Exhibition: ‘The Intimate World of Josef Sudek’ at Jeu de Paume, Paris

Exhibition dates: 7th June – 25th September, 2016

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976) 'St. Vitus cathedral, Prague, Czech Republic' c. 1926 from the exhibition 'The Intimate World of Josef Sudek' at Jeu de Paume, Paris, June - Sept, 2016

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976)
St. Vitus cathedral, Prague, Czech Republic
c. 1926
Silver gelatin print

A poetry of the everyday

Josef Sudek, a one-armed man lugging around a large format camera, is one of my top ten photographers of all time.

His photographs, sometimes surreal, always sensitive, have a profound sensibility that affect the soul. Melancholy and mysterious by turns, they investigate the inner life of objects which stand as metaphors for the inner life of the artist. A form of healing after his horrific injuries and the loss of his arm during the First World War, the photographs purportedly look outwards upon the world but are actually interior meditations on life, death and the nature of being. Light emerges from the darkness; understanding from tribulation; and Sudek, in Jungian terms, integrates his ego into his soul through the process of (photographic) individuation – whereby the personal and collective unconscious (his hurt and damage) are brought into consciousness (eg. by means of dreams, active imagination, or free association) to be assimilated into the whole personality. It is a completely natural process necessary for the integration of the psyche and, in Sudek’s life, was integral to his healing from the vicissitudes of war.

Using Pictorialism as the starting point for his exploration of the world, Sudek never abandons the creation of “atmosphere” in his photographs, even as the images become modernist, surrealist and offer a new way of seeing the world. Having myself photographed extensively at night, and from the interior of my flat, I can understand Sudek’s fascination with both locations: the quiet of night, the stillness, the clarity of vision and thought; the interior as exterior, the projection of interior thoughts onto an external surface reflected back into the camera lens. “Nature, architecture, streets and objects are magnified by his sensitivity and mastery of the effects of light, contrasting with the impenetrable cloak of darkness.” Except the cloak of darkness is not impenetrable, as light cannot exist without darkness.

Pace, his photographs are breath / taking. They are exhalations of the spirit.

Sudek’s ability to transcend the literal, his ability to transform the objectal quality of photography ranks him as one of the top photographers of all time. He synthesises a poetry of objects, a poetry of the everyday, and projects the folds of his mind onto the visual field (through “tears” of condensation on the window, through labyrinths of paper and glass, such as in Labyrinth on my table, 1967, below). As a form of self-actualisation – the desire to become everything that one is capable of becoming – Sudek’s photographs interrogate that chthonic darkness that lurks in the heart of everyone of us, our dark night of the soul.

In that process of discovery (who am I, what kind of human being am I, how can I heal myself), he finds redemption.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

“I like to tell stories about the life of inanimate objects, to relate something mysterious: the seventh side of a dice. Everything around us, dead or alive, in the eyes of a crazy photographer mysteriously takes on many variations, so that a seemingly dead object comes to life through light or by its surroundings.”

Josef Sudek

Josef Sudek at Jeu de Paume

“The Intimate World of Josef Sudek”, exhibition at Jeu de Paume Paris, from 07 June 2016 until 25 September 2016

Entitled “The Intimate World of Josef Sudek”, this exhibition is the first of this scale to revisit the life and work of Josef Sudek (Kolin, 1896 – Prague, 1976) within its socio-geographical and historical context: Prague during the first half of the twentieth century, at a time when the Czech capital was a veritable hub of artistic activity.

The exhibition features a selection of 130 works spanning the totality of Sudek’s career, from 1920 to 1976, and allows the public to examine the extent to which his photography was a reflection of his personal relationship to the surrounding world. On display are works that are the result of Sudek’s photographic experiments carried out within the privacy of his own studio, images of the garden seen from his window, and photographs of adventures further afield. The artist enjoyed meandering through the streets of Prague and its surrounding suburbs, and made frequent excursions to the nearby countryside.

Sudek’s enduring fascination with light, and its absence, is at the root of some of the most haunting photographs of the twentieth century. Nature, architecture, streets and objects are magnified by his sensitivity and mastery of the effects of light, contrasting with the impenetrable cloak of darkness.

Text from the Jeu de Paume Vimeo website

On display are works that are the result of Sudek’s photographic experiments carried out within the privacy of his own studio, images of the garden seen from his window, and photographs of adventures further afield. The artist enjoyed meandering through the streets of Prague and its surrounding suburbs, and made frequent excursions to the nearby countryside. Sudek’s enduring fascination with light, and its absence, is at the root of some of the most haunting photographs of the twentieth century. Nature, architecture, streets and objects are magnified by his sensitivity and mastery of the effects of light, contrasting with the impenetrable cloak of darkness.

As a photographer, Sudek was particularly concerned with the quality of the photographic print, an essential component in terms of the expressive potential of an image. His mastery of the pigment printing process enabled him to produce highly atmospheric and evocative images, thereby reaping all of the reflective and descriptive power of the gelatin silver print. The exhibition presents work from Sudek’s early career, but also features photographs from a pivotal period of experimentation and innovation, beginning in the 1940s. Focusing on the technical and formal aspects of the medium of photography, Sudek created pigment prints, halftone prints, puridlos (photographs between two windows) and veteše (photographs inserted into old frames), techniques which allowed him to transform the objectal quality of photography.

The loss of his right arm during the First World War and the difficulties he now encountered in transporting his view camera did not dampen his passion for photography. Sudek’s studio window became an object of abiding fascination – rather like the surface of a canvas – reflecting moments of exquisite tenderness and hope when a flowering branch brushed against its pane, or of poignant melancholy when he observed the world beyond his window transformed by the playful infinity of mist. His room with a view allowed him to capture, on film, his love of Prague. His photographs demonstrate both a precision and a depth of feeling, fitting odes to the rich history and architectural complexity of the Czech capital.

Like many artists of his generation marked by their experience of war, Sudek expresses a particularly acute awareness of the dark and tormented aspects of human existence – feelings that would inspire some of his most melancholy and most moving pictures. A photograph taken at night, through the glass pane of his window, shows a city plunged into darkness during the Occupation of the Second World War, and communicates a sentiment of unspeakable despair – a dramatic illustration of Sudek’s technical ability to transcend the literal.

The first part of the exhibition features images that herald the photographer’s later work, showing his early landscapes, portraits of fellow patients at Invalidovna, the Prague hospice for war invalids like Sudek, his hesitant foray into modernism, and his interior shots of St. Vitus Cathedral. Through images that recount the narrative of his life, the viewer gains access to Sudek’s inner world, and an insight into his immediate environment, the views and objects he loved, his studio and garden. His endless walks in Prague found expression in the views of the city and its surroundings, as well as in photographs of its more sordid “suburbs”, a subject explored by other Prague artists. The eastern and northern areas of Bohemia, the Beskid Mountains and the Mionší forest were other destinations close to the photographer’s heart. The exhibition “The Intimate World of Josef Sudek” provides a fascinating panorama of the work of this unique artist.

Text from the Jeu de Paume website

Beginnings

Sudek’s first photographic prints – small and largely assembled in albums – were mainly views of the countryside taken along the Elbe River when he travelled from Prague to Kolín to visit his mother between 1916 and 1922.

Using processes such as gelatin silver and bromoil he showed a talent for printing his pictures in a style that favoured soft edges and broad swathes of tone. Here Sudek was not so much studying the effects of light as he was observing the conventions of Pictorialism, a photography movement that straddled the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century, and was based on a strong Romantic ethos. Pictorialist photographers enhanced atmospheric effects with such processes as carbon and gum bichromate. Sudek began using the carbon process regularly and in a personally expressive manner in the late 1940s.

His Invalidovna and St. Vitus Cathedral series in Prague, begun in the first half of the 1920s, show him exploring interior spaces where light emphasises both the profane and the sacred. The play of bands of sunlight and darkness is a central feature of the composition and, indeed, of the life of the photograph.

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976)
Dimanche après-midi à l’île Kolín [Sunday afternoon at Kolín island]
c. 1922-1926
Gelatin silver print
28.4 × 28.7cm
Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa. Achat, 2000
© Succession de Josef Sudek

“… [Sudek] referred to photography as meteorology to describe the significance of the atmosphere, and how a photographer must predict the right conditions for photographing and enlarging prints. His work became sharper with richer tones, and his compositions became more illusive. The foregrounds and backgrounds of his photographs, particularly in his “Window” series began to oscillate. These achievements were perhaps made more attainable by his focus on inanimate objects over which he had more control than living things. Most of his cityscapes became deserted, as he directed his camera at statues or replaced what would have been a living subject with such emulative sculptures.

In effect, Sudek’s substitution of the inanimate for the animate brought the objects he photographed to life in his mind. He called the enormous decaying trees in the woods of Bohemia “sleeping giants” and would take portraits of masks and statuary heads, transforming them into frozen, worn grotesqueries. His personification of objects is even more vivid in his studio photography, particularly after 1939, the oncoming of World War II and the Nazi occupation of Prague. As the city was oppressed by German troops, the artist retreated into his studio and insulated himself sentimentally with still lifes. To an interviewer, he explained, “I love the life of objects. When the children go to bed, the objects come to life. I like to tell stories about the life of inanimate objects.” He devoted endless hours to arranging and photographing the everyday – apples, eggs, bread, and shells – and special objects given to him by friends, such as feathers, spectacles, and watches, which he called “remembrances” of that person. A photograph from his series “Remembrances of Architect Rothmayer, Mr. Magician,” for example, portrays objects respectfully placed in a row on a desk, as if artifacts from an archeological site, from which the history of a life or character of a man could be divined.

“Everything around us, dead or alive, in the eyes of a crazy photographer mysteriously takes on many variations,” Sudek said, “so that a seemingly dead object comes to life through light or by its surroundings.” This statement is perhaps telling of Sudek’s relationship to death and life, as a result of the loss of his arm and the manner in which he suffered the loss. In the 1963 film, “Zit Svuj Zivot” (Living Your Life), a documentary portrait of Sudek by Evald Strom, we see a sensitive man describing his efforts to photograph the reality of the objects around him, not as if he were bringing the objects to life, but as if it was his purpose to represent the lives of objects as they truly are. Of the image of a vase of wildflowers, he says “This is a photograph of wildflowers, my attempt to photograph wildflowers,” and of an old lamp, “This is a celebrated lamp; it holds a lot of memories.””

Ashley Booth Klein, “Josef Sudek and The Life of Objects,” in Obelisk Vol. 2 Issue 1, Winter 2015 [Online] Cited 18/09/2016. No longer available online

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976)
Rue de Prague
1924
Gelatin silver print
8.3 × 8.2cm
Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa. Don anonyme, 2010
© Succession de Josef Sudek

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976)
Portrait de mon ami Funke [Portrait of my friend Funke]
1924
Gelatin silver print
28.5 × 22.6cm
Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa. Achat, 1985
© Succession de Josef Sudek

“Josef Sudek: The World at My Window” is the first exhibition in France since 1988 to cover Sudek’s entire career and spotlight the different phases of his work. Coming in the wake of several exhibitions at the Jeu de Paume devoted to Eastern European photographers of the early twentieth century, among them André Kertész and Francois Kollar, this one comprises some 130 vintage prints by the Czech artist. Bringing to bear a vision at once subjective and timeless, Sudek captures the ongoing changes in Prague’s natural world and landscapes.

His early profession as a bookbinder came to an abrupt halt when he was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian army in Bohemia and sent to the Italian front. After the First World War he came back to Prague wounded; the loss of his right arm meant abandoning bookbinding, and he turned to photography. After revisiting the battlefield in Italy once more he returned, in despair, to Prague: “I found the place,” he recounted, “but my arm wasn’t there. Since then I’ve never gone anywhere. I didn’t find what I was looking for.”

A study grant enabled him to train at the state-run school of graphic arts in Prague, where he mixed with practitioners of Pictorialism, a photographic movement aiming at achieving colour and texture effects similar to those of painting. He started concentrating on architectural details, always waiting until the light was absolutely perfect. Little by little he gave up the Pictorialist ambiences of his views of St Vitus’s cathedral, opting for a pure, straightforward approach which the American photographer Alfred Stieglitz summed up as “maximum detail for maximum simplification”.

During the Second World War Sudek began photographing the window giving onto his garden, the result being the celebrated Window of My Studio series. He then shifted his focus to the accumulated jumble of objects in the studio, producing a further series titled Labyrinths. Light was an inexhaustible theme in his work, orchestrating the seasons, making the invisible visible and transporting us into another world. As if to escape the leaden context of the War and then of Communism, Sudek took refuge in music, especially that of his compatriot Leoš Janáček. A true music lover, he gradually built up a substantial collection of recordings which he played to his friends during improvised concerts in his studio.

The second half of his career saw Sudek abandon photography’s traditional subjects as he explored the outskirts of Prague with his black view camera on his shoulder. Known as “the poet of Prague”, he became an emblematic figure in the Czech capital. Discreet and solitary, he gradually withdrew from the city’s art scene, leaving his studio only to prowl the streets at night with his imagination as his guide.

Sudek’s photographs rarely include people; his focus was more on empty urban and rural spaces. Fascinated by the streets of Prague, the city’s deserted parks and public gardens, and the wooded Bohemian landscapes his mastery of light rendered sublime, he preferred the un-enlarged contact print as a means of preserving all the detail and authenticity of the places he roamed through. His work moved towards experiments with light. In photographs shot through with simplicity and sensitivity, Sudek foregrounds a kind of poetry of the everyday, using the interplay of light and shade to achieve a kind of fluctuation between interior and exterior.

Text from Jeu de Paume

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976)
La Fenêtre de mon atelier [The window of my studio]
c. 1940-1948
Gelatin silver print
17 × 11.2cm
Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa. Don anonyme, 2010
© Succession de Josef Sudek

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976)
La Fenêtre de mon atelier [The window of my studio]
c. 1940-1954
Gelatin silver print
22.9 × 16.8cm
Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa. Don anonyme, 2010
© Succession de Josef Sudek

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976)
La Fenêtre de mon atelier [The window of my studio]
c. 1940-1950
Gelatin silver print
28.1 × 22.9cm
Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa. Don anonyme, 2010
© Succession de Josef Sudek

The world from my window

Sudek was not content with making single, unrelated images. He generally worked in projects or series, creating extended visual explorations of the phenomena and scenes he viewed – often from the closed window of his studio, which separated his private studio-home from the exterior world. In the series From My Window it was the endlessly varying states of transformation of droplets of water that he watched streaming down his windowpane. His images invite us to contemplate, with great fascination, the physical cycles of water and the phenomenon of rivulets coursing down a surface – like human tears. Reminding us even of [Paul] Verlaine’s “There is weeping in my heart like the rain upon the city…” Sometimes the melancholy mood of these images is leavened by a rose in a vase on the windowsill or tendrils of leaves announcing the arrival of spring.

There is weeping in my heart
like the rain falling on the town.
What is this languor
that pervades my heart?

Oh the patter of the rain
on the ground and the roofs!
For a heart growing weary
oh the song of the rain!

There is weeping without cause
in this disheartened heart.
What! No betrayal?
There’s no reason for this grief.

Truly the worst pain
is not knowing why,
without love or hatred,
my heart feels so much pain.

Paul Verlaine. “Il pleure dans mon coeur”

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976)
Quatre saisons: l’été [Four seasons: summer]
c. 1940-1954
From the series “La Fenêtre de mon atelier” [The window of my studio]
Gelatin silver print
22.6 × 17.1cm
Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa. Don anonyme, 2010
© Succession de Josef Sudek

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976)
La Dernière Rose [The Last Rose]
1956
Gelatin silver print
28.2 x 23.2cm
Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa. Don anonyme, 2010
© Succession Josef Sudek

Night walks

Sudek’s preoccupation with darkness dates to the Nazi Occupation of Prague from March 1939 until the end of the war. Experiencing his city plunged into nights of enforced darkness Sudek explored the absence of light in his pictures. We know that this was more than a technical exercise, for he wrote “Memories” and “Restless Night” on the verso of one nocturnal photograph dated 1943.

The curfews imposed on citizens at the time made it unlikely that Sudek ventured out into the city after dark during wartime. Neither agile nor inconspicuous with his large-format camera slung over his increasingly hunched back, Sudek would have risked his life had he done so. The small courtyard of his studio on Ujezd street was hidden from the road, however, and one or two lights in neighbouring apartments served as beacons. Well after sundown he would photograph the syncopated play of blurs of light against the wall of impenetrable blackness.

The spirit of place

Sudek visited and photographed places that held either personal or spiritual significance for him: the landscape along the Elbe River, Invalidovna, St. Vitus Cathedral, his studio, Prague’s complex streets and open squares, the majestic Prague Castle, the city’s surrounds, and Frenštát pod Radhoštĕm where he spent summers with friends. Hukvaldy, home of Leoš Janaček, the composer whose music he loved, was a particularly favoured haunt. This was true also of the ancient Mionší Forest where he navigated his way through dense brush and forests by way of shortcuts that he created and playfully named. The Beskid Mountains also served as spiritual retreat. Although he was an urbanite in many respects, Sudek’s love of nature and sense of despair for its desecration is strongly expressed in Sad Landscapes, his series of images made in the Most region where industrialisation ravaged the countryside in the 1950s.

The life of objects

Sudek collected everything. Today he would be known as a hoarder. But his obsession served him well, for out of the chaos of his small studio and living spaces he carefully selected a variety of these objects to photograph. From delicate feathers to crumpled paper and tinfoil, multi-faceted drinking glasses, flowers, fruit, seashells, envelopes, flasks, frames, prisms, candelabras, string and shoe moulds, the subjects ranged from the mundane to the exotic. Once chosen, the set-up was lovingly composed – often in subtly changed configurations with other objects – and carefully lit before being memorialised in either pigment or gelatin silver prints.

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976)
Le Jardin Royal [The Royal Garden]
c. 1940-1946
Procédé pigmentaire au papier charbon [Carbon pigment on paper]
16.1 × 11.7cm
Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa. Don anonyme, 2010
© Succession de Josef Sudek

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976)
Prague pendant la nuit [Prague at night]
1950
Gelatin silver print
22.8 × 29cm
Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa. Don anonyme, 2010
© Succession de Josef Sudek

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976)
Prague pendant la nuit [Prague at night]
c. 1950-1959
Gelatin silver print
12 × 16.7cm
Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa. Don anonyme, 2010
© Succession de Josef Sudek

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976)
Prague pendant la nuit [Prague at night]
c. 1950-1959
Gelatin silver print
12.2 × 17.3cm
Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa. Don anonyme, 2010
© Succession de Josef Sudek

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976)
Le Jardin de Rothmayer [The Rothmayer Garden]
1954-1959
Gelatin silver print
16.9 × 22.9cm
Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa. Don anonyme, 2010
© Succession de Josef Sudek

Entitled “The Intimate World of Josef Sudek”, this exhibition is the first of this scale to revisit the life and work of Josef Sudek (Kolín, 1896 – Prague, 1976) within its socio-geographical and historical context: Prague during the first half of the twentieth century, at a time when the Czech capital was a veritable hub of artistic activity. The exhibition features a selection of 130 works spanning the totality of Sudek’s career, from 1920 to 1976, and allows the public to examine the extent to which his photography was a reflection of his personal relationship to the surrounding world. On display are works that are the result of Sudek’s photographic experiments carried out within the privacy of his own studio, images of the garden seen from his window, and photographs of adventures further afield. The artist enjoyed meandering through the streets of Prague and its surrounding suburbs, and made frequent excursions to the nearby countryside. Sudek’s enduring fascination with light, and its absence, is at the root of some of the most haunting photographs of the twentieth century. Nature, architecture, streets and objects are magnified by his sensitivity and mastery of the effects of light, contrasting with the impenetrable cloak of darkness.

The exhibition presents work from Sudek’s early career, but also features photographs from a pivotal period of experimentation and innovation, beginning in the 1940s. Focusing on the technical and formal aspects of the medium of photography, Sudek created pigment prints, halftone prints, puridlos (photographs between two windows) and veteše (photographs inserted into old frames), techniques which allowed him to transform the objectal quality of photography. The loss of his right arm during the First World War and the difficulties he now encountered in transporting his view camera did not dampen his passion for photography.

Sudek’s studio window became an object of abiding fascination – rather like the surface of a canvas – reflecting moments of exquisite tenderness and hope when a flowering branch brushed against its pane, or of poignant melancholy when he observed the world beyond his window transformed by the playful infinity of mist. His room with a view allowed him to capture, on film, his love of Prague. His photographs demonstrate both a precision and a depth of feeling, fitting odes to the rich history and architectural complexity of the Czech capital.

Through images that recount the narrative of his life, the viewer gains access to Sudek’s inner world, and an insight into his immediate environment, the views and objects he loved, his studio and garden. His endless walks in Prague found expression in the views of the city and its surroundings, as well as in photographs of its more sordid “suburbs”, a subject explored by other Prague artists. The eastern and northern areas of Bohemia, the Beskid Mountains and the Mionší forest were other destinations close to the photographer’s heart.

Text from Jeu de Paume

New ways of seeing

Although more influenced by prevailing photographic conventions in the beginning, Sudek came to show an openness to experimenting with new ways of composing and printing his images. In the late 1920s, Sudek photographed objects designed by modernist Ladislav Sutnar, thus creating angled views of furniture with reflective surfaces and ceramics of pure form.

Sudek’s most successful foray into modernism is his experimentation with grotesque (surreal) subjects such as mannequins, decaying sculptures and the accoutrements of the architect Otto Rothmayer’s garden. There is little doubt that in the fragmented figurative sculptures Sudek was recalling some of the human devastation that he witnessed on the battlefields of the First World War.

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976)
Statue
c. 1948-1964
Gelatin silver print
9 × 14cm
Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa. Don anonyme, 2010
© Succession de Josef Sudek

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976)
Dans le jardin [In the garden]
1954-1959
Gelatin silver print
17 × 23.3cm
Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa. Don anonyme, 2010
© Succession de Josef Sudek

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976)
Labyrinthe sur ma table [Labyrinth on my table]
1967
Gelatin silver print
39 × 22.9cm
Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa. Don anonyme, 2010
© Succession de Josef Sudek

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976)
Labyrinthe de verre [Glass Maze]
around 1968-1972
Gelatin silver print
39 × 22.9cm
Musée des beaux-arts du Canada, Ottawa. Don anonyme, 2010
© Succession de Josef Sudek

Josef Sudek (Czech, 1896-1976)
Sans titre (Nature morte sur le rebord de la fenêtre) [Untitled (Still life on the windowsill)]
1951
Montage par le photographe c. 1960.
Two silver gelatin prints, glass plate, lead
48.2 × 39.2cm
Musée des arts décoratifs, Prague.
© Succession de Josef Sudek

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Exhibition: ‘Ken Domon: Master of Japanese Realism’ at the Museo dell’Ara Pacis, Rome

Exhibition dates: 27th May – 18th September, 2016

Curators: Rossella Menegazzo, Professor of East Asian Art History at the University of Milan and Takeshi Fujimori, Japanese photographer and Artistic Director of the Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990) 'Allenamento degli allievi del corpo della Marina [Students of the Navy training]' 1936 from the exhibition 'Ken Domon: Master of Japanese Realism' at the Museo dell'Ara Pacis, Rome, May - Sept, 2016

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Allenamento degli allievi del corpo della Marina [Students of the Navy training]
1936
Yokosuka
535 x 748mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Social Realism

I love most Japanese photography of the post-war period (1950s-1970s) and this artist’s work is no exception. What an absolute master of photography, not just of Japanese photography, he was.

Direct, focused, gritty, unflinching, the work of this initiator of social realist photography lays bare “the direct connection between the camera and the subject” in the most forthright way. While professing that the photographs are “an absolutely non-dramatic snapshot” (just like the Bechers professed that their gridded, ordered photographs were just about form and nothing else), this artist produced quality work that narrates a transcendent story of life in Japan. His images are music, and visions, from the heart of a nation. You only have to look at the photograph Gemella non vedente (1957, below) from the series Hiroshima to understand what I mean. There is just this feeling in your synapses about his pictures, as though you yourself were holding the camera …

In his portrait photographs there is quietness and contemplation; in his other work anger, sadness, joy, humour. A direct connection to reality is at the forefront of his understanding. This connection is miraculously (as in, something that apparently contravenes known laws governing the universe) transformed into other spaces and feelings – the twirling of umbrellas, the lizard on the head, the raised arms and white gloves of the traffic policeman (shot from a crouching position).

While he is not an artist who creates change he certainly documents the results of change in a magnificent way. I love them all.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Museo dell’Ara Pacis for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990) 'Esercitazioni delle crocerossine' [Red Cross exercises] 1938 from the exhibition 'Ken Domon: Master of Japanese Realism' at the Museo dell'Ara Pacis, Rome, May - Sept, 2016

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Esercitazioni delle crocerossine [Red Cross exercises]
1938
Azabu, Tokyo
535 x 748mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

For the first time ever outside Japan, an exhibition of work by Ken Domon (1909-1990), recognised as a master of realism and one of the most important figures in the history of modern Japanese photography, is being held in Rome at the Museo dell’Ara Pacis. It features about 150 photographs taken in black and white as well as colour between the 1920s and the 1970s, which illustrate the author’s path towards social realism. From the first shots of the period before and during World War II, which display a vision linked to photojournalism and propaganda, through photography of the social sphere, the exhibit follows Ken Domon’s production up to the crucial work documenting the tragedy of Hiroshima, which the photographer undertook as though in response to a call and a humanitarian duty.

Regarded as an absolute master of Japanese photography and initiator of the realistic movement, Ken Domon marked a pivotal chapter in the history of post-war Japanese photography, laying the foundations for contemporary photographic production and remaining a constant point of reference for Japanese enthusiasts. According to Domon, “The fundamental gift of quality work lies in the direct connection between the camera and the subject.” The master’s aim was indeed always to capture a wholly realistic image devoid of drama. Against the background of the renewed spirit of the post-war period, he focused on society in general and everyday life: “I am immersed in the social reality of today but at the same time in the classical culture and traditions of Nara and Kyoto. This twofold involvement has the common denominator of a search for the point at which the two realities are linked to the destinies of people, the anger, sorrow and joy of the Japanese people.”

The realistic photograph, described as “an absolutely non-dramatic snapshot”, therefore plays the leading part in an exhibition thematically laid out to illustrate the master’s vast production, transversally encompassing the whole of Japanese culture. From the early work of a photojournalistic nature and at the service of pre-war propaganda and the cultural promotion of Japan overseas (Photojournalism and Pre-War Propaganda; The Post-War Period: Towards Social Realism) to a focus on recording everyday life and the city’s transformation and westernisation with ever-greater attention to social themes. His social realism is expressed in particular through two series emblematic of this period, namely Hiroshima (1958), regarded by the Nobel laureate Kenzaburō Ōe as the first great modern work of Japan, and The Children of Chikuhō, a series on poverty in the mining villages of southern Japan with a broad range of lively portraits of children encountered in the streets.

This is followed by Portraits, comprising photographs of famous figures in the worlds of art, literature, culture and science such as Yukio Mishima, Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, Tarō Okamoto and Yusaku Kamekura. The final section is devoted to his most important series, Pilgrimage to Ancient Temples, photographs of Buddhist sculptures, buildings and treasures as well as views of landscapes taken on journeys throughout Japan in search of the beauty of the sacred places of the past. Landscapes that conjure up the fascination of cultural diversity and the exotic.

Ken Domon’s work can be described as autobiographical, documentation that is private rather social, always selected on personal criteria that transform the shot into a moment of dialogue with the subject. His vision of the subject, be it a landscape, a sculpture, a person or an object, is a vehicle of the universal beauty seen through the lens, which does not omit the physical characteristics of the form captured. A multifaceted figure whose photography embraces the whole of Japanese culture before and after the war, Ken Domon is also the first photographer to have a personal museum devoted entirely to his vast work in his hometown of Sakata, inaugurated in 2003. Together with friends and other leading figures in the Japanese world of art, he initiated the cultural renewal that enabled Japan to emerge definitively from the defeat in war and led to the contemporary aesthetic that is still a point of reference for the entire world.

The show is part of a vast programme of events that will represent the cultural and technological world of Japan in Italy all through 2016: major exhibitions of art, productions from the great tradition of Noh and puppet theatre (bunraku), concerts, performances of modern and traditional dance, film festivals, exhibits of architecture, design, comics, literature, sport and so much else. The occasion is the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the first treaty of friendship and trade between Italy and Japan, signed on 25 August 1866, which initiated diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Press release from the Museo dell’Ara Pacis

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Pesca all’ayu
1936
Izu, Prefettura di Shizuoka
457 x 560mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Ken Domon. 'Bambini che fanno roteare gli ombrelli [Kids twirling umbrellas]' c. 1937

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Bambini che fanno roteare gli ombrelli [Kids twirling umbrellas]
c. 1937
Dalla serie Bambini (Kodomotachi)
From the series Children (Kodomotachi)
Ogōchimura
535 x 748mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

The pre-war period

From photojournalism to propaganda photography

Domon began to work in photography in 1933 at the age of 24, carrying out the humble duties of an apprentice at Miyauchi Kōtarō’s studio in Ueno. Right from the start he won prizes and began to write for photography magazines and journals, publishing his first photo in Asahi Camera in August 1935. The 10th of October of the same year marked an important turning point in his career. He replied to an advertisement published by the Nippon Kōbō studio in Ginza, which was looking for a photo technician. Founded by Natori Yōnosuke (1910-1962) when he returned from his experience in Berlin at the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, the studio spread in Japan for the first time concepts such as editing and reporting and a new system of production based on the collaboration between photographer and graphic designer under the supervision of an art director, which led to the large-scale diffusion of photojournalism.

Domon began his first reportage for the magazine Nippon, published in English in order to promote Japanese culture abroad with a mix of information and propaganda. The first photographic reportage was on the traditional Shichigosan Festival on the occasion of the presentation of children in the Meiji Jingu shrine, realised with his model C Leica. This was followed by services that presented handicrafts, traditions, industrial and military progress and the progressive aspects of Japan, which in the 1930s had become increasingly nationalistic.

The war years and the bunraku puppet theatre

During the years of maximum Japanese expansion in the Pacific, immediately prior to the Second World War, even photography had to comply with the strict rules of military policy. Only few selected professional photographers could obtain photographic materials for assignments deemed to be “essential”, and naturally the “essential” photographic services were subject to the requirements of government propaganda, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the International Tourism Agency and the International Cultural Relations Company.

Thus many photographic publications were discontinued, with economic repercussions for photographers. In fact, Domon had difficulty maintaining a family of seven. He also had the added anxiety of the probable arrival of a “red card” that would have called him to arms and probably to the front in a group of photo-reporters. In response to this critical situation, Domon decided to retire from the public scene, dedicating himself to culture, in particular to Buddhist temples and the bunraku puppet theatre.

On the 8th of December, 1941 he was in the backstage of the Yotsubashi Bunraku Theatre in Osaka when he read the special edition of a newspaper announcing the declaration of war to the United States. It was not easy to gain the respect and collaboration of the master puppeteers – national living treasures such as Yoshida Bungorō, Yoshida Eiza and Kiritake Monjūrō – in the key moment of taking the shot with a camera that did not go unnoticed due to its size and long exposure times. However, by 1943 he had shot about 7,000 negatives, which were collected in the book entitled Bunraku published in 1972.

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Esercitazioni delle crocerossine [Red Cross exercises]
1938
Azabu, Tokyo
535 x 748mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-199 'Foto commemorativa della cerimonia di diploma del corpo della Marina' [Commemorative photo of the Marine Corp graduation ceremony] 1944

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Foto commemorativa della cerimonia di diploma del corpo della Marina [Commemorative photo of the Marine Corp graduation ceremony]
1944
Tsuchiura, Ibaragi
1047 x 747mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Vigile urbano a Ginza 4-chōme [Traffic policeman in Ginza 4-chōme]
1946
Tokyo
457 x 560mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

The postwar period

The affirmation of realism in photography

The tragic events related to the Second World War and to the defeat of Japan, marked by the atrocities of the atomic bomb, revealed the great deception of the war propaganda. Defeat led to the collapse of the imperial myth and state Shintoism, which had been the basis of military ideology.

If on the one hand, by the end of the 1940s there had been considerable intellectual rebirth leading to a rapid resumption of the diffusion of magazines, publications, exhibitions and artistic circles, on the other hand there was no language that seemed suitable for expressing such a tragic reality. There was a need to document a society undergoing profound change and in this sense Domon became the promoter of realistic photography, becoming a landmark for amateur photographers. He embraced the western trends that had taken over the city, but also the alleys and the poorest sectors of the population.

The high point of the realist tendency was reached around 1953, thanks to the exhibition, Photography Today: Japan and France, held in 1951 at the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo, provided the opportunity to make comparisons with names such as Cartier Bresson, Brassai, Doisneau. Domon’s last word on realism appeared in the magazine Photo Art in 1957 with an article that debated the two fundamental concepts of photography: jijitsu, reality, and shinjitsu, truth.

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Pescatrici di perle (ama san) [Pearl fisherwomen]
1948
457 x 559mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Donne a passeggio [Women walking]
1950
Sendai
457 x 560mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
L’attrice Yamaguchi Yoshiko [The actress Yoshiko Yamaguchi]
1952
535 x 748mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Yoshiko Yamaguchi (Japanese, 1920-2014)

Yoshiko Yamaguchi (山口淑子, Yamaguchi Yoshiko, February 12, 1920 – September 7, 2014) was a Japanese singer, actress, journalist, and politician. Born in China, she made an international career in film in China, Hong Kong, Japan and the United States.

Early in her career, the Manchukuo Film Association concealed her Japanese origin and she went by the Chinese name Li Hsiang-lan (李香蘭), rendered in Japanese as Ri Kōran. This allowed her to represent China in Japanese propaganda movies. After the war, she appeared in Japanese movies under her real name, as well as in several English language movies under the stage name, Shirley Yamaguchi.

After becoming a journalist in the 1950s under the name Yoshiko Ōtaka (大鷹淑子, Ōtaka Yoshiko), she was elected as a member of the Japanese parliament in 1974, and served for 18 years. After retiring from politics, she served as vice president of the Asian Women’s Fund.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Sit-in studentesco a Tachikawa contro l’ampliamento della base americana [Student sit-in in Tachikawa against the expansion of US base]
1955
Tokyo
457 x 560mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Sorelline orfane, Rumie e Sayuri [Orphan sisters, Rumie and Sayuri]
1959
Dalla serie I bambini di Chikuhō (Chikuhō no kodomotachi)
From the series Children of Chikuhō
457 x 560mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Children and miners’ villages

Domon adored children. His first services for Nippon were focused on the Shichigosan Festival and then on children fishing in Izu. But in 1952 he began to photographing children all over Japan, capturing the vitality of the streets and of the poorer neighbourhoods in Tokyo, Ginza, Shinbashi, Nagoya and Osaka and in particular in the Kōtō area where he lived. Probably due to the loss of his second child in 1946 in an accident, Domon moved increasingly toward a realist if not a socialist approach, which allowed him to deal with current themes in an indirect way through the innocent eyes of children.

Several books were dedicated to this theme: The Children of Kōtō (Kōtō no kodomotachi), whose publication was stopped by Domon himself, dissatisfied with his work in 1956; The Children of Chikuhō (Chikuhō no kodomotachi), published in January 1960, and its continuation which followed in November, The Father of Little Rumie is Dead (Rumie chan has otōsan ga shinda), which showed the miserable conditions of children in the villages of the mining area on the island of Kyūshū, and in particular the story of two orphan sisters, whose story moved Japan becoming a best seller. Lastly, the collection Children (Kodomotachi), published in 1976 by master of graphics and friend, Yūsaku Kamekura, and published by Nikkor Club, the amateur photographers’ association linked to Nikon and Domon.

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Rumie
1959
Dalla serie I bambini di Chikuhō (Chikuhō no kodomotachi)
From the series Children of Chikuhō
457 x 560mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Lucertola [Lizard]
1955
Dalla serie I bambini di Kōtō (Kōtō no kodomotachi)
From the series Children of Chikuhō
Tokyo
457 x 560mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Pioggerella [Drizzle]
1952-1954
Dalla serie Bambini (Kodomotachi)
From the series Children (Kodomotachi)
Atami
457 x 560mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Bagno presso il fiume davanti allo Hiroshima Dome [Bath at the river in front of the Hiroshima Dome]
1957
From the series Hiroshima
535 x 748mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Hiroshima

Published in March 1958, the year prior to the first brain haemorrhage to strike Domon Ken, the Hiroshima collection presents 180 photographs introduced by a short explanatory essay. The work, completed thirteen years after the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and then on Nagasaki, focused the attention of the world once again on the still open but almost forgotten wounds of Hiroshima, with a strong social impact.

The importance of this event in the life of the photographer is also evidenced by Domon’s recording in his notebook in the day and time of his arrival: July 23rd, 1957, 2.40 pm. From then until November he went there six times, for thirty-six days, producing more than 7,800 negatives, of which Hiroshima is only the synthesis. Domon realised that until then he had ignored and been afraid of what Hiroshima had actually meant. With his 35mm camera he revealed the places and people directly and indirectly affected by the atomic bomb, coldly recording with tears in his eyes the material damage, physical injuries, scars, deformations, and the plastic surgery and transplants undergone by the victims of the bomb, dedicating 14 pages at the beginning of the book to the progress made in the field of plastic surgery, which became a real photographic dossier.

The public shock that followed the publication of the dossier made him the object of harsh criticism that, however, failed to undermine his determination to represent reality. In an article published in the magazine Shinchō in 1977 the Nobel Prize winner Ōe Kenzaburō defined Hiroshima as the first work of modern art that dealt with the theme of the atomic bomb, talking about the living instead of the dead.

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
La morte di Keiji [The death of Keiji]
1957
From the series Hiroshima
457 x 560mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Paziente in ospedale [Hospital patient]
1957
From the series Hiroshima
457 x 560mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Donna in cura per le lesioni da bomba atomica [Women being treated for injuries from atomic bomb]
1957
From the series Hiroshima
457 x 560 mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Gemella non vedente [Blind twin (female)]
1957
From the series Hiroshima
457 x 560mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990) 'Autoritratto' [Self-portrait] 1958

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Autoritratto [Self-portrait]
Published in the November issue of the magazine Sankei Camera
457 x 560mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Portraits (Fūbō)

In 1953 the publication of the Portraits (Fūbō) collection of photographs, which came out in paperback the following year, concluded fifteen years of work dedicated to the portrait that had begun with the first photograph in May 1936 portraying the writer Takeda Rintarō, continuing during the war and until the year in which the collection was published. Domon gathered in a single volume 83 portraits of friends and acquaintances, personalities from the world of entertainment, literature, theatre and politics, stressing in the introduction that they were ” […] people I respect and like and am close to […] The choice of people was surprisingly subjective and random and no claim to any strictly historical or cultural meaning can be made.”

It seems that the initial choice of the faces to be included in the collection was made by Domon with a list written in ink on a sliding door on the second floor of his house in 1948. This list was subjected to the comments and opinions of friends and publishers who went to his house and subsequently underwent substitutions and changes. Through familiar faces and less well-known personalities, Domon bears witness to a crucial era in Japan, one of great writers such as Mishima, Kawabata and Tanizaki, of actors and directors of the caliber of Mifune and Ozu, of great artists who were often his friends and gave rise to a new important artistic trends in the country, such as the sculptor Noguchi, the graph artist Kamekura, the founder of the Ikebana School, Sōgetsu Teshigahara, or painters like Fujita, Umehara, Okamoto. Each picture is accompanied by the name of the subject, their occupation and the date it was taken. There are also short texts describing the relationship between Domon and the person depicted, in addition to the atmosphere created during the shooting.

Sometimes subjects were exasperated by the professional stubbornness of Domon, as is clear in the portrait of Umehara that reveals an air of irritation close to intolerance. Outrightness and instantaneousness, which were always Domon’s objectives, became easier to achieve thanks to technological developments. He passed from a camera assembled for cabinet card portraits – with a dry plate and flash that worked with magnesium powder, used before the war – to a small Leica in the post-war period.

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Shiga Naoya (scrittore/writer)
1951
457 x 560mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Naoya Shiga (志賀直哉, Shiga Naoya, February 20, 1883 – October 21, 1971) was a Japanese writer active during the Taishō and Shōwa periods of Japan, whose work was distinguished by its lucid, straightforward style and strong autobiographical overtones.

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Shiga Kiyoshi (medico ricercatore/medical researcher)
1949
457 x 560mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Kiyoshi Shiga (志賀潔, Shiga Kiyoshi, February 7, 1871 – January 25, 1957) was a Japanese physician and bacteriologist. He had a well-rounded education and career that led to many scientific discoveries. In 1897, Shiga was credited with the discovery and identification of the Shigella dysenteriae microorganism which causes dysentery, and the Shiga toxin which is produced by the bacteria. He conducted research on other diseases such as tuberculosis and trypanosomiasis, and made many advancements in bacteriology and immunology.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Takami Jun (scrittore/writer)
1948
457 x 560mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Jun Takami (Japanese, 1907-1965)

Jun Takami (高見順, Takami Jun, 30 January 1907 – 17 August 1965) was the pen-name of a Japanese novelist and poet active in Shōwa period Japan. His real name was Takami Yoshio.

Takami was interested in literature from youth, and was particularly attracted to the humanism expressed by the Shirakaba writers. On entering Tokyo Imperial University he joined a leftist student arts group, and contributed to their literary journal (Sayoku Geijutsu). After graduation, he went to work for Columbia Records, and continued his activities as a Marxist writer, as part of the proletarian literature movement.

In 1932, he was arrested with other communists and suspected members of the Japan Communist Party under the Peace Preservation Laws, and was released six months later after being coerced into recanting his leftist ideology. An auto-biographical account of his experience appeared in Kokyu Wasureubeki (“Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot”, 1935), which, although considered wordy, was nominated for the first Akutagawa Prize. The theme of ironic self-pity over the weakness that led to his “conversion” and his subsequent intellectual confusion were recurring themes in his future works.

He gained a popular following in the pre-war years with Ikanaru Hoshi no Moto ni (“Under Whatever Star”, 1939-1940)., a story set in the Asakusa entertainment district of Tokyo.

During and immediately after World War II, Takami served as Director of the Investigation Bureau of the Japanese Literature Patriotic Association. After the war, he suffered from poor health, but continued to write poetry from his sickbed.

In 1962, Takami helped establish the Museum of Modern Japanese Literature. In 1964, his poetry collection Shi no Fuchi yori (“From the Abyss of Death”, 1964) won the Noma Prize. The same year, he also published, Takami Jun Nikki, (“The Diaries of Takami Jun”), an extremely detailed account of over 3000 pages, in which he described his experiences during the war and immediately afterwards.

Takami Jun lived in Kamakura, Kanagawa prefecture from 1943 until his death of esophageal cancer. His grave is at the temple of Tōkei-ji in Kamakura.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Kuga Yoshiko (attrice/actress) and Ozu Yasujirō (regista/director)
1958
457 x 560mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Yoshiko Kuga (Japanese, 1931-2024)

Yoshiko Kuga (久我美子, Kuga Yoshiko, 1931-2024) is a Japanese actress. Kuga was born in Tokyo, Japan. Her father, Michiaki Koga (久我通顕), was a marquis and a member of the House of Peers.

In 1946, while still attending Gakushuin Junior High School, she became an actress for Toho studios. In June 1946, Toho had sponsored a search for “new faces”, choosing Kuga as one of 48 new actresses and actors from 4,000 applicants. In 1947, she made her debut as one of the lead actresses in the omnibus movie Four Love Stories (四つの恋の物語, Yottsu no Koi no Monogatari). She was one of the actors active in the 1948 union strike at Toho studios. In the 1950s, she started working independently and starred in many productions of the Shochiku studios under the direction of Keisuke Kinoshita. Other important directors include Kenji Mizoguchi (The Woman in the Rumor), Yasujirō Ozu (Equinox Flower), and Tadashi Imai (An Inlet of Muddy Water). In 1954, she co-founded the film production company Ninjin Club (Bungei purodakushon ninjin kurabu) with actresses Keiko Kishi and Ineko Arima to enable better working conditions for actors within the studio system. Since the 1970s, she appeared mainly on television and on stage.

Kuga was married to actor Akihiko Hirata from 1961 until his death in 1984.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Yasujirō Ozu (Japanese, 1903-1963)

Yasujirō Ozu (小津安二郎, Ozu Yasujirō, 12 December 1903 – 12 December 1963) was a Japanese film director and screenwriter. He began his career during the era of silent films, and his last films were made in colour in the early 1960s. Ozu first made a number of short comedies, before turning to more serious themes in the 1930s. The most prominent themes of Ozu’s work are family and marriage, and especially the relationships between generations. His most widely beloved films include Late Spring (1949), Tokyo Story (1953), and An Autumn Afternoon (1962).

Widely regarded as one of the world’s greatest and most influential filmmakers, Ozu’s work has continued to receive acclaim since his death. In the 2012 Sight & Sound poll, Ozu’s Tokyo Story was voted the third-greatest film of all time by critics world-wide. In the same poll, Tokyo Story was voted the greatest film of all time by 358 directors and film-makers world-wide.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Ushi (Bue), dai dodici guardiani (jūnishinshō) del Murōji [Ushi (Ox), one of the twelve guardians (jūnishinshō) of Muroji]
1941-1943
Murōji, Nara
535 x 748mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Pilgrimage to the ancient temples (Kojijunrei)

Murōji

The Murōji temple, small and immersed in the greenery of the Nara mountains, was for Domon the first stage of a “pilgrimage to the ancient temples”, a sort of journey of the soul that accompanied him throughout his life and from which came the encyclopaedic work Kojijunrei (Pilgrimage to the Ancient Temples). It all began in 1939 with a simple excursion, suggested by friend and art historian Mizusawa Sumio (1905-1975): an experience that changed his life. In the first year alone he returned more than forty times and on many more occasions over the course of the following years.

At first Domon focused his photographic work on buildings, from the five-story pagoda – the smallest in Japan – to the architectural details, focusing on the sculptures inside, but also on the imposing profile of the Miroku Buddha of Ōnodera, excavated on the rocky wall facing the river along the road that leads to Murōji. Later he concentrated on wooden statues (kōninbutsu) of the Heian era (794-1185) inside the temple and starting with wide, overall shots he then moved on to capture the most minute details of the wood, so as to emphasize the folds and hems of the vestments and the gestures of the hands and eyes. His favourite statue was of Buddha Shaka, enthroned Mirokudō, who with his “beautiful and compassionate face” was, he claimed, the “most beautiful man on earth.”

For this particular job he used a basic Konishiroku (now Konika) camera made of wood, especially suitable for cabinet card portraits that he had purchased in 1941, but also an Eyemo with a tripod, often carried by his assistants. Evidence of Domon’s numerous pilgrimages and countless photographs can be found in the 1954 Murōji collection. The expanded, definitive edition of this work, Nyonin Takano Murōji, was published in 1978 and includes photographs taken subsequently with the new post-war techniques.

Around the temples

The thousands of shots that Domon took in 39 temples from 1939 to the seventies made up the Pilgrimage to the Ancient Temples (Kojijunrei), the masterpiece of his career for which, even today, he is known worldwide. It consists of five volumes published over a number of years (the first in 1963, the second in 1965, the third in 1968, the fourth in 1971 and the fifth in 1975) which put together 462 colour pictures and 325 photogravures of temples and statues built between the seventh and the sixteenth century, following a subjective criterion and not expecting such large proportions. It is first and foremost a work that documents the beauty of architecture, sculpture, gardens and landscapes around the temples and shrines selected by Domon. And yet it is also a testimony of the progression of photographic technique in those years, such as the transition to colour film of 1958, and of Domon’s health problems that influenced his choices.

In December 1959 he suffered a brain haemorrhage that paralysed the right part of his body, thus making it impossible to hold the camera, even after a long period of rehabilitation. Therefore, he resolved to use a tripod. He suffered a second haemorrhage on the June 22nd, 1968, which this time confined him to a wheelchair. And even with this umpteenth misfortune he did not stop taking photographs. With the help of assistants and by moving his point of view further down, he continued to work. He had a third haemorrhage in 1979, followed by a long stay in hospital and his death on the September 15th, 1990.

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Hitsuji (Pecora), dai dodici guardiani (jūnishinshō) del Murōji [Hitsuji (Sheep), one of the twelve guardians (jūnishinshō) of Muroji]
1941-1943
Murōji, Nara
535 x 748mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Buddha Shaka ligneo a figura intera presso il Mirokudō del Murōji [Buddha Shaka wooden full-length at the Mirokudō Muroji]
c. 1943
Nara
457 x 560mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Ōnodera, campana e ciliegi [Onodera, bell and cherry trees]
1977
Nara
535 x 748mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Ken Domon (Japanese, 1909-1990)
Pagoda del Murōji con la neve [Pagoda Muroji with snow]
1978
Nara
535 x 748mm
Ken Domon Museum of Photography

Museo dell’Ara Pacis
Lungotevere in Augusta, Rome

Opening hours:
Daily 9.30am – 19.30pm

Museo dell’Ara Pacis website

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Exhibition: ‘Moholy-Nagy: Future Present’ at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

Exhibition dates: 27th May – 7th September, 2016

Curator: Karole P. B. Vail, Guggenheim’s exhibition curator, in collaboration with co-organisers Carol S. Eliel (LACMA) and Matthew S. Witkovsky (Art Institute of Chicago)

Installation view: 'Moholy-Nagy: Future Present', Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, May 27–September 7, 2016 showing at left, 'B-10 Space Modulator' (1942)

Installation view of Moholy-Nagy: Future Present at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, May 27 – September 7, 2016 showing at left, B-10 Space Modulator (1942, below)
Photo: David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

“To understand the production of art at the end of tradition, which in our lifetime means art at the end of modernism, requires, as the postmodern debate has shown, a careful consideration of the idea of history and the notion of ending. Rather than just thinking ending as the arrival of the finality of a fixed chronological moment, it can also be thought as a slow and indecisive process of internal decomposition that leaves in place numerous deposits of us, in us and with us – all with a considerable and complex afterlife. In this context all figuration is prefigured. This is to say that the design element of the production of a work of art, the compositional, now exists prior to the management of form of, and on, the picture plane. Techniques of assemblage, like montage and collage – which not only juxtaposed different aesthetics but also different historical moments, were the precursors of what is now the general condition of production.”

Fry, Tony. “Art Byting the Dust,” in Hayward, Phillip. Culture, Technology and Creativity in the Late Twentieth Century. London: John Libbey and Company, 1990, pp. 169-170.

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

In order to understand the present we must link it to the self transforming urges of the past. We must see it as an evolutionary urge toward a transformation of all traditional notions, as a gradual process of growth in which several earlier currents have penetrated one another and thus have changed their very essence.

László Moholy-Nagy

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
B-10 Space Modulator
1942
Oil and incised lines on Plexiglas, in original frame
Plexiglas: 42.9 × 29.2cm
Frame: 82.9 × 67.6cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection
© 2016 Hattula Moholy-Nagy/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

László Moholy-Nagy. 'Room of the Present (Raum der Gegenwart)' constructed in 2009 from plans and other documentation dated 1930

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Room of the Present (Raum der Gegenwart)
Constructed in 2009 from plans and other documentation dated 1930
Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
© 2016 Hattula Moholy-Nagy/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Photo: Peter Cox, courtesy Art Resource, New York

Installation view: 'Moholy-Nagy: Future Present', Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, May 27–September 7, 2016 showing at right, 'A II (Construction A II)' (1924)

Installation view of Moholy-Nagy: Future Present at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, May 27 – September 7, 2016 showing at right, A II (Construction A II) (1924, below)
Photo: David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946) 'A II' 1924 from the exhibition 'Moholy-Nagy: Future Present' at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, May - Sept, 2025

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
A II (Construction A II)
1924
Oil and graphite on canvas
115.8 × 136.5cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection
© 2016 Hattula Moholy-Nagy/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Installation view: 'Moholy-Nagy: Future Present', Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, May 27–September 7, 2016

Installation views of Moholy-Nagy: Future Present at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, May 27 – September 7, 2016
Photo: David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946) 'Dual Form with Chromium Rods' 1946 (installation view)

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Dual Form with Chromium Rods (installation view)
1946
Plexiglas and chrome-plated brass
92.7 × 121.6 × 55.9cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection
© 2016 Hattula Moholy-Nagy/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946) 'Dual Form with Chromium Rods' 1946 from the exhibition 'Moholy-Nagy: Future Present' at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, May - Sept, 2025

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Dual Form with Chromium Rods
1946
Plexiglas and chrome-plated brass
92.7 × 121.6 × 55.9cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection
© 2016 Hattula Moholy-Nagy/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Photo: Kristopher McKay © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York

From May 27 to September 7, 2016, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum presents the first comprehensive retrospective in the United States in nearly fifty years of the work of pioneering artist and educator László Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946). Organised by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Moholy-Nagy: Future Present examines the full career of the utopian modernist who believed in the potential of art as a vehicle for social transformation, working hand in hand with technology. Despite Moholy-Nagy’s prominence and the visibility of his work during his lifetime, few exhibitions have conveyed the experimental nature of his work, his enthusiasm for industrial materials, and his radical innovations with movement and light. This long overdue presentation, which encompasses his multidisciplinary methodology, brings together more than 300 works drawn from public and private collections across Europe and the United States, some of which have never before been shown publicly in this country. After its debut presentation in New York, the exhibition will travel to the Art Institute of Chicago (October 2, 2016 – January 3, 2017) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (February 12 – June 18, 2017).

Moholy-Nagy: Future Present provides an opportunity to examine the full career of this influential Bauhaus teacher, founder of Chicago’s Institute of Design, and versatile artist who paved the way for increasingly interdisciplinary and multimedia work and practice. Among his radical innovations were his experiments with cameraless photographs (which he dubbed “photograms”); use of industrial materials in painting and sculpture that was unconventional for his time; researching with light, transparency, and movement; his work at the forefront of abstraction; and his ability to move fluidly between the fine and applied arts. The exhibition is presented chronologically up the Guggenheim’s rotunda and features collages, drawings, ephemera, films, paintings, photograms, photographs, photomontages, and sculptures. The exception to the sequential order is Room of the Present (Raum der Gegenwart) in the High Gallery, a contemporary fabrication of a space originally conceived by Moholy-Nagy in 1930 but never realised in his lifetime. Constructed by designers Kai-Uwe Hemken and Jakob Gebert, the large-scale work contains photographic reproductions, films, slides, documents, and replicas of architecture, theater, and industrial design, including a 2006 replica of his kinetic Light Prop for an Electric Stage (Lichtrequisit einer elektrischen Bühne, 1930). Room of the Present illustrates the artist’s belief in the power of images and his approach to the various means with which to view them – a highly relevant paradigm in today’s constantly shifting and evolving technological world. Room of the Present will be on display at all three exhibition venues and for the first time in the United States. The Guggenheim installation is designed by Kelly Cullinan, Senior Exhibition Designer, and is inspired by Moholy-Nagy’s texts on space and his concept of a “spatial kaleidoscope” as applied to the experience of walking up the ramps.

Born in 1895 in Austria-Hungary (now southern Hungary), Moholy-Nagy moved to Vienna briefly and then to Berlin in 1920, where he encountered Dada artists, whose distinctive visual attributes of the urban industrial landscape had already entered his work. He was also influenced by the Constructivists, and exhibited work on several occasions at Berlin’s Der Sturm gallery. During this time, Moholy-Nagy experimented with metal constructions, photograms, and enamel paintings. At the same moment, in his ongoing quest to depict light and transparency, he painted abstract canvases composed of floating geometric shapes. While teaching at the Bauhaus in Weimar and then Dessau, he and Walter Gropius pioneered the Bauhaus Books series, which advanced Moholy-Nagy’s belief that arts education and administration went hand in hand with the practice of art making. Around this period, the artist became temporarily disenchanted with the limitations of traditional painting. Photography took on greater importance for him, and he described the photogram as “a bridge leading to new visual creation for which canvas, paint-brush and pigment cannot serve.” He fashioned photomontages by combining photographs (usually found) and newspaper images into absurd, satirical, or fantastical narratives. When he moved back to Berlin in 1928, he enjoyed success as a commercial artist, exhibition and stage designer, and typographer, examples of which will be on display in Moholy-Nagy: Future Present. Adolf Hitler’s rise to power made life increasingly difficult for the avant-garde in Germany; thus, in 1934 Moholy-Nagy moved with his family to the Netherlands and then to London. Once he moved to Chicago in 1937, he never returned to Europe.

Moholy-Nagy immigrated to Chicago to become founding director of the New Bauhaus, known today as the Institute of Design at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He also made some of his most original and experimental work during this time, pursuing his longtime fascination with light, shadow, transparency, and motion. He continued to make photograms, created his Space Modulators (hybrids of painting and sculpture made from Plexiglas), and pioneered 35 mm colour slide photography, shown as projections in the exhibition. He gave his full attention to American exhibition venues before his untimely death of leukaemia in 1946, showing nearly three dozen times across the United States – including in four solo shows.

Moholy-Nagy was a central figure in the history of the Guggenheim Museum. His work was included in the museum’s founding collection, and he held a special place at the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, the forerunner of the Guggenheim Museum. He was among the first artists director Hilla Rebay exhibited and collected in depth, and the museum presented a memorial exhibition shortly after his death. Moholy-Nagy: Future Present highlights the artist’s interdisciplinary and investigative approach, migrating from the school to the museum or gallery space, consistently pushing toward the Gesamtwerk, the total work, which he sought to achieve throughout his lifetime.

Press release from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946) 'Nickel Sculpture with Spiral' 1921 (installation photograph)

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Nickel Sculpture with Spiral (installation view)
1921
Nickel-plated iron, welded
35.9 x 17.5 x 23.8cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Gift of Mrs. Sibyl Moholy-Nagy 1956
© 2016 Hattula Moholy-Nagy/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946) 'A 19' 1927 from the exhibition 'Moholy-Nagy: Future Present' at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, May - Sept, 2025

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
A 19
1927
Oil and graphite on canvas
80 x 95.5cm
Hattula Moholy-Nagy, Ann Arbor, MI
© 2016 Hattula Moholy-Nagy/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Photogram
1941
Gelatin silver photogram
28 x 36cm
The Art Institute of Chicago, gift of Sally Petrilli, 1985
© 2016 Hattula Moholy-Nagy/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Space Modulator
1939-1945
Oil and incised lines on Plexiglas, in original frame
Plexiglas: 63.2 × 66.7cm
Frame: 88.6 × 93cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection
© 2016 Hattula Moholy-Nagy/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Papmac
1943
Oil and incised lines on Plexiglas, in original frame
Plexiglas: 58.4 × 70.5cm
Frame: 91.1 × 101.9cm
Private collection
© 2016 Hattula Moholy-Nagy/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
CH BEATA I
1939
Oil and graphite on canvas
118.9 × 119.8cm
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection
© 2016 Hattula Moholy-Nagy/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Construction AL6 (Konstruktion AL6)
1933-1934
Oil and incised lines on aluminium
60 × 50cm
IVAM, Institut Valencià d’Art Modern, Generalitat
© 2016 Hattula Moholy-Nagy/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Photogram
1926
Gelatin silver photogram
23.8 x 17.8cm
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Ralph M. Parsons Fund
© 2016 Hattula Moholy-Nagy/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Photo: © Museum Associates/LACMA

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian, 1895-1946)
Cover and design for Vision in Motion (Paul Theobald, 1947)
Bound volume
28.6 × 22.9cm
The Hilla von Rebay Foundation Archive
© 2016 Hattula Moholy-Nagy/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 5th Avenue (at 89th Street)
New York

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Saturday 11am – 8pm

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum website

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Exhibition: ‘A History: Contemporary Art from the Centre Pompidou’ at the Haus der Kunst, Munich

Exhibition dates: 25th March – 4th September, 2016

Curator: Christine Macel

Artists include: Pawel Althamer/ Maja Bajević / Yto Barrada / Jean-Michel Basquiat / Taysir Batniji / Christian Boltanski / Erik Boulatov / Mohammed Bourouissa / Frédéric Bruly Bouabré / Sophie Calle and Greg Shephard / Mircea Cantor / Chen Zhen / Hassan Darsi / Destroy All Monsters / Atul Dodiya / Marlene Dumas / Ayşe Erkmen / Fang Lijun / Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica / Samuel Fosso / Michel François / Coco Fusco und Paula Heredia / Regina José Galindo / Kendell Geers / Liam Gillick / Fernanda Gomes / Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster / Felix Gonzalez-Torres / Renée Green / Subodh Gupta / Andreas Gursky / Hans Haacke / Petrit Halilaj / Edi Hila / Gregor Hildebrandt / Thomas Hirschhorn / Nicholas Hlobo / Carsten Höller / Pierre Huyghe / Fabrice Hyber / Isaac Julien / Oleg Kulik / Glenn Ligon / Robert Longo / Sarah Lucas / Gonçalo Mabunda / David Maljković / Chris Marker / Ahmed Mater / Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy / Annette Messager / Rabih Mroué / Zanele Muholi / Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba / Roman Ondák / Gabriel Orozco / Damián Ortega / Philippe Parreno / Nira Pereg / Dan Perjovschi / Wilfredo Prieto / Tobias Putrih / Walid Raad / Sara Rahbar / Tobias Rehberger / Nick Relph und Oliver Payne / Pipilotti Rist / Chéri Samba / Anne-Marie Schneider / Santiago Sierra / Mladen Stilinović / Georges Tony Stoll / Wolfgang Tillmans / Rirkrit Tiravanija / Danh Vo / Marie Voignier / Akram Zaatari / Zhang Huan

Thomas Hirschhorn (Swiss, b. 1957) 'Outgrowth' 2005 from the exhibition 'A History: Contemporary Art from the Centre Pompidou' at the Haus der Kunst, Munich, March - Sept, 2016

Thomas Hirschhorn (Swiss, b. 1957)
Outgrowth
2005
Wood, plastic, newspaper clipping, tape, metal, bubble wrap
Installation: 374 x 644 x 46cm
Minimum dimensions of the rail: 400 x 670cm
Achat en 2006, Ankauf / Purchase
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris
Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle
Crédit photographique: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Georges Meguerditchian/Dist. RMN-GP
Copyright de l’oeuvre: © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016

Take your pick: some interesting, some not. My favourite: Annette Messager Mes voeux (1989, below) … such a strong, creative and inspiring artist.

I’m not writing so much as I have bad RSI in my left wrist at the moment.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

In 2016, two prominent exhibition projects explore the pressing question of which factors remain relevant to the writing of art history. While “Postwar – Art between the Pacific and Atlantic, 1945-1965” concentrates on the time immediately after World War II, “A History: Contemporary Art from the Centre Pompidou” provides an overview of contemporary art since the 1980s with 160 works by more than 100 artists.

The year 1989 marked a break with the past and the start of a new era. The fall of the Berlin Wall toppled divisions in the world of European art, while the events of Tiananmen Square focused attention on a new China. The ongoing globalisation allows for an unprecedented mobility. The static understanding of identity, once based on origin and nationality, has since given way to a more transnational and variable narrative. Contemporary artistic proposals, which arise from the new “decolonised subjectivity”, are also based on a new understanding of site-specificity. For example, in the 1960s and 1970s the protagonists of Land Art still understood landscapes primarily as post-industrial ruins. In contemporary artistic practice, however, space is defined above all socially and politically – by traumatic historical events, home country, exile, diaspora and hybrid identities, such as African-American, Latino, Turkish-German, African-Brazilian, and so forth. The new presentation of the Centre Pompidou contemporary collections at Haus der Kunst focuses particularly on this altered geography, notably the former Eastern Europe, China, Lebanon, and various Middle Eastern countries, India, Africa, and Latin America. This is the first time such a large-scale view of the Centre Pompidou collection has been presented outside France.

Lijun Fang (Chinese, b. 1963) 'Sans titre' 2003 from the exhibition 'A History: Contemporary Art from the Centre Pompidou' at the Haus der Kunst, Munich, March - Sept, 2016

Lijun Fang (Chinese, b. 1963)
Sans titre
2003
Woodcut on paper
400 x 854cm
Each panel: 400 x 120cm
Achat en 2004, Ankauf / Purchase
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris
Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle

Marlene Dumas (South African, b. 1953)
The Missionary (Le Missionnaire)
2002-2004
Oil on canvas
60 x 230cm
Don de la Clarence Westbury Foundation, 2005
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris
Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle
Crédit photographique: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Philippe Migeat/Dist. RMN-GP
Copyright de l’oeuvre: © Marlene Dumas

Jean-Michel Basquiat (American, 1960-1988)
Slave Auction (Vente aux enchères d’esclaves)
1982
Acrylic paint, oil pastel and collages
Collage of crumpled papers, oil pastel and acrylic paint on canvas
183 x 305.5cm
Don de la Société des Amis du Musée national d’art moderne, 1993
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris
Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle
Crédit photographique: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Philippe Migeat/Dist. RMN-GP
Copyright de l’oeuvre: © The estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016

Fabrice Hyber (French, b. 1961)
Peinture homéopathique n° 10 (Guerre désirée) (Homeopathic painting n° 10 (Desired war))
1983-1996
Mixed media on canvas
Graphite lead, charcoal, coloured pencil, resin, gouache, India ink, acrylic, pastel, watercolour, felt-tip pen, adhesive tape, on paper, photocopy, photographs and tissue paper pasted on canvas
225 x 450cm
Each panel: 225 x 225cm
Achat en 1996, Ankauf / Purchase
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris
Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle
Crédit photographique: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Jacques Faujour/Dist. RMN-GP
Copyright de l’oeuvre: © Adagp, Paris

Hans Haacke (German, b. 1936)
MetroMobiltan
1985
Fibreglass, photography, hardboard, polyester fabric, aluminum, acrylic paint
Fibreglass pediment, 1 fibreglass plate with English text, 1 black and white photograph in 5 parts laminated on hardboard, 3 banners in synthetic polyester fabric each mounted on 2 aluminium tubes: on the left and on the right 2 banners blue with English text (letters in cut and sewn white polyester fabric), in the centre 1 brown banner with photographic enlargement in cut and sewn fabric and English text), platform in 8 elements of acrylic painted fibreglass
Installation: 355.6 x 609.6 x 152.4cm
Achat en 1988, Ankauf / Purchase
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris
Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle
Crédit photographique: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Georges Meguerditchian/Dist. RMN-GP
Copyright de l’oeuvre: © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016

Chéri Samba (Democratic Republic of Congo, b. 1956)
Marche de soutien à la campagne sur le SIDA
1988
Oil and glitter on prepared canvas
134.5 x 200cm
Purchase in 1990
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle
© Chéri Samba, photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Philippe Migeat/Dist. RMN-GP

Haus der Kunst is pleased to present A History: Contemporary Art from Centre Pompidou, an exhibition originally curated by Christine Macel at the Centre Pompidou, Paris. With approximately 160 works by more than 100 artists from across the world, “A History: Contemporary Art from the Centre Pompidou” provides an incisive overview of artistic positions since the 1980s in painting, sculpture, installation, video, photography, and performance.

The Centre Pompidou’s collection of contemporary art has rarely been presented so comprehensively outside France. The selected works on view date from the 1980s to the present raising two significant questions: What factors are relevant for ensuring that art history is written in a specific way, and what does an ever changing understanding of the term ‘contemporary’ mean for public museums and their collections? Still, the concentration on Euro- American domains, which many museums formerly pursued in the acquisition of works for their collections, can hardly be sustained today and is no longer the aspiration of most museums. Globalisation, with its expanded narratives, has recently become too determining for the position of contemporary art to ignore. Curator Christine Macel defines her intention accordingly: to present ‘one’ among many possible histories of contemporary art.

With the progression of globalisation – understood here as the consolidation of economic, technological and financial systems, but also the questioning of linear history, and hegemonic cultural narratives – our perception of identity has changed. Since the first globally-oriented biennial in Havana in 1986, exhibition organisers and larger museums in Europe and North America have strived to display art created beyond the Western artistic circuit. The static understanding of identity as something based in origins and a “home base” has largely given way to a transnational and variable one.

The turning point for Centre Pompidou was its 1989 exhibition “Les Magiciens de la Terre”, in which curator Jean-Hubert Martin aimed to confront the problematic phenomenon of “one hundred percent of exhibitions that ignore eighty percent of the world.” Half the participating artists came from non-Western countries, while the other half came from the West. In addition, all exhibiting artists were – without exception – still active, making the presentation truly contemporary. Since then, the Centre Pompidou, like many large museums, has had to confront the reality of the expanded circuits of contemporary art. Over the years the museum gradually changed its acquisition practices and has increasingly opened its focus toward Eastern Europe, China, Lebanon, the Middle East, India, Congo, Nigeria, South Africa, Cameroon, Mexico and Brazil.

Meanwhile, our understanding of the term “origins” has continued to evolve. Consequently, the definition of “site-specific” has also changed. In the 1960s and 70s, artists of the Land Art movement still essentially regarded landscapes as post-industrial ruins. By contrast, Okwui Enwezor, director of Haus der Kunst believes that, in today’s artistic practice, space is defined by impermanence, by the mutability of politically and socially grounded positions, by aesthetic pluralism, and by cultural differences. Furthermore, colonial and postcolonial experiences shaped by traumatic historical events, home, exile, diaspora produced hybrid identities – such as African-American, Euro- American, Latino, Turkish-German, French-Arabic, African-Brazilian, etc. Consequently new forms of cosmopolitanism and provincialism jostle next to one another. It is no coincidence that the exhibition practice of today can already look back on a number of shows that focused on borders and issues of migration.

Against this backdrop of dynamism and permanent transition the exhibition is divided into seven chapters:

The Artist as Historian

An interest in the historical document and a more general obsession with the past, have led to the nostalgic excavation and re-enactments of existing works of art. Artists from the Arab speaking world are increasingly present in the art world; having borne witness to the Gulf War in 1991, these artists have developed new practices around the examination of history.

The Artist as Archivist

A passion for the archive initially led to a demand for completeness and later to an acceptance of the fragmentary, resulting on the one hand in concurrence of taxonomic efforts and endless accumulation, and, on the other, in an insight into the accelerated loss of memory. On a higher level, both coincide: Archives are especially useful in helping to identify and address wounds in the collective memory.

Sonic Boom

Trying to capture the sensation of listening to music in an image has a long tradition. Yet, even for artists who take their works to the edge of physical dissolution, listening often moves to the fore. Further, changes in the music industry and music production have reinforced the permeability of art and composition.

The Artist as Producer: The “Traffic” Generation

The concept of artwork is transformed through its dematerialisation. An awareness of temporality, volatility, and process shifts to the foreground. Artists develop new forms of collaboration and collective creation, and make aesthetic use of clips, sampling, and film narrative (which is also regarded as an exhibition platform). As a result, copyright as an object of reflection has come into focus.

The Artist as Documentarist: As Close as Possible to the Real

The proliferation of the Internet in the context of a market economy and consumer society has led to a greater interest in the real, in the status quo of the observer and the reporter and generally in an engagement with all areas of human life. The artist takes on the role of a witness who accepts the subjectivity of his observations.

Artist and Object

Between 1980 and 1990, artists turned to an exploration of the everyday and the object; the 1990’s can be considered as the ultimate epoch of the aesthetic of the mundane. The now-famous video, “The Way Things Go” by Fischli and Weiss (1986-87) sings this song of songs to the everyday. No less iconic is Gabriel Orozco’s modified Citroën (La DS, 1993). The confrontation with consumer society is manifested in photography in detailed and richly coloured compositions like Gursky’s 99 Cent (1999), and in sculpture with the integration of found objects. The common denominator is the attention artists pay to excessive consumption – as an opportunity or as a fact.

The Artist and the Body

Video and photography seem to be particularly fitting mediums for artists whose works include a performative element. The theme of the human body – wounded or damaged by oppression – returns as a theme with a vengeance. Many works with erotic and sexual overtones emerge. New technical possibilities, either through plastic surgery or image manipulation, bring the grotesque into the fold.

Press release from Haus der Kunst

Fischli and Weiss
The Way Things Go
1986-1987

Erik Boulatov (Russian, b. 1933) 'Printemps dans une maison de repos des travailleurs' 1988

Erik Boulatov (Russian, 1933-2025)
Printemps dans une maison de repos des travailleurs
1988
Oil on canvas
169.2 x 239 x 4cm
Purchased in 1989
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016,
Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Philippe Migeat/Dist. RMN-GP

Michel François (Belgian, b. 1956)
Affiche Cactus
1997
Print on paper
120 x 178cm
Don de l’artiste en 2003
Collection Centre Pompidou
Paris Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016
Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Philippe Migeat/Dist. RMN-GP

Pawel Althamer (Polish, b. 1967)
Tecza (Rainbow)
2004
Metal, cotton, felt, rubber, cork, plastic
120 x 185 x 57cm
Purchased in 2006
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle
© Pawel Althamer
Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Service de la documentation photographique du MNAM/Dist. RMN-GP

Samuel Fosso (Nigerian born Cameroon, b. 1962)
La Femme américaine libérée des années 70
1997
Chromogenic print
127 x 101cm
Crédit photographique: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Philippe Migeat/Dist. RMN-GP
Copyright de l’oeuvre: © Samuel Fosso, courtesy J.M. Patras, Paris
Achat en 2004, Ankauf / Purchase
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris
Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle

Atul Dodiya (Indian, b. 1959)
Charu
2004
Enamel paint and synthetic varnish on plywood
183 x 122cm
Don de la Société des Amis du Musée national d’art moderne, 2013
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris
Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle
Crédit photographique: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Philippe Migeat/Dist. RMN-GP
Copyright de l’oeuvre: © Atul Dodiya

Huan Zhang (Chinese, b. 1966)
Family Tree
2000
9 chromogenic prints
396 x 318cm
Each print 132 x 106cm
Montage of the nine prints
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris
Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle,
Purchased in 2004
© droits réservés, photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Philippe Migeat/Dist. RMN-GP

Huan Zhang (Chinese, b. 1966) 'Family Tree' 2000 (detail)

Huan Zhang (Chinese, b. 1966) 'Family Tree' 2000 (detail) 'Family Tree' 2000 (detail)

Huan Zhang (Chinese, b. 1966)
Family Tree (details)
2000
9 chromogenic prints
396 x 318cm
Each print 132 x 106cm
Montage of the nine prints
Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle,
Achat en 2004
© droits réservés, photo
© Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Philippe Migeat/Dist. RMN-GP

Andreas Gursky (German, b. 1955)
Madonna I
2001
Chromogenic print
282 x 213 x 6.5cm
Achat en 2003, Ankauf / Purchase
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris
Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle
Crédit photographique: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Georges Meguerditchian/Dist. RMN-GP
Copyright de l’oeuvre: © Courtesy: Monika Sprüth Galerie, Cologne / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016

Ahmed Mater (Saudi, b. 1979)
From the Real to the Symbolic City
2012
Digital proof
292 x 245cm
Don de Athr Gallery, avec le soutien de Sara Binladin et Zahid Zahid, Sara Alireza et Faisal Tamer, Abdullah Al-Turki, 2013
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris
Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle
Crédit photographique: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Georges Meguerditchian/Dist. RMN-GP
Copyright de l’oeuvre: © droits réservés

Annette Messager (French, b. 1943)
Mes voeux
1989
263 gelatin silver prints framed under glass held in place by black adhesive paper and hung on the wall by long strings
Overall dimensions: 320 x 160cm
1 épreuve 24 x 17cm, 50 épreuves 20 x 14cm, 57 épreuves 15 x 11cm, 49 épreuves 13 x 9cm, 106 épreuves 8 x 6cm
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris
Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle
Achat en 1990
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016, photo Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Philippe Migeat/Dist. RMN-GP

Annette Messager (French, b. 1943) 'Mes voeux' 1989 (detail)

Annette Messager (French, b. 1943)
Mes voeux (detail)
1989
263 gelatin silver prints framed under glass held in place by black adhesive paper and hung on the wall by long strings
Overall dimensions: 320 x 160cm
1 épreuve 24 x 17cm, 50 épreuves 20 x 14cm, 57 épreuves 15 x 11cm, 49 épreuves 13 x 9cm, 106 épreuves 8 x 6cm
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris
Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle
Achat en 1990
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016, photo Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Philippe Migeat/Dist. RMN-GP

Ayse Erkmen (Turkish, b. 1949)
Netz
2006
Cotton garment labels, nails
Installation: 220 x 60 x 20cm
Purchased in 2012
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris
Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle
© Ayse Erkmen
Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Georges Meguerditchian/Dist. RMN-GP

Wolfgang Tillmans (German, b. 1968)
Suzanne & Lutz, white dress, army skirt
1993
Chromogenic print
99 x 66 x 2cm
Donation de la Caisse des Dépôts en 2006
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris
Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Philippe Migeat/Dist. RMN-GP

Gabriel Orozco (Mexican, b. 1962) 'La D.S.' 1992 'La D.S.' 1992

Gabriel Orozco (Mexican, b. 1962)
La D.S.
1992
Centre national des arts plastiques, FNAC 94003
© Gabriel Orozco/CNAP, courtesy photo Galerie Crousel-Robelin-Bama

Gonçalo Mabunda (Mozambique, b. 1975) 'O trono de um mundo sem revoltas (Le trône d’un monde sans révolte)' 2011

Gonçalo Mabunda (Mozambique, b. 1975)
O trono de um mundo sem revoltas (Le trône d’un monde sans révolte) (The throne of the world without revolt)
2011
Recycled iron, weapons of the civil war in Mozambique
79 x 88 x 49cm
Don de la Société des Amis du Musée national d’art moderne, 2012. Projet pour l’art contemporain 2011, avec le soutien de Nathalie Quentin-Mauroy
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris
Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle
Crédit photographique: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Georges Meguerditchian/Dist. RMN-GP
Copyright de l’oeuvre: © Gonçalo Mabunda

Chen Zhen (Chinese-French, 1955-2000)
Paris Round Table
1995
Wood, metal
180cm, diameter 550cm
Purchased in 2002
Dépôt du Centre national des arts plastiques, 2002
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris
Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016, Présentation dans “Extra Large”, Grimaldi Forum, Monaco, juillet 2012
Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Philippe Migeat/Dist. RMN-GP

Yto Barrada (Franco-Moroccan, b. 1971)
Sans titre
1998-2004
Chromogenic print
73 x 73cm
Donation de la Caisse des Dépôts en 2006
Collection Centre Pompidou, Paris
Musée national d’art moderne – Centre de création industrielle
© Yto Barrada
Photo © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI/Georges Meguerditchian/Dist. RMN-GP

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Exhibition: ‘The Memory of the Future. Photographic Dialogues between Past, Present and Future’ at the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne

Exhibition dates: 25th May – 28th August, 2016

Curator: Tatyana Franck, Director, Musée de l’Elysée, assisted by Lydia Dorner and Emilie Delcambre

Artists: Takashi Arai / Israel Ariño / Anna Atkins / Patrick Bailly-Maître-Grand Pierre Cordier / Bernd and Hilla Becher / Martin Becka / Binh Danh /Jayne Hinds Bidaut John Dugdale / Jean-Gabriel Eynard / Joan Fontcuberta / Dennis Gabor / Loris Gréaud / JR Idris Khan / Laure Ledoux / Gustave Le Gray / Gabriel Lippmann / Vera Lutter / Christian Marclay / Mathew Brady / Vik Muniz / Oscar Muñoz / Eadweard Muybridge / France Scully Osterman and Mark Osterman Andreas / Andreas Müller-Pohle / Florio Puenter Benjamin Recordon / Dino Simonett / Jerry Spagnoli / Joni Sternbach / James Turrell Martial Verdier / Paul Vionnet / Pierre Wetzel / Victoria Will / Nancy Wilson-Pajic

3D Digitisation of Jean-Gabriel Eynard (Swiss, 1775-1863) 'Charles et Mathilde Horngascher-Odier' 1845 from the exhibition 'The Memory of the Future. Photographic Dialogues between Past, Present and Future' at the Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne, May - August, 2016

3D Digitisation of Jean-Gabriel Eynard (Swiss, 1775-1863)
Charles and Mathilde Horngascher-Odier
1845
© Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne

Gabriel Lippmann (colour photography) and Dennis Gabor (holograms). Eadweard Muybridge (movement) and Pierre Cordier (chemigrams). Daguerreotypes, calotypes, negatives on dry waxed paper, tintypes, ambrotypes, cyanotypes. Heliogravure, ferrotype, collage and carbon printing. 3D digitisations that “light up” the image from every angle.

What’s old is new again. Then and now, here and there. The memory of future past.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Musée de l’Elysée for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Oscar Muñoz (Colombian, b. 1951) 'Ante la Imagen' 2009 from the exhibition 'The Memory of the Future. Photographic Dialogues between Past, Present and Future' at the Musée de l'Elysée, Lausanne, May - August, 2016

Oscar Muñoz (Colombian, b. 1951)
Ante la Imagen
2009
© Oscar Muñoz, courtesy of the artist and Mor charpentier gallery

Oscar Muñoz’s work combines photography, engraving, drawing, installation, video and sculpture, defying all attempts at categorisation. Using non-conventional techniques, his work is a reflection on social concerns and addresses the themes of memory and forgetting, appearance and disappearance, loss and the insecurity of human life. In his work El Coleccionista, the artist uses a triple video projection to show a figure that is sorting, organising and grouping what appears to be personal archives. Oscar Muñoz evokes here the ability of images to be part of multiple narratives, from one image to another, from one context to another. These images propose multiple narrations that overlap and intermingle between the past and present, memory and time.

For Ante la Imagen, Muñoz uses the portrait of the chemist Robert Cornelius (1809-1893), known for having reduced the exposure time of the photographic process of the daguerreotype and for producing one of the first self-portraits, to demonstrate the effectiveness of his method. Muñoz reproduces this portrait by engraving it on a reflecting metallic surface, like a daguerreotype. With each manipulation, the viewer sees the portrait of Cornelius superimposed on his own. The work is composed and decomposed and questions the interior multiplicity of one and the same image. Muñoz replaces this frozen image by a constantly-changing one, vulnerable to deterioration under the effect of air, like life itself.

Gabriel Lippmann (Franco-Luxembourgish, 1845-1921)
Selfportrait
c. 1892
© Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne

Professor of physics at the Sorbonne, a member of the French Academy of Sciences and author of many scientific works, the international renown of Gabriel Lippmann Is mainly due to his invention of colour photography using the interferential method. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1908.

In 1891, he presented his invention, which would revolutionise photography, to the public. Lippmann developed the “wave theory of light”, which held that light bodies vibrate (like sound) and that light is propagated by waves of different speeds. The variations in wavelengths lead to changes in colour. To prove the validity of his theory, Lippmann worked for five years to find a method that would fix these interferences. To do so, he developed a device that made it possible to place a special photographic plate (made of layers proportional to the wavelengths) in contact with a mercury mirror, a very complicated process. The sensitive layer of an average wavelength, green, for example, has 4,000 bright points per millimetre in its thickness, separated by dark intervals. The Musée de l’Elysée has the largest collection of Lippmann prisms in the world.

McDonnell Douglas Corp. / Spindler & Hoyer
Portrait of Dennis Gabor
1975
© Jonathan Ross Hologram Collection

Engineer and physicist, Dennis Gabor is known for having invented the hologram in 1947, for which he was awarded the Holweck prize in 1970, and then the Nobel Prize in physics in 1971. Fascinated by Abbé’s theory of the microscope and Gabriel Lippmann’s method of colour photography, he studied electron optics, which led him to propose the concept of holography that he referred to as “wavefront reconstruction” at the time. The initial project consisted of an electron microscope capable of visualising atom networks and the atoms themselves, but that was not put into practice until 20 years later, whereas the hologram as a photographic process would have to wait for the invention of the laser in the 1960s, the light source necessary for the hologram. Subsequently, Emmett Leith and Juris Upatnieks in the United States and Yuri Denisyuk in Russia contributed to the improvement of Gabor’s invention and presented three-dimensional holograms. Since then, holograms are widely know to the general public through advertising, the production of packaging materials and jewellery items.

The life-size version of the portrait of Gabor can be seen at the offices of the McDonnell Douglas Corporation in the United States, one of the first companies to have attempted to market the holograph. The reduced-size copy presented here was made several years later by Spindler & Hoyer, a German optical company.

Eadweard Muybridge (English, 1830-1904)
Animal Locomotion, Plate 597
1887
© Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne

Christian Marclay (American-Swiss, b. 1955)
Memento (Survival of the Fittest)
2008
© Christian Marclay, courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery, New York

A well-known filmmaker and multimedia artist, Christian Marclay made his mark on the contemporary art scene by combining the visual arts, film and musical culture. In 2007, he began a project that explores the interactions between sound and vision, as well as the manipulation and the conservation of different forms of recordings. He initiated a series together with the Graphicstudio, University of South Florida involving the use of two archaic recording systems – the cyanotype photography process and the audiotape.

He adopted and adapted the subject of the audiotape, which has become just about obsolete as a result of technological developments, and placed it at the center of his visual abstraction to capture the old soundtracks of hundreds of cassette tapes unfurled like so many streamers, using the cyanotype process. “We assume, because we’re able to capture sounds or images, that they will exist forever – when, in fact, obsolescence makes you feel the limit of those assumptions.” By combining these two mediums, the artist brilliantly explores the resonances between the past and present.

JR
UNFRAMED, Man Ray revu par JR, Femme aux cheveux longs, 1929, Vevey, Suisse
2010
© JR / Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne

JR has “the largest art gallery in the world”. Thanks to the technique of photo collage, he freely exhibits his work on walls worldwide, thus attracting the attention of those who rarely or never go to museums. His work is a mixture of art and action and deals with commitment, freedom, identity and limits. After finding a camera in the Paris Metro in 2001, he travelled throughout Europe to meet other people whose mode of artistic expression involved the use of the walls and façades that give form to our cities. After observing the people he met and listening to their message, JR pasted their portraits up in streets and basements and on the roof tops of Paris.

JR thus creates “pervasive art” that he puts up on buildings in the Paris suburbs, on walls in the Middle East, on broken bridges in Africa and in the favelas of Brazil. These artistic actions make no distinction between the actors and the spectators. JR’s approach presented here is a mixture of the reinterpretation and recontextualisation of the icons of the history of photography taken from the collections of the Musée de l’Elysée of Lausanne, which he applies to the façades of buildings in the city of Vevey. He thus crops and enlarges the photos of Robert Capa, Man Ray, Gilles Caron and Helen Levitt so that the city becomes a gigantic open-air museum.

Binh Danh (American born Vietnam, b. 1979)
Sphinxes (by Arthur Putnam, 1912)
2014
Artist and Haines Gallery courtesy, San Francisco
© Binh Danh

“Landscape is what defines me. When I am somewhere new or unfamiliar, I am constantly in dialogue with the past, present and my future self. When I am thinking about landscape, I am thinking about those who have stood on this land before me. Whoever they are, hopefully history recorded their makings on the land for me to study and contemplate.”

Born in Viet Nam, Binh Danh addresses themes of collective and personal memories, history, heritage and mortality. Known for printing his works on unconventional supports such as leaves or grass, he experiments with the photographic process of the daguerreotype in his most recent creations in order to document the history of the city of San Francisco.

Reminiscent of the work of photographic pioneers such as Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904), Charles Marville (1813-1879) and Eugène Atget (1857-1927), Binh Danh explores the complexities of a constantly evolving city, from the first major expansion in recent years of Silicon Valley. He places San Francisco, cliché of the culture of technology and success, in another time space in order to incite the viewer to reflect on the rapid pace of changes in a city. By choosing the daguerreotype, the artist works on the reflecting surface of the process to incorporate the spectator into his work and to thus transform it into a shared experience.

Paul Vionnet (Swiss, 1830-1914)
La cure d’Etoy
1870
Tirage sur papier aristotype
13.4 × 17.8cm
Collection iconographique vaudoise
© Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne

With the exhibition The Memory of the Future. Photographic Dialogues between Past, Present and Future, the Musée de l’Elysée encourages contemporary artists to take a close look at photography as a medium, innovates as it reveals a 3D digitisation technology developed by a spin-off from Lausanne’s Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), and displays its unique visual heritage.

The Memory of the Future. Photographic Dialogues between Past, Present and Future is the first exhibition that Director Tatyana Franck has curated at the Musée de l’Elysée. It opens up a dialogue between the work of the pioneers of photographic techniques (the past), those of contemporary artists that breathe new life into these skills (the present), and avant-garde technologies that update these early processes (the future). Works from the museum’s collections, contemporary artists and new technologies come face to face and join forces to give a brand new vision of the history of photography. The Memory of the Future aims to configure the present by reconfiguring the past in order to prefigure the future.

Techniques over time

First of all, early photographic processes such as ambrotypes, daguerreotypes, ferrotypes, cyanotypes, etc. are displayed next to works by contemporary artists who breathe life into them. The technical innovations of the past are fertile ground for contemporary art and design. The exhibition includes a waxed paper negative by Gustave Le Gray in dialogue with those by Martin Becka, while cyanotypes by Anna Atkins and Paul Vionnet converse with those by Christian Marclay, Nancy Wilson-Pajic and John Dugdale. Jean-Gabriel Eynard’s daguerreotypes from the museum’s collections are exhibited next to portraits by Takashi Arai and Patrick Bailly-Maître-Grand and landscapes by Binh Danh and Jerry Spagnoli. And as for contemporary ferrotypes, The Memory of the Future shows the work of Joni Sternbach and Jayne Hinds Bidaut as well as portraits taken by Victoria Will at the Sundance Independent Film Festival in 2014.

Works of two scientists who won a Nobel Prize and invented a photographic technique also have pride of place – a self portrait by Gabriel Lippmann (Nobel Prize in Physics in 1908) who invented color photography using the interferential method and a portrait of Dennis Gabor (Nobel Prize in Physics in 1971), the inventor of the holographic process, a photographic technique in relief – echoing a holographic picture by James Turrell, a contemporary artist primarily concerned with light. Lastly, and as a point of convergence for all these photographic processes to fix an image on to a support, the camera obscura is presented through the works of Florio Puenter, Dino Simonett and Vera Lutter. Loris Gréaud – an artist invited to present an original installation capturing the spirit of the Musée de l’Elysée by recording its shadows and light – also explores this technique.

Homage and metamorphosis

The exhibition also presents the “mise en abyme” of iconic pictures from the history of photography reinterpreted by contemporary artists whose works examine the very notion of time or memory.

The earliest photograph in history – by Nicéphore Niépce and dating back to 1826 – is thus transformed by Joan Fontcuberta (Googlegramme Niépce, 2005) using PhotoMosaïque freeware connected online to the Google search engine, and by Andreas Müller-Pohle (Digital Scores VI). The first photographic self portrait in history – by Robert Cornelius in 1839 – is reproduced on a series of mirrors by Oscar Muñoz in 2009 to examine the paradox of the aging of the photographic support, which is, however, supposed to record an image for eternity. While Pierre Cordier pays homage to Eadweard Muybridge’s photographic breaking down of movement, Idris Khan (who took part in the reGeneration exhibition in 2005) pays homage to the iconic photographs of Bernd and Hilla Becher.

Innovating to preserve and showcase

Having launched a campaign in 2014 to digitise its photography books – 1500 books have been scanned so far – the Musée de l’Elysée is continuing to explore techniques to dematerialise its visual heritage for conservation and promotion purposes. Launched in 2015 thanks to the Engagement Migros development fund, an ambitious three dimensional digitisation project puts the Musée de l’Elysée at the forefront of museum innovation.

A venue for exhibitions, conservation and now an experimentation, as part of the exhibition La Mémoire du futur the Musée de l’Elysée is proposing for the first time a space dedicated to the presentation of digitised virtual objects from its collections. This innovative project aims to introduce new collaborative and interactive experiences using the Museum’s collections to a wide range of audiences – whether they be photography enthusiasts, curators or researchers.

Thanks to the Engagement Migros development fund, Innovation partner of the Musée de l’Elysée, the public is invited to experimentally test the first 3D digitisations carried out in partnership with the start-up Artmyn, created at EPFL’s Audiovisual Communications Laboratory (LCAV) led by Martin Vetterli. It will thus be possible to look at the works in 3D with unprecedented precision, but above all, to make the different textures of which they are composed appear on screen by lighting up the digital replicas from any angle.

This new technology comes in the form of a scanner made up of a dome on which are fixed several small lamps of precisely-adjusted intensity that switch on and off in turn depending on each picture scanned. “We are returning to an ancient theory of vision that imagined the eye’s projection towards the world, allowing the spectator once again to become an actor in the photographic experience,” explains Martin Vetterli in the exhibition catalogue.

Preliminary work was carried out with the Collections Department to select the processes that would most benefit from this scanning technology – heliogravure, ambrotype, ferrotype, collage and carbon printing. The first results will be presented in the exhibition. A tactile device supplemented by a video tour of the work presents a collage by René Burri from the René Burri Foundation housed at the Musée de l’Elysée. Rendered in real time and very high resolution, the images that have been cut out and superimposed by the artist can be freely explored so that the visitor can appreciate the visual richness of the work. Visitor experience appraisal is an integral part of the project to optimise presentation techniques and create a digital experimentation area in the museum.

The active participation of visitors to the Museum is an essential step for this first test phase: the interactions and different perceptions of the benefits of the prototype presented will be taken into account for the purpose of developing teaching and learning tools that will subsequently be used to refine and expand the user’s experience and to develop a digital, educational discovery space within the exhibition areas.

Press release from the Musée de l’Elysée

Paul Vionnet (Swiss, 1830-1914)
Lausanne, le pont Chauderon en construction
1904
Tirage au gélatino-bromure d’argent
39.5 × 23.0cm
Collection iconographique vaudoise
© Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne

Paul Vionnet, a local photographic pioneer, is at the origin of the Iconographic Collection of the Canton of Vaud. This collection, devoted to the history of the Vaud, is at the very foundation of the creation of the Musée de l’Elysée in 1985 as a museum dedicated to the image. During his childhood, Paul Vionnet spent his vacations at his grandparents’ home in Aubonne and was a frequent visitor of Adrien Constant Delessert (1806-1876), a neighbour and renowned Vaud photographer. During his stays there in 1845, Delessert taught him photographic techniques and the calotype.

Fascinated by the sciences, nature and his canton, Paul Vionnet took it upon himself to collect the greatest number of iconographic documents possible concerning the history, landscapes and monuments of the region for the purpose of enriching the collection of the Historical Monuments Service in Lausanne. The documents that he was not able to acquire himself were reproduced using photography. Following in his father’s footsteps, he was ordained pastor in 1856, and assigned to Granges de Sainte-Croix, near Aubonne, and then to Pampigny in 1858. He nevertheless continued to take photographs, having since adopted the wet collodion technique, documenting landscapes and monuments during his free time.

He retired in 1896 and founded the Collection historiographique vaudoise that would house his documents. In 1903, Paul Vionnet bequeathed his private collection to the canton of Vaud, forming the fifth section of the Musée Cantonal des Antiquités. He was named assistant curator, and several years later, the municipality commissioned him to take the photographs for Lausanne à travers les âges.

Anna Atkins (English, 1799-1871)
Adiantum tenerum (Jamaica)
c. 1852
© Wilson Centre for Photography

A British photographer considered to be the first woman to create a photograph, Anna Atkins is also known to have published the first books on botany illustrated with cyanotypes. Passionately interested in science and art, she became a member of the Botanical Society of London in 1839 and realised that the photographic process could be used to obtain precise and detailed botanical images and to provide information at all levels of a society increasingly eager for knowledge.

Anna Atkins drew her inspiration from the inventor of photography, William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877), and from a close family friend, John Herschel (1792-1871), a scientist known for the invention and the improvement of the cyanotype. She subsequently developed the process on her own that would allow her to obtain authentic and inexpensive photographic reproductions and that would make her part of the great tradition of her teachers. In 1843, she published her work, British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions, the first volume of which preceded the famous work of Talbot, The Pencil of Nature, by several months. In 1853, she applied the same process to ferns and published Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Ferns,a page of which is presented here.

Anonymous
Portrait of a young girl
1860-1870
© Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne

This exhibition is an odyssey into the history of photography where different eras are juxtaposed and where artists and their methods dialogue with each other. Through a selection of historic photographic processes and the works of contemporary artists, the spectator is encouraged to observe the influence of the past on today’s artistic creations. The exhibition The Memory of the Future proposes a three-pronged vision: that of the past with the works of the pioneers of photographic techniques, that of the present with contemporary works that revive this know-how, and that of the future with technologies that give a new perspective on the works of the past.

Through century-old processes such as daguerreotypes, calotypes, negatives on dry waxed paper, tintypes, ambrotypes, cyanotypes and including holograms, The Memory of the Future celebrates the founding fathers of photographic techniques by establishing a dialogue between them and contemporary artists. From Gabriel Lippmann to James Turrell, including Robert Cornelius and Oscar Muñoz, this exhibition brings together for the first time some one hundred works whose common thread is their ability to withstand time. The Memory of the Future also proposes a selection of works from the Musée de l’Elysée’s collections that have never before been presented to the public.

After having launched a campaign to digitise its photography books in 2014 – 1,500 books have been digitised as of this time – the Musée de l’Elysée continues to explore techniques to dematerialise its visual heritage in order to preserve and enhance it. Consistent with its ambition to not only preserve works of value but to prospect for new ones, the Musée de l’Elysée has undertaken a 3D digitisation project of its works using a prototype developed by the EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne). This technology of the future is presented in this exhibition in the form of a touch screen monitor.

Press release from the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne

John Dugdale. 'The Clandestine Mind' 1999

John Dugdale (American, b. 1960)
The Clandestine Mind
1999
© The John Dugdale Studio

John Dugdale (American, b. 1960)
Mourning Tulips
1999
© The John Dugdale Studio

John Dugdale’s interest in photography goes back to his childhood when he received his first camera at the age of 12 and dreamed of becoming one of the major photographers of the 20th century. After a brilliant career as a fashion photographer, the year 1993 marked the turning point in the life of the artist who lost his sight following a stroke and CMV retinitis. Dugdale nevertheless refused to give up photography and began to take an interest in 19th century photographic techniques, using his family and friends as assistants. He discovered the large format and decided to use the cyanotype process, considering it to be the most direct and the easiest to use.

In his blue works, he portrays his everyday life by reversing the roles. Dugdale poses with a simplistic spirituality that could appear to be in contradiction with the 21st century. Generally posing in the nude, he considers that “life is transient. Once you leave this world, you fly into the universe without clothes. I want people to learn you cannot protect yourself by hiding behind clothes.”

Thanks to its low toxicity, the use of this process allows him to be involved in the printing of his photographs. His sensitivity to historic techniques emphasises the poetry of his work and the transitory nature of time and place. In the hopes of sharing his experience and his healing, Dugdale creates a new body of art by “showing the beauty of life and how one should act around illness.

Jerry Spagnoli (American, b. 1956)
Glass 10/9/12
2012
© Jerry Spagnoli

When the photographer Jerry Spagnoli discovered a daguerreotype at a flea market, he described it as the most perfect photograph he had ever seen, a discovery that would influence the rest of his work. After familiarising himself with the process in his studio in San Francisco, the artist experimented with it using equipment from the 19th century and studying the effects obtained in order to understand the technical aspects as well as the visual and expressive potential.

By studying the body and the roots of photographic imagination in his series Anatomical Studies, the portrait, objects and contemporary street scenes, events and non-events in his series The Last Great Daguerreian Survey of the Twentieth Century, Spagnoli attempts to highlight the qualities of the daguerreotype – uniqueness, richness of detail – through the four series presented here, in order to allow a contemporary public to rediscover its virtues. It is also a way for him to approach the optical essence of photography. “With other processes the material substrate of the image can be intrusive, but when you look at a daguerreotype, there is a transparency to the depiction as if you were looking through the lens itself.”

Vik Muniz (Brazilian, b. 1961)
The Steerage (After Alfred Stieglitz)
2000
from the Pictures of Chocolate series

Pierre Cordier (Belgian, b. 1933)
Photo-Chimigramme 17/6/76 I “Hommage à Muybridge 1972”
1976
© Pierre Cordier

Pierre Cordier is a Belgian artist known as the father of the chemigram and for its development as a means of artistic expression. In 1956, writing a dedication with nail polish on photographic paper to a young German woman, Pierre Cordier discovered what he later called the chemigram. This technique “combines the physics of painting (varnish, oil, wax) and the chemistry of photography (photosensitive emulsion, developer and fixer), without the use of a camera or enlarger, and in full light.”

He worked for 30 years as a lecturer on the history of photography at the École Nationale des Arts Visuels in Brussels. When he gave up photography in 1968 to devote himself exclusively to the chemigram, he wanted to pay tribute to the great photography pioneers – Muybridge in 1972 and Marey in 1975. The Homage to Muybridge presented here was inspired by Allan Porter, chief editor of the Swiss revue Camera, one of the most prominent revues in the history of photography. In the issue of Camera of October 1972, we can read: “Cordier used Muybridge’s famous sequence, The Horse in Motion, which he transformed in three different ways: 1. Still subject and mobile camera. 2. Mobile subject and still camera. 3. Subject and camera, both mobile. He then combined the three sequences into one and treated it according to the photochemigram process.”

Andreas Muller-Pohle (German, b. 1951)
Digital scores V (after Nicephore Niepce)
2001
Inkjet print
Image: 10 7/8 in x 11 in
Mat: 16 1/8 in x 20 1/8 in
Paper: 12 1/8 in x 12 1/8 in

Andreas Müller-Pohle is one of the key figures involved in the ontological as well as the representational nature of photography. Since the 1990s, he has reflected on the radical changes in the essence of technical images. His first artistic project focused on questions of photographic perception and on the recycled photograph.

In the mid-1990s, Müller-Pohle began to explore the use of digital, genetic and political codes. He is one of the first artists to have broken down and translated the analog and the digital codes of images. In his series Digital Scores (after Nicéphore Niépce), he takes us back to the origin of analog photography by translating the photograph of Niépce, View from the Window at Le Gras (taken from a window of his house in 1826), into alphanumeric code. The complete binary transcription of this photograph is then distributed over eight panels.

Martin Becka (Czech, b. 1956)
Le Parc
2002
© Martin Becka

After studying photography, Martin Becka worked as a print developer for the Sepia Agency before becoming an independent news photographer. As of the beginning of the 1980s, he began doing research on the history of photography and the pre-industrial photographic processes that he incorporated into his personal creative work. By using traditional processes to photograph ultramodern cities like Dubai and business districts such as La Défense in Paris, the artist proposes a sort of “archeology of the present”, making the spectator reflect on the period in which he lives, the future, and the multiplication of images at a time when their reproducibility is unlimited. He sees photography as a means to “bend time in every possible direction.”

In his installation Le Parc (the André Citroën Public Park in Paris), Becka establishes a dialogue between the past and the present by paying homage to the photographic work of Alfred-Nicolas Normand (1822-1909) and the dry waxed paper negative process developed in 1851 by Gustave Le Gray (1820-1884). By choosing this century-old technique that requires an approach to work that is radically different from those currently in vogue, he is able to obtain negatives with a density adapted to a presentation by transparency and to create and control movement and unique atmospheres. Becka thus encourages the spectator to reflect on the notion of the photographic object.

Bernd and Hilla Becher (German, 1931-2007/1934-2015)
Gas Tank: Essen-Karnap D
1973
Gelatin silver print

Bernd and Hilla Becher (German, 1931-2007/1934-2015)
Gasbehälter bei Wuppertal (Gas tank near Wuppertal)
1966
Gelatin silver print

Born during the period of industrial archeology, the Bechers’ work consists, in the words of Pierre Restany, “of an optical pilgrimage at the roots of the industrial world”. The couple proposes a way do see industrial architecture by taking an approach based on inventory methodology. Their work is a reflection on the creation of heritage and raises the question of the heritage value of industrial objects, which is inseparable from their artistic value.

With a focus on archiving and industrial memory, Bernd and Hilla Becher’s approach consists of establishing a detailed inventory and keeping track of industrial structures by photographing sites threatened by obsolescence and often abandoned. The series Gas Tanks includes nine photographs from the period between 1965 and 1973, taken according to the extremely stringent protocol that is characteristic of their work (frontal view, centring of the subject, mid-height, absence of light, etc.). The composition of each portrait is standardised and identical, with emphasis on the frontal aspect and the monumentality of industrial constructions classified according to their functionality and form.

Taking advantage of the extremely reproducible nature of the photograph, the Bechers reveal the massive diffusion and production of images that contribute to erasing our memories of their origins and their authors. In doing so, they observe a civilisation on the decline and highlight the production of an era, vestiges of the human imagination and life.

Idris Khan (British, b. 1978)
Every … Bernd and Hilla Becher Spherical Type Gasholder
One panel triptych, 2003
Lambda Digital C print mounted on aluminium
20 1/2 x 26 1/2 inches

Idris Khan (British, b. 1978)
Every … Bernd and Hilla Becher Prison Type Gasholder
2004
Lambda Digital C print mounted on aluminium
80 × 65 inches

“I try to capture the essence of the building – something that’s been permanently imprinted in someone’s mind, like a memory.”

Idris Khan is fascinated by the photographic medium. Fuelled by images and influential theoretical essays on the history of photography, he re-appropriates the works that had an impact on him and subjects them to a series of transformations in order to see them from a different perspective. His work is a reflection on the passage of time, the accumulation of experiences and, as such, the decrease of unique moments. In his series Homage…, he presents rephotographed works, enlarged and superimposed in multiple layers. He uses digital tools to play with the opacity of the layers so as to strengthen the mystery of the original objects whose layering reveals new details. The work Homage to Bernd Becher shown here reproduces and compiles the photographs that correspond to the Bechers’ typology in order to celebrate the vestiges of these vanished industrial infrastructures.

Fascinated by the ability of the photographic medium to capture the soul as well as the body image, Idris Khan, in his series Rising Series… After Eadweard Muybridge “Human and Animal Locomotion”, pays homage to Muybridge’s early scientific experiments using the camera to sequentially record human and animal movement. Beyond the tribute paid to photography that is defined here as a compilation of knowledge, Idris Khan positions himself with respect to a medium laden with history and with a bright future ahead of it.

Victoria Will (American, b. 1980)
Kristen Stewart
2014
© Victoria Will

Kristen Stewart poses for a tintype (wet collodion) portrait at The Collective and Gibson Lounge, during the 2014 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Victoria Will/Invision/AP)

Victoria Will began her career as a staff photographer for the New York Post.Specialized at the time in portraits and fashion, her photographs were disseminated worldwide by the magazines W, the New York Times and Vogue. When she was invited for the fourth time to the Sundance Film Festival, an American independent film festival, she decided to try something new and to replace her digital reflex camera with the century-old tintype process to make portraits of movie stars. Following her success, she renewed the experience in the following years and gradually improved this complex technique.

Overcoming the difficulties of the process, its sensitivity to time and the danger of the chemical products involved, the photographer successively made portraits in 7 to 8 minutes of actors such as Vincent Cassel, Robert Redford, Jennifer Connelly, Spike Lee and Ethan Hawke. “What I love about the process is how raw it is,” says Victoria. “We live in an age of glossy magazines and overly retouched skin. But there is no lying with tintypes. You can’t get rid of a few wrinkles like in Photoshop.”

Both the photographer and her public “appreciate the honesty of these photographs. Development leaves a lot of room for the unexpected: we discover a face that we thought was familiar while being the contrary of digital portraits. The stages in the darkroom contribute to the idea of creating something unique and refreshing.”

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Review: ‘Henry Talbot: 1960s Fashion Photographer’ at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 7th May – 21st August, 2016

Curator: Susan van Wyk

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 - Australia 1999, Australia from 1940) 'No title (Fashion illustration for Lisal of Melbourne)' 1971, printed 2016 (installation view)

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration for Lisal of Melbourne) (installation view)
1971, printed 2016
Inkjet print
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
Photo: © Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria

To be frank, this handsomely installed exhibition of the work of Australian fashion photographer Henry Talbot is a bit of a let down. The images look terribly dated, and while historically they have some significance in terms of the time and context from which they emerged – the movement towards en plein air photography, taking the model from the studio to the street – most of the photographs are not very good. The prints are either commercial vintage prints with all their faults (dust, scratches, poor printing, over exposure, lack of burning in etc.) evidencing a lack of care and attention to detail, or modern inkjet reproductions from original negatives and even then some of the printing is poor: for example, the hair of the model in Fashion illustration for Blunden Wool, models Joan Crellin and Bruce Anderson (1961, below) is completely blown out with no detail retained in the highlights. Some of the angles in his images (the positioning of the figure) are just off, the cropping of the negatives (the space above and below the figure) often does not work and framing of the prints is also less than exemplary. But we must remember Talbot was a commercial photographer from the 1960s and that’s just what these photographs are: commercial fashion photographs that fulfil a client brief.

Talbot was no experimenter. Too often his images are really basic, a basic visualisation, and he has a fixed idea for a shot and goes with that idea and variations of it, even when it is evident that the photograph is not working. Any photographer worth their salt would recognise such a situation and be flexible enough to change it up but with Talbot this does not happen. Positioning his model centrally, he usually uses low depth of field so that everything falls out of focus behind. In this sense he still seems to possess a studio mindset. While professing his love of free-moving fashion, his photographs seem stilted and conformist, even as they are taken out of doors. His proof sheets are evidence of a “team” oriented focus in order to fulfil a client brief, but in these very proof sheets we see uneven exposures and severe cropping into the frame to get the final image. And while he was more romantic than the hard edged Helmut Newton, his photographs only ever project a surface and rarely show any true emotion. Without doubt his best two photographs are Fashion illustration for Fibremakers, model Maggi Eckardt (1966, below) taken at the Altona Petrochemical Company. The photographs are a symphony of form, movement and light. They possess a “feeling” a lot of his other photographs simply cannot, and do not, contain.

There is no catalogue to the exhibition so this posting will have to serve historically to document the exhibition and Talbot’s work. Thus, there is an in depth interview included with Australian curator, artist and photography collector Joyce Evans who ran Church Street Photographic Centre in Melbourne from 1976 and who showed Talbot’s work in her gallery. It is all very well that I have an opinion on the work but what I write needs to be an informed opinion, and the interview with Joyce provides valuable background with regard to the people, the era and the context from which these photographs emerged. One thing noted in the conversation is that Talbot photographed strong, independent women like Janice Wakeley and Maggie Taberer… something that is not mentioned at all in the wall text and press release that accompanies the exhibition. I would have thought it vital that a curator would have linked the presence of these independent women in fashion photography to the work of art photographers such as Australian artist Carol Jerrems who published her seminal book A Book About Australian Women in 1975.

Another insight into the times is provided by a friend Ian Lobb who knew Talbot:

“People said he was good, and he charged enough, but he just thought he was having fun, fun with a certain quality. I don’t think he had any grand ideas about his talent, but he was quite prepared to sell a print or sell his time if someone wanted to pay. Henry knew the fun he was having wasn’t going to last beyond his life. And now, it is weird and very country town that his work should be regurgitated. His work looks poor because people are making him into something he wasn’t.

There is a seminal incident that can help with the context of the Henry Talbot, Athol Shmith and Helmut Newton generation. Athol Shmith was giving a print critique at Prahran, and someone had left a glass of fixer on the shelf of the room. Athol finished his critique and drank it. Rushed to hospital of course. But think of that from all its angles. The world in which these photographers worked and the stories from those times reveal a world that was flying by the seat of its pants – just.”

Talbot is a solid photographer, no more. While the exhibition gives some sense of depth to the quality of work that was coming out of Melbourne at that time, perhaps it would have been best to let sleeping dogs lie.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the National Gallery of Victoria for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. Some installation photographs as noted © Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria. All the rest as noted taken by Brooke Holm for the National Gallery of Victoria.

In conversation with Australian curator, artist and photography collector Joyce Evans about the Australian photographer Henry Talbot

17/07/2016

MB: Just before we started this conversation you said to me Joyce that Talbot was a gentle man. Can you explain what you meant by that please?

JE: I use the word gentle in comparison to his one-time partner Helmut Newton, who I found to be an aggressive man.

MB: So they were in partnership together before Newton left for Europe

JE: Yes

MB: So Talbot was intelligent, he knew his field and understood the history of the genre that he was working in, he could speak well, and was well liked both by clients, models and the society in which he worked.

JE: Well, he was not a superficial person. When he spoke he researched things properly, he had the depth of knowledge which came from a sort of European intellect. This intellect was broadly read, and he was also a person that listened.

MB: And he was also a good teacher as well…

JE: In his commercial work, Henry photographed his women (as far as I could see), with the idea of having a client, and he was displaying clothes on the women, which was part of the old tradition. In an environment where, if you wanted to make a living, that’s what you had to do. If he had been, however, in a place like New York – which was avant-garde as compared to Melbourne, which was not avant-garde – he may well have gone the same way as Helmut Newton. The very big difference, though, is in the personality of the two men.

Helmut Newton went out and he was an aggressive man. He had charm, but it was an aggressive charm, it wasn’t a gentle charm. He had intelligence and he knew how to handle his women so that he got aggression out of his women, that’s what he wanted.

MB: Whereas Talbot was doing it for a job?

JE: Talbot A was doing it for a job and B, he had a gentle nature. He was not an aggressive man and actually if you look at those photographs you can see that he liked the women that he photographed and he lived in an environment where fashion was still, fairly soft, in many ways. You can see in things like the swimwear industry and the sports industry there was quite a lot of Australian independence, but he, combined with Athol Shmith in Melbourne, took his models out into the street, they interacted with the environment, and he did not depend on the studio.

MB: When I look at his photographs they are quite modernist, they are quite clean, but his vision seems to me to be quite limited… in the sense that he uses a central female figure (sometimes two central figures), low depth of field, out of focus background. And then you look at the proof sheets and you can see that he is not an experimenter. From shot to shot there is a slight change in angle of a hand or the tilt of a head but he really doesn’t push the boundaries of what he is trying to say with the image. He has his set idea (for the shot, for the location) and then he does slight variants in the proof sheet towards that idea. Very rarely do you get a feeling, a sense of atmosphere in his images – of the outdoors in the sense of the outdoors enveloping the model. The models seem to be isolated within their environment…

JE: But who does what is asked of him, at that time? You can compare him to Avedon or Athol Shmith, but you cannot compare him to today. You cannot ask someone to work outside of his own time. You can ask him to lead in his own time and the leading that occurred at that time, by both Shmith and Talbot, was that they took models out into the city and the environment and away from the studio. This was something that Avedon did and these two photographers did also. The big argument is, did Talbot do it effectively? Who chose his proofs? Which ones got published?

MB: But also, a quite organised and restricted view of the world, even though he was pushing the boundaries by taking fashion photography outdoors, he still seems to be in a studio mindset when he was outside.

JE: What you did in those days, is that you would do the shoot, you would come in with your proof sheets, and the art director would go over it with the red crayon with the team – it tended often to be team work. So he’s working to a brief …. and you are the instrument of the team. The art director sets everything up and you do the shoot. Now, when you get a name like Talbot had, you could start to begin to influence what the art director was doing. Now, how much and when and at what time and what effect – I really don’t know.

MB: Did he photograph strong women? You mentioned Maggie Taberer and Janice Wakeley.

JE: Maggie Taberer and Janice Wakeley – both educated women, well read women – Talbot would have chosen his own models and they were two of his favourites. Or been offered models, depending on the control of the art director and what they desired.

MB: Today, all we can do is try and understand the history of these photographs, and the time and context from which they emerged. From today’s standpoint they look rather dated and stilted.

JE: You have to see them from a decade earlier, looking at fashion photography in Australia from the 1930s and 1940s to see what was happening. The 1930s fashion stuff was very very largely in the studio. Very little of it was en plein air.

MB: But that doesn’t negate his aesthetic choices to shoot with so low a depth of field that the context of the outdoors becomes more or less irrelevant. Yes, you have the images of the oil refinery behind with the movement of the women, in my opinion some of his best photographs, that are more romantic in feel… and these tend to work better than other more prosaic shots.

JE: He was more of a romantic than Newton was. Newton was very hard edged and he managed to get that extra particular something out of his women…

MB: Even in his Melbourne images?

JE: Well, we don’t know Newton’s Melbourne images, because he has denied them all.

MB: Yes exactly, that’s the thing.

JE: Thinking about Talbot, he was part of a movement. He wasn’t the leader of it or the only one, but he was part of the early evolution of the movement.

MB: Does that mean his photographs stand up to scrutiny today?

JE: I have this feeling that when you only look at the top of the cake, you don’t know what the cake is all about. I don’t know whether I would put him as the fairy on top of the cake or one of the really nice pieces of icing. I think that Athol Shmith is a stronger photographer.

MB: What about the Australian photographer Bruno Benini? I find him incredibly strong in terms of his style, his lighting.

JE: My understanding of Bruno is that he is a decade younger that Talbot…

MB: So 1950s?

JE: Yes I think so

MB: So he has a more classical influence…

JE: It’s not that, he’s like John Eaton is to Pictorialism, he’s a very good photographer – but he’s not a groundbreaker, he’s not of the beginning of Pictorialism. I think Benini is a very good fashion photographer and I think he is working on other people’s shoulders. I think Athol Shmith is stronger and if I had a choice about having to show one, but I like the fact that we have shown Talbot, because it gives some sense of depth to the quality of work that was coming out of Melbourne. Places like Sportscraft were exceptionally good at encouraging talent, both in design and in photography.

MB: All I can do is understand the history and the context and what was going on at the time and then, as I was thinking the other day, all I can write is what I see.

JE: Compare this… Athol Shmith had Bambi. Bambi was the most exquisite women you would ever find in your whole life. I remember her when I was a teenager, me and my girlfriend were both sitting in a room and she was there, both in our late teens / early 20s, and I remember saying to my friend that I feel as though I have ten feet – and I am so clumsy when I look at her. She is so beautiful. Now Janice Wakeley was also a stunning looking women as was Maggie Taberer. But the number one model with Athol was Bambi and then there were really other top people that he had. And he, I think, had a much broader base to work with – not only his models, but his clientele was broader. Talbot was predominantly clothing as compared to Shmith who did a whole stack of things other than fashion. His love of music, he did a lot of musicians, he did some amazing portraiture. Shmith did H.G. Wells etc…

MB: His breadth was greater than Talbot. My concern with Talbot is 1/ the dating of the images, and 2/ his aesthetic choices when taking those photographs which may be a team decision but, the fact that he didn’t experiment that much. When looking at his proof sheets there are only slight changes to the positioning of the model…

JE: He’s got an idea and he goes for it.

MB: And that just really shows a lack of flexibility in his vision.

JE: No, I don’t think so I just think that it shows that he knows what he wants and that’s it.

MB: I think that is where we differ.

JE: He is very professional. How many shots of a person do you make at a time?

MB: I work on a ratio of 10 to 1, so if you take 10 shots you will get one, possibly two excellent shots. Talbot must have been thinking I need one good shot and he kept shooting and shooting, even though some of his exposures are poor, even though he radically crops the full frame image to get the final shot. It shows he was not as confident as you think about getting the shot, because he is hedging his bets with his in camera framing, relying on cropping later.

JE: He knows he wants her getting this feeling, and he goes bang, bang, bang, head turned slightly, arm down slightly and that’s it… and he knew what he wanted at the beginning and then he just saw the variations to fine tune it. And that’s what every photographer tends to do.

MB: And that’s where I really think there is a problem with his photography. Most of his images don’t really work – and yet he never recognised that fact at the time, when he was taking or setting up the shot, that it was not working. Any good photographer worth his salt, worth his previsualisation of the shot, must know how to adapt and be flexible enough to change on the run. He didn’t recognise that they weren’t working and change the idea. That’s the problem I have with him. It shows a fixed mindset in terms of not being able to see through the viewfinder when a shot is not working.

JE: That’s another story…

MB: Let’s leave it there. Thank you Joyce so very much for your thoughts.

“Well man, this is 1966 and in this game you have to be open to, and live, contemporary influences to a certain degree. The younger generation is very strong in fashion – very much in command. They’re spending a great deal of money in the garment industry, so fashion is geared to the young. There is, of course, in this “with it” idea itself, certain conformity to non-conformity, to a non-conformity standard. But, as a photographer, you must accept this idea as far as you can and that probably reflects to some extent in your own behaviour and dress.”

Henry Talbot, 1966

“I always tried to show models in a free-moving fashion. I avoided stiff poses and I tried to keep up with what the great fashion photographers overseas were doing”

Henry Talbot

Installation view of the exhibition 'Henry Talbot: 1960s Fashion Photographer' at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne

Installation views of the exhibition Henry Talbot: 1960s Fashion Photographer at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne
Photos: © Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 - Australia 1999, Australia from 1940) 'Collection of proof sheets 1958-1972'

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 - Australia 1999, Australia from 1940) 'Collection of proof sheets 1958-1972' (installation view)

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
Collection of proof sheets (installation view)
1958-1972
Gelatin silver photographs
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
Photos: © Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration for Blunden Wool, models Joan Crellin and Bruce Anderson) (installation view)
1961, printed 2016
Photographed on location at the National Gallery of Victoria
Inkjet print
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive

Photo: © Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 - Australia 1999, Australia from 1940) 'No title (Fashion illustration for Watersun ski wear)' 1970, printed 2016 (installation view)

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration for Watersun ski wear) (installation view)
1970, printed 2016
Inkjet print
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive

Photo: © Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 - Australia 1999, Australia from 1940) 'No title (Fashion illustration for the Australian Wool Board) (installation photo)' 1968, printed 2016 (installation view)

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration for the Australian Wool Board) (installation view)
1968, printed 2016
Inkjet print
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
Photo: © Marcus Bunyan and the National Gallery of Victoria

“There is little an Australian fashion photographer can do that has not been done overseas, and often better. But one thing they do not have is our Australian environment. I use it a great deal because the idea makes it possible to come up with something uniquely different.”

Henry Talbot 1966

“The striking and youthful fashion of 1960s Melbourne is the starring subject of more than eighty photographs by fashion photographer Henry Talbot, many of which have never been exhibited before. Showcasing the shifting face of fashion from a time that has captured popular imagination, many of the images have never been seen since their original publication 50 years ago and offer an insight into the styles and attitudes of the 1960s. The photographs on display have been carefully selected from an extraordinary archive of 35,000 negatives that Talbot gifted to the NGV in the 1980s.

“Henry Talbot’s photography captures the exuberance and changing times of a generation. His modern photographs depict an emerging youth culture and offer an insider’s look into a thriving cultural scene during the 1960s,” said Tony Ellwood, Director, NGV.

A European émigré artist from Germany, Talbot brought an invigorating internationalism to Australian photography and partnered with Helmut Newton. Their Flinders Lane studio was very successful enterprise and secured major clients including the Australian Wool Board and Sportscraft. It was during the 1960s that Talbot established his place as a dynamic force in Australian fashion photography and his work was regularly published in Australian Vogue.

The exhibition includes some of Talbot’s beautiful fashion spreads from 1960s Australian Vogue, providing a visual history that chronicles the magazine’s first decade in Australia. The photographs will be presented alongside a display of early edition Australian Vogue magazines, including those in which Talbot’s photographs originally appeared, offering an insight into the aspirational fashion and lifestyle choices of Australians living in this era. Talbot’s photography also highlights the public’s affinity with uniquely Australian brands, such as Qantas and Holden. Fast cars and air travel were aspirational luxury experiences in the 1960s and, as a result, airports, planes and brand new cars were the glamorous setting for many of Talbot’s photographs, demonstrating his astute understanding of current trends and consumer culture.

From an outback sheep station, to lamp-lit streets of Melbourne, Australian cityscapes and landscapes also provided the backdrop to some of Talbot’s most arresting photographs. Shot on location around Melbourne, these photographs showcase Talbot’s adventurous style and ability to transform 1960s Melbourne into scenes that looked like Paris, London, New York – a testament to his ‘international eye’. A photographer with an astute vision, Talbot also ingeniously transformed Altona Petrochemical Company into an intergalactic, futuristic setting that captured the public’s fascination with space travel during the ‘space race’ of the 1960s. This exciting suite of images demonstrates the ways in which space travel permeated popular culture, including space-age fashion trends.

The exhibition will open during the NGV’s landmark 200 Years of Australian Fashion exhibition and together, these two exhibitions will offer a comprehensive and fresh new look at Australian fashion in the 1960s.”

Press release from the National Gallery of Victoria

Henry Talbot (Australian born Germany, 1920-1999)

Henry Talbot was born in Germany in 1920. As a young man he studied graphic design and photography in Berlin and Birmingham. After leaving Germany in 1939, he arrived in Australia in 1940. Following a period of internment, Talbot then served in the Australian army. In the postwar years he left Australia, travelling to South America and Europe, before returning to Melbourne in 1950. At the time Melbourne was the most important centre of fashion in Australia because of the abundance of textile and garment manufacturing in Flinders Lane; boutiques in the Paris End of Collins Street, and major department stores around the city.

Talbot worked in some of the leading Melbourne photographic studios and quickly established a reputation as a major fashion photographer in Melbourne. In 1956 he was invited to go into partnership with Helmut Newton. Newton was already renowned for his innovate fashion images and this partnership offered Talbot recognition for his talent in this field. In 1973 Talbot closed his studio, and ten years later presented the NGV with what is now known as the Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive. Works in this exhibition at taken from this remarkable collection, comprising 35,000 black-and-white negatives, photographs and contact prints.

Wall text

Installation view of the National Gallery of Victoria’s Henry Talbot: 1960s Fashion Photographer exhibition at NGV Australia at Federation Square with at left, No title (Fashion illustration, model Janice Wakely) (1961, below) (installation view)
Photo: Brooke Holm

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 - Australia 1999, Australia from 1940) 'No title (Fashion illustration, model Janice Wakely)' 1961 from the exhibition 'Henry Talbot: 1960s Fashion Photographer' at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia, Melbourne, May - August, 2016

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration, model Janice Wakely)
1961
Gelatin silver photograph
24.3 x 19.3cm
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

Working with the right model was as important to the success of Talbot’s images as choosing the right location. Like most photographers he had his favourite models, and often worked with Janice Wakely, Maggie Tabberer, Helen Homewood, Maggi Eckardt and Margot McKendry.

Talbot’s philosophy was simple, as he explained it in 1995: “I’ve always held that if you can establish a definite emotional rapport with a model you’re halfway toward producing good photographs. My own favourite method of fashion working is to explain roughly what I am after then leave the model more or less free to interpret the garment she’s to show. A good model will absorb and become part of what she is wearing almost completely. Whilst shooting away I may suggest minor changes, the model senses what I’m after, and then really good shots happen.”

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration for Sportscraft on location Yarra River near Princes Bridge)
1961
Gelatin silver photograph
24.4 x 19.0cm
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration model wearing long feather dress)
1961-1966
Gelatin silver photograph
24.2 x 19.4cm
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 - Australia 1999, Australia from 1940) 'No title (Fashion illustration model wearing a three-quarter length coat)' 1961-1966

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration model wearing a three-quarter length coat)
1961-66
Gelatin silver photograph
25.0 x 19.1cm
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

‘Forsaking city airs for cool country breezes, she previews the three day event at Oaklands Hunt Club which will finish the Melbourne Cup season, wearing a three-quarter oat of palest blue pearl lamb.’

Descriptive caption, 1966

Installation view of the National Gallery of Victoria’s Henry Talbot: 1960s Fashion Photographer exhibition at NGV Australia at Federation Square

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration) (installation view)
1963, printed 2016
Inkjet print
40.7 x 40.6cm (image)
67.4 x 61.1cm (sheet)
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration) (installation view)
1963, printed 2016
Inkjet print
50.9 x 50.8cm (image)
72.4 x 61.0cm (sheet)
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

Photo: Brooke Holm

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration)
1963, printed 2016
Inkjet print
40.7 x 40.6cm (image)
67.4 x 61.1cm (sheet)
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

The locations used by Talbot were an important aspect of his image making; they played a significant role in the implicit narratives he constructed in his fashion photography. Talbot’s work, like most fashion photographs, presents an aspirational ideal. In his case a picture of the modern woman – at an opening night; arriving at the airport; on the streets of London; visiting an art gallery; or in a beatnik coffee bar – who looks effortlessly up to date and glamorous because she has bought the perfect garment.

Despite Talbot’s assertion that using Australian settings gave his work an edge, some of his most successful photographs artfully disguise the familiar streets of Melbourne. The streets of the city are transformed in Talbot’s photographs to look like Fifth Avenue, New York or Hyde Park in London.

Wall text

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration)
1963, printed 2016
Inkjet print
50.8 x 50.3cm (image and sheet)
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration)
1963, printed 2016
Inkjet print
50.9 x 50.8cm (image)
72.4 x 61.0cm (sheet)
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

The 1960s was a period of social turbulence, when youth-led movements changed the world. In Australia it was a time of prosperity: employment rates were high and, for many, the opportunities seemed boundless. The fashions of the day, including mini skirts and hipster pants, reflected the “youthquake” that was shaking up the status quo. Photography studios made the transition to the 1960s by creating images with a fresh, contemporary edge, and increasingly worked on location rather than in the studio.

Henry Talbot began to work in fashion photography in the 1950s, but it was in the 1960s that he established himself as a leading force in Melbourne’s fashion industry. He worked for designers and manufacturers, department stores and boutiques, as well as on the job for the Australian Wool Bureau, taking photographs that showed Australian fashion to the world.

Wall text

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration for Classweave Fabric, models Uschi Huber, Ellen Neudal and Heather Ceembruger)
1963, printed 2016
Inkjet print
50.9 x 50.8cm (image)
72.5 x 61.1cm (sheet)
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

‘The magic carpet revisited: Classweave takes to the air. Classweave deny weaving the magic carpet, but [the] chic three disagree, find Classweave fabrics magic. Feel like flying,and choose Qantas.’

Advertising copy, Australian Vogue, 1963

Installation view of the National Gallery of Victoria’s Henry Talbot: 1960s Fashion Photographer exhibition at NGV Australia at Federation Square
Photo: Brooke Holm

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration for Pelaco shirts and Ford Falcon, models Margot McKendry and Murray Rose)
1963, printed 2016
Inkjet print
41.0 x 40.6cm (image)
67.5 x 61.1cm (sheet)
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

‘They’re going places, the Pelaco Pair – and riding the crest all the way. They live their life with a style and carefree assurance that many envy. They know and demand the best this modern world has to offer, a personal formula for success that shows in everything they do. You can see it in the clothes they wear (he doesn’t own a shirt that isn’t Pelaco; she collects Lady Pelaco, secretly feels they were created especially for her). You can see it in the cars they drive – always, a trim, taut, terrific Falcon.’

Advertising copy, Vogue Australia, April/May 1963

Murray Rose (Australian, 1939-2012)

Iain Murray Rose, AM (6 January 1939 – 15 April 2012) was an Australian swimmer, actor, sports commentator and marketing executive. He was a six-time Olympic medalist (four gold, one silver, one bronze), and at one time held the world records in the 400-metre, 800-metre, and 1500-metre freestyle (long course). He made his Olympic debut at the 1956 Summer Olympics as a 17-year-old and won three Olympic medals, all gold. Four years later, as a 21-year-old, he won three Olympic medals (one gold, one silver, one bronze) at the 1960 Summer Olympics.

At the age of 17, Rose participated in the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne. He won the 400-metre and 1500-metre freestyle races and was a member of the winning team in the 4×200-metre freestyle relay. Winning three gold medals in his home country immediately made him a national hero. He was the youngest Olympian to be awarded three gold medals in one Olympic Games. Afterwards, Rose moved to the United States to accept an athletic scholarship at the University of Southern California where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Business/Communications.

He continued competing while at USC, and graduated in 1962. At the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, Italy, Rose again won an Olympic gold medal in the 400m freestyle, as well as a silver in the 1500m freestyle and a bronze in the 4 x 200m freestyle relay, bringing his haul to six Olympic medals. In addition to his Olympic medals, he won four gold medals at the 1962 Commonwealth Games in Perth, Australia. He eventually set 15 world records, including the world record in the 800-metre freestyle in 1962, which was not broken until Semyon Belits-Geiman set a new record in 1966. Rose continued to compete as a masters swimmer. During the 1960s, he also pursued an acting career, starring in two Hollywood films and making guest appearances on television shows.

In addition, Rose worked as an Australian sports commentator for the Nine Network, plus each of the major US networks, participating in seven consecutive Olympic Games.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Installation views of the National Gallery of Victoria’s Henry Talbot: 1960s Fashion Photographer exhibition at NGV Australia at Federation Square
Photos: Brooke Holm

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration, model Maggie Tabberer)
(1960s), printed 2016
Inkjet print
61.2 x 47.4cm (image)
86.3 x 60.9cm (sheet)
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive (119664)
© Lynette Anne Talbot

Maggie Tabberer (Australian, 1936-2024)

Maggie Tabberer AM (also known as Maggie T; born 11 December 1936 – died 6 December 2024) is a dual Gold Logie-winning Australian fashion, publishing and media / television personality. Maggie’s first modelling job was a one-off assignment at the age of 14, after a photographer spotted her at her sister’s wedding. She attended a modelling school in her early twenties, and at the age of 23 was discovered by photographer Helmut Newton, who mentored her and launched a highly successful modelling career. While living in Melbourne in 1960, she won ‘Model of the Year’, and moved to Sydney to take advantage of the modelling opportunities there, but she chose to end her modelling career at the age of 25 after she began to lose her slim figure.

Tabberer stayed well connected to the fashion industry, however. In 1967 she started a public relations company, Maggie Tabberer & Associates, which took on many fashion-related clients and assignments. In 1981, she launched a plus-size clothing label called Maggie T. A portrait of her by Australian artist Paul Newton was a finalist in the 1999 Archibald Prize.

Publishing work

Tabberer began working in publishing when she wrote a fashion column, “Maggie Says”, for Sydney’s Daily Mirror newspaper in 1963. She remained with the paper for sixteen years, until billionaire Kerry Packer asked her to become fashion editor of Australian Women’s Weekly magazine in 1981, and she soon became the public face of the magazine, frequently appearing on its cover and television advertising. Tabberer stayed with Women’s Weekly for fifteen years until 1996.

Television work

Tabberer began appearing on television in 1964, as the “beauty” on panel talk show Beauty and the Beast (the “beast” being the show’s host: Eric Baume until 1965, and then Stuart Wagstaff). Tabberer’s appearances on Beauty and the Beast made her a household name, and she began hosting her own daily chat show, Maggie, for which she won two consecutive Gold Logies, in 1970 and 1971. She was the first person to win back-to-back awards, although Graham Kennedy had already won three non-consecutive Gold Logies by 1970.

Since 2005, she has hosted her own television interview show, Maggie… At Home With on Australian pay TV channel Bio. (formerly The Biography Channel). On her show she “visits the homes of various Australian celebrities and elites to discuss their lives, careers, tragedies, and triumphs.”

Text from the Wikipedia website

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration for Fibremakers, model Maggi Eckardt)
1966, printed 2016
Inkjet print
54.45 x 50.8cm (image)
72.5 x 61.0cm (sheet)
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration for Fibremakers, model Maggi Eckardt)
1966, printed 2016
Inkjet print
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

“Fibres for fashions future. Its theme was fibres for the present and the future … pictures taken by Melbourne photographer Henry Talbot – a man who is as sophisticated as James Bond and always a jump ahead of ‘now’. The visiting ‘Venusians’ in Mr Talbot’s photographs (Maggi Eckardt and Jackie Holme) are gyrating at the Altona Petrochemical Company in Victoria.”

Australian Fashion News, March 1967

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration for Fibremakers, model Maggi Eckardt) (installation view)
1966, printed 2016
Inkjet print
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

Photo: Brooke Holm

Maggi had been brought up on Sydney’s northern beaches and went to a ladies’ college in Manly. She had the proud, sultry looks of a flamenco dancer. Her distinctive appearance limited her potential in Australian modelling but she was heaven-sent for elegant Parisian designers such as Balenciaga and Givenchy and was transformed through the worshipping lens of American photographer Richard Avedon into an international icon. After seven years overseas, Maggi returned to Sydney in 1972 to be embraced as a TV personality and high-profile fashion adviser to David Jones.

Text from Gerald Stone. “The six wives of Singo,” on The Sydney Morning Herald website July 27, 2002 [Online] Cited 09/10/2021

During the 1960s Maggi Eckhardt was one of the world’s most sought after models. Her modelling career began in 1958 when she was selected to model for celebrated British designer Norman Hartnell. He offered her a job in his London salon and she never looked back. The brunette beauty rapidly shot to international fame modelling top designer brands including Dior and Balenciaga. She posed for a string of famous photographers such as Richard Avedon and Helmut Newton and graced the covers of Australian and French Vogue.

Text from “Australia’s 25 top models named” on the News.com.au website [Online] Cited 17/08/2016. No longer available online

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 - Australia 1999, Australia from 1940) 'No title (Fashion illustration for Sportscraft)' 1967, printed 2016 (installation view)

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration for Sportscraft) (installation view)
1967, printed 2016
Inkjet print
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

Photo: Brooke Holm

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 - Australia 1999, Australia from 1940) 'Swimwear model' 1968 (installation view)

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
Swimwear model (installation view)
1968
Gelatin silver photograph
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

Photo: Brooke Holm

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration, model wearing cotton capri pants and cropped sleeveless top on location in Papua New Guinea)
1961-1966
Gelatin silver photograph
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

‘Discovering the hidden charms of New Guinea in the obvious attributes of Swiss cotton… she wears a cropped top and lean slack in sunny yellow, embroidered in diamond panels of white.’ Descriptive caption, 1966

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration model wearing cropped pants and jacket, Papua New Guinea)
1961-1966
Gelatin silver photograph
22.4 x 19.1cm
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 - Australia 1999, Australia from 1940) 'No title (Fashion illustration for Stella Ricks, model wearing coat and hat)' 1960s

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration for Stella Ricks, unknown model wearing coat and hat)
1960s
Gelatin silver photograph
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

‘Town and country, sport and travel are words enough to place this American style coat in the all-purpose group, and its colour is the outstanding feature – honey bamboo saddle stitched with white. Loose and casual it has fly-away cuffs on sleeves, hip, and breast pockets, and a tailored revere collar. By Stella Ricks.’ Descriptive caption, 1960s

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration model wearing plaid kilt style skirt, Spring Street, Melbourne)
1956-1960
Gelatin silver photograph
24.4 X 21.0cm
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration model wearing hip length fur jacket, photographed at the National Gallery of Victoria)
1960s
Gelatin silver photograph
24.3 x 19.1cm
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 - Australia 1999, Australia from 1940) 'No title (Fashion illustration, model Maggie Tabberer wearing ocelot coat)' 1961-1966

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration, model Maggie Tabberer wearing ocelot coat)
1961-66
Gelatin silver photograph
24.0 x 19.0cm
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration, model Janice Wakely standing in front of wool bale)
1961-66
Gelatin silver photograph
24.5 x 18.8cm
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration for Sportscraft, Treasury Gardens, Melbourne)
1960-61
Gelatin silver photograph
24.3 x19.1cm
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration, model Maggie Tabberer)
1960
Gelatin silver photograph
24.4 x 19.1cm
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 - Australia 1999, Australia from 1940) 'No title (Fashion illustration for Sportscaft, model Janice Wakely)' 1956-1961

Henry Talbot (Germany 1920 – Australia 1999, Australia from 1940)
No title (Fashion illustration for Sportscaft, model Janice Wakely)
1956-61
Gelatin silver photograph
24.1 x 19.1cm
Henry Talbot Fashion Photography Archive
© Lynette Anne Talbot

Janice Wakely (Australian, 1935-2022)

Janice Wakely, fashion model and photographer, graduated from Sydney’s Mannequin Academy in 1952 and began her modelling career in Melbourne two years later. Dismissed as ‘too thin’ by various Australian agencies after working on a Department of Trade-sponsored fashion tour to New Zealand in 1956, she decamped for London. Within ten days, Wakely snared a shoot with Marie Claire in Paris and St Tropez; soon, she was dubbed ‘The Girl of the Moment’ with ‘The Look of 1958’.

The Australian Women’s Weekly reported that, in the competitive English market, her “fragile but tough and oh, so carefully casual” look had set her apart – for the time being – from “the thousands from Commonwealth countries who invade Britain each year to see something of the world before they settle down to marriage and the building of a home and family.”

Returning to Australia in 1958, Wakely commandeered the camera herself, proceeding to capture photographers such as Helmut Newton, Athol Shmith and Henry Talbot while they worked with models on location. During this time, Wakely maintained a strong presence in front of the camera. Photographed by Terence Donovan in London in 1960, in 1961 and 1962, she starred in the All-Australian Fashion Parades, was featured on the cover of The Women’s Weekly, was Model of the Year and wore the Gown of the Year.

Then, in 1963, she stepped down from the catwalk, establishing the Penthouse modelling agency and photographic studio in Flinders Lane, Melbourne with co-model Helen Homewood. After an overseas tour in 1965, Wakely returned to Melbourne and set up a studio with fashion photographer Bruno Benini, who, according to People magazine, had “given many other girls a helping hand up the ladder to success”.

Wakely commented in 1968 that “the Australian sense of fashion is appalling”.

Extract from “Treasure Trove: Janice Wakely, fashion icon,” on the ABC Canberra website 11 October, 2012 [Online] Cited 30/07/2016. No longer available online

The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia
Federation Square
Corner of Russell and  Flinders Streets, Melbourne

Opening hours:
Open daily 10am – 5pm

National Gallery of Victoria website

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Exhibition: ‘Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph’ at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre, New Plymouth, New Zealand Part 2

Exhibition dates: 29th April – 14 August, 2016

Curator: Geoffrey Batchen

Installation view of the exhibition Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery with at left, Christian Marclay and at right, Hiroshi Sugimoto

Part 2 of a posting on the wonderful exhibition Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery / Len Lye Centre, New Plymouth, New Zealand. See Part 1 of the posting.

While there is no doubt as to the quality and breadth of the work on display, nor how it has been curated or installed in these beautiful contemporary spaces, I question elements of the conceptual rationale that ground the exhibition. Curator Geoffrey Batchen correctly notes that “artists are coming back to the most basic and elemental chemistry of photography, hands on, making unique images where there is a direct relationship between the thing being imaged and then image itself” as a response to the dematerialisation of the image that occurs in a digital environment and the proliferation of reproductions of digital images, but his assertion in a Radio New Zealand interview that the cameraless photograph has a direct relationship to the world, unmediated – through the unique touch of the object on the photographic paper – is an observation that seems a little disingenuous.

Batchen observes, “it’s as if nature represents itself, completely unmediated and directly. In some ways … [this] is far more realist, far more true to the original object than any camera picture could be.” Note how he qualifies his assertion and position by the statement “in some ways”.

The reality of the situation is that every photograph is mediated to one degree or another, whether through the use of the camera, the choice of developer, photographic paper, size, perspective and so forth. The physicality of the actual print and the context of capture and display are also mediated, in each instance and on every occasion. Every photograph is mediated through the choices of the photographer, even more so in the production of cameraless photographs (what to choose to photograph, where to position the object, what to draw with the light) because the artist has the ultimate control on what is being pictured (unlike the reality of the world). To say that cameraless photographs have a more direct and unmediated relationship to the world than analogue and digital photographs could not be further from the truth – it is just that the taxonomic system of ordering “reality” is of a different order.

Batchen further states in the Radio new Zealand interview that “in these photographs the object is still there, that’s the strange thing about cameraless photographs. There is a sense of presentness to this kind of photograph. … Cameraless photographs seem to exist in a kind of eternal present, and in that sense they complicate our understanding both of photography but also to the world that is being represented here.”

This is a contentious observation that argues for some special state of being that exists within the cameraless photograph which I believe does not exist. I argue that EVERY photograph possesses the POSSIBILITY of a sense of presentness of the object being photographed (whether it be landscape, portrait, street, abstract, etc…). It just depends whether the photographer is attuned to what is present before their eyes, whether they are attuned to the mediation of the camera and whether the print reveals what has been captured in the negative. Minor White’s “revelation of spirit”.

A “hands on” process does not guarantee a more meaningful form of photographic authenticity, or cameraless photographs possess some inherent authentic reality (the appeal to the aura of the object, Benjamin), any more than analogue or digitally reproduced photographs do. They are all representations of a mediated reality in one form or another. Some photographs will simply not capture that “presence” no matter how hard you try, be they cameraless or not.

Further, every photograph exists in an eternal present, bringing past time to present and, in the process of existence, transcending time. In this regard, to claim special status for cameraless photographs is a particularly incongruous and elliptical argument, an argument which posits an obfuscation of the theoretical history of photography.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

PS. I particularly love Len Lye’s work for its visual dexterity and robustness.

Many thankx to the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All images are photographed by Bryan James.

“You assume that the image caught by the camera is “the” image, but of course a camera is ultimately a device – about from the Renaissance on – in which perspective is organised within a box using a lens, based on a principle that light travels in straight lines. So what you get when you use a camera is a mediated image, an image constructed according to certain conventions developed during the Renaissance and beyond in which the world is developed … according to the rules of perspective, and we’ve learnt to accept those rules as, as reality itself. But … when you put an object directly onto a piece of paper without any mediation [of a machine], it’s as if nature represents itself, completely unmediated and directly. In some ways … [this] is far more realist, far more true to the original object than any camera picture could be.”

Geoffrey Batchen

Geoffrey Batchen: Cameraless Photography

From Standing Room Only, 2:25 pm on 17 April 2016 Radio New Zealand

Today, if you have a smartphone, you have a camera with you wherever you go. But how were the first ever photos taken? Professor of Art History at Victoria University and world-renowned historian Geoffrey Batchen is the curator of ‘Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph’ exhibition at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and Len Lye Centre in New Plymouth.

Installation view of the exhibition Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery showing Christian Marclay's 'Large Cassette Grid No. 6', 2009 (left) and 'Allover (Rush, Barbra Streisand, Tina Turner, and Others)', 2008 (right)

Installation view of Christian Marclay’s Large Cassette Grid No. 6, 2009 (left) and Allover (Rush, Barbra Streisand, Tina Turner, and Others), 2008 (right)

Christian Marclay (US) 'Large Cassette Grid No. 6' 2009 from the exhibition 'Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph' at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre, New Plymouth, New Zealand, April - August, 2016

Christian Marclay (American, b. 1955)
Large Cassette Grid No. 6
2009
Cyanotype photograph

Christian Marclay (American, b. 1955)
Allover (Rush, Barbra Streisand, Tina Turner, and Others)
2008
Cyanotype photograph

Using hundreds of cassette tapes bought in thrift stores, Christian Marclay has scattered the entangled strands of the tapes across large sheets of specially prepared blueprint paper, deliberately adopting the “action painter” techniques of Jackson Pollock and similar artists. He then exposed them, sometimes multiple times, under a high-powered ultraviolet lamp. In other cases, the cassettes themselves were stacked in translucent grids to make a minimalist composition.

Installation view of the exhibition Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery with at left, Christian Marclay and at right, Hiroshi Sugimoto

Walead Beshty (American, b. 1976) 'Two Sided Picture (RY), January 11, 2007, Valencia, California, Fujicolor Crystal Archive, 2007' from the exhibition 'Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph' at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre, New Plymouth, New Zealand, April - August, 2016

Walead Beshty (American, b. 1976)
Two Sided Picture (RY), January 11, 2007, Valencia, California, Fujicolor Crystal Archive, 2007
Chromogenic photograph

In the series from which this work comes American photographic artist Walead Beshty cut and folded sheets of photographic paper into three-dimensional forms and then exposed each side to a specific colour of light, facilitating the production of multi-faceted prints with the potential to exhibit every possible colour combination. The trace of this process remains visible, with the original folds transformed into a network of contours on the surface of the print.

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948) 'Lightning Fields 168' 2009 (installation view)

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948)
Lightning Fields 168 (installation view)
2009

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948)
Lightning Fields 168
2009
Gelatin silver photograph

Hiroshi Sugimoto’s photographs of static electricity were inspired by his unsuccessful efforts to banish such discharges from the surface of his negatives during the printing process. Sugimoto decided instead to try and harness such discharges for the purposes of image making. Utilising a Van der Graaf generator, he directed as many as 40,000 volts onto metal plates on which rested unexposed film. He soon changed tactics when he discovered that immersing the film in saline water during the discharge gave much better results.

Installation views of the exhibition Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery with at left, Andreas Müller-Pohle Digital Scores (after Nicéphore Niépce) 1995, and to the right in the second and third images, Susan Purdy

In 1995 the German artist Andreas Müller-Pohle took the digital code generated by a scan of the supposed “first photograph,” Nicéphore Niépce’s 1827 heliograph View from the window at Le Gras, and spread it across eight panels as a messy swarm of numbers and computer notations. Each of Müller-Pohle’s separations represents an eighth of a full byte of memory, a computer’s divided remembrance of the first photograph. The Scores are therefore less about Niépce’s photograph than about their own means of production (as the title suggests, they bear the same abstracted relation to an image as sheet music has to sound). We see here, not a photograph, but the new numerical rhetoric of digital imaging.

Installation view of Ian Burn (Australian, 1939-1993) Xerox book # 1, 1968 from the exhibition Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery

In the 1960s a number of artists sought to distil artwork from the new imaging technologies becoming commonly available. Ian Burn, an Australian artist then living in New York, made a series of Xerox Books in 1968 in which he churned out 100 copies of a blank sheet of white paper on a Xerox 660 photocopying machine, copying each copy in turn until the final sheet was filled with the speckled visual noise left by the machine’s own imperfect operations.

Installation view of the exhibition Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery

Installation view of the exhibition 'Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph' at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery with in foreground display case, Herbert Dobbie's illustrated cyanotype books 'New Zealand Ferns (148 Varieties)' 1880, 1882, 1892 and background, the cyanotypes of Anna Atkins

Installation views of the exhibition Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery with in foreground display case, Herbert Dobbie’s illustrated cyanotype books New Zealand Ferns (148 Varieties) 1880, 1882, 1892 and background, the cyanotypes of Anna Atkins

Herbert Dobbie, a railway station master and amateur botanist who emigrated to New Zealand from England in 1875, made cyanotype contact prints of specimens of all 148 known species of fern in his new country in 1880 and sold them in album form. Dobbie was responding to a fashion for collecting and displaying ferns among his local audience, a fashion driven in part by a nostalgia for a pre-modern style of life and in part by a developing nationalism. The end result is a group of images that hover somewhere between science and art, between popular aesthetic enjoyment and commercial profit.

Anna Atkins (English, 1799-1871)
Untitled (from the disassembled album Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns)
c. 1854
Cyanotype photographs

The English photographer Anna Atkins issued albums of cyanotype prints of seaweed and algae from 1843, and these are often regarded as the earliest photographic books.

In the 1850s, Atkins collaborated with her friend Anne Dixon to produce at least three presentation albums of cyanotype contact prints, including Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Ferns (1853) and Cyanotypes of British and Foreign Flowering Plants and Ferns (1854). These albums included examples from places like Jamaica, New Zealand and Australia – a reminder that, for an English observer, all these places were but an extension of home, a part of the British Empire. These cyanotypes look as if they were made yesterday, offering a trace from the past that nevertheless always remains contemporary.

William Henry Fox Talbot (British, 1800-1877) 'Lace' c. 1845

William Henry Fox Talbot (British, 1800-1877)
Floral patterned lace
c. 1845
Salted paper print
23.0 x 18.8 cm (irregular)

During the 1850s, William Henry Fox Talbot focused his energies on the invention of a way of producing photographic engravings on metal plates, so that permanent ink on paper imprints could be taken from them. In April 1858, having found a way to introduce an aquatint ground to the process, he filed a patent for a system which he called photoglyphic engraving.

Talbot described his invention in terms of an ability to make accurate photographic impressions without a camera: “The objects most easily and successfully engraved are those which can be placed in contact with the metallic plate, – such as the leaf of fern, the light feathery flowers of a grass, a piece of lace, etc. In such cases the engraving is precisely like the object; so that it would almost seem to any one, before the process was explained to him, as if the shadow of the object had itself corroded the metal, – so true is the engraving to the object.”

This photograph was made using the calotype process, patented in 1841 by its inventor, the English gentleman William Henry Fox Talbot. The increased exposure speeds allowed by the process made it easier to print positive photographs from a negative image, so that multiple versions of that image could be produced. In this case, a positive photograph has been made from a contact print of a piece of lace.

Installation view of the exhibition 'Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph' at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery featuring Len Lye's cameraless photographic portraits

Installation views of the exhibition Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery featuring Len Lye’s cameraless photographic portraits

Len Lye (New Zealand, 1901-1980)
Georgia O’Keeffe
1947
Courtesy of the Len Lye Foundation Collection
Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre

Len Lye (New Zealand, 1901-1980)
Le Corbusier
1947
Courtesy of the Len Lye Foundation Collection and Archive
Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre

Lye’s subjects included notable artists such as Joan Miró, Hans Richter, and Georgia O’Keeffe (who brought some deer antlers to the shoot), the architect Le Corbusier, the jazz musician Baby Dodds, the scientist Nina Bull, and the writer W. H. Auden. But they also included a baby and a young woman who remain unnamed; Lye’s new partner, Ann Hindle; and Albert Bishop, a plumber who had come by to do some repairs. (Referencing the history of “silhouette” art)

Len Lye (New Zealand, 1901-1980)
Marks and Spencer in a Japanese Garden (Pond People)
1930
Courtesy of the Len Lye Foundation Collection and Archive
Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre

Len Lye’s earliest cameraless photographs were made around 1930 as he settled into the London art scene and before he emerged as a leading figure in experimental cinema. His practice was eclectic during this period. He exhibited paintings, batiks, photographs and sculpture as part of the Seven and Five Society, Britain’s leading avant-garde group. During a visit to Mallorca with his friends Robert Graves and Laura Riding, Lye made a number of photograms with plasticine and cellophane shapes arranged over the photographic paper. Two of these, Self-Planting at Night (Night Tree) and Watershed, were exhibited in the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London.

Installation view of the exhibition Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery featuring James Cant’s Six Signed Artist’s Prints 1948

James Cant (Australian, 1911-1982)
The struggle for life
1948
Cliché verre print (cyanotype blueprint from one hand-drawn glass plate)
35 x 29.6cm sheet

A number of Australian artists, some working in Melbourne and some in London, issued prints in the 1940s and early 50s using architectural blueprint (or cyanotype) paper, perhaps because, during the deprivations that attended the aftermath of World War Two, it was a cheap and available material for this purpose. James Cant, an artist interested in both Surrealism and Australian Aboriginal art, brought the two together in his designs for a portfolio of Six Signed Artist’s Prints that he issued in a print run of 150 in 1948. Each image was painted on a sheet of glass and then this glass was contact printed onto the blueprint paper to create a photograph.

In August 1834, while resident in Geneva, William Henry Fox Talbot had a friend make some drawings on sheets of varnished glass exposed to smoke, using an engraver’s needle to scratch through this darkened surface. The procedure came to be known as cliché verre.

Kilian Breier (German, 1931-2011) 'Kilian Breier: Fotografik 1953-1990' 1991 (cover)

Kilian Breier (German, 1931-2011)
Kilian Breier: Fotografik 1953-1990 (cover)
1991

The German artist Kilian Breier began making abstract photographs in the 1950s, some by folding his photographic paper and others by allowing rivulets of developer to flow across and stain it. A 1991 exhibition catalogue, Kilian Breier: Fotografik 1953-1990, gave the artist an opportunity to make a provocative gesture in line with his dedication to the self-generated image; he included in it a loose unfixed piece of signed photographic paper that continues to develop every time it is exposed to light. It therefore inhabits the book that protects it like a ghost, unable to be seen but nonetheless always present.

Max Dupain (Australian, 1911-1992)
Untitled rayograph [with water]
1936
Gelatin silver photograph

The Australian modernist photographer Max Dupain was a great admirer of the work of Man Ray. In 1935 Dupain reviewed a book of the American’s photographs for The Home magazine in Sydney, declaring that “He is alone. A pioneer of the 20th century who has crystallised a new experience in light and chemistry.” With this book as his inspiration, Dupain himself made a number of experimental cameraless photographs in the later 1930s.

Běla Kolářová (Czechoslovakia, 1923-2010)
Pecky broskve (z cyklu Stopy)
Peach Stones (From Traces series)
1961
Gelatin silver photograph from an artificial negative

Taking up photography in 1956 during the Cold War, the Czech artist Běla Kolářová wrote about the need to photograph things normally beneath the notice of photography, the negligible detritus of everyday life. Her initial experiments along these lines involved the making of prints from what she called “artificial negatives.” Collecting all sorts of discarded items (onion peels, peach pits), she either placed her scraps directly on celluloid or embedded them in a layer of paraffin, projecting the resulting image onto bromide paper using an enlarger. Kolářová also began to produce photographic images by placing her light-sensitive paper on a record turntable, rotating it at varying speeds, and allowing the light to produce a series of overlapping and wavy concentric circles.

Installation view of
György Kepes (Hungarian, 1906-2001)
Black, great and white light composition, 1949
Black and white calligraphy, 1951
Fluid patterns, 1938
(Calligraphic light), 1948
Optical transformation, 1938
Hieroglyphic body, 1942
(Magnetic pattern), 1938
Gelatin silver photographs (printed c. 1977)

The Hungarian-born artist György Kepes moved to the United States in the late 1930s, where he published a series of interdisciplinary books concerned with the “language of vision.” Informed by his study of psychological theory, Kepes particularly favoured the cameraless photograph as offering a kind of universal language, stressing the need for images that combined “transparency and interpenetration… the order of our time is to knead together the scientific and technical knowledge required, into an integrated whole on the biological and social plane.” Even when they appear to be abstractions, Kepes’s own photograms were intended as an expression of the interdependence of natural and manmade structures and as an advocacy for the interrelationship of art, science, and technology.

Installation view of the exhibition 'Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph' at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery showing the work of Herbert Matter (left), Chargesheimer (centre), and Roger Catherineau (right)

Installation view of the work of Herbert Matter (left), Chargesheimer (centre), and Roger Catherineau (right)

Herbert Matter (American born Switzerland, 1907-1984)
Untitled
c. 1939-1943
Gelatin silver photograph

Born in Switzerland, Herbert Matter studied with Fernand Léger in Paris before working there and in Switzerland as a graphic designer, incorporating photographic images into his many posters. In 1935 he moved to the United States, involving himself in the design and art world he found there, with a special interest in the work of abstract painters. He produced a number of experimental photographs in this period, deliberately designed to break with what he called “the chains of documentation.” These included a calligraphic image made in 1944 by tracing brush strokes on a wet emulsion plate charged by an electrical current and a series of sinuous, painterly photographs, perhaps made by pouring chemicals on sheets of glass already marked with a resist and then printing from them.

Chargesheimer (German, 1924-1972)
Scenarium
1961
Gelatin silver chemigram

In 1961, the German artist Karl-Heinz Hargesheimer, who went by the single name of Chargesheimer, published a limited-edition book titled Lichtgrafik [Light Graphic]. He described the ten unique prints gathered in it as photochemische Malereien or “photo-chemical paintings,” inducing their strange combinations of gestural calligraphic marks and organic-looking surface using only developer and fixer on gelatin silver photographic paper.

Roger Catherineau (French, 1925-1962)
Photogramme
1957
Gelatin silver photograph

Starting in the 1950s, French artist Roger Catherineau drew on his interest in sculpture and dance to produce sinuous, layered photograms that look more like graphics than paintings. Their ambiguous depths were made even more elusive by the addition of coloured inks to their surfaces.

Installation view of the exhibition Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery with at left, Marco Breuer and at right, Lynn Cazabon

Installation view of Danica Chappell (Australia) 'Slippery Image #1' 2014-2015 'Slippery Image #2' 2014-2015 and 'Traversing Edges & Corners (Orange #9)' 2014 'Traversing Edges & Corners (Orange #10)' 2014 tintype

Installation view of
Danica Chappell (Australian, b. 1972)
Slippery Image #1, 2014-2015
Slippery Image #2, 2014-2015
Daguerreotype

Danica Chappell (Australian, b. 1972)
Traversing Edges & Corners (Orange #9), 2014
Traversing Edges & Corners (Orange #10), 2014
Tintype

The work of Australian artist Danica Chappell brings together the formal experiments of early modernist avant-garde groups, such as the Russian Constructivists and the German Bauhaus, with some of photography’s earliest techniques, resulting in geometrically patterned daguerreotypes and tintypes. These patterns of light and shadow animate the surface of Chappell’s metallic photographs, while also recording her work in the darkroom, her negotiation of radiation, object, body and time.

Installation view of
Lynn Cazabon (American, b. 1964)
Diluvian
2010-2013
40 unique silver gelatin solar photographs

Diluvian, by American artist Lynn Cazabon, comprises a grid of unique contact prints, with their imagery and the means of its production both being directly generated by the work’s subject matter. Embedded in a simulated waste dump, covered with discarded cell phones and computer parts as well as organic material, expired sheets of gelatin silver paper were sprayed with baking soda, vinegar and water, sandwiched under a heavy sheet of glass, and left in direct sunlight for up to six hours, four prints at a time. The chemical reactions that ensued left visual traces – initially vividly coloured and then gradually fading when fixed – of our society’s flood of toxic consumer items, produced by the decomposing after-effects of those very items.

Installation view of works by Marco Breuer (German, b. 1966) Untitled (C-1378), 2013; Untitled (C-1598), 2014; Untitled (C-1526), 2014; Untitled (C-1338), 2013

Installation view of
Marco Breuer (German, b. 1966)
Untitled (C-1378), 2013
Untitled (C-1598), 2014
Chromogenic paper, embossed/burned/scraped

Marco Breuer (German, b. 1966)
Untitled (C-1526), 2014
Chromogenic paper, burned/scraped

Marco Breuer (German, b. 1966)
Untitled (C-1338), 2013
Chromogenic paper, burned

By folding, scoring, burning, scouring, abrading, and/or striking his pieces of photographic paper, German-born, US-based artist Marco Breuer coaxes a wide range of colours, markings and textures from his chosen material. Both touched and tactile, Breuer’s photographs have become surrogate bodies, demonstrating the same fragility and relationship to violence as any other organism. And like any other body, they also bear the marks of time, not of a single instant from the past, like most photographs, but rather of a duration of actions that have left accumulated scars.

Installation view of the exhibition 'Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph' at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery with at left, the work of Anne Noble

Installation view of the exhibition 'Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph' at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery with at centre, the work of Anne Noble

Installation views of the exhibition Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery with at centre, the work of Anne Noble

Anne Noble (New Zealand, b. 1954)
Bruissement: Bee Wing Photograms #10
2015
Pigment print on Canson baryta paper
320 x 110cm
Courtesy of the artist, Wellington

In recent times, the New Zealand artist Anne Noble has made a number of works that address the calamitous collapse of the global honeybee population. In these two cameraless photographs, cascading vertically down the wall like Chinese scroll paintings, we get to see the imprint of thousands of detached bee wings, their determined hum stilled by disease, human interference and a toxic ecology. The haunting beauty of these delicate traceries and strange shadows is also a warning. A beekeeper herself, Noble looks at bees as a living system under stress but also as a model for our own society; as she says, “what is happening to the bees we are likely doing to ourselves.”

Installation view of works by Alison Rossiter (American, b. 1953) Agfa Cykora, expired January 1942, processed 2013; Eastman Kodak Velox, expired March 1919a, processed 2014; Eastman Kodak Medalist E2, expired September 1956, processed 2010; Eastman Kodak Velox, expired March 1919b, processed 2014; Eastman Kodak PMC No.11, expired September 1937, processed 2013; Defender Argo, exact expiration date unknown, c. 1910, processed 2013; Velox T4, expiry date October 1, 1940, processed 2008

Installation views of
Alison Rossiter (American, b. 1953)
Agfa Cykora, expired January 1942, processed 2013
Eastman Kodak Velox, expired March 1919a, processed 2014
Eastman Kodak Medalist E2, expired September 1956, processed 2010
Eastman Kodak Velox, expired March 1919b, processed 2014
Eastman Kodak PMC No.11, expired September 1937, processed 2013
Defender Argo, exact expiration date unknown, c. 1910, processed 2013
Velox T4, expiry date October 1, 1940, processed 2008
Unique gelatin silver photographs

Since 2007, American photographic artist Alison Rossiter has been buying old expired packets of unexposed film at auction or on the internet, some of them dating from as early as 1900. She then develops these sheets in her darkroom with no further exposure to light, never quite sure what the resulting object-image will look like. The one inscribed Velox T4, expiry date October 1, 1940, for example, was developed in 2008, and displays a Mark Rothko-like grid of pale impressions on a dark ground. These are the chemical traces left behind by the wrapping paper that once protected it from light. We’re looking, then, at an exposure – to chemicals as well as to leaked light – of approximately seventy years.

Installation view of works by Matt Higgins (Australia) Untitled 134-5, 2014; Untitled 254-5, 2014; Untitled 287-5, 2014; Untitled 292-5, 2014

Installation view of
Matt Higgins (Australia)
Untitled 134-5, 2014
Untitled 254-5, 2014
Untitled 287-5, 2014
Untitled 292-5, 2014
Unique chemigram on gelatin silver photographic paper

Australian artist Matt Higgins makes what are called ‘chemigrams,’ created by the interplay of various manual and chemical processes on a single sheet of photographic paper or film. Higgins also uses resists to help create his patterned surfaces, from soft organic substances such as apple syrup to industrial compounds such as epoxy enamel. He thereby returns photography to its historical roots: the desire to coax images from a chemical reaction to light.

Installation views of the exhibition Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery

Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre
Queen St, New Plymouth, New Zealand
Phone: +64 6 759 6060
Email: info@govettbrewster.com

Opening hours:
Daily 10am – 5pm

Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre website

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Book: ‘HAND-COLOURED NEW ZEALAND: THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF WHITES AVIATION’ by Peter Alsop

August 2016

HAND-COLOURED NEW ZEALAND: THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF WHITES AVIATION by Peter Alsop cover

A beautiful book by my New Zealand friend Peter Alsop about that countries hand coloured scenic photos. Whites Aviation changed the way New Zealanders viewed their country. Take a look inside this book.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

“A magical cocktail of aviation and photography … painted with cotton wool.”

“Nothing can change the authenticity and aesthetic of a hand-made craft.”

“This beautiful book follows Marcus King: Painting New Zealand for the World in providing another significant step towards understanding New Zealand’s art and design. However, for me, reading this book has been a transformational experience. In my youth, a Whites Aviation photograph, whether in a living room or office, represented the absence of other art in everyday Kiwi lives. Having read this book, I’ve come to realise that Whites’ hand-coloured photos were instead a harbinger; a forerunner, an object of contemporary art in thousands of New Zealand homes.”

Douglas Lloyd Jenkins, Art & Design Historian

Book blurb

Every single photo coloured by hand? Using cotton wool? Yes, such was the era of hand-coloured photography – a painting and photograph in one – the way you got a high-quality colour photo before colour photography became mainstream.

Some of New Zealand’s best hand-coloured photos were produced by Whites Aviation from 1945. For over 40 years, the glorious scenic vistas were a sensation, adorning offices and lounges around the land; patriotic statements within New Zealand’s emerging visual arts. Now, despite massive changes in society and photography, the stunning scenes and subtle tones still enchant, as coveted collectibles; decorations on screen; and as respected pieces of photographic art.

But, until now, this inspirational story has not been told; nor the full stories of Leo White (company founder); Clyde Stewart (chief photographer and head of colouring); and the mission-critical ‘colouring girls’. New Zealand’s first published collection of hand-coloured photography is also now enshrined, ready to enchant for decades more. Nothing, it seems, can change the appeal of an alluring hand-made craft.

The Colourist

Lovely 3 min doco on hand-coloured photography and Whites Aviation. Every photo coloured by hand.

HAND-COLOURED NEW ZEALAND THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF WHITES AVIATION by Peter Alsop page 31

HAND-COLOURED NEW ZEALAND THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF WHITES AVIATION by Peter Alsop page 41

HAND-COLOURED NEW ZEALAND THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF WHITES AVIATION by Peter Alsop page 50

HAND-COLOURED NEW ZEALAND: THE PHOTOGRAPHS OF WHITES AVIATION by Peter Alsop pages 31, 41 and 50.

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Exhibition: ‘Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph’ at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre, New Plymouth, New Zealand Part 1

Exhibition dates: 29th April – 14 August, 2016

Curator: Geoffrey Batchen

Installation view of the exhibition Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery

This is how best a contemporary art exhibition can show the work to advantage. Just gorgeous!

The well curated, comprehensive content is complemented by a beautifully paced hang nestled within stunning contemporary art spaces. Labels are not just plonked on the wall, but are discretely displayed on horizontal shelves next to the work – accessible but so as not to interrupt the flow of the work. Coloured walls add to the ambience of the installation and act as an adjunct to the colours of the art. Beautiful modernist contemporary display cabinets keep the spaces fresh and vibrant.

A discussion of the content of the exhibition to follow in part 2 of the posting.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

“Exploring the art of cameraless photography, encompassing historical, modern and contemporary works. Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph is the first comprehensive survey of cameraless photography held anywhere in the world, presenting more than 200 examples, from 1839 – when photography’s invention was announced – through to contemporary artists. We present the most complete study of cameraless photography to date, focusing on the cameraless mode from the 1830s through to today and offering a global perspective on this way of working.

The theme of the exhibition is inspired by artist Len Lye’s cameraless photographs from 1930 and 1947, and it’s the first time all 52 of Lye’s photograms have been seen together. Emanations is an opportunity to put Lye’s photographic work in a suitably global context, surrounded by his predecessors, contemporaries and successors. Emanations includes many masterpieces of photographic art and showcases the talents of some of the world’s leading contemporary photographic artists.

The exhibition has work by photographic pioneers William Henry Fox Talbot and Anna Atkins, important modernist photographers Man Ray and László Moholy-Nagy, and many of today’s most significant photographic artists including Walead Beshty, Marco Breuer, Liz Deschenes, Joan Fontcuberta, Christian Marclay, Thomas Ruff, and Hiroshi Sugimoto. Emanations also includes work by both senior and emerging Australian and New Zealand artists, from Anne Noble and Anne Ferran to Andrew Beck and Justine Varga.

The exhibition presents artwork by more than 50 artists hailing from New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, England, Canada and the United States. Almost every photographic process is included in the exhibition – photogenic drawings, calotypes, daguerreotypes, and tintypes, as well as gelatin silver, chromogenic and ink-jet photographic prints, photocopies, verifax and thermal prints.

The exhibition is accompanied by a major book by the same name and on the same theme, co-published by the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and DelMonico Books/Prestel, based in New York and Munich. The book contains 184 full-page colour plates and a 25,000 word essay by Geoffrey Batchen. The Govett-Brewster is also publishing another book reproducing all the cameraless photographs by Len Lye, along with an essay by Wystan Curnow.

Emanations is curated by Geoffrey Batchen, Professor of Art History at Victoria University of Wellington, and a world-renowned historian and curator of photography.”

Text from the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery website

Installation view of Andrew Beck ‘Double Screen’ 2016 part of the exhibition 'Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph' at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery

Installation views of
Andrew Beck (New Zealand, b. 1987)
Double Screen
2016
Glass, acrylic paint, gelatin silver photographs

In the 1930s, László Moholy-Nagy made art that combined a cameraless photograph, plexiglass and paint. New Zealand artist Andrew Beck works in a similar way to produce sculptural installations that complicate our expectations of the relationship between light and shadow, the natural and the artificial, images and objects, art and reality. He forces us to look very closely at what we are seeing, and even to critically reflect on the act of seeing itself.

Installation view of the exhibition 'Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph' at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery with at left, works by Anne Ferran and at right, Joyce Campbell

Installation view of the exhibition Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery with at left, Anne Ferran and at right, Joyce Campbell

Installation view of Joyce Campbell ‘LA Bloom’ 2002 part of the exhibition 'Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph' at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery

Installation view of
Joyce Campbell (New Zealand, b. 1971)
LA Bloom
2002
Cibachrome photographs
Courtesy of the artist, Auckland

In 2002 the New Zealand photographer Joyce Campbell decided to conduct a microbial survey of Los Angeles, a city in which she lives for part of each year. She swabbed the surfaces of plants and soil from twenty-seven locations chosen out of her Thomas Guide to the city. She then transferred each sample onto a sterilised plexiglass plate of agar and allowed it to grow as a living culture. The Cibachrome positive colour contact prints she subsequently made from these plates resemble abstract paintings and yet also offer a critical mapping of the relative fertility of this particular urban landscape, revealing its dependence on the politics of water distribution.

Installation view of Aldo Tambellini (Italy/US) 'Videograms' 1969

Installation view of
Aldo Tambellini (Italian-American, 1930-2020)
Videogram, 1969
Videogram, 1969
Videogram, 1969
Videogram, 1969
Gelatin silver photographs

Although raised in Italy, Aldo Tambellini was working in New York in 1969 when he manipulated the cathode ray tube of a TV set into the shape of a spiral (for this artist, a universal sign of energy) and exposed sheets of light-sensitive paper by laying them over its screen. The calligraphic inscriptions that resulted made his paper look as if it had been scorched from the inside out. These ‘videograms,’ as Tambellini called them, highlight the chaos and chance operations that lurk just beneath the surface of technology’s apparent rationality.

Installation view of Shaun Waugh (New Zealand) 'ΔE2000 1.1' 2014 part of the exhibition of the exhibition 'Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph' at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery

Installation views of
Shaun Waugh (New Zealand, b. 1982)
ΔE2000 1.1
2014
24 Agfa boxes with mounted solid colour inkjet photographs

This work by New Zealand artist Shaun Waugh began with the purchase of empty boxes that once held Agfa photographic paper. Waugh then took readings of all four sides of the inside lip of each box lid using a spectrophotometer, employing this data and Photoshop to generate a solid orange-red inkjet print. The box lid is used to frame a two-dimensional version of itself, bringing analogue and digital printing into an uncomfortably close proximity to create a memorial to a kind of photography that is now defunct. Hung salon style, like so many small paintings, Waugh’s work manages to turn the photograph inside out, and thus into something other than itself.

Wall text from the exhibition Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery

Installation view of the exhibition 'Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph' at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery with, at left, work by Anne Ferran and, at right, Adam Fuss

Installation view of the exhibition Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery with at left, Anne Ferran and at right, Adam Fuss

Installation view of the work of Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949) Untitled, 1998; Untitled, 1998; Untitled, 1998; Untitled (baby's petticoat), 1998; Untitled (collar), 1998; Untitled (baby's bonnet), 1998; Untitled (sailor suit), 1998; Untitled (shirts), 1998

Installation view of
Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Untitled, 1998
Untitled, 1998
Untitled, 1998
Untitled (baby’s petticoat), 1998
Untitled (collar), 1998
Untitled (baby’s bonnet), 1998
Untitled (sailor suit), 1998
Untitled (shirts), 1998

Unique gelatin silver photographs

In 1998 Australian artist Anne Ferran was offered an artist-in-resident’s position at an historic homestead not far from Sydney that had been occupied by successive generations of the same family since 1813. Ferran spent six months systematically making contact prints using the dresses, bodices, skirts, petticoats, and collars still contained in the house. Hovering in a surrounding darkness, softly radiating an inner light, the ghostly traces of these translucent garments now act as residual filaments for a century of absorbed sunshine. Many of them have been patched over the years and their signs of wear and repair are made clear. This allows us to witness a history of the use of each piece of clothing, seeing inside them to those small and skilful acts of home economy – the labour of women – usually kept hidden from a public gaze.

Anne Ferran (Australian, b. 1949)
Untitled (baby’s bonnet)
1998
Unique gelatin silver photograph

Installation view of the exhibition Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery with, at left, work by Adam Fuss and, at right, Lisa Clunie

Installation view of the exhibition Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery with at left, Adam Fuss and at right, Lisa Clunie

Installation view of Adam Fuss (UK/Australia/US) Caduceus 2010 (left) and Untitled 1991 (right)

Born in England, raised in Australia, and resident in New York, Adam Fuss has produced a diverse range of large cameraless photographs since the 1980s, asking his light-sensitive paper to respond to the physical presence of such phenomena as light, water, a slithering snake, flocks of birds, and sunflowers.

Adam Fuss (British, b. 1961) 'Untitled' 1991 from the exhibition 'Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph' at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre, New Plymouth, New Zealand, April - August, 2016

Adam Fuss (British, b. 1961)
Untitled
1991
Type C photograph

Lisa Clunie (New Zealand) ‘Fold I’ 2014 from the exhibition 'Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph' at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre, New Plymouth, New Zealand, April - August, 2016

Lisa Clunie (New Zealand)
Fold I
2014
Silver gelatin photograph

The work of New Zealand artist Lisa Clunie looks back to the work of pioneer modernist László Moholy-Nagy in order to manifest the idea that our lives are shaped by a continual play of forces. Like Moholy, she wets her photographic paper and then tightly folds it, before moving the paper back and forth under her enlarger, selectively exposing these folds to the ‘force’ of light. The resulting work reminds us that a photograph has weight, surface, texture, tension and edges.

Installation view of the exhibition Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery with at right, the work of Robert L. Buelteman

Installation view of Robert L. Buelteman (American, b. 1954) ‘Cannabis sativa’ 2002 (left) and ‘Eucalyptus polyanthemos’ 2000 (right)

Installation view of
Robert L. Buelteman (American, b. 1954)
Cannabis sativa (left)
2002
Digital chromogenic development photograph

Robert L. Buelteman (American, b. 1954)
Eucalyptus polyanthemos (right)
2002
Digital chromogenic development photograph

The San-Franciscan artist Robert Buelteman takes his leaves and other botanical specimens and slices them into paper-thin sections, before charging them, in a complicated and dangerous process, with a pulse of 40,000 volts of electricity. This leaves behind a colorised trace on his photographic paper, a photogram in which these plants appear to be aflame, as if emitting an energy all their own. Hovering between life and death, this is a nature that seems to be on the cusp of its transmutation into something else entirely.

Installation view of the exhibition Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery with at centre, Robert Owen and at right, Joan Fontcuberta

Robert Owen (Australian, b. 1937)
Endings (Rothko died today) – Kodachrome 64, No. 21, 26/02/1970
2009
Pigment ink-jet print

The photographic work of Australian artist Robert Owen is part of a broader tendency on the part of contemporary artists to reflect in morbid terms on aspects of photography’s past. Owen has been collecting film stubs since 1968. Although better known as a painter and sculptor, he recently decided to print these end strips of film as a series of large colour photographs, paying homage to this residue of the Kodak era in a chronological sequence of readymade chromatic fields. This one was collected on the day that the American abstract painter Mark Rothko killed himself.

Adam Fuss (British, b. 1961)
Untitled (from the series My Ghost)
2001
Unique gelatin silver photograph

In his series, titled My Ghost, Adam Fuss put together a body of contact photographs of such things as plumes of smoke, patterns of light, a butterfly, a swan and a baptism dress. As his title suggests, Fuss’s work aims to evoke rather than describe; for all their evident tactility, these photographs are meant as metaphors, as prayers, perhaps even as poems.

Adam Fuss (British, b. 1961) both 'Untitled' 1989

Installation view of
Adam Fuss (British, b. 1961)
Untitled
1989
Cibachrome photograph

Adam Fuss (British, b. 1961)
Untitled
1989
Cibachrome photograph

Installation view of Joan Fontcuberta (Spain). ‘MN 62: OPHIUCUS (NGC 6266), AR 17 h. 01,2 min. / D -30º 07’’ (left) and ‘LAMBDA CORONAE AUSTRALIS (Mags 5,1/9,7 Sepn 29,2" AP 214º), AR 18 h 43,8 min. / D -38º 19’’ (right) both 1993

Installation view of Joan Fontcuberta (Spanish, b. 1955) ‘MN 62: OPHIUCUS (NGC 6266), AR 17 h. 01,2 min. / D -30º 07’’ (left) and ‘LAMBDA CORONAE AUSTRALIS (Mags 5,1/9,7 Sepn 29,2" AP 214º), AR 18 h 43,8 min. / D -38º 19’’ (right) both 1993

Installation views of
Joan Fontcuberta (Spanish, b. 1955)
MN 62: OPHIUCUS (NGC 6266), AR 17 h. 01,2 min. / D -30º 07′ (left)
LAMBDA CORONAE AUSTRALIS (Mags 5,1/9,7 Sepn 29,2″ AP 214º), AR 18 h 43,8 min. / D -38º 19′ (right)
both 1993
From the Constellations series
Cibachrome photographs

Photographs from the Constellations series by Spanish artist Joan Fontcuberta come filled with fields of sparkling blackness, their speckled surfaces redolent of infinite space and twinkling stars. Their titles imply we are looking upwards towards the heavens. But this artist’s prints actually record dust, crushed insects and other debris deposited on the windscreen of his car, a trace of the evidence of his own rapid passage through terrestrial space and time. The artist applied sheets of 8-by-10-inch film directly onto the glass windscreen and shone a light through, creating photograms which were then made into glossy Cibachrome prints.

Installation view of Paul Hartigan (New Zealand) 'Colourwords' 1980-1981 as part of the exhibition 'Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph' at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery

Detail of Paul Hartigan (New Zealand, b. 1939) 'Colourwords' 1980-1981 as part of the exhibition 'Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph' at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery

Installation views and detail of
Paul Hartigan (New Zealand, b. 1939)
Colourwords
1980-1981
Colour photocopy

Consistently defined by a subversive edge and a darkly witty humour, the work of New Zealand artist Paul Hartigan is often subtly permeated by astute social and political perceptions. Shortly after they were introduced into New Zealand in 1980, Hartigan explored the creative possibilities of a colour photocopying machine, making a series of images in which words and found objects ironically refer to each other in an endless loop. With the objects arranged to spell out their own colour, each picture offers an oscillation of word and meaning, flatness and dimension, art and detritus.

Installation view of Gavin Hipkins (New Zealand) ‘The Coil’ 1998 (left) and Lucinda Eva-May as part of the exhibition 'Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph' at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery

Installation view of Gavin Hipkins (left) and Lucinda Eva-May (right) as part of the exhibition Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery

Installation view of
Gavin Hipkins (New Zealand, b. 1968)
The Coil
1998
Silver gelatin photographs

Inspired by the kinetic films of Len Lye, in the 1990s Gavin Hipkins made a series of cameraless photographs that play with sequence and implied movement. The 32 images that make up The Coil were made by resting polystyrene rings on sheets of photographic paper and then exposing them to light.

Installation view of
Lucinda Eva-May (Australia)
Unity in light #6, 2012 (left)
Unity in light #9, 2012 (right)
C-type prints

Australian artist Lucinda Kennedy has sought to capture a phenomenological representation of the feelings and sensations of sexual intercourse through the direct imprint on sheets of photographic paper of this most primal of human interactions. Turned into a single blurred organism by the extended duration of the exposure, the artist and her partner become an abstraction, thereby aptly conjuring an experience that has always been beyond the capacity of mere description.

Installation view of the exhibition Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery with at left, Thomas Ruff, and at right, Justine Varga

Installation view of Thomas Ruff (Germany, b. 1958) 'r.phg.07_II' 2013

Installation views of
Thomas Ruff (Germany, b. 1958)
r.phg.07_II
2013
Chromogenic print

Thomas Ruff (Germany, b. 1958)
r.phg.07_II
2013
Chromogenic print

German artist Thomas Ruff uses his computers to construct virtual objects with simulated surfaces and to calculate the lights and shadows they might cast in different compositions. He then prints the results, in colour and at very large scale. Combining variations of spheres, curves, zig-zags and sharp edges, all set within richly coloured surrounds, Ruff’s images are both untethered abstractions and historical ciphers. Although referred to by the artist as photograms, the final prints are perhaps better conceived as being about the photogram, studiously replaying an analogue process in digital terms so as to make a spectacle of its logic.

Installation view of the exhibition Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery with at left, Shimpei Takeda and at right, Justine Varga

Justine Varga (Australian, b. 1984)
Exit (Red State)
2014-2015
Chromogenic photograph

Justine Varga (Australian, b. 1984)
Desklamp
2011-2012
Chromogenic photograph

Australian artist Justine Varga creates photographic works from an intimate and often prolonged exchange between a strip of film and the world that comes to be inscribed on it. Desklamp involved the year-long exposure of a large format negative placed on top of the artist’s desk lamp. Exit was derived from a similar piece of film that was scarred and weathered during a three-month exposure on her windowsill during a residency in London. Both were then turned into luscious colour photographs in the darkroom via various printing procedures.

Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre
Queen St, New Plymouth, New Zealand
Phone: +64 6 759 6060
Email: info@govettbrewster.com

Opening hours:
Daily 10am – 5pm

Govett-Brewster Art Gallery/Len Lye Centre website

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Exhibition: ‘Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium’ at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

Exhibition dates: 20th March – 31st July, 2016

Curator: Britt Salvesen, Curator and Head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department and the Department of Prints and Drawings at LACMA

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989) 'Self-portrait' c. 1970 from the exhibition 'Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium' at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), March - July, 2016

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Self-portrait
c. 1970
Paint, canvas, and stickers on fiver-based gelatin silver print
6/5/16 x 9 1/4 in. (16 x 23.5cm)
Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Robert Mapplethorpe is a formalist.

Apollonian and Dionysian ideals are two sides of the same coin.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

An extract from one of my earliest piece’s of research and writing (1996)

“In the work of the American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, we can see the formalised classical aesthetic of beauty combined with content which many people are repelled by (pornography, sexuality, violence, power) creating work which is both Apollonian and Dionysian.14 Peoples’ disgust at the content of some of Mapplethorpe’s images is an Apollonian response, an aesthetic judgement, a backing away from a connection to ‘nature’, meaning ‘that which is born’. Mapplethorpe said, “I’ve done everything I show in my photographs,”15 revealing a connection to an inner self, regardless of whether he intended to shock. Those seeking suppression of Mapplethorpe’s photographs, mainly conservative elements of society, cite the denigration of moral values as the main reason for their attacks. However Mapplethorpe’s S&M photographs sought to re-present the identity of a small subculture of the gay community that exists within the general community and by naming this subculture he sought to document and validate its existence. The photograph can and does lie but here was the ‘truth’ of these Dionysian experiences, which conservative bigots could not deny – that they exist.

In the NEA/Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center controversy surrounding Mapplethorpe16 his work was defended on aesthetic grounds, not on the grounds of homoerotic content, of freedom of expression or artistic freedom. The classical Apollonian form of his images was emphasised. As one juror put it, “Going in, I would never have said the pictures have artistic value. Learning as we did about art, I and everyone else thought they did have some value. We are learning about something ugly and harsh in society.”17 Ugly and harsh. To some people in the world S&M scenes are perfectly natural and beautiful and can lead to the most transcendent experience that a human being can ever have in their life. Who is to decide for the individual his or her freedom to choose?

This Apollonian fear of the Dionysian ‘Other’, the emotional chaotic self, was found to involve fear of that which is potentially the ‘same as’ – two sides of the same coin. This fear of ‘the same’, or of the proximity of the same, or of the threat of the same, can lead to violence, homophobia, racism and bigotry. Mapping out sexual identities’ toleration of difference, which is ‘the same as’, recognises that there are many different ways of being, and many truths in the world.”

Extract from Marcus Bunyan. “The defining of Apollonian and Dionysian ideals in images of the male body,” (1996 Master of Arts exegesis) published September 2012 on Art Blart.

Footnotes

14/ Danto, Arthur C. Mapplethorpe – Playing With The Edge. Essay. London: Jonathon Cape, 1992, p. 331

15/ Interview with Robert Mapplethorpe quoted in Cooper, Emmanuel. The Sexual Perspective. London: Routledge, 1986, p. 286

16/ Ellenzweig, p. 205, Footnote 1

17/ Cembalest, Robin. “The Obscenity Trial: How They Voted To Acquit,” in Art News December 1990 89 (10), p. 141 quoted in Ellenzweig, Allan. The Homoerotic Photograph. New York: Columbia University, 1992, p. 208

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989) 'Leatherman #1' 1970 from the exhibition 'Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium' at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), March - July, 2016

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Leatherman #1
1970
9 7/16 x 6 3/4 in. (23.97 x 17.15cm)
Jointly acquired by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; partial gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation; partial purchase with funds provided by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the David Geffen Foundation
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Candy Darling
1972
Dye diffusion transfer print, cardboard
3/34 x 2 7/8 in. (9.6 x 7.3cm)
Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Untitled (Nancy Nortia/Dugan)
c. 1974
4 1/2 x 5 1/8 in. (11.4 x 13cm)
Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Nick
1977
Gelatin silver print
14 x 14 1/16 in. (35.56 x 35.72cm)
Promised Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Self-portrait
1980
13 3/4 x 13 3/4 in. (34.93 x 34.93cm)
Promised Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) presents Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium, a major retrospective examining the work and career of one of the most influential visual artists of the 20th century. Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium is co-organised by LACMA and the J. Paul Getty Museum. In a historic collaboration, the two institutions will trace the artist’s working methods and materials, presenting the improvisational, experimental aspects of his practice alongside the refined perfection of his prints. The works on display provide new context for understanding the key genres that Mapplethorpe pursued: portraiture, the nude, and still life. His personal connections to sitters, his ability to manage a successful studio, and his ambition to elevate photography to the status of contemporary art will be demonstrated through rarely seen correspondence, books, and other ephemera, including those from the artist’s archive held by the Getty Research Institute.

LACMA’s presentation (March 20 – July 31, 2016) focuses on Mapplethorpe’s working methods, sources, and creative processes – the experimental and performative aspects of his work – while the J. Paul Getty Museum (March 15 – July 31, 2016) highlights the artist’s disciplined studio practice, figure studies, and legacy. Between the two museums, more than 300 works by Mapplethorpe will be on view, making this one of the largest-ever presentations of his work. The objects on view in Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium are drawn almost entirely from the landmark joint acquisition of art and archival materials made in 2011 by the J. Paul Getty Trust and LACMA from The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation.

“4 years ago LACMA and the Getty came together to jointly acquire the art and archives of Robert Mapplethorpe,” said Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director. “It has been an exciting collaboration ever since, as our researchers, conservators, and curators have all spent time with this trove of Mapplethorpe’s art. Now, we are glad to present this large-scale joint exhibition to Los Angeles and the world.”

“Through this historic collaboration, the LACMA and J. Paul Getty Museum exhibitions offer a new perspective on this influential artist,” said Britt Salvesen, curator and head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography department. “Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium reveals the rich resources of the Mapplethorpe archive, which provides a broader context for the iconic images that brought him fame. Mapplethorpe’s refined style challenged viewers to consider his portraits, flowers, and sexually explicit images as equal expressions of a personal vision. His drive to capture the perfect moment is the core of his art.”

Following its Los Angeles debut, Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Medium will travel internationally beginning with the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in Canada (September 10, 2016 – January 15, 2017), the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, (October 28, 2017 – February 4, 2018), and another international venue. This will be the first major traveling retrospective in North America since the landmark exhibition The Perfect Moment, organized in 1988 by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia.

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated book, Robert Mapplethorpe: The Photographs, co-published by LACMA and the J. Paul Getty Museum. A comprehensive guide to the artist’s work and career, this publication will feature an introduction by co-curators Britt Salvesen and Paul Martineau, five scholarly essays, an illustrated chronology, and a selected exhibition history and bibliography.

Exhibition organisation

The LACMA presentation is organised in five thematic sections. The first gallery establishes Mapplethorpe in the milieu of 1970s and 1980s urban gay culture, depicting himself and his models openly declaring their sexuality through clothing, body adornment, and gesture. The second gallery highlights the work Mapplethorpe created in the late 1960s and early 1970s before he took up photography in earnest. As a student of graphic design at the Pratt Institute, he demonstrated an early facility for draftsmanship and a penchant for geometric composition. He designed jewellery and temporary assemblages using items of clothing. Inspired by Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg, he also experimented with collages and constructions, often incorporating Catholic iconography and appropriated imagery from homosexual periodicals.

Mapplethorpe borrowed a Polaroid camera from a friend in 1970 and, over the course of the next year, honed his vision as a photographer. These early unique images, installed in the third gallery, reveal his observational acuity and his ability to be in the moment. Mapplethorpe was one of his own best subjects, as his many self-portraits attest, and he was open about being a participant in the scenarios he depicted. The fourth gallery focuses on Mapplethorpe’s engagement with the leather and bondage community, his appropriation of pornographic source material, and his exploration of the African American male nude. Additionally, this gallery features ephemera relating to Mapplethorpe’s first breakout exhibitions in New York, including a joint exhibition at The Kitchen and Holly Solomon Gallery in 1977. The fifth gallery presents work from the mid-1980s, when Mapplethorpe was running a successful studio and producing many commissioned portraits. Among his favourite subjects were the artists, musicians, and other performers he first encountered in the downtown art scene in the ’70s. He commented that photography was “the perfect medium for the 70s and 80s, when everything was fast. If I were to make something that took two weeks to do, I’d lose my enthusiasm. It would become an act of labor and the love would be gone.”

Exhibition highlights

Self-portrait (1980)

Mapplethorpe’s turn to photography in the early 1970s coincided with his embrace of New York’s leather subculture, and, throughout the decade, he explored the potential of both forms of expression simultaneously. His 1980 self-portrait as a surly, smoking leatherman captures the hyper masculine posturing that was concomitant with the choice of leather as a fashion statement and as a sexual fetish. Staring defiantly into the camera, Mapplethorpe declares his participation in the leather community. At the same time, the photograph expresses the playful and performative aspects of his studio practice. An element of dress-up and theater is evident in much of his portraiture. This self-portrait shows the artist posing in the role of an archetypal tough-guy – a greaser complete with popped collar, a lit cigarette dangling from his lip, and hair styled into a pompadour.

Patti Smith (1978)

Mapplethorpe was studying art at the Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, when he met Patti Smith in spring 1967. Mapplethorpe and Smith spent the next decade in close proximity, inspiring one another’s artistic aspirations. Mapplethorpe chose photography as his medium in the early 1970s, whereas Smith gravitated toward poetry and music, and the two collaborated in a number of portrait sessions. Here, Smith poses in the act of cutting her hair, a gesture of defiance. As she explained in a 1975 interview, she didn’t “want to walk around New York looking like a folk-singer. I like rock ‘n’ roll. So I got hundreds of pictures of Keith Richards, and I hung them up and then just took scissors and chopped away until I had a real Rolling Stones haircut.” Mapplethorpe captured Smith’s androgynous style, composing the photograph to emphasise contrasts of black and white in Smith’s features and wardrobe, in the background, and even in the cat.

Lisa Lyon (1982)

Mapplethorpe met Lisa Lyon at a party in 1979, and he would go on to produce nearly 200 photographs of her over the next several years. The first woman to win the International Federation of Body Builders female competition, Lyon had an androgynous, muscular physique that appealed to Mapplethorpe’s interest in the sculptural body. “I’d never seen anybody that looked like that before,” he said. “Once she took her clothes off it was like seeing something from another planet.” The pinnacle of their collaboration came with the release of the book Lady (1983), a series of portraits of Lyon. In this portrait, Mapplethorpe captures Lyon in her work-out attire, a nod to her role as an early advocate for fitness and weight training, which came to be a defining feature of early and mid-1980s American culture.

Complementary exhibition

The LACMA exhibition will also be accompanied by the installation Physical: Sex and the Body in the 1980s, which will feature roughly 30 works from the museum’s permanent collection. Placing Mapplethorpe’s work in dialogue with his contemporaries, the installation examines the cultural and artistic upheavals of a pivotal decade in the history of American art and society. Featured artists include Bruce Weber, Kiki Smith, Sarah Charlesworth, Laura Aguilar, and Marina Abramovic, among others. Physical: Sex and the Body is curated by Ryan Linkof, assistant curator of the Wallis Annenberg Photography department.

Press release from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Parrot Tulips
1988
Dye imbibition print
20 11/16 x 26 in. (52.55 x 66.04cm)
Jointly acquired by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; partial gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation; partial purchase with funds provided by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the David Geffen Foundation
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Joe, N.Y.C.
1978
Gelatin silver print
7 11/16 x 7 5/8 in.
Jointly acquired by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; partial gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation; partial purchase with funds provided by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the David Geffen Foundation
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Patti Smith
1978
Gelatin silver print
13 7/8 x 13 3/4 in. (35.24 x 34.93cm)
Jointly acquired by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; partial gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation; partial purchase with funds provided by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the David Geffen Foundation
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Keso Dekker
1979
Gelatin silver print
14 x 13 13/16 in. (35.56 x 35.08cm)
Promised Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Keso Dekker, Dutch-born visual artist (b. 1946), has designed sets and costumes for over 500 theatre productions, with some 70 directors and choreographers across Europe and the United States. Initially a painter, designer of private and public spaces and museum exhibitions, he also taught, published and wrote for television and organised exhibitions – always on the subjects of design, fashion, dance and the visual arts, plus their histories.

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Tim Scott
1980
Gelatin silver print
13 15/16 x 14 in. (35.4 x 35.56cm)
Promised Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Phillip Prioleau
1980
Gelatin silver print
13 13/16 x 13 13/16 in. (35.08 x 35.08cm)
Promised Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Lisa Lyon
1982
Gelatin silver print
15 3/16 x 16 3/16 in. (38.58 x 38.58cm)
Promised Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Brian Ridley and Lyle Heeter
1979
Gelatin silver print
14 x 14 in. (35.56 x 25.56cm)
Promised Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Kathy Acker
1983
Gelatin silver print
Promised Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Kathy Acker (1947-1997) was an American experimental novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, critic, performance artist, and postmodernist writer, known for her idiosyncratic and transgressive writing that dealt with complex themes such as childhood trauma, sexuality, language, identity, and rebellion.

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989) 'Ken Moody' 1985

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Larry and Bobby Kissing
1979
Gelatin silver print
17 13/16 x 13 11/16 in. (45.24 x 34.77cm)
Promised Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Melody Danielson
1987
Gelatin silver print
23 3/16 x 19 5/16 in. ( 58.9 x 49.05cm)
Promised Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Poppy
1988
Dye imbibition print
19 13/16 x 18 11/16 in. (50.32 x 47.47cm)
Jointly acquired by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; partial gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation; partial purchase with funds provided by the J. Paul Getty Trust and the David Geffen Foundation
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Lucinda’s Hand
1985
Gelatin silver print
19 3/16 x 15 1/4 in. (48.74 x 38.74cm)
Promised Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Robert Mapplethorpe (American, 1946-1989)
Two Men Dancing
1984
Gelatin silver print
19 1/8 x 15 3/16 in. (72.4 x 59.7cm)
Promised Gift of The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to the J. Paul Getty Trust and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art
© Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation

Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)
5905 Wilshire Boulevard (at Fairfax Avenue)
Los Angeles, CA, 90036
Phone: 323 857 6000

Opening hours:
Thursday – Tuesday 10am – 6pm
Closed Wednesday

LACMA website

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