Exhibition: ‘Hilma af Klint – A Pioneer of Abstraction’ at Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Exhibition dates: 16th February – 26th May 2013

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
Untitled
Nd

I don’t often say this about an artist but OMG, I am in love!

Five years before Wassily Kandinsky (he of the book Concerning the Spiritual In Art 1910), before Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich, the images of Carl Jung (The Red Book) and Rudolf Steiner (Blackboard Drawings 1919-1924) – who dismissed her ideas as wrong – was this revolutionary artist and abstractionist, Hilma af Klint, possibly the first purely abstract painter to produced non-objective works in the early 1900’s. While her more conventional painting became the source of her financial income her ‘life’s work’ remained a quite separate practice and hidden from view. She worked in isolation with little knowledge of the Avant-garde movement in Europe and requested that her complex and articulate paintings not be shown until 20 years after her death.

“Through her work with the group “the Five” af Klint created experimental automatic drawing as early as 1896, leading her towards an inventive geometric visual language capable of conceptualising invisible forces both of the inner and outer worlds. Quite apart from their diagrammatic purpose the paintings have a freshness and a modern aesthetic of tentative line and hastily captured image: a segmented circle, a helix bisected and divided into a spectrum of lightly painted colours. She continued prolifically to add to the body of work amounting to over 1000 pieces until 1941. She requested that it should not be shown until 20 years after the end of her life. In 1970 her paintings were offered as a gift to Moderna Museet in Stockholm, which declined the donation.” (Text from Wikipedia)

Ironic then is it not, that this first major exhibition of Hilma af Klint’s life’s work is at Moderna Museet in Stockholm. How times and attitudes change. And yes, I have ordered the catalogue…

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Photographer unknown
Portrait of Hilma af Klint
Nd

“Negotiating around the masculine domain of art making by working through automatism and spiritual séances, Hilma af Klint appears to allow herself more freedom and reverence by working directly through ‘High Masters’ in their masculine form; through instructed spiritualist experience. Influenced heavily by the infamous Madame Blavatsky, the co-founder of The Theosophical Society and writer of ‘The Secret Doctrine’, af Klint’s ‘High Masters’ guided her hand in an attempt to gain spiritual knowledge of the self and of the universe…

Her occult diaries containing symbols of crosses, mystical vowels, dead sea scrolls, astral and metaphysical planes, mystical initials, strange vowels cross over to the larger works, continuing to make the viewer work hard at understanding what message is being sent. It is then that you notice the rest of the space with painting after painting hung mainly in series, working their way with fluidity around the many walls contained within the exhibiting space. Cubicles of watercolours denoting The Tree of Life, Studies of world religions, paintings for the temple, they are all there. It is clear that af Klint was prolific in her secretive world but it is hard to imagine how she managed to keep all these vast works hidden from view.

It is clear that Klint has some understanding of scientific breakthroughs in her time however her occult physics, chemistry and mathematical understanding appears ahead of its time. Her provocative nature appears to ask questions of sexuality, suggests male and female equality and is probably through this enquiry, still seen as revolutionary. In light of this, af Klint experienced continuous dismissal of her working practices and ideas linked to the scientific and mathematical study of spiritual knowledge. Her friends describe her work as ‘inappropriate’ and her contemporary Rudolph Steiner, founder of The Anthroposophical Society dismissed her ideas as wrong when asked by personal invitation to view them, claiming that she couldn’t have contact with spirits in that way although he doesn’t appear to state clearly for what reason.”

Open College for the Arts tutor Hayley Lock on the We Are OCA website [Online] Cited 20/05/2013

Hilma af Klint – A Pioneer of Abstraction | Introduction

In the spring of 2013, the Moderna Museet is showing Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) in a large format with many works that have never been shown before. This retrospective exhibition presents Hilma af Klint as one of the greatest Swedish artists.

Hilma af Klint was a pioneer in abstract art, as early as 1906 she left a representational painting behind. Between 1906 and 1915, nearly 200 abstract paintings of partly monumental formats were added. Similar to Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich, who until now have been regarded as the foreground figures of abstraction, Hilma af Klint was interested in spiritual currents of her time such as spiritualism, theosophy and later anthroposophy. Hilma af Klint’s art is about the consciousness of a spiritual dimension, something that was marginalized in an increasingly materialistically oriented world.

Moderna Museet’s retrospective exhibition presents Hilma af Klint’s most important abstract works as well as paintings and works on paper that have never been shown before.

Installation views of Hilma af Klint – A Pioneer of Abstraction, 2013
© Photo: Åsa Lundén/ Moderna Museet

In Spring 2013 Moderna Museet is dedicating a major exhibition to Hilma af Klint (1862-1944), featuring many works that have never before been shown in public. This retrospective exhibition of a Swedish pioneer of abstract art is Moderna Museet’s tribute to Hilma af Klint as one of the greatest Swedish artists. A woman artist whose work is still far too unknown to a wider public, Hilma af Klint eschewed representational painting as early as 1906. Between 1906 and 1915, she produced nearly 200 abstract paintings, some of which are in monumental formats.

Like Vassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian and Kazimir Malevich, who have previously been regarded as the main protagonists of abstract art, Hilma af Klint was influenced by contemporary spiritual movements, such as spiritism, theosophy and, later, anthroposophy. Hilma af Klint’s oeuvre builds on the awareness of a spiritual dimension of consciousness, an aspect that was being marginalised in an increasingly materialistic world. When she painted, she believed that a higher consciousness was speaking through her. In her astonishing works she combines geometric shapes and symbols with ornamentation. Her multifaceted imagery strives to give insights into the different dimensions of existence, where microcosm and macrocosm reflect one another.

Hilma af Klint’s groundbreaking images were created in the early years of the 20th century – before the dawn of abstract art in Russia and Europe. Her works are not concerned with abstraction of colour and shapes for its own sake, but are an attempt to portray that which is not visible. Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian also explored a spiritual dimension. Kandinsky moved away from Expressionism and gradually left visible reality behind. He had a great interest in the occult and published On the Spiritual in Art in 1911. Malevich arrived via Cubism and Futurism at his suprematist, abstract and exceedingly spiritual images. Mondrian successively turned his back on figurative portrayals of that which the eye can see, reducing his compositions to a play of vertical and horizontal lines, and to the primary colours red, yellow and blue, with white and black. As a theosophist, he was striving for a purely spiritual expression of the eternal ideas beyond the visible world. Spiritual searching was thus an essential element to many of the modernists who moved towards an abstract imagery. Unlike Hilma af Klint, Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian did not claim to be acting as mediums in their creative process. This was an experience, however, that she had in common with artists such as the artists František Kupka (1871-1957), Emma Kunz (1892-1963) and the writer Victor Hugo (1802-1885).

Hilma af Klint left more than 1,000 paintings, watercolours and sketches. Although she exhibited her early, representational works, she refused to show her abstract paintings during her lifetime. In her will, she stipulated that these groundbreaking works must not be shown publicly until 20 years after her death. She was convinced that only then would the world be fully and completely ready to understand their significance.

Moderna Museet’s retrospective exhibition presents Hilma af Klint’s most important abstract works, as well as paintings and works on paper that have never before been presented publicly, enhancing our understanding of her oeuvre. Her extensive diaries and notebooks have been included in the research for this exhibition, which comprises some 200 paintings and works on paper and will tour internationally in 2013-2015.

About the artist

Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was a pioneer of art that turned away from visible reality. By 1906, she had developed an abstract imagery. This was several years before Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) and Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935), who are still regarded as the pioneers of abstract 20th-century art. Hilma af Klint assumed that there was a spiritual dimension to life and aimed at visualising contexts beyond what the eye can see. When painting, she believed that she was in contact with a higher consciousness that spoke and conveyed messages through her. Like many of her contemporaries, she was influenced by spiritual movements, especially spiritualism, theosophy and later anthroposophy. Through her paintings, she sought to understand and communicate the various dimensions of human existence.

In her will, Hilma af Klint wrote that her abstract works must not be made accessible to the public until at least twenty years after her death. She was convinced that their full meaning could not be understood until then. One hundred years ago, Hilma af Klint painted pictures for the future.

A Woman Artist at the Turn of the Century

Hilma af Klint began her art studies at Tekniska Skolan in Stockholm and also had lessons in portrait painting. Between 1882 and 1887, she was a student at the Royal Academy of the Fine Arts. After graduating and until 1908, she had a studio at Kungsträdgården in central Stockholm. She painted and exhibited portraits and landscapes in a naturalist style. In the late 1870s, Hilma af Klint attended séances, where a medium contacted the dead. There was a great fascination for invisible phenomena at the time. This can be seen in relation to scientific discoveries, such as x-rays that could reveal internal human organs, and electromagnetic waves that led to the development of radio and telephony.

In 1896, Hilma af Klint and four other women formed the group “De Fem” [The Five]. They made contact with “high masters” from another dimension, and made meticulous notes on their séances. This led to a definite change in Hilma af Klint’s art. She began practising automatic writing, which involves writing without consciously guiding the movement of the pen on the paper. She developed a form of automatic drawing, predating the surrealists by decades. Gradually, she eschewed her naturalist imagery, in an effort to free herself from her academic training. She embarked on an inward journey, into a world that is hidden from most people.

Press release from the Moderna Museet website

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
From A Work on Flowers, Mosses and Lichen, July 2 1919
1919
© Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk
Photo: Moderna Museet, Albin Dahlström

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
Evolution, No. 7, Group VI, The WUS/Seven-Pointed Star Series
1908
© Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk
Photo: Albin Dahlström/Moderna Museet

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
The Swan, No. 17, Group IX/SUW, The SUW/UW Series
1915
© Courtesy Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk
Photo: Albin Dahlström/Moderna Museet

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
The Swan, No. 1, Group IX/SUW, The SUW/UW Series
1915
© Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk
Photo: Moderna Museet, Albin Dahlström

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
The Swan
1914

Symbols

Hilma af Klint’s imagery is full of symbols, letters and words. Symbols are like doors into another dimension. For Hilma af Klint, her entire work was about conveying the messages she received, and to shed light on the great existential issues.

It would be pointless to translate the symbols and letters in Hilma af Klint’s works into definite, unambiguous terms. They must always be seen in relation to the entire context. In her notebook Symboler, Bokstäver och Ord tillhörande Hilma af Klints målningar [Notes on Letters and Words pertaining to Works by Hilma af Klint] she attempts to clarify the complex meanings of the various signs. Here are a few general explanations:

The snail or spiral represents development or evolution. The eyelet and the hook,blue and yellow, and the lily and the rose represent femininity and masculinity respectively. W stands for matter, while U stands for spirit. The almond shape arising when two circles overlap is called the vesica piscis and is an ancient symbol for the development towards unity and completion. The swan represents the ethereal in many mythologies and religions and stands for completion in the alchemical tradition. In Christianity, the dove represents the holy spirit and love.

Terminology

Esoteric and occult denote “the science of the hidden dimensions”. Western esotericism is a mixture of Neoplatonism, Hermeticism, Jewish kabbalah and the three occult “sciences” of astrology, magic and alchemy.

Spiritualism shares the conviction that it is possible to make contact with the spirits of the deceased. Modern spiritism was spread thanks to the Fox sisters in the USA in 1848.

Theosophy is a general doctrine incorporating inspiration from various religions and spiritism. The religions are regarded as different expressions of one fundamental truth. Theosophy teaches that the origin of everything, divinity, is inherent in every being. The Theosophical Society was founded in New York in 1875 by Helena Blavatsky and others. There is also an older form of theosophy that is significantly different to the newer version.

Anthroposophy is a life philosophy that originated in theosophy. Rudolf Steiner, who was the leader of the German branch of the Theosophical Society, left theosophy in 1913 to set up the anthroposophical movement. The two philosophies have a great deal in common, but anthroposophy in general has a stronger Christian element.

According to legend, the Rosicrucians were an esoteric society in Germany who engaged in alchemy in the early 17th century. Today, there are many secret orders that claim to uphold the Rosicrucian traditions.

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
Tree of Knowledge
1913

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
Primordial Chaos, No. 16, Group I, The WU/Rose Series
1906-1907
© Courtesy Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk
Photo: Albin Dahlström/Moderna Museet

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
The Large Figure Paintings, No. 5, Group III, The Key to All Works to Date, The WU/Rose Series
1907
© Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk
Photo: Moderna Museet, Albin Dahlström

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
The Ten Largest, No. 3, Youth, Group IV
1907
© Courtesy Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk
Photo: Albin Dahlström/Moderna Museet

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
The Ten Largest, No. 1
1907

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
The Dove, No. 3, Group IX/ UW, The SUW/UW Series
1915
© Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk
Photo: Moderna Museet, Albin Dahlström

Hilma af Klint (Swedish, 1862-1944)
Altarpiece, No. 1, Group X, Altarpiece Series
1915
© Stiftelsen Hilma af Klints Verk
Photo: Albin Dahlström/Moderna Museet

Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Moderna Museet is ten minutes away from Kungsträdgården, and twenty minutes from T-Centralen or Gamla Stan. Walk past Grand Hotel and Nationalmuseum on Blasieholmen, opposite the Royal Palace. After crossing the bridge to Skeppsholmen, continue up the hill. The entrance to Moderna Museet and Arkitekturmuseet is on the left-hand side.

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday 10 – 18
Monday closed

Moderna Museet website

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Exhibition: ‘Edith Tudor-Hart: In the Shadow of Tyranny’ at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Exhibition dates: 2nd March – 26th May 2013

Edith Tudor-Hart (Austrian-British, 1908-1973)
Untitled (Unemployed Workers’ Demonstration, Vienna)
1932
Modern silver gelatine print from archival negative
30.3 x 30cm
Scottish National Portrait Gallery: Archive presented by Wolfgang Suschitzky 2004
© The Estate of Edith Tudor-Hart

Another photographer unknown to me, who “attempted to use the camera as a political weapon, aligning her practice with the wider worker photography movement” and produced “images that show a sophisticated realism, marked by their directness and capacity to communicate issues of inequality and deprivation.” In other words she was using photography to fight the good fight, producing photographs that interrogate issues of poverty, unemployment and slum housing.

But there is more to Tudor-Hart’s photographs than just social realism otherwise they would not hold us so. Beyond a perceptive understanding of light and the formal elements of the picture plane there is that ineffable something that a good photographer always has – the ability to transcend the scene, to capture the chance encounter – be it the look on a woman’s face, the ensemble of children preparing vegetables or the untitled man ‘In Total Darkness’ (with traces of Eugene Atget). The aesthetic of engagement, the ability of her photographs to speak directly to the viewer in a vital, dynamic way, also speaks to the life of the photographer: studied at the Bauhaus, an agent for the Communist party, I would have liked to have met this artist.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Edith Tudor-Hart (Austrian-British, 1908-1973)
Demonstration, South Wales
1935
Printed 2004 from original negatives held in the Edith Tudor Hart Archive
Gelatin silver print
Framed: 50.80 x 40.64cm
© The Estate of Edith Tudor-Hart

Edith Tudor Hart was in South Wales in the 1930s following her husband’s appointment as a GP there. As communists they would have sympathised with the economic hardship of the miners in the Rhondda valley. During the industrial depression following the First World War, unemployment figures in the area soared. With the help of other unions, the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement (NUWM) organised Hunger Marches, which demanded more fair unemployment legislation. This photograph was taken during one such demonstration, with the photographer perched on a post opposite the crowd of men.

Text from the National Galleries of Scotland website

Edith Tudor-Hart (Austrian-British, 1908-1973)
Members of the Social-Democratic Youth Movement Marching Past the Opera House, Opernring, Vienna
c. 1928
Printed 2004 from original negatives held in the Edith Tudor Hart Archive
Gelatin silver print
28 x 30cm
Scottish National Portrait Gallery
© Copyright held jointly by Peter Suschitzky, Julia Donat & Misha Donat

This is a very dynamic image showing members of the Social-Democratic Youth Movement marching in Vienna. In the wake of the First World War, the Austrian political parties had a youthful membership – it is estimated that up to sixty per cent of the Viennese Social Democrats were under forty years of age. The limits of teenagers’ political engagement was a particular source of controversy, with many arguing that the youth movement should be more educational than political. Memoirs of the period reveal that political identification was often fluid. A common joke amongst young activists was that you went to bed a Social Democrat and woke up a Communist!

Text from the National Galleries of Scotland website

Edith Tudor-Hart (Austrian-British, 1908-1973)
Untitled (Man Selling Fruit, Vienna)
c. 1930
Modern silver gelatine print from archival negative
30.3 x 30.1cm
Scottish National Portrait Gallery: Archive presented by Wolfgang Suschitzky 2004
© The Estate of Edith Tudor-Hart

Edith Tudor-Hart (Austrian-British, 1908-1973)
Untitled (Caledonian Market, London)
c. 1931
Modern silver gelatine print from archival negative
27.7 x 27.5cm
Scottish National Portrait Gallery: Archive presented by Wolfgang Suschitzky 2004
© The Estate of Edith Tudor-Hart

Edith Tudor-Hart (Austrian-British, 1908-1973)
Ferris Wheel, Vienna
c. 1931
Printed 2004 from original negatives held in the Edith Tudor Hart Archive
Gelatin silver print
29.3 x 29.2cm
Scottish National Portrait Gallery: Archive presented by Wolfgang Suschitzky 2004
© The Estate of Edith Tudor-Hart

Before marrying Edith Tudor Hart had studied photography at the Bauhaus in Dessau. The concerns of this school are obvious in the geometries and startling perspective of this image. Note the exaggerated size of the steel supports of the wheel and the minute figures of the people standing on the ground. The photographer’s eagerness to document the dynamism of urban life suggests she was aware of developments in Soviet avant-garde photography.

Text from the National Galleries of Scotland website

Edith Tudor-Hart (Austrian-British, 1908-1973)
Karl-Marx-Hof, Vienna
c. 1932
Printed 2004 from original negatives held in the Edith Tudor Hart Archive
Gelatin silver print
30.2 x 30cm
Scottish National Portrait Gallery
© Copyright held jointly by Peter Suschitzky, Julia Donat & Misha Donat

The Karl-Marx-Hof was a fortress-like housing estate built by the Social Democrats between 1927 and 1930. A kilometre in length, its huge walls contained nearly 1400 apartments for Viennese workers. In her photograph of the building Tudor-Hart summons both its strength and sense of modernity. However, the permanence evoked by the architecture soon proved to be more apparent than real. In February 1934, during the short-lived Austrian civil war, the building was shelled by Austro-fascist forces. Out-gunned, and concerned about women and children still in their homes, the Karl-Marx-Hof’s defenders surrendered. The first mass movement against European fascism was easily defeated and the Austrian Social Democrats were driven into illegality and exile.

Text from the National Galleries of Scotland website

Edith Tudor-Hart (Austrian-British, 1908-1973)
Family Group, Stepney, London
c. 1932
Printed 2004 from original negatives held in the Edith Tudor Hart Archive
Gelatin silver print
Scottish National Portrait Gallery
© Copyright held jointly by Peter Suschitzky, Julia Donat & Misha Donat

Tudor-Hart worked extensively amongst working-class communities in East and North London, photographing children on the streets and families in their homes. She was part of a larger movement on the left concerned about the effect of widespread slum housing. However, Tudor-Hart’s imagery is rarely merely propaganda and her ability to connect with those she photographs – often women and children – is evident. This complex photograph explores the photographer’s relationship to her subjects. Shot deliberately through the window it emphasises her voyeurism, thus limiting the sentimental impact of the image.

Text from the National Galleries of Scotland website

Edith Tudor-Hart (Austrian-British, 1908-1973)
Untitled (Ultraviolet Light Treatment, South London Hospital for Women and Children)
c. 1935
Modern silver gelatine print from archival negative
30.3 × 30cm
Scottish National Portrait Gallery: Archive presented by Wolfgang Suschitzky 2004

This photograph was taken for a booklet promoting the work of the South London Hospital for Women and Children, produced in collaboration with the German exile photographer, Grete Stern. It shows light treatment for children suffering from vitamin deficiencies, a standard cure at the time. The South London Hospital was founded in 1912 “to meet the growing demand of women for medical treatment by members of their own sex.” Tudor-Hart campaigned throughout her life for health reforms for women and children, part of a wider movement of women whose activity was vital to the formation of the National Health Service in 1948.

Text from the National Galleries of Scotland website

Edith Tudor-Hart (Austrian-British, 1908-1973)
Untitled (Drying Room, Pit-head Baths, Ashington Colliery, Northumberland)
c. 1937
Modern silver gelatine print from archival negative
30.3 x 30.1cm
Scottish National Portrait Gallery: Archive presented by Wolfgang Suschitzky 2004
© The Estate of Edith Tudor-Hart

The life and work of one of the most extraordinary photographers in Britain during the 1930s and 1940s is the subject of a major new exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Based on extensive new research, Edith Tudor-Hart: In the Shadow of Tyranny, is the first full presentation of the Austrian-born photographer’s work. The exhibition presents over 80 photographs, many of which have never been shown before, and includes film footage, Tudor-Hart’s scrapbook and a selection of her published stories in books and magazines.

During the 1930s, photography became implicated in the vital political and social questions of the era as never before. The enhanced technological capacities of the camera and faster printing processes offered left-wing political activists new techniques for popular mobilisation. The medium took on a sharper social purpose, breaking down the traditional divisions of culture through its quality of immediacy and capacity for self-representation.

Edith Tudor-Hart was a key exponent of this aesthetic of engagement, with images that show a sophisticated realism, marked by their directness and capacity to communicate issues of inequality and deprivation. In a turbulent decade, she attempted to use the camera as a political weapon, aligning her practice with the wider worker photography movement. Tudor-Hart’s photography dealt with many of the major social issues of the day, including poverty, unemployment and slum housing. Her imagery is a vital record of the politically-charged atmosphere of inter-war Vienna and Britain during the Great Slump of the 1930s. After 1945, Tudor-Hart concentrated on questions of child welfare, producing some of the most psychologically penetrating imagery of children of her era.

Tudor-Hart’s life story as a photographer is inextricably tied to the great political upheavals of the twentieth century. Born Edith Suschitzky in Vienna in 1908, she grew up in radical Jewish circles in a city ravaged by the impact of the First World War. Her childhood was dominated by social issues in a culture acutely aware of the impact of the Russian Revolution. After training as a Montessori teacher, she studied photography at the Bauhaus in Dessau and pursued a career as a photojournalist. However, her life was turned upside down in May 1933 when she was arrested whilst working as an agent for the Communist Party of Austria. She escaped long-term imprisonment by marrying an English doctor, Alexander Tudor-Hart, and was exiled to London shortly afterwards. Notoriously, Tudor-Hart continued to combine her practice as a photographer with low-level espionage for the Soviet Union and was pursued by the security services until her death in 1973.

Tudor-Hart’s photography introduced into Britain formal and narrative features that derived from her training on the Continent. Her method initiates a dialogue with those she photographs, very different from the more distancing imagery of the photojournalists. Along with thirty or so German-speaking exile photographers, many of Jewish origin, Tudor-Hart helped transform British photography. After the Second World War, rejected by Fleet Street and the British establishment, Tudor-Hart turned to documenting issues of child welfare. Her photographs were published in Picture Post and a range of other British magazines. By the late 1950s she had abandoned photography altogether.

Commenting on the exhibition, Director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Christopher Baker, said, ‘We are really pleased to be staging this thrilling retrospective of Tudor-Hart’s photography. It combines stunning images with an intriguing life-story and illuminates a turbulent period in European history. Tudor-Hart was one of the great photographers of her era.’ Edith Tudor-Hart: In the Shadow of Tyranny is drawn largely from the photographer’s negative archive, which was donated to the National Galleries of Scotland by her family in 2004. The exhibition travels to the Wien Museum in September and will form the first complete presentation of her work in Austria.

Press release from the Scottish National Portrait Gallery

Edith Tudor-Hart (Austrian-British, 1908-1973)
Untitled (Children Preparing Vegetables, North Stoneham Camp, Hampshire)
1937
Modern silver gelatine print from archival negative
30.2 x 29.8cm
Scottish National Portrait Gallery: Archive presented by Wolfgang Suschitzky 2004
© The Estate of Edith Tudor-Hart

Edith Tudor-Hart (Austrian-British, 1908-1973)
Untitled (Basque Refugee Children, North Stoneham Camp, Hampshire)
1937
Modern silver gelatine print from archival negative
30.2 x 30cm
Scottish National Portrait Gallery: Archive presented by Wolfgang Suschitzky 2004
© The Estate of Edith Tudor-Hart

The children are giving the Spanish anti-fascist Republican salute.

Edith Tudor-Hart (Austrian-British, 1908-1973)
Untitled (Child Staring into Bakery Window)
c. 1935
Modern silver gelatine print from archival negative
35.30 x 30.00cm
Scottish National Portrait Gallery: Archive presented by Wolfgang Suschitzky 2004
© The Estate of Edith Tudor-Hart

Edith Tudor-Hart (Austrian-British, 1908-1973)
Untitled (In Total Darkness, London)
c. 1935
Modern silver gelatine print from archival negative
27.70 x 27.50cm
Scottish National Portrait Gallery: Archive presented by Wolfgang Suschitzky 2004
© The Estate of Edith Tudor-Hart

Scottish National Portrait Gallery
1 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JD
Phone: +44 131 624 6200

Opening hours:
Daily 10am – 5pm

Scottish National Portrait Gallery website

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

Exhibition dates: 6th April – 26th May 2013

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

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.

Yang Fudong. Close to the Sea & The Revival of the Snake – Pechino

Yang Fudong’s videos must number without doubt among the most talismanic works in the history of Chinese independent cinema. On Artribune Television, “Art inChina” presents “Close to the Sea & The Revival of the Snake”, Yang Fudong’s first one-man show in Beijing, featured at ShanghART Gallery & ARTMIA Gallery.

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

Yang Fudong (Chinese, b. 1971)
East of Que Village (installation view)
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 (Chinese, b. 1971)
East of Que Village (still)
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 (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 (Chinese, b. 1971)
Shenjia alley. Fairy (1)
2000
C-print
96 x 150cm
Courtesy of the artist; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York / Paris; ShanghART gallery, Shanghai

Yang Fudong (Chinese, b. 1971)
Mrs. Huang at M last Night (8)
2006
C-print, b&w
120 x 180cm
Courtesy of the artist; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York / Paris; ShanghART gallery, Shanghai

Yang Fudong (Chinese, b. 1971)
An Estranged Paradise (mo sheng tian tang) (still)
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 (Chinese, b. 1971)
I love my motherland (wo ai wo de zhu guo) (still)
1999
5-channel b&w video-installation
12 minutes
Courtesy of the artist; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York / Paris; ShanghART gallery, Shanghai

Yang Fudong (Chinese, b. 1971)
City Light (Cheng shi Zhi guang) (still)
2000
Single-channel video, colour, with sound
6 minutes
Courtesy of the artist, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York / Paris, ShanghART gallery, Shanghai

Yang Fudong (Chinese, b. 1971)
International Hotel (1)
2010
Inkjet print, b&w
180 x 120cm
Courtesy of the artist; Marian Goodman Gallery, New York / Paris; ShanghART gallery, Shanghai

Yang Fudong (Chinese, b. 1971)
The First Intellectual
2000
C-print
193 x 127cm
Courtesy of the artist, Marian Goodman Gallery, New York / Paris, ShanghART gallery, Shanghai

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

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday 11am – 6pm
Monday closed

Kunsthalle Zürich website

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

Exhibition dates: 31st January – 26th May 2013

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
From the El
c. 1955
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

“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.”

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

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

Saul Leiter

How brave was the 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.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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 (American, 1923-2013)
Nude
1970s
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
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.

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 (American, 1923-2013)
New York
1950s
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
Sign Painter
1954
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
Graffiti Heads
1950
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
Shirt
1948
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
Harlem
1960
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
Hat
1956
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
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.

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 colour rather than being defined by careful modelling.

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.

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.

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 (American, 1923-2013)
Carol Brown, ‘Harper’s Bazaar’
c. 1958
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
Soames Bantry, ‘Nova’
1960
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
Walking
1956
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
Reflection
1958
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

“I spent a great deal of my life being ignored. I was always very happy that way. Being ignored is a great privilege. That is how I think I learnt to see what others do not see and to react to situations differently. I simply looked at the world, not really prepared for anything.”

Saul Leiter

Art critic Roberta Smith wrote in 2005: “Mr. Leiter was a photographer less of people than of perception itself. His painter’s instincts served him well in his emphasis on surface, spatial ambiguity and a lush, carefully calibrated palette. But the abstract allure of his work doesn’t rely on soft focus, a persistent, often irritating photographic ploy, or the stark isolation of details, in the manner of Aaron Siskind or early Harry Callahan. Instead, Mr. Leiter captured the passing illusions of everyday life with a precision that might almost seem scientific, if it weren’t so poetically resonant and visually layered.”

Text from the Lens Culture website [Online] Cited 15/05/2013 no longer available online

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
Shopping
c. 1953
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
Kutztown
1948
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
Pizza, Patterson
1952
© Saul Leiter / Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

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

Opening hours:
Daily, 10am – 7pm

Kunst Haus Wein website

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

Exhibition dates: 2nd March – 20th May 2013

Anonymous photographer
Hardstrasse with Hardbrücke in construction
1972
Gelatin silver print
8.8 x 12.6cm
Baugeschichtliches Archiv der Stadt Zürich

When creating this archive, 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.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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.

Michael Wesely (German, b. 1963)
Canadian Embassy, Leipziger Platz, Berlin (5.2.2003 – 28.4.2005)
 C-print
125 x 175cm
Galerie Fahnemann, Berlin
© Michael Wesely/Courtesy Galerie Fahnemann

Michael Wesely (born 1963 in Munich) is a German art photographer who is best known for his photos of cities, buildings, landscapes, and still lives of flowers taken with a special ultra-long exposure technique. …

Wesely’s works deal with the subject of time and the change that takes place over time. Due to the extremely long exposure and the special bulb he uses, those elements that move the least dominate his images, while those moving will later be seen as transparent figures or the outlines of newly erect buildings overlapping. The pictures “reveal the passage of time by showing the changing skyline, the skeletons of cranes. the rise of new buildings, and the disappearance of others. Beams of sunlight, the residue of the ever-changing positions (tithe earth and sun, are also evident, like a palimpsest of seasons”. Everything that ever happened on the scene during exposure (during weeks, months, or even up to two or three years) will be seen in one single picture. Wesely’s photographs have been described as a metaphor on the change of Berlin after 1989 because “at once strikingly energetic and ghostly and uninhabited. This formal paradox aptly describes Berlin, which had only been unified for ten years at the time the images were taken. In that way, the photographs offer a larger commentary on time’s passage.”

Text from the Wikipedia website

William Henry Fox Talbot (English, 1800-1877)
The Bridge of Sighs, St. John’s College,  Cambridge
1845
Salt print from calotype negative
16.4 x 20.6cm
Museum Folkwang Essen

Charles Marville (French, 1813-1879)
24, Rue Bièvre, Paris
1865-1869
Albumin print
27.4 x 36.6cm
Collection Thomas Walther

Lucien Hervé (Hungarian, 1910-2007)
Le Corbusier: Façade of the Secretariat Building, Chandigarh, 1961
1961
Gelatin silver print
25.5 x 25.4cm
Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montréal
© Estate Lucien Hervé

Lucien Hervé is considered to be one of the great architectural photographers of the 20th century. He collaborated with Le Corbusier from 1949 until the architect’s death in 1965, developing a great rapport. Le Corbusier even once pronounced Hervé to have ‘the soul of an architect.’ In 1949, Hervé travelled from Paris to Marseille to see Le Corbusier’s recently designed housing complex, Unité d’Habitation. Awed by the groundbreaking modern design, Hervé took 650 photographs of it in a single day and it was from then onwards they worked closely with one another.

Through light and shadow, he defined the dialogue between substance and form. By delineating a strong contrast between the light and shadows in his subject as well as placing emphasis on building details, Hervé was able to communicate the depth of a room, the surface of a wall, or the strength of a building’s framework.

Born 1910 in Hungary, Hervé (born László Elkán) moved to Paris at the age of 19 and earned French citizenship in 1938. During World War II, he was captured by the Germans, escaped and became a member of the French Resistance under the name of Lucien Hervé, which he kept thereafter. After the war he left politics behind to write for art journals. It was one of his editors, in fact, who suggested he visit Unité d’Habitation. Hervé began experimenting with photography, over or underexposing images and often severely cropping them to attain unusual compositions following the work of avant-garde artists such as Piet Mondrian, László Moholy-Nagy, and Alexander Rodchenko.

Text from the Michael Hoppen Gallery website

F. C. Gundlach (German, 1926-2021)
“Op Art” bathing suit by Sinz, Vouliagmeni/Greece
1966
Gelatin silver print
50 x 50cm
F.C. Gundlach, Hamburg
© F.C. Gundlach

Laurence Bonvin (Swiss, b. 1967)
Blikkiesdorp, Cape Town, South Africa
2009
Inkjet print
40 x 50cm
Courtesy the artist
© Laurence Bonvin

Laurence Bonvin (born 1967 in Sierre) is a Swiss photographer and director living between Berlin, Valais and Lisbon. Her documentary approach has for many years focused on the phenomena of transformation in urban and natural environments.

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 (Italian, b. 1941)
#1176 01 29 1997 3:30PM Looking Southeast
From Carlo Scarpa’s Tomba Brion
1997
C print
19.5 x 24.6cm
Courtesy the artist
© Guido Guidi

Guido Guidi (born January 1, 1941) is an Italian photographer. His work, spanning over more than 40 years, has focused in particular on rural and suburban geographies in Italy and Europe. He photographs places that are normally overlooked. His published works include In Between Cities, Guardando a Est, A New Map of Italy and Veramente. …

Guidi began experimenting in the late 1960s with pseudo-documentary images that interrogated photography’s objectivity. Influenced by neorealist film and conceptual art, in the 1970s he began investigating Italy’s man-altered landscape. Working in marginal and decayed spaces with an 8×10 large format camera, he creates dense sequences intended as meditations on the meaning of landscape, photography, and seeing. Later he investigated the life and death of modernist architecture, with projects on Scarpa, van der Rohe, and Le Corbusier. Photography for Guidi is something autobiographical. It is synonymous with inhabiting, and the camera is the instrument that allows him to observe, appropriate and collect what lies beyond his doorstep.

“Guidi was a leading voice in the resurgence of Italian photography of the 1970s and 1980s”. “Since then, working mostly in colour with a large-format camera, he has patiently returned to the same places – his native Romagna and the area around Venice – documenting the shift from a rural to a post-industrial landscape.”

Text from the Wikipedia website

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Le Vele di Scampia
2009
Blu Ray photoanimation
8.57 min
Courtesy Koch Oberhuber Wolff, Berlin
© Tobias Zielony/ KOW

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948)
Seagram Building, New York City
1997
Gelatin silver print
58.4 x 47cm
Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal
© Hiroshi Sugimoto/Courtesy of Gallery Koyanagi Tokyo

Aage Strüwing (Danish, 1913-1989)
Arne Jacobsen: Rødovre Town Hall
1955
Gelatin silver print
23.7 x 17cm
EPFL Archives de la construction moderne, Lausanne
© Estate Strüwing

Moriz Nähr (Austrian, 1859-1945)
 Stiegenhaus im Haus Stonborough-Wittgenstein [Staircase in the house Stonborough-Wittgenstein] (composite cleaned)
1928

Moriz Nähr (Austrian, 1859-1945)
 Stiegenhaus im Haus Stonborough-Wittgenstein (Staircase in the house Stonborough-Wittgenstein)
1928
Silbergelatine Abzug
13.8 x 8.9cm
Albertina, Wien
© Estate Moriz Nähr

Moriz Nähr (1859-1945) is one of the most important innovators of photography in “Vienna around 1900”. His photographic oeuvre is mentioned today in the same breath as that of the famous Parisian photographer Eugène Atget. Nähr enjoyed a life-long artist’s friendship with Gustav Klimt and was connected with the artist through a special network of eminent personalities from the arts, culture and philosophy. Numerous portrait photographs of Klimt emphatically document the two artists’ bond. Klimt was also inspired by Nähr’s photographic motifs, as illustrated by the conformities in the photographer’s pictures and Klimt’s painting Beech Forest I created in 1902. The legends surrounding Moriz Nähr are based on the one hand on his close ties with Gustav Klimt and the Vienna Secession and on the other hand on his connections with the family of Ludwig Wittgenstein and the imperial Habsburg family, especially with the heir to the throne Archduke Franz Ferdinand, who appointed him court photographer in 1908. Owing to his work as a freelance photographer as well as to his various commissions, he has left behind a multi-faceted oeuvre comprising not only landscape-, architecture-, and portrait photography but also street photography (Scenes from the Naschmarkt, 1918) as well as photographs documenting exhibitions (Vienna Secession).

Anonymous. “Moriz Nähr: Photographer of Viennese Modernism,” on the Leopold Museum website 2018 [Online] Cited 14/07/2024

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 the Wikipedia website

Lala Aufsberg (German, 1907-1976)
Cathedral of Light
c. 1937
Gelatin silver print
24 x 18cm
Town Archive Nuremberg
© Photo Marburg

Lala Aufsberg (actually, Ida Louise Aufsberg, born 26 February 1907 in Sonthofen, May 18, 1976) 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 x 6 and 9 x 12 and 103,000 photos.

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
 Chrysler Building under construction, New York
1929
Gelatin silver print
16.8 x 8.3cm
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 11am – 6pm
Wednesday 11am – 8pm
Closed on Mondays

Fotomuseum Winterthur website

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Exhibition: ‘Gordon Parks: 100 Moments’ at New York State Museum

Exhibition dates: 26th January – 19th May 2013

Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006)
A dance group, Frederick Douglass housing project, Anacostia, Washington, DC, 1942
1942
Gelatin silver print
17.5 x 22″
Prints and Photographs Division
Library of Congress

The more I see the work of this outstanding artist, the more I fall in love with it. There is just a beautiful lyricism here – nothing extraneous or superfluous within the picture frame, sensitively balanced photographs that are whimsical and engaging. A woman and her dog in Harlem, NY, 1943 (below) is just a joy.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the New York State Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera.”

Gordon Parks

Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006)
A woman and her dog in Harlem, NY, 1943
1943
Gelatin silver print
23 x 21″
Prints and Photographs Division
Library of Congress

Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006)
Street Scene: Three young boys, Harlem, NY, 1943
1943
Gelatin silver print
23 x 21″
Prints and Photographs Division
Library of Congress

Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006)
Street Scene: Two children walking, Harlem, NY, 1943
1943
Gelatin silver print
23 x 21″
Prints and Photographs Division
Library of Congress

Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006)
Anacostia, D.C. Frederick Douglass Housing Project. A family says grace before the evening meal. June 1942
1942
Gelatin silver print
Gordon Parks Collection, Photographs and Prints Division
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library

Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006)
Red Jackson, Harlem
1948
Gelatin silver print
Gordon Parks Collection, Photographs and Prints Division
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library

Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006)
The Fontenelle Family
1967
Gelatin silver print
Gordon Parks Collection, Photographs and Prints Division
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library

Another Parks image in the show, taken in 1967 and published in Life magazine, is subtler though ultimately more powerful. It shows Harlem resident Bessie Fontenelle and four of her children at the welfare office. Across a desk, the family faces an anonymous white man, his back to the camera, with a suit, thick-framed spectacles and slicked hair. Fontenelle looks drawn and careworn, ground down by poverty. Parks lived with the family for a month and documented their lives for a story and photo essay for Life, an assignment he devised in response to an editor’s question about why inner-city residents were rioting across America.

“The problem in documenting a family like that,” Parks later said, “is that you wonder, in the end, whether you should have touched the family, or just left them alone.” While he lived with them, the alcoholic father, Norman, was unemployed, and Parks struggled with journalistic objectivity as he resisted the impulse to provide funds for food and clothing.

After their story was published, money flooded in from Life readers, and the Fontenelles were able to buy a small house in Queens. They’d been there just three months when Norman, who was drunk, dropped a lit cigarette onto the couch and burned the house down. He died in the fire, as did one of the six kids; another boy died a few years later, and three girls eventually were claimed by AIDS. Parks spent the rest of his life wondering whether, in service of telling the larger story of urban poverty for many families, he’d contributed to the destruction of the one he photographed.

Steve Barnes. “On exhibit: ‘Gordon Parks: 100 Moments’ at the State Museum,” on the Times Union website Jan 23, 2013 [Online] Cited 15/07/2024

Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006)
Boy at Swimming Pool, Harlem, NY, 1942
1942
Gelatin silver print
22 x 17.5″
Gordon Parks Collection, Photographs and Prints Division
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library

A new exhibition celebrating the 100th birthday of world-renowned photographer Gordon Parks opens on January 26, 2013 at the New York State Museum. Gordon Parks: 100 Moments showcases six decades of Parks’ photographs, including numerous never-before-seen images and Parks’ most famous photo, American Gothic, Washington, D.C. On display at the State Museum through May 19, 2013, the stunning visual collection is organised by the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. The exhibit also includes images from the Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information (OWI) collections at the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

“Gordon Parks was a true Renaissance man – musician, writer, film director and, most notably, world-class photographer,” said State Education Commissioner John B. King, Jr. “His work helped drive the Civil Rights movement by exposing the stark realities of life faced by so many African Americans. We are honoured to exhibit some of his most important images at the New York State Museum.”

“The State Museum is honoured to present this landmark exhibition by Gordon Parks, one of New York’s greatest photographers,” said State Museum Director Mark Schaming. “This is truly a unique opportunity to see these powerful images from the Schomburg’s vast collections together in a beautifully curated exhibition.”

Known for documenting the ordinary yet compelling lives of African Americans in cities like Harlem and Washington, D.C., Parks began his career in 1948 as a professional photographer for Life magazine, where he was the publication’s first African American employee. Tackling issues in black communities like post-World War II urban migration, the expansion of black newspapers and radio, entrenched segregation and economic discrimination, Parks was a consummate storyteller of urban life through his ever-questioning lens. Parks died in 2006.

Press release from the New York State Museum website

Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006)
Policeman, badge no. 19687, NY, 1943
1943
Gelatin silver print
23 x 21″
Prints and Photographs Division
Library of Congress

Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006)
American Gothic, Washington, D.C., (Ella Watson)
1942
Gelatin silver print

One of Parks’ most famous images, taken in Washington, D.C., in 1942, captures Ella Watson, who at that point had been a cleaning woman in federal offices for 26 years and supported a family of six on a salary of about $20 a week. She’s in front of a large, vertically hung American flag and flanked by a broom and a mop, their well-used heads a testament to the rigor of her nightly labors. Watson, whom Parks chronicled as part of his work as the first black photographer for the Farm Security Administration, has a stony expression, and she looks slightly to the side of the camera – a gaze diverted and downcast. It’s a polemical picture, and its obvious echo of Grant Wood’s painting “American Gothic” led to Parks’ photo becoming familiarly known by the same name. Parks later said the photo was meant to highlight racism and inequality and that when he made the picture he was still seething from having been refused service at several retail establishments in Washington.

Steve Barnes. “On exhibit: ‘Gordon Parks: 100 Moments’ at the State Museum,” on the Times Union website Jan 23, 2013 [Online] Cited 15/07/2024

Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006)
Grandfather and grandchild on Seaton Road, Washington, DC, 1942
1942
Gelatin silver print
21 x 17″
Prints and Photographs Division
Library of Congress

Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006)
First Aid: Interracial activities at Camp Nathan Hale, Southfields, NY, 1943
1943
Gelatin silver print
22 x 17.5″
Gordon Parks Collection, Photographs and Prints Division
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library

Gordon Parks (American, 1912-2006)
Construction workman, Washington, DC, 1942
1942
Gelatin silver print
21″ x 17″
Prints and Photographs Division
Library of Congress

New York State Museum
260 Madison Ave Albany
NY 12230, United States
Phone: +1 518-474-5877

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday 9.30am – 5.00pm
Closed Monday
Closed Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day

New York State Museum website

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Exhibition: ‘Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive Part III: Poetics and Politics’ at The Walther Collection Project Space, New York: Part 2

Exhibition dates: 22nd March – 18th May 2013

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

Unidentified photographer, inscribed:
Dressing hair. Women of the E. Coast. Africa
Tanzania, early twentieth century
Gelatin or collodion printed-out print mounted on album page

“Distance invokes travel, geographic dichotomies, estrangement, otherness, and separation in time. Whereas desire implies proximity, closeness, affect, and unfulfilled longing.”

Part 2 of the posting about the exhibition Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive Part III. I have added notes under some of the photographs to give context to the tribes, the people and the titles of the photographs. For more information see The New Yorker: Photo Booth’s interview with curator South African scholar Tamar Garb.

See Part 1 of the posting.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Samuel Baylis Barnard (English, 1841-1916), inscribed:
Damara Servant Girl, S. Africa
South Africa, late nineteenth century
Albumen print

Unidentified photographer
Photograph of a young woman
East Africa, Early twentieth century
Gelatin-silver developed-out print

Samuel Baylis Barnard (English, 1841-1916), inscribed:
Zulu Kaffir
South Africa, late nineteenth century
Albumen print

Unidentified photographer
Studio photograph of a man
East Africa, late nineteenth century
Albumen print

This man is from the Hadendowa tribe, eastern Sudan.

Hadendoa (or Hadendowa) is the name of a nomadic subdivision of the Beja people, known for their support of the Mahdiyyah rebellion during the 1880s to 1890s. The area historically inhabited by the Hadendoa is today parts of Sudan, Egypt and Eritrea.

Unidentified photographer, inscribed:
Monsiga Chief of Mafeking
South Africa, late nineteenth century
Gelatin or collodion printed-out print mounted on album page

Mahikeng – formerly, and still commonly, known as Mafikeng and historically Mafeking in English – is the capital city of the North-West Province of South Africa. It is best known internationally for the Siege of Mafeking, the most famous engagement of the Second Boer War.

Located close to South Africa’s border with Botswana, Mahikeng is 1,400 km (870 mi) northeast of Cape Town and 260 km (160 mi) west of Johannesburg. In 2001, it had a population of 49,300. In 2007, Mafikeng was reported to have a population of 250,000 of which the CBD constitutes between 69,000 and 75,000. It is built on the open veld at an elevation of 1,500 m (4,921 ft), by the banks of the Upper Molopo River. The Madibi goldfields are some 15 km (9.3 mi) south of the town.

A. James Gribble, inscribed:
Masupa. Kaffir Chief & sons. Basutoland
South Africa, late nineteenth century
Albumen print

Basutoland or officially the Territory of Basutoland, was a British Crown colony established in 1884 after the Cape Colony’s inability to control the territory. It was divided into seven administrative districts; Berea, Leribe, Maseru, Mohales Hoek, Mafeteng, Qacha’s Nek and Quthing.

Basutoland was renamed the Kingdom of Lesotho upon independence from the United Kingdom on October 4, 1966.

W. Rausch (South African, 1862-1900), inscribed:
Indaba of Induna Chiefs, Buluwayo
Zimbabwe, 1890s
Gelatin or collodion printed-out print mounted on card

InDuna (plural: izinDuna) is a Zulu title meaning advisor, great leader, ambassador, headman, or commander of group of warriors. It can also mean spokesperson or mediator as the izinDuna often acted as a bridge between the people and the king. The title was reserved for senior officials appointed by the king or chief, and was awarded to individuals held in high esteem for their qualities of leadership, bravery or service to the community. The izinDuna would regularly gather for an indaba to discuss important issues. An indaba is an important conference held by the izinDuna (principal men) of the Zulu or Xhosa peoples of South Africa. (Text from Wikipedia)

William Rausch was born in Cape Colony, South Africa in 1862. Eventually he made his way to Bulawayo where established himself as a photographer. His earliest photos date from 1895. He is one of four photographers listed in Matabeleland during this time: C. Hines, C. H. Newberry, J. Parkin, and W. Rausch. The Rhodesia Scientific Association (1899) lists Rausch as having won a prize for his Rhodesian photographs. He died of pneumonia at Memorial Hospital on 24 September, 1900. H. A. de Beers was appointed as executor and his estate was finalised 24 January 1901.

Unidentified photographer
Studio photograph of a man
South Africa, late nineteenth century
Carte de visite

Gray Brothers (Diamond Fields), inscribed:
Zulu / Young Warrior in fighting order, and in skin Kaross. Armed with hatchet and assegai
South Africa. c. 1870s
Carte de visite

G. F. Williams
Studio photograph of two women
South Africa, c. 1870s
Carte de visite

Lawrence Brothers, Cape Town (attr.), inscribed:
Kaffir girl
South Africa, c. 1870s
Carte de visite

The partners of Lawrence Bros. were James Lawrence and Colin Gibb Lawrence and they were doing business from Ashley street, Cape Town in 1864. Left for England in 1865. James employed his brothers Alexander and Colin Gibb as his assistants and later joined with Colin in a partnership.

Kaffir (/ˈkæfər/,Afrikaans: “kaffer”, Sarnami: “kafri”) is an ethnic slur which is used in reference to black Africans in South Africa. Derived from the Arabic word Kafir meaning “nonbeliever”, particularly of Islam.

Unidentified photographer
Portrait of King Khama III
South Africa, early twentieth century

Khama III (1837?-1923), also known as Khama the Good, was the kgosi (meaning chief or king) of the Bamangwato people of Bechuanaland (now Botswana), who made his country a protectorate of the United Kingdom to ensure its survival against Boer and Ndebele encroachments.

After Khama became king in 1875, after overthrowing his father Sekgoma and elbowing away his brother Kgamane his ascension came at a time of great dangers and opportunities. Ndebele incursions from the north (from what is now Zimbabwe), Boer and “mixed” trekkers from the south, and German colonialists from the West, all hoping to the seize his territory and its hinterlands. He answered these challenges by aligning his state with the administrative aims of the British, which provided him with cover and support, and, relatedly, by energetically expanding his own control over a much wider area than any “kgosi” before him. Khama converted to Christianity, which moved him to criminalise sectarianism and to deprecate the institutions favoured by traditionalists. At Khama’s request stringent laws were passed against the importation of alcohol.

Text from the Wikipedia website

G. T. Ferneyhough (attr.) and unidentified photographers
Albumen prints mounted to album page
South Africa, last third of the nineteenth century

G. T. Ferneyhough (attr.), Crewes & Van Laun (attr.), H. F. Gros (attr.), and unidentified photographers
Album page with photographs of Cetshwayo and his family, Chief Sekhukhune, and unidentified persons
South Africa, last third of the nineteenth century

The bottom right hand text says, “Cetshwayo’s wives who came to England.” Obviously on the ship that took the King to England in 1882 (see below)

Invading Zululand

Lieutenant-General Sir Frederic Thesiger, 2nd Baron Chelmsford, led the invasion of Zululand on 11 January, with British centre column crossing at Rorke’s Drift. Additional British forces massed at Lower Drift on the Thukela River, near the coast, and on the north-western border near Utrecht.

Isandlawana and Rorke’s Drift

Despite an early success at Isandlwana (22 January) where 24,000 Zulu warriors overran the British camp of 1,700 – over 1,300 British and Imperial troops were annihilated (only 60 of the survivors were Europeans). That evening the small garrison at Rorke’s Drift regained British self-respect by defending the (hospital) station against a force of more than 3,000 Zulu warriors.

Defeat at Ulundi

Cetshwayo’s army was finally defeated at oNdini (Ulundi) on 4 July 1879 and his royal homestead burnt to the ground. Although Cetshwayo escaped from oNdini, he was soon captured in the Ngome Forest by British dragoons (28 August). He was informed by Shepstone that he was to be exiled from Zululand and that the nation would be divided into 13 independent chiefdoms under the authority of the British.

Exile

On 15 September 1879 Cetshwayo was dispatched to Cape Town. He was held as a prisoner of war until February 1881 when he was transferred from the castle to Oude Molen, a farm on the Cape Flats.

“In 1882 Cetshwayo was permitted to travel to England for audience with Queen Victoria – he petitioned for his return to Zululand as ruler. He was a hit amongst London society and became a favourite of the public.”

Cetshwayo was returned in secret to Zululand on 10 January 1883. He was met at Port Durnford by Sir Theophilus Shepstone (who was brought out of retirement for the process). Shepstone arranged the details of Cetshwayo’s restoration (29 January), but he was not permitted an army to defend his somewhat reduced ‘nation’ – part of the arrangement was that the north of Zululand was to be put under the control of his rival, Zibhebhu kaMaphitha.

Defeat and Retreat

By March 1883 Zibhebhu was moving against Cetshwayo’s supporters in his assigned northern territory and Cetshwayo’s uSuthu marched against him. The uSuthu were defeated and driven into Transvaal and back south to oNdini. The civil war between Cetshwayo and Zibhebhu ranged across the Mahlabathini plain and the uSuthu was once again defeated. Whilst Cetshwayo and his 15-year old heir, Dinizulu, were able to escape the capital of oNdini and hide out in the Nkandla forest, theuSuthu leadership was decimated. Cetshwayo was escorted to Eshowe by Henry Francis Fynn jr, the British Resident in Zululand, on the 15 October 1883.

A Disputed Cause of Death

On the afternoon of 8 February 1884 Cetshwayo died. Although officially recorded as a heart attack (Surgeon Scott, the resident military medical officer, was refused permission to do an autopsy and so could record no other cause). However an abortive assassination attempt (by poison) was made against Mnyamana kaNgqengelele, chief of the Buthelezi and Cetshwayo’s chief inDuna, around the same so time it seems likely that Cetshwayo was also poisoned.

Text from the African History website [Online] Cited 11/05/2013 no longer available online

Unidentified photographers
Albumen prints mounted to album page
South Africa, late nineteen century

Unidentified photographer
Native Policemen
South Africa, late nineteen century
from Albumen prints mounted to album page

Unidentified Photographer
Portrait of a Man (detail)
South Africa, late nineteen century
from Albumen prints mounted to album page

Notice how the white spots have been painted on by the photographer after exposure, presumably to “exoticise” the noble savage.

Unidentified photographers
Album page
South Africa, late nineteenth century

The Walther Collection Project Space
Suite 718, 508-526 West 26th Street
New York
Phone: +1 212 352 0683

Opening hours:
Wednesday – Saturday 12pm – 6pm

The Walther Collection website

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Exhibition: ‘Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive Part III: Poetics and Politics’ at The Walther Collection Project Space, New York: Part 1

Exhibition dates: 22nd March – 18th May 2013

Unidentified photographer
Photograph of a man
South Africa, late nineteenth century
Gelatin or collodion printed-out print

Undertaking research in to the work of South African photographer Ernest Cole, I wanted to know more about “South African colonial photography” pre-Apartheid. If you type the phrase into Google images there is absolutely nothing online about this historical archive. So it is a great privilege that The Walther Collection has allowed me to publish nearly 40 photographs over two postings on Art Blart. What a honour to be the first online space to promote this important historical record.

It is vital that colonial photographs such as these are visible in contemporary society for they bare witness to the conditions of the past and provide a visual language to textualise our experience and thereby make it available for interpretation and closure – for people of all colours and races. This is particularly true for a post-colonial country such as South Africa where the history of the nation must be examined impartially no matter how painful the subject matter in order to understand how the actions of the past influence the present and will continue to be re/sighted in the future. Through continual re/citation by being present in the public sphere for all to see (not hidden away offline) these images will become a source of pride (for person, family, tribe, country) – for these were strong human beings that survived the vicissitudes of colonialism to form the history and lineage of a nation.

We must thank numerous private collectors that have saved many of these photographs from the rubbish tip when no public institution was interested in collecting them. Interesting books about the South African archive include Surviving the Lens: Photographic Studies of South and East African People, 1870-1920 by Michael Graham Stewart (2001) and Contemporary African Photography from the Walther Collection. Events of the Self, Portraiture and Social Identity by Okwui Enwezor (ed.) Göttingen, Steidl, 2010.

See Part 2 of the posting.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Caney Brothers, inscribed:
Ordinary & Fighting Dresses.
South Africa, late nineteenth century
Albumen print

Henri Noyer (attr.), inscribed:
Taisaka Spearsmen No. 2
Madagascar, early twentieth century
Gelatin or collodion printed-out print

The Taisaka come from the South-East coast of the island of Madagascar.

Unidentified photographer
Mouv, Nthaka warrior
East Africa, early twentieth century
Gelatin or collodion developed out print

The Ameru had an age set system which provided the community with warriors for defence. Boys are circumcised and become Nthaka (warriors). They stay in a Gaaru and learn to defend the community and take care of their families. The warriors were called Nthaka and were isolated from the community for military training

Unidentified photographer
Studio photograph of a man
South Africa, late nineteenth century

J. E. Middlebrook (South African, active 1870s-1900s) (attr.), inscribed:
A Zulu girl. Hair strung with beads
South Africa, late nineteenth century
Gelatin-silver printed-out print

The Zulu (Zulu: amaZulu) are the largest South African ethnic group, with an estimated 10-11 million people living mainly in the province of KwaZulu-Natal. Small numbers also live in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Mozambique. Their language, Zulu, is a Bantu language; more specifically, part of the Nguni subgroup. The Zulu Kingdom played a major role in South African history during the 19th and 20th centuries. Under apartheid, Zulu people were classed as third-class citizens and suffered from state-sanctioned discrimination. They remain today the most numerous ethnic group in South Africa, and now have equal rights along with all other citizens.

J. E. Middlebrook. Late 19th-century South African photographer. The flourishing diamond mines in Kimberley brought hundreds of workers and photographers to the area beginning in 1867. J. E. Middlebrook followed soon thereafter in the early 1870s, and set up his photography studio, The Premier Studio, on West Street West ; he had a second studio in Durban, “Opposite the Club.” Middlebrook photographed the landscape, farms, cities, and people of South Africa. His photographs of the Zulu people are considered to be theatrical, deliberating portraying the native people in an idyllic, romantic, and exotic light. He took photographs during the South African war (1899-1902). A number of well-known photographers were based at the studio, including C. Evans, Wunsch, Atkinson and Dyer, who documented Kimberley’s early days. By 1906, Middlebrook’s was bought by Frank Hancox and when German, Charles Seidenstucker, arrived in South Africa, he promptly became the studio’s new owner.

A. James Gribble (South African, 1863-1943), inscribed:
Kaffer woman
South Africa, late nineteenth century
Albumen print

The word kaffer is a word that is used widely in South Africa and is a derogatory word for a black person. Used mainly by Afrikaans people. In old Dutch it means unbeliever (in God), so should not necessarily mean black, but just unholy or non-Christian. Boers gave the name in early South African history as native Africans did not believe in Jesus. Name came after Bantu – which means the same thing, but was banned as it was discriminatory.

Unidentified photographer, inscribed:
Zulu mothers
South Africa, late nineteenth century
Gelatin-silver printed out print

Samuel Baylis Barnard (English, 1841-1916), inscribed
Hottentott S. Africa [Portait of /A!kunta]
South Africa, early 1870s
Albumen print

The word ‘Hottentots’ was a name disparagingly used to refer to the Khoikhoi people that lived in the southern parts of the African continent as early as the 5th century AD and continued to live till the first colonists arrived in the middle of the seventeenth century. The Dutch colonists called them Hottentots. It means ‘stammerer’ in Dutch. Khoikhoi means ‘people people’. The word Hottentot is no longer used to describe the people.

The Walther Collection is pleased to announce Poetics and Politics, the third and last exhibition in the series Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive, curated by Tamar Garb. Poetics and Politics presents an extraordinary range of previously unseen vintage portraits, cartes de visite, postcards, and album pages from Southern and Eastern Africa, produced from the 1870s to the early twentieth century. The exhibition makes visible both the ideological frameworks that prevailed during the colonial period in Africa and the exceptional skill of photographers working in the studio and landscape.

The culmination of Distance and Desire, Poetics and Politics offers a remarkable opportunity to view the narratives that emerge from this African photographic archive, describing in particular the experience of the studio – the curiosity between subject and photographer, the negotiations of costume and pose, and the will for self-representation. The exhibition investigates typical European depictions of Africans, from scenes in nature, to sexualised images of semi-nude models, to modern sitters posing in elaborate studios, critically addressing the politics of colonialism and the complex issues of gender and identity.

Among over 75 vintage prints, Poetics and Politics includes a selection of elegant studio portraits by Samuel Baylis Barnard, one of Cape Town’s most prominent nineteenth century photographers. Original album pages of landscapes and ethnographic imagery are displayed alongside a series of carte de visite portraits of Africans, created in the 1870s in the Diamond Fields of Kimberley, South Africa. The exhibition also features several double-sided displays of album pages, showing striking combinations of personal and stock images, and the juxtapositions of prominent figures in both African and Western contexts.

Distance and Desire is accompanied by an extensive catalogue, published by The Walther Collection and Steidl, and edited by Tamar Garb. Including twelve original essays, the catalogue offers new perspectives by contemporary artists and scholars on the African archive, reimagining its diverse histories and changing meanings. On June 8, 2013 the expanded exhibition incorporating all three parts of Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive will open at The Walther Collection in Neu-Ulm, Germany. The Walther Collection is a private non-profit foundation dedicated to researching, collecting, exhibiting, and publishing modern and contemporary photography and video art, based in Neu-Ulm, Germany and New York. Distance and Desire is part of the collection’s multi-year investigation of African photography and video.

Press release from the Walther Collection website

Unidentified photographer, inscribed:
Native Police
South Africa, Late nineteenth century
Albumen print mounted on album page

Kimberley Studio (New Rush, Diamond Fields), inscribed:
Zulu / Warrior in skin kaross, armed with assegais and Guerrier Zulu a manteau de fourrure et armé de piques
South Africa, c. 1870s
Carte de visite

John Salmon, inscribed:
Basuto
South Africa, c. 1870s
Carte de visite

See Sotho people on Wikipedia

Samuel Baylis Barnard (English, 1841-1916)
Photograph of a woman
South Africa, late nineteenth century
Carte de visite

William Moore (attr.), inscribed:
Macomo and his chief wife [Portrait of Maqoma and his wife Katyi]
South Africa, c. 1869
Albumen print

G. F. Williams
Studio photograph of a man, South Africa
South Africa, late nineteenth century
Carte de visite

Unidentified photographer, inscribed:
Fingo swells
South Africa, late nineteenth century
Gelatin or collodion printed-out print

The Fengu (plural amaFengu) are a Bantu people; originally closely related to the Zulu people, but now often considered to have assimilated to the Xhosa people whose language they now speak. Historically they achieved considerable renown for their military ability in the frontier wars. They were previously known in English as the “Fingo” people, and they gave their name to the district of Fingoland (Mfenguland), the South West portion of the Transkei division, in the Cape Province.

M. Veniery, inscribed:
Choubouk
Sudan, early twentieth century
Gelatin or collodion printedout print mounted on card

Unidentified photographer, inscribed:
Bushman
South Africa, late nineteenth century
Gelatin or collodion printed-out print

The San peoples, also known as the Bushmen, are members of various Khoe, Tuu, or Kx’a-speaking indigenous hunter-gatherer groups that are the first nations of Southern Africa, and whose territories span Botswana, Namibia, Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho and South Africa. In 2017, Botswana was home to approximately 63,500 San people, which is roughly 2.8% of the country’s population, making it the country with the highest population of San people. “Bushmen” is now considered derogatory by many South Africans.

A.C. Gomes & Son, inscribed:
Views in Zanzibar – Natives Hairdressing, Tanzania
Late nineteenth century
Gelatin or collodion printed-out print mounted to album page

A. C. Gomes established a photo studio in Zanzibar perhaps as early as 1868. He had a brief partnership with J. B. Coutinho in the 1890s. His son P. F. Gomes continued the family business in Zanzibar for many years, he died in 1932. Over those years both have left us with some marvellous images.

The Walther Collection Project Space
Suite 718, 508-526 West 26th Street
New York
Phone: +1 212 352 0683

Opening hours:
Wednesday – Saturday from 12pm – 6pm

The Walther Collection website

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

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

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 (French, 1939-1970)
Transport of a victim of the famine of the Civil War in Biafra, July 1968
1968
© Fondation Gilles Caron

Gilles Caron (French, 1939-1970)
Demonstration at the first anniversary of the Soviet repression of “Spring in Prague”, Czechoslovakia, 21 August, 1969
1969
© Fondation Gilles Caron

Gilles Caron (French, 1939-1970)
Israeli Soldiers at the Wailing Wall at the end of the Six Day War in 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 (French, 1939-1970)
Daniel Cohn-Bendit facing a CRS in front of the Sorbonne, Paris, 6 May 1968
1968
© Fondation Gilles Caron

Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité

The Compagnies républicaines de sécurité, abbreviated CRS, are the general reserve of the French National Police. They are primarily involved in general security missions but the task for which they are best known is crowd and riot control.

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: military 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 (French, 1939-1970)
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
Phone: + 41 21 316 99 11

Opening hours:
Wednesday – Monday, 10am – 6pm
Closed Tuesdays

The Musée de l’Elysée website

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Exhibition: ‘Picturing New York: Photographs from the Museum of Modern Art’ at the Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA), Perth

Exhibition dates: 26th January – 12th May 2013

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Fifth Avenue, nos. 4, 6, 8, Manhattan
March 20, 1936
Gelatin silver print
15 x 19 1/4″ (38.1 x 48.9cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Thomas Walther Collection
© 2012 Berenice Abbott/Commerce Graphics

A second tranche of images from this touring exhibition of photographs from the MoMA collection, presented at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in Perth. My personal favourites in this posting are the tonal Abbott, mean streets Gedney, luminous Groover and the intimate Burckhardt. There are two photographers I don’t know at all (Gedney and Burckhardt) and one who is very underrated: Peter Hujar.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

William Gedney (American, 1924-1989)
Brooklyn
1966
Gelatin silver print
7 9/16 x 11 5/16″ (19.3 x 28.8cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Gift of the Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library
© 2012 Estate of William Gedney

William Gale Gedney (October 29, 1932 – June 23, 1989) was an American photographer. It wasn’t until after his death that his work gained momentum and his work is now widely recognised… William Gedney died of AIDS in 1989, aged 56, in New York City and is buried in Greenville, New York, a few short miles from his childhood home. He left his photographs and writings to his lifelong friend Lee Friedlander.

Text from the Wikpedia website

See more photographs by William Gedney on the Duke Libraries website and on The Selvedge Yard website

Jan Groover (American, 1943-2012)
Untitled
1981
Platinum/palladium print
7 5/8 x 9 1/2″ (19.4 x 24.2cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Gift of Howard Stein
© 2012 Jan Groover

“Depicting the iconic New York that captivates the world’s imagination and the idiosyncratic details that define New Yorkers’ sense of home, this exhibition from MoMA’s extraordinary photography collection celebrates the city in all its vitality, ambition and beauty. Made by approximately 90 artists responding to the city as well as professionals on assignment, including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Lewis Hine, Helen Levitt, Cindy Sherman, Alfred Stieglitz, and Weegee, over 150 works reveal the deeply symbiotic relationship between photography and the ‘city that never sleeps’ – New York. Both an exploration of the life of the city and a documentation of photography’s evolution throughout the twentieth century, Picturing New York celebrates the great and continuing tradition of capturing the grit and glamour of one of the world’s greatest urban centres.

Artists include Berenice Abbott, Diane Arbus, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander, Nan Goldin, Helen Levitt, Cindy Sherman, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Weegee, and Garry Winogrand, among many others.”

Text from the AGWA website

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Times Square
1940
Gelatin silver print
15 9/16 x 19 9/16″ (39.6 x 49.7cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Gift of the photographer
© 2012 Estate of Lisette Model, courtesy Baudoin Lebon Gallery, Paris and Keitelman Gallery, Brussels

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
New York City
1968
Gelatin silver print
8 7/8 x 13 3/16″ (22.5 x 33.5cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Purchase and gift of Barbara Schwartz in memory of Eugene M. Schwartz
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery

Henri Cartier-Bresson (French, 1908-2004)
Near the Hall of Records, New York
1947
Gelatin silver print
15 5/16 x 22 13/16″ (38.9 x 57.9cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Gift of the photographer
© 2012 Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum, courtesy Foundation HCB, Paris

Rudy Burckhardt (American born Switzerland, 1914-1999)
A View From Brooklyn I
1954
Gelatin silver print
10 5/16 x 9 3/16″ (26.2 x 23.4cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Gift of CameraWorks, Inc. and Purchase
© 2012 Rudy Burckhardt / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Rudy Burckhardt (1914, Basel – 1999) was a Swiss-American filmmaker, and photographer, known for his photographs of hand-painted billboards which began to dominate the American landscape in the nineteen-forties and fifties.

Burckhardt discovered photography as a medical student in London. He left medicine to pursue photography in the 1930s. He immigrated to New York City in 1935. Between 1934 and 1939, he traveled to Paris, New York and Haiti making photographs mostly of city streets and experimenting with short 16mm films. While stationed in Trinidad in the Signal Corps from 1941-1944, he filmed the island’s residents. In 1947, he joined the Photo League in New York City. Burckhardt married painter Yvonne Jacquette whom he collaborated with throughout their 40 year marriage. He taught filmmaking and painting at the University of Pennsylvania from 1967 to 1975.

On his 85th birthday, Burckhardt committed suicide by drowning in the lake on his property.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Rudy Burckhardt and Edwin Denby
The Climate of New York
1980

Trailer for Rudy Burckhardt Films from Tibor de Nagy Gallery on Vimeo.

Lee Friedlander (American, b. 1934)
New York City
1980
Gelatin silver print
18 5/8 x 12 3/8″ (47.3 x 31.5cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
The Family of Man Fund
© 2012 Lee Friedlander

Underwood and Underwood (American, active 1880-1934)
Above Fifth Avenue, Looking North
1905
Gelatin silver print
9 1/2 x 7 5/16″ (24.2 x 18.6cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
The New York Times Collection

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
City of Ambition
1910
Photogravure
13 3/8 x 10 1/4″ (34 x 26.1cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
© 2012 Estate of Alfred Stieglitz / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987)
New York Series #22
1976
Gelatin silver print
14 5/8 x 14 3/4″ (37.1 x 37.4cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Gift of the Estate of Peter Hujar and James Danziger Gallery, New York
© 2012 Peter Hujar Archive

Peter Hujar (October 11, 1934 – November 26, 1987) was an American photographer known for his black and white portraits. Born in Trenton, New Jersey, United States. Hujar later moved to Manhattan to work in the magazine, advertising, and fashion industries. His subjects also consisted of farm animals and nudes. His most famous photograph is Candy Darling on Her Deathbed which was later used by the group Antony and the Johnsons as cover for their album I Am a Bird Now. The one-time lover, friend and mentor of artist David Wojnarowicz, Hujar died of AIDS complications on November 26, 1987, aged 53.

See the more photographs on the Peter Hujar Archive website

Fairchild Aerial Surveys, Inc.
The Mount Everest of Manhattan: The Silvered Peak of the Chrysler Building
1930
Gelatin silver print
8 3/4 x 6 13/16″ (22.3 x 17.3cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
The New York Times Collection

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Girl in Fulton Street, New York 1929
1929
Gelatin silver print
7 1/2 x 4 5/8″ (19.1 x 11.7cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Gift of the photographer

Lewis W. Hine (American, 1874-1940)
Italian Family Looking for Lost Baggage, Ellis Island, New York
1905
Gelatin silver print
5 9/16 x 4 5/16″ (14.1 x 10.9cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Art Gallery of Western Australia
Perth Cultural Centre, James Street Mall, Perth

Opening hours:
Wednesday – Monday 10am – 5pm
Closed Tuesdays

AGWA website

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