Memory City in ART News

©Alex Webb, “Dancehall, Lake Ontario, Rochester, NY, 2013,” from “Memory City” (with Rebecca Norris Webb), Radius Books, late spring 2014

“Rochester, in upstate New York, has been the home of Kodak since the company’s start in 1888. When it declared bankruptcy in 2012, Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb decided to use film made by the company to shoot the city. For the project, Webb used his last rolls of Kodachrome, the famous but now-discontinued film, developing it as hazy black and white since its special color process is no longer available. The results look like any struggling but hopeful city, quiet but proud.”—Rebecca Robertson, ART News

http://www.artnews.com/2014/02/13/11-edgy-art-books-document-the-bizarre-bygone-and-adorable/

TO PRE-ORDER “MEMORY CITY” FROM RADIUS BOOKS (both trade edition and limited edition): 

http://radiusbooks.org/7430/alex-webb-rebecca-norris-webb-memory-city/

NEW WORKSHOP JUST ADDED: Finding Your Vision @ Fotografiska Museum, Stockholm, Saturday, June 7th-Wed. June 11, 2014:  http://fotografiska.eu/kurser/kurs/alex-webb-and-rebecca-norris-webb/

©Rebecca Norris Webb, “Blue Secondhand Prom Dress, Rochester, NY, 2012,” from “Memory City” (with Alex Webb), Radius Books, late spring 2014

LINKS, REVIEWS, ARTICLES, WORKSHOPS, EXHIBITIONS AND MORE:

——Link to NEW YORK TIMES LENS blog Q&A with Jim Estrin & Alex and Mound Bayou slide show:

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/07/alex-webb-looks-back-in-black-and-white/?smid=tw-share

——ALEX’S PHOTOGRAPHS FROM INDIA’S KUMBH MELA IN FEBRUARY 2014 ISSUE:

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2014/02/kumbh-mela/spinney-text

——Saturday May 3 thru Friday May 10, FINDING YOUR VISION, NEW YORK.  ONLY ONE SPOT left in this annual workshop. For more information including how to enroll, please visit: 

https://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAXO31_3&VBID=2K1HZOQ8HF290Z&IID=2K1HRG8E8ABS&PN=3

——Friday, Dec. 13 thru Feb. 22, 2014: BEFORE THE SHIFT: The Early Black-and-White Work of Alex Webb, Lynne Cohen, Martin Parr, and Stephen Shore at at the Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago; opening reception with Alex, Friday, Dec. 13, 5:30-8pm:

http://www.stephendaitergallery.com/dynamic/exhibit_display.asp?EventID=2&Exhibit=Currrent&ExhibitID=175

 

©Alex Webb, “Mound Bayou, Mississippi, 1976,” reprinted in the NYTimes Lens Blog

TWO LOOKS: NYTimes, Nat’l Geographic

©Alex Webb, Mound Bayou, Mississippi, 1976

Q. Jim Estrin, New York Times Lens Blog:

Had you ever been to Mississippi before? Was it similar to anything you had seen before or different?

A.  Alex Webb:

It was my first trip to Mississippi. I had photographed in some small towns in Alabama prior to visiting Mound Bayou; however, those towns were segregated — unlike Mound Bayou, there were no black town officials, no black police officers, and if there were black-owned businesses, they were in the black part of town.

Visiting Mound Bayou for the first time, I was completely unprepared for the intensity of the emotional experience of being welcomed and embraced by a culture so different than my own. I recall one moment when Ellie, the woman whom I first met at Smitty’s, suddenly turned to me, reached up and put her two hands on either side of my head and said, “I ain’t never touched the hair of a white man before.” Needless to say, as a young, white kid from Cambridge, Mass., I was stunned and deeply moved.

Link to read the rest of the Q&A with Jim Estrin and see the complete Mound Bayou slide show:

http://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/07/alex-webb-looks-back-in-black-and-white/?smid=tw-share

ALEX’S PHOTOGRAPHS FROM INDIA’S KUMBH MELA IN FEBRUARY 2014 ISSUE:

 

 

 

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2014/02/kumbh-mela/spinney-text

 

©Alex Webb, Kumbh Mela in February 2014 issue of National Geographic Magazine

UPCOMING WORKSHOPS, EXHIBITIONS,  AND TALKS WITH ALEX AND REBECCA:

——Saturday May 3 thru Friday May 10, FINDING YOUR VISION, NEW YORK.  A few spots left in this annual workshop. For more information including how to enroll, please visit: 

https://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAXO31_3&VBID=2K1HZOQ8HF290Z&IID=2K1HRG8E8ABS&PN=3

——Friday, Dec. 13 thru Feb. 22, 2014: BEFORE THE SHIFT: The Early Black-and-White Work of Alex Webb, Lynne Cohen, Martin Parr, and Stephen Shore at at the Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago; opening reception with Alex, Friday, Dec. 13, 5:30-8pm:

http://www.stephendaitergallery.com/dynamic/exhibit_display.asp?EventID=2&Exhibit=Currrent&ExhibitID=175

 

©Rebecca Norris Webb, Junipers, from A Field Guide to Silence

A shelter

or a ship

these junipers?

 

A black bough flies into the night.

Now even the snow

is the shadow of an owl.

—Rebecca Norris Webb, from “A Field Guide to Silence”