Home

Jane Hilton: Precious, June 13- July 13, 2013

Wed, 06/05/2013

 Nailya Alexander Gallery presents “Precious,” an exhibition of fourteen color photographs from Jane Hilton’s recent project documenting working girls in assorted Nevada brothels. The exhibition will run from June 13th through July 13th  2013 at 41 E 57th Street, Suite 704. Gallery hours are from 11am to 6pm, Tuesday through Saturday. The opening reception for the artist will be held on June 12th from 6 to 8pm.  

In 2000, the BBC commissioned Hilton to make “Love for Sale,” a series of ten documentaries on Nevada’s legalized prostitution. In 2010, she decided to return with her plate camera to create intimate nude portraits of these girls who represent different cultural backgrounds and a variety of age groups. Hilton visited eleven brothels, including Madam Kitty’s Cathouse and Moonlite Bunny Ranch. She was able to capture her models’ dignity and strength of character while delicately challenging the societal notion of beauty and the stereotypical taboo associated with prostitution. Her entire study and detailed stories are documented in the book with the same title, “Precious,” which will be released by Schilt Publishing this month.

Jane Hilton, photographer and filmmaker, lives in London. Among her past projects exploring various aspects of American culture are “Dead Eagle Trail” (2006-2009), “God Bless America” (1994-2002), and “All Lit Up” (1999-2000). Jane Hilton’s work can be found in the permanent collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Her photographs are regularly published in The Sunday Times Magazine and The Telegraph Magazine. 

New York: Look & Listen

Tue, 05/07/2013

Nailya Alexander Gallery is pleased to announce the first solo gallery exhibition of William Meyers, New York: Look & Listen. The opening reception for Mr. Meyers will be held on May 7th, from 6 to 8pm. The exhibition will run through June 8, 2013 at the Fuller Building, 41 East 57th Street, Suite 704 (corner of Madison Avenue). Gallery hours are 11am-6pm, Tuesday through Saturday, and by appointment. Although Mr. Meyers (b. 1938) had been a photography buff since his early teens, he only became seriously involved around fifteen years ago after a chance encounter with Phil Bloch, a director of the International Center of Photography. Prior, Mr. Meyers led a multifaceted career, including service as a Naval Air Intelligence Officer with notable involvement in the Cuban Missile Crisis and the recovery of the Gemini 2 Space Capsule. He had business operations throughout New England and investments in biotechnology. He also had a play produced off-Broadway and had poetry published in several journals.

Photographs featured in New York: Look & Listen are drawn from the Outer Boroughs as well as the Music New York and Alternate Manhattan projects. All the works share characteristic spontaneity and frankness. They represent the quotidian, unsung places where most of the city inhabitants live and work. In 2008, the New York Public Library acquired a portfolio of 86 prints from William Meyers’ Outer Boroughs: New York beyond Manhattan project for its permanent collection.

In recent years, Mr. Meyers’ photographs have been exhibited at the Museum of the City of New York, the Alice Austen House Museum, the Palatele Brancovensti (Bucharest), and several gallery group shows. Meyers’ photographs have been published in The New York Times, the New York Sun, the New York Press, ARTnews, City Journal, and elsewhere. One of his photographs is on permanent display at Ansche Chesed in New York where it serves as a memorial to those who perished in the Holocaust.  Currently William Meyers is the regular photography critic for the Wall Street Journal. From 2002-2008 he was the photography critic for the New York Sun. His writing on photography has also been published by the Weekly Standard, Commentary Magazine, and Nextbook.

The AIPAD Photography Show New York, April 4-7, 2013

Sat, 03/30/2013

More than 75 of the world's leading photography art galleries will present a wide range of museum-quality work, including contemporary, modern, and nineteenth-century photographs, as well as photo-based art, and new media, at the historic Park Avenue Armory on New York City's Upper East Side. Please come visit us at Booth #102. We will be featuring photographs by George Tice, Pentti Sammallahti, Alexey Titarenko, William Meyers, and Ann Rhoney. The Show Info. 

 

The Wall Street Journal Review, March 9, 2013

Sat, 03/09/2013

 "Here Far Away," a monograph of Pentti Sammallahti's work, was published in 2012 in six languages—a testimony to the high regard in which the Finnish-born photographer is held. The earliest of the 39 black-and-white images at Nailya Alexander is "Helsinki, Finland" (1973), a picture of two ducks relaxing on an ice floe; there is another unoccupied floe beside theirs, the body of water the ice is floating in and, in the misty background, some ships and the harbor-side town. It casts an aura of chill, but also of romantic beauty. Since then Mr. Sammallahti (b. 1950) has traveled throughout Scandinavia and Europe, as well as Asia, Africa and America. Wherever he is, he has an affinity for the local animals: the contemplative monkey on a rock under a tree in "Swayambhunath, Nepal" (1994); the stoic horse beside a stone windmill in "Gotland, Sweden" (1993); the two city birds on a sidewalk in "Houston, TX" (1998); the dutiful dog guarding a pile of used tires in "Cilento, Italy" (2000). Mr. Sammallahti's prints aren't large; many are quite small. "Signilskar, Finland" (1974) is only 3½ inches by 4¼ inches; it is a picture of a white rabbit, seen in profile, sitting in a stand of dark trees. This is an image of great delicacy. You get close to it to study its details, the way you get close to a Rembrandt etching.

Here Far Away, February 27 - April 27, 2013

Fri, 02/22/2013

Nailya Alexander Gallery is pleased to announce Here Far Away, an exhibition by renowned Finnish photographer Pentti Sammallahti (b. 1950), celebrating his first major monograph in six languages (French, German, Italian, Spanish, English and Finnish) and covering work from 1964 to 2011. The English first edition, published by Dewi Lewis (UK), is already out of print. The exhibition will open on Wednesday, February 27th, with a reception from 6 to 8pm, and will run through April 27, 2013, at the Fuller Building, 41 E 57th Street, Suite 704.

Although the exhibition presents both iconic and lesser known gelatin silver and archival pigment prints made in different periods and sizes, it is not a retrospective per se; instead, it is a reflection of “the restless Finnish photographer’s craftsmanship, who finds the same odd, melancholic poetry in locations across the globe,” as Sean O’Hagan comments in his Guardian review. “Looking at the photograph, you feel on the threshold of another, more mysterious world that is indeed here and far away.” Last summer, the artist received rave reviews by the European press for his retrospective at the Arles International Festival, including Francis Hodgson of the Financial Times statement that “his original prints make up the stand-out exhibition among the 50-plus this year.”

Pentti Sammallahti’s photographs are in many international museum collections, including the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, England; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas, USA; Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, France; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, Germany; Moderna Museet / Fotografiska Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; and The Finnish State Collections and the Photographic Museum of Finland.

George Tice: Platinum/Palladium Photographs

Sun, 12/02/2012

Nailya Alexander Gallery is pleased to announce George Tice: Platinum/Palladium Photographs, an exhibition of sixteen 20 x 24 inch photographs, taken between 1969 and 2003. The opening reception with George Tice will be held on December 12, from 6 to 8pm. The exhibition will run through February 16, 2013 at the Fuller Building, 41 East 57th Street, Suite 704 (corner of Madison Avenue). Gallery hours are 11am-6pm, Tuesday through Saturday and by appointment. 

Exhibited internationally, George Tice’s work is represented in over one hundred museum collections, including MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Newark Museum. George Tice’s first show in New York was at the Underground Gallery in 1965. In 1972, he had a one-man show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Paterson, New Jersey and in 2002, ICP exhibited George Tice: Urban Landscapes.

Tice has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Media Museum (UK), the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, as well as commissions from The Field Museum of Natural History, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Museum of Modern Art. He has published seventeen books including the following that are available in the gallery: Fields of Peace (1998), George Tice: Selected Photographs, 1953-1999 (2001), Lincoln (1984), Hometowns, An American Pilgrimage (1988), Stone Walls, Grey Skies, A Vision of Yorkshire (1993), George Tice: Urban Landscapes (2002), Common Mementos (2005), Paterson II (2006), Ticetown (2007) and Seacoast Maine (2009).

2013 marks George Tice’s 60th year in photography.

 

 

New York: Stieglitz to Titarenko

Mon, 10/15/2012

Nailya Alexander Gallery is pleased to announce New York: Stieglitz to Titarenko, an exhibition about the timeless essence of the ever changing city. Included are some thirty black and white and color photographs from 1910 to 2012 by Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Paul Strand, Berenice Abbott, Walker Evans, Bruce Davidson, Eleanor Fischer, Louis Faurer, William Klein, Saul Leiter, Evelyn Hofer, George Tice, Harold Roth, William Meyers, Nina Korhonen, and Alexey Titarenko. The exhibition will run from October 17 to December 8, 2012 at the Fuller Building, 41 East 57th Street, Suite 704. Gallery hours are 11am-­‐6pm, Tuesday through Saturday and by appointment. The opening reception will be held on October 17, from 6 to 8pm.

New York City has fascinated generations of photographers. Alfred Stieglitz combined formal perspectives with his romantic imagination to search for “the spirit of that something that endears New York to one who really loves it... the universal thing in it.” Walker Evans rebelled against Stieglitz’s “unwonted earnestness” and created his own “documentary style” pictures of the city. Newcomers like Alexey Titarenko (b. 1962, St. Petersburg, Russia) see New York through their experience in disparate places and with different photographic traditions. Each photographer in the exhibition has his own view of the city, each is enchanted by its secret magic, and somehow a plausible New York emerges from this visual cacophony. 

From Pictorialism and Avant-Garde to Socialist Realism: Russian Photography 1920s-1930s

Sat, 09/01/2012

 September 7 - October 13, 2012

 

Nailya Alexander Gallery is pleased to announce “From Pictorialism and Avant-Garde to Socialist Realism: Russian Photography, 1920s-1930s.” The exhibition of rare vintage photographs, will feature sixteen masters, including Max Alpert (1899-1980), Nikolai Andreev (1882-1947), Viktor Bulla (1883-1938), Semyon Fridlyand (1905-1964), Alexander Grinberg (1885-1979), Sergey Ivanov-Alliluev (1891-1979), Valentina Kulagina (1902-1987), Sergey Lobovikov (1870-1941), Moisei Nappelbaum, Nikolai Petrov (1874-1940), Aleksandr Rodchenko (1891-1956), Arkady Shaikhet (1898-1959), Arkady Shishkin (1899-1985), Mikhail Tarkhanov (1888-1962), Vasily Ulitin (1888-1976), and M. Vitoukhnovsky (-).

The 1920s in Russian photography were the most exciting years, an age of great experiments. Photographers from different styles exhibited at major salons both at home and abroad. As in the West, modernist photography was coming into vogue, while the pictorialist movement was still popular with photographers who continued to explore printing techniques and remained faithful to their aesthetic ideals. Highlighted are works by Sergey Lobovikov using bromoil processes in his evocative images of the Russian rural life, and portraits of Russian “types” made by Vitoukhnovsky who traveled throughout Russia. Alexander Grinberg celebrated the human form in his studies of movement and nudes. Victor Bulla documented demonstrations and avant-garde street decorations of Petrograd of the early 1920s. Famous master of studio portraiture, Moisei Nappelbaum, created portraits of prominent revolutionaries, scientists, and cultural figures, and the exhibition will showcase a portrait of Lenin made in 1918, among others. Alexander Rodchenko’s first portraits of Vladimir Mayakovsky in 1924 became iconic. The exhibition also features some rare abstract photographs by a lesser known artist Mikhail Tarkhanov, who studied under Vasily Kandinsky in Vkhutemas in the early 1920s. This was a time of the birth of Soviet photojournalism, and the work by Arkady Shaikhet and Max Alpert, its most important founders, are in the exhibition. Photography became the most effective art form and propaganda tool for the new Soviet society with t rise of socialist realism in the 1930s. The Masters of Soviet Photography exhibition in 1935 was the last to feature works of all genres side by side. The variety of styles ceased to exist by the end of the decade, pictorialism was forbidden for its lack of ideological content, avant-garde photographers were accused of formalism, and Alexander Grinberg was sentenced to a labor camp for eroticism. Gradually, images of optimism and the glorification of Stalin populated magazines and Soviet cinema. In the exhibition, Valentina Kulagina’s photomontage created for the entrance of the Siberian pavilion at the VDNKh (All-Union Agricultural Exhibition) is one of the greatest examples of socialist realist art. 

Helen Glazer: Temporary Presences

Thu, 06/07/2012

Nailya Alexander Gallery is pleased to present Temporary Presences, an exhibition of thirteen hand-colored archival pigment prints by Helen Glazer (b. 1955).  The exhibition will run from June 14 through July 20, 2012 at the Fuller Building, 41 East 57th Street, Suite 704.Glazer’s work is influenced by ideas of chaos and complexity, theories that look at the diverse patterns in nature, such as the shape of coastlines, the growth of tree limbs or the movement of fluids. The intricacy of cloud formations arises from an infinitely detailed system in which each tiny element reflects the pattern of the whole. With study, these patterns are recognizable, yet never entirely predictable.

Glazer intensifies her prints with pastel pencils to bring out these temporary presences, heightening and deepening the colors and tones. The resulting works -- printed up to 40 inches long -- reveal nuances that the camera captures, but the naked eye fails to see, and conventional image processing does not show. Though these works read mainly as abstractions, the representational force of photography is integral to the experience. That they are not inventions, but records of actual moments in time, is a reminder that stability is an illusion and that the reality we live in is being replaced moment by moment.

“Cloud formations are ephemeral, transforming and decaying as they move through the vast space of the sky," Glazer notes. "When I stop the action with my camera and mine the information recorded there, clouds reveal themselves as intricately textured forms that gesture and take on a poetic resonance. They inspire wonder and feelings of transcendence. They morph into unexpected, almost otherworldly forms that would be difficult to invent–the human brain works too schematically for that."

Helen Glazer (b. 1955, Bronx, NY) lives in Baltimore. She received her BA in art from Yale University in 1976 and her MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in 1978. She has exhibited her work extensively in the Baltimore and Washington, DC areas. Her hand-colored cloud photographs were recently shown in the “Alchemy of Change” exhibition at the New York Hall of Science and will be a part of the "Centennial Exhibition" at the Delaware Art Museum in the fall. Her work is in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Chautauqua Institution (Chautauqua, NY).

Evgeny Mokhorev: Photographs 1991-2010

Fri, 04/06/2012

Nailya Alexander Gallery is pleased to announce the third solo exhibition by St. Petersburg photographer Evgeny Mokhorev (b. 1967). The exhibition features twenty-four gelatin silver prints over the period of almost twenty years (1991-2010). The exhibition will run from April 11 through June 9, 2012 at the Fuller Building, 41 East 57th Street, Suite 704. Gallery hours are 11am‐6pm, Tuesday through Saturday and by appointment.

Mokhorev was eight when he began taking photographs. He is the first Russian photographer who showed such an incredible insight into the fragile and troubled world of children. Since the late 1980s, he has passionately explored the marginal territories of adolescence, the unsettling revelations of lost childhood, and the magical transformations into adulthood. His first solo exhibition outside of his homeland was in Paris in 1992, right after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was held within the framework of Mois de la Photo, a Photography Festival in Paris, where his series about street kids of St. Petersburg “Games Children Play,” became a sensation.

Mokhorev’s sensitive images are exquisitely composed and taken in natural light. He possesses a special empathy that allows him to enter the complex universe of pubescence, and to capture the wonder of innocence and the delicate inner world expressed by his models. The Russian photography critic Irina Chmyreva compares Mokhorev’s models to the youth depicted in the Renaissance. They project a similar self­‐respect, composure, and a sense of themselves. They are as beautiful as the antique sculptures that abound in his city of St. Petersburg.

Mokhorev’s works are part of the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Columbus Museum of Art, the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg and the House of Photography in Moscow. Concurrently, Mokhorev photographs are exhibited through April 29 at Houston Fotofest, 2012.