Book: ‘Spomenik’ by Jan Kempenaers

February 2011

Three Canons

Be still with yourself

Until the object of your attention

Affirms your presence

Let the Subject generate its own Composition

When the image mirrors the man

And the man mirrors the subject

Something might take over

Minor White 1968

“Gone is the modernist tenet of authorship in which everything in a photograph depends and can be traced to a single photographer acting in isolation. In its place, White supposes a relationship with subject that is a two way street: by granting the world some role in its own representation we create a photograph that is not so much a product solely of individual actions as it is the result of a negotiation in which the world and all its subjects might participate.”

Vince Leo

These are beautiful photographs; there is no fuss, no histrionics here. The use of light and the framing of subject are wonderful. The photographer has let the subject generate its own composition meaning that the sculptures speak for themselves: something takes over – an ethereal evocation of space and place.

The sculptures occupy a representational space appropriated by the imagination. “Lefebvre writes that it [representational space] “overlays physical space, making symbolic use of its objects” and is predominantly non-verbal in nature.”1 The photographs and their representational space offer the viewer the possibility of drifting (Guy Debord’s dérive) encouraging “an unplanned journey through a landscape… where an individual travels where the subtle aesthetic contours of the surrounding architecture and geography subconsciously direct them with the ultimate goal of encountering an entirely new and authentic experience.”2

I find the photographs truly authentic. I immerse myself in their presence: I embrace them because they are in my imagination, creatures of the deep recesses of the mind.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Burgin, Victor. In/Different Spaces: Place and Memory in Visual Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, p. 27
2/ Anonymous. “Dérive,” on the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 28/06/2011

Many thankx to Jan Kempenaers for allowing me to publish the photographs and text in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All photographs © Jan Kempenaers and courtesy of the artist.

This monument, authored by sculptor Miodrag Živković, commemorates the Battle of Sutjeska, one of the bloodiest battles of World War II in the former Yugoslavia.

World War II

Since nearly the beginning of Axis powers taking control of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in April of 1941, the armies of Germany, Italy and their other Axis collaborators had been battling against armed uprisings of local resistance forces, most notably Josip Tito’s communist Partisan Army. As the Partisans in large part relied on guerilla tactics and unconventional warfare, they became a significant force for the Axis leadership to reckon with. As a result, the German Army created a set of targeted operations to take out Tito specifically, which they felt would behead the Partisan’s leadership and destroyed the movement. The first attempt at subduing Tito took place in January of 1943, during what the German’s called Operation Case White, which the Yugoslav’s later referred to as the Battle of Neretva near Makljen. However, this operation ended in Tito dramatically escaping at the last moment.

In May of 1943, Axis powers set upon Tito again with a new operation called Case Black. The operation was initiated with 127,000 Axis forces pursuing 22,000 Yugoslav Partisans across the Durmitor Mountains, then north into the Zelengora Mountains of present-day Bosnia. Then, in early June of 1943, the Partisans were subsequently boxed in and trapped within Axis lines on Vučevo Mountain on the east Sutjeska River valley, near the small village of Tjentište. As a result, a massive battle between the two sides ensued in what today is known as the ‘Battle of Sutjeska’ (Bitka na Sutjesci). Despite this hopeless seeming situation, Tito orchestrated a daring move where, starting on the morning of June 9th, he ordered Partisan units to begin breaking west across the open valley and over the river. Some of the Partisans were surprisingly successful in breaking the German lines, at which point they headed up a steep ravine of Ozren Mountain and were then able to break north through German lines and escape past Goražde through the mountains into eastern Bosnia.

Despite this ambitious and daring escape Tito made during this seemingly hopeless battle, it came at a great cost of life. During the conflict, over 7,000 Partisan soldiers were killed. Tito’s escape at Sutjeska is considered a significant pivotal moment is the Partisan Liberation Struggle against the German-Italian Axis occupiers, as it proved that they were a formidable fighting force which could not easily be destroyed.

Anonymous text. “Tjentište,” on the Spomenik Database website Nd [Online] Cited 22/07/2022

The Petrova Gora monument was designed by Vojin Bakić and built in 1982. It was dedicated to the people of Kordun and Banija who died during World War II. It was dismantled in 2011.

The Kosmaj monument in Serbia is dedicated to soldiers of the Kosmaj Partisan detachment from World War II.

The Kruševo Makedonium monument in Macedonia was dedicated to the Ilinden Uprising of 1903, when the Bulgarian population revolted against the Ottoman Empire.

Ilinden Uprising

The primary historical event this monument commemorates is the Ilinden Uprising, which was an uprising of Macedonian IMARO rebels initiated against Ottoman rule on August 2nd, 1903. During this time, in the region of present-day Kruševo, resistance fighters proclaimed this newly liberated land to be the land of the Kruševo Republic, under the leadership of then school-teacher turned war-hero Nikola Karev. This separatist territory lasted less than two weeks before it was suppressed by 176,000 Turk soldiers and put back under Ottoman control, with nearly 9000 people being executed at the hands of the Turks in retaliation.

World War II

In addition, this spomenik commemorates the local Kruševo fighters of the People’s Liberation Struggle (WWII) who struggled under the Partisan banner to help free Macedonian from Axis and fascist occupation. On August 19th, 1942, the Kruševo Partisan Detachment was formed as a force of community soldiers who engaged in skirmishes with Axis troops across Macedonia until Kruševo’s liberation by Soviet-backed Bulgarians during the fall of 1944. Macedonia was officially declared a nation-state during the Anti-fascist Assembly for the National Liberation of Macedonia (ASNOM), held at Prohor of Pčinja Monastery, on August 2nd, 1944, which was a date symbolically chosen to align with the date of the Ilinden Uprising, as the ASNOM gathering considered itself the ‘Second Ilinden’. Presently, this date is still celebrated in Macedonia as the Day of the Republic.

Anonymous text. “Kruševo,” on the Spomenik Database website Nd [Online] Cited 22/07/2022

The Susanjar Memorial Complex in Bosnia and Herzegovina was created in remembrance of the thousands killed by Germans during the Orthodox festival of Ilindan in 1941.

Spomenik Construction

Preliminary plans to construct a memorial complex at the Sanski Most execution site for the commemoration of these tragedies was organised in late 1968. At this point, an official selection board was convened to arrange this memorial’s construction. This board consisted of municipal officials as well as generals and officials of the SR of Bosnia who were from the Sanski Most region. The chairman of the board was Yugoslav WWII hero Petar Dodik, at this time a lawyer from Sarajevo. Funding for the project was raised by this board largely via public voluntary donations from those in the community. Three specific notable designers were considered by the board to create the monument, all who had varying ideas of what the monument should look like. Belgrade architect Bogdan Bogdanović, wanted to construct a ‘Tower of Babel’ themed structure, but the design selection committee found this concept unacceptable. Famous Zagreb sculptor Vanja Radauš suggested a bone-shaped memorial, but this was also rejected, as it was felt it might incite feelings of anger and hatred towards Croats in general, especially as the memorial was intended to be a place of healing and reconciliation… not horror.

The project was eventually awarded to Sarajevo architect Petar Krstić, whose primary composition, completed in 1970, consisted of an aluminium flame-like obelisk set within an open paved courtyard. The complex’s approaching pathways were lined with stone tiles commemorating the victims killed and executed in the uprising. In addition, long crisscrossing concrete tubes are arranged around the monument as seating for visitors and as an outdoor classroom for students. The official commemoration ceremony for the memorial took place on August 2nd, 1971, a date which recognised 30 years since the 1941 St. Elijah’s Day killings. During the memorial’s construction, there was an alleged incident where when workers were digging in the ground to construct the memorial’s crypt, blood started to bubble up from the earth. After an investigation, it was determined to be human blood (presumably left over from the massacres which occurred on the site) which had seeped into the ground and mixed with moist clay, allowing it to remain viscous and suspended. However, I was not able to find definitive corroborating evidence of this event. Also, after the monument’s official opening in 1971, a series of annual poetry reading events called the ‘Šušnjar Literary Festival’ were held at the site every August 2nd during the monument’s remembrance ceremonies.

Symbolism

It has been stated by the creator of this memorial sculpture, Petar Krstić, that its sharply irregular and luminescent form is meant to resemble the shape of a shining leaping flame and that said form is meant to be symbolic of the light of life and the victorious process of overcoming the threat of fascism which caused such sufferings to the people of the Sanski Most region. Such a universally understood image of the flame representing the ‘light of life’ was mostly surely chosen by the memorial’s selection board with the intention that it would be an inclusive and non-incendiary symbol pleasing all members of the town’s ethnically divided population. In addition, Krstić explained that his sculpture was meant to symbolise not only the suffering of people in Sanski Most, but suffering of all people throughout the ages. Such statements reinforce the ‘universalist’ interpretations of this sculpture. Interestingly, Krstić’s original design called for the memorial sculpture to emit sounds and lights from a machine within the structure, which would symbolise the struggle and suffering of the people of Sanski Most – however, this experimental concept became cost prohibitive and was never integrated into the site.

Anonymous text. “Sanski Most,” on the Spomenik Database website Nd [Online] Cited 22/07/2022

Built in 1963, this monument in Niš, Serbia commemorates the 10,000 people from the area that were killed during World War II. The three clenched fists are the work of sculptor Ivan Sabolić.

This monument is in Korenica, on the border of Croatia and Bosnia. It commemorates Yugoslavia’s victory in World War II.

This monument is dedicated to the soldiers who freed the city of Knin, Croatia from the fascists during World War II.

Built in 1949, this monument was designed by Vojin Bakić and is dedicated to the fallen fighters of the Yugoslav front.

The Kadinjača Memorial Complex commemorates those who died during the Battle of Kadinjača.

Serbia’s most grandiose spomenik (Yugoslav-era memorial), Kadinjača commemorates the Partisans from the Workers’ Battalion who perished on this spot fighting the Germans in November 1941. Rising on a green hill like some futuristic Stonehenge, the arresting series of white granite monoliths of various heights and angles culminates in two 14m-high pillars that together form a symbolic ‘bullet hole’ sculpture. The 15-hectare complex comprises a stone pyramid with a crypt for the fallen soldiers.

There’s a memorial hall with an exhibition about the historic event. The Partisans’ heroic defeat at the battle of Kadinjača marked the end of the short-lived Republic of Užice, the first liberated territory in German-occupied Europe. Proclaimed by Yugoslavia’s legendary resistance movement, it covered an area of about 20,000 sq km in western Serbia and lasted only 67 days.

Anonymous text. “Kadinjača Memorial Complex,” on the Lonely Planet website Nd [Online] Cited 22/07/2022

This sculpture was built in 1973 and designed by Bogdan Bogdanovic. It is dedicated to the long mining tradition in Kosovo.

Jan Kempenaers website

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Exhibition: ‘Eikoh Hosoe – Theatre of Memory’ at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Exhibition dates: 12th May – 7th August 2011

Many thankx to Susanne Briggs for her help and for AGNSW for allowing me to publish the text and photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Kazuo Ohno
1980
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

“The camera is generally assumed to be unable to depict that which is not visible to the eye. And yet the photographer who wields it well can depict what lies unseen in his memory.”

Eikoh Hosoe

This exhibition brings together four seminal series by Eikoh Hosoe, a leading figure in modern Japanese photography. Taken over five decades, The butterfly dream 1960-2005, Kamaitachi 1965-1968 and Ukiyo-e projections 2002-2003 are driven by Hosoe’s longstanding fascination for the revolutionary dance movement butoh and for its charismatic founders, Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno. Together these series epitomise his unique style, which combines photography with elements of theatre, dance, film and traditional Japanese art, and uses mythology, metaphor and symbolism. Using the latest digital technology, Hosoe prints his photographs on washi paper, mounting them in the traditional Japanese manner as scrolls and folding screens, thereby suggesting a new way of ‘reading’ his series as a continuous narrative. Hosoe’s interest in examining the beauty and strength of the human body is best seen in his acclaimed series of extremely abstract nudes, Embrace 1969-1970. The models are butoh dancers associated with Hijikata.

For over fifty years, internationally acclaimed Japanese photographer Eikoh Hosoe has been producing cutting edge works demonstrating a unique mastery of the photographic medium. Early on in his career he abandoned the documentary style prevalent in the post-war years and produced photographs that breathed a sense of experimentation and freedom into photography. By calling on mythology, metaphor and symbolism he created images that broke the bounds of traditional photography. Hosoe developed a unique style situated at the crossroads of several different art forms, combining photography with elements of theatre, dance, film and traditional Japanese art.

From the early days of his career Hosoe’s destiny became linked to butoh, the revolutionary performance movement formed in post-war Japan. His close relationship to Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, the two pivotal figures of butoh dance, forms the basis for his seminal series such as Kamaitachi, Embrace, The butterfly dream and Ukiyo-e projections, included in this exhibition.

This exhibition also highlights Hosoe’s extraordinary creativity and mastery of photographic printing techniques. Having experimented with both film-based and digital techniques to develop new methods of photographic expression, in recent years, he has started to use digital printing technologies on Japanese handmade paper (washi) and mounts his works in the form of traditional Japanese scrolls and screens. These ‘photo-scrolls’ provide a fascinating new reading of Hosoe’s work and underline his commitment to push the boundaries of photographic expression.

Hosoe gained recognition in the late 1950s when he began to develop his close-ups of the human body. Embrace, a series of black-and-white, abstract nude photographs, encapsulates Hosoe’s strive for originality in this photographic genre.

Through the novelist, Yukio Mishima, Hosoe was to meet Tatsumi Hijikata, one of the founders of Butoh dance. After seeing Hijikata’s performance, adapted from the novel Kinjiki (Forbidden Colours) by Mishima in a small Tokyo theatre, Hosoe was inspired and began photographing the Butoh dancer, a collaboration which continued for many years and culminated in the series Kamaitachi (1965-1968). This series, shot on various locations in the rural Tohoku region, integrated elements of dance, theatre and documentary into a cinematic work that aimed to recreate and dramatise Hosoe’s childhood memories.

Hosoe’s association with Butoh also led him to photograph the renowned Butoh performer, Kazuo Ohno. Released in 2006 in celebration of Ohno’s 100th birthday, the series The butterfly dream is a poignant visual documentary of Ohno’s artistic development over 46 years. While they retain the drama intrinsic to Butoh, Hosoe’s photographs of Ohno focus in on details of Ohno’s body, the curve of a wrist or a facial expression caught between agony and ecstasy.

Hosoe’s latest colour work, Ukiyo-e Projections, revisits his early work by linking it into ukiyo-e and Butoh dance. This series was born when he found out that the experimental Asbestos Dance Studio, founded by Hijikata and his wife, was to close in 2003 after forty years of activity. Upon hearing about the closure, Hosoe felt the need to pay a photographic tribute “to express gratitude for all that it had produced.” Ukiyo-e Projections was completed on stage at the Studio during a series of sessions in 2002 and 2003. For this series Hosoe created what he calls a “photographic theatre,” projecting a mixture of his own photographs with ukiyo-e prints on to the white-painted bodies of young Butoh dancers. The series explores many of the themes that recur in his work: sexuality, the human form and movement.

Eikoh Hosoe: Theatre of Memory highlights Hosoe’s mastery of photography through his four seminal series, Embrace, Kamaitachi, The Butterfly Dream and Ukiyo-e Projections, showing Hosoe’s sensibility for theatre, performance and the human body. It further demonstrates his creativity and mastery of photographic printing techniques. Throughout his career Hosoe, a master printer, has experimented with both film-based and digital techniques to develop new methods of photographic expression. In recent years, he has combined new printing technologies with Japanese washi paper to present his work on traditionally made silk screens and scrolls.

This is the first solo exhibition of Hosoe’s works in Australia. Hosoe, 77, is currently completing a new series of works on the sculpture of Auguste Rodin. The exhibition Eikoh Hosoe – Theatre of memory is realised in collaboration with Studio Equis, France.

Text from the Art Gallery of New South Wales website

Photographer Eikoh Hosoe on his work and inspirations

Eikoh Hosoe – a leading figure in modern Japanese photography – came to the Art Gallery of New South Wales to launch the exhibition ‘Eikoh Hosoe: theatre of memory’. In this video he discusses his work and inspirations.

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024) 'Kazuo Ohno' 1994 from the series 'The butterfly dream' 1960-2005

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Kazuo Ohno
1994
From the series The butterfly dream 1960-2005
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Kazuo Ohno
1996
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

The Butterfly Dream

The butterfly dream – a collection of photographs taken over a period of 46 years – represents Hosoe’s homage to the charismatic butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno. It was published as a book, which was released on 27 October 2006 in celebration of Ohno’s 100th birthday.

Originally an instructor in physical education and performer of modern dance, Ohno befriended Tatsumi Hijikata in the 1950s and became a pivotal fi gure in the development of the butoh performance movement. Ohno’s poetic dance style stems from his belief in the transcendental nature of human experience, that the human body has a memory of sensations and knows no limits of self-expression.

Following closely his friend’s extremely long and successful career – Ohno continued to perform late into his 90s – Hosoe has captured some of the most poignant and magical moments in the history of butoh. In honour of Ohno’s long-held conviction in the importance of achieving freedom of body and mind, Hosoe named his photographic exploration of Ohno’s unique art after the famous Daoist allegory in which the philosopher Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, but once awake, wondered if he was a man dreaming to be a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming to be Zhuangzi.

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Kamaitachi #12
1968
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Kamaitachi #14
1965
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Kamaitachi #17
1965
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

Centered on the Japanese myth of Kamaitatchi, a mythical folkloric monster believed to have existed in rural Japan, these photographs were created collaboratively by the photographer Eikoh Hosoe and the choreographer and dancer Tatsumi Hijikata (1928-86) over several years in the late 1960s. The famed choreographer, who established the abstract dance style of Butoh, performed in front of Hosoe’s camera, enacting the movement of the monster Kamaitachi.

Hosoe captured Hijikata’s transformation into Kamaitachi as they traveled from Tokyo to a small farming village in Yamagata in the Tohoku region of Japan. Often thought to be a weasel, Kamaitachi appears in a whirlwind to cut its victims with a sickle, but his cuts neither draw blood nor cause pain. In the village, Hijikata ran around in a rice field, interacted with villagers and farmers, and played with children. The artists stated that their collaboration in the rural Tohoku region (where the both artists were born) was their symbolic departure from the increasingly modernised capital city Tokyo while they had worked professionally.

Text from the Minneapolis Institute of Art website

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Kamaitachi #23
1965
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Kamaitachi #35
1968
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Kamaitachi #37
1965
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Kamaitachi #38
1968
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

Kamaitachi

Eikoh Hosoe’s long association with the revolutionary performance movement butoh came about through his encounter in 1959 with one of its founders, Tatsumi Hijikata. Hosoe collaborated with Hijikata on several series including Kamaitachi, which is acknowledged as the finest illustration of Hosoe’s hybrid photographic style, combining performance and documentary with a dramatic, virile aesthetic that embodies the founding principles of Hijikata’s ankoku butoh or ‘dance of darkness’.

The dramatic and intense energy that Hijikata generated with his dance not only captured Hosoe’s imagination but also opened up new ways for the young photographer to approach themes such as sexuality, gender and the human body.

Driven by the desire to re-enact his childhood memories when he was evacuated from Tokyo during World War Two, Hosoe had Hijikata perform kamaitachi, the legendary weasel-like demon that haunted the rice paddies in the extremely sparse, rural landscape of the Tohoku region from where they both came. Fusing reality (Hijikata interacting with the landscape and village people) and performance, Hosoe’s ‘subjective documentary’ series opened new ground in Japanese post-war photography.

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Kamaitachi #8
1965
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

Kamaitachi: Toward a Vacuum’s Nest

Shuzo Takiguchi

“When we are photographed, our bodies and souls become the victims of sacrifice in a ritual that strips our shadows away. The Eskimo, believed that their spirits resided in their shadows and that shamans had the power to steal them. Sir James George Frazer’s Golden Bough is not the only work to recount the dazzling drama of fate, or of life and death, that unfolds between man and his shadow.

Like life, death comes and goes – perhaps for a short time, perhaps longer. Narcissus’s story will continue to dominate our lives in ways that will become increasingly complicated over time; however, the camera (or, according to villagers in Sikkim, “the evil eye in a box”) seems to have reduced us, in one fell swoop, to the physics of light and shade. The objective lens seems opened to all of Nature, where all roads lead. The fact is, however, that it turns upside down once in the darkness and then is transformed into Nature.

To what extent were Katsu Kaishu,1 Baudelaire, and other luminaries of the early modern era who posed before the camera – tenuously sustained by their recognition of Nature amid a strange confusion of affectation and narcissism – aware of the evil lurking in the lens? Whatever the case, we will eventually see that, like the naked eye, the lens exists always “in its savage state.”2 We are seldom aware of the bizarre fact (or perhaps we just accept it as a self-evident truth) that both the thieves of shadows (photographers) and the thieves’ victims (subjects) are human beings.

I find it almost impossible to believe that the camera could truly capture, for example, the desire of a bird in flight at a certain moment or at any moment. All too often, the photographer unknowingly loses sight of reality, and the reality runs or rolls away, just outside the frame. Or, surprisingly, reality may be there in a corner of the image, invisible and therefore completely unnoticed. And so here I am reminded of Man Ray’s trenchant modern maxim: “Photography is not art.”

Before we even look at the Kamaitachi images, I want to stress the importance of distinguishing them from the generic concept referred to as staged photography. They are strictly, categorically, different from posed photographs of modern narcissists. If Hosoe had not met Tatsumi Hijikata, the phenomenal butoh master, he could not have created this extraordinary series. Hijikata is a man who – metaphorically speaking – can transmogrify in an instant into a phantasmagorical bird. This is not even theatrical photography, but rather a rare instance in which the camera obscura becomes a theater. And it is the paradoxical existence of the camera – which can photograph a vast void when we mean to capture a concrete object – that proves to be a stroke of luck for Hijikata, the master of movement.

Like the lens, Hijikata is a unique dancer, always aware that the “eye exists in its savage state.”3 His “dance experience” is never a matter of leaping across a stage, pretending to be a swan: if a bird is what he has in mind, Hijikata becomes a raven. The raven plunges to the ground far below the stage. Then it runs, if it wants to run, or flies, if it wants to fly. For Hijikata, hasn’t the paradoxical vacuum dwelling in the camera become a divine machine at a certain moment? Then, voluntarily or involuntarily, we may reach the lights of purgatory, for which we have yearned, beyond the millennia of human history.

At the very least, I see here an inevitable force striving to preserve the relationship between photographer and subject. In all likelihood, no other work approaches the original meaning of the term “happening” (however simplified it may be in this case) as closely as this one. Tatsumi Hijikata uses his dance artistry to abruptly penetrate the center of the vacuum between time and space, and he descends to the ground closest to the place where we were born.

He has arrived at the vacuum’s nest, the home of kamaitachi, the “sickle-weasel.”

Today it would seem that the kamaitachi belong to legend and mythology. What are kamaitachi? Memories from my childhood flood back to me: my father was a country doctor, and several times I saw farmers, claiming to have been bitten by a kamaitachi, carried to the threshold of our house. Those were frightening moments, smelling of blood, like the first bolt of lightning streaking across a dark sky. I heard the farmers say they were attacked out of the blue, under a rice-drying rack or an ancient persimmon tree. But no one bore a grudge against that invisible weasel. In fact, a family of actual weasels made their home in the loft of the thatched shed behind our house. Every once in a while, I would see them dart across a field, always taking the shortest path and then disappearing. They lived among people but avoided them. The rumour was that the disreputable little creatures were so wary and agile that they never took the same path twice. I wonder whatever happened to them. One book defines kamaitachi as a laceration from the localised vacuum created by a dust devil. No one really knows the truth. The days of kamaitachi are long gone.

Was kamaitachi a spirit of the soil, a phantom that appeared only to farmers? If so, that invisible flying blade must have been incredibly sharp to leap through the sky and pierce flesh.

It is hard to say whether Tatsumi Hijikata is a spirit of the soil or the air; however, even before we can contemplate the question, he approaches the ground almost vertically and rushes like a gale into a farming village. This village is in a rice-growing district, where Japan’s most inconsistent and absurd social reality anomalously persists. Hijikata appears suddenly, like a hawk diving to the ground – or a kidnapper from heaven.

The god of the rice fields smiles on this scene. A faint trace of that smile is on the kagura theatrical dance mask, but it isn’t the embarrassed smile replayed endlessly on television. It is a smile that could exist among demons, a smile that was present even on a footpath between barren rice fields during a terrible famine, a startling but comical smile from the realm of the unconscious.

At a precise moment, our dancer and photographer approach a timeworn village – their footsteps only faintly audible – and they capture a brief moment in the empty village, where zinnias and other flowers bloom, coated with white soil dust. The entire village, mesmerised like a haunted house, enthrals them.

Is he a hawk that has just landed – or a leaping weasel? It is foolish to ask. It is our dancer who would be wounded. The villagers gaze at him innocently, as though he reminds them of a long-forgotten priest. They smile, without knowing why, at the arrival of the oblivious fool. Their smiles become the same smile of the footpath between rice fields. It is a smile that borders on terror.

A girl smiles like a shrine maiden whom the gods have endowed with evil and innocence in perfect balance. Were the girls born fairies? Sooner or later they will experience the orgasm of life and death. Then they will depart. Will they return to the earth or to the sky? No one knows which path they will take.

In any case, two contradictory, endless journeys await them.

Hairy vacuum! Bloody vacuum! Biting vacuum! You must continue to exist on this earth!

The desire for the heavens will inexorably lead to a desire for the bowels of the earth. Then the excrescence will head for the huge void, and vice versa. The cosmic metamorphosis that this phenomenon seeks will occur, extremely and tangibly. The vacuum theater, too, is part of the evolution.

To arrive at the source of the phantom of ecstasy, we must dig deeper and deeper, day by day.

And the witness is an instantaneous flash.”

by Shuzo Takiguchi
Translated by Connie Prener

1/ Officer credited with the modernisation of Japan’s navy (1823-1899)
2/ Allusion to Andre Breton’s Le Surréalisme et la peinture
3/ Ibid.,

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Embrace #48
1970
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

Embrace

First published as a book in 1971, Embrace represents a return to the study of the human body that Hosoe undertook in earlier series such as Man and woman (1959) or Ordeal by roses (1963). In this new body of work, however, he abandoned the strong contrast and dramatic, baroque visual aesthetic in favour of the purity of the human form. Showing abstract fragments of male and female nudes in intimate placement, the series is not merely about eroticism or the dialogue of rivalry between the opposite sexes but is also a celebration of the pure beauty of the human body.

By depersonalising the bodies of his models, Hosoe attempted to reach a universal expression of corporeality. The extreme abstraction of these images focuses the attention on the flesh, which, according to Hosoe’s belief, is the essence of human beings.

The author Yukio Mishima comments on this series: ‘The viscosity which is associated with sex – those earthly odours and temperatures of soft and indeterminately formed internal organs – has been painstakingly removed from these photographs. To me this is a series filled with a hard, athletic beauty. First and foremost, it is about form.’

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Embrace #52
1970
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

Ukiyo-e Projections

When Hosoe heard the news that the Asbestos Dance Studio, founded by Tatsumi Hijikata and his wife Akiko Motofuji, was to close in April 2003 after 40 years of activity, he felt the need to pay tribute to the achievements of this experimental studio. With the help of Hijikata’s widow, he organised a series of performances in 2002 and 2003, in which the dancers were asked to coordinate their movements in accordance with images from his own work, as well as from 19th-century Japanese paintings and woodblock prints projected on their naked, white-painted bodies.

The result of this ‘photographic theatre’ was stunning: a mysterious four-dimensional space transcending ordinary space and time was created as the two-dimensional images were projected on the three-dimensional bodies. The idea to use shunga – the erotic woodblock prints by noted ukiyo-e artists such as Utamaro, Hokusai and others – stemmed from Hosoe’s conviction that Hijikata’s archaic, ecstatic dance style had its roots in this particular art genre of the Edo period (1603-1868).

Exploring many of the themes that recur in Hosoe’s work – sexuality, the human form, movement and the passage of time – this series epitomises his unique approach in synthesising photography with various forms of visual and performance arts.

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Ukiyo-e Projections #2-36
2003
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

Art Gallery of New South Wales
Art Gallery Road, The Domain
Sydney NSW 2000, Australia

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Review: ‘American Dreams: 20th century photography from George Eastman House’ at Bendigo Art Gallery, Victoria

Exhibition dates: 16th April – 10th July 2011

Gertrude Käsebier (American, 1852-1934)
The Sketch (Beatrice Baxter)
1903
Platinum print
Gift of Hermine Turner
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

This is a fabulous survey exhibition of the great artists of 20th century American photography, a rare chance in Australia to see such a large selection of vintage prints from some of the masters of photography. If you have a real interest in the history of photography you must see this exhibition, showing as it is just a short hour and a half drive (or train ride) from Melbourne at Bendigo Art Gallery.

I talked with the curator, Tansy Curtin, and asked her about the exhibition’s gestation. This is the first time an exhibition from the George Eastman House has come to Australia and the exhibition was 3-4 years in the making. Tansy went to George Eastman House in March last year to select the prints; this was achieved by going through solander box after solander box of vintage prints and seeing what was there, what was available and then making work sheets for the exhibition – what a glorious experience this would have been, undoing box after box to reveal these magical prints!

The themes for the exhibition were already in the history of photography and Tansy has chosen almost exclusively vintage prints that tell a narrative story, that make that story accessible to people who know little of the history of photography. With that information in mind the exhibition is divided into the following sections:

Photography becomes art; The photograph as social document; Photographing America’s monuments; Abstraction and experimentation; Photojournalism and war photography; Fashion and celebrity portraiture; Capturing the everyday; Photography in colour; Social and environmental conscience; and The contemporary narrative.

There are some impressive, jewel-like contact prints in the exhibition. One must remember that, for most of the photographers working after 1940, exposure, developing and printing using Ansel Adams Zone System (where the tonal range of the negative and print can be divided into 11 different ‘zones’ from 0 for absolute black and to 10 for absolute white) was the height of technical sophistication and aesthetic choice, equal to the best gaming graphics from today’s age. It was a system that I used in my black and white film development and printing. Film development using a Pyrogallol staining developer (the infamous ‘pyro’, a developer I tried to master without success in a few trial batches of film) was also technically difficult but the ability of this developer to obtain a greater dynamic range of zones in the film itself was outstanding.

“The Zone System provides photographers with a systematic method of precisely defining the relationship between the way they visualise the photographic subject and the final results… An expressive image involves the arrangement and rendering of various scene elements according to photographer’s desire. Achieving the desired image involves image management (placement of the camera, choice of lens, and possibly the use of camera movements) and control of image values. The Zone System is concerned with control of image values, ensuring that light and dark values are rendered as desired. Anticipation of the final result before making the exposure is known as visualisation.”1

Previsualisation, the ability of the photographer to see ‘in the mind’s eye’ the outcome of the photograph (the final print) before even looking through the camera lens to take the photograph, was an important skill for most of these photographers. This skill has important implications for today’s photographers, should they choose to develop this aspect of looking: not as a mechanistic system but as a meditation on the possibilities of each part of the process, the outcome being an expressive print.

A selection of the best photographs in the exhibition could include,

1/ An original 1923 Alfred Steiglitz Equivalent contact print – small (approx. 9cm x 12cm, see below), intense, the opaque brown blacks really strong, the sun shining brightly through the velvety clouds. In the Equivalents series the photograph was purely abstract, standing as a metaphor for another state of being, in this case music. A wonderful melding of the technical and the aesthetic the Equivalents “are generally recognised as the first photographs intended to free the subject matter from literal interpretation, and, as such, are some of the first completely abstract photographic works of art.”2

2/ Paul Strand Blind (1915, printed 1945) – printed so dark that you cannot see the creases in the coat of the blind woman with a Zone 3 dark skin tone.

3/ Lewis Hine [Powerhouse mechanic] see below, vintage 1920 print full of subtle tones. Usually when viewing reproductions of this image it is either cropped or the emphasis is on the body of the mechanic; in this print his skin tones are translucent, silvery and the emphasis is on the man in unison with the machine. The light is from the top right of the print and falls not on him directly, but on the machinery at upper right = this is the emotional heart of this image!

4/ Three tiny vintage Tina Modotti prints from c. 1929 – so small, such intense visions. I have never seen one original Modotti before so to see three was just sensational.

5/ Walker Evans View of Morgantown, West Virginia vintage 1935 print – a cubist dissection of space and the image plane with two-point perspective of telegraph pole with lines.

6/ An Edward S. Curtis photogravure Washo Baskets (1924, from the portfolio The North American Indian) – such a sumptuous composition and the tones…

7/ Ansel Adams 8″ x 10″ contact print of Winter Storm (1944, printed 1959, see above) where the blackness of the mountain on the left hand side of the print was almost impenetrable and, because of the large format negative, the snow on the rock in mid-distance was like a sprinkling of icing sugar on a cake it was that sharp.

8/ A most splendid print of the Chrysler Building (vintage 1930 print, approx. 48 x 34cm) by Margaret Bourke-White – tonally rich browns, smoky, hazy city at top; almost like a platinum print rather than a silver gelatin photograph. The bottom left of the print was SO dark but you could still see into the shadows just to see the buildings.

9/ An original Robert Capa 1944 photograph from the Omaha Beach D Day landings!

10/ Frontline soldier with canteen, Saipan (1944, vintage print) by W Eugene Smith where the faces of the soldiers were almost Zone 2-3 and there was nothing in the print above zone 5 (mid-grey) – no physical and metaphoric light.

11/ One of the absolute highlights: two vintage Edward Weston side by side, the form of one echoing the form of the other; Nude from the 50th Anniversary Portfolio 1902-1952 (1936, printed 1951), an 8″ x 10″ contact print side by side with an 8″ x 10″ contact print of Pepper No. 30 (vintage 1930 print). Nothing over zone 7 in the skin tones of the nude, no specular highlights; the sensuality in the pepper just stunning – one of my favourite prints of the day – look at the tones, look at the light!

12/ Three vintage Aaron Siskind (one of my favourite photographers) including two early prints from 1938 – wow. Absolutely stunning.

13/ Harry Callahan. That oh so famous image of Eleanor and Barbara, Chicago (vintage 1953 print) that reminds me of the work of Jeffrey Smart (or is it the other way around). The wonderful space around the figures, the beautiful composition, the cobblestones and the light – just ravishing.

14/ The absolute highlight: Three vintage Diane Arbus prints in a row – including a 15″ square image from the last series of work Untitled (6) (vintage 1971 print, see above) – the year in which she committed suicide. This had to be the moment of the day for me. This has always been one of my favourite photographs ever and it did not disappoint; there was a darkness to the trees behind the three figures and much darker grass (zone 3-4) than I had ever imagined with a luminous central figure. The joyousness of the figures was incredible. The present on the ground at the right hand side was a revelation – usually lost in reproductions this stood out from the grass like you wouldn’t believe in the print. Being an emotional person I am not afraid to admit it, I burst into tears…

15/ And finally another special… Two vintage Stephen Shore chromogenic colour prints from 1976 where the colours are still true and have not faded. This was incredible – seeing vintage prints from one of the early masters of colour photography; noticing that they are not full of contrast like a lot of today’s colour photographs – more like a subtle Panavision or Technicolor film from the early 1960s. Rich, subtle, beautiful hues. For a contemporary colour photographer the trip to Bendigo just to see these two prints would be worth the time and the car trip/rail ticket alone!

Not everything is sweetness and light. The print by Dorothea Lange Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California is a contemporary print from 2003, the vintage print having just been out on loan; the contemporary section, ‘The contemporary narrative’, is very light on, due mainly to the nature of the holdings of George Eastman House; and there are some major photographers missing from the line up including Minor White, Fredrick Sommer, Paul Caponigro, Wynn Bullock and William Clift to name just a few.

Of more concern are the reproductions in the catalogue, the images for reproduction supplied by George Eastman House and the catalogue signed off by them. The reproduction of Margaret Bourke-White’s Chrysler Building (1930, see below) bears no relationship to the print in the exhibition and really is a denigration to the work of that wonderful photographer. Other reproductions are massively oversized, including the Alfred Stieglitz Equivalent, Lewis Hine’s Powerhouse mechanic (see below) and Tina Modotti’s Woman Carrying Child (c. 1929). In Walter Benjamin’s terms (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction) the aura of the original has been lost and these reproductions further erode the authenticity of the original in their infinite reproducability. Conversely, it could be argued that the reproduction auraticizes the original:

“The original artwork has become a device to sell its multiply-reproduced derivatives; reproductability turned into a ploy to auraticize the original after the decay of aura…”3

In other words, after having seen so many reproductions when you actually see the original – it is like a bolt of lightning, the aura that emanates from the original. This is so true of this exhibition but it still begs the question: why reproduce in the catalogue at a totally inappropriate size? Personally, I believe that the signification of the reproduction (in terms of size and intensity of visualisation) is so widely at variance with the original one must question the decision to reproduce at this size knowing that this variance is a misrepresentation of the artistic interpretation of the author.

In conclusion, this is a sublime exhibition well worthy of the time and energy to journey up to Bendigo to see it. A true lover of classical American black and white and colour photography would be a fool to miss it!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Anon. “Zone System,” on Wikipedia [Online] Cited 13/06/2011
2/ Anon. “Equivalents,” on Wikipedia [Online] Cited 13/06/2011
3/ Huyssen, Andreas. Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia. London: Routledge, 1995, pp. 23-24

Many thankx to Tansy Curtin, Senior Curator, Programs and Access at Bendigo Art Gallery for her time and knowledge when I visited the gallery; and to Bendigo Art Gallery for allowing me to publish the text and photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Actual size of print: 9.2 x 11.8 cm
Size of print in catalogue: 18.5 x 13.9 cm

These two photographs represent a proportionate relation between the two sizes as they appear in print and catalogue but because of monitor resolutions are not the actual size of the two prints.

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Equivalent
1923
Gelatin silver print
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Actual size of print: 16.9 x 11.8cm
Size of print in catalogue: 23.2 x 15.8cm

These two photographs represent a proportionate relation between the two sizes as they appear in print and catalogue but because of monitor resolutions are not the actual size of the two prints.

Lewis Hine (American, 1874-1940)
[Powerhouse mechanic]
1920
Gelatin silver print
Transfer from the Photo League Lewis Hine Memorial Committee, ex-collection Corydon Hine
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

As it approximately appears in the exhibition (above, from my notes, memory and comparing the print in the exhibition with the catalogue reproduction)

Below, as the reproduction appears in the catalogue (scanned)

Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904-1971)
Chrysler Building
New York City
1930
Silver gelatin photograph

An exhibition of treasures from arguably the world’s most important photographic museum, George Eastman House, has been developed by Bendigo Art Gallery. The exhibition American Dreams will bring, for the first time, eighty of some of the most iconic photographic images from the 20th Century to Australia.

The choice of works highlights the trailblazing role these American artists had on the world stage in developing and shaping the medium, and the impact these widely published images had on the greater community.

Curator Tansy Curtin, who worked closely with George Eastman House developing the exhibition commented, “Through these images we can recognise the extraordinary ability of these artists, and their pivotal role influencing the evolution of photography. Their far-reaching images helped shape American culture, and impacted on the fundamental role photography has in communications today. Even more than this we can see through these artists the burgeoning love of photography that engaged a nation.”

Through these images we can see not only the development of photography, but also as some of the most powerful social documentary photography of last century, we see extraordinary moments captured in the lives of a wide range of Americans. The works distil the dramatic transformation that affected people during the 20th century – the affluence, degradation, loss, hope and change – both personally and throughout society.

The role of photography in nation building is exemplified in Ansel Adams’ majestic portraits of Yosemite national park, Bourke-White’s Chrysler building and images of migrants and farm workers during the Depression. Tansy Curtin added, “We see the United States ‘growing up’ through photography. We see hopes raised and crushed and the inevitable striving for the American Dream.” Director of Bendigo Art Gallery Karen Quinlan said, “We are thrilled to have been given this unprecedented opportunity to work with this unrivalled photographic archive. The resulting exhibition American Dreams, represents one of the most important and comprehensive collections of American 20th Century photography to come to Australia.”

George Eastman House holds over 400,000 images from the invention of photography to the present day. George Eastman, one time owner of the home in which the archives are housed, founded Kodak and revolutionised and democratised photography around the world. Eastman is considered the grandfather of snapshot photography.

American Dreams is one of the first exhibitions from this important collection to have been curated by an outside institution. It will be the first time Australian audiences have been given the opportunity to engage with this vast archive.

Press release from the Bendigo Art Gallery

Paul Strand (American 1890-1976)
Blind woman, New York
1916
Platinum print
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Edward S. Curtis (American, 1868-1952)
Washo Baskets
1924
From the portfolio The North American Indian
Photogravure
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Tina Modotti (Italian / American / Mexican, 1896-1942)
Woman Carrying Child
c. 1929
Gelatin silver print
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Pepper No. 30
1930
Vintage silver gelatin print
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Torn Poster, Truro, Massachusetts
1930
Gelatin silver contact print
Purchased with funds from National Endowment for the Arts
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Alfred Steiglitz (American, 1864-1946)
[Georgia O’Keefe hand on back tire of Ford V8]
1933
gelatin silver print
Part purchase and part gift from Georgia O’Keefe
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
View of Morgantown, West Virginia
June, 1935
Gelatin silver print
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California
1936, printed c. 2003
Photogravure print
Gift of Sean Corcoran
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Nude
1936, printed 1951
From the Fiftieth Anniversary Portfolio: 1902-1952, c. 1952
Vintage silver gelatin print
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Kern County California
1938
Gelatin silver print
Exchange with Roy Stryker
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park
c. 1938
Gelatin silver print
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

W. Eugene Smith (American, 1918-1978)
[Frontline Soldier with Canteen at Saipan]
June 1944
Gelatin silver print
41.1 × 32.4cm
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Eleanor and Barbara, Chicago
1953
Vintage gelatin silver print
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Untitled (6)
1971
Gelatin silver print
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Bendigo Art Gallery
42 View Street Bendigo
Victoria Australia 3550
Phone: 03 5434 6088

Opening hours:
Bendigo Art Gallery is open daily 10 am – 5 pm

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Exhibition: ‘HIJACKED 2: Australia/Germany’ at the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide

Exhibition dates: 13th May – 1st July 2011

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

Olaf Unverzart (German, b. 1972)
Untitled (from the series Fallen Kann Ich Auch Alleine)
1999
Pigment print
56 x 38cm/125 x 85cm
Courtesy of Oechsner Galerie

Ingvar Kenne (Australian born Sweden, b. 1965)
Nick Cave
2001
From the series Citizen 1997-2012
C-type print
100 x 100cm
Courtesy of the artist

Narelle Autio (Australian, b. 1969)
Untitled 8 (from the series Not of This Earth)
2001
Courtesy of the artist

Jörg Brüggemann (German, b. 1979)
Nam Song River, Vang Vieng, Laos, December 2007
2007
C-type print
69 x 57cm
Courtesy of the artist and Ostkreuz

Johanna Ahlert (German, b. 1980)
Truck and Trailer Castle, Berlin
2008
From the series CONVOI 2008
C-type print
100 x 127cm
Courtesy of the artist

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
The loners
2009
From the series Between worlds
Pigment ink-jet print
105 x 105cm

Ingvar Kenne (Australian born Sweden, b. 1965)
Mona Chuguna, Author, Broome, Australia
2009
From the series Citizen 1997-2012
C-type print
100 x 100cm
Courtesy of the artist

Hijacked 2: Australia/Germany builds on the very considerable success of the inaugural exhibition, Hijacked 1 – Australia and America, and its internationally celebrated and hugely successful book. This new exhibition effectively considers two socially disparate nations, Germany and Australia, through an expansive photographic anthology of fascinating works, juxtaposed to suggest connections.

Hijacked 2 has been curated by Mark McPherson and Ute Noll and showcases the diverse talents and perspectives of thirty contemporary German and Australian photographers. With a focus on the depiction of the young, the boundary-riding, and the fringe-dwelling, Hijacked 2 is evocative, confronting, dreamlike and rousing.

Featured artists from Australia are: Narelle Autio, James Brickwood, Michael Corridore, Andrew Cowen, Tamara Dean, Suzie Fox, Lee Grant, Derek Henderson, Rebecca Ann Hobbs, Ingvar Kenne, Bronek Kózka, Georgia Metaxas, Polixeni Papapetrou and Louis Porter.

From Germany the artists are: Johanna Ahlert, Natalie Bothur, Jörg Brüggemann, Thekla Ehling, Albrecht Fuchs, Jan von Holleben, Karsten Kronas, Anne Lass, Jens Liebchen, Myriam Lutz, Julian Röder, Josef Schulz, Oliver Sieber, Ivonne Thein, Olaf Unverzart and Sascha Weidner.

Hijacked 2: Australia/Germany is toured by the Australian Centre for Photography. A substantial 412-page publication accompanies the exhibition with texts by Uta Daur, Bec Dean, Alasdair Foster, Bill Kouwenhoven, Katja Melzer, Daniel Palmer and Katrina Schwarz.

Text from the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art website

Ivon Thein (German, b. 1979)
Untitled 07 (from the series Thirty-Two Kilos)
2006
C-type print
55 x 80cm
Courtesy of Galerie Voss

Oliver Sieber (German, b. 1966)
Reita, Köln, 2007
2007
Pigment print
34 x 27cm
Courtesy Galerie Priska Pasquer, Germany

David Henderson (New Zealand, b. 1963)
Dave Omeka Kidwell and Feather, Ātiamuri
2008
From the series Mercy Mercer

Thekla Ehling (German, b. 1968)
Untitled
2011
From the series Vergiszmeinnicht (forget-me-not)

Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art
Hawke Building, City West campus
University of South Australia
55 North Terrace, Adelaide
Phone: (08) 8302 0870

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Exhibition: ‘Vienna – Art & Design’ at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 18th June – 9th October 2011

Media preview for Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

A subtle pleasure

The delicate paintings are smaller with a flatness of texture and a sombreness than I had not imagined; magnificent in their subtlety. However, the real stars of this wonderful exhibition are the design pieces.

Whether silver, wood, ceramic, glass or jewellery the designs are balanced by a glorious aesthetic. Never has a tea service looked so ravishing or decadent.

This is not a wham bang show like Dali or that other King of some fame showing elsewhere. This is for a discerning audience – one that can take time (between pots of tea) to study and go ooh and aah!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the National Gallery of Victoria for inviting me and for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All photographs © Marcus Bunyan 2011 except the photographs of the full paintings which come from the NGV press CD ROM.

I just couldn’t help myself!
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of first room of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of first room of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria showing at left:

Otto Wagner (architect) (Austrian, 1841-1918)
Alexander Albert (manufacturer) Austria active c. 1904
Chair for Dr Karl Lueger
1904
Rosewood (Dalbergia sp.), mother-of-pearl, leather
98.5 x 63 x 59.5cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Estate of Karl Lueger, 1910

at right:

Wilhelm Gause (Germany 1853-1916)
Vienna Municipal Ball
1904
Watercolour and oil on cardboard
62 x 88cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Commissioned by the City of Vienna, 1904
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Wilhelm Gause (Germany 1853-1916)
Vienna Municipal Ball
1904
Watercolour and oil on cardboard
62 x 88cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Commissioned by the City of Vienna, 1904

Stylish, provocative, rebellious, and unforgettable – the world has seen nothing like Vienna in 1900. A century ago, a group of radical young artists, architects, writers, musicians, designers and thinkers overturned all the rules and created a brave new world. Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Josef Hoffmann and Adolf Loos were central to this artistic revolution which transformed Vienna into a dynamic metropolis at the forefront of ground-breaking modernism.

Vienna at the dawn of the twentieth century was opulent, elegant and daring. Casting aside outmoded social mores and moralities, private life became public spectacle. Cabarets, coffee houses, and nightclubs teemed with radical debate and artistic abandon. Gustav Klimt’s society portraits immortalise the chic women who presided over this creative ferment. Josef Hoffmann and the Vienna Workshops created the bold new interior design and the household objects with which these women furnished their elegant homes, establishing the modern ‘look’. As Sigmund Freud defined sexual fragmentation and erotic obsession for a new millennium, Egon Schiele explored human sexuality in images of unparalleled and startling frankness.

Vienna: Art & Design will explore this extraordinary period of artistic and intellectual genius, bringing together more than 250 works of art, including painting, drawing, graphic and decorative art, furniture, fashion, jewellery and photography, most never before seen in Australia. Visitors will experience the inventiveness and brilliance of a unique generation who laid the foundations for life in the twentieth century – a legacy still vividly alive today.

Text from the National Gallery of Victoria website Nd [Online] Cited 22/07/2022

Otto Wagner (Austrian, 1841-1918) (architect)
Alexander Albert (Austria active c. 1904) (manufacturer)
Chair for Dr Karl Lueger
1904
Rosewood (Dalbergia sp.), mother-of-pearl, leather
98.5 x 63 x 59.5cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Estate of Karl Lueger, 1910
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Josef Hoffmann (Austrian, 1870-1956) (designer)
J. & J. Kohn, Vienna (manufacturer)
Adjustable-back chair (Sitzmaschine)
1908
Ebonised Beech (Fagus sp.), plywood, steel
(a-b) 110.8 x 68.1 x 83.7cm (overall)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased through The Art Foundation of Victoria with the assistance of Jardine Matheson Australia, Fellow, 1983
© Estate of Josef Hoffmann

Josef Hoffmann (Austrian, 1870-1956) (designer)
Wiener Werkstätte, Vienna (commissioning workshop)
J. Soulek, Vienna (manufacturer)
Bureau, from the Gallia apartment boudoir
1913
Painted wood, gilt, glass, silk, brass
(a-m) 179.4 x 110.9 x 64.6cm (overall)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Samuel E. Wills Bequest, 1976
© Estate of Josef Hoffmann

Otto Wagner (Austria 1841-1918) (architect)
Reconstruction of facade for Die Zeit (installation view)
1902 designed, 1985 made
Iron, aluminium, nickel-plated iron, glass
450 x 332cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Commissioned by the Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, 1985
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Otto Wagner (Austria 1841-1918) (architect)
Reconstruction of facade for Die Zeit (installation detail)
1902 designed, 1985 made
Iron, aluminium, nickel-plated iron, glass
450 x 332cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Commissioned by the Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, 1985
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Otto Wagner objects including shelving, stool, chair and hot air blower (rear) in the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Gustav Klimt (Austria 1862-1918)
The Park (installation detail)
1909
Oil on canvas
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view part of the second room of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Wilhelm Otto List
Young lady in black and white (installation detail)
1904
Oil on canvas
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Charles Robert Ashbee (designer) (British, 1863-1942)
Standing cup and cover (installation view)
1901
Silver, turqoise

Josef Hoffmann (designer) (Austria-Hungary 1870-1956)
Sports Trophy (installation view)
1902
Silver, gilt, malachite
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Josef Hoffmann (Austria-Hungary 1870-1956) (designer)
Wiener Werkstätte, Vienna (manufacturer) (Austria-Hungary 1903-1932)
Tea service (installation view)
c. 1909-1911
Silver-gilt, wood
(1.A-E) 21.5 x 29.0 x 26.8cm (overall) (kettle, stand and burner)
(2) 10.8 x 15.4 x 20.2cm (teapot)
(3.A-B) 8.7 x 8.8 x 6.8cm (overall) (sugar basin and lid)
(4) 4.8 x 8.5 x 15.6cm (milk jug)
(5) 3.4 x 36.3 x 29.9cm (tray)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased, 1985
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of room three of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria showing part of Gustave Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze: Central wall 1901-1902 (detail at top)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Max Klinger (German, 1857-1920)
Beethoven (installation view)
c. 1902
Plaster
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of room four of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria with at right, Gustav Klimt’s painting Emilie Flöge (1902)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Gustav Klimt (Austrian, 1862-1918)
Emilie Flöge
1902
Oil on canvas
178.0 x 80.0cm
Wien Museum, Vienna

Gustav Klimt (Austrian, 1862-1918)
Emilie Flöge (installation detail)
1902
Oil on canvas
178.0 x 80.0cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of room five of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of first room of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria showing at right:

Koloman Moser (Austrian, 1868-1918) (designer)
Armchair (installation view)
1903
Painted beech

at second right

Josef Hoffmann (Austrian, 1870-1956) (designer)
Collapsible library steps (installation view)
1905
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Gustav Klimt (Austrian, 1862-1918)
Fritza Riedler (installation detail)
1906
Oil on canvas
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Gustav Klimt (Austrian, 1862-1918)
Fritza Riedler
1906
Oil on canvas
152.0 x 134.0cm
Belvedere, Vienna

Installation views of room six of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Josef Hoffmann (Austrian, 1870-1956)
Tea and coffee service (installation view)
1909
Silver, ivory
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of room seven of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria with, against the wall,

Adolf Loos (Austrian, 1870-1933) (designer)
Sideboard, from the Langer apartment
1903
Mahogany (Swietenia sp.), mirror, brass
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Adolf Loos (Austrian, 1870-1933) (designer)
Johann Heeg (manufacturer)
Clock
1906-1907
Brass, glass, clock mechanism, enamel paint, steel
(a-b) 42.7 x 43.0 x 32.7cm (overall) (c) 7.4 x 5.5 x 0.8cm (key)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased through The Art Foundation of Victoria with the assistance of Waltons Limited, Fellow, 1987

Installation view of room seven of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Ferdinand Andri (Austrian, 1871-1956)
The Gallia children (installation view)
1901
Oil on canvas

with Josef Hoffmann furniture in the foreground
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Ferdinand Andri (Austrian, 1871-1956)
The Gallia children
1901
Oil on canvas
100.4 × 130.8cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented by the family of Moriz and Hermine Gallia, 1976
© the artist’s estate

Gustave Klimt (Austrian, 1862-1918)
Portrait of Hermine Gallia (installation view detail)
1904
Oil on canvas
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Pieces of Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Mosser silver in the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Love the reflected light!

Installation views of room eight of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Objects by Dagobert Peche (left, right and second right) and Josef Hoffmann in the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Egon Schiele (Austrian, 1890-1918)
Portrait of a boy (Portrait of Herbert Rainer aged approximately six (installation detail)
1910
Oil on canvas
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Egon Schiele (Austrian, 1890-1918)
Portrait of a boy (Portrait of Herbert Rainer aged approximately six)
1910
Oil on canvas
101.0 x 101.5cm
Belvedere, Vienna

NGV International
180 St Kilda Road

Opening hours:
Daily 10am – 5pm

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Review: ‘Trace’ by Murray Fredericks at Arc One Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 24th May – 18th June 2011

Murray Fredericks (Australian, b. 1970)
Salt 271
2011
150 x 120cm
Pigment print on cotton rag

“Photographers tell me what I already know. The recognition of the beautiful, bizarre, or boring (the three photographic B’s) is not the problem. You would have to be a refrigerator not to be moved by the beauty of Yosemite. The problem is to deal with one’s total experience, emotionally as well as visually. Photographers should tell me what I don’t know.”

Duane Michals Real Dreams1

“While we cannot describe its appearance (the equivalent), we can define its function. When a photograph functions as an Equivalent we can say that at that moment, and for that person the photograph acts as a symbol or plays the role of a metaphor for something that is beyond the subject photographed.”

Minor White

Fredericks new infrared panoramic works show the strength of nature at it’s finest (9 out of 10 to nature especially when see through this type of filtration), excellent technical skills and good printing but somehow any revelation of spirit in the sublime has been lost in these photographs.

The photographer does not take me anywhere, there is no new space to step into, another view of the world that I want to spend time with. The relationship between the two series is also nebulous, the critical ice / fire space between the works adding little frisson to the exhibition.

I ask: Is it sufficient to use a digital scientific infrared back, if for no other reason that it is there? Is it sufficient to know that these climatic conditions take place in the same area each day, at the same time, place the camera down and just capture the scene? Is there really a non-decisive moment in these photographs, a poetic insight, or is this just what was, literally, hanging around so to speak?

The answer to all three questions I leave up to the reader.

Personally, I need photography to push the boundaries of elusiveness through an understanding in revelation, not just through an understanding of space and form, light and colour. I believe that conventional patterns of perception are there to be broken in ways that disrupt the technologies of the self – the self-regulating of our senses, the conventions of cultural capital – but too what do we open ourselves up to?

As Minor White says: ‘The sound of one hand clapping’.

While the photographs have the weight of serious equipment and professional acumen behind them after the initial awe on viewing they fall to earth, like the rainstorms they portray. As with my earlier review of Salt they seem to be more about the photographer than any revelation of the thing being photographed.

Duane Michals observes that, “The best artists give themselves in their work” but this giving is ego-less, the dropping away of the bells and whistles to let an’other’ emerge: in this sense I do not feel the total experience, emotionally as well as visually.

Paul Strand said that it took him 10 years to start to become an artist, to let go of ego in his work; paradoxically after this the work became more his own.

For me, these photographs never become a metaphor for something that is beyond the subject being photographed.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Michals, Duane. Real Dreams 1976 [Online] Cited 08/06/2011, on longer available online.

Many thankx to Angela Connor for her help and to Arc One Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Murray Fredericks (Australian, b. 1970)
Salt 272
2010
Pigment print on cotton rag
150 x 120cm

Murray Fredericks (Australian, b. 1970)
Salt 273
2011
Pigment print on cotton rag
150 x 120cm

Salt began in 2003 and is a series of photographs of vast empty landscapes. Each image in the series is connected by the placement of the horizon running across the lower third of the frame. The horizon is the only referential form, breaking the void and providing the viewer with an element that paradoxically ‘defines’ the space. These new works add another dimension to Salt, with the water from last year’s rains now creating scenes diametrically opposed to the work occupying the adjacent walls as Hector.

Hector draws its title from an affectionately name atmospheric phenomenon that produces some of the world’s biggest thunderstorms. These new black and white works employ Murray’s methodical consistency of composition with distinctly different outcomes to the Zen-like vistas of Salt. In these works the expanse of the storm is consciously contained and forced into a barometric battle with the invisible air at its limits for the place of subject within the photograph…

By juxtaposing these series, each viewer is at once placed outside the containers which harbour these landscapes of remote territories – one calm and one facing the eye of the storm – and at the same time place in the centre of Murray’s minimal, ethereal representations of these places. In this way we can trace his exploration into these subjects – capturing the moment is our witness to a reverence to land and country.

Text from Arc One Gallery

Joseph Mallord William Turner (English, 1775-1851)
Valley of Aosta: Snowstorm, Avalanche, and Thunderstorm
1836/37
Oil on canvas
36 1/4 x 48 in. (92.2 x 123cm)
The Art Institute of Chicago: Frederick T. Haskell Collection

Murray Fredericks (Australian, b. 1970)
Hector 10
2011
220 x 120cm
Pigment print on cotton rag

Murray Fredericks (Australian, b. 1970)
Hector 11
2011
204 x 120cm
Pigment print on cotton rag

Arc One Gallery
45 Flinders Lane
Melbourne, 3000
Phone: (03) 9650 0589

Opening hours:
Wed – Sat 11am – 5pm

Arc One Gallery website

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Review: ‘Ice Structure’ by Kirsten Haydon at Gallery Funaki, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 24th May – 18th June, 2011

Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973) ice objects 2011 Enamel, copper, reflector beads Various dimensions

“Confronted by the immensity and power of desert and ice, one cannot simply stand to the side and evaluate as though one were standing before a landscape garden and other works of art. Conflicting emotions, including fear, are aroused and simultaneously absorbed or taken over by the overmastering presence of nature.”
Yi Fu Tuan. Desert and Ice: Ambivalent Aesthetics, 1993

There are many things to like about this exhibition: the fine craftsmanship, the forms, the observation and the beauty of some of the pieces. The symbolism is simple and effective – re-imaged relics of white, vitreous enamel objects from the huts of Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton, the use of reflector beads to imitate snow and Meccano-like steel girders to symbolise human construction and encroachment on a pristine land. Some of the ‘objects’ remind me of the beauty and simplicity of Etruscan vessels, seemingly delicate apports, being the transference of an article from one place and time to another; the use of reflector beads at the bottom of ice sample (2011, below) is also inspired. So too is the occlusion of the image in the brooch ice plane (2011, below) which adds further mystery to an already surreal landscape. One piece is absolutely stunning. The wonderful neckpiece ice movement (2011, see two photographs below) is ravishing in it’s articulation and form, its snow-covered twig-like coolness. Unfortunately where the exhibition fails is in the use of banal images in several works such as ice depot, ice runway, ice industry (brooch, all 2011, not pictured) and ice industry (2011, neckpiece, below). The obvious point being made is that of man made construction in a pristine landscape but the simple symbology used so effectively in other pieces becomes a little awkward in these pieces. The images used are quite ugly and while this fits the symbolic use of them it doesn’t make for very interesting or illuminating art. There needed to be more layering for the message to be effective – which is why the occluded brooch works so well, human construction blinded, dissolved. This is a pity because the rest of the exhibition is excellent. Enter this ice world and you will be delightfully surprised! Dr Marcus Bunyan Many thankx to Katie Scott for her help and Gallery Funaki for allowing me to publish the photographs and text in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973) 'ice edge' and 'ice sheet flow' both 2011

Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973) ice edge (left) Object 2011, enamel, reflector beads, copper, silver 60 x 350 x 210 mm ice sheet flow (right) Object 2011 Enamel, reflector beads, copper, silver 70 x 130 x 195 mm

Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973) ice plane Brooch 2011 Enamel, photo transfer, reflector beads, silver, copper, steel 80 x 80 x 10 mm

Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973) 'ice movement', neckpiece, 2011

Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973) ice industry neckpiece 2011 enamel, copper, photo transfer, paint, silver 280 x 160 x 10 mm I make jewellery and objects that both connect to and explore human experience and place. Since Antarctica’s discovery explorers, expeditioners, artists and writers have attempted to record and visualise this isolated continent. In 2004 I was awarded a New Zealand Antarctic Arts Fellowship en joined those who communicate their experiences of Antarctica. Antarctica is often regarded as a pristine yet harsh environment, home to extraordinary wildlife and the domain of scientists. Due to its remoteness projects that are supported by international Antarctic programmes are predominantly science-based and as a result artistic research in Antarctica is limited. The cultural theorist, Yi Fu Tuan describes the experience of the explorer as: “the longing to be taken out of oneself and ones habitual world into something vast, overpowering and indifferent.” His statement resonates with my experience of Antarctica where I found myself drawn to the minutiae of the ice crystal and the structures and forms that I could associate with in the extraordinary landscape. While in that place, so removed from the conventions of civilisation, I came to understand the immensity of nature and to see that it exists without the necessity for human presence … Inside the historic huts of Robert Scott and Ernest Shackleton I was captivated by the history, contained both in the interior spaces themselves and in the material artefacts left by the expeditioners … These seemingly mundane objects are transformed into a still life of significant artefacts of a previous time, preserving the memory and story of their parties of explorers. My interpretations engage through the iconography of personal jewellery, domestic objects and the environment of Antarctica. In the course of making I continue to investigate and portray Antarctica through my own and others’ personal experiences. The objects I produce reference valued souvenir jewellery and objects now displayed in museums as historical artefacts, which were once personal mementos … Excerpts from the catalogue text by Kirsten Haydon May 2011

Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973) ice movement Neckpiece 2011 Enamel, copper, reflector beads, silver

Kirsten Haydon (New Zealand, b. 1973) ice sample Object 2011 Enamel, copper, reflector beads Gallery Funaki Sackville House Apartment 33 27 Flinders Lane Melbourne 3000 Australia Opening hours: Wednesday – Friday 12 – 5pm Saturday on occasion (check our socials) or by appointment Gallery Funaki website LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK Back to top

Exhibition: ‘Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change’ at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)

Exhibition dates: 26th February – 7th June, 2011

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Ruins of a Church, Antigua, Guatemala
1875
Albumen print
Collection Centre Canadien d’Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal

While rightly famous for his work on animal locomotion it is the first group of photographs in this posting that shine most brightly. It is often overlooked how magnificent a photographer Eadweard Muybridge was and what a brilliant eye he had. The top three photographs, especially the first one (above), are knockouts – radiant jewels in which the tensional points of the composition and the atmosphere of the scene are captured magnificently. I also love the use of human figures to give scale to the scene.

It is rare to find Eadweard Muybridge photographs other than his locomotion studies on the Internet (do a search under Google and see for yourself!), so it is a particular pleasure to post these photographs. It is something I have been wanted to do for quite a while now and finally it has come to pass; earlier iterations of this exhibition had few press images so I must heartily thank the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photograph for a larger version of the image.

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
The Ramparts, Funnel Rock, Hole in the Wall, Pyramid, Sugar Loaf, Oil House, and Landing Cove on Fisherman’s Bay, South Farallon Island (4150)
1871
Albumen print
U.S. Coast Guard Historian’s Office

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Ruins of the Church of San Domingo, Panama
1875
Albumen print
Image courtesy The Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Bridge on the Porto Bello, Panama
1875
Albumen print
Department of Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Tenaya Canyon. Valley of the Yosemite. From Union Point. No. 35
1872
Albumen print
Collection National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
First-Order Lighthouse at Punta de los Reyes, Seacoast of California, 296 Feet Above Sea (4136)
1871
Albumen print
U.S. Coast Guard Historian’s Office

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Pi-Wi-Ack. Valley of the Yosemite. (Shower of Stars) “Vernal Fall.” 400 Feet Fall. No. 29
1872
Albumen print
Collection San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; gift of Jeffrey Fraenkel and Frish Brandt

From February 26 through June 7, 2011, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will showcase the first-ever retrospective examining all aspects of artist Eadweard Muybridge’s pioneering photography. Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change brings together more than 300 objects created between 1857 and 1893, including Muybridge’s only surviving zoopraxiscope – an apparatus he designed in 1879 to project motion pictures. Originally organised by Philip Brookman, Corcoran Gallery of Art chief curator and head of research, the San Francisco presentation is organised by SFMOMA Associate Curator of Photography Corey Keller.

Helios: Eadweard Muybridge in a Time of Change includes numerous vintage photographs, albums, stereographs, lantern slides, glass negatives and positives, patent models, zoopraxiscope discs, proof prints, notes, books, and other ephemera. The works have been brought together from 38 different collections and include a number of Muybridge’s photographs of Yosemite Valley, including dramatic waterfalls and mountain views from 1867 and 1872; images of Alaska and the Pacific coast; an 1869 survey of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads in California, Nevada, and Utah; pictures from the Modoc War, pictures from Panama and Guatemala; and urban panoramas of San Francisco. The exhibition also includes examples from Muybridge’s experimental series of sequential stop-motion photographs such as Attitudes of Animals in Motion (1881) and his later masterpiece Animal Locomotion (1887).

The exhibition is organised in a series of thematic sections that present the chronology of Muybridge’s career, the evolution of his unique sensibility, the foundations of his experimental approach to photography, and his connections to other people and events that helped guide his work. The sections include: Introduction: The Art of Eadweard Muybridge (1857-1887); The Infinite Landscape: Yosemite Valley and the Western Frontier (1867-1869); From California to the End of the Earth: San Francisco, Alaska, the Railroads, and the Pacific Coast (1868-1872); The Geology of Time: Yosemite and the High Sierra (1872); Stopping Time: California at the Crossroads of Perception (1872-1878); War, Murder, and the Production of Coffee: the Modoc War and the Development of Central America (1873-1875); Urban Panorama (1877-1880); The Horse in Motion (1877-1881); Motion Pictures: the Zoopraxiscope (1879-1893); and Animal Locomotion (1883-1893).

Muybridge and San Francisco

Best known for his groundbreaking studies of animals and humans in motion, Muybridge (1830-1904) was also an innovative and successful landscape and survey photographer, documentary artist, inventor, and war correspondent. Born in Kingston upon Thames, England, in 1830, Muybridge immigrated to the United States around 1851. He worked as a bookseller in New York and San Francisco and returned to London in 1860 following a serious injury. Muybridge learned photography in Britain and by 1867 returned to the United States, where began his career as a photographer in San Francisco. He gained recognition through innovative landscape photographs, which showed the grandeur and expansiveness of the American West. Between 1867 and 1871, these were published under the pseudonym “Helios.”

Muybridge spent most of his career in San Francisco and Philadelphia during a time of rapid industrial and technological growth. In the 1870s he developed new ways to stop motion with his camera. Muybridge’s legendary sequential photographs of running horses helped change how people saw the world. His projected animations inspired the early development of cinema, and his revolutionary techniques produced timeless images that have profoundly influenced generations of photographers, filmmakers, and visual artists.

Press release from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) website [Online] Cited 02/06/2011 no longer available online

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Savings and Loan Society, Clay Street (340)
1869
albumen stereograph
Collection of Leonard A. Calle

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Contemplation Rock, Glacier Point (1385)
1872
Albumen stereograph
Collection of California Historical Society

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Group of Indians (489)
1868
Albumen stereograph
Collection of Leonard A. Walle

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
The Brandenburg Album of Bradley & Rolufson “Celebrities” and Muybridge Photographs, page 104
1874
Albumen prints
Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, Museum Purchase Fund

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Cockatoo; flying. Plate 759
1887
Collotype
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Boxing; open-hand. Plate 340
1887
Collotype
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Horses. Running. Phryne L. Plate 40
1879
From The Attitudes of Animals in Motion, 1881
Albumen print
Image courtesy The Board of Trustees, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Gift of Mary and Dan Solomon

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Studies of Foreshortenings. Horses. Running. Mahomet. Plates 143-144
1879
From The Attitudes of Animals in Motion, 1881
Albumen print
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
Leland Stanford, Jr. on his pony “Gypsy” – Phases of a Stride by a Pony While Cantering
1879
Collodion positive on glass
Wilson Centre for Photography

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904) 'General view of experiment track, background and cameras, Plate F, from The Attitudes of Animals in Motion' 1881

Eadweard Muybridge (English-American, 1830-1904)
General view of experiment track, background and cameras, Plate F
1881
From The Attitudes of Animals in Motion, 1881
Albumen print
Courtesy Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)
151 Third Street (between Mission + Howard)
San Francisco CA 94103

Opening hours:
Friday – Tuesday 10 am – 5 pm and Thursday 10 am – 9 pm
Wednesday Closed

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art website

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Exhibition: ‘The Photographs of Ray K. Metzker’ at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Exhibition dates: 15th January – 5th June, 2011

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

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
City Whispers, Philadelphia
1983
Gelatin silver print
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
© Ray K. Metzker, courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Couplets: Atlantic City/New York City
1969/1968
Gelatin silver print
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
© Ray K. Metzker, courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Couplets: New York City
1968
Gelatin silver print
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation
© Ray K. Metzker, courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Double Frames: Philadelphia
1965, printed 1984
Gelatin silver print
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Double Frames: Philadelphia
1965, printed 1972
Gelatin silver print
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Couplets: Philadelphia
1968, printed 2002
Gelatin silver print
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Pictus Interruptus: Philadelphia
1977
Gelatin silver print
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Works by Ray K. Metzker, one of the most original and influential photographers of the last half century, will be on view from Jan. 15 to June 5, 2011, at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. The Photographs of Ray K. Metzker will reveal Metzker’s ability to turn ordinary subjects, including the urban experience and nature, into the visual poetry of the finely crafted black-and-white print.

At the age of nearly 80, Metzker is greatly admired for his passionate engagement with both photography and the world. He has explored the use of high contrast and selective focus, the potentials of multiple and composite images, and the infinite gradations of daylight, from dazzling white to inky shadow.

This is great and lasting work – the very best of a classic form of American modernism, said Keith F. Davis, senior curator of photography at the Nelson-Atkins. Metzker has led a life of deep devotion to understanding the potential, challenge and pleasure of photographic seeing. In so doing, he has transcended any simple notion of technical experimentation or formalism to illuminate a vastly larger human realm – one of uncertainty, isolation and vulnerability, as well as of unexpected beauty, grace and transcendence.

Thanks to a major gift from the Hall Family Foundation, the Nelson-Atkins now has the largest holding of Metzker’s work (92 prints) in the United States.

Born in Milwaukee, Wis., in 1931, Metzker first took up photography as a teenager. After two years in the army, he entered the graduate program at the Institute of Design, Chicago, in the fall of 1956. His professors, Aaron Siskind and Harry Callahan, were acclaimed artists and inspiring teachers, and they emphasised the medium’s remarkable range and visual potential. Metzker’s artistic vision grew from a union of ideas: the realities of modern life, the medium’s myriad technical possibilities, and the quest for a distinctly individual vision.

Metzker has lived and worked in Philadelphia since 1962, and as he approaches the age of 80, he continues to make new pictures there.

The photographs in the exhibition feature examples from all his major series, including his earliest mature work from Chicago (1957-1959); photographs from an extended visit to Europe (1960-1961); the street activity, people, and structures of Philadelphia (from 1962 to the present); beachgoers at the New Jersey shore, Sand Creatures (1968-1977); the starkness of the Southwestern light and landscape, New Mexico (1971-1972); and the lush mysteries of the natural realm, in his Landscapes (1985-1996) from Italy, France and the United States.

The exhibition features a host of innovative and ingenious approaches to photography, including the use of the double image, Double Frame (1964-1966) and Couplets (1968-1969); single works created from an entire roll of film, Composites (1964-1966); and the creative control of focus in both Pictus Interruptus (1976-1980) and Landscapes (1985-1996).

Press release from The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art website

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Chicago
1957
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Chicago
1959, printed 1989
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Philadelphia
1963, printed 1986
Gelatin silver print
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Man in Canoe
1961
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American 1931-2014)
Philadelphia, 1963
1963
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Philadelphia
1964, printed 1989
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Composite: Atlantic City
1966
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American, 1931-2014)
Composites: Night at the Terminal
about 1966
Gelatin silver print
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
© Ray K. Metzker, courtesy of Lawrence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American 1931-2014)
Philadelphia
1981
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American 1931-2014)
Philadelphia, 1964
1963
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

Ray K. Metzker (American 1931-2014)
Philadelphia, 1963
1963
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.,
© Ray K. Metzker, Courtesy of the Laurence Miller Gallery

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

Opening hours:
Thursday – Monday 10am – 5pm
Closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art website

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Exhibition: ‘When the Curtain Falls: Margarita Broich – Photographs’ at Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin

Exhibition dates: 18th March – 30th May 2011

Many thankx to the 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.

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960)
Vaginal Davis
Performance, Rising Stars, Falling Stars, Arsenal, Berlin, 13.11.2010
2010
© Margarita Broich

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960)
Martin Wuttke with poodle Taxi
Gretchens Faust, Berliner Ensemble, 11.05.2009
2009
© Margarita Broich

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960) 'Veronica Ferres, Unter Bauern, 1.9.2008' 2008

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960) 'Melanie and Daniela Reichert, Unter Bauern, 27-08-2008' 2008

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960) 'Rosebud, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, 21-12-2001' 2001

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960)
Margarita Broich
Rosebud, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin, 21-12-2001
2001
© Margarita Broich

As an actress Margarita Broich is one of the big names, but it may come as a surprise to many that she is also a photographer. For the first time the Martin-Gropius-Bau is showing an exhibition of her work consisting of over 60 portraits of her fellow artists, including Ben Becker, Kate Winslet, Veronika Ferres, Klaus Maria Brandauer, Christoph Schlingensief, Thomas Quasthoff and many more. Margarita Broich has captured those fleeting moments when the actor sheds the role in the intervals or a few minutes after the end of a performance. The role can still be discerned on the features of the players when they are still surrounded by the world of scenery and mirrors but not acting any more. They have been sought out in changing rooms, theatre foyers, or with the make-up artist, taking off their make-up while still surrounded by the tools of their transformation.

Broich portrays the artists with the instinct of a colleague. Her photographs capture famous artists from her circle of acquaintances at those moments when they are returning from the stage after playing their role. However matter-of-fact the situation of the subject may occasionally appear, each photograph has its own charm. The beholder is granted glimpses of scenes that must be among the most intimate in show business: whether they show Martin Wuttke with a blonde, Andy Warhol mane and his poodle, Taxi, smoking a cigarette after a performance of “Gretchens Faust”, or Klaus Maria Brandauer at the end of a 10-hour Wallenstein epic, sitting on a stool with a bottle of beer, the snapshots are full of tension.

Born in Neuwied in 1960, Margarita Broich initially studied photo design in Dortmund and worked as a theatrical photographer at the Bochum Schauspielhaus (Theatre) under Claus Peymann, before studying dramatic art herself at Berlin’s College of Arts. Since then she has appeared in numerous German-language stage performances and television dramas, working with such directors as Claus Peymann, Robert Wilson and, earlier, with Christoph Schlingensief.

Text from the Martin-Gropius-Bau website [Online] Cited 26/05/2011 no longer available online

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960) 'Kate Winslet, The Reader, 20-04-2008' 2008

Margarita Broich (German, b. 1960)
Klaus Maria Brandauer
Wallenstein, Berliner Ensemble in the Preuss-Halle, Berlin, 09-06-2007
2007
© Margarita Broich