Aperture Gallery in Chelsea, 547 W 27th Street (New York City)

Aperture Foundation is a nonprofit arts institution, founded in 1952 by

Ansel Adams Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his Monochrome photography, black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association ...

, Minor White,

Barbara Morgan Barbara Radding Morgan (born November 28, 1951) is an American teacher and a former NASA astronaut. She participated in the Teacher in Space program as backup to Christa McAuliffe for the 1986 ill-fated STS-51-L mission of the Space Shuttle '' ...

Dorothea Lange Dorothea Lange (born Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn; May 26, 1895 – October 11, 1965) was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Great Depression, Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administratio ...

Nancy Newhall Nancy Wynne Newhall (May 9, 1908 – July 7, 1974) was an American photography critic. She is best known for writing the text to accompany photographs by Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, but was also a widely published writer on photography, cons ...

Beaumont Newhall Beaumont Newhall (June 22, 1908 – February 26, 1993) was an American curator, art historian, writer, photographer, and the second director of the George Eastman Museum. His book ''The History of Photography'' remains one of the most signific ...

, Ernest Louie, Melton Ferris, and Dody Warren. Their vision was to create a forum for fine art photography, a new concept at the time. The first issue of the magazine ''

Aperture In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture and focal length of an optical system determine the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane. An ...

'' was published in spring 1952 in San Francisco. In January 2011,

Chris Boot Chris Boot (born 27 May 1960) is a British photography curator, book publisher, and has worked in a variety of other roles related to photography. He was director of London’s Photo Co-op, director of the London and New York offices of Magnum Ph ...

joined the organization as its director. Boot has previously been an independent photobook publisher and worked with

Magnum Photos Magnum Photos is an international photographic cooperative owned by its photographer-members, with offices in New York City, Paris, London and Tokyo. It was founded in 1947 in Paris by photographers Robert Capa, David "Chim" Seymour, Maria Eis ...

and

Phaidon Press Phaidon Press is a global publisher of books on art, architecture, design, fashion, photography, and popular culture, as well as cookbooks, children's books, and travel books. The company is based in London and New York City, with additional o ...

. Sarah Meister, curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art from 2009 to 2020, was named as Boot's replacement in the Executive Director position in January 2021, starting in May 2021.

Books

Aperture Foundation is a publisher of photography books, with more than 600 titles in print. Its book publication program began in 1965, with ''Edward Weston: The Flame of Recognition'', which became one of its best-selling titles.Aperture.org
/ref> Some, like ''Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph'', have been in print for 40 years. Aperture supports the efforts of other non-profit organizations by partnering on books, exhibitions, and educational programming.

Publications

* ''The Golden Age of British Photography, 1839–1900.'' New York: Aperture Foundation, 1984. . *''Masters of Photography: Collector's Set.'' New York: Aperture Foundation, 1997. . *''Crossing Borders: Contemporary Czech and Slovak Photography.'' New York: Aperture Foundation, 1998. . *''Istanbul: City of a Hundred Names'', with

Orhan Pamuk Ferit Orhan Pamuk (born 7 June 1952) is a Turkish novelist, screenwriter, academic, and recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature. One of Turkey's most prominent novelists, his work has sold over thirteen million books in sixty-three lang ...

New York:

, 2007. *''Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb on Street Photography and the Poetic Image: The Photography Workshop Series''. New York, Aperture Foundation, 2014. . Photographs and text by Alex Webb and

Rebecca Norris Webb Rebecca Norris Webb (born 1956) is an American photographer. Originally a poet, her books often combine text and images. An NEA grant recipient, she has work in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and The Cleveland Museum of Art. ...

, introduction by

Teju Cole Teju Cole (born June 27, 1975) is a Nigerian-American writer, photographer, and art historian. He is the author of a novella ''Every Day Is for the Thief'' (2007), a novel ''Open City'' (2011), an essay collection ''Known and Strange Things'' (20 ...

. *''Larry Fink on Composition and Improvisation: The Photography Workshop Series.'' New York: Aperture Foundation, 2014. . Photographs and text by

Larry Fink Laurence Douglas Fink (born November 2, 1952) is an American billionaire businessman. He is the chairman and CEO of BlackRock, an American multinational investment management corporation. BlackRock is the largest money-management firm in the wor ...

, introduction by

Lisa Kereszi Lisa Kereszi (born 1973) is an American photographer and professor from Pennsylvania. Life and work Kereszi grew up in Pennsylvania where her father owned a junk yard in Trainer and her mother owned and ran an antique store. Kereszi earned a BA ...

. *''Other Rooms.'' New York: Aperture Foundation, 2014. . Photographs by

Jo Ann Callis Jo Ann Callis (born 1940) is an American artist who works with photography and is based in California. Her work is held in various public collections. Life and work Callis was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. Though she initially pursued a degree at Oh ...

. *''The Bikeriders.'' New York: Aperture Foundation, 2014. . Photographs by

Danny Lyon Danny Lyon (born March 16, 1942) is an American photographer and filmmaker. All of Lyon's publications work in the style of photographic New Journalism, meaning that the photographer has become immersed in with, and is a participant of, the do ...

. *''¡Vámonos! Bernard Plossu in México: 1965-66, 1970, 1974, 1981.'' New York: Aperture Foundation, 2014. . Photographs by Bernard Plossu, edited by Salvador Albiñana and Juan García de Oteyza. *''The New Black Vanguard'' 2019 by Antwaun Sargent

Aperture/Michael E. Hoffman Award

In 2003, the Foundation instituted the first Aperture/Michael E. Hoffman Award, in memory of Michael E. Hoffman (died 2001), who was Aperture's publisher for 37 years.

The Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards

The Paris Photo–Aperture PhotoBook Awards is a yearly photography book award that is given jointly by

Paris Photo Paris Photo is an annual international art fair dedicated to photography. It was founded in 1997, and is held in November at the Grand Palais exhibition hall and museum complex, located at the Champs-Élysées in the 8th arrondissement in Pari ...

and Aperture. It is announced at the Paris Photo fair and was established in 2012. The categories are Photography Catalogue of the Year, PhotoBook of the Year and First PhotoBook (with a $10,000 prize).

Aperture Portfolio Prize

The Aperture Portfolio Prize is an annual international competition to discover, exhibit, and publish new talents in photography. Winners: * 2006: Hiroshi Watanabe * 2007: Julio Bittencourt * 2008: Michael Corridore * 2009:

Alexander Gronsky Alexander Gronsky (Александр Гронский, born 1980) is a Russian landscape photographer. His photographs of the Russian landscape have been shown in solo exhibitions, received awards, and were published in the book ''Pastoral'' ( ...

* 2010: David Favrod * 2011: Sarah Palmer * 2013:

Bryan Schutmaat Bryan Schutmaat (born November 3, 1983) is an American photographer based in Texas, USA. Schutmaat book's include ''Grays the Mountain Sends'' (2013), which won the Aperture Foundation Portfolio Prize; ''Islands of the Blest'' (2014); and ''Good Go ...

* 2014:

Amy Elkins Amy Elkins (born 1979) is an American photographer based in California. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in photography from the School of Visual Arts The School of Visual Arts New York City (SVA NYC) is a private for-profit art scho ...

* 2015: Drew Nikonowicz * 2016: Eli Durst * 2017: Natalie Krick * 2018:

Ka-Man Tse Ka-Man Tse (born 1981) is a Hong Kong-born photographer, video artist, and educator based in New York. Influenced by her Asian-American and queer identity, Tse primarily uses portraiture to tell stories about the people, identity, visibility, and ...

* 2019: Mark McKnight * 2020: Dannielle Bowman * 2021:

Donavon Smallwood Donavon Smallwood (born 1994) is an American photographer, living in New York City. His first book is ''Languor'' (2021). Life and work Smallwood was born, grew up and continues to live in Harlem, New York City. He studied documentary film and Eng ...

* 2022: Felipe Romero Beltrán * 2023: Vân-Nhi Nguyen

Exhibitions

In 2005, Aperture’s three-thousand-square-foot gallery opened in New York’s Chelsea art district. Many of the shows travel to venues in the U.S. and abroad. Aperture's Chelsea gallery showcases exhibitions organized by sister institutions. Aperture has exhibited shows including ''Nazar: Photographs from the Arab World''; ''Joan Fontcuberta: Landscapes Without Memory''; ''William Christenberry, Photographs: 1961–2005''; ''A Couple of Ways of Doing Something, images by Chuck Close'', ''poems by Bob Holman''; ''Lisette Model and Her Successors''; and the Lucie-nominated ''Invasion 68: Prague'', photographs by Josef Koudelka.

References

External links

*{{Official website, www.aperture.org American photography organizations Photography foundations Visual arts publishing companies Publishing companies established in 1952 Awards established in 2012 Photography awards Arts foundations based in the United States