Shelley Rice

Untitled, 1987 - 1988 © Rotimi Fani-Kayode / Courtesy of The Walther Collection and Autograph ABP, London

I’m feeling like men are in need of equal time on this Blog.

They have, as usual, had more than equal time on the walls of New York galleries and museums this month. But I am less interested in numbers than in a confluence I’ve noticed recently: two of the exhibitions by accomplished photographers in Chelsea galleries this spring, one an American and one an African, one living and one dead, use male subjects to embody an edginess, a nihilism even, that tilts the idea of patriarchy wildly off center. Exploring the works of Alec Soth and Rotimi Fani-Kayode together is not a self-evident choice, but I’m thinking that the juxtaposition may yield some insights into the farther reaches of the male psyche during these early years of the 21st century.

Bronx Museum, February 9, through May 20, 2012
Curated by Valerie Smith

Juan Downey, "America Is Back Together", 1972

Juan Downey: The Invisible Architect is a dense and highly conceptual exhibition, one that at first hardly seems at home on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx.

Milagros de la Torre "Under the Black Sun" 1991-1993 Hand-dyed toned gelatin silver print, Mercurochrome, Pin Variable dimensions; diptych Courtesy of the Artist

Americas Society, Feb. 8- April 14
Curated by Edward J. Sullivan

For me, the most unnerving thing about the Milagros de la Torre exhibition at the Americas Society, with almost 40 photographic works produced since the 1990s (that will be shown simultaneously at the Museo de Arte in Lima, Peru), is its proximity. A constant feature of the work selected for this artist’s first monographic show in New York is that either the artist or the viewer must get close, too close.

The Jewish Museum, November 4, 2011 through March 25, 2012
Curated by Mason Klein of the Jewish Museum and Catherine Evans of the Columbus Museum of Art, this important exhibition draws on two museum collections with rich holdings on the history of New York’s Photo League. Begun during the Depression, the brainchild of photographer and teacher Sid Grossman, this organization – which encompassed darkrooms and meeting rooms, lecture series and photography classes, exhibition spaces and a newsletter called Photo Notes — was seminal to the formation of New York’s late 20th century photography community. But despite its considerable influence, little has been known about this chapter in the city’s cultural history, in large part because the League and its founder were blacklisted by the government during the Communist Scare of the 1950s. This is the first museum exhibition in three decades to comprehensively explore its contributions in order to correct what Klein calls “a historical myopia”, and it is a terrific show well worthy of its complex subject.

Jerome Liebling, "Butterfly Boy", New York, 1949, gelatin silver print. The Jewish Museum, New York, Purchase: Mimi and Barry J. Alperin Fund. © Estate of Jerome Liebling.