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A PHOTO COLLECTION THAT CAPTURES NEW YORK AT THE VERY DAWN OF AIDS

In 'FEVER,' Allen Frame's candid 1981 photos capture a time of hope and innocence—and they are all the more tragic for it

In a new book of color photographs, all shot in 1981, Allen Frame revisits a time that gave rise to an aesthetic that was distinctly New York. A circle of friends, many—though not all—gay men, made art at a specific moment in city’s history, though perhaps not what you’d expect.

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A Portrait of the New York Art Scene
Just Before the Advent of AIDS

A new book and exhibition revisit downtown New York in 1981 and capture the face of a lost generation just before the pandemic struck.

Frame’s photographs, which combine the immediacy of the snapshot with the timeless sensibilities of fine art, preserve the face of a lost generation. Here, we see a world filled with possibility and hope, the hallmarks of youth made all the more poignant by the sense that they cannot begin to imagine the terrors the future will hold.   

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In a simultaneous, in-person show at MATTE in Brooklyn, Frame is presenting a selection of images from Fever, along with a salon-style hanging of work from his collection of artists depicted in the book and recent work by some of them, including Frank Franca, Nan Goldin, Jody Guralnick, Kevin Teare, Ken Tisa, Jane Warrick, David Wilson and Zamba. Other photographs from the period by Sheyla Baykal, Robert Penner, Laurie Sagalyn, and Perry Walker are part of the salon-style presentation.


MATTE Editions HQ
1899 Fulton Street, Brooklyn, NY 11233
www.MATTEeditions.com

In my photographs there's an inherent reality that we see, real people in real situations, not actors in a film or play that I’m directing or writing. I acknowledge that reality, but of course, I shape it, with various decisions of framing, editing, sequencing. I want to acknowledge my subjectivity, too, my projections onto people and situations. What is exciting to me is the mixture of the two, the coming together of some "objective" reality and "subjective" experience. I title images with the actual subjects' names, the actual location, the actual date, but what seems to be going on in the photograph may not reflect the actual circumstances.

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Showing Us the Light

For Khalik Allah, photography is a spiritual endeavor, a conscious marriage of street and self, a quest to elevate both. It is also inherently lyrical, and like a preacher improvising a sermon, a musician in the zone, or poet freestyling off the dome, there’s something mystical and transcendent in the execution. That’s not to say it isn’t firmly grounded in this reality, in the actuality of life at 125th and Lexington in Harlem where much of his work is focused. Cycles of addiction, poverty, and suffering haunt the darkness of this nightscape but the camera is an instrument beholden to the light.

Link to the Spring 2021 issue of the magazine.

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Close to Home: Creativity in Crisis
Curated by Corey Keller
March 6 – September 5, 2021

Close to Home: Creativity in Crisis brings together seven Bay Area artists ― Carolyn Drake, Rodney Ewing, Andres Gonzalez, James Gouldthorpe, Klea McKenna, Tucker Nichols, and Woody De Othello ― and their deeply personal responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and social upheaval of 2020. Their projects emerged from the profound curtailing of daily life that resulted from shelter in place: the disruption of routines and the inaccessibility of studios or materials, the instability in employment, and the delicate and sometimes untenable balance struck between family needs and work obligations. These challenges demanded an adaptive way of working; rather than closing off opportunities, the constraints prompted new approaches and new lines of inquiry.

Individually, the artists demonstrate a startlingly wide range of artistic, emotional, and political responses, a reminder of how this unprecedented period affects each of us differently. Taken together, their work emphasizes our shared experience in this collective crisis.

link to SFMoMA

click below to read about Klea's installtion No Feeling Is Final, 2020

Khalik Allah’s latest film "IWOW: I Walk on Water", focuses on the artist’s longtime muse Frenchie, a 60-something schizophrenic, homeless Haitian man, who he becomes increasingly intertwined with. Allah, whose previous moving image work includes 2018’s "Black Mother", also turns the camera on himself to document a turbulent romantic relationship and grapple with personal notions of spirituality and mortality – all inquiries about which he gathers advice from charismatic confidants including Fab 5 Freddy, members of the Wu-Tang Clan, and, in deeply moving exchanges, his own mother. On the motivations behind his image-making practice, Allah says “My objective hasn’t changed, it’s always been to keep it real with myself; to stay true to my vision and to have the courage to express it cinematically. "IWOW" is a sort of first-person documentary poem; a statement of my artistic integrity and my uncompromising dedication to the streets.”

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Khalik Allah is featured in the new Spring 2021 issue of the magazine.

1981, NYC

It was a time like our own. A young man comes to New York and wants to be an artist. A president wants to make America great. A doctor sounds an alarm. A health crisis looms, like an overture in a minor key, but everyone goes to a bar called the Bar and a gallery called Fun.
 
There was a difference between uptown and downtown then. Allen Frame had grown up in Mississippi and lived in Boston, and, in 1977, when his friends were moving to New York, he moved there too. After living in a gay rooming house in Brooklyn, he found a place downtown on Perry Street in the West Village. He cleaned apartments for enough cash to get by, and he didn't need much because rent was cheap. Frame had time for friendship, for art and sex. He met other gay men who were artists and writers, and each brought references and experiences and ambition to the scene. He had his first boyfriend. "It was like heaven," he said...

get your own copy of Aperture 241 HERE and read on

November 21 – January 16

Christopher Russell's art engages historical notions of landscape yet he does so with a decidedly contemporary approach. Each work is unique and combines color photography and drawing. Based in the Pacific Northwest and inspired by Carleton Watkins' photographs of the American West, Russell's images both extend the tradition of landscape photography and challenge the viewer's perception of the medium. These images of hazy color are manipulated by the artist scratching into the surface of the print with a razor. The drawings add detail back into the consciously obscured photographic image. In some cases, he draws abstract forms made with small markings that represent the half-tone patterns of photomechanical reproduction. With others, Russell draws historical plant and floral patterns, essentially layering stylized images of nature over the original photographic image. Though he pushes conceptual and art historical boundaries, Russell remains a Romantic and his artwork invites the viewer to experience the wonder that he has found, and that continues to inspire him.

link to KMR ARTS

On following a higher power to document black life across the diaspora – an interview with the new Magnum nominee

"I think that beauty is everywhere. It depends on the decision to find it, focus on it, and accept it. Perception is always a choice. It seems that we are feeding off what our senses tell us is reality, but we choose what we see. When we look outward, we see a reflection of what we first witness inside ourselves. When you turn inward, your inner world is naturally unique. As long as I draw on that well of inspiration it’s not going to run dry."

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