Andy Grundberg

Articles argue that photography has changed perceptions of the relationship of art and life and discuss the works of individual photographers

Writings on Photography, 1974-1989

Crisis of the Real

A leading critic’s inside story of “the photo boom” during the crucial decades of the 1970s and 80s When Andy Grundberg landed in New York in the early 1970s as a budding writer, photography was at the margins of the contemporary art world. By 1991, when he left his post as critic for the New York Times, photography was at the vital center of artistic debate. Grundberg writes eloquently and authoritatively about photography’s “boom years,” chronicling the medium’s increasing role within the most important art movements of the time, from Earth Art and Conceptual Art to performance and video. He also traces photography’s embrace by museums and galleries, as well as its politicization in the culture wars of the 80s and 90s. Grundberg reflects on the landmark exhibitions that defined the moment and his encounters with the work of leading photographers—many of whom he knew personally—including Gordon Matta-Clark, Cindy Sherman, and Robert Mapplethorpe. He navigates crucial themes such as photography’s relationship to theory as well as feminism and artists of color. Part memoir and part history, this perspective by one of the period’s leading critics ultimately tells a larger story about the crucial decades of the 70s and 80s through the medium of photography.

Inside an Artistic Revolution from Pop to the Digital Age

How Photography Became Contemporary Art

Joel Sternfeld

Anne Tucker

Kerry Brougher

This is the definitive edition of Joel Sternfelds seminal American Prospects made from new printing plates and technology that did not exist at the time of the 2003 Steidl edition. The book is otherwise unchanged, except for the addition of one new image. The subjects of American Prospects include a fireman picking out a pumpkin at a farm stand while a classic American house burns in the background, a lone basketball hoop in a vast Southwestern desert reminiscent of the Creation, and whales beached in Oregon seemingly symbolic of ecological failure to come. These and other narrative pictures, helped open the gates for a new type of photography now practised by Gregory Crewdson, Rineke Dijkstra, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth, and Jeff Wall, among many others By corrupting the purity of photography, Sternfeld played a pivotal role in moving the medium forward. (Kerry Brougher, Chief Curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.) A major figure in the photography world, Joel Sternfeld was born in New York City in 1944. He has received numerous awards including two Guggenheim fellowships, a Prix de Rome and the Citibank Photography Award. Sternfelds books published by Steidl include American Prospects (2003), Sweet Earth (2006), Oxbow Archive (2008), First Pictures (2011) and On This Site (2012).

American Prospects

Alexey Brodovitch

A study of the life and work of the graphic designer who created a new look in fashion publications and whose teaching inspired the design profession.

Brodovitch

In Joel Sternfeld's now-classic view of America, a fireman shops for a pumpkin while a house burns in the background; a group of motorcyclists stop at the side of the road to take in a stunning, placid view of Bear Lake, Utah; the high-tech world headquar.

Vik Muniz

Linda Benedict-Jones

Frick Art & Historical Center

While working at the Frick Art & Historical Center in 1999 and 2000, Vik Muniz chose Clayton as a site for exploring the many traces that remain of the pleople who moved through its rooms more than a century ago. His suite of images is an open narrative compelling viewers to test the veracity of what they see and to imagine their own stories within his constructed history.

Picture Stories by Vik Muniz for Very Little Folks

Clayton Days

Catalog for an exhibition held at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution, May 14, 2009-Jan. 4, 2010."Design inspired by The Nature Conservancy's Campaign for a Sustainable Planet.

Andy Grundberg

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