Writing:
Articles
Artist Talks as eBooks
Photography Books
Book Reviews
Interviews
Buffalo and WNY
Portfolios:
World in a Jar
Architecture of Landscape
Manifest Destiny & The American West
Unseen Terror
Contact:

New:

“CEPA GALLERY: A DIRECTOR'S HISTORY OF AN ARTIST SPACE AT THIRTY”
Interviews with CEPA's Directors
Light Work, Contact Sheet #131 www.lightwork.org
(Adobe PDF 24MB)

Carl Chiarenza: Internal Landscapes, Photo Review, V. 28, No. 4, 2009

“Tom Persinger: The Genesis of F295,” Photo Ed, Spring, 2009

FREE FOR ALL
Eight artists give the online visitor their artists' books.

In Search of the Pleasure Principle (Adobe PDF)

WARRIORS WITHOUT WEAPONS, "Road To Freedom: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1956 - 1968,"
Afterimage V. 36 No. 3, p. 27, Review by Robert Hirsch

A Century of Colour Photography: from the autochrome to the digital age

The God of Time

World in a Jar, Quicktime Slideshow and Commentary

Point and Shoot Exhibition Catalog: Curated by Robert Hirsch and David Harrod
- Available as a PDF -

The Photobook: A History (Volume II)
Review by Robert Hirsch

William Christenberry
Book Review by Robert Hirsch

The Muse of Place & Time
An Interview With William Christenberry

Flexible Images: Handmade American Photography, 1969 - 2002
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"World in a Jar: War & Trauma" will be on exhibition at the Rockefeller Arts Center, SUNY Fredonia from February 5 - 26.
Artist Presentation on Thursday, February 18th at 8:30 PM
For more information call: 716-673-4897
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| Robert Hirsch’s Unseen Terror: The Bomb, Other Bogeymen, and a Culture of Fear can be seen at the NOORDERLICHT INTERNATIONAL PHOTOFESTIVAL’S HUMAN CONDITIONS, on view September 6 – October 4, 2009, Groningen, The Netherlands.
Hirsch’s project will be featured in “War Machines” an exhibition curated by Wim Melis that also includes work by Gabriel Jones (US), Shunkichi Kikuchi (Magnum), Simon Norfolk (GB), Simon Roberts (US), Paul Shambroom (US), P.W. Voigt (DE),
and Yosuke Yamahata (Magnum).
In an ambitious and probing photo festival Noorderlicht curator Wim Melis and five guest curators offer their views on themes that define the human condition. Stuart Franklin, Lauren Heinz, Simon Njami, Marc Prüst and Bas Vroege take us with them to conflict areas, and provide their commentary on developments in the vanguard of engaged, narrative documentary photography. On the basis of weaponry Melis underscores the absurdity of war. Six diverse exhibitions, but one powerful thread: the love and the horrors of which man is capable; the struggles that remain hidden from the eyes of the world. Thus Noorderlicht deliberately turns the spotlight on the footnotes of world history, on ordinary people and their circumstances, their will to live and their capacity to destroy.”
For details visit:
Unseen Terror: The Bomb, Other Bogeymen, and a Culture of Fear
or
www.noorderlicht.com |
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Gateway: Selections from the Collection
Nov. 21, 2008 - April 19, 2009
The new Burchfield Penney Art Center at Buffalo State College opened to the public on November 22 with a continuous 31-hour grand opening celebration.
http://www.yournewburchfieldpenney.com
View the Burchfield Penney 360
The exhibition will features contemporary work from the Burchfield Penney's collection, including: sculpture, representational and non-representational painting, photography, drawings, prints, video and mixed media installations. Featured works by Cindy Sherman, Robert Longo, John Pfahl, Russell Drisch, and Robert Hirsch.
The Buffalo State College Dance Ensemble(right) was among several performers Saturday during the 31-hour opening celebration of the Burchfield Penney Art Center in front of Robert Hirsch's World in a Jar installation. The new state-of-the-art facility is located on the Buffalo State College campus.
The city’s newest hot spot: An arts center
By Mark Sommer, News Staff Reporter
http://www.buffalonews.com/cityregion/story/502363.html
Shock and Awe
Exhibits large in scope make for an engaging show
BY COLIN DABKOWSKI, News Arts Writer
http://www.buffalonews.com/entertainment/story/527535.html |

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Robert Hirsch: World in a Jar: War & Trauma
Following an aesthetic strategy of search and discovery, World in a Jar: War & Trauma utilizes the camera as a cultural tool to curate and re-imagine key components from historical and original images to explore the workings of our collective societal memory involving loss, popular culture, religion, tragedy, and the nature of evil over the past four centuries.
Using the Shoah as it point of departure, World in a Jar is a free-form sculptural montage that rethinks the customary linear narrative by offering a supermarket of moveable images. The original installation consisted of 850 individual image jars, each one serving as an interchangeable viewing block, allowing it to be a perpetual work in progress that recreates itself each time it is installed. This permits each photograph to not only present its own split-second historical reference, but also informs the context and interpretation of the surrounding images. There are no captions to anchor the images to particular events, which allows the images to transcend their specific time-based circumstances. Rather, images freely float in an ambiguous and enigmatic space, encouraging viewers to interact and expand meanings based on their own experiences. This engagement is a reminder how photographs continue to seduce us into believing that they are objective records, when in fact all images are not what they initially appear to be and require thoughtful interpretation. This open-ended production, emulating how the puzzles and paradoxes of our own memories are constructed, can convey an endless tale about the human condition that exists outside of chronological time.
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Light & Lens: Photography in the Digital Age
Light & Lens: Photography in the Digital Age is as an introductory text that clearly and concisely instructs people in the fundamental, “forever” aesthetic and technical building blocks necessary to create thought-provoking digitally based photographs and features works of 190 international artists.
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SEIZING THE LIGHT: A Social History of Photography, Second Edition
Seizing the Light: A Social History of Photography provides a thought-provoking, accurate, and accessible introduction to the photographic arts for all readers. With stunning images and commentary by hundreds of international artists, the text clearly and concisely provides the building blocks necessary to critically explore photographic history from the photographers' eye, an aesthetic point of view.
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World In A Jar: War and Trauma
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A World in the Jar: War and Trauma
After opening at Big Orbit Gallery, World in a Jar has recently been exhibited at South East Center of Contemporary Art, University of Northern Iowa, Parsons School of Design, Wichita Falls Art Museum, and Light Work in Syracuse, New York. Hirsch has also been lecturing about the cultural and personal forces that shaped this project.
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Manifest Destiny & The American West
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Manifest Destiny & The American West is a stylized three-dimensional image catalog representing the infinite and competing geography that has shaped the American culture and psyche from Coronado to today.
Manifest Destiny & the American West
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