Highlights from Salone Milan, NYCxDesign, and 3DoD Copenhagen

The sheer number of presentations made it impossible to see it all, and just like a choose-your-own-adventure book, no two tales of design week are alike. Taking part in each design week is a commitment, and it’s together we ke going, until the last show, the last party, the last drink. So we followed our friends and let the stream of openings and parties guide us from one installation to the next, fueled by childlike curiosity and the deep desire to be transported into otherness, even if just for a few moments. The commercial value is, of course, underlying, but during those days, it somehow feels beside the point. Design week might technically span over a week, sometimes two (or three, who’s counting?), but the obsession for that one piece, the way that material caught the light, the feeling of being in that one room, or the memory of that one late-night conversation outside so-and-so’s exhibition lingers on. What follows is just a glimpse of what we saw, loved, and are still reeling from.

Milan

Photos by Sean Davidson

Tbilisi and Paris-based Rooms Studio introduced a series of six sculptural, mix-media beds – their firsts – with their 5Vie installation, Bedrooms, emphasizing the role of these deeply personal spaces and how they carry the most intimate elements of our inner worlds.

Bedrooms, Rooms Studio

Australian studios Volker Haug and Flack presented Me and You, a lighting collection born from an unexpected mishap: during a Flack installation, a vintage light broke and urgently needed to be replaced. The aesthetic language for Me and You naturally unfolded, showcasing Flack’s artful signature blend of interior and industrial design.

Zürich-based, British designer Grace Prince presented Attentive Still, a series of four new glass and hammered works that explore balance and structure, developed during her Numeroventi artist residency in Florence.

Me and You, Volker Haug and Flack

Attentive Still, Grace Prince

For their first Salone, NYC gallery VERSO’s showcase highlighted the fusion of traditional craftsmanship and cutting-edge design from Palma and Bravo studios, reflecting the cultural identities and material use of Brazil and Chile.

VERSO Gallery Showcase

Montréal lighting studio Lambert & Fils teamed up with Milanese designers from DWA Design Studio to present the third iteration of Caffè Populaire, introducing their latest collection, ISLE, designed by Zoë Mowat, in conversation with UNICO, a series of vessels designed by DWA using recycled plastics from Pedrali. The garden bar concept invited guests to enjoy drinks served in Sophie Lou Jacobsen glassware and snacks by LA-based food art studio, Ananas Ananas.

Barcelona gallery VASTO presented sisters Anna and Maria Ritsch's Cup Holder, a photograph from their ‘Dissolving Series’ which transforms 3D printed objects into abstract photographic compositions, alongside a curated collection of functional collectibles and avant-garde stonework by emerging designers, at the newly enhanced Marimar Club.

Caffè Populaire, Lambert & Fils and DWA Design Studio

Cup Holder, VASTO Gallery

5VIE presented Omi Iyọ, a powerful installation by Nigerian designer Nifemi Marcus-Bello, curated by Design Miami Editor-in-Chief, Anna Carnick. The polished stainless steel piece, resembling a boat's hull, symbolizes the perilous journeys of undocumented migrants from Africa to Europe. Reflecting on human impact, the installation, filled with salt flowing to form patterns below, honors the memory of those lost and emphasizes our interconnectedness amidst Italy's significant geopolitical role in migration debates.

Itinerant organization CONTRIBUTIONS Design presented Passaggi, a collaborative installation bringing together the voices of designer Sophie Lou Jacobsen, art director Giulia Nardi of COSE Journal and photographer Adrianna Glaviano. Presented at Spazio Martin, Passaggi explored the emotive powers of domestic objects.

Omi Iyọ, Nifemi Marcus-Bello and 5VIE

Passaggi, CONTRIBUTIONS Design

Milanese giants cc-tapis and Tacchini unveiled the Rude Arts Club, introducing British trailblazer Faye Toogood and Tacchini’s first collaborative furniture collection and the third installment of Toogood's handmade rugs with cc-tapis. The exhibition transformed unique rooms with tactile lights, plush fabric-clad walls, and sculptural furniture, blending wit and style.

FormaFantasma’s La Casa Dentro at Fondazione ICA presented a selection of new works exploring the home as both a physical space and a nexus of personal identity and collective memory. A Salone favorite, the exhibition blended rationalist design elements with sentimental and decorative features inspired by childhood memories.

Rude Arts Club, cc-tapis and Tacchini

La Casa Dentro, FormaFantasma

New York

Photos by Sean Davidson

Nick Ozemba and Felicia Hung — the dynamic duo behind Brooklyn-based design studio In Common With — celebrated the much anticipated opening of Quarters, an expansive 8,000-square-foot space designed like a well-appointed home where everything — furniture, lighting, art, and even pantry provisions — is shoppable. The opening night was the talk of the town, with the space being christened with late-night dancing and drag performances, rightly so.

Sight Unseen’s co-founder Monica Khemsurov launched Petra, an online collection of artistic hardware by leading designers at Blue Green Works’ Chinatown showroom. Featuring handmade fixtures by over thirty contributors from around the world, Petra includes exclusive pieces from metal pulls by Chris Wolston to BD Barcelona’s licensed reproductions of Salvador Dalí’s elaborate 1937 ‘Rinoceróntico’ door handle. The design week showcase also included ten cabinets and consoles by ten designers commissioned by Khemsurov for the occasion, including Steven Bukowski, Rest Energy and Studio POA.

Quarters, In Common With

Petra, Sight Unseen and Blue Green Works

Seoul-born, New York-based designer Minjae Kim presented Arbiters Corner under the sculptural canopy of the Gallery at Ace Hotel Brooklyn. This exhibition marked the final chapter of the year-long A!R partnership between Ace Hotel and multidisciplinary studio FORT MAKERS, and featured Kim’s work conceptualized during his month-long stay at the hotel. The central artwork depicted a chess game in progress, exploring themes of accessibility and conflict.

Spanning lighting, decorative objects and furniture, A Year Without a Kiln — Simone Bodmer-Turner’s latest solo exhibition at Emma Scully Gallery — was a marker in a year when the artist moved her life and practice from an apartment and studio in Brooklyn to a farmhouse and orchard in Massachusetts. During this time, Bodmer-Turner didn’t have access to her kiln, the primary tool behind her clay creations, and with this absence, she was presented with the opportunity to introduce different materials into her practice.

Arbiters Corner, Minjae Kim

A Year Without a Kiln, Simone Bodmer-Turner

Chinatown duo Sunfish unveiled their spring collection at founders Julia Eshaghpour and Kevin Hollidge’s own home. For this new series, the couple drew influence from techniques and design movements across time and place, teasing at the Art Deco trend with shino-glaze and handcrafted tile-clad tables, and wood-framed screens with hand painted depictions of birds.

David Michon’s excellent weekly décor substack FOR SCALE celebrated its first URL to IRL moment with the publication of an inaugural print newspaper at Colbo. The event coincided with Glamor Butch, an eclectic collection of objects from NYC artists and makers, selected by Michon’s discerning eye.

Spring Collection, Sunfish

FOR SCALE, David Michon

SuperHouse's The Odd Couple (on view through August 17), focuses on American art furniture over the past four decades, showcasing the diverse tendencies, philosophies, and narratives of transgenerational American artists. Highlights include historical pieces from the functional art and studio craft movements, as well as contemporary works demonstrating the lasting legacies of conceptual rigor and expert craftsmanship from artists like Pippa Garner, Dan Friedman, Michele Oka Doner, and Kim Mupangilai.

The annual group showcase Jonald Dudd made its return to NYCxDesign, this time curated by Charles Constantine, co-founder and creative director of Bestcase. Held at the former sex shop Contact Sports, the exhibition, titled Forbidden Fruit, offered a freeform exploration of furniture making, highlighting the work of 30 designers and studios.

The Odd Couple, SuperHouse

Forbidden Fruit, Jonald Dudd

For their design week debut, artist duo Wretched Flowers presented Artifact V.2, their second collection of lighting and decorative objects inspired by historical objects from museum archives. Highlights included the revival of Tramp Art modernized using laser-cut stainless steel, and a tubular chainmail floor lamp with optional cast-pewter stars traditionally found on Amish quilts.

LA’s beloved Marta Gallery made their NADA debut with Correspondence / Coexistence, putting in conversation artists Myoung-Ae Lee, from South Korea, and Isabel Rower, based out of NYC. The dual showcase emphasized generational lineage and the evolving zeitgeist, with Lee's typology-defying canvases and Rower's ceramic works that playfully mimic cardboard structures.

Artifact V.2, Wretched Flowers

Correspondence / Coexistence, Marta Gallery

Lindsey Adelman has long followed the porous border between art and design. A Realm of Light, presented at TIWA Gallery, displayed a constellation of oil lamps — some hanging and others sitting on surfaces — transforming the space into a warm, meditative landscape adorned with hand-stitched hanging panels by textile artist and La Réunion founder, Sarah Nsikak.

For the second consecutive year, West Village gallery Demisch Danant shone a light on Noé Duchaufour-Lawrance. The Lisbon-based French designer — a rare contemporary amongst the gallery’s roster of historical greats — showcased a selection of works from Made in Situ, a studio project that advocates for a practice rooted in a specific territory, exploring its materials, artisans, craftsmanship and cultural vernacular.

A Realm of Light, Lindsey Adelman

Made in Situ, Demisch Danant

Jacqueline Sullivan Gallery’s A Room is an Archive of Touch, on view through July 20, is an intimate exploration of memory and domesticity, inspired by Lisa Robertson's essay "Atget's Interiors." The exhibition, featuring meticulous textile pieces by Grace Atkinson, pinched clay ceramics by Jennefer Hoffmann, and kiln-formed cast glass (known as pâte de verre) sconces Natalie Weinberger, highlights how the cadence of habit in rooms and objects creates an archive of the past through gestures and intuition, reflecting both the beauty and pain of remembering.

In industry jargon, “time and materials” is a means of telling the story of a finished piece. To honor the design process, Sarah Zames and Colin Stief — of interiors studio General Assembly — asked ten designers to create a piece of furniture or decor with that notion in mind. On view at their Boerum Hill shop, Assembly Line, Time and Materials presented new works by the likes of Bowen Liu, Danny Kaplan, Fern, and Steven Bukowski.

A Room is an Archive of Touch, Jacqueline Sullivan Gallery

Time and Materials, General Assembly

Copenhagen

With A Thousand Moons, Danish-Egyptian architect Salem Charabi introduced a body of work developed over the past two years for a single commission, a private residence in California. Before sending them on a transatlantic journey, Charabi enlisted his dear friend and collaborator, art director Owen Dodd, to orchestrate a public viewing and celebration. The thirty-eight pieces of furniture stood proudly atop their respective shipping crates, marking their final moments in the workshop where they were crafted.

Danish textiles brand Tekla in collaboration with Finnish furniture manufacturer Artek debuted a textile collection, celebrating architect, designer and Artek co-founder Aino Aalto, commemorating her 130th birthday. Adorned with Alto’s iconic Kirsikankukka, or cherry blossom, pattern which she created as an homage to Japanese art and design, the collection honors "the beauty of the every day".

With A Thousand Moons, Salem Charabi

Tekla and Artek Textile Collection

Milan-based designer Natalia Criado showcased a selection from her surrealist, jewelry-like tableware collection in RESILIENCE, a group show exploring the enduring flexibility, reliability and strength of wood, metal and concrete, alongside Danish architect designer Danielle Siggerud, artist Susanne Storm at rug studio Knothouse’s showroom.

Serbian-born and Paris-based artist and designer Ana Kraš celebrated the launch of her objects brand, Teget. After years spent responding to project briefs, Kraš is now able to give her vision full freedom, letting go of any commercial constraints. In conjunction with the showcase of Teget’s first collection, Static Noise, Kraš also presented a capsule collection of mesh garments with her longtime collaborators from Danish fashion brand, Saks Potts.

RESILIENCE, Natalia Criado, Danielle Siggerud, and Susanne Storm

Static Noise, Teget by Ana Kraš

Exploring the intersection of art, design and food, FRAMA and Faye Toogood came together for the first time with COLLAGE, an amplified view of one of our most human experiences: sharing a meal. Toogood’s spatial intervention in FRAMA’s Copenhagen HQ brought color and extreme proportions into the historic 1878 building, inviting visitors to dine throughout the space amidst playful tactile sculptures.

With Shaping the Future, Carl Hansen & Søn — the third-generation family-run company and warrants of Scandinavian design — presented new lighting and furniture launches by Børge Mogensen, Kaare Klint, Rikke Frost, Vilhelm Lauritzen and Henning Koppel while celebrating the 110th anniversary of Hans J. Wegner. The showstopper was the reedition of Kaare Klint’s Spherical Bed, a masterpiece originally introduced in 1938 at the Cabinetmakers' Autumn exhibition, under the title A Lady’s Boudoir.

COLLAGE, FRAMA and Faye Toogood

Shaping the Future, Carl Hansen & Søn

Emerson Bailey, the design and antiques gallery based out of Bozeman, Montana and Kullabygden, Sweden debuted Centuries, an exhibition of Scandinavian design from the 18th Century to present day. Alongside the antiques, the exhibition also highlighted contemporary pieces, such as lighting from Sekt, the first reproduction of the Folke Bensow table by Näfveqvarn, the Christianborg tap series by Toni Copenhagen and rugs by Cappelen Dimyr.

In collaboration with French-born and Mexico-based designer Fabien Cappello, known for his vibrant pattern combinations, Swedish design brand Hem launched the Toto lamps — joyful and covetable pieces bursting with color and light.

Centuries, Emerson Bailey

Toto Lamps, Hem and Fabien Cappello

The Real and Concrete, Rafael Prieto and St. Leo

White Utopia, Bonnie Hvillum and Natural Material Studio

Art

The Ritsch Sisters at Villa Clea

July 05, 2024

On those muggy days of late June in Milan, the elongated structure of Villa Clea appears like a mirage of an oasis of contemporary aesthetics. Located near from Fondazione Prada and surrounded by tall residential buildings that rise like an amphitheater around the structure, Villa Clea provides a veritable stage on which the Ritsch Sisters were invited to present their site-specific work of photo and video installations.

“I invited Anna and Maria Ritsch to live with Matteo and me, interpreting the spaces of this house, and they led me to reflect on the concept of relationship,” says Allina who established Villa Clea with her partner Matteo Corbellini as a multifunctional loft for living and showing art.

By Theophilos Doranti
Photos courtesy of Villa Clea and the Ritsch Sisters

And it is in fact the very idea of abstract interrelational experiences that comes to mind when strolling through the exhibits within the three separate rooms of Villa Clea. The Ritsch Sisters seem to have approached the architecture and interior of Villa Clea with precise playfulness, as becomes evident in the first room of the exhibition. Against the backdrop of a minimalist sound installation featuring the sounds of birds from New York and Vienna combined with occasional piano notes, we see photographs mounted on curved aluminum plates, which engage in a respectful dialogue with the space and the spectators. These sculptural photographs seamlessly blend into the organic monomaterial construction, which largely consists of light curtains, mirrors and aluminum furniture. As they either face or turn away from the viewers, they create a captivating interplay of proximity and distance, resulting in a wonderful ambivalent experience between concentration and spatial dispersion.

The second room shows a video installation titled Sound of an Egg Peeling, a symbolically charged exploration of human interdependence and connection. German-speaking viewers will likely notice the phonetic similarity between the English eye and the German Ei (egg). Might this be a meditation on natality and the Ritsch Sisters’ shared fascination with the seeing eye? In any case, eggs scattered throughout the room (sourced from a neighboring farm) create an immersive encounter, especially when visitors start peeling one of those eggs themselves.

In the third and final room, we find ourselves standing in front of a bed over which the largest photo print of the exhibition looms, titled Full moon she thought. It shows a woman with half-open eyes gazing at us from a potential delirium. Or is she annoyed that we disturbed her in her private bedroom? Those who don't fall into the bed at this point can turn over and enjoy getting their hands on the publication Together Apart by the Ritsch Sisters, which was published last year.

Immersive and fluid

For Villa Clea, Matteo Corbellini has used the remains of an old body shop to build a new architecture made of clay and concrete, while Allina (Alessandra Pelizzari Corbellini) designed the puristic and clear interior. Together, they have created an immersive and fluid space where they live, offer art residencies and aesthetic experiences, in a community centered around contemporary art.

Art

Thank God Tattooing Is Dead

July 02, 2024

I don’t have any tattoos. I know. But whenever someone asked me about it, my answer was always: “There’s one person that I’d get a tattoo from.” That person was Maison Hefner, a tattoo artist whose account I’d stumbled upon while scrolling on Instagram one day. But as unfortunate for me as it is fortunate for my mom, that account no longer exists. The person behind the account, Monty Richthofen, deleted it a few weeks ago with well over 100K followers.

That may seem like a big deal. I remember how it felt when I got locked out of my personal Instagram at 1K followers and had to restart. But to Monty, deleting his persona’s account was an intentional and essential step to progress his art practice as himself. The real Monty is an artist based in Berlin, who recently closed his first institutional solo show at Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, titled “THANK GOD, GOD IS DEAD”. The show featured what he’s known for: canvases stamped with statements that look like they’ve been given a lifetime to bleed into the fabric, alongside two immersive installations.

By Juliyen Davis
Photos courtesy of Monty Richthofen
Cover image by Jens Ziehe

When I hit up the artist that I’d followed for so long — and thought I knew — he was en route to the Italian countryside, where there’s no internet. We discussed his decision to delete his account, his recent show, and his plans for the future — that is, for when he returns.

To a lot of people on the internet, including me, you’re known as Maison Hefner. But you recently deleted the account that I and everyone else was following in order to go by your real name, Monty Richthofen. Tell me more about that.

Monty Richthofen— I first started using social media in 2015. At the time, I had just moved to London and started tattooing. My friend Joe Fox told me that I should get Instagram to promote my work. I wasn’t really into the idea of social media and didn’t have a smartphone, so I asked him to make me an account. I was living and tattooing out of a tiny attic but I thought it would be funny to have a username that implied something different. And that was the birth of me posting tattoos on a cracked version of Instagram on my Blackberry.

But I see “Maison Hefner” as a character from my twenties when I was traveling a lot and doing tattoos. COVID slowed things down and I began focusing on painting. Now, I'm confident in who I am and what I do as an artist. And as I've developed my practice, I’ve decided I want to show under my real name.

It felt important that I put an end to the persona and pull the plug. I feel that a lot of established people in hype-based industries have missed their chance to quit. They're in their 50s and still carrying on a persona that has little to do with their current reality.

That’s real. But I can imagine people wanting to hold onto that, especially if they feel like that’s the only reason that they’re relevant. How do you let that go?

Fuck it. I wanted to jump in the cold water and see who’s actually interested in my journey. Sometimes, just like a snake, we need to shed our skin in order to continue growing. I believe as an artist, it’s my duty to leave my comfort zone to challenge not only my own perspective but also the perspective, conventions and realities of others. As an artist, you are where you are in your career because you've done the work. By deleting a social media account you don’t lose the success nor the work nor the connections you’ve made. After all, Instagram is just a platform.

Did you hold any type of memorial for Maison?

I didn't want to make it a thing and just went dancing after I deleted the account. I had a really fun time dancing by myself, feeling the weight off my shoulders and realizing that I now have space and time for other things. It felt good to let go. The account gave me a lot of independence and stability but it was a burden at the same time.

R.I.P. Maison Hefner.

Where do the statements that you’re known for come from?

My texts are like snapshots, similar to photos. They’re memories or notes from certain moments in my life: observations from things that happened to me, things that I thought of, dreams, etc. I basically just write whenever I have time and I write until my head is empty. I have a lot of input and I need to let all of it spill out. It’s how I process things. I take out the trash.

Love that.

And I keep them all in shoe boxes, like time capsules.

That reminds me of when I go home and get to flip through the box my mom keeps all of my stuff from growing up in. I give her a hard time for it sometimes but I’m actually so glad she’s kept it all for me.

It's 100 percent like that. There's no order whatsoever. I can only roughly guess what time things are from based on the style of my handwriting or the content.

It’s interesting seeing how my handwriting has developed over the last decade. I have multiple different styles of handwriting depending on what I’m writing or how I’m feeling.

How important are these statements to your work?

Text is always the foundation of my work, but not always the visible end product. It is the basis for my ideas but from there my thoughts develop. I think of it the same as writing a script. You might start with black words on white paper but it eventually becomes a vivid moving image.

To be honest, because of Maison Hefner, I mostly know you for your tattoos. What has your art journey looked like though outside of that?

Although I went to an art school I didn’t learn to paint until after. I taught myself. And I started doing small shows with my friends, which is how I met my gallerist, André Schlechtriem. He gave me the opportunity to have my first big gallery show at Dittrich & Schlechtriem. I developed the idea for an installation called “If This Is You Who Am I”. It combined poetry and painting with sound and light and was brought to life in collaboration with Yasmina Dexter and Elias Asisi.

Do you want to talk more about the show you just finished at NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, THANK GOD GOD IS DEAD?

My father died when I was only 18 years old and I felt alone trying to confront my thoughts and questions about it. Writing was a way of processing this grief through a creative channel. It helped me understand myself better as a human — a human that will also die at some point. Sooner or later. I feel like death is a subject people do not necessarily feel comfortable talking about so I wanted to create a space where one can engage with it as part of a collective experience.

The main piece incorporates three coffin-like beds and a sound piece, made again in collaboration with Yasmina Dexter. It repeats a long list of aphorisms: “THANK GOD CAPITALISM IS DEAD,” “THANK GOD SOCIAL MEDIA IS DEAD” and “THANK GOD NOTHING IS DEAD.” The audience is invited to lay in the coffins and I personally found it interesting looking at the people and just wondering what they were going through as they listened.

So are you done doing tattoos… forever?

Maybe not forever. I don’t like the word “forever,” for obvious reasons. But I think for now, I’ve done everything that I wanted to do with tattooing.

Do you have a favorite quote? One that’s not yours.

I have a cap by the artist Jenny Holzer that states, “PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT.” I stole it. It doesn’t always work.

Art

Steven Cuffie's Intimate Archive

Shot in 1979, the woman in the portrait is identified by nothing other than her first name. Marcus Cuffie discovered this image of Karen alongside a multitude of portraits while they and their sister Morgan were sifting through the extensive personal archive left behind by their late father, Baltimore photographer Steven Cuffie. Save for a few exhibitions in Baltimore before his children were born, the majority of Steven Cuffie’s public facing work was as a photographer for the City of Baltimore, documenting city events, infrastructure damages, crime scenes, and the like. But after his death in 2014, Marcus and Morgan discovered the sheer breadth of his artistic practice, uncovering hundreds of captivating portraits shot in the 1970s and 80s.

In 2022, the pair of siblings worked with the New York Life Gallery to curate the first New York exhibition of their fathers work, in an effort to share their discovery with the world. Now Marcus has partnered with the gallery once again, curating and compiling 26 of Cuffie’s photographs of the eponymous Karen into a zine and exhibiting three of the images and a number of negatives alongside its release. The zine, Karen, is now available for purchase from New York Life Gallery.

Below, Marcus answered some of our questions about the intriguing Karen and their father's archive.

What did your father’s practice mean to you growing up, and if it has changed, how is your relationship to it different now?

Growing up, I knew my dad as a photographer but I didn't exactly think of him as an artist until I was older. The camera was so present in my childhood that it didn't really register to me that the photos he was taking were part of this larger body of work that had been started before I was born. I sort of thought of it like any kid would think of their family taking photos or home videos. He worked for the city as a photographer, so I also knew it was his job, but to me that made it feel more utilitarian than artistic.

That said, my dad was a big supporter of my artistic growth as a child and a big reason I'm able to have focused on being a creative for the majority of my life is because my dad set this standard in his own life. Photo was really all he did since he was younger, and I understood that it made him happy to do that. I think working with the pictures now has given me this kinship with him where I can now see him more as a peer and a point of inspiration. Especially because the work I'm focusing on right now is the work he was making in his late 20's and into his 30's so there's overlap with my own age.

When did you start this process of archiving, curating, and presenting your father’s work to the public? What, if anything, catalyzed it?

The 1st show was in October of 2022 at New York Life gallery, and I started archiving around spring of 2022. My sister had gone down to Baltimore to get some things from our old house around 2018/2019. Christmas of 2019, me and my sister were going through the pictures, a lot of which were images we had never seen before, and I casually posted them on my Instagram and got a lot of feedback from people. Mostly it was people just being positive about the work, I didn't really think at that time that I would do anything with it, and I was doing my own thing in fashion so I didn't really have the time to focus on it. In 2022 my friend Clarke Rudick hit me up about doing a portfolio of my dads work for the 1st issue of his magazine Crosscurrent, and a bit after that Ethan James Green got in touch about showing the work at New York Life as the inaugural show for the gallery. It was really interest from other people that pushed me to make it more of a serious endeavor, I think on my own I felt the images were amazing but I think just getting positive reinforcement from other people made me feel like, ok maybe this can really be a long term project.

He was just searching for a way to understand the world, and his camera was a tool for that.

What do you know about the subject in the “KAREN” series? Who is/was she?

Really all I have is her name and the dates the photos were taken. I know that she is one of a number of women who reoccur in my dads work in the late 70s but beyond that the relationship she had with him is a mystery to me. Which is the case with a lot of the women in the photos. My dad didn't leave behind much writing about his work, and because this is work that was made in his younger days he didn't really discuss it with us, and in fact these photos were kind of kept out of sight since they can be erotic. I know that some of the women in the photos were definitely women my dad dated, because some images feature him in tandem with the women. Some are just friends or women he asked to sit, though, so there's a range.

Do you consider yourself an artist or photographer in your own right? If so, how does your father’s practice inform your own?

I definitely think of myself as a creative or artist, but I'm not a photographer. I did play around with photo in high school, but I never really stuck with it. I work in fashion as a stylist now and I think my dad and his relationship with photography definitely had a hand in that. I was just as into looking at photo books as he was, and I'm still always looking at and buying new photo books because I have this long relationship with it. I can't say I have like a full technical understand of the medium but I do feel like my taste and my point of view on photo was formed by my dads work, and seeing this work he was making when he was young I do see how without realizing it we have these similar ideas of what makes a good photo. I can't say it's like a hereditary thing but maybe because I was looking at the same things he was, because I had his library of books growing up, it's given me a similar point of view to his.

What do you think makes your father’s work so relevant to this day?

I think what motivated my father is generally what's at the heart of any photographic practice: he was just searching for a way to understand the world, and his camera was a tool for that. I think the photos definitely have certain details to them that age them, but I think when you really look at the subjects in the photos there's a timeless quality to them. In the same way that like Dorothea Lange or Gordon Parks were making images years before my father that he was looking at for inspiration, I think people can look at these pictures now and understand them. Photos break through time because we as people don't really change radically from decade to decade, the details of our surroundings shift but the way in which we relate stays the same.

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