Steven Kasher Gallery is proud to present Weegee: Naked City from January 12 – February 25, 2012. Our exhibition is presented in conjunction with two major specifically-focused Weegee exhibitions, Weegee: Naked Hollywood at MoCA and Weegee: Murder is My Business at the ICP. We are presenting over 140 Weegee prints that explore the full emotional, satirical and aesthetic range of Weegee's photographs of New Yorkers and other urbanites. The exhibition features multiple prints from each of Weegee's major subjects: Song and Dance, Drink, Party, Spectacle, Circus, Love and Sex, Crime and Disaster, Citizens, Celebrity, Art and Weegee Himself. The exhibition will also feature audio and film recordings of Weegee's voice, one of the great guttural Jewish New Yorkese hybrids of spoken English.


Steven Kasher Gallery is delighted to present an exhibition of the recently discovered work of Vivian Maier from December 15, 2011 through February 25, 2012. VIVIAN MAIER features over 40 black and white prints. Maier, whose day job was as a nanny, took over 100,000 distinctive street photographs, mostly in New York City and Chicago, yet showed the results to no one. This is a startling posthumous discovery of a major photographer, ranking with those of E. J. Bellocq and Mike Disfarmer. The exhibition is accompanied by a publication: Vivian Maier: Street Photographer (powerHouse Books, 2011), foreword by Geoff Dyer.


Steven Kasher Gallery recently presented Gilles Larrain: Idols featuring 35 never before exhibited large-scale photographs of New York's most wildly colorful, often scandalous denizens of style that he shot during the revolutionary early 1970s. Larrain's now legendary SoHo studio became a haven for the glamorous misfits who were exploring their sexual identity and re-creating the city's night life. The images, originally published in the book Idols in 1973, captured the individuals who transformed the era. Original copies of the book are coveted collectors items; a new edition by powerHouse Books was launched simultaneously with this exhibition.


Beginning on November 11, the vitrine space of the Steven Kasher Gallery will be the home of the project Occupying Wall Street: A Visual Diary by Accra Shepp. This exhibition is an ongoing visual record of the Occupy Wall Street protest in Zuccotti Park. Each week artist Accra Shepp makes twenty to thirty portraits of individuals who are participating in the demonstration. Using a 4x5 view camera with black and white film, Shepp's vision slows down the action of the protest and allows the viewer to exercise a sustained gaze. As the Occupy Wall Street protest continues, Shepp will add new images on a weekly basis to the installation. Visitors are invited to contribute their comments on the protest and the images in a ledger at the gallery.


In the back room of Steven Kasher Gallery, coinciding with our Gilles Larrain: Idols exhibition, Louda Larrain created her inaugural art installation, her "inner sanctum." The installation, The House of Louda: Post-Couture Textile Paintings and Revamped Umbrella Dress Sculptures, featured deconstructed textile paintings dressing the walls, in addition to a bas-relief of textile sculpture in the form of toys, heads, female and male body parts and other indescribable surprises. The installation was on view November 2 - December 10.


Steven Kasher Gallery is honored to have recently exhibited a new body of work by the great American artist John Chamberlain. JOHN CHAMBERLAIN: Pictures presented nine monumental photoworks, comprised of multiple eight-foot-high stretched canvas panels, each panel hosting a highly-processed and colorized panoramic photograph by the artist. Created in 2010-11, Pictures is Chamberlain's most candid, autobiographical, and intimate body of work to date. Departing from his sculptures in medium and imagery, these new works on canvas continue the artist's use of color and composition that infuse his art with extreme energy and power. The exhibition was accompanied by a publication: John Chamberlain: Pictures (SteidlKasher, Gottingen, 2011), text by Carlo McCormick.


Steven Kasher Gallery recently presented Laura Levine: Musicians, an insider's look at the artists at the forefront of rock, punk, indie rock, post-punk, hip-hop, New Wave, and No Wave. This was the first one-person gallery exhibition featuring Levine's photography, including her vintage gelatin silver prints - many one of a kind. The show featured over 35 vintage and modern prints and was presented with our exhibition Rude and Reckless: Punk/Post-Punk Graphics, 1976-82.

Rude and Reckless: Punk/Post-Punk Graphics, 1976-82 was the first New York exhibition surveying the extraordinary diversity of Punk and Post-Punk graphic design. The exhibition showcased a wide range of American and British artistry, with influences that included the Bauhaus, Futurism, Dadaism, Pop Art, Constructivism and Expressionism. The exhibition featured over 200 rare posters, along with fanzines, flyers, clothing, badges and stickers.


In partnership with The New Yorker, Steven Kasher Gallery presented New Yorker Fiction/Real Photography, a selection of over 40 important photographs selected by Elisabeth Biondi and Steven Kasher from the artwork accompanying Fiction stories published in The New Yorker from 1998 to 2011. The exhibition was a tribute to the distinguished New Yorker Visuals Editor Elisabeth Biondi and to the extraordinary photography she has brought to the The New Yorker for fifteen years.

On June 23, Steven Kasher Gallery hosted a panel discussion which explored the relationship between The New Yorker's fiction pieces and their accompanying photographs as they appeared in the magazine. Steven Kasher moderated the panel, which included the writer A.M. Homes; the photographer Malerie Marder; the former Visuals Editor of The New Yorker, Elisabeth Biondi; and the Fiction Editor of The New Yorker, Deborah Treisman.


Our exhibition Charles Moore: Civil Rights and Beyond was the most comprehensive exhibition of photography by Charles Moore ever undertaken by a gallery or museum. The exhibition featured approximately 60 prints, mostly vintage, drawn from the photographer's estate. Charles Moore (1931-2010) was the most important civil rights era photographer. His searing images of conflict between demonstrators and law enforcement helped propel landmark civil rights legislation. The opening reception was hosted by Charles Moore's daughter, Michelle Peel.


Phyllis Galembo: Maske featured recent photographs by Phyllis Galembo. Included in the exhibition were sixteen large-scale color prints presenting African and Haitian figures in indigenous masquerade costume. In her recurring travels throughout Africa and the Caribbean over the past thirteen years, Galembo shoots revelers during traditional rituals, rites, ceremonies, and festivals. This exhibition coincides with the release of Galembo's new book, Maske (Boot, 2010), which includes an introduction by Chika Okeke-Ogulu, Assistant Professor of Art History at Princeton University. The show was recently reviewed in Cultural Politics and The Huffington Post.


Mark Seliger: Listen was an exhibition of personal and evocative photographs by acclaimed contemporary photographer Mark Seliger. The exhibition included 30 large-scale platinum palladium prints depicting nudes, still lifes, portraits, and New York cityscapes. Many of the photographs were on exhibition for the first time. Along with the exhibition, Seliger released his new book with the same title, Listen (Rizzoli New York, 2010), featuring 90 tritone photographs and an interview with the artist by leading American magazine designer Fred Woodward. The book was reviewed in Interview and GQ, and Seliger was also featured on the CBS Early Show and interviewed for The New York Times and New York Post.


William Albert Allard, National Geographic's most celebrated photographer, was the focus of our recent exhibition William Albert Allard: Five Decades. It featured over 30 large-scale color photographs and a selection of unique Polaroids from the artist's almost fifty-year career. Accompanying the exhibition was the release of the publication William Albert Allard, Five Decades: A Retrospective (Focal Point, 2010). The book is part memoir and part retrospective, documenting his career as a photographer and writer. Allard was interviewed for PBS Newshour and The New York Times Lens Blog in addition to being featured in The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and the October issue of National Geographic.


Our exhibition, Simply Beautiful, presented large-scale color photographs by over 25 National Geographic photographers and launched a new program that features limited edition collectors' prints. The exhibition accompanied the release of the new book: National Geographic Simply Beautiful Photographs (National Geographic Books, October, 2010) edited by award-winning photographer Annie Griffiths. Choosing remarkable images from all of the Society's core mission areas, Griffiths deftly explores the idea of what creates beauty in a photograph.


By popular demand, our Max’s Kansas City exhibition was extended and is still generating amazing interest from the press. Steven Kasher was interviewed on WYNC for the programs Soundcheck and The Leonard Lopate Show and he was also interviewed for the ABC 7 video taxi feed. There were articles and reviews in The New York Times Art & Design and Fashion & Style sections, New York Magazine, Interview, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, ArtNews, The New Yorker, and ABC 7 among many others. A complete list of articles, reviews and other media about the exhibition can be viewed on our gallery Press page. The show launched the book Max's Kansas City: Art, Glamour, Rock and Roll (Abrams Image, 2010) edited by Steven Kasher. Photographs from the VIP Preview opening can be viewed on Patrick McMullan’s website.


Phyllis Galembo was one of four photographers featured in the exhibition Interplay curated by Dan Cameron at the New Orleans Center for Contemporary Art. Her African Masquerade series was recently on view in Call and Response: Africa to America: The Art of Nick Cave and Phyllis Galembo at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in Charleston, South Carolina. A selection of her photographs from Africa and Haiti were featured last May on Kanye West’s blog.


The Gwangju Biennale that took place in South Korea in September featured 25 vintage black and white photographs by Mike Disfarmer in an exhibition curated by Massimiliano Gioni. Dan Hurlin’s theatrical production Disfarmer with tabletop puppetry and projections of Disfarmer’s photographs premiered at St. Ann’s Warehouse last year and was presented at Mass MOCA on May 8-9. Grammy-winning guitarist Bill Frisell’s multimedia presentation, The Disfarmer Project features a four-piece band performing songs from his recent album Disfarmer (Nonesuch, 2009) with Disfarmer images projected above the stage. A new book Mike Disfarmer: Photo Poche N°122, (Actes Sud 2009) came out last November with over 60 black and white Disfarmer photographs. In a recent interview, musician and composer T-Bone Burnett cited Disfarmer as a major inspiration for the new album No Better Than This that he produced in mono this year for John Mellencamp.


Christopher Thomas’ evocative new book, Passion, edited by Petra Giloy-Hirtz and Ira Stehmann was recently released by Prestel.  His richly textured series of portraits depicts participants in the Oberammergau Passion Play in Germany. The play, performed since 1634 by the inhabitants of a small Bavarian village, runs for five months at the beginning of each decade. The book combines Thomas' painterly large-format photographs with text, mirroring the play’s composition of spoken dramatic text and motionless actors conveying tableaux vivants scenes. In November he begins shooting a new series of dreamlike urban landscapes in Venice, Italy.


Stephen Shames’ Aperture exhibition The Black Panthers: Making Sense of History, Photographs by Stephen Shames was recently on view at The Haggerty Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. A selection of this work was collected in his monograph The Black Panthers (Aperture, 2006). The exhibition brings together gelatin silver prints from this politically charged body of work.