A Painter and His Poets: The Art of George Schneeman

My 1978 photograph of George Schneeman painting Allen Ginsberg is featured at this exhibition at Poet's House (April 22-Sept 20, 2014) which is the first major retrospective of George Schneeman's collaborative works with prominent poets of the second-generation New York School, among them Ted Berrigan, Anne Waldman, Larry Fagin, Maureen Owen, and Michael Brownstein.

Allen Ginsberg sitting for George Schneeman in 1978.  Photograph by Harvey Wang

VISIONS OF MARY FRANK at Film Forum

VISIONS OF MARY FRANK, a film by John Cohen premiered at New York's Film Forum on April 16.  It runs until April 22.  The film was shot by John and myself, and edited by Edmund Carson.  In the film, John Cohen – filmmaker, photographer, musician, ethnographer – visits with his friend Mary Frank in her Chelsea studio and at her Woodstock home, talking about her life and art. Married young (originally to Robert Frank and, since 1997, to musicologist Leo Treitler), and pregnant at 17, she’s brutally honest about often having put her art before all else, about the early influence of dance upon her brushstrokes, and about being (in Cohen’s words) “hot in a cool world.” Her paintings, her political activism, and her past (the film includes wonderful footage of her with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac) tell the story of a deeply-felt, well-lived life.

John Cohen by Harvey Wang

Mary Frank by Harvey Wang

John Cohen shooting Mary Frank in her studio by Harvey Wang

John Cyr's Developer Trays

John Cyr's terrific book "Developer Trays" was recently published by Powerhouse Books.  I am pleased that John included my very unique "canoe" tray in his book. 

From the publisher:

Developer Trays is master photography printer John Cyr’s tribute to the craft and art he has spent his career perfecting. As sure as the age of silver has come to an end, there remain few but extraordinary and dedicated darkroom practitioners such as Cyr who continue to work with chemistry and processes more or less unchanged since the early days of the medium.

With an unrivaled passion for the darkroom and all its accouterments Cyr set out to document the actual developer trays of many of the world’s most renowned photographers. Cyr celebrates in stunning large-format color photographs the intimate materiality of the developer tray itself and the ephemeral presence of the artist within it. This revelatory work showcases the ubiquitous developer tray as an essential vehicle of analog photography that defies modern digital photographic advances: its material nature and functionality will not become obsolete.

Trays from many of the giants of photography, including: Ansel Adams, Eddie Adams, Wynn Bullock, Bill Burke, Bruce Davidson, Elliott Erwitt, Emmet Gowin, David Graham, Sid Kaplan, O. Winston Link, Sally Mann, Eugene Richards, Stuart Rome, Mark Seliger, Neil Selkirk, Aaron Siskind, Jerry Uelsmann, Minor White, and Joel-Peter Witkin.

John Cyr "Harvey Wang's Developer Tray"