A fascinating discussion of photographers’ essays about failed attempts to make a picture.
Presenters: Will Steacy Ed Kashi Elinor Carucci
Moderators: Taj Forer Michael Itkoff
Location: Brooklyn Bridge Park – Pier 3
Presented by:
Please join us for a panel discussion and book signing for Photographs Not Taken, a fascinating collection of photographers’essays about failed attempts to make a picture. Editor Will Steacy asked over sixty photographers to abandon the conventional tools needed to make a photograph and instead make one using words. In each essay, the photograph has been stripped down to its barest and most primitive form: the idea behind it.
Ed Kashi is a critically acclaimed photojournalist who uses photography, filmmaking, and social media to explore geopolitical and social issues. A dedicated educator and mentor to photographers around the world, Kashi lectures frequently on visual storytelling, human rights, and the world of media.
A Contributing Photographer to the VII Foundation since 2010, Kashi has been recognized for his complex imagery and its compelling rendering of the human condition. His early adoption of hybrid visual storytelling has produced a number of influential short films and in 2015 he was named Multimedia Photographer of the Year by Pictures of the Year International.
His work has appeared in National Geographic, Open Society Foundations, The New Yorker, MSNBC, GEO, Human Rights Watch, MediaStorm, NBC.com, The New York Times Magazine, Oxfam, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and TIME. His work has been published and exhibited worldwide, receiving numerous awards and honors, and he has published nine books of his photography.
Born 1971 in Jerusalem, Elinor Carucci graduated in 1995 from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design with a degree in photography, and moved to New York that same year. Her work has been included in many solo and group exhibitions worldwide, solo shows include: Edwynn Houk gallery, Fifty One Fine Art Gallery, FoMU, and Gagosian Gallery, London among others. Group shows include the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, and The Photographers’ Gallery, London, United Kingdom.
Her photographs are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art New York, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Houston Museum of Fine Art, among others and her work appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Details, New York Magazine, W, Aperture, ARTnews and many more publications.
She was awarded the ICP Infinity Award in 2001, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002, and NYFA in 2010. Carucci has published four monographs to date, Closer, Chronicle Books 2002, and Diary of a Dancer, SteidlMack 2005, and MOTHER, Prestel 2013. In fall of 2019 Monacelli Press/Phaidon published her fourth monograph, Midlife.
Carucci teaches at the graduate program of Photography and Lens-Based Art at School of Visual Arts.
Her COVID series will be exhibited as a solo show in the gallery of the University of Central Missouri in Warrensburg, Missouri, in September 2020.
Edwynn Houk Gallery is pleased to present Elinor Carucci’s latest body of work, Midlife
In this new series spanning the past eight years, Carucci continues to explore themes of identity, relationships, and the passage of time by documenting herself and her family in their daily lives, a practice that has long been central to her work. Through these deeply personal photographs—which range from moments of intimacy and emotionally charged scenes, to the most mundane tasks of running a household—the artist’s vulnerability and total honesty to her audience invite viewers to recognize their own experiences in hers.
Carucci’s images have always been distinguished by an ability to illustrate the universality of human emotions by zeroing in on carefully composed scenes of domesticity. Yet, Midlife feels particularly compelling because it chooses as its subject matter a period in life that is rarely acknowledged, much less celebrated. Youthful beauty and the advent of motherhood are familiar motifs in the history of art, but the narrative of women’s lives seems to stop there. More than simply shining a light on the midlife years, Carucci presents an intensive and tender investigation into the effects of time on her body, her self-identity in all its complexity, and her relationships with her family members as they each move through new phases of their lives. Midlife is also the subject of an acclaimed monograph published by The Monacelli Press.
The Midlife viewing room will be live from September 10th through October 22nd, 2020 on the newly redesigned Edwynn Houk Gallery website. An artist talk about Carucci’s career and a virtual reception for the exhibition will be hosted by the School of Visual Arts on Thursday, September 10th from 6:30 to 8:00 PM. Please visit to register for the event, which will be held on Zoom.
Michael Itkoff is an artist and Cofounder of Daylight and Fabl. Michael’s photographic and video work is in public and private collections in the US and his work has appeared on the covers of Orion, Katalog, Next City and Philadelphia Weekly. Michael was the recipient of the Howard Chapnick Grant for the Advancement of Photojournalism (2006), a Creative Artists Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Arts Council (2007), and a Puffin Foundation Grant (2008). He has written for the NYTimes Lens blog, Art Asia Pacific, Nueva Luz, Conscientious blog and the Forward. Michael’s monograph Street Portraits was published by Charta Editions in 2009.
Daylight is a nonprofit organization dedicated to publishing art and photography books. By exploring the documentary mode along with the more conceptual concerns of fine art, Daylight’s uniquely collectible publications work to revitalize the relationship between art, photography, and the world at large.
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