Exhibition dates:Â 28th November – 20th December, 2008
Daniel Crooks (New Zealand, b. 1973) Intersection No.2 (vertical plane) 2008
This was a magical exhibition – beautiful, insightful and mesmerising in equal parts. Five large video screens were presented in the long space of the Anna Schwartz gallery in Melbourne. The outer two videos feature striated horizontal and vertical bands of pulsating colours, fluxing up and down and from side to side, seemingly rushing past like tarmac outside a moving car. These videos add balance at each end of the installation.
The inner videos on either side of the central panel are the most figurative of the work: the video on the left-hand side reminded me of a Jackson Pollock drip painting come alive, ribbons of paint in time and space morphing backwards, finally coalescing into figures and their shadows walking across tarmac; the video on the right-hand side shows people moving across a pedestrian intersection like an animated slow motion photograph flowing anamorphically across the screen, their shadows distorted on the ground as trams pass behind them. Up close the surface of the projected video breaks down into grided squares of light, hypnotic in their blooming, shape-shifting colours.
The central panel is the key to the whole work. Intensities of colour flash and fade in time with atmospheric ambient music (by J. David Franz and Byron Scullin) that works effectively with the whole installation. Beeps of the pedestrian crossing intersection intersperse the ambient music adding an almost sonar like pinging to the atmospheric soundtrack; after-images appear and glow as the colours fade, transcending the solidity of the ever-changing single pixel of colour taken through the block of video time. The pyrotechnics of the other screens are balanced by the colours/intensities/music of this central panel.
The installation reminds me of a folded out five-panel religious altarpiece form of the 15th century. The figures, shadows and lines of the outer videos surround the pulsing heart of the central panel that, for me, took on an almost transcendent spirituality (especially when you understand the transcendence of time and space that is being achieved and how that relates to your own path in life). If you stand very still against the far wall of the gallery and look at all five videos at the same time the central panel achieves the ‘Intersection’ that Daniel Crooks is imagining. Subtle, profound and intelligent the viewer is invited to spend time, no, to transcend time in the company of this work and that is a major achievement: to reveal certain truths about our existence in these moments of time, to inhabit the space between breath – no time, no space.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Daniel Crooks (New Zealand, b. 1973) Intersection No.5 (horizontal volume) 2008
“The subjects of Daniel Crook’s oeuvre; the recurrence of city transport systems, lifts in high-rise buildings alongside images of the sea, invoke an idea of the world made as much of time as space and that indeed we ourselves are also made of time …
Crooks works, literally, from inside the medium, deconstructing its time-space matrix to reveal the inner truth about the subjects of video: they are purely temporal.
The five works comprising Intersection are all sourced from the same ‘volume’ of video footage. Each video is a formal variation that navigates an alternative path through the same light field, pushing its own ‘picture plane’ through the space along opposing axes.
The two most figurative videos navigate the entire volume of footage – each swapping time for the vertical or the horizontal. The second, more abstracted videos are reduced to horizontal and vertical ‘planes’. The centre work – a single pixel of information that tunnels through time – is the intersection between opposing axes, almost like the fulcrum or nodal point, and in turn acts as a pivot for the installation.”
Catalogue notes from Daniel Crooks exhibition Intersection at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne.
Daniel Crooks (New Zealand, b. 1973) Intersection No.4 (vertical volume) 2008
Daniel Crooks works preÂdomÂiÂnantÂly in video, phoÂtogÂraÂphy and sculpÂture. He is best known for his digÂiÂtal video and phoÂtoÂgraphÂic works that capÂture and alter time and motion. Crooks manipÂuÂlates digÂiÂtal imagery and footage as though it were a physÂiÂcal mateÂrÂiÂal. He breaks time down, frame by frame. The resultÂing works expand our sense of temÂpoÂralÂiÂty by manipÂuÂlatÂing digÂiÂtal ‘time slices’ that are norÂmalÂly imperÂcepÂtiÂble to the human eye.
Intersection installation view at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Addendum 2019
Daniel Crooks Static No. 12 (extract) 2012 HD Video Courtesy Daniel Crooks & Anna Schwartz Gallery
Artistic Responses by Daniel Crooks | Symposium: Wider Vantages Are Needed Now, Times 18 2013
Daniel Crooks, New Zealand-born and Melbourne-based, is one of the foremost innovators in the quickly evolving fields of video and digital art.
Daniel Crooks: Phantom Ride 2016
Daniel Crooks’ Phantom Ride alludes to cinema history to create a seamless journey through a composite reality. By manipulating digital footage as though it were a physical material, the artist has constructed a collaged landscape that takes us through multiple worlds and shifts our perception of space and time.
Anna Schwartz Gallery 185 Flinders Lane Melbourne, Victoria 3000
Exhibition dates: 15th November – 23rd December, 2008
Cindy Sherman (American, b. 1954) Untitled #466 2008 Chromogenic print 254.3 x 174.6cm
The artist Cindy Sherman is a multifaceted evocation of human identity standing in glorious and subversive Technicolor before the blank canvas of her imagination. Poststructuralist in her physical appearance (there being no one Cindy Sherman, perhaps no Sherman at all) and post-photographic in her placement in constructed environments, Sherman challenges the ritualised notions of the performative act – and destabilises perceived notions of self, status, image and place.
The viewer is left with a sense of displacement when looking at these tableaux. The absence / presence of the artist leads the viewer to the binary opposite of rational / emotional – knowing these personae and places are constructions, distortions of a perceived reality yet emotionally attached to every wrinkle, every fold of the body at once repulsive yet seductive.
They are masterworks in the manner of Rembrandt’s self portraits – deeply personal images that he painted over many years that examined the many identities of his psyche – yet somehow different. Sherman investigates the same territories of the mind and body but with no true author, no authoritative meaning and no one subject at their beating heart. Her goal is subversive.
As Roy Boyne has observed, “The movement from the self as arcanum to the citational self, has, effectively, been welcomed, particularly in the work of Judith Butler, but also in the archetypal sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. There is a powerful logic behind this approbation. When self-identity is no longer seen as, even minimally, a fixed essence, this does not mean that the forces of identity formation can therefore be easily resisted, but it does mean that the necessity for incessant repetition of identity formation by the forces of a disciplinary society creates major opportunities for subversion and appropriation. In the repeated semi-permanences of the citational self, there is more than a little scope for counter-performances marked, for example, by irony and contempt.”1
Counter performances are what Sherman achieves magnificently. She challenges a regularised and constrained repetition of norms and as she becomes her camera (“her extraordinary relationship with her camera”) she subverts its masculine disembodied gaze, the camera’s power to produce normative, powerful bodies.2 As the viewer slips ‘in the frame’ of the photograph they take on a mental process of elision much as Sherman has done when making the images – deviating from the moral rules that are impressed from without3 by living and breathing through every fold, every fingernail, every sequin of their constructed being.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
1/ Boyne, Roy. “Citation and Subjectivity: Towards a Return of the Embodied Will,” in Featherstone, Mike (ed.,). Body Modification. London: Sage, 2000, p. 212
2/ “To the extent that the camera figures tacitly as an instrument of transubstantiation, it assumes the place of the phallus, as that which controls the field of signification. The camera thus trades on the masculine privilege of the disembodied gaze, the gaze that has the power to produce bodies, but which itself has no body.” Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter. New York: Routledge, 1993, p. 136
3/ “Universal human nature is not a very human thing. By acquiring it, the person becomes a kind of construct, built up not from inner psychic propensities but from moral rules that are impressed upon him from without.” Goffman, Erving. Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behaviour. London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1972, pp. 44-45
Many thankx to Metro Pictures Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606-1669) Self-portrait as the apostle Paul (left) 1661 Self-portrait as Zeuxis laughing (right) 1662
Cindy Sherman (American, b. 1954) Untitled #464 2008 Chromogenic print 214.3 x 152.4cm
For her first exhibition of new work since 2004, Cindy Sherman will show a series of colour photographs that continues her investigation into distorted ideas of beauty, self-image and ageing. Typical of Sherman, these works are at once alarming and amusing, distasteful and poignant.
Working as her own model for more than 30 years, Sherman has developed an extraordinary relationship with her camera. A remarkable performer, subtle distortions of her face and body are captured on camera and leave the artist unrecognisable to the audience. Her ability to drastically manipulate her age or weight, or coax the most delicate expressions from her face, is uncanny. Each image is overloaded with detail, every nuance caught by the artist’s eye. No prosthetic nose or breast, fake fingernail, sequin, wrinkle or bulge goes unnoticed by Sherman.
Sherman shoots alone in her studio acting as author, director, actor, make-up artist, hairstylist and wardrobe mistress. Each character is shot in front of a “green screen” then digitally inserted onto backgrounds shot separately. Adding to the complexity, Sherman leaves details slightly askew at each point in the process, undermining the narrative and forcing the viewer to confront the staged aspect of the work.
Press release at Metro Pictures Gallery
Installation view of Cindy Sherman exhibition at Metro Pictures Gallery, New York, 2008
Cindy Sherman (American, b. 1954) Untitled 2008 Chromogenic print 148.6 x 146.7cm
Cindy Sherman (American, b. 1954) Untitled 2008 Chromogenic print 177.8 x 161.3cm
Cindy Sherman (American, b. 1954) Untitled #468 2008 Chromogenic colour print 191.8 x 151.1cm
The society portraits made in 2008 portray older women in opulent settings wearing expensive clothes, their faces stretched and enhanced unnaturally, showing signs of cosmetic surgery. These markers point to cultural standards of beauty and wealth, and here signal the failed aspiration to sustained youth. Printed large, presented in decorative and often gilded frames, and depicting figures in formal poses, these works are reminiscent of Sherman’s history portraits and classical portraiture in general. In this way, they remind the viewer that representation is not a new phenomenon, and the cultural implications in all images are tied to long and complex histories. In Untitled #468 the figure stands stoically with arms crossed and mouth slightly agape, wearing a fur, silk scarf, and white gloves, which the artist found at thrift shops. In the background, an ornate building mirrors the elaborate dress of the woman.
The perspective of the building does not align with that of the figure, blatantly breaking the illusion of reality and recalling Sherman’s 1980 series of rear-screen projections. This clear and deliberate artificiality indicates that images, characters, and even our own selves are constructed, not fixed.
Anonymous text. “Untitled #468,” on The Broad website Nd [Online] Cited 09/06/2022
Cindy Sherman (American, b. 1954) Untitled 2008 Chromogenic print 244.5 x 165.7cm
Linda Connor (American, b. 1944) Prayer Flag and Chortens, Ladakh, India 1988 1988 Silver gelatin print
Connor’s photographs reveal the essence of her subjects, yielding a sense of timelessness while visually evoking the intangible. She uses a distinctive technique. A large-format view camera allows her to achieve remarkable clarity and rich detail. Her prints are created by direct contact of the 8 x 10-inch negative on printing out paper, exposed and developed using sunlight …
Connor embraces a wide range of subject matter, connecting the physical and the spiritual world. Just as sacred art evokes deep meaning even without an explicit understanding, Connor hopes her photographs serve a similar metaphorical function. Upon entering Chartres Cathedral, for example, one feels transported into another realm, regardless of religious beliefs. Connor’s images share this transformative nature as they transcend the boundaries of subject, culture, and time. She brings an equal amount of attention to a rock in the desert as she does when she photographs a temple.
Text from the Phoenix Art Museum website
Many thankx to the Phoenix Art Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Linda Connor (American, b. 1944) Windows and Thangkas, Ladakh 1988 Silver gelatin print
Linda Connor (American, b. 1944) Library of Prayer Books, Ladakh, India 1988 Silver gelatin print
Linda Connor is an American photographer who photographs spiritual and exotic locations including India, Mexico, Thailand, Ireland, Peru, and Nepal. Her photographs appear in a number of books, including Spiral Journey, a catalog of her exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in 1990 and Odyssey: Photographs by Linda Connor, published by Chronicle Books in 2008. Connor was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant in 1976 and 1988 and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1979. Connor’s work is included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
Linda Connor (American, b. 1944) Portal Figures, Chartres Cathedral, France 1989 Silver gelatin print
Linda Connor (American, b. 1944) Mudra, Mindroling Monastery, Tibet 1993 Silver gelatin print
Linda Connor (American, b. 1944) Blind Musician, Kashmir, India 1985 Silver gelatin print
Linda Connor (American, b. 1944) Apollo, Mt. Nemrut, Turkey 1992 Silver gelatin print
Doris and John Norton Gallery for the Center for Creative Photography, Phoenix Art Museum 1625 N Central Ave, Phoenix, AZ 85004, USA
The Americans. Photographs by Robert Frank. Introduction by Jack Kerouac. Scalo, Zürich/D.A.P., New York, 1993. First Scalo edition. 179 pp. Oblong quarto. Hardbound in photo-illustrated dust jacket. Black-and-white reproductions.
WOW! One of the seminal books of photography and signed as well.
“It was Frank’s The Americans that made the photographic book into an art form in its own right. Frank was following a lead set by [Wright] Morris’ book (The Inhabitants) and, especially, by Evans’ American Photographs, both of which are designed to let pictures play off each other in a way that controls and reinforces their effect on the viewer. Even Klein’s New York book displays this tendency. But Frank’s goes much further, creating a denser, richer, deeper structure of images than any book before it.”
Colin Westerbeck in Michel Frizot, et. al., The New History of Photography.
Jean Louis Marie Eugène Durieu (1800-1874) was an early French amateur nude photographer, primarily known for his early nude photographs of men and women. A number of his male and female models were also painted by Eugène Delacroix, with whom he was friends.
Durieu was born in Nîmes, and became known for making studies of nudes for Delacroix. During his career Durieu was a lawyer. His last job was inspector for education and culture. In 1849 he went into early retirement and devoted himself to the newly developing technology of photography. In 1853, Durieu worked with Delacroix on a series of photographs of different male and female nude models.
In the early 1850s, Durieu, like many of his photographic peers, gravitated from the daguerreotype to the calotype. None of the works from his daguerreotypical oeuvre can be attributed to him with any certainty. Apart from the Delacroix album held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, another work on paper does exist, however, a more personal album preserved at the George Eastman House in Rochester, which was once part of the Gabriel Cromer collection. Its repertoire is more varied and includes female nudes in fairly elaborate settings, as well as portraits and reproductions of paintings and engravings. …
“I look with passion and without fatigue at these photographs of naked men, this admirable poem, this human body on which I learn to read and whose sight tells me more than the inventions of scribblers.”
Delacroix, ‘Journal’, October 5, 1855
Delacroix was confronted, like his entire generation, with the emergence of photography. An intriguing tool fascinating for the painter, this medium occupies a place apart in all of his work. He is at the source of a deep reflection on artistic truth in the face of photographic realism.
Far from seeing photography as a potential rival to painting, Delacroix took a keen interest in the development of this new medium, following its technical progress with sufficient curiosity to become a founding member of the Heliographic Society in 1851. He amassed a considerable photographic collection-of frescoes by Raphael, paintings by Rubens, and cathedral sculptures. Moreover, although he did not use a camera himself, a series of male and female nude models were photographed at his request by Eugène Durieu, in 1854. We know from his diary and letters that he sometimes used these photographs to practice drawing when no live models were available. These shots, which he sometimes carries with him, are a valuable tool for practicing drawing during his stays in the province. They meet very personal criteria; Delacroix wanted to use images voluntarily a little blurry and mostly stripped of all the quaint accessories conveyed by commercial photographs to the attention of artists.
However, despite a deep fascination for photography, Delacroix keeps a critical eye on this new medium. He adopts an attitude sometimes skeptical about his proper use and mastery of the technique, refusing to award benefits beyond its instrumental value. His reluctance is particularly keen with regard to one’s own photographed image: he even goes so far as to demand the destruction of some negatives, fortunately in vain.
The album of thirty-two photographs preserved in the department Prints and Photography of the National Library de France and commonly known as “Durieu Album”, by the name of the author of the photographs contains mainly photographs of two nude models, a man and a woman, taken by Eugene Durieu in the presence and on the indications of Delacroix during two sessions of successive poses, on Sunday 18 and 25 June 1854. The album was probably in lot 1532 of the sale after the painter’s death, bought by the critic Philippe Burty, who said on the front page: “All this sequence of photographs was bought by me at the posthumous sale of Eugène Delacroix’s workshop. He used it often and his cartons contained a considerable number of pencil studies from these photographs some of which were made expressly for him by one of his friends, and the models posed by him.” This album went on to the bibliographer and historian of the art Maurice Tourneux, who offered it in 1899 to the Cabinet des Prints.
The examination of the album, whose pages are all presented here in the order of the pages, shows that divides into four distinct sequences. Plate I represents a seated male nude model. His black beard and its abundant hair absolutely distinguishes him from the model with the better drawn musculature having posed in the following photographs. This test is undoubtedly part of a different set provided by Durieu to Delacroix.
The twenty-six photographs that follow in the album are, like the first, calotypes, that is to say prints from negative on paper. The calotype is characterised by a slight blur that Delacroix’s eyes found useful and tolerable photography, the grain of the negative paper producing, in the prints, less precise contours than in the daguerreotype or prints based on collodion glass. These twenty-six photographs of June 1854 form a very homogeneous series, with two models. The man that Delacroix calls “the Bohemian” appears by the development of his musculature and his ease to pose, as a professional model. He is present alone on seventeen views, and on the other nine in the company of a female model, probably an Italian, also a professional model, who posed again in 1855 for two other photographers.
The album ends with three prints, based on a glass negative, of the same model draped to the waist, sitting in front of a plain canvas background. The sharpness, due to the negative on glass, the rigorous composition and images, their “professional” aspect make them totally different from the previous ones, to such that we can hesitate to attribute them to Durieu. While the calotypes posed by Delacroix are very rare, these last three images are seen in more than one collection; they have been broadcast to a wider audience.
Text from the Delacroix et la photographie exhibition pdf (translated from the French by Google translate)
Enchanted by the play of light and reflections which transformed the appearance of matter, Riesener began a new aesthetic that made him one of the precursors of impressionism. A passionate colourist, he researched all the nuances of colour and studied the techniques of ancient Greece and the Renaissance, including Titian, Veronese and Corregio. Impressed by his research into colour, he turned towards Rubens, which for him was the Shakespeare of painting. Very early in his career Riesener studied tonal divisions, well before the physician Chevreul discovered their scientific basis. His tactile taste led him to look for the most perfect expression of matter and particularly of skin. He put poetry into his painting by the play of shadow and he passionately admired nature, life and all the beauties they produced.
He researched the subject of life in the countryside and, liking to paint reality, said he wanted to express “the heat of the day, the melancholy of the evening, meadows, flowers as they are in nature”. His study of the elements caused him to paint a series of skies which varied according to the light and time of day – the subjects were ahead of their time and Riesener had to fight hard against the Salon juries and the Institut. Using pure colours, he excluded the blacks and whites which had been used for shadows and light before him. His material science of colour was the opposition which gave birth to contrasts from juxtaposed pigments. He did not portray faces by contours, but by shadows and modelling.
William Clift (American, b. 1944) Somebody’s House, Baltimore, Maryland, 1964 1964
from the book
Certain Places Photographs and Introduction by William Clift. William Clift Editions, Santa Fe, 1987. 44 pp., twenty-two tritone illustrations.
One of the most ravishing photographic books ever produced. Sensitive photography, luminous images, wonderful reproductions on quality stock. Nothing more need be said. My favourite of so many great images is above.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
All photographs are used under fair use conditions for the purpose of education and research. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
William Clift (American, b. 1944) Apple Blossoms, Velarde, New Mexico, 1973 1973
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William Clift (American, b. 1944) Desert Form No. 1, New Mexico, 1984 1984
William Clift (American, b. 1944) Untitled 1976 From the County Courthouse series Gelatin silver print 16.5 h x 13 w inches
Andreas Gursky banner at NGV International exhibition, Melbourne
A large but plain crowd assembled for the opening of the first exhibition by world renowned German photographer Andreas Gursky at the National Gallery of Victoria in St Kilda Road, Melbourne. After some lively conversation with friends and following the opening speeches we wandered into a large clean gallery space with minimal design elements. The use of space within the gallery allowed the work to speak for itself. It is a minimal hang and the exhibition works all the better for this.
As for the work itself 21 large photographs are presented ranging from landscapes to buildings, race tracks to formula 1 pits, Madonna concerts to the Tour de France. Most work successfully in building a hyperreal vision of the world. We are not sure what is ‘real’ or hyperreal, what is a straight photograph or what has been digitally manipulated and woven together. The colour and sharpness of the images is often intensified: in reproductions of the famous photograph of the 99c supermarket in America the colours seem flat but ‘in the flesh’ the colours are almost fluoro in their saturation and brightness.
Having said that the photographs are nearly always unemotional – as though seen from above in the third person, they observe with detachment. The intrigue for the viewer is in the detail, in working out what is going on, but these are not passionate photographs on the surface. It is beneath the surface that the photographs have their psychological effect: the best of the images work on the subconscious of the viewer. Like a fantastical dance the three very wide images of the Formula 1 pits feature pit crews practicing tyre changes, frozen in a choreographed ballet. People in the galleries above stare down; pit lane girls seem to have been inserted digitally into the images, standing at side or behind the pit crews in a seemingly surreal comment on these worlds. These are theatrical tableaux vivant, splashed with teams colours. Fantastic photographs.
In some of the images, such as the Madonna concert or the photograph of the Bahrain Formula 1 racetrack, space seems to have folded in on itself and the viewer is unsure of the structure of the image and of their vantage point in looking at them. Space also collapses in the photograph of the pyramid of Cheops (2006, below), where the depth of field from foreground to background of the image is negligible. Less successful are images of a Jackson Pollock painting and a green grass bank with running river (Rhein II 1996, below), intensified beyond belief so that the river seems almost to be made of liquid silver.
A wonderful exhibition in many aspects, well worth a visit to see one the worlds best photographers at work. The photographs tell detached but psychologically emotional stories about what human beings are doing to the world in which they live. These images are a commentary on the state of this relationship – images of repetition, pattern, construction, use, abuse and fantasy woven into hyperreal visions of an unnatural world.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the National Gallery of Victoria for inviting me to the opening and for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
For the first time in Australia, an exhibition by German contemporary photographer Andreas Gursky opened at the National Gallery of Victoria. From the Haus der Kunst in Munich, Andreas Gursky presents 21 major works for which the artist is internationally acclaimed. The photographs range from 1989 to 2007 and include seminal works such as Tokyo Stock Exchange and the diptych 99 cent store. Andreas Gursky is recognised as one of the world’s leading contemporary artists. On view through 22 February, 2009.
Well known for his large-scale (generally measuring an astounding four to five metres) and extraordinarily detailed photographs of contemporary life, Gursky continues the lineage of ‘new objectivity’ in German photography which was brought to contemporary attention by Bernd and Hilla Becher.
In the 1990s, Gursky became inspired by the various manifestations of global capitalism. His interest was piqued looking at a newspaper photograph of the crowded floor of the Tokyo Stock Exchange and he began to photograph its flurry of suited traders, somehow moving according to some inbuilt order.
Dr Gerard Vaughan, Director, NGV said the Andreas Gursky exhibition represented a significant coup for Melbourne: “The National Gallery of Victoria is the only Australian venue for this extraordinary show – the first major exhibition of Gursky’s work ever to be seen in this country. Generously organised by the Haus der Kunst Museum in Munich we are extremely fortunate to have had the works in this show selected for us by Andreas Gursky himself.”
Andreas Gursky was born in 1955 and grew up in Düsseldorf, Germany. In the early 1980s, he studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany’s State Art Academy. Whilst there he was heavily influenced by his teachers Bernd and Hilla Becher, who were well known for their methodical black and white photographs of industrial machinery.
In 1984 Gursky began to move away from the Becher style, choosing instead to work in colour. Since then he has travelled across the world to cities such as Tokyo, Cairo, Hong Kong, Stockholm, Singapore and Los Angeles photographing factories, hotels and office buildings – places he considered to be symbols of contemporary culture. His world-view photographs during this period are considered amongst the most original achievements in contemporary photography.
Gursky has been the subject of numerous international exhibitions including the Internationale Foto-Triennale in Esslingen, Germany in 1989 and 1995, the Venice Biennale in 1990, and the Biennale of Sydney in 1996 and 2000. In 2001, Gursky was the subject of an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Press release from the National Gallery of Victoria website
Exhibition dates: 14th November, 2008 – 12th April, 2009
Ray Mortenson (American, b. 1944) Untitled (7-16-6) 1984 Gelatin silver print Courtesy of Janet Borden, Inc.
Documenting the abandoned, burnt out, and razed structures of entire city blocks in the South Bronx in the aftermath of the 1970s, during which this neighbourhood experienced dramatic decline, Broken Glass: Photographs of the South Bronx by Ray Mortenson will be on view at the Museum of the City of New York from November 14, 2008 through March 9, 2009. The 50 black and white cityscapes and interiors on view – five of which are large-scale – were taken between 1982 and 1984, and they vividly illustrate the results of a downslide that began in the Great Depression of the 1930s and accelerated with the construction of the Cross Bronx Expressway in the 1950s and the fiscal crisis of the 1970s. Broken Glass is Mortenson’s first museum exhibition in New York City, and it is the first presentation of the South Bronx photographs.
The 50 photographs on view, all black and white, range in size from the smallest at approximately 11″ by 14″, to the most monumental at 40″ by 60″. Each conveys a devastating silence, serving as a reminder that these city blocks were once the homes of individuals, families, and a large community. Mortenson has written, “The buildings were like tombs – sealed up, broken open and plundered. Inside, stairways with missing steps led up to abandoned apartments. Doors opened into rooms that were once bedrooms or kitchens. Small things left behind hint at who the occupants might have been – a hairbrush, photographs, or bits of clothing.” Ghostly remnants of the once prosperous and thriving neighbourhoods can be glimpsed in his images which document the extent and severity of the urban decline experienced in the South Bronx.
These photographs document an important chapter in the history of a New York City neighbourhood, augmenting their aesthetic power. The decline of the South Bronx began as early as the Great Depression when previously sustained development came to an abrupt halt. After World War II an exodus of New York’s middle class began and continued into the 1970s. This caused a population decline throughout the city, but the effects were particularly hard on the South Bronx as more than 200,000 residents left the community between 1970 and 1980. As entire communities left the city, Robert Moses’ road building and slum clearance, along with other urban renewal initiatives had dramatic effects on the lives of all who remained. In the 1970s New York City faced another economic crisis and virtual bankruptcy. City government was unable to maintain services in the South Bronx and “planned shrinkage” became an unofficial policy as services were slowly withdrawn. With little incentive for landlords to upgrade or even maintain their property, waves of arson and “insurance fires” decimated the by now largely minority community. Astonishingly, some 12,000 fires a year occurred through the 1970s, averaging more than 30 a day.
A successful resurrection of the South Bronx began in the mid-1980s, as grass roots organisations and community development corporations, along with financial reinvestment by the City, sparked its regeneration. The photographs on view stand in starkest contrast to today’s revitalised neighbourhood, which has been the result of the dedication of its citizens combined with government support. The photographs serve as a reminder of the ruins that once dominated the now-vibrant streets and that the balance between prosperity and urban decline can be fragile.
Brief Biography
Ray Mortenson was born in Wilmington, Delaware in 1944 and studied art at the Carnegie Institute of Technology and the San Francisco Art Institute. In the early 1970s, Mortenson moved to New York and began working with photography. His first significant photographic project was a comprehensive investigation of the industrial landscapes of New Jersey’s Meadowlands (1974-1982). Since then, Mortensen has continued to focus on landscape photography that is often interested in liminal places of transition, set apart from everyday life. His photographs have been accepted into the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
Press release from the Museum of the City of New York website
Ray Mortenson (American, b. 1944) Untitled 1983 Gelatin silver print Courtesy of Janet Borden, Inc.
Ray Mortenson (American, b. 1944) Untitled 1984 Gelatin silver print Courtesy of Janet Borden, Inc.
Ray Mortenson (American, b. 1944) Untitled 1983 Gelatin silver print Courtesy of Janet Borden, Inc.
Ray Mortenson (American, b. 1944) Untitled 1984 Gelatin silver print Courtesy of Janet Borden, Inc.
Ray Mortenson (American, b. 1944) Untitled 1984 Gelatin silver print Courtesy of Janet Borden, Inc.
Museum of the City of New York 1220 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street New York, NY 10029 Phone: 212-534-1672
As far as the eye can see shows 13 reconstructed and digitally reassembled panorama photos by Tiedemann from his 1,500-footage work. The city views from the years 1949-1952 were enlarged to almost gigantic dimensions (up to 25.5 m in length) and thus provide a fascinating view of the destruction of the war and the reconstruction of Berlin.
Fritz Tiedemann (German, 1915-2001) was a trained surveying technician and was trained in the military as a photogrammeter (specialist for photographic measuring methods). He documented the city as a photographer at the Office of Preservation. The photographer Arwed Messmer came across Tiedemann’s photographs during research work for his book project “Anonyme Mitte – Berlin” in the Berlinische Galerie and then developed the idea for this exhibition.
After WW 2, rubble clearance had made considerable progress and rebuild had begun, a remarkable photographic inventory was done in East Berlin. By order of the magistrate of the capital of the GDR an – up to now – unknown photographer documented central places and areas that were of importance concerning the urban planning in the early 50s. He captured the Pariser Platz and the Schloßplatz area as well as the works on the Walter Ulbricht Stadium or a sand storage area in the outskirts. In order to adequately picture the void and the vastness of the destroyed city as well as the remaining urban structures, the photographer made horizontal turns with the camera and thus produced sequences that – once brought together – turned into panoramic pictures.
The concealed quality of these pictures was lately discovered by Berlin photographer Arwed Messmer. By means of digital mounting of the sequences he created synthetic large-size pictorial worlds that show the destroyed Berlin as an empty stage. Thus inspired, the Photo Archive of the East Berlin magistrate, preserved by the Berlinische Galerie and documented in the catalogue “Ost-Berlin und seine Bauten. Fotografien 1945-1990” / “East Berlin Architecture”, was searched through anew. Thus the exhibition operates at the interface between applied photography and new photographic technology as well as between collective memory and an unfamiliar optic experience.
Press release from the Berlinische Galerie Museum of Modern Art
Installation views of the exhibition As far as the eye can see at the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin
Between 1948 and 1953, photographer and technical surveyor Fritz Tiedemann (German, 1915-2001) was commissioned by the urban administration of East Berlin to undertake extensive documentation of architecture and urban planning in the capital of the GDR. Many of his early visual documents are series of images conceived as panoramas, whereby the sweep of the camera gives a comprehensive impression of emptiness and the extent of war damage in the city. Processed as contact copies and stuck onto archive covers, his many photographs are one important, early basic collection of a photo archive that was extended consistently until 1990. It has been kept in the architectural collection of the Berlinische Galerie since 1992.
An in-depth study of the collection was facilitated with support from the Getty Foundation, Los Angeles, and the results were made available to the public in the shape of the publication “Ost-Berlin und seine Bauten” in 2006. In 2008 a selection of Tiedemann’s photographs was shown to the public in the exhibition So weit kein Auge reicht. Berliner Panoramafotografien aus den Jahren 1949-1952. Aufgenommen von Fritz Tiedemann. Rekonstruiert und interpretiert von Arwed Messmer (As far as no eye can see. Berlin panorama photographs from the years 1949-1952. Taken by Fritz Tiedemann. Reconstructed and interpreted by Arwed Messmer). A catalogue of the same name was also published; it has since been produced in a second, revised edition.
Text from the Berlinische Galerie Museum of Modern Art
14 February 1915 Hamburg – 23 November 2001 Münster, Westfalen
The identity behind the name “Tiedemann” could be clarified during the course of the exhibition. A former colleague of Fritz Tiedemann as well as descendents of the photographer learned about the exhibition due to the nationwide media coverage and contacted the museum.
As a professional surveying technician Fritz Tiedemann received additional specialist qualification as a topographer during his military service. His photographic skills and expertise were of great importance for the documentation of wartime damage and a visual basis for future urban planning. Indeed, his photographs can be considered as new documents showing the vastness and emptiness of the destroyed city.
In February 1948 he began working as a photographer for the Berlin Historic Buildings’ and Memorials’ Conservation Office. In October 1949 due to the political division of Greater Berlin he was to continue his work for the East Berlin government’s city planning office. Besides historical aspects the documentation then also focused on the architectural development of East Berlin as is also displayed by the exhibition’s panoramic photographs.
On February 28, 1953 Fritz Tiedemann was arrested by the East German police forces for his attempts to have West Berlin authorities share in those historically valuable photographs. He was tried and imprisoned and after the events of June 17, 1953 granted amnesty. Together with his family he subsequently fled to West Germany where he was acknowledged as political refugee. In January 1954 he took up work as a topographer with a company called Plan und Karte, later Hansa Luftbild, in Münster, Westphalia, where he remained employed until his retirement in 1978.
Photography had not only been part of Fritz Tiedmann’s professional activities, it was in fact his life-long passion, the results of which are considered by his family as a great heritage.
Text from the Berlinische Galerie Museum of Modern Art
Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive 
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