Discover how Bridport’s community and local artist Greta Berlin respond to repeated vandalism acts against public sculptures, highlighting the struggle for artistic expression.
Bridport Artist Greta Berlin Faces Heartbreak as Sculptures Repeat…
Bulgari restores sculptures at Rome monument to Italy’s first king
Luxury jeweller Bulgari is funding the restoration of the bronze sculptures and marble statues that decorate the Vittoriano monument in the centre of Rome.
Sculpture bronzed in Chalford to be installed near White House
American sculptor Sabin Howard has flown from the US to see his decade-long work come to life in Stroud.
This is the smartphone photography accessory of my dreams
As a bit of a smartphone photography enthusiast, there’s one product at MWC 2024 that has excited me more than any other. Surprisingly, it’s not even a phone but an accessory for the newly released Xiaomi 14 Ultra.
Don’t get me wrong, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra is incredibly exciting – but the Professional Photography Kit looks like it could really complete the package and make for the ultimate pocketable street photography setup.
The kit is comprised of two main parts. The first is a phone case, which has swappable metal rings that encircle the 14 Ultra’s large circular camera module. One ring is purely decorative, and has a bit of a Sony Alpha vibe in its metallic orange colorway, while the other adds a 67mm filter thread. This means you can attach ND filters, mist filters, polarizers, or whatever else you fancy.
The second part of the kit is an ergonomic grip that clips onto the case and connects to the phone via USB-C. Aside from making the phone easier to hold, this grip packs a 1,500mAh battery to keep it juiced up, and adds a physical shutter button, zoom rocker and programmable dial. There’s even a wrist strap to keep your phone secure while you’re out shooting.
This isn’t an entirely new concept; my LG G5 had a snap-on grip with similar features all the way back in 2016, and products like the ShiftCam ProGrip offer a one-size-fits-all solution with a similar goal in mind. Xiaomi’s version seems like the most polished evolution so far, though, both in terms of aesthetics and functionality.
Plus, it comes at a time when accessories like this make more sense than ever. The aforementioned LG G5 had a very underwhelming 16MP camera with a tiny sensor, whereas the new Xiaomi 14 Ultra has a quad 50MP array at its disposal. The main camera even has a 1-inch sensor and an adjustable aperture.
As good as touchscreen user interfaces are, there are shortcomings when it comes to photography. If you’ve ever tried to zoom or switch a setting one-handed, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about. This nifty kit looks like it’ll solve that completely.
The only downside is that it’s only designed to work with Xiaomi 14 Ultra – so if you aren’t going to opt for the brand’s top-tier flagship model, then you’re pretty much out of luck. There have been some reports of the accessory working with other phones, but I didn’t have much luck when I tried it for myself.
I attempted to attach the grip portion to my Vivo X100 Pro. Obviously, the phone case won’t fit, but it seemed like the grip portion could work. In some ways it does – the phone begins to charge, and the shutter button can take a photo – but it just doesn’t fit. Unless I was holding it in place, the USB-C connector would just fall out, making the grip effectively useless.
If you’re crafty enough, or some kind of 3D printing wizard, then I’m sure you could make it work with other phones. But most people would be better off using something designed to accommodate their device.
The Xiaomi 14 Ultra photography kit is available to purchase for around $259 if you can find it in the US, or £179 in the UK. There is also a deal, depending on your region, if you pre-order the Xiaomi 14 Ultra then the kit comes bundled for free for a limited time. Xiaomi’s even throwing in a free tablet, too, making it a pretty tempting deal.
For more on the latest in smartphone photography, check out our top picks for the best camera phones and the best Android phones.
Six Decades of Elliott Erwitt’s Iconic New York Street Photography
Magnum photographers. New York City, USA, 1989
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French-American photographer Elliott Erwitt is known for his whimsical images of life in New York City. Now, some of his best work featuring the city has been pulled together in a revised edition of Elliott Erwitt’s New York. The publication is a fitting tribute to the photographer, who died on November, 2023 at age 95.
From the moment he landed in New York in 1948, his camera was his constant companion. And his black-and-white photography showcases the beauty he found in everyday life. From people passing the time while waiting for the subway to portraits of iconic celebrities, he never missed an opportunity to create a work of art with his camera.
In this revised edition of the book, which was originally published in 2008, there are 16 pages of previously unpublished photographs from the 1950s and 1960s. This makes the coffee table book a precious resource for lovers of Erwitt’s street photography. While there are plenty of incredible images from the past, the book explores the full timeline of Erwitt’s career.
There are many clever and ironic photographs from more recent times, including a crowd of Magnum photographers in the late 1980s. In it, we see the professionals jockeying for the best view high up on a roof. Rather than get involved in the war for a vantage point, Erwitt was able to step back and see the amusement in the chaos.
Elliott Erwitt’s New York, published by teNeues, is now available via Amazon or Bookshop. The German publisher worked closely with Erwitt and has published many volumes of his work, including one that brings together his hilarious dog photographs.
A new coffee table book celebrates Elliott Erwitt’s iconic New York City street photography.
New York City, USA, 1949.
New York City, USA, 2001.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York City, USA, 1988.
His black-and-white photography celebrates the beauty of everyday life.
New York City, USA, 1950.
New York City, USA, 1949.
New York City, USA, 1954.
This revised edition of Elliott Erwitt’s New York includes 16 pages of previously unpublished photos from the 1950s and 1960s.
New York City, USA, 1953.
Marilyn Monroe. New York City, USA, 1956.
New York City, USA, 1953.
This volume, which is a wonderful celebration of the photographer’s career, is now on sale.
Elliott Erwitt: Website | Instagram
All images © Elliott Erwitt. My Modern Met granted permission to feature photos by teNeues.
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Walter Edgar’s Journal: Injustice in focus – The Civil Rights photography of Cecil Williams
This week we talk with Claudia Smith Brinson about her new book, Injustice in Focus: The Civil Rights Photography of Cecil Williams (2023, USC Press). Claudia’s rich research, interviews, and prose, offer a firsthand account of South Carolina’s fight for civil rights and tells the story of Cecil Williams’s life behind the camera. The book also features eighty of William’s photographs.
Cecil Williams is one of the few Southern Black photojournalists of the civil rights movement. Born and raised in Orangeburg, South Carolina, Williams worked at the center of emerging twentieth-century civil rights activism in the state, and his assignments often exposed him to violence perpetrated by White law officials and ordinary citizens. Williams’s story is the story of the civil rights era.
June Crespo: Vascular – Announcements – e-flux
The active materiality of June Crespo’s practice is at the very basis of Vascular, an ambitious installation now on view at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.
The Thomas Cole National Historical Site announces a new exhibition: ‘Native Prospects: Indigeneity and Landscape’
CATSKILL — The Thomas Cole National Historic Site announced that a new exhibition “Native Prospects: Indigeneity and Landscape,” curated by Scott Manning Stevens, PhD/Karoniaktatsie (Akwesasne Mohawk), will open on May 4 at the historic site in Catskill. The exhibition juxtaposes an Indigenous approach to the articulation of their homelands and the environment with the American landscape paintings of Thomas Cole, which are rooted in European tradition. Cole’s influence led him to be recognized as founder of the 19th-century American art movement now known as the Hudson River School of landscape painting.
The exhibition’s curator, Manning Stevens, PhD / Karoniaktatsie (Akwesasne Mohawk), is Associate Professor of Native American Studies and English at Syracuse University, where he is also Director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Program and Founding Director of the Center for Global Indigenous Cultures and Environmental Justice. The exhibition and the accompanying publication are organized by the Thomas Cole National Historic Site.
The Indigenous approach to land underscores a mutual relationship of nurturing and caretaking. As Dr. Stevens writes, “For many Indigenous peoples, including the Haudenosaunee, it is our relationship with the land that is of paramount importance. That relationship teaches us the ethics on which our societies are built.” He continues, “any abstract portrayal of the land and its features in our visual culture is meant to call to mind those relationships—relationships that we have a sacred duty to remember and maintain.” The approach to nature exemplified by Cole’s one-point perspective landscape paintings is rooted in a European tradition that reflects a perceived right to dominate and rule over nature, as seen for example in an oft-quoted passage from Genesis: “Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”
“Native Prospects: Indigeneity and Landscape” presents 19th-century paintings by Thomas Cole featuring Native figures, in context with Indigenous works of historic and cultural value, and artworks by contemporary Indigenous artists: Teresa Baker (Mandan/Hidatsa), Brandon Lazore (Onondaga, Snipe Clan), Truman T. Lowe (Ho-Chunk), Alan Michelson (Mohawk member of the Six Nations of the Grand River), and Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee). Bringing the 19th century into conversation with our present moment, this cross-cultural exhibition offers profound interpretations of American art and land, expands conventional definitions of “land” and “landscape,” and highlights Indigenous artistic creation.
Much of the critique of 19th-century American landscape painting has focused on the absence of communities of the original inhabitants of the land. Yet communities of Native peoples had lived throughout these regions for millennia, constructing villages and clearing woods for agricultural fields, as they supported their communities from the resources of the land and its waterways.
Unlike most of his artistic circle, Thomas Cole included Native figures in many of his landscape paintings, though most often alone. Dr. Stevens interprets these figures as what art historians refer to as “staffage.” In Cole’s case, these figures served to provide a sense of scale, geographic location, and arguably time period. Scale was often related to the sublime aspects of certain natural features such as a waterfall or mountain, while identifying a figure as Native American placed the viewer in an American locale, and finally, having a lone Native figure in the landscape, dressed in a stereotypically Indigenous manner, pointed to the country’s past, with the implicit and harmful presumption that Native Americans were no longer present in this region. Cole’s Native figures demonstrate no ethnographic acuity on the artist’s part, beyond romanticized stereotype.
“Native Prospects” reflects this aspect of the landscape painting tradition while examining representations of land by Native peoples, both in the distant past and today. While Indigenous societies in North America did not have a tradition of representational landscape art, the land was featured abstractly as it related to Native communities in various designs, some decorative and others mnemonic. Contemporary Native visual artists have inherited a variety of legacies of representing the land, a fraught subject for many Native artists because of the dispossession of Indigenous peoples from the land and the peril facing the land historically and today.
“Indigenous societies flourish when we recognize that our relationship to the land is as much determined by responsibilities as it is by rights,” said exhibition curator Manning Stevens, PhD. “We maintain our collective right to protect the land and all that’s on it, and we do so with our custodial duties toward the environment in mind.
“For many Indigenous peoples the European landscape tradition in art presents viewers with a false sense that North America was an uninhabited wilderness waiting to be settled or that the beauty of nature can be depicted with a sense of nostalgia or in an elegiac light, given the inevitability of the presumed advance of ‘civilization’ with its towns, cities, and industries. Contemporary Native artists have inherited this tradition but feel compelled to respond from their own perspectives and be mindful of their traditions. For some that is delivered as a critique and for others it is a prompt to revisit the ancestral views of their people.”
The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with original essays by the curator and such other scholars as Gabrielle Tayac, PhD, (Piscataway) and Joseph Mizhakiiyaasige Zordan (Bad River Ojibwe). Additionally, the publication will feature writing and plates by featured artists Teresa Baker (Mandan/Hidatsa), Brandon Lazore (Onondaga, Snipe Clan), and Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee), as well as texts on Alan Michelson (Mohawk member of the Six Nations of the Grand River), by Clémence White, and Truman T. Lowe (Ho-Chunk), by Patricia Marroquin Norby, PhD, (Purépecha), Associate Curator of Native American Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The exhibition opens May 4 at the Thomas Cole National Historic Site and will run through Oct. 27.
Curator Dr. Scott Manning Stevens will present a Curator’s Talk at 2:30 p.m. May 4, followed by an opening reception from 4-6 p.m.
Tyler ISD Students Spotlight Mental Health Through Photography Exh…
On March 5, Tyler ISD photography students are set to illuminate the importance of mental health through a unique exhibition. Organized by Next Step Community Solutions, this event not only showcases the talents of local students but also aims to foster a community dialogue around mental well-being. Hosted at Gallery Main Street, Tyler, from 6-8 p.m., the exhibition is free and welcomes all members of the public, with the first 100 guests receiving complimentary Andy’s Frozen Custard.
Empowering Through Art
In a powerful collaboration with Caldwell Arts Academy photography students, Next Step Community Solutions brings to light the coping mechanisms students employ against daily stress and adversity. Each photograph in the exhibition is accompanied by a personal narrative, detailing the student’s journey towards maintaining mental health through their creative process. This initiative not only provides a platform for young artists but also emphasizes the therapeutic potential of art in mental health management.
Community Engagement and Awareness
The event is more than a display of artistic talent; it’s a call to action for the East Texas community to engage in meaningful conversations about mental health. By highlighting students’ perspectives and coping strategies, the exhibition aims to break down the stigma surrounding mental health discussions. Next Step Community Solutions believes in the power of community-based interventions to foster a supportive environment for those dealing with mental health issues.
Looking Forward
This exhibition marks the beginning of what many hope will be a continuing conversation about the importance of mental health awareness in Tyler and beyond. The partnership between Tyler ISD, Caldwell Arts Academy, and Next Step Community Solutions exemplifies the impactful role of education and community organizations in addressing critical societal issues. As attendees reflect on the narratives and images, the event is poised to inspire further initiatives that support mental health through creative expression.
The significance of this exhibition extends beyond the photographs displayed; it lies in the shared experiences and the collective acknowledgment of the importance of mental health. By bringing these conversations to the forefront, Tyler ISD students and Next Step Community Solutions are paving the way for a future where mental well-being is openly discussed and supported within the community.
