Saturday, October 31, 2026

Diane Arbus / One of the most original and influential American Photographers

Diane Arbus
One of the most original and influential American Photographers

Diane Arbus was one of the most original and influential American Photographers of the 20th Century and was known for her photographs of outsiders and ordinary people of society. Diane Arbus is the kind of complex, ambitious, taboo-smashing artist whose life, work and the connection between the two, are endlessly fascinating. Her photographs, particularly those of whom she termed “freaks”, set off a shockwave in the ’60s. And they still have the power shock the viewer’s psyche.

By Dimitris Lempesis

PRESENTATION: Fritz Scholder

Fritz Scholder is credited with having reconceptualized the portrayal of Native Americans in contemporary art away from traditional, romanticized stereotypes to a “new realism” with candid, truthful, even startling, images of modern-day Native people. He became famous for his ground-breaking resolve to “paint the Indian real, not red.” His myriad approaches to the subject established his place as a leading progenitor of the New American Indian Art movement, which opened the door to Native American artists for invigorated prominence and a new artistic freedom in the contemporary art world.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo M.M.K. Archive

PRESENTATION: Carrying

The exhibition project “Carrying” activates spaces inside and outside the building of Museum Brandhorst. Works by nternational artists occupy historically charged sites and transit zones of the museum as well as the public space. Architectural interventions, performances, paintings, and sound and film works enter into dialogue with the museum and interrogate the entanglement of military and cultural power.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Museum Brandhorst Archive

Architecture / Aldo Rossi-The Architect and the Cities, Part II

ARCHITECTURE:

Aldo Rossi-The Architect and the Cities

Part II

Aldo Rossi advocated the use of a limited range of building types and concern for the context in which a building is constructed. This postmodern approach, known as neorationalism, represents a reinvigoration of austere classicism. In addition to his built work, he is known for his writings, numerous drawings and paintings, and designs for furniture and other objects.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: MAXXI Archive

ARCHITECTURE

Aldo Rossi-The Architect and the Cities

Part I

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: MAXXI Archive

Architecture / Aldo Rossi

Architecture
Aldo Rossi

Aldo Rossi (3/5/1931-4/9/1997)has achieved distinction as a theorist, author, artist, teacher and architect, in his native Italy as well as internationally. He accomplished the unusual feat of achieving international recognition in four distinct areas: theory, drawing, architecture and product design. Noted critic and historian, Vincent Scully, has compared him to Le Corbusier as a painter-architect. Ada Louise Huxtable, architectural critic and Pritzker juror has described Rossi as “a poet who happens to be an architect.”

By Efi Michalarou

Peter Hujar-Eyes Open in the Dark

Unflinching and at times dark, he captured intellectuals, luminaries, and members of New York City subculture in moments of disarmed vulnerability. Hujar embraced male sexuality unabashedly and was unafraid to examine death and dying. In her introduction to “Portraits in Life and Death”, Susan Sontag wrote, “…Fleshed and moist-eyed friends and acquaintances stand, sit, slouch, mostly lie – and are made to appear to meditate on their own mortality…Peter Hujar knows that portraits in life are always, also, portraits in death”.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Raven Row Archive

Michael Kenna-Bridges of Michael Kenna

Michael Kenna is best known for his black-and-white landscape photography in which he often utilizes drawn-out exposure times, some up to 10 hours in length. Most of Michael Kenna’s photography is taken at dawn or at night, and he has commented that you can’t always see what’s otherwise noticeable during the day … with long exposures you can photograph what the human eye is incapable of seeing.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Robert Mann Gallery

Nobuyoshi Araki

Today is the occasion to bear in mind Nobuyoshi Araki (1940). For over half a century, Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki has devoted himself to plumbing the depths of that which is most intimate – the invisible, intangible spirit that animates our very flesh. In his hands, the erotic transcends the mere functionality of pornography and reveals the raw intensity of the emotional, physical, and psychological self that gives sex its power. Through documents or interviews, starting with: moments and memories, we reveal out from the past-unknown sides of big personalities, who left their indelible traces in time and history…

By Dimitris Lempesis

POETRY

by Chema Madoz

Chema Madoz

"Treasures of a Cimarrón", Photojournalism/Documentary Category.
by Pedro Genaro

Pedro Genaro Rodríguez

TREASURES OF A CIMARRÓN

Lullaby

Lean, Mean, Killing Machine

Albert Watson / Photos

Vivienne Westwood Shoe
New York City, 1993
Photo by Albert Watson

Albert Watson

PHOTOS

Rodney Smith

HATS

PHOTOS

by Gerd Bonferd

Kustulka / Photos

Kustulka

PHOTOS

by Txema Yeste

With his technical prowess and flair for experimentation, Barcelona-based photographer Txema Yeste's star is on the rise at the moment, and he's currently one of the most interesting and adventurous fashion photographers working. You never know which direction his next editorial is going to go in, which is great.

Bill Wadman

DANCE

Nobuyoshi Araki / Crossing Boundaries

This interview with Nobuyoshi Araki was conducted on October 28, 2010, in Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan by Hyewon Yi, as part of her research on participant/observer photography. Yuko Teshima Fujii assisted with interpretation during the interview and translation of the transcript. Kikuko Tanaka also assisted with translation of the transcript. The interviewer thanks Mashiyama Takayuki of Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo, for arranging the interview, reviewing the transcript, expediting permission to publish the accompanying photographs, and countless other courtesies. Warning: The interview contains sexually explicit language.

Nobuyoshi Araki

NOBUYOSHI ARAKI

Intimate photography:

Tokyo, nostalgia and sex

BY C.D. Liddell

26 november 2006

Usually reviews of Nobuyoshi Araki’s work start by pointing out the contradictions “monster,” “genius,” “pornographer,” “artist,” etc. The greatest negative routinely cited is his attitude toward women, photographed smeared with paint or bound in bondage ropes, images that reflect attitudes rooted in Edo’s ancient past or Tokyo’s modern sexual underworld.

But this kind of moralistic approach doesn’t quite fit a subject like Araki, who is more a force of nature, existing, in some Nietzschean space beyond good and evil, or at least “good and evil” as defined by middle-class Western journalists like Adrian Searle in The Guardian. In a review of the show “Nobuyoshi Araki: Self, Life, Death,” at London’s Barbican last year, Searle slyly hinted that Araki’s depictions of women placed him beyond the pale of some liberal leftwing acceptability, before trying to find some level on which he could be “redeemed.’‘

Musuk Nolte

PHOTOS

Saturday, October 31, 2026

Diane Arbus / One of the most original and influential American Photographers