The 2014–2015 Ildiko Butler Travel Grant Recipients

Featuring: Qinrui Hua, Giovani Santoro, Aubrey Vollrath
Curators: Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock and Joseph Lawton
Dates: July 2015–May 2016 

Hayden Hartnett Project Space
Fordham University at Lincoln Center MAP
113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue
(Inside the office of Undergraduate Admission room 203)
New York, NY 10023
haydenhartnettprojectspace.com

The Ildiko Butler Travel Grant is awarded to four photographers in the Department of Theatre and Visual Art each year that demonstrate exceptional promise. The grant amount is $3,500 and enables students to generate a substantial body of work while traveling abroad in their proposed countries. The Department of Theatre and Visual Art is pleased to present the photographs of Qinrui Hua, Giovani Santoro, and Aubrey Vollrath made in Japan, Italy, and Germany respectively. Their work represents a range of locations and interests; however, despite the differences in their individual focus, each photographer is engaged in the process of carefully studying the world and representing it in a straightforward, descriptive manner.

Applications are accepted each year in March. Please direct questions regarding the application guidelines to the Department of Theatre and Visual Arts in room 423. 

Image captions left to right: Giovani Santoro, Italy; Qinrui Hua, Japan; Aubrey Vollrath, Germany. For more images of the recipient's work, please visit the exhibition website. 

The Hayden Hartnett Project Space presents yearlong exhibitions of work produced by students from the Fordham University Department of Theatre and Visual Art. It is located on the second floor in the Office of Undergraduate Admission, room 203. The hours for the Hayden Hartnett Project Space are 9–5, Monday through Friday, except on university holidays.

veterans/photographers

Featuring works by: Philip D'Afflisio, Douglas Dacy, Dawn Jolly, James McCracken, Cody Adam Pearce, Oswaldo Pereira, Giovani Santoro, David Wiggins

Curator: Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock

Exhibition dates: May 27–September 30, 2015
Reception: Wednesday, September 16, 6–8 pm
Summer Vet Together: Thursday, July 16, 4–7 pm. For all students, veterans, faculty, friends, staff, and allies

The Lipani Gallery
Fordham University at Lincoln Center

113 West 60th Street, New York, NY 10023
fordhamuniversitygalleries.com

veteransphotographers photographersveterans brings together forty images made by eight artists who have studied photography at Fordham University. Philip D'Afflisio, Dawn Jolly, Cody Adam Pearce, Oswaldo Pereira, and David Wiggins are Fordham University alumni and Douglas Dacy, James McCracken, and Giovani Santoro are currently matriculated students.

Working in black and white, color, and with both traditional and digital photographic technologies, their work represents a range of years, styles, and interests; however, despite their differences, each photographer is engaged in the process of carefully studying the world and representing it in a descriptive manner. Significantly, each of the exhibition participants is a veteran of the United States Armed Forces.

Philip D'Afflisio’s color images focus on details in the landscape, particularly objects that foreground a sense of history. There is a classical beauty to the photographs, as well as recognition of inherent mystery. His picturesque image of an alert hunting dog leads us into this exhibition and sets the tone of inquiry found throughout the show.

Douglas Dacy’s images pay special attention to form and the simple qualities of light. Illumination imparts significance to both landscapes and still lifes, regardless of the nature of the subject matter. The resultant photographs are poetic meditations on the ordinary.

Dawn Jolly’s photographs were made during the Visual Arts Department course Documentary Photography: Italy. They display Rome and its inhabitants bathed in the beautiful summertime Mediterranean light, yet hint at social issues of gender and race just below the surface.

James McCracken’s quiet images made in Virginia along the West Virginia border provide a glimpse into territory that he is intimately familiar with, as he was raised in nearby Richmond. His spartan landscapes are precise descriptions of the topography, of the season, and have a timeless quality.

Cody Adam Pearce’s black and white images made in Morocco and Iraq are carefully composed studies of the relationship between humans and the landscape. In some cases the figure is directly featured, in other cases the human presence is dwarfed by its surroundings, or even absent entirely.

 






Oswaldo Pereira makes very traditional, black and white documentary images of subject matter that is anything but traditional—an S&M convention in New York City. His understated approach to the topic yields a pragmatic record of an atypical event.

Giovani Santoro spent the summer of 2014 traveling throughout Italy as the recipient of the Visual Arts Department’s Ildiko Butler Travel Grant. His images in this exhibition contrast the architecture and opulent spaces of Rome with their inhabitants.

David Wiggins subtly adjusts the tonalities in his images highlighting latent faces that he detects in the tarmac of roads and streets. The resulting portraits accentuate the surreal hiding within the everyday.

Regardless of the photographers’ chosen subjects, all participants in this exhibition are deeply engaged in the process of looking at what is in front of them. Their images embrace a long tradition in the medium of photography that celebrates the revelatory power of direct representation.

Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock, 2015 (for more information please email: apicellahit@fordham.edu

My Ranching Life

My Ranching Life
Featuring works by: Jean Laughton

Curator: Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock

Exhibition dates: May 22–September 30, 2015
Reception: Wednesday, September 23, 6–8 p.m.

The Ildiko Butler Gallery
Fordham University at Lincoln Center MAP
113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023
The gallery is open from 9am to 9pm everyday except on university holidays
fordhamuniversitygalleries.com

Image caption: Riding Drag on the Brunsch Ranch, 2012

This day we were ‘neighboring’ on the Brunsch family ranch and working with a crew of about twenty other neighboring ranchers. We do this in the fall and spring to help each other out. Just at sunrise, we gathered over four hundred pairs and trailed them a few miles into the corrals at the headquarters of the ranch for shipping day. This was when I first started cowboying, so I was appropriately riding drag, in the back. – Jean Laughton

My Ranching Life by Jean Laughton brings together eighteen black and white prints made from negatives shot between 2002 and 2011. A native Iowan, photographer Jean Laughton moved from New York City after sixteen years of residence to the Badlands of South Dakota in 2002 to pursue her projects. What was initially intended to be a brief photographic opportunity turned into thirteen years, with Jean working her way up from ranch hand novice to ranch manager at Lyle O’Bryan’s Quarter Circle XL Ranch.

The photographs in My Ranching Life are a small sample selected from hundreds of images made by Laughton over an extended time period; nevertheless, they represent a thoughtful depiction of a ranching community from the perspective of a participant, as opposed to that of an outside observer. Her photographs document the realities of the vocation—all panoramas are shot from horseback while working—and give shape to a depiction of American ranching life shorn of gloss and stereotype. The following statement by Laughton captures the essence of her endeavor succinctly:

I feel lucky to work in an area of ranches where things are done the old way—in the day of herding cattle on 4 wheelers I am happy to say we do it all on horseback. And we also brand with a wood fire and drag the calves in on horseback. There are many here who take pride in their cowboying—keeping the traditions and the spirit of individualism alive.

I would like to offer a very special thanks to Jean Laughton for her decision to leave New York City back in 2002. We would not have her timeless landscapes and lovely testimonial on display in Fordham University’s Ildiko Butler Gallery had she not decided to radically change her life by leaving behind the big city and beginning her new ranching life. For more information about My Ranching Life, Jean’s story, as well as her other related projects, Go West, and Americana, please visit her website.

Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock, 2015

For more information contact: Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock
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Faculty Spotlight 2015

Faculty Spotlight 2015

The Ildiko Butler Gallery
Fordham University at Lincoln Center MAP
113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023
ildikobutlergallery.com

Featuring works by:
Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock
Richard Kalina
Anibal Pella-Woo

The current display of works in Fordham University's Ildiko Butler Gallery is the 2015 installment of the annual Faculty Spotlight Exhibition. Each year in the fall three members from the Department of Theater and Visual Art are asked to share a sampling of their production with the Fordham community. Richard Kalina represents painting this year and photography is represented by both Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock and Anibal Pella-Woo. Despite the differences in their mediums and approaches, their works generate a lively dialogue regarding content and representational methods.

Dates: February 3, 2015 – March 10, 2015
Reception: Tuesday, February 3, 2015, 6 – 8 p.m.
WEB:

For more information please contact: apicellahit@fordham.edu

From the Archives

From the Archives: Photographs by William Fox from the Fordham University Archives and Special Collections

Curator: Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock

Exhibition dates: June 6 – July 18, 2014

The Ildiko Butler Gallery

Fordham University at Lincoln Center MAP

113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue

New York, NY 10023

fordhamuniversitygalleries.com

From the Archives: Photographs by William Fox from the Fordham University Archives and Special Collections brings together seventeen contemporary digital prints made from the original negatives housed in the Archives at the Rose Hill campus’ Walsh Family Library. William Fox was a professional photographer who worked for Fordham University on a freelance basis for upwards of twenty years generating photographs that span a range of topics from commencements, to classrooms, and from campus architecture, to student life. The varied images presented in this exhibition were all created between the years of 1940 and 1941.

Fox’s negatives were all made to the exacting standards of the time with a large format, tripod mounted camera and provided an impressive level of fidelity – a task requiring considerable craft. The fact that the negative emulsion has separated, cracked, and deteriorated is not due to their care, as archival standards in archives only developed in the 1980s, but due to the instability of the materials themselves. That we have them at all is a small miracle and testament to the good care provided by those that have worked at the Fordham University Archives and Special Collections over the years.

The images in From the Archives are a small sample selected from thousands of negatives made by William Fox and represent the beginnings of Fordham University’s self-awareness, from a publicity and photographic point of view. His photographs documented the growth of Fordham University over an extended period and gave shape to aspects that the university valued up to and through the tumultuous times of World War two.

It should be emphasized that not all of William Fox’s negatives evidence deterioration. The curatorial choices here intentionally highlight the flaws of the analog process for their mystery and visual beauty, in contrast to our digital age of precision and perfection. Special thanks to Patrice Kane, Head of Archives and Special Collections at Fordham University for her expertise and continued assistance.

Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock, 2014

For more information please contact: apicellahit@fordham.edu

Gary Metz’s Quaking Aspen: a Lyric Complaint

Gary Metz’s Quaking Aspen: a Lyric Complaint
Fordham Unversity's Ildiko Butler Gallery
113 West 60th Street
New York, NY 10023
Website
Contact: apicellahit@fordham.edu

Show dates: Monday, January 20, 2014 – Friday, March 14, 2014
Opening reception: Tuesday, January 21, 2014, 6 – 8 pm

Curators: Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock, Artist-in-Residence and Gallery Director for the Ildiko Butler Gallery, Hayden Hartnett Project Space, and Lipani Gallery & Joseph Lawton, Associate Professor and Director of the Visual Arts Department

Critical essay by: Edward Earle, Curator, Collections, International Center of Photography
Gallery talk: Edward Earle, Wednesday, January 22, 2014, 6 – 8 pm

This exhibition is generously supported by Fordham University Art Collections & funded in part from a Fordham University Faculty Challenge Grant

Printing: Sergio Purtell at Black and White on White (with Fordham Alumni Rory Mulligan and Apollonia Colaciccio)

Catalog scanning and image adjustments: Saul Metnick

In the 1970’s, the late photographer and educator Gary Metz generated a significant body of work that was very much in the spirit of the times. Metz’s Quaking Aspen: a Lyric Complaint challenged the first 100 years of landscape photography, which had placed a major emphasis on depicting nature as sublime, heroic, and unspoiled. Unlike previous photographers who glorified nature, Metz and his contemporaries wrenched photography out of the national parks and replaced the scenic with the vernacular of the everyday American landscape.

A number of Metz’s colleagues received wide recognition for their similar investigations culminating in the seminal 1975 exhibition, The New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape at the Museum of Photography at the George Eastman House. Gary Metz never received the same level of acknowledgement. Now, 40 years later, his Quaking Aspen: a Lyric Complaint is as powerful and relevant as ever, resonating with current interests in ecology and the everyday landscape.

This touring exhibition consists of twenty-one black and white photographs selected from the larger body of work, with an accompanying catalog including a critical essay by International Center for Photography Curator, Edward Earle. Confirmed venues for the exhibition include Spéos Paris London Photographic Institute, Rhode Island School of Design, Syracuse University, and The University of Colorado, Boulder – significant to us as curators, as we were Gary’s students at two of the aforementioned schools. The importance of this exhibition is twofold: first, it properly sites Metz’s work within the history of the medium; as well, it marks the first time that the Fordham University Visual Arts Department has mounted a touring exhibition of this scope and caliber.

Given that Gary was an influential educator, this exhibition incorporates students in all levels of production. The exhibition prints will be made by Sergio Purtell at Black and White on White. Sergio was an undergraduate photography student at Rhode Island School of Design under Gary and currently, several of our Fordham photography graduates, Rory Mulligan and Apollonia Colaciccio are employed at Black and White on White. They will be assisting Sergio in printing this exhibition.

Saul Metnick, a student of Gary’s while an undergraduate photography student at Rhode Island School of Design has painstakingly overseen all digital scanning and image adjustments for the reproductions in the exhibition catalog, as well as for web and social media purposes.

In light of the fact that Gary Metz was a Professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder; Director of Education at the International Center of Photography, Director of the Photography Department at the Rhode Island School of Design, as well as in the collection of the Museum of Modern art, amongst others, it is surprising that no major exhibition of Metz’s photographs has ever been mounted. We are confident that the exhibition Quaking Aspen: a Lyric Complaint, will reach beyond the Fordham community and receive wide attention and publicity. As educators, the opportunity to work together with students towards generating an exhibition of historical significance would be an extraordinary opportunity

Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock & Joseph Lawton, 2013

All images courtesy of: The Estate of Gary Metz
©2013 The Estate of Gary Metz
Catalog Essay ©2013 Edward Earle

The Ildiko Butler Gallery Opening Exhibition

The Ildiko Butler Gallery Opening Exhibition

Photographs by: Ildiko Butler, Dylan Chandler, Tiffany Edwards, and Joseph Lawton
Curator: Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock

On view: September 23 – October 31, 2013
Champagne reception: Tonight - Monday, September 23, 5:30 – 7 p.m.

The Ildiko Butler Gallery
Fordham University at Lincoln Center MAP
113 West 60th Street at Columbus Avenue
New York, NY 10023
Website

The current display of black and white photographs by Ildiko Butler, Dylan Chandler, Tiffany Edwards, and Joseph Lawton is the inaugural exhibition of the Ildiko Butler Gallery at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center Campus. Ildiko Butler (FCLC 1985), Dylan Chandler (FCLC 2004), and Tiffany Edwards (FCLC 2002) are all Fordham alumni and former students of Professor Joseph Lawton. Their work represents a range of years, different photographic styles, and interests; however, despite the differences in their individual focus, each photographer is engaged in the process of carefully studying the world and representing it in a straightforward, descriptive manner. Fidelity to what is framed is of paramount importance.

Ildiko Butler’s digital photographs were made in Apt, France in 2013. Her careful scrutiny of a single site yields a number of meditative, found sculptures and still lifes. As well, her interests in form and attention to light have a connection to romantic photographs by late 19th and early 20th century landscape photographers.

Dylan Chandler’s photographs were made at nighttime in Hong Kong in 2012. His precise focus is on the architecture of a modern city and the repetitions and juxtapositions that are found in dense urban environments. People are conspicuously absent; yet, constantly alluded to.

Tiffany Edward’s large format photographs were made in Staten Island, close to where she grew up. Her portraits of individual children are candid and understated. Despite her use of a cumbersome, large format camera on a tripod, the portraits have an immediacy and intimacy.

Joseph Lawton’s 35mm photographs from around the world have a narrative quality and embrace the theatrical found in everyday moments.

Regardless of the photographers’ chosen subjects, all the participants in this exhibition are deeply engaged in the process of looking at what is in front of them. Their images embrace a long tradition in the medium of photography that celebrates the revelatory power of direct representation.

Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock, 2013

Image credits: (left to right, top to bottom) Ildiko Butler, Apt, France, 2013; Joseph Lawton, Calcutta, 1989; Tiffany Edwards, Brandon, 2003; Dylan Chandler, Wan Chai, Hong Kong Island, Hong Kong, 2013

Caveat Emptor (let the buyer beware)

 




















Caveat Emptor (let the buyer beware):
An exhibition of confiscated art forgeries from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s holdings

Organizers: Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock & Daniel Small

The artists purportedly exhibiting are: James E. Buttersworth, Marc Chagall, Willem de Kooning, Tsuguhara Foujita, Juan Gris, Paul Gauguin, Henri Matisse, Maurice Prendergast, Rembrandt van Rijn, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Andy Warhol, and Hale Woodruff

The Center Gallery
Fordham University at Lincoln Center
113 West 60th Street
New York, NY 10023

July 26 – August 9, 2013
Reception: Friday, July 26, 6 – 8 pm
Website

Caveat Emptor brings together a cross section of confiscated art forgeries on loan from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s holdings. The works and time periods represented in the exhibition are disparate and the exhibition’s cohesion is further challenged by the tension between the paintings’ initial renown and their true makers’ anonymity. Although one might recognize a work and be tempted to ascribe the word “art” to the object on the wall, they are in fact knock off products, regardless of skill level, that are intended to deceive collectors, institutions, experts, and history.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has definitively certified each work in the exhibition as a fake. Nevertheless, some contested works have historically occupied a limbo in which the very criteria for determining what is authentic and what is a forgery have been in a constant state of flux. Numerous works have been classified and reclassified, even after the passage of many years. At times it becomes unclear where many disputed works actually fall in the ever-changing continuum. At first inspection, Caveat Emptor presents blue-chip works that could potentially be seen in a group exhibition at any museum, institution, or private collection; yet in truth, one is essentially viewing legal evidence.

Beyond the complexities of forensic evidence that serve to authenticate works, numerous additional issues arise when the competing interests of artists’ estates and legacies intersect with institutional acceptance or denial and countless legal issues. Caveat Emptor will run for two weeks and during the second week the Federal Bureau of Investigation will set up a registration office in the gallery in conjunction with the
--> fourth International Conference on Cyber Security (ICCS2013) being held at Fordham University. The forgeries on the walls will serve as the backdrop for their office during the conference.
Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock & Daniel Small, 2013

All works courtesy of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, New York Office

For more information please contact: Stephan Apicella-Hitchcock: apicellahit@fordham.edu

Image caption: The Rembrandt Database, Rembrandt, Self Portrait, dated 1629, Alte Pinakothek, München, inv. no. 11427 (top); Installation shot, courtesy of Daniel Small (bottom)

Press:
Art in America
The Huffington Post
Hyperallergic
Fordham Notes
e-skop
Jaque al arte
the National Arts Program
Galerie Michael
Community Arts NYC
Radio Romania Cultural
The Verge

Postcard project for Cabinet Magazine

My son with his great-grandfather, 3/13/2011, 2:52 PM Japan Standard Time, postcard project for Cabinet Magazine, issue number 4, Spring 2013