Season’s Greetings from Art Blart 2012

December 2012

Exhibition: ‘The Serial Portrait: Photography and Identity in the Last One Hundred Years’ at the National Gallery of Art, Washington

Exhibition dates: 30th September 2012 – 31st December 2012

Figure 5. Emmet Gowin (American, b. 1941)
Edith, Danville, Virginia
1971
Gelatin silver print
20.2 x 25.2cm (7 15/16 x 9 15/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Patrons’ Permanent Fund
© Emmet and Edith Gowin, Courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

~ Alfred Stieglitz / Georgia O’Keeffe
~ Paul Strand / Rebecca Strand
~ Emmet Gowin / Edith Gowin
~ Harry Callahan / Eleanor and Barbara Callahan
~ Robert Mapplethorpe / Patti Smith
~ Nicholas Nixon / The Brown Sisters
~ Andy Warhol / Serial Photography / Photo Booth Portraits
~ Mario Testino / Kate Moss
~ Baron Adolf de Meyer / Baroness Olga de Meyer
~ Edward Weston / Charis Weston
~ Lee Friedlander / Maria Friedlander
~ Paul Caponigro / The woods of Connecticut
~ Bernd and Hilla Becher / grids
~ Gerhard Richter / Overpainted Photographs
~ Masahisa Fukase / wife and family
~ Seiichi Furuya / Christine Furuya-Gößler
~ Sally Mann / children and husband
~ William Wegman / dogs

Australia?
Nobody that I can think of except Sue Ford.

Notice how all the artists are men except two: Sally Mann and Hilla Becher.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Introduction

Alfred Stieglitz, one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century, argued that “to demand the [single] portrait… be a complete portrait of any person is as futile as to demand that a motion picture be condensed into a single still.” Stieglitz’s conviction that a person’s character could not be adequately conveyed in one image is consistent with a modern understanding of identity as constantly changing. For Stieglitz, who frequently made numerous portraits of the same sitters – including
striking photographs of his wife, the painter Georgia O’Keeffe – using the camera in a serial manner allowed him to transcend the limits of a single image.

Drawn primarily from the National Gallery of Art’s collection, the
Serial Portrait exhibition features twenty artists who photographed the same subjects – primarily friends, family, or themselves – multiple times over the course of days, months, or years. This brochure presents a selection of works by seven of these artists. Like Stieglitz’s extended portrait of O’Keeffe, Emmet Gowin’s ongoing photographic study of his wife, Edith, explores her character and reveals the bonds of love and affection between the couple. Milton Rogovin’s photographs of working-class residents of Buffalo, New York, record shifts in the appearance and situation of individuals in the context of their community over several decades.

A number of photographers in the exhibition have made serial self-portraits that investigate the malleability of personal identity. Photographing themselves as shadows, blurs, or partial reflections, Lee Friedlander and Francesca Woodman have made disorienting images that hint at the instability of self-representation. Ann Hamilton has employed unusual props and materials to transform herself into a series of hybrid objects. Finally, work by Nikki S. Lee takes the idea of mutable identity to its logical conclusion as the artist photographs herself masquerading as members of different social and ethnic groups.

Text from the NGA website

Figure 4. Emmet Gowin (American, b. 1941)
Edith, Danville, Virginia
1963
Gelatin silver print, printed 1980s
19.7 x 12.7cm (7 3/4 x 5 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Charina Endowment Fund
© Emmet and Edith Gowin, Courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Emmet Gowin

Emmet Gowin (born 1941) met Edith Morris in 1961 in their hometown of Danville, Virginia, just as he had decided to abandon business school to study art. Several years later at the Rhode Island School of Design, his teacher Harry Callahan, who made numerous photographs of his wife, Eleanor, encouraged Gowin to photograph the subject he knew most intimately – his family and in particular Edith, whom he married in 1964.

The Gowins’ artistic and marital collaboration has endured for half a century, yielding an extraordinary series of quiet, attentive portraits. In some photographs, such as Edith, Danville, Virginia, 1963 (fig. 4, above), Edith appears contemplative, even reserved. The somber beauty of this work stems in part from Gowin’s use of a tripod-mounted, large-format camera, which requires a lengthy exposure but produces photographs with exquisite details, such as the delicate shadow of a twig that falls across Edith’s face. To make the dramatic circular shadow that surrounds her in Edith, Danville, Virginia, 1971 (fig. 5, above), Gowin attached a lens meant for a 4 × 5 camera to a large 8 × 10 camera. This focus draws our attention to her figure, but the screen door simultaneously frames and obscures her form, resulting in a play between presence and elusiveness. While Gowin’s photographs are born of a deep intimacy, they refuse to lay bare his wife’s soul or expose the couple’s private passions.

The same delicate balance between revelation and reserve marks a group of portraits made during the couple’s travels in Central and South America. Edith and Moth Flight, 2002 (fig. 6, below), made at night using a ten-second exposure, combines Gowin’s enchantment with natural beauty and his interest in the nuances of his wife’s gestures and moods. Placing a pulsing ultraviolet light behind Edith’s head, Gowin recorded the luminous traces left by moths as they danced around her blurred face, transforming her into a ghostly and even otherworldly presence, visible yet just out of our reach.

Text from the NGA website

Figure 6. Emmet Gowin (American, b. 1941)
Edith and Moth Flight
2002
Digital ink jet print
19 x 19cm (7 1/2 x 7 1/2 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Charina Endowment Fund
© Emmet and Edith Gowin, Courtesy Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Francesca Woodman (American, 1958-1981)
House #3, Providence, Rhode Island
1976
Gelatin silver print
16.1 x 16.3cm (6 5/16 x 6 7/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of the Heather and Tony Podesta Collection

Francesca Woodman

Francesca Woodman (1958-1981) began making photographs at age thirteen, and by the time she entered the Rhode Island School of Design in 1975, she was already a skilled photographer. Using herself as the subject of nearly all her work, Woodman put her body in the service of exploring such themes as feminine identity, sexuality, mythology, and the relationship of the body to its surroundings. Conjuring visions of a complex inner world, Woodman’s photographs are powerful for their ability to suggest psychic turmoil within images of serene, ethereal beauty.

Woodman’s interest in the emotional affect of space can be seen in House #3, Providence, Rhode Island, 1976 (fig. 14, above). Using an abandoned house as a makeshift studio, Woodman often photographed herself merging with her surroundings, including doors, walls, and windows, dissolving physical or psychic boundaries. She also frequently moved during long exposures or allowed the camera to record only part of her body in order to obscure her figure. By invoking a ghostly presence, Woodman’s photographs often present her as someone who refuses to commit to a solid image of herself.

Woodman’s lush and intimate photographs thus offer a tantalising glimpse of a mysterious, private world. Yet they are more than romantic expressions of a young woman’s subjective experience. Notes in Woodman’s diary suggest, for instance, that Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island, 1975-1978 (fig. 15, below), alludes to the Greek mythological story of Leda, who was seduced by the god Zeus in the form of a swan.

Toward the end of her brief but prolific career (Woodman committed suicide when she was twenty-two) the artist began working on a much larger scale, using her body more as a structural element. Caryatid, New York, 1980 (fig. 16, below), made as part of a monumental photo-installation called Temple Project, draws both its title and inspiration from the columns carved in the shape of women that were used in ancient Greek and Roman architecture. Although Woodman displays her figure in a more expansive and direct manner than in her earlier work, the gesture that obscures her face and leaves her partial and unknowable is typical for the artist, who always preferred suggestion over declaration.

Text from the NGA website

Francesca Woodman (American, 1958-1981)
Untitled, Providence, Rhode Island
1975-1978
Gelatin silver print
10.5 x 10.5cm (4 1/8 x 4 1/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of the Collectors
Committee and R. K. Mellon Family Foundation

Francesca Woodman (American, 1958-1981)
Caryatid, New York
1980
National Gallery of Art, Washington
William and Sarah Walton Fund and Gift of the Collectors Committee

Figure 17. Ann Hamilton (American, b. 1956)
body object series #13, toothpick suit/chair
1984
Gelatin silver print, printed 1993
11 x 11cm (4 5/16 x 4 5/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of Heather and Tony Podesta Collection

Ann Hamilton

An artist known for multimedia environments, performances, and videos, Ann Hamilton (born 1956) made the first photographs in the body object series in 1984 with objects left over from an installation she had presented as an MFA student at Yale. Later images from the series were based on subsequent performances and installations, documenting both the objects used and the actions performed with them. Hamilton appears in each photograph with objects attached to or touching her body, her face only rarely visible. The results are striking, unsettling, and often witty.

Despite emerging from Hamilton’s installation and performance practice, the photographs in the series stand on their own as works of art. Paying close attention to the material qualities of familiar objects, Hamilton models creative new uses for them, changing their function and meaning. In body object series #13, toothpick suit/chair, 1984 (fig. 17, above), for example, thousands of toothpicks transform Hamilton’s clothes into a porcupine-like hide while a chair becomes a burdensome instrument of torture. The image elicits visceral emotions – alienation, hostility, fear – though it does so with a dose of absurdist humour.

As self-representations, the photographs in the body object series depart radically from any traditional notion of portraiture. Instead of insisting on Hamilton’s uniqueness as an individual, these images present her body almost as an object on a par with other objects. Some of the photographs are linked directly to her biography: Hamilton had studied textile design before getting her MFA, and the toothpick suit refers to her love of fabrics. In other photographs she makes abstract concepts more graspable through the senses. Sound is given tactile and visual form as tissue paper in body object series #14, megaphone, 1986 (fig. 18, below), while in body object series #15, honey hat, 1989 (fig. 19, below), Hamilton wrings her hands in honey to suggest the idea of washing one’s hands of guilt. Based on an installation in which the artist embedded money – 750,000 pennies – in a layer of honey, this image also gives new meaning to the phrase “sticky fingers” and highlights the connections between language, images, and objects that Hamilton explores in both her photographs and installations.

Text from the NGA website

Figure 18. Ann Hamilton (American, b. 1956)
body object series #14, megaphone
1986
Gelatin silver print, printed 1993
11 x 11cm (4 5/16 x 4 5/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of Heather and Tony Podesta Collection

Figure 19. Ann Hamilton (American, b. 1956)
body object series #15, honey hat
1989
Gelatin silver print, printed 1993
11 x 11cm (4 5/16 x 4 5/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of Heather and Tony Podesta Collection

The National Gallery of Art explores how the practice of making multiple portraits of the same subjects produced some of the most revealing and provocative photographs of our time in The Serial Portrait: Photography and Identity in the Last One Hundred Years, on view in the West Building’s Ground Floor photography galleries from September 30 through December 31, 2012. Arranged both chronologically and thematically, the exhibition features 153 works by 20 artists who photographed the same subjects – friends, family, and themselves – numerous times over days, months, or years to create compelling portrait studies that investigate the many facets of personal and social identity.

“The Gallery’s photography collection essentially began with the donation of Alfred Stieglitz’s ‘key set,’ so it is fitting that this exhibition opens with portraits by Stieglitz, who understood that a person’s character was best captured through a series of photographs taken over time,” said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art. “Although the exhibition is drawn largely from the Gallery’s significant collection of photographs, we are grateful to the lenders who have allowed us to present more fully the serial form of portraiture that Stieglitz championed.”

Since the introduction of photography in 1839, portraiture has been one of the most widely practiced forms of the medium. Starting in the early 20th century, however, some photographers began to question whether one image alone could adequately capture the complexity of an individual. As Alfred Stieglitz, the era’s leading champion of American fine art photography, argued: “to demand the [single] portrait that will be a complete portrait of any person is as futile as to demand that a motion picture will be condensed into a single still.”

Along with Stieglitz, some of the 20th century’s most prominent photographers – Paul Strand, Harry Callahan, and Emmet Gowin – used the camera serially to transcend the limits of a single image. Each of these photographers made numerous studies of their lovers that sought to redefine the expressive possibilities of portraiture while probing the affective bonds of love and desire. By employing the camera’s capacity to record fluctuating states of being and mark the passage of time, other photographers such as Nicholas Nixon and Milton Rogovin have documented individuals – in families or communities – over four decades. Capturing subtle and dramatic shifts in appearance, demeanour, and situation, these series are poignant and elegiac memorials that remind us of our own mortality.

Other photographers have made serial self-portraits that explore the malleability of personal identity and the possibility of reinvention afforded by the camera. By photographing themselves as shadows, blurs, or partial reflections, Ilse Bing, Lee Friedlander, and Francesca Woodman have created inventive but elusive images that hint at the instability of self-representation. Conceptual artists of the 1970s and 1980s such as Vito Acconci, Blythe Bohnen, and Ann Hamilton have explicitly combined performance and self-portraiture to stage continual self-transformations. The exhibition concludes with work from the last 15 years by artists such as Nikki S. Lee and Gillian Wearing, who take the performance of self to its limits by adopting masquerades to delve into the ways identity is inferred from external appearance.

Press release from the National Gallery of Art website

Figure 11. Lee Friedlander (American, b. 1934)
Westport, Connecticut
1968
Gelatin silver print
19.8 x 12.3cm (7 13/16 x 4 13/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Trellis Fund
© Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery

Lee Friedlander

In the 1960s Lee Friedlander (born 1934) sought, by his own account, to create images of “the American social landscape and its conditions.” Other photographers in his New York circle, including Diane Arbus and Garry Winogrand, also explored the chaotic beauty and contradictions of modern life. Friedlander, however, was the only member of this group to turn repeatedly to self-portraiture in order to understand the world around him. He stalked city streets with camera in hand, recording not only the haphazard incidents of daily life but also his own presence, often as a shadow or a reflection.

In the shop window of Westport, Connecticut, 1968 (fig. 11, above), for example, a reflection of Friedlander’s legs appears to merge with the shapely limbs of a woman in a bathing suit who points a camera at the viewer. The woman is an illusion, a cutout advertisement – but she is also a stand-in for the camera-wielding Friedlander, whose torso and head also appear faintly, as a shadow cast against her legs.

By letting the reflection in a window obscure what is inside, or allowing his shadow to intrude into the frame, Friedlander violates many of the rules of “good” photography. Works such as New York City, 1966 (fig. 12, below) testify to Friedlander’s ability to transform such “mistakes” into witty, ironic juxtapositions. In this case, the startling intrusion of Friedlander’s shadow onto the back of a fellow pedestrian is visually confusing, simultaneously threatening and humorous, as Friedlander’s spiky hair merges with the woman’s fur collar. A sly commentary on the predatory nature of such street photography, the looming shadow that engulfs the subject is also an effect of Friedlander’s equipment, a 35mm Leica with a wide-angle lens. In order to fill the picture frame with his chosen subject, Friedlander had to make the picture at close range, resulting in the inclusion of his own shadow.

Even in self-portraits in which Friedlander makes himself fully visible to the camera, the artist often makes humorously self-deprecating deadpan images, appearing, for example, as a disheveled driver on a manic mission in Haverstraw, New York, 1966 (fig. 13, below). Edgy but unpretentious, brimming with pictorial detail, Friedlander’s self-portraits are visual puzzles that explore the place of the self in the chaos of contemporary urban life.

Text from the NGA website

Figure 12. Lee Friedlander (American, b. 1934)
New York City
1966
Gelatin silver print
21.7 x 32.7cm (8 9/16 x 12 7/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Trellis Fund
© Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery

Figure 13. Lee Friedlander (American, b. 1934)
Haverstraw, New York
1966
Gelatin silver print
21.7 x 32.7cm (8 9/16 x 12 7/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Trellis Fund
© Lee Friedlander, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998)
Self-Portrait with Leica
1931
Gelatin silver print, printed c. 1988
26.7 x 29.7cm (10 1/2 x 11 11/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of Ilse Bing Wolff

Gillian Wearing (English, b. 1963)
Me as Mapplethorpe
2009
Gelatin silver print (based upon Robert Mapplethorpe work: Self Portrait, 1988. © Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation)
149.86 x 121.92cm (59 x 48 in.)
Private Collection
Courtesy the artist; Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York; Maureen Paley, London, Regen Projects, Los Angeles

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Rebecca
1922
Platinum print
24.4 x 19.4cm (9 5/8 x 7 5/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Southwestern Bell Corporation Paul Strand Collection
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive

Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Rebecca, New Mexico
1932
Platinum print
14.9 x 11.8cm (5 7/8 x 4 5/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Southwestern Bell Corporation Paul Strand Collection
© Aperture Foundation Inc., Paul Strand Archive

Figure 1. Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Georgia O’Keeffe
probably 1918
Platinum print
18.4 x 23.1cm (7 1/4 x 9 1/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Alfred Stieglitz Collection

Alfred Stieglitz

Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946) was already an accomplished photographer, publisher, and champion of modern art when he the first encountered the work of Georgia O’Keeffe in 1916. He made his first photographs of her in 1917 and sent them to her with the note, “I think I could do thousands
of things of you – a life work to express you.” Over the next two decades Stieglitz made more than three hundred photographs of O’Keeffe, whom he married in 1924, creating what he called a “composite portrait.” This extraordinary body of work charts the couple’s relationship and
expresses Stieglitz’s conviction that portraiture should function as a kind of “photographic diary.”

Many of the photographs Stieglitz made of O’Keeffe in the early years of their relationship, including Georgia O’Keeffe, c. 1918 (fig. 1, above), are palpably erotic, reflecting the intense passion they shared. Revealing herself to the lens with a bewitching vulnerability, O’Keeffe exudes a tenderness and seductiveness that belie the strain of holding the pose during the long exposures required by Stieglitz’s large-format camera. Often, his photographs express both his desire and admiration for O’Keeffe, at times verging on idealisation of the person he called “Nature’s child – a Woman.” Yet his portraits also look beyond her face to find eloquence in all
parts of her body, as in the print Georgia O’Keeffe – Hands and Thimble (fig. 2, below), where her hands display an almost tactile physicality. Here, Stieglitz used a printing technique that resulted in tonal reversal, causing deep shadows to print as bronze tones and creating the dark outlines that dramatise O’Keeffe’s graceful fingers and emphasise the metallic gleam of the thimble.

After Stieglitz exhibited more than forty portraits of O’Keeffe, including some provocative nudes, in 1921, the painter was dismayed to find that her own art began to be interpreted in a sexualised way, and she rarely posed unclothed after 1923. O’Keeffe’s desire to control her image, along with the increasingly attenuated nature of their relationship after 1929, when
she began spending several months a year working in New Mexico while he stayed in New York, further strained their partnership. In Georgia O’Keeffe, 1930 (fig. 3, below), the artist stands before one of the paintings she had made in New Mexico. Gazing steadily at the camera, she appears as a monumental force at one with her art, confident yet untouchable.

Text from the NGA website

Figure 2. Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Georgia O’Keeffe – Hands and Thimble
1919
Palladium print
24 x 19.4cm (9 7/16 x 7 5/8 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Alfred Stieglitz Collection

Figure 3. Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Georgia O’Keeffe
1930
Gelatin silver print
23.9 x 19.1cm (9 7/16 x 7 1/2 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Alfred Stieglitz Collection

Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947)
The Brown Sisters
1975
Gelatin silver print
20.2 x 25.2cm (7 15/16 x 9 15/16 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Patrons’ Permanent Fund
© Nicholas Nixon, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco and Pace/MacGill Gallery, New York

Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947)
The Brown Sisters
1978
Gelatin silver print
Promised gift of James and Margie Krebs
© Nicholas Nixon, courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

For more images from this series please see my posting Nicholas Nixon: Family Album

Figure 7. Milton Rogovin (American, 1909-2011)
Samuel P. “Pee Wee” West (Lower West Side series)
1974
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of Dr. J. Patrick and Patricia A. Kennedy

Milton Rogovin

Milton Rogovin (1909-2011) belongs to a rich photographic tradition of documenting the social and personal histories of people who would otherwise be forgotten. He did so serially, returning over many years to encapsulate not just single moments but entire lifetimes. Rogovin started his career as an optometrist in Buffalo, New York. In 1957, after he refused to testify before the House Committee on Un-American Activities about his association with the Communist Party, the local paper labeled him the “Top Red in Buffalo.” His optometry practice folded as a result, leaving his family of five to survive on the salary of his wife, Anne. With free time suddenly available, Rogovin turned to photography with a strong sense of purpose. “My voice was essentially silenced,” he recalled, “so I decided to speak out through photographs.”

Rogovin’s candid, powerfully direct pictures gave voice to those who traditionally had none: immigrants, minorities, and working-class people. Even though he traveled around the world making photographs of workers, his best-known work was made closer to home. In 1972 he began photographing residents of Buffalo’s Lower West Side, the city’s poorest
and most ethnically diverse neighbourhood. With his bulky twin-lens Rolleiflex camera, the photographer was sometimes suspected of working for the police or the FBI. Over time, however, Rogovin gained the trust of his sitters by visiting regularly and by giving them prints of their portraits. Dignified and occasionally tender, these photographs depict the circumstances of each subject with sober honesty.

Several times over the next three decades, Rogovin sought out and re-photographed many of his original subjects, capturing the changes wrought by time and circumstance. The series Samuel P. “Pee Wee” West (figs. 7-10) registers changes in the sitter’s situation over the course of twenty-eight years, from 1974 to 2002. In 2003 the oral historian Dave Isay, working
alongside Rogovin, interviewed West, who related the story of his decades of heavy drinking. Reflecting on a photograph Rogovin had made of him in 1985 (fig. 8), West said, “That… picture actually changed my life”; it prompted him to stop drinking for six months before relapsing. A later brush with death led to permanent recovery and the founding of a program to help local youth reject drugs and alcohol. In this and other serial portraits, Rogovin honoured the everyday lives of his subjects, offering a powerful visual legacy of a community he respected and loved.

Text from the NGA website

Figure 8. Milton Rogovin (American, 1909-2011)
Samuel P. “Pee Wee” West (Lower West Side series)
1985
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gft of Dr. J. Patrick and Patricia A. Kennedy

Figure 9. Milton Rogovin (American, 1909-2011)
Samuel P. “Pee Wee” West (Lower West Side series)
1992
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gft of Dr. J. Patrick and Patricia A. Kennedy

Figure 10. Milton Rogovin (American, 1909-2011)
Samuel P. “Pee Wee” West (Lower West Side series)
2002
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of Dr. J. Patrick and Patricia A. Kennedy

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

Opening hours:
Daily 11.00am – 4.00pm

National Gallery of Art website

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Exhibition: ‘WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath’ at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston Part 2

Exhibition dates: 11th November 2012 – 3rd February 2013

This is the biggest posting on one exhibition that I have ever undertaken on Art Blart!

As befits the gravity of the subject matter this posting is so humongous that I have had to split it into 4 separate postings. This is how to research and stage a contemporary photography exhibition that fully explores its theme. The curators reviewed more than one million photographs in 17 countries, locating pictures in archives, military libraries, museums, private collections, historical societies and news agencies; in the personal files of photographers and service personnel; and at two annual photojournalism festivals producing an exhibition that features 26 sections (an inspired and thoughtful selection) that includes nearly 500 objects that illuminate all aspects of WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY.

I have spent hours researching and finding photographs on the Internet to support the posting. It has been a great learning experience and my admiration for photographers of all types has increased. I have discovered the photographs and stories of new image makers that I did not know and some hidden treasures along the way. I hope you enjoy this monster posting on a subject matter that should be consigned to the history books of human evolution.

**Please be aware that there are graphic photographs in all of these postings.** Part 1, Part 3, Part 4

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston for allowing me to publish some of the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Photographic Essays

14. Photographic Essays showcases selections from two distinct storylines: Larry Burrows’ Yankee Papa 13, published in Life magazine; and Pulitzer Prize winner Todd Heisler’s series Final Salute, for Denver’s Rocky Mountain News. Burrows follows a man through a rescue attempt in Vietnam; Heisler documents a Marine major assigned to casualty notifications. (12 images, 6 from each photographer, as well as the magazine and newspaper in which the series were published)

The view from inside Marine helicopter Yankee Papa 13, Vietnam, March 1965

The caption that accompanied this photograph in the April 16, 1965, issue of LIFE: “From the downed YP3 in the background, the wounded gunner, Sergeant Owens, races to Yankee Papa 13, where Farley waits in the doorway.”

The caption that accompanied this photograph in LIFE: “Farley, unable to leave his gun position until YP13 is out of enemy range, stares in shock at YP3’s co-pilot, Lieutenant Magel, on the floor.”

Farley and Hoilien, dead tired, linger beside their helicopter and continue to talk over the mission

In a supply shack, hands covering his face, an exhausted, worn James Farley gives way to grief

Larry Burrows (English, 1926-1971)
One Ride with Yankee Papa 13
1965
Photo Essay
© Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Todd Heisler (American, b. 1972)
Untitled
2005
From the series Final Salute
© Todd Heisler/Rocky Mountain News

The night before the burial of her husband’s body, Katherine Cathey refused to leave the casket, asking to sleep next to his body for the last time. The Marines made a bed for her, tucking in the sheets below the flag. Before she fell asleep, she opened her laptop computer and played songs that reminded her of “Cat,” and one of the Marines asked if she wanted them to continue standing watch as she slept. “I think it would be kind of nice if you kept doing it,” she said. “I think that’s what he would have wanted.”

Executions

15. Executions are among the frequent photographs in wartime: Officials and the public seek confirmation that the enemy is dead; the executioners often forcefully request images to signify their power. An 1867 photograph by François Aubert shows the bloodied shirt of Maximilian I after the Austro-Hungarian archduke was shot by a nationalist firing squad in Mexico. Eddie Adams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of the Vietnamese police chief shooting a Viet Cong prisoner came to symbolise the brutality of the Vietnam War. Jahangir Razmi’s Firing Squad in Iran (1979) also won a Pulitzer; Razmi’s newspaper, Ettela’at, ran the photograph without credit, in order to protect him. He was not recognised until a 2006 Wall Street Journal article. (20 images)

Francois Aubert (French, 1829-1906)
The Shirt of the Emperor, Worn during His Execution, Mexico
1867
Albumen print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gilman Collection, gift of the Howard Gilman Foundation, 2005
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY

Eddie Adams (American, 1933-2004)
Saigon Execution (General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon)
February 1, 1968
Silver gelatin photograph

Although the image brought Adams the Pulitzer Prize, he would express discomfort with it later in life.

“The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them; but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. … What the photograph didn’t say was, ‘What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American people?” (Wikipedia)

For Adams, the lie was the omission of context – that the plainclothes Lem had allegedly just been caught having murdered not only South Vietnamese police but their civilian family members; that Loan was a good officer and not a cold-blooded killer… Like any great work of art, Adams’ serendipitous photograph took on a life of its own… and a tapestry of meanings richer than its creator could ever have intended.

Headsman. “1968: Nguyen Van Lem,” on the ExecutedToday website February 1st, 2009 [Online] Cited 03/09/2022

Eddie Adams Talk About The Saigon Execution Photo

Leisure Time

16. Leisure Time is another popular subject. This section features images that range from a 1958 photograph (by Loomis Dean) of an Elvis Presley serenade in the barracks to Stephen Colbert’s 2009 Iraq appearance in a camouflage suit (by Moises Saman). More-intimate moments show an off-duty serviceman sleeping on a cot next to a wall of pinups (by Edouard Gluck) as well as another serviceman listening to music on headphones (by Alvaro Zavala). Army Staff Sergeant Mark Grimshaw captures an American soldier stationed in Iraq, tending grass that the soldier has grown. (The soldier’s wife sent him seeds from the United States, but he couldn’t get the grass to grow until he purchased sod from a local Iraqi farmer.) (21 images)

Álvaro Ybarra Zavala (Spanish, b. 1979)
Untitled
2003
From the series Apocalypse

More images and text from the sequence can be seen at Álvaro Ybarra Zavala’s Projects web page

Mark A. Grimshaw (American, b. 1968)
First Cut, Iraq
July 2004
Inkjet print, printed 2012
Courtesy of the photographer
© Mark Grimshaw

Support

17. Support features photographs of people planning operations and supplying troops behind the front, from flying troops and supplies to the battlefront, to making bread in factories and building temporary bridges. One iconic 1942 photo by Alfred Palmer shows women aircraft workers polishing the noses of bomber planes. A 1915-18 picture by an unknown photographer depicts two men working early battery-operated phones. In 2001, James Nachtwey captured a firefighter walking over burning rubble at the World Trade Center in New York. (13 images)

Alfred Palmer (American, 1906-1993)
Women aircraft workers finishing transparent bomber noses for fighter and reconnaissance planes at Douglas Aircraft Co. Plant in Long Beach, California
1942
Gelatin silver print
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, gift of Will Michels in honor of his sister, Genevieve Namerow

James Nachtwey (American, b. 1948)
Firefighters search for survivors at Ground Zero
2001
© James Nachtwey

Medicine

18. Medicine, divided into two subsections, presents doctors and nurses at work at the front, and individuals who are surviving with injuries. “Wartime Medicine“ presents the conditions of medical operations on the battlefield, from Vo Anh Khanh’s photograph of North Vietnam surgeons working in a swamp to Larry Burrows’ emergency dressing station in Vietnam. “Subsequent to War“ showcases survivors. A 2007 photograph by Peter van Agtmael shows a soldier with a prosthetic leg playing with his two sons and light sabres in a field. A 1985 photograph by Michael Coyne pictures a rehabilitation centre stacked with braces and artificial limbs for the victims of war in Iran and Iraq. Nina Berman’s 2004 portrait of PTSD patient Randall Clunen, from the series Purple Hearts, relates the psychic scars of war. (22 images)

Vo Anh Khanh (Vietnamese, 1936-2023)
A Cambodian guerrilla is carried to an improvised operating room in a mangrove swamp in this Viet Cong haven on the Ca Mau Peninsula
1970
© National Geographic Society

This scene was an actual medical situation, not a publicity setup.

Peter van Agtmael (American, b. 1981)
Darien, Wisconsin, October 22, 2007
2007, printed 2009
Chromogenic print, ed. # 1/10
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, gift of David and Cindy Bishop Donnelly, John Gaston, Mary and George Hawkins and Mary and Jim Henderson in memory of Beth Block
© Peter van Agtmael / Magnum Photos

Michael Coyne (Australian, b. 1945)
Rehabilitation Centre – Iran
1985
Type C print
55cm x 36.6cm

Nina Berman (American, b. 1960)
Randall Clunen
2004
From the series Purple Hearts
Pigment print
28 x 28 in.

Faith

19. Faith presents devotion during wartime. The Oath of War (1942), by Mark Markov-Grinberg, taken minutes before a regiment attacked an entrenched German defensive position, shows a soldier kissing his gun. A 1918 image by an unknown photographer depicts a soldier’s grave in France, marked by a wooden cross and the soldier’s helmet, under which his Bible was found. Naval photographer R. Woodward’s 1945 photograph depicts a shipboard service performed after a Japanese plane dropped two bombs on the ship; the officiating chaplain is possibly Father O’Callahan, who subsequently received the Medal of Honor. Three days before the start of the Iraq War in 2003, Hayne Palmour IV captured the baptism of a Marine by a Navy chaplain in Kuwait, in a pool of water constructed from sandbags. (12 images)

Mark Borisovich Markov-Grinberg (Russian, 1907-2003)
The Oath of War (Soviet soldier kissing his rifle)
1939, printed later
Ferrotyped gelatin silver print

R. Woodward, USNR, American (birth date unknown)
Religious services under the blasted flight deck of the USS Franklin
March 1945
Gelatin silver print, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, gift of St. Paul’s United Methodist Church

Religious services under the blasted flight deck of the USS Franklin (CV-13), for the 807 men killed from two bomb blasts while off the coast of Japan. The only American warship to suffer greater losses was the battleship Arizona at Pearl Harbor. March 1945 by R. Woodward, USNR.

PLEASE NOTE: This information is incorrect. 883 servicemen perished when the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis was torpedoed and sunk by a Japanese submarine on 30 July 1945 and the survivors were not spotted until three and a half days later. Many succumbed to exposure to the elements, dehydration and shark attacks.

Refugee

20. The focus of Refugee moves away from the combatants’ standpoint and into the perspectives of others, including individuals who have been displaced as well as left behind. This section presents people either fleeing battle or living as expatriates in a new place. The Pulitzer Prize-winning image shot in 1965 by Sawada Kyoichi shows a Vietnamese mother and her children wading across a river to escape from a U.S. napalm strike on their village. An image by Hilmar Pabel depicts a family fleeing across the border in the Bavarian Forest to the West, escaping in the night carrying suitcases. A famous 1993 picture by Gilles Peress, of hands pressing against both sides of a windowpane, documents the evacuation of Jews from Sarajevo. A 1994-1995 portrait by Fazal Sheikh depicts a mother and her two children sitting on the ground somewhere in Tanzania; her newborn’s name, Makantamba, means “one who was born at the time of war.” Jonathan C. Torgovnik’s Valentine with her daughters Amelie and Inez, Rwanda (2006) is taken from the series Intended Consequences. An image by Alexandria Avakian depicts a Lebanese refugee in traditional dress mowing a lawn in suburban Michigan. (8 images)

Sawada Kyoichi (Japanese, 1936-1970)
Mother and children wade across river to escape U.S. bombing. Qui Nhon, South Vietnam
September 1965

Hilmar Pabel (German, 1910-2000)
A family flees across the border in the Bavarian Forest to the West
1948-1949
Gelatin silver print, printed 1995
Collection of Alan Lloyd Paris
© bpk, Berlin / Art Resource, NY

Gilles Peress (French, b. 1946)
Evacuation of the Jews, Skanderia, Sarajevo, Bosnia
1993
From the book Farewell to Bosnia, 1994
Gelatin silver print
16 x 20 inches

Alexandria Avakian (American, b. 1960)
Dearborn, Michigan, June 2002: Tufaha Baydayn, a Lebanese American, fled Lebanon’s civil war in the 1970s
2002

Jonathan C. Torgovnik (American, b. 1969)
Valentine with her daughters Amelie and Inez, Rwanda
2006
from the series Intended Consequences
Chromogenic print, ed. #11/25
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, gift of the artist
© Jonathan Torgovnik

Exhibition posting continued in Part 3…
Exhibition posting Part 1…

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
1001 Bissonnet Street
Houston, TX 77005

Opening hours:
Wednesday 11.00 am – 5.00 pm
Thursday 11.00 am – 9.00pm
Friday, Saturday 11.00am – 6.00pm
Sunday 12.30 – 6.00pm
Closed Monday and Tuesday

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston website

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Exhibition: ‘Janina Green: Ikea’ at Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 28th November 28 – 15th December 2012

Installation photograph of Ikea by Janina Green at Edmund Pearce Gallery, Melbourne

“It is necessary to revisit what Walter Benjamin said of the work of art in the age of its mechanical reproducibility. What is lost in the work that is serially reproduced, is its aura, its singular quality of the here and now, its aesthetic form (it had already lost its ritual form, in its aesthetic quality), and, according to Benjamin, it takes on, in its ineluctable destiny of reproduction, a political form. What is lost is the original, which only a history itself nostalgic and retrospective can reconstitute as “authentic.” The most advanced, the most modern form of this development, which Benjamin described in cinema, photography, and contemporary mass media, is one in which the original no longer even exists, since things are conceived from the beginning as a function of their unlimited reproduction.”

Jean Baudrillard. ‘Simulacra and Simulation’. 1981 (English translation 1994)

“To apprehend myself as seen is, in fact, to apprehend myself as seen in the world and from the standpoint of the world. The look does not carve me out in the universe; it comes to search for me at the heart of my situation and grasps me only in irresolvable relations with instruments. If I am seen as seated, I must be seen as “seated-on-a-chair,” … But suddenly the alienation of myself, which is the act of being-looked-at, involves the alienation of the world which I organise. I am seated on this chair with the result that I do not see it at all, that it is impossible for me to see it …”

Jean-Paul Satre. ‘Being and Nothingness’ (trans. Hazel Barnes). London: Methuen, 1966, p. 263

“It must be possible to concede and affirm an array of “materialities” that pertain to the body, that which is signified by the domains of biology, anatomy, physiology, hormonal and chemical composition, illness, age, weight, metabolism, life and death. None of this can be denied. But the undeniability of these “materialities” in no way implies what it means to affirm them, indeed, what interpretive matrices condition, enable and limit that necessary affirmation. That each of those categories [BODY AND MATERIALITY] have a history and a historicity, that each of them is constituted through the boundary lines that distinguish them and, hence, by what they exclude, that relations of discourse and power produce hierarchies and overlappings among them and challenge those boundaries, implies that these are both persistent and contested regions.”

Judith Butler. ‘Bodies That Matter’. New York: Routledge, 1993, pp. 66-67

Fable = invent (an incident, person, or story)

Simulacrum = pretends to be a faithful copy, but it is a copy with no original

Performativity = power of discourse, politicisation of abjection, ritual of being

Body / identity / desire = imperfection, fluidity, domesticity, transgression, transcendence

Intimate, conceptually robust and aesthetically sensitive.
The association of the images was emotionally overwhelming.
An absolute gem. One of the highlights of the year.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Janina Green (Australian born Germany, b. 1944)
Waterfall
1990
Silver gelatin print on Kentmere Parchment paper, tinted with coffee and photo dyes
58 x 48cm
Vintage print

Janina Green (Australian born Germany, b. 1944)
Pink vase
1990 reprinted 2012
Silver gelatin print on fibre based paper, hand tinted with pink photo dye
85 x 70cm

Janina Green (Australian born Germany, b. 1944)
Blue vase
1990 reprinted 2012
Silver gelatin print on fibre based paper, hand tinted with blue photo dye
85 x 70cm

Janina Green (Australian born Germany, b. 1944)
Nude
1986
Silver gelatin print on fibre based paper, hand tinted with blue photo dye
60 x 45cm
Vintage print

My photographs are always about the past.

The Barthesian slogan, “this has been,” is for me, “I was there.” This series of images of a vase from Ikea consists of silver gelatin prints tinted in different coloured photographic dyes; photographs of a simple mass produced vase – its form the familiar vessel which so dominates Art History. “Ikea” for me is symbolic of the useful homely object and of the ideal home. The vase from Ikea no longer exists. The picture of that vase stands in for the vase that once existed. The photograph can be seen now – at this moment. It will continue to exist in the future. Its representation crosses time barriers.

My photographs are always documentations of a private performance.

Every photograph records what is in front of the camera, but my interest is in the occasion and the complex conditions of the making of the photograph – first the negative then the print. Each photograph ends up being a documentation of my state of mind during this intensely private moment as well as something for other people to look at. Because of changing conditions, every one of these prints from that same negative is different. For me each analogue print is an unsteady thing. They are now relics from another era, as is the vase.

As a counterpoint to the repetition of the vase prints, I have selected four vintage works from my archive.

Artists statement by Janina Green

Janina is represented by M.33

Janina Green (Australian born Germany, b. 1944)
Orange vase
1990 reprinted 2012
Silver gelatin print on fibre based paper, hand tinted with orange photo dye
85 x 70cm

Janina Green (Australian born Germany, b. 1944)
Green vase
1990 reprinted 2012
Silver gelatin print on fibre based paper, hand tinted with green photo dye
85 x 70cm

Janina Green (Australian born Germany, b. 1944)
Interior
1992
C Type print
38 x 30cm
Vintage print / edition of 5

Janina Green (Australian born Germany, b. 1944)
Telephone
1986 reprinted 2010
Silver gelatin print on fibre based paper, tinted with coffee
58 x 48cm

Janina Green (Australian born Germany, b. 1944)
Yellow vase
1990 reprinted 2012
Silver gelatin print on fibre based paper, hand tinted with yellow photo dye
85 x 70cm

Edmund Pearce Gallery

This gallery is now closed.

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Exhibition: ‘WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath’ at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Part 1

Exhibition dates: 11th November 2012 – 3rd February 2013

Curators: Anne Tucker, Natalie Zelt and Will Michels

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
The Valley of the Shadow of Death
1855

This is the biggest posting on one exhibition that I have ever undertaken on Art Blart!

As befits the gravity of the subject matter this posting is so humongous that I have had to split it into 4 separate postings. This is how to research and stage a contemporary photography exhibition that fully explores its theme (NGV please note!). The curators reviewed more than one million photographs in 17 countries, locating pictures in archives, military libraries, museums, private collections, historical societies and news agencies; in the personal files of photographers and service personnel; and at two annual photojournalism festivals producing an exhibition that features 26 sections (an inspired and thoughtful selection) that includes nearly 500 objects that illuminate all aspects of WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY.

**Please be aware that there are graphic photographs in all of these postings.** Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston for allowing me to publish some of the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

On November 11, 2012, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, debuts an unprecedented exhibition exploring the experience of war through the eyes of photographers. WAR / PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath features nearly 500 objects, including photographs, books, magazines, albums and photographic equipment. The photographs were made by more than 280 photographers, from 28 nations, who have covered conflict on six continents over 165 years, from the Mexican-American War of 1846 through present-day conflicts. The exhibition takes a critical look at the relationship between war and photography, exploring what types of photographs are, and are not, made, and by whom and for whom. Rather than a chronological survey of wartime photographs or a survey of “greatest hits,” the exhibition presents types of photographs repeatedly made during the many phases of war – regardless of the size or cause of the conflict, the photographers’ or subjects’ culture or the era in which the pictures were recorded. The images in the exhibition are organised according to the progression of war: from the acts that instigate armed conflict, to “the fight,” to victory and defeat, and images that memorialise a war, its combatants and its victims. Both iconic images and previously unknown images are on view, taken by military photographers, commercial photographers (portrait and photojournalist), amateurs and artists.

“‘WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY’ promises to be another pioneering exhibition, following other landmark MFAH photography exhibitions such as ‘Czech Modernism: 1900-1945’ (1989) and ‘The History of Japanese Photography’ (2003),” said Gary Tinterow, MFAH director. “Anne Tucker, along with her co-curators, Natalie Zelt and Will Michels, has spent a decade preparing this unprecedented exploration of the complex and profound relationship between war and photography.” “Photographs serve the public as a collective memory of the experience of war, yet most presentations that deal with the material are organised chronologically,” commented Tucker. “We believe ‘WAR / PHOTOGRAPHY’ is unique in its scope, exploring conflict and its consequences across the globe and over time, analysing this complex and unrelenting phenomenon.”

The earliest work in the exhibition is from 1847, taken from the first photographed conflict: the Mexican-American War. Other early examples include photographs from the Crimean War, such as Roger Fenton’s iconic The Valley of the Shadow of Death (1855) and Felice Beato’s photograph of the devastated interior of Fort Taku in China during the Second Opium War (1860). Among the most recent images is a 2008 photograph of the Battle Company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade in the remote Korengal Valley of Eastern Afghanistan by Tim Hetherington, who was killed in April 2011 while covering the civil war in Libya. Also represented with two photographs in the exhibition is Chris Hondros, who was killed with Hetherington. While the exhibition is organised according to the phases of war, portraits of servicemen, military and political leaders and civilians are a consistent presence throughout, including Yousuf Karsh’s classic 1941 image of Winston Churchill, and the Marlboro Marine (2004), taken by embedded Los Angeles Times photographer Luis Sinco of soldier James Blake Miller after an assault in Fallujah, Iraq. Sinco’s image was published worldwide on the cover of 150 publications and became a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist.

The exhibition was initiated in 2002, when the MFAH acquired what is purported to be the first print made from Joe Rosenthal’s negative of Old Glory Goes Up on Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima (1945). From this initial acquisition, the curators decided to organise an exhibition that would focus on war photography as a genre. During the evolution of the project, the museum acquired more than a third of the prints in the exhibition. The curators reviewed more than one million photographs in 17 countries, locating pictures in archives, military libraries, museums, private collections, historical societies and news agencies; in the personal files of photographers and service personnel; and at two annual photojournalism festivals: World Press Photo (Amsterdam) and Visa pour l’Image (Perpignan, France). The curators based their appraisals on the clarity of the photographers’ observation and capacity to make memorable and striking pictures that have lasting relevance. The pictures were recorded by some of the most celebrated conflict photographers, as well as by many who remain anonymous. Almost every photographic process is included, ranging from daguerreotypes to inkjet prints, digital captures and cell-phone shots.

Press release from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Yousuf Karsh (Armenian-Canadian, 1908-2002)
Winston Churchill
1941
Gelatin silver print

WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath is organised into 26 sections, which unfold in the sequence that typifies the stages of war, from the advent of conflict through the fight, aftermath and remembrance. Each section showcases images appropriate to that category while cutting across cultures, time and place. Outside of this chronological approach are focused galleries for “Media Coverage and Dissemination” (with an emphasis on technology); “Iwo Jima” (a case study); and “Photographic Essays” (excerpts from two landmark photojournalism essays, by Larry Burrows and Todd Heisler).

Media Coverage and Dissemination

1. Media Coverage and Dissemination provides an overview of how technology has profoundly affected the ways that pictures from the front reach the public: from Roger Fenton and his horse-drawn photography van (commissioned by the British government to document the Crimean War), to Joe Rosenthal’s 1940s Anniversary Speed Graphic (4 x 5) camera, to pictures taken with the Hipstamatic app of an iPhone by photojournalist Michael Christopher Brown in Egypt during the protests and clashes of the Arab Spring. (22 images / objects)

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
The artist’s van [Marcus Sparling, full-length portrait, seated on Roger Fenton’s photographic van]
1855
Salted paper print
17.5 × 16.5cm
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division

Manufactured by Graflex, active 1912-1973
Anniversary Speed Graphic (4 x 5), “Scott S. Wigle camera” (First American-made D-Day picture)
c. 1940
Camera
Collection of George Eastman House (Gift of Graflex, Inc.)

An Advent of War

2. The photographs in An Advent of War depict the catalytic events of war. These moments of instigation are rarely captured, as photographers are not always present at the initial attack or provocation. Photographs that Robert Clark took on the morning of September 11, 2001, and the aerial view of torpedoes approaching Battleship Row during the Pearl Harbor attack, taken by an unknown Japanese airman on December 7, 1941, both convey with clarity the concept of war’s advent. (11 images).

Unknown photographer (Japanese)
War in Hawaiian Water. Japanese Torpedoes Attack Battleship Row, Pearl Harbor
December 7, 1941
Gelatin silver print
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, gift of Will Michels

Recruitment & Embarkation

3. Recruitment & Embarkation shows mobilisation: the movement toward the front. Mikhail Trakhman captures a Russian mother kissing her son goodbye in Kolkhoz farmer M. Nikolaïeva bids her son Ivan goodbye before he joins the partisans (1942), while a 1916 photograph by Josiah Barnes, known as the “Embarkation Photographer,” shows an archetypal moment: young Australian soldiers waving goodbye from a ship as they depart their home country to fight in World War I. (7 images)

Josiah Barnes (Australian, 1858-1921)
Embarkation of HMAT Ajana, Melbourne
July 8, 1916
Gelatin silver print (printed 2012)
On loan from the Australian War Memorial

Known as “the embarkation photographer”, the Kew, Melbourne photographer Josiah Barnes took an interest in photographing Australian troopships as they departed for war from Melbourne. He had two sons, “Norm and Victor, who left for war in 1916 (both returned to Australia after their service),” which may have fuelled his interest.

Mikhail Trakhman (Russian, 1918-1976)
Kolkhoz farmer M. Nikolaïeva bids her son Ivan goodbye before he joins the partisans
1942
Gelatin silver print

A kolkhoz was a form of collective farm in the Soviet Union which, alongside sovkhoz (state farm), formed the main components of the socialised farm sector which emerged after the October Revolution of 1917 as an antithesis to feudalism, aristocratic landlords, serfdom and individual farming.

Mikhail Trakhman

Mikhail Trakhman was born in Moscow in 1918. After graduating from school, he began working at the newsreel studio and at the same time studying for courses in the field of assistant operator. From 1938 he became the photo reporter of the Uchitelskaya Gazeta, and in 1939 he was drafted into the army and participated in the Soviet-Finnish war. During the Great Patriotic War, Mikhail Trakhman worked as a press photographer for the Soviet Information Bureau. His main instrument was the famous “Leica” camera, but often military weapons fell into his hands. He shot in besieged Leningrad, in Pskov and in Belarus, participated in the liberation of Poland and Hungary. The most famous are his photographs from the partisan series taken in the rear of the German troops. In his diaries, he wrote: “I take a lot of things, although I know that 80% of the shot will go to the basket, but I need to shoot it, since such things happen once in a lifetime.” Thanks to these photos, he entered the history of war reporting. Mikhail Trakhman was awarded the Order of the Red Star and the medal “For the Defense of Leningrad” and “Partisan Medal”, which he especially valued.

Anonymous. “Mikhail Trakhman,” on the Lumiere Brothers Gallery website [Online] Cited 06/09/2020

Training

4. Training explores photographs of soldiers in boot camp or more-advanced phases of instruction and exercise. World War II Royal Navy officers gather around a desk to study different types of aircraft in a photograph by Sir Cecil Beaton. Also included is the iconic Vietnam-era photograph of a U.S. Marine drill sergeant reprimanding a recruit in South Carolina, from Thomas Hoepker’s series US Marine Corps boot camp, 1970. In one photograph, shot by a Japanese soldier and published in 1938 by Look magazine, Japanese soldiers use living Chinese prisoners in bayonet practice. (13 images)

Thomas Hoepker (German, 1936-2024)
A US Marine drill sergeant delivers a severe reprimand to a recruit, Parris Island, South Carolina
1970
From the series US Marine Corps boot camp, 1970
Inkjet print
Thomas Hoepker / Magnum Photos
© Thomas Hoepker / Magnum Photos

Daily Routine

5. Daily Routine features moments of boredom, routine and playfulness. A member of the U.S. Army Signal Corps wears a gas mask as he peels onions. A 1942 photograph by Sir Cecil Beaton catches the off-guard expression of a Royal Navy man at a sewing machine, mending a signal flag. (13 images)

Anonymous photographer
Soldiers trying out their gas masks in every possible way. Putting the respirator to good use while peeling onions. 40th Division, Camp Kearny, San Diego, California
1918
National Archives and Records Administration

Cecil Beaton (English, 1904-1980)
A Royal Navy sailor on board HMS Alcantara uses a portable sewing machine to repair a signal flag during a voyage to Sierra Leone
March 1942
Gelatin silver print, printed 2012
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Gift of the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation
© The Imperial War Museums (neg. #CBM 1049)

HMS Alcantara

HMS Alcatara was an RML passenger liner of 22,209 tons and 19 knots launched in 1926, and taken up by the Royal Navy for conversion to an armed merchant cruiser to counter the threat posed by German surface raiders against shipping. When Jim Hingston joined her as an ordinary seaman at Freetown she was still largely in merchant dress, with wood panelling throughout. Much to the regret of her crew this was removed during their stay at Simonstown – the wisdom of that was apparent to them only too soon.

There were some 53 such ships in all, poorly armed, in Alcantara‘s case with eight 6 inch and two 3 inch guns, the former having a range of some 14,200 yards (13,000 metres). Such armament could not be much more than defensive, the intention being that the AMCs should radio the position of the German ship and not only give merchant shipping a chance to escape but delay the commerce raider long enough to allow regular RN warships to get to the scene.

Alcantara‘s opponent, the Thor, was laid down in 1938 as a freighter of 9,200 tons displacement and a speed of 18 knots, but commissioned as a commerce raider on 14 March 1940. Though she had only 6 150 mm guns they had a much greater range, at 20,000 yards, than Alcantara and other British AMCs. She also carried a scout floatplane. During the engagement with Alcantara on 28 July 1940 the Thor inflicted significant damage but the Alcantara successfully closed, and after being hit the Thor withdrew in order to avoid the risk of being crippled or being forced to abort her mission. In later encounters with AMCs the Thor severely damaged the Carnarvon Castle and sank Voltaire.

HMS Alcantara later had her 6 in armament upgraded and was equipped with a seaplane, but as the threat of surface raiders receded she was converted to her more natural role of troopship in 1943.

Reconnaissance, Resistance and Sabotage

6. Images of Reconnaissance, Resistance and Sabotage are scarce by nature, as they reveal spies in the act and could be used against those depicted or their families. A U.S. soldier on night watch sits atop a mountain in Afghanistan, wrapped in a blanket and peering into night-vision equipment, in a photograph by Adam Ferguson. A photograph by T. E. Lawrence (known as Lawrence of Arabia) documents the bombing of the Hejaz Railway during the Arab Revolt. Cas Oorthuys’ photograph Under German Occupation (Dutch Worker’s Front), Amsterdam (c. 1940-1945), taken with a camera hidden in his jacket, shows the back of a fellow countryman who is helping to conceal the photographer, with German troops in the distance. Also included is Arkady Shaikhet’s 1942 photograph Partisan Girl depicting Olga Mekheda, who was renowned for her ability to get through German roadblocks – even while pregnant. (10 images)

T.E. Lawrence (British, 1888-1935)
Untitled [A Tulip bomb explodes on the railway Hejaz Railway, near Deraa, Hejaz, Ottoman Empire]
1918
Collection of the MFA Houston

Cas Oorthuys (Dutch, 1908-1975)
Under German Occupation (Dutch Worker’s Front), Amsterdam
c. 1940-1945
Gelatin silver print
13 7/8 × 11 5/8 in. (35.2 × 29.5cm)
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Museum purchase funded by Anne Wilkes Tucker in honor of the 50th wedding anniversary of Max and Isabell Smith Herzstein

Adam Ferguson (Australian, b. 1978)
September 4, Tangi valley, Wardak province, Afghanistan, a soldier of the U.S. Army 10th Mountain Division was attentively monitoring a highway
September 4, 2009

“To me, this picture epitomises the abstract idea of the ‘enemy’ that exists within the U.S. led war in Afghanistan: a young infantryman watches a road with a long-range acquisition sight surveying for insurgents planting Improvised Explosive Devices. U.S. Army Infantrymen rarely knowingly come face to face with their enemy, combat is fleeting and fought like cat and mouse, and the most decisive blows are determined by intelligence gathering, and then delivered through technology that maintains a safe distance, just like a video game.”

~ Adam Ferguson

Arkady Shaikhet (Russian, 1898-1959)
Partisan Girl
1942
Gelatin silver print
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, gift of Marion Mundy
© Arkady Shaikhet Estate, Moscow, courtesy Nailya Alexander Gallery, NYC

Patrol & Troop Movement

7. Patrol & Troop Movement conveys the mass movements of peoples and personnel by land, sea and air, from the movement of troops and supplies to patrols by all five divisions of military service: Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and Air Force. Combat patrols are detachments of forces sent into hostile terrain for a range of missions, and they – as well as the photographers accompanying them – face considerable danger. João Silva’s three sequenced frames show, through his eyes, the tilted earth just after he was felled by an IED while on patrol in Afghanistan in 2010; he lost both legs in the incident. A tranquil, 1917 image by Australian James Frank Hurley depicts silhouetted soldiers walking in a line, their reflections captured in a body of water. A 1943 photograph by American Warrant Photographer Jess W. January USCGR shows members of the U.S. Coast Guard observing a depth-charge explosion hitting a German submarine that stalked their convoy. (14 images)

João Silva (South African born Portugal, b. 1966)
Soldiers of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 66th Armored Regiment, 4th Infantry Division react to photographer Joao Silva stepping on a mine in the Arghandab district of Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, on Oct. 23, 2010, in a three-photo combination. For American troops in heavily-mined Afghan villages, steering clear of improvised explosive devices is the most difficult task
October 23, 2010
© João Silva / The New York Times via Redux

Frank Hurley (Australian, 1885-1962)
Supporting troops of the 1st Australian Division walking on a duckboard track
1917

Warrant Photographer Jess W. January USCGR, American
USCG Cutter Spencer destroys Nazi sub
April 17, 1943
Gelatin silver print
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

The Wait

8. The Wait depicts a common situation of wartime. Susan Meiselas captures a tense moment during a 1978 street fight in Nicaragua, when muchachos with Molotov cocktails line up in an alleyway, ready to initiate an attack on the National Guard. Robert Capa shows two female French ambulance drivers in Italy during World War II, leaning against their vehicle, knitting, as they wait to be called. (8 images)

Robert Capa (American-Hungarian, 1913-1954)
Drivers from the French ambulance corps near the front, waiting to be called
Italy, 1944
Original album – Italy. Cassino Campaign. W.W.II.
© 2001 By Cornell Capa, Agentur Magnum

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948)
Muchachos Await Counter Attack by The National Guard, Matagalpa, Nicaragua
1978
Chromogenic print (printed 2006)
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, museum purchase with funds provided by Photo Forum 2006
© Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos

The Fight

9. The Fight is one of the most extensive sections in the exhibition. Dmitri Baltermants shot Attack – Eastern Front WWII (cover image of the exhibition catalogue) in 1941 from the trench, as men charged over him. Sky Over Sevastopol (1944), by Evgeny Khaldey, is an aerial photograph of planes on their way to a bombing raid of the strategically important naval point. Joe Rosenthal’s Over the Top – American Troops Move onto the Beach at Iwo Jima (1945) pictures infantrymen emerging from the protection of their landing craft into enemy fire. Staged photographs, presented as authentic documents, tend to proliferate during wartime, and several examples are included here. In 1942 the Public Relations Department of the War issued an assignment to photographers to create “representative” images of combat in North Africa for more dynamic images; official British photographer Len Chetwyn staged an Australian officer leading the charging line in the battle of El Alamein, using smoke in the background from the cookhouse to create a lively image. (21 images)

Len Chetwyn (English, 1909-1980)
Australians approached the strong point, ready to rush in from different sides
November 3, 1942
Silver gelatin photograph

Joe Rosenthal (American, 1911-2006)
Over the Top – American Troops Move onto the Beach at Iwo Jima
February 19, 1945 (printed February 23, 1945)
Gelatin silver print with applied ink
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, gift of Richard S. and Dodie Otey Jackson in honor of Ira J. Jackson, M.D., and his service in the Pacific Theater during World War II
© AP / Wide World Photos

Dmitri Baltermants (Russian, 1912-1990)
Attack – Eastern Front WWII
1941
Silver gelatin photograph

The Wait and Rescue

10. The Wait and Rescue bookend The Fight. Among the photographs in Rescue are Ambush of the 173rd AB, South Vietnam (1965), by Tim Page, showing soldiers immediately combing through a battleground to assist the wounded; American Lt. Wayne Miller’s image of a wounded gunner being lifted from the turret of a torpedo bomber; and Life magazine photographer W. Eugene Smith’s 1944 photograph of an American soldier rescuing a dying Japanese infant. Smith wrote about that moment, stating “hands trained for killing gently… extricated the infant” to be transported to medical care. (8 images)

Lt. Wayne Miller (American, 1918-2013)
Crewmen lifting Kenneth Bratton out of turret of TBF on the USS SARATOGA after raid on Rabaul
November 1943
Silver gelatin photograph

More information: Kenneth C. Bratton – Mississippi (WWII vet). He was born in Pontotoc, MS, December 17, 1918. He passed away April 15, 1982. Lt. Bratton won a purple heart for his bravery during the attack on Rabaul November 11, 1943.

Wayne Forest Miller (September 19, 1918 – May 22, 2013) was an American photographer known for his series of photographs The Way of Life of the Northern Negro. Active as a photographer from 1942 until 1975, he was a contributor to Magnum Photos beginning in 1958. …

War photographer

Miller then served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy where he was assigned to Edward Steichen’s World War II Naval Aviation Photographic Unit. He was among the first Western photographers to document the destruction at Hiroshima.

Text from the Wikipedia website

The Grumman TBF Avenger (designated TBM for aircraft manufactured by General Motors) is an American World War II-era torpedo bomber developed initially for the United States Navy and Marine Corps, and eventually used by several air and naval aviation services around the world.

The Avenger entered U.S. service in 1942, and first saw action during the Battle of Midway. Despite the loss of five of the six Avengers on its combat debut, it survived in service to become the most effective and widely-used torpedo bomber of World War II, sharing credit for sinking the super-battleships Yamato and Musashi (the only ships of that type sunk exclusively by American aircraft while under way) and being credited for sinking 30 submarines. Greatly modified after the war, it remained in use until the 1960s.

Text from the Wikipedia website

W. Eugene Smith (American, 1918-1978)
Dying Infant Found by American Soldiers in Saipan
June 1944
Gelatin silver print
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, gift of Will Michels in honor of Anne Wilkes Tucker
© Estate of W. Eugene Smith / Black Star

Aftermath

11. Aftermath, with four subsections, features photographs taken after the battle has ended. “Death” on the battlefield is one of the earliest types of war images: Felice Beato photographed the dead in the interior of Fort Taku in the Second Opium War (1860). George Strock’s Dead GIs on Buna Beach, New Guinea (1943), which ran in Life magazine with personal details about the casualties, was the first published photograph from any conflict of American dead in World War II. In 1966, Associated Press photographer Henri Huet documented an American paratrooper, who was killed in action, being raised to an evacuation helicopter. Incinerated Iraqi, Gulf War, Iraq, taken by Kenneth Jarecke, was published in Europe, but the American Associated Press editors withheld it in the United States. “Shell Shock and Exhaustion” shows impenetrable exhaustion after battle. In Don McCullin’s Shell-shocked soldier awaiting transportation away from the front line, Hué, Vietnam (1968), the man looks forward with the “thousand-yard stare.” Robert Attebury photographed Marines so exhausted after a 2005 battle in Iraq that lasted 17 hours that they fell asleep where they had been standing, amid the rubble of a destroyed building. “Grief and Battlefield Burial” were taken at the site of the conflict, including David Turnley’s 1991 picture of a weeping soldier who has just learned that the remains in a nearby body bag are those of a close friend. “Destruction of Property” shows collateral damage from war. Christophe Agou, for instance, photographed the smouldering steel remains of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 2001. (39 images)

George Strock (American, 1911-1977)
Dead GIs on Buna Beach, New Guinea
January 1943
© George Strock / LIFE

Henri Huet (French, 1927-1971)
The body of an American paratrooper killed in action in the jungle near the Cambodian border is raised up to an evacuation helicopter, Vietnam
1966
Gelatin silver print (printed 2004)
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, museum purchase
© AP / Wide World Photos

Kenneth Jarecke (American, b. 1963)
Gulf War: Incinerated Iraqi soldier in personnel carrier
Nasiriyah, Iraq, March 1991

Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909)
Angle of North Taku Fort at which the French entered
August 21-22, 1860

Don McCullin (British, b. 1935)
Shell-shocked US soldier awaiting transportation away from the front line
Hue, Vietnam, 1968
© Don McCullin

David Turnley (American, b. 1955)
American Soldier Grieving for Comrade
Iraq, 1991

Ken Kozakiewicz (left) breaks down in an evacuation helicopter after hearing that his friend, the driver of his Bradley Fighting Vehicle, was killed in a “friendly fire” incident that he himself survived. Michael Tsangarakis (centre) suffers severe burns from ammunition rounds that blew up inside the vehicle during the incident. All of the soldiers were exposed to depleted uranium as a result of the explosion. They and the body of the dead man are on their way to a MASH (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital).

Prisoners of War (Civilian and Military)/Interrogation

12. Prisoners of War (Civilian and Military)/Interrogation is a frequently photographed subject because such pictures can be made outside an area of conflict. Moreover, the people in control often documented their prisoners as a show of power. The photographs in this section include the official recording of a prisoner of war before his execution by the Khmer Rouge, taken by Nhem Ein. (14 images)

Nhem Ein (Cambodian, b. 1959)
Untitled (prisoner #389 of the Khmer Rouge; man)
1975-1979
Gelatin silver print (printed 1994)
Courtesy of Museum of Modern Art
Arthur M. Bullowa Fund and Geraldine Murphy Fund
Digital image © The Museum of Modern Art / Licensed by SCALA Art Resource, NY. Used with permission of Photo Archive Group

Iwo Jima

13. Iwo Jima is a case study within the exhibition that presents the complete thematic narrative in photographs from a specific battle. Included in this section is the inspiration for the exhibition: Joe Rosenthal’s iconic, Pulitzer Prize-winning Old Glory Goes Up on Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima, a photograph he took as an Associated Press photographer in World War II showing U.S. Marines and one Navy medic raising the American flag on the remote Pacific island. (25 images)

Joe Rosenthal (American, 1911-2006)
Old Glory Goes Up on Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima
February 23, 1945
Gelatin silver print
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Manfred Heiting Collection, gift of the Kevin and Lesley Lilly Family
© AP / Wide World Photos

Exhibition posting continued in Part 2…

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
1001 Bissonnet Street
Houston, TX 77005

Opening hours:
Wednesday 11am – 5pm
Thursday 11am – 9pm
Friday, Saturday 11am – 6pm
Sunday 12.30 – 6pm
Closed Monday and Tuesday

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston website

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Public talk: ‘This is not my favourite photograph’ by Dr Marcus Bunyan part of ‘What makes a great photograph?’ at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Fitzroy

Wednesday 5th December 2012

We were asked to choose our favourite photograph, one that we could nominate as a great photograph. I chose a slightly different take on proceedings.

Marcus

Many thankx to my fellow speakers for their talks and to Director of the Centre for Contemporary Photography Naomi Cass for inviting me to speak at a wonderful evening. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Alexander Gardner (American, 1821-1882) 'Lewis Paine' April 1865 (detail)

Alexander Gardner (American, 1821-1882) 'Lewis Paine' April 1865

Alexander Gardner (American, 1821-1882)
Lewis Paine
26th April, 1865
Albumen silver print from a Collodion glass plate negative

This is not my favourite photograph

A minute’s silence…

This is not my favourite photograph
Nor may it be a great photograph…
More interestingly to me, it is a remarkable photograph – one that you are able to make remarks on.

It is also a photograph that has haunted me for years.

Taken by Alexander Gardner in April 1865, this photograph is a portrait of Lewis Thornton Powell (aka Lewis Payne or Paine) who was one of the conspirators in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln which had happened the same month. The photograph has a background of dark metal, and was taken on one of the ironclads U.S.S. Montauk or Saugus, where the conspirators were for a time confined. Paine was executed in July 1865 just eight short weeks later.

Alexander Gardner (American, 1821-1882) 'Lewis Paine' 26th April, 1865

Alexander Gardner (American, 1821-1882)
Three photographs of Lewis Paine
26th April, 1865

This is the triptych of photographs by Gardner in the form they are usually displayed, like a three-panel renaissance altar-piece. The left and right hand photographs were taken within minutes of each other, with the camera in the same position, whereas in the centre photograph the camera has been lowered to show more of the body, and the image has been cropped at the top. In the central plate the figure of Paine has been raised up in the frame – almost prematurely brought back to life by his placement.

The centre image is the only one where Paine stares directly at the camera. He surveys the viewer with a gaze I find enigmatic.

This is a very modern face, a very contemporary face. His hair is just like Justin Beiber’s.

Who brushed his hair across for this picture, and would it normally be this long, or has it just been ignored because of his fate?

He still has good muscle tone – has he been exercising in his cell?

And finally his clothing – is it navy issue, as his top appears to have been given to him, perhaps the coarse, navy blue wool of the Northern states.

Noel Cordle
Hot Dead Guys: Lewis Powell
Posted on September 5th, 2010
Mere Musings blog [Online] Cited 01/12/2012 no longer available online

There’s even a web page dedicated to him on “hot dead guys” where there’s that awkward moment when one of Lincoln’s conspirators is so sexy its ridiculous…

He wasn’t all bad. Biographers of Powell describe him as a quiet, introverted boy who enjoyed fishing and caring for sick and injured animals. Apparently, Lewis was an intelligent, sensitive, soul with great potential.

Descriptions of Lewis from “The Life, Crime and Capture”

Alexander Gardner (American, 1821-1882)
Lewis Paine (detail)
26th April, 1865
Albumen silver print from a Collodion glass plate negative

Could we say that he is left-handed given the different size of his fingers (?)

Roland Barthes (French, 1915-1980)
Camera Lucida (La Chambre claire)
1980

Roland Barthes in his seminal work Camera Lucida said in Section 39: “He is dead and he is going to die…

“The photograph is handsome, as is the boy: that is the studium. But the punctum is: he is going to die. I read at the same time: this will be and this has been; I observe with horror an anterior future of which death is the stake. By giving me the absolute past of the pose, the photograph tells me death in the future. What pricks me is the discovery of this equivalence.”

If we were to place this image within the metaphysical school of photography which peaked with Paul Caponigro and Minor White we could say:

Hovering above his head, has his spirit already begun to leave his body?

One reading of his gaze is that he is really interested in what the photographer is doing – almost the gaze of an apprentice wanting to apply these skills in the future.

Given his fate is he insane because of his interest?

What is really going on in his mind – what is his perspective?

Another reading could be as looking out to the future in the hope of finding that he will be judged in another way.

And another is the immediacy of his gaze – it is a gaze that is happening now!

The other thing that I find quite mysterious is the distance of the photographer from the subject.

Was it fear that stopped him getting any closer or are there deck fittings we cannot see that prevented his approach?

What brought Paine to this place?

Michel Foucault calls the methods and techniques through which human beings constitute themselves, “Technologies of the self.” Foucault argued that we as subjects are perpetually engaged in processes whereby we define and produce our own ethical self-understanding. According to Foucault, technologies of the self are the forms of knowledge and strategies that “permit individuals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of immortality.”1

As we look into his eyes he knows that we know he is going to die, has already died but the intensity of that knowledge is brought into present time. What Paine emanates is a form of i-mortality.

I wonder, did Gardner ever show him the finished photographs before he died?

This is Barthes anterior future, a moment where truth is interpreted in the mind of the photographer, not out there but in here [points to head and heart], where past, present and future coalesce into single point in time – his death and our death are connected through his gaze, the knowledge of our discontinuity. Eons contracted into an eternal moment.

In this moment in time, what we are doing is we are making a list about the human condition when we talk about something that is remarkable. We are moving towards a language that defines the human condition…

But ultimately language can never fully describe the human condition, much as it may try… and this is why this photograph is remarkable, because it is ineffable, unknowable.

This photograph inhabits you, it haunts you like few others.

Early Wittgenstein described a world of facts pictured by thoughts. he said, “Don’t Think, But Look!”

I would add “Don’t think, but feel and look”

This photograph is a memoriam to a young man and his present death. As such it is a REMARKABLE photograph that haunts us all.

Dr Marcus Bunyan
December 2012

1/ Foucault, Michel. “Technologies of the self,” in L. H. Martin, H. Gutman and P. H. Hutton (eds.). Technologies of the self. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1988, p. 18.

Postscript

George Cook (American, 1819-1902)
Union ironclads firing on Fort Moultrie, S.C.,
8th September 1863
Photo courtesy of the Cook Collection, Valentine Richmond History

George Cook’s photograph of Union ironclads firing on Fort Moultrie, S.C., believed to be the world’s first combat photograph. Monitors engage Confederate batteries on Sullivan’s Island, Charleston, South Carolina. Photographed from one of the Confederate emplacements, the ships are identified as (from left to right): Weehawken, Montauk and Passaic. The monitor on the right appears to be firing its guns. Date is given as 8 September 1863, when other U.S. Navy ships were providing cover for Weehawken, which had gone aground on the previous day. She was refloated on the 8th after receiving heavy gunfire from the Confederate fortifications.

Kilburn Brothers (Edward and Benjamin Kilburn, American)
Four monitors laid up in the Anacostia River, off the Washington Navy Yard
c. 1866
Ships are (from left to right): USS Mahopac, USS Saugus, USS Montauk (probably), and either USS Casco or USS Chimo
Photo mounted on a stereograph card, marked: “Photographed and published by Kilburn Brothers, Littleton, N.H.”

Anonymous photographer
‘Montauk’ at left, and ‘Lehigh’ at right, laid up at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, Pennsylvania
c. late 1902 or early 1903
U.S. Naval Historical Center photograph

Anonymous photographer
Saugus, in Trent’s Reach on the James River, Virginia
c. early 1865
Note the mine sweeping “rake” attached to her bow
U.S. Naval Historical Center photograph

Anonymous photographer
Officers pose on deck of the Saugus, in front of the gun turret, probably while the ship was serving on the James River, Virginia
c. early 1865
Note ship’s bell and other details of the turret and deck fittings
U.S. Naval Historical Center photograph

Centre for Contemporary Photography

No permanent exhibition space at the moment

Centre for Contemporary Photography website

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Public talk: ‘What makes a great photograph?’ at the Centre for Contemporary Photography (CCP), Fitzroy

Wednesday 5 December 6.00pm – 7.30pm

Entry by gold coin donation
Bookings not required

Join CCP to reflect on the inscrutable and relevant question: What makes a great photograph?

As part of the 2012 Kodak Salon, CCP presents an evening of confident and wildly divergent points of view on this topic.
A photography editor, a couple of curators, designers, a creative director, writers and artists will reveal their passionate choices on the night!

Speakers include: Serena Bentley, Marcus Bunyan, Helen Frajman, Natalie King, Bronek Kozka, Tin and Ed, Tom Mosby, and John Waricker. Chaired by Naomi Cass, CCP Director.

Centre for Contemporary Photography

No permanent exhibition space at the moment

Centre for Contemporary Photography website

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Exhibition: ‘Licht-Bilder (Light images). Fritz Winter and Abstract Photography’ at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich

Exhibition dates: 9th November 2012 – 17th February 2013

Fritz Winter (German, 1905-1976)
K 35
1934
Oil on paper on canvas
110 x 75cm
Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen Pinakothek der Moderne, München
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012

The glorious paintings of Fritz Winter show a beautiful synergy with the abstract photographs. The relationship between painting and photography has always been a symbiotic one, a close mutualist relationship that has benefited both art forms. This is fully evidenced in this outstanding posting, where I have tried to sequence the artworks to reflect the nature of their individuality and their interdependence. Great blessings on the curators that assembled this exhibition: an inspired concept!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Alvin Langdon Coburn (American, 1882-1966)
Vortograph
1917 (1962)
Gelatin silver print
30.6 x 25.5cm
George Eastman House, Rochester, New York
© Courtesy of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Francis Bruguière (American, 1879-1945)
Abstract Study
c. 1926
Gelatin silver print
24.3 x 19.3cm
George Eastman House, Rochester, New York
© Courtesy of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Fritz Winter (German, 1905-1976)
Einfallendes Licht II (Incident Light II)
1935
Oil on paper on canvas
44.2 x 33.4cm
Konrad Knöpfel-Stiftung Fritz Winter im Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Untitled (Photogram)
c. 1939-1941
Gelatin Silver Print
40 x 47.8cm
George Eastman House, Rochester, New York
© Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012 Museum Folkwang, Essen, Fotografische Sammlung
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012

In his lesser known early work, the German painter Fritz Winter (1905-1976) made an obsessive analysis of the aesthetic aspects of light. As a Bauhaus student he was influenced by the international avant-garde’s boundless euphoria for light between Expressionism and Constructivism. The light of large cities with headlights, cinemas and illuminated advertisements gave a new impulse to aesthetics; x-rays, radioactivity and microphotography made it possible to perceive previously unknown sources of energy and natural phenomena.

In his pictures of light beams and crystals created in 1934-1936, Winter devoted himself with virtuosity to aspects such as the reflection, radiation and refraction of light. His virtually monochrome paintings incorporate crystal shapes and bundles of rays; they focus on the earth’s interior and the infinite expanse of the cosmos; they block the pictorial space with dark grids or lend it a glass-like transparency.

For the first time, 25 Licht-Bilder by Fritz Winter will be juxtaposed with an international selection of 40 of the earliest abstract photographs in history of art. In the 1910s to 1930s artists experimented with the most varied of photographic techniques to ascertain the genuine qualities of photography beyond the merely representative. The New Vision in photography and abstract painting become immediately obvious through the display of vintage prints and paintings side by side.

The exhibition combines 25 exceptional paintings by Fritz Winter from German museums and private collections as well as 40 international lenders of photographic works including Centre Pompidou, Paris, George Eastman House in Rochester, New York, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, Neue Galerie Kassel, Kunsthalle Mannheim, Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation, Munich and Kunstmuseum Stuttgart.

Press release from the Pinakothek der Moderne website

Fritz Winter (German, 1905-1976)
Stufungen (Gradations)
1934
Oil on paper on canvas
100.5 x 75.5cm
Konrad Knöpfel-Stiftung Fritz Winter im Kunstmuseum Stuttgart
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012

Alfred Ehrhardt (German, 1901-1984)
Adular, Maderanertal, Schweiz
1938-1939
Gelatin silver print
49.5 x 30cm
Stiftung Ann und Jürgen Wilde, Pinakothek der Moderne, München
© Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung
© Courtesy of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Fritz Winter (German, 1905-1976)
Weiß in Schwarz (White in Black)
1934
Oil on paper on canvas
100.5 x 75.5cm
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel, Neue Galerie
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012

Fritz Winter (German, 1905-1976)
Licht, A 1
1934
Oil on paper on canvas
59 x 45cm
Private Collection
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Untitled (Photogram)
1925
Gelatin silver print
23.7 x 17.8cm
Museum Folkwang, Essen, Fotografische Sammlung
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012 Museum Folkwang, Essen, Fotografische Sammlung
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012

Alfred Ehrhardt (German, 1901-1984)
Beryll, Minas Geraes, Brasilien
1938/1939
Gelatin silver print
49.7 x 29.9cm
Stiftung Ann und Jürgen Wilde, Pinakothek der Moderne, München
© bpk, Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung
© Courtesy of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Pinakothek Der Moderne
Barer Strasse 40
Munich

Opening hours:
Daily except Monday 10am – 6pm
Thursday 10am – 8pm

Pinakothek der Moderne website

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Exhibition: ‘Jeff Wall Photographs’ at The Ian Potter Centre: National Gallery of Victoria Australia, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 30th November 2012 – 17th March 2013

Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing, at right, The Destroyed Room 1978
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation shots of the new Jeff Wall exhibition at NGV Australia. Review to follow in due course.

Many thankx to Jemma Altmeier and all the media team at NGV for all their wonderful help and congratulations to the curators, Susan van Wyk and Dr Isobel Crombie, for their restrained yet contemporary installations and for getting the exhibitions to Melbourne. They look magnificent. Well done!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the NGV for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All photographs © Marcus Bunyan © National Gallery of Victoria. May not be reproduced without permission.

Jeff Wall & Thomas Demand: In Conversation, National Gallery of Victoria

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
The Destroyed Room (detail)
1978
Transparency in light box, AP
159.0 x 234.0cm
Collection of the artist
© Jeff Wall

Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing, at left, The Destroyed Room 1978, and at right, Double Self-Portrait 1979
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing, at right, Double Self-Portrait 1979
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing, at left, Doorpusher 1984, and at right, Polishing 1998
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
Polishing (detail)
1998
Transparency in light box, 1/2
162.0 x 207.0cm
State Art Collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia
Purchased with assistance from the Art Gallery of Western Australia Foundation, 1999
© Jeff Wall

Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing, at centre, Doorpusher 1984, and at right, Polishing 1998
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing, at left, Diagonal Composition 1993, and at right, Doorpusher 1984
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
Diagonal Composition
1993
Transparency in light box, AP
40 x 46cm
Collection of the artist
© Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
Pipe Opening (detail)
2002
Transparency in light box, AP
40 x 46cm
Collection of the artist
© Jeff Wall

Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing, at right, A view from an apartment 2004-2005
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing After ‘Invisible Man’ by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue 1999-2000
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
After ‘Invisible Man’ by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue (detail)
1999-2000
Transparency in light box, AP
174 x 250.5cm
Collection of the artist
© Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
A view from an apartment (detail)
2004-2005
Transparency in light box, 1/2
167.0 x 244.0cm
Tate, London
Purchased with assistance from the American Fund for the Tate Gallery and Tate Members, 2006
© Jeff Wall

Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing A sudden gust of wind (after Hokusai) 1993
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia
Federation Square
Corner of Russell and  Flinders Streets, Melbourne

Opening hours:
Daily 10am – 5pm

National Gallery of Victoria website

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Exhibition: ‘Thomas Demand’ at the National Gallery of Victoria International, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 30th November 2012 – 17th March 2013

Installation view of Thomas Demand at NGVI showing, at right, Lichtung / Clearing 2003
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

You saw it here first on Art Blart!

Beautiful installation shots of the new Thomas Demand exhibition at NGVI. Jeff Wall installation photographs to follow in the next posting on Saturday. Reviews to follow in due course.

These are all cardboard models created in Thomas Demand’s studio and then photographed. The models are destroyed afterwards leaving the photographs as artefacts and remembrances, both a performance in their own right, but also a record of another performance, that of the creation of the models. Double self, double performativity, double ritual.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Thomas Demand is regarded as one of the world’s leading contemporary artists whose work in photography and, most recently stop-animation films, is at the forefront of contemporary art. Demand initially worked as a sculptor who used photography to document his ephemeral creations. From 1993 his creative practice changed and, from then on, he made sculptures for the sole purpose of photographing them. Demand begins with an image, often taken from media sources and frequently dealing with traumatic or politically important events, and creates a life-size replica of the image using paper and cardboard. The effect of these uncanny reconstructions is to destabilise our understanding of the sites which we ‘know’ so well through reproduction. This exhibition features a selection of photographs and 35mm films as chosen by the artist.

Jeff Wall & Thomas Demand: In Conversation, National Gallery of Victoria

Thomas Demand (German, b. 1964)
Lichtung / Clearing
2003
C-Print / Perspex
Courtesy Taka Ishii Gallery, Sprüth Magers Berlin London, Esther Schipper, Berlin, Matthew Marks Gallery
© Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn / VISCOPY, Sydney

Installation view of Thomas Demand at NGVI showing, at left, Badezimmer / Bathroom 1997 and, at right, Labor / Laboratory 2000
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Thomas Demand (German, b. 1964)
Labor / Laboratory
2000
C-Print / Perspex
180 × 268cm
Courtesy Taka Ishii Gallery, Sprüth Magers Berlin London, Esther Schipper, Berlin, Matthew Marks Gallery
© Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn / VISCOPY, Sydney

Installation view of Thomas Demand. Badezimmer / Bathroom 1997 at NGVI
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Thomas Demand (German, b. 1964)
Badezimmer / Bathroom
1997
C-Print / Perspex
160.0 × 122.0cm
Courtesy Taka Ishii Gallery, Sprüth Magers Berlin London, Esther Schipper, Berlin, Matthew Marks Gallery
© Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn / VISCOPY, Sydney

Installation view of Thomas Demand at NGVI showing Copyshop 1999
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Thomas Demand (German, b. 1964)
Copyshop
2009
C-Print / Perspex
Courtesy Taka Ishii Gallery, Sprüth Magers Berlin London, Esther Schipper, Berlin, Matthew Marks Gallery
© Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn / VISCOPY, Sydney

Installation view of Thomas Demand at NGVI showing Parlament / Parliament 2009
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Thomas Demand (German, b. 1964)
Parlament / Parliament
2009
C-Print / Perspex
Courtesy Taka Ishii Gallery, Sprüth Magers Berlin London, Esther Schipper, Berlin, Matthew Marks Gallery
© Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn / VISCOPY, Sydney

When you step through the door into the Thomas Demand exhibition you enter a realm that was conceived, meticulously planned, and built to his exacting specifications. Demand designed every aspect of this exhibition. Having selected the photographs and films that he wanted to show in Melbourne, he then went on to design the exhibition space itself.

He was quite specific that the secondary walls had to be full height to create a sense of beautiful rooms rather than a space that has been partitioned. Once this was done he began work on the layout of the show. He carefully planned the sequence in which you would encounter each work, setting up an interesting play between the works. How we read these is an entirely individual experience. Recently someone said to me that they thought the placement of Lichtung / Clearing next to Paneel / Pegboard was an interesting comment on forest clearing and the devastating impact that pulp mills can have on the environment. Until then I had never seen those works in that way.

In conversation during the installation, Thomas explained that he was not interested in putting together an exhibition that then toured around the world. The usual practice of curating an exhibition and then ‘fitting’ it into different exhibition spaces in a number of venues holds little interest for him. So each time you see a Thomas Demand exhibition it has been curated, designed and installed for that particular space.

This is perhaps most obvious when you enter the rooms where the films are showing. From the brightly lit first room you can see through the door way into a darkened room lined with floor to ceiling curtains, but not really. What you see is a darkened room hung with wallpaper that the artist made to look like the kind of sweeping curtains that you might find in a cinema or theatre. It’s theatrical and spectacular but once you enter this space the real treat is Demands films.

Susan van Wyk, 6 February 2013 on the NGV website [Online] Cited 05/09/2020

Thomas Demand (German, b. 1964)
Tribute
2011
C-Print / Perspex
166 x 125cm, edition of 6
Courtesy Taka Ishii Gallery, Sprüth Magers Berlin London, Esther Schipper, Berlin, Matthew Marks Gallery
© Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn / VISCOPY, Sydney

Installation view of Thomas Demand at NGVI showing, at right, Space Simulator 2003
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of Thomas Demand at NGVI showing, at left, Grotte / Grotto 2006 and, at right, Space Simulator 2003
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Thomas Demand (German, b. 1964)
Space Simulator
2003
C-Print / Perspex
300 × 429.4cm
Courtesy Taka Ishii Gallery, Sprüth Magers Berlin London, Esther Schipper, Berlin, Matthew Marks Gallery
© Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn / VISCOPY, Sydney

Installation view of Thomas Demand at NGVI showing, at right, Grotte / Grotto 2006
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Thomas Demand (German, b. 1964)
Grotte / Grotto (detail)
2006
C-Print / Perspex
Courtesy Taka Ishii Gallery, Sprüth Magers Berlin London, Esther Schipper, Berlin, Matthew Marks Gallery
© Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn / VISCOPY, Sydney

One of the world’s most influential contemporary artists, Thomas Demand, will be the subject of a new exhibition announced by the National Gallery of Victoria.

The exhibition will be the first major Australian survey of the artist’s work and will comprise large scale photographs and films never before shown in Australia.

NGV Director, Tony Ellwood said the addition of Thomas Demand to the NGV’s exhibition schedule is part of an exciting and ambitious summer program.

“When the opportunity came up to hold an exhibition of Thomas Demand’s work this summer, it was just too good to miss. Thomas Demand will be part of a great summer program at the NGV and has been timed to coincide with the Jeff Wall Photographs exhibition being held at NGV Australia.

“We are offering a two-for-one ticket for Thomas Demand and Jeff Wall Photographs, so visitors to the NGV can experience the work of two major artists of international contemporary photography for one ticket price,” said Mr Ellwood.

Works in the exhibition will span the artist’s career from 1997 to 2012. Recent works presented in the exhibition include Control Room (pictured below), which depicts the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and Tribute, a work based on images taken at the site of tragic mass panic at Europe’s biggest rave party.

Susan van Wyk, NGV Curator of Photography said Thomas Demand is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading contemporary artists.

“Thomas has a unique style in which he creates paper models of objects and scenes, often taken from media sources like flickr or newspaper reports. These intricate life size models are then photographed.

“The results are disquieting images that subvert our understanding of reality and fiction and draws attention to how we engage with the media and modern technologies,” said Ms Van Wyk.

Press release from the NGV website

Installation view of Thomas Demand at NGVI showing, at left, Vault 2012 and, at centre, Kontrollraum / Control Room 2011
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Thomas Demand (German, b. 1964)
Kontrollraum / Control Room
2011
C-Print / Perspex
200 × 300cm
Courtesy Taka Ishii Gallery, Sprüth Magers Berlin London, Esther Schipper, Berlin, Matthew Marks Gallery
© Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn / VISCOPY, Sydney

Installation view of Thomas Demand at NGVI showing Vault 2012
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Thomas Demand (German, b. 1964)
Vault (detail)
2012
C-Print / Perspex
Courtesy Taka Ishii Gallery, Sprüth Magers Berlin London, Esther Schipper, Berlin, Matthew Marks Gallery
© Thomas Demand, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn / VISCOPY, Sydney

NGV International
180 St Kilda Road

Opening hours:
Open daily 10am – 5pm

National Gallery of Victoria website

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December 2012

Exhibition dates: 30th September 2012 – 31st December 2012

Introduction

Emmet Gowin

Francesca Woodman

Ann Hamilton

Lee Friedlander

Alfred Stieglitz

Milton Rogovin

Exhibition dates: 11th November 2012 – 3rd February 2013

Photographic Essays

Executions

Leisure Time

Support

Medicine

Faith

Refugee

Exhibition dates: 28th November 28 – 15th December 2012

Exhibition dates: 11th November 2012 – 3rd February 2013

Media Coverage and Dissemination

An Advent of War

Recruitment & Embarkation

Mikhail Trakhman

Training

Daily Routine

HMS Alcantara

Reconnaissance, Resistance and Sabotage

Patrol & Troop Movement

The Wait

The Fight

The Wait and Rescue

War photographer

Aftermath

Prisoners of War (Civilian and Military)/Interrogation

Iwo Jima

Wednesday 5th December 2012

This is not my favourite photograph

A minute’s silence…

This is not my favourite photographNor may it be a great photograph…More interestingly to me, it is a remarkable photograph – one that you are able to make remarks on.

It is also a photograph that has haunted me for years.

The centre image is the only one where Paine stares directly at the camera. He surveys the viewer with a gaze I find enigmatic.

This is a very modern face, a very contemporary face. His hair is just like Justin Beiber’s.

Who brushed his hair across for this picture, and would it normally be this long, or has it just been ignored because of his fate?

He still has good muscle tone – has he been exercising in his cell?

And finally his clothing – is it navy issue, as his top appears to have been given to him, perhaps the coarse, navy blue wool of the Northern states.

There’s even a web page dedicated to him on “hot dead guys” where there’s that awkward moment when one of Lincoln’s conspirators is so sexy its ridiculous…

He wasn’t all bad. Biographers of Powell describe him as a quiet, introverted boy who enjoyed fishing and caring for sick and injured animals. Apparently, Lewis was an intelligent, sensitive, soul with great potential.

Could we say that he is left-handed given the different size of his fingers (?)

Roland Barthes in his seminal work Camera Lucida said in Section 39: “He is dead and he is going to die…

If we were to place this image within the metaphysical school of photography which peaked with Paul Caponigro and Minor White we could say:

Hovering above his head, has his spirit already begun to leave his body?

One reading of his gaze is that he is really interested in what the photographer is doing – almost the gaze of an apprentice wanting to apply these skills in the future.

Given his fate is he insane because of his interest?

What is really going on in his mind – what is his perspective?

Another reading could be as looking out to the future in the hope of finding that he will be judged in another way.

And another is the immediacy of his gaze – it is a gaze that is happening now!

The other thing that I find quite mysterious is the distance of the photographer from the subject.

Was it fear that stopped him getting any closer or are there deck fittings we cannot see that prevented his approach?

What brought Paine to this place?

As we look into his eyes he knows that we know he is going to die, has already died but the intensity of that knowledge is brought into present time. What Paine emanates is a form of i-mortality.

I wonder, did Gardner ever show him the finished photographs before he died?

In this moment in time, what we are doing is we are making a list about the human condition when we talk about something that is remarkable. We are moving towards a language that defines the human condition…

But ultimately language can never fully describe the human condition, much as it may try… and this is why this photograph is remarkable, because it is ineffable, unknowable.

This photograph inhabits you, it haunts you like few others.

Early Wittgenstein described a world of facts pictured by thoughts. he said, “Don’t Think, But Look!”

I would add “Don’t think, but feel and look”

This photograph is a memoriam to a young man and his present death. As such it is a REMARKABLE photograph that haunts us all.

Postscript

Wednesday 5 December 6.00pm – 7.30pm

Exhibition dates: 9th November 2012 – 17th February 2013

Exhibition dates: 30th November 2012 – 17th March 2013

Exhibition dates: 30th November 2012 – 17th March 2013

This is not my favourite photograph
Nor may it be a great photograph…
More interestingly to me, it is a remarkable photograph – one that you are able to make remarks on.