This past February, the editors of FOAM magazine asked me if I would interview Kathy Ryan, picture editor of The New York Times Magazine for their Spring issue. To which I happily said “Yes!” The New York Times Magazine is one of those weekly doses of information, energy and creativity wrapped in a smart little package that arrives at your doorstep without much fuss.
Kathy Ryan has been picture editor at the magazine for over a decade and has come to be regarded as an iconic figure within the photography community. This Spring she is participating in The New York Photo Festival in a curatorial role. My task was to ask her about the work she chose to include.
Excerpts from the interview are posted below. The entirety of the interview can be found ONLY in the printed version of the magazine, which, of course, is available at fine bookstores and newstands near you. Enjoy!
KATHY RYAN INTERVIEW Thursday February 22, 2008
The exhibit includes new works by Roger Ballen, Horacio Salinas, Stephen Gill, Katherine Wolkoff, Julian Faulhaber, Lars Tunbjörk, Alejandra Laviada, and Andreas Gefeller.
The New York Photo Festival
New York City is the acknowledged worldwide nexus of commercial and fine art photography. A sprawling galaxy of galleries, magazines, museums and auction houses all dealing in photographic arts cover Manhattan and Brooklyn, and artists are scattered throughout the five boroughs, giving the photography community a pulsing, vibrant feel.
It is surprising to note, then, that there has been a long-standing void in the photography landscape of the City that Never Sleeps. There has been no annual large-scale event dedicated to photography in recent memory. All of that changes this Spring. The inaugural New York Photo Festival (May 14–May 18, 2008) is poised to celebrate contemporary photography in a big way. Four prominent figures in the world of photography have been commissioned to curate exhibitions. The curators include Magnum photographer Martin Parr, The New York Times Magazine picture editor Kathy Ryan, Lesley A. Martin of the Aperture Foundation, and Tim Barber of tinyvices.com. Running concurrently with the curated shows will be a range of activities, including seminars, book signings, workshops, portfolio reviews and live performances.
In February, I had the chance to speak with Kathy Ryan. Her tenure at the New York Times Magazine has been lauded by both photographers and critics, in addition to the masses of readers that receive the magazine on a weekly basis. For the New York Photo Festival she has decided to curate an exhibition of contemporary photographers all of whom she sees as being in dialogue with the disciplines of painting and sculpture. The exhibition will include new work by Roger Ballen, Horacio Salinas, Stephen Gill, Katherine Wolkoff, Julian Faulhaber, Lars Tunbjörk, Alejandra Laviada, and Andreas Gefeller.
DARIUS HIMES Kathy, I’m curious about the genesis for this show. You mentioned that you wanted to bring together a group of photographers who you felt were having a dialogue with the disciplines of painting and sculpture. How did that idea evolve for you?
KATHY RYAN When Daniel Power (of powerHouse Books) and Frank Evers (of the VII Agency) approached me about curating a show, there was a period of a couple months when I simply pondered what I would do. I’m new to curating exhibitions, although being a picture editor is all about bringing photographers together in a single venue.
A pivotal moment for me was seeing some new work of Roger Ballen’s. He had visited with me last Spring to show some of his newest work, and I was just astounded by the power of the images. He had pushed the work beyond traditional photographic portraiture and seemed, to me, to be engaged in a dialogue with Picasso’s mark-making and other cubist portraiture. Both of them have produced primal images. In Ballen’s work there is the evidence of the brush stroke and the marks on the wall; the use of old pencils and wires; cat tails and fingers coming in from the edge of the frame; spilled oil; a rough sense of sculpture and painting mixed together; all of these elements in Ballen’s work struck me as continuing a dialogue that Picasso and Georges Braque had begun early in the 20th century.
DH I totally agree with you, in that Ballen has moved well beyond the confines of traditional photographic portraiture, or anything that is even remotely traditional from a photographic standpoint, even though his beginnings are squarely within the documentary tradition.
KR Definitely. Ballen takes elements of the real world but adjusts them to the medium of photography, creating new pieces that seem to me to be more in sync with the thought patterns of painters than with photographers. Ultimately, the final objects exist as photographs, but at the moment of creation they are paintings and sculptures in the real world as much as a latent image exposed on a piece of film.
When he brought this new work in, I was immediately taken with it. They are incredibly engaging and provocative on a formal level, but at the same time they exist on a deeper psychological level. There is a playful yet nightmarish undertow to his work. I was just haunted by them in the weeks that followed. He’s like a one-man school of painting and photography. There is definitely a dialogue happening, but it’s not really with other photographers.
Roger Ballen’s work showed me how to recognize the other images that would be in the show.
… [to read more, buy the magazine!]
