NYPH’12 General Info & About Us
The New York Photo Festival 2012 edition will be held May 16 through May 20 in Dumbo, Brooklyn. A site locator of the area’s exhibition sites and amenities can be found with our NYPH’12 map.
All New York Festival exhibition sites are free and open to the public. Tickets are required for the artists’ and curators’ presentations, and for the festival’s various receptions, to be held at The POWERHOUSE Arena; NYPH’12 tickets also function as Dumbo Amenities cards, allowing bearer one-time discounts and samples of foodstuffs, candies, drinks, and durable goods in the area (value: $45+). Tickets are $15 in advance (order tickets), $20 at the door. Tickets ordered in advance can be picked up during the festival at Will Call desk May 11-May 20 (tickets@nyphotofestival.com, tel 347-853-7447 x135).
NYPH’12 will explore the matrix of art photography and social documentary through four curators creating sites and live events exploring the origins and meeting points of art photography and documentary work:
Glenn Ruga will premiere a phenomenal collection of masterworks from Bruce Davidson, Reza, Eugene Richards, Rina Castelnuovo, and Platon walking the fine line between doc art—or art doc—in On the Razor’s Edge: Between Documentary and Fine Art Photography: “The landscape documentary photographers face is both a culture that avoids facing difficult issues and a marketplace that rewards obfuscation. But luckily we have artists who demand truth, explore far beyond the measure of normality and the pedestrian, and who grapple with complex issues. But they want—and need—some measure of success in the marketplace, as we all do in contemporary society. They therefore must walk a razor’s edge fraught with these contradictions.”
Amy Smith-Stewart will debut a smashing curated show entitled What Do You Believe In, featuring a select group of of sixteen artists— Jen DeNike, Hank Willis Thomas, Leah Beeferman, Stuart Hawkins, Yamini Nayar, Fay Ray, Luke Stettner, Anissa Mack, Kenya Robinson, Xaviera Simmons, Nicole Cherubini, Nyeema Morgan, Sara Greenberger Rafferty, Matthew Spiegelman, Daniel Gordon, Ignacio Lang—and explores how photography shapes our ideas—who we are, why we do the things we do, how our thinking happens, and where it evolves. Works in the exhibition will range from collage, installation, video, sculpture, and photography and span the mystical, ideological and political.
Claude Grunitzky will delight the senses and the imagination with work from Evangelia Kranioti, Irmelie Krekin, and Christian Witkin in the Curse and the Gift: “Henri Cartier-Bresson once famously said that, ‘to take a photograph is to align the head, the eye and the heart. It’s a way of life.’ In this age of iPhones and Android digital photography, where Instagram and Picasa allow for easy photo editing, with endless retouching and sharing options, the art photographer’s perspective has been sacrificed at the altar of instant gratification. Photography is a way of life, and as we all become touch-screen photographers, emailing and Facebooking away, art photography takes on an entirely new meaning in its role in helping us to understand the way we live now. With our modern societies in flux, and many forms of cohesion in jeopardy, it helps to reflect on those changing human dynamics by looking at images that were composed calmly, away from the pressure of instant delivery.”
Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky, That Subliminal Kid will stupefy the senses with Sinfonia Antarctica (The Book of Ice): “The Soviet architect, graphic designer, and collage artist Gustav Klutsis once said of his music-staging loudspeaker arrays: ‘Fantastic work. Looking for new media. Surface. Space. Construction.'” For the New York Photo Festival, Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky takes a look at how the role of the “archive” of Antarctic history—in photography, graphic design, and contemporary composition—has shaped some of the ways we think about contemporary digital media aesthetics. In conjunction with NYPH’12, Miller will present material from his recent Book of Ice project through the prism of an intersection of sculpture, architecture, live performance, moving image, and digital media installation.
Juried work from the New York Photo Festival Invitational, an online submission-based review platform run by the festival, these esteemed jurors and exhibited at the POWERHOUSE Arena in Dumbo.
The New York Photo Festival was founded in 2008 by Daniel Power (Director and Producer 2008 and 2009, Producer 2010) and Frank Evers; Sam Barzilay, Exhibitions Coordinator in 2008, was Director and Producer of the 2011 edition.
Designed to be an American counterpart and thematic successor to the prestigious European photo festivals Les Rencontres d’Arles, PHotoEspana, and Visa pour l’Image, the New York Photo Festival creates an international atmosphere of inspiring visual installations, professional and aficionado fellowship and camaraderie, and news-worthy staged presentations, awards ceremonies, and live events over the course of four-and-a-half days during the busiest photography month in New York City.
The inaugural edition of the festival, NYPH’08 (May 14-18) proved an astounding success, with over 15,000 tickets sold, 2,500 industry professionals and artists, 1,000 members of the international press, packed seating for all day and evening programming events at St. Ann’s Warehouse (450 capacity), 20 countries represented in curated and satellite pavilions, 85,000 clicked site visits, 47,000 blog posts, 2.5 million unique visits to the festival web sites, 49 media partners, and over 3,000 submissions from 87 countries for the New York Photo Awards .
The festival is headquartered in Dumbo, Brooklyn, in the POWERHOUSE Arena (37 Main Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201, tel 347-853-7447, info (at) NYPHotofestival.com, www.NYPH.at).