International Center of Photography Library
1. What are archives meant to do? Materials held in suspension for eternity, they hover between the inert death of purpose and a potential for future measurement. Like embalmed body parts in an Egyptian tomb meant to transport ritual order from the past to our world. Do we understand it entirely? Like an annoying child… Continue reading Pablo Lerma: Greenfield and forensic imagination
Queering the Collection, 2019, a collaboration between GenderFail and the ICP Library from the publisher "Throughout 2018, the ICP Library collectively produced more than six in-house library installations and events considering representation in libraries at large. The success of this initiative resulted in an increase of the ICP Library’s holdings of queer, gender non-binary imagemakers,… Continue reading Notes on Queering the Collection(s) @ the ICP Library
Peter Hujar (1934-1987) The exhibition and catalog Peter Hujar - Speed of Life at the Morgan Library & Museum (January 26 - May 20, 2018) is an auspicious way to begin a review of the past year. The acquisition of Hujar's prints, contact sheets, and related materials by the Morgan represents the most extensive institutional… Continue reading Photo books, exhibitions & related events 2018 edition, part 1 – Peter Hujar, Oliver Wasow
To articulate what is past does not mean to recognize “how it really was.” It means to take control of a memory, as it flashes in a moment of danger. For historical materialism it is a question of holding fast to a picture of the past, just as if it had unexpectedly thrust itself,… Continue reading Temporary Autonomous Installations in All Used Up: Dismantling the Gaze x Queering the Collection, October 17, 2018 at ICP Museum
Yours truly and ICP Head Librarian and Archivist Matthew Carson participated in the recent panel From X-Files to The Matrix: Reality Disintegrated, held on Sunday, March 4 at the ICP Museum. In the words of organizer Claudine Boeglin: The 90s. It was an era of hope bracketed between the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989)… Continue reading OMG, Bring a Book! The Library Goes to Critical Jamming
Faced with the excess and diversity (where to start?) of publications in Queering the Collection, currently installed in the ICP Library, I was happy to find (& just by judging a book by its cover) a familiar name: Stephen Grebinski. This past fall at the Art Book Fair at P.S.1 I bought one of his… Continue reading Stephen Grebinski, Keyed to Masculine Comfort, 2015
Following conversations with my colleagues at the ICP Library about an event related to our current photobook display Je est un autre: The Vernacular in Photobooks, I decided to present selections from a small collection of films stills I accumulated in the 1980s when I worked at movie revival houses and non-profits in NYC. Calling… Continue reading “I am in Paris.”
Who was Irving Desfor? Unknown to us up until now, his book/photo album Great Magicians In Great Moments came to the ICP Library when the personal library of our founder Cornell Capa was folded into the ICP collection after Capa’s passing in 2008. How did none of us notice this until it seemingly appeared (excuse… Continue reading Photography is Magic
The Roxy Theatre opened at 153 W. 50 St., between 6th and 7th Avenues in 1927 with the film The Love of Sunya, produced by and starring Gloria Swanson. The theater seated 5,920 people. An apogee of "movie palace" distinction in New York City, its brief moment in history is now traceable only in photographs.… Continue reading What played at the Roxy?
Monsters & Madonnas 