Our Max's Kansas City exhibition which opens on September 15 is generating amazing interest from the press. Vanity Fair is running an article about the show in their September issue, articles will be coming out in The New York Times and New York Magazine and there is a Talk of Town piece in The New Yorker. The show will launch the book Max's Kansas City: Art, Glamour, Rock and Roll (Abrams Image, 2010) edited by Steven Kasher. A book signing will be held at the Strand bookstore on Sept. 30 with Danny Fields, Steven Kasher, Steven Watson and Max's photographer Anton Perich and books will also be signed at the opening.


A gorgeous new monograph of Phyllis Galembo's photographs Maske is being released in October by Chris Boot. There will be a book signing in the gallery on October 12. Galembo is one of four photographers featured in the exhibition Interplay, curated by Dan Cameron at the New Orleans Center for Contemporary Art, which runs through October 24, 2010. Her African Masquerade series was recently on view in Call and Response: Africa to America: The Art of Nick Cave and Phyllis Galembo at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in Charleston, South Carolina. A selection of her photographs from Africa and Haiti were featured last May on Kanye West's blog.


The Gwangju Biennale taking place in South Korea in September features 25 vintage black and white photographs by Mike Disfarmer in an exhibition curated by Massimiliano Gioni. Dan Hurlin's theatrical production Disfarmer, with its tabletop puppetry and projections of Disfarmer's photographs, premiered at St. Ann's Warehouse last year and was presented at Mass MOCA on May 8-9. Grammy-winning guitarist Bill Frisell's multimedia presentation The Disfarmer Project features a four-piece band performing songs from his recent album Disfarmer (Nonesuch, 2009) with Disfarmer images projected above the stage. A new book, Mike Disfarmer: Photo Poche N°122, (Actes Sud 2009) came out last November with over 60 black and white Disfarmer photographs.


Christopher Thomas's evocative new book Passion, edited by Petra Giloy-Hirtz and Ira Stehmann, was recently released by Prestel. His richly textured series of portraits depicts participants in the Oberammergau Passion Play in Germany. The play, performed since 1634 by the inhabitants of a small Bavarian village, runs for five months at the beginning of each decade. The book combines Thomas's painterly large-format photographs with text, mirroring the play's composition of spoken dramatic text and motionless actors conveying tableaux vivants scenes.


Our upcoming exhibition Simply Beautiful, featuring new limited editions from National Geographic, will open with a reception and booksigning on October 14. Simply Beautiful will present large-scale color photographs by over 25 National Geographic photographers and launch a new program of limited edition collectors' prints. The exhibition will accompany the release of the book: National Geographic Simply Beautiful Photographs (National Geographic Books, October, 2010) edited by award-winning photographer Annie Griffiths. Choosing remarkable images from all of the Society's core mission areas: exploration, wildlife, culture, science and nature, Griffiths deftly explores what creates beauty in a photograph. A concurrent exhibition will run at the National Geographic Museum in Washington, DC through February 6, 2011.