Mali Twist!

Visiting the Mali Twist exhibit at the Fondation Cartier creates a sort of counterpoint to my experience of the Irving Penn show at the Grand Palais. Another photographer who often posed his subject against a blank studio backdrop, Malick Sidibé (1935-2016) was one of the greatest photographers of the west African nation of Mali — oh, wait, […]

Irving Penn at the Grand Palais

I finally went to see the Irving Penn exhibit at the Grand Palais (Paris), two weeks before it is to close. I’d been looking forward to it ever since I saw the marquee-sized posters around the city back in September. Perhaps I felt a bit intimidated about writing about a blockbuster show honoring a blockbuster […]

Oops! The ‘failures and accidents’ that plague photographers — and have forever…at the Orsay

In this Parisian week of celebrating some of the best photographers in the world, it is something of a relief to laugh along with the Musee d’Orsay curators at the shocks and disappointments that awaited the earliest photographers, and still haunt us today. OK, so how many times have you taken a wonderful landscape or […]

Florence Biennale XI (2017)

Florence Biennale XI (2017) Across the street from my Florence hotel there is a vast complex, the Fortezza de Basso, behind high yellow-brown brick walls. It is a space large enough for an expansive exhibition of juried contemporary art submitted by artists from around the world. This year the variety of artists and media is […]