Montreal’s Momenta focuses on fact and illusion in photography

By Robert Everett-Green
Courtesy of The Globe and Mail

Photography in its projected form is a prime public art in Montreal, and often a monumental one. It is less clear how devoted the city is to photography as an interior gallery art.

LaToya Ruby Frazier’s Mom Making an Image of Me, from The Notion of Family series, 2008. COURTESY OF MICHEL REIN AND GAVIN BROWN’S ENTERPRISE

“While photographs may not lie, liars may photograph.” Lewis Hine’s comment from the depth of the film era seems quaint in the age of Photoshop, when photos can indeed be made to tell polished untruths. Hine’s larger point, amplified later by Richard Avedon, was that the photographer’s choice of what to show is not so much the truth as an opinion, or an attempt at persuasion.

Photography’s relationship with the real is the overall theme of Montreal’s Momenta: Biennale de l’Image, the latest edition of what used to be called Le Mois de la Photo. This expansive yet relatively compact festival features 38 artists from 17 countries in 20 venues, anchored at Galerie de l’UQAM and VOX, Centre de l’image contemporaine.

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The Notion of Family at Silver Eye Center for Photography

Silver Eye presents a selection of LaToya Ruby Frazier’s seminal series The Notion of Family at it’s new Penn Avenue gallery. Frazier’s images explore the painful effects of decades of industrial decline, poverty, and systemic racism in her hometown of Braddock, PA. A working class town situated on the bank of the Monongahela River, Braddock’s economy had been rooted in industry since Andrew Carnegie built the Edgar Thomson Steel Works in 1873. A child of the 80s and 90s, Frazier grew up when most of the steel industry had left the region and the War on Drugs decimated her community. Frazier came to use photography and art as a way to question inequality and reclaim history.

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Sep. 21 – Nov. 18, 2017

Silver Eye Center for Photography
4808 Penn Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15224

Opening Reception: Thursday, Sep. 21, 6:00–8:00pm

Gallery Hours
Tues, Wed, Fri, 11:00am–6:00pm
Thurs, 11:00am–8:00pm
Sat, 11:00am–5:00pm

This exhibition is made possible by a generous grant from The Pittsburgh Foundation. The cyanotypes in this exhibition were created through the generous use of the production space at Pittsburgh Filmmakers/Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.

On the Making of Steel Genesis: Sandra Gould Ford

Silver Eye Center for Photography presents LaToya Ruby Frazier’s On the Making of Steel Genesis: Sandra Gould Ford at the August Wilson Center’s BNY Mellon Gallery.

On the Making of Steel Genesis: Sandra Gould Ford is a collaborative exhibition that explores the work and life of artist Sandra Gould Ford, whom Frazier first met in 2015 at the Women and Girls Foundation’s Pittsburgh Conference. They soon realized they had a deep connection as Black women artists from Southwestern PA interested in working class issues. They discovered that they once lived in the same apartment building, the Talbot Towers in Braddock—Ford as a newlywed and Frazier as a newborn.

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Sep. 22 – Dec. 31, 2017

August Wilson Center
BNY Gallery
980 Liberty Ave.
Pittsburgh, PA 15222

Reception: Friday, Sep. 22 at Silver Eye Center for Photography, 4808 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA
For more information, please visit silvereye.org

Gallery Hours
Wednesday & Thursday: 11:00am – 6:00pm
Friday & Saturday, 11:00am – 8:00pm
Sunday: noon – 5:00pm

This exhibition is generously supported by a grant from The Pittsburgh Foundation.

Accessibility: For personal assistance selecting accessible seats or for more information about accessibility for a person with a disability, please contact Customer Service at 412-456-6666

’20/20′ at the Carnegie: A passionate family gathering of African American art

During two recent trips to “20/​20: The Studio Museum in Harlem and Carnegie Museum of Art,” I noticed only a relatively small number of black folks exploring the gallery spaces devoted to one of the most exciting art exhibitions Pittsburgh has hosted in years.

There are historic reasons for this, I suppose. Once upon a time, grand spaces such the Carnegie Museum of Art simply didn’t cater to the interests of Pittsburgh’s African-American community.

The good folks of Homewood, the Hill District and other predominantly black communities in Pittsburgh took the hint and pretty much stayed away. The snub was mutual and was compounded by generational indifference.

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By: Tony Norman
Courtesy of: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

And From The Coaltips A Tree Will Rise

New catalogue of work by LaToya Ruby Frazier.

A 2016 residency at MAC’s Grand-Hornu (Museum of Contemporary Arts) allowed LaToya to pursue work on a post-industrial society in Belgium. Her focus was the Borinage, a mining region whose intense activity in the 19th century was diminished by a series of crises that led to the closure of the last mine in 1976. Testimonies gathered by Frazier from the former miners and their families have resulted in And From The Coaltips A Tree Will Rise, an extensive collection of portraits, landscapes and still lifes.

Available for purchase on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Artbook | D.A.P.

aToya Ruby Frazier: And from the Coaltips a Tree Will Rise

Paperback: 160 pages
Publisher: MAC’S Grand Hornu (Museum of Contemporary Arts, Belgium)
Date: September 26, 2017
Language: English
ISBN-10: 2930368705
ISBN-13: 978-2930368702

20/20: The Studio Museum in Harlem and CMOA

Experience a dynamic exchange of ideas about art and society.

Founded in 1968, The Studio Museum in Harlem is internationally known for its catalytic role in championing the works of artists of African descent. In a unique institutional collaboration, CMOA [Carnegie Museum of Art] and the Studio Museum present a group exhibition with works by 40 artists, 20 from each of the collections. Responding to a tumultuous and deeply divided moment in our nation’s history, the curators have mined these collections to offer a metaphoric picture of America today. Spanning nearly 100 years—from 1920s photographs by James VanDerZee to recent works by Kerry James Marshall, Ellen Gallagher, and Collier Schorr—20/20 provides a critical opportunity to prompt conversations about the necessity of art during times of social and political transformation.

20/20 draws together works from these important collections in dialogue. The exhibition unfolds through a thematic exploration of the foundations of our national condition, ultimately championing the critical role of art in political and individual expression. The first section of the exhibition, titled “A More Perfect Union,” presents a group of works that consider the formation of our democracy and shifting notions of national identity.

The following two sections of the exhibition—“Working Thought” and “American Landscape”—expand on this by mapping contemporary American experience as a product of historical inheritances. “Working Thought” considers the basis of the national economy and the labor needed to sustain it, with works by Melvin Edwards, David Hammons, Kara Walker, Nari Ward, and others.

In turn, “American Landscape” considers the effects of our national economy on lived experience through artworks that document or express the built environment, past and present. The photographs of LaToya Ruby Frazier and Zoe Strauss record the effects of industry and dispossession on marginalized communities, while more abstract works by Mark Bradford, Abigail DeVille, and Kori Newkirk make use of everyday and found materials to reclaim and reinvent our perspective on natural and urban landscapes.

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20/20 Studio Museum in Harlem and CMOA

20/20: The Studio Museum in Harlem and Carnegie Museum of Art
Jul 22–Dec 31, 2017
Carnegie Museum of Art
Heinz Galleries

Courtesy of: Carnegie Museum of Art