Exhibition: ‘William Christenberry: Photographs, 1961-2005’ at the Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia

Exhibition dates: 12th September – 8th November, 2009

 

Many thankx to the Morris 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.

 

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016) 'Green Warehouse, Newbern, Alabama' 1997 from the exhibition 'William Christenberry: Photographs, 1961-2005' at the Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia, Sept - Nov, 2009

 

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016)
Green Warehouse, Newbern, Alabama
1997
Dye coupler print

 

 

Widely recognised as a pioneer in the field of colour photography, William Christenberry has used this expressive medium to explore the American South for forty years. While pursuing this artistic quest he has drawn inspiration from Walker Evans, and influenced a generation of emerging photographers. William Christenberry: Photographs, 1961-2005 surveys his poetic documentation of southern vernacular architecture, signage, and landscape using a wide range of cameras, from his earliest Brownie photographs of the early 1960s to his later work with a large-format camera. Combining never-before-seen photographs, both old and new, with images that are now iconic, this exhibition comprises fifty vintage photographic works and one sculpture. Together, they convey the breadth of his singular photographic vision. Discuss the artistic objectives of his long-term interpretation of the Southern landscape with Michelle Norris of National Public Radio, Christenberry explained: “What I really feel very strongly about, and I hope reflects in all aspects of my work, is the human touch, the humanness of things, the positive and sometimes the negative and sometimes the sad.”

Text from the Morris Museum of Art website [Online] Cited 15/10/2009. No longer available online

 

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016) 'House and Car, near Akron, Alabama' 1981 from the exhibition 'William Christenberry: Photographs, 1961-2005' at the Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia, Sept - Nov, 2009

 

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016)
House and Car, near Akron, Alabama
1981

 

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016) 'Kudzu with Storm Cloud, near Akron, Alabama' 1981

 

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016)
Kudzu with Storm Cloud, near Akron, Alabama
1981

 

 

“William Christenberry Photographs, 1961-2005, a phenomenal retrospective exhibition of Christenberry’s photographs, opens to the public at the Morris Museum of Art on September 16, 2009. The Morris Museum is the only Georgia venue hosting this exhibition.

“‘William Christenberry Photographs, 1961-2005’ is an overview of the career of one of the South’s most important living artists,” said Kevin Grogan, director of the Morris Museum of Art. “Organised by the Aperture Foundation, this exhibition brings to Augusta a body of work like no other. No one has so scrupulously and attentively captured a sense of place and time in quite the way that Bill Christenberry has. He is a remarkable artist, as is proven by this extraordinary body of work. He is America’s Proust.”

Since the early 1960s, William Christenberry has plumbed the regional identity of the American South, focusing his attention primarily on his childhood home, Hale County, Alabama. Widely recognised as a pioneer in the field of colour photography, Christenberry draws inspiration from the work of Walker Evans, while paralleling the work of such international practitioners as Bernd and Hilla Becher. Ranging from his earliest Brownie photographs to his later work with a large-format camera, William Christenberry Photographs, 1961-2005 is a survey of the artist’s poetic documentation of the Southern landscape and vernacular architecture that surrounded him as he grew up. The exhibition, coupling never-before-seen photographs with images that are now iconic, reveals how the history, the very story of place, is at the heart of Christenberry’s ongoing project. While the focus of his work is the American South, it touches on universal themes related to family, culture, nature, spirituality, memory, and ageing. Christenberry photographs real things in the real world – ramshackle buildings, weathered commercial signs, lonely back roads, rusted-out cars, whitewashed churches, decorated graves. Dutifully returning to photograph the same locations annually – the green barn, the palmist building, the Bar-B-Q Inn, among others – he has fulfilled a personal ritual and documented the physical changes wrought by every single year. Straddling past and present, Christenberry’s art suggests the gravity and power of the passage of time.

The exhibition is accompanied by a stunning monograph entitled William Christenberry, published by Aperture in cooperation with the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The book, a comprehensive survey, presents all aspects of the artist’s oeuvre as he intended it to be viewed and considered. More than half the work reproduced has not been previously published.”

Text from the press release on the Morris Museum of Art website [Online] Cited 15/10/2009. No longer available online

 

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016) 'Sprott Church in Alabama' 1971

 

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016)
Sprott Church in Alabama
1971

 

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016) 'T.B. Hick's Store, Newbern, Alabama' 1976 from the exhibition 'William Christenberry: Photographs, 1961-2005' at the Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia, Sept - Nov, 2009

 

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016)
T.B. Hick’s Store, Newbern, Alabama
1976

 

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016) 'Farmhouse, Hale County, Alabama' 1977

 

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016)
Farmhouse, Hale County, Alabama
1977

 

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016) 'House and Car, near Akron, Alabama' 1978

 

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016)
House and Car, near Akron, Alabama
1978

 

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016) 'Palmist Building, Havanna, Alabama' 1980

 

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016)
Palmist Building, Havanna, Alabama
1980

 

The Palmist Building is one of the most iconic structures in Christenberry’s extensive body of work. When he was a child, the clapboard building was a general store operated by his great uncle, but it was later home to a palm reader. The inverted hand-painted sign that covers a broken window initially enticed him to photograph the building in 1961. His earliest photographs pinpoint the sign itself and the peeling whitewash around it. As he became more engrossed in the project, Christenberry carefully examined the relationship of the building to its surroundings, particularly the chinaberry tree that eventually engulfed it.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

 

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016) 'Rabbit Pen, near Moundville, Alabama' 1998

 

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016)
Rabbit Pen, near Moundville, Alabama
1998

 

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016) 'Old House, near Akron, Alabama' 1964

 

William Christenberry (American, 1936-2016)
Old House, near Akron, Alabama
1964

 

 

Morris Museum of Art
1 Tenth Street
Augusta, Georgia 30901
Phone: 706-724-7501

Opening Hours:
Tuesday – Saturday: 10.00am – 5.00pm
Sunday: 12 – 5.00pm
Closed Mondays and major holidays

Morris Museum of Art website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Exhibition: ‘The Abstracted Landscape’ at the Laurence Miller Gallery, New York

Exhibition dates: 24th September – 14th November, 2009

Exhibition artists: Peter Bialobrzeski, Stephane Couturier, DoDo Jin Ming, Toshio Shibata

 

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

 

DoDo Jin Ming (Chinese, b. 1955) 'Behind My Eyes 2nd Movement, Plate I' 2002 from the exhibition 'The Abstracted Landscape' at the Laurence Miller Gallery, New York, Sept - Nov, 2009

 

DoDo Jin Ming (Chinese, b. 1955)
Behind My Eyes 2nd Movement, Plate I
2002

 

DoDo Jin Ming (Chinese, b. 1955) 'Behind My Eyes 2nd Movement, Plate VIII' 2003 from the exhibition 'The Abstracted Landscape' at the Laurence Miller Gallery, New York, Sept - Nov, 2009

 

DoDo Jin Ming (Chinese, b. 1955)
Behind My Eyes 2nd Movement, Plate VIII
2003

 

DoDo Jin Ming (Chinese, b. 1955) 'Free Element, Plate XXX' 2002

 

DoDo Jin Ming (Chinese, b. 1955)
Free Element, Plate XXX
2002

 

Stéphane Couturier (French, b. 1957) 'Olympic Parkway No. 1' 2001 from the exhibition 'The Abstracted Landscape' at the Laurence Miller Gallery, New York, Sept - Nov, 2009

 

Stéphane Couturier (French, b. 1957)
Olympic Parkway No. 1
2001

 

Stéphane Couturier (French, b. 1957) 'Proctor Valley No. 1' 2004

 

Stéphane Couturier (French, b. 1957)
Proctor Valley No. 1
2004

 

 

Laurence Miller is pleased to present, as its opening show for the fall, The Abstracted Landscape, featuring the work of four midcareer international artists: Peter Bialobrzeski, from Hamburg; Stephane Couturier, from Paris; DoDo Jin Ming from Beijing and New York; and Toshio Shibata, from Tokyo.

These four photographers each translate the landscape into a poetic and abstract vision, utilising techniques and processes unique to photography to create scenes that remain sufficiently recognisable yet unobtainable through the naked eye. Peter Bialobrzeski, in his series Lost in Transition, photographs rapid urbanisation and industrialisation by taking very long exposures, which create other-worldly colours and lighting not visible to the naked eye. Stéphane Couturier embraces the camera’s monocularity in his series from Havana to flatten our normal reading of space and render totally ambiguous the walls of a decaying interior. DoDo Jin Ming, in her series Behind My Eyes, applies the technique of negative printing to render mysterious and foreboding fields of sunflowers. And Toshio Shibata wields his large view camera, with multiple tilts and swings, to look straight down the side of a dam, creating a vertigo-inducing viewpoint we would be unable (and perhaps unwilling) to see directly with our own eyes.

Abstraction in the landscape has a rich tradition within the history of photography. Felix Teynard’s Egyptian views from the mid-1850’s are wonderfully abstract, as are those of J.B. Greene and August Salzmann. Timothy O’Sullivan, Carlton Watkins and William Henry Jackson each made views of the American west from the 1806’s through the 1880’s, that were equally rich in detail and minimal in composition. In the 20th century there are many examples, from George Seeley to Paul Strand, through Moholy Nagy and the Bauhaus to Edward Weston’s glorious sand dunes.

Text from the Laurence Miller Gallery website [Online] Cited 12/10/2009. No longer available online

 

Toshio Shibata (Japanese, b. 1949) 'Kashima Town, Fukushima Prefecture' 1990

 

Toshio Shibata (Japanese, b. 1949)
Kashima Town, Fukushima Prefecture
1990

 

Toshio Shibata (Japanese, b. 1949) 'Grand Coulee Dam, Douglas County, WA' 1996

 

Toshio Shibata (Japanese, b. 1949)
Grand Coulee Dam, Douglas County, WA
1996

 

Peter Bialobrzeski (German, b. 1961) 'Transition # 33' 2005

 

Peter Bialobrzeski (German, b. 1961)
Transition #33 from the series Lost in Transition
2005

 

Peter Bialobrzeski (German, b. 1961) 'Transition # 20' 2005

 

Peter Bialobrzeski (German, b. 1961)
Transition #20 from the series Lost in Transition
2005

 

Peter Bialobrzeski (German, b. 1961) 'Transition #23' 2005

 

Peter Bialobrzeski (German, b. 1961)
Transition #23 from the series Lost in Transition
2005

 

 

Laurence Miller Gallery

Laurence Miller Gallery is now operating as a private dealer and consultant.

Laurence Millery Gallery website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Review: ‘Between Lines’ by Kim Lawler at fortyfive downstairs, Flinders Lane, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 29th September – 10th October, 2009

Curator: Amy Barclay

 

Kim Lawler (Australian) 'Between Lines' #4 2009 from the exhibition 'Between Lines' by Kim Lawler at fortyfive downstairs, Flinders Lane, Melbourne, Sept - Oct, 2022

 

Kim Lawler (Australian)
Between Lines #4
Aerial Photograph, Great Sandy Desert, Western Australia
2009

 

 

I finally made it to Kim Lawler’s exhibition Between Lines at fortyfive downstairs, Flinders Lane, Melbourne and, in many ways, the trip was well worth it. Lawler presents 12 prints from her eponymous series, aerial photographs taken over Western Australia.

Eschewing the essentially topographic state promoted in the “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” of 1975 that have influenced so many photographers in recent decades (including the hyper-real photographs of the West Australian landscape by Edward Burtynsky where there is an emotional distance between the photograph and the viewer), Lawler instead mines the depths of abstraction in landscape photography.

These are visceral photographs – in #4 the river and surrounds almost become vascular and cellular; in #13 the synapses and electrons infiltrate the highway reminding me of bomb craters from a Second World War landscape. In #7 the shrubs, unlike the precision of the New Topographics, become feckless dots, the landing strip a scar on the body; in #12 the toxic unsutured wound bleeds across the surface of the skin, white scar tissue surrounding it.

In these atypical mappings Lawler employs a taxonomy of disorder. The photographs are very soft in focus, soft in printing, big in the grain of the film and there is very little depth of field employed – in other words there is really nothing in focus at all, nothing that the eye and the mind can fix on. These are interstitial spaces (i.e. gaps between spaces full of structure or matter) and the title Between Lines is entirely appropriate for the work. The photographs contain beautiful textures, colours, surfaces.

This is their strength but also their weakness. The eye and the mind longs for something to hold onto, perhaps just a small fraction of the image to be in focus, so that the disorder plays off the order (for one cannot exist without the other!). Mutation only exists if their is something to mutate against. The other two small problems I had with the work were a matter of semantics and others may disagree – personally I found the size of the prints neither here nor there and they could have done with being about 2-3 inches larger and the white frames were too heavy. That is a funny thing to say about contemporary white frames, that they are too heavy for the work, but this is entirely possible: the moulding was too thick and the depth of the box frames to deep for my liking, detracting from the print itself and making the works darker than they needed to be.

Overall then an excellent exhibition that offers a positive variation on the cliched narrative of aerial photography of the Australian outback, one that questions the munificence of human habitation of the body and of the earth.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


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

 

 

Kim Lawler (Australian) 'Between Lines #7 (Landing Strip)' 2009 from the exhibition 'Between Lines' by Kim Lawler at fortyfive downstairs, Flinders Lane, Melbourne, Sept - Oct, 2022

 

Kim Lawler (Australian)
Between Lines #7 (Landing Strip)
Aerial Photograph, Great Sandy Desert, Western Australia
2009

 

Kim Lawler (Australian) 'Between Lines #8' 2009

 

Kim Lawler (Australian)
Between Lines #8 (Jones Soak, position approximate)
Aerial Photograph, Great Sandy Desert, Western Australia
2009

 

 

“Beyond romance or nostalgia, Lawler’s lucid visual studies reveal the aesthetic beauty of the stories being written and rewritten onto this responsive and at times fragile environment.”

~ Amy Barclay, curator

 

Between Lines comprises a series of aerial photographs taken in the Kimberley, far north Western Australia. This remote area is embedded with stories of Indigenous and non-Indigenous inhabitants, transitory visitors and scarred by multinational companies resource development. The artist, Kim Lawler, is concerned with markings, both natural and constructed, that tell stories of places, transitions and interruptions that occur within the landscape.

Between Lines is informed by Lawler’s experience of living in these regions and local perspectives on the displacement of people and their consequential relationship to the land that has taken place. It is also informed by the opposing qualities of abandon and connection that occur as the stories within these landscapes continue to unfold.

Competing demands for natural resources, and the resulting impact upon transitional landscapes, resonate with the stories of many generations of people that continue to flow through or inhabit each region. Attuned to the markings on these landscapes, it is these residual narratives ‘Between Lines’ seeks to record.

The imagery seen in Between Lines extends from Lawler’s previous artwork that interrogated additional Kimberley locations including: the remote Buccaneer Archipelago; the isolated far northern reaches of the Kimberley Coastline; Cockatoo Island iron ore mine and resort and; inland regions such as Warmun Aboriginal Community on the periphery of the Great Sandy Desert.

“Lawler’s eye is arrested by markings, natural and constructed, that trace and recount places, transitions and interruptions; the signifiers of change in a landscape millions of years old.”

Amy Barclay, curator

Text from the fortyfive downstairs website

 

Kim Lawler (Australian) 'Between Lines #12' 2009

 

Kim Lawler (Australian)
Between Lines #12
Joseph Bonaparte Gulf, Northern Kimberley, Western Australia
2009

 

Kim Lawler (Australian) 'Between Lines #13' 2009

 

Kim Lawler (Australian)
Between Lines #13
Great Northern Highway, Kimberley, Western Australia
2009

 

Kim Lawler (Australian) 'Between Lines #16' 2009

 

Kim Lawler (Australian)
Between Lines #16
Cockatoo Island Cyanide Settling Pool, Yampi Sound, Western Australia
2009

 

 

fortyfive downstairs
45, Flinders Lane
Melbourne 3000

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Friday 12 – 6pm
Saturday 12 – 4pm

fortyfive downstairs website

Kim Lawler website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Exhibition: ‘Doug Aitken’ at Regen Projects, Los Angeles

Exhibition dates: 12th September – 17th October, 2009

 

Many thankx to Regen Projects for allowing me to publish the art work in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968) 'The handle comes up, the hammer comes down' 2009 from the exhibition 'Doug Aitken' at Regen Projects, Los Angeles, Sept - Oct, 2009

 

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968)
The handle comes up, the hammer comes down
2009
LED lit lightbox

 

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968) 'Free' 2009 from the exhibition 'Doug Aitken' at Regen Projects, Los Angeles, Sept - Oct, 2009

 

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968)
Free
2009
LED lit lightbox

 

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968) 'Start Swimming' 2006 from the exhibition 'Doug Aitken' at Regen Projects, Los Angeles, Sept - Oct, 2009

 

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968)
Start Swimming
LED lit lightbox
2006

 

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968) 'Start Swimming' 2006

 

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968)
Start Swimming
LED lit lightbox
2006

 

Installation view of ;Doug Aitken; at Regen Projects, Los Angeles

 

Installation view of Doug Aitken at Regen Projects, Los Angeles

 

 

Regen Projects is pleased to announce an exhibition of new works by Los Angeles artist Doug Aitken. This exhibition will present a series of new text-based light boxes and will feature the west coast debut of the film migration. Aitken explores the themes of temporality, space, memory, movement, and landscape in his work. History and themes of both the past and present are interwoven and reconfigured. His work deconstructs the connection between idea and iconography allowing each to reinvent itself.

Doug Aitken’s new light boxes combine image and text in a collision that creates a rupture in which alternate connections are presented. The work frontier depicts a destroyed property on the water’s edge, redefining expectations of what a frontier may hold. The images within some of the light boxes are a photographic collage that references Aitken’s photographic oeuvre and aesthetic. Experimenting with font, borrowed images, and his own photographs, the light boxes will be presented in the darkened gallery, glowing and playing off of one another. The disjunction of word, image, and light in these works also moves toward a cinematic whole, creating panoramic landscapes through text.

Presented alongside the light boxes will be Aitken’s first large scale public installation in Los Angeles, migration. The film, the first instalment in a three-part trilogy entitled empire, debuted at the 2008 Carnegie International. This hallucinatory epic depicts the movements of migratory animals as they pass through vacant and deserted hotel and motel rooms, delineating a nomadic passage across America from east to west. Fittingly making its first appearance on the west coast, this large-scale cinematic installation will be presented to the public on Santa Monica Boulevard projected onto the courtyard of Regen Projects II; visible only at night from sunset to sunrise. In addition to the nighttime public presentation, migration will also be exhibited at the 633 North Almont Drive space on an indoor billboard accompanied by its original score.

Settlers who met the untamed wilderness to forge new ways of life defined westward expansion. Aitken’s migratory landscape in migration is the opposite; it is a landscape completely devoid of human presence. His non-linear narrative presents a series of different sequences in which the animals and their actions are unique while the rooms and their components are indistinguishable. Hotels such as these offer a sense of both security and isolation and while some animals adapt to these surroundings, others seem conspicuously strange. Rarely do we get to examine these creatures so closely. Their movements and presence make the viewer acutely aware of scale, calling into question various relationships; the most apparent of which is the relationship of the natural and the man-made. In this encounter between the urban and the indigenous the viewer gets a sense of both displacement and habituation. As one critic describes:

“One by one, at different hotels, the animals behave as they behave, sniffing the air, twitching their noses to orient themselves in the desolate human habitat. Imbued with Aitken’s usual intimations of planetary solitude, his sense of spatial dislocation, and gorgeous formalised perception, these images … have the quality not so much of a nonlinear narrative as of a mirage.” (Kim Levin, Artnews, January 2009, p. 110.)


Aitken’s work has been exhibited extensively at museums and galleries worldwide, including his 2007 exhibition “sleepwalkers,” a large-scale outdoor installation at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He has had numerous solo exhibitions including shows at the Serpentine Gallery, the Kunstmuseum Wolfsberg, the Kunsthaus Bregenz and the Kunsthalle Zurich. Aitken was awarded the international prize at the Venice Biennale in 1999 and was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial.

Text from the Regen Projects website [Online] Cited 01/11/2009. No longer available online

 

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968) Still from 'Migration' 2008

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968) Still from 'Migration' 2008

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968) Still from 'Migration' 2008

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968) Still from 'Migration' 2008

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968) Still from 'Migration' 2008

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968) Still from 'Migration' 2008

 

Doug Aitken (American, b. 1968)
Stills from Migration
2008
Single video projection with billboard (steel and PVC projection screen)

 

 

In Migration, peacocks, deer, and beaver are filmed occupying motel rooms in vignettes that strike a poignant, provocative chord: talk about unexpected guests. Nevertheless, the work isn’t funny; it’s too frank in its beauty, too finely and respectfully wrought to be a joke.

Aitken’s animals are frequently shot in close perspective, which enhances their beauty in a way that is mesmerising. We’re not looking through them as much as we’re looking alongside them, ingesting the utter foreignness of their environs. As evening falls, we see an owl, an already otherworldly creature whose glowing eyes appear extraterrestrial, blinking at us from its perch on a king-size bed. Against the singsong of chirping birds, the camera pans away from the stationary owl as the room fills with thousands of downy feathers. Light is a powerful character in the film, whether gently filtered through sheer curtains or spilling onto carpeted hallways. Rather than highlighting imperfections or ugliness, the light is salvic, evincing a limbo that’s illuminating and warming. In one way or another, all of Aitken’s animals are drawn to light, whether toward a blinking lamp, the refracted surface of a swimming pool, or even the glow of an opened refrigerator door.

Extract from

 

 

Regen Projects
6750 Santa Monica Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90038
Phone: (310) 276 5424

Gallery hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 5pm

Regen Projects website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to thttps://artblart.com/2009/10/04/exhibition-doug-aitken-at-regen-projects-los-angeles/op

Exhibition: ‘Snow Machine’ by Florian Maier-Aichen at Gagosian Gallery, Britannia Street, London

Exhibition dates: 3rd September – 3rd October, 2009

 

Many thankx to the Gagosian Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting.

 

Florian Maier-Aichen (German, b. 1973) 'Der Watzmann' 2009 from the exhibition 'Snow Machine' by Florian Maier-Aichen at Gagosian Gallery, Britannia Street, London, Sept - Oct, 2009

 

Florian Maier-Aichen (German, b. 1973)
Der Watzmann
2009

 

 

Florian Maier-Aichen brings a contemporary sensibility to bear on a range of historical references, from German Romantic painting to 19th-century photographs of the American West. The German-born photographer shoots images with a large-format camera then alters them digitally by combining negatives, adding computer-drawn elements or otherwise changing the originals. The effects are painterly and the works large-scale (the biggest one in this show, all but one of them C-prints, was around 8 by 71⁄3 feet). In one untitled print (2009), a digitally created brushstroke cuts diagonally across a snowy mountainside. Alluding to the trails ploughed across mountains to prevent avalanches, the photograph also suggests the black-and-white paintings of Abstract Expressionist Franz Kline. The sky above a dark mountainous outcropping in Der Watzmann (2009) references the Caspar David Friedrich painting of the same name (Maier-Aichen appropriated the image of the peak from the painting itself), while the sky suggests an airbrush version of the aurora borealis in red-orange and blue-green.

Der Watzmann may be the most direct reference to 19th-century German Romanticism and the sublime, but these are themes that Maier-Aichen frequently evokes, only to upend them.

Jean Dykstra. “Florian Maier-Aichen,” on the Art in America website May 4, 2009 [Online] Cited 24/09/2019

 

Florian Maier-Aichen (German, b. 1973) 'Untitled' 2008 from the exhibition 'Snow Machine' by Florian Maier-Aichen at Gagosian Gallery, Britannia Street, London, Sept - Oct, 2009

 

Florian Maier-Aichen (German, b. 1973)
Untitled
2008

 

'Snow Machine' by Florian Maier-Aichen installation view at Britannia Street, Gagosian Gallery

'Snow Machine' by Florian Maier-Aichen installation view at Britannia Street, Gagosian Gallery 2

 

Snow Machine by Florian Maier-Aichen installation views at Gagosian Gallery, Britannia Street, London

 

“Florian Maier-Aichen’s images reinterpret landscape photography for the 21st century. Often shot at obscure angles or from aerial views, his estranged vantage points are both alien and familiar; a sensation enhanced by his subtle manipulation of the images. Conceiving the representation of sites with a sense of dislocation, Maier-Aichen’s work addresses issues of globalisation and virtual perception. In Untitled, Maier-Aichen’s coastline is far from postcard perfect: a virgin beach lined with superhighway and luxury homes expanding into the misty distance. Tinting the surrounding forest in an unnatural shade of red, he casts an apocalyptic glow over the seascape, framing wilderness and human intervention as a scene of science fiction portent.”

Text from the Saatchi Gallery website [Online] Cited 24/04/2019

 

Florian Maier-Aichen (German, b. 1973) 'Untitled' 2009 from the exhibition 'Snow Machine' by Florian Maier-Aichen at Gagosian Gallery, Britannia Street, London, Sept - Oct, 2009

 

Florian Maier-Aichen (German, b. 1973)
Untitled
2009

 

 

“I have always been interested in the making of things. Most products and materials conceal their process of manufacture. It’s the same with photography, which turned from a discipline that was subject to the mastery of the few (alchemists) into a readily available industrial mass product, too transparent and too technical.”


Florian Maier-Aichen

 

 

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of recent photographs by Florian Maier-Aichen. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in London.

A photographer schooled on both sides of the Atlantic, Maier-Aichen’s work reflects on the dual influences of the history of photography and the history of painting, whether drawing on such dichotomies as German Romantic painting and the pioneers of German “objective” photography, or applying his post-factum experience of American frontier art – from the Hudson River School and Abstract Expressionism to Land Art and West Coast conceptualism – to his own topographical depictions of landscape subjects. He focuses on the camera’s consummate power to establish typologies of thought, perception, and feeling, producing images that, in mining the past, come to embody a matrix of issues salient to recent photographic practice.

Approaching the photographic field like a painter approaches a canvas, Maier-Aichen does for the contemporary image-world what pictorial photographers attempted in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, using the strategies and motifs of Romantic and Luminist painting. Unnaturally high-keyed or delicately tinted images of soaring mountain ranges, moody seas, and the industrial architecture of bridges, waterways, and dams carving through the natural landscape are all emanations of a rich and diverse imagination where a keen and critical grasp of art history coexists with more pronounced literary and cinematic conceits.

In a creative process that is as intensive as it is subtle and opaque, Maier-Aichen combines an exhaustive range of staged effects and traditional photographic techniques – albumen, silver-gelatin, and c-printing – with drawing and current computer-imaging processes. Weaving together often disparate elements from distinct sources, he applies myriad creative adjustments to each in order to produce seamless photographs that do not betray their intricate and layered compositions. Multiple negatives, digital manipulation, and elaborate studio techniques are employed to produce seemingly straightforward photographic landscape subjects while other images that engage the most conventional photographic techniques may themselves be subjects of pure fabrication.”

Text from the Gagosian Gallery website [Online] Cited 20/09/2009. No longer available online

 

Florian Maier-Aichen (German, b. 1973) 'Untitled' 2009

 

Florian Maier-Aichen (German, b. 1973)
Untitled
2009

 

Florian Maier-Aichen (German, b. 1973) 'Untitled' 2009

 

Florian Maier-Aichen (German, b. 1973)
Untitled
2009

 

Florian Maier-Aichen (German, b. 1973) 'Untitled (St. Francis Dam)' 2009

 

Florian Maier-Aichen (German, b. 1973)
Untitled (St. Francis Dam)
2009

 

 

Gagosian Gallery
6-24 Britannia Street
London WC1X 9JD
Phone: 44.207.841.9960

Opening Hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 10am – 6pm

Gagosian Gallery website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Exhibition: ‘Ansel Adams: A Life’s Work’ at Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego

Exhibition dates: 23rd May – 4th October, 2009

 

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) 'Monolith - The Face of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park' 1927 from the exhibition 'Ansel Adams: A Life's Work' at Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, May - Oct, 2009

 

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Monolith, The Face of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park
from the portfolio Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras
1927
Gelatin silver print

 

 

Some well known Ansel Adams images below with some less well known photographs from the Manzanar Relocation Center photographic series of 1943.

Marcus


Many thankx to the Museum of Photographic Arts for allowing me to publish the three photographs, Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada from Lone Pine, California (1944), Mount McKinley, Alaska (1948) and Aspens, Northern New Mexico (1958). Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) 'Marion Lake, Kings River Canyon, California' c. 1925 from the exhibition 'Ansel Adams: A Life's Work' at Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, May - Oct, 2009

 

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Marion Lake, Southern Sierra
from the portfolio Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras
1927
Gelatin silver print

 

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) 'Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico' 1941 from the exhibition 'Ansel Adams: A Life's Work' at Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, May - Oct, 2009

 

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico
1941
Gelatin silver print

 

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) 'Birds on wire, evening, Manzanar Relocation Center' 1943

 

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Birds on wire, evening, Manzanar Relocation Center
1943
Gelatin silver print

 

 

The Museum of Photographic Arts (MoPA) in Balboa Park is pleased to present Ansel Adams: A Life’s Work. The exhibition includes over 80 photographs by the 20th Century master, and celebrates Adams as an artist and conservationist. A Life’s Work will be on view May 23, 2009 through October 4, 2009, and features an overview of Adam’s work from his early years in the Sierra Nevadas and Yosemite Valley to his work in the Japanese Internment Camp at Manzanar, as well as his well-known masterpieces.

Ansel Adams: A Life’s Work will be running concurrently with Jo Whaley: Theater of Insects on view from May 16 through September 27, 2009, as well as Picturing the Process: Exploring the Art and Science of Photography on view through July 25, 2009.

The exhibition begins with survey of Adams’ early years with the Sierra Club (1920s-1930s), where his photographs and essays were first published in the Club’s Bulletin. 1927 marked a pivotal point for Adams, where he participated in the Sierra Club’s annual High Trip, which took him to the high country of the Sierra. It was during this trip that he exposed the negative of the iconic image Monolith, the Face of Half Dome. Adams describes this photograph as “my first conscious visualisation; in my mind’s eye, I saw the final image.”

It was during this first High Trip that Adams met San Francisco-based arts patron, Albert Bender. Bender took immediate interest in Adam’s photographs, and published Adams’ first portfolio, The Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras (1927). The publication included an edition of 100 portfolios of 18 prints each, 75 were printed.

The exhibition features 15 of the rare Parmelian vintage prints, as well as eight photographs from the 1929 Sierra Club Portfolio.

The exhibition continues with a wide range of representative works from the 1930’s and 1940’s, including commercial work that the artist did for the YPCCO (Yosemite Park and Curry Company). From 1931 to 1937, Adams was hired by YPCCO, a group of businesses in Yosemite Valley, to photograph various winter sports for an advertising campaign. This opportunity provided a much needed source of income for the artist during the Great Depression. The exhibition also includes other various commercial assignments throughout his career, which Adams clearly separated from his fine art photography, but notes as a vital aspect of his career. In his Autobiography he wrote: “I have little use for students or artists who scorn commercial photography as a form of prostitution … Let them pay the bills! … I struggled with a great variety of assignments through the years. Some I enjoyed, some I detested, but learned from them all.”

A Life’s Work also includes the powerful and poignant images from the Manzanar Internment Camp. In late 1943 through 1944, Adams visited the camps in central California, where over 10,000 Japanese-Americans were interned during World War II. Adams’ intention for this self-assigned project was “to interpret the camp and its people, their daily life and their relationship to their community and their environment,” wrote Adams in his Autobiography. “As my work progressed, however, I began to grasp the problems of the remarkable readjustment these people had to make… With admirable strength of spirit, the Nisei rose above despondency and make a life for themselves… This was the mood and character I determined to apply to the project.”

A Life’s Work will feature many of his iconic masterworks, including Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, as well as his works in colour, which he experimented with beginning in the late 1940s.

Press release from the Museum of Photographic Arts website [Online] Cited 15/09/2009

 

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) 'View south from Manzanar to Alabama Hills, Manzanar Relocation Center' 1943

 

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
View south from Manzanar to Alabama Hills, Manzanar Relocation Center
1943
Gelatin silver print

 

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) 'View SW over Manzanar, dust storm, Manzanar Relocation Center' 1943

 

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
View SW over Manzanar, dust storm, Manzanar Relocation Center
1943
Gelatin silver print

 

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) 'Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada from Lone Pine, CA.,' 1944

 

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Winter Sunrise, Sierra Nevada from Lone Pine, California
1944
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy of the Museum of Photographic Arts.
Copyright © 2009 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

 

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) Mount McKinley, Alaska, 1948

 

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Mount McKinley, Alaska
1948
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy of the Museum of Photographic Arts
Copyright © 2009 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

 

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) 'Aspens, Northern New Mexico' 1958

 

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Aspens, Northern New Mexico
1958
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy of the Museum of Photographic Arts
Copyright © 2009 The Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

 

 

Museum of Photographic Arts
Located within Balboa Park at 1649 El Prado, 
San Diego, CA 92101
Phone: 619-238-7559

Opening hours:
Thursday – Sunday: 11.00am – 4.00pm
Monday – Wednesday closed

MoPA website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Exhibition: ‘Don McCullin – In England’ at the National Media Museum, Bradford

Exhibition dates: 8th May – 27th September, 2009

 

Don McCullin (British, b. 1935) 'Ladies' Day, Royal Ascot' 2006 from the exhibition 'Don McCullin – In England' at the National Media Museum, Bradford, May - Sept, 2009

 

Don McCullin (British, b. 1935)
Ladies’ Day, Royal Ascot
2006
Gelatin silver print
© Don McCullin

 

 

A passionate and personal view of England by one of our greatest living photographers, In England reflected on England from the 1950s to the present day. For half a decade McCullin recorded images of England, highlighting issues surrounding wealth, race, class and social justice. This was the first ever exhibition dedicated exclusively to this aspect of his work.

The images, taken mainly from two books – Homecoming (1979) and In England (2007) – are often imbued with their social or political context. Several exhibited photographs were taken during McCullin’s trips to Bradford and around his own home city, London, as well as Liverpool and the North East. The exhibition also included McCullin’s first ever published photograph, The Guv’nors.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


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

 

 

Don McCullin (British, b. 1935) 'Early morning, Steel Foundry, West Hartlepool, County Durham, U.K.' 1963 from the exhibition 'Don McCullin – In England' at the National Media Museum, Bradford, May - Sept, 2009

 

Don McCullin (British, b. 1935)
Early morning, Steel Foundry, West Hartlepool, County Durham, U.K.
1963
Gelatin silver print
© Don McCullin

 

Don McCullin (British, b. 1935) 'Kids on Bradford estate' c. 1970s from the exhibition 'Don McCullin – In England' at the National Media Museum, Bradford, May - Sept, 2009

 

Don McCullin (British, b. 1935)
Kids on Bradford estate
c. 1970s
Gelatin silver print
© Don McCullin

 

Don McCullin (British, b. 1935) 'Bradford, early 1970s' c. 1970s

 

Don McCullin (British, b. 1935)
Bradford, early 1970s
c. 1970s
Gelatin silver print
© Don McCullin

 

Don McCullin (British, b. 1935) 'Blackpool, early 1970s' c. 1970s

 

Don McCullin (British, b. 1935)
Blackpool, early 1970s
c. 1970s
Gelatin silver print
© Don McCullin

 

 

A passionate and personal view of Britain by one of our greatest living photographers is being showcased in a major free-to-enter exhibition at the National Media Museum from 8 May – 27 September 2009.

Don McCullin – In England reflects on Britain from the 1950s to the present day. For half a decade McCullin, in addition to travelling the world photographing war ravaged countries to great acclaim, has been recording England and highlighting issues surrounding wealth, race, class and social justice.

The National Media Museum is hosting the first ever exhibition dedicated exclusively to this aspect of his work. Curator Colin Harding said: “Although Don is probably best known for his war photography, he is not purely a war photographer and does not class himself as such. However, many of the 70 black and white images displayed in this new show are clearly influenced by his experiences abroad. Don’s vision of England is not a pretty one. He photographed what he saw and what he saw was often harsh – poverty, unemployment, discrimination, but he always photographs with passion and empathy.”

Many of the images have a political or social context and are taken extensively from two books – Homecoming (1979) and In England (2007); coincidentally published in the same years Margaret Thatcher came to power and Tony Blair left power respectively. Some of the images will be publicly displayed for the first time.

Don McCullin – In England gives audiences the chance to see his first ever published photograph – of The Guv’nors, a 1950s gang from his neighbourhood around Finsbury Park, London. The picture appeared in The Observer newspaper after a policeman was murdered by one of the gang members.

Several exhibited photographs were taken during McCullin’s trips to Bradford (the National Media Museum’s home city) and around his own home city, London, as well as Liverpool and the North East. Other aspects of English life are featured – a series of landscapes, including a study of Hadrian’s Wall taken earlier this year, a 1968 shoot with The Beatles, and trips to the seaside and Royal Ascot.

To complement the exhibition a new area will be produced on the Museum’s website offering exclusive video interviews, images, further information, and links to other relevant websites.

Text from the National Media Museum website Nd [Online] Cited 12/09/2009 no longer available online

National Media Museum Don McCullin exhibition archive web page.

 

 

Photographer Don McCullin on his early years
In 2009 Don McCullin spoke to us about his early years as part of his In England exhibition at the museum.

 

Don McCullin (British, b. 1935) 'Windsor Baths, Bradford, early 1970s' c. 1970s

 

Don McCullin (British, b. 1935)
Windsor Baths, Bradford, early 1970s
c. 1970s
Gelatin silver print
© Don McCullin

 

Don McCullin (British, b. 1935) 'Mayfair, London' 1965

 

Don McCullin (British, b. 1935)
Mayfair, London
1965
Gelatin silver print
© Don McCullin

 

Don McCullin. 'Towards an Iron Age hill fort, Somerset' 1991

 

Don McCullin (British, b. 1935)
Towards an Iron Age hill fort, Somerset
1991
Gelatin silver print
© Don McCullin

 

Don McCullin (British, b. 1935) 'The Guv'nors, Finsbury Park, London' 1958

 

Don McCullin (British, b. 1935)
The Guv’nors, Finsbury Park, London
1958
Gelatin silver print
© Don McCullin

 

Don McCullin (British, b. 1935) 'Snowy, Cambridge, early 1970s' c. 1970s

 

Don McCullin (British, b. 1935)
Snowy, Cambridge, early 1970s
c. 1970s
Gelatin silver print
© Don McCullin

 

According to McCullin, a postcard of this photograph sold ‘like hotcakes’ in Australia. McCullin found Snowy, the man in the portrait, standing by the side of the road with an ice-cream barrow in Cambridge, in the early 1970s. He pulled the mouse out of his pocket and put it into his mouth as McCullin took pictures.

 

Don McCullin (British, b. 1935) 'Mother and son, Bradford' 1978

 

Don McCullin (British, b. 1935)
Mother and son, Bradford
1978
Gelatin silver print
© Don McCullin

 

 

Don McCullin (British, b. 1935)
Festival of Speed, Goodwood, Sussex
2006
Gelatin silver print
© Don McCullin

 

 

National Media Museum
Bradford, West Yorkshire, BD1 1NQ

Opening hours:
Wednesday – Sunday
 10am – 5pm

National Media Museum website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Review: ‘Connection is Solid’ by John Nicholson at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Richmond, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 25th August – 19th September, 2009

 

John Nicholson (Australian, b. 1970) 'Untitled' 2009 from the exhibition 'Connection is Solid' by John Nicholson at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Richmond, Melbourne, Aug - Sept, 2009

 

John Nicholson (Australian, b. 1970)
Aerial Navigation
2009

 

 

You could say that the essence of the cosmos is not matter, it is consciousness.

It is not the external world that is real – it is “maya”, an illusion, for the real world lies within.

These works, with their striations, strata and suspension are emanations of that spirit – projections of the inner reality.

In terms of the ancient Chinese philosophy Lao Tzu we dream the butterfly and the butterfly is us. If you don’t ‘get’ these works, let go all pretensions and feel their colour as sound, as vibrations of energy.

Submerge yourself in their shape and form. Like DNA structure, a heart beat or the record of a seismic shock these works are music as art, the length of harmony quivering and slipping in our minds, before our eyes.

This is the colour music of Roy De Maistre’s paintings of the 1930’s updated to the 21st century. They are fugues of sound made physical entities, intertwining, coming and going. Here lines, tones and colours are organised in a parallel way – tone after tone, line after line. They are wavelengths of the interior made visible. The connection is solid and fluid at one and the same time; there are many connections to be discovered, many journeys to be made.

I hear them, I like them.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


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

 

 

John Nicholson (Australian, b. 1970) 'Under the radar' 2009 from the exhibition 'Connection is Solid' by John Nicholson at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Richmond, Melbourne, Aug - Sept, 2009

 

John Nicholson (Australian, b. 1970)
Under the radar
2009
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Installation view of 'Connection is Solid' by John Nicholson at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne

Installation view of 'Connection is Solid' by John Nicholson at Sophie Gannon Gallery, Melbourne

 

Installation views of Connection is Solid by John Nicholson at Sophie Gannon Gallery
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

 

John Nicholson (Australian, b. 1970) 'Thrill seeker' 2009 (detail)

 

John Nicholson (Australian, b. 1970)
Thrill seeker (detail)
2009
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Roy de Maistre (Australian, 1894-1968) 'Arrested Movement from a Trio' 1934

 

Roy de Maistre (Australian, 1894-1968)
Arrested Movement from a Trio
1934
Oil and pencil on composition board
72.3 × 98.8cm

 

John Nicholson (Australian, b. 1970) 'Slip' 2009

 

John Nicholson (Australian, b. 1970)
Slip
2009

 

John Nicholson (Australian, b. 1970) 'The wire might sense' 2009

 

John Nicholson (Australian, b. 1970)
The wire might sense
2009

 

John Nicholson (Australian, b. 1970) 'Swoop' 2009

 

John Nicholson (Australian, b. 1970)
Swoop
2009
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Installation view of 'Connection is Solid' by John Nicholson with on the wall 'Satellite Graffitti' (2009) and on the floor 'Cascade' (2009) and 'Swoop' (2009)

 

Installation view of Connection is Solid by John Nicholson with on the wall Satellite Graffitti (2009) and on the floor Cascade (2009) and Swoop (2009)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

 

Sophie Gannon Gallery
2, Albert Street, Richmond, Melbourne

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 5pm

Sophie Gannon Gallery website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Exhibition: ‘Vera Lutter’ at Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, California

Exhibition dates: 24th July – 12th September, 2009

 

Vera Lutter (American, b. 1960) 'Campo Santa Sofia, Venice, XV: December 12, 2007' 2007 from the exhibition 'Vera Lutter' at Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, California, July - Sept, 2009

 

Vera Lutter (American, b. 1960)
Campo Santa Sofia, Venice, XV: December 12, 2007
2007
Unique gelatin silver print
68 5/16 × 56 in (173.5 × 142.2cm)

 

 

I really like this atmospheric work – the scale, the ‘grandness’ of it, the dismemberment through verticality, the immersion into inky darkness – there is something almost subterranean (man living under-earth, under-evolution) about the pictures vestigial structures.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


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

 

 

Vera Lutter (American, b. 1960) 'Campo Santa Sofia, Venice, XXIII: December 17, 2007' 2007 from the exhibition 'Vera Lutter' at Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, California, July - Sept, 2009

 

Vera Lutter (American, b. 1960)
Campo Santa Sofia, Venice, XXIII: December 17, 2007
2007
Unique gelatin silver print
85 7/16 × 112 in
217 × 284.5cm

 

Vera Lutter (American, b. 1960) 'Ca Del Duca Sforza, Venice II: January 13-14, 2008' 2008 from the exhibition 'Vera Lutter' at Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills, California, July - Sept, 2009

 

Vera Lutter (American, b. 1960)
Ca Del Duca Sforza, Venice II: January 13-14, 2008
2008
Unique gelatin silver print
104 1/2 × 168 in
265.4 × 426.7cm

 

Vera Lutter (American, b. 1960) 'Calle Vallaresso, Venice XXVII: January 31, 2008' 2008

 

Vera Lutter (American, b. 1960)
Calle Vallaresso, Venice XXVII: January 31, 2008
2008
Unique gelatin silver print
55 3/8 × 68 1/4 in
140.7 × 173.4cm

 

 

“Instability, uncertainty, suspense, and monumentality are entities that I consider and think about; they inform my work.”

~ Vera Lutter

 

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of large-scale unique photographs by Vera Lutter. This is her first exhibition in Los Angeles.

In Lutter’s conceptual approach to the camera obscura, the most rudimentary form of photography, the apparatus records in a very direct and immediate way what exists in the world outside. By choosing to retain the negative image, she transforms the visual facts of her chosen environments into uncanny scenes that reflect on the two principal realities of time and space.

In recent years, Lutter has made the hauntingly romantic city of Venice an object of prolonged study. Building on her previous recordings of industrial landscapes and cities surrounded by water, such as Old Slip, New York (1995), and Cleveland (1997), the works created in Venice elaborate her intention “to create an image in which the city appears to be suspended above its own reflection, rendering a place that appears to exist outside of gravity.”

During the anticipated high-water season of 2005, Lutter captured mirage-like emanations of San Marco and Piazza Leoni in which the spectral landmarks appear to hover above their own reflected image in the placid water. Lutter returned to Venice the following year to record the area where the Grand Canal flows into the Bacino, which then opens up into the lagoon. This unstable body of water not only gives Venice its special ethereal character; it also threatens the floating city’s very existence.

Lutter revisited Venice in 2007 and 2008 to explore further the physical, technical, and architectural complexities of the city. Works such as San Giorgio (2008), Campo Santa Sofia (2007) and Calle Vallaresso (2008) reveal certain innate qualities and conditions of the city that elude direct observation and can be experienced only through her luminous incarnations, the physical image.

Text from the Gagosian Gallery website [Online] Cited 01/09/2009 no longer available online

 

Vera Lutter uses the camera obscura, the most basic photographic device, to render in massive form images that serve as faithful transcriptions of immense architectural spaces. The camera obscura was originally developed during the Renaissance as an aid in the recording of the visible world.

Vera Lutter is best known for monumental black-and-white photographs of cityscapes. Her unique silver gelatin prints are negatives made by transforming a room into a pinhole camera obscura chamber. Directly exposed, often over many hours, onto photosensitive paper, these vistas appear as solarised images, their ethereal platinum tones imbuing the scenes with a haunting melancholy. From an early concentration on the Manhattan skyline, Lutter has turned lately to more industrial sites, including a dry dock, a zeppelin factory, an airport runway, a marina and a deserted warehouse.

Vera Lutter Biography on the Metro Art Works website [Online] Cited 01/09/2009 no longer available online

 

Installation view of Vera Lutter at Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills

Installation view of Vera Lutter at Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills

 

Installation views of Vera Lutter works at Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills

 

Vera Lutter (American, b. 1960) 'San Giorgio, Venice XVIII: January 26, 2008' 2008

 

Vera Lutter (American, b. 1960)
San Giorgio, Venice XVIII: January 26, 2008
2008
Unique gelatin silver print

 

Vera Lutter (American, b. 1960) 'San Marco, Venice, XIX: December 1, 2005' 2005

 

Vera Lutter (American, b. 1960)
San Marco, Venice, XIX: December 1, 2005
2005
Unique gelatin silver print
92 ¼ x 112 ¾ in
234.3 x 286.4cm

 

Vera Lutter (American, b. 1960) 'Ca' del Duca Sforza, Venice XXXI: July 14, 2008' 2008

 

Vera Lutter (American, b. 1960)
Ca’ del Duca Sforza, Venice XXXI: July 14, 2008
2008
Unique gelatin silver print
56 × 80 3/4 in
142.2 × 205.1cm

 

Vera Lutter (American, b. 1960) 'Ca del Duca Sforza, Venice, XXXXIII: July 24, 2008' 2008

 

Vera Lutter (American, b. 1960)
Ca del Duca Sforza, Venice, XXXXIII: July 24, 2008
2008
Unique gelatin silver print
50 1/2 × 67 1/8 in
128.3 × 170.5cm

 

Vera Lutter (American, b. 1960) 'Ca del Duca, Venice, XA: December 8, 2007' 2007

 

Vera Lutter (American, b. 1960)
Ca del Duca, Venice, XA: December 8, 2007
2007
Unique gelatin silver print

 

 

Gagosian Gallery
456 North Camden Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
Phone: 310.271.9400

Opening hours:
Monday – Saturday 10am – 6pm

Gagosian Gallery website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Exhibition: ‘Intersections Intersected: The Photography of David Goldblatt’ at the New Museum, New York

Exhibition dates: 15th July – 11th October, 2009

 

David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018) 'Family at Lunch, Wheatlands Plots, Randfontein, September 1962' 1962 from the exhibition 'Intersections Intersected: The Photography of David Goldblatt' at the New Museum, New York, July - Oct, 2009

 

David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018)
Family at Lunch, Wheatlands Plots, Randfontein, September 1962
1962
Gelatin silver print

 

 

One of the greats.

Marcus


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

 

 

David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018) 'A new shack under construction, Lenasia Extension 9, Gauteng' 1990 from the exhibition 'Intersections Intersected: The Photography of David Goldblatt' at the New Museum, New York, July - Oct, 2009

 

David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018)
A new shack under construction, Lenasia Extension 9, Gauteng
1990
Gelatin silver print

 

David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018) 'Monuments celebrating the Republic of South Africa (left and JG Strijdom, former prime minister (right), with the headquarters of Volkskas Bank, Pretoria. 25 April 1982' 1982

 

David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018)
Monuments celebrating the Republic of South Africa (left and JG Strijdom, former prime minister (right), with the headquarters of Volkskas Bank, Pretoria. 25 April 1982
1982
Black and while photograph on matte paper
Courtesy the artist and Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg

 

David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018) 'Man with an injured arm. Hillbrow, Johannesburg, June, 1972' 1972

 

David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018)
Man with an injured arm. Hillbrow, Johannesburg, June, 1972
1972
Black and while photograph on matte paper
Courtesy the artist and Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg

 

David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018) 'Mofolo South, Soweto, September 1972' 1972

 

David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018)
Mofolo South, Soweto, September 1972
1972
Gelatin silver print

 

 

Over the last fifty years, David Goldblatt has documented the complexities and contradictions of South African society. His photographs capture the social and moral value systems that governed the tumultuous history of his country’s segregationist policies and continue to influence its changing political landscape. Goldblatt began photographing professionally in the early 1960s, focusing on the effects of the National Party’s legislation of apartheid. The son of Jewish Lithuanian parents who fled to South Africa to escape religious persecution, Goldblatt was forced into a peculiar situation, being at once a white man in a racially segregated society and a member of a religious minority with a sense of otherness. He used the camera to capture the true face of apartheid as his way of coping with horrifying realities and making his voice heard. Goldblatt did not try to capture iconic images, nor did he use the camera as a tool to entice revolution through propaganda. Instead, he reveals a much more complex portrait, including the intricacies and banalities of daily life in all aspects of society. Whether showing the plight of black communities, the culture of the Afrikaner nationalists, the comfort of white suburbanites, or the architectural landscape, Goldblatt’s photographs are an intimate portrayal of a culture plagued by injustice.

In Goldblatt’s images we can see a universal sense of people’s aspirations, making do with their abnormal situation in as normal a way as possible. People go about their daily lives, trying to preserve a sense of decency amid terrible hardship. Goldblatt points out a connection between people (including himself) and the environment, and how the environment reflects the ideologies that built it. His photographs convey a sense of vulnerability as well as dignity. Goldblatt is very much a part of the culture that he is analysing. Unlike the tradition of many documentary photographers who capture the “decisive moment,” Goldblatt’s interest lies in the routine existence of a particular time in history.

Goldblatt continues to explore the consciousness of South African society today. He looks at the condition of race relations after the end of apartheid while also tackling other contemporary issues, such as the influence of the AIDS epidemic and the excesses of consumption. For his “Intersections Intersected” series, Goldblatt looks at the relationship between the past and present by pairing his older black-and-white images with his more recent colour work. Here we may notice photography’s unique association with time: how things were, how things are, and also that the effects of apartheid run deep. It will take much more time to heal the wounds of a society that was divided for so long. Yet, there is a possibility for hope, recognition of how much has changed politically in the time between the two images, and a potential optimism for the future. Goldblatt’s work is a dynamic and multilayered view of life in South Africa, and he continues to reveal that society’s progress and incongruities.”

Joseph Gergel, Curatorial Fellow

Text from the New Museum website [Online] Cited 15/08/2009. No longer available online

 

David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018) 'Wreath at the Berg-en-Dal Monument' 1983

 

David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018)
Wreath at the Berg-en-Dal Monument which commemorates the courage – and the sarcophagus which holds the bones – of 60 men of the South African Republic Police, who died here 27 August 1900 in a critical battle of the Anglo-Boer War. Dalmanutha, Mpumalanga. December 1983.
1983
Courtesy the artist and Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg

 

David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018) 'The swimming bath rules at the rec, Cape Blue Asbestos Mine, Koegas, Northern Cape' 2002

 

David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018)
The swimming bath rules at the rec, Cape Blue Asbestos Mine, Koegas, Northern Cape
2002

 

David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018) 'The mill, Pomfret Asbestos Mine, Pomfret, North-West Province, 20 December 2002' 2002

 

David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018)
The mill, Pomfret Asbestos Mine, Pomfret, North-West Province, 20 December 2002
2002

 

David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018) 'Johannesburg from the Southwest' 2003

 

David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018)
Johannesburg from the Southwest
2003

 

David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018) 'Incomplete houses, part of a stalled municipal development of 1000 houses. Lady Grey, Eastern Cape, 5 August 2006' 2006

 

David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018)
Incomplete houses, part of a stalled municipal development of 1000 houses. Lady Grey, Eastern Cape, 5 August 2006
2006

 

 

New Museum
235 Bowery
New York, NY 10002
212.219.1222

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday 11am – 6pm

New Museum website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top