Join us at ICP for a conversation between artists Jeff Mermelstein and Farah Al Qasimi on the occasion of our latest exhibition, Photobooks USA: 2000-25, discussing their respective photobooks, Hello Future and #nyc. Mermelstein and Al Qasimi will delve into the processes of translating their work to book form and what keeps them inspired, followed by a Q&A.
About the Books
Image: Farah Al Qasimi, Lunch, 2018, from Hello Future
Hello Future
Shortlisted for the Aperture-Paris Photo Photobook of the Year 2021, Hello Future is a culmination of Farah Al Qasimi’s (born 1991) photographic, performance and film practice, unified within her keen focus on surface and texture, and the revealing visual influences of the splashy and florid. Al Qasimi examines postcolonial structures of power, gender and aesthetics in the Persian Gulf states and global cultural confluence and migration at large.
#nyc
#nyc is Jeff Mermelstein's multifarious, comic and heartbreaking survey of contemporary life as learned through overseen text messages. Written in the new language of acronym and initialism, truncation and cipher wordplay, interrupted by the occasional longueur, people appear to have few inhibitions when faced only with their own reflection in a phone screen, such that they pour their heart-felt desire and lust and hate and vitriol in unfettered streams of text consciousness. Chaucerian in its breadth and humor, this project reveals the complex inner lives of the city’s residents, and the intriguing richness of emotion that exists within the most innocuous moments of everyday life: on the train, a park bench, or in the street. Here, a short history of New York unfolds, as told directly by one resident to another.
About the Speakers
Farah Al Qasimi makes photographs, films and music. Often working with large-scale vinyl imagery and a multiplicity of photographic prints and screens, she is interested in the internet and its hierarchies of information and emotion. Al Qasimi loves the complexity of storytelling and value-building in children's cartoons, and many of her video works include primary narrators who are anthropomorphized. Through a highly collaborative practice, she has worked with hand-sewn puppets, falcons, African Land Snails, exorcists, and most recently, a Jack Sparrow impersonator. Her work is in the collections of MoMA New York, Tate Modern, Guggenheim New York and Abu Dhabi, and she has participated in residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, Delfina Foundation in London, and the Chinati Foundation in Marfa.
Jeff Mermelstein, the son of Holocaust survivors, was born in 1957 in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He graduated from Rutgers College in 1978 with a B.A. in Biology and moved to New York City the same year for a one-year internship at the International Center of Photography, where he has been on the teaching faculty since 1987. Mermelstein was awarded an Aaron Siskind Foundation Grant (1991) and the European Publishers Award for Photography (1999). His photographs are held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Whitney Museum of American Art; Art Institute of Chicago; and the International Center of Photography, New York. His editorial work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Fortune, Life, The New Yorker, New York, Esquire, GQ, Newsweek, Time, Vanity Fair, and many others.
Mermelstein's monographs include 'Sidewalk' (Dewi Lewis Publishing, 1999), 'No Title Here' (powerHouse Books, 2003), 'Twirl / Run' (powerHouse Books, 2009), 'Arena' (TBW Books, 2019), 'Hardened' (Mörel Books, 2019), and '#nyc' (MACK, 2020).
International Center of Photography & Online
79 Essex Street, New York, NY 10002ICP Library / Online
Facts Only
*Hello Future* is a photobook by Farah Al Qasimi.
Jeff Mermelstein's book is titled *#nyc*.
Farah Al Qasimi works with photographs, performance, and film.
Mermelstein's work in *#nyc* uses text messages, acronyms, and cipher wordplay to survey contemporary life in New York.
Farah Al Qasimi's work examines postcolonial structures of power, gender, and aesthetics in the Persian Gulf states and global cultural confluence.
Jeff Mermelstein's photographs are held in collections at the MoMA, SFMOMA, Whitney Museum of American Art, and others.
Farah Al Qasimi has worked with hand-sewn puppets, falcons, African Land Snails, exorcists, and a Jack Sparrow impersonator.
Jeff Mermelstein was born in 1957 and attended Rutgers College.
Mermelstein's monographs include *Sidewalk* (1999), *No Title Here* (2003), *Twirl / Run* (2009), *Arena* (2019), *Hardened* (2019), and *#nyc* (2020).
The event is at the International Center of Photography & Online (ICP) at 79 Essex Street, New York, NY 10002.