Eclipse Award-Winning Photographer Barbara Livingston Gifts Jim Raftery’s Turfotos Collection To Keeneland Library
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Eclipse Award-Winning Photographer Barbara Livingston Gifts Jim Raftery’s Turfotos Collection To Keeneland Library
Edited Press Release
Keeneland Library received a history-making gift from six-time Eclipse Award-winning photographer Barbara Livingston, who has donated an estimated two million photographic negatives from the collection of famed Turf photographer Jim Raftery.
Raftery’s Turfotos Collection is the most comprehensive photographic collection of Thoroughbred racing in 20th century North America, chronicling the sport’s human and equine legends for nearly 60 years, from the late 1930s through the early 1990s.
“We are incredibly grateful to Barbara for placing this incomparable historic industry asset in our care,” Keeneland Library Director Roda Ferraro said. “The Raftery Turfotos Collection is the largest gifted still image acquisition in Keeneland Library history, and we are honored to preserve Jim Raftery’s legacy for future generations of researchers, writers and racing fans.”
Barbara Livingston | Horsephotos
Livingston, the longtime chief photographer for Daily Racing Form, acquired the Turfotos collection from Raftery’s family in 2020 as part of her personal quest to preserve racing’s photographic history.
“Jim Raftery was among the all-time great racing photographers; he was stunningly prolific and a character to boot,” Livingston said. “I gave the majority of negatives and slides from the Raftery Collection to Keeneland Library because they will provide the collection a safe haven.
“I grew up inspired by so many photographs from the collections of Skeets Meadors, C.C. Cook, and more, that Keeneland Library provided to others for their use,” she said. “I saw how the Library preserved these collections, as well as the respect they have for history and photographers. The Library was clearly the right choice for me and, more importantly, it was the right choice for Jim Raftery and his family. Jim Raftery’s name will now continue to be seen and, with Keeneland’s help, his photographs will no doubt inspire future photographers, racing historians and racing fans.”
In December, Ferraro traveled to Livingston’s home in upstate New York to coordinate the four-day move of 3,300 pounds of negatives via truck to a climate-controlled off-site storage facility in Lexington.
The Library began processing the collection in January, an undertaking that given its size and scope will span decades. Bin by bin, the negatives will be rehoused in archival enclosures and stored in the Library’s 24/7 temperature- and humidity-controlled vault.
Kelso with trainer Carl Hanford | Keeneland Library Raftery Turfotos Collection
Each negative will be indexed and triaged for digitization. An internal indexing system, custom-built by the Library for this project, will render each negative searchable by place, horse, race, person and date, among other metadata fields.
“Without an intake, archival rehousing, processing and indexing workflow customized to this uniquely rich and sizable collection, we would have two million inaccessible negatives,” Ferraro said. “We created a system centered on access and preservation of the negatives in their original form and, when warranted by condition or a high likelihood for potential future use, a digital form.”
The most imperiled negatives will be digitized during processing. Select others will be digitized to respond to patron image requests after each respective negative is indexed and searchable.
“This is a painstaking, slow-moving process, particularly when we encounter negatives that require research to build our collection index with as much identifying information as possible,” Ferraro said. “It can be daunting to look ahead to the roughly two million negatives, but as with all our photograph collections, this is a critical preservation effort that will enhance our capacity to serve our global user base and tomorrow’s public and industry stakeholders.”
Keeneland Library works with the entire industry daily to connect journalists, writers, filmmakers, educators and publicists to its photography holdings for use in articles, books, documentaries and exhibits along with race track and farm promotional materials.
Check out D-backs’ legend Randy Johnson’s new photo exhibit at Scottsdale museum
SCOTTSDALE, AZ (3TV/CBS 5) — You may know Randy Johnson for his time on the mound with the Arizona Diamondbacks, but did you know the former pitcher is also a well-known photographer?
Just in time for spring training, you can soon see the artwork of the Diamondbacks’ legend. Beginning Friday, Johnson’s photography will be on display at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.
Johnson started photography in the early 1980s before his time with the team. “I think a lot of people think I just got into it when I retired but I started photojournalism at USC while I was playing baseball on a scholarship there. I was learning about film photography and working for the college newspaper,” he said. “Then I gradually transitioned into my baseball career when I got drafted by the Montreal Expos in ‘85 out of college. Then photography took a backseat.”
After retirement, Johnson says he enjoyed traveling to Africa, which is the focus of the exhibit. “I’ve been there about five, six times. It’s a vast continent. There’s just so many areas to travel to and see so many different things and that’s what I’ve tried to capture here,” he explained.
An open reception will be held for Johnson’s exhibit on Friday, Feb. 23 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tickets are free, but you must reserve yours. To reserve or find out more information, click or tap here.
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Dreamy Santa Monica Pier Photos Look Like a Wes Anderson Film
Santa Monica Pier is a favorite spot amongst both tourists and locals to Southern California. The colors of the beach, the food stands, the Pacific Pier amusement park make for a uniquely quirky mix that can only be found there. French photographer Helene Havard, who visits the area often, set out to capture the vibrancy of this area. By working with her signature, Wes Anderson-like colors, she heightens the dreamy quality of these laidback scenes.
“Santa Monica Pier is a place I find magical, especially at sunset. I used to come here, as I live in French Polynesia and go very often to Cali either for pleasure or to fly to different countries,” Havard tells My Modern Met. “Each time I come to LA, I like this place for the retro feeling it has. Everything seems from another time. It feels a little bit surreal according to my taste.”
In Havard’s pastel-toned images, Santa Monica Pier looks like a place where it’s always Sunday afternoon. People line up for hot dogs and burgers, ride the world-famous ferris wheel, walk on the sand, and simply bask under the warm California sun. While these places have long been used as film locations, Havard further elevates the cinematic potential of this place with simple creative choices, like narrative framing and a unique palette.
Scroll down to check out Havard’s tribute to Santa Monica Pier, and follow her on Instagram to stay up to date with her latest photographic adventures.
French photographer Helene Havard, who visits the Santa Monica Pier often, set out to capture the vibrancy of this area.
By working with her signature, Wes Anderson-like style, she heightens the dreamy quality of these laidback scenes.
“Santa Monica Pier is a place I find magical, especially at sunset,” she tells My Modern Met.
“Each time I come to LA, I like this place for the retro feeling it has. Everything seems from another time. It feels a little bit surreal according to my taste.”
In Havard’s pastel-toned images, Santa Monica Pier looks like a place where it’s always Sunday afternoon.
Helene Havard: Website | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube
My Modern Met granted permission to feature photos by Helene Havard.
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Close-Up Photographer of the Year Embraces the Natural World in Macro
Close-up Photographer of the Year celebrates five years of captivating entries from photographers. This year, the contest brought 12,000 entries from 67 different countries. The individuals who participated zoomed in close on the natural world to capture macro marvels that left viewers in awe.
Isopods, birds, fish, slime molds, butterflies, and sunny lily pads in a Mexican cenote were among this year’s submissions that covered the gamut of flora and fauna. The images boasted each photographer’s skill and patience that was put toward unveiling the intricate beauty that often goes unnoticed by the naked eye.
The competition’s diverse categories have celebrated a multitude of natural wonders covering the astounding, delicate, and ethereal patterns in nature. Close-up Photographer of the Year continues to inspire and amaze, reminding us of the boundless beauty that surrounds us, waiting to be discovered through the lens of a camera.
For those excited about the beauty of macrophotography, the contest’s website showcases the top 100 photos, inviting viewers on a visual journey through the wonders of the natural world.
Yuan Minghui-Like A Flower
Manfred Auer – Orange Isopod
Csaba Daroczi – The Bird of the Forest
Arne Bivrin – Kiss of Death
Rene Krekels – Wood
Mirko Scortichini – Butterflies Storm
Laura Storm – Cloud Nine
Simon Theuma – Dreamtime
Barry Web – Comatricha with Droplets
Ye Fei Zhang-Butterfly Eggs
Chris Gug – Spirit of the Yucatan
Liang Fu – Heart of the Sea
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Wild, Touching — and Even Funny: Best Underwater Photographs of 2024 » Explorersweb
Marine photographers from all over the planet submitted to a contest that will pull your heartstrings in every direction imaginable.
The Underwater Photographer of the Year contest dates back to 1965. While this year’s winners and finalists scored shots that would have been impossible to imagine back then, they also captured timeless themes and intimate moments from all over the Blue Planet’s namesake habitat.
Sweden’s Alex Dawson won the grand prize with a haunting shot of whale skeletons surrendered to the Greenland sea by indigenous hunters.
The UPY pointed out that “from a stable population of over 100,000 minke whales in the North Atlantic, the hunters of Tasiilaq typically take less than a dozen.”
The UPY also published a heap of photos in each of this year’s 13 categories, including “Wrecks,” “Macro,” and my personal favorite, “Behavior.”
And don’t worry if you get a little teary over the “Save our Seas” category. There’s always an entry like “Home sweet home” or “Aquatic primate” to buoy your mood.
Photo: Suliman Alatiqi
This year’s contest attracted a record number of entrants. ”The collection is a great reminder that while underwater photography is a specialist discipline, there is huge diversity within it,” said the UPY.
Check out all the winners, runners-up, and commended entries on the UPY website.
Ray Francis, Celebrating Blackness
A founder of the Kamoinge Workshop, he made lush, powerful photos that document and honor members of the African diaspora.
In the late 1970s, in Montreal, photography students were obsessed with getting deep blacks — “max black” — in our prints, squeezing the full range of tones out of our black-and-white photo paper. Knowing that light meters were designed to average a scene out to gray, we recalibrated ours to make the shadows in our shots as darkly lush as an Ansel Adams moonrise.
Few of us realized there might be more to blackness than a lack of light. We didn’t understand that in the right hands, the deep, deep blacks might speak to far more than a darkroom technique — to issues of race and segregation.
Four hundred miles south of us, in New York, Ray Francis was printing shots that had the bold shadows we were striving for. Thirty-two of his prints are on view now in “Waiting to Be Seen: Illuminating the Photographs of Ray Francis,” at the Bruce Silverstein gallery in Chelsea, a posthumous show that is Francis’s first solo presentation. He died in 2006, at 69.
In 1963, he helped found the Kamoinge Workshop in New York, a collective dedicated to “photography’s power as an independent art form that depicts Black communities,” according to the Workshop, which is furthering its mission today. The photos on view at Silverstein suggest that, in the circle of Kamoinge, depicting Black people was likely to involve thinking about black tones in a print.
Francis’s images, with their reflections on race, seem to get a special energy and power because of their links to art photography that cared so deeply about the darkness in a black-and-white print.
A Forthcoming Documentary Examines How Civic Life in America Is a Matter of ‘Join or Die’
“This is Bob. Bob is a big fan of clubs,” the narrator opens in the trailer for the forthcoming documentary Join or Die. “And this is a film about why you should join one and how Bob discovered that the fate of America depends on it.”
Bob, or Robert D. Putnam, is an acclaimed political scientist who has deeply influenced our understanding of how society and government work. A professor at Harvard and author of fifteen books, Putnam analyzes a swath of economic, social, political, and cultural trends using loads of data, heralding the idea of social capital, or the networks within society that enable it to function effectively.
Two-and-a-half decades ago, Putman wrote the prescient book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, a powerful insight into how Americans are becoming increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and democratic structures. He tilts a mirror toward our own social behaviors, and Join or Die posits that its importance has only amplified since.
All images © ‘Join or Die’
Directed and produced by Rebecca Davids and Pete Davis, Join or Die follows “the half-century story of America’s civic unraveling” through Putnam’s work and interviews with numerous influential figures like Hillary Clinton, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, and scholar Eddie Glaude, Jr. The film explores provocative questions like, “What makes democracy work? Why is American democracy in crisis?” Then, it poses a call to action: “What can we do about it?”
The project collates striking statistics that Putnam has gathered during his career about the incredible drops in collective involvement, such as a 50 percent decline from the 1970s to the 1990s in the number of times Americans attended a club meeting the previous year. Or a 50 percent decline from the 1970s to the 1990s in the number of Americans who took a leadership role in any local organization.
“The places that have better government are the places that have a long history of social networks and social capital,” Putnam says. He adds in another clip, “Organization—connections with other people—is the only way you get big change.”
Check out the trailer on the film’s website. (via Swiss Miss)
Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article A Forthcoming Documentary Examines How Civic Life in America Is a Matter of ‘Join or Die’ appeared first on Colossal.
Ozerkevich shares work on early French sports photography
The Atletas (year unknown). The arrows, added by Ozerkevich, indicate places that have been edited. | COURTESY OF OZERKEVICH
When you edit a photo to make your body look different or certain features more prominent, you follow a tradition of retouching photos that may be at least 140 years old, according to Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History Rachel Ozerkevich. On Feb. 15, Ozerkevich shared her research on early publicized photography during a presentation titled “Aesthetes and Athletes: Media Debates and French Sports Images, 1881-1917.” Ozerkevich explained that this 36-year period in France saw a massive rise in popular press and marked the beginnings of sports publications printing photography in their pages.
The use of handwork — the editing of images through drawing, cutting or otherwise altering the original physical image — truly captured her attention in the aesthetics of French sports imagery. Often this handwork was used to make photos resemble illustrations more palatable to audiences unfamiliar with photography. Ozerkevich explained that “our biases and beliefs about ideal bodies, beauty and national belonging owe a lot to sports imagery. We know how to read all the images we see in the sports media because the earliest sports-image makers relied on artistic conventions.” Before showing a small sampling of these images, Ozerkevich warned the audience that they might look different from our modern conception of photography. “We have art directors, photographers and editors literally playing with photographs. They’re playing with lines, shapes, layouts and the interplay between text and image,” she said. Indeed, each of Ozerkevich’s example images had been directly drawn on to create the desired effects.
Ozerkevich is currently developing her research into a book, and each chapter of her project focuses on different examples of retouched images and explores the techniques used to manipulate them. A photograph from the 1900 Paris Olympic Games showed a moment from the diving competition on the Seine where one of the figures had been entirely drawn into the image. “Retouching involved everything from highlighting important areas to blurring out or minimizing extra confusing details, to cropping or cutting out areas that might detract from a central narrative,” Ozerkevich explained. She also emphasized the importance of inspecting these photographs physically because digital copies can lose the texture and signs of alterations.
As she examined the societal impact of editing the body, she focused on female weightlifters and the ways that their photographs were retouched to maintain gendered stereotypes about beauty ideals and proportions in women. Speaking about a posed photo of a family of female weightlifters who referred to themselves as the Atletas, Ozerkevich said, “These images of the women show dramatic evidence of having been drawn on. There are pen and scratch marks around the women’s waists, busts, chins and arms, which literally slimmed their bodies.” The photographer Edmond Desbonnet published the photo in a magazine called La Culture Physique. Ozerkevich added that “[the Atletas] were too fit. They were too muscular and thereby too far removed from mainstream ideals of female beauty…much of Desbonnet’s drawing, then, has to do with making their bodies conform a little bit more to these widely accepted beauty ideals.” This example illustrates how long the press has been distorting women’s bodies to present an ideal that has long been shaping popular perceptions of beauty standards.
Ozerkevich’s last example was, in many ways, the most troubling. It was a 1905 picture of a woman dressed in traditional North American indigenous clothing, showing off her costume and form. Ozerkevich revealed that the woman who performed under the name Osceola was a white European performer who “appropriated generic Indigenous regalia and narratives in her complex self-fashioning.” She explained that through this cultural appropriation, “Osceola was engaging with discourses about indigenous otherness, exoticism and eroticism, and… capitalizing on popular fears about women’s physical and intellectual liberation.” Ozerkevich is in the process of searching for additional information about Osceola, but this example demonstrates the critical role that race and culture play in our understanding of sports imagery and history.
In a 45-minute presentation and brief Q&A session, Ozerkevich managed to reveal a condensed history of altering photography as well as establish the clear and necessary connection between sports photography, popular culture, body image and art history. Her upcoming articles and book are sure to leave readers more aware and considerate of the images they encounter daily and the historical traditions that inspire them.
ArtCentre Of Plano Presents Photographs Of Sarah Carson
The ArtCentre of Plano is presenting the photographs of Sarah Carson this March in honor of Women’s History Month. Carson’s exhibition will be held at both the ArtCentre of Plano and the Courtyard Theater.
Sarah Carson, a photographer based in Dallas, has created an extensive portfolio spanning both black/white and color photography. She also possesses a collection of black/white images embellished with oil paint. Carson’s photographic subjects range from the Texas Rodeo and Red Canyonlands to New York Cityscapes, English Castles, an Italian Horse Race, the marvel of Petra and Eastern Europe during the Soviet era.
Sarah Carson: Vivid Memories
On exhibit at the Courtyard Theater and the ArtCentre of Plano from March 5 to March 30, 2024.
- Opening Reception: Thursday, March 7, 5 to 7 p.m., Courtyard Theater
- Lunch & Learn: Wednesday, March 20, 2024, 12 to 1 p.m., ArtCentre of Plano
“The photographs in this exhibition are, indeed, some of my most vivid memories,” said Carson. “And I hope that they speak with my voice in a special way to you.”
Carson’s exhibitions have been held in various cities including Boston, New York, Miami, New Orleans, Houston, Dallas, Santa Fe and Budapest, Hungary. Her work is featured in exhibition books and specialized publications. From 1994 to 2012, Carson conducted photography workshops during spring and autumn at Montestigliano, a large farm-estate near Siena, Tuscany. Each year, the participants’ Italian work was showcased in a Dallas gallery or art center.
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