Exhibition: ‘Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans’ at The National Gallery of Art, Washington

Exhibition dates: National Gallery of Art, January 18 – April 26, 2009; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, May 16 – August 23, 2009; Metropolitan Museum of Art, September 22 – December 27, 2009

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
The Americans
New York: Grove Press
1959

One of the seminal photography books of the twentieth century, Robert Frank’s The Americans changed photography forever, changed how America saw itself and became a cult classic. Like Eugene Atget’s positioning of the camera in an earlier generation Frank’s use of camera position is unique; his grainy and contrasty images add to his outsider vision of a bleak America; his sequencing of the images, like the cadences of the greatest music, masterful. One of the easiest things for an artist to do is to create one memorable image, perhaps even a group of 4 or 5 images that ‘hang’ together – but to create a narrative of 83 images that radically alter the landscape of both photography and country is, undoubtedly, a magnificent achievement.

The photographs in the posting appear by number order that they appear in the book.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
The Americans 1
Parade – Hoboken, New Jersey
1955
Gelatin silver print
Image: 21.3 x 32.4cm (8 3/8 x 12 3/4 in.)
Private collection, San Francisco
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

Released at the height of the Cold War, The Americans was initially reviled, even decried as anti-American. Yet during the 1960s, many of the issues that Frank had addressed – racism, dissatisfaction with political leaders, skepticism about a rising consumer culture – erupted into the collective consciousness. The book came to be regarded as both prescient and revolutionary and soon was embraced with a cult-like following.

First published in France in 1958 and in the United States in 1959, Robert Frank’s The Americans is widely celebrated as the most important photography book since World War II. Including 83 photographs made largely in 1955 and 1956 while Frank (1924-2019) travelled around the United States, the book looked beneath the surface of American life to reveal a profound sense of alienation, angst, and loneliness. With these prophetic photographs, Frank redefined the icons of America, noting that cars, jukeboxes, gas stations, diners, and even the road itself were telling symbols of contemporary life. Frank’s style – seemingly loose, casual compositions, with often rough, blurred, out-of-focus foregrounds and tilted horizons – was just as controversial and influential as his subject matter. The exhibition celebrates the 50th anniversary of the book’s publication by presenting all 83 photographs from The Americans in the order established by the book, and by providing a detailed examination of the book’s roots in Frank’s earlier work, its construction, and its impact on his later art.

Anonymous text from The National Gallery of Art website [Online] Cited 06/03/2009. No longer available online

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
The Americans 2
City fathers – Hoboken, New Jersey
1955
Gelatin silver print
Image: 41.9 x 57.8cm (16 1/2 x 22 3/4 in.)
Susan and Peter MacGill
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
The Americans 3
Political Rally – Chicago
1956
Gelatin silver print
Image and sheet: 57.8 x 39.4cm (22 3/4 x 15 1/2 in.)
Susan and Peter MacGill
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019) The Americans 4 'Funeral, St. Helena, South Carolina' 1955-1956

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
The Americans 4
Funeral – St. Helena, South Carolina
1955
Gelatin silver print
Image and sheet: 39.7 x 58.1cm (15 5/8 x 22 7/8 in.)
Susan and Peter MacGill
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

“The photos revealed a bleaker, more dislocated view of America than Americans were used to (at least in photography). Frank’s “in-between moments” demonstrated that disequilibrium can seem more revealing, seeming to catch reality off-guard. In doing so the collection also announced to the world that photos with a completely objective reference / referent could be subjective, lyrical, reveal a state-of-mind. Looser framing, more forced or odd juxtapositions, “drive-by” photos and other elements offer a sense of the process that has produced the photos”

Lloyd Spencer on Discussing The Americans in Hardcore Street Photography

I couldn’t have put it better myself!

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
The Americans 13
Charleston, South Carolina
1955
Gelatin silver print
Image: 41.3 x 59.1cm (16 1/4 x 23 1/4 in.)
Susan and Peter MacGill
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019) The Americans 14 'Ranch Market, Hollywood' 1955-1956

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
The Americans 14
Ranch Market – Hollywood
1956
Gelatin silver print
Image: 31.4 x 48.3cm (12 3/8 x 19 in.)
Danielle and David Ganek
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
The Americans 15
Butte, Montana
1956
Gelatin silver print
Overall: 20 x 30.2cm (7 7/8 x 11 7/8 in.)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Acquired through the generosity of the Young family in honour of Robert B. Menschel, 2003
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
The Americans 18
Trolley – New Orleans
1955
Gelatin silver print
Image: 40.6 x 57.8cm (16 x 22 3/4 in.)
Susan and Peter MacGill
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
Contact sheets for The Americans
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

“Frank’s contact sheets take us back to the moment he made the photographs for The Americans. They show us what he saw as he traveled around The United States and how he responded to it. These sheets are not carefully crafted objects; in his eagerness to see what he had captured, Frank did not bother to order his film strips numerically or even to orientate them all in the same direction.”

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
Sequencing of The Americans numbers 32-36
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

“Almost halfway through the book Frank created a sequence united by the visual repetition of the car and the suggestion of its movement.”

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
The Americans 32
U.S. 91, Leaving Blackfoot, Idaho
1956
Gelatin silver print
Image: 28.9 x 42.2cm (11 3/8 x 16 5/8 in.)
Collection of Barbara and Eugene Schwartz
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
The Americans 33
St. Petersburg, Florida
1955
Gelatin silver print
Sheet: 22.2 x 33.7cm (8 3/4 x 13 1/4 in.)
Collection of Barbara and Eugene Schwartz
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
The Americans 34
Covered Car – Long Beach, California
1956
Gelatin silver print
Image: 21.4 x 32.7cm (8 7/16 x 12 7/8 in.)
Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gilman Collection, Purchase, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Gift, 2005
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
The Americans 35
Car accident, US 66 between Winslow and Flagstaff, Arizona
1955-1956
Gelatin silver print
Image: 31 x 47.5cm (12 3/16 x 18 11/16 in.)
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Promised gift of Susan and Peter MacGill in honour of Anne d’Harnoncourt
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
The Americans 36
U.S. 285, New Mexico
1955
Gelatin silver print
Image: 33.7 x 21.9cm (13 1/4 x 8 5/8 in.)
Mark Kelman, New York
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019) The Americans 37 'Bar, Detroit' 1955-1956

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
The Americans 37
Bar – Detroit
1955
Gelatin silver print
Overall: 39.4 x 57.8cm (15 1/2 x 22 3/4 in.)
Sherry and Alan Koppel
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

The 50th anniversary of a groundbreaking publication will be celebrated in the nation’s capital with the exhibition Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans, premiering January 18 through April 26, 2009, in the National Gallery of Art’s West Building ground floor galleries. In 1955 and 1956, the Swiss-born American photographer Robert Frank (b. 1924) traveled across the United States to photograph, as he wrote, “the kind of civilisation born here and spreading elsewhere.” The result of his journey was The Americans, a book that looked beneath the surface of American life to reveal a culture on the brink of massive social upheaval and one that changed the course of 20th-century photography.

First published in France in 1958 and in the United States in 1959, The Americans remains the single most important book of photographs published since World War II. The exhibition will examine both Frank’s process in creating the photographs and the book by presenting 150 photographs, including all of the images from The Americans, as well as 17 books, 15 manuscripts, and 28 contact sheets. In honour of the exhibition, Frank has created a film and participated in selecting and assembling three large collages. The exhibition will travel to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from May 17 through August 23, 2009, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art from September 22 through December 27, 2009.

“The Americans is as powerful and provocative today as it was 50 years ago,” said Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art. “We are immensely grateful to Robert Frank and his wife, June Leaf, for their enthusiastic participation and assistance in all aspects of this exhibition and its equally ambitious catalogue. We also wish to thank Robert Frank for his donation of archival material related to The Americans, in addition to gifts of his photographs and other exhibition prints to the National Gallery of Art in 1990, 1994, and 1996, all of which formed the foundation of the project.”

Press release from the National Gallery of Art

Robert Frank (Swiss-Americans, 1924-2019)
The Americans 44
Elevator – Miami Beach
1955
Gelatin silver print
Image: 31.4 x 47.8cm (12 3/8 x 18 13/16 in.)
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Purchased with funds contributed by Dorothy Norman, 1969
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019) The Americans 50 'Assembly line, Detroit' 1955-1956

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
The Americans 50
Assembly line – Detroit
1955
Gelatin silver print
21.4 x 32.1cm (8 7/16 x 12 5/8 in.)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Purchase, 1959
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
The Americans 51
Convention hall – Chicago
1956
Gelatin silver print
Image: 22.5 x 34.1cm (8 7/8 x 13 7/16 in.)
Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Museum Purchase
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019) The Americans 55 'Beaufort, South Carolina' 1955-1956

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
The Americans 55
Beaufort, South Carolina
1955
Gelatin silver print
Image and sheet: 31.1 x 47.6cm (12 1/4 x 18 3/4 in.)
Private collection
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
The Americans 58
Political rally – Chicago
1956
Gelatin silver print
Image: 59.1 x 36.5cm (23 1/4 x 14 3/8 in.)
Betsy Karel
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
The Americans 70
Coffee shop, railway station – Indianapolis
1956
Gelatin silver print
Overall (image): 22.9 x 34.6cm (9 x 13 5/8 in.)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York, Acquired through the generosity of Carol and David Appel, 2003
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

Robert Frank (Swiss, 1924-2019)
The Americans 71
Chattanooga, Tennessee
1955
Gelatin silver print
Image: 20.8 x 29.5cm (8 3/16 x 11 5/8 in.)
Private collection
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

“It’s hard to stress how different The Americans was. Over the course of those 83 pictures – shot from Detroit to San Francisco to Chattanooga, Tennessee – Frank captured the country in images that were intentionally unglamorous. On a technical level, he brazenly tossed out an adherence to traditional ideas of composition, framing, focus, and exposure.”

Sarah Greenough, Senior Curator of Photography at the National Gallery of Art in Washington

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019) The Americans 73 'Detroit - Belle Isle' 1955

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
The Americans 73
Belle Isle – Detroit
1955
Gelatin silver print
Sheet: 29.2 x 42.5cm (11 1/2 x 16 3/4 in.)
Collection of Barbara and Eugene Schwartz
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
The Americans 81
City Hall – Reno, Nevada
1956
Gelatin silver print
Image: 20.3 x 32.4cm (8 x 12 3/4 in.)
Private collection
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019) The Americans 83 'US 90 on route to Del Rio, Texas' 1955-1956

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
The Americans 83
U.S. 90, en route to Del Rio, Texas
1955
Gelatin silver print
Image (and board): 47.6 x 31.1cm (18 3/4 x 12 1/4 in.)
Private collection, courtesy Hamiltons Gallery, London
Photograph © Robert Frank, from The Americans

National Gallery of Art
National Mall between 3rd and 7th Streets
Constitution Avenue NW, Washington

Opening hours:
Daily 10.00am – 5.00pm

National Gallery of Art website

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Exhibition: ‘Reading the modern photography book: changing perceptions’ at the National Gallery of Art, Washington

Exhibition dates: 18th January – 26th April, 2009

Looks a great exhibition for fans of photography books!

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

foto-auge (photo-eye)
Edited and with an introduction by Franz Roh, cover design by Jan Tschichold
(Stuttgart: Akademischer Verlag, Dr. Fritz Wedekind & Co., 1929)

“Also produced in conjunction with Film und Foto, this book showcases a wide variety of photographic practices as a way of examining the social importance of the medium’s ability to construct visual knowledge.”

Held in conjunction with Looking In: Robert Frank’s “The Americans,” this exhibition examines a variety of artistic and thematic approaches to the modern photography book, displaying examples that span the period from the late 1920s to the early 1970s. The photography book, more than simply a book containing photographs, is a publication composed by the careful sequencing and editing of photographic material. Often produced by a photographer, they present visual narratives through creative page design that frequently integrates photographs with text and graphic elements.

This focus exhibition organises 21 books from the Gallery’s library into four themes: “New Visions,” “Documented Realities,” “Postwar Scenes,” and “Conceptual Practices.” It highlights diverse projects from individual photographers such as László Moholy-Nagy, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Yasuhiro Ishimoto as well as collaborative projects from the Hungarian Work Circle (Munka Kör) and Andy Warhol’s Factory, revealing that the photography book is both a significant conveyer of contemporary experience and a witness to historical events.

The modern photography book, more than simply a book containing photographs, is a publication composed by the careful sequencing and editing of photographic material. Often produced by a photographer, these books present visual narratives through creative page design that frequently integrates photographs with text and graphic elements. Popular across the political spectrum, photography books have been published both as art objects and as documentary records. Through their organisation they foster a critical examination of the visual world, and as works of historical witness they have helped to construct cultural memories. Photography books have been a primary format for the arrangement and display of photographs, making them a vital but commonly overlooked component of the history of photography. Today they continue to provide an important forum for photographers to convey their work to a wide public audience.

Photographs have appeared in book format since their inception. For example, William Henry Fox Talbot’s commercially published The Pencil of Nature (1844) was one of the earliest explorations of photography’s narrative capabilities. Like all early photography books, Talbot’s photographs were printed separately from the letterpress text. It was not until the 1880s, with the development of the halftone plate and printing process, that mass-produced newspapers, magazines, and books regularly featured photographs. This invention, which allowed type and photographic images to be mechanically reproduced on the same press, dramatically changed the means by which the general public viewed and had access to photographs. By the 1920s the number of photographically illustrated publications had increased exponentially, and photographs regularly recounted events without explanatory text. As people began to see more and more photographs on a daily basis, they became far more visually literate. Set within this context, the modern mass-produced photography book challenged not only traditional narrative structures but also popular habits of reading and seeing.

Text from the National Gallery of Art website [Online] Cited 06/03/2009. No longer available online

Yasuhiro Ishimoto (Japanese-American, 1921-2012)
Aruhi Arutokoro (Someday, Somewhere)
Preface by Tsutomu Watanabe, design by Ryuuichi Yamashiro (Tokyo: Geibi Shuppan, 1958)

“This engaging publication juxtaposes photographs taken by Ishimoto in Chicago and Tokyo. Born in the United States, Ishimoto spent his childhood in Japan and later returned to the U.S. to attend school at the Institute of Design in Chicago. Finally settling in Tokyo, he influenced a new generation of postwar Japanese photographers interested in producing books.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson (French, 1908-2004)
The Decisive Moment
(New York: Simon & Schuster, in collaboration with Éditions Verve, Paris, 1952)

“An important presentation of Cartier-Bresson’s photographs from the 1930s and 1940s, this large-format book helped to popularise his work, in which a distinctive documentary approach transforms ordinary moments into remarkable photographic visions.”

National Gallery of Art
National Mall between 3rd and 7th Streets
Constitution Avenue NW, Washington

Opening hours:
Daily 10.00am – 5.00pm

National Gallery of Art website

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Opening 3: Review: ‘Show Court 3’ and ‘Mood Bomb’ by Louise Paramor at Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 5th March – 28th March, 2009

Opening: Thursday 5th March, 2009

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964)
Show Court 3 (II)
2009

Boarding a train at Flinders Street we emerge at South Yarra station to stroll down to River Street for our third opening of the night at Nellie Castan Gallery. We are greeted by the ever gracious Nellie Castan who has just returned from an overseas trip to Europe where she was soaking up the wonders of Rome amongst other places. For the latest exhibition in the gallery Louise Paramor is presenting two bodies of work: Show Court 3 and Mood Bomb (both 2009). Lets look at Show Court 3 first as this work has older origins.

Originally exhibited in 2006 at Nellie Castan under the title Jam Session the sculptures from this exhibition and many more beside (75 in all) were then installed in 2007 on show court 3 at Melbourne & Olympic Parks, hence the title of the installation. In the smaller gallery in 2009 we have six Lambda photographic prints that are records of this installation plus a video of the installation and de-installation of the work.

While interesting as documentary evidence of the installation these photographs are thrice removed from the actual sculptures – the sculptures themselves, the installation of the sculptures on court and then the photographs of the installation of the sculptures. The photographs lose something in this process – the presence or link back to the referentiality of the object itself. There is no tactile suggestiveness here, no fresh visual connections to be made with the materials, no human interaction. The intertextual nature of the objects, the jamming together of found pieces of bright plastic to make seductive anthropomorphic creatures that ‘play’ off of each other has been lost.

What has been reinforced in the photographs is a phenomena that was observed in the actual installation.

“The sculptures created a jarring visual disruption when placed in a location normally associated with play and movement. The stadium seating surrounding the tennis court incited an expectation of entertainment; a number of viewers sat looking at the sculptures, as though waiting for them to spin and jump around. But mostly, the exhibition reversed the usual role of visitors to place where one sits and watches others move; here the objects on the tennis court were static and the spectators moved around.” (2007)1

In the photographs of these objects and in the installation itself what occurs is an inversion of perception, a concept noted by the urbanist Paul Virilio.2 Here the objects perceive us instead of us perceiving the object: they stare back with an oculocentric ‘suggestiveness’ which is advertising’s raison d’être (note the eye sculpture above). In particular this is what the photographs suggest – a high gloss surface, an advertising image that grabs our attention and forces us to look but is no longer a powerful image.

In the main gallery was the most interesting work of the whole night – experiments of abstraction in colour “inspired by the very substance of paint itself.” Made by pouring paint onto glass and then exhibiting the smooth reverse side, these paintings are not so much about the texture of the surface (as is Dale Frank’s work below) but a more ephemeral thing: the dreamscapes of the mind that they promote in the viewer, the imaginative connections that ask the viewer to make. Simpler and perhaps more refined than Frank’s work (because of the smooth surface, the lack of the physicality of the layering technique? because of the pooling of amoebic shapes produced, not the varnish that accumulates and recedes?) paint oozes, bleeds, swirls, drips upwards and blooms with a sensuality of intense love. They are dream states that allow the viewer to create their own narrative with the title of the works offering gentle guides along the way: Girl with Flowers, Lovers, Mood Bomb, Emerald God, Mama, and Animal Dreaming to name just a few. To me they also had connotations of melted plastic, almost as if the sculptures of Show Court 3 had dissolved into the glassy surface of a transparent tennis court.

These are wonderfully evocative paintings. I really enjoyed spending time with them.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ O’Neill, Jane. Louise Paramor: Show Court 3. Melbourne: Nellie Castan Gallery, 2009

2/ Virilio, Paul. The Vision Machine. (trans. Julie Rose). Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994, pp. 62-63

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

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964)
Show Court 3 (VI)
2009

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964) 'Show Court 3' 2009 (detail)

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964)
Show Court 3 (detail)
2009

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964)
Opening night crowd in front of Sky Pilot (left) and Mama (right)
2009
Paint on glass

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964)
Opening night crowd in front of Green Eyed Monster (right) and Sky Pilot (right)
2009
Paint on glass

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964)
Opening night crowd in front of Pineapple Express
2009
Paint on glass

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964) 'A Dog and His Master' 2009 (detail)

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964)
A Dog and His Master (detail)
2009
Paint on glass

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964)
Lovers
2009
Paint on glass

Dale Frank (Australian, b. 1959)
2. One conversation gambit you hear these days: ‘Do you rotate?’ An interesting change of tack? No suck luck. ‘Do you rotate?’ simply fishes for information about the extent of your collection. Do you have enough paintings to hang a different one in your dining room every month?
2005

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964)
Mood Bomb
2009
Paint on glass

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964) 'Slippery Slope' 2009 (detail)

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964)
Slippery Slope (detail)
2009
Paint on glass

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964) 'Green Eyed Monster' 2009 (detail)

Louise Paramor (Australian, b. 1964)
Green Eyed Monster (detail)
2009
Paint on glass

Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne

This gallery closed in December 2013

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Photographic prize: the Magnum Foundation and the Inge Morath Foundation announce the sixth annual Inge Morath Award

March 2009

Inge Morath (American born Austria, 1923-2002)
From the series about Regensburg Museums
1999
Gelatin silver print

“To take pictures had become a necessity and I did not want to forgo it for anything.”

Inge Morath

The Magnum Foundation and the Inge Morath Foundation announce the sixth annual Inge Morath Award. The annual prize of $5,000 is awarded by the Magnum Foundation to a female documentary photographer under the age of 30, to support the completion of a long-term project. One award winner and up to two finalists are selected by a jury composed of Magnum photographers.

Inge Morath was an Austrian-born photographer who was associated with Magnum Photos for nearly fifty years. After her death in 2002, the Inge Morath Foundation was established to manage Morath’s estate and facilitate the study and appreciation of her contribution to photography.

Because Morath devoted much of her enthusiasm to encouraging women photographers, her colleagues at Magnum Photos established the Inge Morath Award in her honour. The Award is now given by the Magnum Foundation as part of its mission of supporting new generations of socially-conscious documentary photographers, and is administered by the Magnum Foundation in collaboration with the Inge Morath Foundation.

Past winners of the Inge Morath Award include: Kathryn Cook (US, ’08) for Memory Denied: Turkey and the Armenian Genocide; Olivia Arthur (UK, ’07) for The Middle Distance; Jessica Dimmock (US, ’06) for The Ninth Floor; Mimi Chakarova (US, ’06) for Sex Trafficking in Eastern Europe; Claudia Guadarrama (MX, ’05) for Before the Limit; and Ami Vitale (US, ’02), for Kashmir.

Text from The Inge Morath Foundation website [Online] Cited 01/03/2009. No longer available online

Inge Morath (American born Austria, 1923-2002)
Visitor in the Metropolitan Museum
1958
Gelatin silver print

Inge Morath (American born Austria, 1923-2002)
Window washer
1958
Gelatin silver print

“I have photographed since 1952 and worked with Magnum Photos since 1953, first out of Paris, later out of New York. I am usually labeled as a photojournalist, as are all members of Magnum. I am quoting Henri Cartier-Bresson’s explanation for this: He wrote to John Szarkowski in answer to an essay in which Szarkowski stated that Cartier-Bresson labels himself as a photojournalist.

“May I tell you the reason for this label? As well as the name of its inventor? It was Robert Capa. When I had my first show in the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1948 he warned me: ‘watch out what label they put on you. If you become known as a surrealist […] then you will be considered precious and confidential. Just go on doing what you want to do anyway but call yourself a photojournalist, which puts you into direct contact with everything that is going on in the world.'”

It is in this understanding that we have been working as a group and yet everyone following their own way of seeing. The power of photography resides no doubt partly in the tenacity with which it pushes whoever gets seriously involved with it to contribute in an immeasurable number of forms his own vision to enrich the sensibility and perception of the world around him.

[In the 1950s] the burden of the already photographed was considerably less than now. There was little of the feeling of being a latecomer who has to overwhelm the huge existing body of the photographic oeuvre – which, in photography as in painting and literature, necessarily leads first to the adoption and then rejection of an elected model, until one’s own work is felt to be equal or superior, consequently original.

Photography is a strange phenomenon. In spite of the use of that technical instrument, the camera, no two photographers, even if they were at the same place at the same time, come back with the same pictures. The personal vision is usually there from the beginning; result of a special chemistry of background and feelings, traditions and their rejection, of sensibility and voyeurism. You trust your eye and you cannot help but bare your soul. One’s vision finds of necessity the form suitable to express it.”

Inge Morath, Life as a Photographer, 1999

Text from The Inge Morath Foundation website [Online] Cited 01/03/2009. No longer available online

Inge Morath (American born Austria, 1923-2002)
Mrs. Eveleigh Nash, London, 1953
1953
Gelatin silver print

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Artist’s talk: Photographer Gregory Crewdson to present at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City

12th March, 2009

Many thankx to the Nelson-Atkins 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.

Gregory Crewdson (American, b. 1962)
Untitled from the series Beneath the Roses
2006
Digital pigment print

Famed photographer Gregory Crewdson will present the inaugural discussion in a series sponsored by the Photography Society of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City…

Crewdson’s work has been widely exhibited and reviewed. He makes large-scale photographs of elaborate and meticulously staged tableaux, which have been described as “micro-epics” that probe the dark corners of the psyche. Working in the manner of a film director, he leads a production crew, which includes a director of photography, special effects and lighting teams, casting director and actors. He typically makes several exposures that he later digitally combines to produce the final image.

“Crewdson is one of the most daring and inventive contemporary artists using photography,” said Keith F. Davis, Curator of Photography at the Nelson-Atkins. “His meticulously crafted works are immensely rich in both narrative and psychological terms. They prod us to rethink our ‘usual’ relationship to photographs as physical objects and as records of worldly fact. Crewdson is a genuinely important figure in today’s art world. He has an international reputation and has influenced an entire generation of younger photographic artists.”

Attendance to the program is free.

Text from ArtDaily.org website

Gregory Crewdson (American, b. 1962)
Untitled from the series Beneath the Roses
2005
Digital pigment print

Gregory Crewdson (American, b. 1962)
Untitled (Sunday Roast) from the series Beneath the Roses
2005
Digital pigment print

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

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

Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art website

Gregory Crewdson on the Gagosian website

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Photographs: Marcus Bunyan. ‘Momentum’ 2009

February 2009

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Untitled from the series Momentum
2009
Digital colour photograph

Momentum

A new body of work – the first of 2009 – is now online.

All 30 images can be seen on my website.

Marcus

Photographs are available from this series for purchase. As a guide, a digital colour 16″ x 20″ costs $1000 plus tracked and insured shipping. For more information please see my Store web page.

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Untitled from the series Momentum
2009
Digital colour photograph

Marcus Bunyan website

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Exhibition: ‘The best is often the Memories: Photographic Portraits of Romy Schneider’ at Museum für Kunst Und Gewerbe, Hamburg

Exhibition dates: 6th February – 13th April, 2009

Will McBride (American, 1931-2015) 'Romy Schneider, Paris, 1964' from the exhibition 'The best is often the Memories: Photographic Portraits of Romy Schneider' at Museum für Kunst Und Gewerbe, Hamburg, Feb - April, 2009

Will McBride (American, 1931-2015)
Romy Schneider, Paris, 1964
1964
Gelatin silver print

The legend that was Romy!

I have never known the filmography of Romy Schneider, never come across this actress before sad to say. But now I do. What great photographs. What a beautiful woman: sensitive, vivacious, stunning. A soul I would have liked to have known.

Marcus

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

Romy Schneider (German: born Rosemarie Magdalena Albach; 23 September 1938 – 29 May 1982) was a German-French actress. She began her career in the German Heimatfilm genre in the early 1950s when she was 15. From 1955 to 1957, she played the central character of Empress Elisabeth of Austria in the Austrian Sissi trilogy, and later reprised the role in a more mature version in Luchino Visconti’s Ludwig (1973). Schneider moved to France, where she made successful and critically acclaimed films with some of the most notable film directors of that era.

Read more about Romy Schneider on the Wikipedia website

Peter Brüchmann (German, 1932-2016)
Romy Schneider, Munich, 1968
1968
Gelatin silver print

Peter Brüchmann

Born in Berlin, Peter Brüchmann trained to be a photographer with the fashion and portrait photographer Lotte Söhring and subsequently completed a traineeship at the German press agency dpa. In the 1950s and 1960s he worked for well-known magazines, such as Schöner Wohnen, Stern and Bild am Sonntag. Brüchmann is primarily known for his portraits of celebrities of the movie and music industry. In 2008 the photographer participated in the group exhibition Die Erinnerung ist oft das Schönste – Fotografische Porträts von Romy Schneider, an exhibition comprising portraits of the famous Franco-German actress Romy Schneider, held at the Stiftung Opelvillen Rüsselheim, Germany. Today Peter Brüchmann works as a freelance photographer for several national and international magazines. Numerous of his photographs are among the collections of the German Historical Museum in Berlin.

Roger Fritz (German, 1936-2021)
Romy Schneider, Paris, 1961
1961
Gelatin silver print

Herbert List, Max Scheler, Roger Fritz, F. C. Gundlach, Will McBride, Peter Brüchmann, Werner Bokelberg, Helga Kneidl and Robert Lebeck took photos of Romy Schneider in quite different ways, as a young girl, in her film roles, together with her children, apparently unobserved in everyday situations or in set poses and dressed up in various costumes, merry or pensive, beautiful and fragile. More than 140 pictures will be on show, of which about 40 are being exhibited for the first time.

Hardly any other star has left us with so many different and conflicting images as Romy Schneider. She was photographed thousands of times – and yet she always remained enigmatic. Some of the photographers whose work is presented in this exhibition only met Romy once – Herbert List, for instance, captured her as a teenager around 1954 on pictures which remained unknown until recently – or accompanied her throughout her life, like Robert Lebeck, who succeeded in taking disturbingly personal pictures of her from the 1950s through to shortly before her death.

These snapshots conjure up once again the legend that was Romy, while at the same time making a powerful statement which reveals the transitoriness of existence. Because that is the core of what a photo does: it creates an image in order to bear lasting witness to an event which happened – yet at the very moment of capturing the image on film, it is no more than the proof that the fleeting moment has passed.

The photos by Herbert List, Werner Bokelberg, Peter Brüchmann, Roger Fritz and Max Scheler are being shown publicly for the first time. This also applies to the majority of the photos by F. C. Gundlach and Will McBride. The pictures by Helga Kneidl and Robert Lebeck have already appeared in books about Romy Schneider. These volumes are however now out of print.

Text from the Museum für Kunst Und Gewerbe website

Herbert List (German, 1903-1975)
Romy Schneider, Munich, 1954
1954
Gelatin silver print

Herbert List

Herbert List (7 October 1903 – 4 April 1975) was a German photographer, who worked for magazines, including Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and Life, and was associated with Magnum Photos. His austere, classically posed black-and-white compositions, particularly his homoerotic male nudes, taken in Italy and Greece being influential in modern photography and contemporary fashion photography.

Photographer

In 1929 he met Andreas Feininger who inspires his greater interest in photography and who gives him a Rolleiflex camera. From 1930 he began taking portraits of friends and shooting still life, is influenced by the Bauhaus and artists of the surrealist movements, Man Ray, Giorgio De Chirico and Max Ernst, and creates a surrealist photograph titled Metaphysique in a style he called fotografia metafisica in homage to De Chirico, his most important influence during this period. He used male models, draped fabric, masks and double-exposures to depict dream states and fantastic imagery. He has explained that his photos were “composed visions where [my] arrangements try to capture the magical essence inhabiting and animating the world of appearances.”

In 1936, in response to the danger of Gestapo attention to his openly gay lifestyle and his Jewish heritage, List left Germany for Paris, where he met George Hoyningen-Huene with whom he travelled to Greece, deciding then to become a photographer. During 1937 he worked in a studio in London and held his first one-man show at Galerie du Chasseur d’Images in Paris. Hoyningen-Huene referred him to Harper’s Bazaar magazine, and 1936-1939 he worked for Arts et Metiers Graphiques, Verve, Vogue, Photographie, and Life. List was unsatisfied with fashion photography. He turned back to still life imagery, continuing in his fotografia metafisica style.

From 1937 to 1939 List traveled in Greece and took photographs of ancient temples, ruins, sculptures, and the landscape for his book Licht über Hellas. In the meantime he supported himself with work for magazines Neue Linie, Die Dame and for the press from 1940-1943, and with portraits which he continued to make until 1950. In List’s work the revolutionary tactics of surrealist art and a metaphysical staging of irony and reverie had been honed in an the fashion industry that relied on illusion and spectacle which after World War II returned to a classical fixation on ruins, broken male statuary and antiquity.

Text from the Wikipedia website

F. C. Gundlach (German, 1926-2021)
Romy Schneider, Hamburg, 1961
1961
Gelatin silver print

F. C. Gundlach

F. C. Gundlach (Franz Christian Gundlach; born 16 July 1926 in Heinebach, Hesse; died 23 July 2021, Hamburg, Germany) is a German photographer, gallery owner, collector, curator und founder. In 2000 he created the F.C. Gundlach Foundation, since 2003 he has been founding director of the House of Photography – Deichtorhallen Hamburg.

His fashion photographs of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, which in many cases integrated social phenomena and current trends in the visual arts, have left their context of origin behind and found their way into museums and collections. Since 1975 he also curated many internationally renowned photographic exhibitions. On the occasion of the reopening of the House of Photography in April 2005, he curated the retrospective of the Hungarian photographer Martin Munkácsi. Here, the exhibitions A Clear Vision, The Heartbeat of Fashion and Maloney, Meyerowitz, Shore, Sternfeld. New Color Photography of the 1970s from his collection were presented since 2003. Most recently he curated the exhibitions More Than Fashion for the Moscow House of Photography and Vanity for the Kunsthalle Wien 2011.

The fashion photographer

F. C. Gundlach attended the Private Lehranstalt für Moderne Lichtbildkunst (Private School for Modern Photography) under Rolf W. Nehrdich in Kassel from 1946 to 1949. Subsequently, he began publishing theatre and film reports in magazines such as Deutsche Illustrierte, Stern, Quick and Revue as a freelance photographer.

His specialisation in fashion photography began in 1953 with his work for the Hamburg-based magazine Film und Frau, for which he photographed German fashion, Parisian haute couture and fur fashion campaigns. Additionally he photographed portraits of artists such as Romy Schneider, Hildegard Knef, Dieter Borsche and Jean-Luc Godard. For Film und Frau, but also for Stern, Annabelle, Twen and other magazines, F. C. Gundlach has since made fashion and reportage trips to the Near, Middle and Far East as well as to Central and South America. Under an exclusive contract with the magazine Brigitte, he photographed many of the trendsetting fashion pages until 1983, a total of more than 160 covers and 5,000 pages of editorial fashion. In the 1970s and 1980s he worked in South America, Africa, but above all in New York and on the American west coast.

His retrospective solo exhibitions, such as ModeWelten (1985), Die Pose als Körpersprache (1999), Bilder machen Mode (2004) or F. C. Gundlach. The photographic work (2008) were shown in many museums and galleries in Germany and abroad.

“He is a photographer whose images show the knowledge of the dominant role of fashion as a cultural social factor. For this reason, he rarely presented the phenomena of fashion in isolation, but rather linked them to the phenomenology of everyday reality and placed them in the socio-cultural context from which they ultimately originated. F. C. Gundlach proves to be a photographic artist with a will to style, a mastery of staging and the ability to shape the photographic image at his leisure, who arranges his models in ever new formal constellations: as a photographer of extraordinary aesthetic quality.”

~ Klaus Honnef

“As a fashion photographer who makes use of a recording medium, the photographer must live, think and feel entirely in his time. Fashion photographs are always interpretations and stagings. They reflect and visualise the zeitgeist of the present and anticipate the spirit of tomorrow. They offer projection screens for identification, but also for dreams, wishes and desires. And yet fashion photographs say more about a time than documentary photographs pretending to depict reality.”

~ F.C. Gundlach

Text from the Wikipedia website

Werner Bokelberg (German, 1937-2024)
Romy Schneider, London, 1968
1968
Gelatin silver print

Helga Kneidl (German, b. 1939)
Romy Schneider, Paris, 1972
1972

Helga Kneidl (German, b. 1939)
Romy Schneider, Paris, 1973
1973

Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
Steintorplatz, 20099 Hamburg

Opening hours:
Tuesday to Sunday 10am – 6pm
Thursday 10am – 9pm
Closed Mondays

Museum für Kunst Und Gewerbe website

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Exhibition: ‘Edward Burtynsky: The Residual Landscapes’ at The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff, Alberta

Exhibition dates: 7th February – 26th April, 2009

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955) 'Silver Lake Operations #1, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia 2007' from the exhibition 'Edward Burtynsky: The Residual Landscapes' at The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff, Alberta, Feb - April, 2009

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Silver Lake Operations #1, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia 2007
2007

One of the great photographers of the world.

Enjoy some of his images and for more photographs please visit his website.

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

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955) 'Tanggu Port, Tianjin, China 2005' from the exhibition 'Edward Burtynsky: The Residual Landscapes' at The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff, Alberta, Feb - April, 2009

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Tanggu Port, Tianjin, China 2005
2005

Nature transformed through industry is a predominant theme in my work. I set course to intersect with a contemporary view of the great ages of man; from stone, to minerals, oil, transportation, silicon, and so on. To make these ideas visible I search for subjects that are rich in detail and scale yet open in their meaning. Recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries are all places that are outside of our normal experience, yet we partake of their output on a daily basis.

These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire – a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times.

Edward Burtynsky quoted on The Whyte Museum website

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Oxford Tire Pile #8, Westley, California 1999
1999

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Nickel Tailings #30, Sudbury, Ontario, 1996
1996

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Nickel Tailings #31, Sudbury, Ontario 1996
1996

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Feng Jie #4, Three Gorges Dam Project, Yangtze River, 2002
2002

These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear,” said Edward Burtynsky, photographer. “We are drawn by desire – a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times.

Speaking of his “Quarries” series, Burtynsky has said, “The concept of the landscape as architecture has become, for me, an act of imagination. I remember looking at buildings made of stone, and thinking, there has to be an interesting landscape somewhere out there, because these stones had to have been taken out of the quarry one block at a time. I had never seen a dimensional quarry, but I envisioned an inverted cubed architecture on the side of a hill. I went in search of it, and when I had it on my ground glass I knew that I had arrived.”

Text from The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Shipbreaking #1, Chittagong, Bangladesh, 2000
2000

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Bao Steel #2, Shanghai, China, 2005
2005

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Iberia Quarries #3, Bencatel, Portugal, 2006
2006

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
China Quarries #8, Xiamen, Fujian Province, 2004
2004

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Dam #6, Three Gorges Dam Project, Yangtze River, 2005
2005

Trailer for the film Manufactured Landscapes in which Jennifer Baichwal documents Edward Burtynsky doing what artists do – making art, in this case photographing Bangladesh and China as he observes the “manufacturer to the world”.

Edward Burtynsky Manufactured Landscapes

The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies
111 Bear Street, Banff, Alberta
T1L 1A3 Canada
Phone: 1 403 762 2291

Opening hours:
Thursday – Monday 11am – 5pm
Tuesday and Wednesday – CLOSED

The Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies website

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Photographs: ‘Melbourne firestorm’ by Marcus Bunyan

Date: 7th February, 2009

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
On Port Phillip Bay
2009

Port Phillip Bay in the morning from the 48th floor of a tower in Southbank, Melbourne

Melbourne’s hottest day ever 46.4 degrees. Firestorms to the north of the city, Port Phillip Bay completely obscured, very strange light seen from 48th floor. The day, 7th February 2009, is now known as the Black Saturday bushfires.

180 people died and 414 were injured as a result of the fires.

It was a very scary day. I cannot imagine what it would have been like to have been there, up close. My condolences to all those that lost loved ones.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
On Port Phillip Bay
2009

Port Phillip Bay during firestorm, in the afternoon from the 48th floor of a tower in Southbank, Melbourne

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Looking towards the docks, Melbourne
2009

Looking towards the docks, Melbourne, during the firestorm

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Looking across the city
2009

Looking across the city with the Melbourne Star Observation Wheel (at the time called the Southern Star) in the foreground

Black Saturday bushfires

The Black Saturday bushfires were a series of bushfires that ignited or were burning across the Australian state of Victoria on and around Saturday, 7 February 2009 and were Australia’s all-time worst bushfire disasters. The fires occurred during extreme bushfire-weather conditions and resulted in Australia’s highest ever loss of life from a bushfire; there were 180 fatalities, and 414 were injured as a result of the fires.

As many as 400 individual fires were recorded on 7 February. Following the events of 7 February 2009 and its aftermath, that day has become widely referred to in Australia as Black Saturday.

Background

A week before the fires, a significant heatwave affected southeastern Australia. From 28-30 January, Melbourne broke temperature records by experiencing three consecutive days above 43°C (109 °F), with the temperature peaking at 45.1°C (113.2°F) on 30 January, the third hottest day in the city’s history.

The wave of heat was caused by a slow moving high-pressure system that settled over the Tasman Sea, with a combination of an intense tropical low located off the North West Australian coast and a monsoon trough over northern Australia, which produced ideal conditions for hot tropical air to be directed down over southeastern Australia.

The February fires commenced on a day when several localities across the state, including Melbourne, recorded their highest temperatures since records began in 1859. On 6 February 2009 – the day before the fires started – the Premier of Victoria John Brumby issued a warning about the extreme weather conditions expected on 7 February: “It’s just as bad a day as you can imagine and on top of that the state is just tinder-dry. People need to exercise real common sense tomorrow”. The Premier went on to state that it was expected to be the “worst day [of fires conditions] in the history of the state”.

Events of 7 February 2009

A total of 358 firefighting personnel, mainly from the Country Fire Authority (CFA) and Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE), were deployed across the state on Friday evening (6 February) in anticipation of the extreme conditions the following day. By mid-morning Saturday, hot northwesterly winds in excess of 100 kilometres per hour (62 mph) hit the state, accompanied by extremely high temperatures and extremely low humidity; a total fire ban was declared for the entire state of Victoria.

As the day progressed, all-time record temperatures were being reached. Melbourne hit 46.4°C (115.5°F), the hottest temperature ever recorded for the city and humidity levels dropped to as low as two percent. The McArthur Forest Fire Danger Index reached unprecedented levels, ranging from 160 to over 200. This was higher than the fire weather conditions experienced on Black Friday in 1939 and Ash Wednesday in 1983.

Around midday, as wind speeds were reaching their peak, an incorrectly-rigged SWER line was ripped down at Kilmore East. This sparked a bushfire that would become the deadliest and most intense firestorm ever experienced in Australia’s post-1788 history. The overwhelming majority of fire activity occurred between the afternoon of 7 February and 7:00 pm, when wind speed and temperature were at their highest, and humidity at its lowest.

Casualties

A total of 180 people were confirmed to have died as a result of the fires. The figure was originally estimated at 14 on the night of 7 February, and steadily increased over the following two weeks to 210. It was feared that it could rise as high as 240-280, but these figures were later revised down to 173 after further forensic examinations of remains, and after several people previously believed to be missing were located. This figure was later increased to 180 after several people succumbed to their injuries. …

Among the dead in the Kinglake West area were former Seven Network and Nine Network television personality Brian Naylor, and his wife Moiree. Actor Reg Evans and his partner, artist Angela Brunton, residing on a small farm in the St Andrews area, also died in the Kinglake area fire. Ornithologist Richard Zann perished in the Kinglake fire, together with his wife Eileen and daughter Eva.

Fatalities

General statistics

~ 164 people died in the fires themselves, 12 died later in hospital, and 4 died from other causes including car crashes

~ Out of the 180 deaths, 100 were male, 73 were female, and 7 were unidentified

~ There were 164 Australians, 9 foreign nationals, and 7 people of unidentified nationalities killed in the bushfires. The foreign nationals comprised citizens of:

~ Greece (2)
~ Indonesia (2)
~ Philippines (2)
~ Chile (1)
~ New Zealand (1)
~ United Kingdom (1)

~ 7 of the deaths occurred in bunkers of both fire-specific and non-fire-specific design

~ 1 firefighter, David Balfour, 47, from Gilmore, ACT, was killed near Cambarville on the night of 17 February, when a burnt-out tree fell on him as he attached a hose to a fire tanker

Location of deaths

~ Inside houses (113)
~ Outside houses (27)
~ In vehicles (11)
~ In garages (6)
~ Near vehicles (5)
~ On roadways (5)
~ Attributed to or associated with the fire but not within fire location (4)
~ On reserves (1)
~ In sheds (1)
~ Unknown locations (7)

Text from the Wikipedia website

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Looking across Melbourne
2009

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Looking across Melbourne
2009

Looking across Melbourne, Bolte Bridge towers in the foreground

More images from the set on Flickr website

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Exhibition: ‘Villa Edur. Eduardo Sourrouille’ at Artium, Basque Centre-Museum of Contemporary Art

Exhibition dates: 17th January – 19th April, 2009

Eduardo Sourrouille (Spanish, b. 1970)
Salon para Gaydjteam
2008

Artium, Basque Centre-Museum of Contemporary Art, presents the exhibition Villa Edur. Eduardo Sourrouille (North Gallery, from January 17 to April 19), an intimate self-portrait of this Basque artist based on more than 170 photographs taken in recent years. Sourrouille (Basauri, Bizkaia, 1970) proposes a metaphorical visit to the private rooms of his life, from the most superficial to the most intimate, to explore all aspects of the relationship with others and with oneself. Based on three different series of technically exquisite photographs, the author displays a world in which affection and the need to love and to feel loved predominates, in which there are ever-present allusions to questions such as sexual identity, the demands of friendship and recognition of links with others.

Villa Edur, the title of the first major one-man show of the work of Eduardo Sourrouille in a Museum, is taken from the maternal home of Eduardo Sourrouille, “the first legacy I received from her, the most valuable of all her bequests: besides being a home, it is an ongoing project, a driving force in my life and a reflection of my artistic career.” As in a home, the exhibition allows the visitors to explore a number of different rooms, each more intimate than the previous one, in which the artist receives visitors, who are converted into a host and guests.

Thus, in the exhibition, as in his house, “the host receives his guests at the entrance, where newcomers have access to proof of all the visitors that preceded them.” And in this way, the visitor sees two different series of portraits in the first room, Of the folder, people who visited my house and Of the folder, people who visited my house: room for… In the first Gallery, the artist presents different portraits of couples, consisting of himself with the different people with whom he has had some kind of relationship, be this emotional, family, friendship or any other kind. In this case, the photographs come very close to studio portraits, with carefully prepared, static poses, with hardly any atrezzo.

Each of these photographs is matched in the exhibition with another belonging to the second gallery of images, in which Sourrouille repeats the figures but in this case with a more accentuated theatricality, with a set design that may make the spectator imagine anecdotes or stories that occur in the encounter. The room, dominated by a more than one hundred photographs, reveals an entire “network of relationships, in which friendship, affection, love, fascination, desire, etc. (sometimes mixed up), have a place. The number of people including his father and other relatives, a large number of friends, artists such as Miguel Ángel Gaüeca, Manu Arregui and Ignacio Goitia, have been present here and have left their mark, and as the entire exhibition is imbued with games and humour, fictional figures such as Doña Rogelia are also included.

From this broad entrance, densely inhabited by figures “whose ghost lives on”, the artist invites first to step into his sitting room, the place in his house that “offers a precise image of what its owner is and would like to be.” In this space, Eduardo Sourrouille presents thirty self-portraits that “show of the people who have coexisted in me” and who “embody in the symbolic manner the different aspects of love and friendship, that can be found in me, as in any other individual.” With this aim in mind, Sourrouille presents in this exhibition space the Selfportrait with a friend series, thirty images in which the artist photographs himself with different animals, ironic portraits in which the human being appears to adopt certain characteristics of the animal.

There remain two more rooms in this house, the most private of all, where “intimate secret processes” take place. Sourrouille once again portrays himself with his father in the environment where the legacy is transmitted by means of simple rites, before going on to “the most secret room of all (…) in which the intimate world of each person is developed, in other words, what one does not necessarily confess but what one, nevertheless, has decided to experience.” Here, the spectator confronts a video entitled If you could see him through my eyes, in which the sheets are lowered slowly to discover the artist accompanied by two wild boar.

Press release from Basque Centre-Museum of Contemporary Art

Eduardo Sourrouille. Villa Edur from Artium Museoa on Vimeo.

Guided tour of Eduardo Sourrouille

The house that I show in Villa Edur is my house, as it was (is) my mother’s. It is the first legacy I received from her, the most valuable of all: in addition to a home, it is a perpetual project, a vital engine and a reflection of my career.

Eduardo Sourrouille (Spanish, b. 1970)
Self-portrait with impetuous friend
2008

“The house I depict in Villa Edur is my home, as it was (is) my mother’s home. It is the first legacy I received from her, the most valuable of all her bequests: besides being a home, it is an ongoing project, the driving force in my life and a reflection of my artistic career.

1

In my house, the host receives his guests at the entrance, where newcomers find proof of all the visitors that preceded them. Everything takes place in this zealously staged space, and so each decorative element is selected with the very same care. Objects, costumes and scenery make up, both individually and jointly, a system of symbols alluding to the nature of its own contents.

One by one, the portrait of the person in question confronts his situation within the context that was created for him and which, at the same time, he himself contributed to defining, and whose ghost still lives on. Each portrait determines both a singular identity and the kind of relationship in which at least two individuals interact and this, in turn, is the reflection of a specific experience. Each relationship leaves a visible and definitive mark on the other, like the dent in an aluminium vessel, which reasserts the experience and provides solace (provisionally) as it is the proof of our materiality. The inescapable need to make these marks involves the creation of an entire network of relationships in which friendship, affection, love, fascination, desire, etc. (sometimes mixed up), have a place.

Next to the door, raised on her solid, light shelf, my mother observes us and invites us in.

2

A door leads to the sitting room, a multifunctional and ultimately magical space, an environment in which everything that can be shown to visitors (plus part of what cannot be shown) is put on display. Definitively, the sitting room always offers a precise image of who its owner is and would like to be, of what he deliberately reveals to others and what he cannot prevent from being perceived through the cracks in his subconscious.

For this reason, the sitting room offers visitors a gallery of thirty self-portraits that show them the different people who coexist in me, what they can expect and the extent of the range of choices permitted. From a conceptual viewpoint and in a symbolic manner, these portraits embody different aspects of love and friendship that can be found in me, as in any other individual.

3

Beyond the sitting room lie the private rooms in which intimate, secret processes take place, ceremonies that create individuals and subsequently shape them, mould them and endorse them for the world. In one of these, I share the space with my father because this room is where his offspring receive their legacy through atavistic and recurrent rites – so simple that they scarcely cause pain. In another room, I (at last) dare to make the call I have learnt, the one that I use to invoke the Other, even though in some ways the person I seek is myself. There is anguish and confusion in that call, but also the desire to establish constructive communication, as I also offer myself to the Other so that he might leave his mark on me.

4

The intimate world of each person, in other words, what one does not necessarily confess but what one, nevertheless, has decided to experience, is developed in the most secret room of all. It is also the space reserved for the beauty that one finds by one’s own means – as it has not been revealed by any of one’s elders – and which therefore will be treasured as the exclusive property of its discoverer.

I live in Villa Edur because all the relationships that crystallise around me also reside there. Every individual harbours a space that he uses as a scenario to display his relationships, his family, lovers, friends, and for life, everything that is deposited with the passing of time, following the structure of his stage machinery. That is the space that is often called home.”

Ianko López Ortiz de Artiñano for Eduardo Sourrouille

Text from the Artium, Basque Centre-Museum of Contemporary Art website