colour photography

Archive for the 'colour photography' Category

May

Exhibition: ‘Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life’ at Haus der Kunst, Munich

Categories: black and white photography, colour photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, landscape, light, memory, photographic series, photography, photojournalism, portrait, reality, space and time
Tags: "struggle" photography, 20 defiance campaign Leaders appear in the Johannesburg Magistrates Court, activism, Adrian Piper, Afrapix, African National Congress, African social life, Alf Kumalo, ANC, anti-apartheid movement, apartheid, apartheid regime, apartheid signage, Bang Bang Club, Benjamin Moloise, Black Consciousness movement, black pimpernel, black South Africans, Bob Gosani, Center for Historical Reenactments, Chief Albert Luthuli, Chris Hani, Chris Hani's assassination, Coffins at the mass funural held in KwaThema, Crowd near the Drill Hall on the opening day of the Treason Trial, Dan Weiner, David Goldblatt, Drum, Drum magazine, Eli Weinberg, Eli Weinberg Crowd near the Drill Hall on the opening day of the Treason Trial, Eli Weinberg Nelson Mandela portrait wearing traditional beads and a bed spread, Ernest Cole, frontline photography, G.R. Naidoo, Gauteng, Gille de Vlieg, Gille de Vlieg Coffins at the mass funural held in KwaThema, Gille de Vlieg Pauline Moloise (mother of Ben), Greame Williams, Greame Williams Nelson Mandela and Winnie Mandela as he is released from the Victor Vester Prison, Hans Haacke, Haus der Kunst, Ian Berry, Jürgen Schadeberg, Jodi Bieber, Jodi Bieber Protest against Chris Hani's assassination, Johannesburg, Jurgen Schadeberg 20 defiance campaign Leaders appear in the Johannesburg Magistrates Court, Jurgen Schadeberg Nelson Mandela Treason Trial, Jurgen Schadeberg The 29 ANC Women's League women are being arrested by the police for demonstrating against the permit laws, Khotso House, Margaret Bourke-White, Memorial Service for Benjamin Moloise, Middle East, Munich, Nelson Mandela, Nelson Mandela and Winnie Mandela, Nelson Mandela and Winnie Mandela as he is released from the Victor Vester Prison, Nelson Mandela portrait wearing traditional beads and a bed spread, Nelson Mandela Treason Trial, Nobel Peace Prize Winner, Omar Badsha, Omar Badsha and Paul Weinberg, Paul Weinberg, Pauline Moloise, Pauline Moloise (mother of Ben), permit laws, Peter Magubane, Peter McKenzie, photo essays, Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life, photojournalism, photojournalistic reportage, politics, Pretoria, Protest against Chris Hani's assassination, Ranjith Kally, Ranjith Kally Chief Albert Luthuli, repression, repression and resistance, resistance, Rise and Fall of Apartheid, Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life, Sharpeville massacre, social documentary photography, South African photographers, South African photography, Stanger in Natal, The 29 ANC Women's League women are being arrested by the police for demonstrating against the permit laws, Treason Trial, two women & Winnie Madikizela Mandela, Victor Vester Prison, Winnie Madikizela Mandela, Winnie Mandela

Exhibition dates: 15th February – 26th May 2013

NEVER AGAIN!

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Many thankx to Haus der Kunst for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Eli Weinberg
Crowd near the Drill Hall on the opening day of the Treason Trial, Johannesburg, 19. December 1956
1956
Times Media Collection, Museum Africa, Johannesburg

Gille de Vlieg
Coffins at the mass funural held in KwaThema, Gauteng, July 23, 1985
1985

Gille de Vlieg
Pauline Moloise (mother of Ben), two women & Winnie Madikizela Mandela mourn at the Memorial Service for Benjamin Moloise, who was hanged earlier that morning. Khotso House, Johannesburg, October 18, 1985
1985

Jodi Bieber
Protest against Chris Hani’s assassination
1993
© Goodman Gallery Johannesburg

“Complex, vivid, evocative, and dramatic, “Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life” represents the most comprehensive exhibition of its kind, attempting to formulate an understanding of apartheid’s legacy in South Africa through visual records. These images responded to the procedures and processes of the apartheid state from its beginning in 1948 to the first non-racial democratic elections that attended its demise in 1994. Featuring more than 600 documentary photographs, artworks, films, newsreel footage, books, magazines, and assorted archival documents, the exhibition will fill more than 2,000 square meters of the East Wing of Haus der Kunst. Starting in the entrance gallery (where two film clips are juxtaposed; one from 1948 showing the victorious Afrikaner National Party’s celebration rally, and another of President F.W. De Klerk in February 1990 announcing Nelson Mandela’s release from prison) the exhibition offers an absorbing exploration of one of the twentieth century’s most contentious historical eras.

The exhibition highlights the different strategies adopted by photographers and artists; from social documentary to reportage, photo essays to artistic appropriation of press and archival material. Through these polysemic images, the exhibition embarks on a tour of how photographers and artists think with pictures, the questions these images pose, and the issues of social justice, resistance, civil rights and the actions of opposition to apartheid raise. In so doing, “The Rise and Fall of Apartheid” brings together many iconic photographs that have rarely been shown before, to propose a fresh historical overview of the photographic and artistic responses to apartheid.

A fundamental argument of the exhibition is that the rise of the Afrikaner National Party to political power and its introduction of apartheid as the legal foundation of governance in 1948 changed the country’s pictorial perception from a “relatively benign colonial space based on racial segregation to a highly contested space in which the majority of the population struggled for equality, democratic representation, and civil rights” (Okwui Enwezor). From the moment apartheid was introduced, photographers in South Africa were immediately aware of how these changes taking place in politics and society accordingly affected photography’s visual language: The medium was transformed from a purely anthropological tool into a social instrument. No one photographed the struggle against apartheid better, more critically, and incisively than South African photographers. For that reason, with the notable exception of a few Western photographers and artists, including Ian Berry, Dan Weiner, Margaret Bourke-White, Hans Haacke, Adrian Piper, and others, the works in the exhibition are overwhelmingly produced by South African photographers.

Resisting the easy dichotomy of victims and oppressors, the photographers’ images present the reading of an evolving dynamic of repression and resistance. Ranging in approach between “engaged” photography of photo essays to the “struggle” photography of social documentary which was aligned with activism, to photojournalistic reportage, the photographers did not only show African citizens as victims, but more importantly as agents of their own emancipation. Included in the exhibition are seminal works by Leon Levson, Eli Weinberg, David Goldblatt and members of “Drum” magazine, such as Peter Magubane, Jürgen Schadeberg, Alf Kumalo, Bob Gosani, G.R. Naidoo, and others in the 1950s. Also represented are the investigative street photography of Ernest Cole and George Hallett in the 1960s, the reportage of Sam Nzima, Noel Watson, and protest images of the Black Consciousness movement, and student marches in the 1970s to those of the Afrapix Collective in the 1980s, as well as reportages by the members of the so-called Bang Bang Club in the 1990s. The exhibition concludes with works by a younger generation of South African photographers, such as Sabelo Mlangeni and Thabiso Sekgale, and the collective Center for Historical Reenactments, whose projects offer subtle reappraisals of the after effects of apartheid still felt today.

These South African photographers represented a clear political belief. They were opponents of the apartheid regime, and they employed photography as an instrument to overcome it. The independent photo agency Afrapix, founded in 1982 by Omar Badsha and Paul Weinberg, saw itself as a group of “cultural workers”. They believed political convictions came first, and that photography, like writing or acting, was part of the anti-apartheid movement. This attitude was supported by photographers such as Peter McKenzie, who – at a cultural conference organized by the ANC (African National Congress) in Gabarone, Botswana in 1982 – argued that the work of cultural producers is necessarily part of the struggle against apartheid. McKenzie’s argument stood in sharp contrast to that of David Goldblatt, who had the opinion that photographers should report on events with as much inner distance as they can muster.

On the other end of the spectrum, the so-called “struggle” or “frontline photography” is characterized by immediacy, giving the impression of being in the middle of the action. “If you want a picture, you get that picture, under all circumstances” was the leitmotif of one of the leading figures, Peter Magubane.

The photographs’ subjects are different historical events. These include the “Treason Trial” of 1956-61, which ended with the acquittal of 156 anti-apartheid activists, including Nelson Mandela; the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, in which police shot 69 demonstrators dead; Mandela’s release in 1990 after 27 years in prison; and the civil war between opposing political factions during the 1994 election. Yet this exhibition is not a history of apartheid itself. Instead it aims to critically interrogate the normative symbols and signs of the photographic and visual responses to apartheid. For example, ritualized gestures were also part of the apartheid imagery. The “thumbs up” as a sign of solidarity among activists belonged to the movement’s nonviolent start when civil disobedience and strikes were still regarded as effective agents. After the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, the resistance became militarized. The cherished “thumbs up” was transformed into the upraised fist, the general symbol of black power. Since the burial of the Sharpeville massacre’s victims, black South Africans expressed their sense of community and identity at funerals. Their public mourning thus became a ritualized form of mass mobilization and defiance.

From the ordinary and mundane to the bureaucratic and institutional, the corrosive effects of the apartheid system on everyday life are explored in the multiplicity of public signage that drew demarcating lines of segregation between whites, Africans, and non-Europeans. For example, Ernest Cole engaged in a sustained study of apartheid signage at train stations, banks, buses, taxi ranks, and throughout the streets of cities like Johannesburg and Pretoria in the early to mid-1960s. Another exemplary image is a photo from 1956 taken by Peter Magubane. It draws attention to the fact that racial segregation restricted movement in both private and public space. The image shows a young white girl sitting on a bench with the inscription “Europeans only” as her black nanny strokes her neck, but must do so from the back bench.

However, the everyday was not limited to the humiliations of policed segregation. “Drum” magazine, one of the most important media outlets for African social life, combined the gritty realism of reportage and the fantasy of normality in the self-constructions of non-European dandies, beauty queens, and the exuberance of township life. Its pages offered images of entertainment, representations of leisure, cultural events, and celebrity portraits. The magazine encompassed a full range of motifs, from relentless documentary photography to fashion shoots, dance revues, and concerts. Through the magazine, photographs found an audience that was politically sensitive and attentive; it also gave South African photographers the opportunity to exchange ideas with colleagues from other African countries, India, and Europe for the first time.

In 1990, the interest of the international press was focused on Mandela’s imminent release. Photographs from South Africa had finally prepared the ground for the participation of world opinion in shaping the country’s future. In this context, the exhibition also asks whether photography can help inform the political face of the world.”

Press release from the Haus der Kunst website

Jurgen Schadeberg
The 29 ANC Women’s League women are being arrested by the police for demonstrating against the permit laws, which prohibited them from entering townships without a permit, 26th August 1952
1952
Courtesy the artist

Jurgen Schadeberg
20 defiance campaign Leaders appear in the Johannesburg Magistrates Court on a charge of contravening the Suppression of Communism Act, August 26, 1952
1952
Courtesy the artist

Ranjith Kally
Chief Albert Luthuli, former President General of the African National Congress, Rector of Glasgow University and 1960 Nobel Peace Prize Winner, gagged by the government from having any of his words published in his country, confined to small area around his home near Stanger in Natal, April 1964
1964
© Bailey’s Archives

Jurgen Schadeberg
Nelson Mandela, Treason Trial
1958
Courtesy the artist

Eli Weinberg
Nelson Mandela portrait wearing traditional beads and a bed spread. Hiding out from the police during his period as the “black pimpernel,” 1961
1961
Courtesy of IDAFSA

Greame Williams
Nelson Mandela and Winnie Mandela as he is released from the Victor Vester Prison
1990
Courtesy the artist
© Greame Williams

Haus der Kunst
Prinzregentenstraße 1
80538 Munich
Germany
T: +49 89 21127 113

Opening hours:
Monday - Sunday 10 am - 8 pm
Thursday 10 am - 10 pm

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May

Exhibition: ‘Yang Fudong: “Estranged Paradise. Works 1993 – 2013″‘ at Kunsthalle Zürich

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: black and white photography, colour photography, digital photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, film, gallery website, intimacy, landscape, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, reality, sculpture, space, time and video
Tags: Cheng shi Zhi guang, Chinese artist, Chinese film maker, Chinese photographer, Chinese photography, City Light, East of Que Village, Estranged Paradise, Estranged Paradise. Works 1993 - 2013, film noir, I love my motherland (wo ai wo de zhu guo), international cinema, International Hotel, International Hotel (1), Kunsthalle Zürich, mo sheng tian tang, Mrs. Huang at M last Night, Shanghai, Shenjia alley, Shenjia alley. Fairy (1), The Evergreen Nature of Romantic Stories, The Fifth Night (Rehearsal), The First Intellectual, Tonight Moon, Yang Fudong, Yang Fudong An Estranged Paradise, Yang Fudong Cheng shi Zhi guang, Yang Fudong City Light, Yang Fudong East of Que Village, Yang Fudong Estranged Paradise, Yang Fudong Estranged Paradise. Works 1993 - 2013, Yang Fudong I love my motherland (wo ai wo de zhu guo), Yang Fudong International Hotel (1), Yang Fudong mo sheng tian tang, Yang Fudong Mrs. Huang at M last Night (8), Yang Fudong Shenjia alley. Fairy (1), Yang Fudong The First Intellectual

Exhibition dates: 6th April – 26th May 2013

Many thankx to the Kunsthalle Zürich for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

*PLEASE NOTE THIS POSTING CONTAINS ART PHOTOGRAPHS OF FEMALE NUDITY – IF YOU DO NOT LIKE PLEASE DO NOT LOOK, FAIR WARNING HAS BEEN GIVEN*

Installation views of Yang Fudong: “Estranged Paradise. Works 1993 – 2013″, Kunsthalle Zürich, 2013
© Stefan Altenburger Photography Zurich

Yang Fudong
East of Que Village
2007
Six channel video installation, b&w, with sound
20 minutes 50 seconds
Installation view Marian Goodman Gallery, New York, 2009
Courtesy of the artist; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York / Paris; ShanghART gallery, Shanghai

“Yang Fudong (born 1971 in Beijing, lives and works in Shanghai) is one of the most important figures of China’s contemporary art scene and independent cinema movement. His films and photographic work, often rooted in traditional Chinese painting, examine tensions between urban and rural, history and the present, worldliness and intellectualism. Their a-temporal and dreamlike quality, long and suspended sequences, dividing narratives, as well as multiple relationships and story lines reflect the conundrums of idealism and ideology of a new generation. At the same time, the works address the ideals and anxieties of young people who are struggling to find their place in the fast-paced changes of present-day China. Estranged Paradise. Works 1993 – 2013, curated by Beatrix Ruf and Philippe Pirotte, is Yang Fudong’s first major institutional survey exhibition in Europe, presenting film, installation as well as photography from the late 1990s until today, highlighting the formal aspects of the construction of cinema in the artist’s oeuvre and its resonance in Film Noir aesthetics. Following the exhibition in Zurich, the show will travel to the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (21 August – 1 December 2013).

Yang came to the attention of the Western art world in 2002, when he premiered his film An Estranged Paradise (1997-2002) at Documenta XI. Beginning with a meditation on the composition of space in Chinese painting, the film traces the spiritual instability of Zhuzi, a young intellectual in the legendary city of Hangzhou. The film reflects the artist’s fascination with international cinema, referencing such works as Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise (1984) and Jean-Luc Godard’s À bout de souffle (1960), as well as Shanghai films from the 1920s and 1930s, a place and time in which China was strongly influenced by the West. Using camera, lighting and cinematic space to outline the landscape of Chinese modernity, Yang reveals his love of black and white cinematography. Likewise, the contradictions and discontents raised by a progressive modernity as characteristic themes of Film Noir play a significant role in the artist’s work: an invocation of the past and anxiety about the future, and tensions between indifference and engagement, remembrance and forgetting. Films that embody Film Noir concepts include the single channel videos Backyard – Hey, Sun is Rising! (2001), in which four men engage in a series of simultaneous but isolated rituals: smoking, massage, military exercises in a park; City Light (2000), which functions as a noir detective story with elements of slapstick; Honey (2003) then again, a stylistic reference to spy films and all their clichés, invokes ambiguity of seduction and deceit as the earmark of espionage, but also a sense of heightened anxiety and alienation, reflecting paranoia, possibly a metaphor for an ambivalent situation in contemporary China. More recently, since Yang doesn’t direct his actors anymore, they seem to inhabit plot-less noirs, reflecting the genre more in stylistic ways, as low-key lighting, exaggerated contrasts, a dramatically shadowed lighting, an eroticist style and a psychologically expressive approach to visual composition, or mise-en-sène.

The protagonists of Yang’s works are mostly his contemporaries, young people between the ages of twenty and forty, who have spent most of their lives in a society in transformation. The ideals and anxieties of a new generation, the dignity of the individual in a rapidly developing society still in the process of adjusting to the material conditions of the constantly changing times, are recurring themes. This is most obvious in photographic series like Don’t worry, it will be better (2000) or Mrs. Huang at M last night (2006), both depict a fancy lady and her courtiers, in a hotel room or at a night out, seemingly enjoying the trophies of their material success. The sly glances of the protagonists, leave the audience in a state of uncertainty regarding the actual events and the storyline.

In other works some scenes and settings visually recall the literati paintings of ancient China, made by artists and intellectuals pursuing spiritual freedom living in seclusion. The Evergreen Nature of Romantic Stories (2000), a series of photographs in which young men and women stare at miniature landscapes (constructed landscapes mimicking natural scenery of rocks, hills and rivers), relocates the importance of reflection in traditional Chinese gardens as a metaphor for personal orientation and identity, in the domesticity of modern apartments. In the early video-installation Tonight Moon (2000), men in swimsuits and men in costumes mingle in an Eastern botanical garden. Multiple story lines develop and diverge on small monitors and a large screen, conveying a sense of ambiguity. International Hotel (2010), the recent series of black and white photographs of attractive women in bathing suits dipping into a pool at an Art Deco Hotel, invokes the sentimental and touches upon questions about feminine interiority, imbued with melancholy connotations taking the form of moderation and accommodation.

With the film installation East of Que Village (2007), Yang diverges from the urbanity of his other work, delivering a highly personal film that focuses on the sense of isolation and loss increasingly present in China’s contemporary society as communities are scattered, traditional rural villages dissolved, and the fight for survival takes precedence. The imagery is of a desolate and hostile landscape, the host to a group of wild dogs fighting a merciless life-and-death struggle for survival, with only a sporadic presence of human life and social values.

More and more in recent works, Yang shifts his attention toward a reflection on film production. The Fifth Night (Rehearsal) (2010) is an alternative edition of his seven-screen video installation The Fifth Night (with each screen running ten minutes and thirty-seven seconds, the exact length of a reel of film), including four full takes as well as an earlier rehearsal. The artist used different lenses for each camera, but films everything at the same moment. Yang calls this type of installation a “spatial film” or “multiple views” film, and he compares the technique to a contemporary form of the Chinese hand scroll. We see the itinerant youths who often occupy his films, with their pensive, inhibited expressions. Each screen features one solitary “absolute” protagonist; together they compose a series of distinct and mutually unbeknownst worlds. One screen’s lead character, in turn, becomes another’s extra. The sets and props are Yang’s most elaborate to date, with stages, spiral staircases, and alleyways merging into one. The enclosed courtyard in which the piece was shot comes to resemble a maze, pushing the concept of the narrative spatial possibilities of cinema. This bold experiment, which takes an open, outdoor space as an interior, breaks down a boundary that runs throughout Yang’s other films, which have been shot entirely inside or entirely outside. The “rehearsal” version captures the video output from seven monitors that were connected to seven film cameras and ends in “failure”, as one witnesses that one of the cameras breaks, leaving only six channels, assuming the notion that film is both a medium and a site. Additionally, there are three screens of photo documentation and a documentary. Yang coined it a “preview film” because of its raw-image quality, which included viewfinder frames, contradicting the very slick and refined results of the known version. In this instance, Yang transcended his traditional working process of shooting-editing-screening, and pushed further his theory that “anything which has been filmed can be shown. I found that what attracts me the most, and becomes my material, is the process of filmmaking itself.”

Press release from the Kunsthalle Zürich website

Yang Fudong
Shenjia alley. Fairy (1)
2000
C-print
96 x 150 cm
Courtesy of the artist; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York / Paris; ShanghART gallery, Shanghai

Yang Fudong
East of Que Village
2007
Six channel video installation, b&w, with sound
20 minutes 50 seconds
Courtesy of the artist, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York / Paris, ShanghART gallery, Shanghai

Yang Fudong
Mrs. Huang at M last Night (8)
2006
C-print, b&w
120 x 180 cm
Courtesy of the artist; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York / Paris; ShanghART gallery, Shanghai

Yang Fudong
An Estranged Paradise (mo sheng tian tang)
1997-2002
Five-channel video (35 mm b&w film transferred to DVD), music by Jin Wang
76 minutes
Courtesy of the artist, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York / Paris, ShanghART gallery, Shanghai

Yang Fudong
I love my motherland (wo ai wo de zhu guo)
1999
5-channel b&w video-installation
12 minutes
Courtesy of the artist; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York / Paris; ShanghART gallery, Shanghai

Yang Fudong
City Light (Cheng shi Zhi guang)
2000
Single-channel video, color, with sound
6 minutes
Courtesy of the artist, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York / Paris, ShanghART gallery, Shanghai

Yang Fudong
International Hotel (1)
2010
Inkjet print, b&w
180 x 120 cm
Courtesy of the artist; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York / Paris; ShanghART gallery, Shanghai

Yang Fudong
The First Intellectual
2000
C-print
193 x 127 cm
Courtesy of the artist, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York / Paris, ShanghART gallery, Shanghai

Kunsthalle Zürich
Limmatstrasse 270
CH-8005 Zürich
T: +41 (0) 44 272 15 15

Opening hours:
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Thursday: 11am – 8pm, free admission from 5 – 8pm
Saturday, Sunday, as well as public holidays: 10am – 5pm
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May

Exhibition: ‘Saul Leiter’ at Kunst Haus Wien, Vienna

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: American, american photographers, beauty, black and white photography, colour photography, documentary photography, exhibition, gallery website, light, memory, New York, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, quotation, reality, space, street photography and time
Tags: 35mm Kodachrome colour slide film, Abstract Expressionism, abstract photography, abstraction, alienation, Always the young strangers, arts, black and white photography, Carol Brown, city, colour photography, cubist changes of perspective, Edward Steichen, Edward Steichen Always the Young Strangers, From the El, Graffiti Heads, Harper's Bazaar, history of photography, Kodachrome colour slide film, Kunst Haus Wien, master of colour photography, melancholy, MOMA, Museum of Modern Art, New York City, New York School, New York street photography, Nova magazine, painting metamorphosed into photography, Photographic abstractions, Photographs by William Eggleston, portraiture, reflections, Saul Leiter, Saul Leiter Carol Brown, Saul Leiter From the El, Saul Leiter Graffiti Heads, Saul Leiter Harlem, Saul Leiter Hat, Saul Leiter Kutztown, Saul Leiter New York, Saul Leiter Nude, Saul Leiter Pizza, Saul Leiter Reflection, Saul Leiter Shirt, Saul Leiter Shopping, Saul Leiter Sign Painter, Saul Leiter Soames Bantry, Saul Leiter Street Scene, Saul Leiter Taxi, Saul Leiter Walking, semiabstract urban space, Soames Bantry, stephen shore, still life, street photography, subjective observations, subjective photography, the city, urban space, urbanscape, Vienna, William Eggleston

Exhibition dates: 31st January – 26th May 2013

“I like it when one is not certain of what one sees.
We don’t know why the photographer has taken such a picture.
If we look and look, we begin to see and are still left with the pleasure of uncertainty.”

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“It is not where it is or what it is that matters, but how you see it.”

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“After the age of 75 you should not be photographed.
You should be painted by Rembrandt or Hals, but not by Caravaggio.”

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Saul Leiter

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How brave is this photographer, occluding most of the colour image in darkness, something that had never been done before and has rarely been seen since. Look at the last three photographs in this posting to understand what I mean.

Considering that Saul Leiter’s colour photography predates William Eggleston and Stephen Shore by a couple of decades, it can truly be said that he is one of the early masters of colour photography. As the curator Ingo Taubhorn comments, “The older aesthetic views on the hegemony of black-and-white photography and the historical dating of the first artistic use of colour photography to the early 1970s need to be critically reviewed. Saul Leiter’s oeuvre essentially rewrites the history of photography.” Well said.

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Many thankx to the Kunst Haus Wein for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Saul Leiter
From the El
c. 1955
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter
Nude
1970s
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter
Taxi
c. 1957
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

“KUNST HAUS WIEN is devoting a major retrospective to the oeuvre of the 89-year-old photographer and painter Saul Leiter. The exhibition, which was developed in cooperation with House of Photography / Deichtorhallen Hamburg, presents the wide range of this versatile artist’s works, including early black-and-white and colour photographs, fashion images, painted photographs of nudes, paintings and a number of his sketchbooks. One section of the exhibition is devoted to Saul Leiter’s most recent photographs, which he continues to take on the streets of New York’s East Village.

It is only in the last few years that Saul Leiter has received due recognition for his role as one of the pioneers of colour photography. As early as 1946, and thus well before the representatives of the so-called “new colour” photography in the 1970s, such as William Eggleston and Stephen Shore, he was one of the first to use colour photography for artistic shots, despite its being frowned upon by other artists of the day. “The older aesthetic views on the hegemony of black-and-white photography and the historical dating of the first artistic use of colour photography to the early 1970s need to be critically reviewed. Saul Leiter’s oeuvre essentially rewrites the history of photography,” comments curator Ingo Taubhorn.

Saul Leiter has always considered himself both a painter and a photographer. In his painting and in his photographs he clearly tends towards abstraction and two-dimensionality. One often finds large deep-black areas, produced by shadows, taking up as much as three quarters of his photographs. Passers-by are not presented as individuals, but as blurred clouds of colour, filtered through misty panes of glass or wedged in between walls of buildings and traffic signs. The boundaries between the abstract and the representational in his paintings and photographs are virtually fluid. Saul Leiter’s street photography – a genre in which his work is matchless – is, in essence, painting metamorphosed into photography.

In Leiter’s works, the genres of street photography, portraiture, still life, fashion photography and architectural photography coalesce. He finds his motifs, such as shop windows, passers-by, cars, signs and – time and again – umbrellas, in the direct vicinity of his apartment in New York, where he has now lived for almost 60 years. The indeterminateness of detail, the blurring of movement and reduced depth of field, the use of shadows or deliberate avoidance of the necessary light, as well as the alienation caused by photographing through windows or as reflections, all combine to create the muted colour vocabulary of a semi-real, semiabstract urban space. These are the works of an as yet almost undiscovered modern master of colour photography.

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About Saul Leiter

Saul Leiter discovered his passion for art at an early age and started painting as a teenager at the end of the 1940s. His family did not support him in his artistic endeavours; his father, a renowned Talmudic rabbi and scholar, had always hoped his son Saul would one day follow him in the family tradition and become a rabbi. Leiter was self-taught, but by no means uneducated. He read and learned a great deal about art, so that his knowledge and understanding constantly grew. In this way, he made sure that his own ideas and artistic works were duly related to the historical context.

In 1946, shortly after he had moved to New York, Leiter became acquainted with Richard Poussette-Dart, who introduced him to photography, a medium that appealed to Leiter very much and that he quickly made his own. Leiter soon resolved to use photography not only as a means of making art but as a way of earning a living. He started taking fashion photographs, and thanks to his good eye, his playful sense of humour, and his pronounced sense of elegance, swiftly emerged as an extraordinary fashion photographer. In the 1950s, “Life” magazine published photo spreads of Saul Leiter’s first black-and-white series. He took part in exhibitions, for example “Always the Young Strangers” (1953) curated by Edward Steichen at the Museum of Modern Art. From 1958 to 1967, Leiter worked for “Harper’s Bazaar.” Altogether he spent some 20 years photographing for various classic magazines as well as more recent ones: after “Esquire” and “Harper’s” he also worked for “Show”, “Elle”, “British Vogue”, ”Queen” and “Nova”.

Saul Leiter
New York
1950s
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter
Sign Painter
1954
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter
Graffiti Heads
1950
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter
Shirt
1948
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter
Harlem
1960
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter
Hat
1956
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter
Street Scene
1957
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

The exhibition chapters

Abstract Painting

Although his photographic oeuvre has dominated his image as an artist, Saul Leiter sees himself first and foremost as a painter. He began his artistic career as a painter, and while working as a photographer he never stopped painting and drawing. Leiter’s passion for art began when he was just a child, even though his ambitions received no support from his family. As a teenager he spent many hours in libraries studying art books. He found inspiration in the paintings of such artists as Vermeer, Bonnard, Vuillard and Picasso, as well as in Japanese graphic art. Leiter, who was self-taught, painted his first pictures in 1940. Most of them were lyrical, abstract compositions that reflected his admiration for the new American avant-garde. His ardent feeling for colour is recognisable even in these early paintings, as is his lifelong predilection for painting small format pastels and watercolours on paper.

After moving to New York in 1946, he sometimes presented his works together with abstract expressionist painters such as Willem de Kooning and Philip Guston. His studio was located on 10th Street in the East Village, which at that time was a neighbourhood very popular with avant-garde artists. Leiter shared these artists’ interest in abstraction and the use of colour, gesture and the element of chance, but he chose a radically different format for his works. Whereas many of his contemporaries, such as Jasper Johns or Franz Kline, painted wall-sized paintings that physically filled the beholder’s entire field of vision, Leiter worked in an intimate, small format. His works were also exhibited at the Tanager Gallery, one of the most important artist-run cooperatives in the East Village at that time. After switching the main focus of his work to photography in the late 1940s, however, Leiter stopped exhibiting his paintings.

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Figurative Painting

Saul Leiter’s abstract painting frequently unites qualities of intimacy and familiarity with a sense of space reminiscent of an open landscape. Occasionally he also makes figurative sketches. Often these give mere intimations of a face or a body, perhaps a pointed nose, eyes and a mouth. Some of his male figures wear hats, similar to those worn by the religious Jews that peopled Leiter’s world in his youth. Most of these works focus on a single figure; only occasionally do we see a couple, or several figures grouped together. The quality of the line and the subtle suggestion of figures or heads in these paintings are reminiscent of paintings by Édouard Vuillard and Pierre Bonnard, in which facial features are hinted at through lines and fine shadings of color rather than being defined by careful modelling.

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Street Photography

When, in 1947, Saul Leiter attended an exhibition of works by the French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, he became convinced of the creative potential of this medium. He bought himself a 35mm Leica camera at a bargain and began, without any previous training, to take photographs on the streets of New York. At first he used only black-and-white film, but in 1948 he also started using colour film. His black-and-white photographs exhibit some elements of documentary photography but are nevertheless far removed from a photojournalistic style. Rather, they are subjective observations, often concentrating on a single individual in the big city. Leiter’s complex, multilayered works evoke feelings of alienation, melancholy and tension. Leiter underscores this impression by experimenting with strong contrasts, light and shadow, and asymmetrical compositions containing large areas in which the images are blurred.

Thematically and stylistically, there are great similarities between Leiter’s works and the works of other representatives of New York street photography of the same era, for example Ted Croner, Leon Levinstein, Louis Faurer and later Robert Frank and William Klein, today generally known as the New York School. Their radical new, subjective photography had a psychological component that revealed an unusual sensitivity to social turbulences and the uncertainty felt by many Americans during the years following the Second World War.

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Colour Photography

Until well into the 1970s, colour photography was used almost exclusively for advertising and fashion magazines. Many photographers considered the vivid colours unsuitable for artistic expression. Moreover, they were unable to develop their colour film themselves, which made it a very expensive undertaking. It was not until 1976 that the Museum of Modern Art in New York gave its first exhibition devoted to colour photography, when it presented “Photographs by William Eggleston”.

Saul Leiter was one of the few photographers who did not reject colour photography. As a painter, he took a particular interest in street photography as a genre in which to experiment with colour film. As early as 1948, at the beginning of his career, he bought his first roles of 35mm Kodachrome colour slide film, which had been on the market since 1936. In order to save money, he often used film that had passed its sell-by date. Leiter particularly liked the resulting pictures with their delicate, muted colours.

The innumerable early colour photographs that Leiter took between 1948 and 1960 are of a unique painterly and narrative quality. They stand in contrast to the works of other photographers, in which colour is often the defining element of the composition. This circumstance, coupled with Leiter’s tendency towards abstraction, links Leiter’s photography with his painting. But in contrast to his painting (and his black-and-white photographs), his colour photographs are highly structured. It is the incomparable beauty of these works that has brought Leiter recognition as one of the masters of 20th-century photography.

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Fashion Photography

In the late 1950s, Saul Leiter worked successfully in the fields of fashion photography and advertising. From the very first, his style was unmistakeable. His images were multilayered and complex, characterised by soft, impressionistic qualities and cubist changes of perspective. He was given his first commercial assignment in 1958 by Henry Wolf, at that time the new Art Director of Harper’s Bazaar, with whom Leiter became friends. Harper’s Bazaar was one of the leading American fashion magazines, presenting trail-blazing fashion series by photographers such as Richard Avedon or Lillian Bassman.

Subsequently, Leiter was given more and more prestigious assignments, and over the years began to spend almost all his time doing commercial work. Apart from Harper’s Bazaar, his fashion and advertising photos appeared in Elle and Show, in British Vogue and Queen and also in Nova. The amazing thing is that during this period, Leiter managed to retain his own narrative, stylised aesthetic, whereas other fashion photographers favoured a rather brittle, graphic style. In the 1970s, partly due to his own dwindling interest in commercial photography, Leiter received fewer and fewer assignments. In 1981 he gave up his studio on Fifth Avenue and in the following years led a quiet life far from the public eye.

Saul Leiter
Carol Brown, ‘Harper’s Bazaar’
c. 1958
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter
Soames Bantry, ‘Nova’
1960
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter
Walking
1956
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter
Reflection
1958
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter
Shopping
c. 1953
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter
Kutztown
1948
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter
Pizza, Patterson
1952
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

KUNST HAUS WIEN
Museum Hundertwasser
Untere Weißgerberstraße 13
1030 Vienna
T: +43-1-712 04 91

Opening hours:
Daily, 10 am – 7 pm

Kunst Haus Wein website

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May

Exhibition: ‘Concrete – Photography and Architecture’ at Fotomuseum Winterthur, Zurich

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: American, american photographers, architecture, beauty, black and white photography, colour photography, designer, digital photography, documentary photography, exhibition, film, gallery website, landscape, light, memory, New York, photographic series, photography, pictorialism, sculpture, space, surrealism, time, video and Walker Evans
Tags: "Op Art" bathing suit by Sinz, #1176 01 29 1997 3:30PM Looking Southeast, 24 Rue Bièvre Paris, Aage Strüwing Arne Jacobsen: Rødovre Town Hall, Anonymous Hardstrasse with Hardbrücke in construction, architectural design, architectural photography, architecture, architecture photography, Arne Jacobsen, Arne Jacobsen: Rødovre Town Hall, arts, beauty, Berlin, Blikkiesdorp, Blikkiesdorp Cape Town, Brutalism, Cambridge, Canadian Embassy Leipziger Platz Berlin, Cape Town, Carlo Scarpa's Tomba Brion, Cathedral of Light, Chandigarh, Charles Marville, Charles Marville 24 Rue Bièvre Paris, Chrysler Building under construction, concrete, Concrete - Photography and Architecture, concrete architecture, Concrete exhibition, design and reality, English photographer, exclusivity, f. c. gundlach, F.C. Gundlach "Op Art" bathing suit by Sinz, Façade of the Secretariat Building, Fotomuseum Winterthur, fragility, French photographer, gelatin silver print, Guido Guidi, Guido Guidi #1176 01 29 1997 3:30PM Looking Southeast, Guido Guidi Carlo Scarpa's Tomba Brion, Hardstrasse with Hardbrücke in construction, Henry Fox Talbot, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Hiroshi Sugimoto Seagram Building, homes and houses, Japanese artist, japanese photographer, Lala Aufsberg, Lala Aufsberg Cathedral of Light, Laurence Bonvin, Laurence Bonvin Blikkiesdorp Cape Town, Le Corbusier, Le Corbusier Façade of the Secretariat Building, Le Vele di Scampia, Leipziger Platz, leipziger platz berlin, Lucien Hervé, Lucien Hervé Le Corbusier: Façade of the Secretariat Building, Michael Wesely, Michael Wesely Canadian Embassy, Migropolis, Moriz Nähr, Moriz Nähr Staircase in the house Stonborough-Wittgenstein, Moriz Nähr Stiegenhaus im Haus Stonborough-Wittgenstein, New York, Nuremberg, photoanimation, Photography and Architecture, photography of architecture, Rødovre Town Hall, Salt print from calotype negative, Schlieren photography, Seagram Building, skyscraper, South Africa, St. John’s College, Staircase in the house Stonborough, Staircase in the house Stonborough-Wittgenstein, Stiegenhaus im Haus Stonborough-Wittgenstein, The Bridge of Sighs, Tobias Zielony, Tobias Zielony Le Vele di Scampia, utopian fantasies, Walker Evans, Walker Evans  Chrysler Building under construction, William Henry Fox Talbot, William Henry Fox Talbot The Bridge of Sighs, Wittgenstein, Wolfgang Scheppe's Migropolis, Zurich

Exhibition dates: 2nd March – 20th May 2013

When creating this blog, so much of my time is spent cleaning up clearly inadequate media images, an example of which can be seen below. I have become very adept at this process and my thoughts are this: would you want to be the artist whose work is displayed to the public in a remarkably decomposed manner, one not up to a standard of any artist who cares about their prints and reputation? I certainly would not. It is a wonder to me that museums and galleries spend thousands of dollars staging exhibitions and producing costly catalogues and yet cannot spend a tiny proportion of time, money and care on their media images to promote artist and said exhibition. I had to spend a lot of time on over half of these images to bring them up to presentable standard.

Having said that, there are some cracking photographs in this posting. The Sugimoto is sublime, Walker Evans so muscular, Lucien Hervé a masterpiece of light and texture, and Moriz Nähr a symphony of light and tone, to name but a few. I hope you enjoy all the effort it takes to bring these images to you.

Marcus

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Many thankx to the Fotomuseum Winterthur, Zurich for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Moriz Nähr
 Stiegenhaus im Haus Stonborough-Wittgenstein [Staircase in the house Stonborough-Wittgenstein] (composite)
1928

Anonymous
Hardstrasse with Hardbrücke in construction
1972
Gelatin-silver print
8,8 x 12,6 cm
Baugeschichtliches Archiv der Stadt Zürich

Michael Wesely
Canadian Embassy, Leipziger Platz, Berlin (5.2.2003 – 28.4.2005)
 C-print
125 x 175 cm
Galerie Fahnemann, Berlin
© Michael Wesely/Courtesy Galerie Fahnemann

William Henry Fox Talbot
The Bridge of Sighs, St. John’s College,  Cambridge
1845
Salt print from calotype negative
16.4 x 20.6 cm
Museum Folkwang Essen

Charles Marville
24, Rue Bièvre, Paris
1865-1869
Albumin print
27.4 x 36.6 cm
Collection Thomas Walther

Lucien Hervé
Le Corbusier: Façade of the Secretariat Building, Chandigarh, 1961
1961
Gelatin-silver print
25.5 x 25.4 cm
Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal
© Estate Lucien Hervé

F.C. Gundlach
“Op Art” bathing suit by Sinz, Vouliagmeni/Greece
1966
Gelatin-silver print
50 x 50 cm
F.C. Gundlach, Hamburg
© F.C. Gundlach

Laurence Bonvin
Blikkiesdorp, Cape Town, South Africa
2009
Inkjet-print
40 x 50 cm
Courtesy the artist
© Laurence Bonvin

“Architectures and cities are both volumes and images alike. We experience them directly, physically and sensually, as well as through pictures. Pictures speak a language of their own. They offer a discourse that is quite unlike the physical experience of architecture. They transform volume into surface; distil matter into forms and signs – rarely, if ever, leaving it as it is. That is probably why so many architects try to get involved in determining the image of their buildings. Concrete – Photography and Architecture seeks to approach the singular and complex relationship between architecture and photography in light-hearted, narrative and dialectical ways. The exhibition explores issues of history and ideology, as well as the specifics of form and material, in the photographic image.

The visual appeal of destroyed or dilapidated buildings is also addressed, as are their powerful demonstrations of power and exclusivity, fragility and beauty. To what extent does photography influence not only the way architecture is perceived, but also the way it is designed? How does an image bring architecture to life, and at what point does it become uncanny? How do settlements develop into cities? Or, in sociological terms: how do work and life interconnect differently in, say, Zurich and Winterthur, as opposed to, say, Calcutta? And how do skyscrapers and living spaces translate into the flat, two-dimensional world of photography?

Concrete – Photography and Architecture is not, however, chronologically arranged. Instead, it is based on compelling positions, counterpositions and thematic fields that connect various concrete, fundamental and historical aspects. Alongside everyday buildings and prestigious architecture, structured by horizontal and vertical axes, alongside homes and houses, utopian fantasies, design and reality, an important aspect of the exhibition is the compelling appeal of architectural decay due to the passage of time, through both natural and deliberate destruction. It is almost as though photography were providing a moral reminder even such magnificence and presence, whether hewn in stone or cast in concrete, has its weaknesses too.

Architecture has always been an important platform for the frequently heated discussion of ideas and views, zeitgeist and weltanschauung, everyday life and aesthetics. Architecture is the bold materialisation of private and public visions, functionality and avant-garde art alike. It is, as Slavoj Žižek puts it, ideology in stone. Photography and architecture both play an undisputed role in our everyday lives. They confront us on a daily basis, often without our even noticing, and they influence how we think, act and live in subliminal and lasting ways. Concrete – Photography and Architecture provides visual answers to the question of what it is that makes up the intimate yet complex relationship between architecture and photography, architect and photographer.

The exhibition presents more than 400 photographs and groups of works from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, including William Henry Fox Talbot, Domenico Bresolin and Charles Marville as well as Germaine Krull, Lucia Moholy and Julius Shulman, and spanning an arc to contemporary works by Georg Aerni, Iwan Baan, Luisa Lambri and Hiroshi Sugimoto. Projects such as the long-term observations of Schlieren photography or Wolfgang Scheppe’s Migropolis show how the art of photography is playing an increasingly important role as an instrument of research and knowledge. The exhibition is accompanied by a lavishly illustrated book published by Scheidegger & Spiess, with some 300 colour and black-and-white pictures, essays by Jochen Becker, Johannes Binotto, Verena Huber Nievergelt, Michael Jakob, Nicoletta Leonardi, Lorenzo Rocha, Caspar Schärer, Aveek Sen and Urs Stahel as well as a conversation with Annette Gigon, Meret Ernst and Armin Linke.”

Press release from the Fotomuseum Winterthur website

Guido Guidi
#1176 01 29 1997 3:30PM Looking Southeast
From Carlo Scarpa’s Tomba Brion
1997
C-print
19,5 x 24,6 cm
Courtesy the artist
© Guido Guidi

Tobias Zielony
Le Vele di Scampia
2009
Blu Ray photoanimation
8.57 min
Courtesy Koch Oberhuber Wolff, Berlin
© Tobias Zielony/ KOW

Hiroshi Sugimoto
Seagram Building, New York City
1997
Gelatin-silver print
58,4 x 47 cm
Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal
© Hiroshi Sugimoto/Courtesy of Gallery Koyanagi Tokyo

Aage Strüwing
Arne Jacobsen: Rødovre Town Hall
1955
Gelatin-silver print
23,7 x 17 cm
EPFL Archives de la construction moderne, Lausanne
© Estate Strüwing

Moriz Nähr
 Stiegenhaus im Haus Stonborough-Wittgenstein [Staircase in the house Stonborough-Wittgenstein]
1928
Silbergelatine-Abzug
13.8 x 8.9 cm
Albertina, Wien
© Estate Moriz Nähr

Haus Wittgenstein, also known as the Stonborough House and the Wittgenstein House) is a house in the modernist style designed and built on the Kundmanngasse, Vienna, by the Austrian architect Paul Engelmannand the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.

In November 1925, Wittgenstein’s sister Margaret Stonborough-Wittgenstein commissioned Engelmann to design and build a large townhouse. Margaret also invited her brother to help with the design in part to distract him from an incident that had happened while he had been a primary school teacher: he had hit a boy for getting an answer wrong and the boy had collapsed. The architect was Paul Engelmann, someone Wittgenstein had come to know while training to be an Artillery Officer in Olmutz. Engelmann designed a spare modernist house after the style of Adolf Loos: three rectangular blocks. Wittgenstein showed a great interest in the project and in Engelmann’s plans and poured himself into the project for over two years. He focused on the windows, doors, door knobs, and radiators, demanding that every detail be exactly as he specified, to the point where everyone involved in the project was exhausted. One of the architects, Jacques Groag, wrote in a letter: “I come home very depressed with a headache after a day of the worst quarrels, disputes, vexations, and this happens often. Mostly between me and Wittgenstein.” When the house was nearly finished he had a ceiling raised 30mm so the room had the exact proportions he wanted.

Waugh writes that Margaret eventually refused to pay for the changes Wittgenstein kept demanding, so he bought himself a lottery ticket in the hope of paying for things that way. It took him a year to design the door handles, and another to design the radiators. Each window was covered by a metal screen that weighed 150 kg, moved by a pulley Wittgenstein designed. Bernhard Leitner, author of The Architecture of Ludwig Wittgenstein, said of it that there is barely anything comparable in the history of interior design: “It is as ingenious as it is expensive. A metal curtain that could be lowered into the floor.”

The house was finished by December 1928, and the family gathered there that Christmas to celebrate its completion. Describing the work, Ludwig’s eldest sister, Hermine, wrote: “Even though I admired the house very much, I always knew that I neither wanted to, nor could, live in it myself. It seemed indeed to be much more a dwelling for the gods than for a small mortal like me”. Paul Wittgenstein, Ludwig’s brother, disliked it, and when Margaret’s nephew came to sell it, he reportedly did so on the grounds that she had never liked it either. Wittgenstein himself found the house too austere, saying it had good manners, but no primordial life or health. He nevertheless seemed committed to the idea of becoming an architect: the Vienna City Directory listed him as “Dr Ludwig Wittgenstein, occupation: architect” between 1933 and 1938.

After World War II, the house became a barracks and stables for Russian soldiers. It was owned by Thomas Stonborough, son of Margaret until 1968 when it was sold to a developer for demolition. For two years after this the house was under threat of demolition. The Vienna Landmark Commission saved it – after a campaign by Bernhard Leitner – and made it a national monument in 1971, and since 1975 it has housed the cultural department of the Bulgarian Embassy.

(Text from Wikipedia)

Lala Aufsberg
Cathedral of Light
c. 1937
Gelatin-silver print
24 x 18 cm
Town Archive Nuremberg
© Photo Marburg

Lala Aufsberg (actually, Ida Louise Aufsberg, born 26 February 1907 in Sonthofen, May 18, 1976 ibid) was a well-known art photographer. After attending primary school and six years of school for Higher daughters in Immenstadt she began training for the 1932 photo dealer in Oberstdorf. After completion of the training Lala Aufsberg moved to Nuremberg, where she worked in the photographers’ studios of Seitz and Rosemary. In 1931 she joined the photo club of friends of photography in Nuremberg.

From April 1938 Lala Aufsberg attended the State School of Applied Arts and Crafts in Weimar, Department Lichtbildnerei at Walter Hege. In July 1938, she passed the exam for the master photographer’s craft, and in the same year returned to Sonthofen and opened a photographic studio. In the years 1937 and 1938 she documented the Nazi Party rallies in Nuremberg (see above photograph). She received her first artistic job in the years 1941-1942, in which she photographed the murals in churches and monasteries in Carinthia and Styria. Owned by the University of Marburg “German documentation center for art history” – Bildarchiv Foto Marburg (listed in UNESCO Archives Portal) acquired 1976/1977 and 1996, the Lala-Aufsberg archive with about 46,000 art history, black and white negatives in sizes 6×6 and 9×12 and 103,000 photos.

Walker Evans
 Chrysler Building under construction, New York
1929
Gelatin-silver print
16.8 x 8.3 cm
Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Fotomuseum Winterthur
Grüzenstrasse 44 + 45 CH-8400
Winterthur (Zürich)

Opening hours:
Tuesday to Sunday 11 am – 6 pm
Wednesday 11 am – 8 pm
Closed on Mondays

Fotomuseum Winterthur website

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May

Exhibition: ‘Gilles Caron, The Conflict Within’ at The Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: black and white photography, colour photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, intimacy, landscape, memory, Paris, photographic series, photography, photojournalism, portrait, reality, space, street photography and time
Tags: 6 May 1968, American Patrol during the Vietnam War, Battle of Dak To, Biafra, Civil War in Biafra, Compassionate Icons, Czechoslovakia, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Daniel Cohn-Bendit facing a CRS in front of the Sorbonne, Filmmaker and photographer Raymond Depardon, French photographer, General Moshe Dayan, Gilles Caron American Patrol during the Vietnam War, Gilles Caron Battle of Dak To, Gilles Caron Civil War in Biafra, Gilles Caron Daniel Cohn-Bendit facing a CRS in front of the Sorbonne, Gilles Caron Demonstration at the first anniversary of the Soviet repression of Prague Spring, Gilles Caron Filmmaker and photographer Raymond Depardon, Gilles Caron Israeli Soldiers at the Wailing Wall at the end of the Six Day War, Gilles Caron Protest rue Saint-Jacques, Gilles Caron Protest rue Saint-Jacques Paris, Gilles Caron The Conflict Within, Gilles Caron Transport of a victim of the famine of the Civil War in Biafra, Gilles Caron Vietnam November 1967, inner moral conflict, Israeli Soldiers at the Wailing Wall at the end of the Six Day War, Lausanne, Looking at the reporter, Moshe Dayan, Musée de l'Elysée, Musée de l'Elysée Lausanne, Nigéria, Nouvelle Vague, photojournalism, Prague, Prague Spring, Protest rue Saint-Jacques Paris, Protest rue Saint-Jacques Paris 1968, Raymond Depardon, Sorbonne, Switzerland, The Conflict Within, The contemplative soldier, The French Capa, The iconography of revolt, Transport of a victim of the famine of the Civil War in Biafra, Vietnam, Vietnam November 1967, Vietnam war, Vietnam War photographers, Vietnam war photographs, war, war photographer, war photography

Exhibition dates: 30th January – 12th May 2013

Dead at 30

Died so young

Probably at the barrel of a snub nosed gun.

Guilt, narcissism, parody or irony

Doesn’t matter now

He’s dead…

Photos live on

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Many thankx to the Musée de l’Elysée Lausanne for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Gilles Caron
Battle of Dak To, Vietnam, November 1967
1967
© Fondation Gilles Caron

Gilles Caron
Transport of a victim of the famine of the Civil War in Biafra, July 1968
1968
© Fondation Gilles Caron

Gilles Caron
Protest rue Saint-Jacques, Paris, 6 May 1968
1968
© Fondation Gilles Caron

Gilles Caron
Demonstration at the first anniversary of the Soviet repression of “Spring in Prague”, Czechoslovakia, 21 August, 1969
1969
© Fondation Gilles Caron

Gilles Caron
American Patrol during the Vietnam War 1967
1967
© Fondation Gilles Caron

Gilles Caron
Israeli Soldiers at the Wailing Wall at the end of the Six Day War in 1967
1967
© Fondation Gilles Caron

Gilles Caron
General Moshe Dayan June 1967
1967
© Fondation Gilles Caron

Visual memory of an epoch, Gilles Caron (1939-1970) has chronicled the greatest contemporary conflicts through his images (Six-Day War, Vietnam War, Biafra and Northern Ireland conflicts, May 68, Prague Spring…), a commitment that eventually cost him his life while on assignment in Cambodia. Called up as a parachutist to serve in the Algerian War, Caron became a witness to the brutality inflicted on civilians. Through photojournalism, he sought to cross to the other side in order to contribute to a better understanding of how populations caught up in the spiral of war were living.

His initial heroic vision of war photography soon turned into a reflection on the purpose of his job: can the role of witness, mere spectator, be satisfying? He is one of the first photographers to suffer symptoms from this inner moral conflict, and one of the first to practice a form of introspective disenchantment that led the reporter to gradually turn his camera on him, to become the object of the photographic narrative.

In the early stages of his career, during the Six-Day War and in Vietnam, he chose to focus on inactive figures, soldiers or prisoners absorbed in their thoughts, writing or meditating. During the Biafra War, Caron seemed particularly compassionate for the condition of children and other victims. In May 68 and in Northern Ireland, he was mainly interested in emblematic actors – demonstrators throwing stones or Molotov cocktails – as incarnations of urban guerilla. His inventiveness was never more visible than in his reports on street fighting where, through his lens, demonstrations seemed transformed into choreographies.

A war reporter, regularly exposed to extreme conditions, Caron was however not indifferent to the spectacle of the sixties, the Nouvelle Vague and the young musical scene. He would on occasion photograph on the film sets of Godard or Truffaut and even worked as a fashion photographer. These ventures into cinema and fashion might seem quite remote from the rest of his work but they clearly influenced his formal language, as demonstrated in his reports on the protests in the Latin Quarter or Ulster. The exhibition ends with an anti-heroic portrait of the photojournalist. Essential for the history of photojournalism, this conclusion proves that Caron’s conscience, along that of other photojournalists, became quite an unhappy one at the end of the 60s. Guilt, narcissism, parody or irony… In the end, it is difficult to figure out what image of themselves reporters are making.

Gilles Caron
Battle of Dak To, Vietnam, November – December 1967
1967
© Fondation Gilles Caron

Gilles Caron
Daniel Cohn-Bendit facing a CRS in front of the Sorbonne, Paris, 6 May 1968
1968
© Fondation Gilles Caron

Gilles Caron
Protest rue Saint-Jacques, Paris, 6 May 1968
1968
© Fondation Gilles Caron

The exhibition presented at the Musée de l’Elysée is Caron’s first major retrospective. Comprising 150 prints and archival documents from the Fondation Gilles Caron, the collection of the Musée de l’Elysée and private collections, the exhibition is an opportunity to rediscover in six parts one of the major photojournalists of the 20th century through an original approach.

1. Heroism

Here and Now: Named the “French Capa” by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Caron’s images highlighting the different scenes of military operations are evidence to his audacity and talents as a reporter.

2. Making History?

The contemplative soldier: This section illustrates a recurring theme in Caron’s work of individuals who are absorbed, and/or made fragile and vulnerable by their surrounding events: miliary prisoners, civilian victims, soldiers shown reading or in reflection, become iconographic images of unedited, and spontaneous moments of stillness.

3. Sympathy

Compassionate Icons: In these photographs, beginning with the war in Biafra and extending across Caron’s travels one sees the deep sensibility of the photographer unfold in his images as Caron must face the very real pain of others. The images of children, starving and void of childhood innocence whom have been sacrificed in conflict mark the beginning of concerned photographic iconography.

4. Demonstrations and guerrilla

The iconography of revolt: In the images of revolt, be that workers, farmers, or students, Caron gives particular iconic importance to the figure of the “lanceur”: like David against Goliath. This representation of the body in action is like a repeated choreography which is performed spontaneously across the fronts of rebellion in Paris, on May 1968, Londonderry (Northern Ireland) and Prague.

5. Nouvelle Vague

Young and passionate in the 60s: In addition to his work in areas of conflict, famine, and war, Caron also gives photography a unique view of the youth of the 1960′s. With images of famous muses (actresses and singers) as well as of university students, and youth on the street, Caron shows his talents for fashion photography and film stills developed during his work with Truffaut and Godard.

6. The last image

Looking at the reporter: After Biafra and Chad, doubt took hold of Caron. The lens of the camera turns back upon the reporter, and these images document the work of the photojournalist in the field. These portraits leave viewers with a mixed message, this is his own profession but the images are in no way heroic portrayals of the work of the photojournalist.

Gilles Caron
Civil War in Biafra, Nigeria, November 1968
1968
© Fondation Gilles Caron

Gilles Caron
Vietnam, November 1967
1967
© Fondation Gilles Caron

Gilles Caron
Filmmaker and photographer Raymond Depardon, during the Civil War in Biafra, Nigéria, August 1968
1968
© Fondation Gilles Caron

The Musée de l’Elysée
18, avenue de l’Elysée
CH – 1014 Lausanne
T: + 41 21 316 99 11

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday, 11am – 6pm
Closed Monday, except for bank holidays

The Musée de l’Elysée website

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May

Exhibition: ‘Laure Albin Guillot: The Question of Classicism’ at Jeu de Paume, Paris

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Exhibition dates: 26th February – 12th May 2013

The ravishing sensuality of the nudes make all the hours spent assembling this blog worthwhile!

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Many thankx to Jue de Paume for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

*PLEASE NOTE THIS POSTING CONTAINS ART PHOTOGRAPHS OF MALE AND FEMALE NUDITY- IF YOU DO NOT LIKE PLEASE DO NOT LOOK, FAIR WARNING HAS BEEN GIVEN*

Laure Albin Guillot
Estampe pour F. Marquis chocolatier-confiseur, Paris [Print for F. Marquis chocolate maker, Paris]
sans date (without date)
Collection particulière, Paris

Laure Albin Guillot
Étude publicitaire [Advertising study]
sans date (without date)
Collection Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Ville de Chalon-sur-Saône

Laure Albin Guillot
Les tierces alternées, illustration pour les Préludes de Claude Debussy [The third alternative, illustration for Claude Debussy Preludes]
1948
© Laure Albin Guillot / Roger-Viollet

Laure Albin Guillot
Publicité pour la pommade-vaccin Salantale [Advertisement for Salantale ointment vaccine]
1942
Bibliothèque nationale de France

Laure Albin Guillot
Micrographie
1929
Collection particulière, Paris
© Laure Albin Guillot / Roger-Viollet

Laure Albin Guillot
Micrographie, bourgeon de Frêne (coupe)
1930
Collection Société française de photographie
© Laure Albin Guillot / Roger-Viollet

Laure Albin Guillot
Micrographie
1929
Collections Roger-Viollet / Parisienne de Photographie
© Laure Albin Guillot / Roger-Viollet

“Laure Albin Guillot (Paris, 1879-1962), a “resounding name that should become famous”, one could read just after World War II. Indeed, the French photographic scene in the middle of the century was particularly marked by the signature and aura of this artist, who during her lifetime was certainly the most exhibited and recognized, not only for her talent and virtuosity but also for her professional engagement.

Organised in four parts, the exhibition, Laure Albin Guillot: The Question of Classicism allows one to discover her art of portraiture and the nude, her active role in the advertising world, her printed work and, at last, a significant gathering of her “micrographies décoratives”, stupefying photographs of microscopic preparations that made her renown in 1931. The exhibition presented at the Jeu de Paume gathers a significant collection of 200 original prints and books by Laure Albin Guillot, as well as magazines and documents of the period from public and private collections, such as the Parisienne de Photographie, the Musée National d’Art Moderne, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Musée Nicéphore Niépce (Chalon-sur-Saône) and the Musée Français de la Photographie (Bièvres).

A large number of the original prints and documents on show come from the collections of the Agence Roger-Viollet, which acquired Laure Albin Guillot’s studio stock in 1964. This archive, which now belongs to the City of Paris, recently became accessible after a long inventory process. Made up of 52,000 negatives and 20,000 prints, this source has made it possible to question the œuvre and the place that the photographer really occupies in history. The photographer’s work could appear as a counter-current to the French artistic scene of the 1920s to 40s, whose modernity and avant-garde production attract our attention and appeal to current tastes. It is however this photography, incarnating classicism and a certain “French style” that was widely celebrated at the time.

If Laure Albin Guillot’s photography was undeniably in vogue between the wars, her personality remains an enigma. Paradoxically, very little research has been carried out into the work and career of this artist. Her first works were seen in the salons and publications of the early 1920s, but it was essentially during the 1930s and 40s that Laure Albin Guillot, artist, professional and institutional figure, dominated the photographic arena. As an independent photographer, she practised several genres, including portraiture, the nude, landscape, still life and, to a lesser degree, documentary photography. Technically unrivalled, she raised the practice to a certain elitism. A photographer of her epoch, she used the new means of distribution of the image to provide illustrations and advertising images for the press and publishing industry.

She was notably one of the first in France to consider the decorative use of photography through her formal research into the infinitely tiny. With photomicrography, which she renamed “micrographie”, Laure Albin Guillot thus offfered new creative perspectives in the combination of art and science. Finally, as member of the Société des artistes décorateurs, the Société Française de Photographie, director of photographic archives for the Direction générale des Beaux-Arts (forerunner of the Ministry of Culture) and first curator of the Cinémathèque nationale, president of the Union Féminine des Carrières Libérales, she emerges as one of the most active personalities and most aware of the photographic and cultural stakes of the period.”

Press release from the Jeu de Paume website

Laure Albin Guillot
Illustration pour ‘Le Narcisse’ de Paul Valéry
1936
Collection particulière, Paris
© Laure Albin Guillot / Roger-Viollet

Laure Albin Guillot
Lucienne Boyer
1935
Collections Roger-Viollet / Parisienne de Photographie
© Laure Albin Guillot / Roger-Viollet

Laure Albin Guillot
Autoportrait
1935
Collection Musée Nicéphore Niépce, Ville de Chalon-sur-Saône
© Laure Albin Guillot / Roger-Viollet

Laure Albin Guillot
Jean Cocteau
1939
© Laure Albin Guillot / Roger-Viollet

Laure Albin Guillot
Hubert de Givenchy
1948
© Laure Albin Guillot / Roger-Viollet

Laure Albin Guillot
Étude de nu
1930s
© Laure Albin Guillot / Roger-Viollet

Laure Albin Guillot
Étude de nu
1939
© Laure Albin Guillot / Roger-Viollet

Laure Albin Guillot
Étude de nu
1939
Bibliothèque nationale de France.
© Laure Albin Guillot / Roger-Viollet

Laure Albin Guillot
Nudite de Jeune Femme [Nude of a Young Woman]
c. 1950
© Laure Albin Guillot / Roger-Viollet

Laure Albin Guillot
Étude de nu
1935
Collections Roger-Viollet / Parisienne de Photographie
© Laure Albin Guillot / Roger-Viollet

Laure Albin Guillot
Sans titre [women with crossed legs on a plinth]
1937
Collection musée Nicéphore Niépce, Ville de Chalon-sur-Saône

Jeu de Paume
1, Place de la Concorde
75008 Paris
métro Concorde
T: 01 47 03 12 50

Opening hours:
Tuesday: 12.00 – 21.00
Wednesday – Friday: 12.00 – 19.00
Saturday and Sunday: 10.00 – 19.00
Closed Monday

Jeu de Paume website

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Apr

Exhibition: ‘Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop’ at The National Gallery of Art, Washington

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: American, american photographers, beauty, black and white photography, colour photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, landscape, light, New York, Paris, photographic series, photography, photojournalism, photorealism, pictorialism, portrait, psychological, reality, space, surrealism and time
Tags: A Powerfull Collision, Adobe Photoshop, Albert Sands Southworth, albumen print, Albumen silver print, albumen silver print from glass negative, Alfred Stieglitz Collection, anti-Nazi photomontages, Arthur Felig, arts, British artist, British photographer, British photography, Cape Horn Columbia River Oregon, Carleton E. Watkins, Carleton E. Watkins Cape Horn Columbia River, daguerreotype, Decapitated Man with Head on a Platter, Dora Maar, Dora Maar Le simulateur, Edward Steichen, Edward Steichen  The Pond - Moonrise, Ein kräftiger Zusammenstoss, Eugène L'Africain, fake, fake photography, Faking It, Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop, Frederick Sommer, Frederick Sommer Max Ernst, french artist, French photographer, French photography, gelatin silver print, Halifax, He Lost His Head, Henry Peach Robinson, Henry Peach Robinson She Never Told her Love, J.C. Higgins and Son, J.C. Higgins and Son Man in bottle, Jerry N. Uelsmann, Jerry N. Uelsmann Untitled 1976, Josiah Johnson Hawes, Kathy Grove, Kathy Grove The Other Series, Kathy Grove The Other Series (After Kertész), Le Simulateur, Man in bottle, Max Ernst, national gallery of art, Nova Scotia, Paris Commune massacres, paul getty museum, Photoshop, Platinum print with applied color image, Red Cap Snow Shoe Club, Red Cap Snow Shoe Club Halifax Nova Scotia, Seated man with Brattle Street Church seen through window, She Never Told her Love, Southworth and Hawes, Southworth and Hawes Seated man with Brattle Street Church seen through window, The Other Series, The Other Series (After Kertész), The Pond - Moonrise, washington, washington d c, Weegee creative work, Weegee Times Square New York, William Notman, Wm. Notman & Son

Exhibition dates: 17th February – 5th May 2013

Further images from this impressive exhibition devoted to the art of photographic manipulation before the advent of digital imagery from its second stop, at The National Gallery of Art, Washington.

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Many thankx to the National Gallery of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Unknown American (American)
He Lost His Head
Nd

Edward Steichen
 The Pond – Moonrise
1904
Platinum print with applied color image
39.7 x 48.2 cm (15 5/8 x 19 in.)
Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Alfred Stieglitz Collection, 1933
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art/ Permission Estate of Edward Steichen. All rights reserved

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Using a painstaking technique of multiple printing, Steichen achieved prints of such painterly seductiveness they have never been equaled. This view of a pond in the woods at Mamaroneck, New York is subtly colored as Whistler’s Nocturnes, and like them, is a tone poem of twilight, indistinction, and suggestiveness. Commenting on such pictures in 1910, Charles Caffin wrote in Camera Work: “It is in the penumbra, between the clear visibility of things and their total extinction into darkness, when the concreteness of appearances becomes merged in half-realised, half-baffled vision, that spirit seems to disengage itself from matter to envelop it with a mystery of soul-suggestion.” (Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website)

Henry Peach Robinson (British, 1830-1901)
She Never Told Her Love
1857
Albumen silver print from glass negative
18 x 23.2cm (7 1/16 x 9 1/8in.)
Gilman Collection, Purchase, Jennifer and Joseph Duke Gift, 2005

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Consumed by the passion of unrequited love, a young woman lies suspended in the dark space of her unrealized dreams in Henry Peach Robinson’s illustration of the Shakespearean verse “She never told her love,/ But let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud,/ Feed on her damask cheek” (Twelfth Night II,iv,111-13). Although this picture was exhibited by Robinson as a discrete work, it also served as a study for the central figure in his most famous photograph, Fading Away, of 1858.

Purportedly showing a young consumptive surrounded by family in her final moments, Fading Away was hotly debated for years. On the one hand, Robinson was criticized for the presumed indelicacy of having invaded the death chamber at the most private of moments. On the other, those who recognized the scene as having been staged and who understood that Robinson had created the picture through combination printing (a technique that utilized several negatives to create a single printed image) accused him of dishonestly using a medium whose chief virtue was its truthfulness. (Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website)

Frederick Sommer
Max Ernst
1946
Gelatin silver print
19.2 x 23.97 cm (7 9/16 x 9 7/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Frederick and Frances Sommer Foundation

Wm. Notman & Son, Montreal, Eugène L’Africain, William Notman
Red Cap Snow Shoe Club, Halifax, Nova Scotia
c. 1888
Collage of albumen prints with applied media
71.1 x 83.8 cm (28 x 33 in.)
McCord Museum, Montreal

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Notman established his first photography studio in Montreal in 1856 and relentlessly expanded his operations over the next two decades. At its peak, his company had twenty-four branches throughout Canada and New England, making it the most successful photographic enterprise in North America at the time. Notman specialized in composite portraits of large groups, including sporting clubs, trade associations, family gatherings, clergymen, and college graduates, some featuring more than four hundred figures. Each figure in a group was photographed separately in the studio then printed at the proper scale and pasted onto a painted background, as in this portrait of a Nova Scotia snowshoe club. The entire collage was then re-photographed. The final, relatively seamless tableau could then be printed and sold in a variety of sizes and formats. (Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website)

The National Gallery of Art presents the first major exhibition devoted to the art of photographic manipulation before the advent of digital imagery. Faking It: Manipulated Photography before Photoshop will be on view in the West Building’s Ground Floor galleries from February 17 through May 5, 2013, following its debut at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (from October 11, 2012, through January 27, 2013). In June it travels to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

“Following in its tradition of exhibiting and collecting the finest examples of photography, the Gallery is pleased to present some 200 photographs from the 1840s through the 1980s demonstrating the medium’s complicated relationship to truth in representation,” said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art. “We are grateful to the many lenders, both public and private, who have generously shared works from their collections – especially the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the largest lender and the organizer of this fascinating exhibition.”

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The Exhibition

This is the first major exhibition devoted to the history of manipulated photography before the digital age. While the widespread use of Adobe® Photoshop® software has brought about an increased awareness of the degree to which photographs can be doctored, photographers – including such major artists as Gustave Le Gray, Edward Steichen, Weegee, and Richard Avedon – have been fabricating, modifying, and otherwise manipulating camera images since the medium was first invented. This exhibition demonstrates that today’s digitally manipulated images are part of a continuum that extends back to photography’s first decades. Through visually captivating pictures created in the service of art, politics, news, entertainment, and commerce, Faking It not only traces the medium’s complex and changing relationship to visual truth, but also significantly revises our understanding of photographic history.

Organized thematically, the exhibition begins with some of the earliest instances of photographic manipulation – those attempting to compensate for the new medium’s technical limitations. In the 19th century, many photographers hand tinted portraits to make them appear more vivid and lifelike. Others composed large group portraits by photographing individuals separately in the studio and creating a collage by pasting them onto painted backgrounds depicting outdoor scenes. As the art and craft of photography grew increasingly sophisticated, photographers devised a staggering array of techniques with which to manipulate their images, including combination printing, photomontage, overpainting, ink and airbrush retouching, sandwiched negatives, multiple exposures, and other darkroom magic.

The exhibition presents a superb selection of manually altered photographs created under the mantle of art, including 19th-century genre scenes composed of multiple negatives, stunning pictorialist landscapes from the turn of the 19th century, and the predigital dreamscapes of surrealist photographers in the 1920s and 1930s. A section of doctored images made for political or ideological ends includes faked composite photographs of the 1871 Paris Commune massacres, anti-Nazi photomontages by John Heartfield, and falsified images from Stalin-era Soviet Russia. The show also explores popular uses of photographic manipulation such as spirit photography, tall-tale and fantasy postcards, advertising and fashion spreads, and doctored news images.

The final section features the work of contemporary artists – including Duane Michals, Jerry Uelsmann, and Yves Klein – who have reclaimed earlier techniques of image manipulation to creatively question photography’s presumed objectivity. By tracing the history of photographic manipulation from the 1840s to the present, Faking It vividly demonstrates that photography is – and always has been – a medium of fabricated truths and artful lies.”

Press release from the National Gallery of Art website

Arthur Felig – Weegee (American, born Hungary, 1899-1968)
Times Square, New York
1952-59
Gelatin silver print
20.3 x 17.8 cm (8 x 7 in.)
© International Center of Photography, Bequest of Wilma Wilcox, 1993

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Famous for his gritty tabloid crime photographs, Weegee devoted the last twenty years of his life to what he called his “creative work.” He experimented prolifically with distorting lenses and comparable darkroom techniques, producing photo caricatures of politicians and Hollywood celebrities, novel variations on the man-in-the-bottle motif, and uncanny doublings and reflections, such as this striking image, which he described as “Times Square under 10 feet of water on a sunny afternoon.”

Kathy Grove (American, born 1948)
The Other Series (After Kertész)
1989-90
Gelatin silver print
19.7 x 15.2 cm (7 3/4 x 6 in.)
Purchase, Charina Foundation Inc. Gift, 2010
© Kathy Grove

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In the late 1980s Grove, an artist who supports herself as a professional photo retoucher, began seamlessly altering images of famous works of art, using bleach, dyes, and airbrush to remove the female figure from each image and leaving the rest of the scene intact. Her cunning excisions mimic the process by which art historians, echoing the culture at large, have erased the achievements of actual women while enshrining Woman as a blank screen upon which the ideas and desires of both artist and viewer are projected. If photographs are presumed to represent the truth, Grove’s pictures remind us to ask: Whose truth?

Unknown American
[Decapitated Man with Head on a Platter]
c.1865
Tintype with applied color
8.4 x 6 cm (3 5/16 x 2 3/8 in.)
© International Center of Photography, Gift of Steven Kasher and Susan Spungen Kasher, 2008

Carleton E. Watkins (American, 1829-1916)
Cape Horn, Columbia River, Oregon
1867, printed 1880-1890
Albumen silver print from glass negatives
52.3 x 40.4 cm (20 9/16 x 15 7/8 in.)
© George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film, Rochester

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Watkins, the consummate photographer of the American West, combined a virtuoso mastery of the difficult wet plate negative process with a rigorous sense of pictorial structure. For large-format landscape work such as Watkins produced along the Columbia River in Oregon, the physical demands were great. Since there was as yet no practical means of enlarging, Watkins’s glass negatives had to be as large as he wished the prints to be, and his camera large enough to accommodate them. Furthermore, the glass negatives had to be coated, exposed, and developed while the collodion remained tacky, requiring the photographer to transport a traveling darkroom as he explored the rugged virgin terrain of the American West. The crystalline clarity of Watkins’s remarkable “mammoth” prints is unmatched in the work of any of his contemporaries and is approached by few artists working today. (Text from the Metropolitan Museum of Art website). Here the clouds have been printed in (compare to the work on the Metropolitan Museum of Art website)

Dora Maar (French, Paris 1907-1997 Paris)
Le simulateur
1936
Gelatin silver print
29.2 x 22.9 cm (11 1/2 x 9 in.)
Collection of The Sack Photographic Trust for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

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Maar’s haunting photomontages of the mid-1930s evoke a mood of oneiric ambiguity. Here, the world is turned literally upside-down: a boy bends sharply backward, echoing the curve of the vaulted ceiling on which he stands. On the print, Maar scratched out the figure’s eyes, exploiting Surrealism’s strong association of blindness with inner sight.

Albert Sands Southworth, Josiah Johnson Hawes
Seated man with Brattle Street Church seen through window
1850s
Daguerreotype
21.6 x 16.5 cm (8 1/2 x 6 1/2 in.)
The Isenburg Collection at AMC Toronto

J.C. Higgins and Son
Man in bottle
c. 1888
Albumen print
13.5 x 10 cm (5 5/16 x 3 15/16 in.)
Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Susan and Thomas Dunn Gift, 2011

Jerry N. Uelsmann
Untitled
1976
Gelatin silver print
49.3 x 36 cm (19 7/16 x 14 3/16 in.)
Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, David Hunter McAlpin Fund, 1981
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art/ © Jerry N. Uelsmann

Unknown Photographer German
Ein kräftiger Zusammenstoss (A Powerfull Collision)
1914
Gelatin silver print
8.7 x 13.7 cm (3 7/16 x 5 3/8 in.)
Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2010

National Gallery of Art
National Mall between 3rd and 7th Streets
Constitution Avenue NW, Washington

Opening hours:
Monday – Saturday 1000 am – 5.00 pm
Sunday 11.00 am – 6.00 pm

National Gallery of Art website

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Apr

Exhibition: ‘Roman Vishniac Rediscovered’ at the International Center of Photography (ICP), New York

By Dr Marcus Bunyan 1 Comment

Categories: American, american photographers, Berlin, black and white photography, colour photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, light, memory, New York, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, reality, space, street photography and time
Tags: A Vanished World, American Jewish communal and immigrant life, American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Anhalter Bahnhof, Beach dwellers in the afternoon Nice France, Berlin Cathedral, Berlin street photography, Berlin Zoo, Boy with kindling in basement dwelling, Cross section of a pine needle, germany, Herring for the traditional third meal of Shabbath, Holocaust, Holocaust survivors, immigrant life in America, Interior of the Anhalter Bahnhof, Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe, Jewish displaced persons camps, Jewish life in Eastern Europe, Jewish schoolchildren Mukacevo, Krochmalna Street, Mukacevo, Nazi Storm Troopers marching next to the Arsenal in front of the Berlin Cathedral, People behind bars Berlin Zoo, photomicroscopy, postwar period, Potsdamer Platz, rise of Nazi power, Roman Vishniac Beach dwellers in the afternoon, Roman Vishniac Boy with kindling in basement dwelling, Roman Vishniac Cross section of a pine needle, Roman Vishniac Herring for the traditional third meal of Shabbath, Roman Vishniac Interior of the Anhalter Bahnhof, Roman Vishniac Jewish schoolchildren, Roman Vishniac Nazi Storm Troopers, Roman Vishniac Nazi Storm Troopers marching next to the Arsenal in front of the Berlin Cathedral, Roman Vishniac People behind bars Berlin Zoo, Roman Vishniac Recalcitrance, Roman Vishniac Street scene with swastika flag in background, Roman Vishniac Zionist youth building a school and foundry, Russian Revolution, social documentary photography, Street scene with swastika flag in background, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Vishniac, Warsaw, Weimar Berlin, Zionist youth building a school and foundry

Exhibition dates: 18th January – 5th May 2013

“By repositioning Vishniac’s iconic photographs of Eastern Europe within the broader tradition of social documentary photography, and introducing recently discovered and radically diverse bodies of work, this exhibition stakes Vishniac’s claim as a modern master.”

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ICP Adjunct Curator Maya Benton

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Rediscovered! Rediscovered? Surely, such a splendid artist as Vishniac has never been away…

Revealing “a compositional acuity, inventiveness, and surprising stylistic range” – in other words traces of Josef Sudek, Walker Evans, Rodchenko and New Photography – Vishniac’s best work is a record of its troubled time: a photographic record of Jewish life in Eastern Europe between the two World Wars. What the viewing public must be made aware of is the curatorial reinterpretation of his work, seeking as it does to solidify his place “among the 20th century’s most accomplished photographers.”

While some of the work on view may be new, the claims of curator Maya Benton (above) must be observed with a good deal of scepticism. What we need to understand is how his photographs are being interpreted across a range of frames of reference - from photojournalism, to social documentary photography and art – in order, as Maya Benton says, to “reposition” his iconic photographs within the broader tradition of social documentary photography. This repositioning is a form of re/visioning of an artist’s work to place it in a different context or frame of reference in order to increase its significance; or, by exclusion (as in the case of the S/M photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe that have been occluded by the Mapplethorpe Foundation), another context, make the work of an artist more socially palatable than would otherwise be the case.

The interpretation of Vishniac’s photographs becomes problematic depending on what frame of reference one applies to them and how their interpretation is negotiated between multiple, fluid points of view. Repositioning an artist’s work within a broader context changes the nature of the interpretation of that artist’s work and raises the pertinent question: who is repositioning this work and for what reason(s); who is pushing that agenda and curatorial barrow (in Benton’s case it is because she wants Vishniac’s work to be seen as that of a modern master, to make the credibility of the exhibition and the artist more than it possibly is). What we must be fully aware of is the time and place in which Vishniac made the work and the conditions for its initial reception, not some stake in the ground claim of modern mastership.

Vishniac’s photographs frame the historical discourse of the end of Jewish culture in Eastern Europe and the rise of Fascism in Germany with erudition – for the past, present and future. Any other claims to eclecticism, applying different “repositioning” in particular cases, seems inelegant and shows a lack of consistency in clear thinking. When you really look at his work there is a sensitivity to the human condition in his work that is outstanding, coupled with a clear compositional structure and use of chiaroscuro. He was an excellent visual artist who had strong previsualisation that is evidenced in the prints. These photographs make insightful comment on the surrounding culture at the time of their production. Nothing more grandiose need be said.

Dr Marcus Bunyan for the Art Blart blog

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Many thankx to the ICP for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for another version of the image.

Roman Vishniac
Herring for the traditional third meal of Shabbath, Mukachevo
1937-38
Gelatin silver print
10 1/2 x 13 3/8 inches

Roman Vishniac
Untitled [Jewish schoolchildren, Mukacevo]
c. 1935-38
© Mara Vishniac Kohn
Courtesy International Center of Photography

Roman Vishniac
Untitled [Boy with kindling in basement dwelling, Krochmalna Street, Warsaw]
c. 1935-38
© Mara Vishniac Kohn
Courtesy International Center of Photography

Roman Vishniac
Cross section of a pine needle
date unknown
© Mara Vishniac Kohn
Courtesy International Center of Photography

Roman Vishniac
Untitled [Interior of the Anhalter Bahnhof, a railway terminus near Potsdamer Platz, Berlin]
late 1920s – early 1930s
© Mara Vishniac Kohn
Courtesy International Center of Photography

“Roman Vishniac Rediscovered, on view at the International Center of Photography (1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street) January 18 – May 5, 2013, brings together four decades of work by a remarkably versatile and innovative photographer. The exhibition includes recently discovered vintage prints, moving film footage, personal correspondence, and exhibition prints made from Vishniac’s recently digitized negatives. His complex and visionary work, much of which is shown here for the first time, reveals a compositional acuity, inventiveness, and surprising stylistic range that solidifies his place among the 20th century’s most accomplished photographers.

Vishniac created the most widely recognized and reproduced photographic record of Jewish life in Eastern Europe between the two World Wars. Yet only a fraction of his work was published during his lifetime, most notably in A Vanished World (1983). Over the course of his career, Vishniac witnessed the sweeping artistic and photographic innovation of Weimar Berlin, the ominous rise to Nazi power in Germany, the final years of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, and immigrant life in America during and after the war.

“By repositioning Vishniac’s iconic photographs of Eastern Europe within the broader tradition of social documentary photography, and introducing recently discovered and radically diverse bodies of work, this exhibition stakes Vishniac’s claim as a modern master,” said ICP Adjunct Curator Maya Benton, who organized the exhibition.

Born in 1897 to a wealthy Russian-Jewish family, Vishniac immigrated to Berlin in 1920 in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. As an amateur photographer, he took to the streets with his camera throughout the 1920s and ’30s, offering astute, often humorous visual commentary on his adopted city and experimented with new and modern approaches to framing and composition. Documenting the rise of Nazi power, he focused his lens on the signs of oppression and doom that soon formed the backdrop of his Berlin street photography. From 1935 to 1938, while living in Berlin and working as a biologist and science photographer, he was commissioned by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), then the world’s largest Jewish relief organization, to photograph impoverished Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe. On New Year’s Day, 1941, he arrived in New York and soon opened a portrait studio. At the same time, he began documenting American Jewish communal and immigrant life and established himself as a pioneer in the field of photomicroscopy. In 1947, Vishniac returned to Europe and documented Jewish displaced persons camps and the ruins of Berlin. During this time, he also recorded the efforts of Holocaust survivors to rebuild their lives, and the work of the JDC and other Jewish relief organizations in providing them with aid and emigration assistance.

Roman Vishniac Rediscovered is a comprehensive reappraisal of Vishniac’s total photographic output, from the early years in Berlin through the postwar period. The exhibition also includes a slideshow of 100 color science transparencies – digitized for the first time – of Vishniac’s microphotoscopy, taken from the early 1950s to the late 1970s. In addition to the exhibition, a primary task of the archive is to make this work available for research, in partnership with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.”

Press release from the ICP website

Roman Vishniac
Untitled [Street scene with swastika flag in background, Berlin]
c. 1935-36
© Mara Vishniac Kohn
Courtesy International Center of Photography

Roman Vishniac
Untitled [Nazi Storm Troopers marching next to the Arsenal in front of the Berlin Cathedral]
c. 1935
© Mara Vishniac Kohn
Courtesy International Center of Photography

Roman Vishniac
Untitled [Beach dwellers in the afternoon, Nice, France]
c. 1939
© Mara Vishniac Kohn
Courtesy International Center of Photography

Roman Vishniac
People behind bars, Berlin Zoo
early 1930s
© Mara Vishniac Kohn
Courtesy International Center of Photography

Roman Vishniac
Untitled [Zionist youth building a school and foundry while learning construction techniques, Werkdorp Nieuwesluis, Wieringermeer, The Netherlands]
1939
© Mara Vishniac Kohn
Courtesy International Center of Photography

International Center of Photography
1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street
New York NY 10036
T: 212 857 0045

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Wednesday: 10.00 am – 6.00 pm
Thursday – Friday: 10.00 am – 8.00 pm
Saturday – Sunday: 10.00 am – 6.00 pm
Closed: Mondays

International Center of Photography website

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Apr

Review: ‘Aliza Levi / Books on a White Background’ at Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: aborigine, colour photography, digital photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, light, Melbourne, memory, photographic series, photography, quotation, review, space and time
Tags: Aliza Levi, Aliza Levi Across Australia, Aliza Levi Australia its History and Present Condition, Aliza Levi Australia the Land of Promise, Aliza Levi Black But Comely, Aliza Levi Books on a White Background, Aliza Levi Malthus on Population, Aliza Levi Ourselves Writ Strange, Aliza Levi Scenes and Sports of Savage Lands, Aliza Levi Strangers May Be Present, Aliza Levi The Aboriginal as Human Being, Aliza Levi The Art of Living in Australia, Aliza Levi The Gulf Between, Aliza Levi The Report of the Aborigines Committee of the Meeting for Sufferings 1840, Aliza Levi White Settlers and Native Peoples, Australia its History and Present Condition, Australia the Land of Promise, Australian books, Australian colonisation, Australian history, authority, Black But Comely, books, Books on a White Background, books on Australia, colonial books, colonialism, Edmund Pearce Gallery, Gérard Genette, Gérard Genette paratext, Indigenous Australian history, Kate Warren, Malthus on Population, multifaceted signifiers, Native Peoples, nineteenth century colonists, Ourselves Writ Strange, paratext, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, past as an immanent presence, post-colonialism, Scenes and Sports of Savage Lands, South Africa artist, South African photographer, Strangers May Be Present, Textual thresholds: The uncomfortable nature of titles in Books on a White Background, The Aboriginal as Human Being, The Art of Living in Australia, The Gulf Between, The Report of the Aborigines Committee of the Meeting for Sufferings 1840, White Settlers, White Settlers and Native Peoples, zone of transaction

Exhibition dates: 10th April – 4th May 2013

Aura of white

Shadow of black

Books for the boys *

Black bodies out the back

* Books for the bourgeois

* Books for the parlour

* Books for the burning

* Books to hide memories

* Books lost in archives

* Books still in libraries

* Books for the tower (implying Babel)

* Books for the scrapheap

* Books for academics

* Books for the garbo

* Books for the church stall

* Books to forget

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Many thankx to Edmund Pearce Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Aliza Levi
Across Australia
2011
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42 cm

Aliza Levi
Australia, its History and Present Condition
2013
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42 cm

Aliza Levi
Australia the Land of Promise
2012
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42 cm

Aliza Levi
Black But Comely
2013
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42 cm

Aliza Levi
Malthus on Population
2012
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42 cm

“I began this series by choosing books that reflected the assumptions and behaviour of the nineteenth century colonists, the persistent notations of self and other. I soon started to notice, that many of the titles were pertinent to today. A blurring of time and relevance, where views from a hundred years ago were intersecting with current attitudes and events.”

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Aliza Levi

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South African born artist, Aliza Levi premiers her latest body of work Books on a White Background at Edmund Pearce Gallery. Camera and lights in hand, Aliza has been photographing nineteenth century books in small town junk shops, second-hand book dealers, flea markets, rare book collections and libraries both here and in her native South Africa. Books authored by anthropologists, ethnologists and laypersons who took it upon themselves to comment on their travels. To date she has captured nearly 250 books.

The books, were initially chosen to reflect the ideologies and assumptions of the nineteenth century West. However, Aliza soon realised, that some of the titles were pertinent to today. A blurring of time and relevance where titles from a hundred years ago were intersecting with current attitudes and events. For example, the book Strangers May be Present, in its evocation of colonial settlers viewing the other as stranger also evoked for her the more recent, disturbing events in which the other is articulated: xenophobic attacks and corrective rapes in South Africa. Closer to home, the century old book entitled Australia, the Land of Promise immediately raises questions around certain stark realities such as refugee detention centres.

Kate Warren writes in the accompanying exhibition essay: “The precise regularity of her photographic compositions create a compelling visual plane that immediately draws the viewer’s attention. But look closer. In the situation that Levi presents us with, the seductive nature of the visual cannot escape the immediacy of language. The force of their titles – often starkly confronting and potentially upsetting – leaves the embossing, decoration and materiality of the books themselves as an ironic supplement.”

Born in 1969 in South Africa, Aliza Levi’s practice is multidisciplinary in form yet single-minded in concept. Much of her work presents a relationship to land, consciousness and memory brought on by her South African and Australian citizenship. Having recently presented her work in the UK, this is her first solo show in Melbourne, where she has been producing art as well as facilitating women’s art groups with refugees from Sudan. Levi is currently completing a Masters Degree in Fine Art at Monash University.”

Press release from the Edmund Pearce Gallery website

Aliza Levi
Ourselves Writ Strange
2011
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42 cm

Aliza Levi
Scenes and Sports of Savage Lands
2012
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42 cm

Aliza Levi
Strangers May Be Present
2010
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42 cm

Aliza Levi
The Art of Living in Australia
2012
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42 cm

Textual thresholds: The uncomfortable nature of titles in Books on a White Background

by Kate Warren

Aliza Levi’s research-based photographic project, Books on a White Background (2012), confronts the viewer with an array that is at once visually compelling and profoundly difficult to look at. The precise regularity of her photographic compositions, the ‘grid-like’ repetition of these images’ installation, the consistent form and shape of her subject matter, and the contrast between the stark white background and the darker shadows thrown, all create a compelling visual plane that immediately draws the viewer’s attention. But look closer. In the situation that Levi presents us with, the seductive nature of the visual cannot escape the immediacy of language. The force of their titles – often starkly confronting and potentially upsetting – leaves the embossing, decoration and materiality of the books themselves as an ironic supplement.

This is not a ‘library’. Although developed from Levi’s archival research, the final photographic project is not an ‘archive’. Rather than displaying the original books themselves as objets trouvés, Levi disavows their materiality and tactility. Photographing the books’ ‘spines’, she not only flattens but removes entirely from view their ‘flesh’ the pages and the content – and in doing so opens up a liminal space that can accommodate and illuminate a multiplicity of (sometimes uncomfortable) and connections between the past and the present.

In the human form, our spines form the connection between the psychical realm of our brains and the physicality of our bodies; between our ‘inner’ subjectivity and our ‘outer’ ability to move, communicate and interact with our surroundings. Likewise in the case of the books that Levi photographs; the spines and titles are liminal spaces that mediate their content and the cultural and historical contexts in which they exist. Gérard Genette calls this the ‘paratext’, the “fringe [which] constitutes a zone between text and off-text, a zone not only of transition but also of transaction: a privileged place of a pragmatics and a strategy, of an influence on the public.” Levi’s project works at this juncture. By denying access to the detailed substance and content of these books she denies their overt ‘authority’, yet at the same time she reveals uncomfortable legacies that persist and cannot be wholly escaped.

The various ‘post’ discourses (post-colonialism, post-structuralism, post-modernism) and their influential theorists and practitioners have done enormous amounts of work to deconstruct and destabilise dominant narratives and histories. The process is necessarily ongoing and open-ended; because although many narratives that were once unquestioned have been removed from their dominance and acceptability, it is often through language that their traces and legacies remain.

Thus in the selection of Australian books included in this exhibition, there emerges jarring and disturbing contrasts between titles that clearly belie values that are no longer widely accepted (such as The Aboriginal as Human Being), and other titles which still resonate with national myths (such as Australia the Land of Promise). Other titles like Ourselves Writ Large and The Gulf Between become more ambiguous; for without access to the specificities of their content, these books’ paratexts are revealed in Levi’s project as (necessarily) multifaceted signifiers. They immediately open up a ‘zone of transaction’ that reveals the past as an immanent presence, constantly transformed by and transforming of the present. These now abstracted titles retain a force and power to reveal uncomfortable truths and forgotten narrative tropes, speaking to the way that Australian history and presumed cultural values are constructed and repeated in our contemporary life.

Kate Warren would like to thank Aliza Levi for the stimulating and ongoing discussions; and David Wlazlo for his timely and astute insights.

Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p2.

Aliza Levi
The Aboriginal as Human Being
2012
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42 cm

Aliza Levi
The Gulf Between
2012
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42 cm

Aliza Levi
The Report of the Aborigines Committee of the Meeting for Sufferings 1840
2012
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42 cm

Aliza Levi
White Settlers and Native Peoples
2012
Archival Inkjet Print
59 x 42 cm

Edmund Pearce Gallery
Level 2, Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street (corner Flinders Lane)
Melbourne Victoria 3000

Opening hours:
Wed – Sat 11 am – 5 pm

Edmund Pearce Gallery website

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Apr

Exhibition: ‘Gordon Parks: Centennial’ at Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Exhibition dates: 21st February – 27th April 2013

What an admirable photographer Gordon Parks was. It is a joy to see five of his colour photographs in this posting because I have never seen any before. They are glorious, complex compositions that ebb and flow like music whilst at the same time they are also damning indictments of the racially segregated society that was America in the 1950s. The little girl looks on in Ondria Tanner and Her Grandmother Window-shopping (1956, below), her left index finger bent upward on the pane of glass as the prettily dressed white, automaton mannequins march on, oblivious to her gaze; Mr. and Mrs. Albert Thornton, Mobile, Alabama (1956, below) are surrounded by photographs, their pose mimicking that of their parents hanging behind them, while before them on the coffee table (under glass) are other, younger members of their extended family. Past, present and future coalesce in this one poignant image.

The sensibility of Parks photographs is a refined sensitivity based on experience. “Sensibility” is based on personal impressions of pleasure or pain. These are hard-wired responses that will vary from person to person. The discrimination of men towards each other mattered to Parks, this was his hard-wired response. This was his feeling towards subject matter and that is why these wonderful photographs still matter to us today.

Marcus

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Many thankx to the Jenkins Johnson Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Gordon Parks is the most important black photographer in the history of photojournalism. Long after the events that he photographed have been forgotten, his images will remain with us, testaments to the genius of his art, transcending time, place and subject matter.

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Dr Henry Louis Gates

Gordon Parks
Ondria Tanner and Her Grandmother Window-shopping, Mobile, Alabama
1956
Edition 19 of 25
Pigment print
14 x 14 inches
Modern print

Gordon Parks
At Segregated Drinking Fountain, Mobile, Alabama
1956
Edition 19 of 25
Pigment print
14 x 14 inches
Modern print

Gordon Parks
Department Store, Mobile, Alabama
1956
Edition 20 of 25
Pigment print
14 x 14 inches
Modern print

Gordon Parks
Mother and Children, Mobile, Alabama
1956
Edition 17 of 25
Pigment print
13 7/8 x 14 inches
Modern print

Gordon Parks
Mr. and Mrs. Albert Thornton, Mobile, Alabama
1956
Edition 17 of 25
Pigment print
14 1/8 x 14 inches
Modern print

In celebration of the 100th birthday of Gordon Parks, one of the most influential African American photographers of the 20th century, Jenkins Johnson Gallery in collaboration with The Gordon Parks Foundation presents Gordon Parks: Centennial, on view from February 21 through April 27, 2013. Gordon Parks, an iconic photographer, writer, composer, and filmmaker, would have turned 100 on November 30, 2012. This will be the first solo exhibition for Parks on the West Coast in thirteen years. The exhibition will survey works spanning six decades of the artist’s career starting in 1940. The exhibition consists of more than seventy-five gelatin silver and pigment prints, including selections from Life magazine photo essays: Invisible Man, 1952; Segregation Story, 1956; The Black Panthers, 1970; and Flavio, 1960, about favelas in Brazil. Also included in the exhibition is his reinterpretation of American Gothic and his elegant depictions of artists like Alexander Calder, fashion models, and movie stars.

Noteworthy highlights include groundbreaking prints from the Invisible Man series which unfolds a visual narrative based on Ralph Ellison’s award winning novel. The images capture the essence of social isolation and the struggle of a black man who feels invisible to the outside world. Also on view will be a number of color prints from Segregation Story, 1956, which are a part of a limited edition portfolio of twelve color photographs with an essay by Maurice Berger. Newly released, these images were produced from transparencies found in early 2012, discovered in a storage box at The Gordon Parks Foundation. In the late 1960s Life magazine asked Gordon Parks to report on the Oakland, California-based Black Panther Party, including Eldridge Cleaver. Parks’ striking image of Eldridge Cleaver and His Wife, Kathleen, Algiers, Algeria, 1970 depicts Cleaver recovering from gun wounds after being ambushed by the Oakland police as well as an insert of Huey P. Newton, co-founder of the party along with Bobby Seale.

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About Gordon Parks

Parks was born into poverty in Fort Scott, Kansas in 1912, the youngest of fifteen children. He worked several odd jobs until he bought a camera at a Pawn Shop in 1937 in Seattle and was hired to photograph fashion at a department store in Minneapolis. In 1942 Parks received a photography fellowship from the Farm Security Administration, succeeding Dorothea Lange among others. While at the F.S.A., Parks created American Gothic, now known as one of his signature images, in which he shows Ella Watson, a cleaning women, holding a mop and broom, standing in front of an American flag. The image makes a poignant commentary on social injustice whilst referencing Grant Wood’s celebrated painting American Gothic which it is also named after. He became a freelance photographer working for Vogue as well as publishing two books, Flash Photography (1947) and Camera Portraits: Techniques and Principles of Documentary Portraiture (1948). In 1948 Parks was hired by Life magazine to do a photographic essay on Harlem gang leader, Red Jackson, which led to a permanent position at Life, where he worked for twenty years. Parks developed his skills as a composer and author and in 1969 he became the first African American to direct a major motion picture, The Learning Tree based on his best selling novel and in 1971 he directed Shaft. A true Renaissance man, Gordon Parks passed away in 2006.

As Philip Brookman, curator of photography and media arts at the Corcoran, states, “Gordon Parks’ art has now changed the way we perceive and remember chronic issues, such as race, poverty, and crime, just as it has influenced our understanding of beauty: of nature, landscape, childhood, fashion, and memory.”

Press release from the Jenkins Johnson Gallery website

Gordon Parks
Norman Fontenelle, Sr., Harlem, New York
1967
Gelatin silver print
13 x 9 1/8 inches
Modern print

Gordon Parks
Ellen’s Feet, Harlem, New York
1967
Gelatin silver print
6 1/4 x 9 3/8 inches
Modern print

Gordon Parks
Mysticism, Harlem, New York
1952
Gelatin silver print
10 5/8 x 10 3/8 inches
Vintage print

Gordon Parks
Tenement Dwellers, Fort Scott, Kansas
1949
Gelatin silver print
7 x 9 inches
Modern print

Gordon Parks
Harlem Neighborhood, Harlem, New York
1952
Gelatin silver print
10 3/8 x 13 1/2 inches
Vintage print

Gordon Parks
Drugstore Cowboys, Turner Valley, Canada
1945
Gelatin silver print
9 7/8 x 12 7/8 inches
Modern print

Gordon Parks
The Invisible Man, Harlem, New York
1952
Edition 1 of 10
Pigment print
14 1/8 x 14 inches
Modern print

Jenkins Johnson Gallery
464 Sutter Street
San Francisco, CA 94108
T: 415.677.0770

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Friday 10am – 6pm
Saturday 10am – 5pm

Jenkins Johnson Gallery website

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Dr Marcus Bunyan

Dr Marcus Bunyan is an Australian artist and writer. His work explores the boundaries of identity and place. He writes the Art Blart blog which reviews exhibitions in Melbourne, Australia and posts exhibitions from around the world. He has a Dr of Philosophy from RMIT University, Melbourne and is currently studying a Master of Art Curatorship at The University of Melbourne.

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Archive for the 'colour photography' Category

Exhibition: ‘Yang Fudong: “Estranged Paradise. Works 1993 – 2013″‘ at Kunsthalle Zürich

Exhibition dates: 6th April – 26th May 2013

Exhibition: ‘Saul Leiter’ at Kunst Haus Wien, Vienna

Exhibition dates: 31st January – 26th May 2013

The exhibition chapters

Exhibition: ‘Concrete – Photography and Architecture’ at Fotomuseum Winterthur, Zurich

Exhibition dates: 2nd March – 20th May 2013

Exhibition: ‘Gilles Caron, The Conflict Within’ at The Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne

Exhibition dates: 30th January – 12th May 2013

Exhibition: ‘Laure Albin Guillot: The Question of Classicism’ at Jeu de Paume, Paris

Exhibition dates: 26th February – 12th May 2013

Exhibition: ‘Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop’ at The National Gallery of Art, Washington

Exhibition dates: 17th February – 5th May 2013

Review: ‘Aliza Levi / Books on a White Background’ at Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 10th April – 4th May 2013

Textual thresholds: The uncomfortable nature of titles in Books on a White Background

Exhibition: ‘Gordon Parks: Centennial’ at Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco

Exhibition dates: 21st February – 27th April 2013

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