Review: David Taylor: Working the Line
The US-Mexico border is not exactly a welcoming place for documentary photographers. And yet, for the past seven years, David Taylor has been photographing across 690 miles of that politically…
Author Robyn Day
Robyn Day
Robyn Day is a Boston-based photographer and writer. She reviews photography exhibitions for Big Red & Shiny.
Review: John Coplans: Hands
Those of us with our heads in the clouds of art theory sometimes forget that it’s enough to take pleasure in looking at photographs. I have to remind myself that…
Review: Vivian Maier: A Woman’s Lens
At Brandeis University’s Women’s Studies Research Center through December 18, Vivian Maier: A Woman’s Lens may be the first exhibition of the elusive (some would say, reclusive) photographer’s work…
Eija-Liisa Ahtila: Olentoja
In retrospect, it seems only fitting that I should see Finnish artist Eija-Liisa Ahtila’s video installations at the Davis Museum. It’s been years since I last uttered the words “esse…
An Enduring Vision: Photographs from the Lane Collection
Believe it or not, An Enduring Vision was an exhibition catalog before it ever reached the Herb Ritts Gallery, published by the MFA in 2011. And it was part and…
Pre-Existing Condition: At Yellow Peril Gallery
Title: “Limbic” Artist: Kathryn Parker Almanas Exhibit: Pre-Existing Condition Gallery: Yellow Peril Gallery There are only seven photographs in the first gallery, but they pack a punch to the…
Harold Feinstein’s Coney Island Summer: On view at Panopticon Gallery
Harold Feinstein,Two Men & a Boy Contemplate, Coney Island, 1950 “It’s a nickel a question,” he joked. At that point, I suppose I already owed Harold Feinstein five cents,…
In Conversation: Photographic Identity in Modern African American Art
Earlie Hudnall, Jr., Lady in Black Hat with Feathers, 1990, gelatin silver print, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist. © 1990 Earlie Hudnall Interspersed throughout three galleries…
Doing queer photography by photographing queer doings: On the carnal strategies of Catherine Opie and Collier Schorr
What is queer photography? Do we know it when we see it? Or does the definition hold a certain slippage, the paradox of any deconstructive category? By the late 1980s,…
Let’s Play ‘Dress Up’: The Flash Forward Festival comes to Panopticon Gallery
If you’re in the mood for Neo-Victorian drag iconography torn from the pages of comic book fantasies (and, let’s face it, who isn’t?), then Dress Up should be your…
Charland/Stark: Backscatter and Still/Life at Gallery Kayafas
Potato Power, LaJoie Growers LLC, Van Buren, Maine 2012 #1/5 23×29″ Pigment print ©Caleb Charland We think we know how photographs are made. It’s an almost instantaneous assumption that…
Flash Forward Festival – Cultivated: New Photography from New England in the traditional style
Victoria Crayhon (Providence, RI), Untitled, Auburn, NY, 2010, from the series “Thoughts On Romance From the Road,” Archival inkjet print, 24 x 36 inches, courtesy of the artist We’re…
Visual Poetics: David Hilliard’s Photographic Tale at Carroll and Sons Gallery
David Hilliard The Tale is True (DH237) from A Tale is True 2012 Courtesy of the artist and Carroll and Sons, Boston. It’s only right that The Tale is…
A New Idea for New Topographics: Toshio Shibata, ‘Constructed Landscapes’ at the Peabody Essex Museum
The opening reception of Toshio Shibata, Constructed Landscapes at PEM on Wednesday April 17 drew well over 200 visitors, from affiliated artists to friends of the museum (which includes,…
Me Love You Long Time (MLYLT) at Mills Gallery
Clifford Landon Pun Opium, No Pun Intended, 2011 Digital print on plinth, 36″ x 54 Image Courtesy Melissa Blackall Photography It sounds like a karaoke bar, a din of…
Guillermo Srodek-Hart’s ‘Interiors’ and Lynn Saville’s ‘Vacancy’ at Gallery Kayafas
The decision to pair Guillermo Srodek-Hart’s Interiors with Lynn Saville’s Vacancy is so compelling that I expected it to have been a curatorial strategy as carefully crafted as military tactics.…
Bruce Davidson: Witness at Robert Klein Gallery and Ars Libri
So you’ve seen Bruce Davidson’s East 100th Street at the Museum of Fine Arts and just can’t help wanting more? That is quite possibly the third of life’s proverbial certainties,…
“What you call a ghetto, I call home.” Bruce Davidson’s East 100th Street at the Museum of Fine Arts
There’s no question that Bruce Davidson is a lion of twentieth century photography, and with good reason. His silver gelatin prints are atmospheric, transporting viewers to a rough and tumble…