Ian Berry

A critical history and comprehensive catalog of the celebrated and controversial works created by activist and artist Tim Rollins and Kids of Survival.

In August 1981, artist and activist Tim Rollins was recruited by the principal of Intermediate School 52 in the South Bronx to develop a curriculum that combined art-making with lessons in reading and writing for students classified as “at risk.” On the first day of school, Rollins told his students, “Today we are going to make art, but we are also going to make history.” This book unfolds that history, offering the first comprehensive catalog of work created collaboratively by Rollins and several generations of students, now known as the “Kids of Survival”. Rollins and his students developed a way of working that combined art-making with reading literature and writing personal narratives: Rollins or a student would read aloud from classic literary texts by such authors as Shakespeare and Orwell while the rest of the class drew or wrote on the pages being read, connecting the stories to their own experiences. Often, Rollins and his students (who later named themselves “Kids of Survival” or K.O.S.) cut out book pages and laid them on a grid on canvas before undertaking their graphic interventions. This process developed into the group's signature style, which they applied to literary texts, musical scores, and other printed matter. This book and the accompanying major museum retrospective document the history of the groundbreaking practice of Tim Rollins and K.O.S., with full color images of paintings, drawings, sculptures, and prints. These include a caricature of Jesse Helms with an animal body drawn on the pages of Animal Farm; graffiti-like images painted in acrylic on the pages of Frankenstein; a gleaming pattern of fantastical golden horns on Kafka's Amerika; and a series of red letter A's on The Scarlet Letter. Essays by Julie Ault, Susan Cahan, David Deitcher, Eleanor Heartney, Larry Rinder, James Romaine Interview with the artist by Ian Berry… (mais)

Nancy Grossman’s work continually returns to the human body and the charged relationships that make up our world.She began as a painter in the late 1950s, working in a style that combined the energy of Abstract Expressionism with figuration. In the mid-1960s, she began incorporating found leather and metal parts into chaotic and explosive wall reliefs. Coming of age in the 1960s, Grossman was painfully aware of the condescending environment in which she and many women artists worked. Soon she began carving lifelike human heads and covering them with black leather—a body of work she continued to create until the early 1990s. Frequently described as disturbing, these images "blew conventional images of femininity to smithereens," as critic Holland Cotter noted. Alongside her three-dimensional art, Grossman has consistently produced masterful drawings and revealing collages that give presence to emotional and physical struggle. This retrospective volume surveys all aspects of her independent and inspiring career.… (mais)

The exhibition ‘The English’ is an important body of work and is a sensitive and highly personal exploration of England and English life from the perspective of a Magnum documentary photographer who grew up in the North of England, but had spent a substantial part of his life abroad, particularly in South Africa.

40 years later, this series of images forms a unique collection by a photographer who captured a time, now passed, and an era when there was far greater freedom to create photographs. At the time Berry noted: ‘England is the easiest country in the world in which to take photographs—in the way people react or rather do not react in the photographer’s presence.’

These images, explore the English at work and at play, they explore the eccentricities and humour of the English, while others portray, with an intimate delicacy, the fragility of what it is to be human.

Photographer Zak Waters says of Ian Berry’s work, “Ian Berry is the most naturally gifted photographer I have ever met. He has an uncanny knack of creating images from where most photographers would not find one. Most people are unaware that he is probably more comfortable taking vertical images rather than the more natural horizontal format, which in itself is a challenge away from, say, portraiture. Ian’s images have helped define certain aspects of history”

Ian Berry was born in Preston, Lancashire and made his reputation in South Africa, where he worked for the Sunday Times and later for Drum magazine. He was the only photographer to document the massacre at Sharpeville and his photographs were used in the trial to prove the victims’ innocence. Ian Berry was invited by Henri Cartier-Bresson to join Magnum Photos in 1962 when he was based in Paris.

Berry has travelled the world documenting major social and political events. He has worked for (among others) the Observer, Geo, Paris Match, Stern, Life and Fortune. He has exhibited his work nationally and internationally and produced several books. Notable awards include the first ever Nikon Photographer of the Year and British Press Magazine Photographer of the Year.… (mais)