Curator: Rebecca Senf, Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photograph at the at Phoenix Art Museum
Linda Connor (American, b. 1944) Prayer Flag and Chortens, Ladakh, India 1988 1988 Silver gelatin print
Connor’s photographs reveal the essence of her subjects, yielding a sense of timelessness while visually evoking the intangible. She uses a distinctive technique. A large-format view camera allows her to achieve remarkable clarity and rich detail. Her prints are created by direct contact of the 8 x 10-inch negative on printing out paper, exposed and developed using sunlight …
Connor embraces a wide range of subject matter, connecting the physical and the spiritual world. Just as sacred art evokes deep meaning even without an explicit understanding, Connor hopes her photographs serve a similar metaphorical function. Upon entering Chartres Cathedral, for example, one feels transported into another realm, regardless of religious beliefs. Connor’s images share this transformative nature as they transcend the boundaries of subject, culture, and time. She brings an equal amount of attention to a rock in the desert as she does when she photographs a temple.
Text from the Phoenix Art Museum website
Many thankx to the Phoenix Art Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Linda Connor (American, b. 1944) Windows and Thangkas, Ladakh 1988 Silver gelatin print
Linda Connor (American, b. 1944) Library of Prayer Books, Ladakh, India 1988 Silver gelatin print
Linda Connor is an American photographer who photographs spiritual and exotic locations including India, Mexico, Thailand, Ireland, Peru, and Nepal. Her photographs appear in a number of books, including Spiral Journey, a catalog of her exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in 1990 and Odyssey: Photographs by Linda Connor, published by Chronicle Books in 2008. Connor was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1976 and 1988 and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1979. Connor’s work is included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
Linda Connor (American, b. 1944) Portal Figures, Chartres Cathedral, France 1989 Silver gelatin print
Linda Connor (American, b. 1944) Mudra, Mindroling Monastery, Tibet 1993 Silver gelatin print
Linda Connor (American, b. 1944) Blind Musician, Kashmir, India 1985 Silver gelatin print
Linda Connor (American, b. 1944) Apollo, Mt. Nemrut, Turkey 1992 Silver gelatin print
Doris and John Norton Gallery for the Center for Creative Photography, Phoenix Art Museum 1625 N Central Ave, Phoenix, AZ 85004, USA
The Americans. Photographs by Robert Frank. Introduction by Jack Kerouac. Scalo, Zürich/D.A.P., New York, 1993. First Scalo edition. 179 pp. Oblong quarto. Hardbound in photo-illustrated dust jacket. Black-and-white reproductions.
WOW! One of the seminal books of photography and signed as well.
“It was Frank’s The Americans that made the photographic book into an art form in its own right. Frank was following a lead set by [Wright] Morris’ book (The Inhabitants) and, especially, by Evans’ American Photographs, both of which are designed to let pictures play off each other in a way that controls and reinforces their effect on the viewer. Even Klein’s New York book displays this tendency. But Frank’s goes much further, creating a denser, richer, deeper structure of images than any book before it.”
Colin Westerbeck in Michel Frizot, et. al., The New History of Photography.
Curators: Brandon Brame Fortune, Anne Collins Goodyear, Frank H. Goodyear III, Ann M. Shumard, and Wendy Wick Reaves
Many thankx to the National Portrait Gallery, Washington for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
I photograph because I am interested in people, what it means to be alive, and how we make sense of the world. Whether I am photographing on assignment, or for personal work, the same ideas direct my attention. On the psychological and narrative level, I am interested in looking at states of being: birth, childhood, ageing, physical fragility, death, sensuality, the animal world and people in nature.
Formally, I tend to emphasise the tactile qualities of the living world: skin, hair, light, surface, colour, and material. I recognise that these are very broad themes, but they are also the basis for essential philosophical questions. My photographs don’t provide answers to these questions, but hopefully act as moments of contemplation.
Jocelyn Lee artist statement
Jocelyn Lee approaches her photographic subjects looking to reveal not simply the individuality of those who pose before her camera. She also wants to convey something deeper about how her subjects confront the place where they live and the situation in which they find themselves. This interest in the psychological dimensions of character is emblematic of her portraiture – whether she is working on an editorial assignment or on an independent project.
Jocelyn Lee’s photographs for this exhibition are drawn from work that she has completed in Maine, a place where she has spent much time. The images derive from several projects, including an advertising campaign for a local rug designer and a commission to portray adolescent girls. Seen together, they suggest the role that environment and narrative play in the art of portraiture. Although Lee is interested in photographing specific people at different stages of life, each portrait also provides a broader opportunity to reflect on our shared humanity. A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Lee has served as a professor of photography at Princeton University since 2003.
America is a snapshot culture. Armed with a portable camera and a spirit of inquiry, we revel in the images that we create. Although we often treat still photographs – including portraits – as ephemeral fragments to be discarded or replaced by the next image, there are portrait photographers today who create pictures that defy an easy death. Often working on a specific commission or editorial assignment, these photographers compose portraits that cause us to pause and reflect.”
Portraiture Now: Feature Photography focuses on six photographers who, by working on assignment for publications such as the New Yorker, Esquire, and the New York Times Magazine, each bring their distinctive “take” on contemporary portraiture to a broad audience. Critically acclaimed for their independent fine-art work, these photographers – Katy Grannan, Jocelyn Lee, Ryan McGinley, Steve Pyke, Martin Schoeller, and Alec Soth – have also pursued a variety of editorial projects, taking advantage of the opportunities and grappling with the parameters that these assignments introduce. Their work builds upon a longstanding tradition of photographic portraiture for the popular press and highlights creative possibilities for twenty-first-century portrayal. The exhibition has additional portraits not included in this website; it opened on November 26, 2008, and closed on September 27, 2009.
Text from the National Portrait Gallery website
~ KATY GRANNAN ~ JOCELYN LEE ~ RYAN MCGINLEY ~ STEVE PYKE ~ MARTIN SCHOELLER ~ ALEC SOTH
“A critic once pointed out to me the different ways in which I photograph men and women. With men I seem to be poking fun, he said, whereas my depiction of women is more reverent. He makes a good point. Many of my best pictures of men are playful (a man in a flight suit holding model airplanes, a shirtless man with carrots in his ears). But the women I photograph look more like saints than clowns. As a man, I suppose, I identify more with my male subjects. In them, I see my own awkwardness and frailty. Women are always “the other.”
In assembling this group of portraits of women, I’m aware that I’m treading on dangerous ground. When I was in college, I learned to be distrustful of men’s depictions of women. I remember seeing Garry Winogrand’s book ‘Women Are Beautiful’ in the school library and being shocked that it hadn’t been defaced for its blatant objectification of women. But looking back, maybe I was too harsh. Whether one photographs men or women, it is always a form of objectification. Whatever you say about Winogrand, his depiction was honest.
In putting together a collection of my best portraits of women, I’m trying to come to terms with how I honestly see and depict women. Are my pictures romanticised? Sexualised? Why do I see women in this way? For me, photography is as much about the way I respond to the subject as it is about the subject itself.”
Alec Soth artist statement
Adroitly navigating the disciplines of editorial photography and fine art work, Alec Soth has emerged as a leading American artist. He is an associate photographer with the famed Magnum Photos group, and has shown his work in galleries and museums in the United States and in Europe.
Born and based in Minneapolis and educated in New York, Soth first attracted critical notice with his series Sleeping by the Mississippi (2004). Since then, he has published NIAGARA (2006), Fashion Magazine (2007), and Dog Days, Bogotá (2007). Unlike many contemporary photographers, Soth works with a large-format 8 x 10-inch camera, which, given the time involved in setting up for a photograph, creates an intense relationship between the artist and subject. Soth sees this as the crux of his work.
For this exhibition, we have chosen a selection of his portraits of women, drawn from past editorial work and fine arts projects, including three portraits from Fashion Magazine, which explored the world of Paris couture and countered those images with subjects from Soth’s Minnesota home. As he notes, “I’m trying to come to terms with how I honestly see and depict women. Are my pictures romanticised? Sexualised? Why do I see women in this way? For me, photography is as much about the way I respond to the subject as it is about the subject itself.”
This full-length portrait was created during the winter of 2007, after Soth’s return from Paris, where he made the first photographs for his commission from Magnum Photos that resulted in Fashion Magazine. Fashion Magazine is the third in a series of projects by the same name, in which Magnum asks one photographer to document the whirl of fashion week in Paris from his or her own point of view.
“Photography is a kind of permission; it’s a way in. It’s a catalyst for extraordinary experiences that would otherwise not be possible. (This is the common thread between my personal projects and commissioned work.) I have had so many life-changing moments – some are dramatic, most are utterly mundane and exquisite.
I consider each of these experiences a privilege, and every subject worthy of attention.”
Katy Grannan artist statement
In images for the New York Times Magazine, Katy Grannan focuses on such poignant details as the teenager’s imperfect complexion, the sick man’s drooping muscles, a tidy kitchen counter, or a neighbourhood swing to make us understand heartrending realities of juvenile imprisonment, end-of-life decisions, or post-traumatic stress syndrome. For several of her art gallery projects, Grannan advertised for subjects in small-town newspapers. As she gained the sitters’ trust and helped visualise their fantasies, many posed nude or partially undressed. In Grannan’s work for the Times, we recognise similar qualities of risk, vulnerability, and, ultimately, empathy between the photographer and her subjects.
This portrait of four-year-old Audrey Wilbur is a study in contrasts between the cheerful fabrics of the clothing and decor and the impoverished bareness of the room’s mattress, walls, and floor. Grannan’s depiction of Audrey, made at the height of the dot-com bubble, was the cover for the New York Times Magazine’s March 19, 2000, issue, which included James Fallows’s “The Invisible Poor” and a photo essay titled “In the Shadow of Wealth.”
Schoeller photographed Barack Obama for a December 2004 feature on “Men of the Year,” in Gentleman’s Quarterly, where a variant of this photograph appeared. Reflecting upon the success of his address at the 2004 Democratic convention, Obama, who would go on to win the presidential election in 2008, observed: “The reason you do this stuff is not to … get your face in a magazine … You do this stuff because you care about the epic struggle to make America what it can be.”
A photographic close-up is perhaps the purest form of portraiture, creating a confrontation between the viewer and the subject that daily interaction makes impossible, or at least impolite. In a close-up, the impact stems solely from the static subject’s expression or apparent lack thereof, so the viewer is challenged to read a face without the benefit of the environmental cues we naturally use to form our interpersonal reactions.
After seeing Bernd and Hilla Becher’s water tower series in 1991, I was inspired by the idea of photographing a large group of subjects in the exact same style. The pictures in my Close Up series have all been taken from similar angles and with the same equipment, but here I have tried to bring out personality and capture individuality in a search for a flash of vulnerability and integrity. The greatest challenge in taking these images lies in the attempt to arrest the subtle moment that flickers between expressions, movements of which the subject is unaware. Like most portrait photographers, I aim to record the instant the subject is not thinking about being photographed, striving to get beyond the practiced facial performance, reaching for something unplanned. While trying to be as objective as possible, I acknowledge that every gesture is still an act of artifice. Familiar faces are treated with the same levels of scrutiny as the un-famous. The unknown and the too- well- known meet on a level platform that enables comparison, where a viewer’s existing notions of celebrity, value, and honesty are challenged.
Martin Schoeller artist statement
Martin Schoeller has exhibited his portraits internationally and has received numerous awards. His photographs have appeared in many prominent magazines, including the New Yorker, Gentleman’s Quarterly (GQ), Vanity Fair, and Rolling Stone.
A native of Germany, Schoeller, who now lives and works in New York, honed his skills by working with Annie Leibovitz. “Watching her deal with all of the elements that have to come together – subjects, lighting, production, weather, styling, location – gave me an insight into what it takes to be a portrait photographer,” he explains.
Equally important for Schoeller was the photography of German minimalists Bernd and Hilla Becher, who “inspired me to take a series of pictures, to build a platform that allows you to compare.” Schoeller’s portraiture brings viewers eye-to-eye with the well-known and the anonymous. His close-up style emphasises, in equal measure, the facial features, both studied and unstudied, of his subjects – presidential candidates and Pirahã tribespeople, movie stars and artists – levelling them in an inherently democratic fashion. Schoeller’s photographs challenge us to identify the qualities that may, under varying circumstances, either distinguish individuals or link them together, raising a critical question: What is the very nature of the categories we use to compare and contrast.
Well known for creating photographs of herself adopting a broad range of personas, Cindy Sherman’s own face is surprisingly unfamiliar. Originally published with a New Yorker profile of Sherman by Calvin Tomkins addressing “Her Secret Identities,” Schoeller’s portrait unmasks the influential artist.
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Eighth and F Streets, NW Washington D.C.
Jean Louis Marie Eugène Durieu (1800-1874) was an early French amateur nude photographer, primarily known for his early nude photographs of men and women. A number of his male and female models were also painted by Eugène Delacroix, with whom he was friends.
Durieu was born in Nîmes, and became known for making studies of nudes for Delacroix. During his career Durieu was a lawyer. His last job was inspector for education and culture. In 1849 he went into early retirement and devoted himself to the newly developing technology of photography. In 1853, Durieu worked with Delacroix on a series of photographs of different male and female nude models.
In the early 1850s, Durieu, like many of his photographic peers, gravitated from the daguerreotype to the calotype. None of the works from his daguerreotypical oeuvre can be attributed to him with any certainty. Apart from the Delacroix album held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, another work on paper does exist, however, a more personal album preserved at the George Eastman House in Rochester, which was once part of the Gabriel Cromer collection. Its repertoire is more varied and includes female nudes in fairly elaborate settings, as well as portraits and reproductions of paintings and engravings. …
“I look with passion and without fatigue at these photographs of naked men, this admirable poem, this human body on which I learn to read and whose sight tells me more than the inventions of scribblers.”
Delacroix, ‘Journal’, October 5, 1855
Delacroix was confronted, like his entire generation, with the emergence of photography. An intriguing tool fascinating for the painter, this medium occupies a place apart in all of his work. He is at the source of a deep reflection on artistic truth in the face of photographic realism.
Far from seeing photography as a potential rival to painting, Delacroix took a keen interest in the development of this new medium, following its technical progress with sufficient curiosity to become a founding member of the Heliographic Society in 1851. He amassed a considerable photographic collection-of frescoes by Raphael, paintings by Rubens, and cathedral sculptures. Moreover, although he did not use a camera himself, a series of male and female nude models were photographed at his request by Eugène Durieu, in 1854. We know from his diary and letters that he sometimes used these photographs to practice drawing when no live models were available. These shots, which he sometimes carries with him, are a valuable tool for practicing drawing during his stays in the province. They meet very personal criteria; Delacroix wanted to use images voluntarily a little blurry and mostly stripped of all the quaint accessories conveyed by commercial photographs to the attention of artists.
However, despite a deep fascination for photography, Delacroix keeps a critical eye on this new medium. He adopts an attitude sometimes skeptical about his proper use and mastery of the technique, refusing to award benefits beyond its instrumental value. His reluctance is particularly keen with regard to one’s own photographed image: he even goes so far as to demand the destruction of some negatives, fortunately in vain.
The album of thirty-two photographs preserved in the department Prints and Photography of the National Library de France and commonly known as “Durieu Album”, by the name of the author of the photographs contains mainly photographs of two nude models, a man and a woman, taken by Eugene Durieu in the presence and on the indications of Delacroix during two sessions of successive poses, on Sunday 18 and 25 June 1854. The album was probably in lot 1532 of the sale after the painter’s death, bought by the critic Philippe Burty, who said on the front page: “All this sequence of photographs was bought by me at the posthumous sale of Eugène Delacroix’s workshop. He used it often and his cartons contained a considerable number of pencil studies from these photographs some of which were made expressly for him by one of his friends, and the models posed by him.” This album went on to the bibliographer and historian of the art Maurice Tourneux, who offered it in 1899 to the Cabinet des Prints.
The examination of the album, whose pages are all presented here in the order of the pages, shows that divides into four distinct sequences. Plate I represents a seated male nude model. His black beard and its abundant hair absolutely distinguishes him from the model with the better drawn musculature having posed in the following photographs. This test is undoubtedly part of a different set provided by Durieu to Delacroix.
The twenty-six photographs that follow in the album are, like the first, calotypes, that is to say prints from negative on paper. The calotype is characterised by a slight blur that Delacroix’s eyes found useful and tolerable photography, the grain of the negative paper producing, in the prints, less precise contours than in the daguerreotype or prints based on collodion glass. These twenty-six photographs of June 1854 form a very homogeneous series, with two models. The man that Delacroix calls “the Bohemian” appears by the development of his musculature and his ease to pose, as a professional model. He is present alone on seventeen views, and on the other nine in the company of a female model, probably an Italian, also a professional model, who posed again in 1855 for two other photographers.
The album ends with three prints, based on a glass negative, of the same model draped to the waist, sitting in front of a plain canvas background. The sharpness, due to the negative on glass, the rigorous composition and images, their “professional” aspect make them totally different from the previous ones, to such that we can hesitate to attribute them to Durieu. While the calotypes posed by Delacroix are very rare, these last three images are seen in more than one collection; they have been broadcast to a wider audience.
Text from the Delacroix et la photographie exhibition pdf (translated from the French by Google translate)
Enchanted by the play of light and reflections which transformed the appearance of matter, Riesener began a new aesthetic that made him one of the precursors of impressionism. A passionate colourist, he researched all the nuances of colour and studied the techniques of ancient Greece and the Renaissance, including Titian, Veronese and Corregio. Impressed by his research into colour, he turned towards Rubens, which for him was the Shakespeare of painting. Very early in his career Riesener studied tonal divisions, well before the physician Chevreul discovered their scientific basis. His tactile taste led him to look for the most perfect expression of matter and particularly of skin. He put poetry into his painting by the play of shadow and he passionately admired nature, life and all the beauties they produced.
He researched the subject of life in the countryside and, liking to paint reality, said he wanted to express “the heat of the day, the melancholy of the evening, meadows, flowers as they are in nature”. His study of the elements caused him to paint a series of skies which varied according to the light and time of day – the subjects were ahead of their time and Riesener had to fight hard against the Salon juries and the Institut. Using pure colours, he excluded the blacks and whites which had been used for shadows and light before him. His material science of colour was the opposition which gave birth to contrasts from juxtaposed pigments. He did not portray faces by contours, but by shadows and modelling.
Fazal Sheikh (American, b. 1965) The Victor Weeps: Afghanistan (Abdul Aziz holding a photograph of his brother, Mula Abdul Hakim) 1997
Conference
What is Real? Photography and the Politics of Truth
This conference brings together renowned photographers, artists, writers, curators, and scholars in a series of panels and conversations:
~ Redefining Documentary: The State of Documentary Photography Today ~ Art versus Document: An (Un)comfortable Union? ~ Public/Private: Community in the Digital Age ~ Who Needs Truth Anyway? The Uses and Ethics of Documentary
Participants include Ariella Azoulay, Geoffrey Batchen, Nayland Blake, Okwui Enwezor, Thomas Keenan, Thomas Y. Levin, Maria Lind, Susan Meiselas, Walid Raad, Martha Rosler, Brian Wallis, and others.
The International Center of Photography Presents A Two-Day Symposium to Examine The Changing Nature of Documentary Practice.
Friday December 12th 2008 6 – 10pm Saturday December 13th 2008 9 – 5pm
The Times Center 242 West 41st Street New York City
William Clift (American, b. 1944) Somebody’s House, Baltimore, Maryland, 1964 1964
from the book
Certain Places Photographs and Introduction by William Clift. William Clift Editions, Santa Fe, 1987. 44 pp., twenty-two tritone illustrations.
One of the most ravishing photographic books ever produced. Sensitive photography, luminous images, wonderful reproductions on quality stock. Nothing more need be said.
My favourite of so many great images is above.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
All photographs are used under fair use conditions for the purpose of education and research. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
William Clift (American, b. 1944) Apple Blossoms, Velarde, New Mexico, 1973 1973
William Clift (American, b. 1944) Desert Form No. 1, New Mexico, 1984 1984
William Clift (American, b. 1944) Untitled 1976 From the County Courthouse series Gelatin silver print 16.5 h x 13 w inches
“The photographs tell detached but psychologically emotional stories about what human beings are doing to the world in which they live.” Dr Marcus Bunyan
Andreas Gursky banner at NGV International exhibition, Melbourne
A large but plain crowd assembled for the opening of the first exhibition by world renowned German photographer Andreas Gursky at the National Gallery of Victoria in St Kilda Road, Melbourne. After some lively conversation with friends and following the opening speeches we wandered into a large clean gallery space with minimal design elements. The use of space within the gallery allowed the work to speak for itself. It is a minimal hang and the exhibition works all the better for this.
As for the work itself 21 large photographs are presented ranging from landscapes to buildings, race tracks to formula 1 pits, Madonna concerts to the Tour de France.
Most work successfully in building a hyperreal vision of the world. We are not sure what is ‘real’ or hyperreal, what is a straight photograph or what has been digitally manipulated and woven together. The colour and sharpness of the images is often intensified: in reproductions of the famous photograph of the 99c supermarket in America the colours seem flat but ‘in the flesh’ the colours are almost fluoro in their saturation and brightness.
Having said that the photographs are nearly always unemotional – as though seen from above in the third person, they observe with detachment. The intrigue for the viewer is in the detail, in working out what is going on, but these are not passionate photographs on the surface. It is beneath the surface that the photographs have their psychological effect: the best of the images work on the subconscious of the viewer.
Like a fantastical dance the three very wide images of the Formula 1 pits feature pit crews practicing tyre changes, frozen in a choreographed ballet; people in the galleries above stare down; pit lane girls seem to have been inserted digitally into the images, standing at side or behind the pit crews in a seemingly surreal comment on these worlds. These are theatrical tableaux vivant, splashed with teams colours. Fantastic photographs.
In some of the images, such as the Madonna concert or the photograph of the Bahrain Formula 1 racetrack, space seems to have folded in on itself and the viewer is unsure of the structure of the image and of their vantage point in looking at them. Space also collapses in the photograph of the pyramid of Cheops (2006, below), where the depth of field from foreground to background of the image is negligible. Less successful are images of a Jackson Pollock painting and a green grass bank with running river (Rhein II 1996, below), intensified beyond belief so that the river seems almost to be made of liquid silver.
The photographs tell detached but psychologically emotional stories about what human beings are doing to the world in which they live. These images are a commentary on the state of this relationship – images of repetition, pattern, construction, use, abuse and fantasy woven into hyperreal visions of an unnatural world.
A wonderful exhibition in many aspects, well worth a visit to see one of the world’s best photographers at work.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the National Gallery of Victoria for inviting me to the opening and for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
For the first time in Australia, an exhibition by German contemporary photographer Andreas Gursky opened at the National Gallery of Victoria. From the Haus der Kunst in Munich, Andreas Gursky presents 21 major works for which the artist is internationally acclaimed. The photographs range from 1989 to 2007 and include seminal works such as Tokyo Stock Exchange and the diptych 99 cent store. Andreas Gursky is recognised as one of the world’s leading contemporary artists. On view through 22 February, 2009.
Well known for his large-scale (generally measuring an astounding four to five metres) and extraordinarily detailed photographs of contemporary life, Gursky continues the lineage of ‘new objectivity’ in German photography which was brought to contemporary attention by Bernd and Hilla Becher.
In the 1990s, Gursky became inspired by the various manifestations of global capitalism. His interest was piqued looking at a newspaper photograph of the crowded floor of the Tokyo Stock Exchange and he began to photograph its flurry of suited traders, somehow moving according to some inbuilt order.
Dr Gerard Vaughan, Director, NGV said the Andreas Gursky exhibition represented a significant coup for Melbourne: “The National Gallery of Victoria is the only Australian venue for this extraordinary show – the first major exhibition of Gursky’s work ever to be seen in this country. Generously organised by the Haus der Kunst Museum in Munich we are extremely fortunate to have had the works in this show selected for us by Andreas Gursky himself.”
Andreas Gursky was born in 1955 and grew up in Düsseldorf, Germany. In the early 1980s, he studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany’s State Art Academy. Whilst there he was heavily influenced by his teachers Bernd and Hilla Becher, who were well known for their methodical black and white photographs of industrial machinery.
In 1984 Gursky began to move away from the Becher style, choosing instead to work in colour. Since then he has travelled across the world to cities such as Tokyo, Cairo, Hong Kong, Stockholm, Singapore and Los Angeles photographing factories, hotels and office buildings – places he considered to be symbols of contemporary culture. His world-view photographs during this period are considered amongst the most original achievements in contemporary photography.
Gursky has been the subject of numerous international exhibitions including the Internationale Foto-Triennale in Esslingen, Germany in 1989 and 1995, the Venice Biennale in 1990, and the Biennale of Sydney in 1996 and 2000. In 2001, Gursky was the subject of an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Press release from the National Gallery of Victoria website
Exhibition dates: 14th November, 2008 – 12th April, 2009
Curator: Sean Corcoran, Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Museum of the City of New York
Ray Mortenson (American, b. 1944) Untitled (7-16-6) 1984 Gelatin silver print Courtesy of Janet Borden, Inc.
Many thankx to the Museum of the City of New York for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Documenting the abandoned, burnt out, and razed structures of entire city blocks in the South Bronx in the aftermath of the 1970s, during which this neighbourhood experienced dramatic decline, Broken Glass: Photographs of the South Bronx by Ray Mortenson will be on view at the Museum of the City of New York from November 14, 2008 through March 9, 2009. The 50 black and white cityscapes and interiors on view – five of which are large-scale – were taken between 1982 and 1984, and they vividly illustrate the results of a downslide that began in the Great Depression of the 1930s and accelerated with the construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway in the 1950s and the fiscal crisis of the 1970s. Broken Glass is Mortenson’s first museum exhibition in New York City, and it is the first presentation of the South Bronx photographs.
The 50 photographs on view, all black and white, range in size from the smallest at approximately 11″ by 14″, to the most monumental at 40″ by 60″. Each conveys a devastating silence, serving as a reminder that these city blocks were once the homes of individuals, families, and a large community. Mortenson has written, “The buildings were like tombs – sealed up, broken open and plundered. Inside, stairways with missing steps led up to abandoned apartments. Doors opened into rooms that were once bedrooms or kitchens. Small things left behind hint at who the occupants might have been – a hairbrush, photographs, or bits of clothing.” Ghostly remnants of the once prosperous and thriving neighbourhoods can be glimpsed in his images which document the extent and severity of the urban decline experienced in the South Bronx.
These photographs document an important chapter in the history of a New York City neighbourhood, augmenting their aesthetic power. The decline of the South Bronx began as early as the Great Depression when previously sustained development came to an abrupt halt. After World War II an exodus of New York’s middle class began and continued into the 1970s. This caused a population decline throughout the city, but the effects were particularly hard on the South Bronx as more than 200,000 residents left the community between 1970 and 1980. As entire communities left the city, Robert Moses’ road building and slum clearance, along with other urban renewal initiatives had dramatic effects on the lives of all who remained. In the 1970s New York City faced another economic crisis and virtual bankruptcy. City government was unable to maintain services in the South Bronx and “planned shrinkage” became an unofficial policy as services were slowly withdrawn. With little incentive for landlords to upgrade or even maintain their property, waves of arson and “insurance fires” decimated the by now largely minority community. Astonishingly, some 12,000 fires a year occurred through the 1970s, averaging more than 30 a day.
A successful resurrection of the South Bronx began in the mid-1980s, as grassroots organisations and community development corporations, along with financial reinvestment by the City, sparked its regeneration. The photographs on view stand in starkest contrast to today’s revitalised neighbourhood, which has been the result of the dedication of its citizens combined with government support. The photographs serve as a reminder of the ruins that once dominated the now-vibrant streets and that the balance between prosperity and urban decline can be fragile.
Brief Biography
Ray Mortenson was born in Wilmington, Delaware in 1944 and studied art at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the San Francisco Art Institute. In the early 1970s, Mortenson moved to New York and began working with photography. His first significant photographic project was a comprehensive investigation of the industrial landscapes of New Jersey’s Meadowlands (1974-1982). Since then, Mortensen has continued to focus on landscape photography that is often interested in liminal places of transition, set apart from everyday life. His photographs have been accepted into the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
Press release from the Museum of the City of New York website
Ray Mortenson (American, b. 1944) Untitled 1983 Gelatin silver print Courtesy of Janet Borden, Inc.
Ray Mortenson (American, b. 1944) Untitled 1984 Gelatin silver print Courtesy of Janet Borden, Inc.
Ray Mortenson (American, b. 1944) Untitled 1983 Gelatin silver print Courtesy of Janet Borden, Inc.
Ray Mortenson (American, b. 1944) Untitled 1984 Gelatin silver print Courtesy of Janet Borden, Inc.
Ray Mortenson (American, b. 1944) Untitled 1984 Gelatin silver print Courtesy of Janet Borden, Inc.
Museum of the City of New York 1220 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street New York, NY 10029 Phone: 212-534-1672
Co-curators: Arwed Messmer (who also reconstructed and digitally reassembled the panoramic photographs taken by Fritz Tiedemann) alongside Ursula Müller and Florian Ebner
Many thankx to the Berlinische Galerie Museum of Modern Art, Berlin for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
As far as the eye can see shows 13 reconstructed and digitally reassembled panorama photos by Tiedemann from his 1,500-footage work. The city views from the years 1949-1952 were enlarged to almost gigantic dimensions (up to 25.5 m in length) and thus provide a fascinating view of the destruction of the war and the reconstruction of Berlin.
Fritz Tiedemann (German, 1915-2001) was a trained surveying technician and was trained in the military as a photogrammeter (specialist for photographic measuring methods). He documented the city as a photographer at the Office of Preservation. The photographer Arwed Messmer came across Tiedemann’s photographs during research work for his book project “Anonyme Mitte – Berlin” in the Berlinische Galerie and then developed the idea for this exhibition.
After WW 2, rubble clearance had made considerable progress and rebuild had begun, a remarkable photographic inventory was done in East Berlin. By order of the magistrate of the capital of the GDR an – up to now – unknown photographer documented central places and areas that were of importance concerning the urban planning in the early 50s. He captured the Pariser Platz and the Schloßplatz area as well as the works on the Walter Ulbricht Stadium or a sand storage area in the outskirts. In order to adequately picture the void and the vastness of the destroyed city as well as the remaining urban structures, the photographer made horizontal turns with the camera and thus produced sequences that – once brought together – turned into panoramic pictures.
The concealed quality of these pictures was lately discovered by Berlin photographer Arwed Messmer. By means of digital mounting of the sequences he created synthetic large-size pictorial worlds that show the destroyed Berlin as an empty stage. Thus inspired, the Photo Archive of the East Berlin magistrate, preserved by the Berlinische Galerie and documented in the catalogue “Ost-Berlin und seine Bauten. Fotografien 1945-1990” / “East Berlin Architecture”, was searched through anew. Thus the exhibition operates at the interface between applied photography and new photographic technology as well as between collective memory and an unfamiliar optic experience.
Press release from the Berlinische Galerie Museum of Modern Art
Installation views of the exhibition As far as the eye can see at the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin
Between 1948 and 1953, photographer and technical surveyor Fritz Tiedemann (German, 1915-2001) was commissioned by the urban administration of East Berlin to undertake extensive documentation of architecture and urban planning in the capital of the GDR. Many of his early visual documents are series of images conceived as panoramas, whereby the sweep of the camera gives a comprehensive impression of emptiness and the extent of war damage in the city. Processed as contact copies and stuck onto archive covers, his many photographs are one important, early basic collection of a photo archive that was extended consistently until 1990. It has been kept in the architectural collection of the Berlinische Galerie since 1992.
An in-depth study of the collection was facilitated with support from the Getty Foundation, Los Angeles, and the results were made available to the public in the shape of the publication “Ost-Berlin und seine Bauten” in 2006. In 2008 a selection of Tiedemann’s photographs was shown to the public in the exhibition So weit kein Auge reicht. Berliner Panoramafotografien aus den Jahren 1949-1952. Aufgenommen von Fritz Tiedemann. Rekonstruiert und interpretiert von Arwed Messmer (As far as no eye can see. Berlin panorama photographs from the years 1949-1952. Taken by Fritz Tiedemann. Reconstructed and interpreted by Arwed Messmer). A catalogue of the same name was also published; it has since been produced in a second, revised edition.
Text from the Berlinische Galerie Museum of Modern Art
14 February 1915 Hamburg – 23 November 2001 Münster, Westfalen
The identity behind the name “Tiedemann” could be clarified during the course of the exhibition. A former colleague of Fritz Tiedemann as well as descendants of the photographer learned about the exhibition due to the nationwide media coverage and contacted the museum.
As a professional surveying technician Fritz Tiedemann received additional specialist qualification as a topographer during his military service. His photographic skills and expertise were of great importance for the documentation of wartime damage and a visual basis for future urban planning. Indeed, his photographs can be considered as new documents showing the vastness and emptiness of the destroyed city.
In February 1948 he began working as a photographer for the Berlin Historic Buildings’ and Memorials’ Conservation Office. In October 1949 due to the political division of Greater Berlin he was to continue his work for the East Berlin government’s city planning office. Besides historical aspects the documentation then also focused on the architectural development of East Berlin as is also displayed by the exhibition’s panoramic photographs.
On February 28, 1953 Fritz Tiedemann was arrested by the East German police forces for his attempts to have West Berlin authorities share in those historically valuable photographs. He was tried and imprisoned and after the events of June 17, 1953 granted amnesty. Together with his family he subsequently fled to West Germany where he was acknowledged as political refugee. In January 1954 he took up work as a topographer with a company called Plan und Karte, later Hansa Luftbild, in Münster, Westphalia, where he remained employed until his retirement in 1978.
Photography had not only been part of Fritz Tiedmann’s professional activities, it was in fact his life-long passion, the results of which are considered by his family as a great heritage.
Text from the Berlinische Galerie Museum of Modern Art
Alec Soth (American, b. 1969) Two Towels 2004 From the series Niagara (2006)
Minneapolis-based photographer Alec Soth has attained international recognition for his photographic series. Notable are the two series Sleeping by the Mississippi (1999-2004) portraying the river and the life along it’s banks and Niagara (2006) where Soth focuses his large format camera on the hotels, residents loves and lives and the environs around Niagara Falls.
His work is firmly rooted in the documentary traditions of Walker Evans and Robert Frank but pushes the documentary form. Whereas Frank used a foreigners eye and ‘snapshot’ photography to challenge traditional notions of American culture in his seminal book The Americans (1958), Soth photographs the everyday events of American life – home, romance, religion, bliss, heartbreak and agony – and constructs his vision of the land and people in poetic form. His use of handwritten notes is especially poignant.
Working in a serial form, Soth builds the themes within his series. The connections between people living their lives and facing their plight together – with dignity – become fully evident.
Soth’s view of America is both narrative, truth and epic construction.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Alec Soth (American, b. 1969) Charles, Vasa, Minnesota 2002 From the series Sleeping by the Mississippi (1999-2004)
You must be logged in to post a comment.