Exhibition: ‘Daidō Moriyama: Tokyo Photographs’ at Philadelphia Museum of Art

Exhibition dates: 28th February – 31st July, 2009

Curator: Peter Barberie, Curator of Photographs

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

Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938) 'Untitled' from the series 'Memory of Dog' 1982 from the exhibition 'Daidō Moriyama: Tokyo Photographs' at Philadelphia Museum of Art, Feb - July, 2009

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Untitled from the series Memory of Dog
1982
Gelatin silver print
Image: 8 1/16 × 11 13/16 inches (20.5 × 30cm)
Purchased with funds contributed by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, 1990
Philadelphia Museum of Art
© Daidō Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama often calls himself a “stray dog,” a reference to one of his iconic early pictures of a roaming mongrel, but also to his preferred incidental vantage points in relation to his subjects and his beguiled yet wary stance toward modernising Japanese society. In the series Memory of Dog, he revisited photographic scenarios and motifs from his previous two decades of work, overlaying his peripheral approach with another quality that he finds crucial to photography: its relationship to memory.

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, born 1938) 'Untitled (Rose)' 1984 from the exhibition 'Daidō Moriyama: Tokyo Photographs' at Philadelphia Museum of Art, Feb - July, 2009

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Untitled (Rose)
1984
Gelatin silver print
© Daidō Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, born 1938) 'Viaduct 1, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo' 1981

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Viaduct 1, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo
1981
Gelatin silver print
© Daidō Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, born 1938) 'Untitled (Bottle)' from the series 'Light and Shadow' 1982

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Untitled (Bottle) from the series Light and Shadow
1982
Gelatin silver print
Image: 7 13/16 x 11 13/16 inches (19.8 x 30cm)
Purchased with funds contributed by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, 1990
© Daidō Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama is one of the most important and exciting Japanese photographers of our time, having made prolific, often experimental pictures of modern urban life since the 1960s. This exhibition showcases a group of approximately 45 photographs made in and around Tokyo in the 1980s, when Moriyama focused his mature aesthetic on the city with renewed intensity.

Moriyama approaches the world with an equalising eye, capturing disparate peripheral details that in themselves account for little, but together add up to a powerful diagnosis of modern experience. In 1980s Japan such details encompassed the disorienting and sometimes brutal juxtaposition of traditional culture and modernisation, most visible in the glut of consumer goods and images. But in Moriyama’s photographs these subjects appear alongside the banal elements of any streetscape: a derelict patch of pavement and wall, a car with an aggressive key scratch running its full length, even a single rose blossom.

Moriyama’s urban imagery shares some of its qualities with other great street photography of the 20th century, and he has cited the photographs of William Klein as a major influence. But his work involves strong responses to a wide range of modern art and literature, including photographs and graphic designs by many of his Japanese contemporaries, Andy Warhol’s silkscreens, and the novels of Jack Kerouac and James Baldwin. Moriyama’s mix of international and Japanese trends to represent modern Tokyo is one source of his photography’s power, and the exhibition will include a small number of works by other artists to demonstrate his visual sensibility, including prints and photographs by Warhol, Klein, Shomei Tomatsu, and Tadanori Yokoo.

Text from the Philadelphia Museum of Art website [Online] Cited 23/03/2009

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, born 1938) 'Memory of Dog 2' 1981

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Memory of Dog 2
1981
Gelatin silver print
© Daidō Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, born 1938) 'Untitled' c. 1981-1985

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Untitled
c. 1981-1985
Gelatin silver print
Image: 8 1/4 x 11 7/8 inches (21 x 30.2cm)
Purchased with funds contributed by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, 1990
© Daidō Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, born 1938) 'Untitled' from the series 'Light and Shadow' 1982

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Untitled from the series Light and Shadow
1982
Gelatin silver print
Image: 7 3/4 x 11 13/16 inches (19.7 x 30cm)
Purchased with funds contributed by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, 1990
© Daidō Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Untitled (Twin Chairs)
1986
Gelatin silver print
© Daidō Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, born 1938) 'On the Road (Chair)' from the series 'Light and Shadow' 1981

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
On the Road (Chair) from the series Light and Shadow
1981
Gelatin silver print
Image: 7 3/4 x 11 13/16 inches (19.7 x 30cm)
Purchased with funds contributed by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, 1990
© Daidō Moriyama

Since the 1960s Japanese photographer Daidō Moriyama (born 1938) has been making dynamic, often experimental images of modern urban life, establishing a reputation as one of the most important and exciting photographers of our time. The Philadelphia Museum of Art will present an exhibition of approximately 45 photographs by Moriyama, made in and around Tokyo in the 1980s, when the artist focused his mature aesthetic on the city with renewed intensity. The exhibition will be on view from February 28-June 30, 2009 in the Julien Levy Gallery at the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building.

Born in 1938 in Ikeda-cho (now Ikeda-shi), Osaka, Moriyama witnessed the dramatic changes that swept over Japan in the decades following World War II. After his father’s death in a train accident, he began working as a freelance graphic designer at age 20. He was intrigued by the graphic possibilities of screenprinting, the cheapest and most prolific form for printed imagery, and by international trends in contemporary art. These interests, along with attention to the various forms of visual stimuli that populate the urban landscape have been a hallmark of Moriyama’s career.

In 1960 Moriyama took up the study of photography under Takeji Iwamiya and one year later moved to Tokyo hoping to join the eminent photographers’ group VIVO, a short-lived cooperative whose members were exploring and confronting the revolution in modern Japanese society in their work. Although VIVO disbanded a week after Moriyama’s arrival in the capital, the visual and existential turmoil they explored would become one of the core subjects in Moriyama’s photographs. His gritty, black and white images of streets and highways express the conflicting realities of contemporary Japan, the disorienting and sometimes brutal juxtaposition of traditional culture and modernisation.

“It is a pleasure to present this group of photographs from the Museum’s collection reflecting the distinctive vision of Daidō Moriyama, who is undoubtedly among the great urban photographers of the 20th century,” Curator of Photographs Peter Barberie said. “These particular images focus on the visual experience of modern-day Tokyo, but through them Moriyama is documenting broader global trends of modernisation, and at the same time exploring the unique aesthetic qualities of his medium.”

His early images from the 1960s and 70s tested the notion of photographic artistry in an extreme fashion. He chose seemingly arbitrary subjects, and experimented with motion and overexposure to create blurred or nearly blank images, adopting an anti-aesthetic position. Other Japanese photographers were also working in this vein, but Moriyama’s 1972 book Bye Bye Photography became the defining statement of this particular style. The later photographs presented in this exhibition are generally sharper in focus but maintain the peripheral vantage point that Moriyama so often employed, as well as the seemingly random content. His images capture with an equalising eye the kinds of disparate peripheral details that litter the modern urban experience: shadows, cars, and abandoned corners, as well as the glut of consumer goods and commodities.

Profoundly influenced by Japanese photographers Eikoh Hosoe and Shomei Tomatsu, Moriyama’s vision was also enriched by his acquaintance with the work of American photographers William Klein and Robert Frank. Like them he practiced a new, more action-oriented street photography. His images are often out of focus, vertiginously tilted, or invasively cropped.

His work also involves strong responses to a wide range of modern art and literature, including photographs and graphic designs by many of his Japanese contemporaries, Andy Warhol’s silkscreens, and the novels of Jack Kerouac and James Baldwin. The exhibition will include a small number of works by other artists to demonstrate his visual sensibility, including prints and photographs by Warhol, Klein, Shomei Tomatsu, and Tadanori Yokoo.

Press release from the Philadelphia Museum of Art

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, born 1938) 'Tunnel' 1982

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Tunnel
1982
Gelatin silver print
Image: 7 15/16 x 11 7/8 inches (20.2 x 30.2cm)
Purchased with funds contributed by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, 1990
© Daidō Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Untitled from the series Light and Shadow
1982
Gelatin silver print
Image: 7 3/4 × 11 3/4 inches (19.7 × 29.8cm)
Purchased with funds contributed by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, 1990
© Daidō Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Untitled
c. 1981-1985
Gelatin silver print
Image: 8 3/8 × 11 5/8 inches (21.2 × 29.6cm)
Sheet: 10 × 11 15/16 inches (25.4 × 30.4cm)
Purchased with funds contributed by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, 1990
© Daidō Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Untitled, from the series Light and Shadow
1982
Gelatin silver print
Image: 7 3/4 x 11 13/16 inches (19.7 x 30cm)
Sheet: 10 x 12 1/8 inches (25.4 x 30.8cm)
Purchased with funds contributed by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, 1990
© Daidō Moriyama

Daidō Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Setagaya-ku, Tokyo, Midnight
1986
Gelatin silver print
© Daidō Moriyama

Philadelphia Museum of Art
26th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway
Philadelphia, PA 19130

Opening hours:
Thursday – Monday, 10.00am – 5.00pm
Closed Tuesday and Wednesday

Daido Moriyama website

Philadelphia Museum of Art website

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Exhibition: ‘Hyper’ by Denis Darzacq at Australian Centre for Photography (ACP), Sydney

Exhibition dates: 13th March – 12th April, 2009

Denis Darzacq (French, b. 1961)
Hyper #4
2007

These images form an interesting body of work: levitating bodies suspended between heaven and earth, neither here nor there, form a hyper-real image grounded in the context of the fluorescent isles of French supermarkets. The mainly anonymous humans look like mannequins in their inertness, frozen at the moment of throwing themselves/being thrown into the consumer environment. After his brilliant series La Chute (The Fall) Darzacq has taken people gathered in a casting call from around the town of Rouen and made their frozen bodies complicit in the mass production of the supermarket and the mass consumption of the image as tableaux vivant: the mise en scène directed by the photographer to limited effect. There is something unsettling about these images but ultimately they are unrewarding, as surface as the environment the bodies are suspended in, and perhaps this is the point.

Suspension of bodies is not a new idea in photography. Jacques Henri Lartigue used the freeze frame to good effect long before Henri Cartier-Bresson came up with his ‘decisive moment’: playing with the effect of speed and gravity in an era of Futurism, Lartigue used the arrested movement of instant photography then afforded by smaller cameras and faster film to capture the spirit of liberation in the ‘Belle Epoque’ period before the First World War.

“All the jumping and flying in Lartigue’s photographs, it looks like the whole world at the turn of the century is on springs or something. There’s a kind of spirit of liberation that’s happening at the time and Lartigue matches that up with what stop action photography can do at the time, so you get these really dynamic pictures. And for Lartigue part of the joke, most of the time, is that these people look elegant but they are doing these crazy stunts.”1

One of the greatest, if not the greatest ever, series of photographs of levitating bodies is that by American photographer Aaron Siskind. Called Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation (sometimes reversed as Terrors and Pleasures of Levitation as on the George Eastman House website) the images feature divers suspended in mid-air with the sky as their blank, background canvas. The images formal construction makes the viewer concentrate on the state of the body, its positioning in the air, and the look on the face of some of the divers caught between joy and fear.

“Highly formal, yet concerned with their subject as well as the idea they communicate, the ‘Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation’ photographs depict the dark shapes of divers suspended mid-leap against a blank white sky. Shot with a hand-held twin-lens reflex camera at the edge of Lake Michigan in Chicago, the balance and conflict suggested by the series’ title is evident in the divers’ sublime contortions.”2

Perhaps because of their air of balance and conflict we can return to these vibrant images again and again and they never loose their freshness, intensity and wonder. The same cannot be said of Denis Darzacq’s Hyper photographs. Slick and surface like the consumer society on which they comment the somnambulistic bodies are more like floating helium balloons, perhaps even tortured souls leaving the earth. Reminiscent of the magicians trick where the girl is suspended and a hoop passed around her body to prove the suspension is real these photographs really are more smoke and mirrors than any comment on the binary between being and having as some commentators (such as Amy Barrett-Lennard, Director Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts) have suggested. There is no spirit of liberation here, no sublime revelation as the seemingly lifeless bodies are trapped between the supermarket shelves, as oblivious to and as anonymous as the products that surround them. The well shot images perhaps possess a sense of fun, if I am being generous, as Darzacq plays with our understanding of reality… but are they more than that or is the Emperor just wearing very thin consumer clothing?

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Kevin Moore (Lartigue biographer) quoted in “Genius of Photography,” on the BBC website [Online] Cited 15/03/2009

2/ Text from the Museum of Contemporary Photography website [Online] Cited 15/03/2009 (no longer available)

Many thankx to the Australian Centre for Photography for allowing me to publish the Darzacq photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All other images are used under “fair use” for the purpose of education, research and critical discourse.

Denis Darzacq (French, b. 1961)
Hyper #8
2007

“The astonishing photographs that make up Hyper involve no digital manipulation, just close collaboration between young dancers and sportspeople as they jump for the camera to form strange, exaggerated poses and body gestures. Denis Darzacq was drawn to the trashy, consumerist nature of the French Hypermarkets (the equivalent of our supermarkets) and the hyper coloured backgrounds they provided. These supermarkets offered a sharp juxtaposition to the sublime, almost-spiritual bodies that appear to float in their aisles.

Hyper is the latest series of works by French photographer Denis Darzacq, who continues to explore the place of the individual in society, a theme which has been crucial to his work in the last few years.”

Text from the ACP website [Online] Cited 15/03/2009. No longer available online

Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986) 'L'envol de Bichonnade' 1905

Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986)
Bichonnade, 40, Rue Cortambert, Paris
1905
Gelatin silver print

Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986)
Mr Folletete (Plitt) et Tupy, Paris, March 1912
1912
Gelatin silver print

Jacques Henri Lartigue (French, 1894-1986)
Fuborg
1929
Gelatin silver print

Herni Cartier-Bresson (French, 1908-2004)
Behind Saint Lazare Station, Paris, France
1932
Gelatin silver print

Aaron Siskind (American, 1903-1991) 'Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation #37' 1954

Aaron Siskind (American, 1903-1991)
Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation #37
1956
Gelatin silver print

Aaron Siskind (American, 1903-1991)
Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation #47
1954
Gelatin silver print

Aaron Siskind (American, 1903-1991)
Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation #93
1961
Gelatin silver print

Aaron Siskind (American, 1903-1991) 'Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation #99' 1953

Aaron Siskind (American, 1903-1991)
Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation #99
1956
Gelatin silver print

Aaron Siskind (American, 1903-1991) 'Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation #491' 1954

Aaron Siskind (American, 1903-1991)
Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation #491
1956
Gelatin silver print

Denis Darzacq (French, b. 1961)
Hyper #3
2007

Hyper picks up on La Chute while explicitly focusing the artist’s message on the consumerism which hovered in the background of several previous series. In Casques de Thouars Darzacq explored the connecting power and the limits of a consumer product; here the critique is more biting. Hyper opposes bodies in movement and the saturated, standardised space of mass distribution outlets. In this totally commercial setting, the body’s leap expresses the freedom and unhampered choice of its movement. It is a clear challenge to the marketing strategies which seek to control our behaviour. Some of the figures, glowing with an aura, impose glory and give off a sense of spirituality in total contrast with the temples of consumption in which they are found.

“Hyper 1, 2007-2010,” on the Denis Darzacq website Nd [Online] Cited 13/06/2022

Denis Darzacq (French, b. 1961)
Hyper #14
2007

Australian Centre for Photography

This gallery has now closed

Denis Darzacq website

Denis Darzacq Hyper images

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Exhibition: ‘Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Rooms’ at Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Sydney

Exhibition dates: 24th February – 8th June, 2009

Curators: Jaap Guldemond (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen), Franck Gautherot & Seungduk Kim (Le Consortium, Dijon)

MCA Curatorial Liaison: Judith Blackall

“Discover the work of internationally acclaimed Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama with this major exhibition that spans decades of her artistic practice.

Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years demonstrates the enduring force of Yayoi Kusama. Renowned early installations such as Infinity Mirror Room – Phalli’s Field (1965) along with recent immersive environments including Fireflies on the Water (2000) and Clouds (2008) provide insight into the creative energy of this extraordinary artist and her lifelong preoccupation with the perceptual, visual and physical worlds.

Working across different media and forms that include painting, collage, sculpture, installation and film, as well as performance and its documentation, Kusama creates works that reveal a fixation with repetition, pattern and accumulation. Describing herself as an “obsessive artist”, her work is intensely sensual, infused with autobiographical, psychological and sexual content.”

Text from the MCA website [Online] Cited 12/03/2009. No longer available online

Many thanks to Ed Jansen for the use of his installation photographs of this exhibition at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam in 2008. See the whole set of his photographs on Flickr. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929)
Infinity Mirror Room – Phalli’s Field
1965

Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929)
Infinity Mirror Room – Phalli’s Field
1965
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 2008
Photo: Ed Jansen

Rewind 1960

Visual hallucinations of polka dots since childhood have inspired the most significant works of this avant-gardist, who says creating art “saved” her during her lifelong battle with mental illness.

Interview by Natalie Reilly

This photograph [see above, top, for the image of her in 1965] shows a creative work that I made in New York in 1960. I was 31 years old at the time and my inspiration was the inundation and proliferation of polka dots. The work represents the evolution of my original formative process. Of all the pieces I have made, I like this one the best. It was my intention to create an interminable image by using mirrors and multiplying red polka dots.

I was born in Nagano Prefecture , a mountainous region in Japan. The youngest of four children, I have one sister and two brothers.

Since childhood, I have loved to paint pictures and create art forms. [Kusama has suffered from obsessive thinking and visual hallucinations since early childhood. the hallucinations – often of polka dots, or “nets” as she calls them – have become the inspiration for much of her work.] I did many artworks in great numbers in my younger days.

I went to Seattle in 1957 where I had my first solo exhibition in the US. I moved to New York in 1958. Japan in those days was too conservative for avant-garde art to be accepted. [By 1961, Kusama was an active participant in the avant-garde movement in New York. Her art, which often included performance and controversial themes such as nudity and protests against the Vietnam War, drew acclaim for art critics and other artists such as Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg.]

I was deeply moved by the efforts the artists in New York were making then to develop a new history for art. I owe what I am today to many people in the art circles in Japan, the US and Europe who enthusiastically supported my art and gave me a boost into the international art scene.

Artists Georgia O’Keefe and Joseph Cornell were among the many friends who helped me, including Donald Judd and [writer and activist] Lucy Lippard who appreciated the originality of my art. [In 1962 at the height of her success in New York, Kusama’s mental health began to suffer as she grew more paranoid about other artists copying her work. Late that year, she covered up all the windows in her studio in an attempt to “shut out the world”, and by November she was hospitalised after suffering a nervous breakdown.]

I came back to Japan in 1973, because my health had deteriorated. I wanted to create art in a quiet atmosphere. I once said, “if it were not for art, I would have killed myself a long time ago” an that’s still true. I do art in order to pursue my philosophy of life seeking truth in art.

Reilly, Natalie. “Rewind 1960,” in Boleyn, Alison (ed.,). Sunday Life: The Sunday Age Magazine. Melbourne: Fairfax Magazines. February 15th 2009, p. 30.

Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929) 'Clouds' 1999 and 'Love Forever' 2005 from the exhibition 'Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Rooms' at Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), Sydney, Feb - June, 2009

Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929)
Clouds 1999 and Love Forever 2005
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 2008
Photo: Ed Jansen

Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929) 'Clouds' 2008 (installation view at MCA)

Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929)
Clouds (installation view at MCA)
2008
Image courtesy the artist, Yayoi Kusama Studio, Victoria Miro Gallery, London and Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo and © the artist

Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929) 'Stars Infinity (A.B.C)' 2003 (installation view MCA)

Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929)
Stars Infinity (A.B.C) (installation view at MCA)
2003
Image courtesy and © the artist

This exhibition explored the extraordinary work of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. It revealed the coherence of her practice over many years and highlighted the freshness and innovation she brings to themes investigated throughout her life. Describing herself as an ‘obsessive artist’, her work is intensely sensual, infused with autobiographical, psychological and sexual content.

Kusama was born in 1929, in Matsumoto City, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. She demonstrated a passion for art from an early age and went on to study Nihonga painting, a formal Japanese technique using ground pigment and animal glues. Excited by the promise of the post-war international art scene, Kusama moved to New York in 1958. Her first New York solo exhibition a year later was an outstanding success and she became renowned as an innovative and adventurous young artist with her large Infinity Net canvases; Accumulation sculptures of everyday objects completely covered with soft, sewn and stuffed protuberances; environments such as the Infinity Mirror Room-Phalli’s Field (1965) and performances and Happenings. In 1966 she exhibited Narcissus Garden, a field of mirrored spheres in the gardens of the Venice Biennale, creating a sensation with an extraordinarily beautiful and compelling new version of her accumulations.

Kusama was energetic, talented, strategic and courageous at a time of fervent development in the art world, in a city that was exciting and notoriously competitive. During the ‘60s and ‘70s she was an active presence in Europe as well – in 1962 she was the only female artist to take part in the widely acclaimed Nul (Zero) international group exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. She returned to Tokyo in 1973.

Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years juxtaposed seminal works from the 1960s with more recent installations, films, paintings, floor pieces and silkscreen prints on canvas, and included major new works. The exhibition reflected Kusama’s lifelong obsession with repetition, pattern and aggregation, and her perceptions – visual, physical and sensory. It demonstrated her originality, creativity and uncompromising vision across many different techniques. Her work has been highly influential to new generations of artists and designers and she remains one of the most respected artists working today.

Organised by Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
Presented in association with City Gallery, Wellington, New Zealand.

Anonymous. “Yayoi Kusama: Mirrored Years,” on the MCA website Nd [Online] Cited 13/06/2022

Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929)
Fireflies on the Water
2000

Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929)
The Moment of Regeneration
2004

Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929)
The Moment of Regeneration (installation view at MCA)
2004
Image courtesy the artist, Yayoi Kusama Studio, Victoria Miro Gallery, London and Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo and © the artist

Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929) 'Walking on the Sea of Death' 1981 (installation view at MCA)

Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929)
Walking on the Sea of Death (installation view at MCA)
1981
Image courtesy the artist, Yayoi Kusama Studio, Victoria Miro Gallery, London and Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo and © the artist

Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929) 'Narcissus Garden' 1966

Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929)
Narcissus Garden (at the Venice Biennale, Italy)
1966

Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929) 'The Earth in Late Summer' 2004 (installation view MCA)

Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929)
The Earth in Late Summer (installation view MCA)
2004
Image courtesy the artist, Yayoi Kusama Studio, Victoria Miro Gallery, London and Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo and © the artist

Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929) 'I'm here but nothing' 2000- (installation view MCA)

Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929)
I’m here but nothing (installation view MCA)
2000-
Image courtesy the artist, Yayoi Kusama Studio, Victoria Miro Gallery, London and Ota Fine Arts, Tokyo and © the artist

Yayoi Kusama (Japanese, b. 1929)
Invisible Life
2000

Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA)
140 George Street
The Rocks, Sydney, Australia

Opening hours:
Daily 11am – 5pm

Yayoi Kusama website

Museum of Contemporary Art website

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Exhibition: ‘Overpainted Photographs’ by Gerhard Richter at Centre de la Photographie, Geneva

Exhibition dates: 20th February – 12th April, 2009

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
9.4.89
10.1 x 14.8cm
Oil on colour photograph

There is something unsettling in Richter’s serendipitious interventions. Using his own prosaic 10 x 15cm colour photographs that have been commercially printed as the basis of the works, Richter overlays the surface of the photograph with skeins of paint that disturb the reflexivity of each medium. Dragging the photograph through the paint or using a palette knife to apply layers of colour, the surfaces of paint and photograph no longer exist as separate entities. The process produces punctum like clefts rent in the fabric of time and space. If the intervention is judged unsuccessful the result if immediately destroyed.

In 5.Juli.1994 (below) blood red fingers of paint strain upwards as they invade the solidity of a dour suburban home, echoing the invading trees branches at top right of picture. In 11.2.98 (below) green paint slashes across the mouth and forehead of a woman in a floral dress, her eyes seemingly bloodshot and pleading stare into the distance to the left of our view, the silent scream strangled in her throat by the vibrations of paint. These are the instantaneous responses of the artist to the photograph, a single mood expounded in irreversible gestures, the actions of the painter’s hand disturbing the indexical link of the photograph and it’s ability to be ‘read’ as a referent of the object it depicts. Richter’s interventions challenge the concept of momentary awareness and offer the possibility of a space between, where the image stands for something else – access to Other, even a contemplation of the sublime.

“The colour of paint applied corresponds or contrasts the tonalities of the underlying photograph but link the two through formal relationships of the layers … Often a tense relationship, the results run the gamut of the surreal to the beautiful to the disturbed. It is all the more surprising that each in its perceived completeness was in essence accomplished by chance and trial and error.”1

“Richter’s painterly gestures bounce off the [photographs] content in peculiar ways, sometimes interacting with it, sometimes overlaying it and sometimes threatening to eclipse it altogether. The final effect is to cause both photography and painting to seem like incredibly bizarre activities, disparate in texture but often complicit in aspiration.”2

I love the violence, the sometimes subversive, sometimes transcendental ‘equivalence’ of these images: where a Steiglitz cloud can stand for music, where a Minor White infrared photograph posits a new reality, Richter offers us an immediacy that destroys the self-reflexive nature of everyday life. His spontaneous musings, his amorphous worlds, his bleeds and blends crack open the skin of our existential life on earth. Here, certainly, are ‘the clefts in words, the words as flesh’.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ “Gerhard Richter: Overpainted Photographs,” on the 5B4 blog, February 9, 2009 [Online] Cited 13/06/2022

2/ Hatje Cantz. “Gerhard Richter: Overpainted Photographs,” on the Artbook website Nd [Online] Cited 13/06/2022

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932) '11.4.89' from the exhibition 'Overpainted Photographs' by Gerhard Richter at Centre de la Photographie, Geneva, Feb - April, 2009

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
11.4.89
10 x 15cm
Oil on colour photograph

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
11.3.89
10 x 14.9cm
Oil on colour photograph

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
5.Juli.1994
10.2 x 15.2cm
Oil on colour photograph

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
11.2.98
10 x 14.7cm
Oil on colour photograph

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
22.2.96
9.6 x 14.7cm
Oil on colour photograph

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
11.Febr.05
10.1 x 14.9cm
Oil on colour photograph

The exhibition presents 330 of Richter’s largely unknown overpainted photographs, a technique he has been using since 1982.

The exhibition UERBERNALTE FOTOGRAFIEN / PHOTOGRAPHIES PEINTES (OVERPAINTED PHOTOGRAPHS) at the Centre de la photographie Geneva (CPG) presented a side of the work of Gerhard Richter largely unknown up till now. Only a few collectors and gallerists close to the artist were aware of the practise that Gerhard Richter, one of the most important artists of our times, had developed systematically since 1982. It is only because of this exhibition that more than 1000 of his over-painted photographs will enter into his catalogue raisone. The CPG presents approximately 330 of them in this show.

“By placing paint on photographs, with all their random and involuntary expressiveness, Gerhard Richter reinforces the unique aspect of each of these mediums and opens a field of tension rich in paradoxes, as old as the couple – painting / photography – which has largely defined modern art.”

Text from Centre de la Photographie website

Gerhard Richter is justly famed for the photorealism of his early canvases, but it is less well known that he has also painted directly onto photographic prints. These (mostly small-format) pieces were reproduced in books as early as the first Atlas, but practically all of the works themselves are housed in private collections and rarely exhibited in public. Overpainted Photographs gathers this body of work, which unites the labor of the hand with the work of mechanical reproduction to produce a kind of art as conceptually rich as Richter’s better-known paintings, neutralizing the expressive powers of each medium to reach an indifference to their potency. In an overture to Duchamp’s “degree zero” found objects, the original photographs are frequently bland in content – an empty office, a ball, a beach scene or tourist snapshot – and Richter’s painterly gestures bounce off that content in peculiar ways, sometimes interacting with it, sometimes overlaying it and sometimes threatening to eclipse it altogether. The final effect is to cause both photography and painting to seem like incredibly bizarre activities, disparate in texture but often complicit in aspiration. This monograph offers a unique opportunity to savour what had previously been a neglected but copious aspect of Richter’s work.

Text from the Amazon website

“The public scenes, whether on the beach or the ski slope or children’s theatre, are beset with sudden surges of colour that tend to resemble interventions of the sky or elemental forces, more than the moods of a decorative or ornamental painter annotation. Sometimes they seem like catastrophic visions. Blood-red snowflakes dance above the white fern. The photo shows skyscrapers in the urban morning sun – and the oil paint adds to the sulpherous fire that pours over the city from the sky”

Botho Strauss in Gerhard Richter: Overpainted Photographs (Hardcover)

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
22.1.2000 (Firenze)
12 x 12cm
Oil on colour photograph

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
21.1.2000 (Firenze)
12 x 12cm
Oil on colour photograph

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932)
22.4.07
12.6 cm x 16.7 cm
Oil on colour photograph

Centre de la Photographie
28, rue des Bains,
CH – 1205 Genève
Phone: + 41 22 329 28 35

Opening hours:
Tuesday to Sunday 11.00 – 18.00

Centre de la Photographie website

Gerhard Richter website

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Photographic prize: the Magnum Foundation and the Inge Morath Foundation announce the sixth annual Inge Morath Award

March 2009

Inge Morath (American born Austria, 1923-2002)
From the series about Regensburg Museums
1999
Gelatin silver print

“To take pictures had become a necessity and I did not want to forgo it for anything.”

Inge Morath

The Magnum Foundation and the Inge Morath Foundation announce the sixth annual Inge Morath Award. The annual prize of $5,000 is awarded by the Magnum Foundation to a female documentary photographer under the age of 30, to support the completion of a long-term project. One award winner and up to two finalists are selected by a jury composed of Magnum photographers.

Inge Morath was an Austrian-born photographer who was associated with Magnum Photos for nearly fifty years. After her death in 2002, the Inge Morath Foundation was established to manage Morath’s estate and facilitate the study and appreciation of her contribution to photography.

Because Morath devoted much of her enthusiasm to encouraging women photographers, her colleagues at Magnum Photos established the Inge Morath Award in her honour. The Award is now given by the Magnum Foundation as part of its mission of supporting new generations of socially-conscious documentary photographers, and is administered by the Magnum Foundation in collaboration with the Inge Morath Foundation.

Past winners of the Inge Morath Award include: Kathryn Cook (US, ’08) for Memory Denied: Turkey and the Armenian Genocide; Olivia Arthur (UK, ’07) for The Middle Distance; Jessica Dimmock (US, ’06) for The Ninth Floor; Mimi Chakarova (US, ’06) for Sex Trafficking in Eastern Europe; Claudia Guadarrama (MX, ’05) for Before the Limit; and Ami Vitale (US, ’02), for Kashmir.

Text from The Inge Morath Foundation website [Online] Cited 01/03/2009. No longer available online

Inge Morath (American born Austria, 1923-2002)
Visitor in the Metropolitan Museum
1958
Gelatin silver print

Inge Morath (American born Austria, 1923-2002)
Window washer
1958
Gelatin silver print

“I have photographed since 1952 and worked with Magnum Photos since 1953, first out of Paris, later out of New York. I am usually labeled as a photojournalist, as are all members of Magnum. I am quoting Henri Cartier-Bresson’s explanation for this: He wrote to John Szarkowski in answer to an essay in which Szarkowski stated that Cartier-Bresson labels himself as a photojournalist.

“May I tell you the reason for this label? As well as the name of its inventor? It was Robert Capa. When I had my first show in the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1948 he warned me: ‘watch out what label they put on you. If you become known as a surrealist […] then you will be considered precious and confidential. Just go on doing what you want to do anyway but call yourself a photojournalist, which puts you into direct contact with everything that is going on in the world.'”

It is in this understanding that we have been working as a group and yet everyone following their own way of seeing. The power of photography resides no doubt partly in the tenacity with which it pushes whoever gets seriously involved with it to contribute in an immeasurable number of forms his own vision to enrich the sensibility and perception of the world around him.

[In the 1950s] the burden of the already photographed was considerably less than now. There was little of the feeling of being a latecomer who has to overwhelm the huge existing body of the photographic oeuvre – which, in photography as in painting and literature, necessarily leads first to the adoption and then rejection of an elected model, until one’s own work is felt to be equal or superior, consequently original.

Photography is a strange phenomenon. In spite of the use of that technical instrument, the camera, no two photographers, even if they were at the same place at the same time, come back with the same pictures. The personal vision is usually there from the beginning; result of a special chemistry of background and feelings, traditions and their rejection, of sensibility and voyeurism. You trust your eye and you cannot help but bare your soul. One’s vision finds of necessity the form suitable to express it.”

Inge Morath, Life as a Photographer, 1999

Text from The Inge Morath Foundation website [Online] Cited 01/03/2009. No longer available online

Inge Morath (American born Austria, 1923-2002)
Mrs. Eveleigh Nash, London, 1953
1953
Gelatin silver print

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Artist’s talk: Photographer Gregory Crewdson to present at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City

12th March, 2009

Many thankx to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Gregory Crewdson (American, b. 1962)
Untitled from the series Beneath the Roses
2006
Digital pigment print

Famed photographer Gregory Crewdson will present the inaugural discussion in a series sponsored by the Photography Society of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City…

Crewdson’s work has been widely exhibited and reviewed. He makes large-scale photographs of elaborate and meticulously staged tableaux, which have been described as “micro-epics” that probe the dark corners of the psyche. Working in the manner of a film director, he leads a production crew, which includes a director of photography, special effects and lighting teams, casting director and actors. He typically makes several exposures that he later digitally combines to produce the final image.

“Crewdson is one of the most daring and inventive contemporary artists using photography,” said Keith F. Davis, Curator of Photography at the Nelson-Atkins. “His meticulously crafted works are immensely rich in both narrative and psychological terms. They prod us to rethink our ‘usual’ relationship to photographs as physical objects and as records of worldly fact. Crewdson is a genuinely important figure in today’s art world. He has an international reputation and has influenced an entire generation of younger photographic artists.”

Attendance to the program is free.

Text from ArtDaily.org website

Gregory Crewdson (American, b. 1962)
Untitled from the series Beneath the Roses
2005
Digital pigment print

Gregory Crewdson (American, b. 1962)
Untitled (Sunday Roast) from the series Beneath the Roses
2005
Digital pigment print

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
4525 Oak Street
Kansas City, MO 64111

Opening hours:
Thursday – Monday 10am – 5pm
Closed Tuesday and Wednesday

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art website

Gregory Crewdson on the Gagosian website

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The wonderful world of artist Dale Chihuly

March 2009

Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941)
Palazzo Ducale Chandelier
1998

Visit the Dale Chihuly website and click on the “Work” link to see a truly remarkable artist at work!

Marcus

Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941)
Chiostro di Sant’apollonia Chandelier
1996

Dale Chihuly is most frequently lauded for revolutionising the Studio Glass movement by expanding its original premise of the solitary artist working in a studio environment to encompass the notion of collaborative teams and a division of labor within the creative process. However, Chihuly’s contribution extends well beyond the boundaries both of this movement and even the field of glass: his achievements have influenced contemporary art in general. Chihuly’s practice of using teams has led to the development of complex, multipart sculptures of dramatic beauty that place him in the leadership role of moving blown glass out of the confines of the small, precious object and into the realm of large-scale contemporary sculpture. In fact, Chihuly deserves credit for establishing the blown glass form as an accepted vehicle for installation and environmental art beginning in the late twentieth century and continuing today.

Stylistically over the past forty years, Chihuly’s sculptures in glass have explored colour, line, and assemblage. Although his work ranges from the single vessel to indoor/outdoor site-specific installations, he is best known for his multipart blown compositions. These works fall into the categories of mini-environments designed for the tabletop as well as large, often serialised forms that are innovatively displayed in groupings on a wide variety of surfaces ranging from pedestals to bodies of natural water. Masses of these blown forms also have been affixed to specially engineered structures that dominate large exterior or interior spaces.

Over the years Chihuly and his teams have created a wide vocabulary of blown forms, revisiting and refining earlier shapes while at the same time creating exciting new elements, such as his Fiori, all of which demonstrate mastery and understanding of glassblowing techniques. Earlier forms, such as the Baskets, Seaforms, Ikebana, Venetians, and Chandeliers, from the late 1970s through the 1990s have been augmented since the early to mid-1990s with new blown elements. Chihuly and his teams primarily developed these while working in glass factories in France, Finland, Ireland, and Mexico. The resulting Reeds, Saguaros, Herons, Belugas, Seal Pups, and other forms are now juxtaposed with the earlier series, including Macchia, Niijima Floats, and Persians in lively new contexts.

“Since the early 1980s, all of Chihuly’s work has been marked by intense, vibrant colour and by subtle linear decoration. At first he achieved patterns by fusing into the surface of his vessels “drawings” composed of prearranged glass threads; he then had his forms blown in optic moulds, which created ribbed motifs. He also explored in the Macchia series bold, colourful lip wraps that contrasted sharply with the brilliant colours of his vessels. Finally, beginning with the Venetians of the early 1990s, elongated, linear blown forms, a product of the glassblowing process, have become part of his vocabulary, resulting in highly baroque, writhing elements. In recent years Chihuly has experimented with Polyvitro to create new interpretations of some of his glass forms.

Davira S. Taragin on the Dale Chihuly website

Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941) 'Chiostro di Sant'apollonia Chandelier' 1996 (detail)

Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941)
The artist with his Chiostro di Sant’apollonia Chandelier (detail)
1996

Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941)
Colorado Springs Fountain
installation 2005

Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941)
Basket Forest
2005

Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941)
Macchia Forest
2004

Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941)
Ponti Duodo e Barbarigo Chandelier
1998

Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941)
Saffron Tower
2008

Dale Chihuly website

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Review: ‘Ocean Without A Shore’ video installation by Bill Viola at The National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

February 2009

Bill Viola – Ocean Without a Shore | TateShots

Bill Viola’s video installation, Ocean Without a Shore, is presented in the atmospheric setting of the church of San Gallo, Venice. Monitors positioned on three stone altars in the church show a succession of individuals slowly approaching out of darkness and moving into the light, as if encountered at the intersection between death and life. Viola talks about his artistic intentions and the technical challenges of the piece.

Originally installed inside the intimate 15th century Venetian church of San Gallo as part of the 2007 Venice Biennale (see above) incorporating its internal architecture into the piece using the three existing stone altars as support for the video screens, the installation has been recreated in a small darkened room at The National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. What an installation it is.

Deprived of the ornate surroundings of the altars of the Venetian chapel – altars of which Viola has said that, “… as per the original development of the origins of Christianity these alters actually are a place where the dead kind of reside and connect with those of us, the living, who are here on earth. And they really are a connection between a cross, between a tomb and an alter – a place to pray,”1 – the viewer is forced to concentrate on the images themselves. This is no bad thing, stripping away as it does a formalised, religious response to mortality.

In the work Viola combines the use of a primitive twenty five year old security black and white analogue video surveillance camera with a high definition colour video camera through the use of a special mirror prism system. This technology allows for the seamless combination of both inputs: the dead appear far off in a dark obscure place as grey ghosts in a sea of pulsating ‘noise’ and gradually walk towards you, crossing the invisible threshold of a transparent water wall that separates the dead from the living, to appear in the space transformed into a detailed colour image. As they do so the sound that accompanies the transformation grows in intensity reminding me of a jet aircraft. You, the viewer, are transfixed watching every detail as the ghosts cross-over into the light, through a water curtain.

The performances of the actors (for that is what they are) are slow and poignant. As Viola has observed, “I spent time with each person individually talking with them and you know when you speak with people, you realise then that everybody has experienced some kind of loss in their life, great and small. So you speak with them, you work with them, you spend time and that comes to the surface while we were working on this project together, you know? I didn’t want to over-direct them because I knew that the water would have this kind of visual effect and so they were able to, I think, use this piece on their own and a lot of them had their own stories of coming back and visiting a relative perhaps, who had died.”1

The resurrected are pensive, some wringing the hands, some staring into the light. One offers their hands to the viewer in supplication before the tips of the fingers touch the wall of water – the ends turning bright white as they push through the penumbrae of the interface. As they move forward the hands take on a stricken anguish, stretched out in rigour. Slowly the resurrected turn and return to the other side. We watch them as we watch our own mortality, life slipping away one day after another. Here is not the distraction of a commodified society, here is the fact of every human life: that we all pass.

The effect on the viewer is both sad but paradoxically uplifting. I cried.

A friend who I went with said that the images reminded her not of the dead temporarily coming back to life, but the birth of a new life – the breaking of water at the birth of a child. The performers seemed to her to behave like children brought anew into the world. One of my favourite moments was when the three screens were filled with just noise and a figure then appears out of the beyond, a dim and distant outline creating a transcendental moment. Unfortunately there are no images of these grainy figures. As noted below Viola uses a variety of different ethnic groups and cultures for his performers but the one very small criticism I have is they have no real individuality as people – there are no bikers with tattoos, no cross dressers, no punks because these do not serve his purpose. There is the black woman, the old woman, the middle aged man, the younger 30s man in black t-shirt: these are generic archetypes of humanity moulded to Viola’s artistic vision.

Viola has commented, “I think I have designed a piece that’s open ended enough, where the people and the range of people, the kind of people we chose are from various ethnic groups and cultures. And I think that the feeling of more this is a piece about humanity and it’s about the fragility of life, like the borderline between life and death is actually not a hard wall, it’s not to be opened with a lock and key, its actually very fragile, very tenuous.

You can cross it like that in an instant and I think religions, you know institutions aside, I think just the nature of our awareness of death is one of the things that in any culture makes human beings have that profound feeling of what we call the human condition and that’s really something I am really interested in. I think this piece really has a lot to do with, you know, our own mortality and all that that means.”1

These series of encounters at the intersection of life and death are worthy of the best work of this brilliant artist. He continues to astound with his prescience, addressing what is undeniable in the human condition.

Long may he continue.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ TateShots. Venice Biennale: Bill Viola. 30 June 2007 [Online] Cited 23/09/2009. No longer available online

“The unfolding of consciousness, the revelation of beauty, present even after death, the moment of awe, the space without words, the emptiness that builds mountains, the joy of loving, the sorrow of loss, the gift of leaving something behind for the next traveler.”

Bill Viola

Bill Viola (American, 1951-2024)
Ocean Without A Shore (excerpt)
2007
Installation in the church of San Gallo, Venice

Bill Viola (American, 1951-2024)
Ocean Without A Shore (excerpt)
2007

“Ocean Without a Shore is about the presence of the dead in our lives. The three stone altars in the church of San Gallo become portals for the passage of the dead to and from our world. Presented as a series of encounters at the intersection between life and death, the video sequence documents a succession of individuals slowly approaching out of darkness and moving into the light. Each person must then break through an invisible threshold of water and light in order to pass into the physical world. Once incarnate however, all beings realise that their presence is finite and so they must eventually turn away from material existence to return from where they came. The cycle repeats without end.”

The work was inspired by a poem by the twentieth century Senegalese poet and storyteller Birago Diop:

Hearing things more than beings,
listening to the voice of fire,
the voice of water.
Hearing in wind the weeping bushes,
sighs of our forefathers.

The dead are never gone:
they are in the shadows.
The dead are not in earth:
they’re in the rustling tree,
the groaning wood,
water that runs,
water that sleeps;
they’re in the hut, in the crowd,
the dead are not dead.

The dead are never gone,
they’re in the breast of a woman,
they’re in the crying of a child,
in the flaming torch.

The dead are not in the earth:
they’re in the dying fire,
the weeping grasses,
whimpering rocks,
they’re in the forest, they’re in the house,
the dead are not dead.

Text from the Ocean Without A Shore website [Online] Cited 23/09/2009. No longer available online

Bill Viola (American, 1951-2024) 'Ocean Without A Shore' 2007 video still

Bill Viola (American, 1951-2024) 'Ocean Without A Shore' 2007 video insatllation

Installation photographs of Ocean Without A Shore at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Bill Viola (American, 1951-2024) 'Ocean Without A Shore' 2007 original video installation at church of San Gallo (still)

Bill Viola (American, 1951-2024)
Ocean Without A Shore (still)
2007
Original installation at church of San Gallo

NGV International
180 St Kilda Road, Melbourne

Open daily 10am-5pm

National Gallery of Victoria International website

Bill Viola website

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Photographs: Marcus Bunyan. ‘Momentum’ 2009

February 2009

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Untitled from the series Momentum
2009
Digital colour photograph

Momentum

A new body of work – the first of 2009 – is now online.

All 30 images can be seen on my website.

Marcus

Photographs are available from this series for purchase. As a guide, a digital colour 16″ x 20″ costs $1000 plus tracked and insured shipping. For more information please see my Store web page.

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Untitled from the series Momentum
2009
Digital colour photograph

Marcus Bunyan website

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Exhibition: ‘Edward Burtynsky: The Residual Landscapes’ at The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff, Alberta

Exhibition dates: 7th February – 26th April, 2009

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955) 'Silver Lake Operations #1, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia 2007' from the exhibition 'Edward Burtynsky: The Residual Landscapes' at The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff, Alberta, Feb - April, 2009

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Silver Lake Operations #1, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia 2007
2007

One of the great photographers of the world.

Enjoy some of his images and for more photographs please visit his website.

Many thankx to The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955) 'Tanggu Port, Tianjin, China 2005' from the exhibition 'Edward Burtynsky: The Residual Landscapes' at The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff, Alberta, Feb - April, 2009

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Tanggu Port, Tianjin, China 2005
2005

Nature transformed through industry is a predominant theme in my work. I set course to intersect with a contemporary view of the great ages of man; from stone, to minerals, oil, transportation, silicon, and so on. To make these ideas visible I search for subjects that are rich in detail and scale yet open in their meaning. Recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries are all places that are outside of our normal experience, yet we partake of their output on a daily basis.

These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire – a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times.

Edward Burtynsky quoted on The Whyte Museum website

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Oxford Tire Pile #8, Westley, California 1999
1999

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Nickel Tailings #30, Sudbury, Ontario, 1996
1996

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Nickel Tailings #31, Sudbury, Ontario 1996
1996

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Feng Jie #4, Three Gorges Dam Project, Yangtze River, 2002
2002

These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear,” said Edward Burtynsky, photographer. “We are drawn by desire – a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times.

Speaking of his “Quarries” series, Burtynsky has said, “The concept of the landscape as architecture has become, for me, an act of imagination. I remember looking at buildings made of stone, and thinking, there has to be an interesting landscape somewhere out there, because these stones had to have been taken out of the quarry one block at a time. I had never seen a dimensional quarry, but I envisioned an inverted cubed architecture on the side of a hill. I went in search of it, and when I had it on my ground glass I knew that I had arrived.”

Text from The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Shipbreaking #1, Chittagong, Bangladesh, 2000
2000

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Bao Steel #2, Shanghai, China, 2005
2005

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Iberia Quarries #3, Bencatel, Portugal, 2006
2006

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
China Quarries #8, Xiamen, Fujian Province, 2004
2004

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Dam #6, Three Gorges Dam Project, Yangtze River, 2005
2005

Trailer for the film Manufactured Landscapes in which Jennifer Baichwal documents Edward Burtynsky doing what artists do – making art, in this case photographing Bangladesh and China as he observes the “manufacturer to the world”.