New York Photo Festival and Awards; The Explainer

Ok, don’t be fooled by the rainbow; the New York Photo Festival is serious business. As you can see above, there are some serious heavy-hitters involved. But let’s start from the beginning:

This festival was conceived by Frank Evers, the Managing Director of the VII Agency, and Daniel Power, who is the founder and publisher of powerHouse Books.

Here’s the description from the press release:

Founded by Daniel Power and Frank Evers, and a joint initiative of powerHouse Books and VII Photo Agency, the New York Photo Festival will be the first international-level Festival of photography to be based in the U.S., with the ambition of documenting the future of photography in all its forms. For the inaugural edition (May 14-18, 2008) of this new annual event, a group of internationally respected curators have been selected to deliver their personal vision of the newest and most important trends in contemporary photography: Magnum photographer Martin Parr, The New York Times Magazine picture editor Kathy Ryan, Lesley A. Martin of the Aperture Foundation, and Tim Barber of tinyvices.com. In addition to the curated pavilions, the Festival will offer visitors an extensive range of activities that will generate dialogue and buzz among all the communities of photo professionals, amateurs, students, and aficionados of art and culture: seminars, portfolio reviews, slide shows, book signings, photographic workshops, live performances and events, and a gallery row. The New York Photo Festival will be headquartered in DUMBO.

This is a lot of information to process; I’ve been trying all morning to properly compartmentalize the festival in my brain. The major event(s) seems to be these four shows, curated by Ryan, Parr, Martin and Barber. These are already planned. Here’s what each have in store for us:

Kathy Ryan looks at sculptural and painterly qualities of recent photography in
Chisel. The exhibit includes new works by Roger Ballen, Horacio
Salinas, Stephen Gill, Katherine Wolkoff, Simon Norfolk, Julian
Faulhaber, Lars Tunbjörk, Alejandra Laviada, and Andreas Gefeller.

photo by Roger Ballen

Martin Parr’s exhibit, New Typologies, highlights
the use of the photographic series as an attempt to bring order to the
chaos around us. The show features the work of Wassink Lundgren, Donovan
Wylie, Jeffrey Milstein, Jan Banning, Sarah Pickering, Ananké Asseff,
Michel Campeau, and Jan Kempenaers.

photo by Jan Kempenaers

Leslie Martin, book publisher at the Aperture Foundation, reflects
on the replication and reproduction of the photographic image in The
Ubiquitous Image, focusing on how contemporary artists are using the
seemingly limitless cache of disseminated images to create their own
work. Artists include Joachim Schmid, Claudia Angelmaier, Marco Breuer,
Penelope Umbrico, Harrell Fletcher, Natalie Czech, Curtis Mann, Robert
Bowen, Peter Piller, and Useful Photography.

photo by Claudia Angelmaier

Tim Barber; photographer, curator, publisher, and former
photo editor for Vice magazine– brings together over 300 images in
Various Photographs. The exhibit showcases a wide spectrum of works
from well established to unknown photographers.

photo by Catherine Lutes

*I think it’s classic that Tim Barber does not list his photographers, or have a fancy name for his show.

In any case, these exhibitions are set and planned for their venues in DUMBO. Fancy mockup:

See how you can get into the action with the Awards segment of the festival, and hear from founder Frank Evers, after the jump.