The New York Civil Liberties Union! Be advised that the New York City Transit Rules of Conduct allows anyone to photograph their facilities, but it does require a valid press pass for lights, reflectors or tripods. Since it’s happened again, a NYCLU rep clarifies that if you’re on a public sidewalk, “You’re entitled to take pictures of anything you can see — period.” That includes police activity. So next time you’re pushed around, take down the uniformed perpetrator’s info and drop NYCLU a line.

Mexican photographer Alejandro Cartagena works in the haphazardly built, poorly planned suburban communities near Monterrey, Mexico where sullen teens roam cramped housing clusters and the drought-ridden landscape. This latest series — Car Poolers — is a bird’s eye view of men in trucks, just riding prostrate, looking skyward, some spotting the photographer, some of them asleep. There’s something decidedly eerie about them being slumped alongside barrels and buckets of bolts, like so much work equipment. One of these photos is currently shortlisted for Sony World Photo Awards.

]]> http://animalnewyork.com/2012/02/car-pooling-in-mexcio-men-in-trucks/feed/ 3 http://animalnewyork.com/2012/02/portraits-active-duty-soldiers-dread-heavy-heads/ http://animalnewyork.com/2012/02/portraits-active-duty-soldiers-dread-heavy-heads/#comments Tue, 07 Feb 2012 18:30:21 +0000 Marina Galperina http://animalnewyork.com/?p=179488

The “Soldier” series by Suzanne Opton was previously featured and gigantic billboards in nine US cities and set off enough people to spark a debate about the image of America’s military.

Presumably, such portraiture doesn’t bode well for recruitment — heads plastered sideways, eyes heavy or pressed shut, weathered, unguarded faces letting slip that 355 days in Iraq of 295 days in Afghanistan have been hell and it’s less “be all you can be” and more “what am I still doing here?” Blow up to 40″ x 50″ archival prints, pair them with portraits of blanket-wrapped veterans undergoing war trauma treatments, and it gets grisly.

It really grinds. There’s still time to see them at: “Soldier/Many Wars,” Suzanne Opton, Jan 5 – Feb 11, Platform Gallery, Seattle

David LaChapelle’s “Earth Laughs in Flowers” series takes from the Dutch Masters’ still life and its opulent piles of fruit, only, his throws in some signifiers of the modern age that “explore contemporary vanity, vice, the transience of earthly possessions and, ultimately, the fragility of humanity.” It’s all vapid hues of pink and yellow, plasticine sheen and nothing subtle: Silicone assholes, Vienna sausages, blooming, flowers, wet fruit, a praying mantis, blood-splattered wine-glasses, more flowers, more fruit, clouds of cigarette ash, Cheetos, junk, a toy airplane, a burning American flag. See them for the first time on US soil at “David LaChapelle: Earth Laughs in Flowers,” Feb 23 – Mar 24, Fred Torres Collaborations, NYC

A one-man trailer park, old hippies in the desert, a monk in a ghost town — Alec Soth traveled 20,000 miles tracking these modern-day hermits for the mysterious, unsettling series Broken Manual. These men trust Soth. They leave their caves and cabins and pose for portraits. They show off their make-shift huts, home-made shivs and lonely rubber fuck holes. They just want to be left alone. Gawk at them with this highly anticipated New York show at the Sean Kelly Gallery. The accompanying road trip documentary Somewhere to Disappear plays hourly. “Broken Manual,” Alec Soth, Feb 3 – Mar 11, Sean Kelly Gallery, NYC

Throughout the 1950′s, Greenpoint-born bank-industry dude Frank Oscar Larson was handy with the Rolleiflex, capturing “the life of the streets” and “candid portraits of working stiffs” on his weekends. Culled from a recently uncovered hoard of thousands of unseen negatives, the Queens Museum of Art’s exhibition features shots from Chinatown to the Hell’s Kitchen to Times Square to Central Park, with ladies with gams and street urchins without teeth and Brando still in theaters. Don’t even try to feign nostalgia on this one. You’re not that old. “Frank Oscar Larson: 1950s New York Street Stories,” Feb 5 – May 20, Queens Museum of Art, Queens

The self-described “New Young Japanese Photographer” (dude was born in 1985) was previously featured in Lombard Freid’s “Minor Cropping May Occur” show, exposing the erratic, cramped, stereotype-shattering scenes of his family life. He’s since wandered off into the arms of this lady. Looks like some raw stuff, very unpretentious, casual but charged enough to be compelling. “Lovesody,” Motoyuki Daifu, Jan 26 – Mar 3, Lombard Fried Projects, NYC.

In her photographic series Learning To Love The State I Am In, photographer Samantha Shubert squeezes herself between dumpsters, hugs a jagged curve of a crippled wall and shoves herself into the hollow of a broken highway curb. She’s from woodsy upstate New York, so this urban Baltimore scene is new, but she’s learning to love it, clearly, physically, prollifically.

This is charming, albeit not original. We’ve seen planking, owling, body-meme-ing of all sorts. The Bodies in Urban Spaces troupe did the very same too, just with more participants, piling into NYC street crevices like into a clown-car. Something about Sam and the simplicity of her photo essay that’s above anxiety of influence. Seems earnest… as earnest as slumping vulnerably over window grates can be.

With all these ladies left slumped, discarded, alone… shock value has been achieved, but it’s not that far off. Well, according to Disney propaganda and story origin, Sleeping Beauty’s been dead out of it waiting for some princely necrophiliac to love her back to life, right? I mean, “correct.”