The fragility of her tales © Athina Souli (@athina.souli), Piraeus, Greece

Opaque Futures © Pablo Castro (@pcastrophoto), Madrid, Spain

Feature Shoot’s worldwide project The Print Swap are headed to Paris this spring! For the last few months, photographers around the globe were invited to submit images via Instagram using the hashtag #theprintswap, and twenty-five final images were selected by the photographer and gallery director Elise Prudhomme to be part of our milestone tenth exhibition. The show will take place at the stunning Studio Galerie B&B, located between Canal Saint-Martin and Gare de ‘Est. Selected photographers hail from around the world, with roots in France, Spain, Germany, Greece, the United Kingdom, Austria, Switzerland,  Norway, the Netherlands, Russia, the United States, Australia, and more.

Andy Warhol. Ladies and Gentlemen, Circa 1974-1975
Synthetic polymer and silkscreen inks on canvas, 120 x 80 inches (304.8 x 203.2 cm)
© 2019 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Tim Nighswander

Andy Warhol. Red Jackie, 1964
Acrylic and silkscreen ink, 40 x 40 inches (101.6 x 101.6 cm)
© 2019 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: Froehlich Collection, Stuttgart Courtesy Froehlich Collection, Stuttgart

Andy Warhol turned appropriation into fine art, perhaps the most profoundly American aspect of his practice. Where Dada subverted the known, Warhol exalted it, creating a pantheon of iconography that charmed, rather than challenged, the status quo – while simultaneously being edgy enough to avoid becoming camp, corn, or schmaltz.

Warhol is America looking back at itself, with a nod and a wink, taking art in the age of mass reproduction to the next level when he began making silkscreens in August 1962. Marilyn Monroe’s tragic death sparked it off. She was his first, perhaps his greatest, and far from his last, as he transformed The Factory into an art world machine.

Andy’s Marilyn is a Mona Lisa of sorts — her many incarnations and moods a psychic x-ray into the person none of us ever knew. Using a publicity photography by Gene Korman for the 1953 film Niagara, Warhol took the manufactured image and remade it into something beautiful and grotesque.

Ming Smith. Grace Jones at Studio 54, 1978
archival pigment print, 30 x 40 inches

Ming Smith. Sun Ra Space II, New York City, NY, 1978
archival pigment print, 40 x 60 inches

In 1974, at the age of 23, Linda Goode Bryant opened Just Above Midtown (JAM), a non-profit New York arts organization dedicated to showing the work of artists of color in the heart of 57th Street, then the capital of the art world. Rent was a astonishing $300 per month, the 70% discount a testament to Goode Bryant’s negotiating prowess.

Like Goode Bryant, JAM was a revolution unto itself, with the intention to burn the art world down to the ground. JAM pioneered the works of now-renowned Black artists including Dawoud Bey, Norman Lewis, Senga Nengudi, Lorraine O’Grady, Howardena Pindell, Lorna Simposon, and Ming Smith — all of whom are being show at Frieze New York (May 2-5) as part of a special tribute to Linda Goode Bryant’s JAM Gallery from the 1970s.

The 2019 Frieze Stand Prize was awarded to Jenkins Johnson Gallery for their presentation of the work of photographer Ming Smith, whose contributions to the medium have recently come into clear focus. Hailing from Columbus, Ohio and educated at Howard University, Smith moved to New York in 1973 to live as an artist. To support herself, Smith joined the ranks of Grace Jones, Bethann Hardison, B. Smith, Sherry Bronfman, and Toukie Smith as the first generation of Black women to break the color barrier in the fashion and beauty industries,

The truth about destiny is that is larger than life or death. It is a taste of the eternal realm that drives us to pursue it, whatever the cost. For Éve-Claudine Lorétan, alias Coco, the final act of her life began when she met photographer Olivier Fatton on a Sunday in November 1989 in Bern, Switzerland.

A fashion model, performance artist, and media sensation, Coco was just 20 years old when she told Fatton she wanted him to document her transformation. Fatton immediately demurred to Coco’s every wish, taking pleasure in serving her needs and desires. His love was a solace and a balm for the angelic beauty whose powerful story lay inside her ethereal visage — a story that he honors in the extraordinary new book, Coco (Editions Patrick Frey).

Here we see a story of fate unfold, of triumph and tragedy crystallized in a single soul. Coco began transitioning at the age of 13 when she started taking hormones purchased illegally. As her partner in life, love, and art, Fatton watches as Coco fluctuated between two diametrically opposing realms.

Salt N’ Pepa © Janette Beckman / Courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

Salt N’ Pepa © Janette Beckman / Courtesy of Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles

Hip Hop embodies hypermasculinity in its best and worst forms – offering archetypes for emulation that have evolved over the years as the art form grew from a local phenomenon to a billion-dollar global market. In its earliest years on the streets of the Bronx, it was exclusively the realm of high school kids who wanted to throw parties in the park, the rec center, or at the gym.

When Sha-Rock joined the Funky Four Plus One, she became the first female MC, making it all the way to Saturday Night Live on Valentine’s Day 1981 when they became the first Hip Hop group on national TV. Over the next four decades, women would continue to find themselves as Miss Plus One, an integral yet peripheral figure to the history and evolution of the culture.

Photography, much like Hip Hop, has long been an all-boy’s club on both the talent and industry sides of the game. With male photographers making 90% of commercial work, the female gaze has long been underrepresented and undervalued in the iconography created and consumed – a telling reminder of the underlying biases that wordlessly reinforce a gendered point of view.

Martine Gutierrez, Girl Friends (Rosella & Palma 4), 2014. 

Martine Gutierrez, Line Up 5, 2014. 

Martine Gutierrez, Girl Friends (Anita & Marie 3), 2014. 

Martine Gutierrez is a star, restoring performance art to its rightful place in the pantheon. As artist and muse, Gutierrez uses film and photography as a medium uses a crystal ball, gazing into the vast unknowable realm until an image occurs — a lyrical poem, a visual ode to the mellifluous construction of the feminine as a look, a lifestyle, and the glorious manifestation of luminous artifice.

In Life / Like: Photographs by Martine Gutierrez, now on view at Mount Holyoke College Art Museum through June 16, 2019, Gutierrez takes us deep insider her magical world, where hair and make up, costume and set, lighting and casting combine the pleasures of cinema, fashion, and design.

Featuring works from the series Girl Friends and Line Ups, Gutierrez surrounds herself with mannequins, taking playing with dolls to exquisite new heights. “Mannequins very succinctly represent the artificial, especially in materiality, when compared to the imperfect reality of the human body,” Gutierrez has said. “But in coaxing the viewer’s misinterpretation, misleading with light and guise, I am looking for the place where those two worlds meet.”

You’ll often find the Portland-based photographer Jules Davies in someplace new or hidden, whether it’s close to home in the sprawling landscapes of the American West or a small village in Japan, famous for its huge chestnut trees. While others might prefer the luxuries of high-speed travel, she opts to take her time, exploring the road less traveled and encountering unforgettable faces along the way, each with a different story to tell. She has a moniker: Julesville. Maybe it’s an imaginary place or simply a state of mind, spanning all the magical, sunlit deserts, mountains, and lakes she’s trodden.

Julesville is also Davies’s Instagram handle and website domain name, and while she’s usually adventuring through the backroads of some secret and mysterious town, she’s also plugged-in to the digital world. More than an online presence, she’s built an online community of individuals of all backgrounds, all longing for the great unknown. In Julesville, every corner of the world, no matter how remote, has its time in the sun, and personal, human stories reign supreme. Take a look at her Squarespace website, a virtual tapestry of cultures and colors, and you’ll see what we mean. We spoke with the artist about her journeys around the world, the evolution of the fashion industry, and her one-of-a-kind website.

Untitled Two Girls Embrace, 2018

Untitled Hat, 2018

Tyler Mitchell made history in 2018 as the first Black photographer to shoot the cover of American Vogue, at the tender age of 23. His subject was no less than Beyoncé, and their collaboration was unlike anything that had graced the fashion bible during its 126-year reign. But within Mitchell’s oeuvre, the series is perfectly in tune with the artist’s vision of a Black utopia.

It is the sensation of euphoria that comes from a place of inner peace, pride, and freedom — a state of being that is naturally grand, sensuous, and enchanting. It is a realm Mitchell composes in his photographs, portraits of friends, colleagues, and confidants that informs the mood and approach to create a powerful feeling of intimacy, joy, and community.

I Can Make You Feel Good, Mitchell’s first solo exhibition now on view at Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam through June 5, 2019, brings together significant works and pairs them to with two new video installations: Idyllic Space and Chasing Pink, Found, which pairs images of leisure with crowdsource audio stories of Black microtrauma.

Mark Murrmann

Ted Pushinsky

Back in 2001, brothers Ray and David Potes were putting out photo zines the old fashioned way. Ray would edit and art direct while Dave ran copies while working in a college copy department. The one titled Hamburger Eyes really stood out — and began attracting photographers who wanted to share their work.

Ray, who was living in Hawaii at the start, moved to San Francisco where David was, and the city became home base for a vital street photography culture that recalled the glory of Garry Winogrand and Joel Meyerowitz.

Hamburger Eyes that quickly became a cult sensation in the photo underground, as the classic black and white format made the strange and mundane scenes of daily life all the more profound. In its back to basic approach, Hamburger Eyes elevated the photo zine into a work of art.

Over the years, Hamburger Eyes has gone on to publish 37 issues, as well as over 200 titles by artists, as well as two books — their latest SF Eyes: The Continuing Story of Life, Loss, Tragedy, and Triumph in the City of San Francisco as Captured by the All-Seeing Lens of Hamburger Eyes Photography Magazine just released by Hat & Beard Press in conjunction with a documentary film produced by Aaron Rose.

SF Eyes is a picture perfect postcard of San Francisco, when it was punk AF by crew members Jason Roberts Dobrin, Kappy, Dylan Maddux, Alex Martinez, Mark Murrmann, Ted Pushinsky, Andrea Sonnenberg, Stefan Simikich, and Tobin Yelland, among others.

Hamburger Eyes spent its formative years in San Francisco, becoming an integral part of the scene. With the sweeping changes to the city, and to photography as a whole, most of the crew have decamped, but the love for the town never grows old.

To celebrate two decades of San Francisco street photography, we have brought together some of the artists at the core to share the continuing story of Hamburger Eyes.