Tyler Mitchell, Who Photographed Beyoncé for Vogue, Is Getting a Full-Blown Museum Show at the International Center of Photography’s New Flagship

The International Center of
Photography has a new home—again.

The photography institution in New York is settling into its
third headquarters in five years, preparing to open the doors of
its new Lower East Side flagship at Essex Crossing on January 25.
The inaugural exhibitions—a wide-ranging and action-packed
lineup—aim to capture the diversity of the medium.

The space is launching with solo shows of work by Tyler
Mitchell, the fast-rising photographer
best known for
shooting Beyoncé’s Vogue cover in 2018,
and James Coupe, whose work focuses on high-tech surveillance. Also
on tap is an overview of hip-hop portrait photography, and—in honor
of the neighborhood—a selection of photographs from the museum’s
collection documenting life on the Lower East Side during the
mid-20th century.

The move to 79 Essex Street brings the institution’s school and
the museum together under one roof—with 40,000 square feet of
space—for the first time in some 20 years. The building,
designed by Gensler, boasts classrooms, darkrooms, and other
facilities for photographers, as well as a research library, a
shop, café, public event spaces, and, of course, exhibition
galleries.

“ICP is entering an exciting new era,” said the museum’s
director, Mark Lubell, in a statement.

“The Lower East Side: Selections from the ICP Collection” offers
fascinating snapshots of this vibrant immigrant neighborhood from
photographers including Jacob Riis and Weegee, many of whom lived
there themselves.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, viewers will have the
opportunity to become part of “James Coupe: Warriors“—if they
agree to have their faces recorded and analyzed. Through the
(deeply unsettling) magic of deepfakes, Coupe will alter the cult
classic film The Warriors in real time, replacing
faces of gang members in the film with those of museumgoers who
have been algorithmically categorized and assigned to different
characters based on demographics and personality, as perceived by
AI.

Rounding things out are “Tyler Mitchell: I Can Make
You Feel Good,” featuring the 24-year-old who in 2018 was
tapped by Beyoncé to become the first African American
photographer to shoot the cover of Vogue, and
“Contact High: A Visual
History of Hip-Hop,” organized by Los Angeles’s Annenberg
Space for Photography and covering the music genre’s influence on
fashion, politics, and race relations, as well as the music
industry.

The past few years have been something of a roller-coaster ride
for the institution. In March 2014, the museum announced that it
was was not renewing the lease
on the Midtown building it had called home since the 1980s. Six
months later, ICP revealed that it had purchased a new home on the
Bowery.

The old museum closed in January 2015, reopening at 250 Bowery
the following June—but
in the interim, rumors were already
brewing that the museum was already planning a second move to
the greener pastures of Essex Crossing.

The SHoP Architects-designed development
complex on the Lower East Side, then still under-construction, was
once slated to house a New York
outpost for Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum, leaving an opening for
a new cultural anchor. ICP, meanwhile, had long hoped to reunite
its museum and school under one roof, which wasn’t possible at the
Bowery location.

The move was officially
announced in October 2017, and the museum’s short-lived spot on
Bowery quietly shuttered in June. The space has since been
sold.

General admission is rising from $14 to $16 with the move, but
visitors 18 and under get in free; admission is
also $3 for Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)/EBT Card holders.

The post Tyler Mitchell, Who Photographed Beyoncé for Vogue,
Is Getting a Full-Blown Museum Show at the International Center of
Photography’s New Flagship appeared first on artnet
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