Rebecca Bengal

  • Culture January 1, 1

    CUBA HAS LONG BEEN IMPRINTED on the American imagination as a place stylishly, nostalgically lost in time, romanticized in an image vocabulary of architectural ruins, classic Chevrolets, and tiny, tough old ladies smoking fat cigars. In Rose Marie Cromwell’s debut monograph, El Libro Supremo de la Suerte, the artist unearths another side of the country, lodged somewhere between surreality and vérité. The title, which translates as “the supreme book of luck,” takes its name from a guide to the charada, a “Chinese-Cuban folkloric number system” Cromwell discovered while hanging out with Havana locals. Each number corresponds to a list of
  • Cover of The Street Philosophy of Garry Winogrand
    Culture January 1, 1

    Garry Winogrand died on March 19, 1984, at the age of fifty-six—too quickly and too soon. Just six weeks earlier he had been diagnosed with gallbladder cancer and gone to Tijuana seeking an alternative cure. Anyone would have left behind unfinished work, but this was Winogrand, who, with his Leica M4, made pictures as prolifically as a digital photographer, so we’re talking mountains. In the end, he left behind 2,500 rolls of undeveloped film and 6,500 rolls of developed negatives that were never printed. Today, the Garry Winogrand Archive at the Center for Creative Photography includes more than 20,000 fine
  • Culture January 1, 1

    Over the course of his career, photographer Dawoud Bey has consistently reexamined his methods and intentions. In the process, Bey, a 2017 recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant, has also radically revised our vision, as a comprehensive new monograph, Seeing Deeply, reveals. Raised in Jamaica, Queens, in 1953, Bey first became known in the mid to late 1970s for the series “Harlem, U.S.A.” In those images, and in subsequent works, black-and-white street portraits give everyday people pride of place in the frame. Barbers, shopkeepers, and churchgoers all seem glad to pose for Bey. In a portrait of a blues singer,