“NYC is the melting pot, the metropolis of the world, and therefore the most natural location for a festival with a mission to bring together global talent that is both timely and critical.”

— Jody Quon, curator, NYPH’09

The New York Photo Festival is pleased to announce—after a very successful and critically acclaimed recession-year festival edition in 2009, and its splendid 2008 debut—the festival curators and exhibition dates for 2010.

New York City’s premier photography festival will take place May 12–16, 2010; the main festival sites will return to the Brooklyn waterfront community of DUMBO for the third straight year, and the festival will also expand its programming and pre-festival activities, for the first time, into other parts of the city.

Dedicated to the mission of pushing the boundaries of contemporary photography and showcasing ideas of our collective photographic future, the New York Photo Festival and its organizers and co-founders Daniel Power and Frank Evers will be forging down this path once more: NYPH’10 will feature the personal visions of curators Vince Aletti, Erik Kessels, Fred Ritchin, and Lou Reed as they take hold of the many indoor and outdoor sites in the formerly industrial neighborhood.

NYPH’10 will also see new initiatives in programming, including later and extended exhibition hours; reduced fare and open attendance hours for the public; special New York Photo Awards featured presentations; and expanded site programming.

PRESENTING THE NEW YORK PHOTO FESTIVAL 2010 CURATORS:

Vince Aletti reviews photography exhibitions for The New Yorker’s Goings On About Town section and writes a regular column about photo books for Photograph. He is the winner of the 2005 Infinity Award in writing from the International Center of Photography, where he is currently an adjunct curator. Aletti co-curated “Weird Beauty: Fashion Photography Now” with Carol Squiers and is the curator of “This Is Not a Fashion Photograph,” both at ICP; he and Squiers worked together on “Richard Avedon Fashion,” the museum’s summer 2009 exhibition, as well as on the catalog published by Abrams.
Male, a book of photographs and other artwork from Aletti’s personal collection, was published by PPP Editions at the end of 2008. The Disco Files 1973-78: New York’s Underground, Week by Week, a compilation of record reviews and club scene roundups by Aletti, was released by DJHistory.com in 2009.

Erik Kessels is a photography curator, writer, and picture anthropologist, and a founding partner and creative director of KesselsKramer, an independent, international communications agency located in Amsterdam. He has curated exhibitions such as “Loving Your Pictures” at the Centraal Museum Utrecht, The Netherlands and at Les Rencontres d’Arles Photographie, France, and has published several books of his images—including the In Almost Every Picture series. Since 2000, he has been one of the editors of the alternative photography magazine Useful Photography.
Kessels is an editorial contributor for both BON International and Identity Matters, and he has lectured at the D&AD President’s Lecture and at several international design conferences in Singapore, Goa, Toronto, and Bangkok. He has taught communication at Hallo© in Amsterdam and photography at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, also in Amsterdam. In 2008 he was an artist in residence for the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture, where he curated a celebration of amateurism. For the opening of the world’s first graphic design museum, in Breda, Erik organized an exhibition entitled “The European Championship of Graphic Design.” For the DVD art project Loud & Clear he worked with artists such as Marlene Dumas and Candice Breitz. Kessels has made commercial work for national and international clients such as Nike, Diesel, J&B Whisky, Oxfam International, Ben Mobile, and the Hans Brinker Budget Hotel, and has won numerous international design awards.

Fred Ritchin is professor of Photography & Imaging at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He is the author of After Photography (W. W. Norton, 2009) and In Our Own Image: The Coming Revolution in Photography (Aperture, 1990), and has co-authored books such as An Uncertain Grace: The Photographs of Sebastião Salgado (Aperture, 1990), In Our Time: The World As Seen by Magnum Photographers (W. W. Norton, 1989), and Mexico Through Foreign Eyes: Photographs, 1850–1990 (W. W. Norton, 1993). His essays have appeared in many other books, including Picture Imperfect by Kent Klich and Under Fire: Great Photographers and Writers in Vietnam by Catherine Leroy. Currently he is working on a new book, Outside the Frame, concerning contemporary imagery and social change.
Ritchin is also director of PixelPress, an organization that has created websites, books, and exhibitions that promote human rights and documentary experimentation. He is the former picture editor of The New York Times Magazine and Horizon magazine, former executive editor of Camera Arts magazine, and the founding director of the Photojournalism and Documentary Photography fulltime educational program at the International Center of Photography. Ritchin was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in public service by The New York Times for the 1996 website, “Bosnia: Uncertain Paths to Peace,” which he co-created with photographer Gilles Peress. He also created the first multimedia version of the daily New York Times in 1994. Ritchin lectures and conducts workshops internationally on new and documentary media.

Lou Reed is a playwright, poet, musician, and photographer whose photographs have been exhibited worldwide. His third photography book, Romanticism, will be released later this year on Edition 7L. He was named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government and is the recipient of numerous other awards. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 and is a founding member of the legendary band, the Velvet Underground.
Reed released his first suite of electronic mediation music, Hudson River Wind Meditations, on the Sounds True label in 2007. In late 2008 Reed released a new album of live electronic music called Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Trio: The Creation of The Universe, which inspired two extremely well received performances by the MM3 in New York, in April of 2009. In December of 2006 Lou Reed premiered the live staging of his masterwork play Berlin at St. Ann’s Warehouse in DUMBO, Brooklyn; the performance was filmed by Academy Award-nominated director and artist Julian Schnabel.
Currently Reed is working on several projects including a collaboration with artist Lorenzo Mattiotti on a graphic novel based on his album, The Raven; a book of essays on Chen Tai Chi called The Art of the Straight Line, which is slated for release in 2009; and continues to co-host a weekly radio show with producer Hal Willner called The New York Shuffle.

Photos of Vince Aletti by Andrea Modica; Erik Kessels by Auke Vleer; and Lou Reed by Ralph Gibson.