This was a most beautiful and refined exhibition. Despite the ferocity of the samurai, their armour is exquisite.
Exhibition dates: 4th July – 4th November, 2014
Curator: Wayne Crothers, Curator of Asian Art at the NGV
Japanese Saddle and stirrups with crane and turtle design Edo period 1665 Japan Lacquer on wood (maki-e), gold foil, silver, pigment, plant fibre (cord), dyes, metal, leather, (other materials) 28.2 x 41.0 x 39.0cm (saddle) Acquired, 1889
This is a most beautiful and refined exhibition. Despite the ferocity of the samurai, their armour is exquisite. The golden screens, the horse trappings, the swords and the pistols are all fabulously detailed. Walking into the darkened exhibition space is like entering another world. A must see exhibition before it closes!
Marcus
Many thankx to the National Gallery of Victoria for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Utagawa Yoshitsuya (Japanese, 1822-1866) The death of Kusunoki Masatsura 19th century Colour woodblock (triptych) (a-c) 35.9 x 74.0cm (image) (overall) (a-c) 36.4 x 74.0cm (sheet) (overall) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1993
Utagawa Yoshitsuya (Japanese, 1822-1866) The death of Kusunoki Masatsura (detail) 19th century Colour woodblock (triptych) (a-c) 35.9 x 74.0cm (image) (overall) (a-c) 36.4 x 74.0cm (sheet) (overall) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1993
Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1809-1909) (attributed to) No title (Samurai warrior) 1860s-1870s Albumen silver photograph, colour dyes 24.2 x 19.6cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Presented through the NGV Foundation by Thomas Dixon, Member, 2001
Baron Raimund von Stillfried (Austrian, 1839-1911) No title (Samurai in armour) c. 1875; (c. 1877-1880) (printed) Albumen silver photograph, colour dyes 24.4 x 19.6cm (image and sheet) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased through the NGV Foundation with the assistance of The Herald & Weekly Times Limited, Fellow, 2001
Exquisite 300-year-old battle armour will bring the epic tales of Japanese history to life in a new exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, Bushido: Way of the Samurai, which explores the fascinating world of the samurai; the warriors, rulers and aristocratic elite of Japanese society for more than 800 years.
The exhibition brings together over 200 objects from the NGV and Australian collections including many rediscovered and rarely seen treasures that were acquired by the NGV in the 1880s and 1920s, such as beautifully crafted armour, helmets, lacquered saddles and a full set of horse trappings. An exquisite group of 16th Century matchlock guns – weaponry used on the battlefield which irrevocably changed warfare and the ethics of the samurai in battle – and an elaborate suit of armour that has no record of being exhibited since its acquisition in 1889 will take centre stage in the exhibition.
Wayne Crothers, Curator, Asian Art, NGV said that Japanese armour, swords and guns are celebrated as refined artworks and are appreciated for their unsurpassed craftsmanship and beauty. “Such dramatic and visually foreboding attire worn by a fierce sword wielding warrior thundering into battle on horseback must have created an image of heart stopping ferocity embodying the spirit and the age of the samurai. It is extraordinary that we have these pieces from key historical periods in Japanese history to share today,” Mr Crothers said.
Bushido: Way of the Samurai also includes three golden screens that would adorn the villas and castles of the samurai elite, one of which is a magnificent seven metre panoramic view of the twelfth century battle of Ichinotani, and a group of dramatic woodblock prints depicting stories of legendary samurai and their super human feats of bravery.
The art and culture of the samurai encompasses over 800 years of Japan’s history and creative past. From the twelfth century through to the modernisation of Japan in 1868, the Shogun, or the military elite, ruled the country and lived to a rigorous code of ethics. This military aristocracy aspired to a life of spiritual harmony that not only perfected the art of war, but also embodied an appreciation of the fine arts that established their life as an art form itself. The refined cultural pursuits of the samurai are exhibited in the form of exquisite Noh theatre costumes and dramatic Noh masks, tea ceremony utensils, lacquered personal items, formal clothing and studio photographs from the 1860s-1870s that capture these noble warriors during the closing years of feudal Japan.
“Samurai virtues of honesty, courage, benevolence, respect, self-sacrifice, self-control, duty, and loyalty combined with a cultivated lifestyle established social stability and a legacy of art and culture in Japanese society that continues to this day,” Mr Crothers said.”
Press release from the NGV
Utagawa Yoshiiku (Japanese, 1833-1904) Fukushima Masanori, from the Heroic stories of the Taiheiki Edo period 1867 Japan Colour woodblock 25.5 x 19.0cm (image and sheet) Purchased, NGV Supporters of Asian Art, 2014
Utagawa Yoshiiku (Japanese, 1833-1904) Gamō Ujisato, from the Heroic stories of the Taiheiki Edo period 1867 Japan Colour woodblock 25.5 x 19.0cm (image and sheet) Purchased, NGV Supporters of Asian Art, 2014
Japanese Ceremonial helmet with octopus and Genji cart wheel crest 19th century Edo period 1600-15-1868 Japan Lacquer on (leather) (maki-e), wood, gold, pigment, glass, metal (nails), silk and cotton (thread), (other materials) 28.0 x 35.5 x 38.0cm Felton Bequest, 1927
Japanese Armour 18th century Metal, wood, pigment, lacquer, gold paint, silk, cotton, leather, metal thread (a-k) 136.0 x 56.0 x 45.0cm (overall) (installation) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Mrs Henry Darlot, 1888
Japanese Armour Edo period 1600-15-1868 Japan Lacquer, leather, metal, silk, cotton, hemp, gold pigment, coloured dyes 144.0 x 71.0 x 53.0cm (overall) (installation) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Acquired, 1889
Japanese Armour Edo period 1600-15-1868 Japan Lacquer, leather, metal, silk, cotton, hemp, gold pigment, coloured dyes 144.0 x 71.0 x 53.0cm (overall) (installation) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Acquired, 1889
One of the most beautiful postings that I have ever done on the blog. The colours, the people, the faces, the places: magnificent.
This was Sarajevo two years before Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated there, catalyst that sparked the beginning of The Great War. Bread and dirty clothes, rough hands and mud-stained shoes.
Can you imagine the journey of Stéphane Passet in those days with plate cameras:
Turkey: September 1912 Morocco: December 1912 / January 1913 China: May 1913 Mongolia: July 1913 India: December 1913 – January 1914 France: June 1914
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Stéphane François Marie Passet (French, 1875-1941) was an amateur photographer and appointed operator on behalf of the Archives de la Planète (Archives of the Planet). This archival project began thanks to the rich French-based banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn (1860-1940), who became concerned about the Chinese cultural heritage after his part-business, part-pleasure trip to China between November 1908 and May 1909.
After his return to Paris, Kahn decided to launch the worldwide project Les Archives de la Planète. This three-decade long project distinguished itself from any other initiated at that time thanks to the compilation of a visual inventory of the world utilising ground-breaking types of media from that time, namely autochrome and film. With the utopian aim to ‘fix once and for all the aspects, the practices, and modes of human activity whose fatal disappearing is just a question of time’, Kahn hired a dozen operators to help him visualise the world, including Passet.
Biographical elements of Passet remain quite meagre. What is known is that he volunteered in the French Army for fifteen years, settled down in Paris in 1910, and worked for Kahn’s Archives de la Planète from 1912 onwards. The circumstances of his previous training as a photographer and cameraman, as well as his recruitment, remain unknown. The visual archive left to us today reveal that two trips were organised [to China] in 1912 (between May and August) and 1913 (between the end of May and the end of June). Passet and his team travelled across China, visiting and recording places such as Beijing (which composes a large part of the archive in China) and northern sites (Great Wall and Ming Tombs), Shenyang, Zhangjiakou, Qufu, Shanghai, places along the Yangtze River, and Mount Tai (hereinafter referred to as Taishan).
The Archives de la Planète ended in 1931 when Kahn was bankrupted.
Anonymous text. “Stéphane Passet,” on the Photography of China website Nd [Online] Cited 10/11/2022
Auguste Leon (French, 1857-1942), French photographer who worked for the project “Archives of the Planet” (French: Les Archives de la Planète) of millionaire French banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn (1860-1940) since 1909. Together with Jean Brin, another French photographer, they visited Macedonia during the Balkan wars in the period of 1912-1913 where they made series of autochromes (very first colour photograps) which today are in the collection of Albert Kahn museum and were published later in the publication: Macedonia in 1913 – Autochromes from the collection of the Museum Albert Kahn.
The Archives of the Planet (French: Les Archives de la Planète) was photographical endeavour to document buildings and cultures.
In 1909, Kahn travelled with his chauffeur and photographer, Alfred Dutertre to Japan on business and returned with many photographs of the journey. On his return to Europe, he decided to go back, this time with the professional photographer Augustus Leon, for a second two-month trip to South America in 1909 where he visited Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil. All materials became the first of the “Archives of the Planet” based in Paris: a collection of colour photographs (process autochrome plates, invented by the Lumiere brothers) and movies.
This prompted him to begin a project collecting a photographic record of the entire Earth. He appointed Jean Brunhes as the project director, and sent photographers to every continent to record images of the planet using the first colour photography, autochrome plates, and early cinematography.
Professional operators were recruited and sent around the world and in France to photograph (colour) and film (the movement) as evidence “aspects, practices and modes of human activity, including the fatal disappearance is only a matter of time.” Among them, the photographer Stéphane Passet conducted between 1912 and 1914, several trips to China, Mongolia and in the British Raj (India and Pakistan), yielding several thousand Autochromes and movies on the people and customs of these country. At the same time Kahn sent his operators, including Augustus Leon, to Scandinavia and more than twenty European countries on the eve of the Great War. Kahn’s photographers began documenting France in 1914, just days before the outbreak of World War I, and by liaising with the military managed to record both the devastation of war, and the struggle to continue everyday life and agricultural work. Other parts of France are not forgotten either, Kahn sending Brittany operators to take monochromes from 1909-1931. In 1926 and 1927, it was to Japan that he sends an operator, Roger Dumas.
Between 1909 and 1931 they collected 72,000 colour photographs and 183,000 meters of film. These form a unique historical record of 50 countries, known as The Archives of the Planet. Between 1909 and 1931, it is thus some 72,000 autochrome (first global fund of early colour photography), 4000 black-and-white, and a hundred hours of footage that will be reported from fifty country. These images are the iconographic side of a large documentation project that will take other forms (publications, documentation centres, etc.) and whose goal is a better understanding of other nations for a better deal in order to prevent conflicts. The images are also projected for this purpose to the guests, often prestigious people from around the world, as well as in higher education structures.
In commemoration of the outbreak of the First World War, the Martin-Gropius-Bau is presenting an exhibition entitled The World c. 1914 – Colour Photography Before the Great War, which features nearly forgotten colour photographs and films commissioned by the French banker Albert Kahn (1860-1940) before the First World War. As the nations of Europe were already arming themselves for battle, Kahn, who was excited by the Lumière Brothers’ colour photography process, dispatched photographers out into the world to develop a unique photo archive. Over 70,000 colour photos have survived in this collection. They represent an immense ethnographic treasure and were also intended to perform a mission of peace: Bringing the outside world closer to home. Kahn’s activities were intended to help secure the fragile peace. The exhibition brings this treasure trove of images from a long forgotten world to light.
For Albert Kahn, knowledge of peoples, buildings, landscapes and lifestyles was directly related to his desire for global peace: People who know and respect one another, and who encounter one another face to face, do not need to wage war. In 1908/09, excited by the new autochrome process of the brothers August and Louis Lumière, Kahn commissioned his photographers to document the world with the goal of assembling an archive of colour photographs from Europe, Asia and Africa. They photographed local scenes and people in typical clothing as well as monuments of cultural history. From this global treasure trove, more than 160 images have been selected for this exhibition. The autochromes from the Kahn archive form the centrepiece. The exhibition also displays images and projections by Adolf Miethe (1862-1927) and Sergei M. Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944).
Adolf Miethe, the inventor of a panchromatic film-coating process and thus the creator of three-colour printing, played a significant role in the development of colour photography. His presentation before the Kaiser led to a commission to create a colour documentation of German landscapes for the St. Louis World’s Fair. His work also enjoyed great popularity as collectible pictures sold with chocolate bars. This resulted in the “Stollwerck Album” – Germany’s first coloured photographic album.
Moreover, the Miethe Process inspired the Russian photographer Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. His work is present in the form of approximately twenty-five colour prints and fifty projected photos. A special item is on loan from the German Museum in Munich: The original projector with which Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii exhibited his work to Nicholas II, the last tsar. In 1909, as a result of this presentation, Prokudin-Gorskii received a commission to record the Russian Empire in 10,000 photos. Between 1909 and 1915, Gorskii made several thousand photographs of great brilliance. He documented the cultural diversity of the tsarist empire from the Crimean Peninsula to Siberia.
Another strong, passionate photographer has gone. One of his best images and one of my favourites is Men on a rooftop (1960, above). For more images see my earlier posting René Burri: A Retrospective at Flo Peters Gallery, Hamburg, November 2009 – January 2010.
Marcus
Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“When Burri left Zurich in the 1950s, he set out to discover the world and some sense of man’s smallness within it. Switzerland was landlocked, bordered by mountains; a camera was a way out. Even then, he worried about what he could do that was new – “when shutters rattle from morning to night in every corner of the world … when every continent is lit with the flash of cameras.” His job, he believes, has been to “trace the enormous social changes taking place in our age, conveying my thoughts and images of them.” And, more poetically, “to put the intensity that you yourself have experienced into the picture – otherwise it is just a document.” He retired from reporting once that intensity, that sense of the bigness of the world, was gone.”
It is with great sadness that the Musée de l’Elysée has learned of the death of René Burri, on Monday October 20 in Zurich, at the age of 81. In his later years, René Burri wished to create a foundation for the preservation of his work. The Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne hosts the Fondation René Burri established in June 2013.
The members of the Fondation de l’Elysée as well as the Musée de l’Elysée team extend their deepest sympathies to the family. A member of Magnum, René Burri was without a doubt one of the most talented photographers of his generation. He was present wherever history was being made and an acute witness of the major events of his time.
On the occasion of his 80th year, René Burri wished to create a foundation for the conservation and promotion of his work in museums and among the public, both in Switzerland and around the world. The Musée de l’Elysée hosts the Fondation René Burri and has been working closely with the artist and his family since June 2013 toward this goal.
“Thanks to the work being undertaken by the Musée de l’Elysée, we feel confident that René Burri’s legacy, which is of universal importance, will be passed on to future generations in the best possible conditions,” says the family.
This major Swiss patrimony has been bestowed to the Musée de l’Elysée on a 20-year loan, with the possibility for renewal. The René Burri photographic archives consist of approximately 30,000 images (vintage and modern prints, contact sheets and slides), in black and white and in colour. One third of this collection has already been received by the museum and an open-air exhibition will be organised in Lausanne as early as next year.
Exhibition dates: 3rd October – 26th October, 2014
Artists: Cherine Fahd, Vivian Maier, Gabriella Mangano and Silvana Mangano, Debra Phillips, Patrick Pound, Clare Rae, Simone Slee, David Wadelton And Kellie Wells and Vivian Maier.
Curators: Naomi Cass, Louise Neri and Karra Rees
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) East 108th Street. September 28, 1959, New York, NY 1959 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Just slightly overrated…
Apologies to the wonderful and hard working Director of the CCP Naomi Cass for what I am about to say, but this is one of the most disappointing photographic exhibitions in Melbourne this year.
Let’s start with the Australian work. There is nothing at all wrong with any of the Australian work. Some of it is very strong, such as the found images of Patrick Pound and the social documentary work of David Wadelton. The problem comes with the lack of connection to the photographs of Vivian Maier. For work that is supposed to be “crossing paths” conceptually with the images of Maier many of the connections are so esoteric as to be almost indistinguishable, so obtuse (as Tim Robbins would say in the Shawshank Redemption) as to be almost unintelligible to the uninitiated.
Where the work is conceptualised around the performative context of identity and the occupation of space(s), such as in Claire Rae’s digital colour lightbox images of people jumping in the air stopped in suspended animation or the beautiful reinscription of the body in the almost dance like video work of Gabriella Mangano and Silvana Mangano, then the juxtaposition simply does not work. The ties that bind one to another simply are not strong enough to sustain the inquiry of the viewer.
More interesting would have been the investigation of the concept of an artist taking photographs in her own time, hidden, secretive, and then being discovered later after she had died – which brings up issues of visibility (the cameras and her gendered own), celebrity, posthumous recreation of identity, the fame of the artist after death, and how the self-portraits fit into this theme etc…
The photographs by Vivian Maier printed by ? are far more disappointing.
Touted as the NEXT BIG THING by curators who are always looking for the next big thing and people out to make a healthy buck or two, VM is a person who has been “posthumously invented” and her work, which was largely unprinted during her lifetime, has been brought to market in a commercial process. As Abigail Solomon-Godeau notes at the end of her excellent essay “Inventing Vivian Maier” on the Jeu de Paume website:
“Here one can see how the terms of an “aesthetic” discourse within the world of contemporary photography, turning on the individual author and her work, and the far less lofty realities of market and marketing, property relations, public relations, media relations and all the other apparatuses, illuminate one another, or even collide. “Her big project,” remarks Michael Williams, “was her life,” but perhaps the even larger project is her posthumous invention.”
Abigail Solomon-Godeau. “Inventing Vivian Maier,” on the Jeu de Paume website, 16th September 2013 [Online] Cited 26/06/2021. No longer available online
With this invention in mind (and the product that you want to sell being paramount), you would have thought that the people who now control her archive would have got a damn good black and white printer to print the work. But no. Some of the prints are appalling, so flat that there is little if any true black in them at all. As for the content of the images, they look better in reproduction than they do in real life.
Maier, as I have said elsewhere, is a competent photographer – but she will never be a great photographer. Periodically (and I use the word my female friend supplied) she is very good, but too often she lapses into cliche. There are lots of low depth of field photographs but the construction of the images is cold and stilted, there is little engagement it would seem but for the snap of the shutter as she wanders around city after city, keeping the resulting negatives securely hidden.
There is also little mystery in her photographs which is probably why they don’t rise to that next level: look at the photograph of the two men staring at a length of hose on the ground on a rainy street in NY. The hose just sits there, the men are caught mid-gesture… and that’s it. Lots of her photographs are like this. And there also seem to be some anger towards the world as well. If you compare the photograph of the two boys, Undated, Canada (below) with that of the twins by Diane Arbus, there seems to be a darkness and malevolence to VM’s photograph that contrasts with the mystery and joy in that of Arbus – not so much in the subject matter but in the feeling that the photographer projects towards what she is photographing.
There is a coldness when you see the prints in the flesh (like the wind whistling off Lake Michigan onto the Chicago streets), an ice chill, a lack of humour, something that is a little creepy and screwy (if you will pardon the colloquialism) about the work. She wants us to know she is there in the photograph, even when she is not physically present, as in the image September 18, 1962 (below) where the viewer understands that the photographer is down on one knee to get the shot.
There is also a healthy dose of narcissism in the photographs: the self-portraits with this serious woman peering back at us, one who’s eyes hardly ever smile (you can tell a lot from a person’s eyes!) are not psychological investigations like the self-portraits of Rembrandt as he ages throughout the years – portraits in which Rembrandt explores what it is to be him – they are something more obsessive which VM then hides under a bushel. The use of fragmentation and shadows in the two self-portraits that I have put together (New York City, September 10, 1955 and Self-Portrait; October 18, 1953, New York, NY, below) speak of a schism inside the person, one who exposes herself through photography and then possesses but disclaims the results.
People have been flocking to see the film with sold out sessions all over the city, and they were flocking into the CCP to see the exhibition last Saturday when we were there. People love the back story as it has been sold to them by “marketing, property relations, public relations, media relations and all the other apparatuses” and there has been a veritable feeding frenzy about this work: THE DISCOVERY OF KING TUT’S TOMB WITH 100,000 NEGATIVES AND ASSORTED ARTEFACTS!
Kudos to the CCP for getting these images to Australia and exhibiting them and its great to see so many people in the gallery but please, let’s understand the hype and then really look at the work. The ART in FACT is that these are not well printed images, and most of them are pretty prosaic in composition and feeling. There are maybe four really good images, but that is about it. As always, go and see for yourself and keep my words in mind.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the CCP for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) August 1960. Chicago, IL 1960 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Undated, Canada Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Self-Portrait, 1950ies c. 1950s Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Armenian woman fighting on East 86th Street, September, 1956, New York, NY 1956 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) April 7, 1960. Florida 1960 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) January 1956 1956 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) January, 1953, New York, NY 1953 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Self-Portrait, 1953 1953 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Self-Portrait, 1953 1953 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Undated, Canada Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) July 1957. Chicago Suburb, I 1957 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) January 9, 1957, Florida 1957 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
One of the most atmospheric and mysterious of Maier’s photographs.
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Self-Portrait, New York, February 3, 1955 1955 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) March 1954, New York, NY 1954 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) May 16, 1957. Chicago, IL 1957 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) June 1963. Chicago, IL 1963 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
During her lifetime, Vivian Maier (1926-2009) produced more than 100,000 photographic images, which remained largely undiscovered until after her death. CCP celebrates this reluctant artist’s timely relevance, juxtaposing her work with contemporary Australian photography, performance and video.
Maier’s prolific body of work recording both herself and the world around her – predominately with a distinctive medium format Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex camera – is a precursor to our age of compulsive photographic documentation via smart phones and digital media. The posthumous construction of her identity is almost as compelling as her images and her ability to determine and frame a gripping moment with poignancy and beauty. Time has been Maier’s collaborator, where nostalgia plays a significant role in the popularity of her archive.
In Crossing Paths with Vivian Maier, Maier’s photography – printed well after her death – is presented with contemporary Australian artists working in still, moving and found photography and who also document the street and themselves in an equally obsessive manner.
Against the gritty street life captured by her probing lens, Patrick Pound responds with second-hand images gleaned from junk shops and the Internet, while Debra Phillips and David Wadelton make an inventory of the city and its quirky features. Maier’s self-portraits reverberate with Australian women artists who turn the camera on themselves in performative ways, in the work of Cherine Fahd, Gabriella Mangano and Silvana Mangano, Clare Rae, Simone Slee and Kellie Wells.
Text from the CCP website
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) May 27, 1970. Chicago, IL 1970 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) May 28, 1954, New York, NY 1954 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) New York City, September 10, 1955 1955 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Self-Portrait; October 18, 1953, New York, NY 1953 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Undated, New York, NY Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Undated, New York, NY Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Undated, New York, NY Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Undated, New York, NY Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Undated, New York, NY Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) New York, NY 1954 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Self-Portrait, 1959 1959 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Undated, New York, NY Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) October 31, 1954. New York, NY 1954 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) July 27, 1954. New York, NY 1954 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) September 18, 1962 1962 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) September 1956, New York, NY 1956 Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Untitled, Undated Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Untitled, Undated Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Love this one, with feeling
~ The balloons for a celebration ~ The exit sign ~ How he looks distractedly off camera into the distance ~ How her hands are clenched anxiously together ~ How she looks sad and lonely, looking off camera
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Untitled, Undated Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Undated, Vancouver, Canada Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Untitled, Undated Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
Vivian Maier (American, 1926-2009) Untitled, Undated Nd Gelatin silver print 30.5 x 30.5cm Vivian Maier/Maloof Collection, courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery
My god, how can a dryer hood or a pine cone become so sensual?
It should have been Paul-Martial’s World of Extra-Ordinary Things!
Marcus
Many thankx to the Kunstmuseum Basel for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
On July 5, 2014, the Kunstmuseum Basel opens a new exhibition presenting a selection of one hundred photographs from the archives of the Paris-based advertising agency Éditions Paul-Martial. The black-and-white pictures formed the basis for posters, newspaper advertisements, and brochures and show ordinary things: buildings, cars, typewriters, radiators, mannequins. What was unusual and novel, however, were the composition, lighting, and exposure of the pictures. In today’s perspective, the collection reflects the multifaceted evolution of photography from the 1920s onward. At the same time, it is an invaluable source for historians, documenting early forms of the carefully designed presentation of commodities and strategies designed to lure the consumer. The photographs are part of a collection newly acquired from the Herzog Collection and have never been on public display.
Cans make it possible to preserve food for the long term; zippers allow bags and pockets to be securely closed; rubber soles protect the walker from slipping; car jacks make it easier to change a tire: the advertising photographs produced by Éditions Paul-Martial tell stories about everyday life and how products like radiators, boilers, and cooking stoves help make it more pleasant. This renders the collection an extraordinarily valuable resource for historians: it illustrates the early history of the staging of consumer goods and the strategies employed to seduce the viewer. Beyond consumer products, the agency’s photographers also captured the new worlds of work in factories and offices and the rise of modern travel and communication technologies. For the time being, most of the photographs’ creators remained anonymous; in the business perspective, individual authorship was obviously a secondary concern, especially since the majority of the pictures were a sort of intermediate product to be used by graphic artists in the design of brochures and posters.
New Objectivity and Neues Sehen
The historic photographs also reflect the multifaceted evolution of photography as an art in its own right from the 1920s onward. Pictures of buildings, machines, and selected products hew to the sober aesthetic of the New Objectivity, which took hold after the Great War. Photographs of transformer stations and bridges point to the Neues Sehen (New Vision) of the Bauhaus photographers and the works of the Russian avant-garde, which emphasised diagonal lines to heighten the dynamic quality of the picture – this influence is also evident in techniques such as photomontage and double exposures. In isolated objects and enigmatic motifs such as a pinecone, the surreal, mysterious, and sometimes also absurd infiltrate the world of ordinary things.
The photographers’ love of experimentation is palpable throughout: they often created small series in which they tried different lighting effects and unusual angles of view. The selection of a hundred photographs is drawn from a larger collection the museum acquired from the collection of Peter and Ruth Herzog, Basel, in 2012 through a combined purchase-and-donation agreement. The exhibition was designed in close collaboration between the curator, Anita Haldemann, and the photography collector and expert Peter Herzog.
The Fonds Paul-Martial – considerable parts of its inventory have also gone to the Musée d’Art Moderne de Saint-Étienne Métropole, the department of prints and photography at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, and the collection of Marc Pagneux, France – is still widely unknown, and the work of exploring this exceptionally rich archive, which promises important insights into the history of photography and especially of contemporary art, has only just begun.
Brave man, hanging over the side of a rickety biplane at 15,000 feet taking aerial photographs during World War One but just look at the images he brought back, especially the hellish Untitled (Vaux) (1918-1919, below). I’m still not that convinced by his portraiture. The technical proficiency is magnificent (lighting, set, costume) but they are just too styled for me – the cat in the top left corner of Noel Coward (1932, below), the bowler hat of Charles Chaplin (1931, below) and the double shadow of Fred Astaire in Funny Face (1927, below) coupled with bands of light/dark and tons of “atmosphere” (certainly not sharp and clear!) which echo the mannerisms of Pictorialism. I see little modernist aesthetics and advertising tactics in these photographs. They are beautiful but they leave me unengaged. I much prefer the advertising photography in the next posting, much more angular and modern. You will have to wait and see what it is!
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to The Art Institute of Chicago for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
At the start of World War I in 1914, Edward Steichen was a pioneering champion of art photography – catapulting to fame as a leading member of the Photo Secessionists and as cofounder of the trailblazing magazine Camera Work. Yet by the early 1920s, Steichen had rejected the soft focus, dreamy landscapes and portraits of his early years in favour of realist photographs made for informational purposes or popular consumption. This turning point was first marked by his role in World War I as chief of the Photographic Section of the American Expeditionary Forces from 1917 to 1919; and was fully realised in his subsequent work as lead photographer at Condé Nast publications from 1923 to 1937.
While on military duty, Steichen helped adapt aerial photography for intelligence purposes, implementing surveillance programs that had a lasting impact on modern warfare. He later reflected: “The wartime problem of making sharp, clear pictures from a vibrating, speeding airplane ten to twenty thousand feet in the air had brought me a new kind of technical interest in photography… Now I wanted to know all that could be expected from photography.” Steichen began to value photography’s capacity to transmit and encode information, and he soon proved his savvy as a collaborator and producer rather than a solitary auteur – new skills that enabled his subsequent groundbreaking career in magazines. Upon his return to New York in 1923, Steichen joined Condé Nast publications, creating iconic fashion photographs and celebrity portraits for Vogue and Vanity Fair. Over a period of nearly 15 years he created images that redefined the field through their clever use of modernist aesthetics and advertising tactics, becoming an influential impresario who promoted photography as a mass-media tool.
Focusing on rarely seen Steichen photographs drawn from the Art Institute’s collection, this exhibition includes a unique album of over 80 World War I aerial photographs assembled and annotated by Steichen himself as well as a group of iconic glamour portraits and fashion photographs done for Condé Nast, featuring notable figures such as Greta Garbo, Fred Astaire, and Gloria Swanson.
Throughout his extensive career, famed photographer Edward Steichen (1879-1973) championed photography’s multiple roles – from his earliest efforts to promote American photography as an equal among the modern fine arts, to his groundbreaking work for the magazine industry. A new exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, Sharp, Clear Pictures: Edward Steichen’s World War I and Condé Nast Years, on view from June 28 – September 28, 2014, in Galleries 1-4, examines a crucial period in Steichen’s career, when he rejected the painterly Pictorialist aesthetic of his early years in favour of a straight, information-based approach. This turning point was first signalled by Steichen’s role in World War I, as chief of the Photographic Section of the American Expeditionary Forces from 1917 to 1919, and was fully realised in his work as lead photographer at Condé Nast Publications from 1923 to 1937.
Focusing on rarely seen Steichen photographs drawn from the Art Institute’s collection, this exhibition includes a unique album of over 80 World War I aerial photographs assembled and annotated by Steichen himself as well as a group of iconic glamour portraits and fashion photographs done for Condé Nast, featuring such early Hollywood royalty as Mary Pickford, Greta Garbo, Fred Astaire, Charlie Chaplin and Gloria Swanson, as well as key historical figures like Winston Churchill.
Prior to WWI, Edward Steichen was a pioneering champion of art photography – he had a leading reputation in the Photo Secession movement in New York, and, along with his mentor Alfred Stieglitz, had cofounded its trail-blazing fine-art journal Camera Work. Together, they opened the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, later 291, which first presented Picasso, Bråncusi, and a range of progressive photographers to the American public. In 1906, seeking a change, Steichen moved to Voulangis, France, with his family, where he immersed himself in European modern art. They remained there until the outbreak of the war in 1914, when, under the threat of advancing German troops, they fled home to the United States.
In July 1917, Steichen entered active duty with the goal of becoming “a photographic reporter, as Mathew Brady had been in the Civil War,” but he quickly abandoned this romantic notion to help implement the newest weapon of war – aerial photography. While on military duty, Steichen helped adapt aerial photography for intelligence purposes, implementing surveillance programs that had a lasting impact on modern warfare. He later reflected: “The wartime problem of making sharp, clear pictures from a vibrating, speeding airplane ten to twenty thousand feet in the air had brought me a new kind of technical interest in photography… Now I wanted to know all that could be expected from photography.” Steichen began to value photography’s capacity to transmit and encode information, and he soon proved his savvy as a collaborator and producer rather than a solitary auteur – new skills that enabled his subsequent groundbreaking career in magazines.
Following his military discharge in 1919, Steichen returned to Voulangis, where for a period of three years he created work that embraced clear focus, close cropping, and other techniques of modernist photography. Upon his return to New York in 1923, Steichen joined Condé Nast Publications, creating iconic fashion photographs and celebrity portraits for Vogue and Vanity Fair. In undertaking this challenging endeavour, the organisational and technical skills Steichen gained during his time in the military and in Voulangis proved invaluable.
Steichen championed the cultural and economic potential of celebrity, fashion, and advertising photography, creating images that became the foundation for contemporary magazine photography. Over a period of nearly 15 years he created images that redefined the field through their clever use of modernist aesthetics and advertising tactics, becoming an influential impresario who promoted photography as a mass-media tool.
Press release from The Art Institute of Chicago website
Exhibition dates: 8th February – 2nd November, 2014
The Edward Steichen Photography Galleries, third floor
Curators: Organised by Quentin Bajac, The Joel and Anne Ehrenkranz Chief Curator, with Lucy Gallun, Assistant Curator, Department of Photography
Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987) David Wojnarowicz 1981 Gelatin silver print 14 x 14″ (35.6 x 35.6cm) The Fellows of Photography Fund Museum of Modern Art Collection
Many thankx to MoMA for allowing me to publish four of the photographs in the posting. The rest of the images were sourced from the Internet in order to give the reader a more comprehensive understanding of what this exhibition is actually about – especially if you are thousands of miles away and have no hope of ever seeing it!
Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
The exhibition is divided into 6 themes each with its own gallery space:
1/ Surveying the Studio 2/ The Studio as Stage 3/ The Studio as Set 4/ A Neutral Space 5/ Virtual Spaces 6/ The Studio, from Laboratory to Playground
A Neutral Space
Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999) Eleanor 1948 Gelatin silver print 4 1/2 x 3 1/4″ (11.4 x 8.3cm) Gift of the artist Museum of Modern Art Collection
Charles Harry Jones (English, 1866-1959) Brussels Sprouts c. 1900 Gelatin silver printing-out-paper print 6 1/8 × 8 1/16″ (15.5 × 20.5cm) Acquired through the generosity of Robert B. Menschel Museum of Modern Art Collection
Charles Harry Jones (1866 – 15 November 1959) was an English gardener and photographer, noted for his still lifes of fruit and vegetables.
The photographs were probably made between 1895 and 1910, and likely while he was employed at Ote Hall. Jones’ work was never exhibited in his lifetime, and was largely unknown even to his family, until the photographic prints were discovered by accident in 1981. Sean Sexton found a suitcase containing hundreds of prints of vegetables, fruits and flowers at Bermondsey antiques market. Other than a very few exceptions, Jones’ photographs exist only in unique examples. None of the glass-plate negatives have been located.
Jones isolated his vegetables, fruits and flowers against neutral dark or light backgrounds, in the manner of formal studio portraits. He used long exposures and small apertures to give depth of field.
Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976) Cala Leaves 1932 Gelatin silver print 9 9/16 x 7 9/16″ (24.3 x 19.2cm) Gift of Paul F. Walter Museum of Modern Art Collection
Richard Avedon (American, 1923-2004) Carl Hoefert, unemployed blackjack dealer, Reno, Nevada, from the series In the American West August 30, 1983 Gelatin silver print, printed 1985 47 1/2 x 37 1/2″ (120.6 x 95.2cm) Gift of the artist Museum of Modern Art Collection
Peter Hujar (American, 1934-1987) Pascal (Paris) 1980 Gelatin silver print 14 5/8 x 14 11/16″ (37.1 x 37.3cm) Gift of David Wojnarowicz Museum of Modern Art Collection
Valérie Belin (French, b. 1964) Untitled from the series Mannequins 2003 Gelatin silver print 61 x 49″ (154.9 x 124.5cm) Purchase Museum of Modern Art Collection
Laurie Simmons (American, b. 1949) Allan McCollum (American, b. 1944) Untitled from the series Actual Photos 1985 Silver dye bleach print 9 5/16 x 6 5/16″ (23.7 x 16.1cm) Joel and Anne Ehrenkranz Fund Museum of Modern Art Collection
Josephine Meckseper (German, b. 1964) Blow-Up (Michelli, Knee-Highs) 2006 Chromogenic colour print 78 5/8 x 62 5/8″ (199.7 x 159.1cm) Fund for the Twenty-First Century Museum of Modern Art Collection
Christian Marclay (American and Swiss, b. 1955) Allover (Genesis, Travis Tritt, and Others) 2008 Cyanotype Composition and sheet: 51 1/2 x 97 3/4″ (130.8 x 248.3cm) Publisher and printer: Graphic studio, University of South Florida, Tampa Acquired through the generosity of Steven A. and Alexandra M. Cohen Museum of Modern Art Collection
Luigi Veronesi (28 May 1908 – 25 February 1998) was an Italian photographer, painter, scenographer and film director born in Milan.
Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958) phg.06 2012 Chromogenic colour print 100 3/8 x 72 13/16″ (255 x 185cm) Courtesy David Zwirner, New York/London Museum of Modern Art Collection
Man Ray (American, 1890-1976) Rayograph 1923 Gelatin silver print 9 7/16 x 7″ (23.9 x 17.8cm) Purchase Museum of Modern Art Collection
György Kepes (American born Hungary, 1906-2001) Abstraction – Surface Tension #2 c. 1940 Gelatin silver print 14 x 11 1/8″ (35.6 x 28.3cm) Gift of the artist Museum of Modern Art Collection
The Studio, from Laboratory to Playground
Barbara Morgan (American, 1900-1992) Pure Energy and Neurotic Man 1941 Gelatin silver print, printed 1971 19 1/8 x 15 1/2″ (48.6 x 39.3cm) Gift of the artist Museum of Modern Art Collection
Barbara Morgan (American, 1900-1992) Cadenza 1940 Gelatin silver print, printed 1971 17 7/8 x 15″ (45.4 x 38.2cm) Gift of the artist Museum of Modern Art Collection
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Focusing Water Waves, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1958-1961 Gelatin silver print 6 9/16 x 7 15/16″ (16.7 x 20.1cm) Gift of Ronald A. Kurtz Museum of Modern Art Collection
Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991) Wave Pattern with Glass Plate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1958-1961 Gelatin silver print 6 9/16 x 7 9/16″ (16.7 x 19.2cm) Gift of Ronald A. Kurtz Museum of Modern Art Collection
Heinz Hajek-Halke (German, 1898-1983) Embrace (Umarmung) 1947-1951 Gelatin silver print 15 5/8 x 11 3/8″ (39.7 x 29.0cm) Gift of the artist Museum of Modern Art Collection
Harold Edgerton (American, 1903-1990) Lead Falling in a Shot Tower 1936 Gelatin silver print 7 9/16 x 9 1/2″ (19.3 x 24.2cm) Gift of Gus and Arlette Kayafas Museum of Modern Art Collection
Harold Edgerton (American, 1903-1990) Bouncing Ball Bearing 1962 Gelatin silver print 9 9/16 x 7 11/16″ (24.3 x 19.5cm) Gift of Gus and Arlette Kayafas Museum of Modern Art Collection
Harold Edgerton (American, 1903-1990) This is Coffee 1933 Gelatin silver print 9 7/8 x 12 7/8″ (25.1 x 32.7cm) Gift of the artist Museum of Modern Art Collection
Roman Signer (Swiss, b. 1938) Sand Curtain (Sandvorhang) 1983 Super 8 film transferred to video (colour, silent) Approximately 2 min. Committee on Media Funds Museum of Modern Art Collection
Roman Signer (Swiss, b. 1938) Sand Stairs (Sandtreppe) 1975 Super 8 film transferred to video (colour, silent) Approximately 2 min. Committee on Media Funds Museum of Modern Art Collection
Roman Signer (Swiss, b. 1938) Rubber Motor (Gummimotor) 1983 Super 8 film transferred to video (colour, silent) Approximately 2 min. Committee on Media Funds Museum of Modern Art Collection
Roman Signer (Swiss, b. 1938) Sand Cone (Sandkegel) 1984 Super 8 film transferred to video (colour, silent) Approximately 2 min. Committee on Media Funds Museum of Modern Art Collection
Roman Signer (Swiss, b. 1938) Sand Pillar (Sandturm) 1987 Super 8 film transferred to video (colour, silent) Approximately 2 min. Committee on Media Funds Museum of Modern Art Collection
Roman Signer (Swiss, b. 1938) Sand (Sand) 1988 Super 8 film transferred to video (colour, silent) Approximately 2 min. Committee on Media Funds Museum of Modern Art Collection
Roman Signer (Swiss, b. 1938) Umbrella (Schirm) 1989 Super 8 film transferred to video (colour, silent) Approximately 2 min. Committee on Media Funds Museum of Modern Art Collection
Roman Signer (Swiss, b. 1938) Barrel (Fass) 1985 Super 8 film transferred to video (colour, silent) Approximately 2 min. Committee on Media Funds Museum of Modern Art Collection
Roman Signer (Swiss, b. 1938) Carriage (Wagen) 1982 Super 8 film transferred to video (colour, silent) Approximately 2 min. Committee on Media Funds Museum of Modern Art Collection
Roman Signer (Swiss, b. 1938) Tube (Schlauch) 1982 Super 8 film transferred to video (colour, silent) Approximately 2 min. Committee on Media Funds Museum of Modern Art Collection
Roman Signer (b. 1938 in Appenzell, Switzerland) is principally a visual artist who works in sculpture, installations photography, and video. Signer’s work has grown out of, and has affinities with both land art and performance art, but they are not typically representative of either category.It is often being described as following the tradition of the Swiss engineer-artist, such as Jean Tinguely and Peter Fischli & David Weiss.
Signer’s “action sculptures” involve setting up, carrying out, and recording “experiments” or events that bear aesthetic results. Day-to-day objects such as umbrellas, tables, boots, containers, hats and bicycles are part of Signer’s working vocabulary. Following carefully planned and strictly executed and documented procedures, the artist enacts and records such acts as explosions, collisions, and the projection of objects through space. Signer advocates ‘controlled destruction, not destruction for its own sake’.Action Kurhaus Weissbad (1992) saw chairs catapulted out of a hotel’s windows; Table (1994) launched a table into the sea on four buckets; Kayak (2000) featured the artist being towed down a road in a canoe. In documenta 8 (1987), he catapulted thousands of sheets of paper into the air to create an ephemeral wall in the room for a brief, but all the more intense moment. As the Swiss representative at the Venice Biennale in 1999, he made 117 steel balls fall from the ceiling on to lumps of clay lying on the ground.Many of his happenings are not for public viewing, and are only documented in photos and film.Video works like Stiefel mit Rakete (Boot with Rocket) are integral to Signer’s performances, capturing the original setup of materials that self-destruct in the process of creating an emotionally and visually compelling event.
Kiki Smith (American born Germany, b. 1954) My Secret Business 1993 Lithograph 23 9/16 x 18 1/8″ (59.8 x 46cm) Gift of Howard B. Johnson Museum of Modern Art Collection
Adrian Piper (American, b. 1948) Food for the Spirit #2 1971, printed 1997 Gelatin silver print 14 9/16 x 15″ (37 x 38.1cm) The Family of Man Fund Museum of Modern Art Collection
Adrian Piper (American, b. 1948) Food for the Spirit #8 1971, printed 1997 Gelatin silver print 14 9/16 x 14 15/16″ (37 x 38cm) The Family of Man Fund Museum of Modern Art Collection
Adrian Piper (American, b. 1948) Food for the Spirit #14 1971, printed 1997 Gelatin silver print 14 9/16 x 15″ (37 x 38.1cm) The Family of Man Fund Museum of Modern Art Collection
Harold Edgerton (American, 1903-1990) Indian Club Demonstration 1939 Gelatin silver print 13 x 10″ (33.0 x 26.0cm) Gift of the artist Museum of Modern Art Collection
Harold Edgerton (American, 1903-1990) Bobby Jones with an Iron 1938 Gelatin silver print 9 5/8 x 11 1/2″ (24.4 x 29.2cm) Gift of the artist Museum of Modern Art Collection
John Divola (American, b. 1949) Untitled from the series Vandalism 1974 Gelatin silver print 7 1/16 x 7 1/16″ (18.0 x 18.0cm) Purchase Museum of Modern Art Collection
John Divola (American, b. 1949) Untitled from the series Vandalism 1974 Gelatin silver print 7 x 7″ (17.9 x 17.9cm) Purchase Museum of Modern Art Collection
Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019) Boston (detail) March 20, 1985 Colour instant prints (Polaroids) with hand-applied paint and collage Each 27 3/4 x 22 1/4″ (70.3 x 56.4cm) Acquired through the generosity of Polaroid Corporation Museum of Modern Art Collection
Anna Blume (German, 1937-2020) Bernhard Blume (German, 1937-2011) Kitchen Frenzy (Küchenkoller) (detail) 1986 Gelatin silver prints Each 66 15/16 x 42 1/2″ (170 x 108cm) Acquired through the generosity of the Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art Museum of Modern Art Collection
Anna Blume (née Helming; 21 April 1936 – 18 June 2020) and Bernhard Johannes Blume (8 September 1937 – 1 September 2011) were German art photographers. They created sequences of large black-and-white photos of staged scenes in which they appeared themselves, with objects taking on a “life” of their own. Their works have been shown internationally in exhibitions and museums, including New York’s MoMA. They are regarded as “among the pioneers of staged photography”. …
Anna and Bernhard Blume together created installations, sequences of large photo scenes and, mostly in the 1990s, Polaroids. Both created drawings. They staged and photographed scenes in which they appeared themselves, with objects taking on a “life” of their own. According to the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation, their process was to create their picture sequences together and complete all related tasks without outside help. That included designing the sets and costumes, developing the negatives, and producing enlargements; at each stage the artwork was refined, polished and painted. Anna said: “Wir malen mit der Kamera, und diese malerische Arbeit findet auch noch im Labor statt.” (We paint with our camera, and this painterly work continues in the lab, too.) The images were produced without the aid of digital manipulation or post-production montages. Taking pictures of a “flying, crashing, and swirling world”, the artists used safety features such as ropes, nets and mattresses.
Exhibition dates: 8th February – 2nd November, 2014
The Edward Steichen Photography Galleries, third floor
Curators: Organised by Quentin Bajac, The Joel and Anne Ehrenkranz Chief Curator, with Lucy Gallun, Assistant Curator, Department of Photography
Bruce Nauman (American, b. 1941) Composite Photo of Two Messes on the Studio Floor 1967 Gelatin silver print 40 1/2″ x 10′ 3″ (102.9 x 312.4cm) Gift of Philip Johnson Museum of Modern Art Collection
A bumper two part posting on this fascinating, multi-dimensional subject: photographic practices in the studio, which may be a stage, a laboratory, or a playground. The exhibition occupies all MoMA’s six photography galleries, each gallery with its own sub theme, namely, Surveying the Studio, The Studio as Stage, The Studio as Set, A Neutral Space, Virtual Spaces and The Studio, from Laboratory to Playground. See Part 2 of the posting.
The review of this exhibition “When a Form Is Given Its Room to Play” by Roberta Smith on the New York Times website (6th February 2014) damns with faint praise. The show is a “fabulous yet irritating survey” which “dazzles but often seems slow and repetitive.” Smith then goes on to list the usual suspects: “And so we get professional portraitists, commercial photographers, lovers of still life, darkroom experimenters, artists documenting performances and a few generations of postmodernists, dead and alive, known and not so, exploring the ways and means of the medium. This adds up to plenty to see: around 180 images from the 1850s to the present by some 90 photographers and artists. The usual suspects here range from Julia Margaret Cameron to Thomas Ruff, with Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Lucas Samaras, John Divola and Barbara Kasten in between.” There are a few less familiar and postmodern artists thrown in for good measure, but all is “dominated by black-and-white images in an age when colour reigns.”
The reviewer then rightly notes the paucity of “postmodern photography of the 1980s, much of it made by women, that did a lot to reorient contemporary photo artists to the studio. It is a little startling for an exhibition that includes so many younger artists dealing with the artifice of the photograph (Ms. Belin, for example) to represent the Pictures Generation artists with only Cindy Sherman, James Casebere and (in collaboration with Allan McCollum) Laurie Simmons” before finishing on a positive note (I think!), noting that the curators “had aimed for a satisfying viewing experience, which, these days, is something to be grateful for.”
SOMETHING TO BE GRATEFUL FOR… OH, TO BE SO LUCKY IN AUSTRALIA!
Just to have the opportunity to view an exhibition of this quality, depth and breadth of concept would be an amazing thing. Even a third of the number of photographs (say 60 works) that address this subject at any one of the major institutions around Australia would be fantastic but, of that, there is not a hope in hell.
Think Marcus, think… when was the last major exhibition, I mean LARGE exhibition, at a public institution in Australia that actually addressed specific ISSUES and CONCEPTS in photography (such as this), not just putting on monocular exhibitions about an artists work or exhibitions about a regions photographs?
Ah, well… you know, I can’t really remember.
Perhaps the American Dreams exhibition at Bendigo Art Gallery, but that was a GENERAL exhibition about 20th century photography with no strong investigative conceptual theme and it was imported from George Eastman House.
Here in Australia, all we can do is look from afar, purchase the catalogue and wonder wistfully what the exhibition actually looks like and what we are missing out on. MoMA sent me just 10 images media images. I have spent hours scouring the Internet for other images to fill the void of knowledge and vision (and then cleaning those sometimes degraded images), so that those of us not privileged enough to be able to visit New York may gain a more comprehensive understanding of what this exhibition, and this multi-faceted dimension of photography, is all about.
It’s a pity that our venerable Australian institutions and the photography curators in them seem to have had a paucity of ideas when it comes to expounding interesting critiques of the medium over the last twenty years or so. What a missed opportunity.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to MoMA for allowing me to publish six of the photographs in the posting. The rest of the images were sourced from the Internet. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Installation view of the exhibition A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, February – November, 2014
Installation view of the exhibition A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, February – November, 2014
Installation view of the exhibition A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, February – November, 2014 showing at right, Seydou Keïta’s Untitled 1959
Installation view of the exhibition A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, February – November, 2014 showing at left and centre the work of Richard Avedon including Carl Hoefert, unemployed blackjack dealer, Reno, Nevada, from the series In the American West August 30, 1983; and at right, the work of Peter Hujar including at second and third right, David Wojnarowicz both 1981, and at right, Pascal (Paris) 1980
Installation view of the exhibition A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, February – November, 2014
Surveying the Studio
Uta Barth (American, b. 1958) Sundial (07.13) 2007
Chromogenic colour prints
each 30 x 28 1/4″ (76.2 x 71.8cm)
The Photography Council Fund
Museum of Modern Art Collection
Geta Brâtescu (Romanian, 1926-2018) The Studio. Invocation of the Drawing (L’Atelier. Invocarea desenului)
1979
Gelatin silver prints with tempera on paper
33 1/16 x 27 9/16″ (84 x 70cm)
Modern Women’s Fund
Museum of Modern Art Collection
Geta Brătescu was a Romanian visual artist with works in drawing, collage, photography, performance, illustration and film. In 2008, Brătescu received an honorary doctorate from the Bucharest National University of Arts for “her outstanding contributions to the development of contemporary Romanian art”. Brătescu was artistic director of literature and art magazine Secolul 21. A major retrospective of her work was held at the National Museum of Art of Romania in December 1999. In 2015 Brătescu’s first UK solo exhibition was held at the Tate Liverpool. In 2017, she was selected to represent Romania at the 57th Venice Biennale.
Man Ray (American, 1890-1976) Laboratory of the Future 1935
Gelatin silver print
9 1/16 x 7″ (23.1 x 17.8cm)
Gift of James Johnson Sweeney
Museum of Modern Art Collection
Charles Sheeler (American, 1883-1965) Cactus and Photographer’s Lamp, New York 1931
Gelatin silver print
9 1/2 x 6 5/8″ (23.5 x 16.6cm)
Gift of Samuel M. Kootz
Museum of Modern Art Collection
Bringing together photographs, films, videos, and works in other mediums, A World of Its Own: Photographic Practices in the Studio examines the ways in which photographers and artists using photography have worked and experimented within the four walls of the studio space, from photography’s inception to today. Featuring both new acquisitions and works from the Museum’s collection that have not been on view in recent years, A World of Its Own includes approximately 180 works, by approximately 90 artists, such as Berenice Abbott, Uta Barth, Zeke Berman, Karl Blossfeldt, Constantin Brancusi, Geta Brătescu, Harry Callahan, Robert Frank, Jan Groover, Barbara Kasten, Man Ray, Bruce Nauman, Paul Outerbridge, Irving Penn, Adrian Piper, Edward Steichen, William Wegman, and Edward Weston.
The exhibition considers the various roles played by the photographer’s studio as an autonomous space; depending on the time period, context, and the individual motivations (commercial, artistic, scientific) and sensibilities of the photographer, the studio may be a stage, a laboratory, or a playground. Organised thematically, the display unfolds in multiple chapters. Throughout the 20th century, artists have explored their studio spaces using photography, from the use of composed theatrical tableaux (in photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron or Cindy Sherman) to neutral, blank backdrops (Richard Avedon, Robert Mapplethorpe); from the construction of architectural sets within the studio space (Francis Bruguière, Thomas Demand) to chemical procedures conducted within the darkroom (Walead Beshty, Christian Marclay); and from precise recordings of time and motion (Eadweard Muybridge, Dr. Harold E. Edgerton) to amateurish or playful experimentation (Roman Signer, Peter Fischli / David Weiss). A World of Its Own offers another history of photography, a photography created within the walls of the studio, and yet as groundbreaking and inventive as its seemingly more extroverted counterpart, street photography.”
Text from the MoMA website
The exhibition is divided into 6 themes each with its own gallery space:
1/ Surveying the Studio 2/ The Studio as Stage 3/ The Studio as Set 4/ A Neutral Space 5/ Virtual Spaces 6/ The Studio, from Laboratory to Playground
The Studio as Stage
Unidentified photographer (French?) Untitled c. 1855 Albumen silver print from a wet-collodion glass negative 9 3/16 × 6 1/8″ (23.4 × 15.5cm) Gift of Paul F. Walter Museum of Modern Art Collection
George Platt Lynes (American, 1907-1955) Untitled 1941 Gelatin silver print 7 5/8 x 9 5/8″ (19.2 x 24.4cm) Anonymous gift Museum of Modern Art Collection
Lucas Samaras (American born Greece, 1936-2024) Auto Polaroid 1969-1971 Eighteen black-and-white instant prints (Polapan), with hand-applied ink Each 3 3/4 x 2 15/16″ (9.5 x 7.4cm) Overall 14 5/8 x 24″ (37.2 x 61cm) Gift of Robert and Gayle Greenhill Museum of Modern Art Collection
Working in the digital realm long before it was associated with fine art, Samaras pioneered radical new modes of image making throughout his storied career, pushing and redefining the boundaries of portraiture and self-portraiture over the course of seven decades. Centering on the body and the psyche, Samaras’s autobiographical work across photography, painting, installation, assemblage, drawing, textile, and sculpture often meditates on the malleable, shapeshifting nature of selfhood. “I like remaking myself in photography,” the artist once said. …
In the late 1960s, Samaras began working with a Polaroid 360 camera, creating his iconic Auto Polaroids by altering hundreds of images, mostly self-portraits, with applications of ink by his own hand. In 1973, using a Polaroid SX-70, he took this collagist approach further by manipulating the wet emulsion of the film with a stylus or his fingertip before the chemicals set. The resulting distortions in his Photo-Transformations series took on abstract, otherworldly effects, which he would continue exploring amid the rise of other image making technologies in the following decades.
Lucas Samaras (American, 1936-2024) Auto Polaroid (details) 1969-1971 Eighteen black-and-white instant prints (Polapan), with hand-applied ink Each 3 3/4 x 2 15/16″ (9.5 x 7.4cm) Overall 14 5/8 x 24″ (37.2 x 61cm) Gift of Robert and Gayle Greenhill Museum of Modern Art Collection
Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879) Madonna with Children 1864 Albumen silver print 10 1/2 x 8 5/8″ (26.7 x 21.9cm) Gift of Shirley C. Burden Museum of Modern Art Collection
Julia Margaret Cameron (British, 1815-1879) Untitled (Mary Ryan?) c. 1867 Albumen silver print 13 3/16 x 11″ (33.5 x 27.9cm) Gift of Shirley C. Burden Museum of Modern Art Collection
Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon) (French, 1820-1910) Adrien Tournachon (French, 1825-1903) Pierrot Surprised 1854-1855 Albumen silver print 11 1/4 x 8 3/16″ (28.6 x 20.8cm) Suzanne Winsberg Collection. Gift of Suzanne Winsberg Museum of Modern Art Collection
Maurice Tabard (French, 1897-1984) Untitled 1929 Gelatin silver print 6 9/16 x 6 1/2″ (16.7 x 16.5cm) Gift of Robert Shapazian Museum of Modern Art Collection
Edward Steichen (American born Luxembourg, 1879-1973) Anna May Wong 1930 Gelatin silver print 16 9/16 x 13 7/16″ (42.1 x 34.1cm) Gift of the artist Museum of Modern Art Collection
“Taking people away from their natural circumstances and putting them into the studio in front of a camera did not simply isolate them, it transformed them. Sometimes the change was subtle; sometimes it was great enough to be almost shocking. But always there was transformation.”
~ Irving Penn 1974
Cindy Sherman (American, b. 1954) Untitled #131 1983 Chromogenic colour print 35 x 16 1/2″ (89 x 41.9cm) Joel and Anne Ehrenkranz Fund Museum of Modern Art Collection
The Studio as Set
Barbara Kasten (American, b. 1936) Construct I-F 1979 Colour instant print (Polaroid Polacolor) 9 1/2 x 7 1/2″ (24.0 x 19.0cm) Acquired through the generosity of Wendy Larsen Museum of Modern Art Collection
Barbara Kasten (American, b. 1936) Construct NYC 17 1984 Silver dye bleach print 29 3/8 x 37 1/16″ (74.7 x 94.1cm) Gift of Foster Goldstrom Museum of Modern Art Collection
James Casebere (American, b. 1953) Subdivision with Spotlight 1982 Gelatin silver print 14 13/16 x 18 15/16″ (37.6 x 48.1cm) Purchase Museum of Modern Art Collection
Francis Bruguière (American, 1879-1945) Light Abstraction c. 1925 Gelatin silver print 9 15/16 x 7 15/16″ (25.2 x 20.2cm) Gift of Arnold Newman Museum of Modern Art Collection
Francis Joseph Bruguière (15 October 1879 – 8 May 1945) was an American photographer.
Francis Bruguière was born in San Francisco, California, to Emile Antoine Bruguière (1849-1900) and Josephine Frederikke (Sather) Bruguière (1845-1915). He was the youngest of four sons born into a wealthy banking family and was privately educated. His brothers were painter and physician Peder Sather Bruguière (1874-1967), Emile Antoine Bruguiere Jr. (1877-1935), and Louis Sather Bruguière (1882-1954), who married wealthy heiress Margaret Post Van Alen. He was also a grandson of banker Peder Sather. His mother died in the 1915 sinking of the British ocean liner SS Arabic by a German submarine.
In 1905, having studied painting in Europe, Bruguière became acquainted with photographer and modern art promoter Alfred Stieglitz (who accepted him as a Fellow of the Photo-secession), and set up a studio in San Francisco, recording in a Pictorialist style images of the city after the earthquake and fire; some of them were reproduced in a book called San Francisco in 1918. He co-curated the photographic exhibition at the 1915 Panama-California Exposition in San Diego, and nine of his photographs were included in The Evanescent City (1916) by George Sterling.
In 1918, following the decline of the family fortune, he moved to New York City where he made his living by photographing for Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Harper’s Bazaar. Soon he was appointed the official photographer of the New York Theatre Guild. In this role he photographed the British stage actress Rosalinde Fuller, who was debuting in What’s in a Name? (1920), and she partnered him for the rest of his life.
Throughout his life, Bruguière experimented with multiple-exposure, solarization (years ahead of Man Ray), original processes, abstracts, photograms, and the response of commercially available film to light of various wavelengths. Until his one-man show at the Art Centre of New York in 1927, he showed this work only to friends. In the mid-1920s, he planned to make a film called The Way, depicting stages in a man’s life, to be played by Sebastian Droste with Rosalinde doing all the female parts. To obtain funding, Bruguière took photographs of projected scenes, but Droste died before filming started; so we are left with only the still pictures.
In 1927 they moved to London, where Bruguière co-created the first British abstract film, Light Rhythms, with Oswell Blakeston. Long thought to have been lost, it has now been recovered. During World War II, he returned to painting.
Jaromír Funke (1 August 1896 – 22 March 1945) was a leading Czech photographer during the 1920s and 1930s.
Funke was recognised for his “photographic games” using mirrors, lights, and insignificant objects, such as plates, bottles, or glasses, to create unique works. In his still life imagery he created abstracts of forms and shadows reminiscent of photograms. His work was regarded as logical, original and expressive in nature. A typical feature of Funke’s work would be the “dynamic diagonal.”
Paul Outerbridge (American, 1896-1958) Images de Deauville 1936 Tri-colour carbro print 15 3/4 x 12 1/4″ (40 x 31.1cm) Gift of Mrs. Ralph Seward Allen Museum of Modern Art Collection
Elad Lassry (Israeli, b. 1977) Nailpolish 2009 Chromogenic colour print 14 1/2 x 11 1/2″ (36.8 x 29.2cm) Fund for the Twenty-First Century Museum of Modern Art Collection
The Museum of Modern Art 11 West 53 Street New York, NY 10019 Phone: (212) 708-9400
Opening hours: 10.30am – 5.30pm Open seven days a week
Curators: Felicity Grobien, curatorial assistant, Modern Art Department, Städel Museum; Dr Felix Krämer, head of the Modern Art Department at the Städel Museum
Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) London: The British Museum 1857 Albumen print mounted on cardboard 32.2 x 43cm Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main Photo: Städel Museum – ARTOTHEK
There are some absolutely stunning images in this posting. It has been a great pleasure to put the posting together, allowing me the chance to sequence Roger Fenton’s elegiac London: The British Museum (1857, below) next to Werner Mantz’s minimalist masterpiece Cologne: Bridge (c. 1927, below), followed by Carlo Naya’s serene Venice: View of the Marciana Library (c. 1875, below) and Albert Renger-Patzsch’s sublime but disturbing (because of the association of the place) Buchenwald in November (c. 1954, below). What four images to put together – where else would I get the chance to do that? And then to follow it up with the visual association of the Royal Prussian Institute of Survey Photography’s Cologne: Cathedral (1889, below) with Otto Steinert’s Luminogram (1952, below). This is the stuff that you dream of!
The more I study photography, the more I am impressed by the depth of relatively unknown Eastern European photographers from countries such as Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria and Turkey. In this posting I have included what details I could find on the artists Václav Jíru, Václav Chochola and the well known Czech photographer František Drtikol. The reproduction of his image Crucified (before 1914, below) is the best that you will find of this image on the web.
I would love to do more specific postings on these East European photographers if any museum has collections that they would like to advertise more widely.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
PS. Lichtbilder = light images.
Many thankx to the Städel Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Installation view of the exhibition Lichtbilder. Photography at the Städel Museum from the Beginnings to 1960 at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt
Installation view of the exhibition Lichtbilder. Photography at the Städel Museum from the Beginnings to 1960 at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt showing Nadar’s George Sand (1864, below)
Nadar [Gaspard Félix Tournachon] (French, 1820-1910) George Sand (Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin) c. 1864
Installation view of the exhibition Lichtbilder. Photography at the Städel Museum from the Beginnings to 1960 at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt showing
(left)
August Sander (German, 1876-1964) Country girls 1925
(right)
August Sander (German, 1876-1964) Portrait of Anton Räderscheidt 1927
Otto Steinert (1915-1978) Ein-Fuß-Gänger (installation view) 1950
The Subjective Gaze
After the Second World War a young generation took an innovative approach to the medium of photography. Distancing themselves from the propaganda and heroic photography of the National Socialist era, they looked at the avant grade photography of the 1900s. Among those innovators were the six photographers who founded the fotoform group in 1949: Peter Keetman, Siegfried Lauterwasser, Wolfgang Reisewitz, Toni Schneiders, Otto Steinert and Ludwig Windstosser. Emphasising formal issues they focused on the artist potential of photography and a free and experimental way of working. Abstract and minimal images as well as de-familiarised and dreamlike compositions were the results.
Otto Steinert, who taught art photography initially in Saarbrücken and later in Essen, was soon perceived as the key figure of the movement. In the years to come his exhibitions and publications stood for ‘subjective photography’. He underlined the photographer’s role as artist. By arguing that the camera is inevitably handled by a subjective and calculating author, Steinert weakened the notion of photographic objectivity.
Wall text from the exhibition
Otto Steinert (German, 1915-1978) Ein-Fuß-Gänger 1950 Gelatin silver print 28.5 × 39cm Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main Photo: Städel Museum – ARTOTHEK
Installation view of the exhibition Lichtbilder. Photography at the Städel Museum from the Beginnings to 1960 at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt
Rudolf Koppitz(Austrian, 1884-1936) Head of a Man with Helmet (installation view) c. 1929 Carbon print, printed c. 1929 49.8 × 48.4cm Städel Museum, Frankfurt a. M., donated by Annette and Rudolf Kicken 2013
Installation view of the exhibition Lichtbilder. Photography at the Städel Museum from the Beginnings to 1960 at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt showing at right, Otto Steinert’s La Comtesse de Fleury (1952, below)
In 1845, the Frankfurt Städel was the first art museum in the world to exhibit photographic works. The invention of the new medium had been announced in Paris just six years earlier, making 2014 the 175th anniversary of that momentous event. In keeping with the tradition it thus established, the Städel is now devoting a comprehensive special exhibition to European photo art – Lichtbilder. Photography at the Städel Museum from the Beginnings to 1960 – presenting the photographic holdings of the museum’s Modern Art Department, which have recently undergone significant expansion. From 9 July to 5 October 2014, in addition to such pioneers as Nadar, Gustave Le Gray, Roger Fenton and Julia Margaret Cameron, the show will feature photography heroes of the twentieth century such as August Sander, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Man Ray, Dora Maar or Otto Steinert, while moreover highlighting virtually forgotten members of the profession. While giving an overview of the Städel’s early photographic holdings and the acquisitions of the past years, the exhibition will also shed light on the history of the medium from its beginnings to 1960.
“Even if we think of the presentation of artistic photography in an art museum as something still relatively new, the Städel already began staging photo exhibitions in the mid 1840s. We take special pleasure in drawing attention to this pioneering feat and – with the Lichtbilder exhibition – now, for the first time, providing insight into our collection of early photography, which has been decisively expanded over the past years through new purchases and generous gifts,” comments Städel director Max Hollein. Felix Krämer, one of the show’s curators, explains: “With Lichtbilder we would like to stimulate a more intensive exploration of the multifaceted history of a medium which, even today, is often still underestimated.”
The first mention of a photo exhibition at the Städel Museum dates from all the way back to 1845, when the Frankfurt Intelligenz Blatt – the official city bulletin – ran an ad. This is the earliest known announcement of a photography show in an art museum worldwide. The 1845 exhibition featured portraits by the photographer Sigismund Gerothwohl of Frankfurt, the proprietor of one of the city’s first photo studios who has meanwhile all but fallen into oblivion. Like many other institutions at the time, the Städel Museum had a study collection which also included photographs: then Städel director Johann David Passavant began collecting photos for the museum in the 1850s. In addition to reproductions of artworks, the photographic holdings comprised genre scenes, landscapes and cityscapes by such well-known pioneers in the medium as Maxime Du Camp, Wilhelm Hammerschmidt, Carl Friedrich Mylius or Giorgio Sommer. An 1852 exhibition showcasing views of Venice launched a tradition of presentations of photographic works from the Städel’s own collection.
Whereas the photos exhibited in the Städel in the nineteenth century were contemporary works, the show Lichtbilder will focus on the development of artistic photography. The point of departure will be the museum’s own photographic holdings, which were significantly expanded through major acquisitions from the collections of Uta and Wilfried Wiegand in 2011 and Annette and Rudolf Kicken in 2013, and which continue to grow today through new purchases. The exhibition’s nine chronologically ordered sections will span the history of the medium from the beginnings of paper photography in the 1840s to the photographic experiments of the fotoform Group in the 1950s.
In the entrance area to the show, the visitor will be greeted by a selection of Raphael reproductions presented by the Städel in exhibitions in 1859 and 1860. They feature full views and details of the cartoons executed by Raphael to serve as reference images for the Sistine Chapel tapestries. The art admirer was no longer compelled to travel to London to marvel at the Raphael cartoons at Hampton Court, but could now examine these masterworks in large-scale photographs right at the Städel. The following exhibition room is devoted to the pioneers of photography of the 1840s to ’60s. No sooner had the invention of the new medium been announced in 1839 than enthusiasts set about conquering the world with the photographic image. The aspiration of the bourgeoisie for self-representation in accordance with aristocratic conventions soon rendered photographic portraiture a lucrative business; to keep up with the growing demand, the number of photo studios in the European metropolises steadily increased. Works of architecture and historical monuments, art treasures and celebrities were all recorded on film and made available to the public. Quite a few photographers – for example Édouard Baldus, the Bisson brothers, Frances Frith, Wilhelm Hammerschmidt and Charles Marville – set out on travels to take pictures of the cultural-historical sites of Europe and the Near East, and thus to capture these testimonies to the past on film.
Among the most successful exponents of this genre was Georg Sommer, a native of Frankfurt who emigrated to Italy in 1856 and made a name for himself there as Giorgio Sommer. The second section of the show will revolve around the image of Italy as a kind of paradise on Earth characterised by the Mediterranean landscape and the legacy of antiquity. That image, however, would not be complete without views of the simple life of the Italian population. These genre scenes – often posed – were popular as souvenirs because they fulfilled the travellers’ expectations of encountering a preindustrial, and thus unspoiled, way of life south of the Alps. Faced with the challenges presented by the climate, the long exposure times and the complex photographic development process, photographers were constantly in search of technical improvements – as illustrated in the third section of the presentation. Léon Vidal and Carlo Naya, for example, experimented with colour photography, Eadweard Muybridge with capturing sequences of movement, and the Royal Prussian Photogrammetric Institute with large-scale “mammoth photographs.”
While the pictorial language of professional photography hardly advanced, increasing emphasis was placed over the years on its technical aspects. The section of the show on artistic photography demonstrates how, at the end of the nineteenth century, enthusiastic amateur photographs worked to develop the medium with regard to aesthetics as well. Whereas until that time, professional photographers had given priority to genre scenes and other motifs popular in painting, the so-called Pictorialists set out to strengthen photography’s value as an artistic medium in its own right. Atmospheric landscapes, fairy-tale scenes and stylised still lifes were captured as subjective impressions. While Julia Margaret Cameron very effectively staged dialogues between sharp and soft focus, Heinrich Kühn employed the gum bichromate and bromoil techniques to create painterly effects.
After World War I, a new generation of photographers emerged who questioned the standards established by the Pictorialists. Their works are highlighted in the following room. Rather than intervening in the photographic development process, the adherents to this new current – who pursued interests analogous to those of the New Objectivity painters – devoted themselves to austere pictorial design and sought to establish a “new way of seeing.” The gaze was no longer to wander yearningly into the distance, but be confronted directly and immediately with the realities of society. The prosaic and rigorous images of August Sander and Hugo Erfurth satisfy the demands of this artistic creed. The exhibition moreover directs its attention to early photojournalism and the development of the mass media. Apart from documentary photographs by the autodidact Erich Salomon, Heinrich Hoffmann’s portraits of Adolf Hitler – purchased for the Städel collection in 2013 – will also be on view. Although it was Hitler himself who had commissioned them, he later prohibited the portraits’ reproduction. For in actuality, Hoffmann’s images expose the hollowness of the dictator’s demeanour. The show devotes a separate room to the work of Albert Renger-Patzsch, whose formally rigorous scenes are distinguished by uncompromising objectiveness in the depiction of nature and technology.
The photographers inspired by Surrealism pursued interests of a wholly different nature, as did the representatives of the Czech photo avant-garde – the focusses of the following two exhibition rooms. In the section on Surrealist photography, the works oscillate between fiction and reality, and photographic experiments unveil the world’s bizarre sides. Employing strange effects or unexpected motif combinations, artists such Brassaï, André Kertész, Dora Maar, Paul Outerbridge and Man Ray sought the unusual in the familiar. The Czech photographers of the interwar period, for their part, explored the possibilities of abstract and constructivist photography. Their works, many of which exhibit a symbolist tendency, are concerned with the aestheticisation of the world.
The final section of the show is dedicated to Otto Steinert and the fotoform Group. It sheds light on how Steinert and the members of the artists’ group took their cues from the experiments of the photographic vanguard of the 1920s, while at the same time dissociating themselves from the propagandistic and heroising use of photography during the National Socialist era. The six photographers who joined to found the fotoform Group in 1949 – Peter Keetman, Siegfried Lauterwasser, Wolfgang Reisewitz, Toni Schneiders, Otto Steinert and Ludwig Windstosser – coined the term “subjective photography” and emphasised the photographer’s individual perspective.
The show augments the joint presentation of photography, painting and sculpture practised at the Städel Museum since its reopening in 2011 and also to be continued during and after Lichtbilder. The aim of this exhibition mode is to convey the decisive role played by photography in art-historical pictorial tradition since the medium’s very beginnings. The presentation is being accompanied by a catalogue which – like the exhibition architecture – foregrounds the specific “palette” of photography as a medium conducted in black and white. The subtle tones of grey are mirrored not only in the works’ reproductions, but also in the colour design of the individual catalogue sections. When the visitor enters the exhibition space, he is surrounded by an architecture that is grey to the core, while at the same time making clear that no one shade of grey is like another. In the words of curator Felicity Grobien: “The exhibition reveals how multi-coloured the prints are, for in them – contrary to what we expect from black-and-white photography – we discover a vast range of subtle colour nuances that emphasise the prints; distinctiveness.
Press release from the Städel Museum
Édouard Baldus (French, 1813-1889) Orange: The Wall of the Théâtre antique 1858 Albumen print mounted on cardboard 43.4 x 33.4cm Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main Photo: Städel Museum – ARTOTHEK
Werner Mantz began his career as a portrait and advertising photographer, later becoming known for his architectural photographs of the modernist housing projects in Cologne during the 1920s. This portfolio of photographs was selected by the artist towards the end of his life as representative of his finest work. These rare prints reveal Mantz’s mastery in still-life and architecture photography, and are considered some of the most influential works created in the period.
Carlo Naya (Italian, 1816-1882) Venice: View of the Marciana Library, the Campanile and the Ducal Palace c. 1875 Albumen print mounted on cardboard 41.3 x 54.1cm Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main Photo: Städel Museum – ARTOTHEK
Carlo Naya (1816, Tronzano Vercellese – 1882, Venice) was an Italian photographer known for his pictures of Venice including its works of art and views of the city for a collaborative volume in 1866. He also documented the restoration of Giotto’s frescoes at the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. Naya was born in Tronzano di Vercelli in 1816 and took law at the University of Pisa. An inheritance allowed him to travel to major cities in Europe, Asia, and northern Africa. He was advertising his services as portrait photographer in Istanbul in 1845,and opened his studio in Venice in 1857. He sold his work through photographer and optician Carlo Ponti. Following Naya’s death in 1882, his studio was run by his wife, then by her second husband. In 1918 it was closed and publisher Osvaldo Böhm bought most of Naya’s archive.
Royal Prussian Institute of Survey Photography (est. 1885) Cologne: Cathedral 1889 Gelatin silver prints mounted on cardboard 79.8 x 64.5cm Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main Photo: Städel Museum – ARTOTHEK
Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879) Mrs Herbert Duckworth 1867 Albumen print mounted on cardboard 35 x 27.1cm Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main Photo: Städel Museum – ARTOTHEK
Giorgio Sommer (European, 1834-1914) Naples: Delousing c. 1870 Albumen print mounted on cardboard 25.5 x 20.6cm Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main Photo: Städel Museum – ARTOTHEK
Lewis Carroll (English, 1832-1898) Alexandra “Xie” Kitchin as Chinese “Tea-Merchant” (on Duty) 1873 Albumen print 19.8 x 15.2cm Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main Photo: Städel Museum – ARTOTHEK
Additional images
Albert Renger-Patzsch (German, 1897-1966) Tropical Orchis, cattleya labiata c. 1930 Gelatin silver print, printed c. 1930 Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main Photo: Städel Museum – ARTOTHEK
Václav Jíru (Czech, 1910-1980) Untitled (Sunbath) 1930s Gelatin silver print Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main Acquired in 2013 as a gift from Annette and Rudolf Kicken
Jíru started to shoot as an amateur photographer, and since 1926 published photos and articles. He first exhibited in 1933 and collaborated with the Theatre Vlasta Burian, photographed in the Liberated Theatre, was devoted to advertising photography, and became well known in the international press (London News, London Life, Picture Post, Sie und Er, Zeit im Bild).
In 1940 he was arrested by the Gestapo for resistance activities, and sentenced to life in prison by the end of the war. In the book Six Spring, where there are pictures taken shortly after liberation, he described his experience of prison and concentration camps. After the war he became a member of the Union of Czechoslovak Journalists and in 1948 a member of the Association of Czechoslovak Artists. He continued shooting, but also looking for new talented photographers. In 1957, he founded and led four languages photographic Revue Photography. By the end of his life he organised a photographic exhibition and served on the juries of photographic competitions.
The photographs of Václav Jírů, especially in the pre-war stage, was very wide: sports photography, theatrical portrait, landscape, nude, social issues, report. After the war he concentrated on the cycles of nature, landscapes and cities. A frequent theme of his photographs was Prague, which unlike many other photographers he photographed in its unsentimental everyday life (Prague mirrors, walls Poetry Prague, Prague ghosts).
Václav Chochola (Czech, 1923-2005) Kolotoc-Konieci (merry-go-round horse) c. 1958 Gelatin silver print Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main Acquired in 2013 as a gift from Annette and Rudolf Kicken
Chochola (January 31, 1923 in Prague – August 27, 2005) was a Czech photographer, known for classic Czech art and portrait photography. He began photography while studying at grammar school in Prague-Karlin. After leaving the photographer taught and studied at the School of Graphic Arts. He was a freelance photographer, photographed at the National Theatre and has collaborated with many other scenes. Chochol created a series of images using non-traditional techniques, creating photograms, photomontage and roláže.
In his extensive work Chochol was devoted to candid photographs, portraits of celebrities (famous for his portrait of Salvador Dali), acts or sports photography. His documentary images from the Prague uprising in May 1945 are invaluable. In 1970 Chochol spent a month in custody for photographing the grave of Jan Palach. He died after a brief serious illness in Motol Hospital in Prague.
Text translated from Czech Wikipedia website
Jde užasle světem, o kterém jako kluk na předměstí snil a od něhož byl vždy oddělen červenou šňůrou, a do něhož má najednou přístup. Skutečnost, že v tomto světě nikdy nebyl úplně doma, dokázal proměnit v nepřehlédnutelnou přednost: zbystřilo mu to oko a zahlédl detaily, které my oslněni jinými cíli ani nevidíme.
He walks in amazement through the world he dreamed of as a boy in the suburbs, and from which he was always separated by a red cord, and to which he suddenly has access. He was able to turn the fact that he was never quite at home in this world into an unmissable advantage: it sharpened his eye and he saw details that we, dazzled by other goals, don’t even see.
František Drtikol (3 March 1883, Příbram – 13 January 1961, Prague) was a Czech photographer of international renown. He is especially known for his characteristically epic photographs, often nudes and portraits.
From 1907 to 1910 he had his own studio, until 1935 he operated an important portrait photostudio in Prague on the fourth floor of one of Prague’s remarkable buildings, a Baroque corner house at 9 Vodičkova, now demolished. Jaroslav Rössler, an important avant-garde photographer, was one of his pupils. Drtikol made many portraits of very important people and nudes which show development from pictorialism and symbolism to modern composite pictures of the nude body with geometric decorations and thrown shadows, where it is possible to find a number of parallels with the avant-garde works of the period. These are reminiscent of Cubism, and at the same time his nudes suggest the kind of movement that was characteristic of the futurism aesthetic.
He began using paper cut-outs in a period he called “photopurism”. These photographs resembled silhouettes of the human form. Later he gave up photography and concentrated on painting. After the studio was sold Drtikol focused mainly on painting, Buddhist religious and philosophical systems. In the final stage of his photographic work Drtikol created compositions of little carved figures, with elongated shapes, symbolically expressing various themes from Buddhism. In the 1920s and 1930s, he received significant awards at international photo salons.
David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018) 9:00 Going home: Marabastad-Waterval bus: For most of the people in this bus the cycle will start again tomorrow at between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m. 1983-1984 From the series The Transported of KwaNdebele. A South African Odyssey Silver gelatin print 55.5 x 37cm Courtesy of David Goldblatt and the Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg
This looks like a very interesting exhibition, one which “examines documentary photographs dating from around 1979 in terms of their aesthetic, ethical, performative, and political engagement with reality” by examining one series of work for each of the thirteen artists. The exhibition investigates the photographs in terms of the documentary approaches they embody not through individual images, but through a series of images.
As the press release rightly notes, “Documentary standpoints are revealed not only by the photographs themselves, but also by the way in which they are used. The exhibition thus addresses five sets of issues in relation to each series of photographs: who the photographers were or are; when and where the photographs were taken; who commissioned them; where, how, and with which target audience in mind they were first published; and the extent to which they open up possibilities for photography today.”
The selection of the series offers a broad range of styles, continents and subject matter – as well as illustrating the changing nature of documentary photography between the years 1974-1985, between Candida Hofer’s series Turks in Germany and Thomas Ruff’s Portraits.
I think I have to buy the catalogue.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Museum Ludwig for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018) AM/PM Travelers from KwaNdebele buying their weekly season tickets at the PUTCO depot in Pretoria 1983-1984 From the series The Transported of KwaNdebele. A South African Odyssey Silver gelatin print 55.5 x 37cm Courtesy of David Goldblatt and the Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg
Miyako Ishiuchi (Japanese, b. 1947) Apartment #45 1977-1978 Silver gelatin print 35.5 x 28cm Courtesy of Miyako Ishiuchi and The Third Gallery Aya, Edobori, Nishi-ku, Osaka
Miyako Ishiuchi (Japanese, b. 1947) Apartment #47 1977-1978 Silver gelatin print 35.5 x 28cm Courtesy of Miyako Ishiuchi and The Third Gallery Aya, Edobori, Nishi-ku, Osaka
In his short book Camera Lucida, written in 1979 and first published in 1980, Roland Barthes distinguished two responses to photography – its taming by means of aesthetic categories, including authorship, oeuvre, and genre, and its acceptance as an unflinching record of reality relying on untamed effects. Some twenty years later the exhibitions documenta 10 and 11, set up in 1997 and 2002 respectively, proved that viewing photography both as an art form and as a reproduction of reality need not be a contradiction in terms. On the contrary, Okwui Enwezor has shown that in its documentary capacity photography can redefine the relationship between aesthetics and ethics. Today, thirty-four years after the publication of Barthes’s volume, our exhibition examines documentary photographs dating from around 1979 in terms of their aesthetic, ethical, performative, and political engagement with reality.
The far-reaching social upheavals and crises associated with the period around 1979 highlighted the documentary approach as a major artistic concern. In his Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914‒1991 historian Eric Hobsbawm described the decades after 1975 as a period of crisis. The U.S.A. and the Soviet Union fought proxy wars in Latin America and many African countries in an attempt to cement their spheres of influence; the Islamic revolution took place in Iran; destabilisation of the Soviet Union began around 1980; and China developed into one of world’s most dynamic economic regions. In addition, banking policy worldwide led to a debt crisis in the so-called Third World and the power of transnational economies, promoted by revolutions in transport, manufacturing, and communication technology, grew in proportion to the decreasing influence of territorial states.
Artists and photographers monitored and documented these global changes over longer periods of time, generally in the places where they lived. This activity often resulted in a multitude of photographs. The exhibition therefore focuses not on individual images, but on series. It features one series for each of the thirteen artists and photographers represented in the museum’s collection, including Robert Adams, Joachim Brohm, Ute Klophaus, and Candida Höfer. Loans of works by David Goldblatt, Miyako Ishiuchi, and Raghubir Singh complement the collection.
Barthes based his discussion on the immediate emotional effect of single photographic images, on their arousal of feelings of wonder, sorrow, and empathy. His analysis revolved around viewer responses to what he perceived as the essence of photography. By contrast, the exhibition investigates photographs in terms of the documentary approaches they embody. Do they represent an ethnographic view, for example, aimed solely at recording change, or are they linked to a policy of investigative disclosure? Documentary standpoints are revealed not only by the photographs themselves, but also by the way in which they are used. The exhibition thus addresses five sets of issues in relation to each series of photographs: who the photographers were or are; when and where the photographs were taken; who commissioned them; where, how, and with which target audience in mind they were first published; and the extent to which they open up possibilities for photography today.
The catalogue, which contains an introductory essay and a text on each of the thirteen series of photographs, outlines the basic attitudes to photography and documentary work apparent in the works. Addressing the current role of documentary photography from a historical perspective, the volume constitutes a major contribution to the ongoing discourse on documentary work. Its extensive bibliographies also make it an important a resource for further research. Moreover, since the majority of the photographs come from the Museum Ludwig’s holdings, the catalogue acts as a reevaluation of its collection.
![Nadar [Gaspard Félix Tournachon] (French, 1820-1910) 'George Sand (Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin)' c. 1864 from the exhibition 'Lichtbilder. Photography at the Städel Museum from the Beginnings to 1960' at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt, July - October, 2014](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/nadar-george-sand.jpg "Nadar [Gaspard Félix Tournachon] (French, 1820-1910) 'George Sand (Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dupin)' c. 1864 from the exhibition 'Lichtbilder. Photography at the Städel Museum from the Beginnings to 1960' at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt, July - October, 2014")
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