The Flag

It was very cold I couldn’t feel my toes,  but I was just hoping for the moment that birds were going
to fly over.
BENJAMIN REID, 10

Statement

Hunters often consider what they do to be a privilege, a ritual in which outsiders do not fully understand. Hunting reveals a world mostly hidden in an urban society increasingly divorced from its rural roots. While hunting in contemporary North America has lost its formative purpose - the search for sustenance - it is much more than merely a game. Hunting is a natural thread that connects us with our own roots, with who we once were, and with what it once meant to be human. These truths are often lost in the urban jungle. I spent a year and half traveling across the United States looking for its next generation of hunters. Setting out from New Mexico, I passed through Wyoming, Illinois, New York, Maryland, North Carolina, and Georgia. Along the way I joined many hunting expeditions as I sought the perspective of child hunters.

These faces show America's youth connecting to hunting's storied past. Many children today while away their time with video games, television and movies. These subjects take a different path. For them, the thrill is learning to follow their instincts and being immersed in nature. All these children have something in common, they are at home in nature.

Bio

Erika Larsen was born in Washington DC in 1976. She has been photographing the world of hunting since 2003 and became a contributing photographer to Field & Stream Magazine in 2005. This work has been recognized by World Press Photo, American Society of Magazine Editors, American Photography and others. She received a 2007 Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council of the Arts for the completion of this project. She had her second solo show earlier this year with Young Blood at the Redux Gallery, NYC. elarsenphoto.com, reduxpictures.com

Enrique

Red Earth

You have to stay really quiet. Usually, we just don’t talk at all.
Enrique Cordova, 7

Josh's Hog

The Feather 

After

The Skinning

Mary's Field

Sometimes I try to go to sleep but sometimes I read my books, and look around at all the trees and
get songs stuck in my head.
Mary Dennis, 10

Ruthie's First Kill

Benjamin 

William

My least favorite thing is that you’re taking the life away from the animal you shot, but if you kill it
cleanly and eat it, it makes it a lot better.
Will Freidburger, 14

Deer Slayer

Gael dressing, State Palace Theatre, New Orleans 2001.  Images courtesy of Yancey Richardson Gallery

Statement

 
These burlesque pictures and go-go interiors were made alongside one another and led parallel lives once they branched apart. Although the empty interiors are in a variety of strip clubs, the girls of the New Burlesque movement would most likely not perform in the kinds of joints I was shooting. These two related worlds do not usually intersect - though they are clearly related. So, this is not a documentary project. The empty interiors point to a lack of intimacy and show a somewhat tawdry attempt at the fantastic in interior design. I have a love/hate relationship with these places, their smells of stale beer, cigarettes and Lysol. I revel in the fuschia neons, the blacklight and the hand-painted figures of naked ladies on the walls. The real women depicted, however, represent something else. My view of them is more celebratory and romantic, sort of a tonic for the empty stages with the ratty carpets, a reclaiming.

Bio

Lisa Kereszi was born in 1973 in Chester, Pennsylvania. In 1995 she graduated from Bard College and in 2000 received a Master of Fine Arts from the Yale University School of Art. She is now on the faculty as a Lecturer at the Yale School of Art, and is Acting Director of Undergraduate Studies in Photography. In addition, she has been a guest lecturer at many other institutions including, NYU, Massachusetts College of Art, Parsons, School of Visual Arts, and Vassar.

Her work is in many private collections and museum collections including, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the Berkeley Art Museum and the Yale University Art Gallery. She is represented by Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York. Her editorial work has appeared in books and magazines such as, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, New York, Harper’s, W, The London Telegraph Sunday Magazine, Details, etc. Her book, Fantasies was recently released by Damani Editore and she has an upcoming release from Nazraeli Press in Spring 2009.  yanceyrichardson.com, andersonhopkins.com

Jessica as Alice’s caterpillar, New Orleans 2001

Dirty Martini’s legs, women watching, NYC 2003 

Mannequin legs on swing at Big Daddy’s, New Orleans 2000

Tara Pontani sprinkling glitter,  NYC 2003

Mural in corner at Muff Divers, Philippines 2005 

Fairy with chorus of clowns, Show World, NYC 2000 

Dressing room at Show World, NYC 1999 

X onstage, New Orleans 2001

Stripper pole at peep show, Calif. 2005 

Dancer onstage, Henry Miller’s Theatre, NYC 2000 

Arturo

Statement

The Downs at Albuquerque

"The tales that Doctor Parcival told George Willard began nowhere and ended nowhere. Sometimes the boy thought they must all be inventions, a pack of lies. And then again he was convinced that they contained the very essence of truth."                          

                                    -Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio

One of my most vivid memories is of ponying a race horse around the exercise track at Arlington Park outside of Chicago in 1972.  I was almost eighteen.  After having survived the ride, I was offered a job working on the backside as a hot walker, but my mother said no.  Actually I think she said, “No.  You’ll run off with a South American jockey.”  The ineffable feeling of that day did not return until 2003 when I began to make pictures at a small racetrack, the Downs at Albuquerque.

I see this body of work as raw material for a series of vignettes not unlike those in Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, except that the “town” in this case is the backside and frontside of the Downs.  Unlike the sort of realistic view that is usually associated with social documentary photography, my intent is to suggest narrative possibilities through intimate photographs of people, happenings, objects, and settings.  I hope to convey the atmosphere of an untold story through flashes of psychological insight, through moments of meeting. 

It is hard to imagine that horse racing was the most popular spectator sport in America only 40 years ago.  Since then its popularity has diminished, in large part because of the expansion of casinos, and many tracks have closed.  One of the grooms at the Downs told me that most racetracks have become more like bus stations, with strangers just coming and going.  He said that on the backside, it used to be that everyone from different barns would get together to play cards and tell stories after they had finished with the horses.  “Now,” he added, “It’s just a job.  Still, at this track, it’s more like the old days.”  

Just last week the New Mexico Racing Commission gave the Downs permission to relocate in Moriarty, a small town located some distance from Albuquerque.  The track’s owners plan to build a new, $65 million racetrack and casino with more than double the number of slot machines. But for now, vestiges of the old days are still present in the shadows of the grandstand that overlooks the finish line at the Downs at Albuquerque. It is my aim to record these remaining fragments before they disappear altogether. 

Bio 

Ellen Rennard received a BA in Independent Studies from Princeton University in 1976 and an MA from Middlebury College in 1988.  She has studied photography with Eugene Richards, Joyce Tenneson, Craig Stevens, among others, but was introduced to portraiture by her father when she was very young.  Rennard was the still photographer for the documentary, The True Meaning of Pictures, and an assistant to Shelby Lee Adams.   Her images have appeared in publications including Oxford American, Rangefinder, and B&W.  She is the recipient of numerous grants including the Kodak Educator’s Scholarship and recently lectured at the Griffin Museum of Photography.  She currently teaches English at the Groton School.  ellenrennard.com

Before the Race

Whiskers

Stall 28

Billy

Racing Blinkers

Russell

Johanna, Tacking Up

Don

Travis

Ponce

Exam 2, 2006

Statement

Repository

Body art is, “A direct reflection of the artist’s life experiences.”

                                    –Rosemary Mayer, 1972
 
I examine the body within a medical context by exploring through photography, video and performance four main themes: pathological waste; containment of the body and its parts; fragmentation and violence against the body; a subject’s relationship to a specific environment.      

Following my surgery in 2004 for cervical cancer, I began to photograph and perform in hospitals, morgues, medical museums and my doctors’ offices. My photographs and videos focus attention on the physical and emotional traces cancer and surgery can leave on the body while challenging the prescribed treatment for recovery and role of the patient.       

Through self-portraiture and self-performance, private rituals are revealed to the public only through documentation. Personal experiences with illness and mortality are intertwined with medical procedures and the environments they take place in. The same character’s presence in many of the works allows for an introspective look at these, in some cases unassociated worlds in comparison to one another. The deliberate use of repetitive forms and actions highlights and reshapes our thoughts on these medical environments, the treatment of our bodies in these spaces, what role we have at protecting our bodies, and the lengths we will go to achieve a sense of health.        

While the journey stems from a personal bout with cancer, I hope to resonate with each viewer as they reflect on the work and their own experiences with similar medical settings.  

Bio

After 8 years in New York working as a photographer and photo editor, Sarah Sudhoff has returned home to Texas working as a freelance photographer, artist and professor of art.  She is currently based out of Austin, Texas.  sarahsudhoff.com

Sale, 2006

S04, 2005

Cancer Wafer, 2005

Exploratory Surgery, 2005

Monday 11am, 2005

Prevention?, 2005

Uterus, 2006

S05, 2006

Tuesday 3pm, 2006

Fallopian Tube, 2005

Clean 2, 2006 

Lyre, 2007. Images Courtesy of Julie Saul Gallery

STATEMENT 

Crawl

Crawl is the beginning of my ongoing investigation into a part of our landscape we, as upright creatures, rarely take the time to think about.  Infants know this world for a time.  Picnickers and soldiers glimpse it.  There is no more dynamic stage of life and death on earth than the first few inches above its surface.  This is where prairies and forests are born.  Here is where the bulk of our food comes from, and where all terrestrial creatures return when we die.  Comforting, beautiful, frightening, strange--this is the terrestrial world.  And it can only be discovered and known intimately on hands and knees.

BIO

Sally Gall received a BFA in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1978.  She has taught and lectured extensively in the US and abroad.  Her public collections include the Guggenheim Museum, The Whitney Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston among many others.  Gall is represented by Julie Saul Gallery in New York and is currently exhibiting 'Crawl', her tenth solo show there, up through June 28. sallygall.com | saulgallery.com

Tossed, 2007

Commitment, 2007

Double Spiraling Helix, 2007

Pas De Deux, 2007

Salad Days, 2007

Late Harvest, 2007

Straddle, 2007

Study for a Roman Fresco, 2007

Watering Hole, 2007

and if I don't get enough attention, 2003.  Images courtesy of Edywnn Houk Gallery

Statement

Crisis/Pain
 
'Crisis' was taken during a very difficult time in my relationship with my husband, Eran.
 
It was photography that allowed me to be able to step away, to see what was going on, even what is about to happen. The fact that Eran let me take those pictures, in the middle of these difficult situations, in a way, reconnected me to him. And at times he used my pictures to tell me what he couldn't say.
 
I was surprised by the fact that I was taking pictures, that I needed so much to make pictures, that I was pushing my own limits, I wanted to do this. I wanted to look at us and at times, it was the only way to see. I wanted to be able to see the beauty in those painful moments, to create, to feel myself and who I am because everything else felt like total chaos and out of control.
 
I felt the need to title those images in a more specific way then I did with my work in the past, giving more information. Some situations became charged just by a little piece of information. With a few words, a documented moment was charged, making it possible to see more of what is in it, just by pointing out 'this is what it is about'.
 
During the same period of time I had also dealt with severe back pain, I made a series of self-portraits, describing my pain and the different treatments I went through, I titled this series 'pain'. Having this pain was also one of the catalysts for the marriage crisis to happen, so for me these two bodies of work are connected. 

The physical pain and the emotional pain came to an end around the same time. I learned a lot during that time, and the photographs function not only as a memory but also as a reminder of what can crawl into life so quietly and have such a massive effect, because it was all there, in the photographs, sometimes even before I knew it.

Bio

Elinor Carucci is an Israeli-born photographer who lives and works in New York City. She received her BFA from Bezalel Academy in 1995 but began experimenting with photography when she was 15 years old.  Carucci has been exhibited widely, with solo shows at several international venues including: the Hafia Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel; The Photographers’ Gallery, London and Fotographie Forum, Frankfurt. Her photographs are included in public collections such as The Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum of Arts, International Center of Photography, The Jewish Museum and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts. Carucci is a recipient of numerous awards including the ICP Infinity Award (2001), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2002). Publications include, Closer, Chronicle Books 2002 and Diary of a Dancer, SteidlMack (2005).    elinorcarucci.com

First tears over another man, 2002

After argument, 2003

Guilt, 2002

Pain #8 2003

Pain #11 2003

My parents #1, 2002

Kissing my mother, 2002

My parents #2, 2003

Touching my mother, 2001