including Picture Imperfect by Kent Klich andUnder Fire: Great Photographers and Writers in Vietnam by Catherine Leroy. Currently he is working on a new book, Outside the Frame, concerning contemporary imagery and social change.

Ritchin is also director of PixelPress, an organization that has created websites, books, and exhibitions that promote human rights and documentary experimentation. He is the former picture editor of The New York Times Magazine and Horizon magazine, former executive editor of Camera Artsmagazine, and the founding director of the Photojournalism and Documentary Photography fulltime educational program at the International Center of Photography. Ritchin was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in public service by The New York Times for the 1996 website, “Bosnia: Uncertain Paths to Peace,” which he co-created with photographer Gilles Peress. He also created the first multimedia version of the daily New York Times in 1994. Ritchin lectures and conducts workshops internationally on new and documentary media.



Lou Reed is a playwright, poet, musician, and photographer whose photographs have been exhibited worldwide. His third photography book, Romanticism, will be released later this year on Edition 7L. He was named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government and is the recipient of numerous other awards. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 and is a founding member of the legendary band, the Velvet Underground.

Reed released his first suite of electronic mediation music, Hudson River Wind Meditations, on the Sounds True label in 2007. In late 2008 Reed released a new album of live electronic music called Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Trio: The Creation of The Universe, which inspired two extremely well received performances by the MM3 in New York, in April of 2009. In December of 2006 Lou Reed premiered the live staging of his masterwork play Berlin at St. Ann’s Warehouse in DUMBO, Brooklyn; the performance was filmed by Academy Award-nominated director and artist Julian Schnabel.

Currently Reed is working on several projects including a collaboration with artist Lorenzo Mattiotti on a graphic novel based on his album, The Raven; a book of essays on Chen Tai Chi called The Art of the Straight Line, which is slated for release in 2009; and continues to co-host a weekly radio show with producer Hal Willner called The New York Shuffle.
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This was written by James Pomerantz. Posted on Monday, November 2, 2009, at 6:00 pm. Filed under Awards, Contemporary Art, Extracurricular Activities, Random. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback.
3 Comments

TIMOTHY BRINER wrote:
http://dsheaphoto.net/blog/?p=830

Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at 5:03 pm | Permalink
JAMES POMERANTZ wrote:
Frank Evers, Co-Chair/Co-Founder of NYPH posted the following
over at whatsthejackanory about their decision on this year’s curators:

We are thrilled with our curatorial choices, including Lou Reed, who I believe is really going to surprise a lot of people with his deep and current knowledge of contemporary photography. Along with his fellow festival curators, Erik Kessels, Vince Aletti and Fred Ritchin, this group represent as cerebral and thoughtful a team as we could possibly come up with this year. Considering that the twin pillars of NYPH are Ideas and Discovery, I am confident that this group will help make NYPH’10 a rousing success, while challenging and presenting us with works by an exciting new roster of important international artists.

I understand that some people feel that, regardless of this caliber, an all-male curatorial roster will somehow prevent the festival from showcasing female and international artists, or critical perspectives that ought to be on display. I would ask that such naysayers (including the anonymous ones), look at the festival’s track record both in past curated shows, satellite exhibitions and the Award (NYPHA) winners/honorable mentions. I would gladly match our collective contributions in just two years, in showcasing a diversity of contemporary artistic talent, to any other international festival of its kind. This year, I fully expect us to continue to lead in this area. (I might also add that next year’s roster has two amazing female curators already committed, so people also need to realize that the gender part is really how the cookies crumbles in terms of our ongoing engagement with the curatorial community).

Our ultimate goal is to create a space every year in NYC, where we can all gather to consider a wide range of works by international contemporary artists from around the world (male and female), in a context of scholarship and ideas crafted by our esteemed festival curators, talented satellite curators, and Awards Juries. Additionally, we are hoping that over time the larger photo community will use this event as an annual opportunity to gather, connect, share, and support each other. We are still a very young international festival, with huge expectations. We know that some of the things that we do don’t quite work, some of the ideas and artists don’t quite connect, but we’ve also had our hits too (as Andrew kindly pointed out) and we will continue to strive to improve our batting average over time. We face an ongoing challenge with limited funding and resources, but here we are at the end of the day…we are still standing and committed. We have more people than ever wanting to attend next year and participate, our online activity is already up over 500% over the same time last year (we are increasingly developing a very large international audience), so we know that we are heading in the right general direction, and we are fully committed to continuously improving the experience. We appreciate all the ideas, the concerns and the feedback, even the tough ones

Hang in there with us, and Thanks!

Frank Evers
Co-Chair/Co-Founder
New York Photo Festival (’08, ‘09, ‘10)

Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at 7:01 pm | Permalink
PETER VAN AGTMAEL wrote:
That’s awesome. I love lou reed.

‘If I ran for president
And once was a member of the klan
Wouldn’t you call me on it
The way I call you on farrakhan’

-Lou Reed, Good Evening Mr. Waldheim,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Waldheim

Tuesday, November 3, 2009 at 7:19 pm | Permalink