Notes from the field.

First European Month of Photography.

On its 13th anniversary the Paris Month of Photography, a biennial celebration of photography that began in 1980, extends to two new European capitals: Berlin and Vienna. More will be added in two years. November is traditionally the month of the festival but most of the exhibitions will last until January 2005. Information and contact: www.2004.photographie.com (the web site has 3 versions: French, German, English).

Paris:

There will be over 86 exhibitions there in various spaces including the Beaubourg Center (Bernd and Hilla Becher), Orsay Museum (Marey, Stieglitz), the European House of Photography (the organizer of the month--www.mep-fr.org--with the 60th anniversary of the France-Presse agency, the French Society for Photography), the National Library (Robert Capa), the National Center for Photography/Jeu de Paume (Rineke Dikstra and the Stedelijk Museum), and the Pavillon des Arts (1841-1941: a Century of Italian Photography). Some of the photographers exhibiting: Alvarez-Bravo, Boubat, Cartier-Bresson, Jan Dibbets, Robert Doisneau, Walker Evans, Benedict Fernandez, Gisele Freund, Flor Garduno, Jean-Claude Gautrand, Giacomelli, Rip Hopkins, Frank Horvat, Andre Kertesz, Man Ray, Joachim Mogarra, Isabel Munoz, Gilles Peress, Eric Poitevin, etc.... Two prizes will be awarded: The Paris-Match Award (created in 1980, 10,000 euros) and the new Lucien Herve and Rodolf Herve Award given to Guillaume Herbaut (L'Oeil Public) for his work on Chernobyl, Auschwitz, and Shkodra (Albania). This 6,000 euros award goes to a 25-43-year-old photographer who worked on a specific theme chosen each year. This year's theme was "Man and the Environment." The other nominees were Nicolas Comment, Rip Hopkins, and Klavdij Sluban.

Berlin:

There will be over 100 exhibitions in Berlin for this first Month of Photography. Helmut Newton's work, from the archive he donated just before his accidental death earlier this year, will be on exhibit at the new Stiftung Museum of Photography: Canadian Photography, John Baldessari at the German Guggenheim, Sophie Calle and Paris-William Klein at Martin Gropius Bau, Gilles Peress at the Cultural Forum for Photography. Martine Franck (Fables) at the Maison de France. Pierre Verger and Mario Cravo Neto at the Museum of Ethnology. Claudio Hils (Archive_Belfast) at the Heckenhauer Gallery. Contemporary Cuban Photography at the Refugium Gallery, Willy Ronis at the Willy Brandt House, etc.... The winner of the 2004 Hannah Hoch award will also be announced in November.

Vienna:

There will be over 70 exhibitions in Vienna including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Stephen Shore, Antonin Kratochvil, self-portraits by Jean Baudrillard, etc....

Paris Photo 2004: Nov. 11-14, 2004.

Paris Photo 2004 will be held in the Carrousel du Louvre from November 11 through 14, 2004. The eighth annual Paris Photo will host 105 prestigious galleries and publishers from 16 countries, exhibiting all forms of photography: from rare vintage prints and modern masterpieces to cutting edge art, fashion, and documentary photography. Paris Photo expects to welcome over 40,000 visitors, including international collectors, museum professionals, artists and the media. Over 70% of the exhibiting galleries are based outside France. There is an especially strong increase in participation by American galleries (17 galleries), as well as 15 galleries from Germany and 10 galleries from the United Kingdom. Paris Photo will welcome 31 newcomers to the fair, including the first-ever participant from Iran: Silk Road Gallery of Tehran. To celebrate and foster contemporary photography, Paris Photo and BMW will inaugurate a new photography prize at this year's fair: The Prix BMW-Paris Photo. Granted to a talented contemporary photographer exhibiting at Paris Photo, the award will be given to one artist selected from 50 short-listed artists by a jury of experts and collectors. The prize will be accompanied by a cash award of 12,000 Euros (approximately $15,000 USD). The award ceremony will take place at the fair on Friday. November 12 at 7 pm. Exhibition highlights: Gregory Crewdson, Katy Grannan, Andreas Gursky, Candida Hofer, Celine van Balen, Valerie Belin, Loretta Lux, Thomas Ruff, Ed Ruscha, Andre Kertesz, William Klein, Seydou Keita, Bill Brandt, Dorothea Lange, and Hiroshi Sugimoto. Special solo shows including never-before-seen vintage prints by Robert Doisneau; Tina Barney's series The Europeans; and the dramatic large-format color photographs of award-winning war photographer Luc Delahaye; fashion photography by David LaChapelle, Slim Aarons, Lilliam Bassman, Helmut Newton, and Ellen Von Unwerth; a selection of works from the Andre Breton Archive, including portraits of Magritte, Breton, Eluard and Dali; vintage prints by William Henry Fox Talbot, and Anna Atkins. Paris Photo celebrates the work of emerging photographers from a specific country in its annual Statement exhibition. Statement 2004 will feature new work from Switzerland, with eight Swiss galleries presenting solo shows by emerging Swiss photographers. Exhibited artists will include John M. Armeleder (at Susanna Kulli, Zurich); Erik Dettwiler (at Bernhard Bischoff. Thun); Thomas Flechther (at Blancpain Stepczynski, Geneva); Regis Golay (at Edward Mitterrand, Geneva); Claudio Moser (at Skopia, Geneva); Nathalie Rebholz (at Analix Forever, Geneva), Shirana Shahbazi (at Evergreene, Geneva) and Jules Spinach (at Austellungsraum 25, Zurich.) The Paris Photo Project Room will feature screenings of contemporary Swiss videos throughout the fair including Dieter Roth. Fischli & Weiss. Roman Signer, as well as Pipilotti Rist, Sylvie Fleury or Olaf Breuning. To complement the Statement section. Paris Photo will mount a special exhibition at the fair of highlights from the collection of the Winterthur Fotomuseum to reinforce the role that Swiss art and collections have played in the development of modern and contemporary photography. Opened in 1993 and located just outside Zurich, the Winterthur has quickly become one of the world's major photogra-photography museums.

The Center of Documentary Studies at Duke University has awarded the fourteenth Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize to photographer Jim Lommasson and writer Katherine Dunn. Corey Takahashi and Teru Kuwayama received honorable mention. The deadline for the next Lange-Taylor Prize competition is Jan. 31, 2005. Guidelines and additional information is available on the web at http://cds.aas.duke.edu/l-t/index.html.

The Art Gallery of York University is proud to announce that Philip Monk was the recipient of the prestigious 2004 Ontario Association of Art Galleries curatorial writing award "best book by a single author" for his book Double Cross: The Hollywood Films of Douglas Gordon. This is Monk's second OAAG curatorial writing award.

California Biennial, the largest and most ambitious Biennial introducing new art from California at the Orange County Museum of Art will inaugurate the Museum's newly renovated facility. The exhibition, including work from 28 individuals, will be on view until Jan. 9, 2005 / 850 San Clemente Drive. Newport Beach/949-759-1122/http://www/ocma.net.

The Museum of Modern Art will reopen its midtown Manhattan building Saturday, Nov. 20, 2004, commemorating the Museum's 75th anniversary and heralding the completion of the most extensive rebuilding and renovation project in MoMA's history. Designed by Yoshio Taniguchi, the total exhibition space will increase from 85,000 to 125,000 square feet, with galleries clustered around a soaring 110-foot-tall atrium that diffuses natural light throughout the building. For the first time, views of The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden and the city can be seen from many of the galleries in the Museum. Among other features, the new building, constructed at a cost of $425 million, engages the public with a 12,400-square-foot lobby that connects West 53rd and 54th Streets and provides two major entrances to the Museum. On opening day, admission to the Museum will be free of charge as a special gift to the public for its continual support. Visit the Museum's Web site at www.moma.org.

The Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University has announced two residency awards in Media Arts. Recipients Apichatpong Weerasethakul (nicknamed "Joe"), a Thai filmmaker and Sowon Kwon, a Korean-born American working in multi-screen video installation, will be in residence this fall and coming spring.

The American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland will launch new program, Off The Map. This interactive multimedia tour designed by Interactive Knowledge of Charlotte. North Carolina will allow visionary artists to transform a virtual environment by creating monumental art.

The National Archives and Record Administration and Guggenheim Production, Inc. have established The Charles Guggenheim Center for Documentary Film at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. The Center will advance public understanding of the process, challenges and impact of documentary filmmaking through screenings, symposia, and programs that study and exhibit the collections.

The Whitney Museum recently acquired a large body of work from Allan Sekula's Fish Story.

ArtsLink Residencies announced its 11th cycle of awards. Selected from 91 applicants the following organizations received awards: Apexart to host Natasa Petresin of Slovenia, Athens Center for Film and Video at Ohio University to host Goda Sosnovskiene of Lithuania. The Cleveland Institute of Art to host Hristina Ivanoska of Macedonia, Harvestworks to host Petko Dourmana of Bulgaria, Headlands Center for the Arts to host Evelyn Muursepp of Estonia, Kala Art Institute to host Tatiana Radsivilko of Belarus. Montalvo to host Przemyslaw Jasielski of Poland, The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and The Bronx Museum of the Arts to host Philip Zidarow of Bulgaria. New Langton Arts to host Razvan Ion of Romania, 911 Media Arts Center to host Tina Gverovic of Croatia, The Parsons School of Design to host Kristian Lukic of Serbia. The Rhode Island School of Design to host Eduard Balaz of Serbia. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Visiting Artists Program to host Sebastian Cichocki of Poland.

The theme for the Mois de la Photo a Montreal 2005 (a biennial held every other fall) is "Photography and Imagination." It has 5 subsections: 1- "photographic explorations of mind/body experience, the translation of perception into material form, the expression of mental activities and states of mind, the multiplication, or prosthetic enhancement, of the body, mad love," 2- "in Benedict Anderson's formulation, modern nationhood is framed anthropologically as a system of belief in comraderie, boundaries, sovereignty, and community-the photographic image is an instrument of this kind of imagining, as well as a tool for its deconstruction," 3- "Imagining Otherness," 4- "Utopia/Dystopia," 5- "The Photographic Rupture: How does a photographic element enhance, or trouble, works of the imagination in other media? What is the current state of relations between photography and painting or photography and sculpture? How do the photographic imagination and the literary imagination interact?" The 2005 artistic director is Martha Langford (she was the founding Director and Chief Curator of the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (1985-1994) and the Executive Producer of the Still Photography Division of the National Film Board (1981-1984). She has written and lectured extensively on Canadian photography, European and North American art and architecture, cultural theory, and museology.)

Contact 2005 (May 1-31) in Toronto will focus on "the question of truth." Participation in CONTACT is open to anyone using a photographic medium. The registration deadline for exhibitions is Friday January 14, 2005. Information available at: http://www.contactphoto.dreamhost.com. Katy Grannan is the 2004 recipient of the Baum Award for Emerging American Photographer; Grannan who lives in New York will receive $10,000 and currently has an exhibition of her work at the Berkeley Art Museum (through Dec, 5). The Center for Photograhic Arts in Carmel gave the 2004 Jim and Betty Kasson Award of $10,000 to Stephen Marc, Arizona State U. department of photography chair for Passage on the Underground Railroad. CPA's Artist Project Award went to Binh Danh (San Jose, CA) for Killing Fields. SF Camerawork will hold its annual auction on December 4. Friends Without Borders will hold its 8th Friends of Friends Photography Benefit Auction is scheduled for December 7 in NYC (www.fwab.org).