Vicki Goldberg

A COUPLE OF EXCERPTS FROM RECENT WORK:

From Maria Antonietta Mameli, Free Compositions, 2011: (Her photographs are of tiny figures in expansive voids) "She thinks of her figures, alone and surrounded by emptiness, as philosophic commentary, and once you look at these photographs through her eyes, their larger meaning haunts them. These people are us: minute incidents in an immeasurable cosmos, making scarcely a ripple in time and occupying only the most negligible space in an ever-expanding universe. 'We are all small peope,' Mameli says, 'in the middle of something we don't know about.' Ideas about life and death permeate her work. She notes that people are inextricably linked to their shadows as life is to death and body to soul....Not that Mameli's pictures are morbid, for they are not (and would it be morbid to acknowledge that life and death are linked?), yet they are more intense than a quick glance would suggest."

From Sophie Delaporte & Astier de Villatte, 2010: "Sophie Delaporte's photographs for Astier de Villatte ar as full of mystery as a collection of Simenon Stories, as charged with ambiguity as a painting by Dali, and as partial to whimsy as a song by Noel Coward. The mysteries are decidedly post-modern: consisting of inexplicable actions, they involve no crime and have no solution other than anyone's guess. The ambiguity is immutable, six centimeters of uncertainty evidently being preferable to a meter of clarity. The whimsy is one facet of an off-beat sense of humor that manages to combine melancholy, portents, and absurdity; cherishes fantasy; and relishes the odd and the almost ridiculous."

From the introduction to Nick Brandt's A Shadow Falls, 2009, about the images:

"It is an old trick of photography, and one of its best, to ferret out beauty and significance where none was intended. Still, nature can be extraordinarily generous to its most devoted acolytes with cameras and quicksilver sensibilities, arranging itself in compositions that would do a designer proud. I suppose the two zebras have turned their heads and raised their ears in identical fashion because they've heard the same noise, and I am aware they did not don their stripes to match, but what a pas de deux, and how beautifully costumed and performed! Given humans' tendency to anthropomorphize, it is probably mere projection that finds Brandt's elephants somber and melancholy, as if they were oppressed by their own wrinkles. A lion that leans his forehead down to his mate's might only be insisting on his dominance, but it sure looks like affection or at least some kindly, husbandly communication."

A COUPLE OF REVIEWS Of MY WRITING:

LIGHT MATTERS (collected essays): Regarding an essay on Joseph Koudelka: "This is gorgeous writing. Not just succinct, it is profound. In half a paragraph, Ms. Goldberg has explained one of the most difficult issues critics must deal with, and it is necessary to note in savoring it that there is no learned jargon, no platitudinous cant: She can make this complex thought clear to her readers because it is clear to her, and because she is confident they can get it." - The New York Sun

"One of photography's most revered and beloved critics, Goldberg examines both the history of photography and our current state of affairs with curiosity, wit, and cutting insight." - Photo Eye

"As a critic, Vicki Goldberg has overseen photography's rise in contemporary art over the past 25 years and Aperture has collected appearances of her colourful prose into a feisty little book. Goldberg has no patience for the moneyed glam that now shapes the commercial scene. In her profiles and essays she asks us again and again to remember quality over success. It makes for a spirited history of the last quarter century."
- Canadian Art

"Few writers on photography can match the wit and authority of Vicki Goldberg. LIGHT MATTERS, a collection that brings together 25 years of essays and reviews, is full of sparkling tidbits: 'Photography's invention was peculiarly timely, occurring as it did just as the human life span was expanding and the prospect of an afterlife shrinking.'" - V & A Magazine (Victoria & Albert Museum)

CV

Vicki Goldberg
P. O. Box 217
Waterville Valley, NH 03215
Phone: (917) 743 8149
e-mail: vickigoldberg@​verizon.net

BOOKS

The White House: The President's Home in Photographs and History (Little Brown, 2011) - in cooperation with the White House Historical Association -
- 250 photographs from the 1840s to 2010 of the White House, the presidents, their wives, children, staffs, guests, pets,kitchens, bathrooms, etc., plus relations with the media and involvement with technology

Light Matters, a selection of my essays, Aperture, 2005

Co-Author,American Photography: A Century of Images (Chronicle, 1999), book accompanying the PBS documentary of the same name

The Power of Photography: How Photographs Changed Our Lives (Abbeville Press, 1991)
American Library Association list, best academic books of year
New York Times, Boston Globe, and Chicago Tribune lists of the year's best books on photography

Margaret Bourke-White: A Biography (Harper & Row, 1986; Addison-Wesley, 1987)
American Library Association list, best books of the year
New York Times and New York magazine lists of best biographies of the year
The Frank Luther Mott - Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award
Honorable mention, Kraszna-Krausz Award (biennial, international award for best book on photography)
Honors, Maine Photographic Workshop

Editor, Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to the Present (University of New Mexico Press, 1988)
October, 2006, Wall Street Journal names this one of the five best books ever on photography

photographs from the 1840s to 2010 of the White House, the presidents, their wives, children, pets, servants, kitchens, bathrooms, etc., plus relations with the media and involvement with technology

ARTICLES, BOOK INTRODUCTIONS

Regular articles on photography for the New York Times for 13 years, articles on art and photography for Vanity Fair, Smithsonian, American Photo, Aperture, Art in America, ArtNews, Focus, Paris Photo, Foto and Video (Russia) etc.

BOOK AND CATALOG TEXTS

Most recently: Susan Paulsen, Sarah Rhymes With Clara (Steidl, 2011); Maria Antonietta Mameli, Free Compositons (Mousse Publishing, 2011, catalog for a show in Milan and New York); George Zimbel, A Book of Readers (Editions du Passage, 2011); Sophie Delaporte, Nudes (SousLesEtoiles Gallery, 2011); Bruce Wrighton, At Home, (Roland Angst, 2010); Manfred Heiting Collection (Houston Museum of Fine Arts), 2010; Bastienne Schmidt, Home Stills (Jovis, 2010); Sophie Delaporte & Astier de Villatte (Astier de Villatte and HP Deco, catalog for a show in Japan and Paris, 2010); Franco Fontana, Franco Fontana(Postcart, 2010); At the Still Point (Cinubia, 2009); Tenneson and Cameron (Portland Museum of Art. 2009); Nick Brandt, A Shadow Falls (Abrams, 2009); Paul Fusco, Robert Kennedy: Funeral Train (Aperture, 2008); Jian Jiang (translated into Chinese and published in China, 2008); Ernesto Bazan, Bazan/​Cuba (BazanPhotosPublishing, 2008); Doubleness: photography of Chang Chien-Chi (National Museum of Singapore, 2008); Jeffrey Aaronson, Borderland (Galerie Kashya Hildebrand, Zurich, 2008); Joyce Tenneson: A Life in Photography 1968-2008 (Little Brown, 2008)

Contributing editor, American Photographer, 1978 –
Contributing editor, Aperture magazine, 2004 -

CURATOR

Face to Face, Rey Center, Waterville Valley, 2010

Points of Entry: American Immigration, Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, 1995, two year tour -- also: catalogue essay

Bourke-White: A Retrospective, International Center of Photography, 1988-90, two year tour of U. S. and Japan -- also: catalogue essay

TEACHING

Rhode Island School of Design, 2002 - 2008

Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City, 2002

Institute of Fine Art, New York, 1997

Frequent lectures in U.S. and abroad, including Universidade de Belas Artes, Lisbon, Portugal, 2011; keynote address, World Press Photo 2004 and keynote address, Pingyao International Photography Festival, China, 2006 and 2007; Dalian University, China, 2007, University of Art and Architecture, Xi'An, China, 2009; Preus Museum, Norway, 2007; Ellipse Foundation, Lisbon, 2007

JUDGE, ART AND PHOTOGRAPHIC COMPETITIONS

Lucelia Art Awards, 2003; The Eisies, 2000; Kraszna-Krausz Awards, 1998 and 2000; W. Eugene Smith Grants, 1998; McDowell Colony, 1993-95; others

GRANTS
Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Grant for Research, to study violence in the mass visual media, 19th and 20th century, 1994 -- renewed, 1995

AWARDS

Honorary Doctorate, Lesley University, Boston, May, 2011

Long Chen Cup Award (“for excellent achievement in promoting photography in the world”), China, 2006

Dudley Johnston Award, The Royal Photographic Society, 1999

International Center of Photography, Infinity Award for Writing, 1997

Photographic Administrators, Inc., Award for Writing, 1997

Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism, School of Journalism, University of Missouri at Columbia, 1995 (previously given only to photographers)

BOARDS

Arts Arena, 2009 -

Architectural League of New York, 2000 - 2010

Visiting Committee, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 2004-2006 (the committee was discontinued)

TELEVISION

Senior consultant, “American Photography: A Century of Images,” three-hour PBS documentary, October, 1999

Consultant and on-camera commentator, “Decisive Moments,” six-part BBC series, 1997