Exhibition: ‘Balthasar Burkhard’ at Fotomuseum Winterthur and Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, Zurich

Exhibition dates: 10th February – 21st May, 2018

 

 

Balthasar Burkhard poster for his exhibition at Fotomuseum Winterthur

Balthasar Burkhard

 

 

As is so often the case with an artist, it is the early work that shines brightest in this posting.

The works from On the Alp possess an essential power; the daring capture of actions and performances by the international avant-garde of the day make you wish you had been there; and the installation photograph of ‘The Knie’, Kunsthalle Basel in 1983 (below) makes me want to see more of his 1980s installations, with their shift in scale and repetitive nature. There are no more examples online, but a couple of photographs can be seen in the first installation photograph below.

I can leave the underwhelming aerial, cloud and landscape work well alone. There are many people in the history of photography who have taken better photographs of such subject matter. His life-sized photographs of animals again do nothing for me. They possess a reductive minimalism riffing on the canvas backgrounds of Avedon blown up to enormous size (as in most contemporary photography, as if by making something large the photograph gains aura and importance) but they lead nowhere. Perhaps in their actual presence (the physicality of the print) I might be transported to another place, but in reproduction they are a one-dimensional non sequitur.

From the energy of the earlier work emerges “a beauty contest between animals in a photo-shoot”, scrupulous studio photos that demand to be taken seriously, but mean very little. Here, passion has lost out to rigorous and deathly control.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to Fotomuseum Winterthur and Fotostiftung Schweiz for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Together, Fotomuseum Winterthur and Fotostiftung Schweiz will showcase the oeuvre of Swiss artist Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010) in a major retrospective. Burkhard’s work spans half a century: from his early days as a trainee photographer with Kurt Blum to his seminal role in chronicling the art of his time, eventually becoming a photographic artist in his own right who brought photography into the realms of contemporary art in the form of the monumental tableau. More than 150 works and groups of works chart not only the progress of his own photographic career, but also the emergence of photography as an art form in the second half of the twentieth century. An exhibition in collaboration with Museum Folkwang, Essen, and Museo d’arte della Svizzera italiana, Lugano.

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010) from 'On the Alp' 1963 from the exhibition 'Balthasar Burkhard' at Fotomuseum Winterthur and Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, Zurich, Feb - May, 2018

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010)
from On the Alp
1963
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010) 'Untitled (Urs Luthi, Balthasar Burkhard, Jean-Frederic Schnyder), Amsterdam' 1969 from the exhibition 'Balthasar Burkhard' at Fotomuseum Winterthur and Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, Zurich, Feb - May, 2018

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010)
Untitled (Urs Luthi, Balthasar Burkhard, Jean-Frederic Schnyder), Amsterdam
1969
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard

 

Urs Lüthi (b. 1947) is a Swiss conceptual artist who attended the School of Applied Arts in Zurich. Noted for using his body and alter ego as the subject of his artworks, he has worked in photography, sculpture, performance, silk-screen, video and painting.

Jean-Frédéric Schnyder (Swiss, b. 1945) began producing experimental objects in the late 1960s within the context of pop art and has since gone on to create a broad oeuvre encompassing photographs, sculptures, paintings, objects, and installations.

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010) 'Untitled (Jean-Christophe Ammann at Andy Warhol's Factory), New York' 1972

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010)
Untitled (Jean-Christophe Ammann at Andy Warhol’s Factory), New York
1972
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard

 

Jean-Christophe Ammann (14 January 1939 – 13 September 2015) was a Swiss art historian and curator.

 

Jean-Christophe Ammann (Swiss, 1939-2015) 'Untitled (Balthasar Burkhard), USA' 1972

 

Jean-Christophe Ammann (Swiss, 1939-2015)
Untitled (Balthasar Burkhard), USA
Venice, 1972
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard

 

 

Together, Fotomuseum Winterthur and Fotostiftung Schweiz have launched a major retrospective exhibition dedicated to the lifetime achievement of Swiss artist Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010). His oeuvre is almost unparalleled in the way it reflects not only the self-invention of a photographer but also the emancipation of photography as an artistic medium in its own right during the second half of the twentieth century.

The exhibition charts the many facets of Burkhard’s career, step by step, from his apprenticeship with Kurt Blum – in which he adhered closely to the traditional reportage and illustrative photography of the 1960s, and undertook his first independent photographic projects – to his role alongside legendary curator Harald Szeemann, and his documentation of Bern’s bohemian scene in the 1960s and 1970s. Balthasar Burkhard is the author of many iconic images of such groundbreaking exhibitions as When Attitudes Become Form at Kunsthalle Bern in 1969 and the 1972 documenta 5, capturing radical and frequently ephemeral works, actions and performances by the international avant-garde of the day.

Meanwhile, Burkhard endeavoured to make his mark both as a photographer and as an artist, developing his first large-scale photographic canvases in collaboration with his friend and colleague Markus Raetz, trying out his skills as an actor in the USA, and ultimately being invited to hold his own highly influential exhibitions at Kunsthalle Basel and Musée Rath in Geneva in 1983 and 1984. These enabled him to liberate photography from its purely documentary role by creating monumental tableaux in which he developed the motif of the body into sculptural human landscapes and site-specific architectures.

Throughout the course of his career, Burkhard turned time and again to portraiture. Whereas his early photographs tended to show artists in action within their own setting, his later portraits adopted an increasingly formalised approach. During the 1990s, he transposed this stylistic reduction to a wide-ranging series of animal portraits reminiscent of the encyclopaedic style of nineteenth century photography.

Another milestone of Burkhard’s oeuvre can be found in his vast aerial photographs of major mega cities such as Tokyo and Mexico City. These images, shot from an aircraft, like his images of the earth’s deserts, were destined to become a personal passion. Balthasar Burkhard’s quest for a morphology, for a formula that could encapsulate both nature and culture, is particularly evident in his later work, which ranges from pictures of waves and clouds, Swiss mountains and rivers, to the delicate fragility of plants. His interest was always focused on the materiality of the image. Alongside the highly idosyncratic and somewhat darkly sombre tonality of his prints, Burkhard constantly sought to explore every aspect of photography’s aesthetic and technical potential.

Encompassing half a century of creativity, the joint exhibition by Fotomuseum and Fotostiftung not only shows individual works, but also reflects on Balthasar Burkhard’s own view of how his photographs should be presented, underpinned by a wealth of documents from the archives of the artist. The exhibition is divided in two parts and shown in parallel in the exhibition spaces of Fotomuseum and Fotostiftung.

Press release

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010) / Markus Raetz (Swiss, 1941-2020) 'The Bed' 1969/1970

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010) / Markus Raetz (Swiss, 1941-2020)
The Bed
1969-1970
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010) 'Untitled (Michael Heizer, Berne Depression), Berne' 1969

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010)
Untitled (Michael Heizer, Berne Depression), Berne
1969
© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010) 'Untitled (Richard Serra, Splash Piece), Berne' 1969

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010)
Untitled (Richard Serra, Splash Piece), Berne
1969
© J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles

 

Richard Serra (1938-2024) was an American artist known for his large-scale sculptures made for site-specific landscape, urban, and architectural settings. Serra’s sculptures are notable for their material quality and exploration of the relationship between the viewer, the work, and the site.

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010) 'Untitled (Harald Szeemann, the last day of documenta 5), Kassel' 1972

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010)
Untitled (Harald Szeemann, the last day of documenta 5), Kassel
1972
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard

 

 

With this major retrospective, Fotomuseum Winterthur and Fotostiftung Schweiz pay homage to the Swiss artist Balthasar Burkhard (1944-2010). His oeuvre is almost unparalleled in the way it reflects not only the self-invention of a photographer, but also the emancipation of photography as an artistic medium in its own right during the second half of the twentieth century.

Together, the two institutions chart the many and varied facets of Burkhard’s career, step by step. Fotostiftung presents early works from the days of his apprenticeship with Kurt Blum and his first independent documentary photographs. The exhibition also traces Burkhard’s role as a photographer alongside the curator Harald Szeemann and capturing images of Bern’s bohemian scene in the 1960s and 1970s. During that time, Burkhard carved his niche as a photographer and artist, developing his first large-scale photographic canvases in collaboration with his friend Markus Raetz and eventually breaking away from the European art world in search of both himself and new inspiration in the USA.

The second part of the exhibition at Fotomuseum shows the work created by Burkhard after his return to Europe, and his exploration of the photographic tableau. It was during this phase that he largely succeeded in emancipating photography from its purely documentary function. Using monumental formats, he translated the motif of the human body into sculptural landscapes and site-specific architectures. He went on to apply his stylistic device of formal reduction to portraits and landscapes. This marked the beginning of a series of experiments in the handling of photographic techniques. From long-distance aerial photographs of mega-cities such as Mexico City and Tokyo to close-up studies of flowers and plants, Burkhard seemed to be constantly seeking a formula that would embrace both nature and culture, encapsulating a sensory and sensual grasp of visible reality.

Encompassing half a century of creativity, the exhibition not only shows individual works, but is also underpinned by applied projects, films and many documents from the archives of the artist. This wealth of material allows a reflection both on Balthasar Burkhard’s own view of how his photographs should be presented in the exhibition space as well as his constant weighing-up of other media.

Part I (Fotostiftung Schweiz)

Early photographs

Balthasar Burkhard was just eight years old when his father gave him a camera to take along on a school excursion. Burkhard himself describes this early experience with the camera as the starting point of his career. It was also his father who suggested an apprenticeship with Kurt Blum, one of Switzerland’s foremost photographers, ranking along-side Paul Senn, Jakob Tuggener and Gotthard Schuh. Blum taught the young Balz, as he was nicknamed, all the finer points of darkroom technique as well as the art of large-format photography. The earliest work from Burkhard’s apprentice years is a reportage of the school, in the form of a book, while his documentation of the Distelzwang Society’s historic guildhall in the old quarter of Bern was clearly a lesson in architectural photography. Yet, no sooner had he completed his apprenticeship than Burkhard was already embarking on his very own independent projects inspired by post-war humanist photography, such as Auf der Alp, a study of rural Alpine life, for which he was awarded the Swiss Federal Grant for Applied Arts in 1964.

Chronicler of Bohemian Life in Bern

Even during his apprenticeship, Burkhard moved in the Bernese art circles to which his teacher Kurt Blum also belonged. In 1962, he created a first portrait, in book form, of painter and writer Urs Dickerhof. Shortly after that, he became friends with his near-contemporary Markus Raetz, and started taking photographs for the charismatic curator Harald Szeemann, who was director of Kunsthalle Bern from 1961 to 1969. Burkhard immersed himself in the vibrantly dynamic Swiss art scene, documenting the often controversial exhibitions of conceptual art at the Kunsthalle, and capturing the lives of Bern’s bohemian set with his 35mm camera. These visual mementos would later be collated in a kind of photographic journal. Initial collaborative projects with artists included a 1966 artists’ book about the village of Curogna (Ticino) and a window display for the Loeb department store in Bern featuring photographic portraits of the Bernese artist Esther Altorfer, devised in collaboration with Markus Raetz and his later wife, fashion designer Monika Raetz-Müller.

Landscapes 1969

Inspired by his friend Raetz, Burkhard photographed bleak and rugged snow-covered landscapes in the Bernese Seeland region. Heaps of earth piled up along the wayside reminded him of Robert Smithson’s Earthworks, which had just emerged in contemporary art. As Burkhard would later explain, “I wanted to leave out everything relating to myself, so that I could truly relate to what remained. I distanced myself from my subject-matter. I succeeded in stepping back both from myself and from my work.”

A close-up of bare agricultural soil, vaguely reminiscent of a lunar landscape, forms the basis for an object with a neon tube created in 1969 for the legendary exhibition When Attitudes Become Form in collaboration with Harald Szeemann, Markus Raetz and Jean-Frédéric Schnyder. In 1969, Burkhard’s brown-toned landscapes were included in the 1969 exhibition photo actuelle suisse in Sion. They were subsequently published as his first independent portfolio by Allan Porter in the May issue of Camera magazine, which was dedicated to avant-garde European photography and its affinity with contemporary art.

The Amsterdam Canvases 1969-1970

When Markus Raetz took a studio in Amsterdam in 1969, he and Burkhard continued to work on joint projects. Photographs of everyday motifs were enlarged, practically life-sized, onto canvas, and caused a sensation in the spring 1970 exhibition Visualisierte Denkprozesse (Visualised thought processes) at Kunstmuseum Luzern, curated by Jean-Christophe Ammann, who wrote: “On huge canvases, they [Raetz and Burkhard] showed, among other things, a spartan studio space, a bedroom, a kitchen, a curtain. They relativised the purely object-like character by hanging the canvases on clips. The resulting folds enriched the images by adding a new dimension.” In other words, the folds in the canvas created a “quasi ironic and disillusioning barrier.” Burkhard’s large-format works foreshadowed the monumental photographic tableaux that would eventually herald the ultimate march of photography into the museum space some ten years later.

Documentarist of the International Art Scene

By the end of the 1960s, Harald Szeemann and his polarising, controversial exhibitions were drawing increasing attention far beyond the boundaries of Switzerland. In particular, his (in)famous 1969 show When Attitudes Become Form unleashed heated debates that ultimately led to Szeemann’s resignation as director of Kunsthalle Bern. Then, in 1970, he shocked the members and visitors of the Kunstverein in Cologne with an exhibition dedicated to Happening & Fluxus. Here, too, Burkhard was on hand with his camera. Jean-Christophe Ammann, with whom Burkhard undertook a research trip to the USA in 1972, photographing many artists’ studios, proved no less controversial a figure. Moreover, Burkhard also photographed artists, actions and installations at the 1972 documenta 5 in Kassel, which was headed by none other than Szeemann himself. Given the expanded concept of art that prevailed at the time, which strengthened the role of performance art and installation works alike, photography, too, gained a newfound core significance. Indeed, it was only through photography that many of these innovative works were preserved for posterity.

Chicago and the Self-Invention of the Artist

Following a relatively unproductive period in the wake of documenta 5, during which he worked, among other things, on an unfinished documentary project about the small Swiss town of Zofingen, Burkhard spent the years between 1975 and 1978 in Chicago, where he taught photography at the University of Illinois. It was while he was there that he once again reprised the series of photo canvases he had been working on in Amsterdam between 1969 and 1970. This led to new large-format works portraying everyday scenes such as the back seat of an automobile or the interior of a home with a TV, as well as three now lost photographs of roller skaters and a very androgynous back-view nude study of a young man. In 1977 the Zolla/Lieberman Gallery in Chicago presented these canvases together with a selection of the Amsterdam works in what was Burkhard’s first solo exhibition. Critics were impressed by his “soft photographs”. The Chicago Tribune, for instance, enthused: “‘European’ grace is wedded to ‘American’ strength in a supreme artistic fiction that suggests the wide-screen format of film.”

Self-Portraits

In Chicago, Burkhard rekindled his friendship with performance and conceptual artist Thomas Kovachevic, whom he had first met at documenta 5 and who now introduced him to the local art scene. At the same time, Burkhard toyed with the notion of trying his chances as a film actor in Hollywood. With Kovachevich’s help, he produced a series of self-portraits, both Polaroids and slides, which he presented in a small snakeskin-covered box as his application portfolio. He approached Alfred Hitchcock and Joshua Shelley of Columbia Pictures, albeit unsuccessfully. His only film role was in Urs Egger’s 1978 Eiskalte Vögel (Icebound; screened in seminar room I). Burkhard later transformed some of his self-portraits into large-scale canvases, through which he asserted his newfound sense of identity as an artist, making himself the subject-matter of his own artistic work. One of these was also shown in the Photo Canvases exhibition at Zolla/Lieberman Gallery.

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010) 'feet 2' 1980

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010)
feet 2
1980
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010) 'The Knie', Kunsthalle Basel (installation view) 1983

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010)
‘The Knie’, Kunsthalle Basel 
(installation view)
1983
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010) 'Study of The Head' c. 1983

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010)
Study of The Head
c. 1983
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010) 'Design for Body II' c. 1983

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010)
Design for Body II
c. 1983
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard

 

Part II (Fotomuseum Winterthur)

Body and Sculpture

The 1980s heralded the advent of a particularly productive period for Balthasar Burkhard in which he adopted a more sculptural approach to photography, treating his prints as an integral part of the exhibition architecture. Just as he himself had witnessed how the generation of artists before him had called the classic exhibition space into question, so too did his own latest works now begin to take control of that space. Burkhard became one of the foremost proponents of large-scale photographic tableaux, as evidenced by his groundbreaking exhibitions at Kunsthalle Basel in 1983 and Museé Rath, Geneva, in 1984.

It was in the photo canvases he made in Chicago during the late 1970s that Burkhard first turned towards the motif of the body as a sculptural form with which he would continue to experiment over the coming years. Such an overtly sculptural approach to the body and to the nude as landscape soon began to demand a larger format than Burkhard had previously been using. An arm, almost four metres long, framed by heavy steel, or the multipart installation Das Knie (Knee), reflect the very core of his creative oeuvre in all its many facets: monumentality, fragmentation and the breaking of genre boundaries by transposing two-dimensional images into spatially commanding installations.

Portraits: Types and Individuals

The increasing formal reduction of Balthasar Burkhard’s images continued in the field of portraiture. He invited fellow artists such as Lawrence Weiner and Christian Boltanski to sit for him. With this series, it seemed that he had finally put behind him his days as a chronicler of the art scene, reliant on the techniques of applied photography.

Portraits of a rather different kind are his profiles of animals, in an equally reduced setting, against the backdrop of a tarpaulin. Redolent of Renaissance drawings or nineteenth century animal photography, his images of sheep, wolves and lions come across as representing ideal and typical examples of their species without anthropomorphising them, while at the same time wrenching them out of their natural environment. These images reached a broad audience through the popular 1997 children’s book “Click!”, said the Camera, which was republished in its second edition in 2017.

Architectural Photography

Given his increasing success in the art world, Burkhard could well afford to be selective about his choice of commissioned works. He had already been taking photographs for architects connected with the Bern-based firm Atelier 5 back in the 1960s, and was still accepting commissions in this field in the 1990s. Burkhard’s photographic essay on the Ricola building designed by Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron indicates just how thoroughly his own distinctive artistic syntax permeates his commissioned and architectural photography, right through to the details of fragments and materials. These photographs were shown in the Swiss Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 1991, having been explicitly designed for this particular exhibition space. As in his artistic oeuvre, Burkhard operates here with spatially commanding installations, skilfully dovetailing the architectural motif with the presentational form.

Aerial Photography

In the 1990s, before the art world had even begun to turn its attention to the subject of megacities, Burkhard was already taking a keen interest in the world’s major conurbations. Following in the footsteps of his father, who had been a Swiss airforce pilot, he took bird’s-eye-view photographs from a plane. His panoramic shots of cities such as London, Mexico City and Los Angeles were preceded by small-format studies of clouds: the so-called Nuages series. Having incorporated a study of rural Switzerland into his formative training in 1963 with the series Auf der Alp (On the Alp), he returned once more to focus on the landscape of his homeland in the early 2000s with an entire series of aerial photographs of the Bernina mountain range.

Landscape and Flora

In the last two decades of his life, Burkhard concentrated primarily on landscape and flora, turning to historical precedents both in his techniques and in his choice of motif. The desert formations of Namibia, in which all sense of proportion is lost amid the remote and untouched wilderness, set a counterpoint to the sprawling urban expanses of Mexico City and London. The diptych Welle (Wave), by contrast, pays homage to the work of French artist Gustave Courbet, with Burkhard making a pilgrimage to the tide swept shores where the father of Realism had painted in 1870.

In another series, Burkhard adapts the aesthetics of botanical plant studies, which were as widely used around the turn of the twentieth century as the complex photographic process of heliography, and transposes these to larger-than-life formats. Whereas Burkhard, as a young photographer, had captured the exuberant art scene of the 1960s and 1970s, snapshot-style, he later went on, as an artist-photographer, to explore the potential of the photographic tableau, diligently researching near-forgotten techniques and the sensual details of the visible world.

Artwork and Commissioned Work

The site-specific installations of his photographs and Burkhard’s own dedicated approach to museum spaces warrant an excursion into the archives of the artist, paying particular attention to four exemplary exhibitions.

One spectacular and iconic show was the Fotowerke (Photo works) exhibition at Kunsthalle Basel in 1983. Curated by artist Rémy Zaugg, the installations can be reconstructed thanks to the catalogue and copious documentation. Contact prints and studies, for instance, help to give an insight into the no longer extant thirteen metre work Körper I (Body I) as well as shedding light on the choice of motif for further body fragments.

A 1984 solo exhibition at the Le Consortium in Dijon, on the other hand, shows how Burkhard responded with his group of works Das Knie (Knee) to an entirely different installation context within the given space. Similarly, at the Musée Rath in Geneva that same year, Burkhard, together with his friend Niele Toroni, instigated a radical juxtaposition of photography and painting based on the pillars of the exhibition venue.

At Grand-Hornu in the Belgian town of Mons, by contrast, his life-sized photographs of animals were mounted at eye level. While Burkhard chose a large format for the exhibition venue, the images in his children’s book “Click!”, said the Camera tell of a beauty contest between animals in a photo-shoot. This apparent discrepancy between artwork and commissioned work never seemed to be relevant to Burkhard. The sheer volume of his studio photos, alone, indicates just how scrupulously precise he was about the way he wanted to be perceived as a serious photographer.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Balthasar Burkhard' at Fotomuseum Winterthur and Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, Zurich February - May 2018

Installation view of the exhibition 'Balthasar Burkhard' at Fotomuseum Winterthur and Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, Zurich February - May 2018

Installation view of the exhibition 'Balthasar Burkhard' at Fotomuseum Winterthur and Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, Zurich February - May 2018

Installation view of the exhibition 'Balthasar Burkhard' at Fotomuseum Winterthur and Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, Zurich February - May 2018

Installation view of the exhibition 'Balthasar Burkhard' at Fotomuseum Winterthur and Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, Zurich February - May 2018

 

Installation views of the exhibition Balthasar Burkhard at Fotomuseum Winterthur and Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, Zurich February – May 2018

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010) 'Balthasar Burkhard in his studio' 1995

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010)
Balthasar Burkhard in his studio
1995
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010) 'Camel' 1997

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010)
Camel
1997
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010) 'Bull' 1996

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010)
Bull
1996
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010) 'The Reindeer' 1996

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010)
The Reindeer
1996
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010) 'Mexico City' 1999

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010)
Mexico City
1999
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010) 'Mexico City' 1999

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010)
Mexico City
1999
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010) 'Nuages ​​8' 1999

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010)
Nuages ​​8
1999
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010) 'Ecosse' (Scotland) 2000

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010)
Ecosse (Scotland)
2000
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010) 'Bernina' 2003

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010)
Bernina
2003
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010) 'Silberen' 2004

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010)
Silberen
2004
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010) 'Rio Negro' 2002

 

Balthasar Burkhard (Swiss, 1944-2010)
Rio Negro
2002
© Estate Balthasar Burkhard

 

 

Fotostiftung Schweiz
Grüzenstrasse 45
CH-8400 Winterthur (Zürich)
Phone: +41 52 234 10 30

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 6pm
Wednesday 11am – 8pm
Closed on Mondays

Fotostiftung Schweiz website

Fotomuseum Winterthur
Grüzenstrasse 44 + 45
CH-8400
Winterthur (Zürich)

Opening hours:
Tuesday to Sunday 11am – 6pm
Wednesday 11am – 8pm
Closed on Mondays

Fotomuseum Winterthur website

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Exhibition: ‘Susan Meiselas: Mediations’ at Jeu de Paume, Paris

Exhibition dates: 6th February – 20th May, 2018

Curators: Carles Guerra and Pia Viewing

 

Susan Meiselas (b. 1948, Baltimore) 'Sandinistes aux portes du quartier général de la Garde nationale à Esteli : "L'homme au cocktail Molotov", Nicaragua' 16 juillet 1979 from the exhibition 'Susan Meiselas: Mediations' at Jeu de Paume, Paris, Feb - May, 2018

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948)
Sandinistes aux portes du quartier général de la Garde nationale à Esteli : “L’homme au cocktail Molotov”, Nicaragua
16 juillet 1979
© Susan Meiselas/ Magnum Photos

NICARAGUA. Esteli. 1979. Sandinistas at the walls of the Esteli National Guard headquarters

 

 

The second of a double header from Jeu de Paume, Paris.

Whatever you write or say doesn’t matter. It’s the images that matter, the work before you.

Meiselas’ work offers respect, that is the key word, respect for the individuality of the people she photographs. You can feel it in her images; it is what gives them their power. Unlike the previous posting on the work of Raoul Hausmann, where it was all about the photographer, here the work is authored but the photographs are all about the subject: their place in the world, their trials and tribulations.

Meiselas’ photographs are very strong – graphic work (in form and declaration) balanced with an existential, human touch. Meiselas questions the nature of the original photograph and photographic process in order to understand how the photograph and its ongoing testimonies change in specific times and places, by developing multilayered narratives which integrate the participation of her subjects into her works. As such they are as much meditations on the human condition as much as mediations between place, her role as witness, storytelling, and how the meaning of images changes according to the context of their diffusion, which is facilitated by technology.

On the compilation of her visual histories, I can’t put it better than the text below:

“Lauded documentary photographer Susan Meiselas has been working at the nexus of history, politics, ethnography, art, and storytelling throughout her prolific career, producing multi-layered photographic narratives about individuals and societies across the U.S. and the world. Sensitive to both the potential and limitations of images, the 1992 MacArthur Fellow approaches her projects aware of their inevitable impartiality and incompleteness, supplementing her own photographs with texts, interviews, archival images, and other forms of documentation. “My projects are authored but I’d like to think they are not authoritative,” she says.”1

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

1/ Anonymous text. “About Susan Meiselas” on the Artsy website Nd [Online] Cited 14/02/2022


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

 

 

“It is important to me – in fact, it is central to my work – that I do what I can to respect the individuality of the people I photograph, all of whom exist in specific times and places.”

“This photograph is for whom. And so, for a long time that’s been the question motivating almost everything that I do.”


Susan Meiselas

 

 

A member of Magnum Photos since 1976, Susan Meiselas questions documentary practice. She became known through her work in conflict zones of Central America in the 1970s and 1980s in particular due to the strength of her colour photographs. Covering many subjects and countries, from war to human rights issues and from cultural identity to the sex industry, Meiselas uses photography, film, video and sometimes archive material, as she relentlessly explores and develops narratives integrating the participation of her subjects in her works. The exhibition highlights Susan Meiselas’ unique personal as well as geopolitical approach, showing how she moves through time and conflict and how she constantly questions the photographic process and her role as witness.

 

Susan Meiselas: Mediations at Jeu de Paume on Vimeo

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948) 'Sharif and Son' 1971 from the exhibition 'Susan Meiselas: Mediations' at Jeu de Paume, Paris, Feb - May, 2018

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948)
Sharif and Son
1971
From the series 44 Irving Street, 1971
© Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948) 'Lena juchée sur sa caisse, Essex Junction, Vermont, 1973' 1973

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948)
Lena juchée sur sa caisse, Essex Junction, Vermont, 1973
Lena on the Bally Box, Essex Junction, Vermont, 1973
1973
From the series Carnival Strippers, 1972-1975
© Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos

USA. Essex Junction, Vermont. 1973. Lena on the Bally Box

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948) 'Lena après le spectacle, Essex Junction, Vermont, 1973' 1973

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948)
Lena après le spectacle, Essex Junction, Vermont, 1973
Lena after the show, Essex Junction, Vermont, 1973

1973
From the series Carnival Strippers, 1972-1975
© Susan Meiselas/ Magnum Photos

USA. Essex Junction, Vermont. 1973. Lena after the show

 

“Meiselas is known for her searing, visceral photographs of civil unrest and political revolution around the world, from Central America to Kurdistan. However, it is her “Carnival Strippers” that defines her career for many.”

Artsy Editors. “A History of Magnum Photos in Ten Photographers” on the Artsy website Jan 21, 2014 [Online] Cited 13/02/2022

See what they mean on the Susan Meiselas: “Carnival Strippers” 1972-1975 web page.

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948) 'Debbie et Renee, Rockland, Maine, 1972' 1972

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948)
Debbie et Renee, Rockland, Maine, 1972
1972
From the series Carnival Strippers, 1972-1975
© Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos

USA. Rockland, Maine. 1972. Debbie and Renee

 

 

Meiselas’s first major photographic essay focused on the lives of women performing striptease at New England country fairs, whom she photographed during three consecutive summers while teaching photography in New York City public school classrooms. Carnival Strippers was originally published in 1976 with a new edition of the book (which included a CD of the audio recordings) produced by Steidl / Whitney in 2003. In 1976, Meiselas was invited to join the photographic cooperative Magnum Photos. Beginning in 1976, she photographed a group of young girls living in her neighbourhood of Little Italy, New York. Entitled Prince Street Girls, they inspired an on-going relationship.

Meiselas is best known for her coverage of the insurrection in Nicaragua and her documentation of human rights issues in Latin America for over a decade. In 1978 Meiselas made her first trip to Nicaragua, and that year one of her iconic images was published on the cover of the New York Times Magazine. In 1981, she published Nicaragua: June 1978-July 1979, reprinted in 2008 (with a DVD of the film “Pictures from a Revolution”) and in 2016 (with a customise AR app, to trigger film clips from the photographs). Her image of Pablo Jesús Aráuz, the ‘Molotov Man’, made on July 16, 1979 just before the triumph of the Sandinistas, has become an icon of the revolution. The image is shown recontextualised in the installation The Life of an Image: ‘Molotov Man’, 1979-2009. Meiselas served as an editor for two collaborative projects, both of which support and highlight the work of regional photographers. The first, El Salvador: The Work of Thirty Photographers, Writers and Readers, 1983, also features her own images. The second project, Chile from Within, W. W. Norton, 1991, focuses on work by photographers living under the Pinochet regime. Meiselas has also co-directed four films: Living at Risk: The Story of a Nicaraguan Family, 1986 ; Voyages, on her work in Nicaragua produced in collaboration with director M. Karlin, Pictures from a Revolution, 1991, with R. P. Rogers and A. Guzzetti; and Reframing History, 2004.

In 1992, Meiselas produced Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History, Random House, 1997; University of Chicago Press, 2008. The book was produced along with akaKURDISTAN, 1998, an online archive of collective memory, currently shown as a physical map with story books made by contributors from the Kurdish diaspora worldwide. Pandora’s Box, Trebruk/Magnum Editions, 2003, is an exploration of an underground New York S&M club that began in 1995. Both projects are shown as exhibition works.

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948) 'Mississippi' 1974

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948)
Mississippi
1974
From the series Porch Portraits, 1974
© Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948) 'Caroline du Sud' 1974

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948)
Caroline du Sud
1974
From the series Porch Portraits, 1974
© Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948) 'Dee et Lisa, Mott Street, Little Italy, New York, 1976' 1976

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948)
Dee et Lisa, Mott Street, Little Italy, New York, 1976
1976
From the series Prince Street Girls, 1975-1990
© Susan Meiselas/ Magnum Photos

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948) 'Roseann sur la route pour Manhatten Beach, New York, 1978' 1978

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948)
Roseann sur la route pour Manhatten Beach, New York, 1978
1978
From the series Prince Street Girls, 1975-1990
© Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos

USA. New York CIty. 1978. Roseann on the way to Manhattan Beach

 

Alain Dejean / Sygma. 'Portrait de Susan Meiselas, Monimbo, Nicaragua' Septembre 1978

 

Alain Dejean / Sygma
Portrait de Susan Meiselas, Monimbo, Nicaragua
Septembre 1978
© Alain Dejean Sygma

 

 

The retrospective devoted to the American photographer Susan Meiselas (b. 1948, Baltimore) brings together a selection of works from the 1970s to the present day. A member of Magnum Photos since 1976, Susan Meiselas questions documentary practice. She became known through her work in conflict zones of Central America in the 1970s and 1980s in particular due to the strength of her colour photographs. Covering many subjects and countries, from war to human rights issues and from cultural identity to the sex industry, Meiselas uses photography, film, video and sometimes archive material, as she relentlessly explores and develops narratives integrating the participation of her subjects in her works. The exhibition highlights Susan Meiselas’s unique personal as well as geopolitical approach, showing how she moves through time and conflict and how she constantly questions the photographic process and her role as witness.

Her early works already illustrate her interest for documentary photography. Her very first project, 44 Irving Street (1971), was a series of black and white portraits. Here, she used her camera as a means of interacting with the other tenants of the boarding house where she lived during her time as a student. For Carnival Strippers (1972-1975), Meiselas followed strippers working in carnivals in New England over the course of three consecutive summers. The reportage is completed with audio recordings of the women, their clients and managers.

From this period originates also Prince Street Girls (1975-1992), which was shot in the district known as Little Italy, in New York, where Susan Meiselas still lives. She photographed a group of young girls over several years, capturing the changes that took place in their lives as they were growing up, constituting a chronicle of the evolving relationship between the young girls and the photographer.

Three important series represent the center of the exhibition: Nicaragua, El Salvador and Kurdistan. Made between the late 1970s and 2000, the works reveal the way in which the artist challenges and practises photography. During the course of her extensive travels in Latin America, over a number of decades, in times of war and peace, Meiselas returns to the sites where she took the original photographs, using the images to find the people she had met in order to pursue a record of their testimonies. With her project Mediations (1982), Susan Meiselas reveals how the meaning of images changes according to the context of their diffusion. Her novel approach is almost prophetic in a world where the diffusion of the image is facilitated by technology.

As from 1997, Meiselas addresses each conflict in a different way according to the context. Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History (1997) is an archive of the visual history of a people without a nation. Meiselas, who gathered those elements all around the world in collaboration with Kurdish people, constructed her work as an installation composed of a compilation of documents, photographs and videos.

In 1992, Meiselas, asked to contribute to an awareness campaign exposing domestic violence, began by photographing crime scenes, accompanying a team of police investigators, and then selected a number of documents with photographs from the archives of the San Francisco Police Department. This research led her to create Archives of Abuse, collages of police reports and photographs, exhibited in the city’s public spaces as posters on bus shelters.

For the retrospective at the Jeu de Paume, Susan Meiselas has created a new work, begun in 2015, based on her involvement with Multistory, a regional arts organisation based in the United Kingdom. This last series A Room of Their Own was made collaboratively in a refuge for women and focuses on domestic violence. The installation includes five narrative video works, featuring Meiselas’s photographs, first-hand testimonies, collages and drawings.

The exhibition of the Jeu de Paume is the most comprehensive retrospective of her work ever held in France. It retraces her trajectory since the 1970s as a visual artist who associates her subjects to her approach and questions the status of images in relation to the context in which they are perceived.

Press release from Jeu de Paume

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948) 'Masque traditionnel utilisé lors de l'insurrection populaire, Masaya, Nicaragua' 1978

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948)
Masque traditionnel utilisé lors de l’insurrection populaire, Masaya, Nicaragua
(Traditional mask used during the popular uprising, Masaya, Nicaragua)

1978
© Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos

 

In the late 1970s, without an assignment of any sort, Susan Meiselas went to Nicaragua to cover the popular insurrection following the assassination of the editor of the opposition newspaper La Prensa. She became one of the most celebrated photojournalists in the world for her colour photographs of the Sandinista Popular Revolution. Some of them became icons of the Nicaraguan revolution. She didn’t see the insurrection as a series of isolated news events as a photojournalist would, but rather a historical process that was unfolding every day. Her approach was specific to the context of the conflict and the terrain.

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948) 'Fouille de toutes les personnes voyageant en voiture, en camion, en bus ou à pied, Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua' 1978

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948)
Fouille de toutes les personnes voyageant en voiture, en camion, en bus ou à pied, Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua
1978
© Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos

NICARAGUA. Cuidad Sandino. Searching everyone traveling by car, truck, bus or foot

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948) 'Retour chez soi, Masaya, Nicaragua' 1978

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948)
Retour chez soi, Masaya, Nicaragua
1978
© Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos

NICARAGUA. Masaya. September, 1978. Returning home

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948) 'Muchachos attendant la riposte de la Garde nationale, Matagalpa, Nicaragua' 1978

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948)
Muchachos attendant la riposte de la Garde nationale, Matagalpa, Nicaragua
1978
© Susan Meiselas/ Magnum Photos

NICARAGUA. Matagalpa. Muchachos await the counterattack by the National Guard

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948) 'Soldats fouillant la passagers du bus sur l’autoroute Nord, El Salvador' 1980

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948)
Soldats fouillant la passagers du bus sur l’autoroute Nord, El Salvador
1980
© Susan Meiselas/ Magnum Photos

EL SALVADOR. 1980. Soldiers search bus passengers along the Northern Highway

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948) 'Route pour Aguilares, El Salvador' 1983

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948)
Route pour Aguilares, El Salvador
1983
© Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos

EL SALVADOR. 1983. Road to Aguilares.

 

With Mediations, 1982, the project that lends its title to this retrospective exhibition, Meiselas revealed the effects that the circulation of images produces on their meaning. At a time when, thanks to new technologies, photography has become the object of an all-reaching exchange, Meiselas’s attitude becomes unprecedented, while her archival projects constitute a valuable precedent. Two of them, the ones devoted to Nicaragua and Kurdistan, are widely represented in this exhibition.

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948) 'Veuve sur le charnier de Koreme, nord de l'Irak' 1992

 

Susan Meiselas (American, b. 1948)
Veuve sur le charnier de Koreme, nord de l’Irak
(Widow at the mass grave of Koreme, northern Iraq)

1992
© Susan Meiselas/Magnum Photos

NORTHERN IRAQ. Kurdistan. June, 1992. Widow at mass grave found in Koreme

 

The retrospective emphasises the development of Susan Meiselas’ photographic practice from the 1970s onwards. In most of her early work, she addresses the subjects of her portrait-based images by including them in one way or another in the process of her work. In 44 Irving Street, (1972), she asks the persons portrayed to comment on their representation and in Carnival Strippers (1975), a sound recording of the context in which the photographs are taken gives further perspective on the strippers lives. In addition to this aspect, her interest in archival documentation and the compilation of visual histories can also be traced back to this period (Lando, 1975) and one can see this develop in her research work on Kurdistan. Her treatment of images reveals that, in her artistic practice, she considers the photographic frame as a moment in time complementary to other forms of framing and capturing reality, which may be seen and reviewed over time.

 

Susan Meiselas (b. 1948, Baltimore) 'Blocs de béton signalant la fosse commune de Koreme, nord de l'Irak' 1992

 

Susan Meiselas (b. 1948, Baltimore)
Blocs de béton signalant la fosse commune de Koreme, nord de l’Irak
(Concrete blocks signaling Koreme Mass grave, northern Iraq)

1992
© Susan Meiselas/ Magnum Photos

 

 

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Exhibition: ‘Brassaï’ at Fundación MAPFRE, Barcelona

Exhibition dates: 20th February – 13th May, 2018

Curator: Mr. Peter Galassi

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984) 'Vista per sota del Pont Royal cap al Pont de Solférino [View through the pont Royal toward the pont Solférino]' c. 1933 from the exhibition 'Brassaï' at Fundación MAPFRE, Barcelona, Feb - May, 2018

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Vista per sota del Pont Royal cap al Pont de Solférino
View through the pont Royal toward the pont Solférino

c. 1933
(Nuit / Night 53)
40.1 x 51cm
© Estate Brassaï Succession, Paris

 

 

For those who know how to look

Not everyone can see. It takes a great eye and a great mind, and the liberation of that mind, to be able to transform the mundane, the everyday, the vernacular – into art. Brassaï’s folklore, his mythology of life, suggests that the life of others (those living on the edge) is as valuable and essential to the formation of culture as any other part of existence.

Brassaï’s work comes alive at night and, as Alejandra Uribe Ríos observes, “The night was undoubtedly the great muse of his work, his inspiration.” While he got some of his friends to stage scenes for his book Paris by night – acting as prostitutes and customers hanging around in back alleys – it matters not one bit. The artist was embedded in this world and represents what he knows, what he has seen in his mind’s eye.

The density of his photographs is incredible – their atmosphere thick and heavy; revealing and beautiful. “In certain photographs, objects take on a particular light, a fascinating presence. Vision has fixed them “as they are in themselves” […]. It confers a density that is entirely foreign to their real existence. They are there, one might say, for the first time, but at the same time for the last.” The first and last, a circular compaction of time and space into the eternal present, objects as they are in themselves and will always be.

That fascinating presence can be felt even today, for that is what the time freeze of photography does: it “look backwards and forwards in the same instance.”

Brassaï saw something clearly, so that we might see it now. Look at the seemingly mundane space portrayed in Concierge’s Lodge, Paris (1933, below) from his book Paris de jour / Paris by Day. The photograph could be taken at night, but it is day! The small amount of sunlight falls on the tied-back curtain in the doorway; the crumpled mat lies outside the door; the two doors compete for our visual attention – one the solid presence that holds up the left hand side of the image, the other the vanishing point in the distance; and the eye is led down to this door by the pavement and the gutter with a band of water emphasising the form. The verticality of the worn and ancient stone work is emphasised by the modern metal box in front of it, leading the eye up to the Concierge sign only, mind you, for numbers 5 & 7. But then the mystery… what is going on above the ancient door at the rear – the sky, a ceiling, another wall lit by the last rays of the sun? Such a dense, complex image that requires an intimate knowledge of the mystery of place, in both the artist and the viewer.

Here we see Brassaï in Self-portrait, Boulevard Saint-Jacques, Paris 14ème, standing in the snow at night, heavy overcoat, hat, cigarette hanging out of his mouth, squinting through his camera to previsualise not just the photograph he is taking, but it’s final, physical embodiment, the print. In our world today of Insta-photos, millions and millions of photographs that mean basically nothing, and where anyone without training can pick up a camera and think of themselves a photographer, there is something to be said for taking the time to train and educate your eye and your mind. Only then might you reveal something about the world and, possibly, yourself as well.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

@mapfrefcultura #expo_brassai


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

 

 

“I was eager to penetrate this other world, this fringe world, the secret, sinister world of mobsters, outcasts, toughs, pimps, whores, addicts, inverts. Rightly or wrongly, I felt at the time that this underground world represented Paris at its least cosmopolitan, its most alive, its most authentic, that in these colourful faces of its underworld there had been preserved from age to age, almost without alteration, the folklore of its most remote past.”


Brassaï, 1976

 

“In certain photographs, objects take on a particular light, a fascinating presence. Vision has fixed them “as they are in themselves” […]. It confers a density that is entirely foreign to their real existence. They are there, one might say, for the first time, but at the same time for the last.”


Brassaï, undated note

 

“To oblige the model to behave as if the photographer isn’t there really is to stage a comic performance. What’s natural is precisely not to dodge the photographer’s presence. The natural thing in that situation is for the model to pose honestly.”


Brassaï, undated note

 

“The night suggests, he does not teach. The night finds us and surprises us by its strangeness; it liberates in us the forces that, during the day, are dominated by reason.”

“Night does not show things, it suggests them. It disturbes and surprises us with its strangeness. It liberates forces within us which are dominated by our reason during the daytime.”


Brassaï

 

“The night was undoubtedly the great muse of his work, his inspiration. The train tracks, the lovers, the fog, the posters, the ballet and the cabarets. Everything is worthy of portraying for those who know how to look and that is undoubtedly one of Brassai’s merits: embodying the everyday, rescuing the magical, the lyrical, the mystery of common life, and doing it with elegance, converting the seemingly trivial into a artwork.”


Alejandra Uribe Ríos

 

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984) 'Porteria, París [Concierge's Lodge, Paris]' 1933 from the exhibition from the exhibition 'Brassaï' at Fundación MAPFRE, Barcelona, Feb - May, 2018

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Porteria, París
Concierge’s Lodge, Paris

1933
(Paris de jour / Paris by Day 686)
29.3 x 22.2cm
© Estate Brassaï Succession, Paris

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984) 'The Eiffel Tower seen through the Gate of the Trocadéro' 1930-1932

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
La Torre Eiffel vista a través del reixat del Trocadéro
La torre Eiffel vista a través de la reja del Trocadero
The Eiffel Tower seen through the Gate of the Trocadéro

1930-32
(Nuit / Night 1; variant of Paris de nuit / Paris by Night, plate 57)
30 x 23.6cm
© Estate Brassaï Succession, Paris

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984) 'Extinguishing a Streetlight, rue Émile Richard' c. 1932

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Apagant un fanal, Rue Émile Richard
Apagando una farola, rue Émile Richard
Extinguishing a Streetlight, rue Émile Richard

c. 1932
(Nuit / Night 267)
22.9 x 28.1cm
© Estate Brassaï Succession, Paris

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984) 'Avenue de l'Observatoire' 1934

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Avenue de l’Observatoire
1934
Gelatin silver print
23.4 x 30.1cm
© Estate Brassaï Succession, Paris

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984) 'Streetwalker, near the place d’Italie' 1932

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Meuca, a prop de la Place d’Italie
Prostituta, cerca de la Place d’Italie
Streetwalker, near the place d’Italie
1932
(Plaisirs / Pleasure 333)
29.9 x 22.9cm
© Estate Brassaï Succession, Paris

 

 

Introduction

Fundación MAPFRE is launching its 2018 exhibition programme in Barcelona with the exhibition Brassaï, a comprehensive survey of the career of this celebrated Hungarian-born French photographer whose work helped to define the spirit of Paris in the 1930s. Brassaï was one of the most important of the group of European and American photographers whose work in the inter-war years greatly enriched photography’s potential as a form of artistic expression.

The artist began to take photographs in 1929 or 1930, maintaining an intense level of activity throughout the 1930s. Brassaï’s principal subject was Paris, where he settled in 1924, intending to become a painter. Around the end of World War I the artistic centre of the city had shifted from Montmartre to Montparnasse where most of the artists, constituting a major international community, lived like a large family. Brassï was fascinated by the French capital and later said that he started to take photographs in order to express his passion for the city at night. Soon, however, he also began to take portraits, nudes, still life, images of everyday life and depictions of picturesque corners of the city and moments captured during the day.

Brassaï’s confidence in the power of blunt, straightforward photography to transform what it describes, as well as his talent for extracting from ordinary life iconic images of lasting force, won him an important place among the pioneers of modern photography.

This exhibition offers a survey of the artist’s career through more than 200 works (vintage photographs, a number of drawings, a sculpture and documentary material) grouped into twelve thematic sections, of which the two devoted to Paris in the 1930s are the most important. Produced by Fundación MAPFRE and curated by Peter Galassi, chief curator of the Department of Photography at the MoMA, New York, from 1991 to 2011, this is the first retrospective exhibition on Brassaï to be organised since 2000 (Centre Pompidou) and the first to be held in Spain since 1993.

The exhibition benefits from the exceptional loan of the Estate Brassaï Succession (Paris) and other loans from some of the most important institutions and private collections in Europe and the United States, including: The Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), The Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou (París), The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, David Dechman and Michel Mercure, ISelf Collection (London) and Nicholas and Susan Pritzker.

The Photographer – Brassaï (Gyulá Halász, 1899-1984)

Brassaï (the pseudonym of Gyulá Halász) was born in 1899 in Brassó, Transylvania (present-day Braşov in Rumania), from where he subsequently took his name for signing his photographs (Brassaï means “from Brassó”).

After studying art in Budapest and Berlin, he moved to Paris and very soon began to earn occasional money and establish a reputation by selling articles and caricatures to German and Hungarian magazines. Photographs were rapidly replacing traditional magazine illustrations and Brassaï also functioned as a one-man photo-agency. Eventually he started making photographs himself, abandoning painting and sculpting, disciplines for which he nevertheless retained great interest and to which he returned during his career. Around 1900, an aesthetic movement had justified its claim that photography was as a fine art by imitating the appearance of the traditional arts. It was not until the 1920s and 1930s that a new generation rejected that approach and began exploring the artistic potential of plain, ordinary photographs. When the tradition that they launched began to achieve widespread recognition in the 1970s, Brassaï would be recognised as one of its leading figures.

During the German occupation of Paris, Brassaï was obliged to stop taking photographs and he thus returned to drawing and writing. In 1949 he obtained French nationality. After the war he once again devoted part of his time to photography and traveled regularly to undertake commissions for the American magazine Harper’s Bazaar. He died in Beaulieu-sur-Mer (France) in 1984 without ever returning to his native Brassó.

The sections of the exhibition

Paris by Night

Paris by Night was in fact the result of a commission which the publisher Charles Peignot gave to the young and still unknown Brassaï. The book, of which a copy is presented in the exhibition, was published in December 1932 and was extremely successful thanks in part to its modern design, pages without margins and richly toned photogravures. Brassaï continued to explore nocturnal Paris throughout the 1930s, developing a personal vision that is embodied in numerous prints in the exhibition.

They evoke the city’s dynamic, vibrant mood: the close-up image of a gargoyle on Notre Dame Cathedral rather than a conventional view of that building, or the Pont Royal seen from the water rather than from above. These are almost always silent images in which time seems to stand still.

Pleasures

When Brassaï reorganised his archive just after World War II, gathered under the rubric Plaisirs he included his pictures of small-time criminals and prostitutes and other figures of Parisian low life together with images of Parisian entertainments, including cheap dance halls to local street fairs to the annual entertainments designed to flout bourgeois conventions. Brassaï obtained permission to work backstage at the famous Folies Bergère, which allowed him to observe everything that was happening from a high viewpoint. His images of Parisian low life transpose to the vivid new medium of photography a vital mythology that had been elaborated in literature and the traditional visual arts.

No one photographed Paris by night as skilfully as Brassaï but he also built up a considerable collection of images of the city by day. Its famous monuments, picturesque corners and details of everyday life are the subject of many of these photographs. Some of his images of the early 1930s reveal his interest in daring geometrical forms and abrupt truncation, for example his famous images of the city’s cobblestones. But even his boldest graphic experiments reflect his abiding fascination with the continuities of an enduring human civilisation.

Paris by day

Nobody photographed Paris at night as accurately as Brassaï, but also accumulated a considerable collection of images of the city in daylight. Monuments, picturesque corners or details of everyday life play a large part in these scenes.

Some of his photographs from the thirties also reflect his interest in geometric styles or abrupt cuts, as shown by the famous cobblestone images of city streets. But even these bolder graphic experiments reflect, like the rest of his images of the city, his permanent fascination with what for him was presented as a remote and inexhaustible tradition, in constant development.

Graffiti

The notion of graffiti as a powerful art form first emerged in the 20th century. Like African tribal objects, children’s art or that of the mentally ill, graffiti was considered more expressive and vital than the refined forms of traditional western art.

Brassaï was in fact one of the first to focus on this subject matter. He was an inveterate hoarder who throughout his life collected all types of cast-off objects and from almost the moment he began to take photographs he used the medium to record the graffiti he saw on the walls of Paris. He preferred examples of graffiti that had been incised or scratched to drawn or painted ones, as well as those in which the irregularity of the wall itself played an important role in aesthetic terms. He took hundreds of images of this type of which only a small selection is on display here.

Minotaure

Between the time of his arrival in Paris in early 1924 and his first steps in photography taken six years later, Brassaï built up a large circle of friends within the international community of artists and writers in Montparnasse. They included Les deux aveugles [The two blind men], as the art critics Maurice Raynal and the Greek-born E. Tériade referred to themselves. In December 1932, the same month that Paris de nuit was published, Tériade invited Brassaï to photograph Picasso and his studios to illustrate the first issue of Minotaure, the deluxe art magazine that would be published in 1933 by the Swiss publisher Albert Skira. Copies of various different issues are on display in this section. This collaboration marked the starting point of Brassaï’s friendship with Picasso, one of the most important of his entire life. Over the following years Brassaï would play an important role in the life of the magazine, particularly with the projects for which he collaborated with Salvador Dalí and as an illustrator to texts by André Breton, although in some cases as an artist in his own right. The first number of the magazine included a series of nudes by Brassaï and his growing graffiti series, while number 7 devoted several pages to Brassaï’s nocturnal visions. All these evoke the artist’s modernity and his relationship with the most important circles of the Parisian avant-garde.

Personages / Characters

In 1949 in his prologue to Camera in Paris, a monograph on contemporary photographers, Brassaï paraphrased Baudelaire in The Painter of modern Life and established a line of continuity between the art of the photographer and that of some of the great artists of the past such as Rembrandt, Goya and Toulouse-Lautrec. In this sense he explained how, like them, photography could elevate ordinary subjects to the level of the universal. The people depicted in this gallery reflect that idea as not only do we see a worker at Les Halles market, a transvestite or a penitent in Seville, but through the dignity given to them by the image all of them exceed their individuality and come to represent a collective.

Places and things

One of Brassaï’s earliest projects, which was never produced, was a book of photographs of cacti. Many years later, in 1957, he made a short film on animals. Most of his photographs of objects or places, however, focus on human creations, reflecting his boundless curiosity about the people that made them, used them or lived in them.

During his trips Brassaï took numerous photographs of which a small selection are on display here: a view of Gaudí’s Sagrada Familia from a high viewpoint, a painted wall in Sacromonte, Granada, and a shop window in New Orleans. In some of these images, such as Vineyard, Château Mouton-Rothschild (June 1953), the viewpoint jumps sharply from the foreground to the background, splitting the image in half along its horizontal axis – a pictorial device invented by Brassaï.

Society

During the mid-1930s and just after World War II, Brassaï photographed at more than two dozen gatherings of Parisian high society – costume balls, fancy soirées, and other events both at private homes and such elegant venues as the Ritz – as well as the famous Nuit de Longchamp (the race course just outside of Paris) every summer from 1936 to 1939. At these events he had much less opportunity to intervene in the action than in Parisian dance halls and bars, but he nonetheless was able to create lasting images of a distinct social reality. Perhaps the most extraordinary of them is his photograph of the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Art Nouveau interior of the swank restaurant Maxim’s (completed just a few years before the Casa Garriga Nogués). Although that image has been famous since it was made in 1949, Brassaï’s series on Parisian high society is poorly known, and several of the photographs are presented for the first time in this exhibition.

Body of a woman

During the occupation of Paris (1940-1944), Brassaï declined to work for the Germans and so was unable to photograph openly. His only income seems to have come from a clandestine commission from Picasso to photograph the master’s sculptures. Partly at Picasso’s urging, Brassaï returned to drawing. Most of the drawings that he made in 1943-1945, like most of the drawings that survive from his time as an art student in Berlin in 1921-1922, are female nudes. The same is the case with many of the sculptures that he started to produce after the war, often made from stones worn by the effect of water.

It would be foolish to attempt to disguise the intensity of Brassaï’s male gaze behind the curtain of a purely aesthetic pursuit of “form.” What is distinctive and powerful in his images of the female body is their unembarrassed carnal urgency.

Portraits: artists, writers, friends

Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Henry Miller (who gave Brassaï the sobriquet “The eye of Paris”), Pierre Reverdy, Jacques Prévert, Henri Matisse and Léon-Paul Fargue are just a few of the subjects of the portraits on display in this section of the exhibition.

Most of Brassaï’s portraits are of people that he knew and perhaps as a result of that closeness they convey a powerful spirit of frankness, unencumbered by posturing. It is also true; however, that Brassaï regularly achieved that spirit even when he did not know the subject.

Sleep

Broadly speaking, the hallmark of advance European photography in the 1920s and 1930s was a new sense of mobility and spontaneity. But spontaneity was alien to Brassaï’s sensibility, which instead sought clarity and stability. Instead of the popular, hand-held camera, a 35mm Leica, Brassaï chose a camera that used glass plates and often stood on a tripod. As if to declare his independence from the aesthetic of mobility, he chose sleeping in public as a recurrent motif.

The street

Brassaï’s work for Harper’s Bazaar led him to travel in France and in numerous other places, from Spain to Sweden, the United States and Brazil. While the roots of his talent lay in Paris he thus produced an extensive body of photographs taken in places that were unfamiliar to him. The exhibition includes a number of these works, three of them depicting Spain.

Press release from Fundación MAPFRE

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984) 'Chez Suzy' 1931-1932

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Chez Suzy
1931-1932
(Plaisirs / Pleasure 352)
30 x 23.8cm
© Estate Brassaï Succession, Paris

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984) 'Nude in the Bathtub' 1938

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Nu a la banyera
Desnudo en la bañera
Nude in the Bathtub
1938
(Nu / Naked 199)
23.5 x 17.3cm
© Estate Brassaï Succession, Paris

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984) 'Four Seasons Ball, rue de Lappe' c. 1932

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Bal des Quatre Saisons, rue de Lappe
Four Seasons Ball, rue de Lappe
c. 1932
(Plaisirs / Pleasures 2)
49.8 x 40.4 cm
Estate Brassaï Succession, Paris © Estate Brassaï Succession, Paris

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984) 'At Magic City' c. 1932

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Al Magic City
En Magic City
At Magic City
c. 1932
(Plaisirs / Pleasures 439)
23.2 x 16.6cm
© Estate Brassaï Succession, Paris

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984) 'Lovers at the Gare Saint-Lazare' 1937

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Amants a l’estació de Saint-Lazare
Amantes en la Gare Saint-Lazare
Lovers at the Gare Saint-Lazare
c. 1937
(Plaisirs / Pleasures 143)
23.6 x 17.3cm
© Estate Brassaï Succession, Paris

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984) 'Haute Couture Soirée' 1935

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Vetllada d’alta costura
Velada de alta costura
Haute Couture Soirée
1935
(Soirées 85 (image reversed))
17.6 x 21.1cm
© Estate Brassaï Succession, Paris

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984) 'Lobster Seller, Seville' 1951

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Venedor de marisc, Sevilla
Vendedor de marisco, Sevilla
Lobster Seller, Seville
1951
(Étranger / Foreign 401)
49.3 x 37cm
© Estate Brassaï Succession, Paris

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984) 'New Orleans' 1957

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
New Orleans
1957
(Amérique / America 451)
35.9 x 29.4cm
© Estate Brassaï Succession, Paris

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984) 'Montmartre' 1930-1931

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Montmartre
1930-1931
[Paris de jour / Paris by day 472.C]
29.8 x 39.6 cm
© Estate Brassaï Succession, Paris

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984) 'Jean Genet, Paris' 1948

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Jean Genet, Paris
1948
(Arts 787.E)
39.7 x 30.2cm
© Estate Brassaï Succession, Paris

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984) 'Picasso Holding One Of The Sculptures' 1939

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Picasso Tenant Une De Les Sculptures
Picasso Holding One Of The Sculptures

1939
© Estate Brassaï Succession, Paris

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984) 'Portrait of Picasso in His Studio at 23 rue de La Boëtie, Paris' 1932

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Portrait of Picasso in His Studio at 23 rue de La Boëtie, Paris
1932
© Estate Brassaï Succession, Paris

 

23 rue de La Boëtie, Paris

 

23 rue de La Boëtie, Paris

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984) 'Self-portrait, Boulevard Saint-Jacques, Paris 14ème' c. 1931-1932

 

Brassaï (Gyulá Halász) (Hungarian-French, 1899-1984)
Self-portrait, Boulevard Saint-Jacques, Paris 14ème
c. 1931-1932
© Estate Brassaï Succession, Paris

 

 

Fundación MAPFRE – Instituto de Cultura
Casa Garriga i Nogués exhibition space
Calle Diputació, 250
Barcelona

Opening hours:
Mondays closed
Tuesday to Sundays (and holidays): 11 am – 7 pm

Fundación MAPFRE website

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Vale Polixeni Papapetrou (1960-2018)

April 2018

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'Drag queen wearing cut out dress' 1993

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
Drag queen wearing cut out dress
1993
From the series Drag Queens 1988-1999
Gelatin silver photograph
28.5 x 28.5cm
Courtesy the artist and Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne and Stills Gallery, Sydney

 

 

My god, what a loss.

I am very sorry to hear of the passing of Polixeni Papapetrou. Sadness indeed…

Poli was a wonderful spirit and an incredibly gifted artist. Condolences to Robert Nelson and all of the family.

A selection of some of my favourite Papapetrou images are posted below – but really, there are so many memorable images, she leaves behind an indelible and lasting legacy.

From an earlier posting:

“What we should do is honour this talented and determined artist for creating so many memorable images over the years, for following her passion and her heart with courage and conviction. For the rest of my life I will always remember the spaces, the ambiguous vistas, the fantastical archetypes, the fables of her work. Images of drag queens and Dreamkeepers, Ghillies and goblins are etched in my memory. I will always remember them. You can’t ask much more from the work of an artist than that.”


You can kill the dreamer, but you cannot kill the dream.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

 

“Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.”


Paul Klee. Creative Credo (Schöpferische Konfession) 1920

 

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'Three young men paying homage to Elvis on the 13th anniversary of Elvis’ death, Elvis Memorial Melbourne' 1990

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
Three young men paying homage to Elvis on the 13th anniversary of Elvis’ death, Elvis Memorial Melbourne
1990
From the series Elvis Immortal 1987-2002
Selenium toned gelatin silver photograph
40.7 x 40.7cm
Courtesy the artist and Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne and Stills Gallery, Sydney

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'Mr Wrestling' 1992

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
Mr Wrestling
1992
From the series Wrestlers 1992
Pigment ink print
100 x 100cm

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'Indian Brave' 2002

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
Indian Brave
2002
From the series Phantomwise 2002-2003
Pigment ink print
85 x 85cm
Courtesy the artist and Nellie Castan Gallery, Melbourne and Stills Gallery, Sydney

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'Lost' 2005

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
Lost
2005
From the series Fairy Tales 2004-2014
Type C print
100 x 100cm
Courtesy the artist, Michael Reid Gallery, Sydney + Berlin and Jarvis Dooney Galerie, Berlin
Reproduced with permission

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'In the Wimmera 1864 #1' 2006

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
In the Wimmera 1864 #1
2006
From the series Haunted country 2006
Pigment ink print
105 x 105cm
Geelong Gallery Collection

 

In the Wimmera 1864 #1 from the Haunted country series is amongst the earliest works by the artist to have been staged in the Australian landscape and is one in which she explores the narrative of the ‘lost child’. The work references the story of three children lost in Mallee scrub near their home outside Horsham in the Wimmera District and is reminiscent, as the artist intends, of Frederick McCubbin’s late 19th century paintings of children lost or at least wandering absent-mindedly through the Australia bush.

Text from the Culture Victoria website

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'Hanging Rock 1900 #3' 2006

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
Hanging Rock 1900 #3
2006
From the series Haunted country 2006
Pigment ink print
105 x 105cm

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'The Provider' 2009

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
The Provider
2009
From the series Between Worlds 2009-2012
Pigment print
105 x 105cm

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'The Mourner' 2012

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
The Mourner
2012
From the series Between Worlds 2009-2012
Pigment print
105 x 105cm

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'The Joy Pedlars' 2011 from 'The Dreamkeepers' 2011

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
The Joy Pedlars
2011
From the series The Dreamkeepers 2012
Pigment print
105 x 105cm

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'The Wanderer No. 3', 2012 from 'The Dreamkeepers'

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
The Wanderer No. 3
2012
From the series The Dreamkeepers 2012
Pigment print
105 x 105cm

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'Ocean Man' 2013

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
Ocean Man
2013
From the series The Ghillies 2013
120 x 120cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased NGV Foundation, 2013

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'Scrub Man' 2012

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
Scrub Man
2012
From the series The Ghillies 2013
120 x 120cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased NGV Foundation, 2013

 

 

Review of the exhibition Polixeni Papapetrou: Lost Psyche at Stills Gallery, 2014

When “facing” adversity, it is a measure of a person’s character how they hold themselves, what face they show to the world, and how their art represents them in that world. So it is with Polixeni Papapetrou. The courage of this artist, her consistency of vision and insightful commentary on life even while life itself is in the balance, are inspiring to all those that know her.

Papapetrou has always created her own language, integrating the temporal dissemination of the historical “case” into a two-dimensional space of simultaneity and tabulation (the various archetypes and ancient characters), into an outline against a ground of Cartesian coordinates.1 In her construction, in her observation and under her act of surveillance, Papapetrou moves towards a well-made description of the states of the body in the tables and classification of the psychological landscape. Her tableaux (the French tableau signifies painting and scene (as in tableau vivant), but also table (as in a table used to organise data)) are a classification and tabulation that is an exact “portrait” of “the” illness, the lost psyche of the title. Her images lay out, in a very visible way, the double makeover: of the outer and inner landscape.

These narratives are above all self-portraits. The idea that image, archetype and artist might somehow be one and the same is a potent idea in Papapetrou’s work. What is “rendered” visible in her art is her own spirit, for these visionary works are nothing less than concise, intimate, focused self-portraits. They speak through the mask of the commedia dell’arte of a face half turned to the world, half immersed in imaginary worlds. The double skin (as though human soul, the psyche, is erupting from within, forcing a face-off) and triple skin (evidenced in the lack of depth of field of the landscape tableaux) propose an opening up, a revealing of self in which the anatomy (anatemnein: to tear, to open a body, to dissect) of the living is revealed. The images become an autopsy on the living and the dead: “a series of images, that would crystallise and memorise for everyone the whole time of an inquiry and, beyond that, the time of a history.”2

Papapetrou’s images become the “true retina” of seeing, close to a scientific description of a character placed on a two dimensional background (notice how the stylised clouds in The Antiquarian, 2014 match the fur hat trim). In the sense of evidence, the artist’s archetypes proffer a Type that is balanced on the edge of longing, poetry, desire and death, one that the objectivity of photography seeks to fix and stabilise. These images serve the fantasy of a memory: of a masked archetype in a made over landscape captured “exact and sincere” by the apparatus of the camera. A faithful memory of a tableau in which Type is condensed into a unique image: the visage fixed to the regime of representation,3 the universal become singular. This Type is named through the incorporated Text, the Legend: I am Day Dreamer, Immigrant, Merchant, Poet, Storyteller.

But even as these photographs seek to fix the Type, “even as the object of knowledge is photographically detained for observation, fixed to objectivity,”4 the paradox is that this kind of knowledge slips away from itself, because photography is always an uncertain technique, unstable and chaotic, as ever the psyche. In the cutting-up of bodies, cutting-up on stage, a staging aimed at knowledge – the facticity of the masked, obscured, erupting face; the corporeal surface of the body, landscape, photograph – the image makes visible something of the movements of the soul. In these heterotopic images, sites that relate to more stable sites, “but in such a way as to suspect, neutralise, or invert the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror or reflect,”5 Papapetrou’s psyche, “creates the chain of tradition which passes a happening on from generation to generation.”6 In her commedia dell’ arte, an improvised comedy of craft, of artisans (a worker in a skilled trade), the artist fashions the raw material of experience in a unique way.7 We, the audience, intuitively recognise the type of person being represented in the story, through their half masks, their clothing and context and through the skilful dissemination of collective memory and experience.

Through her storytelling Papapetrou moves towards a social and spiritual transformation, one that unhinges the lost psyche. Her landscape narratives are a narrative of a recognisable, challenging, unstable non-linear art, an art practice that embraces “the speculative mystery of ancient roles… They’re all souls with divided emotions, torn between dream and reality, who like us, converge on the collective stage that is the world.” They are archetype as self-portrait: portraits of a searching, erupting, questioning soul, brave and courageous in a time of peril. And the work is for the children (of the world), for without art and family, extinction.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

Footnotes

1/ Adapted from Didi-Huberman, Georges. Invention of Hysteria: Charcot and the Photographic Iconography of the Salpetriere (trans. Alisa Hartz). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003, p. 24-25. I am indebted to the ideas of Georges Didi-Huberman for his analysis of the ‘facies’ and the experiments of Jean-Martin Charcot on hysteria at the Hôpital Salpêtrière in Paris in the 1880s.
2/ Ibid., p. 48
3/ Ibid., p. 49
4/ Ibid., p. 59
5/ Foucault, Michel. “Of Other Spaces,” in Diacritics Spring 1986, p. 24 quoted in Fisher, Jean. “Witness for the Prosecution: The Writings of Coco Fusco,” in Fusco, Coco. The Bodies That Were Not Ours. London: Routledge, 2001, pp. 226-227
6/ Fisher, Ibid., p. 227-228
7/ “One can go on and ask oneself whether the relationship of the storyteller to his material, human life, is not in itself a craftsman’s relationship, whether it is not his very task to fashion the raw material of experience, his own and that of others, in a solid, useful, and unique way.”
Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations (trans. by Harry Zohn; edited by Hannah Arendt). New York: Schocken Books, 1968 (2007), p. 108

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'The Immigrant' 2014

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
The Immigrant
2014
From the series Lost Psyche 2014
Pigment print
100 x 150cm

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'The Storyteller' 2014

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
The Storyteller
2014
From the series Lost Psyche 2014
Pigment print
100 x 150 cm

 

 

Polixeni Papapetrou website

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Review: ‘Shadows of War: Roger Fenton’s Photographs of the Crimea, 1855’ at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London

Exhibition dates: 9th November, 2018 – 28th April, 2019

Curator: Sophie Gordon

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Lord Balgonie' 1855 from the exhibition Review: 'Shadows of War: Roger Fenton's Photographs of the Crimea, 1855' at The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London, Nov 2018 - April 2019

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Lord Balgonie
1855
Albumen print
17.7 x 11.7cm (image)
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500273

 

This portrait (above) shows Captain Alexander Leslie-Melville (1831-1857), known as Lord Balgonie. He was the eldest son of the 8th Earl of Leven, a Scottish peer. Lord Balgonie served in the Grenadier Guards during the war, and died only a couple of years after returning to Britain. At the time, his death was attributed to the hardships of the war. Fenton has photographed him standing in front of a sheet, which serves as a make-shift studio and he looks unkempt and shaken, as if he has recently stepped off the battlefield. In recent years, this photograph has been described as the first photographic portrait of shell-shock. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

 

The Crimean photographs of Roger Fenton represent the beginning of war photography. These staged photographs, documented for the edification of a viewing public back home in England and for the purpose of making money for the photographer, set the trend for the genre for the next 80 years. Staging photographs of war, and altering reality to suit the commercial, political or moral aspirations of photographer or institution, continues to this day.

For most of the images, “research for the exhibition has revealed that Fenton’s portraits and topographical views were principally intended as source material for the artist Thomas J Barker, who had been commissioned by Agnews to produce an oil painting of the senior officers of the allied forces. Barker used over 50 of Fenton’s images to create the monumental work The Allied Generals with the officers of their respective staffs before Sebastopol (private collection).” Fenton was fulfilling his commission and earning a living by taking photographs for a painter. But Fenton’s photographs are most successful when he has a personal connection to the subject matter, whether it be portrait or landscape. In other words, when he is not constructing or documenting as representation, but attempting to capture the spirit of person/place.

In portraiture, this personal connection can be seen in the photographs, Lord Balgonie (1855, above), Fitzroy James Henry Somerset, Baron Raglan (1788-1855) (4 Jun 1855, below), Omar Pacha (1806-1871) (1855, below) and General James Bucknall Estcourt (1802-1855) (1855, below), a man deep in thought or, perhaps, melancholy. These are psychological portraits that attempt to get under the skin of the sitter, not mere representations for use as a template for painting.

The portraits of Baron Raglan and Omar Pacha are taken in the same location, probably at the same sitting. In the portrait of Baron Raglan, this man (soon to die) is relatively small in proportion to the overall framing of the photograph, his dark shadow falling on the wall behind, his hat and white plume pulled forward and out of focus in the image, incredibly large in comparison with the size of the body. In three-quarter profile he gazes out of the image, while the right and top of the image falls into soft, velvet darkness. By comparison, the portrait of Omar Pacha presents to us a much more self possessed and confident man. Fenton has moved the camera closer to his subject. No shadow falls on the wall behind and the light frames the head of the sitter perfectly. His bearing is upright but relaxed; his hands gently rest in his lap; and his gaze stares directly out of the image but not directly into the camera lens as though her is in deep thought somewhere beyond the photographer’s left shoulder. Both are magnificent portraits.

With regard to his landscapes of the Crimea the same feelings can be observed. One is the representational urge, the other the artistic. The first problem is the barrenness of the landscape and what to do with the inevitable horizon line. When photographing people in the landscape Fenton makes use of low depth of field either pulling the figures towards the front of the image (Sir John Miller Adye (1819-1900) 1855, and General Scarlett and Colonel Low Apr 1855, below) or the mid-distance (such as Captain and Mrs Duberly Apr 1855 and Colonel Doherty and the Officers of the 13th Light Dragoons 1855, below) whilst allowing the horizon line to float in the distance, either placed through the figures or floating above them. This low depth of field allows the horizon line to soften and the solid space around the figures to become ambiguous and fluid. It also allows the light in this vast expanse of country to do its duty, to illuminate the isolation of these figures “in the field.” A similar technique was used by Edward S. Curtis when photographing the Native American Indians against the vastness of country – low depth of field, letting the light and composition do the work as subject is located – or vanishes – into the landscape.

For the shear complexity of their visualisation, Fenton’s photographs of Balaklava are among my favourites. The placement of camera, the line of composition (ship masts, hills, horizon line, stacking of cannonball), the flattening of perspective (The Ordnance Wharf at Balaklava Mar 1855, below) and the tonality of the images are exemplary.

Taken a mere 15 years after the birth year of practical photography, Fenton’s “subtle and poetic interpretations” still resonate today. That he captured such acclaimed images using a heavy land camera, the photographs taken sometimes under fire, the glass plates prepared and developed in a ‘travelling darkroom’ – his horse drawn photographic van – make Fenton’s achievement all the more remarkable. The shadow of war that he captured, the presence of the men, women and landscapes of that time and place, are made alive to us today.

Note this

There is the date a photograph is made, and the date it is viewed. There is something about the different way a photograph exists in time, different from the date a poem is written and the date it is read, different from the date a painting is finished and the date it is viewed.

And then

Photographs remind us
of people, passing
They distill an essence
which
in turn
Instills in us
memory of time, place, spirit

 

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to The Queen’s Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Half a league,
half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.


Lord Tennyson. The Charge of the Light Brigade

 

 

John Gilbert (British, 1817-1897) 'The Queen Inspecting wounded Coldstream Guards in the Hall of Buckingham Palace, 22 February 1855' 1856

 

John Gilbert (British, 1817-1897)
The Queen Inspecting wounded Coldstream Guards in the Hall of Buckingham Palace, 22 February 1855
1856
Watercolour
138 x 214.5 x 13cm
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 451958

 

This painting depicts the second meeting with Guardsmen which took place at Buckingham Palace. The first meeting had been with the Grenadier Guards on 20 February 1855. The artist John Gilbert prepared a sketch of the event for the newspaper the Illustrated London News, published on 10 March 1855. He went on to create this painting using photographs of the soldiers for accuracy. Prince Albert supplied photographs of himself and the royal children. Gilbert was also given permission by the Queen to visit the Marble Hall in Buckingham Palace to recreate the scene. The scale of the watercolour caused a sensation when it was exhibited in 1856. Probably acquired by the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Queen Victoria and Prince Albert' 1854 from the exhibition Review: 'Shadows of War: Roger Fenton's Photographs of the Crimea, 1855' at The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London, Nov 2018 - April 2019

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert
1854
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017

 

This is the first exhibition to focus exclusively on Roger Fenton’s pioneering photographs of the Crimean War, taken in 1855. Fenton was already an accomplished and respected photographer when he was sent by the publishers Agnew’s to photograph a war that pitched Britain, France and Turkey as allies against Russia. Arriving several months after the major battles were fought in 1854, Fenton focused on creating moving portraits of the troops, as well as capturing the stark, empty battlefields on which so many lost their lives.

Published in contemporary newspaper reports, Fenton’s photographs showed the impact of war to the general public for the first time. Through his often subtle and poetic interpretations Fenton created the genre of war photography, showing his extraordinary genius in capturing the futility of war.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'A Zouave' 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
A Zouave (Self-portrait as a Zouave)
1855
Salted paper print
18.2 x 14.1cm (image)
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500562

 

The title of this work gives no indication that this is a self-portrait. Fenton has dressed himself in the uniform of a Zouave, a type of Algerian soldier who fought with the French army during the Crimean War. The Zouaves were admired both for their bravery and for their colourful dress. In 1855, when this photograph was exhibited for the first time, Fenton was Britain’s leading photographer but only a handful of fellow artists would have known that this was Fenton and not a Zouave soldier from the war. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Sir John Miller Adye (1819-1900)' 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Sir John Miller Adye (1819-1900)
1855
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017

 

 

The exhibition

Roger Fenton (1819-69) was the first photographer to document a war for public consumption. From March 1855, Fenton spent four months photographing the people and the terrain affected by the Crimean War, fought between the allied nations of Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire against Russia.

Fenton’s time in the Crimea was relatively short given the war lasted over two years (October 1853 – March 1856) but his photographs captured, for the first time, the chaos and disorder of a war zone, and showed the Victorian public portraits of soldiers in the field, directly affected by battle. Although Fenton was fulfilling a commercial commission, he allowed himself to respond emotionally in his work and this is perhaps why his photographs continue to represent the Crimean War more effectively than any other visual record of the conflict.

This exhibition presents Fenton’s work within the wider context of the war, alongside other contemporary artists, photographers and writers also in the Crimea at that time. We begin with two sections which, through Fenton’s portraits, introduce some of the key individuals and events that occurred prior to Fenton’s arrival in the Crimea.

Subsequently we examine Fenton’s work in more detail, before considering the significant role played by the royal family in focusing the attention of the British public on the impact of war and the returning wounded veterans.

The Crimean War, 1853-1856

The Crimean War, also known as the Russian War, pitched the allied nations of Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Sardinia against the Russian Empire. At its simplest, the war was fought to prevent Russia gaining territorial control of various regions in eastern Europe, then under Ottoman control, and of routes into British India. These regions included the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, the Caucasus region and the Danubian provinces of modern-day Romania. Other more complex reasons included disputes over the control of religious sites and the protection of Christians in the Middle East, as well as concern over the declining influence of the Ottoman Empire and the growth of nationalism in various regions.

War with Russia had been publicly discussed for several years before Russian incursions into Romania, then under Ottoman control, led to a declaration of war from Constantinople in October 1853. Britain and France, fearing the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the growth of Russian power, followed with their support for the Ottomans by declaring war on Russia at the end of March 1854.

The conflict began in Europe and could have ended there in July 1854 when Russia began to withdraw but the European allies decided to confront Russia directly by besieging the Russian port of Sevastopol, an important naval base on the Crimean peninsula. The allies landed in the Crimea on 14 September 1854 and made their way towards Sevastopol, encountering the Russians in several major battles en route including Alma (20 September), Balaklava (25 October) and Inkerman (5 November). On 9 September 1855, after numerous other battles and skirmishes, Sevastopol fell to the allies.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Fitzroy James Henry Somerset, Baron Raglan (1788-1855)' 4 Jun 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Fitzroy James Henry Somerset, Baron Raglan (1788-1855)
4 Jun 1855
Albumen print
18.3 x 14.5cm (image)
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500229

 

Lord Raglan (1788-1855) was a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars. He lost his right arm during the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, whilst he was an aide to the Duke of Wellington. Despite having never commanded in the field, he was named as the expedition Commander-in-Chief in early 1854 when war seemed inevitable. He was to become the focus of heavy public criticism over the apparent poor organisation and logistics during the campaign. This criticism contributed to his declining health, and he died in the Crimea on 28 June 1855. He was succeeded as Commander-in-Chief by General James Simpson. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Lieutenant-General Burgoyne and his aide-de-camp Lieutenant Stopford' 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Lieutenant-General Burgoyne and his aide-de-camp Lieutenant Stopford
1855
Salted paper print
21.9 x 17.6cm (image)
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500553

 

John Burgoyne (1782-1871) was a key member of the senior command during the war. After the Battle of Alma on 20 September 1854, Burgoyne proposed that the army march south of Sevastopol and besiege the city, rather than attacking the city from the north. This decision ultimately committed the allies to a siege of almost a year. Burgoyne returned to Britain in the winter of 1854-1855 before Fenton arrived in the Crimea. As Fenton sought to photograph all the senior commanders from the war, he arranged this session in his London studio sometime after he returned to Britain in mid-July 1855. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'General Scarlett and Colonel Low' Apr 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
General Scarlett and Colonel Low
April 1855
Albumen print
19.5 x 16.0cm (image)
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500250

 

Sir James York Scarlett (1799-1871), here seated on a horse, played a key role in the Battle of Balaklava on 25 October 1854. The Charge of the Heavy Brigade, under Scarlett’s command, was a highly successful attack on the Russian army which has become overshadowed by the infamous Charge of the Light Brigade which occurred later during the same battle. Alexander Low (1817-1904) held the rank of Captain in the 4th Light Dragoons at the time of this photograph. He was a highly skilled cavalryman and served with distinction during the Charge of the Light Brigade. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Officers of the 8th Hussars' Apr 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Officers of the 8th Hussars
Apr 1855
Albumen print
16.7 x 16.3cm (image)
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500355

 

Fenton made a number of group portraits of men from the five Light Cavalry regiments that charged on 25 October. News of the action had caught the public imagination, and the names of the regiments became well-known. Fenton would probably have seen photographs of men who may have fought in the battle as having greater commercial potential. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

The Battle of Inkerman 5 November 1854

After Balaklava, the allied armies continued to besiege Sevastopol. The Russian army occupied a strong position between the city and the allies, and on 5 November 1854 they attempted to end the siege. The Battle of Inkerman saw fierce fighting hampered by thick fog, resulting in poor communication between the troops. Casualties were disproportionately high. The battle was a victory for the allies but it also committed the troops to a long winter in the Crimea.

Most of the injured soldiers were shipped to Scutari hospitals, near Constantinople. As the Inkerman wounded arrived, so too did Florence Nightingale and her nurses. During October, reports in The Times sent by William Howard Russell had described the poor care for the wounded and the lack of nurses. This led Sidney Herbert, Secretary of State for War, to ask Nightingale to lead a nursing party to Scutari. They arrived on 4 November 1854.

From Scutari, Nightingale made three visits to the Crimea, the first in May 1855 when she caught a serious illness that was to affect her for the rest of her life. By this time, Nightingale was already well-known to the British public and had been depicted in the press as the ‘Lady with the Lamp’. She returned to Britain in July 1856 and devoted much of the rest of her life to hospital and healthcare reform.

Inkerman

Roger Fenton produced this panoramic view of the Inkerman Valley, the scene of a fierce battle on 5 November 1854 that pitched the British and French allies against the Russian army. The battle took place in thick fog, resulting in troops becoming cut off from their commanders and a high number of casualties. Although the battle was an allied success, its impact was such that it extended the war by months, condemning the troops to the harsh winter of 1854-1855 in the Crimea. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'The Ruins of Inkerman' May 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
The Ruins of Inkerman
May 1855
20.2 x 25.8cm (image)
Albumen print
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'The Quarries and Aqueduct in the Valley of Inkerman' May 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
The Quarries and Aqueduct in the Valley of Inkerman
May 1855
18.5 x 25.4cm (image)
Albumen print
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Hardships in the Crimea' 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Hardships in the Crimea
1855
Albumen print
17.6 x 16.2cm (image)
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500388

 

Fenton took a number of staged photographs of camp life, including this group of the 4th Dragoon Guards. Generally, the titles of his portraits are the name of the sitter or regiment photographed, but this is one of a small number which have been given a more emotive title. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

 

Haunting images that brought the stark reality of war into public consciousness for the first time have gone on display in a new exhibition Shadows of War: Roger Fenton’s Photographs of the Crimea, 1855 at The Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, London. Roger Fenton (1819-1869) was the first photographer to document conflict in such a substantial way at a time when the medium of photography was still in its infancy and there was no expectation of what ‘war photography’ should be.

Drawn entirely from the Royal Collection, the exhibition explores the impact and legacy of Fenton’s Crimean work, which is shown in Scotland for the first time since 1856. It also tells the story of the historically close relationship between the Royal Family and those who have served their country in battle, with contributions to the exhibition’s multimedia guide by Prince Harry, photojournalist Sir Don McCullin and exhibition curator Sophie Gordon.

One of the leading photographers of the 19th century, Roger Fenton was commissioned by the art dealer and publisher Thomas Agnew & Sons to photograph the officers and other people of interest during the Crimean conflict. On 20 February 1855 Fenton set sail for the Crimea on board HMS Hecla, accompanied by 36 chests of cameras, glass plates, chemicals, a stove and other pieces of equipment, and a wine merchant’s van converted into a travelling darkroom and accommodation for the photographer and his two assistants.

Research for the exhibition has revealed that Fenton’s portraits and topographical views were principally intended as source material for the artist Thomas J Barker, who had been commissioned by Agnews to produce an oil painting of the senior officers of the allied forces. Barker used over 50 of Fenton’s images to create the monumental work The Allied Generals with the officers of their respective staffs before Sebastopol (private collection). The painting reproduces some of Fenton’s portraits directly, including those of the Scottish General Sir Colin Campbell and The Times reporter William Howard Russell, as well as his photographs of camp life, such as 8th Hussars Cooking Hut.

Other figures within the painting, such as Barker’s depiction of Florence Nightingale, are clearly inspired by Fenton’s photographs. Although Nightingale was in the Crimea in 1855, she was a reluctant sitter for the camera and appears not to have been photographed by Fenton. Instead Barker’s portrait of her on horseback seems to be inspired by Fenton’s photograph Mr and Mrs Duberly.

In the 19th century there was a thriving market for prints of popular paintings. An engraving of Barker’s work was published in 1859 with a key to help the public identify the figures. The reproduction of the painting in newspapers and exhibitions of Fenton’s photographs raised awareness of the conditions endured by soldiers at a time when the wounded began to arrive home.

The concern and admiration for the veterans displayed by Queen Victoria and members of the royal family helped to highlight the plight of those returning from war. The Queen met groups of soldiers, visited military hospitals and inspected troops of veterans at Buckingham Palace. One such occasion was recorded by John Gilbert in The Queen inspecting wounded Coldstream Guardsmen in the Hall of Buckingham Palace, 22 February 1855. This large watercolour, which has hung at Sandringham House since it was acquired by Queen Victoria’s eldest son, the future King Edward VII, is exhibited for the first time.

Queen Victoria was the first British monarch to meet and support wounded soldiers in public. Today Prince Harry’s work with veterans promotes a wider understanding and respect for those who serve their country. On the exhibition’s multimedia guide His Royal Highness speaks about a number of Fenton’s images and how they helped change attitudes towards those affected by their experiences on the battlefield.

Speaking about Fenton’s image Lord Balgonie, the first visual record of someone suffering from ‘shell shock’ Prince Harry says in the multimedia guide: ‘There has always been a fascination about people returning from war, what they’ve been through and what they’ve seen. The psychological impact of being on the battlefield is something that servicemen and women have had to deal with, but have often found it hard to talk about. As a result of photographers like Roger Fenton and those who have followed him, the public have gained a better appreciation of these experiences and consequently, over the years this fascination has turned to appreciation and respect.’

Press release from The Queen’s Gallery

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Photographic Van' 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Photographic Van
1855
Albumen print
17.4 x 15.9cm
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500439

 

Fenton’s ‘travelling darkroom’ was the only space he had in which to prepare his glass plates before they were exposed in the camera, and afterwards, to develop the negative image. Beyond a few test prints, however, Fenton would not have done any significant printing of photographs in the Crimea. All the negatives were transported back to Britain and printed there. This photograph was probably taken shortly before Fenton went into the ‘Valley of the Shadow of Death’. He later wrote in a letter, perhaps half-jokingly, that he feared the van being destroyed by enemy fire in the valley so he felt he should preserve its memory in a photograph. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

Fenton’s Crimean Commission: 8 March – June 1855

Fenton was commissioned to go to the Crimean War by the Manchester-based publishers Thomas Agnew & Sons. Agnew’s was one of the leading publishers, print sellers and dealers at the time, and the firm saw the war as an opportunity to sell new images to a public hungry for information. The war coincided with an increased number of public art exhibitions as the middle classes in particular had more time and money to spend on leisure activities.

At the same time, Agnew’s also commissioned the British historical painter Thomas Barker (1815-1882) to produce a large oil painting depicting the expected allied victory at Sevastopol. Fenton’s photographs were to be used as source material by Barker. This enabled the artist to claim absolute truthfulness and accuracy in his portraits.

Barker incorporated versions of at least 50 of Fenton’s photographs into his painting. Some photographs have been copied almost exactly; others have been reversed or combined with other images, with elements from some photographs appearing alongside people from other works. The painting was completed in 1856 and the associated engraving was published by Agnew’s in 1859. A key was also produced, identifying each individual in the work, in which Fenton’s role was explicitly acknowledged.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Valley of the Shadow of Death' 23 Apr 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Valley of the Shadow of Death
23 Apr 1855
Albumen print
25.7 x 35.0cm (image)
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500514

 

Perhaps Fenton’s most well-known photograph, ‘The Valley of the Shadow of Death’, is not in fact the location of the charge of the Light Brigade. When Fenton reached the ravine seen in this photograph, he found himself the target of enemy fire. Even so, Fenton managed to make at least two distinct views: the version seen here, and another in which far fewer cannon balls lie on the ground, indicating that he re-arranged one of the scenes. This photograph, which has become one of Fenton’s most famous compositions, demonstrates the power of the camera at war. The scene is still and almost barren, but the power of the imagination draws the viewer into the landscape and the title, with its reference to Psalm 23, suggests that we walk between the realms of life and sudden death. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

James Robertson (English, 1813-1888) 'Valley of the Shadow of Death' 1855-1856

 

James Robertson (English, 1813-1888)
Valley of the Shadow of Death
1855-1856
Salted paper print
22.3 x 29.2cm (image)
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500723

 

Neither Robertson’s photograph nor Simpson’s lithograph show the same location as Fenton’s image, despite all three works having the same title. The full phrase from Psalm 23 from which the title comes is ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil’. It is reported that the British soldiers gave the ravine its name. The emotive pull of Fenton’s composition is all the more apparent when compared with Robertson’s photograph and Simpson’s lithograph, although the round shot in Simpson’s work links it visually to Fenton’s photograph.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Omar Pacha (1806-1871)' 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Omar Pacha (1806-1871)
1855
Salted paper print
17.6 x 14.2cm (image)
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500341

 

Omar Pacha (1806-1871) was the commander of the Ottoman army at the beginning of the war, when the Russian incursions into the Balkan regions began. He was later to win a significant victory against the Russians at the Battle of Evpatoria on 17 February 1855 in the Crimea. Omar Pasha was photographed several times by Fenton, both seated and on horseback. A number of commanding officers were photographed in this way. It was probably to give the artist Thomas Barker a variety of poses which could be incorporated into his painting. Omar Pasha does appear on a horse in the final painting, but his head is a copy of this seated portrait. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Colonel Brownrigg and the two Russian boys Alma and Inkerman' 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Colonel Brownrigg and the two Russian boys Alma and Inkerman
1855
Salted paper print
16.8 x 15.5cm (image)
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500375

 

This portrait shows Colonel Brownrigg of the Grenadier Guards, with two Russian boys who were apparently taken prisoner by the British. In a letter from 29 April 1855 to his wife, Fenton described what happened, ‘Tell Annie [Fenton’s daughter] there are two Russian boys here who both would like to come to England which will she have Alma or Inkermann, such are their new names. One is an orphen [sic] the other has or had his parents in the town. They went out nutting last autumn & were taken, cried sadly but now would cry to go back’. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Cooking house, 8th Hussars' 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Cooking house, 8th Hussars
1855
Albumen print
15.3 x 19.6cm (image)
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500384

 

This beautifully composed group was incorporated almost entirely into Barker’s painting, although the woman standing at the back of the group was omitted. It is easily identifiable on the left-hand side of the painting. Fenton made a handful of photographs which try to capture the camp life of the ordinary soldier. The 8th Hussars were one of the regiments involved in the Charge of the Light Brigade and this association would give the photograph greater interest to the Victorian public. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Maréchal Pélissier, Duke of Malakoff (1794-1864)' Jun 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Maréchal Pélissier, Duke of Malakoff (1794-1864)
Jun 1855
Albumen print
17.9 x 15.5cm (image)
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500327

 

Fenton made several portraits of General Pélissier (1794-1864), on horseback and seated. Barker probably used this particular photograph to paint the general, who as the French Commander-in-Chief at the time of the final assault on Sevastopol in Summer 1855, features prominently in his painting. Pélissier had taken command of the French army on 16 May 1855, replacing General François Canrobert. He brought with him the energy and determination required to bring the siege of Sevastopol to a conclusion. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Captain and Mrs Duberly' Apr 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Captain and Mrs Duberly
Apr 1855
Albumen print
15.2 x 16.0 cm (image)
Royal Collection Trust / © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500314

 

Frances Isabella Duberly (1829-1902), known as Fanny, accompanied her husband Captain Henry Duberly (1822-1891), Paymaster of the 8th Hussars, to the war against the orders of Lord Raglan. She kept a journal of her experience, which included witnessing the Battle of Balaklava. She was also one of the first civilians to enter Sevastopol after it fell to the allies. Mrs Duberly attempted to dedicate the published version of her journal to Queen Victoria, titled Journal Kept During the Russian War, but this was refused. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Wounded Zouave and Vivandiere' 5 May 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Wounded Zouave and Vivandiere
5 May 1855
Salted paper print
17.4 x 15.8cm (image)
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500401

 

The vivandières, also known as cantinières, were attached to French regiments to supply the troops with food and drink beyond the standard rations. In a letter to his wife, Fenton described how he photographed this group on 5 May, ‘In the afternoon a Cantiniere was brought up I made first a picture of her by herself & then a group in which she is giving assistance to a wounded soldier. It was great fun the soldiers enjoyed it so much & entered so completely into the spirit of the thing’. This group was incorporated into Barker’s painting, although the composition was reversed. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Vivandière' 5 May 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Vivandière
5 May 1855
Albumen print
17.4 x 13.1cm (image)
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500338

 

This striking portrait was taken at the same time as the earlier group photograph with the ‘wounded soldier’. The vivandières usually dressed in a feminised version of the uniform of the regiment to which they were attached. There were women attached to the British regiments, known as sutlers, who helped with food, drink and domestic duties. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Colonel Doherty and the Officers of the 13th Light Dragoons' 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Colonel Doherty and the Officers of the 13th Light Dragoons
1855
Salted paper print
14.6 x 19.0cm
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500354

 

Lieutenant Colonel Charles Doherty (d. 1866) was the commanding officer of the 13th Light Dragoons on the day of the Battle of Balaklava. His regiment was part of the Light Brigade, and his men participated in the famous charge. However, due to illness, Doherty did not join the battle. Doherty’s replacement that day, Captain John Oldham, was killed in the battle. Fenton probably photographed this group in anticipation of the interest in regiments who formed the Charge of the Light Brigade. Some of the men included in the group were amongst the chargers. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Ismael Pacha receiving his chibouque' 27 Apr 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Ismael Pacha receiving his chibouque
27 Apr 1855
Albumen print
17.2 x 16.1cm (image)
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500427

 

Ismael Pacha (1813-1865), also known as György Kmety, fought against the Russians in the 1848 Hungarian Revolution. After its failure and the harsh Russian reprisals, he joined the Ottoman army. Fenton took a series of photographs of Ismael Pacha receiving a pipe from his servants. Both Ismael Pacha and his Nubian servant, seen to the right of this photograph, appear in Barker’s painting The Allied Generals. Presumably acquired by Queen Victoria.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Ismael Pacha receiving his chibouque' 27 Apr 1855 (detail)

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Ismael Pacha receiving his chibouque (detail)
27 Apr 1855
Albumen print
17.2 x 16.1cm (image)
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500427

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'View from Cathcart's Hill' 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
View from Cathcart’s Hill
1855
Albumen print
24.1 x 33.7cm (image)
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500534

 

This photograph shows the British camps as seen from Cathcart’s Hill, the main British cemetery in the Crimea. The cemetery took its name from the grave of Sir George Cathcart, a senior military officer who was killed during the Battle of Inkerman. The hill was also used as an observation point as from it commanders could view the progress of the Siege of Sevastopol. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'General James Bucknall Estcourt (1802-1855)' 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
General James Bucknall Estcourt (1802-1855)
1855
Albumen print
20.5 x 15.2cm
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500239

 

General Estcourt was a chief staff officer during the difficult first winter in the Crimea. He was among those most strongly criticised by the public and the press for the suffering of the army, although he was defended by his close friend Lord Raglan. He died of cholera in the Crimea in June 1855. The photograph is hard to interpret. It can be seen as someone taking a break from military concerns but it could also be a portrait of illness and exhaustion. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Sir William Howard Russell (1820-1907)' Jun 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Sir William Howard Russell (1820-1907)
Jun 1855
Albumen print
18.1 x 15.3cm (image)
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500306

 

William Howard Russell was a reporter for The Times who rose to fame during the Crimean War for his vivid descriptions of major battles and the conditions faced by British troops. The Crimean War was the first conflict where advances in technology allowed newspapers to quickly print reports from their correspondents in the field. These reports attracted great public interest and influenced both official and public attitudes to the war. Russell’s emotive account of the Charge of the Light Brigade, published in The Times on 13 November 1854, inspired the poem of the same name by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Sir Colin Campbell' 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Sir Colin Campbell
1855
Albumen print
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017

 

Balaklava – the British base

When the British and French armies moved south to besiege Sevastopol, they had to choose a location in which to base themselves. The armies needed to be able to receive both men and supplies without hindrance for what might be many months. The French based themselves at Kamiesch, whilst the British chose Balaklava. The army took over the town, setting up its own infrastructure including a Post Office and constructing a military railway to transport the supplies as close as possible to the front lines.

When Fenton arrived in the Crimea on 8 March 1855, he disembarked at Balaklava. He took his first photographs on 15 March and spent the next two weeks exploring the port. He described the place in a letter as ‘one great pigsty’, noting the chaos and confusion which he managed to convey in his photographs.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Railway sheds and workshops at Balaklava' 15 Mar 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Railway sheds and workshops at Balaklava
15 Mar 1855
Albumen print
20.9 x 26.1cm (image)
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500463

 

This photograph clearly shows the scale of activity in Balaklava. There are ships in the harbour, and supplies (probably flour bags) are piled high on the water’s edge. In the foreground in ‘Railway Yard’ the new military railway is being constructed. It was paid for by Samuel Morton Peto (1809-1889) who had also provided Fenton’s passage to the Crimea. Construction of the railway began in February 1855 and part of the line was in use within weeks, probably around the same time that Fenton arrived at Balaklava. The railway was dismantled in 1856 after the end of the war. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Guards Hill Church Parade Balaklava in the distance' 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Guards Hill Church Parade Balaklava in the distance
1855
Salted paper print
26.1 x 35.3cm (image)
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500530

 

Towards the end of March, Fenton made a number of views from ‘Guards Hill’ looking down towards the harbour of Balaklava. The ‘church parade’ referred to in the title is the parade of Scots Fusilier Guards seen to the right of the image. Although the group is indistinct, the bearskin hats of the Guards can be clearly distinguished. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Cossack Bay Balaklava' Mar 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Cossack Bay Balaklava
Mar 1855
Albumen print
26.8 x 35.6cm (image)
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500498

 

Despite the title, Cossack Bay is only slightly visible in the middle distance of this photograph. The main view with the ships, including one bearing the number ’69’, centres around Cattle Pier. The ship with the transport number 69 is the Albatross, which at the time of this photograph had recently arrived from Constantinople after a four-day journey bringing Mary Seacole (1805-1881). Mrs Seacole set up a store and ‘hotel’ for British servicemen, supplying food, drink and medical supplies. In 1857 Mrs Seacole published an autobiographical account of her life and experiences in the Crimea, titled Wonderful Adventures of Mrs Seacole in Many Lands. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'The Ordnance Wharf at Balaklava' Mar 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
The Ordnance Wharf at Balaklava
Mar 1855
Albumen print
20.5 x 25.2cm (image)
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017 RCIN 2500461

 

The Ordnance Wharf was the place where military supplies arrived – the British army’s Board of Ordnance was responsible for supplying weapons and ammunition, which can be clearly seen in the foreground of this photograph. The round shot is stacked awaiting transportation on the railway to reach the army camps besieging Sevastopol. The performance of the Board of Ordnance came under heavy criticism during the Crimean War, particularly during the 1854-1855 winter. As a result, after a 400 year existence, the Board was abolished and its responsibilities were transferred to the War Office. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869) 'Balaklava from the Russian Church, Upper Harbour, and Church of Kadikoi in the distance' 1855

 

Roger Fenton (British, 1819-1869)
Balaklava from the Russian Church, Upper Harbour, and Church of Kadikoi in the distance
1855
Albumen print
Royal Collection Trust
© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2017

 

After the war

Fenton left the Crimea on 22 June 1855, so missed the fall of Sevastopol. He arrived back in Britain on 11 July. Queen Victoria saw a selection of his work in August, whilst she was at Osborne House, and Fenton visited France in early September to show his photographs to the Emperor.

Fenton also began preparations for the display of his work at numerous venues across Britain. Hundreds of prints would have been required for the 26 venues identified so far, including Edinburgh, Glasgow, Exeter, Cardiff, Belfast and Dublin. Fenton also managed to photograph some of the significant individuals he had been unable to capture in the Crimea, in order to complete his commission for Agnew’s.

The photographs were extraordinarily popular with the public. One publication stated that two million visitors had seen the photographs by the end of March 1856. It is unlikely that this translated into financial success for Fenton, however. At the end of 1856 Agnew’s sold the negatives and remaining prints to a rival print seller, who continued to sell the work at a much lower price. Fenton continued his association with the royal family, travelling to Balmoral in September 1856 where he photographed the royal children.

 

Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909) 'The Docks after the Explosion' 1856

 

Felice Beato (Italian-British, 1832-1909)
The Docks after the Explosion
1856
Salted paper print
23.7 x 28.7cm (image)
RCIN 2500683

 

James Robertson’s business partner and brother-in-law, Felice Beato, returned to Sevastopol in March or April 1856 to make a further set of photographs. By then the docks had been destroyed. Viewed together, these photographs provide a record of the changing landscape of the city in the aftermath of the war. From the collection of the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII.

 

Fenton’s photographic process

Fenton made his photographs by printing from glass negatives, using a process called the wet collodion process. The negatives were then shipped back to Britain where they were used to make prints in two different ways – the salted paper print and the albumen print.

The wet collodion process used a prepared piece of glass which, in the darkroom, would be coated with collodion and then made light-sensitive with further chemicals. Before the plate could dry, it would be placed in the camera and exposed. Then the plate would be returned to the darkroom and developed, rinsed, fixed, washed, dried and varnished. It was then ready for printing.

The salted paper print used paper which had been prepared by coating it in a salted solution. After drying, it would be made light-sensitive in the darkroom and then placed in a frame in contact with the glass negative to be exposed to sunlight. Once the image had appeared satisfactorily on the paper, the print would be processed, washed, fixed and toned.

 

 

The Queen’s Gallery
Buckingham Palace,
London, SW1A 1AA

Opening hours:
Open daily 09.30 – 16.15

Royal Collection Trust website

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Review: ‘All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed’ at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 13th January – 3rd March, 2018

Curator: Samantha Comte

Artists: Broersen and Lukács, Kate Daw, Peter Ellis, Dina Goldstein, Mirando Haz, Vivienne Shark Le Witt, Amanda Marburg, Tracey Moffatt, Polixeni Papapetrou, Patricia Piccinini, Paula Rego, Lotte Reiniger, Allison Schulnik, Sally Smart, Kiki Smith, Kylie Stillman, Tale of Tales, Janaina Tschäpe, Miwa Yanagi, Kara Walker and Zilverster (Goodwin and Hanenbergh).

Review synposis: Simply put, this is the best local exhibition I have seen this year. A must see before it closes.

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'Hanging Rock 1900 #3' 2006 from the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, The University of Melbourne, Jan - March, 2018

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
Hanging Rock 1900 #3
2006
Pigment ink print
105 x 105cm
Courtesy the artist, Michael Reid Gallery, Sydney + Berlin and Jarvis Dooney Galerie, Berlin

 

 

Oh my, what big teeth you have! Wait just a minute, they need a good clean and they’re all crooked and subverted (or a: how well-known stories are turned on their head and b: how real histories become fantasies, and how fantasies are reimagined)


This is going to be the shortest review in the known universe. Just one word

SUPERLATIVE


Every piece of artwork in this extraordinary, quirky, spellbinding exhibition (spread over the three floors of the The Ian Potter Museum of Art at The University of Melbourne) is strong and valuable to the investigation of the overall concept, that of fairy tales transformed.

The hang, the catalogue, and the mix of a: international and local artists; b: historical and contemporary works; and c: animation, video, gaming, sculpture, photography, painting, drawing and other art forms – is dead set, spot on.

There are too many highlights, but briefly my favourites were the historical animations of Lotte Reiniger; the painting Born by Kiki Smith which adorns the catalogue cover; the theatrical tableaux of Polixeni Papapetrou; the mesmerising video art of Allison Schulnik; and the subversive etchings of both Peter Ellis and Mirando Haz. But really, every single artwork had something interesting and challenging to say about the fabled construction of fairy tales and their place in the mythic imagination, a deviation from the normative, patriarchal telling of tales.

My only regret, that a: there hadn’t been another three floors of the exhibition; b: that there was only one work by Kiki Smith; and c: that there were not another set of disparate voices other than the feminine and black i.e. transgender, gay, disabled – other artists (if they exist?) that were working with this concept.

Simply put, this is the best local exhibition I have seen this year. A must see before it closes.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to The Ian Potter 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. Installation photographs by Christian Capurro.

 

 

All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed, the Ian Potter Museum of Art’s 2017 summer show, traces the genre of the fairy tale, exploring its function in contemporary society. The exhibition presents contemporary art work alongside a selection of key historical fairy tale books that provide re-interpretations of the classic fairy tales for a 21st-century context, including Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel and The Little Mermaid.

Ground floor

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Lotte Reiniger with 'Cinderella/Aschenputtel' (1922) at left

 

Installation view of the exhibition All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Lotte Reiniger with Cinderella/Aschenputtel (1922) at left

 

 

Lotte Reiniger (born 1899, Berlin-Charlottenburg, Germany; died 1981, Dettenhausen, West Germany)
with new music by Karim Al-Zand
Cinderella/Aschenputtel
1922
Silhouette animation film
Primrose Productions
Directed and animated by Lotte Reiniger
Production team: Carl Coch, Louis Hagen, Vivian Milroy Music: Freddie Phillips
12.35 minutes

 

Lotte Reiniger began making her ground-breaking animations in Berlin during the 1920s. Influenced by early fairy tale illustrations, in particular, Andrew Lang’s The Blue Fairy (1887), Reiniger was attracted to the graphic nature of the imagery but also the compelling complexities of fairy tale narratives. Adapting the art of shadow puppetry, she created more than forty intricately crafted fairy tale films.

In 1935, she left Berlin for England, in response to the unjust treatment of the Jewish people. World War II had an enduring impact on Reiniger’s work and life. For example, when she made Hansel and Gretel, in 1953-1954, she changed the ending of the narrative from the Brothers Grimm original, in which the witch is burnt in the over after being tricked by the children, because the taboo nature of this imagery was understandably too close to the horrors of the Holocaust. From her first film, Reiniger was attracted to the timelessness of fairy tale stories for her animations. Aschenputtel (Cinderella) (1922) was among her first filmic subjects and is amongst the words presented here. While Reiniger belonged to the cinematic avant-garde, working in independent production and experimental film making, her spirit harked back to an earlier age of innocence.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

 

The Art of Lotte Reiniger, 1970 | From the Vaults

Lotte Reiniger is known today for her extraordinarily elaborate silhouette animations. Her 1926 feature, “The Adventures of Prince Achmed,” is the oldest surviving full-length animated film. This short documentary provides a fascinating look at Reiniger’s process, offering viewers the opportunity to watch a prolific and pioneering artist at work. Here, she works on two projects: her fantastical short animation, “Papageno” (1935), about the cheerful bird-catcher from Mozart’s opera “The Magic Flute,” along with a dazzling struggle between the Frog Prince and a covetous octopus.

Text from the YouTube website

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Lotte Reiniger (left) and Sally Smart (right)

 

Installation view of the exhibition All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Lotte Reiniger (left) and Sally Smart (right)

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Sally Smart's work 'Blaubart (The Choreography of Cutting)' 2017

 

Installation view of the exhibition All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Sally Smart’s work Blaubart (The Choreography of Cutting) 2017

 

Sally Smart‘s Blaubart (The Choreography of Cutting) is a complex assemblage of elements and ideas that relate to Smart’s recent work on the Russian Fairy tale, Chout (1921) where she found connections to Perrault’s murderous tale of Blue Beard, a lurid story about a noble man who marries numerous women killing each of them and storing their bodies in an underground bloody chamber.

Smart’s work explores this narrative by combining the blue and black silhouetted forms from Lotte Reiniger’s animation of The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) with the black and white photographs of a modern dance performance of Blue Beard devised by Pina Bausch, a noted German dance choreographer. In Smart’s dramatic work a series of hanging dresses and wigs stand in for blue beards wives, whose bodies, in the story, were gruesomely hung from hooks. Blue Beard is a story of violence and betrayal that contains one of the most powerful fairy tale symbols, that of the forbidden room and the quest for knowledge. While we often try to make sense of the world through chronological narrative, Smart’s work suggests that it is the disconnected layers of experiences, stories, images and sensations that lead to a rich life of possibility.

Wall text

 

Sally Smart (born 1960, Quorn, South Australia; lives and works Melbourne, Victoria) 'Blaubart (The Choreography of Cutting)' 2017 (detail)

Sally Smart (born 1960, Quorn, South Australia; lives and works Melbourne, Victoria) 'Blaubart (The Choreography of Cutting)' 2017 (detail)

 

Sally Smart (born 1960, Quorn, South Australia; lives and works Melbourne, Victoria)
Blaubart (The Choreography of Cutting) (detail)
2017
Mixed media installation
Dimensions variable
Courtesy of the artist and Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Miwa Yanagi (left to right, 'Little Match Girl' 2004; 'Gretel' 2004; 'Untitled IV' 2004; and 'Erendira' 2004)

 

Installation view of the exhibition All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Miwa Yanagi (left to right, Little Match Girl 2004; Gretel 2004; Untitled IV 2004; and Erendira 2004)

 

Japanese photographer, Miwa Yanagi constructs elaborate and complex images that examine the representation of women in contemporary Japanese society. Her third major series of works, Fairy tales focuses on a key theme, that of the young girl moving into womanhood and her relationship to the older woman.

Recasting the familiar tales of Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, Yanagi explores the complex relationship between old women and young girls, often presented as the witch and the innocent princess. In this series, Yanagi returns to traditional methods of photography, creating complex backdrops, lighting and costumes. She dresses some of the young girls in wigs, make up and masks to look old and witch-like, creating a strangely unresolved image of an old woman with a young body, playing with the idea of binaries – innocence and heartlessness, maturity and youth.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

Miwa Yanagi (born in born in 1967 in Kobe, Japan; lives and works in Kyoto, Japan) 'Gretel' 2004

 

Miwa Yanagi (born in born in 1967 in Kobe, Japan; lives and works in Kyoto, Japan)
Gretel
2004
Gelatin silver print
116 x 116cm (framed)
Collection of the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Amanda Marburg (right) and Miwa Yanagi (left)

 

Installation view of the exhibition All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Amanda Marburg (right) and Miwa Yanagi (left)

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Amanda Marburg ('Juniper Tree' 2016; 'Hansel and Gretel' 2016; 'Maiden without hands' 2016; 'Death and the Goose boy' 2015; 'The Golden Ass' 2016; 'Hans My Hedgehog' 2016; 'Briar Rose' 2016; and 'All Fur' 2016)

 

Installation view of the exhibition All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Amanda Marburg (Juniper Tree 2016; Hansel and Gretel 2016; Maiden without hands 2016; Death and the Goose boy 2015; The Golden Ass 2016; Hans My Hedgehog 2016; Briar Rose 2016; and All Fur 2016)

 

Amanda Marburg has an enduring fascination with the macabre, referencing dark tales from film, literature and art history to create distinctive paintings that often picture sinister and menacing subjects within brightly rendered, plasticine environments. In this body of work, Marburg looks to the famous Brothers Grimm tales, particularly the first edition of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, published in 1812. The brothers were dedicated to collecting largely oral folk tales from their German heritage, and among the first hey collected were narratives that told of the brutal living conditions of the time. In the better known 1857 edition of their Grimm’s Fairy Tales, more than thirty of the original stories have been removed from the earlier publication including ‘Death and the Goose Boy’ and ‘Juniper Tree’. These stories were often cautionary tales that encompassed gritty themes such as cannibalism, murder and child abuse and while they were popular when first published, they were deemed unsuitable for the later edition.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

Amanda Marburg (born 1976, Melbourne Australia; lives and works in Melbourne, Australia) 'Maiden without hands' 2016

 

Amanda Marburg (born 1976, Melbourne Australia; lives and works in Melbourne, Australia)
Maiden without hands
2016
Oil on linen
122 x 92cm
Courtesy the artist and Sutton Gallery, Melbourne

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Lotte Reiniger (left), Sally Smart (middle), and Miwa Yanagi (right)

 

Installation view of the exhibition All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Lotte Reiniger (left), Sally Smart (middle), and Miwa Yanagi (right)

 

Broersen and Lukács (Persijn Broersen born in Delft, The Netherlands in 1974 and Margit Lukács, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands in 1973; both live and work in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Paris, France) 'Mastering Bambi' 2011 (video still)

 

Broersen and Lukács (Persijn Broersen born in Delft, The Netherlands in 1974 and Margit Lukács, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands in 1973; both live and work in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Paris, France)
Mastering Bambi (video still)
2011
HD video
12:30 minutes
Courtesy of the artists and Akinci, Amsterdam

 

 

Mastering Bambi Preview, 2010 – Persijn Broersen & Margit Lukács from AKINCI Gallery on Vimeo.

Walt Disney’s 1942 classic animation film Bambi is well known for its distinct main characters – a variety of cute, anthropomorphic animals. However, an important but often overlooked protagonist in the movie is nature itself: the pristine wilderness as the main grid on which Disney structured his ‘Bambi’. One of the first virtual worlds was created here: a world of deceptive realism and harmony, in which man is the only enemy. Disney strived to be true to nature, but he also used nature as a metaphor for human society. In his view, deeply rooted in European romanticism, the wilderness is threatened by civilisation and technology. The forest, therefore, is depicted as a ‘magic well’, the ultimate purifying ‘frontier’, where the inhabitants peacefully coexist. Interestingly, the original 1924 Austrian novel Bambi, A Life in the Woods by Felix Salten (banned in 1936 by Hitler) shows nature (and human society) more as a bleak, Darwinist reality of competition, violence and death.

Broersen and Lukács recreate the model of Disney’s pristine vision, but they strip the forest of its harmonious inhabitants, the animals. What remains is another reality, a constructed and lacking wilderness, where nature becomes the mirror of our own imagination. The soundtrack is made by Berend Dubbe and Gwendolyn Thomas. They’ve reconstructed Bambi’s music, in which they twist and fold the sound in such a way that it reveals the dissonances in the movie.

Text from AKINCI Gallery Vimeo web page

 

Broersen and Lukács (Persijn Broersen born in Delft, The Netherlands in 1974 and Margit Lukács, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands in 1973; both live and work in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Paris, France) 'Mastering Bambi' 2011 (video still)

 

Broersen and Lukács (Persijn Broersen born in Delft, The Netherlands in 1974 and Margit Lukács, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands in 1973; both live and work in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and Paris, France)
Mastering Bambi (video still)
2011
HD video
12:30 minutes
Courtesy of the artists and Akinci, Amsterdam

 

 

All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed, the Ian Potter Museum of Art’s 2017 summer show, traces the genre of the fairy tale, exploring its function in contemporary society. The exhibition presents contemporary art work alongside a selection of key historical fairy tale books that provide re-interpretations of the classic fairy tales for a 21st-century context, including Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel and The Little Mermaid.

Featuring international and Australian contemporary artists including Kiki Smith, Patricia Piccinini, Amanda Marburg, Miwa Yanagi, Kara Walker, Allison Schulnik, Tracey Moffatt, Paula Rego, Broersen and Lukacs and Peter Ellis, All the better to see you with explores artists’ use of the fairy tale to express social concerns and anxieties surrounding issues such as the abuse of power, injustice and exploitation.

Curator, Samantha Comte said: “Fairy tales help us to articulate the way we might see and challenge such issues and, through transformation, triumph in the end. This exhibition looks at why fairy tales still have the power to attract us, to seduce us, to lure us and stir our imagination.”

A major exhibition across all three levels of the museum, the exhibition will be accompanied by a raft of public and education programs. American artist Kiki Smith uses fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood as a metaphor to express her feelings about the feminist experience in patriarchal culture. The Portuguese-British artist Paula Rego has constructed the same tale as a feminist farce, with Red Riding Hood’s mother flaunting the wolf ‘s pelt as a stole. Japanese photographer Miwa Yanagi, in her “Fairy Tale” series has created large scale images enacted by children and adolescents in which playfulness and cruelty, fantasy and realism, merge.

The theme of the lost child in the forest is played out through tales such as Snow White and Hansel and Gretel. Tracey Moffatt’s Invocations series of 13 images is composed of three disjointed narratives about a little girl in a forest, a woman and man in the desert and a foreboding horde of spirits. The little girl lost in the forest is familiar from childhood fairy tales, and the style of these images is reminiscent of Disney movies.

Broersen and Lukacs’ powerful video work, Mastering Bambi depicts the forest as a mysterious, alluring and sinister place. Often the setting of a fairy tale, the forest is used as a metaphor for human psychology. Australian artist Amanda Marburg, in her series How Some Children Played at Slaughtering looks to the stories that both excited and haunted generations of children and adults the infamous Grimm’s fairy tales. The melancholy of Marburg’s subjects is counteracted by her use of bewitching bright colour, which creates fairy tale-like landscapes with deceptive charm.

Fairy tales can comfort and entertain us; they can divert, educate and help shape our sense of the world; they articulate desires and dilemmas, nurture imagination and encapsulate good and evil. All the Better to See You With invites us to delve into this shadowy world of ancient stories through the eyes of a diverse range of artists and art works.

Press release from the Ian Potter Museum of Art

 

Second floor

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Paula Rego at left; Kylie Stillman's 'Scape' (2017) middle; and Kiki Smith's 'Born' (2002) at right

 

Installation view of the exhibition All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Paula Rego at left; Kylie Stillman’s Scape (2017) middle; and Kiki Smith’s Born (2002) at right

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Paula Rego (from left to right, 'Happy Family - Mother, Red Riding Hood and Grandmother' 2003; 'Red Riding Hood on the Edge' 2003; 'The Wolf' 2003; 'The wolf chats up Red Riding Hood' 2003; 'Mother Takes Her Revenge' 2003; and 'Mother Wears the Wolf's Pelt' 2003)

 

Installation view of the exhibition All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Paula Rego (from left to right, Happy Family – Mother, Red Riding Hood and Grandmother, 2003; Red Riding Hood on the Edge, 2003; The Wolf, 2003; The wolf chats up Red Riding Hood, 2003; Mother Takes Her Revenge, 2003; and Mother Wears the Wolf’s Pelt, 2003)

 

Portuguese born, British based artist Paula Rego subverts traditional folk stories and fairy tales, adapting these narratives to reflect and challenge the values of contemporary society, playing with feminine roles in culturally determined contexts and turning male dominance on its head.

In Little Red Riding Hood (2003), Rego presents an alternative telling of this well-known story. Her suite of paintings is based on Charles Perrault’s version of this fairy tale Le Petit Chaperon Rouge, 1695 in which the girl and the grandmother are eaten by the wolf, rather than the more famous Grimm version in which the girl and the grandmother survive after being rescued by a male protagonist. Rego reshapes the story for a contemporary context, reflecting on current ideas around gender roles in society and casting the mother as a sharply dressed avenger who overcomes the man-wolf without the aid of a male rescuer.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

Paula Rego (Portuguese-British, b. 1935) 'The wolf chats up Red Riding Hood' 2003

 

Paula Rego (Portuguese-British, b. 1935)
The wolf chats up Red Riding Hood
2003
Pastel on paper
104 x 79cm
Collection of Gracie Smart, London
Courtesy Malborough Fine Art, London
© Paula Rego

 

Paula Rego (Portuguese-British, b. 1935) 'Mother Wears the Wolf's Pelt' 2003

 

Paula Rego (Portuguese-British, b. 1935)
Mother Wears the Wolf’s Pelt
2003
Pastel on paper
75 x 4 x 92cm
Collection of Gracie Smart, London
Courtesy Malborough Fine Art, London
© Paula Rego
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Kylie Stillman's 'Scape' (2017) at left and Kiki Smith's 'Born' (2002) at right

 

Installation view of the exhibition All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Kylie Stillman’s Scape (2017) at left and Kiki Smith’s Born (2002) at right

 

Kylie Stillman (born in Mordialloc, Victoria, Australia in 1975 lives and works in Melbourne Australia) 'Scape' 2017 (installation view)

 

Kylie Stillman (born in Mordialloc, Victoria, Australia in 1975 lives and works in Melbourne Australia)
Scape (installation view)
2017
Hand cut plywood
200 x 240 x 30cm
Courtesy of the artist and Utopian Art, Sydney

 

Kiki Smith (born Nuremberg, Germany 1954; lives and works in USA) 'Born' 2002

 

Kiki Smith (born Nuremberg, Germany 1954; lives and works in USA)
Born
2002
Lithograph in 12 colours
172.72 x 142.24cm
Edition 28
Published by Universal Limited Art Editions
© Kiki Smith / Universal Limited Art Editions Courtesy of the Artist and PACE Gallery, NY

 

Kiki Smith‘s practice has been shaped by her enduring interest in the human condition and the natural world. She evocatively reworks representations and imagery found in religion, mythology and folklore. Exploring themes recurrent to her practice such as birth, death and regeneration, in Born (2002) Smith alludes to an idea that has fascinated her for many years, the relationship of animals, particularly wolves and human beings. This illustration of Red Riding Hood and her grandmother emerging from the wolf’s stomach, subverts the story line of this well-known fairy tale, depicting the couple rising from the body of he wolf rather than being consumed by him. The image is simultaneously savage and tender. Significantly the illustrations of the child and the grandmother are, in fact, both portraits of the artist, the depiction of the child’s face is derived from a drawing of Smith as a child. In this work, the two female figures are no longer victims and the wolf is no longer the aggressor. Instead there is a complicity between characters. Smith’s ongoing use of surprising narrative associations allows her to interrogate ideas around gender and identity, providing a disconcerting view of traditional fairy tale narratives.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Kylie Stillman's 'Scape' (2017) at left, Kiki Smith's 'Born' (2002) middle and Polixeni Papapetrou's work at right

 

Installation view of the exhibition All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Kylie Stillman’s Scape (2017) at left, Kiki Smith’s Born (2002) middle and Polixeni Papapetrou’s work at right

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'The Encounter' 2003

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
The Encounter
2003
Type C print
100 x 100cm
Courtesy the artist, Michael Reid Gallery, Sydney + Berlin and Jarvis Dooney Galerie, Berlin
Reproduced with permission

 

Polixeni Papapetrou was fascinated with costume and disguise throughout her more than thirty years of photographic practice. In her Fairy Tales series (2004-2014), she restages well-known stories in highly theatrical environments, combining recognisable motifs, such as the snowy-white owl in The Encounter (2006) and the brightly coloured candy house in her work The Witch’s House (2003). Papapetrou places her child actors in fantastical landscapes, capturing them performing in front of vividly painted trompe l’oeil backdrops; that evocatively suggest the rich interior world of the child’s imagination.

In her work, Papapetrou also explored the narrative of the lost child, which in the European tradition has a parallel in the tale ‘Hansel and Gretel’. In Australia, the most famous story of children lost in the bush is Joan Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967), a tale embedded in our cultural imagination through both the novel and subsequent movie (1975). Set on St Valentine’s Day 1900, it is the story of three young girls on the cusp of womanhood disappearing without a trace. Papapetrou’s Hanging Rock 1900 #3 (2006), from the Haunted Country series (2006), captures the eerie quality of the Australian landscape and the hopelessness of the lost girls.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'The Witch's House' 2003

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
The Witch’s House
2003
Type C print
100 x 100cm
Courtesy the artist, Michael Reid Gallery, Sydney + Berlin and Jarvis Dooney Galerie, Berlin
Reproduced with permission

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'By the Yarra 1857 #1' 2006

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
By the Yarra 1857 #1
2006
Pigment ink print
105 x 105cm
Courtesy the artist, Michael Reid Gallery, Sydney + Berlin and Jarvis Dooney Galerie, Berlin
Reproduced with permission

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'By the Yarra 1857 #2' 2006

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
By the Yarra 1857 #2
2006
Pigment ink print
105 x 105cm
Courtesy the artist, Michael Reid Gallery, Sydney + Berlin and Jarvis Dooney Galerie, Berlin
Reproduced with permission

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018) 'Lost' 2005

 

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
Lost
2005
Type C print
100 x 100cm
Courtesy the artist, Michael Reid Gallery, Sydney + Berlin and Jarvis Dooney Galerie, Berlin
Reproduced with permission

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Polixeni Papapetrou's work at left and Kate Daw's work at centre right

 

Installation view of the exhibition All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Polixeni Papapetrou’s work at left and Kate Daw’s work at centre right

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Kate Daw's work 'Lights No Eyes Can See (2)' (2017) at left; the work of Paula Rego middle; and Kylie Stillman's 'Scape' (2017) right

 

Installation view of the exhibition All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Kate Daw’s work Lights No Eyes Can See (2) (2017) at left; the work of Paula Rego middle; and Kylie Stillman’s Scape (2017) right

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Kate Daw's work 'Lights No Eyes Can See (2)' (2017) at left, and her paintings 'Arietta's House' (2016), 'Lenci dolls (Lenu and Lila)' (2016), and 'Lenci doll (back to the before)' (2016) left to right

 

Installation view of the exhibition All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Kate Daw’s work Lights No Eyes Can See (2) (2017) at left, and her paintings Arietta’s House (2016), Lenci dolls (Lenu and Lila) (2016), and Lenci doll (back to the before) (2016) left to right

 

Kate Daw (Australian, 1965-2020) 'Lights No Eyes Can See (2)' 2017

 

Kate Daw (Australian, 1965-2020)
Lights No Eyes Can See (2)
2017
Fired and painted clay dimensions variable
Courtesy the artist and Sarah Scout Presents, Melbourne

 

Kate Daw‘s practice was shaped by her ongoing interest in authorship, narrative and creative process. Daw’s work for this exhibition Lights No Eyes Can See (2) (2017, above), is one of many iterations that the artist has made: its original lyric form was written as the song ‘Attics of my Life’, in 1970 by Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter for the rock band The Grateful Dead. In its first iteration Daw reshapes the lyrics into a typed canvas work scaled up to a giant print and a performative iteration in which she asked art students to sing this song at set times of the day.

For this exhibition, Daw transformed an excerpt of the song into a wall piece made in clay. The text describes the dreamy, subconscious space that fairy tales occupy, while the colour and form of the work suggests domestic decoration. Continuously moving between the domestic and the social, the everyday and the imagined, this work reflects Daw’s interest in how we constantly reshape and remake objects, texts and narratives to make sense of the world.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

Kate Daw. 'Lenci dolls (Lenu and Lila)' 2016 (installation view)

 

Installation view of Kate Daw’s work Lenci dolls (Lenu and Lila) 2016
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne with a still from the video work 'Mound' (2011) by Allison Schulnik at left, and the work of Dina Goldstein from her 'Fallen Princess' series at right

 

Installation view of the exhibition All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne with a still from the video work Mound (2011) by Allison Schulnik at left, and the work of Dina Goldstein from her Fallen Princess series at right

 

 

Allison Schulnik (born in 1978, San Diego; lives and works in Los Angeles, USA)
Mound
2011
Clay-animated stop motion video
4.24 minutes
Courtesy the artist and Mark Moore Gallery, California

 

Allison Schulnik (born in 1978, San Diego; lives and works in Los Angeles, USA) 'Mound' 2011 (video still)

 

Allison Schulnik (born in 1978, San Diego; lives and works in Los Angeles, USA)
Mound (video still)
2011
Clay-animated stop motion video
4.24 minutes
Courtesy the artist and Mark Moore Gallery, California

 

Dina Goldstein (born 1969 in Tel Aviv, Israel; lives and works Vancouver, Canada) 'Cinder' 2007

 

Dina Goldstein (born 1969 in Tel Aviv, Israel; lives and works Vancouver, Canada)
Cinder
2007
From the Fallen Princess series
Digital photograph
76.2 x 106.7cm
Courtesy of the artist

 

Dina Goldstein (born 1969 in Tel Aviv, Israel; lives and works Vancouver, Canada) 'Princess Pea' 2009

 

Dina Goldstein (born 1969 in Tel Aviv, Israel; lives and works Vancouver, Canada)
Princess Pea
2009
From the Fallen Princess series
Digital photograph
76.2 x 106.7cm
Courtesy of the artist

 

Dina Goldstein (born 1969 in Tel Aviv, Israel; lives and works Vancouver, Canada) 'Snowy' 2008

 

Dina Goldstein (born 1969 in Tel Aviv, Israel; lives and works Vancouver, Canada)
Snowy
2008
From the Fallen Princess series
Digital photograph
76.2 x 106.7cm
Courtesy of the artist

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Dina Goldstein at left, and the video 'Untitled (scream)' by Janaina Tschäpe at right

 

Installation view of the exhibition All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Dina Goldstein at left, and the video Untitled (scream) by Janaina Tschäpe at right

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Vivienne Shark LeWitt (born Sale, Victoria, Australia in 1956; lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria) with 'The Bloody Chamber' (1983) left and 'Charles Meryon the voyeur 1827-1868. La belle et la bête' (1983) right

 

Installation view of the exhibition All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Vivienne Shark LeWitt (born Sale, Victoria, Australia in 1956; lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria) with The Bloody Chamber (1983) left and Charles Meryon the voyeur 1827-1868. La belle et la bête (1983) right

 

Vivienne Shark LeWitt (born Sale, Victoria, Australia in 1956; lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria) 'The Bloody Chamber' 1983 (installation view)

 

Installation view of Vivienne Shark LeWitt’s The Bloody Chamber 1983
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Vivienne Shark LeWitt (born Sale, Victoria, Australia in 1956; lives and works in Melbourne, Victoria) 'Charles Meryon the voyeur 1827-1868. La belle et la bête' 1983 (installation view)

 

Installation view of Vivienne Shark LeWitt’s Charles Meryon the voyeur 1827-1868. La belle et la bête (The Beauty and the Beast) 1983
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Kara Walker centre and Peter Ellis right

 

Installation view of the exhibition All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Kara Walker centre and Peter Ellis right

 

Kara Walker (born in 1969, Stockton, California; lives and works in New York, USA) 'Burning African Village Play Set with Big House and Lynching' 2006 (installation view)

 

Kara Walker (born in 1969, Stockton, California; lives and works in New York, USA)
Burning African Village Play Set with Big House and Lynching (installation view)
2006
Painted laser cut steel – 22 parts
Dimensions variable (61 x 97.2 x 228.6cm)
Collection of Naomi Milgrom AO, Melbourne

 

Kara Walker is well known for her investigation of race, gender, sexuality, and violence through her elaborate silhouetted works. Since the early 1990s, Walker has been creating works that present disturbing and often taboo narratives using the disarming iconography of historical fiction.

Through the form of a child’s play set Walker reveals the brutal racism and inequality in American history. Burning African Village Play Set with Big House and Lynching (2006) uses simple cut-out silhouettes to create a series of characters and motifs that occupy a chilling, nightmarish world. Drawing from Civil War imagery of the American south, Walker creates parts for the play set – a plantation mansion, small huts, weeping willows, shackled slaves, Confederate soldiers and southern belles – then arranges these into a narrative. In the artists words, she questions how ‘real histories become fantasies and fairy tales’ and how it is, perversely, that ‘fairy tales sometimes pass for history, for truth’. In this work, Walker suggests histories can be played with – manipulated and parts removed – but also that storytelling can be adapted and reshaped to remember and reimagine the past.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

Kara Walker (born in 1969, Stockton, California; lives and works in New York, USA) 'Burning African Village Play Set with Big House and Lynching' 2006 (detail)

 

Kara Walker (born in 1969, Stockton, California; lives and works in New York, USA)
Burning African Village Play Set with Big House and Lynching (detail)
2006
Painted laser cut steel – 22 parts
Dimensions variable (61 x 97.2 x 228.6cm)
Collection of Naomi Milgrom AO, Melbourne

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Kara Walker left and Peter Ellis right

 

Installation view of the exhibition All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Kara Walker left and Peter Ellis right

 

The prince and the bee mistress portfolio 1986

Melbourne based artist, Peter Ellis is a prolific image maker who creates hallucinatory scenes of make-believe animals and human-like creatures. His work takes its inspiration from diverse historical sources including children’s art and literature, detective novels, the legacies of Dada and Surrealism and the transformative qualities of fairy tales.

In this narrative etching The Prince and the Bee Mistress (1986), the artist illustrates a contemporary adult fairy tale by writer Tobsha Learner. It’s a surreal Gothic horror tale about the seduction of a young prince who succumbs to the disastrous ‘charms’ of the Bee Mistress. The Bee Mistress is capable of altering and morphing her body, which is comprised of a swarm of bees. Using his encyclopaedic knowledge of animals, objects and images, Ellis creates densely layered configurations of surprising and unsettling forms. This disturbing and perplexing imagery also references traditional fairy tales, with the puppet prince (plate 3) wearing the same costume as Heinrich Hoffmann’s little boy from the 1845 German children’s book Der Struwwelpeter (Shock Haired Peter).

Wall text from the exhibition

 

Peter Ellis (born 1956 in Sydney, Australia, New South Wales; lives and works in Melbourne Australia) 'The Princes Dream' 1986

 

Peter Ellis (born 1956 in Sydney, Australia, New South Wales; lives and works in Melbourne Australia)
The Princes Dream
1986
Etching, soft-ground, drypoint, sugar-lift, photo-etching, plate-tone and relief printing
35.2 × 50.6cm (plate) 50.4 × 65.9cm (sheet)
Courtesy of the artist

 

Peter Ellis (born 1956 in Sydney, Australia, New South Wales; lives and works in Melbourne Australia) 'Dog Screaming' 1986

 

Peter Ellis (born 1956 in Sydney, Australia, New South Wales; lives and works in Melbourne Australia)
Dog Screaming
1986
Etching, soft-ground, drypoint, sugar-lift, photo-etching, plate-tone and relief printing
35.2 × 50.6cm (plate) 50.4 × 65.9cm (sheet)
Courtesy of the artist

 

Peter Ellis (born 1956 in Sydney, Australia, New South Wales; lives and works in Melbourne Australia) 'Examining the Bee Sting' 1986

 

Peter Ellis (born 1956 in Sydney, Australia, New South Wales; lives and works in Melbourne Australia)
Examining the Bee Sting
1986
Etching, soft-ground, drypoint, sugar-lift, photo-etching, plate-tone and relief printing
35.2 × 50.6cm (plate) 50.4 × 65.9cm (sheet)
Courtesy of the artist

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Peter Ellis left and Mirando Haz (Amedeo Pieragostini) right

 

Installation view of the exhibition All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Peter Ellis left and Mirando Haz (Amedeo Pieragostini) right

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Mirando Haz (Amedeo Pieragostini), left to right The Little Mermaid (La Sirenetta), The Needle (L'Ago), The Emperor's New Clothes (Gli Abiti Nuovi Dell'Imperatore), The Old Street Lamp (Il Vecchio Fanale), The Old House (La Vecchia Casa) all 1977

 

Installation view of the exhibition All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Mirando Haz (Amedeo Pieragostini), left to right The Little Mermaid (La Sirenetta), The Needle (L’Ago), The Emperor’s New Clothes (Gli Abiti Nuovi Dell’Imperatore), The Old Street Lamp (Il Vecchio Fanale), The Old House (La Vecchia Casa) all 1977

 

Mirando Haz (Amedeo Pieragostini) 'The Needle (L'Ago)' 1977 (installation view)

 

Installation view of Mirando Haz’s (Amedeo Pieragostini) work The Needle (L’Ago) 1977
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

 

Mirando Haz (Amedeo Pieragostini) (Italian, 1937-2018) 'The Little Mermaid (La Sirenetta)' 1977

 

Mirando Haz (Amedeo Pieragostini) (Italian, 1937-2018)
The Little Mermaid (La Sirenetta)
1977
Etching Plate
15.5 x 11.5; sheet 19.0 x 15.3cm
The University of Melbourne Art Collection
Gift of the Italian Cultural Institute 1985
Courtesy of the artist

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Zilverster (Sharon Goodwin born in Dandenong, Australia in 1973 and Irene Hanenbergh born in Erica, The Netherlands in 1966 formed the collaborative art practice Zilverster in 2010. They live and work in Melbourne, Australia) including 'The Table of Moresnet' (2016) at centre

 

Installation view of the exhibition All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing the work of Zilverster (Sharon Goodwin born in Dandenong, Australia in 1973 and Irene Hanenbergh born in Erica, The Netherlands in 1966 formed the collaborative art practice Zilverster in 2010. They live and work in Melbourne, Australia) including The Table of Moresnet (2016) at centre

 

Third floor

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Tracey Moffat's 'Invocations' series (2000) (13 framed photo silkscreen works, dimensions variable, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia Collection)

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Tracey Moffat's 'Invocations' series (2000) (13 framed photo silkscreen works, dimensions variable, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia Collection)

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Tracey Moffat's 'Invocations' series (2000) (13 framed photo silkscreen works, dimensions variable, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia Collection)

 

Installation views of the exhibition All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing Tracey Moffat’s Invocations series (2000) (13 framed photo silkscreen works, dimensions variable, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia Collection)

 

Tracey Moffat‘s practice deals with the human condition in all its complexities, drawing on the history of cinema, art, photographs as well as popular culture and her own childhood memories to create works that explore themes around power, identity, passion, resistance and survival.

In her Invocations series, Moffatt explores a bizarre fairy tale world, inhabited by witches and spirits, a lost girl in a forest, and a man and woman in the desert battling their nightmares. It is a journey through landscape and scenes found in a rich array of different sources, from early Disney animations, Hitchcock movies such as The Birds, Goya paintings and the disturbing folkloric tales of the Brothers Grimm.

Using her skills as a filmmaker, Moffatt spent a year constructing the sets an directing actors to create each dramatic scene. She then worked with a printer for another year building the richly textured surfaces that give a powerful sense of illusion and otherworldliness to these works. Drawing on archetypal anxieties and fears, the lost child, the teenager yearning for escape and adult passions Moffatt’s Invocations series reveals the struggle for survival and the quest for power in a harsh and threatening environment.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

Tracey Moffatt (Australian, b. 1960) 'Invocations #5' 2000

 

Tracey Moffatt (Australian, b. 1960)
Invocations #5
2000
Photo silkscreen
156 x 131.5cm (framed)
Museum of Contemporary Art, donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by the artist, 2013
Courtesy of the artist and and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney

 

Tracey Moffatt (Australian, b. 1960) 'Invocations #7' 2000

 

Tracey Moffatt (Australian, b. 1960)
Invocations #7
2000
Photo silkscreen
156 x 131.5cm (framed)
Museum of Contemporary Art, donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by the artist, 2013
Courtesy of the artist and and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney

 

Tracey Moffatt (Australian, b. 1960) 'Invocations #11' 2000

 

Tracey Moffatt (Australian, b. 1960)
Invocations #11
2000
Photo silkscreen
119 x 105cm (framed)
Museum of Contemporary Art, donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program by the artist, 2013
Courtesy of the artist and and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing a still from Allison Schulnik's video 'Eager' (2013-2014) at left, and Patricia Piccinini's 'Still Life with Stem Cells' (2002) at right

 

Installation view of the exhibition All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing a still from Allison Schulnik’s video Eager (2013-2014) at left, and Patricia Piccinini’s Still Life with Stem Cells (2002) at right

 

 

Allison Schulnik (American, b. 1978)
Eager
2013-2014
Clay-animated stop motion video
8.25 minutes
Courtesy the artist and Mark Moore Gallery, California

 

Allison Schulnik (American, b. 1978) 'Eager' 2013-2014 (video still)

 

Allison Schulnik (American, b. 1978)
Eager (video still)
2013-2014
Clay-animated stop motion video
8.25 minutes
Courtesy the artist and Mark Moore Gallery, California

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed' at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing at left, Patricia Piccinini's 'Still Life with Stem Cells' (2002, silicone, polyurethane, human hair, clothing, carpet dimensions variable Monash University Collection), and at right a still from her DVD 'The Gathering' (2007)

 

Installation view of the exhibition All the better to see you with: Fairy tales transformed at The Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne showing at left, Patricia Piccinini’s Still Life with Stem Cells (2002, silicone, polyurethane, human hair, clothing, carpet dimensions variable Monash University Collection), and at right a still from her DVD The Gathering (2007)

 

These two works by Patricia Piccinini focus on one of the artists enduring interests, that of children and their ambiguous relationship with the imaginary creates that populate her work.

The child is the central character of most fairy tales, often at the point of transition to adulthood. Many of the tales reflect adult anxieties around this stage of childhood. But children, as both readers and central characters, often welcome fairy tales, as the stories nurture their desire for change and independence, and provide hope in a world that can be harsh and brutal. Children are also more willing to take on the strange and the magical, which we see in Piccinini’s sculptural work Still Life with Stem Cells (2002) in which a young girl is seated on the floor playing with her toys. These are not toys we are familiar with however, they are stem cells scaled up from their microscopic size, and each is different, as stem cell have the unique ability to change into other types of cells. The child is relaxed and happy, willing to take on this unfamiliar new environment. Piccinini re-enchants the world of the child, presenting an alternative narrative of the world we know. Creating possibility and wonder, she uses the fairy tale narrative to suggest new ways to look at issues facing contemporary culture.

In Piccinini’s video work The Gathering (2009) a young girl is lying on the floor of a dark house, asleep or unconscious. We watch with trepidation as furry blobs crawl towards her. Piccinini often depicts children in her work to evoke a sense of vulnerability and innocence, but it is often ambiguous as to who is more vulnerable, the creatures or the child. She confronts us with the strange and sometimes monstrous, just as fairy tales do.

Wall text from the exhibition

 

Patricia Piccinini (born in Freetown, Sierra Leone in 1965; lives and works in Melbourne, Australia) 'Still Life with Stem Cells' 2002 (photo detail)

 


Patricia Piccinini
(born in Freetown, Sierra Leone in 1965; lives and works in Melbourne, Australia)
Still Life with Stem Cells (photo detail)
2002
Silicone, polyurethane, human hair, clothing, carpet dimensions variable
Monash University Collection Purchased 2002
Courtesy the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne; Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney; Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco

 

The Gathering by Patricia Piccinini from MMAFT on Vimeo.

 

Patricia Piccinini (born in Freetown, Sierra Leone in 1965; lives and works in Melbourne, Australia)
The Gathering
2009
DVD, 16:9 PAL, stereo
3.30 mins
Courtesy the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne; Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney; Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco

 

Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn. 'The Path' 2009 (screen capture)

 

Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn (game designers and co-directors of tale of tales) Auriea Harvey was born in Indianapolis, USA in 1971 and Michaël Samyn was born in 1968 in Poperinge, Belgium; they live and work in Ghent, Belgium
The Path (screen capture)
2009
Computer game developed by TALE OF TALES
Music by Jarboe and Kris Force
Courtesy of tale of tales, Belgium

 

 

The Ian Potter Museum of Art
The University of Melbourne,
Corner Swanston Street and Masson Road
Parkville, Victoria 3010

Opening hours: Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 5pm

The Ian Potter Museum of Art website

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Exhibition: ‘Walker Evans’ at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)

Exhibition dates: 30th September, 2017 – 4th February, 2018

Curator: Clément Chéroux

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Self-Portrait' 1927 from the exhibition 'Walker Evans' at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Sept 2017 - Feb 2018

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Self-Portrait
1927
Gelatin silver print
Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Ford Motor Company Collection, Gift of Ford Motor Company and John C. Waddell
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

 

I have posted on this exhibition before, when it was at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, but this iteration at SFMOMA is the exclusive United States venue for the Walker Evans retrospective exhibition – and the new posting contains fresh media images not available previously.

I can never get enough of Walker Evans. This perspicacious artist had a ready understanding of the contexts and conditions of the subject matter he was photographing. His photographs seem easy, unpretentious, and allow his sometimes “generally unaware” subjects (subway riders, labor workers) to speak for themselves. Does it matter that he was an outsider, rearranging furniture in workers homes while they were out in the fields: not at all. Photography has always falsified truth since the beginning of the medium and, in any case, there is never a singular truth but many truths told from many perspectives, many different points of view. For example, who is to say that the story of America proposed by Robert Frank in The Americans, from the point of view of an outsider, is any less valuable than that of Helen Levitt’s view of the streets of New York? For different reasons, both are as valuable as each other.

Evans’ photographs for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the Great Depression on American life are iconic because they are cracking good photographs, not because he was an insider or outsider. He was paid to document, to enquire, and that is what he did, by getting the best shot he could. It is fascinating to compare Floyd and Lucille Burroughs, Hale County, Alabama (1936, below) with Alabama Tenant Farmer Floyd Bourroughs (1936, below). In the first photograph the strong diagonal element of the composition is reinforced by the parallel placement of the three feet, the ‘Z’ shape of Lucille Burroughs leg then leading into her upright body, which is complemented by the two vertical door jams, Floyd’s head silhouetted by the darkness beyond. There is something pensive about the clasping of his hands, and something wistful and sad, an energy emanating from the eyes. If you look at the close up of his face, you can see that it is “soft” and out of focus, either because he moved and/or the low depth of field. Notice that the left door jam is also out of focus, that it is just the hands of both Floyd and Lucille and her face that are in focus. Does this low depth of field and lack of focus bother Evans? Not one bit, for he knows when he has captured something magical.

A few second later, he moves closer to Floyd Burroughs. You can almost hear him saying to Floyd, “Stop, don’t move a thing, I’m just going to move the camera closer.” And in the second photograph you notice the same wood grain to the right of Floyd as in the first photograph, but this time the head is tilted slightly more, the pensive look replaced by a steely gaze directed straight into the camera, the reflection of the photographer and the world beyond captured on the surface of the eye. Walker Evans is the master of recognising the extra/ordinary. “The street was an inexhaustible source of poetic finds,” describes Chéroux. In his creation of visual portfolios of everyday life, his “notions of realism, of the spectator’s role, and of the poetic resonance of ordinary subjects,” help Evans created a mythology of American life: a clear vision of the present as the past, walking into the future.

With the contemporary decline of small towns and blue collar communities across the globe Evans’ concerns, for the place of ordinary people and objects in the world, are all the more relevant today. As the text from the Metropolitan Museum observes, it is the individuals and social institutions that are the sites and relics that constitute the tangible expressions of American desires, despairs, and traditions. And not just of American people, of all people… for it is community that binds us together.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for allowing me to publish the text and photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Truck and Sign' 1928-1930 from the exhibition 'Walker Evans' at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Sept 2017 - Feb 2018

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Truck and Sign
1928-1930
Gelatin silver print
Private collection, San Francisco
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

 

Walker Evans is one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. His elegant, crystal-clear photographs and articulate publications have inspired several generations of artists, from Helen Levitt and Robert Frank to Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and Bernd and Hilla Becher. The progenitor of the documentary tradition in American photography, Evans had the extraordinary ability to see the present as if it were already the past, and to translate that knowledge and historically inflected vision into an enduring art. His principal subject was the vernacular – the indigenous expressions of a people found in roadside stands, cheap cafés, advertisements, simple bedrooms, and small-town main streets. For fifty years, from the late 1920s to the early 1970s, Evans recorded the American scene with the nuance of a poet and the precision of a surgeon, creating an encyclopaedic visual catalogue of modern America in the making. …

Most of Evans’ early photographs reveal the influence of European modernism, specifically its formalism and emphasis on dynamic graphic structures. But he gradually moved away from this highly aestheticised style to develop his own evocative but more reticent notions of realism, of the spectator’s role, and of the poetic resonance of ordinary subjects. …

In September 1938, the Museum of Modern Art opened American Photographs, a retrospective of Evans’ first decade of photography. The museum simultaneously published American Photographs – still for many artists the benchmark against which all photographic monographs are judged. The book begins with a portrait of American society through its individuals – cotton farmers, Appalachian miners, war veterans – and social institutions – fast food, barber shops, car culture. It closes with a survey of factory towns, hand-painted signs, country churches, and simple houses – the sites and relics that constitute the tangible expressions of American desires, despairs, and traditions.

Between 1938 and 1941, Evans produced a remarkable series of portraits in the New York City subway. They remained unpublished for twenty-five years, until 1966, when Houghton Mifflin released Many Are Called, a book of eighty-nine photographs, with an introduction by James Agee written in 1940. With a 35mm Contax camera strapped to his chest, its lens peeking out between two buttons of his winter coat, Evans was able to photograph his fellow passengers surreptitiously, and at close range. Although the setting was public, he found that his subjects, unposed and lost in their own thoughts, displayed a constantly shifting medley of moods and expressions – by turns curious, bored, amused, despondent, dreamy, and dyspeptic. “The guard is down and the mask is off,” he remarked. “Even more than in lone bedrooms (where there are mirrors), people’s faces are in naked repose down in the subway.”

Extract from Department of Photographs. “Walker Evans (1903-1975),” in Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000 on the Metropolitan Museum of Art website October 2004 [Online] Cited 08/02/2022

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Floyd and Lucille Burroughs, Hale County, Alabama' 1936

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Floyd and Lucille Burroughs, Hale County, Alabama
1936
Gelatin silver print
Collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Floyd and Lucille Burroughs, Hale County, Alabama' 1936 (detail)

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Floyd and Lucille Burroughs, Hale County, Alabama (detail)
1936
Gelatin silver print
Collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Alabama Tenant Farmer Floyd Bourroughs' 1936

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Alabama Tenant Farmer Floyd Bourroughs
1936
Gelatin silver print
22.9 x 18.4cm
Collection particulière, San Francisco
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Photo: © Fernando Maquieira, Cromotex

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Allie Mae Burroughs, Wife of a Cotton Sharecropper, Hale Country, Alabama' 1936

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Allie Mae Burroughs, Wife of a Cotton Sharecropper, Hale County, Alabama
1936
Gelatin silver print
Private collection
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

“These are not photographs like those of Walker Evans who in James Agee’s account in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men took his pictures of the bare floors and iron bedsteads of the American mid-western sharecroppers while they were out tending their failing crops, and who even, as the evidence of his negatives proves, rearranged the furniture for a ‘better shot’. The best shot that Heilig could take was one that showed things as they were and as they should not be. …

To call these ‘socially-conscious documentary’ photographs is to acknowledge the class from which the photographer [Heilig] comes, not to see them as the result of a benign visit by a more privileged individual [Evans], however well-intentioned.”

Extract from James McCardle. “Weapon,” on the On This Day In Photography website [Online] Cited 29/01/2018

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Sidewalk and Shopfront, New Orleans' 1935

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Sidewalk and Shopfront, New Orleans
1935
Gelatin silver print
Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, gift of Willard Van Dyke
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Fish Market near Birmingham, Alabama' 1936

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Roadside Stand Near Birmingham/Roadside Store Between Tuscaloosa and Greensboro, Alabama
1936
Gelatin silver print
Collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Penny Picture Display, Savannah' 1936

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Penny Picture Display, Savannah
1936
Gelatin silver print
Pilara Foundation Collection
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Subway Portrait' January 1941

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Subway Portrait
1938-1941
Gelatin silver print
Collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Subway Passengers, New York' 1938

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Subway Portrait
1938-1941
Gelatin silver print
Collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Subway Passengers, New York' 1938

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Subway Portrait
1938-1941
Gelatin silver print
Collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) '[Subway Passengers, New York City]' 1938

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Subway Portrait
1938-1941
Gelatin silver print
Collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Subway Portraits' 1938-1941

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Subway Portraits
1938-1941
Gelatin silver print
Collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

 

Exhibition Displays Over 400 Photographs, Paintings, Graphic Ephemera and Objects from the Artist’s Personal Collection

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will be the exclusive United States venue for the retrospective exhibition Walker Evans, on view September 30, 2017, through February 4, 2018. As one of the preeminent photographers of the 20th century, Walker Evans’ 50-year body of work documents and distills the essence of life in America, leaving a legacy that continues to influence generations of contemporary photographers and artists. The exhibition will encompass all galleries in the museum’s Pritzker Center for Photography, the largest space dedicated to the exhibition, study and interpretation of photography at any art museum in the United States.

“Conceived as a complete retrospective of Evans’ work, this exhibition highlights the photographer’s fascination with American popular culture, or vernacular,” explains Clément Chéroux, senior curator of photography at SFMOMA. “Evans was intrigued by the vernacular as both a subject and a method. By elevating it to the rank of art, he created a unique body of work celebrating the beauty of everyday life.”

Using examples from Evans’ most notable photographs – including iconic images from his work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the Great Depression on American life; early visits to Cuba; street photography and portraits made on the New York City subway; layouts and portfolios from his more than 20-year collaboration with Fortune magazine and 1970s Polaroids – Walker Evans explores Evans’ passionate search for the fundamental characteristics of American vernacular culture: the familiar, quotidian street language and symbols through which a society tells its own story. Decidedly popular and more linked to the masses than the cultural elite, vernacular culture is perceived as the antithesis of fine art.

While many previous exhibitions of Evans’ work have drawn from single collections, Walker Evans will feature over 300 vintage prints from the 1920s to the 1970s on loan from the important collections at major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Getty Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., the National Gallery of Canada, the Musée du Quai Branly and SFMOMA’s own collection, as well as prints from private collections from around the world. More than 100 additional objects and documents, including examples of the artist’s paintings; items providing visual inspiration sourced from Evans’ personal collections of postcards, graphic arts, enamelled plates, cut images and signage; as well as his personal scrapbooks and ephemera will be on display. The exhibition is curated by the museum’s new senior curator of photography, Clément Chéroux, who joined SFMOMA in 2017 from the Musée National d’Art Moderne of the Centre Pompidou, Paris, organiser of the exhibition.

While most exhibitions devoted to Walker Evans are presented chronologically, Walker Evans‘ presentation is thematic. The show begins with an introductory gallery displaying Evans’ early modernist work whose style he quickly rejected in favour of focusing on the visual portfolio of everyday life. The exhibition then examines Evans’ captivation with the vernacular in two thematic contexts. The first half of the exhibition will focus on many of the subjects that preoccupied Evans throughout his career, including text-based images such as signage, shop windows, roadside stands, billboards and other examples of typography. Iconic images of the Great Depression, workers and stevedores, street photography made surreptitiously on New York City’s subways and avenues and classic documentary images of life in America complete this section. By presenting this work thematically, the exhibition links work separated by time and place and highlights Evans’ preoccupation with certain subjects and recurrent themes. The objects that moved him were ordinary, mass-produced and intended for everyday use. The same applied to the people he photographed – the ordinary human faces of office workers, labourers and people on the street.

“The street was an inexhaustible source of poetic finds,” describes Chéroux.

The second half of the exhibition explores Evans’ fascination with the methodology of vernacular photography, or styles of applied photography that are considered useful, domestic and popular. Examples include architecture, catalog and postcard photography as well as studio portraiture, and the exhibition juxtaposes this work with key source materials from the artist’s personal collections of 10,000 postcards, hand-painted signage and graphic ephemera (tickets, flyers, logos and brochures). Here Evans elevates vernacular photography to art, despite his disinclination to create fine art photographs. Rounding out this section are three of Evans’ paintings using vernacular architecture as inspiration. The exhibition concludes with Evans’ look at photography itself, with a gallery of photographs that unite Evans’ use of the vernacular as both a subject and a method.

About Walker Evans

Born in St. Louis, Walker Evans (1903-1975) was educated at East Coast boarding schools, Williams College, the Sorbonne and College de France before landing in New York in the late 1920s. Surrounded by an influential circle of artists, poets and writers, it was there that he gradually redirected his passion for writing into a career as a photographer, publishing his first photograph in the short-lived avant-garde magazine Alhambra. The first significant exhibition of his work was in 1938, when the Museum of Modern Art, New York presented Walker Evans: American Photographs, the first major solo exhibition at the museum devoted to a photographer.

In the 50 years that followed, Evans produced some of the most iconic images of his time, contributing immensely to the visibility of American culture in the 20th century and the documentary tradition in American photography. Evans’ best known photographs arose from his work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA), in which he documented the hardships and poverty of Depression-era America using a large-format, 8 x 10-inch camera. These photographs, along with his photojournalism projects from the 1940s and 1950s, his iconic visual cataloguing of the common American and his definition of the “documentary style,” have served as a monumental influence to generations of photographers and artists.

Press release from SFMOMA

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Resort Photographer at Work' 1941

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Resort Photographer at Work
1941, printed later
Gelatin silver print
Collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Untitled [Street scene]' 1950s

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Untitled [Street scene]
1950s
Gouache on paper
Collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Street Debris, New York City' 1968

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Street Debris, New York City
1968
Gelatin silver print
Private collection, San Francisco
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) '"Labor Anonymous,” Fortune 34, no. 5, November 1946' 1946

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
“Labor Anonymous,” Fortune 34, no. 5, November 1946
1946
Offset lithography
Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Collection of David Campany
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) '"The Pitch Direct. The Sidewalk Is the Last Stand of Unsophisticated Display," Fortune 58, no. 4, October 1958' 1958

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
“The Pitch Direct. The Sidewalk Is the Last Stand of Unsophisticated Display,” Fortune 58, no. 4, October 1958
1958
Offset lithography
Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris, Bibliothèque Kandinsky, Collection of David Campany
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Collage with Thirty-Six Ticket Stubs' 1975

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Collage with Thirty-Six Ticket Stubs
1975
Cut and pasted photomechanical prints on paper
Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Walker Evans Archive
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

Unidentified Sign Painter. 'Coca-Cola Thermometer' 1930-1970

 

Unidentified Sign Painter
Coca-Cola Thermometer
1930-1970
Enamel on ferrous metal
Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Walker Evans Archive
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Chain-Nose Pliers' 1955

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Chain-Nose Pliers
1955
Gelatin silver print
The Bluff Collection
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

John T. Hill (American, b. 1934) 'Interior of Walker Evans's House, Fireplace with Painting of Car' 1975, printed 2017

 

John T. Hill (American, b. 1934)
Interior of Walker Evans’s House, Fireplace with Painting of Car
1975, printed 2017
Inkjet print
Private collection
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

Lenoir Book Co., 'Main Street, Showing Confederate Monument, Lenoir, North Carolina' 1900-1940

 

Lenoir Book Co.,
Main Street, Showing Confederate Monument, Lenoir, North Carolina
1900-1940
Offset lithography
Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Walker Evans Archive
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

 

 

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Exhibition: ‘Photography in Argentina, 1850-2010: Contradiction and Continuity’ at The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Exhibition dates: 16th September, 2017 – 28th January, 2018

 

 

Charles DeForest Fredricks (American, 1823-1894) 'Inmigrantes alemanes en Buenos Aires jugando cartas' / 'German Immigrants in Buenos Aires Playing Cards' c. 1852 from the exhibition 'Photography in Argentina, 1850-2010: Contradiction and Continuity' at The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Sept 2017 - Jan 2018

 

Charles DeForest Fredricks (American, 1823-1894)
Inmigrantes alemanes en Buenos Aires jugando cartas / German Immigrants in Buenos Aires Playing Cards
c. 1852
Daguerreotype
Courtesy of Carlos G. Vertanessian

 

Charles DeForest Fredricks (American, 1823-1894)

Charles DeForest Fredricks (December 11, 1823 – May 25, 1894) was an American photographer.

Charles D. Fredricks was born in New York City on December 11, 1823. He learned the art of the daguerreotype from Jeremiah Gurney in New York, while he worked as a casemaker for Edward Anthony. In 1843, at the suggestion of his brother, Fredricks sailed for Angostura, today Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela. His business took him to Pará, Rio Grande do Sul, Montevideo, Buenos Aires. He enjoyed great success in South America, remaining there until some time in the early 1850s.

Following a brief period in Charleston, South Carolina, Fredricks moved to Paris in 1853. Here he became the first photographer to create life-sized portraits, which artists (like Jules-Émile Saintin) were hired to colour using pastel.

On his return to New York City, he rejoined Jeremiah Gurney, though it is not clear whether he was initially a partner or an employee. By 1854, he had developed an early process for enlarging photographs. His partnership with Gurney ended in 1855.

During the latter half of the decade he operated a studio in Havana. Here he received awards for his photographic oil colours and watercolours. During the 1860s he operated a studio on Broadway that was noted for its cartes de visites. In the early 1860s, Charles Fredricks personally photographed John Wilkes Booth (the assassin of President Lincoln) on several occasions at his studio.

He retired from photography in 1889 and died in Newark, New Jersey, five years later, on May 25, 1894.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Charles DeForest Fredricks (American, 1823-1894) 'Inmigrantes alemanes en Buenos Aires jugando cartas' / 'German Immigrants in Buenos Aires Playing Cards' c. 1852 (detail)

 

Charles DeForest Fredricks (American, 1823-1894)
Inmigrantes alemanes en Buenos Aires jugando cartas / German Immigrants in Buenos Aires Playing Cards (detail)
c. 1852
Daguerreotype
Courtesy of Carlos G. Vertanessian

 

 

I knew very little about Argentinian photography before researching for this posting.

Such a rich historical photographic archive – Indigenous, political, activist, performative – engaged in the dissection of national identity construction. Lots of German émigrés, lots of strong women photographers e.g. Grete Stern, Annemarie Heinrich, Julio Pantoja and Graciela Sacco.

There is a deep probing in Argentinian photography. There is the irony of the not quite right and an investigation of the dark side, of danger, fear and violence, of loss, grief, rage and resignation. As one of the sections of the exhibition is titled, of Civilisation and Barbarism. A quotation in the posting observes, “One of the most effective means to exercise control of populations in contemporary capitalism is the production of fear.” Drop dead fear.

The bloodlines of the collective consciousness of the Argentinian people run very deep. The dead ones are still there…

Apologies for the lack of photographs in The Aesthetic Gesture section, there were just no good images available.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to the J. Paul Getty Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Gustavo Di Mario (Argentine, b. 1969) 'Malambistas I' / 'Malambo Dancers I' Negative 2014, print 2016 from the exhibition 'Photography in Argentina, 1850-2010: Contradiction and Continuity' at The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Sept 2017 - Jan 2018

 

Gustavo Di Mario (Argentinian, b. 1969)
Malambistas I / Malambo Dancers I
Negative 2014, print 2016
Chromogenic print
60 x 50cm
Courtesy of Gustavo Di Mario
© Gustavo Di Mario

 

Gustavo Di Mario (Argentinian, b. 1969) 'Carnaval' Negative 2005, printed 2015

 

Gustavo Di Mario (Argentinian, b. 1969)
Carnaval
Negative 2005, printed 2015
Chromogenic print
50 x 63.1cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© Gustavo Di Mario

 

 

From its independence in 1810 until the economic crisis of 2001, Argentina was perceived as a modern country with a powerful economic system, a strong middle class, a large European-immigrant population, and an almost nonexistent indigenous culture. This perception differs greatly from the way that other Latin American countries have been viewed, and underlines the difference between Argentina’s colonial and postcolonial process and those of its neighbours. Comprising three hundred works by sixty artists, this exhibition examines crucial periods and aesthetic movements in which photography had a critical role, producing – and, at times, dismantling – national constructions, utopian visions, and avant-garde artistic trends.

This exhibition is part of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a far reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles, taking place from September 2017 through January 2018 at more than 70 cultural institutions across Southern California. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.

Contradiction and Continuity examines the complexities of Argentina’s history over 160 years, stressing the creation of contradictory narratives and the role of photography in constructing them. The exhibition concentrates on photographs that are fabricated rather than found, such as narrative tableaux and performances staged for the camera. However, it also includes examples of what has been considered documentary photography but can be interpreted as imagery intended as political propaganda or expressions of personal ideology.

The exhibition comprises seven sections: Civilization and Barbarism; National Myths: The Indigenous People; National Myths: The Gaucho; National Myths: Evita and the Modern City; The Aesthetic Gesture; The Political Gesture; and Fissures. These themes were chosen to emphasise crucial historical moments and aesthetic movements in Argentina in which photography played a critical role.

Civilisation and Barbarism

In 1845 Domingo Sarmiento (1811-1888), a prominent Argentine intellectual, published the novel Facundo, subtitled Civilization and Barbarism. Sarmiento, who would later be elected president, presented his political ideas in terms of an opposition between civilisation, represented by the capital city of Buenos Aires and European culture, and barbarism, represented by colonial customs, the gauchos, and the indigenous peoples. This section of the exhibition employs these antagonistic themes to introduce some of the complexities of Argentina’s history and culture. Nineteenth-century albums show the growth and advancement of the country through views of Buenos Aires and images that refer to progressive strategies initiated during this period, including railroad construction and the development of the educational system. In contrast, the work of several contemporary artists embodies the lifestyle and popular culture of the vast interior provinces of Argentina.

Like Sarmiento, Juan Bautista Alberdi (1810-1884), another influential intellectual, viewed immigration as a definitive measure for modernising the country. In Bases, published in 1853, he addressed the necessity of implementing policies to encourage immigration. The studio photographs in this section depict the growing presence of immigrant communities. Immigration is a key component to understanding Argentine society that continues to inspire contemporary artists.

 

Esteban Gonnet (French, 1830-1868) 'Recuerdos de Beunos Ayres' / 'Memories of Beunos Aires' 1864

 

Esteban Gonnet (French, 1830-1868)
Recuerdos de Beunos Ayres / Memories of Beunos Aires
1864
Page opening: La pirámide / The Pyramid
Albumen print

 

Benito Panunzi (Italian, 1835-1896) 'Monument to General San Martín' c. 1860-1869

 

Benito Panunzi (Italian, 1835-1896)
Monument to General San Martín
c. 1860-1869
Albumen print

 

National Myths: The Gaucho

The National Myths section of the exhibition focuses on the construction of specific state symbols, including indigenous people, the gaucho, First Lady Eva Perón, and the city of Buenos Aires. Around 1880, coinciding with increasing waves of immigration and efforts at modernisation, an avid debate on national identity arose among Argentine intellectuals and politicians.

By 1910, when the Centennial of Independence was celebrated, the gaucho emerged as an emblematic figure in the national iconography. The gaucho was already a common theme in Costumbrista (customs and character types) paintings of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Criollismo (native culture), a movement of the late nineteenth century, stimulated a wider interest in gaucho-themed art, fiction, theatre, and photographs.

José Hernández’s epic narrative poem Martín Fierro (1872) and Eduardo Gutiérrez’s novel Juan Moreira (1879) were major influences. About 1890, amateur photographer Francisco Ayerza staged a series of romanticised photographs meant to illustrate a later edition of Fierro. Commercial studios accommodated women and children who wanted to be pictured as gauchos. More than a national symbol, the gaucho embodied the idealised masculinity of the virile Argentine man; the contemporary fashion photographs of Gustavo Di Mario present a queer interpretation of the gauchesque.

 

Francisco Ayerza (Argentinian, 1860-1901) 'Estudio para la edición de "Martín Fierro," gaucho con caballo' / 'Study for an edition of Martín Fierro, Gaucho with Horse' c. 1890, print about 1900-1905

 

Francisco Ayerza (Argentinian, 1860-1901)
Estudio para la edición de “Martín Fierro,” gaucho con caballo / Study for an edition of Martín Fierro, Gaucho with Horse
c. 1890, print about 1900-1905
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy of a private collection

 

Francisco Ayerza (1860 – Buenos Aires, Argentina – 1901), was a photographic artist founding member of the Argentine Photographic Society. He formed an artistic movement in Latin America .

At the end of the 19th century, Doctor Francisco Ayerza cultivated the still new photographic art as an amateur. He was one of the organizers of the Argentine Amateur Photographic Society, the first entity of the genre created in that country.

It was at Francisco Ayerza’s house (1266 Piedad Street) where a group of gentlemen met “with the aim of forming a society of photography amateurs”, which ultimately constituted the Argentine Amateur Photographic Society (1889). The following participated in the first session: Leonardo Pereyra, who was elected president; Germán Kühr, Francisco Ayerza (secretary), José María Gutiérrez, Roberto Wernicke, Ricardo N. Murray, Fritz Büsch, Juan Quevedo, Isidro Calderón de la Barca Piñeyro, Daniel MacKinglay, Leonardo Pereyra Iraola, Fernando Steinius and Fernando Denis. …

An aspect of the immediate reality that seduced Francisco Ayerza and his friends for its picturesque appearance was the Pampa, whose geography began to be altered by machinism and immigration, as documented by some prints. From this interest in the Argentine countryside and its customs was born the idea of ​​photographically illustrating the Martín Fierro and, although they made many shots, it could not be finished, despite the efforts made by the authors in such an exhausting task, and although the selected field to photograph was the Estancia San Juan de Pereyra, very close to Buenos Aires.

Text translated from the Spanish Wikipedia website

 

Gustavo Di Mario (Argentinian, b. 1969) 'Malambistas IV' / 'Malambo Dancers IV' Negative 2014, print 2016

 

Gustavo Di Mario (Argentinian, b. 1969)
Malambistas IV / Malambo Dancers IV
Negative 2014, print 2016
Chromogenic print
60 x 50cm
Courtesy of Gustavo Di Mario
© Gustavo Di Mario

 

Malambo was born in the Pampas around the 1600. Malambo is a peculiar native dance that is executed by men only. Its music has no lyrics and it is based entirely on rhythm. The malambo dancer is a master of tap dancing wearing gaucho’s boots. Among the most important malambo moves are: “la cepillada” (the foot sole brushes the ground), “el repique” (a strike to the floor using the back part of the boot) and the “floreos”. Malambo dancers’ feet barely touch the ground but all moves are energetic and complex. Together with tap dancing, malambo dancers use “boleadoras” and other aids such as “lazos”. Like “Payadas” for gauchos (improve singing), malambo was *the* competition among gaucho dancers.

Read more about the Malambo dance

 

Nicola Constantino (Argentinian, b. 1964) 'Nicola alada, inspirado en Bacon inspirado en Rembrandt' / 'Winged Nicola, Inspired by Bacon Inspired by Rembrandt' 2010

 

Nicola Constantino (Argentinian, b. 1964)
Nicola alada, inspirado en Bacon inspirado en Rembrandt / Winged Nicola, Inspired by Bacon Inspired by Rembrandt
2010
Inkjet print
173 x 135cm
Courtesy of Nicola Constantino
© Nicola Constantino

 

Marcos López (Argentinian, b. 1958) 'Reina del trigo. Gálvez, Provincia de Santa Fe' (Queen of Wheat, Gálvez, Santa Fe Province) 1997

 

Marcos López (Argentinian, b. 1958)
Reina del trigo. Gálvez, Provincia de Santa Fe (Queen of Wheat, Gálvez, Santa Fe Province)
1997, printed 2017
Hand-coloured inkjet print
50 × 70cm (19 11/16 × 27 9/16 in.)
Courtesy of the artist and Rolf Art, Buenos Aires
© Marcos López

 

Marcos López (Argentinian, b. 1958) 'Gaucho Gil. Buenos Aires' 2009, print 2017

 

Marcos López (Argentinian, b. 1958)
Gaucho Gil. Buenos Aires
2009, printed 2017
Hand-coloured inkjet print
144 × 100cm
Courtesy of Rolf Art and Marcos López
© Marcos López

 

National Myths: The Indigenous People

While the gaucho became a national myth, “official” images rarely addressed the existence of indigenous peoples. The practice of recording their presence in photography, however, was well established by the late nineteenth century. It began in the portrait studios of Buenos Aires when native caciques (chiefs) visited the capital for peaceful negotiations, or when they were brought in as prisoners and made to pose in traditional garb. Later, photographers would travel by train or wagon to Native American settlements or plantations where indigenous people worked.

These staged compositions, as in the rest of Latin America, portrayed indigenous people as exotic and passive, objectifying them and emphasising their “otherness.” Sitters were always isolated from signs of the “civilised” or “Christian” world. The iconography found in these nineteenth- and early twentieth century photographs corresponds to a nostalgic image of a backward and subjugated group ignored by progress. Modernist and contemporary artists, such as Grete Stern and Guadalupe Miles, presented a different and more accurate view of these people. Both Stern and Miles immersed themselves in indigenous communities, portraying their subjects as individuals rather than stereotypes.

 

Esteban Gonnet (French, 1830-1868) 'Cacique Tehuelche Casimiro Biguá' / 'Tehuelche Chief, Casimiro Biguá' 1864

 

Esteban Gonnet (French, 1830-1868)
Cacique Tehuelche Casimiro Biguá / Tehuelche Chief, Casimiro Biguá
1864
Albumen print
14.1 x 9.7cm
Courtesy of the Daniel Sale Collection
Photo: Javier Augustín Rojas

 

Born in Grenoble, France, Esteban Gonnet moved to Argentina from Newcastle, England, in 1857. Gonnet became a photographer after arriving in Buenos Aires in 1857. He was a surveyor, working with his cousin Hippolyte Gaillard, also a surveyor.

Gonnet’s work reflected the rural lifetime and customs, showing the life and customs of Aboriginal people and paisanos of that era, although Gonnet also took photographies in urban places. In most of his photography he tried to show the typical image of the creole, stereotyping Argentine customs, and using objects as symbols that would create iconic images of the era. His photos were then sold abroad (mostly in Europe), when photography of travels or distant places where gaining in popularity. Gonnet’s innovative style of work consisted of the use of negative system rather than daguerreotype (that was the most common technique by then). Furthermore, Gonnet usually chose to take pictures outdoors instead of working at a studio, which was also his hallmark.

Text from Wikipedia website

 

Antonio Pozzo (Argentinian born Italy, 1829-1910) 'Cacique Pincén' (Chief Pincén) 1878

 

Antonio Pozzo (Argentinian born Italy, 1829-1910)
Cacique Pincén (Chief Pincén)
1878
Printed by Samuel Rimathé, Swiss, born Italy, 1863-unknown
Albumen print
20.2 x 14cm (7 15/16 x 5 1/2 in.)
Collection of Diran Sirinian

 

Antonio Pozzo (Argentinian born Italy, 1829-1910) 'Cacique Pincén' (Chief Pincén) negative 1878; print c. 1900

 

Antonio Pozzo (Argentinian born Italy, 1829-1910)
Cacique Pincén (Chief Pincén)
Negative 1878; print c. 1900
Unknown printer, active Argentina, c. 1900
Hand-coloured halftone postcard
13.7 x 8.7cm
Courtesy of the Daniel Sale Collection
Photo: Javier Augustín Rojas

 

Sociedad Fotográfica Argentina de Aficionados (Argentine, active 1889-1926) 'India yagán u ona tejiendo una canasta' / 'Yagán or Ona Woman Weaving a Basket' c. 1890s

 

Sociedad Fotográfica Argentina de Aficionados (Argentine, active 1889-1926)
India yagán u ona tejiendo una canasta / Yagán or Ona Woman Weaving a Basket
c. 1890s
Printing-out paper
21 x 17cm
Courtesy of the Daniel Sale Collection
Photo: Javier Augustín Rojas

 

Attributed to Carlos R. Gallardo (Argentinian, 1855-1938) 'Esperando el ataque' / 'Waiting for the Attack' 1902

 

Attributed to Carlos R. Gallardo (Argentinian, 1855-1938)
Esperando el ataque / Waiting for the Attack
1902
Gelatin silver print
15.5 x 22cm
Courtesy of the Diran Sirinian
Photo: Javier Augustín Rojas

 

Grete Stern (Argentinian born Germany, 1904-1999) 'Mujer pilagá con sus hijos. Los Lomitas, Formosa' / 'Pilagá Woman with her Kids. Las Lomitas, Formosa' 1964

 

Grete Stern (Argentinian born Germany, 1904-1999)
Mujer pilagá con sus hijos. Los Lomitas, Formosa / Pilagá Woman with her Kids. Las Lomitas, Formosa
1964
From the series Aborígenes del gran Chaco argentine / Indigenous People from the Argentine Gran Chaco
Gelatin silver print
30 x 38cm
Courtesy of a private collection
© Estate of Grete Stern courtesy Galería Jorge Mara – La Ruche, Buenos Aires, 2016

 

Grete Stern (9 May 1904 – 24 December 1999) was a German-Argentinian photographer. Like her husband Horacio Coppola, she helped modernise the visual arts in Argentina, and in fact presented the first exhibition of modern photographic art in Buenos Aires, in 1935. (Wikipedia)

In Berlin in 1927, Stern began taking private classes with Walter Peterhans, who was soon to become head of photography at the Bauhaus. A year later, in Peterhans’s studio, she met Ellen (Rosenberg) Auerbach, with whom she opened a pioneering studio specialising in portraiture and advertising. Named after their childhood nicknames, the studio ringl + pit embraced both commercial and avant-garde loyalties, creating proto-feminist works. In Buenos Aires during the same period, Coppola initiated his photographic experimentations, exploring his surroundings and contributing to the discourse on modernist practices across media in local cultural magazines. In 1929 he founded the Buenos Aires Film Club to introduce the most innovative foreign films to Argentine audiences. His early works show the burgeoning interest in new modes of photographic expression that led him to the Bauhaus in 1932, where he met Stern and they began their joint history.

Following the close of the Bauhaus and amid the rising threat of the Nazi powers in 1933, Stern and Coppola fled Germany. Stern arrived first in London, where her friends included activists affiliated with leftist circles and where she made her now iconic portraits of German exiles, including those of Bertolt Brecht and Karl Korsch. After traveling through Europe, camera in hand, Coppola joined Stern in London, where he pursued a modernist idiom in his photographs of the fabric of the city, tinged alternately with social concern and surrealist strangeness.

In the summer of 1935, Stern and Coppola embarked for Buenos Aires [the had married in the same year, divorcing in 1943], where they mounted an exhibition in the offices of the avant-garde magazine Sur, announcing the arrival of modern photography in Argentina. The unique character of Buenos Aires was captured in Coppola’s photographic encounters from the city’s centre to its outskirts, and in Stern’s numerous portraits of the city’s intelligentsia, from feminist playwright Amparo Alvajar to essayist Jorge Luis Borges to poet-politician Pablo Neruda.

Text from the MoMA website

 

Leonel Luna (Argentinian, b. 1965) 'El rapto de Guinnard' / 'The Kidnap of Guinnard' 2002; print, 2017

 

Leonel Luna (Argentinian, b. 1965)
El rapto de Guinnard / The Kidnap of Guinnard
2002; print, 2017
Inkjet print on vinyl
112 x 72cm
Courtesy of a private collection
© Leonel Luna

 

National Myths: Evita and the Modern City

Photography contributed substantially to the construction of the myths of Buenos Aires as the “Modern City” and Evita as the symbol of Peronism. From the 1930s into the 1950s, the capital, like other advanced cosmopolitan metropolises, continued to expand. Some of the emblematic streets and monuments of the city, such as the Obelisk (1936), Avenida 9 de Julio (begun 1935), and Avenida Corrientes (1936), were built or renovated during this period. Buenos Aires became a model of progress for photographers like Horacio Coppola and Sameer Makarius, who produced series reinforcing this view.

Photography was among the propagandistic strategies deployed by the populist Perón administration (1946-1955). Eva Duarte de Perón (1919-1952), known as Evita, had an important role during the first presidency of her husband, Juan Perón (1895-1974), and became the most enduring image of Peronist ideology. Numerous photographers contributed to building an image of Evita as both an elegant celebrity and a compassionate politician. While Juan Di Sandro, considered the father of photojournalism in Argentina, made her political life accessible through views of official events, Annemarie Heinrich helped create her “new” femininity in glamorous studio portraits. Jaime Davidovich’s installation Evita, Then and Now: A Video Scrapbook (1984) and Santiago Porter’s Evita (2008) offer contrasting – critical as well as multidimensional – views of this complex figure.

 

Annemarie Heinrich (Argentinian born Germany, 1912-2005) 'Eva Perón' Negative 1944, print 1995

 

Annemarie Heinrich (Argentinian born Germany, 1912-2005)
Eva Perón
Negative 1944, print 1995
Gelatin silver print
32.5 x 27cm
Courtesy of Galería Vasari
© Archivo Heinrich Sanguinetti

 

Annemarie Heinrich (9 January 1912 – 22 September 2005) was a German-born naturalised Argentine photographer, who specialised in portraits and nudity. She is known for having photographed various celebrities of Argentine cinema, such as Tita Merello, Carmen Miranda, Zully Moreno and Mirtha Legrand; as well as other cultural personalities like Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda and Eva Perón.

Heinrich was born in Darmstadt and moved to Larroque, Entre Ríos Province, with her family in 1926, her father having been injured during the First World War. In 1930 she opened her first studio in Buenos Aires. Two years later she moved to a larger studio, and began photographing actors from the Teatro Colón. Her photos were also the cover of magazines such as El Hogar, Sintonía, Alta Sociedad, Radiolandia and Antena for forty years.

Heinrich’s work was shown in New York for the first time in 2016 at Nailya Alexander Gallery in the show “Annemarie Heinrich: Glamour and Modernity in Buenos Aires.” Heinrich is considered one of Argentina’s most important photographers.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Annemarie Heinrich (Argentinian born Germany, 1912-2005) 'Veraneando en la ciudad' / 'Spending the Summer in the City' 1959

 

Annemarie Heinrich (Argentinian born Germany, 1912-2005)
Veraneando en la ciudad / Spending the Summer in the City
1959
Gelatin silver print
18 x 18cm
Courtesy of the Guillermo Navone Collection
© Archivo Heinrich Sanguinetti

 

Juan Di Sandro (Argentinian born Italy, 1898-1988) 'Avenida 9 de julio con obelisco. Vista panorámica' / 'Avenida 9 de Julio with Obelisk. Panoramic View' 1956

 

Juan Di Sandro (Argentinian born Italy, 1898-1988)
Avenida 9 de julio con obelisco. Vista panorámica / Avenida 9 de Julio with Obelisk. Panoramic View
1956
Gelatin silver print
29 x 42cm
Courtesy of Galería Vasari
© Familia Di Sandro

 

Sameer Makarius (Argentinian born Egypt, 1924-2009) 'Obelisco' / 'Obelisk' 1957

 

Sameer Makarius (Argentinian born Egypt, 1924-2009)
Obelisco / Obelisk
1957
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy of Diran Sirinian
Photo: Javier Agustin Rojas
© Throckmorton Fine Arts

 

Sameer Makarius was without doubt one of the most prolific photographers in Buenos Aires during the 1950s and 60s. Almost every weekend, he ventured out taking along with him his two cameras, a Leica and an Olympus, to record his new home town. Makarius arrived in Buenos Aires in 1953 and the city must have made a real impact on him. Europe was scarred and slowly recuperating, but things were completely different here. A bustling, modern, elegant plus very confident capital was waiting to be explored. Taking photographs probably helped him to find his bearings and get to know the customs of the city’s inhabitants really well. But then, everybody’s past often determines both their present and their future. Makarius had studied art in Hungary and – being an artist – was inclined to a visual approach. He started out as a painter and abstraction, in all its various ramifications, was one of the main tendencies at the time, with Makarius following suit. Still, when he came to Argentina he was already principally interested in photography. At some stage, probably between the mid and late nineteen forties, a major shift had thus taken place and it is interesting to speculate why. Maybe, Makarius switched to photography because of practical reasons. Cameras were not only widely available at the time, but also coincided perfectly with his wandering life after the end of the war. Before moving to Argentina, he visited and lived in many countries, for example France and Switzerland. And, last but not least, because of his artistic background, he already knew how to deal with composition, light and shadow.

Marjan Groothuis. “Sameer Makarius,” on the Arte Aldia website Nd [Online] Cited 03/02/2022

 

Santiago Porter (Argentine, b. 1971) 'Evita' 2008

 

Santiago Porter (Argentinian, b. 1971)
Evita
2008
From the series Bruma II / Mist II
Inkjet print
154 x 123.5cm
Courtesy of the Collection Malba, Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires
© Santiago Porter

 

The Political Gesture

The gesture of “pointing out” had its origin in conceptual Argentine photography of the 1960s and 1970s. The artistic act evolved into radical actions as the sociopolitical situation in Argentina deteriorated. This section of the exhibition investigates photographs of political gestures provoked by the last dictatorship of 1976-83, in relation to the earlier conceptual practice presented in the adjacent gallery, “The Aesthetic Gesture.”

The action of showing a photograph of a person who was kidnapped or “disappeared” during the dictatorship was employed by the activist group Madres de Plaza de Mayo. In their weekly marches, the Mothers always wore white head scarves and carried photographs of their children on homemade signs demanding they “Return Alive.” With the arrival of democracy and Nunca Más (Never Again), the official 1984 report of crimes against humanity, trials of the military leaders began. However, over the next fifteen years, many of those who were culpable operated with impunity due to such regulations as the Full Stop Law (1986), the Law of Due Obedience (1987), and the Pardons Act (1990). During this time, activist artist groups, such as Grupo Etcétera… and Escombros, emerged to remind the public of crimes and atrocities, pointing out those assassins who had hoped to remain anonymous.

 

Nicolás García Uriburu (Argentinian, 1937-2016) 'Le Geste - Coloration Du Grand Canale - Venise 1968-1970' / 'The Gesture - Colouring the Grand Canal - Venice 1968-70' 1968-1970

 

Nicolás García Uriburu (Argentinian, 1937-2016)
Le Geste – Coloration Du Grand Canale – Venise 1970 / The Gesture – Colouring the Grand Canal – Venice 1970
1968-70
Chromogenic print, stencil and ink
67 x 101cm
Courtesy of Rubén and Agustina Esposito
© Nicolás García Uriburu

 

Born in Buenos Aires in 1937, García Uriburu began painting at an early age and, in 1954, secured his first exhibition at the local Müller Gallery. He enrolled at the University of Buenos Aires, where he received a degree in architecture, and relocated to Paris with his wife, Blanca Isabel Álvarez de Toledo, in 1965. He would later father a child named “Azul” with Blanca. His Three Graces, a sculpture in the pop art style, earned him a Grand Prize at the National Sculpture Salon in 1968. Venturing into conceptual art, he mounted an acrylic display at the Iris Clert Gallery, creating an artificial garden that set a new direction for García Uriburu’s work towards environmental activism.

He was invited to the prestigious Venice Biennale in June 1968, where García Uriburu dyed Venice’s Grand Canal using fluorescein, a pigment which turns a bright green when synthesised by microorganisms in the water. Between 1968 and 1970, he repeated the feat in New York’s East River, the Seine, in Paris, and at the mouth of Buenos Aires’ polluted southside Riachuelo.

A pioneer in what became known as land art, he created a montage in pastel colours over photographs of the scenes in 1970, allowing the unlimited photographic reproduction of the work for the sake of raising awareness of worsening water pollution, worldwide. In addition to environmental conservation he also produced works of art that showcased humanistic naturalism and an antagonism between society and nature, such as: Unión de Latinoamérica por los ríos (Latin America Union for Rivers), and No a las fronteras políticas (No to Political Borders).

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Eduardo Longoni (Argentinian, b. 1959) 'Madres de Plaza de Mayo durante su habitual ronda' / 'Mothers of Plaza de Mayo during Their Customary March' 1981

 

Eduardo Longoni (Argentinian, b. 1959)
Madres de Plaza de Mayo durante su habitual ronda / Mothers of Plaza de Mayo during Their Customary March
1981
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy of and © Eduardo Longoni

 

Eduardo Gil (Argentinian, b. 1948) 'Siluetas y canas. El Siluetazo. Buenos Aires 21-22 de setiembre, 1983' / 'Silhouettes and Cops. El Siluetazo. Buenos Aires, September 21-22, 1983' 1983

 

Eduardo Gil (Argentinian, b. 1948)
Siluetas y canas. El Siluetazo. Buenos Aires 21-22 de setiembre, 1983 / Silhouettes and Cops. El Siluetazo. Buenos Aires, September 21-22, 1983
1983
Gelatin silver print
17.5 x 24.5cm
Courtesy of a private collection
© Eduardo Gil

 

Adriano Lestido (Argentinian, b. 1955) 'Madre e hija de Plaza de Mayo' / 'Mother and Daughter from Plaza de Mayo' 1982, printed 1984

 

Adriano Lestido (Argentinian, b. 1955)
Madre e hija de Plaza de Mayo / Mother and Daughter from Plaza de Mayo
1982, printed 1984
Gelatin silver image
16.5 x 21.2cm
Courtesy of Rolf Art and Adriana Lestido
© Adriana Lestido

 

Grupo Escombros (Argentine, active since 1988) 'Mariposas' (Butterflies) 1988

 

Grupo Escombros (Argentine, active since 1988)
Mariposas (Butterflies)
1988
Pancartas (Signs) series
Chromogenic print (printed in monochrome) mounted on wood
40 × 60cm (15 3/4 × 23 5/8 in.)
Courtesy of the artists and WALDEN, Buenos Aires
© Grupo Escombros / WALDEN

 

Grupo Escombros was born in 1988, in full hyperinflation, as a group of street art or public art as it is usually defined. In that Argentina where the economic value of things changed hour by hour, everything seemed to collapse, including democracy reconquered at the cost of 30,000 missing and collective wounds that may never close.

When analysing this social, political and economic situation, the founding artists of the group asked themselves what would be left of the country. The answer was: “the rubble.” That day the group acquired its name. A name that today is more current than ever, because Argentina continues to collapse, relentlessly. Next to the name, and beyond the inevitable changes, there are characteristics that remained intact:

Most of the works were made outdoors, one street, a square, a cellar, an urban stream

They always express the sociopolitical reality that the country lives at that moment

It is expressed through all possible forms of communication: installations, manifestos, murals, objects, posters, poems, prints, talks, visual poems, graffiti, postcards, net art

Its members come from various disciplines: plastic, journalism, design, architecture. Their works are always collective, annulling the individualities that compose it. They do not belong to any political party or religious creed in particular. Despite constantly denouncing the conditions of absolute injustice in which the men, women and children of Argentina and Latin America live, it is a mistaken simplification to say that it is only a protest group.

Anonymous text from the Grupo Escombros website Nd [Online] 24/01/2018. No longer available online

 

Grupo Etcétera (Argentine, active since 1997) 'MÁSCARAS DESINHIBIDORAS - Escraches a los militares Riverso y Peyón' / 'UNINHIBITING MASKS - Escraches to (Former) Military Officers Riverso and Peyón (2)' 1998

 

Grupo Etcétera (Argentine, active since 1997)
MÁSCARAS DESINHIBIDORAS – Escraches a los militares Riverso y Peyón / UNINHIBITING MASKS – Escraches to (Former) Military Officers Riverso and Peyón (2)
1998
Chromogenic print
15 x 21.5cm
Courtesy of Archivo Etcétera
© Etcétera Archive

 

Etcétera is a multi-disciplinary collective created in Buenos Aires in 1997. It is made up of artists with a background in poetry, theater, visual arts and music. Its original purpose was to bring artistic expression closer to places of social conflict and shift these problems to cultural production spaces. These experiences take place at contemporary art venues such as museums, galleries and cultural centres, but also in the streets, at festivals, during protests and demonstrations, using different strategies including contextual and ephemeral public interventions. They consider themselves part of the “committed art” movement. In 2005, they created the Fundación del Movimiento Internacional Errorista (International Errorist Movement Foundation) with other artists and activists. This international organisation seeks to consolidate error as a life philosophy. The co-founders of the collective, Loreto Garín Guzmán y Federico Zukerfeld, are responsible for coordinating all activities, archives and other initiatives since 2007.

 

Grupo Etcétera (Argentine, active since 1997) 'ARGENTINA VS. ARGENTINA. Escrache to General Galtieri' 1998

 

Grupo Etcétera (Argentine, active since 1997)
ARGENTINA VS. ARGENTINA. Escrache to General Galtieri
1998
Chromogenic print
15 x 21.5cm
Courtesy of Archivo Etcétera
© Etcétera Archive

 

Escrache: Intimidatory action by citizens against persons in the political, administrative or military sphere, which consists in disseminating information about the abuses committed during their administration to their private homes or to any public place where they are identified.

 

Florencia Blanco (French, b. 1971) 'María y Andrés Pedro. Lobería, Buenos Aires' 2008

 

Florencia Blanco (French, b. 1971)
María y Andrés Pedro. Lobería, Buenos Aires
2008
From the series Donde están los muertos? / Where Are the Dead Ones?
Chromogenic print
70 x 70cm
Courtesy of Florencia Blanco
© Florencia Blanco

 

Julio Pantoja (Argentinian, b. 1961) 'Laura Romero, 26 años, estudiante de artes de la serie Los hijos. Tucumán, veinte años despues' / 'Laura Romero, 26 Years Old, Art Student from the series The Sons and Daughters. Tucumán, Twenty Years Later' 1996

 

Julio Pantoja (Argentinian, b. 1961)
Laura Romero, 26 años, estudiante de artes de la serie Los hijos. Tucumán, veinte años despues /
Laura Romero, 26 Years Old, Art Student from the series The Sons and Daughters. Tucumán, Twenty Years Later

1996
Gelatin silver print
20.7 x 20.7cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© Julio Pantoja

 

Julio Pantoja (Argentinian, b. 1961) 'Natalia Ariñez, 23 años, esudiante de arquitectura' / 'Natalia Ariñez, 23 Years Old, Architecture Student' 1999

 

Julio Pantoja (Argentinian, b. 1961)
Natalia Ariñez, 23 años, esudiante de arquitectura / Natalia Ariñez, 23 Years Old, Architecture Student
1999
From the series The Sons and Daughters. Tucumán, Twenty Years Later
Gelatin silver print
20.7 x 20.7cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© Julio Pantoja

 

Graciela Sacco (Argentinian, b. 1956) 'Untitled (#2)' 1993

 

Graciela Sacco (Argentinian, b. 1956)
Untitled (#2)
1993
From the series Bocanada
Heliography on paper
72.1 x 50.1cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum purchase with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© Graciela Sacco

 

Graciela Sacco (Argentina, Rosario, 1956 – November 5, 2017) was a visual artist and teacher from Argentina. She worked mainly with photography, video and installation.She received great recognition for the wide participation of his work in individual and collective exhibitions in his country, fairs and international biennials as those in Mexico, Venice and Shanghai , the most important worldwide… She was an artist committed to the problems of her country. …

Through light, shadows, space, time and movement, she captures the themes he addresses, builds, dialogues and discusses in his works; her first technical interest was photography as a visual language to portray time in a certain space, a certain context lived in a fixed image, navigating analogue and digital media, working with techniques such as Heliography , through which she transfers images to the surface of objects chosen for their compositions, which have been previously emulsified with photosensitive substances which allows their printing and thus provide wooden blocks, acrylic sheets, PVC, paintings, windows, suitcases, dishes, spoons, knives of new meanings and meanings that speak beyond their own meaning; how to use an empty spoon with the “reflection” of the mouth that will eat from it to talk about a society that goes hungry and needs, because as she herself has said: “we are individuals different from each other in their personal growth, but with shared or unresolved needs that unite us and relate”. For this reason Bocanada (1993-2014) and “Body to Body” (1996-2014) become an active work as long as the situation is repeated or is not solved (societies with hunger and ignored basic needs), will remain valid, in force and it can be traced and displayed as many times as necessary.

The first was a set of images reproduced and multiplied, a technique that took from the media and its means to advertise and promote ideas, events, news and products, but through art, taking advantage of the reproducibility of the same product, worth the redundancy, of modernity in the technification and technological evolution of the visual arts. It was born from the urban interventions that Sacco practiced in schools and public squares in Argentina, Brazil and European cities, in which she painted the streets with the image repeated hundreds of times of open mouths, which portray the hunger of the world, the poverty, the need, humility, problems that affect much of the world and that are of human and universal interest, anyone can understand or arouse.

Hence, the work can be reinterpreted anywhere in the world, alluding to the context in which it is presented. As in the second work mentioned in which is not hunger but protests and public demonstrations to claim rights and welfare of student and civil communities, then take advantage of public space as the space of free thought where they can be transformed, evidence and manifest the plurality of ideas and get the support or rejection of their listeners.

Google Translate from the Spanish Wikipedia entry

 

The Aesthetic Gesture

During the 1960s and 1970s, the art scene in Argentina fostered a radical break with traditional forms of art. The opening of new spaces dedicated to experimental art, most notably the Instituto Torcuato di Tella and CAyC (Centro de Arte y Comunicación), gave rise to conceptual art and the engagement of intellectual artists, who began to generate works in unconventional forms, including performances, actions, and installations.

Among these innovations was the “aesthetic gesture,” in which artists used actions and performances to “point out” or signal everyday life events, objects, and people, thus transforming them into works of art. Documented primarily with photographs, these pieces sought to invoke viewers as active participants in artistic actions, erasing the divisions between art and life. In his 1962 Vivo-Dito manifesto, for example, Alberto Greco advocated for “a living art”; and in his Signaling series of 1968, Edgardo Antonio Vigo “pointed out” common objects and events with the intention of producing aesthetic experiences. The difficult political climate of repression in the early 1970s, which culminated in the dictatorship period, provoked artists to undertake increasingly political productions.

 

Jaime Davidovich (Argentine-American, 1936-2016) 'Tape Project: Sidewalk 1' 1971

 

Jaime Davidovich (Argentine-American, 1936-2016)
Tape Project: Sidewalk 1
1971
Gelatin silver print
The J. Paul Getty Museum
© Jaime Davidovich

 

Fissures

The democracy restored to Argentina in 1983 followed a neoliberal model, one that favoured free-market capitalism. The implementation of neoliberalism, during the presidency of Carlos Menem (1989-99), together with the catastrophic economic collapse of 2001, provoked the questioning of long-held national ideals. The works in this section utilise architecture to highlight aspects of national history in relation to current sociopolitical issues. Santiago Porter’s photographs reflect the prosperity of the past in contrast to the present fiscal situation. Similarly, Nuna Mangiante’s graphite-altered pictures revolve around the 2001 crisis and, specifically, the corralito (when citizens were not allowed to withdraw their money from banks).

The works in this section stress inequality and its consequences in contemporary Argentina. SUB, Photographic Cooperative’s series A puertas cerradas (Behind Closed Gates) documents the comfortable life of a wealthy family in a gated neighbourhood outside Buenos Aires, while Gian Paolo Minelli’s photographs focus on people living in Barrio Piedrabuena, an impoverished neighbourhood in the capital city. Ananké Asseff’s portraits of middle-class citizens with their guns attest to rising fear and paranoia in contemporary Argentine society.

 

Santiago Porter (Argentinian, b. 1971) 'Casa de Moneda de la serie Bruma' / 'The Mint' Negative, 2007; print, 2015

 

Santiago Porter (Argentinian, b. 1971)
Casa de Moneda de la serie Bruma / The Mint
Negative, 2007; print, 2015
From the series Mist
inkjet print
The J. Paul Getty Museum, purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© Santiago Porter

 

Martín Weber (Argentinian-Chilean, b. 1868) 'El jugador' / 'The Chess Player' 1999

 

Martín Weber (Argentinian-Chilean, b. 1868)
El jugador / The Chess Player
1999
From the series Ecos del interior / Echoes from the Interior
Silver dye bleach print
84 x 99cm framed
Courtesy and © Martín Weber

 

In the mid-nineteenth century, Argentina opened up to several waves of immigration, mostly European, which arrived through the port of Buenos Aires. The country also experienced strong waves of emigration: the first was in the 40s and was followed by two of a more political nature. One during the political persecution at universities under the dictatorship of Juan Carlos Onganía and the second following the coup in 1976. None however compared with the emigration that took place as from December 2001, when unemployment reached 22%.

 

Martín Weber (Argentinian-Chilean, b. 1868) 'Barras de colores' / 'Color Bars' 1996

 

Martín Weber (Argentinian-Chilean, b. 1868)
Barras de colores / Color Bars
1996
From the series Ecos del interior / Echoes from the Interior
Silver dye bleach print
84 x 99cm framed
Courtesy and © Martín Weber

 

Black-and-white TV began to be broadcast during Peron’s regime. The inaugural transmission showed Evita’s speaking from Plaza de Mayo. Color TV arrived under the military dictatorship of 1978, in time to broadcast soccer’s World Cup.

 

Guadalupe Miles (Argentinian, b. 1971) 'Sin título' (Untitled) 2001

 

Guadalupe Miles (Argentinian, b. 1971)
Sin título (Untitled)
2001, printed 2017
Chaco series
Inkjet print
100 × 100cm (39 3/8 × 39 3/8 in.)
Courtesy of the artist
© Guadalupe Miles

 

Guadalupe Miles (Argentinian, b. 1971) 'Untitled' 2001

 

Guadalupe Miles (Argentinian, b. 1971)
Sin título (Untitled)
2001, printed 2017
Chaco series
Inkjet print
100 × 100cm (39 3/8 × 39 3/8 in.)
Courtesy of the artist
© Guadalupe Miles

 

Alessandra Sanguinetti (American, b. 1968) 'Untitled' 1996-2004

 

Alessandra Sanguinetti (American, b. 1968)
Untitled
1996-2004
From the series En el sexto día / On the Sixth Day
Chromogenic (FujiFlex) print
73.7 x 73.7cm
Courtesy of Yossi milo Gallery, New York
© Alessandra Sanguinetti, Courtesy of Yossi milo Gallery, New York

 

Alessandra Sanguinetti (1968, New York, New York) is an American photographer. Born in New York, Sanguinetti moved to Argentina at the age of two and lived there until 2003. Sanguinetti has stated that she began taking photographs to create a sense of permanence in her life after realising that “everything is transitory.” Currently, she lives in San Francisco, California.

Her most involved project is a documentary photography project about two cousins – Guillermina and Belinda – as they grow up outside of Buenos Aires. The project began in 1999 when Sanguinetti visited her grandmother, Juana, in Argentina. She intended to take pictures of the animals which occupied her grandmother’s rural farm. However, she saw potential in her cousins, whom she had previously disregarded. Sanguinetti recounts this, “I was shooting them without even thinking it was work. My first idea was to just do a single story trying to figure out what they imagined life to be, just so I could get into their world.” Titled The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of their Dreams, the project follows them as they fantasise about becoming adults, early motherhood, and becoming young women while their relationship changes. In this particular collection of photographs, Alessandra makes commentaries about feminine conventions of beauty and behaviour, as well as gender roles and gender identity. She occasionally ridicules social expectations through her images, which are often satirical in nature.  These commentaries are best typified in Petals (2000) and The Couple (1999). Her images focus on the lives of young women and children. Sanguinetti told Vice reporter, Bruno Bayley, “Children are fascinating… As a society, we project so much of our hopes, frustrations, denials, and aspirations on children, and they are so transparent in how they reflect everything that is thrust upon them. How could I not photograph them?”

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Alessandra Sanguinetti (American, b. 1968) 'Untitled' 1996-2004

 

Alessandra Sanguinetti (American, b. 1968)
Untitled
1996-2004
From the series En el sexto día / On the Sixth Day
Chromogenic (FujiFlex) print
73.7 x 73.7cm
Courtesy of Yossi milo Gallery, New York
© Alessandra Sanguinetti, Courtesy of Yossi milo Gallery, New York

 

Sebastián Friedman (Argentinian, b. 1973) 'Segurismos #7' c. 2010-11, printed 2016

 

Sebastián Friedman (Argentinian, b. 1973)
Segurismos #7
c. 2010-2011, printed 2016
From the series Segurismos
Chromogenic print
59.7 x 80cm
Courtesy of Sebastián Friedman
© Sebastián Friedman

 

SUB, Photographic Cooperative (Argentine, active since 2004) 'Titi (She Has the Same Name as Her Mother, Silvina) and Lili, One of the Maids, Share Moments of Relaxation. Titi Was Born in San Jorge Village and Her Relationship with Liliana Has developed since Birth' 2012, printed in 2017

 

SUB, Photographic Cooperative (Argentine, active since 2004)
Titi (She Has the Same Name as Her Mother, Silvina) and Lili, One of the Maids, Share Moments of Relaxation. Titi Was Born in San Jorge Village and Her Relationship with Liliana Has developed since Birth
2012, printed 2017
From the series A puertas cerradas (Behind Closed Gates)
Inkjet print
60 x 80cm
Courtesy of SUB, Photographic Cooperative
© Sub. Coop Todos los derechos reservados

 

Ananké Asseff (Argentinian, b. 1971) 'Luis' c. 2005-07, printed 2015

 

Ananké Asseff (Argentinian, b. 1971)
Luis
c. 2005-07, printed 2015
From the series Potential
198.6 x 129.2cm
Courtesy of Rolf Art and Ananké Asseff
© Ananké Asseff

 

One of the most effective means to exercise control of populations in contemporary capitalism is the production of fear.

To talk about one of my projects, in “Potential” I worked on the reaction of contemporary society when facing fear, and I got involved with Argentinian society more directly when I photographed the middle and upper classes with weapons in their houses. In this country, this is not something socially accepted, on the contrary. The embedded image of people carrying weapons is something associated with low-income earners and criminals. I put into question the prototype of the “suspect” that is generated by each society, but this issue, like all the other aspects that make up this project, goes beyond Argentinian society. It is something that involves us on a global level. At the time I made this work, people talked exhaustively about the lack of safety in Argentina and terrorism around the world. At the time I lived in Germany for a while (I got a scholarship from KHM) and the sense of insecurity was evident there as well, the weariness before someone unknown approaching or the presence of a stranger (a feeling that was much stronger if the other person looked like they were from the Middle East). Everything was exacerbated and worsened by the obsession of the mass media which propagated fear and terror in society. How awake we had to be (and still have to be) to avoid succumbing to these manipulations!

As Leonor Arfuch says, “certain registers of contemporary communication, certain topics and media obsessions allow the defining, and building, of tendentious trends and consensus, shared beliefs and feelings that invade our intimate and family structures, thus spreading easily into our personal history.”

Fear is a feeling that’s experienced individually but built within a society.

Anonymous text. “Argentina Notebook: Interview with Ananké Asseff,” on the Fototazo website 30/10/2015 [Online] Cited 03/02/2022

 

Ananké Asseff (Argentinian, b. 1971) 'Alberto de la serie (POTENCIAL)' / 'Alberto from the series (POTENTIAL)' c. 2005-2007; print, 2015

 

Ananké Asseff (Argentinian, b. 1971)
Alberto de la serie (POTENCIAL) / Alberto from the series (POTENTIAL)
c. 2005-2007; printed 2015
Inkjet print
The J. Paul Getty Museum, purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© Ananké Asseff

 

Gian Paolo Minelli (Swiss, b. 1968) 'Milton' 2009, printed 2016

 

Gian Paolo Minelli (Swiss, b. 1968)
Milton
2009, printed 2016
From the series Zona Sur Barrio Piedrabuena
54 x 66cm
Courtesy of Dot Fiftyone Gallery and the artist
© Gian Paolo Minelli

 

Gian Paolo Minelli (Swiss, b. 1968) 'Luciano con tatuaje' / 'Luciano with Tatoo' 2009, printed 2016

 

Gian Paolo Minelli (Swiss, b. 1968)
Luciano con tatuaje / Luciano with Tatoo
2009, printed 2016
From the series Zona Sur Barrio Piedrabuena
54 x 66cm
Courtesy of Dot Fiftyone Gallery and the artist
© Gian Paolo Minelli

 

 

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Exhibition: ‘Jakob Tuggener – Machine time’ at Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, Zurich

Exhibition dates: 21st October, 2017 – 28th January, 2018

Curator: Martin Gasser

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Fabrik' (book cover) 1943

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Fabrik (Factory) (book cover)
1943
Rotapfel Verlag, Erlenbach-Zurich

 

 

Rare magician, strange alchemist, tells stories through visuals

I am indebted to James McArdle’s blog posting “Work” on his excellent On This Date In Photography website for alerting me to this exhibition, and for reminding me of the work of this outstanding artist, Jakob Tuggener.

The short version: Jakob Tuggener was a draftsman before he became an artist, studying poster design, typography, photography and film. “In 1943, in the middle of the Second World War, Tuggerer’s book Fabrik (Factory) appeared. At first glance, the series of 72 photographs without a text contained therein seems to depict a kind of history of industrialisation – from the rural textile industry to mechanical engineering and high-voltage electrical engineering to modern power plant construction in the mountains. An in-depth reading, however, shows that Tuggener’s film-associative series of photographs simultaneously points to the destructive potential of unrestrained technological progress, as a result of which he sees the then raging World War, and for which the Swiss arms industry produced unlimited weapons. Tuggener was ahead of his time with the book conceived according to the laws of silent film.” (Press release)

Fabrik, subtitled Ein Bildepos der Technik (“Epic of the technological image” or “A picture of technology”) pictures the world of work and industry, and “is considered a milestone in the history of the photo book.” It uses expressive visuals (actions, appearances and behaviours; movements, gestures and details – Tuggener loves the detail) to tell a subjective story, that of the relationship between human and machine. While the book was well ahead of its time, and influenced the early work of that famous Swiss photographer Robert Frank, it did not emerge out of a vacuum and is perhaps not as revolutionary as some people think. Nothing ever appears out of thin air.

“German photographer Paul Wolff, often working in collaboration with Alfred Tritschler, produced a number of exceptional photo books through the 1920s and ’30s, at a time when Constructivism and the Bauhaus influenced many with visions “of an industrialized and socialized society” that placed Germany at “the forefront of European photography” (Martin Parr and Gerry Badger. The Photobook: A History Volume I, Phaidon Press, 2005, p. 86). Arbeit! (1937) is particularly noted for its architectural framing and lighting of massive machinery, its striking portraits of factory workers, and is frequently aligned with works such as Lewis Hine’s Men at Work (1932) and Albert Renger-Patzsch’s Eisen und Stahl (Iron and Steel) (1931).” (Anonymous. “Arbeit!,” on the Bauman Rare Books website [Online] Cited 03/02/2022)

François Kollar’s project La France travail (Working France) (1931-1934), E. O. Hoppé’s Deutsche Arbeit (1930), Heinrich Hauser’s Schwarzes Revier (Black Area) (1930) and Germaine Krull’s Metal (1928) all address the profound social and economic tensions that preceded the Second World War, through an avant-garde photography in the style of “New Vision” and “New Objectivity” – that is, through objective photographs that question common rules of composition, avoiding the more obvious ways subjects would have been photographed at the time. Obscure angles and perspectives abound in these striking photobooks, making their clinical, objective fervour “the great persuaders” of the 1930s and 40s, Modernist and propaganda books of their time.

What made Tuggener so different was the uncompromising subjectiveness of his work, “photographing the two worlds, privilege and labour.” His direct, strong images of factories and high society use wonderful form, light, and shadow to convey their message, never loosing sight of the human dimension, for they shift “our angle from the boss’ POV [point of view] to those unable to get any respite or distance from the situation,” that of the workers. They are a piece of time and human history, which gets closer to the lived reality of the factory floor, than much of the work of his predecessors. Tuggener portrays the mundanity of the “operational sequence” (la chaîne opératoire) of the machine, where the human becomes the oil used to grease the cogs of the ever-demanding “mechanical monsters.” (See Evan Calder Williams’ “Rattling Devils” quotations below)

Tuggener then adds to this new way of seeing which recorded the multiplicity of his points of view – “a modern new style of photography showing not just how things looked, but how it felt to be there” – through the sequencing of the images, which can be seen in the wonderfully combined double pages of the Fabrik book layouts below. Take for example, the photograph that is on the dust jacket, a portrait of a middle-aged worker with a grave look on his face that says, “why the hell are you taking my photograph, why don’t you just f… off.” In the book, Tuggener pairs this image with a whistle letting off steam, a metaphor for the man’s state of being. Tuggener creates these most alien worlds from the inside out, worlds which are grounded in actual lived experience – the little screws lying in the palm of a blackened hand; Navy Cut cigarettes amongst steel artefacts; man being consumed by machine; man being dwarfed by machine; man as machine (the girl paired opposite the counting machine); the Frankenstein scenario of the laboratory (man as monster, machine as man); the intense, feverish eyes of the worker in Heater on electric furnace (the machine human as the devil); and the surrealism of a small doll among the serried ranks of mass destruction, facing the opposition, the opposing lined face of an older worker. This is the stuff of alchemy, the place where art challenges life.

“As Arnold Burgaurer cogently states in his introduction, Tuggener is a jack-of-all-trades: he exhibits, ‘the sharp eye of the hunter, the dreamy eye of the painter; he can be a realist, a formalist, romantic, theatrical, surreal.’ Tuggener’s moves effortlessly between large-format lucidity and grainy, blurred impressionism, in a book that is a decade ahead of its time.” (Martin Parr and Gerry Badger. The Photobook: A History Volume I, Phaidon Press, 2005, p. 144.)

James McCardle observes that, “the meaning of Fabrik is left to the viewer to discover between its pictures, its glimpses of an overwhelming industrial whole; it is essentially filmic on a cryptic film-noir level, a revelation to Frank.” Tuggener’s influence on the early work of Robert Frank can be seen in a sequence from the book Portfolio: 40 Photos 1941/1946 by Robert Frank that was republished by Steidl in 2009 (see below). “Like Tuggener, Frank tackles the task of seemingly incongruous subject matter and finds a harmony through edit and assembly. Again and again throughout this portfolio, Frank is not just trying to show his prowess in making images but in pairing them. They define conflicts in life.” Pace Tuggener. At Frank’s suggestion, Tuggener’s work appeared in both Edward Steichen’s Post-War European Photography and in The Museum of Modern Art’s seminal exhibition, The Family of Man, the latter an essentially humanist exhibition which took the form of a photo essay celebrating the universal aspects of the human experience.

McCardle goes onto suggest that Fabrik, as a photo book, was a model for Frank’s Les Américains: The Americans published fifteen years later in Paris by Delpire, 1958. On this point, we disagree. While his early work as seen in Portfolio: 40 Photos 1941/1946 may have been heavily influenced by Tuggener’s photo book, by the time Frank came to compose Les Américains (for that is what The Americans is, a composition) his point of view had changed, as had that of his camera. While The Americans has many formal elements that can be seen in the construction of the photographs, they also have an element of jazz that would have been inconceivable to Tuggener at that time. Grainy film, strange angles, lighting flare, street lights, night time photography, jukeboxes and American flags portray the American dream not so much from the vantage point of a knowing insider (as Tuggener was) but as a visitor from another planet. Not so much alienating world (man as machine) as alien world, picturing something that has never been recognised before. These are two different models of being. While both are photo books and both pair images together in sequences, Frank had moved on to another point of view, that of an “invalid” outsider, and his photo book has a completely different nature to that of Tuggener’s Fabrik.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Word count: 1,366


Many thankx to Fotostiftung Schweiz for allowing me to publish some of the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

For Jakob Tuggener, whose works can be seen within the context of social documentary photography, the individual and the industrial boom of the 19th and 20th centuries were central themes. His often somber, black and white photographs seem to confront this new world with a sense of fear as well as admiration. Will technology help relieve us of physically hard labour or replace us altogether? Tuggener owes his renown to his photo book Fabrik (Factory) that was published in 1943. With an aesthetic approach that was unique for his time, Tuggener explores in his photographic essay the relationship between humans and the perceived threat as well as progress of technology. The labourers depicted are grave, their faces worn marked by deep folds, while a factory building in the background stands strong, enveloped in a vaporous cloud. This “Pictorial Epic of Technology,” as Tuggener himself described it, is today considered a milestone in the history of photography books.

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (1904-1988) Page layout from the book Fabrik 1943

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Steam whistle, Steckborn artificial silk factory' 1938 from the exhibition Exhibition: 'Jakob Tuggener – Machine time' at Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, Zurich, Oct 2017 - Jan 2018

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Steam whistle, Steckborn artificial silk factory
1938
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Selection from the book 'Portfolio: 40 Photos 1941/1946' by Robert Frank

 

Selection from the book Portfolio: 40 Photos 1941/1946 by Robert Frank (Steidl, 2009)

 

The ‘weightless’ and the ‘grounded’ are two opposing themes that Frank repeatedly uses to move us through this sequence. Three radio transistors in a product shot float into the sky while a music conductor, his band and a church steeple succumb to gravity on the facing page. Even in this image Frank shifts focus to the sky and beyond – the weightless. When he photographs rural life, the farmers heft whole pigs into the air and another carries a huge bale of freshly cut grain which seems featherlight but for the woman trailing behind with hands ready to assist.

Considering this work was made while fascism was on the move through Europe, external politics is felt through metaphor. A painted portrait of men in uniform among a display of pots and pans for sale faces a brightly polished cog from a machine – its teeth sharp and precise. In another pairing, demonstrators waving flags in the streets of Zurich face a street sign covered with snow and frost, a Swiss flag blows in the background. in yet another of a crowd of spectators face the illuminated march of a piece of machinery – its illusory shadow filling in the ranks. These pairings feel under the influence of Jakob Tuggener, whose work Frank certainly knew. Like Tuggener, Frank tackles the task of seemingly incongruous subject matter and finds a harmony through edit and assembly.

Again and again throughout this portfolio, Frank is not just trying to show his prowess in making images but in pairing them. They define conflicts in life. One boy struggles to climb a rope while a ski jumper is frozen in flight. Fisherman bask in sunlight while two pedestrians are caught in blinding snowfall.

Text from the SB4 Photography and Books website December 14, 2009

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Autoritratto, Zurigo [Self-portrait, Zurich]' 1927 from the exhibition Exhibition: 'Jakob Tuggener – Machine time' at Fotostiftung Schweiz, Winterthur, Zurich, Oct 2017 - Jan 2018

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Autoritratto, Zurigo (Self-portrait, Zurich)
1927
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Budenzauber (Charm of the Attic Room) Jakob Tuggener with friends' 1935

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Budenzauber (Charm of the Attic Room) Jakob Tuggener with friends
1935
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Plant entrance, Oerlikon Machine Factory' 1934

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Plant entrance, Oerlikon Machine Factory
1934
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Work in the boiler' 1935

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Work in the boiler
1935
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Running girl in the Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon' 1934

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Running girl in the Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon
1934
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Façade, Oerlikon Machine Factory' 1936

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Façade, Oerlikon Machine Factory
1936
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (1904-1988) Page layout from the book Fabrik 1943

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Nell'ufficio della fonderia, fabbrica di costruzioni meccaniche Oerlikon' [In the foundry office, Oerlikon mechanical engineering factory] 1937

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Nell’ufficio della fonderia, fabbrica di costruzioni meccaniche Oerlikon (In the foundry office, Oerlikon mechanical engineering factory)
1937
From Fabrik 1933-1953
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

 

“Above all, the contrast between the brilliantly lit ballroom and the dark factory hall influenced the perception of his artistic oeuvre,” [curator] Martin Gasser explains. “Tuggener also positioned himself between these two extremes when he stated: ‘Silk and machines, that’s Tuggener’. In reality, he loved both: the wasteful luxury and the dirty work, the enchanting women and the sweaty labourers. For him, they were both of equal value and he resisted being categorised as a social critic who pitted one world against the other. On the contrary, these contrasts belonged to his conception of life and he relished experiencing the extremes – and the shades of tones in between – to the most intense degree.”

 

“Jakob Tuggener’s ‘Fabrik’, published in Zurich in 1943, is a milestone in the history of the photography book. Its 72 images, in the expressionist aesthetic of a silent movie, impart a skeptical view of technological progress: at the time the Swiss military industry was producing weapons for World War II. Tuggener, who was born in 1904, had an uncompromisingly critical view of the military-industrial complex that did not suit his era. His images of rural life and high-society parties had been easy to sell, but ‘Fabrik’ found no publisher. And when the book did come out, it was not a commercial success. Copies were sold at a loss and some are believed to have been pulped. Now this seminal work, which has since become a sought-after classic, is being reissued with a contemporary afterword. In his lifetime, Tuggener’s work appeared – at Robert Frank’s suggestion – in Edward Steichen’s ‘Post-War European Photography’ and in The Museum of Modern Art’s seminal exhibition, ‘The Family of Man’, in whose catalogue it remains in print. Tuggener’s death in 1988 left an immense catalogue of his life’s work, much of which has yet to be shown: more than 60 maquettes, thousands of photographs, drawings, watercolours, oil paintings and silent films.”


Book description on Amazon. The book has been republished by Steidl in January, 2012.

 

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Tornos Machine-tool Factory, Moutier' 1942

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Tornos Machine-tool Factory, Moutier
1942
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Navy Cut, Ateliers de construction mécanique Oerlikon (MFO)' [Navy Cut, Machine Shops Oerlikon (MFO)] 1940

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Navy Cut, Ateliers de construction mécanique Oerlikon (MFO) [Navy Cut, Machine Shops Oerlikon (MFO)]
1940
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Pressure pipe, Vernayaz' 1938

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Pressure pipe, Vernayaz
1938
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Grande Dixence power station' 1942

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Grande Dixence power station
1942
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener Foundation

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Laboratorio di ricerca, fabbrica di costruzioni meccaniche Oerlikon' [Research laboratory, Oerlikon mechanical engineering factory] 1941

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Laboratorio di ricerca, fabbrica di costruzioni meccaniche Oerlikon (Research laboratory, Oerlikon mechanical engineering factory)
1941
From Fabrik 1933-1953
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Heater on electric furnace' 1943 (detail)

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Heater on electric furnace (detail)
1943
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Heater on electric furnace' 1943

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Heater on electric furnace
1943
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Worker, Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon' 1940s

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Worker, Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon
1940s
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener Foundation

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) '"Amore", Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon' 1940s

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
“Amore”, Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon
1940s
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener Foundation

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Weaving mill, Glattfelden' 1940s

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Weaving mill, Glattfelden
1940s
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener Foundation

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Lathe, Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon' 1949

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Lathe, Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon
1949
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Lathe, Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon' 1949 (detail)

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Lathe, Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon (detail)
1949
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Jacob Tuggener at the popular pavillion Montpellier manufactures an epic of industrial photographs of workers' portraits' Montpellier magazine 1943

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Jacob Tuggener at the popular pavillion Montpellier manufactures an epic of industrial photographs of workers’ portraits
Montpellier magazine
1943
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Forgeron dans une fabrique de wagons de Schlieren' [Blacksmith in a Schlieren wagon factory] 1949

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Forgeron dans une fabrique de wagons de Schlieren [Blacksmith in a Schlieren wagon factory]
1949
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Untitled (Arms of work)' c. 1947

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Untitled (Arms of work)
c. 1947
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

 

Jakob Tuggener (1904-1988) is one of the exceptional phenomena of Swiss photography. His personal and expressive recordings of glittering celebrations of better society are legendary, and his 1943 book Fabrik (Factory) is considered a milestone in the history of the photo book. At the centre of the exhibition “Machine time” are photographs and films from the world of work and industry. They not only reflect the technical development from the textile industry in the Zurich Oberland to power plant construction in the Alps, but also testify to Tuggener’s lifelong fascination with all sorts of machines: from looms to smelting furnaces and turbines to locomotives, steamers and racing cars. He loved her noise, her dynamic movements and her unruly power, and he artistically transposed them. At the same time, he observed the men and women who keep up the motor of progress with their work – not without hinting that one day machines might dominate people.

Machine time

Jakob Tuggener knew the world of factories like no other photographer of his time, having completed an apprenticeship as a draftsman at Maag Zahnräder AG in Zurich and then worked in their design department. Through the photographer Gustav Maag he was also introduced to the technique of photography. However, as a result of the economic crisis in the late 1920s, he was dismissed, after which he fulfilled his childhood dream of becoming an artist by studying at the Reimannschule in Berlin. For almost a year he dealt intensively with poster design, typography and film and let himself be carried away with his camera by the dynamics of the big city.

After returning to Switzerland in 1932, he began working as a freelancer for the Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon (MFO), especially for their house newspaper with the programmatic title Der Gleichrichter (The Rectifier). Although the company already employed its own photographer, he was entrusted with the task of developing a kind of photographic interior view of the company. This was intended to bridge the gap between workers and office workers on the one hand and management on the other. By the end of the 1930s, in addition to multi-part reports from the production halls, as well as portraits of “members of the MFO family”, one-sided, album-like series of unnoticed scenes from everyday factory life appeared. From 1937 Tuggener also created a series of 16mm short films – always black and white, silent, and representing the tension between fiction and documentation. This includes, for example, the drama about death and transience (Die Seemühle (The Sea mill), 1944), which was influenced by surrealism and staged by Tuggener with amateur actors in a vacant factory on the shores of Lake Zurich. or the cinematic exploration of the subject of man and machine (Die Maschinenzeit (The Machine Time), 1938-1970). This ties in with the earlier book maquette of the same name and transforms it into a moving, immediately perceptible, but also fleeting vision of the Tuggenean machine age.

In 1943, in the middle of the Second World War, Tuggerer’s book Fabrik (Factory) appeared. At first glance, the series of 72 photographs without a text contained therein seems to depict a kind of history of industrialisation – from the rural textile industry to mechanical engineering and high-voltage electrical engineering to modern power plant construction in the mountains. An in-depth reading, however, shows that Tuggener’s film-associative series of photographs simultaneously points to the destructive potential of unrestrained technological progress, as a result of which he sees the then raging World War, and for which the Swiss arms industry produced unlimited weapons. Tuggener was ahead of his time with the book conceived according to the laws of silent film.1 Neither his uncompromisingly subjective photography nor his critical attitude matched the threatening situation in which Switzerland was called to unity and strength under the slogan “Spiritual Defense”.

Although the book was not commercially successful, Tuggener’s Fabrik was a great artistic success and continued to explore the issues of work and industry. He produced two more book maquettes: Schwarzes Eisen (Black Iron) (1950) and Die Maschinenzeit (The Machine Time) (1952). They can be understood as a kind of continuation of the published book, which the journalist Arnold Burgauer described as a “glowing and sparkling factual and accountable report of the world of the machine, of its development, its possibilities and limitations.” In the mid-1950s, on the threshold of the computer age, Tuggener’s classic “machine time” came to an end. On the one hand, the mechanical processes that had so fascinated Tuggener evaded his eyes. On the other hand, he could not or did not want to make friends with the idea that one day even a human heart could be replaced by a machine.

Portrayer of opposites

As early as 1930 in Berlin, Tuggener had begun to take pictures of the then famous Reimannschule balls. He was fascinated by the tingling erotic atmosphere of these occasions, and he found photography in sparsely lit rooms a great challenge. Back in Zurich, he immediately plunged into local nightlife to surrender to the splendour and luxury of mask, artist and New Year’s balls. Again and again he let himself be abducted by elegant ladies with their silk dresses, their necklines, bare back or shoulders in a glittering fairytale world, whose mysterious facets he sought to fathom with his Leica. Although Tuggener’s ball recordings were only perceived by a small insider audience for a long time, many quickly saw him as a “masterful portrayer of our world of stark contrasts,” a world torn between a brightly lit ballroom and gloomy factory hall. Tuggener also positioned himself between these extremes when he stated, “Silk and machines, that’s Tuggener.” Because he loved both the lavish luxury and the dirty work, the jewelled women and the sweaty men. He felt that he was equal and resisted being classified as a social critic.

In whatever world he moved, Jakob Tuggener did it with the elegance of a grand seigneur [a man whose rank or position allows him to command others]. He was an eye man with a casual, loving look for the inconspicuous, the superficial incident; not just a sensitive picture-poet, but the “photographische Dichter römisch I,” as he used to call himself self-confidently. Critic Max Eichenberger wrote of the Fabrik photographs: “Tuggener is able to make factory photographs that reveal not only a painter, but also a poet, and a rare magician and strange alchemist – lead, albeit modestly turned into gold.”

The exhibition Jakob Tuggener – Maschinenzeit includes vintage and later prints from the early 1930s to the late 1950s, which for the most part come from the photographers estate. In an adjoining room the exhibition will also feature a selection of his 16mm short films from the years 1937-1970, which revolve around the topic of “man and machine” in various ways. These films were newly digitised specifically for the exhibition (in collaboration with Lichtspiel / Cinematheque Bern).

Press release from Fotostiftung Schweiz

 

1/ The story in silent film is best told through visuals (such as actions, appearances and behaviours). Focus on movements and gestures, and borrow from dance and mime. Large, exaggerated motions translate well to silent films, but balance these also with subtlety (ie. a raised eyebrow, a quivering lip – especially when paired with a close-up shot).
Karlanna Lewis. “8 Tips for Making Silent Movies,” on the Raindance website June 1, 2014 [Online] Cited 03/02/2022

 

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) Page layout from the book 'Fabrik' 1943

Jakob Tuggener (1904-1988) Page layouts from the book Fabrik 1943

 

 

Extracts from Shard Cinema by Evan Calder Williams London: Repeater Books, 2017

“All gestures are perhaps inhuman, because they enact that hinge with the world, forging a bridge and buffer that can’t be navigated by words or by actions that feel like purely one’s own. In Vilém Flusser’s definition, a gesture is “a movement of the body or of a tool connected to the body for which there is no satisfactory causal explanation” – that is, it can’t be explained on its own isolated terms.26 The factory will massively extend this tendency, because the “explanation” lies not in the literal circuit of production but in the social abstraction of value driving the entire process yet nowhere immediately visible. We might frame the difficulty of this imagining with the concept of “operational sequence” (la chaîne opératoire), posed by French archaeologist André Leroi-Gourhan, which designates a “succession of mental operations and technical gestures, in order to satisfy a need (immediate or not), according to a preexisting project.”25

26. Vilém Flusser, Gestures (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), p. 2.
27. Catherine Perlès, Les Industries Lithiques Taillées de Franchthi, Argolide: Presentation Generate et Industries Paleolithiques (Terre Haute: Indiana University Press, 1987), p. 23.

 

“Which is to say: we build factories. And in those factories, the process of the exteriorization of memory and muscle becomes almost total, as “the hand no longer intervenes except to feed or to stop” what Leroi-Gourhan, like Larcom, will call “mechanical monsters,” “machines without a nervous system of their own, constantly requiring the assistance of a human partner.”30 But along with engendering the panic of becoming caregiver to the inanimate, this also poses the problem of animation in an unprecedented way. Because if a “technical gesture is the producer of forms, deriving them from inert nature and preparing them for animation,” the factory constitutes us in a different network of the animated and animating.31 It’s a network that can be seen in those writings of factory workers, with their distinct sense of not just preparing those materials but becoming the pivot that eases, smooths, and guides the links of an operational sequence. In particular, a worker functions as the point of compression and transformation between tremendous motive force and products made whose regularity must be assured. The human becomes the regulator of this process, the assurance of an abstract standardization.”

30 André Leroi-Gourhan, Gesture and Speech, trans. Anna Bostock Berger (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), p. 246
31. Ibid., p. 313

 

“… what I’m sketching here in this passage through scattered materials of the century prior to filmed moving images is something simpler, a small corrective to insist that by the time cinema was becoming a medium that seemed to offer a novel form of mechanical time, motion, and vision, one that historians and theorists will fixate on as the unique province and promise of film, many of its viewers had themselves already been enacting and struggling against that form for decades, day in, day out. The point is to place the human operator back in the frame, to ask after those who tended the machine before it was available as a spectacle, and to listen to how they understood what they were tangled in the midst of. But this is neither a humanist gesture of assuring the centrality of the person in the mesh that holds them nor a historical rejoinder to the forgetting and active dismissal of many of these personal accounts. Rather, it’s an effort to show how only with the operator’s experience made central can we see the real historical destruction of such illusions of centrality and, in their place, the novel construction of the human as tender and mender of a flailing inhuman net, the pivot who forms the connective tissue that enacts the lethal animation around her. In short, to see how the real subsumption of labor to capital is not only a systemic or periodizing concept that marks the historical transformation of discrete activities in accordance with the abstractions of value. It also is the granular description of a lived and bitterly contested process by which those abstractions get corporally and mechanically made and unmade, one which we can understand differently if we shift our angle from the boss’ POV to those unable to get any respite or distance from the situation.”

Excerpt from Evan Calder Williams. “Rattling Devils,” on the Viewpoint Magazine website July 13, 2017 [Online] Cited 29/12/2017

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Ballo ungherese, Grand Hotel Dolder, Zurigo, 1935' [Hungarian dance, Grand Hotel Dolder, Zurich, 1935] 1935

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Ballo ungherese, Grand Hotel Dolder, Zurigo, 1935 (Hungarian dance, Grand Hotel Dolder, Zurich, 1935)
1935
From the series Nuits de bal, 1934-1950
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Ballo ungherese, Grand Hotel Dolder, Zurigo, 1935' [Hungarian dance, Grand Hotel Dolder, Zurich, 1935] 1935

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Ballo ungherese, Grand Hotel Dolder, Zurigo, 1935 (Hungarian dance, Grand Hotel Dolder, Zurich, 1935)
1935
From the series Nuits de bal, 1934-1950
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Hotel Belvédère, Davos, 1944' 1944

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Hotel Belvédère, Davos, 1944
1944
From the series Nuits de bal, 1934-1950
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Carlton hotel, St. Moritz' Nd

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Carlton hotel, St. Moritz
Nd
From the series Nuits de bal, 1934-1950
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Palace hotel, St. Moritz' 1948-1949

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Palace Hotel, St. Moritz, San Silvestro
1948-49
From the series Nuits de bal, 1934-1950
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Ballo Acs, Grand Hotel Dolder, Zurigo, 1948' 1948

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Ballo Acs,Grand Hotel Dolder, Zurigo, 1948
1948
From the series Nuits de bal, 1934-1950
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988) 'Ball Nights' 1934-1950

 

Jakob Tuggener (Swiss, 1904-1988)
Ball Nights
From the series Nuits de bal, 1934-1950
Silver gelatin print
© Jakob Tuggener-Stiftung

 

 

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Book review: ‘The Lumen Seed’ by Judith Crispin (2016)

January 2018

Publisher: Daylight Books

Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers should be aware that the posting on this book contains images and names of people who may have since passed away.

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'Sonya Napaljarri Cook Painting' 2015 from the book 'The Lumen Seed' by Judith Crispin (2016)

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970)
Sonya Napaljarri Cook Painting
Warnayaka Arts Centre, Lajamanu Community NT, December 2015

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'Tabra Nakamarra's Puppy' 2015 'The Lumen Seed' by Judith Crispin (2016)

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970)
Tabra Nakamarra’s Puppy
Lajamanu Community NT, June 2015

 

 

Truth and consequence in red dirt country

Australia has a long tradition of social documentary photography, dating back to the late nineteenth century. From Fred Kruger’s photographs of the Aboriginal community at Coranderrk in the 1870-80s through, variously but not exclusively:

Frank Hurley‘s photographs of the First World War, Antarctic exploration, Aboriginal communities and Australian industry

F. Oswald Barnett and his photographs of the slums of Melbourne in the 1930s

Charles P. Mountford (1890-1976) was an ethnographer and photographer, working from the 1930s-1960s who “showed a keen interest in and respect for Aboriginal culture, a fact that is evident in his archive. Although peppered with the vernacular and attitudes of the times, Mountford’s writing, and more tellingly his photographs, are indicative of his belief that Aboriginal life was richer and more complex than most white Australians conceded.” (State Library of South Australia)

Mervyn Bishop (born 1945), followed in 1974, an Australian news and documentary photographer whose work combines journalistic and art photography. Joining The Sydney Morning Herald as a cadet in 1962 or 1963, he was the first Aboriginal Australian to work on a metropolitan daily newspaper and one of the first Aboriginal Australians to become a professional photographer. Focusing on Indigenous self-determination, Bishop’s work “covered the major developments in Aboriginal communities throughout Australia, including the historical moment in 1975 when the (then) Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, poured a handful of earth back into the hand of Vincent Lingiari, Gurindji elder and traditional land owner. This image – representing the Australian government’s recognition of Aboriginal land rights – became an icon of the land rights movement and Australian photography.” (Art Gallery of New South Wales)
See more of Mervyn Bishop’s photographs

Harold Cazneaux and Max Dupain‘s photographs of Australian life from the 1920-1980s

Jim Fitzpatrick and his Drouin series from WW2

Rennie Ellis‘ photographs of celebrity and Melbourne life

William Yang‘s photographs exploring issues of cultural and sexual identity

Female photographers of the 1960s-90s, such as Micky Allan, Sue Ford and Carol Jerrems who all crossed over into art photography

Robert McFarlane (1960s onwards) who specialises in social issues

John F. Williams who photographed Sydney in the 1970s

Jeff Carter who photographed all around Australia from the 1950s onwards

Ian North and Gerrit Fokkema who photographed Canberra in the 1980s

Joyce Evans (1980s onwards) who took important portraits of a diverse cross-section of Australian intelligentsia and personalities and documented Australian country towns and events for the National Library of Australia

Glenn Sloggett who photographed Australian suburbia with a startling mix of warmth and melancholy from the 1990s onwards

More recently, the war photographs of °SOUTH members such as Tim Page, Stephen Dupont, David Dare Parker, Jack Picone and Michael Coyne

Trent Parke who is the only Australian member of the Magnum Photo Agency, whose work moves beyond the strictly documentary to sit between fiction and reality, offering an emotional and psychological portrait of family life and Australia that is poetic and often darkly humorous

And Juno Gemes Indigenous social documentary photography, who documents the changing social landscape of Australia


Unlike America, where social documentary photographers are well known, hardly a name from the above list (save perhaps Max Dupain and possibly Frank Hurley) would be recognised by a wider Australian public and there is little evidence or acknowledgement of their work in Australia. I believe that this is because social documentary photography has never been heavily promoted in this country and that this type of photography is a slice of many people’s work without becoming the driving force behind their oeuvre.

As my friend and curator Nick Henderson observes, “Perhaps the lack of visibility is in part due to many of the social documentary photographers undertaking work for the various state libraries, who regularly commission work documenting place – sometimes external, but also staff photographers – whose work is then not exhibited: many of the institutional galleries haven’t devoted much time to displaying and promoting that work.” While there may have been social documentary photographers in each country town and embedded within federal and state institutions, their work never seems to reach the audience it deserves.

And that is the true

Into this amorphous arena comes a brilliant book Sydney based poet, photographer and composer Judith Crispin titled The Lumen Seed (Daylight Books 2016), a book of that addresses the stories of the Warlpiri people of Lajamanu through conversation, poetry, drawings and photographs, a book that should be compulsory reading for all Australians.

This smallish book (in size, 23.5cm wide by 15cm high) of 120 pages has good strong boards, excellent typography, nicely weighted paper and feels solid in the hand. The book is well printed, although some of the highlights of the photographs have gone missing in action. The layout of the images and text is engaging, challenging the reader to comprehend, contemplate and consider what is being shown and spoken to them. Use of negative space, as can be seen in the example pages below, is excellent. The reader does not feel overwhelmed by comatose verbiage, but empowered when listening to the stories, proposed: “This book is about magic. Not the magic of Kabbalists, Theosophists, or conjurers, not Crowley’s magick with a k, not the magic of the New Age or Western religion – but magic that describes the world hidden inside this world, a world seen only by Aboriginal elders and the dying.” (Judith Crispin, Introduction, p. 12)

As Crispin states, this book is not a book of photojournalism and is the most subjective it can be, the photographs growing out of her love for this community. The multi-dimensional photo essay, for that is what it is in more traditional terms, represents some of the views and customs of the Warlpiri people and for Crispin, her journey started in the centre of Australia’s Anglophile government, Canberra, and ended at Wolfe Creek Crater, birthplace of the rainbow snakes, the Warnayarra, which underpin all Australian Aboriginal cultures. The peoples of this ancient culture speak to the earth, they tend it and understand it; they believe in the deep magic of the landscape, and strengthen the land through gardening and the trees through song. They speak to the spirits of the waterholes and have a deep respect for the spirit of the animals that inhabit the land. “The deep love that Warlpiri people have for the landscape, its mountains and waterholes, is almost incomprehensible for white people.” (Juno Gemes, Foreword, p. 9)

I’m British and I have been here in Australia since 1986 and I have never understood the non-relationship Australia has with its Indigenous people. Growing up on a farm for the first twelve years of my life in England gives me some understanding of a life lived well on the land. We were working class poor, my mother having to boil water on a stove so us kids could have a bath in a copper on the kitchen room floor; and we lived on what we could shoot from the land – pigeons, pheasants, rabbits and hares – and we were acutely aware of the providence and blessings of nature for our sustenance. A totally different connection to land than an Aboriginal one, but a connection none the less, as I found out when I visited the old farm on a recent visit to the UK in August. Walking up the cart path where I had played as a kid brought all the magic rushing back… the flowers, the forest, the trees, the animals and the earth.

Therefore, when I read of the white man’s abuse of the traditional lands of the Aboriginal people I am appalled. If you read the extract from Five Threnodies for Maralinga printed below, you begin to understand the pain and anguish of these people, killed by the atomic cloud of over 7 major tests and 700 minor trials involving plutonium, uranium, and beryllium at the Maralinga site which occurred between 1956 and 1963, part of the Woomera Prohibited Area in South Australia and about 800 kilometres north-west of Adelaide. “In 1948, Warlpiri people were forcibly relocated almost 600 kilometers from their spiritual homeland to Hooker Creek, now Lajamanu, in Gurindji country. Old people, afraid to live among Gurindji ancestors and spirits, tried to walk back to Yuendumu but were rounded up and returned.” (p. 45)

This beautiful, powerful and deeply personal book tells some of their stories. It saddens me beyond belief that these wonderful people have been estranged and displaced from their traditional lands; decimated, killed, and abused; have been exposed to nuclear radiation, poverty, and untold harm and deprivation, both physical and mental. That they endure is a testament to their courage and culture. Juno Gemes observes that, “Crispin’s images are filled with compassion and tenderness. This is not an easy work… The Lumen Seed is a tough and powerful work in photographs, narrative texts, drawings, and poems it sings stories off the Warlpiri at Lajamuna at five minutes to midnight.” (p. 9)

The book needs to be tough to tell the true. But through poetry, love and light a new cosmology emerges that brings hope for a better future. Truth and consequence in red dirt country.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to Myrtille Beauvert, Daylight Books and the artist for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

The Lumen Seed by Judith Crispin (Daylight Books), a cultural dialogue that is taking place before a backdrop of offences against the Australian continent, as well as a history of systematic discrimination against Indigenous peoples on the part of the country’s white population.

 

 

“Yeah, it make me real sad and cry for my country. Because God bin put me there, God put my people there. Why someone could move us, because of his power, because of his idea? Cutting off God’s power, God’s idea here. God’s word, God’s light… and that is the true. Cut off like this electric wire, if you cut him off, like that.”


Jerry Jangala, senior Warlpiri elder and Law man from Lajamanu in the Tanami Desert

 

“The Lumen Seed is a tough and powerful work. In photographs, narrative texts, drawings, and poems it sings stories of the Warlpiri at Lajamanu at five minutes to midnight. Who will hear, who will see, who will act?

Judith Crispin’s experience echoes mine 40 years earlier, although I could not always get back to the same teachers. We belong to a long photographic tradition. It is the tradition of Tina Modotti and Josef Koudelka – a generation of documentary photographers who believe fervently that if you show people what is actually happening in the world, they will understand and be moved to demand change. Activist social documentary photography has always been defined by this passionate subjective belief in democracy and action.”


Juno Gemes, Introduction to The Lumen Seed, 2016

 

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'The Lumen Seed' book cover

Judith Crispin. The Lumen Seed book cover
Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'The Lumen Seed' p. 29

Judith Crispin. The Lumen Seed p. 29
Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'The Lumen Seed' p. 32

Judith Crispin. The Lumen Seed p. 32
Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'The Lumen Seed' p. 46

Judith Crispin. The Lumen Seed p. 46
Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'The Lumen Seed' p. 55

Judith Crispin. The Lumen Seed p. 55
Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'The Lumen Seed' p. 74

Judith Crispin. The Lumen Seed p. 74

 

 

 

 

Foreword: Five Minutes to Midnight

There is nothing like twilight in red dirt country – the soft crackling of fire warming your billycan as the Seven Sisters begin their dance across the night sky. Or the camaraderie around a campfire as people speak in their indigenous languages – the women making jokes about the day’s goings-on or about mistakes made in the intricate protocols of a Law you are learning, day by day. Everything that lives has meaning here. Upholding knowledge is a lifelong obligation for First Nation Custodians – not only in the present but into the future. How can we Australians know this land or our place in it, if not through relationship with our hosts, the Aboriginal people?

When inviting me to write this foreword, Judith Crispin explained her choice, saying, “You are uniquely positioned, as Australia’s premier and longest-serving photographer who has worked collaboratively with Aboriginal people in communities around the country making their culture and struggle for justice visible.” Truly, in both a professional and a practical way, I know the difficulties and the deep satisfactions of working in community. I understand the privileges of learning about the Law, the reciprocity of gratitude, and the obligation to stay true to the received teaching over a lifetime.

As a photographer of long experience, with friendships in Aboriginal communities, I know how everything depends on one’s openness to experience, on the give and take inside relationships that informs how one sees and feels. Photographers in this tradition work in slow time. You learn to move with the people, move within the rhythm of their days, within their country, their wind and sky. What is learned through these relationships can change how one sees forever. By invitation, we become messengers from the frontier of interpersonal experience, conveying urgent messages from our teachers and hosts.

Into this collaborative tradition of relational interpersonal documentary photography – which began with the work of committed photographers in Australia during the 1970s – now steps Judith Crispin with her important book about magic, knowledge, and history. She relates teachings of the Law men who adopted her, who gave her the skin name Nangala, a name that defines her relationship to everyone in the community. In this way, she is being “growed up,” learning how to see the universe according to Warlpiri Law.

“There is a particularly miraculous vision of the world that comes only with the diagnosis of serious illness. … Something is different now – because I know there is a secret world nested inside this one. I’ve seen it.”


The Lumen Seed
opens onto an apocalyptic scene. A hardwood mulga tree, reaching for the sky, holds a placard: “The Lord’s Return is Near.” In Coober Pedy, a curved handmade house rendered in warm mid-tones is edged with the sign “Welcome to Nowhere.” Dusty desert roadscapes unfold into the giant sacred stones of Karlu Karlu. An emu wanders nonchalantly into a gas station. We’re in Emu Dreaming Country now, meeting Crispin’s traveling friends.

A UFO mural at the gas station resonates later in the book with stories of Wolfe Creek Crater, where the meteorite landed. In the Jukurrpa we are told two rainbow snakes created that country, way back at the beginning. UFOs “zipping around the trees” form part of our desert lore. Funky and surreal, these images are imbued with humour. The images that follow lead us onward into a country of visual narratives – foretelling beginnings and endings. Intuitions manifest unpredictably. We enter a thousand kilometres of “bull dust and bone-jarring track, into the Tanami Desert,” which is as nothing compared with the howling grief of Crispin’s first poem…

Foreword extract by Juno Gemes, Hawkesbury River, April 11, 2016, pp. 6-7.

 

Introduction

In late 2015 I was diagnosed with cancer. Before then, I’d not understood how five words could change everything. “I’m sorry, Judith,” my doctor told me, “it’s cancer.” It’s a cliché that you only learn to value life when death is walking beside you, but it was absolutely true for me. I remember driving over Clyde Mountain to bring the word cancer to my parents’ home. Every tree on the range seemed invested with vital force. Every leaf was vibrant, iridescent. Gray mountain gums, in headlights, seemed to manifest ancient intelligence – bearing witness to the fleeting existence of human beings. The threat of death reminds you how precious people are – your oldest friends, children, lovers, parents – you wonder how you’ll bear to leave them. There is a particularly miraculous vision of the world that comes only with the diagnosis of serious illness.

The interval between diagnosis and surgery is an eternity. The surgeon showed me a chart – “If the cancer falls into this range,” he said, “you’ll live; this range and you’ll die.” I felt like Schrödinger’s cat, neither living nor dying. People who see their own death live in two worlds, one mundane and one miraculous. Later, when the cancer had been removed and my death sentence lifted, I watched that other world diminish day by day. No matter how I clung to that miraculous vision, it faded – just as the certain knowledge of my death faded. But something remained. Something is different now – because I know there is a secret world nested inside this one. I’ve seen it. …

The earliest photographs in this book were taken in 2013, when I still believed the Warlpiri needed my help – to promote literacy and health, to outline positive pathways toward reconciliation, and so on. The later photographs were taken in December 2015, when I knew, without a shadow of doubt, that I was the drowning woman and the Warlpiri were the lifeboat. Lajamanu’s elders, especially Wanta Jampijinpa, Henry Jackamarra, and Jerry Jangala, were kind to me. They gave me a skin name1 and showed me how to be a “policewoman” for Jdbrille Waterhole. They seemed genuinely delighted by my interest in Warlpiri cosmology, which they illustrated with stories and drawings – some of which are reproduced in this book. The older women took me “hunting” for wattle seed and bush potato. They told me stories of covenants entered into with ancient star-beings and showed me places along the Tanami Track where min-min lights had chased travellers. Fairy tales and mysteries take on new importance when your life feels precarious.

Lajamanu in 2016 is a meeting of two universes. Elders check their Facebook status on iPhones while explaining, in matter-of-fact tones, about a landscape that will hold you or kill you, depending on your scent – where spirit snakes live in the waterways and the dead walk side by side with the living. In Lajamanu I lost my fear of dying, and more importantly, I lost my fear of living. This is a book about magic. Not the magic of Kabbalists, Theosophists, or conjurers, not Crowley’s magick with a k, nor the magic of the New Age or Western religion – but magic that describes the world hidden inside this world, a world seen only by Aboriginal elders and the dying.

This is not a book of photojournalism and makes no attempt to be objective. Quite the contrary, in fact, I wanted this book to be as subjective as possible. These photographs, especially the portraits, have grown out of my love for this community – the poetry of these often physically fragile people, whose unshakable belief in the deep magic of the landscape gives them a strength rarely evident in the city. Warlpiri culture is gentle; it leaves no tracks on the earth. The history of Aboriginal Australia is largely a record of gardening – “cleaning up country” with firestick farming and ceremonies to strengthen trees through song. When Warlpiri people move through the landscape, they introduce themselves. They apologise to that country for breaking twigs. They ask permission to take water from the creeks. If humanity ever transcends its selfish and murderous nature, it will be because of people like the Warlpiri.

Introduction extract by Judith Crispin pp. 11-13.

 

 

You shall not trap me in this fish-trap of yours in which you trap the dead,

because I know it, and I know its name,

I know the name in which it came into being.


(Coffin Texts)

 

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'The Lord's Return is Near' 2014

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970)
The Lord’s Return is Near
Coober Pedy SA, November 2014

 

The Stuart Highway is a bisecting line in a thousand kilometres of nothing. The sheer scale of the landscape is overwhelming. I’d driven for two days with only Leonard Cohen and David Bowie for company, and had never felt more isolated. I don’t know why I stopped, leaving the Land Rover idling in the middle of the highway, and walked over to the tree. Perhaps its tallness startled me – its length so exposed above the desert floor. I wanted to lay my palm against its bark. At first I didn’t notice the sign nailed high on its trunk: “The Lord’s Return is Near.”

This stretch of highway lies south of the rocket range at Woomera. There are oceans of blood on this land. The Woomera immigration detention centre continued a legacy of suffering that began years earlier, in the 1950s, when Maralinga’s radioactive clouds blew over Woomera, a military township, and killed all the children.

Between 1952 and 1963, British forces dropped nine nuclear weapons and nine thermonuclear weapons between Woomera and the Western Australian border, within contamination distance of urban centres. The Menzies-led Australian government of that time was wholly complicit and lied about the known dangers of nuclear tests. Between these bombings, Britain conducted continuous “minor trials,” which, according to the Royal Commission into British Nuclear Tests in Australia, additionally detonated 99.35 kg of beryllium, 23.979 kg of plutonium, and 7968.88 kg of depleted uranium. By contrast, Little Boy, dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 by the United States, contained only 64 kg of uranium-235, and Fat Man, dropped on Nagasaki in 1945 by the United States, contained only 6.4 kg of plutonium. Anyone who wishes to immediately lose faith in the human race should read the short transcript of the Royal Commission, which is freely available online. (pp. 16-18)

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'Welcome to Nowhere' 2014

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970)
Welcome to Nowhere
Coober Pedy SA, November 2014

 

I arrived in Coober Pedy the same week that dust storms tore the roof off the pub. This dugout, borrowed from friends in Alice Springs, was built from a disused shaft. I slept near the door separating their home from the remaining length of shaft, extending far into the rock. Strange sounds echoed behind that door – sounds of wind, or dogs howling. The door was nailed closed. When I first visited Coober Pedy, it was the farthest into the desert that I had ever ventured. Beyond it stretched the expanse of the Great Victoria Desert, Simpson Desert, Strzelecki Desert, Pedirka Desert, Tirari Desert, and Sturt Stony Desert. I was at the start of a journey that would follow Stuart Highway into nothingness and emerge in the huge Tanami Desert of the Northern Territory and Western Australia. Leaving the dugout, I stopped to photograph the words painted on its roof: “Welcome to Nowhere.” (pp. 22-23)

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'Karlu Karlu I' 2014

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970)
Karlu Karlu I
Near Ayleparrarntenhe NT, November 2014

 

Karlu Karlu, nicknamed “The Devil’s Marbles” by white people, was long considered too spiritually dangerous for anyone but Warumungu elders conducting ceremony. Between these giant stones, on a 48-degree day, the radiant heat is almost unimaginable. Near the skeleton of a burned office chair, I found patches of black glass. A Warumungu friend explained that the heat has, in recent years, become so intense at Karlu Karlu that the air itself ignites, fusing desert sand to glass. In Australia’s deserts the evidence of climate change is irrefutable. (p. 24)

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'Eemie at the UFO Roadhouse' 2015

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970)
Eemie at the UFO Roadhouse
Wycliffe Well Roadhouse and Van-park NT, December 2015

 

UFO enthusiast Arc Vanderzalm moved to the desert in 2004 to establish a UFO-themed van park. In the van park’s early years, Arc rescued an abandoned emu chick and raised him by hand. He named him Eemie. Travellers stopping for fuel at Wycliffe Well roadhouse are sometimes surprised by an adult emu staring in at them through the window. While a guest of the van park, I once startled Eemie by walking into the ladies’ shower block. He peered out at me through the shower curtain with an air of embarrassment, as though I’d intruded at a delicate moment. Later, as I drove toward Tennant Creek, I spotted Eemie chasing a farm dog down the highway, legs akimbo. (p. 29)

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'Sexy John' 2014

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970)
Sexy John
Alice Springs NT, November 2014

 

Sexy John was rescued as a small calf after his mother was culled as part of a government program to reduce feral camels. He was raised by artists in a collective on the outskirts of Alice Springs and befriended a wild blond-haired boy. More than 160 thousand camels were culled between 2009 and 2013, approximately one-fifth of the camel population of the central deserts. (p. 35)

 

Extract from Five Threnodies for Maralinga

V

At Woomera,
seventy-five identical graves
remember babies lost to the predation
of atomic clouds.


Their epitaphs are brief-

Michael Clarke Jones
died 24 August 1952,
aged eight and a half hours.


No one has been here for a long time.


Weeds struggle.
A military vehicle passes,
heading east toward the rocket range.


In the west, Woomera township
is a grid of air force housing.
Land Cruisers fill neat driveways,
lawns are trimmed,
blinds closed.


And no one ever steps out for milk,
no one walks a dog.


I photograph each headstone,
stooping sometimes to straighten a plastic posy,
a tilted ceramic bear.


Wind presses a faded greeting card
to the metal fence.
A matchbox car beside a small boy’s grave
is blue.


There are nineteen stones without toys or flowers,
for stillborns named only “baby”-

Baby Spencer,
Baby Dowling,
Baby Stone.


Don’t look at me

Baby Gower
Baby Roads

from a soldier’s gunny bag
with your eyes too white, too open
like the eyes of poisoned fish
tumbling
in the Pilbara’s poisoned surf.

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'Warlpiri Family' 2015

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970)
Warlpiri Family
Lajamanu Community NT, December 2015

 

In 1948, Warlpiri people were forcibly relocated almost 600 kilometers from their spiritual homeland to Hooker Creek, now Lajamanu, in Gurindji country. Old people, afraid to live among Gurindji ancestors and spirits, tried to walk back to Yuendumu but were rounded up and returned. In the 1970s, Gurindji people held a series of unique ceremonies to hand over the area and its Wampana and Spectacled Hare Wallaby Dreaming stories to the residents of Lajamanu. While this gesture brought some relief to Warlpiri people, who viewed their involuntary occupation of Gurindji land as a breach of traditional Law, they continue to struggle with their relationship to the country. (p. 45)

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'Four Kurdu-kurdu [Kids] with Trampoline' 2015

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970)
Four Kurdu-kurdu [Kids] with Trampoline
Lajamanu Community NT, December 2015

 

Country [Gurindji country], hills… well, I put country first… hills, tree, don’t like you – even that water – and that is true. If you drink water from that, or if you not talking to that country because you don’t know, you got no songs with that area… and in the night, or during the day too, you got no language for to try to talk to that country.

When God bin put you there, in your country, that’s it. You got a right to live on there. You can get sick alright, but not too much. Yuwayi [yes], you know God? He say, “Yeah you get sick but you’ll be alright,” you know? “I’m with you there,” that God talking. And same thing for our ceremony too. You’re right to use your ceremony. You’re right to sing your own Dreaming song and talking to your country … and tell it true – real true.

Jerry Jangala (pp. 50-51)

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'Emu Roadkill and Portrait by Shemaiah Matthews' 2015

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970)
Emu Roadkill and Portrait by Shemaiah Matthews
Lajamanu Community NT, December 2015

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'Lily Nungarrayi Yirringali Jurrah-Hargraves Painting' 2015

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970)
Lily Nungarrayi Yirringali Jurrah-Hargraves Painting
Warnayaka Arts Centre, Lajamanu Community NT, December 2015

 

Without the connection between the land and the person, the individual is lost, empty inside, not connected to anyone or anything or the land. If the connection is lost, they won’t survive and their identity no longer exists. Jukurrpa is our life first. Jukurrpa connects us to our country. It is Law that makes it our right to our country. We can’t be sent away.

This art center [Warnayaka Arts Center] is for the young people to learn their culture and Law. It is important for our youth to learn the knowledge held by the Ngaliya and Warnayaka peoples. The art center is for the survival of culture from the grandfathers’ and grandmothers’ country. The children are getting lost, and there are not many old men left, some women but few men. Some of our important Dreaming sites are hundreds of kilometers from Lajamanu. The grandchildren and great-grandchildren who live in Lajamanu need to know their Jukurrpa; otherwise they will lose their inheritance to this really important country. They need to know the Warlpiri Ngalia Laws so they can go onto their great-grandfathers’ and ancestors’ land, especially where these important Dreaming sites are, like at Mina Mina, belonging to the Kana-kurlangu clan. This is why the art center is so important to the people of Lajamanu. At any time, children can see the works of the elders telling them the Kurdiji, the Law, and all that is tied into the Jukurrpa paintings.

Warnayaka Art elders, recorded by Arts Center manager Louisa Erglis (p. 55)

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'Sacred Object #1' Nd

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970)
Sacred Object #1
Nd
Muffler painted by Warlpiri artists

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'Sacred Object #2' Nd

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970)
Sacred Object #2
Nd
Abandoned doll found in Lajamanu Park

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'Beth Nungarrayi at Jdbrille Waterhole' 2015

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970)
Beth Nungarrayi at Jdbrille Waterhole
Jdbrille Waterhole, Tanami Desert NT, June 2015

 

This area here, no river. It’s the same deal in this country, and so – what do you call it? Soak? [A soakage, or soak, also called a native well, is a source of water in the Australian desert.] You know … I’m trying to get that word there. Soak, yeah, you take all right down to find that water, that water make. Sometimes no water, like this time when it’s dry. Look for the water tree. That’s what my father, my grandpa, my great-grandpa, grandmother, they all look for that water tree. Rock holes down. That’s in our country. We can say it today in a Kardiya way, you know? We can say “Lajamanu is my country.” But that not true. It’s not true … yuwayi, Nangala. My country is back there … my area is back there.

Jerry Jangala (pp. 68-69)

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'Wirntali-Jarra [Friends]' 2015

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970)
Wirntali-Jarra [Friends]
near Emu waterhole, Tanami Desert NT, December 2015

 

Henry Jackamarra and Jerry Jangala have known each other since they were small children. More than a decade his senior, Henry treats Jerry like a little brother – still lecturing him on what he eats and wears, although both men are now respected elders. (p. 72)

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'Jerry Jangala Oversees Kangaroo Ceremony' 2014

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970)
Jerry Jangala Oversees Kangaroo Ceremony
Tanami Desert Outpost NT, November 2014

 

The animal is honoured by sprinkling handfuls of dirt over its fur before it is prepared for cooking in the traditional way. Jerry explains that in the old days the punishment for getting this ceremony wrong was death. In modern times, the penalty for making mistakes in this ceremony is exile. Wanta Jampijinpa, Jerry’s son, reassured me that exile did not necessarily mean death in the Tanami desert. A person could earn his or her place back in the community by accomplishing a special task. The exile must find the way to catch a wedge-tailed eagle and bring its soft underbelly feathers back to Lajamanu as proof. Wanta explained to me how such a seemingly impossible task could be accomplished, but I do not have permission to reproduce that here. (p. 78)

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'Henry Jackamarra Cook, Last Kangaroo Dancer' 2015

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970)
Henry Jackamarra Cook, Last Kangaroo Dancer
Lajamanu Community NT, December 2015

 

Light Trails of Henry Jackamarra Cook

Law is a gray kangaroo dancing
the thin landscape of Henry Cook into being,
somewhere in the Tanami,
where knucklebone winds scrape bare rock
and Henry stands marsupial
in firelight’s weird.

In Lajamanu, tin houses edge the street.
No one is outside,
no one.

In the arts center, old ladies paint seed-dreaming.
Breeze lifts the hem of a curtain,
then stillness.
It is still.

Henry doesn’t paint anymore. He sits alone,
watching ceremony from the 1970s.
Everyone in the videos is dead now, except him.
And the dead are in the desert,
faceless as the desert is,
and as remote.

Ten years ago it seemed nothing to walk
three days to his sacred country,
granite country,
where great salt lakes exhale their thirst
over spinifex and sand,
the rattling sun.

But arthritis and cataracts have caged him.
Inside the arts center,
the lights are switched off.

We drag chairs across a concrete porch
to watch the Tanami darken, shelf clouds
seal the crater at Wolfe Creek.

Rain wakens on his tongue
the angular syllables of displacement.

And home is the desert breathing over itself by night,
erasing tracks of all who walk there –
night’s emu rising savage in the Milky Way,
and eyes, eyes in the granite mines.

One day, he tells me, I’ll walk out
to my country and never come back.

At town’s edge, a kangaroo left by poachers.
Red dust thickens its pelt, as the red dust lies thick
on Henry’s Ray-Bans, stiffening his white hair to wires.

I photograph him disemboweling the buck,
its intestines knotted to ritual marks –
Henry and his flayed brother, backlit
against chained ridges,
and the last sun rearing.

Law is an old man dancing
the gray kangaroo into being,
sewing him back into the desert’s body,
into his own body, ochre and growl,
a hunting boomerang beaten on the ground.

Night erases this landscape –
slow trees, sand,
the saltbush has gone.

Just Henry’s heels rising and falling
along a wind-scored track,
utterances of a language which belongs to him
and to which he belongs.

Tomorrow, the Catfish Waterhole
will stretch his white hair out elastic,
as telephone wires vanishing into the Tanami.

Mud returns to him,
the cool slow memories of country
before the missions, before diabetes and grog
shrank his ancestors down so small
he holds them in a single cupped hand
like fireflies, tiny comets
crossing in the black.

Tomorrow he’ll thread gumleaves
through the hole in his nose,
and say, photo me like this Nangala
I am a beautiful man.


Judith Crispin (pp. 81-83)

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'Lily Nungarrayi Yirringali' 2014

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970)
Lily Nungarrayi Yirringali
Tanami Desert NT, November 2014

 

I was told Lily, when she was young, was in love with a Karadji man but couldn’t be with him because she didn’t want to leave her community. Her arms reveal the parallel ritual marks of someone on a “sacred path.” Now, despite caring relationships with her family, friends, and fourteen adopted dogs, somehow Lily is always alone. When, together with Molly and Rosie, Lily took me to see Catfish Waterhole, she explained that we were going to see her “mother.” I carried Lily, too frail to descend the bank, to the edge of the water. There she turned water over her palms, the traditional way of greeting the waterhole and avoiding surprising any Warnayarra who might be there. The deep love that Warlpiri people have for the landscape, its mountains and waterholes, is almost incomprehensible for white people. Here Lily sings quietly to Catfish Waterhole – not for any ceremonial or traditional reason, I’m told, but just because it makes the waterhole feel loved. (p. 95)

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'Molly's Flame-Tree Seed-pods' 2014

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970)
Molly’s Flame-Tree Seed-pods
Tanami Desert NT, November 2014

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970) 'Molly Napurrula Sifts Wattleseed' 2014

 

Judith Crispin (Australian / Bpangerang, b. 1970)
Molly Napurrula Sifts Wattleseed
Tanami Desert NT, November 2014

 

Warlpiri people still supplement their diet with bush food. Ground wattleseed is mixed with oil and baked into a kind of flat bread. The older ladies took me out “hunting” for wattleseed and kurrajong seedpods. In a township with only one shop, where a head of broccoli costs more than a takeaway meal for a family, it is vitally important to supplement the community’s diet with “bush food.” White Australians have almost no idea of the variety of native fruits and vegetables that grow in the apparent desert – bush potatoes, bush tomatoes, bush bananas, honey ants, land crabs, wattleseeds, etc., can be gathered throughout the Tanami. (p. 104)

 

 

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