Exhibition: ‘The City Lost and Found: Capturing New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, 1960-1980’ at the Art Institute of Chicago

Exhibition dates: 26th October, 2014 – 11th January, 2015

Curators: Alison Fisher (Art Institute of Chicago), Katherine A. Bussard (Princeton University Art Museum), and Greg Foster-Rice (Columbia College, Chicago

 

Bruce Davidson (American, b. 1933) 'Untitled', from 'East 100th Street' 1966-1968 from the exhibition 'The City Lost and Found: Capturing New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, 1960-1980' at the Art Institute of Chicago, October 2014 - January 2015

 

Bruce Davidson (American, b. 1933)
Untitled, fromEast 100th Street
1966-1968
Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York and Magnum Photos

 

 

What looks to be another fascinating exhibition. They are coming thick and fast at the moment, it’s hard to keep up!

Dr Marcus Bunyan


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

 

 

The American city of the 1960s and 1970s experienced seismic physical changes and social transformations, from urban decay and political protests to massive highways that threatened vibrant neighbourhoods. Nowhere was this sense of crisis more evident than in the country’s three largest cities: New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Yet in this climate of uncertainty and upheaval, the streets and neighbourhoods of these cities offered places where a host of different actors – photographers, artists, filmmakers, planners, and activists – could transform these conditions of crisis into opportunities for civic discourse and creative expression.

The City Lost and Found is the first exhibition to explore this seminal period through the emergence of new photographic and cinematic practices that reached from the art world to the pages of Life magazine. Instead of aerial views and sweeping panoramas, photographers and filmmakers turned to in-depth studies of streets, pedestrian life, neighbourhoods, and seminal urban events, like Bruce Davidson’s two-year study of a single block in Harlem, East 100th Street (1966-68). These new forms of photography offered the public a complex image of urban life and experience while also allowing architects, planners, and journalists to imagine and propose new futures for American cities.

Drawn from the Art Institute’s holdings, as well as from more than 30 collections across the United States, this exhibition brings together a large range of media, from slideshows and planning documents to photo collage and artist books. The City Lost and Found showcases important bodies of work by renowned photographers and photojournalists such as Thomas Struth, Martha Rosler, and Barton Silverman, along with artists known for their profound connections to place, such as Romare Bearden in New York and ASCO in Los Angeles. In addition, projects like artist Allan Kaprow’s Chicago happening, Moving, and architect Shadrach Wood’s hybrid plan for SoHo demonstrate how photography and film were used in unconventional ways to make critical statements about the stakes of urban change. Blurring traditional boundaries between artists, activists, planners, and journalists, The City Lost and Found offers an unprecedented opportunity to experience the deep interconnections between art practices and the political, social, and geographic realities of American cities in the 1960s and 1970s.

Organiser

The City Lost and Found: Capturing New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, 1960-1980 is organised by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Princeton University Art Museum.

Text from the Art Institute of Chicago website

 

 

James Nares (British, b. 1953)
Pendulum
1976
Courtesy of Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York

 

James Nares’s film Pendulum illustrates the extraordinary status of Lower Manhattan during the 1970s, where disuse and decay created both the threat of demolition and the freedom to produce ambitious public art projects. The film shows a large pendulum swinging languidly in largely abandoned streets, suggesting the passage of time as well as the menace of the wrecking ball. Nares created this project by suspending a cast-concrete ball from an elevated pedestrian bridge on Staple Street on the Lower West Side adjacent to his loft. Unlike many neighbourhoods, urban renewal plans never came to fruition for this area, which still retains a connection to this precarious, yet liberating time in New York.

 

Romare Bearden (African-American, 1911-1988) 'The Block II' 1972 (detail) from the exhibition 'The City Lost and Found: Capturing New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, 1960-1980' at the Art Institute of Chicago, October 2014 - January 2015

 

Romare Bearden (African-American, 1911-1988)
The Block II (detail)
1972
Collection of Walter O. and Linda J. Evans

 

This monumental collage depicts both a specific, identifiable block in Harlem and also the importance of everyday routines to the city. From the 1960s Romare Bearden used collage to convey the texture and dynamism of urban life, combining paint and pencil with found photographs and images from newspapers, magazines, product labels, and fabric and wallpaper samples. Here Bearden showed the diverse inhabitants of Harlem apartment buildings perched in windows and on fire escapes, sitting on front stoops and street benches. The scene highlights the innumerable ways city dwellers “make do” so that their environments are more functional and liveable, from transforming front steps into a living room to turning sidewalks into playgrounds. While Bearden’s work has strong connections to avant-garde art and American and African histories, his collage technique can also be seen as a form of making do, just like the practices of his neighbours in New York.

 

 

“The American city of the 1960s and ’70s witnessed seismic physical changes and social transformations, from shifting demographics and political protests to the aftermath of decades of urban renewal. In this climate of upheaval and uncertainty, a range of makers – including photographers, filmmakers, urban planners, architects, and performance artists – countered the image of the city in crisis by focusing on the potential and the complexity of urban places. Moving away from the representation of cities through aerial views, maps, and sweeping panoramas, new photographic and planning practices in New YorkChicago, and Los Angeles explored real streets, neighbourhoods, and important urban events, from the Watts Rebellion to the protests surrounding the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. These ideas and images defined not only cities’ social and political stakes in the eyes of the American public, but they also led a new generation of architects, urban planners, and sociologists to challenge long-held attitudes about the future of inner-city neighbourhoods.

Works throughout the exhibition describe this new ideal of urban experience following three main lines of inquiry – preservation, demonstration, and renewal. The first reflects the widespread interest in preserving urban neighbourhoods and communities, including the rise of the historic preservation movement in the United States. The second captures the idea of demonstration in the broadest sense, encompassing political protests during the 1960s, as well as temporary appropriations of streets and urban neighbourhoods through performance art, film, and murals. The third, renewal, presents new and alternative visions for the future of American cities created by artists, filmmakers, architects, and planners. Together these works blur the lines between artists, activists, and journalists, and demonstrate the deep connections between art practices and the political, social, and geographic realities of American cities in a tumultuous era.”

New York

The election of Mayor John Lindsay in 1965 represented a watershed for New York, as the city moved away from administrator Robert Moses’s highly centralised push for new infrastructure and construction in previous decades. Lindsay’s efforts to create a more open and participatory city government were often in dialogue with ideas advanced by critic Jane Jacobs, who argued for the value of streets, neighbourhoods, and small-scale change. This new focus on local and self-directed interventions had a wide influence, leading to the development of pocket parks to replace vacant lots and the groundbreaking Plan for New York City’s use of photo essays and graphic design to express goals of diversity and community. In turn, many artists of the period, including Hans Haacke and Mierle Laderman Ukeles, created work that directly engaged with important social and political issues in the city, such as slum housing and labor strikes.

A multifaceted theme of preservation comes to the fore in work by the many artists and architects in New York who documented, staged, and inhabited areas where buildings were left vacant and in disrepair following postwar shifts in population and industry. The historic streets of Lower Manhattan became an integral part of projects by artist Gordon Matta-Clark and architect Paul Rudolph, for example, while low-income, yet vibrant neighbourhoods like Harlem gave rise to important bodies of work by Romare Bearden, Bruce Davidson, and Martha Rosler. James Nares’s elegiac film Pendulum and Danny Lyon’s remarkable photographs in The Destruction of Lower Manhattan are examples of a growing awareness of the struggle to preserve the existing urban fabric and cultures of New York during the 1960s and ’70s.

 

Mierle Laderman Ukeles (American, b. 1939) 'Touch Sanitation Performance' 1977-1980

 

Mierle Laderman Ukeles (American, b. 1939)
Touch Sanitation Performance
1977-1980
Courtesy of Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York

 

In 1977 Mierle Laderman Ukeles embarked on the multiyear performance piece Touch Sanitation, in which she shook the hand of every one of the 8,500 sanitation workers, or “sanmen,” employed by the city of New York, in keeping with her practice’s focus on labor. After the vilification of sanitation workers during the strikes of 1968, Ukeles’s personal and political camaraderie with the workers took on particular importance; every handshake was accompanied by the words “Thank you for keeping the city alive.” She worked the same hours as the sanmen and followed their paths through the streets of New York. Touch Sanitation was also distinguished by the importance Ukeles placed on the participation of the workers, as she explained in the brochure for the project: “I’m creating a huge artwork called TOUCH SANITATION about and with you, the men of the Department. All of you.”

 

Paul Rudolph (American, 1918-1997) 'Lower Manhattan Expressway, New York City, perspective section' c. 1970

 

Paul Rudolph (American, 1918-1997)
Lower Manhattan Expressway, New York City, perspective section
c. 1970
The Paul Rudolph Archive, Library of Congress

 

Known for high-tech buildings in concrete, architect Paul Rudolph began working on a project for Lower Manhattan Expressway in 1965, funded by the Ford Foundation as research and design exploring “New Forms of the Evolving City.” Rudolph diverged from Robert Moses’s strategy for infrastructural projects through a sensitive engagement with the scale and texture of the dense urban fabric of Lower Manhattan. He proposed a below-grade road surmounted by a large, continuous residential structure of varying heights that would protect the surrounding neighbourhood from the pollution and noise of the highway. In many places this terraced megastructure was precisely scaled to the height of the surrounding loft buildings, with entrances and gardens on existing streets, a contextual quality emphasised in his detailed drawings. Rudolph also designed the expressway complex to resonate with established functions and symbols of the city, with tall buildings flanking the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges like monumental gates to the city.

 

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954) 'Crosby Street, New York, Soho' 1978

 

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954)
Crosby Street, New York, Soho
1978
© Thomas Struth

 

Thomas Struth’s 1978 photographs in the series Streets of New York City are remarkable representations of a city undergoing dramatic change, from the derelict streets of Lower Manhattan and public-housing buildings in Harlem to the dazzling, mirage-like towers of the newly built World Trade Center. Struth produced these photographs during a residency at the New York Institute for Art and Urban Resources, Inc. (now MoMA’s PS1) from December 1977 until September 1978. As he would later write, “I was interested in the possibility of the photographic image revealing the different character or the ‘sound’ of the place. I learned that certain areas of the city have an emblematic character; they express the city’s structure.” Although these photographs adopt the symmetrical framing and deadpan documentary style of his mentors Bernd and Hilla Becher, they led Struth to ask, “Who has the responsibility for the way a city is?”

Chicago

In the 1960s and ’70s Chicago emerged from its industrial past led by a powerful mayor, Richard J. Daley, who prioritised development in the downtown areas. His work to modernise the city resulted in the construction of massive highways, housing projects, and imposing skyscrapers – new architectural and infrastructural icons that were explored by many photographers of the era. The arts experienced a similar boom, with the foundation and expansion of museums and university programs. Growth came at a cost, however, and the art of this period highlights the disparate experiences of local communities in Chicago, including Jonas Dovydenas’s photographs of life in ethnic neighbourhoods and independent films exploring issues ranging from the work of African American community activists to the forced evictions caused by urban renewal projects.

Demonstrations loomed large in Chicago, where artists responded to two major uprisings in 1968, the first on the West Side, following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and the second downtown, during the Democratic National Convention. These violent confrontations between protestors and police drew national attention to issues of race relations and political corruption in Chicago and led to an outpouring of new art projects as forms of demonstration, including community murals like the West Wall and an exhibition at the Richard Feigen Gallery condemning Daley’s actions during the DNC. The image of Chicago that emerged in the mass media of this period was one of destruction and resilience, a duality highlighted by contemporary artists like Gordon-Matta Clark and Allan Kaprow, whose work existed in the fragile space of opportunity between the streets and the wrecking ball.

 

Ken Josephson (American, b. 1932) 'Chicago' 1969

 

Ken Josephson (American, b. 1932)
Chicago
1969
The Art Institute of Chicago, Gift of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago

 

Still from 'Lord Thing', directed by DeWitt Beall, 1970

 

Still from Lord Thing, directed by DeWitt Beall
1970
Courtesy Chicago Film Archives

 

Lord Thing documents the development of the Vice Lords from an informal club for young men on the streets of Chicago’s West Side, its emergence as a street gang, and its evolution into the Conservative Vice Lords, a splinter group that aspired to nonviolent community activism. The film uses a mix of black-and-white sequences to retrospectively analyse the group’s violent middle period and contrasts these with colour sequences that show the Conservative Vice Lords fostering unity and developing black-owned businesses and social programs during the late 1960s. Together, Lord Thing argues for the agency of African Americans in the face of decades of spatialised oppression in Chicago.

 

Art Sinsabaugh (American, 1924-1983) 'Chicago Landscape #117' 1966

 

Art Sinsabaugh (American, 1924-1983)
Chicago Landscape #117
1966
Art Sinsabaugh Archive, Indiana University Art Museum
© 2004 Katherine Anne Sinsabaugh and Elisabeth Sinsabaugh de la Cova

 

Sinsabaugh’s panoramic photographs are among the most distinctive visual records of Chicago, capturing the built landscape with what Sinsabaugh called “special photographic seeing,” achieved with large-format negatives. The Department of City Planning used his photographs in a 1963 planning document to help describe the qualities of Chicago’s tall buildings “as vertical forms contrasting with these two great horizontal expanses [the flat prairie and the lakefront edge].” Sinsabaugh’s panoramas also flirt with abstraction when depicting such remarkable places as Chicago’s Circle Interchange, a monumental coil of highways completed in the early 1960s. Sinsabaugh recalled that for the photographer, like the motorist, freeways provided “an access, an opening, a swath cut right through the heart of the City in all directions.” However, his early thrill at the novelty of these developments soon gave way to an appreciation of their violence, in which entire “neighbourhoods were laid bare and their very bowels exposed.” (Please enlarge by clicking on the image)

 

Alvin Boyarsky (Polish-​Canadian, 1928-1990) 'Chicago à la Carte: The City as Energy System' 1970

 

Alvin Boyarsky (Polish-​Canadian, 1928-1990)
Chicago à la Carte: The City as Energy System
1970
Special issue of Architectural Design, December 1970
Courtesy Alvin Boyarsky Archive, London

 

The concept of the city as organism emerged during the 1960s as a response to the increasingly complex interconnections of technology, communication, and history. One exceptional project in this vein was the British architect Alvin Boyarsky’s Chicago à la Carte. Boyarsky drew on an archive of historical postcards, newspaper clippings, and printed ephemera to trace a hidden history of Chicago’s built environment as an “energy system.” This idea was represented on the cover by a striking postcard image of a vivisection of State Street in the Loop, showing subway tunnels, sidewalks, El tracks, and skyscrapers in what Boyarsky described as “the tumultuous, active, mobile, and everywhere dynamic centre of a vast distribution system.” On other pages, Boyarsky showed images of Chicago’s newly built skyscrapers with newspaper clippings of recent political protests to juxtapose the city’s reaction to recent political protests against the disciplinary tradition of modern architecture in Chicago.

Los Angeles

Los Angeles has always been known for its exceptionalism, as a city of horizontal rather than vertical growth and a place where categories of private and public space prove complex and intertwined. During the 1960s and ’70s these qualities inspired visual responses by seminal artists like Ed Ruscha as well as critics like Reyner Banham, one of the most attentive observers of the city during this period. In many other respects, however, Los Angeles experienced events and issues similar to those of New York and Chicago, including problems of racial segregation, a sense of crisis about the decay of its historical downtown, and large-scale demonstrations, with responses ranging from photography and sculpture to provocative new forms of performance art by the collective Asco.

Concerns about the future forms of urbanism in Los Angeles and a renewal of the idea of the city were major preoccupations for artists, architects, and filmmakers. Many photographers focused on the everyday banality and auto-centric nature of the city, such as Robbert Flick’s Sequential Views project and Anthony Hernandez’s Public Transit Areas series. The historic downtown core continued to hold a special place in popular memory as many of these areas – including the former neighbourhood of Bunker Hill – were razed and rebuilt. Julius Shulman’s photographs of new development in the 1960s – including Bunker Hill and Century City – focus on the spectacular quality of recent buildings as well their physical and cultural vacancy. Architects played a strong role in creating new visions for the future city, including an unrealised, yet bold and influential plan for redeveloping Grand Avenue as a mixed-use district shaped by ideals of diversity and pedestrian-friendly New Urbanism.

 

Julius Shulman (American, 1910-2009) 'The Castle, 325 S. Bunker Hill Avenue, Los Angeles, California, (Demolished 1969)' c. 1968

 

Julius Shulman (American, 1910-2009)
The Castle, 325 S. Bunker Hill Avenue, Los Angeles, California, (Demolished 1969)
c. 1968
Julius Shulman Photography Archive, Research Library at the Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2004.R.10)
© J. Paul Getty Trust. Used with permission

 

Julius Shulman (October 10, 1910 – July 15, 2009) was an American architectural photographer best known for his photograph “Case Study House #22, Los Angeles, 1960. Pierre Koenig, Architect.” The house is also known as the Stahl House. Shulman’s photography spread the aesthetic of California’s Mid-century modern architecture around the world. Through his many books, exhibits and personal appearances his work ushered in a new appreciation for the movement beginning in the 1990s.

His vast library of images currently resides at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. His contemporaries include Ezra Stoller and Hedrich Blessing Photographers. In 1947, Julius Shulman asked architect Raphael Soriano to build a mid-century steel home and studio in the Hollywood Hills.

Some of his architectural photographs, like the iconic shots of Frank Lloyd Wright’s or Pierre Koenig’s remarkable structures, have been published countless times. The brilliance of buildings like those by Charles Eames, as well as those of his close friends, Richard Neutra and Raphael Soriano, was first brought to wider attention by Shulman’s photography. The clarity of his work added to the idea that architectural photography be considered as an independent art form in which perception and understanding for the buildings and their place in the landscape informs the photograph.

Many of the buildings photographed by Shulman have since been demolished or re-purposed, lending to the popularity of his images.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Asco. 'Decoy Gang War Victim' 1974 (printed later)

 

Asco
Decoy Gang War Victim
1974 (printed later)
Photograph by Harry Gamboa Jr.
Courtesy of Harry Gamboa Jr.

 

The Chicano art collective Asco was famous for their No Movies – works that appropriate certain stylistic qualities of the movies while maintaining a nonchalance that allows them to critique the media industry’s role in Los Angeles. Asco’s performances, therefore, function on different registers to engage with current events and issues facing the Chicano community as well as acknowledge the mainstream media’s distorted image of the city. For Decoy Gang War Victim, Asco’s members staged a fake gang shooting then circulated the images to local television stations, simultaneously feeding and deriding the media’s hunger for sensationalist imagery of urban neighbourhoods.

 

William Reagh (American, 1911-1992) 'Bunker Hill to soon be developed' 1971 (printed later)

 

William Reagh (American, 1911-1992)
Bunker Hill to soon be developed
1971 (printed later)
Los Angeles Public Library

 

From 1939 to 1990, William Reagh produced over 40,000 photographs of Los Angeles in considerable architectural detail. Reagh is also well known for his specific efforts to document the Downtown area from the 1950s to the 1980s. His collection is now part of the California State Library, and a photography center in his name, the William Reagh Los Angeles Photography Center, is located at 2332 W. Fourth Street.

The William Reagh Los Angeles Photography Center is operated by Grupo de Teatro SINERGIA in partnership with the Department of Cultural Affairs City of Los Angeles, and is the only Community Photography Laboratory in the Los Angeles area.

 

Reagh was on the streets: Looking. Lingering. Documenting. He walked Los Angeles and consequently saw Los Angeles — offering a different perspective than the mere suggestion of place so often gleaned in motion or generalised shorthand. He circled neighbourhoods, returned to some locations year after year, charting their evolution. And though, until his death in 1992, he became one of Los Angeles’ most prolific visual documentarians, he didn’t set out to be a photographer, nor was his trove of L.A. images meant to be a formal paean to Los Angeles. A painter and philosopher, by training and inclination, photography was something that he “picked up,” while in the service, a proficiency, that overtime became, at turns, poetic – though he, says his son, would never see it as such. …

His father’s arrival in Los Angeles, coincided with the city’s most vigorous years of growth, as well as its many phases of urban renewal. For years, his day job was work as a commercial photographer – shooting products, catalogues, art collections “whatever the clients called for,” his son recalls. But the weekends were dedicated to solely to prowling Los Angeles, uncovering and documenting its very disparate parts, assembling a sense of the whole.

To say there was a goal, a plan or even an organising thesis to his images, would be to overstate his process, Patrick suggests. His father, he says, was a wanderer who would lose himself within the intricate folds of the city, “wherever his muse led him.” Patrick remembers the meanderings of his father. “He just loved to wander downtown and walk around the streets and shoot. Sometimes it might be a streetscape, sometimes it might be people. He’d often shoot from the hip, hold the camera low. He was very good at taking pictures of people without them knowing. But really, he was so non-threatening, such a friendly guy – even in the seediest of neighbourhoods – he would make everyone feel at ease.”

While Saturdays often meant a solo trek – perhaps crisscrossing the freeways by car, touring surface streets on foot for inspiration – on Sundays, Reagh might take Patrick and his sister along. It was an opportunity to see the city through his eyes – the places he felt were important to document, even if he couldn’t articulate why in words. “Train yards, he loved. Shipyards. Amusement parks, the Pike and Pacific Ocean Park,” Reagh recalls. These were places at the edge of things – of the city or the coastline – and, metaphorically, our imaginations. The transit hubs in particular provided an interesting opportunity to see behind the scenes – an end on one story, beginning of another.

Each setting called for a different set up. “If he was downtown shooting people, he’d have his reflex, or another smaller camera, maybe his Leica. At the train yard or shipyard, he’d bring his tripod and set up his big Speed-Graphic. Back then there were no security guards asking questions: who you were and what you were doing. I would climb on stuff, those piled up streetcars. There was broken glass all over. He’d be off shooting. I’d climb. Back when you could do that sort of thing.” …

Decades later, the work reveals his heart. And what the images, taken as a whole, most eloquently preserve is not just sense of place, but a sense of the city’s humanity, its particular vernacular – its feel, pace, space; its leisureliness, and idiosyncratic visual language. “He was just interested in the passing parade.” says Reagh, “He let the camera do the talking.”

Lynell George. “Sidewalk Stories: The Photography of William Reagh,” on the KCET website January 10, 2013 [Online] Cited 26/11/2022. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

John Humble (American, b. 1944) '300 Block of Broadway, Los Angeles, October 3, 1980' 1980

 

John Humble (American, b. 1944)
300 Block of Broadway, Los Angeles, October 3, 1980
1980
Courtesy of Craig Krull Gallery, Santa Monica

 

Brought up in a military family, John Humble spent his childhood moving around the country from one military base to another. Humble was drafted during the Vietnam War, then became a photojournalist for the Washington Post before pursuing a graduate degree at the San Francisco Art Institute. His itinerant nature continued when he traveled the world in the early 1970s, going from Europe to the Middle East, then to Africa and Asia in his Volkswagen van. However, since the summer of 1974 Humble has lived in one place: Los Angeles. His traveling instinct did not diminish despite his fixed geographical location; rather, it intensified as he traversed the length and breadth of the city (from the San Fernando Valley and East Los Angeles to Venice and the shores of Long Beach), creating images that explore the postmodern qualities of America’s second largest city. Humble’s desire to capture “the incongruities and ironies of the Los Angeles landscape” results in a compelling body of work where power lines cut across blue skies, freeways divide neighbourhoods and a river bisects the city.

Humble began working with a 35mm camera, favouring black-and-white prints, but in September 1979 he bought his first view camera and switched to colour printing, producing first Cibachrome, then chromogenic prints. In the 1970s colour emerged within the tradition of photography, most notably in the 1976 exhibition Photographs by William Eggleston at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. No longer confined to the commercial domain of advertising, colour photography gained recognition as a valid expression of fine art. For Humble, the choice was clear; to fully capture the realities of the city – what he refers to as “the urban landscape” – colour was essential.

Text from the J. Paul Getty Museum website

 

 

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Exhibition: ‘Robert Frank in America’ at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University Part 2

Exhibition dates: 10th September, 2014 – 5th January, 2015

Curator: Peter Galassi

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019) 'New York' City 1951 from the exhibition 'Robert Frank in America' at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, September 2014 - January 2015

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019)
New York City
1951
Gelatin silver print Cantor Arts Center Collection, Gift of Raymond B. Gary

 

 

The lunatic sublime of America

See Part 1 for comment on this exhibition.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


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

 

 

“This desire of Frank’s to hold the shape of his feelings in what he made is an ambition found in all Romantic art, one that his style brilliantly encompasses and describes. There is a wonderful illusion of speed trapped in his photographs, a sense of rapidity usually created not by the movement of Frank’s subjects, but by the gesture that he made as he framed his pictures. To photographers who have followed Frank, this autographic gesture incorporates a mystery, one that is distorted, and certainly not explained, by saying that he “shot on the run” or “from the hip.” For the beauty of this gesture is that, caught by such speed, his subjects remain clear, fully recognised, as if the photographer had only glanced at what he wanted to show, but was able to seize it at the moment it unhesitantly revealed itself.”


Tod Papageorge. “Walker Evans And Robert Frank: An Essay On Influence.”

 

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019) 'Detroit' 1955 from the exhibition 'Robert Frank in America' at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, September 2014 - January 2015

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019)
Detroit
1955
Gelatin silver print
Cantor Arts Center Collection, Gift of Bowen H. McCoy

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019) 'Miami' 1955

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019)
Miami
1955
Gelatin silver print
Cantor Arts Center Collection, Gift of Raymond B. Gary

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019) 'New York City' 1950-1951

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019)
New York City
1950-1951
Gelatin silver print
Cantor Arts Center Collection, Gift of Raymond B. Gary

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019) 'Hollywood' 1958

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019)
Hollywood
1958
Gelatin silver print
Cantor Arts Center Collection, Gift of Bowen H. McCoy

 

“Frank’s photos highlight everything from prosperity to poverty, multitudes to desolation, new life to finality of death, and happiness to sorrow which all occur during our lifetimes making his photos easy for the viewers to understand and relate…

Furthermore, Frank was able to emphasise some of the issues of his era, especially segregation, patriotism, and generational gaps. For example, the New Orleans photo on the cover shows a trolley car obviously segregated with white riders in the front and black riders in the back. However, Frank also shows blacks and whites working side by side in an assembly line photo taken in Detroit as well as a black nurse holding a white baby in Charleston, South Carolina with undertones of hope for equality further highlighted by the photo taken in Detroit bar of Presidents Lincoln and Washington bookending an American flag…

American patriotism seems to be a universal theme throughout Frank’s photos as well. Many of the photos in the book contain an American flag which shows the high level of patriotism felt by Americans in the era after defeating Germany and Japan in the Second World War and at the beginning of the Cold War with the rising Soviet Union as a communist superpower. Flags are hung on an apartment building during a parade in Hoboken, on the wall in a Navy Recruiting Station in Butte, Montana, hanging outdoors during a Fourth of July celebration in Jay, New York, on the wall in the Detroit bar, hanging from the building in a political rally in Chicago, and there are star lights in the background of a club car headed to Washington DC.

The most important theme within Frank’s photos is that of “Americans.” Frank photographed people from different cultures, including blacks, Hispanics, Jews, and whites; celebrating different religious and civil ceremonies from funerals to weddings. He included biker groups, prostitutes, celebrities, high-class socialites, rural farmlands, cowboys, soldiers, teenagers, politicians, families, senior citizens, children, gamblers, and travellers among others within the photos. This variety of people from different backgrounds living and socialising in different settings is truly American in that it is a blend of all different types of people living together as one nation.”

Cindy Coffey. “The Americans: An Analysis of the Photography of Robert Frank,” on the History thru Hollywood blog Saturday, May 11, 2013 [Online] No longer available online. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

Bill Brandt (British, 1904-1983) 'Parlourmaid at the Window in Kensington' 1935

 

Bill Brandt (British, 1904-1983)
Parlourmaid at the Window, Kensington
1935 (printed later)
Silver gelatin print

 

“The first critics of The Americans condemned its content; recent critics have attacked it by attempting to describe Frank’s photographic style. Possibly reacting to the variations in cropping that appear in the later editions of the book, or, more probably, looking for the “snapshot aesthetic” under any available stone, they have assumed this style to be haphazard and contemptuously casual. One writer, for example, has said that Frank “produced pictures that look as if a kid had taken them while eating a Popsicle and then had them developed and printed at the corner drugstore.”

The things in Frank’s pictures which have bothered these critics – occasional blur, obvious grain, the use of available light, the cutting off of objects by the frame – are all, however, characteristic of picture journalism, and, arguably, of the entire history of hand-camera photography: Erich Salomon’s work, for example, done for the most part in the twenties, could be discussed in similar terms. The form of Frank’s work, then, is not radical in the true sense of the word: it does not strike to the root of the tradition it serves. The stylistic exaggerations which occur in his pictures serve only to retain that sense of resident wildness we recognise in great lyric poetry – they are present to call attention not to themselves, but to the emotional world of Frank’s subjects, and to his response to those subjects. When, in the statement he wrote shortly before The Americans was published, Frank said: “It is important to see what is invisible to others. Perhaps the look of hope or the look of sadness. Also it is always the instantaneous reaction to oneself that produces a photograph,” he was expressing his belief that both his perceptions (it is significant that he does not mention an intervening camera in these sentences) and the photographs which result from them are essentially unmediated and true.

This desire of Frank’s to hold the shape of his feelings in what he made is an ambition found in all Romantic art, one that his style brilliantly encompasses and describes. There is a wonderful illusion of speed trapped in his photographs, a sense of rapidity usually created not by the movement of Frank’s subjects, but by the gesture that he made as he framed his pictures. To photographers who have followed Frank, this autographic gesture incorporates a mystery, one that is distorted, and certainly not explained, by saying that he “shot on the run” or “from the hip.” For the beauty of this gesture is that, caught by such speed, his subjects remain clear, fully recognised, as if the photographer had only glanced at what he wanted to show, but was able to seize it at the moment it unhesitantly revealed itself.

Despite the grace of this notational style (or perhaps because of it), Frank seems to have felt that movement within the frames of his photographs would only disturb their sense, and, with a few exceptions, ignored the use of dramatic gesture and motion in The Americans (a fact which again suggests his feeling about Cartier-Bresson’s work). In two of his pictures of convention delegates, and in one of a woman in a gambling casino, he shows emphatic hand gestures. In another photograph, he looks down onto a man striding forward under a neon arrow, and, in yet another, describes two girls skipping away from his camera. Otherwise, his subjects move, if at all, toward, and, in a single memorable case, by him – studies in physiognomy, rather than disclosures of a gathering beauty.

The characteristic gestures in his pictures are the slight, telling motions of the head and upper body: a glance, a stare, a hand brought to the face, an arched neck, pursed lips. They suggest that Frank, like Evans, believed significance in a photograph might be consonant with the repose of the things it described. His pictures, of course, are not acts of contemplation – they virtually catalogue the guises of anxiety – but they are stilled, and their meanings found not in broad rhythms of gesture and form, but in the constellations traced by the figures or objects they show, and the short, charged distances between them.

One of the unacknowledged achievements of The Americans is the series of group portraits – odd assemblages of heads, usually seen in profile, that gather in quick, serried cadences and push at the cutting edges of their frames. In the soft muted light that illuminates them, these heads are drawn with the sculptural brevity of those found on worn coins. But, even in this diminishment, as they cluster and fill the shallow space of Frank’s pictures, they assume the unfurling, cursive shapes of great Romantic art.

As this book shows, these photographs beautifully elaborate Evans’ hand-camera pictures, pictures which are not as judgmental as Frank’s, but also not as formally complex and moving. Although Frank’s most literal recastings of American Photographs occur when he is remembering Evans’ view camera pictures – for example, a gas station, a parked car, a statue – these extravagant translations of the older photographer’s bluntest work eloquently reveal one aspect of Frank’s extraordinary gifts as a photographer.”

Tod Papageorge. “Walker Evans And Robert Frank: An Essay On Influence.”

Download the complete essay (100kb pdf)

 

 

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Exhibition: ‘Robert Frank in America’ at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University Part 1

Exhibition dates: 10th September, 2014 – 5th January, 2015

Curator: Peter Galassi

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019) 'En route from New York to Washington, Club Car' 1954 from the exhibition 'Robert Frank in America' at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, September 2024 - January 2015

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019)
En route from New York to Washington, Club Car
1954
Gelatin silver print
Cantor Arts Center Collection, Gift of Raymond B. Gary

 

 

The lunatic sublime of America

This is the first part of a bumper two-part posting. View Part 2 of the posting.

Robert Frank (1924-2019) is one of the most important photographic artists of the twentieth century. He was born in Switzerland but he emigrated to American in 1947. He soon gained a job as a fashion photographer for Harper’s Bazaar. He honed his craft as a photographer in England where he took formal, classical images of British life during a trip to Europe and South America in 1947.

He became friends with Edward Steichen and Walker Evans, and it was Evans who supported him in his Guggenheim Fellowship application in 1955 which enabled him “to travel across the United States and photograph all strata of its society. Cities he visited included Detroit and Dearborn, Michigan; Savannah, Georgia; Miami Beach and St. Petersburg, Florida; New Orleans, Louisiana; Houston, Texas; Los Angeles, California; Reno, Nevada; Salt Lake City, Utah; Butte, Montana; and Chicago, Illinois. He took his family along with him for part of his series of road trips over the next two years, during which time he took 28,000 shots. 83 of these were selected by him for publication in The Americans.“1

In The Americans, Frank documents, “the tensions between the optimism of the 1950s and the realities of class and racial differences. The irony that Frank found in the gloss of American culture and wealth over this tension gave his photographs a clear contrast to those of most contemporary American photojournalists, as did his use of unusual focus, low lighting and cropping that deviated from accepted photographic techniques.2

Originally published as Les Américains in 1958 by Robert Delpire in Paris, and finally in 1959 in the United States by Grove Press, reaction in America was initially hostile. The American critics did not like Frank’s shoot from the hip style of photography, nor the mirror that was being held up to their society, especially by a Jewish foreigner. Over time The Americans came to be seen as a seminal work of American photography and social history. Like many artists, Frank only took photographs for a relatively short period of time, before moving on to become a filmmaker.

One cannot forget the era in which Frank took these photographs – that of McCarthyism and “the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from 1950 to 1956 and characterised by heightened political repression against communists, as well as a campaign spreading fear of their influence on American institutions and of espionage by Soviet agents.”3 Americans were suspicious of foreigners, especially ones with cameras, and this was still the era of racial segregation pre the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

With regard to the structure of the photographs, their origin is based in classicism. This was Frank’s training. It was his skill as an artist, his intuitive and prescient vision of America – how he saw America like no one else before him had – that enabled him to ramp up the intensity, shoot from weird angles, low lighting, cropping, depth of field, unusual focus – and focus on the iconography of America as never seen before: jukeboxes, American flags, cars, highways, death, racial segregation – that was so revolutionary. But he could not have done that without his formal training. You only have to look at the comparison between the photographs of Robert Frank and Walker Evans. Formal and elegant in Evans Church Organ and Pews (1936) and Downtown street, New Orleans (December 1935) with lines vertical and clean… and then Frank, with hardly a straight line or neat angle to be seen. But the one does inform the other, otherwise Frank’s photographs would just become snapshots, vernacular photographs with very little meaning. Which they are not.

This is one of the most powerful, lyrical, humanist photo essays of a country that has ever been taken. Critic Sean O’Hagan, writing in The Guardian in 2014, said The Americans “changed the nature of photography, what it could say and how it could say it. […] it remains perhaps the most influential photography book of the 20th century.”4 As an artist, Frank became the great connector for he is the critical link in the chain that stretches from Lewis Hine through Walker Evans… and on to Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand and Joel Meyerowitz.

As an artist you marvel at his intuition and inspiration, to look at the world as no one else had done before, to push the boundaries of medium and message. To photograph people, alone and in groups; politics; religion; race; automobiles and the road; and the media and thrust them into the white, bright, happy world of 1950s consumerist America saying: this is what this country is really like, this is my “impression” of you in all your fleeting madness, “America as an often bleak and lonely place.” You only have to look at the “eye” in U.S. 91, leaving Blackfoot, Idaho (1956, below) or look at the photograph of the grave by the side of the road to know that you are in Blue Velvet territory (David Lynch, director 1986, the title is taken from The Clovers’ 1955 song of the same name).

I am not sure yet how one world pierces the other but believe me they surely do.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

Footnotes

1/ “Robert Frank” on the Wikipedia website
2/ Ibid.,
3/ “McCarthyism,” on the Wikipedia website
4/ Sean O’Hagan. “Robert Frank at 90: the photographer who revealed America won’t look back,” on The Guardian website Sat 8 Nov 2014 [Online] Cited 06/07/2021


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

 

 

“It was the vision that emanated from the book that lead not only me, but my whole generation of photographers out into the American landscape, in a sense, the lunatic sublime of America.”


Joel Meyerowitz

 

“Like a boxer trains for a fight, a photographer by walking the streets, and watching and taking pictures, and coming home and going out the next day, the same thing again, taking pictures. It doesn’t matter how many he takes, or if he takes any at all, it gets you prepared to know what you should take pictures of, or what is the right thing to do and when.”


Robert Frank

 

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Main St., Ossining, New York' 1932 from the exhibition 'Robert Frank in America' at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, September 2024 - January 2015

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Main St., Ossining, New York
1932
Gelatin silver print

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019) 'Detroit' 1955

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019)
Detroit
1955
Gelatin silver print
Cantor Arts Center Collection, Gift of Raymond B. Gary

 

 

In 1955 and 1956, Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank (b. 1924) traveled throughout the United States on a Guggenheim Fellowship, photographing ordinary people in their everyday lives. His book The Americans – 83 photographs, mostly from those travels, published in 1959 – repudiated the bland good cheer of the magazines with an image of the country that was starkly at odds with the official optimism of postwar prosperity. The book became a landmark of photographic history; but Frank soon turned to filmmaking, and the rest of his early photographic career was largely forgotten. An important group of unknown or unfamiliar photographs in the Cantor Arts Center’s collection provides the core of the exhibition Robert Frank in America, which sheds new light on the making of The Americans and presents, for the first time, Frank’s American photographs from the 1950s as a coherent body of work.

“We are delighted that the Cantor’s collection has provided the basis for a fresh look at one of the great achievements of 20-century photography,” said Connie Wolf, John and Jill Freidenrich Director of the Cantor Arts Center. “We are also deeply grateful to Robert Frank, who has generously contributed to the project.”

The exhibition Robert Frank in America, on view September 10, 2014 through January 5, 2015, features 130 photographs drawn primarily from the Cantor’s collection as well as from other public and private collections and from Frank himself. Peter Galassi, former chief curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, is the exhibition’s guest curator and author of the accompanying publication.

The Exhibition’s Development from the Cantor’s Collection

In the summer of 2012, Wolf invited Galassi to offer his thoughts on one of the museum’s hidden treasures: more than 150 photographs by Robert Frank given to the Cantor in the mid-1980s by Stanford alumnus Bowen H. McCoy and his colleague Raymond B. Gary. This remarkable collection spans the full range of Frank’s photographic career before he turned to filmmaking in the early 1960s. It is especially rich in Frank’s American work of the 1950s, including scores of photographs that are unknown or unfamiliar even to scholars. Wolf and Galassi saw an opportunity to share this work with Stanford students, faculty, scholars at large and the general public.

Research began at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, where more than two decades ago the artist established the archive of his photographic career prior to 1970. Studying more than 1,000 contact sheets enabled Galassi to determine the locations and dates of dozens of previously unidentified photographs in the Cantor collection. He then selected works for the exhibition so as to identify Frank’s major themes and artistic strategies. The compelling sequence of The Americans poetically weaves diverse images into a seamless whole, but Robert Frank in America groups related pictures to explore the pictorial strategies that Frank developed as he worked, and also to highlight important subjects – people, alone and in groups; politics; religion; race; automobiles and the road; and the media.

Frank repeatedly photographed isolated figures so that they seemed trapped by pictorial forces, for example. This powerful metaphor for Frank’s vision of lonely individuals imprisoned by social circumstances is announced in the first picture, The Americans, where the flag obliterates a spectator’s face (Parade – Hoboken, New Jersey, 1955). In Robert Frank in America, that photograph is juxtaposed with another that uses the identical pictorial scheme but a different subject; the interior of a bar (New York City, 1955).

“Although The Americans is famous – partly because it is famous – Robert Frank’s American work of the 1950s has never been considered as a whole,” said Galassi. “The full range of the work shows just how Frank turned the vocabulary of magazine photojournalism on its head and used it to speak in a personal, poetic voice.”

Inviting Galassi to organise the exhibition was part of the museum’s renewed commitment to collecting, studying and presenting photography, Wolf says. The Cantor has been adding to its already strong holdings, presenting innovative exhibitions of work by distinguished artists and providing a valuable opportunity for Stanford students and faculty to work directly with photographs. Leland Stanford’s commission more than a century ago for Eadweard Muybridge’s pioneering work on animal locomotion serves as a foundation for the museum’s extensive collection today.

Exhibition catalogue

The major catalogue accompanying this exhibition is published by the Cantor Arts Center in association with international publisher Steidl, with whom Frank has worked closely on most of his books. All 130 photographs in the exhibition are reproduced as full-page tritone plates. Galassi’s extensive essay traces the evolution of Frank’s work from his arrival in the United States in 1947 until he abandoned his first photographic career in the early 1960s. The text provides a thorough outline of the photographic context in which Frank at first sought success as a magazine photojournalist as well as a detailed analysis of the methods and strategies that lie behind The Americans. The essay features 24 illustrations, including an unprecedented map of Frank’s 1955-56 Guggenheim travels, which locates the sites of nearly all of the photographs in The Americans and in Robert Frank in America. The 200-page book, with a foreword by Connie Wolf, is designed by Katy Homans, New York.

Robert Frank

Robert Frank was born in 1924 in Zürich, Switzerland. The conclusion of World War II ended his vulnerability (his father was a German-born Jew) and enabled him to escape what he regarded as a narrow, antiquated culture. Soon after reaching New York in March 1947, he was hired by Harper’s Bazaar, but his distaste for photographing fashion led him to quit after six months. Over the next five or six years, in Europe and the United States, Frank aimed to establish himself as a freelance photojournalist, with limited success. A Guggenheim Fellowship, awarded in March 1955 and renewed a year later, freed him to pursue his work independently, and he soon began to travel in hopes of making a book. Les Américains was published by Robert Delpire in Paris in 1958 and, as The Americans, by Grove Press in New York in 1959. The latter included an introduction by Jack Kerouac, author of On the Road.

Film and video have formed a central aspect of Frank’s work since 1959, when he collaborated with Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Alfred Leslie on Pull My Daisy. In 1972, however, he resumed making photographs, often using Polaroid positive-negative materials and incorporating text and multiple images. That same year he published the first of several editions of The Lines of My Hand, a book that surveyed his career in all mediums and initiated reconsiderations of his early photographic career. The first full-scale retrospective of his photographs was organised at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in 1986. In 1990, a major gift by Frank established the Robert Frank Collection at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, which has since presented two major exhibitions, each accompanied by an important book: Robert Frank: Moving Out (1994) and Looking In: Robert Frank’s “The Americans” (2009).

Press release from the Cantor Arts Center

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019) 'Beaufort, South Carolina' 1955

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019)
Beaufort, South Carolina
1955
Gelatin silver print
Cantor Arts Center Collection, Gift of Raymond B. Gary

 

Guggenheim proposal summary

“To photograph freely throughout the United States, using the miniature camera exclusively. The making of a broad, voluminous picture record of things American, past and present. This project is essentially the visual study of a civilization and will include caption notes; but it is only partly documentary in nature: one of its aims is more artistic than the word documentary implies.”

The full statement

“I am applying for a Fellowship with a very simple intention: I wish to continue, develop and widen the kind of work I already do, and have been doing for some ten years, and apply it to the American nation in general. I am submitting work that will be seen to be documentation - most broadly speaking. Work of this kind is, I believe, to be found carrying its own visual impact without much work explanation. The project I have in mind is one that will shape itself as it proceeds, and is essentially elastic. The material is there: the practice will be in the photographer’s hand, the vision in his mind. One says this with some embarrassment but one cannot do less than claim vision if one is to ask for consideration.

“The photographing of America” is a large order - read at all literally, the phrase would be an absurdity. What I have in mind, then, is observation and record of what one naturalized American finds to see in the United States that signifies the kind of civilization born here and spreading elsewhere. Incidentally, it is fair to assume that when an observant American travels abroad his eye will see freshly; and that the reverse may be true when a European eye looks at the United States. I speak of the things that are there, anywhere and everywhere - easily found, not easily selected and interpreted. A small catalog comes to the mind’s eye: a town at night, a parking lot, a supermarket, a highway, the man who owns three cars and the man who owns none, the farmer and his children, a new house and a warped clapboard house, the dictation of taste, the dream of grandeur, advertising, neon lights, the faces of the leaders and the faces of the followers, gas tanks and post offices and backyards.

The uses of my project would be sociological, historical and aesthetic. My total production will be voluminous, as is usually the case when the photographer works with miniature film. I intend to classify and annotate my work on the spot, as I proceed. Ultimately the file I shall make should be deposited in a collection such as the one in the Library of Congress. A more immediate use I have in mind is both book and magazine publication.”

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019) 'Florida' 1958

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019)
Florida
1958
Gelatin silver print
Cantor Arts Center Collection, Gift of Raymond B. Gary

 

“I am grateful to the Guggenheim Foundation for their confidence and the provisions they made for me to work freely in my medium over a protracted period. When I applied for the Guggenheim Fellowship, I wrote: “To produce an authentic contemporary document, the visual impact should be such as will nullify explanation.”

With these photographs, I have attempted to show a cross-section of the American population. My effort was to express it simply and without confusion. The view is personal and, therefore, various facets of American life and society have been ignored. The photographs were taken during 1955 and 1956; for the most part in large cities such as Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and in many other places during my Journey across the country. My book, containing these photographs, will be published in Paris by Robert Delpire, 1958.

I have been frequently accused of deliberately twisting subject matter to my point of view. Above all, I know that life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference. Opinion often consists of a kind of criticism. But criticism can come out of love. It is important to see what is invisible to others – perhaps the look of hope or the look of sadness. Also, it is always the instantaneous reaction to oneself that produces a photograph.

My photographs are not planned or composed in advance and I do not anticipate that the on-looker will share my viewpoint. However, I feel that if my photograph leaves an image on his mind – something has been accomplished.

It is a different state of affairs for me to be working on assignment for a magazine. It suggests to me the feeling of a hack writer or a commercial illustrator. Since I sense that my ideas, my mind and my eye are not creating the picture but that the editors’ minds and eyes will finally determine which of my pictures will be reproduced to suit the magazines’ purposes.

I have a genuine distrust and “mefiance” toward all group activities. Mass production of uninspired photojournalism and photography without thought becomes anonymous merchandise. The air becomes infected with the “smell” of photography. If the photographer wants to be an artist, his thoughts cannot be developed overnight at the corner drugstore.

I am not a pessimist, but looking at a contemporary picture magazine makes it difficult for me to speak about the advancement of photography, since photography today is accepted without question, and is also presumed to be understood by all – even children. I feel that only the integrity of the individual photographer can raise its level.

The work of two contemporary photographers, Bill Brandt of England and the American, Walker Evans, have influenced me. When I first looked at Walker Evans’ photographs, I thought of something Malraux wrote: “To transform destiny into awareness.” One is embarrassed to want so much for oneself. But, how else are you going to justify your failure and your effort?”

Robert Frank, U.S. Camera Annual, 1958, p. 115

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019) 'Lusk, Wyoming' 1956

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019)
Lusk, Wyoming
1956
Gelatin silver print
Cantor Arts Center Collection, Gift of Raymond B. Gary

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019) 'Main Street - Savannah, Georgia' 1955

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019)
Main Street – Savannah, Georgia
1955
Gelatin silver print
Cantor Arts Center Collection, Gift of Raymond B. Gary

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Downtown street, New Orleans' December 1935

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Downtown street, New Orleans
December 1935
Gelatin silver print

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019) 'New York City' 1949

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019)
New York City
1949
Gelatin silver print
Lent by Peter Steil

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019) 'New York City' early 1950s

 

Robert Frank (American born Switzerland, 1924-2019)
New York City
early 1950s
Gelatin silver print
Cantor Arts Center Collection, Gift of Bowen H. McCoy

 

 

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Exhibition: ‘photobooks. Spain 1905-1977’ at the Museo Nacional Centro de Art Renia Sofia, Madrid

Exhibition dates: 27th May, 2014 – 5th January, 2015

Curator: Horacio Fernández

Artists: Francesc Català-Roca, Colita (Isabel Steva Hernández), Joan Colom, Salvador Costa, Ramón Masats, Xavier Miserachs, Francisco Ontañón, José Ortiz Echagüe Puertas, Leopoldo Pomés, Alfonso Sánchez Portela

 

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'photobooks. Spain 1905-1977' at the Museo Nacional Centro de Art Renia Sofia

 

Installation photograph of the exhibition photobooks. Spain 1905-1977 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Art Renia Sofia

 

 

This is one of those eclectic exhibitions that this archive likes to promote. What a fascinating subject, something that I knew nothing about.

The posting is especially for my colleague Professor Martinez Alfredo-Exposito, Head of the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Melbourne.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to the Museo Nacional Centro de Art Renia Sofia for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'photobooks. Spain 1905-1977' at the Museo Nacional Centro de Art Renia Sofia

Installation photograph of the exhibition 'photobooks. Spain 1905-1977' at the Museo Nacional Centro de Art Renia Sofia

Installation photographs of the exhibition 'photobooks. Spain 1905-1977' at the Museo Nacional Centro de Art Renia Sofia

 

Installation photographs of the exhibition photobooks. Spain 1905-1977 at the Museo Nacional Centro de Art Renia Sofia

 

Álvaro Bartolomé (poems) and Joaquín del Palacio (Spanish, 1905-1989) (photographer) 'Momentos' 1944 Madrid: edición del autor from the exhibition 'photobooks. Spain 1905-1977' at the Museo Nacional Centro de Art Renia Sofia, Madrid, May 2014 - January 2015

 

Álvaro Bartolomé (poems) and Joaquín del Palacio (Spanish, 1905-1989) (photographer)
Momentos
1944
Madrid: edición del autor

 

Joaquín del Palacio (Kindel) was a Spanish photographer who was born in Madrid in 1905 and died in Madrid in 1989. He changed his name to Kindel to adapt to the foreign names that were starting to work in Spain and so look modern too: KIN came from Joaquín and DEL was for the beginning of his last name.

He did most of his work between 1940 and 1970. He started in 1939, taking pictures of devastated regions of Spain after the Spanish Civil War had finished. Those pictures were social and dramatic scenes according to that period of time.

Later, he began to travel around Spain working for the “Dirección General de Turismo” (General Tourism Office). He took pictures of people and landscapes of Spain in the 1950s. This was a kinder image of the reality.

He was a master of photography that was able to capture the correct natural light for each image.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Enrique Palazuelo. 'Sans Titre. Nuevas escenas matritenses' c. 1957 / posthumous print, 2013 from the exhibition 'photobooks. Spain 1905-1977' at the Museo Nacional Centro de Art Renia Sofia, Madrid, May 2014 - January 2015

 

Enrique Palazuelo
Sans Titre. Nuevas escenas matritenses
c. 1957 / posthumous print, 2013
Copia de exposición

 

Francesc Català-Roca (Valls, Tarragona, Spain, 1922 - Barcelona, Spain, 1998) 'Llegada a Barcelona' (Arriving at Barcelona) 1950 (circa) / posthumous print, 2003

 

Francesc Català-Roca (Valls, Tarragona, Spain, 1922 – Barcelona, Spain, 1998)
Llegada a Barcelona (Arriving at Barcelona)
1950 (circa) / posthumous print, 2003
Selenium-toned gelatin silver print on paper
34.8 x 47.5cm

 

Francesc Català Roca (Spain, 1922-1998)

Son of Pere Català i Pic, a pioneer of avant-garde photography in Catalonia, Francesc Català Roca is considered the master of Catalan documentary photography. Learning his trade within the family, he opened his own studio in 1947 and began making street photography for editorial assignments. Thereafter, he worked continuously producing photographs for publications such as Destino, Gaceta Ilustrada and La Vanguardia. This was to be accompanied by studio work, illustrating artists’ books in collaboration with renowned architects, sculptors and painters such as Josep M. Sert, Eduardo Chillida and Joan Miró, books about the history of Catalan art and documentary photography on the real Spain. As a neo-realist photographer, Català Roca’s took risks, looking for unusual and unconventional viewpoints, playing with the plastic strength of shadows and contrasts, and always focusing on the human element. His technical skill was matched by a great ability to relate to the people he portrayed. His photography acts as a witness to a time when the country had one foot in the hardest era of the Franco regime and the other in what is known as the period of ‘developmentalism’. Following his first solo exhibition in 1953 at Sala Caralt, Barcelona, Català Roca exhibited extensively in parallel with his activity as a book illustrator, publishing numerous titles. Retrospective exhibitions of his work include those held at the Fundació Joan Miró (2000), La Pedrera, Barcelona (2012) and the Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid (2013).

Anonymous. “Francesc Català Roca,” on the MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona website Nd [Online] Cited 23/12/2014. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

Francesc Català-Roca (Valls, Tarragona, Spain, 1922 - Barcelona, Spain, 1998) 'La Vía Layetana entre las calles Junqueras y Condal' (The Vía Layetana between Junqueras and Condal streets) 1950 / posthumous print, 2003

 

Francesc Català-Roca (Valls, Tarragona, Spain, 1922 – Barcelona, Spain, 1998)
La Vía Layetana entre las calles Junqueras y Condal (The Vía Layetana between Junqueras and Condal streets)
1950 / posthumous print, 2003
Selenium-toned gelatin silver print on paper
36.9 x 45.3cm

 

Francesc Català-Roca (Valls, Tarragona, Spain, 1922 - Barcelona, Spain, 1998) 'La Vía Layetana, Barcelona' (The Via Layetana, Barcelona) 1950 (circa) / posthumous print, 2003

 

Francesc Català-Roca (Valls, Tarragona, Spain, 1922 – Barcelona, Spain, 1998)
La Vía Layetana, Barcelona (The Via Layetana, Barcelona)
1950 (circa) / posthumous print, 2003
Selenium-toned gelatin silver print on paper

 

Francesc Català-Roca (Valls, Tarragona, Spain, 1922 - Barcelona, Spain, 1998) 'Monumento a Colón' (Columbus Monument) 1949 / posthumous print, 2003

 

Francesc Català-Roca (Valls, Tarragona, Spain, 1922 – Barcelona, Spain, 1998)
Monumento a Colón (Columbus Monument)
1949 / posthumous print, 2003
Selenium-toned gelatin silver print on paper
With frame: 114 x 88cm

 

Francesc Català-Roca. 'Calle Muntaner' (Muntaner Street) 1950 (circa) / Posthumous print, 2003

 

Francesc Català-Roca (Valls, Tarragona, Spain, 1922 – Barcelona, Spain, 1998)
Calle Muntaner (Muntaner Street)
1950 (circa) / Posthumous print, 2003
Selenium-toned gelatin silver print on paper
47.5 x 32.8cm

 

Francesc Català-Roca (Valls, Tarragona, Spain, 1922 - Barcelona, Spain, 1998) 'Las Ramblas con lluvia' (The Ramblas in the Rain) 1950 (circa) / posthumous print, 2003

 

Francesc Català-Roca (Valls, Tarragona, Spain, 1922 – Barcelona, Spain, 1998)
Las Ramblas con lluvia (The Ramblas in the Rain)
1950 (circa) / posthumous print, 2003
Selenium-toned gelatin silver print on paper
47.7 x 37.5cm

 

Francesc Català-Roca (Valls, Tarragona, Spain, 1922 - Barcelona, Spain, 1998) 'Vestíbulo de la tienda, Barcelona' (Shop Vestibule, Barcelona) 1950 (circa) / posthumous print, 2003

 

Francesc Català-Roca (Valls, Tarragona, Spain, 1922 – Barcelona, Spain, 1998)
Vestíbulo de la tienda, Barcelona (Shop Vestibule, Barcelona)
1950 (circa) / posthumous print, 2003

 

Francesc Català-Roca (Valls, Tarragona, Spain, 1922 - Barcelona, Spain, 1998) 'El hombre del saco' (The Bogeyman) 1950 (circa) / posthumous print, 2003

 

Francesc Català-Roca (Valls, Tarragona, Spain, 1922 – Barcelona, Spain, 1998)
El hombre del saco (The Bogeyman)
1950 (circa) / posthumous print, 2003
Selenium-toned gelatin silver print on paper
47.8 x 35.7cm

 

 

The exhibition photobooks. Spain 1905-1977 presents a journey through the history of the photobook in Spain, setting off at the beginning of the 20th century and ending in the mid seventies, via a selection from the Museo Reina Sofía Collection, contextualised and accompanied by an assortment of complementary material.

For a long time the aesthetic consideration of photography has been limited to individual images that are able to work in a similar way to paintings or etchings, a blueprint developed by historians and museum curators alike to assemble a canon of ‘masterpieces’ for studios or exhibitions. Yet this model is not the only one, and many photographers cannot synthesise their work in a single image, devising it instead in a series. Both models give rise to two coherent histories of photography: one comprised of photos to hang on walls, with a limited number of copies and on sale at art galleries; the other in book form, possibly with a reissue, available in bookstores. By and large, photographers prefer the last option: “pictures on walls and photos in books” (Cartier-Bresson).

A photobook is a publication made up of photographs ordered as a set of images, with plots and complex meanings, and the medium used by some of the most pre-eminent photographers to produce their greatest work; a tried-and-tested model to present, communicate and read photos. Photobooks are becoming more widely recognised as the best medium for presenting series of photographs.

As far as Spain is concerned, the history of photo books is determined by the avatars of its own national history, for instance the Civil War and the transition to democracy, the focus of some of the finest work produced. In addition to propaganda, changes to the image and social role of peasants and, above all, women, are also prominent issues that are explored. The relationship between literature and photography is another characteristic of Spanish photobooks, which also include works in closer proximity to the international history of the format, such as publications on urban matters.

The study of photobooks is leading to a reinterpretation of the history of photography in diverse countries, as well as in Spain. Along with well-known photographers (the likes of José Ortiz Echagüe, Alfonso, Francesc Català-Roca, Ramón Masats, Xavier Miserachs, Francisco Ontañón and Colita), the exhibition features a considerable number of practically unknown frontline artists who in their day actually published first-rate photography collections, as is the case with photographers like Antonio Cánovas, the collective work of Misiones Pedagógicas (Teaching Missions), José Compte, Enrique Palazuelo, Luis Acosta Moro and Salvador Costa.

Curated by Horacio Fernández, the exhibition photobooks. Spain 1905-1977 is in collaboration with Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) to present part of the line of investigation and acquisition carried out by the Museo Reina Sofía concerning photobooks. The exhibition, which coincides with the PHE2014 festival, is concluded with the publication of a catalogue raisonné, jointly published by the Museo Reina Sofía, AC/E and RM.

Text from the Museo Reina Sofía website

 

Enrique Palazuelo (photographs) and Camilo José Cela (text) 'Nuevas escenas matritenses' Madrid, Alfaguara 1965-1966

 

Enrique Palazuelo (photographs) and Camilo José Cela (text)
Nuevas escenas matritenses
Madrid, Alfaguara
1965-1966

 

Colita (photographs) and Maria Aurèlia Capmany (text) 'Antifémina' (Antifemale) Madrid, Editorial Nacional 1977

 

Colita (Spanish, 1940-2023) (photographs) and Maria Aurèlia Capmany (Spanish, 1918-1991) (text)
Antifémina (Antifemale)
Madrid, Editorial Nacional
1977

 

Maria Aurelia Capmany i Farnés (3 August 1918, in Barcelona – 2 October 1991) was a Catalan novelist, playwright and essayist. She was also a prominent feminist cultural and anti-Franco activist.

Isabel Steva i Hernández (24 August 1940 – 31 December 2023), whose pseudonym was Colita, was a Spanish photographer. She trained with Xavier Miserachs i Ribalta, and began her professional career in 1961 as a laboratory technician and stylist for Miserachs.

Initially, she demonstrated great interest in dance photography – almost always flamenco music – and later she also specialised in portraits and journalistic photography. She had numerous exhibitions with photographs of Catalan artists and singers from the Nova Cançó era to the present. She published many books. …

Colita’s work in the press was published in magazines such as Siglo XX, Destino, Fotogramas, Interviú, Boccaccio, Primera Plana and Mundo Diario.

Throughout her career, Colita put on more than forty exhibitions and published some fifty books of photographs. Stylistically, she was closer to the ideas of the Barcelona School, although she was considered an all-purpose photographer. Her work is part of the collections of the Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Colita (Isabel Steva Hernández) 'Novios gitanos. Barcelona' (Gypsy Couple. Barcelona) 1962 / later print, 2011

 

Colita (Isabel Steva Hernández) (Spanish, 1940-2023)
Novios gitanos. Barcelona (Gypsy Couple. Barcelona)
1962 / later print, 2011
Gold-toned chlorobromide print on paper
17.9 x 18cm

 

Joan Colom (Spanish, 1921-2017) 'Raval' 1958 (circa) / vintage print

 

Joan Colom (Spanish, 1921-2017)
Raval
1958 (circa) / vintage print
Gelatin silver print on paper
23.5 x 11cm

 

Joan Colom published his series on Barcelona’s Chinatown in the magazine AFAL (1962) with an autobiography: “Age: 40. Profession: Accountant. Hobbies: Apart from photography, obviously, none.” Of his method, Colom said: “I have decided to only work with subjects that I have predetermined.” Oriol Maspons adds the technical details: “Everything was taken using a Leica M2, shot from the hip without framing or focusing. A real photographer’s work. More than a year on the same subject.” The series had been exhibited with some success (and controversy) at the Sala Aixelá in Barcelona the previous year, under the title El carrer (The Street). In 1964 it was finally published by Lumen in one of the finest photo-books in their Palabra e Imagen collection, “Izas, rabizas y colipoterras”, designed by Oscar Tusquets and Cristian Cirici. Camilo José Cela contributed a text based around Colom’s (surreptitious but captionless) photos that was full of broad, cruel humour, pitilessly mocking the women, photographed by Colom and judged by Cela. Somewhat ahead of her time, one of the women actually sued the photographer, the only result of which was the photo-book’s withdrawal from bookshops, and Colom’s retirement from photography for years. From the 1980s onwards public obscurity became public recognition, which has continued to grow.

Horacio Fernández

 

Joan Colóm (Spain, 1921-2017)

Joan Colóm was born in Barcelona in 1921. Following his military service, he became accountant in a firm where he stayed until his retirement in 1986. At the age of 36 he developed a passion for photography, joined the Photographic Association of Catalonia where he learnt very fast the technical skills that helped him in his atypical career: “I discovered the Barrio Chino in 1958, I understood that it was my world. I was fascinated by its diversity and its social richness… I literally got sucked in by the human quality of these characters…”

Every week end, for more than two years, Joan Colóm explored the “Raval”* neighbourhood, the “bas-fonds” of Barcelona; by photographing without aiming the camera, he was concerned about staying discreet and breaking with the aesthetised tradition of his elders. He was very aware of what he was doing “images that touch me,” he was an impassioned witness of a social theatre. It is whilst printing that he exactly framed the image, with a constant search for truth.

Today, the “imaginaire” of urban life of the Barrio Chino is rooted in Colóm’s images… His work was praised early on by personalities such as Ramon Massats and Josep Maria Casademont who wrote in 1961: “with Joan Colóm, we are entering a new phase of our history of photography.” In these images the modernist avant garde of the fifties is interwined with the “dark” and pessimist tradition of Spain during the Franco era.

In 1964 part of his work on the Barrio Chino – the prostitutes – was published in a book that is now legendary “Izas, rabizas y colipoterras” published by Lumen in Barcelona with a text by Camilo José Cela, who received the Nobel prize for literature in 1989. The book was a great success but also the subject of a scandal: in this repressive era dominated by Franco’s regime, it was obvious that this zone of unrestrained freedom was not appreciated. In addition one of the women photographed wanted to sue Colóm, this event disgusted him and led him to give up the pursuit of his project: “these women had all my respect and there was nothing exotic about them, they were part of whole, that tried to present a neighbourhood with authenticity.”

His work has been compared to Walker Evans’s New York Subway project: the strait crude vision, the rejection of the Pictorialist aesthetic. This work for sure is close to a search for pure realist photography, comparable to Brassai in its content.

Joan Colóm returned to photography when he retired in 1986: every day he roamed the streets in pursuit of his motto: “Yo hago la calle”– “Je fais le trottoir”– a play on words that Henri Cartier-Bresson liked to use often also. Some memorable images by HCB of the Barrio Chino in the 30’s are present in everyone’s memory. Joan Colóm didn’t know these photographs when he began his project, different but animated with this same desire to show life as it is.

*The “Raval” is the real name for this district of Barcelona which is known today as the “Barrio Chino”.

Anonymous. “Joan Colóm: Les Gens du Raval,” on the Fondation Henri-Cartier Bresson website April 2006 [Online] Cited 01/06/2024. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

Joan Colom (Spanish, 1921-2017) 'No title' 1958 / vintage print

 

Joan Colom (Spanish, 1921-2017)
No Title
1958 / vintage print
From the series El carrer (The Street)
Gelatin silver print on paper
27 x 21cm

 

Joan Colom (Spanish, 1921-2017) 'No Title' 1958 / vintage print From the series 'El carrer' (The Street)

 

Joan Colom (Spanish, 1921-2017)
No Title
1958 / vintage print
From the series El carrer (The Street)
Gelatin silver print on paper
23.2 x 16.2cm

 

Joan Colom (Spanish, 1921-2017) 'No Title' 1958 / vintage print From the series 'El carrer' (The Street)

 

Joan Colom (Barcelona, Spain, 1921)
No Title
1958 / vintage print
From the series El carrer (The Street)
Gelatin silver print on paper
23.2 x 16.2cm

 

 

photobooks. Spain 1905-1977 is a history of Spanish photography through a selection of its best photobooks, many of them little known. The exhibition, organised by the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and Acción Cultural Española (AC/E), is the result of a line of acquisitions and research undertaken by the Museum’s Department of Collections with the collaboration of Horacio Fernández, curator of the exhibition.

This exhibition offers a new perspective on Spanish photography during its most important period through the work of photographers like Luis Acosta Moro, Alfonso, Jalón Ángel, Antonio Cánovas, Robert Capa, Francesc Català-Roca, Colita, Joan Colom, José Compte, Salvador Costa, Ramón Masats, Xavier Miserachs, Misiones Pedagógicas, Fernando Nuño, Francisco Ontañón, José Ortiz Echagüe, Joaquín del Palacio, Enrique Palazuelo and Leopoldo Pomés.

photobooks. Spain 1905-1977 shows works published in Spain between 1905 and 1977 – in different styles, in limited or mass editions, printed using refined techniques or on inexpensive paper, for all audiences or for minorities. They are about people, things, behaviours, and ideas. Photobooks were few and far between at the start of the twentieth century, increased in number during the war, and reached their height of development in the sixties. They subsequently grew scarce, only to make a triumphal comeback in the new century, represented in the Museum’s Library in the show Books that are Photos, Photos that are Books. Together they make up a specialised collection that is unique in its kind and embodies the Museo Reina Sofia’s commitment to all aspects of photographic images.

The works on display, most of which are little known, provide a fresh insight into Spanish photography. photobooks probes the broad and suggestive relationships between photography, publishing, design and literature, popular art and culture, history and politics, and public and private life. In the pages of these works is a plural history of the profound transformation of Spanish society. Thanks to the collective work of photographers, publishers, designers and writers, the themes presented in photobooks include the image of woman, seen from perspectives as different as the submission to patriarchal culture in the works of Cánovas and Compte and the militant feminism of Colita. Another major topic is the representation of the Spanish Civil War from both sides, with books like Madrid, which deals with the victims of the bombings during the siege of the capital, contrasting with Jalón Ángel’s portraits of soldiers on the side of the uprising. The war is followed by the sadness and harshness of the dictatorship, shown in photobooks by Joaquín del Palacio and Alfonso.

The relationship between photography and literature emerges throughout the exhibition, starting with the book by Cánovas mentioned above. From the period of the Civil War, special attention is merited by the photobooks of Antonio Machado, Miguel Hernández and Arturo Barea. In the sixties, the Lumen publishing house brought out the Palabra e Imagen (Word and Image) collection, designed by Oscar Tusquets, with extraordinary contributions by writers like Aldecoa, Cela, Delibes, Vargas Llosa and Caballero Bonald, and photographers like Masats, Maspons, Miserachs and Colita. One outstanding work in this section is Nuevas escenas matritenses (New Scenes of Madrid), with photos by Enrique Palazuelo.

Urban culture is also present in the photobooks of Alfonso, Català-Roca, Miserachs and Ontañón. Mention should be made too of the books on the end of the dictatorship by Nuño and the Diorama and Foto FAD teams, which show the gradual disappearance of the old identifying features of Spanish society under the influence of tourism and the global economy.

Apart from displaying some photographs autonomously, the show also features systems that allow visitors to view the plural content of each work exhibited, since it is in the work as a whole, as a coherent sequence of images, that the true entity of the photobook resides.

The first Spanish photobooks

“What a history painter would have painted I photographed,” wrote Antonio Cánovas of ¡Quién supiera escribir!… (If Only I Knew How to Write!…), his adaptation of a poem by Ramón de Campoamor about women’s dependence in a patriarchal world. Using actors and sets, Cánovas recreated a group of tableaux vivants or living pictures subtitled like films, which were as novel as photobooks in 1905. The photographic poem came out in two editions: one in postcards, which was a great commercial success; and a limited edition printed using the technique of the finest twentieth-century photobooks, photogravure.

José Ortiz Echagüe’s photobook Spanische Köpfe, later published as España, tipos y trajes (Spain: Types and Costumes), is the first instalment of an extensive photographic project to document folk culture by seeking out tradition. His aim was to preserve ways of life that were dying out; to show situations from the past: “In wandering through the little villages, I talk to the people, select models one by one, start the difficult task of dressing them in the typical garb.” The result was photographs that were chiefly aesthetic, close to the paintings of Sorolla or Zuloaga, but also political, as they visualised concepts (people, race, collective identity…) used by different ideologies.

With the Misiones Pedagógicas (Educational Missions), the Second Republic set out to bring urban life closer to the rural world through culture. The ‘missionaries’ were university students who took the theatre, music, art, and the cinema to villages. Some of them, such as José Val del Omar and Guillermo Fernández, photographed the audiences, capturing shots that are devoid of local character. Instead of seeking references to the past, they hint at a better future represented by the people’s curious gazes: the photographs chosen for the photobook Patronato de Misiones Pedagógicas (Educational Missions Trust) are intended to disseminate democratic values and confidence in progress.

Both sides of the Spanish Civil War

The Spanish Civil War was photogenic. Dozens of photographers engaged in documenting it. Media all over the world published images of the war, which were used by the both sides to convey their own virtues and the atrocities committed by their opponents.

The collective photobook Madrid is a visual account of the consequences of a siege: destruction, homeless people, the exodus of refugees. The effects of the bombings on the civilian population are captured in montages and photographs by Luis Lladó, Robert Capa, Hans Namuth, Chim, and Margaret Michaelis, among others. The faces of the child victims should be stressed – some appalling forensic photographs that were widely used in Republican propaganda and have been mentioned by Arturo Barea, Virginia Woolf, and Susan Sontag, among other writers.

A type of cultural propaganda characteristic of the Republican side was the publication of books combining words and pictures. Several came out during the war, among them Madrid baluarte de nuestra guerra de independencia (Madrid Bulwark of Our War of Independence), with texts by Antonio Machado; Miguel Hernández’s book of poems Viento del pueblo (Winds of the People); and Arturo Barea’s collection of stories titled Valor y miedo (Courage and Fear). All three feature photographs whose authorship is not credited, though we now know that they were taken by photographers such as Walter Reuter or designers such as Mauricio Amster.

The cult of personality was a salient feature of the Nationalist side’s propaganda. In 1939 the rebel military were presented as serious and efficient technicians in Jalón Ángel’s Forjadores de imperio (Empire Builders), a triumphal parade by no means epically portrayed and much less generous with the defeated. This collection of portraits of the men who had won a war was published in a luxury version designed to hang in public offices and in a popular version in postcard form for mass distribution.

The conservative values of the new fascist regime were conveyed in photographs. In Mujeres de la Falange (Women of the Falange, a collection of photographs by José Compte published in luxury magazines and as humble postcards) woman as mother, subordinate to man and an outsider to society and employment, was a compulsory role model, the only exception being that dictated by war itself, which required her to perform “heavy work with feminine grace for when the men return…”

The postwar years

The hardship of the postwar years is conveyed in a few photobooks that managed to slip past the censors. Literature with photos continued to be published in books such as Momentos (Moments), whose poems would be less sad without the ruins, deserted villages, and bare trees found in the photographs of Joaquín del Palacio (Kindel). Rincones del Viejo Madrid (Corners of Old Madrid), a collection of night shots by Alfonso, is an expressionist photobook printed in the opaque tones of the finest photogravure work. Alfonso portrays the capital as yet another victim – a frozen and sinister backdrop as dead as its missing inhabitants.

The book of poems titled Les fenêtres (The Windows) features many closed windows that also resemble abstract paintings in Leopoldo Pomés’s photos, which bring to mind a confined, stifling place. But in spite of everything, life carries on, as shown by the photos in Barcelona, the city of Francesc Català-Roca, who believed that “what words describe photography places on view”: images found in the street, as alive as the people in the photos, in a pleasant urban photobook.

The 60’s: the golden decade of Spanish photography

Palabra e Imagen (Word and Image) was the creation of publisher Esther Tusquets and designer Oscar Tusquets. It was advertised by the Lumen publishing house as “a collection that is different from everything that has been done so far.” Its books “are not art books, they are not photography books, they are not literary works,” but “a new concept.” They all have a theme “and the writers, the photographer and those who plan and produce the book work on it as a team.” The aim was to present “an idea” using different means: “not just words but also the photography, the composition, the type of lettering, and the colour of the paper can be used to express it.”

Palabra e Imagen was Spain’s main contribution to the history of photobooks. For fifteen years it was a laboratory for experimenting with different ways of publishing a collective work produced by writers, designers, photographers, and editors that attached equal importance to visual and textual readings – word and image.

The photographs are by Jaime Buesa, F. Català-Roca, Colita, Joan Colom, Julio Cortázar, Dick Frisell, Antonio Gálvez, Paolo Gasparini, Sergio Larrain, César Malet, Ramón Masats, Oriol Maspons, Xavier Miserachs, Francisco Ontañón, and Julio Ubiña. Prominent among the graphic designers, in addition to the collection’s creator Oscar Tusquets, are Mariona Aguirre, José Bonet, Lluís Clotet, Toni Miserachs, and Enric Satué. Finally, the authors of the texts include writers such as Rafael Alberti, Ignacio Aldecoa, Carlos Barral, Juan Benet, José María Caballero Bonald, Alejo Carpentier, Cavafis, Camilo José Cela, Julio Cortázar, Miguel Delibes, Federico García Lorca, Alfonso Grosso, Ana María Matute, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, Julián Ríos, and Mario Vargas Llosa.

Important photo-essays were published in the sixties, such as Los Sanfermines (The San Fermín Festivities) by Ramón Masats and Barcelona blanc i negre (Barcelona Black and White) by Xavier Miserachs, both of them masters of documentary photography. The first book was hailed as “the most personal photographic work that has been produced in Spain.” It is a “story told in pictures” that shows the expressive possibilities of the photobook and to what extent “a still photograph is not sufficient for a photographer who pursues a narration.” The second is a stroll through the streets of Barcelona in search of its inhabitants, and is more interested in life than in history. It is a “book to look at” that attempts a difficult combination of the subjective humanist photography of the previous decade and the new international urban photography based on the model established by William Klein, a “highly original way of hinting at cities” without succumbing to commonplaces or picturesqueness.

Also by Miserachs is Costa Brava Show, a photobook based on the mass phenomenon of tourism and featuring black-and-white photos on subjects such as young people enjoying themselves, sexual liberation, and the consequences of economic progress: chaotic town planning, corruption, and loss of authenticity. An equally critical intention underlies the photobook Vivir en Madrid (Living in Madrid), which is documentary in content and experimental in form – both the text and the pictures. Francisco Ontañón’s distant, stark photographs are kind to the common folk and critical of the privileged classes, but always humorous.

Nuevas escenas matritenses (New Scenes of Madrid) is a collection of 63 urban tales written by Camilo José Cela based on street photographs by Enrique Palazuelo that show an “incredible Madrid, where time stood still, oblivious and forgotten.” Published in several formats (from low to high culture: popular weekly and literary review; in normal and bibliophile editions), it tells stories invented from documentary photographs – a literary procedure that has been dubbed the ‘Celian picture-story.’ The photos make possible “hearing with new ears, seeing with different eyes what we believed to have been seen and heard forever.”

Luis Acosta Moro believed that the book of the future would be “a poem of short words and great pictures” of the kind embodied by his photobook Cabeza de muñeca (Doll’s Head), a symbolic work that alludes, among other themes, to the Civil War and the image of women. The publisher regarded it as a new type of book, a “film-novel-artistic essay.” The main subject is the model featured in all the pictures, sometimes dancing (or wrestling) with the photobook’s absolute author, who was responsible for everything: photographs, design, and text.

The 70’s: the last auteur photobooks

Los últimos días de Franco (The Last Days of Franco) is a photobook that is unique in both form and content: the funeral rites of the dictator. Live history is fleeting and the propaganda chiefs needed an official history capable of preserving “the living warmth of memories.” To achieve this, Fernando Nuño photographed videos. The result was a photobook consisting of television images that were second-hand but equally or more documentary than the original reports. “As they have been reproduced from video, [the photos] have the quality of a living document,” explains the book, a visual account that is completed with a second volume titled Los primeros días del Rey (The First Days of the King).

The second half of the seventies witnessed the transition to democracy, a highly politicised period in Spain. Two photobooks, Pintadas del referendum (Graffiti on the Referendum) and Pintades Pintadas (Graffiti), compile the propaganda of the day, in this case in the form of street graffiti – a subject also dealt with in French and Portuguese publications. The aim is to preserve the graffiti “as a necessary testament to and document of the vicissitudes of a people in pursuit of their future.” The authors are two short-lived groups of photographers, Equipo Diorama of Madrid and the Barcelona based Foto Fad.

The photobook Punk is pioneering in its portrayal of an international popular culture phenomenon. In Salvador Costa’s photographs taken from “close up and above the subject,” the scene is less important than the audience featured in the shots of ultramodern people, clothing, and rituals captured by the photographer, who was lucky enough to find a publisher capable of discovering more than just another short-lived fad in his photos.

Photographer Colita and writer Maria Aurèlia Capmany, collaborators on the Vindicación feminista magazine, are the authors of Antifémina (Antifemale), a photobook that set out to portray a type of woman “no one wants to look at” but who “is genuine and real, who is not twenty years old, who is not pretty.” To achieve this, Colita selected photos from her archives on themes such as old age, marriage, work, religion, prostitution, the body, marginalisation, advertising, fashion, and the practice of making flirtatious remarks at women. Antifémina is a visual and political essay, a manifesto in favour of women but against ‘femininity,’ which is always “related to the passive role of women.”

Catalogue

A catalogue on this exhibition has been published by the Museo Reina Sofía, Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) and RM. This books includes a text written by the curator and Javier Ortiz-Echagüe, photographies of all the artworks shown and complete and individual information about each photobook by different specialized authors (Horacio Fernández, Javier Ortiz-Echagüe, Concha Calvo, Rocío Robles, Mafalda Rodríguez, Angélica Soleiman and Laura Terré).

Press release from the Museo Nacional Centro de Art Renia Sofia website

 

José Ortiz Echagüe Puertas (Guadalajara, Spain, 1886 - Madrid, Spain, 1980) 'Sermón en la aldea' (Village Sermon) 1903

 

José Ortiz Echagüe Puertas (Guadalajara, Spain, 1886 – Madrid, Spain, 1980)
Sermón en la aldea (Village Sermon)
1903
Carbondir on laid paper
40.5 x 38.7cm

 

One of José Ortiz Echagüe’s objectives is to achieve “the strange feeling of travelling to a different time.” He comes very close in one of his earliest photographs, Sermón en la aldea (Village Sermon), taken at the parish church of Viguera, a village in La Rioja, using a Photosphere 9 x 12 camera. With artistic photographs, what really matters is the quality of the copies, which in this case are numerous and have varying dates. Ortiz Echagüe made them himself in a laboratory using a personal variant on the technique known as direct carbon, developed under the name of “Carbondir”: a fine pigment print method which is complicated, slow and absolutely artisanal, that results in velvety blacks and clouds of pointillist faded half-colours. The specifics of the carbon direct method mean that Ortiz Echagüe’s prints approach the quality of chalcography, one of the aspirations of less imaginative artistic photography. However, these prints get further from photography the closer they get to engravings. As early as 1923 a review was criticising the disappearance of “what there originally may have been of photography” in his prints, and the artist’s excesses as he “scraped, eliminated, rubbed, smudged, lightened and darkened it.”

Horacio Fernández

 

José Ortiz-Echagüe (Spain, 1886-1980)

José Ortiz-Echagüe (2 August 1886 in Guadalajara – 7 September 1980 in Madrid) was a Spanish entrepreneur, industrial and military engineer, pilot and photographer…

Photographic work

Ortiz-Echagüe believed strongly on the one hand that Spain must modernise itself in accordance with the spirit of the times – inter alia by founding industrial companies – but on the other hand was well aware that a broad modernisation could lead to disappearance of traditional clothing, a change in the villages and even a transformation of the landscape. He wanted at least to capture with his camera and hold this cultural heritage, before the change occurred.

Aesthetics

In the field of artistic photography, he is perhaps the most popular photographer in Spain and one of the most well known abroad. In 1935 the magazine ‘American Photography’ named him one of the top three photographers in the world, while some critics have also considered him to be one of the best Spanish photographers to date. This recognition becomes even more meritorious when it is considered that photography was a hobby to which he only devoted his spare time, especially during weekends and his various trips.

From an artistic point of view one might consider him as a representative of the generation of ’98 in photography, but he is also often included within the photographic movement of Pictorialism, being in fact the best known representative of the Spanish photographic Pictorialism, even though this late definition was never liked by Ortiz-Echagüe. His photographic work focuses on portraying the most defining characteristics of a people, their customs and their traditional costumes as well as locations. He managed to project through his pictures a personal expression which is closer to painting, often using effects during photo processing. Echagüe remained faithful throughout his life to the aesthetics and techniques of Pictorialism, including using gum bichromate and coal.

Working technique

Since 1898 when he got his first camera, he took thousands of photographs entirely in black-and-white. He exposed his negatives using a special technique similar to the carbon printing one (‘carbón fresson’) which was the mainstream practice during his youth. Soon its use would become outdated, however he followed that technique throughout his art, giving a special hue and a greater contrast result to his positives, which now makes his work easily recognisable.

Both paper-making as well as the procedure of obtaining photographs required a lot of patience, an extraordinary ability and a perfect management of that particular technique. Therefore, over the years and as photographic processes would become more simplified and automated, the few photographers still using this technique would tend to abandon it.

The sheet had a thin layer of gelatin onto which was added a black pigment and it was sensitised to light. The photographer obtained his copies under a process based on the principle that in the parts of the image receiving less light the gelatin would remain soft whereas in the parts of the image receiving more light the gelatin would become hardened. The treatment of the copy – bathing in water and sawdust – dissolved the unhardened gelatin together with the pigment onto it revealing a white zone underneath, while the hardened gelatin resisted the bathing process, trapping the pigment inside and subsequently producing black areas. In this way the image on paper was exposed. But furthermore this printed image with the paper still wet, could be retouched using brushes and cotton swabs or scrapers, giving a lot of freedom for creativity.

The ability to intervene in the outcome of a photograph, the greater richness of tones given from the pigment and its stability were the main reasons that Jose Ortiz-Echagüe used this technique. Nevertheless, this archaic method is not considered to be the strongest component in his images. Without an intriguing subject, a good composition, well directed lights on models and the correct layout of the scene, the procedure of coal placed directly to Fresson paper would give a vulgar result.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

José Ortiz Echagüe Puertas (Guadalajara, Spain, 1886 - Madrid, Spain, 1980) 'Puertas Lagarteranas' (Women of Lagartera) 1920-1923 (circa)

 

José Ortiz Echagüe Puertas (Guadalajara, Spain, 1886 – Madrid, Spain, 1980)
Puertas Lagarteranas (Women of Lagartera)
1920-1923 (circa)
Carbondir on laid paper
49.8 x 33.1cm

 

In 1929 José Ortiz Echagüe’s first photo-book came out in Berlin, Spanische Köpfe (Spanish Heads), published in Madrid in 1930 as Tipos y Trajes de España (Characters and Costumes of Spain), a title which, by 1971, would reach twelve editions. The photos needed to be set up, as the author wrote in 1925: “As I walk around the little villages, I talk to the people, I choose the models and then, one by one, I start the job of dressing them in traditional costumes. Having overcome the models’ objections to dressing up in their ancestors’ clothes, I get them together in a setting that I have chosen beforehand, which might be a typical square, the little church or a nearby hillside, from which one can see the village with its majestic castle which is included to create a wonderful backdrop. The sun has just come out, or is about to go down: its rays light the characters perfectly.” Ortiz Echagüe’s references are paintings by Ignacio Zuloaga and Joaquín Sorolla, particularly the Visión de España (Vision of Spain) series from New York’s Hispanic Society of America. Sorolla’s aim was to observe “without symbolisms or literature, the psychology of every region.” Ortiz Echagüe, on the other hand, is content to “perpetuate in graphic documents unalterable by time’s passage, all that Spanish attire has been and continues to be.” Lagartera, a village in the province of Toledo famous for its crafts, was one of his favourite places for photography, particularly with its unusual festival clothing, which the philosopher José Ortega y Gasset does not believe to be native. In the prologue to Tipos y trajes, he writes: “Lagartera attire is common to almost all Europe: with slight differences, it can be found across the whole of the central and Northern part of the continent.”

Horacio Fernández

 

José Ortiz Echagüe Puertas (Guadalajara, Spain, 1886 - Madrid, Spain, 1980) 'Lagarteranas en misa' (Women of Lagartera at Mass) 1920-1923 (circa)

 

José Ortiz Echagüe Puertas (Guadalajara, Spain, 1886 – Madrid, Spain, 1980)
Lagarteranas en misa (Women of Lagartera at Mass)
1920-1923 (circa)
Carbondir on laid paper
46.9 x 33.4cm

 

Xavier Miserachs (Barcelona, Spain, 1937 - Badalona, Barcelona, Spain, 1998) 'No Title' 1964 (circa)

 

Xavier Miserachs (Barcelona, Spain, 1937 – Badalona, Barcelona, Spain, 1998)
No Title
1964 (circa) / vintage print
From the series Costa Brava Show
Gelatin silver print on paper
21.4 x 30.3cm

 

Costa Brava Show (1966) is a photo-book by the photographer Xavier Miserachs, also the author of Barcelona. Blanc i negre (1964), another urban photo-book that travels paths opened up by William Klein. Miserachs claims that in Costa Brava Show “the incorporation of Pop Art elements is obvious, because this is an aesthetic movement that absolutely fascinated me.” And it is true that the subject matter really could not be more perfect for Pop Art: firstly, there is what Manuel Vázquez Montalbán describes as “the paradise of leisure”, secondly “the party (that) is the most baroque display of that leisure time” and finally a “peculiar eroticism”, noted by Josep Pla, who wrote introduction and claims that the photographs are “the best ever taken of what is known as the Costa Brava.” Basically, this is mass tourism as experienced and presented by Miserachs with excellent humour in 155 colour and black and white photographs, covering all the clichés and presaging the globalisation awaiting us all.

Horacio Fernández

 

Xavier Miserachs (Barcelona, Spain, 1937 - Badalona, Barcelona, Spain, 1998) 'No Title' 1965 (circa)

 

Xavier Miserachs (Barcelona, Spain, 1937 – Badalona, Barcelona, Spain, 1998)
No Title
1965 (circa) / vintage print
From the series Costa Brava Show
Gelatin silver print on paper

 

Xavier Miserachs i Ribalta (Spain, 1937-1998)

Xavier Miserachs i Ribalta (July 12, 1937 – August 14, 1998) was a Spanish photographer. He studied medicine at the University of Barcelona, but left school to be a photographer. He exhibited his work in Barcelona from 1956. His work is reminiscent of neorealism and is representative of the years of Spanish economic recovery, 1950-1960. His photographs show him as a creator of a new image of the city and its people.

Miserachs was born in Barcelona on July 12, 1937, in the middle of the Spanish Civil War. He was the son of a hematologist and a librarian, Manuel Miserachs and Montserrat Ribalta. He discovered photography at the Technical Institute of Santa Eulàlia, in Barcelona, where he met Ramon Fabregat and his brother Antonio. He studied four courses of a career in medicine, but left shortly before the end to embark on a career as a professional photographer.

In 1952, he became a member of the Photographic Association of Catalonia (Agrupació Fotogràfica de Catalunya), where he became friends with Oriol Maspons. He first exhibited at the headquarters of the Photographic Association of Catalonia in 1957, along with Ricard Terré and Ramon Masats. In 1959 they presented work together again in the Sala Aixelà of Barcelona. He began his professional career in 1959, when Xavier Busquets commissioned him to guide Picasso in his drawings of the facade of the College of Architects of Catalonia.

In 1961, after returning from military service, Miserachs wanted independence, and set up his first studio in Casa David at Carrer Tuset in Barcelona. He began photographing on request and for book authors with his work appearing in books such as Barcelona Blanc i Negre (with 400 photographs recounting the war in Barcelona) and Costa Brava Show.

During the 1960s he also served as a news reporter for Spanish magazines. In 1968 he signed an exclusive contract with the Revista Triunfo. He also published several articles in La Vanguardia, Gaceta Ilustrada, Interviú, Bazaar and Magazin. He was thus able to witness such historic events as May 68, Swinging London and Prague Spring. Miserachs engaged mainly in editorial photography but also did work doing reports.

In January 1967 he co-founded the Escola Eina, where he was one of the first professors of photography. He occasionally frequented Boccaccio’s, then the meeting place par excellence of the gauche divine [a movement of left-wing intellectuals, professionals and artists that emerged in Barcelona during the sixties and early seventies]. In 1997 he published his memoir, contact sheets, which won a Gaziel prize.

Text from the Wikipedia website

 

Xavier Miserachs (Barcelona, Spain, 1937 - Badalona, Barcelona, Spain, 1998) 'No Title' 1964 (circa)

 

Xavier Miserachs (Barcelona, Spain, 1937 – Badalona, Barcelona, Spain, 1998)
No Title
1964 (circa) / vintage print
From the series Costa Brava Show
Gelatin silver print on paper
17.9 x 21.4cm

 

Francisco Ontañón (Barcelona, Spain, 1930 - Madrid, Spain, 2008) 'La actual M-30 (Madrid)' (The M-30 Ring Road Today [Madrid]) 1963 (May) / posthumous print, 2013

 

Francisco Ontañón (Barcelona, Spain, 1930 – Madrid, Spain, 2008)
La actual M-30 (Madrid) (The M-30 Ring Road Today [Madrid])
1963 (May) / posthumous print, 2013
From the series Vivir en Madrid (Living in Madrid)
Selenium-toned chlorobromide print on fibre-based paper
24.7 x 37.1cm

 

“It has been several years since I discovered photography; Today it is a physiological necessity for me. It was what I intended; It took me a lot to prove to myself that it was an open path, with an indefinite horizon; and without these conditions I would surely have abandoned […] with my work I have discovered everything that I imagined existed in the world; and little by little I have been penetrating into life and its things […] I think I am a little in the middle of it all as a simple spectator; As a photographer I am in a privileged place. […] In addition to all this, I am also one of those who think, with modesty, that I am contributing something to life and history. Having reached this conclusion, it should be added that it is also necessary to say something; that this testimony alone as such is not enough […] photography is also a utilitarian art.”

~ Francisco Ontañón, translated from the Spanish by Google Translate

 

Francisco Ontañón (Barcelona, Spain, 1930 - Madrid, Spain, 2008) 'Sans Titre (Madrid)' (No Title [Madrid]) 1963 (May) / posthumous print, 2013

 

Francisco Ontañón (Barcelona, Spain, 1930 – Madrid, Spain, 2008)
Sans Titre (Madrid) (No Title [Madrid])
1963 (May) / posthumous print, 2013
Selenium-toned chlorobromide print on fibre-based paper
25.6 x 38.4cm

 

Francisco Ontañón (Barcelona, Spain, 1930 - Madrid, Spain, 2008) 'Sans Titre (Madrid)' (No Title [Madrid]) 1964-65 / posthumous print, 2013

 

Francisco Ontañón (Barcelona, Spain, 1930 – Madrid, Spain, 2008)
Sans Titre (Madrid) (No Title [Madrid])
1964-65 / posthumous print, 2013
From the series Vivir en Madrid (Living in Madrid)
Selenium-toned chlorobromide print on fibre-based paper
25.4 x 38.2cm

 

Francisco Ontañón (Barcelona, Spain, 1930 - Madrid, Spain, 2008) 'Sans Titre (Madrid)' (No Title [Madrid]) 1964-65 / posthumous print, 2013

 

Francisco Ontañón (Barcelona, Spain, 1930 – Madrid, Spain, 2008)
Sans Titre (Madrid) (No Title [Madrid])
1964-65 / posthumous print, 2013
From the series Vivir en Madrid (Living in Madrid)
Selenium-toned chlorobromide print on fibre-based paper
25.7 x 38.4cm

 

Francisco Ontañón (Barcelona, Spain, 1930 - Madrid, Spain, 2008) 'Sans Titre (Madrid)' (No Title [Madrid]) 1964 / posthumous print, 2013

 

Francisco Ontañón (Barcelona, Spain, 1930 – Madrid, Spain, 2008)
Sans Titre (Madrid) (No Title [Madrid])
1964 / posthumous print, 2013
From the series Vivir en Madrid (Living in Madrid)
Selenium-toned chlorobromide print on fibre-based paper
25.6 x 38.5cm

 

Francisco Ontañón (Barcelona, Spain, 1930 - Madrid, Spain, 2008) '600 en Casa de Campo con familia (Madrid)' (Outing to Casa de Campo in the 600, with Family [Madrid]) 1963 (May) / posthumous print, 2013

 

Francisco Ontañón (Barcelona, Spain, 1930 – Madrid, Spain, 2008)
600 en Casa de Campo con familia (Madrid) (Outing to Casa de Campo in the 600, with Family [Madrid])
1964-65 / posthumous print, 2013
From the series Vivir en Madrid (Living in Madrid)
Selenium-toned chlorobromide print on fibre-based paper
25.5 x 37.7cm

 

Francisco Ontañón (Barcelona, Spain, 1930 - Madrid, Spain, 2008) 'Parque Sindical (Madrid)' (Parque Sindical Sports Area [Madrid]) 1964 / posthumous print, 2013

 

Francisco Ontañón (Barcelona, Spain, 1930 – Madrid, Spain, 2008)
Parque Sindical (Madrid) (Parque Sindical Sports Area [Madrid])
1964 / posthumous print, 2013
From the series Vivir en Madrid (Living in Madrid)
Selenium-toned chlorobromide print on fibre-based paper
25.5 x 38.1cm

 

Francisco Ontañón (Barcelona, Spain, 1930 - Madrid, Spain, 2008) 'Entierro (Madrid)' (Burial [Madrid]) 1967 / posthumous print, 2013

 

Francisco Ontañón (Barcelona, Spain, 1930 – Madrid, Spain, 2008)
Entierro (Madrid) (Burial [Madrid])
1967 / posthumous print, 2013
From the series Vivir en Madrid (Living in Madrid)
Selenium-toned chlorobromide print on fibre-based paper
25.5 x 38.1cm

 

VV.AA. 'Madrid'. Barcelona, Industries Graphiques Seix i Barral, 1937

 

VV.AA.
Madrid
Barcelona, Industries Graphiques Seix i Barral
1937

 

Ramón Masats Tartera (Spanish, 1931-2024) 'Neutral corner' (Esquina neutral) 1962 / vintage print

 

Ramón Masats Tartera (Spanish, 1931-2024)
Neutral corner / Esquina neutral
1962 / vintage print

 

“Ramón Masats’ work dovetails with the end of the autarchy of the Franco regime and new policy of openness, which the photographer captured with a dynamic, unflinching language.”

“Masats, a man of few words, phlegmatic and stubborn in his convictions, coherent in his eye-heart connection, created a photographic legacy that is essential to understanding the development of graphic reporting in Spain.”

~ Chema Conesa

 

Mario Vargas Llosa (Peruvian, b. 1936) (text), Xavier Miserachs (Spanish, 1937-1988) (photographs) 'Los cachorros' Barcelona: Lumen, colección Palabra e Imagen 1967

 

Mario Vargas Llosa (Peruvian, b. 1936) (text),Xavier Miserachs (Spanish, 1937-1988) (photographs)
Los cachorros
1967
Barcelona: Lumen, colección Palabra e Imagen

 

Xavier Miserachs (Spain, 1937-1998)

Xavier Miserachs (Barcelona, 1937-1998) was one of Catalonia’s leading photographers. His career began when he joined the Agrupació Fotogràfica de Catalunya as a teenager in 1952. It was there that he met Oriol Maspons and began what would become a lifelong friendship. In 1954, aged seventeen, he won the 1st Luis Navarro Trophy at the 2nd National Salon of Modern Photography organised by the Agrupació Fotogràfica de Catalunya. That same year, he began studying medicine, although he dropped out in the last year of his studies in order to concentrate fully on photography. The first of the two now-classic exhibitions with photographs by Xavier Miserachs, Ricard Terré and Ramón Masats was held in 1957 at the Agrupació Fotogràfica de Catalunya in Barcelona, at AFAL in Almeria, and at the Real Sociedad Fotográfica in Madrid. Two years later, in 1959, the second Terré-Miserachs-Masats show was held at Sala Aixelà in Barcelona.

From then on, Miserachs became one of the driving forces behind the renewal of documentary photography in Catalonia, which picked up the thread of a tradition that had been cut short by the Spanish Civil War. Miserachs published books that have, for decades, shaped the imaginary of Barcelona and the Costa Brava. Barcelona. Blanc i negre (Avmà, 1964), Costa Brava Show (Kairós, 1966) and Los cachorros (Lumen, 1967) are two key works from the photographic avant-garde of the time. Miserachs was strongly influenced by the work of the photographer William Klein and his books on cities, particularly the first one dealing with New York, which was published in 1955. The 1955 exhibition The Family of Man also left a deep impression on Miserachs and his contemporaries, and helped to shape the neutralist poetics that showed the working classes moving towards the new urban environment. From the late sixties onwards, Miserachs expanded his professional activities to include advertising, photojournalism and editorial photography. In 1966, be began travelling around the world as correspondent for La Actualidad Española, Gaceta Ilustrada, La Vanguardia, Interviú and Triunfo. In 1969 he co-founded Eina art school and became its first photography teacher, and in 1970 he began his occasional experiments with film: he was producer and director of photography for two underground films directed by Enrique Vila-Matas and Emma Cohen, and directed and produced the short film Amén, historieta muda. In the final years of his life, Miserachs became interested in writing as a way of leaving a written record of his way of conceiving photography, and he wrote books such as Fulls de contactes. Memòries (Edicions 62, 1998) and Criterio fotográfico (Omega, 1998). His photographs are part of some of the most important collections of the photography of the period, including Fotocolectania and MACBA.

Anonymous. “Xavier Miserachs,” on the MACBA Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona website Nd [Online] Cited 23/12/2014. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

Salvador Costa (Spanish, 1948-2008) and Jordi Valls (Spanish) 'Sans Titre' (from the series 'Punk') 1977

 

Salvador Costa (Spanish, 1948-2008) and Jordi Valls (Spanish)
Sans Titre
1977
From the series Punk

 

Salvador Costa (Spain, 1948-2008)

Salvador Costa (Barcelona, 1948-2008), photographer and author of one of the seminal photo-books on the international punk phenomenon. In the spring of 1977, called by his cousin Jordi Valls, he was a direct witness to its emergence in London, attending in the span of just a few days numerous concerts held in the British capital in venues such as the Roxy, where he documented with his camera not only the performances of Cherry Vanilla, The Cortinas, Generation X, The Jam, Johnny Mopped, The Lurkers, Models, The Polices, XTC, and The Strangles, but also the audience who became the undisputed protagonists of his shots, including Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols as well just hanging out.

Back from his London foray, Costa presented the work to Juan José Fernández, who published it that same year under his label Producciones Editoriales label with the title Punk (below), the eighth publication of his Especial Star Books collection, in which there are only two dedicated to photography (the other, Disparos, bears witness to the hippie movement of the sixties).

Anonymous. “Salvador Costa,” on the Archivo Lafuente website Nd [Online] Cited 23/12/2014. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

 

Salvador Costa (Spanish, 1948-2008) and Jordi Valls (Spanish) 'Punk' Barcelona: Producciones Editoriales, colección Especial Star Book 1977

 

Salvador Costa (Spanish, 1948-2008) and Jordi Valls (Spanish)
Punk
Barcelona: Producciones Editoriales, colección Especial Star Book
1977

 

 

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Calle Santa Isabel, 52
28012 Madrid

Opening hours:
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Tuesday Closed, including holidays

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Exhibition: ‘Eyes on the Street: street photography in the 21st century’ at the Cincinnati Art Museum

Exhibition dates: 11th October, 2014 – 4th January, 2015

Artists

Olivo Barbieri (Italian; lives and works in Modena, Italy)
Philip-Lorca diCorcia (American; lives and works in New York)
Jason Evans (British; lives and works in London)
Paul Graham (British; lives and works in New York)
Mark Lewis (Canadian; lives and works in London)
Jill Magid (American; lives and works in New York)
James Nares (American; lives and works in New York)
Barbara Probst (German; lives and works in New York)
Jennifer West (American; lives and works in Los Angeles)
Michael Wolf (German; lives and works in Paris and Hong Kong)

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Eyes on the Street: street photography in the 21st century' at the Cincinnati Art Museum

 

Installation view by Rob Deslongchamps

 

 

Watching the watcher watching…

Dr Marcus Bunyan


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

 

 

“Some of the artists in ‘Eyes on the Street’ made their work at street level; others sought higher vantage points. Some sharpen our appreciation for individuals, while others underscore universal urban traits. Some work with still images, while others create films and videos. What links them, and binds them to the historical tradition of street photography, is the quality of attention they give these bustling environments. They are watchful. What distinguishes them from the twentieth-century street-photography tradition, however, is that these artists are also acutely conscious of the active roles cameras play in making urban public places today. They know they are part of a greater system of watching.”


Brian Sholis, Associate Curator of Photography, Cincinnati Art Museum

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Eyes on the Street: street photography in the 21st century' at the Cincinnati Art Museum

 

Installation view by Rob Deslongchamps

 

Barbara Probst (German, b. 1964) 'Exposure #106: N.Y.C., Broome & Crosby Streets, 04.17.13, 2:29 p.m.' 2013 from the exhibition 'Eyes on the Street: street photography in the 21st century' at the Cincinnati Art Museum, October 2014 - January 2015

 

Barbara Probst (German, b. 1964)
Exposure #106: N.Y.C., Broome & Crosby Streets, 04.17.13, 2:29 p.m.
2013
Ultrachrome ink on cotton paper in twelve parts
Each 29 x 44 inches
Courtesy of the artist and Murray Guy, New York

 

On January 7, 2000, Barbara Probst first deployed a photographic technique that has become her signature and which she is still fruitfully exploring. On that night she used a remote-control device to synchronise the shutters of twelve cameras, creating as many perspectives on the same scene. In that work, and the more than one hundred that have followed, Probst dissects the photographic moment. Take, for example, the twelve-panel Exposure #106, exhibited here, which combines colour and black-and-white film, multiple photographic genres, staged and unscripted elements, and a patchwork of vantage points. One can’t help but “read” these individual images sequentially, creating a false sense of narrative momentum from a collection of pictures taken in the same instant. One likewise builds, as Probst has called it, a “sculpture in the mind” by piecing together a three-dimensional scene from two-dimensional fragments. The process is never perfect, underscoring, as does all of Probst’s work, the incompleteness and partiality of any photograph.

“Probst forcefully deconstructs the notion of photographic truth, not by specifically questioning that photographic truth but merely by pointing out its necessary incompleteness.

~ Jens Erdman Rasmussen, Dutch curator.

 

Jason Evans (Welsh, b. 1968) 'Untitled,' from the series "NYLPT," 2008 from the exhibition 'Eyes on the Street: street photography in the 21st century' at the Cincinnati Art Museum, October 2014 - January 2015

 

Jason Evans (Welsh, b. 1968)
Untitled from the series NYLPT
2008
Gelatin silver print
24 x 24 inches
Courtesy of the photographer

 

Jason Evans is a street photographer who, in his words, simply likes to “walk around and look at things, follow people, and get lost.” The series exhibited here, NYLPT, was made between 2005 and 2012 in New York, London, Paris, and Tokyo. Evans would expose a roll of 35-mm black-and-white film in one of these cities, then rewind and set aside the roll until his travels brought him to another. There, he would reload the film and re-expose the frames, doing so up to five times without knowing what the results would look like. Sometimes a fragment of language or familiar landmark reveals where part of the picture was made. More often, however, the textures, shapes, and surreal combinations of built environments come together to connote urbanness as a category of experience. Aware that people consume images in myriad ways, Evans not only developed the photographs in a darkroom, but also worked closely with a book publisher and digital programmers to create versions of the series specific to different mediums.

 

Olivo Barbieri (Italian, b. 1954) 'site specific_ISTANBUL #4' 2011

 

Olivo Barbieri (Italian, b. 1954)
site specific_Istanbul #4
2011
Archival pigment print
45 x 61 inches
Courtesy of the artist and Yancey Richardson Gallery, New York

 

Between 2003 and 2013, the Italian artist Olivo Barbieri photographed more than forty of the world’s cities from low-flying helicopters. Fascinated by the expanding megalopolises, Barbieri sought a new visual language to present their shifting forms. He hit upon the idea of using a tilt-shift lens – normally used to correct the apparent convergence of parallel lines in pictures of buildings – to render sections of his images out of focus. By also slightly overexposing the photographs, Barbieri created a diorama-like effect; the people and places he captured seemed to inhabit miniature worlds. His pictures contained enormous amounts of information yet placed some of it tantalisingly out of focus.

This visual effect became so popular that Barbieri sought other ways to push photography’s language in response to the cities that inspired him. In recent years he has adopted a wide array of digital post-production techniques to modify his images, all in service of representing the dizzying state of cities today.

“Captivated by a vision of the twenty-first-century city as a kind of site-specific installation – temporary, malleable, and constantly in flux – [Barbieri] sought a photographic corollary for the radical mutations of urban form that he saw taking place.”

~ Christopher S. Phillips, curator

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Eyes on the Street: street photography in the 21st century' at the Cincinnati Art Museum

 

Installation view by Rob Deslongchamps

 

 

Cameras are an integral part of our lives, and the Cincinnati Art Museum’s new exhibition, Eyes on the Street, on view Oct. 11, 2014 – Jan. 4, 2015, examines how they can be used in public spaces. Through a collection of photographs, films and videos by 10 internationally renowned artists – most of whom have never previously exhibited in Cincinnati – the exhibition reimagines street photography and reveals how cameras shape perceptions of cities. Eyes on the Street is the Art Museum’s contribution to the region-wide FotoFocus festival and is a celebration of street photography in the twenty-first century.

“Street photography is a perennial subject of museum exhibitions, but by emphasising the role cameras’ technical capabilities play in making these artworks, I hope to broaden our understanding of the genre,” said Brian Sholis, associate curator of photography. “At the same time, it’s important to recognise that we are not merely subject to faceless surveillance, but can use cameras to amplify the invigorating aspects of city life.”

Eyes on the Street reimagines the genre of street photography and demonstrates how cameras shape our perceptions of cities. It features ten internationally renowned artists who work in photography, film, and video, each of whom deliberatively uses the camera’s technical capabilities to reveal new aspects of the urban environment. Through high-speed and high-definition lenses, multiple or simultaneous exposures, “impossible” film shots, and appropriated surveillance-camera footage, these artists breathe new life into the genre and remind us that urban public places are sites of creative and imaginative encounters.

The exhibition title comes from influential urban theorist Jane Jacobs, who wrote, in her classic treatise The Death and Life of Great American Cities, of “eyes on the street” being crucial to urban neighbourhoods’ vitality – and their ability to accommodate different people and activities. Today, discussion of cameras in public spaces often revolves around surveillance tactics or battles over first-amendment rights. Eyes on the Street reflects the diversity of urban experience and shows us how cameras can help us comprehend the complex urban environment.

The show includes artworks made in New York, San Francisco, Paris, Beirut, Tokyo, Istanbul, and elsewhere by artists who have exhibited widely and have received numerous grants, fellowships, and prizes. Most have never before exhibited in the Cincinnati area.

Press release from the Cincinnati Art Museum

 

Philip-Lorca diCorcia (American, b. 1951) 'Head #23' 2001

 

Philip-Lorca diCorcia (American, b. 1951)
Head #23
2001
Fujicolor Crystal Archive print
48 x 60 inches
Courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner, New York/London

 

To make the photographs exhibited in Eyes on the Street, Philip-Lorca diCorcia affixed a powerful strobe flash to construction scaffolding above a sidewalk in Times Square. He placed his camera some distance away, so as to remain unnoticed, and photographed unwitting strangers bathed in a halo of light. This outdoor “studio” married control and chance, isolating people from their busy surroundings. Their pensive faces reveal complex interior lives it would be easy to miss if we passed them on a busy street.

The resulting series, Heads, comprises a few dozen photographs chosen from the thousands that diCorcia made between 1999 and 2001. Erno Nussenzweig, the subject of Head #13, discovered the photograph of him in 2005. He sued the photographer for using his image without permission. The case went to the New York Court of Appeals, where judges ruled that diCorcia’s images qualify as art, not as advertising, thereby exempting him from privacy protections afforded by law. The case has become an important precedent for artists who wish to take pictures in public places.

 

Jill Magid (American, b. 1973) 'Control Room' 2004

 

Jill Magid (American, b. 1973)
Control Room
2004
Still from a two-channel digital video, ten minutes
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Yvon Lambert, Paris

 

For more than a decade artist Jill Magid has deliberately worked with institutions of authority to create videos, books, installations, and other artworks. For a series made in Liverpool in 2004, Magid spent thirty-one days in the English port city – the length of time footage from its Citywatch surveillance system is stored. Wearing a red trench coat, she aimed “to use the CCTV system as a film crew, to act as the protagonist, and to be saved in [its] evidence locker.”

During the project she developed relationships with the camera operators. In the video Trust, Magid closes her eyes and allows a CCTV operator to verbally guide her safely through the city’s busy streets. She has described the interaction as one of the most intimate she has experienced, and wrote the Subject Access Request Forms, used to obtain the footage, in the form of love letters. As she later said, “Only by being watched, and influencing how I was watched, could I touch the system and become vulnerable to it.”

 

Installation view of James Nares's film 'Street' in the exhibition 'Eyes on the Street: street photography in the 21st century' at the Cincinnati Art Museum

 

Installation view of James Nares’s film Street. Photo by Rob Deslongchamps.

 

 

James Nares Street

James Nares moved to New York during the 1970s and joined the experimental music and art scenes as a filmmaker, painter, sculptor, musician, and performer. Today he is perhaps best known for his beautiful abstract paintings, but he has made still- and moving-image work throughout his career. His 2012 film STREET has drawn renewed attention to his work with cameras. STREET uses the remarkable clarity offered by a high-speed, high-definition camera to mesmerising effect. Shot from the window of a car, “the camera is moving in one line at a constant speed,” he has said. “I take small fragments of time and extend them. […] I just wanted to see the drama in small things that happen all the time, everywhere, the little dramas that become big along the way.”

STREET is an unscripted 61-minute high definition video filmed by artist James Nares over one week in September 2011. The final video is a mesmerising experiment in the nuance and beauty of everyday people and people-watching; providing a global view that extends beyond the streets of New York where it was filmed: from Battery Park to the furthest reaches of Upper Broadway, and West Side to East Side in Nares’ personal homage to actualité films. In Nares’ words, “I wanted the film to be about people. All it needed were magical moments, and there are enough of those happening every moment of any given day.”

The scenes are drawn from more than sixteen hours of material and accompanied by a guitar soundtrack performed by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth.

 

Eyes on the Street

Brian Sholis

Associate Curator of Photography
Cincinnati Art Museum


The title of this exhibition comes from the architecture writer and urban activist Jane Jacobs, who, in her classic 1961 treatise The Death and Life of Great American Cities, wrote of eyes on the street being crucial to the vitality of urban neighbourhoods, in particular their ability to accommodate different people and activities. She was celebrating her Greenwich Village neighbours, “allies whose eyes help us natives keep the peace of the street,” the “lucky possessors of a city order that makes it relatively simple to keep the peace.” She was quick to add, “there is nothing simple about that order itself, or the bewildering number of components that go into it.” Fifty years later the elements that make urban life vibrant and challenging are even greater in number, and the omnipresence of cameras is one of the greatest changes to the ways we manage a city’s order. Today, discussion of cameras in public places often concentrates on issues of surveillance, personal privacy, and first-amendment rights. As the writer Tom Vanderbilt asked in a 2002 essay that touches on Jacobs’s legacy, “Why is a police surveillance camera on a public street any more intrusive than a patrolman stationed on the corner? […] The real question in all of this is motive, not means: who’s doing the watching, and for what purpose?” The artworks brought together in Eyes on the Street offer ways to think about the social, political, legal, and architectural implications of these questions.

The photographs, films, and videos exhibited here also offer ways to reimagine the genre of street photography, which art historians typically associate with Jacobs’s mid-twentieth-century era. At the time she was drafting the ideas quoted above, photographers like Robert Frank, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Garry Winogrand prowled Western cities, 35-mm cameras in hand, taking pictures of the daily sidewalk ballet. They worked tirelessly, often photographing rapidly and without introducing themselves to their subjects, whom they corralled into rectangular compositions that expressed some of the dynamism of the passing parade. By contrast, the artists in Eyes on the Street, all working in the twenty-first century, respond to the changed conditions of the city in part by using more deliberative strategies to capture their subjects. They recognise the pervasive influence of cameras on the urban environment by employing their own cameras’ special capabilities to show things our eyes may not see or our minds might not notice. For photographers working half a century ago, the lens was a natural extension of their hands and a relatively simple conduit of their artistic sensibilities. The artists in Eyes on the Street work more self-consciously to disclose the forces conditioning the urban environment and to acknowledge cameras’ active role in that process. In so doing, they create stunning still- and moving-image artworks that show us such places as New York, Shanghai, Beirut, Paris, Chicago, and Istanbul as we’ve never seen them before.

Faces in the Crowd

Writing more than a century ago, German sociologist Georg Simmel diagnosed the mental life of people living in rapidly modernising cities, suggesting that our psychological survival depended upon separating ourselves from the many stimulations of the urban environment. The influence of Simmel’s thinking upon the social sciences has been profound, but scholars today increasingly identify an inversion of his theory as true: for the survival of the metropolis, we must overcome narrow individualism to empathise with others who share it with us. However, one’s capacity to relate to others is necessarily limited, and this cosmopolitan ethics can be difficult to maintain. James Nares’s 2012 film Street uses the remarkable clarity offered by a high-speed, high-definition camera to offset the potentially numbing effect of so many encounters. By slowing down his footage of New York sidewalks, taken from the window of a car moving thirty miles per hour, Nares isolates small vignettes unspooling on the sidewalk. Peoples’ movements are picked out in fine detail, their individual gestures and expressions heightened into a slow-motion monumentality. A similar effect characterises the photographs in Philip-Lorca diCorcia’s series Heads (1999-2001). To make these works, diCorcia, affixed a flash strobe to construction scaffolding on a sidewalk in Times Square. Placing his camera far enough away to be unnoticed, he pre-focused his lens on the spot illuminated by the flash and captured unwitting strangers bathed in a halo of light. His improvised outdoor studio married control and chance, isolating people from their busy surroundings and catching them in moments of inwardness. Their pensive faces reveal complex interior lives it would be all too easy to ignore should we be strolling past them. The quality of attention afforded by Nares and diCorcia’s cameras results in the humanism of their work and grants the dignity we can read in these faces. As the critic Ken Johnson observed of Street, what results is an update of “Walt Whitman’s poetic embrace of humanity. The camera gazes at all with the same equanimity and finds each person, in his or her own way, dignified, loveable, and even beautiful.”

In his series NYLPT, photographer Jason Evans reverses this penchant for individuation. The acronym stands for “New York London Paris Tokyo.” Working over a period of eight years, Evans would expose a roll of 35-mm black-and-white film in one of these cities, then rewind and set aside the roll until his travels brought him to another. There, he would reload the film and re-expose the frames, sometimes doing so up to five times without knowing what the results would look like. As he has said, “The ‘decisive moment’ was no longer out there waiting to be hunted down,” as with traditional street photography. Instead, “it had moved behind the lens, onto the film plane.” Sometimes a fragment of language or familiar landmark reveals where part of the picture was made. More often, however, the textures, shapes, and surreal combinations of built environments come together to connote urbanness as a category of experience.

 

Jennifer West (American, b. 1966) Still from 'One Mile Film' 2012

 

Jennifer West (American, b. 1966)
One Mile Film (5,280 feet of 35mm film negative and print taped to the mile-long High Line walk way in New York City for 17 hours on Thursday, September 13th, 2012 with 11,500 visitors – the visitors walked, wrote, jogged, signed, drew, touched, danced, parkoured, sanded, keyed, melted popsicles, spit, scratched, stomped, left shoe prints of all kinds and put gum on the filmstrip – it was driven on by baby stroller and trash can wheels and was traced by art students – people wrote messages on the film and drew animations, etched signs, symbols and words into the film emulsion lines drawn down much of the filmstrip by visitors and Jwest with highlighters and markers – the walk way surfaces of concrete, train track steel, wood, metal gratings and fountain water impressed into the film; filmed images shot by Peter West – filmed Parkour performances by Thomas Dolan and Vertical Jimenez – running on rooftops by Deb Berman and Jwest – film taped, rolled and explained on the High Line by art students and volunteers)
2012
Still from 35-mm film transferred to high-definition video
Commissioned and produced by Friends of the High Line and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation
Courtesy of the artist and Marc Foxx, Los Angeles

 

Jennifer West is resolutely experimental in her approach to film, and is known in particular for the ways she treats her film stock: submerging it in seawater, bathing it in chemicals, or exposing it to different types of radiation, usually to psychedelic effect. Her One Mile Film … (2012), commissioned by and for the High Line, an elevated park in New York, documents free-running practitioners – athletes who explore environments without limitations of movement – climbing, jumping, and exploring the park and its environs. Here, though, her “treatment” is an alternative method of recording people in this public space. Once she had completed filming, West affixed her film stock to the High Line’s footpaths, inviting park visitors – some 11,500 of them – to walk on, roll over, draw on, and otherwise imprint their presence upon her work. The finished film appears semi-abstract but is in fact a trace of the people who passed through that particular place on that September 2012 day, like the rubbings people make of manholes and headstones.

 

Michael Wolf (German, 1954-2019) 'Night #20' 2007

 

Michael Wolf (German, 1954-2019)
Night #20
2007
Digital c-print
48 x 60 inches
Courtesy of the artist and Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York

 

The number of both people and buildings tucked into Hong Kong’s small landmass inspired Michael Wolf to express the verticality and compactness of that unique place. His series Architecture of Density emphasises the repetition inherent to most large-scale construction by zeroing in on building facades and eliminating the ground, the sky, and all other elements that might reveal the picture’s scale. The residential towers seem to stretch on forever; the only variation comes from small human elements, such as laundry hung out to dry. The buildings depicted in the series Transparent City, made in 2007 and 2008 in Chicago, are not quite as close together, and Wolf subsequently created looser compositions. He likewise took advantage of a 300-mm lens and the buildings’ glass curtain-wall construction to peer through the windows at the life inside. “I became acutely aware of being a voyeur,” Wolf said.

 

Mark Lewis (Canadian, b. 1958) Still from 'Beirut' 2011

 

Mark Lewis (Canadian, b. 1958)
Beirut
2011
Still from a high-definition video, 8 minutes 11 seconds
Courtesy of the artist and Daniel Faria Gallery, Toronto

 

In his short films, Mark Lewis repeatedly isolates the fundamental gestures of cinema, exaggerating a zoom or a tracking shot to reveal the constructedness of a seemingly natural scene. Without sacrificing beauty or mystery, Lewis’s meticulously planned works uncover the kinds of artifice that big-budget popular movies aim to conceal. In his eight-minute film Beirut (2011), Lewis crafts a Steadicam shot to explore the multiple cultures and tangled histories represented on a Lebanese street. In a remarkable single take, the camera rounds a corner, proceeds down the street, then lifts magically into the air, floating above roofline to situate these histories in the larger urban fabric. And the end of this short film reminds us of the life that continues around us even as we focus only at street level.

 

 

Cincinnati Art Museum
953 Eden Park Drive
Cincinnati, Ohio 45202
Phone: (513) 721-ARTS (2787)

Opening hours:
Open Tuesday – Sunday 11am – 5pm
Closed Mondays

Cincinnati Art Museum website

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Exhibition: ‘War from the Victims’ Perspective, Photographs by Jean Mohr’ at the Moscow Manege, Moscow

Exhibition dates: 11th November – 14th December, 2014

An exhibition produced by the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, and the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Curator: Jean Mohr

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'Greek children, Strovolos camp planned for 1,600 people, Cyprus, 1974' from the exhibition 'War from the Victims' Perspective, Photographs by Jean Mohr' at the Moscow Manege, November - December, 2014

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
Greek children, Strovolos camp planned for 1,600 people, Cyprus, 1974
1974
© Jean Mohr, Musée de l’Elysée

 

 

It’s always the women and children that suffer.

Marcus


Many thanxk to the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne and the Moscow Manege for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'Bullet-holes in a façade, Cyprus, 1974' from the Victims' Perspective, Photographs by Jean Mohr' at the Moscow Manege, November - December, 2014

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
Bullet-holes in a façade, Cyprus, 1974
1974
© Jean Mohr, Musée de l’Elysée

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'Palestinian refugees camp, Gaza, 1979'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
Palestinian refugees camp, Gaza, 1979
1979
© Jean Mohr, Musée de l’Elysée

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'Portrait of a Greek refugee, Larnaca, Cyprus, 1976'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
Portrait of a Greek refugee, Larnaca, Cyprus, 1976
1976
© Jean Mohr, Musée de l’Elysée

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'Young Mozambican refugee, Nyimba camp, Zambia, 1968'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
Young Mozambican refugee, Nyimba camp, Zambia, 1968
1968
© UNHCR / J. Mohr

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'Young Mozambican refugee who gave birth at the Lundo clinic, Tanzania, 1968'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
Young Mozambican refugee who gave birth at the Lundo clinic, Tanzania, 1968
1968
© HCR/J.Mohr

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'School, Kyangwali camp, Uganda, 1968'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
School, Kyangwali camp, Uganda, 1968
1968
© Jean Mohr, Musée de l’Elysée

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'A camp of 300 tents for 1,400 refugees, Lefkaritis, near Lamaca, Cyprus, 1974'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
A camp of 300 tents for 1,400 refugees, Lefkaritis, near Lamaca, Cyprus, 1974
1974
© HCR/J.Mohr

 

 

War from the Victims’ Perspective, Photographs by Jean Mohr

 

 

Early on, Jean Mohr sought to understand and explain the drama of civilians trapped in belligerent situations. His reportages are the result of decades of experience, which saw a ICRC and UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) delegate transform himself into a full-time photographer, after a spell at an academy of painting.

More than 80 exhibitions worldwide have been dedicated to his work, including two at the Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne that holds his collection. In 1978, at Photokina (Frankfurt’s major Photography Fair), Jean Mohr was awarded the prize for the photographer who had most consistently served the cause of human rights. He is one of the best representatives of humanist photography, masterfully balancing sensitivity and rigour, emotion and reflection, art and documentary evidence.

The exhibition addresses the issues of victims of conflicts, refugees and communities suffering from war and still under potential threat. It focuses on the emblematic cases of Palestine, Cyprus, and Africa. Other examples illustrate the universal problems of populations directly or indirectly enduring repercussions of war (in Iran, Pakistan, Nicaragua…).

Palestine, its refugee camps, precarious sanitary conditions, and the Gaza stalemate, whilst being the subject of major media attention, is a case worthy of reconsideration. It needs to be regularly re-explained and repositioned in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict. The case of Cyprus serves as a reminder that the refugee problem still remains an issue for certain members of the European Union. Several hundreds of thousands of people were forced into exile. Africa too needed to be addressed, as the post-colonial conflicts forced millions into displacement. The fragility of these States, outlined as they are by inherited colonial borders, regularly fuels turmoil which leads to humanitarian crises. The refugee problem is present throughout the continent.

Focussing upon these three geographical regions presents the problem of war victims in an historical setting classified by theme: “Portraits of Exile”, “The Children’s Diaspora”, “Temporary Landscapes”, and “Life Goes On”. These photographs render a face to the casualties and retrace the steps of their displacement, from their settlement in the precariousness of the camps and reception centres to their attempts to adapt to an enduring situation.

Portraits of Exile

Featuring portraits of refugees from different countries and cultures, the first section gives a human face to the impact of conflict.

Temporary Landscapes

The second section deals with the impact that war has on people’s homes. The photos document the displacement process and the precarious settlement of victims in camps, reception centres, mosques and shanty towns.

The Children’s Diaspora

Featuring images that capture the day-to-day lives of war’s youngest victims, this section reveals the gamut of situations faced by child refugees, as well as the many and diverse activities they engage in. Some photos show children attending a medical centre or clinic, while others show them playing, dancing or in class at a temporary school.

Life Goes On

The final section documents how people adapt to temporary situations that stretch out indefinitely. The images illustrate how important the distribution of food and clothing is, as well as documenting efforts to ensure that refugees can continue their schooling and education. This section includes the iconic image of a young Mozambican refugee and her newborn baby in a clinic in Lundo, Tanzania.

Press release from the Musée de l’Elysée

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'A few days after the Six-Day War, an Israeli officer considers an ICRC proposal, under the gaze of a Palestinian boy, Kalandia village between Jerusalem and Ramallah, 1967'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
A few days after the Six-Day War, an Israeli officer considers an ICRC proposal, under the gaze of a Palestinian boy, Kalandia village between Jerusalem and Ramallah, 1967
1967
© ICRC / Mohr, Jean

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'A needs assessment visit to stricken families, Khan Yunis, Gaza, 2002'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
A needs assessment visit to stricken families, Khan Yunis, Gaza, 2002
2002
© ICRC/MOHR, Jean

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'A needs assessment visit to stricken families, Khan Yunis, Gaza, 2002'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
A needs assessment visit to stricken families, Khan Yunis, Gaza, 2002
2002
© ICRC/MOHR, Jean

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'A young Mozambican refugee, Muhukuru clinic, Tanzania, 1968'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
A young Mozambican refugee, Muhukuru clinic, Tanzania, 1968
1968
© HCR/J.Mohr

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'Young Greek refugee, Cyprus, 1976'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
Young Greek refugee, Cyprus, 1976
1976
© Jean Mohr, Musée de l’Elysée

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'Kurdish refugees waiting for a food distribution, Qatr camp, Mahabad, Iran, 1991'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
Kurdish refugees waiting for a food distribution, Qatr camp, Mahabad, Iran, 1991
1991
© ICRC/Mohr, Jean

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'The photographed photographer, Jerusalem, 1979'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
The photographed photographer, Jerusalem, 1979
1979
© Jean Mohr, Musée de l’Elysée

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018) 'Mozambican refugee at Sunday mass, Lundo installation area, Tanzania, 1968 The photographed photographer, Jerusalem, 1979'

 

Jean Mohr (Swiss, 1925-2018)
Mozambican refugee at Sunday mass, Lundo installation area, Tanzania, 1968
1968
© UNHCR / J. Mohr

 

 

Moscow Manege
Manezhnaya ploschad (Manege Square), 1
Moscow 125009

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday 12.00 – 22.00
Closed Monday

Moscow Manege website

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Exhibition: ‘Walker Evans. A Life’s Work’ at Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin

Exhibition dates: 25th July – 9th November, 2014

Curator: James Crump

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Young Women Outside Clothing Store' 1934-1935 from the exhibition 'Walker Evans. A Life's Work' at Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin, July - November, 2014

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Young Women Outside Clothing Store
1934-1935
114 x 184mm
Lunn Gallery Stamp (1975)
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

End of the week. Not a lot of energy or time to write an in depth piece on the wonders of Walker Evans, so just a few observations…

I like this photographer, I like him a lot. No histrionics, little subjectivity being thrown at the audience. The images are -just -so. The compositions are seemingly simple but are actually very complex. Only a skilled craftsman can make the difficult look simple. As Thomas Struth has said of his photography: ‘for me it is more interesting to try and find out something from the real than to throw something subjective in front of the audience.’

“The uninflected image gives no hints as to how it is to be interpreted, and the viewer is led to linger over what might otherwise seem an un-noteworthy, everyday vista.” It’s recognising that vista in the first place for what it is, and what else it can be, so that it ‘gives pause’ to the viewer.

I really like the portrait of Berenice Abbott and it is also very educational. Look at the depth of field, with the view camera probably one stop past wide open. The sharpness plane is very tiny but look at the quality of the lens and how it renders the values that are slightly out of focus. What a very beautiful image and I suspect a top drawer lens. Notice also it is print 22. Walker Evans would keep a lot of prints and they were not the same. The next copy of this print might have been better (he might have worked out something to do) or it might be worse – the developer might have gone off. So it is not strictly an “edition” it is just the numbering of the prints he made.

He used every sort of camera: 8 x 10 and the smaller view formats, roll film cameras, Colour polaroid! hence the different sizes of his prints. Occasionally he did crop his images but on other occasions he took “a stance” where you knew he was about to perform and there would be no cropping. If you are really interested in this master photographer, the best Walker Evans book to get is First and Last (1978, available cheaply as a hardback on Amazon) which contains many pictures and “threads” that are dynamite… and the John Szarkowski book Walker Evans (1972) is a good one as well.

Dr Marcus Bunyan


Many thankx to Martin-Gropius-Bau for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Fulton Market, New York' 1934

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Fulton Market, New York
1934
Gelatin silver print
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Roadside Gas Station with Miners' Houses Across Street, Lewisburg, Alabama' 1935

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Roadside Gas Station with Miners’ Houses Across Street, Lewisburg, Alabama
1935
Gelatin silver print
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Two Women' Frenchquarter, New Orleans, February - March 1935 from the exhibition 'Walker Evans. A Life's Work' at Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin, July - November, 2014

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Two Women
Frenchquarter, New Orleans, February – March 1935
155 x 219mm
Lunn Gallery Stamp (1975)
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Girl In French Quarter' New Orleans, February - March 1935

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Girl In French Quarter
New Orleans, February – March 1935
117 x 178mm
Lunn Gallery Stamp (1975)
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Crowd In Public Square' 1930s

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Crowd In Public Square
1930s
143 x 248mm
Lunn Gallery Stamp (1975)
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Man Posing for Picture in front of Wooden House' 1936

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Man Posing for Picture in front of Wooden House
1936
Collection of Clark and Joan Worswick
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Berenice Abbott' 1929-1930

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Berenice Abbott
1929-1930
Gelatin silver print
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

Walker Evans (1903-1975) was one of the great personalities of 20th century photography, being an exponent of what is called the “documentary style”. His work, which spans a period of over fifty years, will be represented by well over 200 original prints from the years 1928 to 1974, taken mostly from the considerable private collection of Clark and Joan Worswick, but also from various German collections.

For decades, right up to the present, the prolific photographic oeuvre of Walker Evans has acquired an increasingly model character. In the half century of his creative activity the photographer documented in sober documentary fashion a uniquely authentic picture of America, and like no other before him showed a particular feel for both the everyday and the subtle – the American Vernacular – creating a sense of identity and historic significance.

Visitors follow both Evans’ biography and the changing face of America, from the Great Depression to the onset of stability and business as usual: early impressions of the 1920s from the New York neighbourhood he lived in; portraits of his friends and fellow artists which give some indication of the ramified cultural ambience he inhabited; specimens of 19th century architecture that have blended into the evolving cultural life about them; picture cycles from Tahiti and Cuba; images of African sculptures and masks commissioned by the New York Museum of Modern Art; and numerous photographs taken in the 1930s in the rural south of the USA, which contrast starkly with the lifestyles of those who may be seen promenading in the fashionable streets of cities like New York.

In addition to street scenes, American monuments and shop window displays far from the world of “big business”, examples of his significant subway photographs are to be seen, taken with a hidden camera. We also see interiors whose modest appointments tell of the life of those who live in them, pictures that inevitably recall Evans’ remark that “I do like to suggest people by absence”. Evans’ predilection for typography, advertising and mass-produced articles give rise to strangely fascinating shots which seem to anticipate the soon-to-emerge Pop Art and its assemblages.

While the exhibition shows icons in the history of photography, it also highlights some of the photographer’s lesser known motifs dating from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. These include works done for Fortune, the magazine founded by Henry Luce in 1930; pictures taken on trips to London from 1945 onwards for the periodical Architectural Forum; or during stays at Robert Frank’s Nova Scotia house in the late 1960s.

Text from the Martin-Gropius-Bau website

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Greek Revival House with Half-Lunette Window in Full-Façade Gable, Cherry Valley, New York' November 1931

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Greek Revival House with Half-Lunette Window in Full-Façade Gable, Cherry Valley, New York
November 1931
Collection of Clark and Joan Worswick
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Façade of House with Large Numbers' Denver, Colorado, August 1967

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Façade of House with Large Numbers
Denver, Colorado, August 1967
Collection of Clark and Joan Worswick
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Interior View of Heliker/Lahotan House' Walpole, Maine, 1962

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Interior View of Heliker/Lahotan House
Walpole, Maine, 1962
Collection of Clark and Joan Worswick
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Interior View of Robert Frank’s House' Nova Scotia, 1969-1971

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Interior View of Robert Frank’s House
Nova Scotia, 1969-1971
Collection of Clark and Joan Worswick
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Robert Frank' Nova Scotia, 1969-1971

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Robert Frank
Nova Scotia, 1969-1971
Collection of Clark and Joan Worswick
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Barn' Nova Scotia, 1969-1971


 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Barn
Nova Scotia, 1969-1971
Collection of Clark and Joan Worswick
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) 'Pabst Blue Ribbon Sign' Chicago, Illinois, 1946

 

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Pabst Blue Ribbon Sign
Chicago, Illinois, 1946
Collection of Clark and Joan Worswick
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

 

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Review: ‘Minor White: Manifestations of the Spirit’ at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Exhibition dates: 8th July – 19th October, 2014

Curator: Paul Martineau is associate curator in the Department of Photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum.

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Vicinity of Rochester, New York' 1954 from the exhibition 'Minor White: Manifestations of the Spirit' at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, July - October, 2014

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Vicinity of Rochester, New York
1954
Gelatin silver print
18.4 x 23.2cm (7 1/4 x 9 1/8 in.)
Promised gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

 

Never the objective camera, always a mixture of spirit and emotion

Minor White and Eugène Atget. Eugène Atget and Minor White. These two photographers were my heroes when I first started studying photography in the early 1990s. They remain so today. Nothing anyone can say can take away from the sheer simple pleasure of really looking at photographs by these two icons of the art form.

I have waited six years to do a posting on the work of Minor White, and this exhibition is the first major retrospective of White’s work since 1989. This posting contains thirty seven images, one of the biggest collections of his photographs available on the web.

What drew me to his work all those years ago? I think it was his clarity of vision that so enthralled me, that showed me what is possible – with previsualisation, clear seeing, feeling and thinking – when exposing a photograph. And that exposing is really an exposing of the Self.

Developing the concept of Steiglitz’s ‘equivalents’ (where a photograph can stand for an/other state of being), White “sought to access, and have connection to, fundamental truths… Studying Zen Buddhism, Gurdjieff and astrology, White believed in the photographs’ connection to the subject he was photographing and the subject’s connection back via the camera to the photographer forming a holistic circle. When, in meditation, this connection was open he would then expose the negative in the camera hopeful of a “revelation” of spirit in the subsequent photograph.” (MB) The capturing of these liminal moments in the flux of time and space is such a rare occurrence that one must be patient for the sublime to reveal itself, if only for a fraction of a second.

Although I cannot view this exhibition, I have seen the checklist of all the works in the exhibition. The selection is solid enough covering all the major periods in White’s long career. The book is also solid enough BUT BOTH EXHIBITION AND BOOK ARE NOT WHAT WE REALLY WANT TO SEE!

At first, Minor White photographed for the individual image – and then when he had a body of work together he would form a sequence. He seemed to be able to switch off the sequence idea until he felt “a storm was brewing” and his finished prints could be placed in another context. It was only with the later sequences that he photographed with a sequence in mind (of course there is also the glorious fold-out in The Eye That Shapes that is the Totemic sequence that is more a short session that became a sequence). In his maturity Minor White composed in sequences of images, like music, with the rise and fall of tonality and range, the juxtaposition of one image next to another, the juxtaposition of twenty or more images together to form compound meanings within a body of work. This is what we really need to see and are waiting to see: an exhibition and book titled: THE SEQUENCES OF MINOR WHITE. I hope in my lifetime! **

How can you really judge his work without understanding the very form that he wanted the work to be seen in? We can access individual images and seek to understand and feel them, but in MW their meaning remains contingent upon their relationship to the images that surround them, the ice/fire frisson of that space between images that guides the tensions and relations to each other. Using my knowledge as an artist and musician, I have sequenced the first seven images in this posting just to give you an idea of what a sequence of associations may look like using the photographs of Minor White. I hope he would be happy with my selection. I hope I have made them sing.

Other than a superb range of tones (for example, in Pavilion, New York 1957 between the flowers in shadow and sun – like an elegy to Edward Weston and the nautilus shell / pepper in the tin) the size, contrast, lighter/darker – warmer/cooler elements of MW’s photographs are all superb. These are the first things we look at when we technically critique prints from these simple criteria, and there aren’t many that pass. But these are all well made images by MW. He was never Diogenes with a camera, never the objective camera, he was always involved… and his images were printed with a mixture of spirit and emotion. Now, try and FEEL your response to the first seven images that I have put together. Don’t be too analytical, just try, with clear, peaceful mind and still body, to enter into the space of those images, to let them take you away to a place that we rarely allow ourselves to visit, a place that is is out of our normal realm of existence. It is possible, everything is possible. If photography becomes something else -then it does -then it does.

Finally, I want to address the review of the book by Blake Andrews on the photo-eye blog website (Blake Andrews. “Book Review: Manifestations of the Spirit,” on the photo-eye blog website October 6, 2014 [Online] Cited 26/06/2021). The opening statement opines: “Is photography in crisis again? Well then, it must be time for another Minor White retrospective.” What a thrown away line. As can be seen from the extract of an interview with MW (published 1977, below), White didn’t care what direction photography took because he could do nothing about it. He just accepted it for what it is and moved with it. He was not distressed at the direction of contemporary photography because it was all grist to the mill. To say that when photography is in crisis (it’s always in crisis!) you wheel out the work of Minor White to bring it back into line is just ridiculous… photography is -what it is, -what it is.

Blake continues, “Minor White was a jack-of-all-styles in the photo world, trying his hand at just about everything at one time or another. The plates in the book give a flavour of his shifting – some might say dilettantish – photo styles.” Obviously he agrees with this assessment otherwise he would not have put it in. I do not. Almost every artist in the world goes on a journey of discovery to find their voice, their metier, and that early experimentation is part of the overall journey, the personal and universal narrative that an artist pictures. Look at the early paintings of Jackson Pollock or Mark Rothko in their representational ease, or the early photographs of Aaron Siskind and how they progress from social documentary to abstract expressionism. The same with MW. In this sense every artist is a dilettante. Every photograph is part of his journey as an artist and has value in an of itself.

And I don’t believe that his mature voice was “internalised, messy, and deliberately obtuse,” – it is only so to those that do not understand what he sought to achieve through his images, those who don’t really understand his work.

Blake comments, “Twenty-five years later White’s star is rising again. One could speculate the reasons for the timing, that photography is in crisis, or at least adrift, and in need of a guru. But the truth is photography has been on the therapist’s couch since day one, going through this or that level of doubt or identity crisis. Is it an art? Science? Documentation? Can it be trusted? When Minor White came along none of these questions had been resolved, and they never will. But every quarter century or so it sure feels good to hang your philosopher’s hat on something solid. Or at least someone self-assured.”

Every quarter of a century, hang your philosophers hat on something solid? Or at least someone self-assured? The last thing that you would say about MW was that the was self-assured (his battles with depression, homosexuality, God, and the aftermath of his experiences during the Second World War); and the last thing that you would say about the philosophy and photographs of MW is that they are something solid and immovable.

For me, the man and his images are always moving, always in a constant state of flux, as avant-garde (in the sense of their accessing of the eternal) and as challenging and essential as they ever were. Through his work and writings Minor White – facilitator, enabler – allowed the viewer to become an active participant in an aesthetic experience that alters reality, creating an über reality (if you like), one whose aesthetics promotes an interrogation of both ourselves and the world in which we live.

“There are plays written on the simplest themes which in themselves are not interesting. But they are permeated by the eternal and he who feels this quality in them perceives that they are written for all eternity.” ~ Constantin Stanislavsky, (1863-1938) / My Life in Art.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

 

**The Minor White Archive at Princeton University Museum of Art has a project called The Minor White Archive proof cards: “The ultimate goal of this project is a stand-alone website dedicated to the Minor White Archive, and the completely scanned proof cards represent significant progress to this end. The website will be an authoritative source for the titles and dates of White’s photographs. All of the scanned proof cards will be available on the website so that users can search the primary source information as well as major published titles. Additionally, the website will include White’s major published sequences, with additional sequences uploaded gradually until the complete set is online. Eventually, the hope is to have subject-term browsing available, adding another access point to the Archive.”

Sarah Moore. “The Minor White Archive proof cards,” on the Princeton University Art Museum website 2014 [Online] Cited 26/06/2021


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.

 

 

“Self-discovery through a camera? I am scared to look for fear of discovering how shallow my Self is! I will persist however … because the camera has its eye on the exterior world. Camera will lead my constant introspection back into the world. So camerawork will save my life.”

“When you try to photograph something for what it is, you have to go out of yourself, out of your way, to understand the object, its facts and essence. When you photograph things for what ‘Else’ they are, the object goes out of its way to understand you.”


Minor White

 

 

When Paul Martineau, an associate curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum, in Los Angeles, was collecting photographs for a new retrospective of Minor White’s photography, he discovered an album called The Temptation of Saint Anthony Is Mirrors. Only two copies of the volume were produced, each containing thirty-two images of Tom Murphy, Minor’s student and model. “It’s a visual love letter: he only created two, one given to Tom and one for him,” Martineau told me.

Martineau’s show, Minor White: Manifestations of the Spirit, is the first major retrospective of White’s work since 1989. White was born in Minneapolis, in 1908, took photographs for the Works Progress Administration during the nineteen-thirties, and served in the Army during the Second World War. He kept company with Ansel Adams, Alfred Steiglitz, and Edward Steichen, and, in 1952, he helped found the influential photography magazine Aperture. Martineau said that, while the Getty retrospective “comes at a time when life is rife with visual imagery, most of it designed to capture our attention momentarily and communicate a simple message,” White aimed to more durably express “our relationships with one another, with the natural world, with the infinite.” White believed that all of his photographs were self-portraits; as Martineau put it, “he pushed himself to live what he called a life in photography.”

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Stony Brook State Park, New York' 1960 from the exhibition 'Minor White: Manifestations of the Spirit' at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, July - October, 2014

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Stony Brook State Park, New York
1960
Gelatin silver print
30.5 x 24.1cm (12 x 9 1/2 in.)
Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) '72 N. Union Street, Rochester, New York' 1960Minor White. '72 N. Union Street, Rochester, New York' 1960

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
72 N. Union Street, Rochester, New York
1960
Gelatin silver print
30.5 x 24.1cm (12 x 9 1/2 in.)
Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'The Sound of One Hand Clapping, Pultneyville, New York' 1957

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
The Sound of One Hand Clapping, Pultneyville, New York
1957
Gelatin silver print
24.4 x 25.1cm (9 5/8 x 9 7/8 in.)
Purchased in part with funds provided by Daniel Greenberg, Susan Steinhauser, and the Greenberg Foundation
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Haags Alley, Rochester, New York' 1960

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Haags Alley, Rochester, New York
1960
Gelatin silver print
30.5 x 24.1cm (12 x 9 1/2 in.)
Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Tom Murphy, San Francisco, California' 1948

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Tom Murphy, San Francisco, California
1948
Gelatin silver print
12.5 x 10cm (4 15/16 x 3 15/16 in.)
The Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum, bequest of Minor White
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) '72 N. Union Street, Rochester, New York' 1958

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
72 N. Union Street, Rochester, New York
1958
Gelatin silver print
26.7 x 29.2cm (10 1/2 x 11 1/2 in.)
Promised gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

 

Controversial, misunderstood, and sometimes overlooked, Minor White (American 1908-1976) pursued a life in photography with great energy and ultimately extended the expressive possibilities of the medium. A tireless worker, White’s long career as a photographer, teacher, editor, curator, and critic was highly influential and remains central to understanding the history of photographic modernism. Minor White: Manifestations of the Spirit, on view July 8 – October 19, 2014 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Getty Center is the first major retrospective of his work since 1989.

The exhibition includes never-before-seen photographs from the artist’s archive at Princeton University, recent Getty Museum acquisitions, a significant group of loans from the collection of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser, alongside loans from the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Portland Art Museum, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Also featured is White’s masterly photographic sequence Sound of One Hand (1965).

“Minor White had a profound impact on his many students, colleagues, and the photographers who considered him a true innovator, making this retrospective of his work long overdue” says Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum. “The exhibition brings together a number of loans from private and public collections, and offers a rare opportunity to see some of his greatest work alongside unseen photographs from his extensive archive.”

One of White’s goals was to photograph objects not only for what they are but also for what they may suggest, and his pictures teem with symbolic and metaphorical allusions. White was a closeted homosexual, and his sexual desire for men was a source of turmoil and frustration. He confided his feelings in the journal he kept throughout his life and sought comfort in a variety of Western and Eastern religious practices. This search for spiritual transcendence continually influenced his artistic philosophy.

Early Career, 1937-1945

In 1937, White relocated from Minneapolis, where he was born and educated, to Portland, Oregon. Determined to become a photographer, he read all the photography books he could get his hands on and joined the Oregon Camera Club to gain access to their darkroom. Within five years, he was offered his first solo exhibition at the Portland Art Museum (1942). White’s early work exhibits his nascent spiritual awakening while exploring the natural magnificence of Oregon. His Cabbage Hill, Oregon (Grande Ronde Valley) (1941) uses a split-rail fence and a coil of barbed wire to demonstrate the hard physical labor required to live off the land as well as the redemption of humankind through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.

During World War II, White served in Army Intelligence in the South Pacific. Upon discharge, rather than return to Oregon, he spent the winter in New York City. There, he studied art history with Meyer Shapiro at Columbia University, museum work with Beaumont Newhall at the Museum of Modern Art, and creative thought in photography with photographer, gallerist, and critic Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946).

Midcareer, 1946-1964

In 1946, famed photographer Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984) invited White to teach photography at the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA) in San Francisco. The following year, White established himself as head of the program and developed new methods for training students. His own work during this period began to shift toward the metaphorical with the creation of images charged with symbolism and a critical aspect known as “equivalence,” meaning an image may serve as an idea or emotional state beyond the subject pictured. In 1952, White co-founded the seminal photography journal Aperture and was its editor until 1975.

In 1953, White accepted a job as an assistant curator at the George Eastman House (GEH) in Rochester, New York, where he organised exhibitions and edited GEH’s magazine Image. Coinciding with his move east was an intensification of his study of Christian mysticism, Zen Buddhism, and the I Ching. In 1955, he began teaching a class in photojournalism at the Rochester Institute of Technology and shortly after began to accept one or two live-in students to work on a variety of projects that were alternately practical and spiritually enriching. During the late 1950s and continuing until the mid-1960s, White traveled the United States during the summers, making his own photographs and organising photographic workshops in various cities across the country.

By the late 1950s, at the height of his career, White pushed himself to do the impossible – to make the invisible world of the spirit visible through photography. White’s masterpiece – and the summation of his persistent search for a way to communicate ecstasy – is the sequence Sound of One Hand, so named after the Zen koan which asks “What is the sound of one hand clapping?”

“White’s sequences are meant to be viewed from left to right, preferably in a state of relaxation and heightened awareness,” says Paul Martineau, associate curator of photographs at the J. Paul Getty Museum and curator of the exhibition. “White called on the viewer to be an active participant in experiencing the varied moods and associations that come from moving from one photograph to the next.”

Late Career, 1965-1976

In 1965, White was appointed professor of creative photography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he developed an ambitious program in photographic education. As he aged, he became increasingly concerned with his legacy, and began working on his first monograph, Mirrors Messages Manifestations, which was published by Aperture in 1969. The following year, White was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, and he was the subject of a major traveling retrospective organised by the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1971.

Beginning in the late 1960s and continuing until the early 1970s, White organised a series of groundbreaking thematic exhibitions at MIT – the first of which served as a springboard for forming the university’s photographs collection. In 1976, White died of heart failure and bequeathed his home to the Aperture Foundation and his photographic archive of more than fifteen thousand objects to Princeton University. The exhibition also includes work by two of White’s students, each celebrated photographers in their own right, Paul Caponigro (American, 1932-2024) and Carl Chiarenza (American, born 1935).

“An important aspect of Minor White’s legacy was his influence on the next generation of photographers,” says Martineau. “Over the course of a career that lasted nearly four decades, he managed to maintain personal and professional connections with hundreds of young photographers – an impressive feat for a man dedicated to the continued exploration of photography’s possibilities.

Press release from the J. Paul Getty Museum website

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Navarro River, California' 1947

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Navarro River, California
1947
Gelatin silver print
35.6 x 45.7cm (14 x 18 in.)
Lent by Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Nude Foot, San Francisco, California' Negative, 1947; print, 1975

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Nude Foot, San Francisco, California
Negative, 1947; print, 1975
Gelatin silver print
22.9 x 30.5cm (9 x 12 in.)
Promised gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Pavilion, New York' 1957

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Pavilion, New York
1957
Gelatin silver print
22.5 x 29.5cm (8 7/8 x 11 5/8 in.)
Purchased in part with funds provided by Daniel Greenberg, Susan Steinhauser, and the Greenberg Foundation
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Cabbage Hill, Oregon (Grande Ronde Valley)' 1941

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Cabbage Hill, Oregon (Grande Ronde Valley)
1941
Gelatin silver print
18 x 22.9cm (7 1/16 x 9 in.)
The Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum, bequest of Minor White
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Self-Portrait, West Bloomfield, New York' 1957

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Self-Portrait, West Bloomfield, New York
1957
Gelatin silver print
17.8 x 20.6cm (7 x 8 1/8 in.)
The Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum, bequest of Minor White
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

 

Interview with Minor White

Q. How would you like to see photography develop?

A. It makes absolutely no difference what I want it to do. It’s going to do what it’s going to do. All I can do is stand back and observe it.

Q. What don’t you want it to do?

A. That doesn’t make any difference either, It’ll do that whether I want it to or not!

Q. Surely, you’ve got to have some feelings?

A. In one sense I don’t care what photography does at all. I can just watch it do it. I can control my photography, I can do what I want with it – a little. If I can get into  contact  with something much wiser than myself , and it says get out of photography, maybe I would. I hesitate to say this because I know its going to be misunderstood. I’ll put I this way – I’m trying to be in contact with my Creator when I photograph. I know perfectly well its not possible to do this all the time, but there can be moments.

Q. Do you see anything in contemporary photography that distresses you?

A. What ever they do is fine.

Q. Is there any work that you are particularly interested in?

A. What ever my students are doing.

Q. There seems to be a passing on of certain sets of ideas and understandings. Do you feel yourself to be an inheritor of a set of ideas or ideals?

A. Naturally. After all I have two parents, so I inherited some thing. I’ve had many spiritual fathers for example. The photographers who I have been influenced by for example. There have been many other external influences. Students have had an influence. In a sense that’s an inheritance. After a while we work with material that comes to us and it becomes ours, we digest it. It becomes energy and food for us, its ours. And then I can pass it on to somebody else with a sense of responsibility and validity. I am quoting it in my words, it has become mine and that person will take it from me – just as I have taken it from people who have influenced me. Take what you can use, digest it, make it yours, and then transmit it to your children or your students.

Q. It’s a cycle?

A. No, it’s a continuous line. Not a cycle at all.


Interview by Paul Hill and Thomas Cooper of Minor White, published in 3 parts in the January, February and March editions of Camera 1977.

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Point Lobos, California' 1948

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Point Lobos, California
1948
Gelatin silver print
16.8 x 19.5cm (6 5/8 x 7 11/16 in.)
The Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum, bequest of Minor White
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'San Francisco, California' 1949

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
San Francisco, California
1949
Gelatin silver print
18.5 x 18.7cm (7 5/16 x 7 3/8 in.)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Vicinity of Dansville, New York' Negative, 1955; print, 1975

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Vicinity of Dansville, New York
Negative, 1955; print, 1975
Gelatin silver print
22.9 x 30.5cm (9 x 12 in.)
Promised gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) Images in the bound sequence 'The Temptation of Saint Anthony Is Mirrors'

 

(top)

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Images 9 and 10 in the bound sequence The Temptation of Saint Anthony Is Mirrors
1948
Gelatin silver prints
9.3 x 11.8cm; 11.2 x 9.1cm
The Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum, bequest of Minor White
© Trustees of Princeton University

(bottom)

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Images 27 and 28 in the bound sequence The Temptation of Saint Anthony Is Mirrors
1948
Gelatin silver prints
5.3 x 11.6cm; 10.6 x 8.9cm
The Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum, bequest of Minor White
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Rochester, New York' 1963

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Rochester, New York
1963
Gelatin silver print
9.2 x 7.3cm (3 5/8 x 2 7/8 in.)
Promised gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

 

Minor White: Manifestations of the Spirit book

Controversial, eccentric, and sometimes overlooked, Minor White (1908-1976) is one of the great photographers of the twentieth century, whose ideas and philosophies about the medium of photography have exerted a powerful influence on a generation of practitioners and still resonate today. Born and raised in Minneapolis, his photographic career began in 1938 in Portland, Oregon with assignments as a “creative photographer” for the Oregon Art Project, an outgrowth of the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

After serving in World War II as a military intelligence officer, White studied art history at Columbia University in New York. It was during this period that White’s focus started to shift toward the metaphorical. He began to create images charged with symbolism and a critical aspect called “equivalency,” which referred to the invisible spiritual energy present in a photograph made visible to the viewer and was inspired by the work of Alfred Stieglitz. White’s belief in the spiritual and metaphysical qualities in photography, and in the camera as a tool for self-discovery, was crucial to his oeuvre.

Minor White: Manifestations of the Spirit (Getty Publications, 2014) gathers together for the first time a diverse selection of more than 160 images made by Minor White over five decades, including some never published before. Accompanying the photographs is an in-depth critical essay by Paul Martineau entitled “‘My Heart Laid Bare’: Photography, Transformation, and Transcendence,” which includes particularly insightful quotations from his journals, which he kept for more than forty years.

The result is an engaging narrative that weaves through the main threads of White’s work and life – his growth and tireless experimentation as an artist; his intense mentorship of his students; his relationships with Edward Weston, Alfred Stieglitz, and Ansel Adams, who had a profound influence on his work; and his labor of love as cofounder and editor of Aperture magazine from 1952 until 1976. The book also addresses White’s life-long spiritual search and ongoing struggle with his own sexuality and self-doubt, in response to which he sought comfort in a variety of religious practices that influenced his continually metamorphosing artistic philosophy.

Published here in its entirety for the first time is White’s stunning series The Temptation of Anthony Is Mirrors, consisting of 32 photographs of White’s student and model Tom Murphy made in 1947 and 1948 in San Francisco. White’s photographs of Murphy’s hands and feet are interspersed within a larger group of portraits and nude figure studies. White kept the series secret for years as at the time he made the photographs it was illegal to publish or show images with male frontal nudity. Anyone making such images would be assumed to be homosexual and outed at a time when this invariably meant losing gainful employment.

Other works shown in this rich collection are White’s early images of the city of Portland that depict his experimentations with different styles and nascent spiritual awakening; his photographs of the urban streets of San Francisco where he lived for a time; his elegant images of rocks, sandy beaches and tidal pools in Point Lobos State Park in Northern California that are an homage to Edward Weston; and the series The Sound of One Hand made in the vicinity of Rochester, New York where he also taught classes at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and curated shows at the George Eastman House (GEH). Paul Martineau describes this iconic series as “White’s chef d’oeuvre, the work that is the summation of his persistent search or a way to communicate ecstasy.” Among the eleven images in the Getty collection are Windowsill Daydreaming, Rochester, Night Icicle, 72 N. Union Street, Rochester, and Pavilion, New York.

Text from the J. Paul Getty Museum

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) '"Something Died Here," San Francisco, California' 1947

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
“Something Died Here,” San Francisco, California
1947
Gelatin silver print
22.8 x 17.5cm (9 x 6 7/8 in.)
The Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum, bequest of Minor White
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Dodd Building, Portland, Oregon' c. 1939

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Dodd Building, Portland, Oregon
c. 1939
Gelatin silver print
34.3 x 26.7cm (13 1/2 x 10 1/2 in.)
Fine Arts Program, Public Buildings Service, U.S. General Services Administration

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'San Mateo County, California / Leonard Nelson, Vicinity of Stinson Beach, Marin County, California, November 1947' 1947

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
San Mateo County, California / Leonard Nelson, Vicinity of Stinson Beach, Marin County, California, November 1947
1947
Gelatin silver print
30.5 x 50.8cm (12 x 20 in.)
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Ralph M. Parsons Fund
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton UniversityArt Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Lily Pads and Pike, Portland, Oregon' c. 1939

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Lily Pads and Pike, Portland, Oregon
c. 1939
Gelatin silver print
34 x 26.8cm (13 3/8 x 10 9/16 in.)
Fine Arts Program, Public Buildings Service, U.S. General Services

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Design (Cable and Chain), Portland, Oregon' c. 1940

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Design (Cable and Chain), Portland, Oregon
c. 1940
Gelatin silver print
33.8 x 25.8cm (13 5/16 x 10 3/16 in.)
Fine Arts Program, Public Buildings Service, U.S. General Services Administration

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Peeled Paint, Rochester, New York' 1959

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Peeled Paint, Rochester, New York
1959
Gelatin silver print
31.1 x 22.9cm (12 1/4 x 9 in.)
Promised gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Empty Head, 72 N. Union Street, Rochester, New York' 1962

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Empty Head, 72 N. Union Street, Rochester, New York
1962
Gelatin silver print
30 x 23cm (11 13/16 x 9 1/16 in.)
Purchased in part with funds provided by Daniel Greenberg, Susan Steinhauser, and the Greenberg Foundation
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Burned Mirror, Rochester, New York' 1959

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Burned Mirror, Rochester, New York
1959
Gelatin silver print
30.5 x 22cm (12 x 8 11/16 in.)
Purchased in part with funds provided by Daniel Greenberg, Susan Steinhauser, and the Greenberg Foundation
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Essence of Boat, Lanesville, Massachusetts' 1967

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Essence of Boat, Lanesville, Massachusetts
1967
Gelatin silver print
31.8 x 23.8cm (12 1/2 x 9 3/8 in.)
Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Ivy, Portland, Oregon' Negative,1964; print, 1975

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Ivy, Portland, Oregon
Negative,1964; print, 1975
Gelatin silver print
22.9 x 30.5cm (9 x 12 in.)
Promised gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) '72 N. Union Street, Rochester, New York' 1960

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
72 N. Union Street, Rochester, New York
1960
Gelatin silver print
30.5 x 24.1cm (12 x 9 1/2 in.)
Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Moencopi Strata, Capitol Reef National Park, Utah' 1962

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Moencopi Strata, Capitol Reef National Park, Utah
1962
Gelatin silver print
32.7 x 24.1cm (12 7/8 x 9 1/2 in.)
Promised gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Windowsill Daydreaming, Rochester, New York' 1958

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Windowsill Daydreaming, Rochester, New York
1958
Gelatin silver print
24.4 x 25.1cm (9 5/8 x 9 7/8 in.)
Purchased in part with funds provided by Daniel Greenberg, Susan Steinhauser, and the Greenberg Foundation
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Notom, Utah' 1963

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Notom, Utah
1963
Gelatin silver print
39.4 x 31.1cm (15 1/2 x 12 1/4 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Gloucester, Massachusetts' 1973

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Gloucester, Massachusetts
1973
Gelatin silver print
21.6 x 29.2cm (8 1/2 x 11 1/2 in.)
Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Batavia, New York' 1958

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Batavia, New York
1958
Gelatin silver print
34 x 20.3cm (13 3/8 x 8 in.)
Purchased in part with funds provided by Daniel Greenberg, Susan Steinhauser, and the Greenberg Foundation
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Night Icicle, 72 N. Union Street, Rochester, New York' 1959

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Night Icicle, 72 N. Union Street, Rochester, New York
1959
Gelatin silver print
30.5 x 23cm (12 x 9 1/16 in.)
Purchased in part with funds provided by Daniel Greenberg, Susan Steinhauser, and the Greenberg Foundation
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) '203 Park Ave., Arlington, Massachusetts' 1966

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
203 Park Ave., Arlington, Massachusetts
1966
Gelatin silver print
34.3 x 12.7cm (13 1/2 x 5 in.)
Promised gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Easter Sunday, Stony Brook State Park, New York' 1963

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Easter Sunday, Stony Brook State Park, New York
1963
Gelatin silver print
23.7 x 9.2cm (9 5/16 x 3 5/8 in.)
Promised gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976) 'Mission District, San Francisco, California' 1949

 

Minor White (American, 1908-1976)
Mission District, San Francisco, California
1949
Gelatin silver print
33.8 x 9.5cm (13 5/16 x 3 3/4 in.)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase
Reproduced with permission of the Minor White Archive, Princeton University Art Museum
© Trustees of Princeton University

 

 

The J. Paul Getty Museum
1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, California 90049

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Friday, Sunday 10am – 5.30pm
Saturday 10am – 8pm
Monday Closed

The J. Paul Getty Museum website

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Exhibition: ‘Playgrounds. Reinventing the square’ at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid

Exhibition dates: 29th April – 22nd September, 2014

Curatorship: Manuel J. Borja-Villel, Tamara Díaz y Teresa Velázquez

Artists: Vito Acconci, Efrén Álvarez , Erich Andrés, Karel Appel, Archigram, Archizoom, Ricardo Baroja, Bernardo Bertolucci, Lina Bo Bardi; André Vainer and Marcelo Ferraz. Photography: Paquito, André Breton, Hans Bruggeman, Caja Lúdica, Camping Producciones, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Tranquillo Casiraghi, Mariana Castillo Deball, Francesc Català-Roca, Mario Cattaneo, Agustí Centelles, Chto Delat?, Julieta Colomer, Joan Colom, Constant (Constant Nieuwenhuys), Waldemar Cordeiro, Corneille, Violette Cornelius, Margit Czenki, Guy Debord, Maya Deren, Disobedience Archive. Curator: Marco Scotini, Ed van der Elsken , James Ensor, El equipo de Mazzanti (Giancarlo Mazzanti, Carlos Medellín, Stanley Schultz, Juliana Zambrano, Eugenia Concha, Lucia Lanzoni and Mariana Bravo), Escuela de Valparaíso, Marcelo Expósito, Aldo van Eyck, Kattia García Fayat, Priscila Fernandes, Ángel Ferrant, José A. Figueroa, Robert Filliou, Peter Fischli, Peter Friedl, Alberto Giacometti, John Goldblatt, Francisco de Goya, GRAV (Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel), Grupo Contrafilé, Eric Hobsbawm, Lady Allen of Hurtwood, Internationale Situationniste, Cor Jaring, Kindel (Joaquín del Palacio), Henri Lefebvre, Fernand Léger, Helen Levitt, Liverani, L.S. Lowry, Maruja Mallo (Ana María Gómez González), Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky), Melchor María Mercado, Boris Mikhailov, Masato Nakagawa, Beaumont Newhall, Palle Nielsen , Isamu Noguchi , Nils Norman, Nudo (Eduardo Marín and Vladimir Llaguno), Hélio Oiticica, OMA / Rem Koolhaas, Cas Oorthuys, Amédée Ozenfant, Martin Parr, Jan H Peeterse, Erik Petersen, Adrian Piper, Cedric Price, Ab Pruis, Edgar Reitz and Alexander Kluge, Oliver Ressler, Jorge Ribalta, Xavier Ribas, Marcos L. Rosa, Emilio Rosenstein (Emil Vedin), Roberto Rossellini, Otto Salemon, Louis Sciarli, Alison y Peter Smithson, Kenneth Snelson, José Solana (José Gutiérrez Solana), Carl Theodor Sørensen, Humphrey Spender, Christensen Tage, Túlio Tavares (comp.), Teatro Ojo, Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Steven Izenour, Jean Vigo, Nuria Vila, Dmitry Vilensky, Pedro Vizcaíno, Peter Watkins, Weegee (Arthur H. Fellig), David Weiss


Many thankx to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

Installation view of the exhibition 'Playgrounds. Reinventing the square' at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid

Installation view of the exhibition 'Playgrounds. Reinventing the square' at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid

Installation view of the exhibition 'Playgrounds. Reinventing the square' at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid

Installation view of the exhibition 'Playgrounds. Reinventing the square' at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid

Installation view of the exhibition 'Playgrounds. Reinventing the square' at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid

Installation view of the exhibition 'Playgrounds. Reinventing the square' at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid

Installation view of the exhibition 'Playgrounds. Reinventing the square' at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid

Installation view of the exhibition 'Playgrounds. Reinventing the square' at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid

 

Installation views of the exhibition Playgrounds. Reinventing the square at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid

 

 

Through a selection of works from different time periods and in different mediums (paintings, sculptures, installations, videos, photographs, archive devices…), this exhibition analyses the socialising, transgressive and political potential of play when it appears linked to public space. The premise of Playgrounds is twofold: on one side, the popular tradition of carnival shows how the possibility of using recreational logic to subvert, reinvent and transcend exists, if only temporarily. On the other side, there has been two fundamental constants in utopian imagery throughout history: the vindication of the need for free time (countering work time, productive time) and the acknowledged existence of a community of shared property, with a main sphere of materialisation in public space.

The historical-artistic approach to the political and collective dimension of spaces of play, on view in this exhibition, gets under way in the second half of the 19th century, a time that signals the start of the process of free time becoming consumption time; a process that threw the concept of public space into crisis as it started to be conceived not only as an element for exercising (political) control, but also one for financial gain. Thus, cities started to become the objects of rational and utilitarian planning, where the field of architecture was redefined, providing spaces for play with new values, built as one of the key points of the modern ideology of the public.

This ideology was reshaped in the early decades of the 20th century; for instance, during this time projects were implemented that allowed the recovery and increased value of land that had been completely torn apart by war, turning it into areas of play aimed at nurturing children’s independence. The significant turning point in this process of restructuring took place during the 1960s, when, as demonstrated by numerous artistic and activist experiences and practices in recent decades, the festive subversion and anti-authoritarian outbursts from carnivalesque logic started to be employed as political tools attempting to generate other ways of making and contemplating the city, as well as organising community life.

With some 300 works, the exhibition recounts a different history of art, from the end of the 19th century to the present day, whereby the artwork plays a part in redefining public space by exploring the city as a game board, questioning modern-day carnival, vindicating the right to laziness, reinventing the square as a place of revolt and discovering the possibilities of a new world through its waste. The exhibit takes the playground model as an ideological interrogation of an alienated and consumerist present.

Text from the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía website

 

Frank Burke (Australian, 1920-1984) 'A kids scooter race at the Paddy's Markets in Sydney, 19 August 1956' 1956 from the exhibition 'Playgrounds. Reinventing the square' at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, April - September, 2026

 

Frank Burke (Australian, 1920-1984)
A kids scooter race at the Paddy’s Markets in Sydney, 19 August 1956
1956
Silver gelatin print

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'Boy with Ribbon' 1940

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
Boy with Ribbon
1940
Silver gelatin print

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'New York (Two girls with ribbon)' c. 1940

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
New York (Two girls with ribbon)
c. 1940

 

Agustí Centelles (Catalan, 1909-1985) 'Barcelona, España. Guardería infantil en Vía Layetana' [Babysitting in Layetana Road] 1936-1939

 

Agustí Centelles (Catalan, 1909-1985)
Barcelona, España. Guardería infantil en Vía Layetana [Babysitting in Layetana Road]
1936-1939
Silver gelatin print

 

Fernand Léger (French, 1881-1951) 'Les Loisirs - Hommage à Louis David' [Leisure - Homage to Louis David] 1948-1949

 

Fernand Léger (French, 1881-1951)
Les Loisirs – Hommage à Louis David [Leisure – Homage to Louis David]
1948-1949

 

Palle Nielsen (Danish, 1920-2000) 'A group of activists from different organisations in Denmark cleared a backyard in Stengade 52'

 

Palle Nielsen (Danish, 1920-2000)
A group of activists from different organisations in Denmark cleared a backyard in Stengade 52 in the area Nørrebro in Copenhagen the 31 of March 1968 and build a playground for the children instead. This was done to create attention of the lack of playgrounds as well as an overall redevelopment of the area
© VEGAP, Madrid, 2014
© PETERSEN ERIK / Polfoto

 

Louis Sciarli (French, b. 1925) 'Le Corbusier. Marseille: Unité d'habitation, École Maternelle' [Le Corbusier. Marseille: housing unit, Kindergarten] 1945/2014

 

Louis Sciarli (French, b. 1925)
Le Corbusier. Marseille: Unité d’habitation, École Maternelle [Le Corbusier. Marseille: housing unit, Kindergarten]
1945/2014

 

Maruja Mallo (Ana María Gómez González) (Viveiro, Lugo, Spain, 1902 - Madrid, Spain, 1995) 'The Fair' 1927

 

Maruja Mallo (Ana María Gómez González) (Viveiro, Lugo, Spain, 1902 – Madrid, Spain, 1995)
The Fair (La verbena)
1927 (September)
Oil on canvas
119 x 165cm

 

In 1928, at a one-woman exhibition put on by Ortega y Gasset in the rooms of the Revista de Occidente, Maruja Mallo showed the four oil paintings in the Madrid Fair series from which La verbena (The Fair), currently in the Museo Reina Sofía collection, is taken. In this colourful painting, an example of her personal world-view, the artist creates Baroque-filled scenes that are apparently without logic, where the motifs self-multiply into a whirlwind of lines and sensations. Imbued with a sharp critical sense, which is translated by the painter into subtle satire, the painting contains all the elements of the traditional popular Madrid fairs (the shooting gallery, the test-your-strength machine), alongside the principal characters and other, stranger kinds of characters like the one-eyed giant, the priest enjoying one of the sideshows or the man with deformed feet, begging with a guitar on his back. All this contributes to an undeniably Surrealist atmosphere.

 

Marcos L. Rosa. 'Revisitando los playgrounds de Aldo van Eyck' 1974/2011

 

Marcos L. Rosa
Revisitando los playgrounds de Aldo van Eyck
1974/2011

 

 

The exhibition addresses the socialising, transgressive and political potential of play in relation to public space. Ever since the popular tradition of the carnival, it has been recognised that it is possible, even if only temporarily, to subvert, reinvent and transcend an everyday life reduced to a mere exercise in survival. The recognition of the existence of communal goods and the need for free time, in direct contradistinction to working time, are two fundamental constants of the utopian imagination throughout history.The public space, as an ambience which synthesises the notion of communal goods, is materialised as part of the experience of citizen participation.

Adopting as its premise the notion of carnival pageantry as a practice that alters the established order, the exhibition Playgrounds. Reinventing the square will explore the collective dimension of play and the need for a “ground” of its own in order to engage in the construction of a new public arena. Playgrounds (curated by Manuel J. Borja-Villel, Tamara Díaz and Teresa Velázquez) takes a historical and artistic approach to the space reserved for play and its socialising, transgressive and political potential from the dawn of modernity to the present day. The show to be seen at the Museo Reina Sofía aims to explore the recreational, playful, festive side of life that puts the humdrum reality of the everyday on hold, subverting, reinventing and transcending it for one fleeting moment.

With approximately 300 works in several formats (painting, sculpture, facilities, video, photography, graphical arts, cinema and documents) of artists like James Ensor, Francisco of Goya, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Helen Levitt, Alberto Giacometti, Ángel Ferrant, Hélio Oiticica, Lina Bo Bardi, Fischli and Weiss, Vito Acconci, Priscila Fernandes, or Xabier Rivas, Playgrounds. Reinventing the square shows how the playful element, understood as creative strategy, coexists with questions related to the public sphere Departing from this idea, the exhibition explores the recognition of the time and the space of the game as areas of essay and learning.

The show adopts the model of the ‘playground’ as an ideological interrogation of an alienated and consumerist present. After the industrial revolution and the gradual implantation of labor systems based on the capitalist principle of minimum investment for maximum gain, there emerges an indissociable identification between producer and consumer, one of whose immediate consequences is the conversion of free time into consumption time. The alienation of labor dominates modes of life and gives rise to a crisis in public spaces, threatened in their turn by economic forces. Derived from a rational and utilitarian planning of the city, the public park is instituted as a surrogate collective paradise, leading from the mid-19th century to great urban facilities for mass consumption and entertainment. From architecture, within the Modern Movement and its derivates, comes the definition of the playground, endowed with new social, pedagogical and functional values while at the same time emerging as one of the key points of the modern ideology of the public.

The ideas of a “junk playground”, proposed by the Danish architect Carl Theodor Sørensen in 1935, and of an “adventure playground”, which was promoted in the United Kingdom by the landscape architect Lady Allen of Hurtwood and spread to several European cities after the Second World War, are means of retrieving and attaching significance to wastelands and bomb sites as play areas aimed at child autonomy. In the sixties, the child is vindicated as an autonomous political subject in a context dominated by the vindication of the right to the city, and coinciding with the high point of the revolt of the homo ludens (borrowing from the essay of the same name by Johan Huizinga) in the context of May ’68. As evidenced by the numerous processes of social activism in recent years, festive subversion and the anti-authoritarian overspilling of boundaries by the carnival become new ways of practising politics. The movements of 2011 in such scattered locations as Tahrir (Cairo), Sol (Madrid), Syntagma (Athens), and other squares, streets and neighbourhoods restored the public and democratic dimension of such spaces. This temporary occupation, articulated through virtual communications networks, implied a reappropriation of the political and experimentation with other forms of organisation and communal life.

The introduction to the exhibition will provide background on the carnivalesque concept of life, underscoring certain aspects related to the notion of free time in modern life. The show will also revisit the street as a place of play and self-realisation, through examples of adventure playgrounds as well as photographs and films that will give a historic panoramic since the 1930s from a documentary perspective. The nucleus of the exhibition is devoted to the model of the modern playground and its contradictions, with relevant materials accounting for the urban revolution of the 1960s, the consideration of the city as a relational and psychological construction and works that parallel aesthetic and political transformations.

The last section of the show will consist of a series of experiments based on anti-hegemonic exercises, such us the civil appropriation of the street for “playground” use and works that challenge passive recreation through the emancipative power of play, not to mention recent experiences that resume the collective reinvention of the square and have become essential in envisioning new ways of doing politics.

Press release from the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'Untitled (Boy and gun)' 1940

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
Untitled (Boy and gun)
1940
Silver gelatin print

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'Children playing with a picture frame, New York' (Niños jugando con un marco, Nueva York) c. 1940

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
Children playing with a picture frame, New York (Niños jugando con un marco, Nueva York)
c. 1940

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009) 'Fruit and candy' Nd

 

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
Fruit and candy
Nd

 

Francesc Català-Roca Valls (Tarragona, Spain, 1922 - Barcelona, Spain, 1998) 'Games in an Empty Lot' 1950 (circa) / Posthumous print, 2003

 

Francesc Català-Roca Valls (Tarragona, Spain, 1922 – Barcelona, Spain, 1998)
Games in an Empty Lot
1950 (circa) / Posthumous print, 2003
Selenium-toned gelatin silver print on paper

 

Joan Colom (Spanish, 1921-2017) 'No title' 1958-1961

 

Joan Colom (Spanish, 1921-2017)
No title
1958-1961 (circa) / Vintage print
From the series El carrer (The Street)
Gelatin silver print on paper

 

Joan Colom published his series on Barcelona’s Chinatown in the magazine AFAL (1962) with an autobiography: “Age: 40. Profession: Accountant. Hobbies: Apart from photography, obviously, none.” Of his method, Colom said: “I have decided to only work with subjects that I have predetermined.” Oriol Maspons adds the technical details: “Everything was taken using a Leica M2, shot from the hip without framing or focusing. A real photographer’s work. More than a year on the same subject.” The series had been exhibited with some success (and controversy) at the Sala Aixelá in Barcelona the previous year, under the title El carrer (The Street). In 1964 it was finally published by Lumen in one of the finest photo-books in their Palabra e Imagen collection, “Izas, rabizas y colipoterras”, designed by Oscar Tusquets and Cristian Cirici. Camilo José Cela contributed a text based around Colom’s (surreptitious but captionless) photos that was full of broad, cruel humour, pitilessly mocking the women, photographed by Colom and judged by Cela. Somewhat ahead of her time, one of the women actually sued the photographer, the only result of which was the photo-book’s withdrawal from bookshops, and Colom’s retirement from photography for years. From the 1980s onwards public obscurity became public recognition, which has continued to grow.

 

 

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Sabatini building. Room A1
Calle Santa Isabel, 52
Madrid 28012 Spain
Phone: (+34) 91 7741000

Opening hours:
Monday – Saturday 10.00am – 9.00pm
Sunday 10.00am – 2.30pm

Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía website

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