Two Crowns of the Egg, which will be published by Damiani in May with an unveiling at Paris Photo Los Angeles on April 26, is an ode by photographer Michael Somoroff to his wife Irina, and an exploration of love, mortality, sexuality, desire, and spirituality. This stunning book designed by Eileen Boxer presents an intense series of portraits and nudes that Somoroff made of his wife of 17 years, Irina. The book begins with early images made during their honeymoon that depict her as a vital young woman just emerging from girlhood. Later photographs, taken over four days in the spring of 2013, explore her mature character and beauty following a renewal of the couple's marriage. Working within the photographic tradition that encompasses Alfred Stieglitz's photographs of Georgia O'Keefe and Edward Weston's Charis, the series portrays the multiple aspects of the artist's gaze upon his lover over the passage of time. The photographs of Irina are interspersed with Somoroff's masterful "Vanitas" still lifes each introduced by an exuberant poem by cutting-edge Latin American writer Giannina Braschi from her postmodern poetry classic Empire of Dreams. These masterful still lifes are described by esteemed art critic Donald Kuspit in his essay in the book as "a photographic version of a Dutch Old Master allegorical composition - oddly abstract, not to say eccentrically sculptural, a pictorial tour de force as well as a slyly minimalist installation, as the organization of the objects in the center along the vertical axis suggests - conveying proverbial truth." These changing compositions comment on the unfolding narrative like a Greek chorus.   Two Crowns of the Egg concludes with an essay by Somoroff that offers an intimate revelation concerning the love story of his marriage with its complexities and ups and downs. The mix of portraits and allegorical still lifes, the variety of films used, and the subtle changes in colors, combined with Braschi's moving poetry and Kuspit's illuminating text, come together to create a work that is both personal and profound. It is a postmodern love story that touches everyone's struggles for connection in these contemporary times.  Michael Somoroff, son of the eminent commercial photographer Ben Somoroff, was born in New York in 1957. He studied art and photography at the New School for Social Research, New York, opening his own studio in the mid-seventies. He later moved for a time to Europe where he became a celebrated photographer, contributing to such publications as Life, Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, Stern, Time, and Der Spiegel. His work is represented in important collections around the world, a sampling of which include the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; and Museo Correr, Venice. His work has been exhibited at venues such as the International Center of Photography, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. In 2006 Somoroff created a large-scale outdoor installation, Illumination I, for the Rothko Chapel in Houston, as the first artist invited to do so since Barnett Newman. Somoroff's homage to legendary photographer August Sander, Absence of Subject, was presented during the 2011 Venice Biennale, the only private exhibit in the artistic history of the city to be placed on Piazza San Marco. Since 2011, Absence has traveled continuously throughout Europe in venues such as Sala Municipal de Exposiciones de las Francesas, Valladolid, Spain; Fondation Stelline in Milan, Italy; Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Tenerife, Spain; and the Benaki Museum, Athens, Greece. It is currently on view at the Sirius Arts Centre, in Cork, Ireland through June 2014. In 2012, his acclaimed monograph A Moment. Master Photographers: Portraits by Michael Somoroff was awarded a Best Photo Books of the Year prize by American Photo.   Giannina Braschi is one of the most revolutionary writers in Latin America today whose celebrated titles include the postmodern poetry classic Empire of Dreams (1988), the tour de force Spanglish novel Yo-Yo Boing! (1998), and the radical collection of dramatic fiction United States of Banana (2011). Defying boundaries between language, genre, fantasy, prophecy, and the news, her work has been described as limitless and fearless. Prior to becoming a poet, Braschi was a singer, model, and tennis champion. She studied literature in Spain, Italy, France, and England before earning a Ph.D. in the Golden Age of Spanish Literature at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and has taught at Rutgers, City University of New York, and Colgate University. She is a charismatic performer of the spoken word in festivals around the globe and has a huge international following. Her work has received honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, El Diario, Instituto de Cultura Puertorrique�a, Ford Foundation, Reed Foundation, Rutgers University, Danforth Scholarship Program, and PEN American Center, among others. The English translation of Empire of Dreams by Tess O'Dwyer won the Columbia University Translation Center Award and inaugurated the Yale Library for World Literature in Translation. Donald Kuspit is one of America's most distinguished art critics, a poet, and eminent professor of Art History and Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Prior to this he was the A. D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University. He is a contributing editor at Artforum, Sculpture, and New Art Examiner; the editor of Art Criticism; and the editor of a series on American art and art criticism for Cambridge University Press. In 1997 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Contribution to Visual Arts from the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. He is a 1983 recipient of the College Art Association's Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism. An author of numerous articles, exhibition reviews, and catalog essays, Kuspit has written more than twenty books, many of them published by Cambridge University Press including The End of Art (2004), Psychostrategies of Avant Garde Art (2000), Idiosyncratic Identities: Artists at the End of the Avant-Garde (1996), and Signs of Psyche in Modern and Postmodern Art (1994).  Book details: Paperback 35 x 30 cm 66 images - 118 pages Price: US $60.00, �34.00, €45 Event details: Two Crowns of the Egg Book Signing Saturday, April 25, 2014 3-4pm Paris Photo L.A. Julian Sander/Feroz Galerie Booth #15, Stage 31 Paris Photo Paramount Pictures Studios 5555 Melrose Avenue Los Angeles, CA. 90038 Media contacts: US: Andrea Smith Tel: +1 646-220-5950 / email: [email protected] Europe: Myrtille Beauvert Tel: +1 347 295 7694 / +33 6 60 09 85 71, email: [email protected]  |
