Category: light

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

 

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.

 

 

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946) 'Equivalent' 1923

 

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

 

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

 

Lewis Hine (American, 1874-1940) '[Powerhouse mechanic]' 1920 catalogue size

 

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 catalogue size

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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) 'Photograph - New York' Negative 1916; print June 1917

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Bendigo Art Gallery website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

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

 

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.

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Vienna - Art & Design' at the National Gallery of Victoria

 

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

 

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

 

Wilhelm Gause (Germany 1853-1916) 'Vienna Municipal Ball' 1904

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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' 1902 designed, 1985 made

 

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' 1902 designed, 1985 made (installation detail)

 

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

 

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' 1909 (installation detail)

 

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

 

Gustav Klimt (Austria 1862-1918) The Park' 1909 (installation detail)

 

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

 

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' 1904 (installation detail)

 

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

 

Charles Robert Ashbee (designer) 'Standing cup and cover' 1901 and Josef Hoffmann. 'Sports Trophy' 1902 (installation view)

 

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' (c. 1909-1911) (installation view)

 

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' 1901-02 (detail at top)

 

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' c. 1902 (installation view)

 

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

 

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 (Austria 1862-1918) 'Emilie Flöge' 1902

 

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

 

Gustav Klimt (Austria 1862-1918) 'Emilie Flöge' 1902 (installation detail)

 

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

 

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

 

Koloman Moser (designer) 'Armchair' 1903 and Josef Hoffmann (designer) 'Collapsible library steps' 1905 (installation view)

 

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 (Austria 1862-1918) 'Fritza Riedler' 1906 (installation detail)

 

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

 

Gustav Klimt (Austria 1862-1918) 'Fritza Riedler' 1906

 

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

 

Installation view of room six of the exhibition 'Vienna - Art & Design' at the National Gallery of Victoria

Installation view of room six of the exhibition 'Vienna - Art & Design' at the National Gallery of Victoria

 

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' 1909 (installation view)

 

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 showing Adolf Loos (Austrian, 1870-1933) (designer) 'Sideboard, from the Langer apartment' 1903

 

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

 

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

 

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' 1901 (installation view)

 

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

 

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' 1904 (installation view detail)

 

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

 

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 view of room eight of the exhibition 'Vienna - Art & Design' at the National Gallery of Victoria

Installation view of room eight of the exhibition 'Vienna - Art & Design' at the National Gallery of Victoria

 

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

 

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 (Austria 1890-1918) 'Portrait of a boy (Portrait of Herbert Rainer aged approximately six)' 1910 (installation detail)

 

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 (Austria 1890-1918) 'Portrait of a boy (Portrait of Herbert Rainer aged approximately six)' 1910

 

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

National Gallery of Victoria website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Exhibition: ‘Robyn Stacey: Tall Tales and True’ at Stills Gallery, Paddington, Sydney

Exhibition dates: 18th May – 25th June 2011

 

Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952) 'Come unto me' 2011

 

Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952)
Come unto me
2011
84 x 120cm
Type C print
Edition of 5 + 2/3 AP

 

 

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.


Percy Bysshe Shelley 1818

 

 

Many thankx to Jessica Howard for her help and to Stills Gallery and Peter Timms for allowing me to publish the text and the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952) 'Help yourself' 2011

 

Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952)
Help yourself
2011
90 x 120cm
Type C print
Edition of 5 + 2/3 AP

 

 

Working extensively with historic collections since 2000, Robyn Stacey’s early projects dealt with Australian flora and fauna, exploring the Herbarium at the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney and the Macleay collection at the University of Sydney. Over the last three years she has worked closely the NSW Historic Houses Trust to produce a series of artworks and a book focusing on three of their properties, Elizabeth Bay House, Vaucluse House, and Rouse Hill estate as well as the Caroline Simpson Research Collection and Library. In these works Stacey reveals her fascination with the still life tradition but also speaks about the Australian notion of home and what it means to our national psyche.

Stacey’s transformation of these historic spaces and objects allows us not only to glance into earlier worlds but also to consider hierarchies of taste, culture and knowledge. By using the still life to re-work and re-view the Trust’s collection she aims to deconstruct the traditional museum display. The objects are returned to an approximate albeit fictional reality, creating a sense that the settings have been left only momentarily and that people are never far away.

In this latest exhibition Stacey looks at the traces of inhabitation. Chatelaine for example, features a sumptuous collection of objects including Wisteria spilling out of an ornate vase on top of a beautifully carved side table. The objects are from the collection of Vaucluse House having belonged to its inhabitant Sarah Wentworth. Her convict past prevented easy entry into high society at the time. In this accumulation of tasteful things we see evidence of Sarah Wentworth’s attempts to assert her social position within a society that spurned her. In other works, which draw from the collection at Rouse Hill estate we bear witness to the varying fortunes of the Rouse family.

As well as being a reflection upon the nature and minutiae of nineteenth century domesticity these still lives also reflect our colonial history; the desire for betterment and the need to re-create what has been left behind through the transport of taste and knowledge systems.

Text from the Stills Gallery website

 

Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952) 'Presentation (Apple)' 2011

 

Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952)
Presentation (Apple)
2011
90 x 74cm
Type C print
Edition of 5 + 2/3 AP

 

Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952) 'Presentation (Pear)' 2011

 

Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952)
Presentation (Pear)
2011
90 x 74cm
Type C print
Edition of 5 + 2/3 AP

 

 

Playing a double game

We all have a penchant for hidden essences. They spur our desires. Sometimes, of course, a thing is just a thing: a cup merely a convenient way of getting coffee to our mouths; a car no more than a machine to get around in. Often, however, (surprisingly often in fact) we choose to invest such apparently lifeless objects with little souls, or what the psychologist Paul Bloom calls ‘realities that are not present to the senses’. Almost everything, it seems, is capable of leading a double life.

And where better to seek out these double lives than in the historic house museum? Here the Regency candlesticks, the ormolu clocks, even the gardening tools and saucepans, come already imbued with a special significance, for here the domestic has been raised to the level of theatre.

The choices Robyn Stacey has made from the wealth of objects at Elizabeth Bay House, Vaucluse House and Rouse Hill Estate are by no means the obvious ones. They are not necessarily things of high status or great beauty. She is equally attracted to the rusted sickle, the well-thumbed book, the peeling painting and the old postcard: everyday things that bear the traces of long usage. Through judicious juxtaposition, dramatic lighting, and the addition of her own evocative flourishes, she dramatises these humble items, teasing out their souls and revealing their double lives.

What Robyn is doing is transforming inanimate objects into surrogate people. In the absence of their corporeal selves, those who made their lives in these houses are reborn through what they owned, loved, used and made. And, in the process, their stories are expanded into the realm of cultural history.

Chatelaine, for example, enlists flowers, a silk shawl, a richly decorated Staffordshire jar and the titular chatelaine itself (a sort of female version of the Swiss army knife) to reconstruct nineteenth-century ideals of femininity. Only when we discover that it is intended, in part, as a homage to Sarah Wentworth, the mistress of Vaucluse House, does its gentle irony morph into poignant masquerade. For, despite being married to one of early Sydney’s richest and most powerful men, Sarah’s impoverished and morally compromised background led to her rejection by polite society. So these outwardly vivacious mementos also serve as emblems of one woman’s tragedy and, by extension, the tragedy of many women’s lives at the time.

What could be more richly evocative than the cornucopia of flowers, fruits, grains and agricultural implements assembled for Rouse and the Cumberland Plain? What, indeed, could be more shamelessly calculated to provoke astonishment? This virtuosic picture is at once a homage to and a respectful parody of the European still-life tradition. Ostensibly it sets out, in almost forensic detail, what was once grown in the gardens and fields around Rouse Hill House, every leaf and petal historically accurate as to species and type. In that sense, it can be appreciated as an authentic record of nineteenth-century colonial gardening and agriculture. But of course it is much more than that.

We don’t have to be au fait with seventeenth-century Dutch iconography to be able to tease out the allusions in those overturned baskets, those pomegranates spilling their seeds, those provocative little asparagus spears, the decaying timber and the butterflies, nor to be touched by the pathos of that hand-made house-brick in the foreground, impressed with a heart. These symbolic clues qualify and complicate our initial response of unguarded optimism. Here and there, melancholy and loss begin to intrude. And the longer we look, the more enveloped we become by a stifling air of artificiality, as if everything has been stilled and embalmed. Initial delight slowly morphs into an eerie silence. It is in their delicate balance of abundance and ruin that all these photographs find their moral core. They are awe-inspiring, in the eighteenth-century meaning of the term.

This is true even of apparently simple works such as, for example, Presentation (Pear). While its reticence seems a world away from the fecundity of Rouse and the Cumberland Plain or Chatelaine, the underlying themes correspond. In fact, Presentation (Pear) is a composition of such elegant straightforwardness that we might suspect a trap. And indeed we might be right.

On a substantial marble pedestal sits, somewhat incongruously, a ripe pear with a fly on it. A butterfly has come to rest nearby. There are just these four individual components, each with its own tale to tell. Combined, however, into a Joseph-Cornell-like assemblage, they assume an almost mythical dimension. The massive plinth, its pomposity worthy of an Ozymandias, can be seen as representing the vanity of human ambition. The pear has long been a symbol of birth and fecundity, the fly represents decay, and the butterfly the brevity of life. Yet such pat interpretations will probably strike a modern sensibility as overdetermined or too reductive. These days we are not inclined to take this sort of thing too seriously, and the very transparency of the symbolism in Presentation (Pear) is perhaps a warning that we should not. There is a good deal of self-referentiality here. The symbols keep turning in on themselves.

What these photographs are, in fact, inviting us to do is to momentarily assume a double life, to surrender to the romantic perceptions of past generations without abandoning our modern scepticism, to experience a pre-scientific world through a post-scientific consciousness so as to understand not just the material world of past generations but also to enter into their way of thinking. As in the cinema (and these photographs are nothing if not cinematic) we are being invited to suspend our disbelief and imagine ourselves in another time, not for nostalgia’s sake, but for the opposite – to strip away sentiment and to see ourselves more clearly.

Thus, beneath their apparent sumptuousness, Robyn’s artfully contrived tableaux are playing a crafty double game of de-familiarisation.

Peter Timms

 

Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952) 'Early Morning Rouse' 2010

 

Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952)
Early morning Rouse
2010
110 x 75.6cm
Type C print
Edition of 5 + 2/3 AP

 

Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952) 'Chatelaine' 2010

 

Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952)
Chatelaine
2010
110 x 82.5cm
Type C print
Edition of 5 + 2/3 AP

 

Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952) 'The Royal Guard' 2011

 

Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952)
The Royal Guard
2011
90 x 76cm
Type C print
Edition of 5 + 2/3 AP

 

Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952) 'Venetian Beauty' 2011

 

Robyn Stacey (Australian, b. 1952)
Venetian Beauty
2011
120 x 107.7cm
Type C print
Edition of 5 + 2/3 AP

 

 

Stills Gallery

This gallery has now closed.

Stills Gallery website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

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

 

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

 

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

 

Murray Fredericks (Australian, b. 1970) 'Salt 273' 2011

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Murray Fredericks (Australian, b. 1970) 'Hector 11' 2011

 

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

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

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

Review: ‘Time Machine: Sue Ford’ at Monash Gallery of Art, Wheelers Hill, Victoria

Exhibition dates: 7th April – 19th June 2011

 

Sue Ford (1943-2009) 'Self-portrait' 1968

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009)
Self-portrait 1968
1968, printed 2011
From the series Self-portrait with camera (1960-2006)
Selenium toned gelatin silver
22.8 x 24 cm
Courtesy Sue Ford Archive

 

 

“Choosing to photograph oneself, one’s life and one’s time exemplified the now well-worn slogan ‘the person is political’. Ford’s self-examination across the decades is unflinching and exacting. As Janine Burke wrote in 1980, her ‘psychological history [is] etched in her face for everyone to see’. Burke concluded that Ford’s self-portraits are ‘as honest as one can ever be about oneself’.”


Helen Ennis. Faces are Maps: Sue Ford and Portraiture.1

 

“The search for the self is a journey into a mental labyrinth that takes random courses and ultimately ends at impasses. The memory fragments recovered along the way cannot provide us with a basis for interpreting the overall meaning of the journey. The meanings that we derive from our memories are only partial truths, and their value is ephemeral. For Foucault, the psyche is not an archive but only a mirror. To search the psyche for the truth about ourselves is a futile task because the psyche can only reflect the images we have conjured up to describe ourselves. Looking into the psyche, therefore, is like looking into the mirror image of a mirror. One sees oneself reflected in an image of infinite regress. Our gaze is led not toward the substance of our beginnings but rather into the meaninglessness of previously discarded images of the self.”


Patrick Hutton. Foucault, Freud,
and the Technologies of the Self.2

 

 

This is a solid exhibition of the work of beloved Australian photographer Sue Ford, essential looking for anyone wanting to have an overview of Australian photography.

The beautifully hung exhibition flows like music, interweaving up and down, the photographs framed in thin, black wood frames. It features examples of Ford’s black and white fashion and street photography; a selection of work from the famous black and white Time series (being bought for their collection by the Art Gallery of New South Wales) – small, snapshot size double portraits, the first portraits taken during the 1960’s, the second around 1974, formalist portraits in which the sitter is closely cropped around head and shoulders with the photographer using the camera as objectively as possible, the double portrait used to display changes in identity over time; a selection of Photographs of Women – modern prints from the Sue Ford archive that are wonderfully composed photographs with deep blacks that portray strong, independent, vulnerable, joyous women (see last four photographs below); and the most interesting work in the exhibition, the posthumous new series Self-portrait with camera (1960-2006) that evidence, through a 47 part investigation using colour prints from Polaroids, silver gelatin prints printed by the artist, prints made from original negatives and prints from scanned images where there was no negative available, a self-portrait of the artist in the process of ageing (see the two photographs above and below this review).

One of my favourite photographs in the exhibition was Margaret with Emma, Redcliffs, Queensland, 1971. The black and white photograph features a grandmother with her granddaughter, close to each other, both wearing floral dresses of different pattern, both staring intently out of the image at what is possibly a television with a weatherboard backdrop. A dark form hovers at the upper left of the photograph adding a disturbing note to the image but it is the look on the grandmother’s face – a look of shock, enthralment, blankness with eyes wide, that is matched by the intensity on the granddaughter’s face as she stares intently – that transcends the distance between photograph and viewer, between grandmother and granddaughter across time and space. The process of looking and ageing captured by the ‘time machine’, the camera, in one single image. The viewer understands this photograph for we all experience the evidence of our bodies, our mortality. We relate intimately to how the photograph reanimates in the present this moment from the past, the momenti mori of the photograph, the little death becoming our future death.

This notion is particularly poignant in the series Self-portrait with camera (1960-2006), a work that Sue Ford was actively engaged with before her death. Smaller colour prints from negatives and Polaroids are here interspersed with black and white photographs up to about 8″ x 10″ in size: the series contains 12 chromogenic photographs, 7 silver gelatin photographs, 6 dye fusion photographs and 22 selenium-toned photographs (printed 2011). In dark, contrasty prints the artist has photographed herself looking down into the camera shooting into a mirror, looking directly into the mirror with camera, with the camera on a timer, with the camera in/visible, being shot by other people with the camera pointed directly at her, with the camera perpendicular to the artist shot by someone else, with Ford behind a movie camera, with multiple refractions in mirrors. Sometimes Ford even becomes the camera (as in the 1986 self-portrait below: I am the camera, the camera is me).

Ford becomes the “one who looks” knowingly at herself, sometimes the author of that observation, sometimes oblivious to it (until later when she has collected these images). As Burke and Ennis note, these photographs of self-examination across the decades are as honest as one can ever be about oneself. This a deeply political but also deeply psychoanalytical investigation: not to “take care of yourself” as a form of knowing as in Greco-Roman antiquity but “knowing yourself” as the fundamental principle of understanding yourself: a procedure of objectification and subjection in which the photograph ‘marks’ our status and the passage of time, that makes us who we are – photographs as vital techniques in the constitution of the self as subject.3

The mirror is frequently used in these photographs to portray the self. While it is true that these are strong, intimate, unflinching and exacting images, in the use of the mirror the im(pose)tures of life are singled / doubled / tripled – a reflection of the psyche that lead to discarded images of the self that are of little use in understanding the substance of our beginnings … or the overall interpretation of the journey. What they do offer is cumulative evidence of a deep, personal conviction into the inquiry: who am I?

Rembrandt famously painted, drew and etched himself hundreds of times in the process of ageing; Ford has likewise done the same. If, as Victor Burgin observes, “An identity implies not only a location but a duration, a history,”4 then the nature of photography (including Ford’s self-reflexive project), concerned as it is with space and time, becomes the mirror in a search for identity. Photography as a mirror on the world constantly repeats moments of illumination in a re/vision of eternal recurrence, a performance that is a hybrid site: both a homogenous (the same “I”) and heterogenous (a different “I”) site of self-representation, different every time we look. To that end I would like you to look at the self-portrait from 1976 (below). The artist is completely absent, her silhouette, her dark shadow swallowed whole by the blank photographic plate on the left hand side of the image as though Ford, the camera and an image of infinite regress have become one, eternally engulfed by space-time but open to re/view at any time.

Whether looking down, looking toward or looking inward these fantastic photographs show a strong, independent women with a vital mind, an élan vital, a critical self-organisation and an understanding of the morphogenesis of things that will engage us for years to come. Essential looking.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

1/ Burke, Janine. Self-portrait/self-image 1980-1981. Melbourne: Australian Directors’ Council, 1981. p. 4 quoted in Ennis, Helen. “Faces are Maps: Sue Ford and Portraiture,” in Lakin, Shaune (ed.,). Sue Ford: Self-portrait with camera (1960-2006). Melbourne: Monash Gallery of Art, 2011, np.

2/ Hutton, Patrick. “Foucault, Freud, and the Technologies of the Self,” in Martin, Luther and Gutman, Huck and Hutton, Patrick (eds.,). Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. London: Tavistock Publications, 1988, p. 139

3/ Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish, quoted in Gutman, Huck. “Rousseau’s Confessions: A Technology of the Self,” in Martin, Luther and Gutman, Huck and Hutton, Patrick (eds.,). Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault. London: Tavistock Publications, 1988, p. 99

4/ Burgin, Victor. In/Different Spaces: Place and Memory in Visual Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, p. 36


Many thankx to Mark Hislop for his help and the Monash Gallery of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009) 'Self-portrait 1986' 1986

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009)
Self-portrait 1986
1986
From the series Self-portrait with camera (1960-2006)
Gelatin silver print, printed 2011
8.4 x 6.5cm
Courtesy Sue Ford Archive

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009) 'Self-portrait 1976' 1976

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009)
Self-portrait 1976
1976, printed 2011
From the series Self-portrait with camera (1960-2006)
Selenium toned gelatin silver print
24 x 18cm
Courtesy Sue Ford Archive

 

Sue Ford (1943–2009) 'Self-portrait 1974' 1974

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009)
Self-portrait 1974
1974, printed 2011
From the series Self-portrait with camera (1960-2006)
Selenium toned gelatin silver print
19.9 x 18cm
Courtesy Sue Ford Archive

 

 

On 16 April 2011, the first major exhibition of the work of the late Sue Ford for two decades will open at Monash Gallery of Art.

Sue Ford (1943-2010) was one of Australia’s most important photographers and filmmakers. Ford studied photography at RMIT and in 1974 was the first Australian photographer to be given a solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria.

Ford passed away in 2009. Before her death, she was working with Monash Gallery of Art on an exhibition of her work which would feature her final major project Self-portrait with camera (1960-2006). This series of 47 photographs has never been shown before, and presents a compelling self-portrait of an artist. It underscores the central role the camera played in Ford’s life. Self-portrait with camera will be shown alongside a survey of Ford’s black-and-white photographs from the 1960s and 70s and examples of her most iconic work, Time series (1960s-1970s).

The exhibition describes a period when photography was charged with political and personal meaning. As photographic historian and contributor to the publication accompanying the exhibition Helen Ennis states: “Ford’s approach to art making has always been straightforward … She does not cultivate a mysterious artistic persona [since] … her art practice is purposeful; it is the outcome of her view of art as a political activity that is democratic, liberating and relevant to contemporary society.”

As MGA Director and curator of the exhibition Shaune Lakin states: “This exhibition provides a great opportunity for Australian audiences to reassess the work of this important photographer, whose work was always at once political, beautiful and elegiac. In an era when the photograph has become a highly disposable thing, it is important to acknowledge its role as an agent of change and memory.”

Press release from the Monash Gallery of Art

 

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009)
Helen, 1962; Helen, 1974
1974
From the series Time series
Gelatin silver prints
11.0 x 8.0cm; 11.5 x 8.3cm
Museum of Australian Photography, City of Monash Collection
Acquired with assistance from the Robert Salzer Foundation and the Friends of MGA Inc 2020

 

Sue Ford (1943-2009) was one of Australia’s most important twentieth-century photographers, and Time series is her most iconic body of work, widely recognised as a key moment in the history of Australian photography. First exhibited at the NGV and Brummels Gallery of Photography in 1974, the series highlights Ford’s interest in the camera’s ability to record the effects of time and history. To create this series, Ford made portraits of her friends and acquaintances during the early to mid-1960s then rephotographed the sitters around a decade later, showing the second portraits beside the first. In some cases Ford later added third and fourth portraits to create Time series II, which she made for exhibition at the 1982 Sydney Biennale. Ford described the camera as a ‘time machine’ and the works in these series bracket periods in the lives of her subjects. With a tender pathos, they evoke the inevitability of time’s passing along with the processes of human ageing and constant change.

Text from the Museum of Australian Photography website 2021

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009) 'Annette 1962; Annette 1974' 1974

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009)
Annette 1962; Annette 1974
1974
From the Time series
Gelatin silver prints
11.1 x 20.1cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with the assistance of the Visual Arts Board and the KODAK (Australasia) Pty Ltd Fund, 1974

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009) 'Jim, 1964; Jim, 1969; Jim, 1974; Jim, 1979' 1982

  

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009)
Jim, 1964; Jim, 1969; Jim, 1974; Jim, 1979
1982
From the series Time series
Gelatin silver prints
11.0 x 7.6cm (each)
Museum of Australian Photography, City of Monash Collection
donated by the Sue Ford Archive 2020

 

Sue Ford (1943-2009) 'Lynne and Carol' 1962

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009)
Lynne and Carol
1962, printed 2011
Selenium toned gelatin silver print
38.0 x 38.0cm
Courtesy Sue Ford Archive

 

Sue Ford (1943-2009) 'Carol, Little Collins St studio' 1962

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009)
Carol, Little Collins St studio
1962, printed 2011
Selenium toned gelatin silver print
37.9 x 38.1cm
Courtesy Sue Ford Archive

 

Sue Ford (1943-2009) 'St Kilda' 1963

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009)
St Kilda
1963, printed 2011
Selenium toned gelatin silver print
38.0 x 38.0cm
Courtesy Sue Ford Archive

 

Sue Ford (1943-2009) 'Untitled [Bliss at Yellow House, King's Cross, Sydney]' c. 1972–1973

 

Sue Ford (Australian, 1943-2009)
Untitled [Bliss at Yellow House, King’s Cross, Sydney]
c. 1972-3, printed 2011
Selenium toned gelatin silver print
47.9 x 34.2cm
Courtesy Sue Ford Archive

 

 

Monash Gallery of Art
860 Ferntree Gully Road, Wheelers Hill
Victoria 3150 Australia
phone: + 61 3 8544 0500

Opening hours:
Tue – Fri 10am – 5pm
Sat – Sun 10pm – 4pm
Mon/public holidays closed

Monash Gallery of Art 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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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, 1963' 1963

 

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' 1963

 

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

 

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) 'Philadelphia' 1964

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Review: ‘Penelope Davis: Smack’ at Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 12th May – 11th June 2011

 

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963) 'Smack' installation 2011

 

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963)
Smack installation
2011
Silicone, nylon thread
Dimensions variable

 

 

A beautiful, hypnotic installation; one outstanding photograph (out of four); and a distance between elements, installation and photographs that, in the gallery space, seemed almost insurmountable.

The installation is intoxicating, taking the viewer into a world outside of reality – inverted, convoluted creatures “after the things of nature” (me ta physika) – in this case mobile phones, camera lenses and electrical plugs and leads, the skin of these objects flayed, extruded and made in silicone. These filamentary ‘jellies’ are wondrous. As Susan Fereday observes they are like detached skin, which “can become a kind of negative, a reversed memory, a perverse relic of its previously animated form … Detached, distraught, dangling. But there is also something slippery in these forms, something visceral, uterine, umbilical …”. The installation reminded me of the chthonian nature of the womb, our birth and that first gasp of breath – do you remember? was it all that you ever needed?

Water, blood, the detritus of birth and the emergence of life into light. Floating, gliding to the surface.

Only one photograph, Fluther (2011, below), approaches this detachment. A beauty it is too. The other three photographs felt more like addendum than adding anything further to the work and failed to achieve a ‘presence’ when compared to the installation. I suspect one of the problems was the scale of the three photographs and the fact that they are so tightly framed. Evidence of this can be seen in the installation shot below, the photograph of the blue ‘jellie’ so tightly prescribed and enclosed so as to not allow any interaction between installation and photograph. Perhaps making the photographs slightly larger and face mounting them behind PlexiGlass would have softened the edges of the photographs allowing a malleable (meta)physical air to breathe across the gallery space.

The highlight is the installation. Go and see, it is well worth the visit.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


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

 

 

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963) 'Smack' installation 2011

 

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963)
Smack installation
2011
Silicone, nylon thread
Dimensions variable

 

Stretched Skin

“Where my inside meets the outside, where my body’s surfaces curve or stretch, dimple or fold, they create sensory cavities that are designed to respond to the outside world, at least to some degree. More difficult to resolve is the place that’s made when my inside turns out and there and no pickets to hide the private things – things I don’t want to look at myself, things too fleshy for the world to see, too soft, raw and pink to be exposed. Bringing the inside out, I am turned outside in and where does that leave me? In the edgeless space of the everyday saturated by grief.

Penelope Davis’ ‘jellies’ make me think about how a person’s skin can record their body’s history through marks – scars, distentions, swellings, bruises and wrinkles – just as a photograph can record a body’s outward appearance through light. We could say that skin is an index to its experiences, but it is not iconic. Skin does not reproduce the body’s image the way a photograph does, unless the skin is lifted to make a new shape. Then, just as hot wind can suck the life out of a fallen leaf and turn its veins into a street map, or sun and sea can batter a plastic bottle into a miraculous Marian figurine, detached skin can become a kind of negative, a reversed memory, a perverse relic of its previously animated form.

That’s what the ‘jellies’ look like: skin, turned inside out, photographic skin turned outside in. Detached, distraught, dangling. But there is also something slippery in these forms, something visceral, uterine, umbilical …”

Except from pamphlet text by artist and writer Susan Fereday, March 2011

 

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963) 'Fluther' 2011

 

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963)
Fluther
2011
Type C photograph
120 x 100cm

 

In Smack, Penelope Davis’ latest body of work, jellyfish-like forms have been assembled from a collage of components. These elements include the detritus of contemporary technologies. Among these are cameras, computer parts, mobile phones, wiring and electrical parts. Organic source materials such as leaves and seaweed (many sourced from the community garden plots surrounding Davis’ studio) are cast and intermixed with these forms. After being cast in silicone, the works are sewn together to create forms that resemble jellyfish. The resulting swarm – or smack, as the collective noun is properly known – is displayed as an installation of semi transparent, suspended forms.

A selection of these ‘jellies’ have also been placed in the digital scanner and ‘photographed’. Some digital post-production work is also employed to create large scale photographic images.

The materials and techniques used allow Penelope Davis to play with some of the procedures and assumptions central to photographic practice. The central motif of the jellyfish is a vehicle to examine critical contemporary issues of consumption and environmental degradation.

Text from the Nellie Castan website [Online] Cited 28/05/2011 no longer available online

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Penelope Davis: Smack' at Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne showing at right the photograph 'Bloom' (2011)

 

Installation view of the exhibition Penelope Davis: Smack at Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne showing at right the photograph Bloom (2011, below)

  

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963) 'Bloom' 2011

 

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963)
Bloom
2011
Type C photograph
120 x 100cm

 

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963) 'Smack' installation 2011 (detail)

  

Penelope Davis (Australian, b. 1963)
Smack installation (detail)
2011
Silicone, nylon thread
Dimensions variable

 

 

Nellie Castan Gallery

This gallery has now closed

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top

Exhibition: ‘Garry Winogrand. Women are beautiful’ at Fundació Foto Colectania, Barcelona

Exhibition dates: 23rd February – 4th June 2011

 

Many thankx to Fundació Foto Colectania for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photograph for a larger version of the image.

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984) 'Centennial Ball, Metropolitan Museum' New York, 1969

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Centennial Ball, Metropolitan Museum
New York, 1969, printed 1981
Silver gelatin print
22 x 33cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984) 'Untitled', New York, 1965

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Untitled
New York, 1965, printed 1981
Silver gelatin print
22 x 33cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984) 'Untitled', New York, 1968

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Untitled
New York, 1968, printed 1981
Silver gelatin print
22 x 33cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

 

 

Foundation Foto Colectania presents for the first time in Barcelona the famous series Women Are Beautiful by Garry Winogrand.

Garry Winogrand is considered one of the greatest innovators of photography of the twentieth-century in America. He knew like no other how to capture the social transformation of females in the 60’s and 70’s through his portraits of women who stand as an allegory of women’s emancipation and their new role in society. The Foundation Foto Colectania presents his series Women Are Beautiful, including 85 photographs taken between 1960 and 1975 and collected in the book with the same title by the legendary director of photography at the MoMA, John Szarkowski. The exhibition from the collection of Lola Garrido, is part of the programming line of the foundation which is dedicated to authors who changed the course of the history of photography. The exhibition can be seen in Barcelona until June 4, 2011. In the 60’s ended the era of big images as symbols of timeless truths, by the devastating influence first from Walker Evans, and later from Robert Frank and William Klein. The pictures are focused on the reflection of reality, no retouching or other ideas added. Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander represent “the new American style” which broke new ground in the so-called Street Photography.

Winogrand combines spontaneity with an apparent confusion, which is more than aware of the complexity of the photography world: “I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs.” The presence of human beings, contrasting with the crowds and the streets in his photographs reveals a new way of looking, in which the anarchy results in a wealth of shapes and structures. The biased and cold style of Winogrand is associated with Abstract Expressionism and its sharp diagonals are similar to paint brush strokes of those years. If the photographer Robert Frank was critical of the 50’s, Garry Winogrand is one of the largest photographers of the 60’s.

Press release from the Fundació Foto Colectania website

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984) 'World's Fair', New York, 1964

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
World’s Fair
New York, 1964, printed 1981
Silver gelatin print
22 x 33cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984) 'New York City' 1967, printed 1981

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
New York City
1967, printed 1981
Silver gelatin print
22 x 33cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984) 'Central Park, New York' 1968, printed 1981

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Central Park, New York
1968, printed 1981
Silver gelatin print
22 x 33cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984) 'Untitled' New York, c. 1970, printed 1981

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Untitled
New York, c. 1970, printed 1981
Silver gelatin print
22 x 33cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984) 'New York' 1961, printed 1981

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
New York
1961, printed 1981
Silver gelatin print
33 x 22cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984) 'Untitled', New York, 1969

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Untitled
New York, 1969, printed 1981
Silver gelatin print
33 x 22cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984) 'Untitled', New York, 1968

 

Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Untitled
New York, 1968, printed 1981
Silver gelatin print
33 x 22 cm
© The Estate of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

 

 

Fundació Foto Colectania
Julián Romea 6, D2
08006
Barcelona

Opening hours:
Wednesday to Saturday: 11am – 2.30pm and 4pm – 8 pm
Sunday: 11am – 3pm

Fundació Foto Colectania website

LIKE ART BLART ON FACEBOOK

Back to top