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marc asnin

uncle charlie : marc asnin : .

curated by bob shamis / QCC art gallery CUNY
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traveling exhibition

introduction : bob shamis

Honored and acclaimed long before the project was even completed, Uncle Charlie is the culmination of more than thirty years of work by photographer Marc Asnin. This exhibition presents a richly textured portrait of a very disturbed and extremely complex individual, Charles Henschke, the photographers uncle and godfather. This body of work also serves as a remarkable in-depth study of a family caught at the nexus of poverty and mental illness. Given complete access and freedom to photograph, Asnin rewards both his subjects and the viewers with images that are compassionate and respectful, but at times searing in their intensity and unflinching honesty. As a child Asnin looked up to his uncle as a streetwise tough guy with a gun. By the early 1980s when Asnin was studying photography, the reality of his uncles life had trampled this boyhood fantasy. Frail, depressed and emotionally vacant, unable to work, unable to even leave his apartment, Charles Henschke was a shell of a human being. At a point when Charles brother, sister, and wife had pretty much given up on him, Asnin decided to make the attempt to reach out to his uncle. Motivated by strong family ties and inspired by Bruce Davidsons classic photo essay East 100th Street, Asnin chose to use photography as the means to reconnect with Charlie. Thus began a journey that became a nearly quarter-century obsession to confront, examine, and understand some very disturbing truths about his uncle and family. Uncle Charlie is an unprecedented long-term documentary project; but this does not begin to describe the depth, revelations, and intimacy of the images that have resulted. The raw emotions and dynamics of family bonds are all played out in front of the camera, as we witness the heartrending consequences of Charlies illness and his emotional void on the lives of his children. Asnins dynamic images also give us a visceral sense of Charlies self-confined worldhis apartment and his neighborhoodin which a disturbing family saga unfolds with the seeming inevitability of a Greek tragedy. With a minimum of background and description the viewer can follow the narrative of Uncle Charlie in the approximately eighty black and white photographs that will comprise the exhibition. However, the photographer has assembled an extraordinarily rich collection of family snapshots, recorded interviews, and other documentary material that will be interspersed within the exhibition to augment and enhance the portrait of Uncle Charlie.

:
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essay : marc asnin

uncle charlie

to share his story with? Ironically, Charlie has never expressed what he felt about our relationship. As for me, was this photographic odyssey fueled by my need to figure out what Charlie meant to me? I believe that the family can be viewed as a microcosm of society the power dynamics, relationships, and cycles of dysfunction or prosperity. This uncompromising examination of my family, while unique in many aspects, has a scope that incorporates us all. This is not only Uncle Charlies story, its the story.

Growing up in Brooklyn in the 1960s, you had to be tough. It was that simple. Intimidation was a way of life and backing down was never an option. Never. As a boy, I looked for a tough guy to emulate, a mentor of the streets, so to speak. I found Uncle Charlie. Tough and tattooed, Uncle Charlie spoke without apology, walked with a swagger, and always carried his Saturday Night Special. To me, he was a real wise guy, a genuine Brooklyn gangster, a dying breed of a Jewish wise guy. Through the eyes of my childhood, Uncle Charlies life was captivating. His muscles, tattoos, and street persona he epitomized everything I wanted to be. That boyhood image was shattered when I encountered Uncle Charlie as an adult. I always thought Charlies life was a Good Fellas kind of story. Instead, what I found was more like Waiting for Godot. The tough guy of my childhood was now suffering from anorexia and was in a catatonic state. In the face of schizophrenia, he was broken, a fragment of what I remembered, a newly found dark hero. There was still an undeniable connection between us as Godfather and Godson, our shared pasts a veil through which we both looked upon the unsettling present. As different as Uncle Charlie and I are, the two of us entered into a reciprocal relationship over the last thirty years which resulted in this photographic essay. The only way I knew how to photograph my uncle was head on, neither Charlie nor I shrunk from the hard truths. The images convey the complexity of my Uncle Charlie; vain, hopeless, cruel, vulnerable, forgotten. He wrestles with the consequences of a wasted life over which he never really had full control, a prisoner of my own mind. Despite this darkness, we become conscious of his resolve and determination. He was a resilient survivor in the face of mental disability and crushing poverty. He managed to raise five children single handedly in a bleak urban landscape. The images I made chronicle Uncle Charlies strained and fractured relationship with his children who inherited his legacy of instability. Charlie says hes never had a friend, hes never been a friend, and that his life was always a momentary thing with people. Charlie often muttered during my three decades of photographing him that, Nothings changed. Ive come full circle. Im still waiting for Godot. I have been wondering forever who I am in Uncle Charlies life. Did his sister create the only friend he ever had? Was I the person he was waiting

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review : daniel morris

... As different as are Uncle Charlie and the two men have entered into a symbiotic relationship in which each lives through the other or has benefited from the others presence over the last three decades of the documentary project. Asnin does not shy away from Marc Asnin

chronicling
in graphic terms Charlies narcissism, self-destructive macho persona, lethargy, and quest for erotic stimulation
after weegee daniel morris

through relationships that borders on prostitution with crack heads

essay on contemporary jewish

american photographers / syracuse university press 2011.

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review : michael kimmelman

review : michael kimmelman

There are

It is, like Asnin, frank tough

few portraits in recent American photography more

but suffused with

intimate or remarkable
than Marc Asnins Uncle Charlie series

love and awe

.
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michael kimmelman chief art critic

...
uncle charlie

/ the new york times .

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review : deborah willis

deborah willis 2000 macarthur fellow / chair photo departmant nyu .

An impressive & significant art project one that forces us to ,

look at humanity in various ways .

Asnin is an exceptional photographer one who chronicles family life through the matrix of performance and private life.

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review : michel guerrin

No work

has ever mingled privacy with photography

to such an extent

...
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review : michel guerrin

you can clearly

feel that these images build an

in-depth portrait
of a certain America .

michel guerrin le monde / editor cultural section .

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review : a.d. coleman

Asnins abrasive

, wounded

study of his uncle Charlies gradual descent into

addiction and madness

... carries with it a particularly wrenching poignancy
a.d. coleman photo critic

.
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review : tony bannon

Some
photographers artists, are honored for their work , even scientists, just by other some

photographers, artists, and scientists, but not by

the public at large.

Such is devotion to the image of Uncle Charlie
tony bannon

the case for Asnin and his

director george eastman house / international house of photography and film director .

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bios and info

marc asnin Marc Asnin is a renowned documentary photographer, having been published in numerous publications including Life, Fortune, The New Yorker, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, French Geo, La Repubblica, Le Monde, and Stern. His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries in the United States and Europe, including the MOMA, Baltimore Museum of Art, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Blue Sky Gallery and is also included in several permanent collections, including the National Museum of American Art, the International Center of Photography, the Museum of the City of New York, the Portland Museum of Art, the Zimmerli Art Museum and the Schomburg Center. His work has received numerous accolades, most notably the W. Eugene Smith Grant in Humanistic Photography, the Mother Jones Fund for Documentary Photography Grant, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Alicia Patterson Fellowship. Asnins work has also appeared in books such as The New York Times Magazine Photographs (Aperture 2011), After Weegee (Syracuse University Press 2011), New York 400 (Running Press, 2009), Blink (Phaidon Press, 1994), Flesh & Blood (Picture Project 1992).

2006 he was the Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Museum of the City of New York where he organized more than a dozen exhibitions including New York Now 2000: Contemporary Work in Photography; The Last Days of Penn Station: Photographs by Aaron Rose; New Yorkers; Subway: Photographs by Bruce Davidson and The Destruction of Lower Manhattan: Photographs by Danny Lyon. He is the author of New York In Color which was published by Abrams Books. His latest book project, a monograph on the American street photographer Leon Levinstein, will be published by Steidl Publishers in 2012.

the queensborough community college (qcc) art gallery The Queensborough Community College (qcc) Art Gallerys mission is to collect and preserve; present and interpret; educate and motivate; and stimulate new art production. The Gallery was founded in 1966 by the first Chairman of the QCC Department of Art and Design as an integral part of the College's educational programming. In 2004, a multi-million dollar renovation of the QCC Art Gallerys facility, the historic Oakland building, created 2,500 square feet of exhibition space, state- of-the-art temperature control, full security, an art research library, and an intimate 25-seat theater. The QCC Art Gallery has become a prominent cultural beacon for the Queens community and greater New York City metropolitan area, serving approximately 10,000 attendees annually. By presenting world-class exhibits and catalogue publications of local, national, international, and historical interest, it broadens appreciation and understanding of art and artist-as-interpreter.

The Gallery currently holds a collection of more than 2,500 works by accomplished artists such as Louise Nevelson, Gustav Klimt, Sol Lewitt, Man Ray, John Coplans and Okada. Included are traditional arts from the cultures of PreColumbian South America, Oceanic, and Neolithic Chinese as well as more than 1,200 objects of African art, which comprise the critically acclaimed permanent African art exhibition. In 2005, Holland Cotter of The New York Times wrote, Queensborough Community College has quietly assembled an impressive collection of African Art ... with luck, other university galleries around the country will emulate it. Annually, the Gallery travels a series of work from its permanent collection; one of our more acknowledged traveling exhibitions is Memories of the Southern Civil Rights Movement by photographer Danny Lyon. In addition to its permanent collection, the Gallery also hosts world-class exhibitions that engage thousands of QCC students and community members each year in new and innovative presentations. Recent exhibits have included Andy Warhols Graphic Works; Picasso Printmaker: A Perpetual Metamorphosis from the Myra and Sandy Kirschenbaum Collection; A Cameroon World: Art and Artifacts from the Marshall and Caroline Mount Collection; and Marching to the Freedom Dream: American Civil Rights Movement 1958-65, a photographic essay by Dan Budnik.

contrastobooks World-renowned and critically acclaimed publisher announces the publication of Uncle Charlie to accompany the traveling exhibition. A leading point of reference for exceptional photojournalism, Contrasto creates extraordinary photography books by exceptional artists. Bringing their experience in the fields of publishing and photography to serve photographers and photography enthusiasts worldwide.

bob shamis Bob Shamis is an independent curator, consultant, and photographer. As an independent curator he has organized photography exhibitions for galleries and museums, including the National Gallery of Canada and the George Eastman House. In 1991 he was the first recipient of the Lisette Model/Joseph G. Blum Fellowship in Photography at the National Gallery of Canada. From 1998 to

www.qccartgallery.org The Gallery serves the many degree and continuing education students at QCC each year, who come to the College from across the Metropolitan area. They come from over 130 different countries of origin, as well as the broader community of Queens, which is the nations most diverse county. The Gallery engages these audiences with multiple genres of art and culture through their exhibits, lectures and our unique outreach activities.

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exhibition info

Number of works : 80 photographs and collected ephemera Space requirements : 345-400 linear feet 122 linear meters Tour dates : Fall 2012 / 2017 Participation fee : $15,000 support materials Book : Uncle Charlie Publisher : Contrasto / 2012 Format : 220 x 300 mm Extent : 320 pages Printing : duotones Binding : hard cover Isbn-1: 9788869651779 For information about this traveling exhibition, please contact: Lisa Scandaliato Exhibition Travel Coordinator ucexhibition@gmail.com or 1.718.631.6396

uncle charlie