Anne Zahalka (Australian, b. 1957) National Portrait Gallery #1 1992/2010
A patchy exhibition by Anne Zahalka at Arc One Gallery, Melbourne. I can’t help feeling that we have seen this before, and done better, in the work of Candida Hofer and Thomas Struth.
Although the square photographs are taken by a medium format film camera (a Hasselblad I suspect) and printed as C-type prints (hence the lush colours) because the camera was handheld this means that, in some of the photographs, little is actually in focus. While this may add to the immediacy of the images, like a quick snapshot as Zahalka prowls the galleries, it detracts from the clarity of the previsualisation of the artist whilst also detracting from the visual depth of field that the subject matter needed.
On the positive side there are some lovely spatial relationships between the figures in the paintings and the busts on the pedestals: in one particular photograph (National Portrait Gallery #2, 2010) there is an almost symbiotic relationship between the man in the painting at left, the bust of the man on the pedestal and the man at the very left in the right hand painting. This arrangement is like a triple portrait of the same person. A similar understanding of the spatial relationships within the image frame can be seen in National Portrait Gallery #1 (see photograph above), one of the more successful photographs in the series, with it’s wonderful red flocked wallpaper and gilt frames.
On the right hand side of the gallery there are numerous vertical colour photographs taken on a 35mm camera that feature the back of people looking at a work of art (see National Gallery of Australia, Masters of Paris #5, 2010). These are basic photographs that seek to conceptualise the act of looking at art as a tourist industry to no great affect or insight into the condition being examined.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Angela Connor and Arc One Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photograph for a larger version of the image.
Anne Zahalka (Australian, b. 1957) National Portrait Gallery #5 2010
Anne Zahalka (Australian, b. 1957) National Portrait Gallery #3 1992/2010
Anne Zahalka (Australian, b. 1957) Prado Museum, Madrid 1992/2010
Arc One Gallery 45 Flinders Lane Melbourne, 3000 Phone: +61 3 9650 0589
Many thankx to Mark Hislop and the Monash Gallery of Art for allowing me to reproduce the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photos for a larger version of the image.
Photographer unknown Matron Grace Wilson doing a round, Mudros 1915 Gelatin silver print Australian War Memorial
NOTHING could have prepared Grace Wilson for her first day at Turks Head Point on the drought-stricken island of Lemnos, where she was to run a field hospital for injured soldiers being shipped out from Gallipoli, 65km away.
“Things are just too awful for words… we found only a bare piece of ground with wounded men in pain, still in filthy, bloodstained clothes, lying amid stones and thistles,” she wrote in her diary.
Matron Wilson and her 40 nurses had arrived in the island’s Mudros harbour aboard the Dunluce Castle on August 2, 1915, to discover to their dismay there was no sign of the supply ship Ascot, which had been due there a week earlier with the tents, medical equipment, crates of tinned food and other essentials.
In a bizarre display of military pomp, a regimental piper led the women – wearing heavy, ankle-length dresses and petticoats – on a long march in searing summer heat to what would be their home for the most harrowing five months of their lives…”
Norman Bradford Stuckey (Australian, 1914-1983) The Pimple, Shaggy Ridge, New Guinea 1943 Toned silver gelatin print Australian War Memorial
The Battle of the Shaggy Ridge was part of the Markham and Ramu Valley – Finisterre Range campaign, consisting of a number of actions fought by Australian and Japanese troops in Papua New Guinea in World War II. Following the Allied capture of Lae and Nadzab, the Australian 9th Division had been committed to a quick follow up action on the Huon Peninsula in an effort to cut off the withdrawing Japanese. Once the situation on the Huon Peninsula stabilised in late 1943, the 7th Division had pushed into the Markham and Ramu Valleys towards the Finisterre Range with a view to pushing north towards the coast around Bogadjim, where they would meet up with Allied forces advancing around the coast from the Huon Peninsula, before advancing towards Madang.
A series of minor engagements followed in the foothills of the Finisterre Range before the Australians came up against strong resistance centred around the Kankiryo Saddle and Shaggy Ridge, which consisted of several steep features, dotted with heavily defended rocky outcrops. After a preliminary assault on a forward position dubbed The Pimple in late December 1943, the Australians renewed their assault in mid-January 1944 and over the course of a fortnight eventually captured the Japanese positions on Shaggy Ridge and the Kankiryo Saddle, after launching a brigade-sized attack up three avenues of advance. In the aftermath, the Australians pursued the Japanese to the coast and subsequently took Madang, linking up with US and Australian forces.
Barbara Joan Isaacson (Australian, 1923-2017) Journalist Iris Dexter standing under the starboard engine of a Douglas C-47 aircraft February-March 1943 Gelatin silver print 2008 Image courtesy of the AMW
Joan Barbara Isaacson was born into a dynamic and family. Her mother, Lynka Isaacson (also known as Caroline Isaacson), was the first female journalist to be employed by a metropolitan newspaper in Australia, and was a strong role model for her daughter. After the war Isaacson’s mother and brother set up the Southern Cross publishing business.
Isaacson attended the Melbourne Technical College, where she studied photography. When she was 18 years old she joined the Australian Women’s Army Service (AWAS). Working in the Army Public Relations section, she travelled the east coast taking documentary and recruitment propaganda photographs and meeting press journalists and photographers.
In 1943 Isaacson married Richard L. Beck, a graphic designer and photographer. During the period from 1946-1948 they set up their own photographic business in Melbourne, specialising in child portraiture. Isaacson took over the business c.1950 when her husband went back to working as a graphic designer, and continued to manage the studio until the birth of her third baby. After her departure from the photography business Isaacson was involved in a variety of other ventures and gave up her photography.
Max Dupain (Australian, 1911-1992) The dozing soldier (Tired Soldier in Train North Queensland) 1943 Gelatin silver print Australian War Memorial
Photographs are an inseparable part of our memory of the First and Second World Wars. They help us remember events which many of us have no direct experience.
Monash Gallery of Art’s new special exhibition Icon & archive: photography and the World Wars draws on the Australian War Memorial’s vast photographic collection to consider the relationship of photography and war. This extraordinary exhibition opens to the public on Friday 16 April.
Direct from the Australian War Memorial, Icon & archive demonstrates the powerful role played by photography in the efforts of Australians to make sense of and remember the terrible events of the First and the Second World Wars.
“Visitors to MGA will see many ‘iconic’ photographs that have become lodged in our national memory,” said MGA Director and curator of the exhibition, Dr Shaune Lakin.
“Icon & archive also presents previously unseen photographs to showcase the experiences of both service personnel and the families left behind during the wars. These photographs provide contemporary audiences with a remarkable picture of the effects of the World Wars on private, family and social life in Australia. In doing this, the exhibition will help members of our community better understand that experience and its relevance to contemporary Australia,” said Dr Lakin.
Icon & archive will play a significant role in the City of Monash’s Anzac Day commemorations, in this the 95th anniversary of the landing at Gallipoli. Icon & archive includes some of the most historically significant pictures from Gallipoli, as well as other important sites involving Australians during both the First and the Second World Wars.”
Press release from the Monash Gallery of Art website [Online] Cited 09/07/2022. No longer available online
Algemon Darge (Australian, 1878-1941) Private George Beamish Swanton with his wife Nellie and their young baby Joan 1915 Gelatin silver print Australian War Memorial
Studio portrait of 1159 Private (Pte) George Beamish Swanton, Australian 24th Battalion, of Werribee, Victoria, with his wife Nellie and young baby, Joan Helen. Pte Swanton enlisted on 28 April 1915 and embarked on board HMAT Euripides on 8 May 1915. He died of wounds on 28 July 1916 at Pozieres, France. Pte Swanton had two brothers who were also killed in action; 222 Pte John (Jack) Swanton, 2nd Battalion, enlisted on 27 August 1914 and was killed in action at Gallipoli Peninsula on 2 May 1915; and 2760 Pte Henry Swanton, 29th Battalion, enlisted on 5 March 1916 and was killed in action at Pozieres, France on 2 November 1916.
This is one of a series of photographs taken by the Darge Photographic Company which had the concession to take photographs at the Broadmeadows and Seymour army camps during the First World War. In the 1930’s, the Australian War Memorial purchased the original glass negatives from Algernon Darge, along with the photographers’ notebooks. The notebooks contain brief details, usually a surname or unit name, for each negative. The names are transcribed as they appear in the notebooks.
Norman Bradford Stuckey (Australian, 1914-1983) Engineers exhausted after destroying obstacles, Tarakan 1945 Gelatin silver print Australian War Memorial
The Battle of Tarakan was the first stage in the Borneo campaign of 1945. It began with an amphibious landing by Allied forces on 1 May, code-named Operation Oboe One; the Allied ground forces were drawn mainly from the Australian 26th Brigade, but included a small element of Netherlands East Indies personnel. The main objective of the landing was capture of the island’s airfield. While the battle ended with success for the Allied forces over the Japanese defenders, this victory is generally regarded as having not justified its costs. The airfield was so heavily damaged that it ultimately could not be repaired in time to make it operational for other phases of the Allied campaign in Borneo.
Asti Studios Studio portrait of an unidentified First World War soldier in Australian service uniform, including greatcoat and slouch hat c. 1914-1918 New South Wales, Sydney Toned silver gelatin print Australian War Memorial
Monash Gallery of Art 860 Ferntree Gully Road, Wheelers Hill Victoria 3150 Australia Phone: + 61 3 8544 0500
A huge gallery crawl on Wednesday last saw me take in exhibitions at Nellie Castan Gallery (Malleus Melficarum: strong sculptural work by James and Eleanor Avery; Broken Canon: vibrant mixed media collages by Marc Freeman); Anita Traverso Gallery (Peristereonas: sculptures, photographs and mixed media by Barry Thompson); John Buckley Gallery (Perpetua by Emma can Leest, beautiful cut paper works; rather mundane paintings by Christian Lock); Karen Woodbury Gallery (Every breath you take: wonderful galaxy-like paintings, perhaps as seen by the Hubble telescope, with a geometric / cellular base by Lara Merrett); The Centre for Contemporary Photography (Event horizon: a group exhibition that “engages the horizon as a means to establish a physical locality with relation to the Earth’s surface and more broadly to the universe of which it is a miniscule component.” An exhibition that left me rather cold); and ACCA (Towards an elegant solution by Peter Cripps, again a singularly unemotional engagement with the precise, contained work: interesting for how the work explores spatial environments but in an abstract, intellectual way).
The stand out work from this mammoth day was Jill Orr: Vision at Jenny Port Gallery. Simply put, it was the strongest, most direct, most emotionally powerful work that I saw all day.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Amelia Douglas and Jenny Port Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in this posting.
Jill Orr (Australian, b. 1952) Megan 2009
Jill Orr’s new participatory performances are photographs of children from Avoca Primary School painted with white clay from the area, displayed in pairs. The children are photographed once with eyes open, once with eyes closed. Orr asked the children to imagine their future life when they had their eyes closed. The key to the work is a group photograph of the ghostly children outside the primary school where everyone is isolated from each other (see photograph below).
“White faces loom up out of a dark ground, described by Orr as a void. On the surface these portraits are finely crafted, the skin of masked face becomes one with the digital file to create a facial landscape. The materiality of the face and the photographic file are exposed for the viewer. Titling the series ‘vision’ Orr ventures into a ‘haptic visuality’ where “vision itself can be tactile, as though one were touching a film with one’s eyes.”
From the catalogue essay by Professor Anne Marsh, Monash University
In the performance, the ritual of being photographed, Orr instructs the children who are placed under the surveillance of the camera. “We are confronted with the pose, the conscious composition of the image to be photographed, the inherent constructedness of the posed photograph.”1 The child assumes the pose by which they wish to be memorialised. The gaze (of the camera, of the viewer) is returned / or not in this spectacle.
Something happens when we look at these photographs. The text of the photographs becomes intertextual, producing as Barthes understands a “plurality of meanings and signifying / interpretive gestures that escape the reduction of knowledge to fixed, monological re-presentations, or presences.”2 This is because, as Foucault observes, texts “are caught up in a system of references to … other texts, other sentences: it is a node within a network … Its unity is variable and relative.”3
The photographs invite us to share not only the mapping of the surface of the skin and the mapping of place (the history of white people living on the land in country Australia) and identity but the sharing of inner light, the light of the imaginary as well – and in this observation the images become unstable, open to reinterpretation. The distance between viewer and subject is transcended through an innate understanding of inner and outer light. The photographs seduce, meaning, literally, to be led astray.
As American photographer Minor White, who photographed in meditation hoping for a revelation in spirit though connection between person > subject > camera > negative > print, observes in one of his Three Canons
When the image mirrors the man And the man mirrors the subject Something might take over 4
Here the power of the photographer acting in isolation, the modernist tenet of authorship, is overthrown. In it’s place, “White supposes a relationship with subject that is a two way street: by granting the world some role in its own representation we create a photograph that is not so much a product solely of individual actions as it is the result of a negotiation in which the world and all its subjects might participate.”5 The autobiography of a soul born in the age of mechanical reproduction. This is the power of these photographs for something intangible within the viewer does take over. I found myself looking at the photographs again and again for small nuances, the detail of hairs on the head, the imagining of what the person was thinking about with their eyes closed: their future, their fears, their hopes, the ‘active imagination as a means to visualise sustainable futures’ (Orr, 2010).
These photographs seem to lengthen or protract time through this haptic touching of inner light. As Pablo Helguera observes in his excellent essay How To Understand the Light on a Landscape that examines different types of light (including experiental light, somber light, home light, ghost light, the light of the deathbed, protective light, artificial light, working light, Sunday light, used light, narrated light, the last light of day, hotel light, transparent light, after light, the light of the truly blind and the light of adolescence but not, strangely, inner light)
“Experience is triggered by light, but not exclusively by the visible light of the electro-magnetic spectrum. What the human eye is incapable to perceive is absorbed by other sensory parts of the body, which contribute to the perception that light causes an effect that goes beyond the merely visual …
There is the LIGHT OF ADOLESCENCE, a blinding light that is similar to the one we feel when we are asleep facing the sun and we feel its warmth but don’t see it directly. Sometimes it marks the unplace, perhaps the commonality of all places or perhaps, for those who are pessimists, the unplaceness of every location …
We may choose to openly embrace the darkness of light, and thus let ourselves through the great gates of placehood, where we can finally accept the unexplainable concreteness of our moments for what they are.”6
In the imagination of the darkness that lies behind these children’s closed eyes is the commonality of all places, a shared humanity of memory, of dreams. These photographs testify to our presence and ask us to decide how we feel about our life, our place and the relation to that (un)placeness where we must all, eventually, return.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
1/ Feiereisen, Florence and Pope, Daniel. “True Fiction and Fictional Truths: The Enigmatic in Sebald’s Use of Images in The Emigrants” in Patt, Lise (ed.,). Searching for Sebald: Photography after W.G. Sebald. Los Angeles: The Institute of Cultural Inquiry, 2007, p. 175.
2/ Barthes, Roland. “From Work to Text” in Image, Music, Text. trans. S. Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977 quoted in Thumlert, Kurt. Intervisuality, Visual Culture, and Education. [Online] Cited 10/08/2006. www.forkbeds.com/visual-pedagogy.htm (link no longer active)
3/ Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Vintage, 1973 quoted in Thumlert, Kurt. Intervisuality, Visual Culture, and Education. [Online] Cited 10/08/2006. www.forkbeds.com/visual-pedagogy.htm (link no longer active)
4/ White, Minor. Mirrors, Messages and Manifestations. Aperture, 1969
5/ Leo, Vince. Review of Mirrors, Messages and Manifestations on the Amazon website [Online] Cited 26/06/2010
6/ Helguera, Pablo. “How to Understand the Light on a Landscape,” in Patt, Lise (ed.,). Searching for Sebald: Photography after W.G. Sebald. Los Angeles: The Institute of Cultural Inquiry, 2007, pp. 110-119
Jill Orr (Australian, b. 1952) Jacinta 2009
Jill Orr (Australian, b. 1952) Avoca Primary School 2009
Jill Orr’s work centres on issues of the psycho-social and environmental where she draws on land and identities. Grappling with the balance and discord that exists between the human spirit, art and nature, Orr has, since the 1970s, delighted, shocked and moved audiences through her performance installations.
This current body of work involved children from the Avoca Primary School as active participants in Orr’s performance for the camera. The result is a series of high contrast black and white photographic portraits, which are shown as diptychs portraying the different states of seeing both outwardly and inwardly. One of each pair frames the child looking directly at the camera. The gaze meets the viewer. Who is looking at whom? The second captures the child whose eyes are closed. An inner world is intimated, but not accessible to the viewer.
In terms of the ‘gaze’, these works turn to the child as conveyer of the imaginary engaging both within and without. “I have found that creative acts require the visionary sensibilities of both the inner and outer world to operate simultaneously, consciously and unconsciously as dual aspects of the one action. In this instance the action is that of active imagination as a means to visualise sustainable futures.” (Jill Orr, 2010). The portraits also reflect the present relationship to place that is etched into the faces of youth as already kissed by the harsh Australian sun.
Avoca is one of many townships that has been socially, economically and environmentally affected by drought and climate change. The portraits are created against this background.
Text from the Jenny Port Gallery website [Online] Cited 26/06/2010 no longer available online
Jill Orr (Australian, b. 1952) Vision installation photographs at Jenny Port Gallery June 2010 Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Pamela Marcil and the Detroit Institute of Arts for allowing me to reproduce the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Marcus
“I am always looking outside, trying to look inside, trying to say something that is true. But maybe nothing is really true. Except what’s out there. And what’s out there is constantly changing.”
Detroit Experiences: Robert Frank Photographs, 1955 showcases more than 50 rare and many never-before-seen black-and-white photographs taken in Detroit by legendary artist Robert Frank. The exhibition will be on view at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) March 3 – July 4, 2010. The exhibition is free with museum admission.
In 1955 and 1956 Robert Frank traveled the U.S. taking photographs for his groundbreaking book The Americans, published in 1958. With funding from a prestigious Guggenheim grant, he set out to create a large visual record of America, and Detroit was one of his early stops. Inspired by autoworkers, the cars they made, along with local lunch counters, drive-in movies and public parks such as Belle Isle, Frank transformed everyday experiences of Detroiters into an extraordinary visual statement about American life.
According to Frank, The Americans included “things that are there, anywhere, and everywhere … a town at night, a parking lot, the man who owns three cars and the man who owns none … the dream of grandeur, advertising, neon lights … gas tanks, post offices and backyards …” The exhibition includes nine Detroit images that were published in The Americans, as well as, for the first time, an in-depth body of work representative of Frank’s Detroit, its working-class culture and automotive industry.
Frank was drawn to Detroit partly by a personal fascination with the automobile, but also saw its presence and effect on American culture as essential to his series. Frank was one of the few photographers allowed to take photographs at the famous Ford Motor Company River Rouge factory, where he was amazed to witness the transformation of raw materials into fully assembled cars. In a letter to his wife he wrote, “Ford is an absolutely fantastic place … this one is God’s factory and if there is such a thing – I am sure that the devil gave him a helping hand to build what is called Ford’s River Rouge Plant.” Frank spent two days taking pictures at the Ford factory, photographing workers on the assembly lines and manning machines by day, and following them as they ventured into the city at night.
Whether in the disorienting surroundings of a massive factory or during the solitary and alienating moments of individuals in parks and on city streets, the Swiss-born photographer looked beneath the surface of life in the U.S. and found a culture that challenged his perceptions and popular notions of the American Dream. Further accentuating his view of America, Frank developed an unconventional photographic style innovative and controversial in its time. Photographing quickly, Frank sometimes tilted and blurred compositions, presenting people and their surroundings in fleeting and fragmentary moments with an unsentimental eye.
Beat poet Jack Kerouac expressed the complex nature of the artist and his work in a passage from his introduction to The Americans stating, “Robert Frank, Swiss, unobtrusive, nice, with that little camera that he raises and snaps with one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world.”
Born in 1924 in Zurich, Switzerland, Frank emigrated to the U.S. in 1947. He worked on assignments for magazines from 1948–53, but his photographic books garnered the highest acclaim. After publishing The Americans, he began filmmaking and directed the early experimental masterpiece Pull My Daisy, in collaboration with Jack Kerouac in 1959. Frank continues to work in both film and photography and has been the subject of many traveling exhibitions in recent years. The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. established Frank’s photographic archive in 1990 and organised his first traveling retrospective, “Moving Out, in 1995” as well as a 2009 exhibition “Looking In: Robert Frank’s “The Americans”.” Frank lived in Mabou, Nova Scotia, and New York City with his wife, artist June Leaf.
In 1955, Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank traveled across the United States photographing how Americans live, work, and spend their leisure time. Detroit was a critical stop on his itinerary, as the Motor City was world renowned for its automobiles along with its factories and labor force. Frank spent several days in Detroit at its legendary Ford Motor Company Rouge Plant and visited dime-store lunch counters, drive-ins, and public parks as well. He may have found Stetson-wearing spectators at a local rodeo an unlikely and uncharacteristic subject for Detroit – a large, industrial, midwestern city. Nonetheless he included Rodeo – Detroit, in addition to eight other photographs taken in the city, as part of the 83 images found in his ground-breaking photo book The Americans from 1958. The book brought Frank great acclaim for his critical commentary on America during the boom years following World War II.
From Bulletin of the Detroit Institute of Arts 89 (2015)
Exhibition dates: 21st November 2009 – 3rd July, 2010
Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999) Eleanor, Chicago 1949 Gelatin silver print Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
I admire the use of strong horizontals and verticals in the work of Harry Callahan and the exquisite sense of space, stillness and sensuality he creates within the image plane. A true American master. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999) Eleanor and Barbara 1953 Gelatin silver print Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999) Eleanor and Barbara, Lake Michigan 1953 Gelatin silver print Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999) Eleanor and Barbara c. 1954 Gelatin silver print Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999) Eleanor, Chicago 1953 Gelatin silver print Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999) Detroit 1943 Gelatin silver print Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The brilliant graphic sensibility of Harry Callahan (1912-1999), a major figure in American photography, is the focus of Harry Callahan: American Photographer at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA). Debuting November 21, the exhibition features approximately 40 photographs that survey the major visual themes of the artist’s career. It celebrates the Museum’s important recent acquisitions – by both purchase and gift – of Callahan’s photographs and showcases significant examples of his artistry from the collections of friends of the MFA. The many sensitive pictures that Callahan made of his wife Eleanor, his depictions of passers-by on the street, his carefully composed landscapes and close-ups from nature, and experimental darkroom abstractions reveal a wide-ranging talent that was enormously influential.
“Harry Callahan was one of the most innovative photographers working in America in the mid 20th-century,” said Malcolm Rogers, Ann and Graham Gund Director of the MFA. “His elegantly spare, introspective photographs demonstrate his lyricism and the originality of his sense of design.”
The Detroit-born photographer, whose career spanned six decades, became interested in the camera in the late 1930s while working as a Chrysler Corporation shipping clerk. He was largely self-taught, and attracted admiration early on for his originality. By 1946, Callahan was hired as a photography instructor by the Hungarian-born artist László Moholy-Nagy for the Institute of Design, a Bauhaus-inspired school of art and design in Chicago. In 1961, Callahan was invited to head the photography program at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where he was based until retiring to Atlanta two decades later.
“Harry Callahan’s approach helped shape American photography in the second half of the 20th-century,” said Anne Havinga, Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Senior Curator of Photographs, who organised the exhibition. “His way of seeing inspired countless followers and continues to feel fresh today.”
Callahan concentrated on a handful of personal subjects in his work, exploring each theme repeatedly throughout his career. These include portraits of his wife Eleanor, depictions of anonymous pedestrians, expressive details of the urban and natural landscape, and experimental darkroom abstractions. The MFA exhibition is organised into five themes: Eleanor, Pedestrians, Architecture, Landscapes, and Darkroom Abstractions …
Press release from the MFA website [Online] Cited 20/06/2010. No long available online
Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999) Eleanor 1948 Gelatin silver print Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999) Chicago 1950 Gelatin silver print Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999) Eleanor, Chicago 1949 Gelatin silver print Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999) Eleanor and Barbara (baby carriage) 1952 Gelatin silver print Courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
In 1936, around the time that Callahan began to explore photography, he married Eleanor Knapp, who served as one of his first and most frequent subjects. Callahan’s portraits of his wife, characterised by their intimate yet detached poetry, have become a landmark in the history of photography. In the photograph Eleanor (about 1948, see second photograph above), Callahan portrays his wife in a private interior setting, facing away from the camera. After the birth of their daughter Barbara in 1950, she too entered these family pictures, which capture the intimate moments of daily life as seen in the photograph, Eleanor and Barbara (1953, see photograph second from top).
Callahan photographed the natural landscape throughout his career, focusing on its evocative forms and textures. In images such as Aix-en-Provence, France (1957), he explored the visual effects that he could create either through high contrast or closely related tonalities. Callahan also utilised a range of different experimental darkroom techniques – from photographing the beam of a flashlight in a darkened room, to developing one print from multiple negatives. Many of his multi-exposure pictures were made by superimposing images from popular culture onto studies of urban life. Callahan’s openness to experimentation was stimulating for the many students who worked with him.
Callahan made many of his best known images during his 15 years in Chicago, where he also began his role as an influential teacher. During the 1950s, the photographer embarked on a series of close-ups of anonymous pedestrians in the streets of Chicago, most of them women. Using a 35mm camera with a pre-focused telephoto lens, he captured passersby unaware of his presence, resulting in snapshot-like images that record unsuspecting subjects absorbed in private thought or action, such as Chicago (1950, see photograph above), a close-up of a preoccupied woman’s face. Callahan returned to this theme frequently, working in both black and white and colour.
Callahan was repeatedly drawn to architectural and urban subjects. Prior to moving to Chicago, he explored the spaces of Detroit, photographing the formal patterns he discovered there. In Detroit (1943, see photograph above), Callahan depicts a street scene, with the people in transit appearing as a pattern. He experimented with colour in these pictures as early as the 1940s, but he worked more extensively in colour later in his career, from the 1970s onward.
Text from the Art Tatler website [Online] Cited 20/06/2010. No long available online
Media opening of European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photo: Marcus Bunyan
A huge posting – and another ‘you saw it here first’ on Art Blart!
A simple, spacious hang shows off some wonderfully vibrant paintings in the new Winter Masterpieces blockbuster at the NGV. The use of strong yellow and pale grey wall colour compliments the paintings. Conversely, other rooms have a dark brown and very dark grey wall colour. Some people will like the effect but I found the dark grey a little too sombre and heavy in the room dedicated to the work of Max Beckmann. Overall a fantastic range of paintings, especially those by the German Expressionists and a luminous painting by Odilon Redon. To see them in Australia is a joy to behold.
Note on the photographs: All the photographs were taken with a timed exposure with the camera on a tripod. While this leads to ghosting as people walk through the shot it also adds a sense of the exhibition as a living entity. I find it preferable to the use of flash photography as flash destroys any ambience that the rooms possess. The photographs are in chronological order, proceeding from the beginning of the exhibition to the end.
PS. Thankx to the many people who have emailed me saying that they love the photographs, especially to Sue Coffey who said the posting looked superb = it makes it all worthwhile!
Media opening of European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbei’s panting Goethe in the Roman countryside 1787 at the exhibition European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein (German, 1751-1829) Goethe in the Roman countryside (Goethe in der römischen Campagna) 1787 Oil on canvas 161.0 x 197.5cm Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main Acquired in 1878 as a gift by Baroness Salomon von Rothschild
Installation view of the exhibition European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbei’s panting Goethe in the Roman countryside 1787 at the exhibition European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of the exhibition European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Alfred Sisley (English, 1839-1899) Banks of the Seine in Autumn (installation view) 1879 Oil on canvas Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of Charles-Francois Daubigny (French 1817-1878) French Orchard at Harvest Time (Le verger) 1876 at the exhibition European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Charles-Francois Daubigny (French, 1817-1878) French Orchard at Harvest Time (Le verger) (installation view) 1876 Oil on canvas Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation view of Odilon Redon (French 1840-1916) Christ and the Samaritan Woman (Le Christ et la Samaritaine) c. 1895 at the exhibition European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Odilon Redon (French, 1840-1916) Christ and the Samaritan Woman (Le Christ et la Samaritaine) c. 1895 Oil on canvas 64.8 x 50.0cm Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main Acquired in 1960
Installation view of the exhibition European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photo: Marcus Bunyan
“The appeal of the Städel Institute lies in the tremendous energy filling that confined space. Virtually all of the great emotions that have lived in the souls of the peoples of Europe are there, and all in superb works.”
Alfred Lichtwark, Director the Hamburg Museum, 1905
One of the world’s finest collections of 19th and 20th century art is showing exclusively in Melbourne as the seventh exhibition in the hugely popular Melbourne Winter Masterpieces series at the National Gallery of Victoria.
European Masters: Städel Museum, 19th-20th Century brings together almost 100 works by 70 artists from one of Germany’s oldest and most respected museums, the Städel Museum in Frankfurt.
Dr Gerard Vaughan, NGV Director, said: “European Masters presents a comprehensive overview of the Städel Museum’s holdings of painting and sculpture from the last two centuries of European art. This blockbuster exhibition provides a superb survey of the key artistic movements of the time, including Realism, Impressionism and Post Impressionism, German Romanticism, Expressionism and Modernism, and French Symbolism.”
European Masters then traces the development of German art, introducing audiences to rarely seen Realist and Symbolist masterpieces from artists such as Max Liebermann and Franz von Stuck.
A major highlight of the exhibition is a powerful selection of German Expressionist paintings, with ten poignant works by Max Beckmann, including The synagogue in Frankfurt am Main and his powerful Double Portrait, all of which have left the Städel for the first time to be shown outside of Europe.
The exhibition also includes a breathtaking selection of Swiss, Belgian and Dutch works by artists such as Arnold Böcklin, Fernand Khnopff and Vincent Van Gogh.
“Exclusive to Melbourne, European Masters provides an unprecedented opportunity to see a spectacular group of masterpieces spanning the dynamic and transformative years of the 19th and 20th centuries. There is something in this exhibition for everyone, from the beauty and immediacy of French Impressionism to the raw power of German Expressionism. This is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see superb pictures that rarely travel outside of Europe,” said Dr. Vaughan.
Founded in 1816 by the Frankfurt financier Johann Friedrich Städel, the Städel Museum has one of the world’s finest art collections. The collection boasts 2700 paintings, 600 sculptures and over 100,000 prints and drawings documenting the development of European art and culture.
This year Melbourne Winter Masterpieces includes European Masters: Städel Museum, 19th-20th Century at the NGV, and Tim Burton at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.
Installation views of Max Liebermann (German 1847-1935, lived in France 1874-78) Samson and Delilah (Simson und Delila) 1901 at the exhibition European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Max Liebermann (German, 1847-1935, lived in France 1874-1878) Samson and Delilah (Simson und Delila) 1901 Oil on canvas 151.2 x 212.0cm Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main Acquired in 1910
Max Klinger (German, 1857-1920) Portrait of a Roman woman on a flat roof (Bildnis einer Römerin auf einem Dach in Rom) 1891 Oil on canvas 182 x 182cm Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main Acquired in 1926 as a gift in commemoration of Walther Rathenau
Installation view at left of Max Klinger (German 1857-1920) Portrait of a Roman woman on a flat roof (Bildnis einer Römerin auf einem Dach in Rom) 1891 at the exhibition European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Max Beckmann room, installation view of European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Max Beckmann (German 1884-1950, worked in the Netherlands 1937-1947, United States 1947-1950) Female dancer (Tanzerin) (installation view) c. 1935 Bronze Photo: Marcus Bunyan
Installation views of European Masters: Städel Museum 19th – 20th Century, Winter Masterpieces at the National Gallery of Victoria Photos: Marcus Bunyan
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (German, 1880-1938) Reclining woman in a white chemise (Liegende Frau im weiβen Hemd) 1909 Oil on canvas 95.0 x 121.0cm Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main Acquired in 1950
Many thankx to Fenna Lampe and the Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam for allowing me to publish the photographs in the post. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
a shimmer of possibility is the latest project by influential British photographer Paul Graham. This work was created during Graham’s many travels through the United States since 2002. a shimmer of possibility consists of twelve sequences varying in number: from just a few images to more than ten. Each sequence offers an informal look at the life of ordinary, individual Americans – from a woman eating to a man waiting for the bus. The sequences focus attention on very ordinary things, which Graham has photographed with affection and curiosity.
Each sequence is a short, casual encounter, where we consider for a moment something that attracts our attention. Then life goes on, full of new possibilities. The way Graham presents the diverse sequences in the exhibition is crucial. Instead of being shown in a linear fashion, a sequence fans out over the wall like a cloud. Due to the carefully considered and inventive structure, no viewing direction or predominant hierarchy is imposed on the individual images. The eye of the viewer wanders over the photos, offering the opportunity to make personal connections in an associative manner.
a shimmer of possibility can be seen as the ultimate antithesis of what Henri Cartier-Bresson called ‘the decisive moment’. This French master endeavoured to record exactly those moments where subject matter and formal aspects combined perfectly in a single image. Paul Graham, by contrast, defends how we normally look around us. We move through the world and look from left to right, see something that grabs our attention, move towards it, glance to the side while en route, pass that by and continue on our way. Observation is a never-ending series of ‘non-decisive moments’, full of potential for anyone who is open to see it.”
Text from the Foam website [Online] Cited 06/06/2010 no longer available online
Graham walked the streets of residential neighbourhoods in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana, and the sidewalks of New Orleans, Las Vegas, and New York, and when he encountered someone who caught his eye, he photographed them: an older woman retrieving her mail; a young man and woman playing basketball at dusk; a couple returning from the supermarket. Graham followed people navigating their way through crowded city sidewalks, and tracked and photographed lone figures crossing a busy roadway, unaware of the camera.
Reviewing several trips’ worth of photographs on the large, flat screen of his computer, Graham realised that the more or less randomly gathered pictures could be united into multipart works. As in a poem, where language and rhythm organise words, lines, and stanzas into an imaginative interpretation of a subject, Graham’s imposed yet open-ended structures imply – through close-ups, crosscutting, and juxtapositions of people and nature-specific narratives and overarching ideas. Images of people placed in tandem with other people and with nature suggest the flow of life, pointing to the unknown and the possibility of change, with nature acting as a balm, whether as raindrops, trees silhouetted against a burning sunset, or the bright green grass on a highway meridian.
In his reconstruction of the world in pictures, Graham describes an America at odds with itself, filled with contradictions and inconsistencies. Yet, through the gloom, the small felicities of life peek through. Fluid, filled with desire, and marked by extremes, his view is what the late curator, critic, and photographer John Szarkowski called, in another context, a “just metaphor” for our times.
Inspired by Chekhov’s short stories – and by his own contagious joy in the book form – photographer Paul Graham has created A Shimmer of Possibility, comprised of 12 individual books, each a photographic short story of everyday life. Some are simple and linear – a man smokes a cigarette while he waits for a bus in Las Vegas, or the camera tracks an autumn walk in Boston. Some entwine two, three or four scenes – while a couple carry their shopping home in Texas, a small child dances with a plastic bag in a garden. Some watch a quiet narrative break unexpectedly into a sublime moment – as a man cuts the grass in Pittsburgh it begins to rain, until the low sun breaks through and illuminates each drop. Graham’s filmic haikus shun any forceful summation or tidy packaging. Instead, they create the impression of life flowing around and past us while we stand and stare, and make it hard not to share the artist’s quiet astonishment with its beauty and grace. The 12 books gathered here are identical in trim size, but vary in length from just a single photograph to 60 pages of images made at one street corner.
Text from the Mack website [Online] Cited 14/08/2019
a shimmer of possibility by Paul Graham 12 volumes 376 pages, 167 colour plates 24.2 cm x 31.8 cm 12 cloth covered hardbacks Limited edition of 1,000 sets MACK ISBN: 9783865214836 Publication date: October 2007
Curators: Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr., Director of the Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation, and Robin Garr, Director of Education, Bruce Museum
Many thankx to Mike Horyczun, Director of Public Relations and the Bruce Museum for allowing me to publish the images in the posting. Please click on the photographs for even larger version of the image.
Marcus
Alexander Hesler (American, 1823-1895) Abraham Lincoln June 3, 1860 Springfield, Illinois
Alexander Hesler or Hessler (1823-1895) was an American photographer active in the U.S. state of Illinois. He is best known for photographing, in 1858 and 1860, definitive iconic images of the beardless Abraham Lincoln. …
Hesler’s known portraits include photographs of the two chief Illinois political figures of his day, Lincoln and federal senator Stephen A. Douglas. In the 1860 presidential election, Lincoln’s friends took steps to have Hesler’s images copied and recirculated, cementing their stature as works of Lincoln image-making.
Hesler was an award-winning photographer whose goal was to create photographs of lasting artistic value. He was recognised for the quality of both his portrait work and his outdoor photography. Upon Hesler’s retirement in 1865, he transferred his Chicago studio and negatives to a fellow photographer, George Bucher Ayres. Several of Hesler’s best-known images of Lincoln are platinum prints produced by Ayres from Hesler negatives.
Preston Butler Abraham Lincoln August 13, 1860 Springfield, Illinois Ambrotype Plate 5 3/4 x 4 1/2 in Library of Congress
Abraham Lincoln as candidate for United States president. Half-length portrait, seated, facing front.
Thought to be the last beardless portrait of Lincoln, this photo was “made for the portrait painter, John Henry Brown, noted for his miniatures in ivory. … ‘There are so many hard lines in his face,’ wrote Brown in his diary, ‘that it becomes a mask to the inner man. His true character only shines out when in an animated conversation, or when telling an amusing tale. … He is said to be a homely man; I do not think so.'” (Source: Ostendorf, p. 62)
Published in: Lincoln’s photographs: a complete album / by Lloyd Ostendorf. Dayton, OH: Rockywood Press, 1998, pp. 62-63.
Between 1856, the year of Preston Butler’s arrival in Springfield, and Feb. 11, 1861, when President-elect Abraham Lincoln departed from Springfield, Butler took at least 8 photographs of Lincoln and at least 1 photograph of Mary, Willie and Tad Lincoln. Also, in 1857 or 1858, Butler photographed each of the 4 sides of Springfield’s public square. These photographs are the primary source of information about the appearance of the public square in Lincoln’s Springfield.
Abraham B. Byers (American, 1836-1920) Abraham Lincoln May 7, 1858 Beardstown, Illinois Ambrotype
The Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut, presents its newest exhibition Lincoln, Life-Size, from February 13, 2010, through June 6, 2010. The exhibition features photographs of Abraham Lincoln reproduced full size, hanging alongside original 19th-century images and artefacts that tell the story of Lincoln’s tumultuous presidency. The exhibition is drawn from the Meserve-Kunhardt Collection which it has on loan from the Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation. Lincoln, Life-Size is supported by Fieldpoint Private Bank & Trust, New England Land Company, Ltd., a Committee of Honor co-chaired by Tom Clephane and Nat Day, and the Charles M. and Deborah G. Royce Exhibition Fund.
Lincoln, Life-Size is organised by guest curator Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr., Director of the Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation, and Robin Garr, Director of Education, Bruce Museum. Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr., is the great-great-grandson of Frederick Hill Meserve one of this country’s premiere Lincoln collectors. Frederick Hill Meserve’s passion for Lincoln was ignited in the 1880s when his father, William Neal Meserve, who had served in the Civil War, asked him to hunt for photographs to illustrate his handwritten war diary. Five generations of the family have preserved this massive historical record over the past century.
The exhibition chronicles the toll of war etched into the face of our 16th president. Life-size enlargements of Lincoln’s portraits circle the entire central gallery. Visitors will experience what it was like to stand before him and look into his eyes. Beneath this facial timeline of his presidency is a selection of photographs of people who touched his life and events that nearly wore him out.
The show explores the time from Abraham Lincoln’s arrival in Washington in 1857 through his assassination in 1865. Photographs chronicle events as the war unfolds, his son dies, and he struggles with generals and mounting death tolls. In the photographs, Lincoln is revealed in a variety of poses, each bearing a significance that attests to the historic nature of his life, be it as he is grappling with emancipation or drafting words that would become sacred; serving as husband and father or being pulled in all directions by his constituents; and ultimately as he holds the country together throughout the turbulent times of the Civil War.
Highlights of the exhibition include Leonard Volk’s bronze life mask of Lincoln’s head and hands, glass negatives by Mathew Brady, original albumen war prints by Alexander Gardner and Timothy O’Sullivan, and carte-de-visites of Lincoln, his family, his cabinet, and his generals. Viewers can study official government war maps, view a Thomas Nast drawing depicting the slavery issue, and walk around an early “triptych” photograph that portrays Lincoln, Grant, or Sherman, depending on where the viewer stands. An oversize “imperial” print shows Lincoln just days before delivering his Gettysburg address. In another imperial print a lab technician’s thumb print obliterates Lincoln at his second inaugural, but what is visible is a spectator in the crowd who appears to be John Wilkes Booth. Another photograph of Booth has these words written on the back side: “Recognize him and kill him.”Lincoln, Life-Size also include artefact related to Lincoln and his era.
“We have presented these works so that viewers can see how the toll the war and personal tragedies aged him during his years in office,” said Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr. “In fact, he was just 56 years old when he was assassinated.” This is the first museum exhibition dedicated to the collection of the Meserve-Kunhardt Foundation, which is now housed on the campus of SUNY Purchase. The recent book, Lincoln, Life-Size, co-authored by Phillip B. Kunhardt III, Peter W. Kunhardt and Peter W. Kunhardt, Jr. is available in the Bruce Museum Store. A full array of exhibition programming related to the exhibition is scheduled.
Text from the Bruce Museum website [Online] Cited 01/06/2010. No longer available online
Mathew B. Brady (American, c. 1822-1896) Abraham Lincoln January 8, 1864 Washington, DC National Archives and Records Administration
Anthony Berger (American born Germany, 1832 – after 1897) Abraham Lincoln February 9, 1864 Washington, DC Collodion negative Quarter-plate glass transparency 10.9 x 8.7cm (case) Brady’s National Photographic Portrait Galleries Library of Congress
This is one of a series of photographs that Anthony Berger took of President Abraham Lincoln at the Brady Gallery in Washington in the winter of 1864, as the Civil War dragged on. Modern albumen print from 1864 wet-plated collodion negative. National Portrait Gallery.
“The Famous Profile” by Anthony Berger, manager of Brady’s Gallery, Washington D.C., made direct from an original collodion negative in the Meserve collection (M-82). One of seven poses taken by Berger on Tuesday February 9, 1864, it is perhaps the most familiar of Lincoln profiles, a more handsome pose than its companion view (0-89) because Lincoln’s profile is less severe and his left eyebrow is more visible.
Alexander Gardner (Scottish 1821-1882; emigrated America 1856) Abraham Lincoln November 8, 1863 Washington, DC Library of Congress
Alexander Gardner (Scottish 1821-1882; emigrated America 1856) Abraham Lincoln February 5, 1865 Washington, DC Library of Congress
Alexander Gardner was a Scottish photographer who immigrated to the United States in 1856, where he began to work full-time in that profession. He is best known for his photographs of the American Civil War, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, and the execution of the conspirators to Lincoln’s assassination.
This is one of the last photos taken of Lincoln, who was assassinated ten weeks later, on April 14, 1865.
Alexander Gardner (Scottish 1821-1882; emigrated America 1856) Abraham Lincoln (detail) February 5, 1865 Washington, DC Library of Congress
The Bruce Museum 1 Museum Drive in Greenwich, Connecticut, USA.
Opening hours: Tuesday – Sunday 10am – 5pm Closed Mondays and major holidays
Owen Leong (Australian, b. 1979) Chi 2009-2010 Pigment print on archival paper 73 x 73cm, edition of 5 Courtesy of the artist and Anna Pappas Gallery
Apologies for the late posting on this exhibition but I only received the images for the posting today.
A strong body of work by Owen Leong, twelve portraits of Asian-Australians, their faces digitally overlaid with the unique wing patterns of the Bogong moth, an insect often seen as a pest in Australia. Uniformly lit, of consistent size and presented in modern white frames the series hangs quietly but impressively in the upstairs space of the Anna Pappas Gallery. Here the uniqueness of human physiognomy (and attendant modifications such as scars, piercings and tattoos) is symbiotically paired with that of the moth – it is almost as though one breathes the other – with the eyes of the humans occluded, becoming blackened pits.
The slightly amateurish digital blacking out of some of the eyes is my only point of contention: perhaps this was intentional (?) but sharp shape selections in Photoshop do not make for a good blend between layers of information. Be that as it may, Leong’s practice of selective breeding applied to humans has produced some beautiful, eloquent photographs that promote difference and diversity through a palpable intimacy with the subject matter.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Anna Pappas, Leah Crossman and the Anna Pappas Gallery for allowing me to use the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Owen Leong (Australian, b. 1979) Jac 2009-2010 Pigment print on archival paper 73 x 73cm, edition of 5 Courtesy of the artist and Anna Pappas Gallery
Owen Leong (Australian, b. 1979) Justin 2009-2010 Pigment print on archival paper 73 x 73cm, edition of 5 Courtesy of the artist and Anna Pappas Gallery
Owen Leong (Australian, b. 1979) Raina 2009-2010 Pigment print on archival paper 73 x 73cm, edition of 5 Courtesy of the artist and Anna Pappas Gallery
I seen to have become a little smitten by Romy Schneider. What charisma!
Marcus
Many thankx to the Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum for Film and Television for allowing me publish the images in the posting. Please click on the images for a larger version.
The exhibition documents the eventful career of Romy Schneider, who by the late 1950s no longer wanted to be Sissi, and by the 1970s was a celebrated star of French cinema. A large number of unknown photographs of Romy Schneider, her film partners, and family from the 1950s and 1960s will be on display from the collections of the Deutsche Kinemathek. The exhibition will also present loans from private individuals and institutions from France and Austria …
The exhibition Romy Schneider. Wien – Berlin – Paris, which the Museum für Film und Fernsehen will present beginning on December 5th, documents the varied and wide-ranging career of Romy Schneider, who no longer wanted to be “Sissi” at the end of the 1950s and was celebrated as a star of French cinema in the 1970s.
Romy Schneider publicly bemoaned her roles in Germany and went to Paris to play women who did justice to her acting abilities and her expectations. She settled in France at the beginning of the 1970s, where she advanced to one of the biggest stars of French cinema. She won several awards and made films with nearly all the great directors and actors of that period. The paparazzi followed the actress at every turn, documenting her strokes of fate for the international popular press, and throughout her life Romy Schneider considered herself to be their victim. Romy Schneider died in Paris in May 1982. To this day, she is admired by millions of fans around the world as one of cinema’s international stars.
This homage, which can be seen in 450 sq. m. of exhibition space at the Filmhaus, treats both the diverse roles and changing image of the actress, as well as her representation in the media.
Pictures from films, the press and her private life are grouped according to recurring motifs and combined with film clips. Media installations show the interplay between projection and active self-promotion. Posters, costumes, correspondence and fan souvenirs will augment the presentation.
Numerous photographs from the 1950s and 1960s of Romy Schneider, her film partners and her family, largely unknown until now, originate from the collections of Deutsche Kinemathek. Loans from other institutions and private individuals will also be on view, for instance from the photographers F. C. Gundlach and Robert Lebeck, as well as from the personal archives of the film director Claude Sautet.
Press release from the Museum für Film und Fernsehen website [Online] Cited 25/05/2010 no longer available online
F. C. Gundlach (Franz Christian Gundlach) was 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.
Alain Delon and Romy Schneider in La Piscine/Der Swimmingpool R- Jacques Deray, F/I 1969 Gelatin silver print Foto/Quelle: Filmarchiv Austria, Wien
Romy Schneider and Alain Delon in La Piscine/Der Swimmingpool R- Jacques Deray, F/I 1969 Gelatin silver print Foto/Quelle: Deutsche Kinemathek
Romy Schneider and Claude Sautet during the shooting of UNE HISTOIRE SIMPLE / A SIMPLE STORY 1978 Gelatin silver print Foto/Quelle: Yves Sautet, Paris
Claude Sautet
Claude Sautet (23 February 1924 – 22 July 2000) was a French author and film director. Born in Montrouge, Hauts-de-Seine, France, Sautet first studied painting and sculpture before attending a film university in Paris where he began his career and later became a television producer. He filmed his first movie, Bonjour Sourire, in 1955.
Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive 
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