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

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

Curator: Alasdair Foster

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 aisles 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 lose 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 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 online

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. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

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 on 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. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

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

“Richter’s spontaneous musings, his amorphous worlds, his bleeds and blends crack open the skin of our existential life on earth.’ Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Curated/organised in conjunction with the Museum Morsbroich in Leverkusen, Germany, and edited/curated by museum director and art historian Markus Heinzelmann

Gerhard Richter (German, b. 1932) '9.4.89' from the exhibition 'Overpainted Photographs' by Gerhard Richter at Centre de la Photographie, Geneva, Feb - 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 practice that Gerhard Richter, one of the most important artists of our time, had developed systematically since 1982. It is only because of this exhibition that more than 1000 of his over-painted photographs will enter his catalogue raisonné. 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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Opening 3: Review: ‘Show Court 3’ and ‘Mood Bomb’ by Louise Paramor at Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 5th March – 28th March, 2009

Opening: Thursday 5th March, 2009

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964)
Show Court 3 (II)
2009

Boarding a train at Flinders Street we emerge at South Yarra station to stroll down to River Street for our third opening of the night at Nellie Castan Gallery. We are greeted by the ever gracious Nellie Castan who has just returned from an overseas trip to Europe where she was soaking up the wonders of Rome amongst other places. For the latest exhibition in the gallery Louise Paramor is presenting two bodies of work: Show Court 3 and Mood Bomb (both 2009). Lets look at Show Court 3 first as this work has older origins.

Originally exhibited in 2006 at Nellie Castan under the title Jam Session the sculptures from this exhibition and many more beside (75 in all) were then installed in 2007 on show court 3 at Melbourne & Olympic Parks, hence the title of the installation. In the smaller gallery in 2009 we have six Lambda photographic prints that are records of this installation plus a video of the installation and de-installation of the work.

While interesting as documentary evidence of the installation these photographs are thrice removed from the actual sculptures – the sculptures themselves, the installation of the sculptures on court and then the photographs of the installation of the sculptures. The photographs lose something in this process – the presence or link back to the referentiality of the object itself. There is no tactile suggestiveness here, no fresh visual connections to be made with the materials, no human interaction. The intertextual nature of the objects, the jamming together of found pieces of bright plastic to make seductive anthropomorphic creatures that ‘play’ off of each other has been lost.

What has been reinforced in the photographs is a phenomena that was observed in the actual installation.

“The sculptures created a jarring visual disruption when placed in a location normally associated with play and movement. The stadium seating surrounding the tennis court incited an expectation of entertainment; a number of viewers sat looking at the sculptures, as though waiting for them to spin and jump around. But mostly, the exhibition reversed the usual role of visitors to place where one sits and watches others move; here the objects on the tennis court were static and the spectators moved around.” (2007)1

In the photographs of these objects and in the installation itself what occurs is an inversion of perception, a concept noted by the urbanist Paul Virilio.2 Here the objects perceive us instead of us perceiving the object: they stare back with an oculocentric ‘suggestiveness’ which is advertising’s raison d’être (note the eye sculpture above). In particular this is what the photographs suggest – a high gloss surface, an advertising image that grabs our attention and forces us to look but is no longer a powerful image.

In the main gallery was the most stimulating work of the whole night – experiments of abstraction in colour “inspired by the very substance of paint itself.” Made by pouring paint onto glass and then exhibiting the smooth reverse side, these paintings are not so much about the texture of the surface (as is Dale Frank’s work below) but a more ephemeral thing: the dreamscapes of the mind that they promote in the viewer, the imaginative connections that ask the viewer to make. Simpler and perhaps more refined than Frank’s work (because of the smooth surface, the lack of the physicality of the layering technique? because of the pooling of amoebic shapes produced, not the varnish that accumulates and recedes?) paint oozes, bleeds, swirls, drips upwards and blooms with a sensuality of intense love. They are dream states that allow the viewer to create their own narrative with the title of the works offering gentle guides along the way: Girl with Flowers, Lovers, Mood Bomb, Emerald God, Mama, and Animal Dreaming to name just a few. To me they also had connotations of melted plastic, almost as if the sculptures of Show Court 3 had dissolved into the glassy surface of a transparent tennis court.

These are wonderfully evocative paintings. I really enjoyed spending time with them.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ O’Neill, Jane. Louise Paramor: Show Court 3. Melbourne: Nellie Castan Gallery, 2009

2/ Virilio, Paul. The Vision Machine. (trans. Julie Rose). Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994, pp. 62-63

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

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964)
Show Court 3 (VI)
2009

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964) 'Show Court 3' 2009 (detail)

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964)
Show Court 3 (detail)
2009

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964)
Opening night crowd in front of Sky Pilot (left) and Mama (right)
2009
Paint on glass

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964)
Opening night crowd in front of Green Eyed Monster (right) and Sky Pilot (right)
2009
Paint on glass

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964)
Opening night crowd in front of Pineapple Express
2009
Paint on glass

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964) 'A Dog and His Master' 2009 (detail)

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964)
A Dog and His Master (detail)
2009
Paint on glass

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964)
Lovers
2009
Paint on glass

Dale Frank (Australian, b. 1959)
2. One conversation gambit you hear these days: ‘Do you rotate?’ An interesting change of tack? No suck luck. ‘Do you rotate?’ simply fishes for information about the extent of your collection. Do you have enough paintings to hang a different one in your dining room every month?
2005

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964)
Mood Bomb
2009
Paint on glass

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964) 'Slippery Slope' 2009 (detail)

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964)
Slippery Slope (detail)
2009
Paint on glass

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964) 'Green Eyed Monster' 2009 (detail)

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964)
Green Eyed Monster (detail)
2009
Paint on glass

Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne

This gallery closed in December 2013

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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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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.

Found copyright-free images digitally supplemented by portraits of men by the Italian painter Titian (1490-1576). The fluidity of space, time, movement, identity, history.

All 30 images can be seen on my website.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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: ‘The best is often the Memories: Photographic Portraits of Romy Schneider’ at Museum für Kunst Und Gewerbe, Hamburg

Exhibition dates: 6th February – 13th April, 2009

Curator: Beate Kemfert from the Opelvillen Rüsselsheim

Will McBride (American, 1931-2015) 'Romy Schneider, Paris, 1964' from the exhibition 'The best is often the Memories: Photographic Portraits of Romy Schneider' at Museum für Kunst Und Gewerbe, Hamburg, Feb - April, 2009

Will McBride (American, 1931-2015)
Romy Schneider, Paris, 1964
1964
Gelatin silver print

The legend that was Romy!

I have never known the filmography of Romy Schneider, never come across this actress before sad to say. But now I do.

What great photographs.

What a beautiful woman: sensitive, vivacious, stunning.

A soul I would have liked to have known.

Marcus

Many thankx to the Museum für Kunst Und Gewerbe for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Romy Schneider (German: born Rosemarie Magdalena Albach; 23 September 1938 – 29 May 1982) was a German-French actress. She began her career in the German Heimatfilm genre in the early 1950s when she was 15. From 1955 to 1957, she played the central character of Empress Elisabeth of Austria in the Austrian Sissi trilogy, and later reprised the role in a more mature version in Luchino Visconti’s Ludwig (1973). Schneider moved to France, where she made successful and critically acclaimed films with some of the most notable film directors of that era.

Read more about Romy Schneider on the Wikipedia website

Peter Brüchmann (German, 1932-2016)
Romy Schneider, Munich, 1968
1968
Gelatin silver print

Peter Brüchmann (German, 1932-2016)

Born in Berlin, Peter Brüchmann trained to be a photographer with the fashion and portrait photographer Lotte Söhring and subsequently completed a traineeship at the German press agency dpa. In the 1950s and 1960s he worked for well-known magazines, such as Schöner Wohnen, Stern and Bild am Sonntag. Brüchmann is primarily known for his portraits of celebrities of the movie and music industry. In 2008 the photographer participated in the group exhibition Die Erinnerung ist oft das Schönste – Fotografische Porträts von Romy Schneider, an exhibition comprising portraits of the famous Franco-German actress Romy Schneider, held at the Stiftung Opelvillen Rüsselheim, Germany. Today Peter Brüchmann works as a freelance photographer for several national and international magazines. Numerous of his photographs are among the collections of the German Historical Museum in Berlin.

Roger Fritz (German, 1936-2021)
Romy Schneider, Paris, 1961
1961
Gelatin silver print

Herbert List, Max Scheler, Roger Fritz, F. C. Gundlach, Will McBride, Peter Brüchmann, Werner Bokelberg, Helga Kneidl and Robert Lebeck took photos of Romy Schneider in quite different ways, as a young girl, in her film roles, together with her children, apparently unobserved in everyday situations or in set poses and dressed up in various costumes, merry or pensive, beautiful and fragile. More than 140 pictures will be on show, of which about 40 are being exhibited for the first time.

Hardly any other star has left us with so many different and conflicting images as Romy Schneider. She was photographed thousands of times – and yet she always remained enigmatic. Some of the photographers whose work is presented in this exhibition only met Romy once – Herbert List, for instance, captured her as a teenager around 1954 on pictures which remained unknown until recently – or accompanied her throughout her life, like Robert Lebeck, who succeeded in taking disturbingly personal pictures of her from the 1950s through to shortly before her death.

These snapshots conjure up once again the legend that was Romy, while at the same time making a powerful statement which reveals the transitoriness of existence. Because that is the core of what a photo does: it creates an image in order to bear lasting witness to an event which happened – yet at the very moment of capturing the image on film, it is no more than the proof that the fleeting moment has passed.

The photos by Herbert List, Werner Bokelberg, Peter Brüchmann, Roger Fritz and Max Scheler are being shown publicly for the first time. This also applies to the majority of the photos by F. C. Gundlach and Will McBride. The pictures by Helga Kneidl and Robert Lebeck have already appeared in books about Romy Schneider. These volumes are however now out of print.

Text from the Museum für Kunst Und Gewerbe website

Herbert List (German, 1903-1975)
Romy Schneider, Munich, 1954
1954
Gelatin silver print

Herbert List (German, 1903-1975)

Herbert List (7 October 1903 – 4 April 1975) was a German photographer, who worked for magazines, including Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Life, and was associated with Magnum Photos. His austere, classically posed black-and-white compositions, particularly his homoerotic male nudes, taken in Italy and Greece being influential in modern photography and contemporary fashion photography.

Photographer

In 1929 he met Andreas Feininger who inspires his greater interest in photography and who gives him a Rolleiflex camera. From 1930 he began taking portraits of friends and shooting still life, is influenced by the Bauhaus and artists of the surrealist movements, Man Ray, Giorgio De Chirico and Max Ernst, and creates a surrealist photograph titled Metaphysique in a style he called fotografia metafisica in homage to De Chirico, his most important influence during this period. He used male models, draped fabric, masks and double-exposures to depict dream states and fantastic imagery. He has explained that his photos were “composed visions where [my] arrangements try to capture the magical essence inhabiting and animating the world of appearances.”

In 1936, in response to the danger of Gestapo attention to his openly gay lifestyle and his Jewish heritage, List left Germany for Paris, where he met George Hoyningen-Huene with whom he travelled to Greece, deciding then to become a photographer. During 1937 he worked in a studio in London and held his first one-man show at Galerie du Chasseur d’Images in Paris. Hoyningen-Huene referred him to Harper’s Bazaar magazine, and 1936-1939 he worked for Arts et Metiers Graphiques, Verve, Vogue, Photographie, and Life. List was unsatisfied with fashion photography. He turned back to still life imagery, continuing in his fotografia metafisica style.

From 1937 to 1939 List travelled in Greece and took photographs of ancient temples, ruins, sculptures, and the landscape for his book Licht über Hellas. In the meantime he supported himself with work for magazines Neue Linie, Die Dame and for the press from 1940-1943, and with portraits which he continued to make until 1950. In List’s work the revolutionary tactics of surrealist art and a metaphysical staging of irony and reverie had been honed in an the fashion industry that relied on illusion and spectacle which after World War II returned to a classical fixation on ruins, broken male statuary and antiquity.

Text from the Wikipedia website

F. C. Gundlach (German, 1926-2021)
Romy Schneider, Hamburg, 1961
1961
Gelatin silver print

F. C. Gundlach (German, 1926-2021)

F. C. Gundlach (Franz Christian Gundlach; born 16 July 1926 in Heinebach, Hesse; died 23 July 2021, Hamburg, Germany) is a German photographer, gallery owner, collector, curator, and founder. In 2000 he created the F.C. Gundlach Foundation, since 2003 he has been the founding director of the House of Photography – Deichtorhallen Hamburg.

His fashion photographs of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, which in many cases integrated social phenomena and current trends in the visual arts, have left their context of origin behind and found their way into museums and collections. Since 1975 he also curated many internationally renowned photographic exhibitions. On the occasion of the reopening of the House of Photography in April 2005, he curated the retrospective of the Hungarian photographer Martin Munkácsi. Here, the exhibitions A Clear Vision, The Heartbeat of Fashion and Maloney, Meyerowitz, Shore, Sternfeld. New Color Photography of the 1970s from his collection were presented since 2003. Most recently he curated the exhibitions More Than Fashion for the Moscow House of Photography and Vanity for the Kunsthalle Wien 2011.

The fashion photographer

F. C. Gundlach attended the Private Lehranstalt für Moderne Lichtbildkunst (Private School for Modern Photography) under Rolf W. Nehrdich in Kassel from 1946 to 1949. Subsequently, he began publishing theatre and film reports in magazines such as Deutsche Illustrierte, Stern, Quick and Revue as a freelance photographer.

His specialisation in fashion photography began in 1953 with his work for the Hamburg-based magazine Film und Frau, for which he photographed German fashion, Parisian haute couture and fur fashion campaigns. Additionally he photographed portraits of artists such as Romy Schneider, Hildegard Knef, Dieter Borsche and Jean-Luc Godard. For Film und Frau, but also for Stern, Annabelle, Twen and other magazines, F. C. Gundlach has since made fashion and reportage trips to the Near, Middle and Far East as well as to Central and South America. Under an exclusive contract with the magazine Brigitte, he photographed many of the trendsetting fashion pages until 1983, a total of more than 160 covers and 5,000 pages of editorial fashion. In the 1970s and 1980s he worked in South America, Africa, but above all in New York and on the American west coast.

His retrospective solo exhibitions, such as ModeWelten (1985), Die Pose als Körpersprache (1999), Bilder machen Mode (2004) or F. C. Gundlach. The photographic work (2008) were shown in many museums and galleries in Germany and abroad.

“He is a photographer whose images show the knowledge of the dominant role of fashion as a cultural social factor. For this reason, he rarely presented the phenomena of fashion in isolation, but rather linked them to the phenomenology of everyday reality and placed them in the socio-cultural context from which they ultimately originated. F. C. Gundlach proves to be a photographic artist with a will to style, a mastery of staging and the ability to shape the photographic image at his leisure, who arranges his models in ever new formal constellations: as a photographer of extraordinary aesthetic quality.”

~ Klaus Honnef

“As a fashion photographer who makes use of a recording medium, the photographer must live, think and feel entirely in his time. Fashion photographs are always interpretations and stagings. They reflect and visualise the zeitgeist of the present and anticipate the spirit of tomorrow. They offer projection screens for identification, but also for dreams, wishes and desires. And yet fashion photographs say more about a time than documentary photographs pretending to depict reality.”

~ F.C. Gundlach

Text from the Wikipedia website

Werner Bokelberg (German, 1937-2024)
Romy Schneider, London, 1968
1968
Gelatin silver print

Helga Kneidl (German, b. 1939)
Romy Schneider, Paris, 1972
1972

Helga Kneidl (German, b. 1939)
Romy Schneider, Paris, 1973
1973

Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
Steintorplatz, 20099 Hamburg

Opening hours:
Tuesday to Sunday 10am – 6pm
Thursday 10am – 9pm
Closed Mondays

Museum für Kunst Und Gewerbe 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

Curator: Craig Richards, photography curator at the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies

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”.

Edward Burtynsky Manufactured Landscapes

The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies
111 Bear Street, Banff, Alberta
T1L 1A3 Canada
Phone: 1 403 762 2291

Opening hours:
Thursday – Monday 11am – 5pm
Tuesday and Wednesday – CLOSED

The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies website

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Photographs: ‘Melbourne firestorm’ by Marcus Bunyan

Date: 7th February, 2009

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
On Port Phillip Bay
2009

Port Phillip Bay in the morning from the 48th floor of a tower in Southbank, Melbourne

Melbourne’s hottest day ever 46.4 degrees. Firestorms to the north of the city, Port Phillip Bay completely obscured, very strange light seen from 48th floor. The day, 7th February 2009, is now known as the Black Saturday bushfires.

180 people died and 414 were injured as a result of the fires.

It was a very scary day. I cannot imagine what it would have been like to have been there, up close. My condolences to all those that lost loved ones.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
On Port Phillip Bay
2009

Port Phillip Bay during firestorm, in the afternoon from the 48th floor of a tower in Southbank, Melbourne

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Looking towards the docks, Melbourne
2009

Looking towards the docks, Melbourne, during the firestorm

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Looking across the city
2009

Looking across the city with the Melbourne Star Observation Wheel (at the time called the Southern Star) in the foreground

Black Saturday bushfires

The Black Saturday bushfires were a series of bushfires that ignited or were burning across the Australian state of Victoria on and around Saturday, 7 February 2009 and were Australia’s all-time worst bushfire disasters. The fires occurred during extreme bushfire-weather conditions and resulted in Australia’s highest ever loss of life from a bushfire; there were 180 fatalities, and 414 were injured as a result of the fires.

As many as 400 individual fires were recorded on 7 February. Following the events of 7 February 2009 and its aftermath, that day has become widely referred to in Australia as Black Saturday.

Background

A week before the fires, a significant heatwave affected southeastern Australia. From 28-30 January, Melbourne broke temperature records by experiencing three consecutive days above 43°C (109 °F), with the temperature peaking at 45.1°C (113.2°F) on 30 January, the third hottest day in the city’s history.

The wave of heat was caused by a slow moving high-pressure system that settled over the Tasman Sea, with a combination of an intense tropical low located off the North West Australian coast and a monsoon trough over northern Australia, which produced ideal conditions for hot tropical air to be directed down over southeastern Australia.

The February fires commenced on a day when several localities across the state, including Melbourne, recorded their highest temperatures since records began in 1859. On 6 February 2009 – the day before the fires started – the Premier of Victoria John Brumby issued a warning about the extreme weather conditions expected on 7 February: “It’s just as bad a day as you can imagine and on top of that the state is just tinder-dry. People need to exercise real common sense tomorrow”. The Premier went on to state that it was expected to be the “worst day [of fires conditions] in the history of the state”.

Events of 7 February 2009

A total of 358 firefighting personnel, mainly from the Country Fire Authority (CFA) and Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE), were deployed across the state on Friday evening (6 February) in anticipation of the extreme conditions the following day. By mid-morning Saturday, hot northwesterly winds in excess of 100 kilometres per hour (62 mph) hit the state, accompanied by extremely high temperatures and extremely low humidity; a total fire ban was declared for the entire state of Victoria.

As the day progressed, all-time record temperatures were being reached. Melbourne hit 46.4°C (115.5°F), the hottest temperature ever recorded for the city and humidity levels dropped to as low as two percent. The McArthur Forest Fire Danger Index reached unprecedented levels, ranging from 160 to over 200. This was higher than the fire weather conditions experienced on Black Friday in 1939 and Ash Wednesday in 1983.

Around midday, as wind speeds were reaching their peak, an incorrectly-rigged SWER line was ripped down at Kilmore East. This sparked a bushfire that would become the deadliest and most intense firestorm ever experienced in Australia’s post-1788 history. The overwhelming majority of fire activity occurred between the afternoon of 7 February and 7:00 pm, when wind speed and temperature were at their highest, and humidity at its lowest.

Casualties

A total of 180 people were confirmed to have died as a result of the fires. The figure was originally estimated at 14 on the night of 7 February, and steadily increased over the following two weeks to 210. It was feared that it could rise as high as 240-280, but these figures were later revised down to 173 after further forensic examinations of remains, and after several people previously believed to be missing were located. This figure was later increased to 180 after several people succumbed to their injuries. …

Among the dead in the Kinglake West area were former Seven Network and Nine Network television personality Brian Naylor, and his wife Moiree. Actor Reg Evans and his partner, artist Angela Brunton, residing on a small farm in the St Andrews area, also died in the Kinglake area fire. Ornithologist Richard Zann perished in the Kinglake fire, together with his wife Eileen and daughter Eva.

Fatalities

General statistics

~ 164 people died in the fires themselves, 12 died later in hospital, and 4 died from other causes including car crashes

~ Out of the 180 deaths, 100 were male, 73 were female, and 7 were unidentified

~ There were 164 Australians, 9 foreign nationals, and 7 people of unidentified nationalities killed in the bushfires. The foreign nationals comprised citizens of:

~ Greece (2)
~ Indonesia (2)
~ Philippines (2)
~ Chile (1)
~ New Zealand (1)
~ United Kingdom (1)

~ 7 of the deaths occurred in bunkers of both fire-specific and non-fire-specific design

~ 1 firefighter, David Balfour, 47, from Gilmore, ACT, was killed near Cambarville on the night of 17 February, when a burnt-out tree fell on him as he attached a hose to a fire tanker

Location of deaths

~ Inside houses (113)
~ Outside houses (27)
~ In vehicles (11)
~ In garages (6)
~ Near vehicles (5)
~ On roadways (5)
~ Attributed to or associated with the fire but not within fire location (4)
~ On reserves (1)
~ In sheds (1)
~ Unknown locations (7)

Text from the Wikipedia website

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Looking across Melbourne
2009

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Looking across Melbourne
2009

Looking across Melbourne, Bolte Bridge towers in the foreground

More images from the set on Flickr website

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Exhibition: ‘Villa Edur. Eduardo Sourrouille’ at Artium, Basque Centre-Museum of Contemporary Art

Exhibition dates: 17th January – 19th April, 2009

Curator: Eduardo Sourrouille with institutional direction and catalogue texts provided by museum director Daniel Castillejo, alongside texts from contributors Alberto Martín and Eduardo García

Eduardo Sourrouille (Spanish, b. 1970)
Salon para Gaydjteam
2008

Artium, Basque Centre-Museum of Contemporary Art, presents the exhibition Villa Edur. Eduardo Sourrouille (North Gallery, from January 17 to April 19), an intimate self-portrait of this Basque artist based on more than 170 photographs taken in recent years. Sourrouille (Basauri, Bizkaia, 1970) proposes a metaphorical visit to the private rooms of his life, from the most superficial to the most intimate, to explore all aspects of the relationship with others and with oneself. Based on three different series of technically exquisite photographs, the author displays a world in which affection and the need to love and to feel loved predominates, in which there are ever-present allusions to questions such as sexual identity, the demands of friendship and recognition of links with others.

Villa Edur, the title of the first major one-man show of the work of Eduardo Sourrouille in a Museum, is taken from the maternal home of Eduardo Sourrouille, “the first legacy I received from her, the most valuable of all her bequests: besides being a home, it is an ongoing project, a driving force in my life and a reflection of my artistic career.” As in a home, the exhibition allows the visitors to explore a number of different rooms, each more intimate than the previous one, in which the artist receives visitors, who are converted into a host and guests.

Thus, in the exhibition, as in his house, “the host receives his guests at the entrance, where newcomers have access to proof of all the visitors that preceded them.” And in this way, the visitor sees two different series of portraits in the first room, Of the folder, people who visited my house and Of the folder, people who visited my house: room for… In the first Gallery, the artist presents different portraits of couples, consisting of himself with the different people with whom he has had some kind of relationship, be this emotional, family, friendship or any other kind. In this case, the photographs come very close to studio portraits, with carefully prepared, static poses, with hardly any atrezzo.

Each of these photographs is matched in the exhibition with another belonging to the second gallery of images, in which Sourrouille repeats the figures but in this case with a more accentuated theatricality, with a set design that may make the spectator imagine anecdotes or stories that occur in the encounter. The room, dominated by a more than one hundred photographs, reveals an entire “network of relationships, in which friendship, affection, love, fascination, desire, etc. (sometimes mixed up), have a place. The number of people including his father and other relatives, a large number of friends, artists such as Miguel Ángel Gaüeca, Manu Arregui and Ignacio Goitia, have been present here and have left their mark, and as the entire exhibition is imbued with games and humour, fictional figures such as Doña Rogelia are also included.

From this broad entrance, densely inhabited by figures “whose ghost lives on”, the artist invites first to step into his sitting room, the place in his house that “offers a precise image of what its owner is and would like to be.” In this space, Eduardo Sourrouille presents thirty self-portraits that “show of the people who have coexisted in me” and who “embody in the symbolic manner the different aspects of love and friendship, that can be found in me, as in any other individual.” With this aim in mind, Sourrouille presents in this exhibition space the Selfportrait with a friend series, thirty images in which the artist photographs himself with different animals, ironic portraits in which the human being appears to adopt certain characteristics of the animal.

There remain two more rooms in this house, the most private of all, where “intimate secret processes” take place. Sourrouille once again portrays himself with his father in the environment where the legacy is transmitted by means of simple rites, before going on to “the most secret room of all (…) in which the intimate world of each person is developed, in other words, what one does not necessarily confess but what one, nevertheless, has decided to experience.” Here, the spectator confronts a video entitled If you could see him through my eyes, in which the sheets are lowered slowly to discover the artist accompanied by two wild boar.

Press release from Basque Centre-Museum of Contemporary Art

Eduardo Sourrouille. Villa Edur from Artium Museoa on Vimeo.

Guided tour of Eduardo Sourrouille

The house that I show in Villa Edur is my house, as it was (is) my mother’s. It is the first legacy I received from her, the most valuable of all: in addition to a home, it is a perpetual project, a vital engine and a reflection of my career.

Eduardo Sourrouille (Spanish, b. 1970)
Self-portrait with impetuous friend
2008

“The house I depict in Villa Edur is my home, as it was (is) my mother’s home. It is the first legacy I received from her, the most valuable of all her bequests: besides being a home, it is an ongoing project, the driving force in my life and a reflection of my artistic career.

1

In my house, the host receives his guests at the entrance, where newcomers find proof of all the visitors that preceded them. Everything takes place in this zealously staged space, and so each decorative element is selected with the very same care. Objects, costumes and scenery make up, both individually and jointly, a system of symbols alluding to the nature of its own contents.

One by one, the portrait of the person in question confronts his situation within the context that was created for him and which, at the same time, he himself contributed to defining, and whose ghost still lives on. Each portrait determines both a singular identity and the kind of relationship in which at least two individuals interact and this, in turn, is the reflection of a specific experience. Each relationship leaves a visible and definitive mark on the other, like the dent in an aluminium vessel, which reasserts the experience and provides solace (provisionally) as it is the proof of our materiality. The inescapable need to make these marks involves the creation of an entire network of relationships in which friendship, affection, love, fascination, desire, etc. (sometimes mixed up), have a place.

Next to the door, raised on her solid, light shelf, my mother observes us and invites us in.

2

A door leads to the sitting room, a multifunctional and ultimately magical space, an environment in which everything that can be shown to visitors (plus part of what cannot be shown) is put on display. Definitively, the sitting room always offers a precise image of who its owner is and would like to be, of what he deliberately reveals to others and what he cannot prevent from being perceived through the cracks in his subconscious.

For this reason, the sitting room offers visitors a gallery of thirty self-portraits that show them the different people who coexist in me, what they can expect and the extent of the range of choices permitted. From a conceptual viewpoint and in a symbolic manner, these portraits embody different aspects of love and friendship that can be found in me, as in any other individual.

3

Beyond the sitting room lie the private rooms in which intimate, secret processes take place, ceremonies that create individuals and subsequently shape them, mould them and endorse them for the world. In one of these, I share the space with my father because this room is where his offspring receive their legacy through atavistic and recurrent rites – so simple that they scarcely cause pain. In another room, I (at last) dare to make the call I have learnt, the one that I use to invoke the Other, even though in some ways the person I seek is myself. There is anguish and confusion in that call, but also the desire to establish constructive communication, as I also offer myself to the Other so that he might leave his mark on me.

4

The intimate world of each person, in other words, what one does not necessarily confess but what one, nevertheless, has decided to experience, is developed in the most secret room of all. It is also the space reserved for the beauty that one finds by one’s own means – as it has not been revealed by any of one’s elders – and which therefore will be treasured as the exclusive property of its discoverer.

I live in Villa Edur because all the relationships that crystallise around me also reside there. Every individual harbours a space that he uses as a scenario to display his relationships, his family, lovers, friends, and for life, everything that is deposited with the passing of time, following the structure of his stage machinery. That is the space that is often called home.”

Ianko López Ortiz de Artiñano for Eduardo Sourrouille

Text from the Artium, Basque Centre-Museum of Contemporary Art website

Eduardo Sourrouille (Spanish, b. 1970)
Panolis
2008

Eduardo Sourrouille (Spanish, b. 1970)
Double self-portrait
2008

Eduardo Sourrouille (Spanish, b. 1970)
Self-portrait with a proud friend
2008

Eduardo Sourrouille (Spanish, b. 1970)
Self-portrait with a gorgeous friend
2008

Artium, Basque Centre-Museum of Contemporary Art
24 Francia Street. Vitoria-Gasteiz, 01002 Araba
Phone: 945 20 90 00

Opening hours:
Tuesdays to Fridays: 11am to 2.00pm and 5.00pm to 8.00pm
Saturdays and Sundays: 11.00am to 8.00pm
Mondays closed

Artium, Basque Centre-Museum of Contemporary Art website

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Exhibition: ‘The Last Days of W’ by Alec Soth at Gagosian Gallery, New York

Exhibition dates: 20th January – 7th March, 2009

Alec Soth (American, b. 1969)
Civic Fest, Minneapolis, MN (Presidential office)
2008

Another fantastic group of Americurbana from this wonderful photographer!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

“Henri Cartier-Bresson famously said, “The world is going to pieces and people like Adams and Weston are photographing rocks.” But I don’t think the world would have been a better place if these photographers had headed off to a war zone. The question is whether you can be a political photographer while you photograph rocks. My pictures don’t have a specific social commentary but I think they have social and political meaning.”

Alec Soth on the Gagosian Gallery website 2009

Alec Soth (American, b. 1969)
Dynell, Bemidji, MN (Girl in store)
2007

Alec Soth (American, b. 1969)
Josh, Joelton, Tennessee
2004

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present The Last Days of W., colour photographs taken by Alec Soth between 2000 and 2008.

Although originally conceived without explicit political intent, in retrospect Soth considers this selected body of work, which spans both terms of George W. Bush’s presidency, to represent “a panoramic look at a country exhausted by its catastrophic leadership.” Soth’s earlier series such as Sleeping by the Mississippi, Niagara, and Dog Days, Bogotá – all subjective narratives containing disenfranchised figures and decaying landscapes – laid the conceptual groundwork for The Last Days of W. It provides a wry commentary on the adverse effects of the national administration, perhaps best exemplified by an unwittingly ironic remark that Bush made in 2000: “I think we can agree, the past is over.”

Following in the humanist tradition established by the great chroniclers of the American experience such as Walker Evans, Robert Frank, and Stephen Shore, Soth captures diverse images of a country disillusioned with, and deceived by, its own identity, from mothers of marines serving in Iraq to teenage mothers in the Louisiana Bayou; from religious propaganda in the American workplace to the mortgage crisis in Stockton, CA. His incisive depiction of contemporary American reality confronts the ideals romanticised in the American Dream with the hastening decline of the American Empire.

Text from the Gagosian Gallery website 2009