Exhibition: ‘Another Story. Photography from the Moderna Museet Collection’ at Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Exhibition dates: 1st February, 2011 – 19th February, 2012

Installation view of the exhibition Another Story at Moderna Museet, Stockholm
Photo: Albin Dahlström/Moderna Museet

A posting from an exhibition highlighting a collection of over 100,000 photographs – how lucky are they!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Annika von Hausswolff (Swedish, b. 1967)
I Am the Runway of Your Thoughts
2008
Moderna Museet
© Annika von Hausswolff

In 2011, all the galleries will be successively rehung exclusively with photographic art. The chronology will be the same, but the 20th century will be presented from a partly new perspective. Moderna Museet will take a radical step, with Another Story – Photography from the Moderna Museet Collection. …

There is a growing interest in photography today, as proven by the panoply of exhibitions, fairs and festivals throughout the world. And this is hardly surprising. Nowadays, practically everyone is a photographer, at the very least snapping pictures with the camera built into most mobiles.

Moderna Museet’s collection of photography, ranging from 1840 to the present day, is one of the finest in Europe, featuring many of the most prominent names in photo history and comprising more than 100,000 photographs. The collection provides a historic background to the art of photography, and now we are sharing this with all our visitors. Moreover, several magnificent private donations have recently enriched the collection with works by famous artists practising in the field of photography.

Text from the Moderna Museet website

Another Story: Possessed by the Camera

1970-2010

Another Story: Possessed by the Camera highlighting contemporary photo-based art 1970-2010

From the 1970s, people have challenged the notion that the purpose of art is to show authentic identities. Instead, the camera is used to emphasise the potential of role-play and how identity can be constructed.

The reproduction of reality in the mass media has radically changed the conditions for our lives. The camera became an especially useful artistic tool in exploring the role-play of existence. The veracity of photography was called into question. By manipulating images and presenting them as authentic depictions, artists warned viewers to be critical and on their guard against how images are used in general.

These changes generated a broad range of photographic practices. Traditionally oriented photographers refined their aesthetic methods towards exquisitely artificial images. Robert Mapplethorpe, for instance, revived classical notions of beauty to undermine social prejudices against homosexuality.

Others experimented with digital manipulations and created new realities out of existing worlds. In the 1980s, the artistic use of photography went even further, in veritably philosophical studies of the many levels of meaning in representation. Since the late 1970s, Cindy Sherman has portrayed herself in stereotypical female disguises as a means of exploring the complexity of specific identities.

As a consequence of the dramatic innovations of the digital era, information and entertainment from far and wide are intermingled. Our formerly distinct notions of time and space have become fuzzier.

Annika von Hausswolff’s I Am the Runway of Your Thoughts from 2008 captures the feeling of trying to grasp and control something that is perceived as a vague threat. The concept of identity is no longer only linked to ethnicity, gender and class. Instead, it can be constructed out of surprising mixtures of given conditions and chosen ideals.

Text from the Moderna Museet website

Annika von Hausswolff (Swedish, b. 1967)
I Am the Runway of Your Thoughts (detail)
2008
Moderna Museet
© Annika von Hausswolff

Andreas Gursky (German, b. 1955)
Bibliothek
1999
Moderna Museet
© Andreas Gursky/BUS 2011

Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944)
The Louvre in Paris X 2005 – the caryatid hall
2005
Moderna Museet
© Candida Höfer/BUS 2011

Graciela Iturbide (Mexican, b. 1942)
Magnolia (2), Juchitán, México (Magnolia with Sombrero / Magnolia con sombrero)
1986
Gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet
© Graciela Iturbide

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958)
Häuser Nummer 9
1989
Moderna Museet
© Thomas Ruff/BUS 2011

Cindy Sherman (American, b. 1954)
Untitled
2008
Moderna Museet
© Courtesy of the Artist and Metro Pictures

In 2011, Moderna Museet’s new directors, Daniel Birnbaum and Ann-Sofi Noring, will launch a new presentation of the collection. Another Story gives a fresh angle on art history, based on works from the Moderna Museet collection. We will start by focusing on photography, which will gradually be given a more prominent position, only to fill the entire exhibition of the permanent collection this autumn.

If you want an art collection to develop and stay alive, it can’t remain static. You need to present it in new ways and look at it from new angles. That may sound obvious, but it is not that common. In 2011, Moderna Museet will take a radical step, with Another Story. Photography from the Moderna Museet Collection. This is possibly the most extreme re-hanging of the collection undertaken in the history of the museum.

Moderna Museet has one of Europe’s finest collections of photography, ranging from 1840 to the present day. Many of the most famous names in photographic history are represented, and the collection comprises more than 100,000 works. The re-hanging of the permanent collection exhibition will be done in three stages. In February, we will open the first part, Another Story: Possessed by the Camera, which presents contemporary photography-based art. Just before summer, we open Another Story: See the World!, presenting the period 1920-1980. This autumn, finally, we look at the early days of photography. Another Story: Written in Light presents the pioneers of photography from 1840 to the first three decades of the 20th century. In autumn 2011 and for the rest of the year, the entire permanent collection exhibition will consist of photography and photo-based art.

Text from the Moderna Museet website [Online] Cited 22/07/2011 no longer available online

Aleksandr Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956)
Sjukov-masten, radiomast i Moskva
1929
Gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet
© Aleksandr Rodtjenko

Another Story: See the World!

1920-1980

Another Story: See the World! focuses on the period 1920-1980.

Many documentary photographers are driven by a strong urge to portray events, places and people in their everyday surroundings. For some, it has been a life-long commitment to uncover and reveal social injustices. For others, it has represented a way of sharing experiences and developing documentary photography in a more personal and artistic direction.

The camera give photographers opportunities to approach vulnerable, sometimes hidden or forgotten, groups and environments. This presentation includes Larry Clark’s intimate and controversial photographs of his drugabusing friends in their hometown, Tulsa. The same theme is found in Nan Goldin’s raw colour portraits.

Amalias Street 5a is on the outskirts of old Riga, a wooden house with 37 inhabitants, documented by the photographer Inta Ruka since 2004. Together with Antanas Sutkus, she is a prominent figure on the Baltic photography scene that commented on and adapted itself to the Soviet Union in the 1980s and 90s, and then documented the changes in the post-Soviet era.

Christer Strömholm and his students also worked in the documentary tradition. Anders Petersen is perhaps the photographer who has most distinctly followed in Strömholm’s footsteps, as in his legendary series from Café Lehmitz in Hamburg (1967-70). Other photographers who have developed individual perspectives in their portrayals of Swedish society are JH Engström, Catharina Gotby and Lars Tunbjörk.

Throughout the history of photography, photographers have ventured for long periods into other people’s worlds and lives. To do that, however, and to earn their living while doing it, many photographers have worked simultaneously on independent projects, and on various commercial assignments. This has led to interesting links and shifts between socially oriented reportage, documentary projects, portrait photography and photographic art.

Text from the Moderna Museet website

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Die elegante Frau – Sekrutärin beine WDR
1927 / c. 1975
Gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet
© August Sander/BUS 2011

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Konditor (Pastry Cook)
1928
Gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet
© August Sander/BUS 2011

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Boxers
1929
Gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet
© August Sander/BUS 2011

Christer Strömholm (Swedish, 1918-2002)
Barcelona
1959
Gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet
© Christer Strömholm/Bildverksamheten Strömholm

Christer Strömholm (Swedish, 1918-2002)
Gina and Nana
1960
Gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet
© Christer Strömholm/Bildverksamheten Strömholm

Christer Strömholm (Swedish, 1918-2002)
Hiroshima
1963/1981
Gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet
© Christer Strömholm/Bildverksamheten Strömholm

Nan Goldin (American, b. 1953)
Couple in bed, Chicago
1977
Dye destruction print, Cibachrome
Moderna Museet
© Nan Goldin

Irving Penn (American, 1917-2009)
Frozen Foods with String Beans, New York, 1977
1977
Moderna Museet
© Irving Penn Foundation

Irving Penn (American, 1917-2009)
Mouth (for L’Oréal), New York, 1986
1986
Moderna Museet
© Irving Penn Foundation

Inta Ruka (Latvia, b. 1958)
Rihards Stibelis
2006
From the series Amãlija’s street 5a
Gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet
© Inta Ruka

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
The Mountain Nymph, Sweet Liberty
1866
Albumen print
Moderna Museet

Another Story: Written in Light

1840-1930

Another Story: Written in Light focuses on the pioneers from 1840 and up to the first three decades of the 20th century

The third part of Another Story. Photography from the Moderna Museet Collection has the subtitle Written in Light. It delineates the infancy of photography, from the moment when the Frenchman Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre developed the photographic process of the daguerreotype in 1839, to August Sander’s fascinating project People of the Twentieth Century, black-and-white portraits of German citizens from the first half of the 20th century.

In six rooms we present several pioneering feats of photography, unique works that contribute to Moderna Museet’s exceptional position among photography-collecting institutions. The section includes Julia Margaret Cameron, who portrayed famous Brits in the 1860s, revealing both their inner and outer character.

Guillaume Berggren’s photographs from 1880s Constantinople are legendary, as are Carleton E. Watkins’ documentation of the American West a few decades earlier. In addition to portraits, landscapes, nature and architecture were typical subjects for the early photographers. A few examples of present-day photography are interspersed, for instance Tom Hunter’s series in which he explored the urban landscape in the wake of industrialism around the turn of the millennium.

What does pictorialism stand for? In one of the larger rooms, we show photographs from the late 1800s up to the outbreak of the First World War, by photographers who were primarily fascinated by optical and visual issues. A seminal figure in the field of art photography is Henry B. Goodwin, famous for his striking artist portraits, painterly nudes and softly hazy Stockholm views.

Photography literally means “written in light”. The various experiments and remarkable documentations shown here encompass Nils Strindberg’s photographs from a disastrous balloon expedition to the North Pole in 1897. Three decades later, his negatives were developed, and the resulting prints are now in the Moderna Museet collection of photography.

Text from the Moderna Museet website

Carleton Watkins (American, 1829-1916)
The Three Brothers
1861
Moderna Museet
Albumen print

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
Henry Taylor
October 10, 1867
Albumen print
Moderna Museet

G Félix T Nadar (France, 1820-1910) and Paul Nadar (France, 1856-1939)
Sarah Bernhardt in Pierrot, Murder of His Wife (Sarah Bernhardt dans Pierrot, assassin de sa femme)
1883/1938
Gelatin silver photograph from wet collodion negative mounted on cardboard
29.8 × 18.1cm
Moderna Museet
Purchase 1965

Nils Strindberg (Swedish, 1872-1897)
Örnen efter landningen. Ur serien Ingenjör Andrées luftfärd, 14/7 1897
The Eagle after landing. From the series Engineer Andrée’s flight, 14/7 1897
1897/1930
Moderna Museet
Gelatin silver print

Nils Strindberg (4 September 1872 – October 1897) was a Swedish photographer and scientist. He was one of the three members of S. A. Andrée’s ill-fated Arctic balloon expedition of 1897. …

Strindberg was invited to the Arctic balloon expedition of 1897 to create a photographic aerial record of the arctic. Before perishing on Kvitøya (White Island) with Andrée and Knut Frænkel, Strindberg recorded on film their long-doomed struggle on foot to reach populated areas. When the remains of the expedition were discovered by the Norwegian Bratvaag Expedition in 1930, five exposed rolls of film were found, one of them still in the camera. Docent John Hertzberg of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm managed to save 93 of the theoretically 240 frames. A selection of these photos were published along with the diaries of the expedition as Med Örnen mot Polen (Stockholm: Bonnier (1930); British edition The Andrée diaries (1931); American edition Andrée’s Story (1932). The book credited the three explorers as its authors. In an article from 2004, Tyrone Martinsson published some digitally enhanced versions of Strindberg’s photos of the expedition, while lamenting the lack of care with which the original negatives were stored from 1944.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Henry B. Goodwin (Swedish, 1878-1971)
Katarina Lift (Katarinahissen), Slussen, Stockholm, Sweden
1918
Moderna Museet
Public domain

Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Moderna Museet is ten minutes away from Kungsträdgården, and twenty minutes from T-Centralen or Gamla Stan. Walk past Grand Hotel and Nationalmuseum on Blasieholmen, opposite the Royal Palace. After crossing the bridge to Skeppsholmen, continue up the hill. The entrance to Moderna Museet and Arkitekturmuseet is on the left-hand side.

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

Moderna Museet website

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Review: ‘Paradise’ by Brook Andrew at Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 18th June – 30th July 2011

Brook Andrew Paradise installation at Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

This is a strong, refined photo-ethnographic exhibition by Brook Andrew at Tolarno Galleries in Melbourne, one that holds the viewers attention, an exhibition that is witty and inventive if sometimes veering too closely to the simplistic and didactic in some works.

Rare postcards of Indigenous peoples and their colonising masters and surrounded by thick polished wood frames (the naturalness of the wood made smooth and perfect) and coloured neon lights that map out the captured identities, almost like a highlighting texta and forms of urban graffiti. This device is especially effective in works such as Men and Women (both 2011, below) with their male and female neon forms, and Flow Chart (2011, below) that references an anthropological map.

Other works such as Monument 1 (2011, below) lay the postcards into the rungs of a small step ladder covered in white paint that has echoes of the colonisers renovation of suburban homes and becomes a metaphor for the Indigenous peoples being stepped on, oppressed and downtrodden. In a particularly effective piece, Monument 2 (2011, below) the viewer stares down into a black box with multiple layers of neon that spell out the words ‘I see you’ in the Wiradjuri language: we can relate this work to Lacan’s story of the sardine can, where the point of view of the text makes us, the viewer, seem rather out of place in the picture, an alien in the landscape. The text has us in its sights making us uncomfortable in our position.

The work Paradise (2011, six parts, above) can certainly be seen as paradise lost but the pairing of black / white / colour postcards is the most reductive of the whole exhibition vis a vis Indigenous peoples and the complex discourse involved in terms of oppression, exploitation, empowerment, identity, mining rights and land ownership. The two quotations below can be seen to be at opposite ends of the same axis in this discourse. My apologies for the long second quotation but it is important to understand the context of what Akiko Ono is talking about with regard to the production of Indigenous postcards.

“White… has the strange property of directing our attention to color while in the very same movement it exnominates itself as a color. For evidence of this we need look no further than to the expression “people of color,” for we know very well that this means “not White.” We know equally well that the color white is the higher power to which all colors of the spectrum are subsumed when equally combined: white is the sum totality of light, while black is the total absence of light. In this way elementary optical physics is recruited to the psychotic metaphysics of racism, in which White is “all” to Black’s “nothing”…”

Victor Burgin 1

“In his study of Aboriginal photography, Peterson also looks at the dynamics of colonial power relations in which both European and Aboriginal subjects are constituted in and by their relations to each other. Peterson in the main writes about two different contexts of the usage of photography of Aboriginal people

1. popular usage of photographs, especially in the form of postcards in the early twentieth century (Peterson 1985, 2005)

2. anthropologists’ ethnographic involvement with photography (Peterson 2003, 2006).

Regarding the first, Peterson depicts how the discourses of atypical (that is, disorganised) family structures and destitution among Aboriginal people were produced and interacted with the prevalent moral discourses of the time. He makes an important remark about the interactive dimensions that existed between the photographer and the Aboriginal subject. Hand-printed postcards in the same period showed much more positive images of Aboriginal people (Peterson 2005: 18-22). These were ‘real’ photographs taken by the photographers who had daily interactions with Aboriginal people…

Peterson gives greater attention to photographs taken by anthropologists for scientific purposes, and in this second context provides a more detailed treatment of his insight regarding the discrepancies between the colonisers’ discourse and the actual visual knowledge that photography offers…

These two contexts are not, of course, mutually exclusive. By dealing with image ethics and the changing photographic contract, Peterson (2003) shows the interlocking formations of popular image, anthropological knowledge and Aboriginal self-representation. In particular, it is important to remember that Aboriginal people have not always rejected collaboration with and appropriation of the idioms of the coloniser. Aboriginal people were not bothered by posing for photographers to produce images such as ‘naked’ Aboriginal men and women in formal pose, accompanied by an ‘unlikely combination’ of weapons (Peterson 2005); and at times complex negotiations occurred between the photographer and the photographed – resulting in both consent and refusal (Peterson 2003: 123-31).

These anecdotes suggest the necessity of unravelling the ‘lived’ dimensions of colonial and / or racial subjugation and resistance to that subjugation from the site of their occurrence …

Rather than scrutinising the authenticity of Aboriginality or taking it for granted that ethnographic photography is doomed to reproduce a colonial or anthropological power structure, it is more important to attend to the ‘instances in which colonized subjects undertake to represent themselves in ways that engage with the colonizer’s own terms’, as Pratt (1992: 7, emphasis in the original) suggests. She proposes the term ‘autoethnography’ to refer to these instances: ‘If ethnographic texts are a means by which Europeans represent to themselves their (usually subjugated) others, autoethnographic texts are those the others construct in response to or in dialogue with those metropolitan representations’ (Pratt 1992).

Akiko Ono 2

The work Paradise buys into the first quotation in a big way, playing as it does with the idioms of black / white / colour. It can also be seen as a form of autoethnographic text that uses rare postcards to critique historical relations between peoples and cultures. What it does not do, I feel, is delve deeper to try to understand the “interlocking formations of popular image, anthropological knowledge and Aboriginal self-representation” and resistance to that subjugation from the site of their occurrence. As the quotation observes “Aboriginal people have not always rejected collaboration with and appropriation of the idioms of the coloniser” and it is important to understand how the disciplinary systems of the coloniser (the ethnographic documenting through photography) were turned on their head to empower Indigenous people who undertake to represent themselves in ways that engage with the coloniser’s own terms. Nothing is ever just black and white. It is the interstitial spaces between that are always the most interesting.

In conclusion this an elegant exhibition of old and new, an autoethnographic text that seeks to address critical issues that look back at us and say – ‘I see you’.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Burgin, Victor. In/Different Spaces: Place and Memory in Visual Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995, p. 131

2/ Ono, Akiko. “Who Owns the ‘De-Aboriginalised’ Past? Ethnography meets photography: a case study of Bundjalung Pentecostalism,” in Musharbash, Yasmine and Barber, Marcus (eds.,). Ethnography & the Production of Anthropological Knowledge: Essays in honour of Nicolas Peterson. The Australian National University E Press [Online] Cited 16/07/2011 (no longer available online)

~ Peterson, N. 1998. “Welfare colonialism and citizenship: politics, economics and agency,” in N. Peterson and W. Sanders (eds.,). Citizenship and Indigenous Australians: Changing Conceptions and Possibilities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 101-17.
~ Peterson, N. 1999. “Hunter-gatherers in first world nation states: bringing anthropology home,” in Bulletin of the National Museum of Ethnology 23 (4), pp. 847-61.
~ Peterson, N. 2003. “The changing photographic contract: Aborigines and image ethics,” in C. Pinney and N. Peterson (eds.,). Photography’s Other Histories. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 119-45.
~ Peterson, N. 2005. “Early 20th century photography of Australian Aboriginal families: illustration or evidence?” in Visual Anthropology Review 21 (1-2), pp. 11-26.
~ Peterson, N. 2006. “Visual knowledge: Spencer and Gillen’s use of photography in The Native Tribes of Central Australia,” in Australian Aboriginal Studies (1), pp. 12-22
~ Pratt, M. L. 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writings and Transculturation. London: Routledge

Footnote 1. Peterson has built up a collection of process-printed (that is, mass-produced) postcard images and hand-printed images dating from 1900 to 1920 (that is, real photographic postcards), over 20 years, during which time he obtained a copy every time he saw a new image. He feels confident that he has seen two-thirds of the process-printed picture postcards from the period although it is harder to estimate how many hand-printed images were circulating (Peterson 2005: 25n.3). He had a collection of 528 process-printed postcards (Peterson 2005: 25) and 272 hand-printed photographs (p. 18) by 2005.

Many thankx to Olivia Radonich for her help and to Tolarno Galleries for allowing me to publish the text and photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. Images courtesy the artist and Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne. Photos by Christian Capurro.

Brook Andrew Paradise installation at Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Paradise 1 (red)
2011
Rare postcards, sapele, and neon
24.5 x 28.5 x 8cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Paradise 2 (orange)
2011
Rare postcards, sapele, and neon
24.5 x 34 x 8cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Paradise 3 (yellow)
2011
Rare postcards, sapele, and neon
24.5 x 28.5 x 8cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Paradise 4 (green)
2011
Rare postcards, sapele, and neon
25 x 33.5 x 8cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Paradise 5 (magenta)
2011
Rare postcards, sapele, and neon
24.5 x 28 x 8cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Flow Chart
2011
Rare postcards, sapele and neon
283 x 449.5 x 8.5cm

Brook Andrew Paradise installation at Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Men
2011
Rare postcards, sapele, and neon
82 x 264 x 12.5cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Women
2011
Rare postcards, sapele, and neon
179 x 179 x 6cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Women (detail)
2011
Rare postcards, sapele, and neon
179 x 179 x 6cm

Tolarno Galleries is pleased to present Paradise, a major solo exhibition by Brook Andrew. Widely regarded as a multi-disciplinary artist, Brook Andrew’s Jumping Castle War Memorial was a highlight of the 17th Biennale of Sydney. Recently his major installation, Ancestral Worship 2010, was included in 21st Century: Art in the First Decade at Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane. His powerful new installation – Marks and Witness: A Lined crossing in Tribute to William Barak 2011 – was commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria and is currently on display at Federation Square, Melbourne.

Paradise expands Brook Andrew’s interest in forgotten histories. His new works ask us to think about what has disappeared from our worlds, literally, and also from our consciousness. The exhibition features a number of assemblages made in neon and wood and incorporating rare postcards and photographs collected over many years. Men 2011 includes the original postcard that became the source for Sexy and Dangerous, Andrew’s iconic work of 1995.

Brook Andrew’s continuing search for curious portrait images from the 19th and early 20th century represents his fascination with the way the camera has documented a particular ‘colonial’ gaze and an interest in the exotic. Outlining or highlighting these images in glorious coloured neon emphasises this point.

However bright the neon, Brook Andrew’s works are characterised by a formal beauty and simplicity that explores conceptually complex ideas and themes. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Monument 4, a ‘boomerang bar’ or Monument 2, a black lacquer box of neon containing the words ‘I see you’ in Wiradjuri. Gazing into this ‘well of words’ is like looking into infinity.

Brook Andrew’s work is held in every major collection in Australia. An important survey of his work: Brook Andrew Eye to Eye was presented by Monash University Museum of Art in 2007. In 2008 his work was showcased in Theme Park at AAMU Museum of Contemporary Aboriginal Art in The Netherlands. Major publications accompanied both of these solo exhibitions.”

Press release from Tolarno Galleries

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Monument 2
2011
Black lacquer, wood, perspex, neon, mirror and wire
38 x 99 x 87cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Monument 2 (detail)
2011
Black lacquer, wood, perspex, neon, mirror and wire
38 x 99 x 87cm

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
18 lives in Paradise
Single box detail
2011

The basic unit used in 18 Lives in Paradise is a cardboard printed box 50 x 50 x 50 cm. The boxes are the building blocks for a sculpture, wall or any other structure. The box is also a parody of the courier box – those containers daily transported around the globe in the vast movement of lives and identities today. What was thought of as fixed may not be so.

The images are sourced from postcards. The postcards range from the early to mid-twentieth century and form part of a worldwide curiosity in indigenous people, circus acts and personalities, environment and resources … The images come together as an assemblage of ‘freaks’ and represent the collision paths of indigenous and non-indigenous cultures; those being documented out of curiosity and those belonging to dominant cultures who have used the land and its people for entertainment and wealth.

18 Lives in Paradise can form a column or wall. It can be a barrier, a beacon or epitaph. En masse, the boxes are a symbol of many lives whose identities are sometimes twisted for the gaze of the curious world.

Brook Andrew 2011

Brook Andrew (Australian, b. 1970)
Monument 1
2011
Black lacquer, are postcards, wood, mirror and metal
104.5 x 69.5 x 58cm

Tolarno Galleries
Level 4, 104 Exhibition Street
Melbourne VIC 3000 Australia
Phone: +61 3 9654 6000

Opening hours:
Tues – Fri 10am – 5pm
Sat 1pm – 4pm

Tolarno Galleries website

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Marcus Bunyan black and white archive: ‘At Newport’ series 1991

July 2011

I am scanning my negatives made during the years 1991-1997 to preserve them in the form of an online archive as a process of active memory, so that the images are not lost forever. These photographs were images of my life and imagination at the time of their making, the ideas I was thinking about and the people and things that surrounded me.

All images © Marcus Bunyan. Please click the photographs for a larger version of the image; remember these are just straight scans of the negatives !

Photographs are available from this series for purchase. As a guide, a vintage 8″ x 10″ silver gelatin print costs $700 plus tracked and insured shipping. For more information please see my store web page.

1991

At Newport series

This series of photographs was taken in Melbourne at the old Victorian Railway’s Newport Workshops and formed the second part of my first solo exhibition, Of Magic, Music and Myth held in 1991 at a hairdressing salon in High Street, Prahran, Melbourne. Some of the titles e.g. Fords are a Joke, GMH are shit (1991, below) are taken from the graffiti scrawled on various surfaces. All are silver gelatin photographs on fibre-based paper.

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Fords are a Joke, GMH are shit
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Harrys got a…
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Screened figure
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Heavy springs
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Untitled (Torro)
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
I, Robot
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Large Anvil
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Spring, Turrets, Keep and Ladder
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Big Cogs
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Coronation
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Frank’s Apron
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Hand is fucked, Farm is flooded, Caravan drifted away I
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Hand is fucked, Farm is flooded, Caravan drifted away II
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Untitled
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Hoe with Surging Rainwater
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Forms I
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Forms II
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Forms III
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan (Australian, b. 1958)
Forms IV
1991
From the At Newport series
Gelatin silver print

Marcus Bunyan black and white archive page

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Photographs: ‘A Thousand Little Suns’ by Martina Lindqvist

July 2011

Martina Lindqvist (Finland, b. 1981)
Untitled 1
2011
From the series A Thousand Little Suns

This end of the world will occur without noise, without revolution, without cataclysm. Just as a tree loses leaves in the autumn wind, so the earth will see in succession the falling and perishing all its children, and in this eternal winter, which will envelop it from then on, she can no longer hope for either a new sun or a new spring. She will purge herself of the history of the worlds. The millions or billions of centuries that she had seen will be like a day. It will be only a detail completely insignificant in the whole of the universe. Presently the earth is only an invisible point among all the stars, because, at this distance, it is lost through its infinite smallness in the vicinity of the sun, which itself is by far only a small star. In the future, when the end of things will arrive on this earth, the event will then pass completely unperceived in the universe. The stars will continue to shine after the extinction of our sun, as they already shone before our existence. When there will no longer be on the earth a sole concern to contemplate, the constellations will reign again in the noise as they reigned before the appearance of man on this tiny globule. There are stars whose light shone some millions of years before we arrived … The luminous rays that we receive actually then departed from their bosom before the time of the appearance of man on the earth. The universe is so immense that it appears immutable, and that the duration of a planet such as that of the earth is only a chapter, less than that, a phrase, less still, only a word of the universe’s history.

Camille Flammarion, Le Fin du Monde (The End of the World) 1893

Many thankx to Martina Lindqvist for allowing me to publish the six photographs in this series. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Martina Lindqvist (Finland, b. 1981)
Untitled 2
2011
From the series A Thousand Little Suns

Martina Lindqvist (Finland, b. 1981)
Untitled 3
2011
From the series A Thousand Little Suns

A Thousand Little Suns is an autobiographical body of work that uses childhood landscapes as metaphor for human experience, and is further influenced by an interest in spatial psychology, or more precisely, the emotive effects of landscapes and forested wilder land. Marcault and Therese Brosse once wrote that “forests, especially, with the mystery of their space prolonged indefinitely beyond the veil of tree-trunks and leaves, space that is veiled for our eyes … are veritable psychological transcendents.” Forests, in spite of being the most natural of spaces, are truly unnatural for the cultured human being. Soon, if we don’t know where we are going we no longer know where we are, and standing on the brink of a forest always represents this possibility of going deeper and deeper into the unknown.

A Thousand Little Suns takes a contemplative look on the landscape of Ostrobothnia in central Finland, which during the autumn and winter months should be shrouded by an impenetrable darkness, but instead finds itself lit by a thousand glowing lights. Shining upon uneasy buildings trapped in the middle of darkness and light; forestation and cultured space, these ephemeral lights place the border with its inherent dialectical problematic of inside / outside in focus. The concept of the border is thus echoed in the structural quality of the land; in the patches of light with their opposing darkness, and is a reflection of the experience of an inherited yet closed off culture that was always seen through the eyes of a visitor.

Martina Lindqvist 2011

Martina Lindqvist (Finland, b. 1981)
Untitled 4
2011
From the series A Thousand Little Suns

Martina Lindqvist (Finland, b. 1981)
Untitled 5
2011
From the series A Thousand Little Suns

Martina Lindqvist (Finland, b. 1981)
Untitled 6
2011
From the series A Thousand Little Suns

Martina Lindqvist website

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Exhibition: ‘Ai Weiwei – Interlacing’ at Fotomuseum Winterthur, Zurich

Exhibition dates: 28th May – 21st August 2011

Many thankx to Fotomuseum Winterthur for allowing me to publish the text and the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for another version of the image.

Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957)
Dropping a Han-Dynasty Urn
1995
Triptych
C-prints
150 x 166cm each
© Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957)
Profile of Duchamp, Sunflower Seeds
1983
From New York Photographs, 1983-1993
C-print
20 x 28.5cm
© Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957)
June 1994
1994
C-print
117.5 x 152cm
© Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei – Interlacing is the first major exhibition of photographs and videos by Ai Weiwei. It foregrounds Ai Weiwei the communicator – the documenting, analysing, interweaving artist who communicates via many channels. Ai Weiwei already used photography in his New York years, but especially since his return to Beijing, he has incessantly documented the everyday urban and social realities in China, discussing it over blogs and Twitter. Photographs of radical urban transformation, of the search for earthquake victims, and the destruction of his Shanghai studio are presented together with his art photography projects, the Documenta project Fairytale, the countless blog and cell phone photographs. A comprehensive book accompanies this exhibition.

Ai Weiwei is a generalist, a conceptual, socially critical artist dedicated to creating friction with, and forming reality. As an architect, conceptual artist, sculptor, photographer, blogger, Twitterer, interview artist, and cultural critic, he is a sensitive observer of current topics and social problems: a great communicator and networker who brings life into art and art into life.

Ai Weiwei was born in 1957, the son of the poet Ai Qing. Following his studies at the Beijing Film Academy, he cofounded in 1978 the artists’ collective The Stars, which rejected Social Realism and advocated artistic individualism and experimentation in art. In 1981 Ai Weiwei went to the USA and 1983 to New York, where he studied at Parsons School for Design in the class of the painter Sean Scully. In New York he discovered artists like Allen Ginsberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, and, above all, Marcel Duchamp. Duchamp is important for him because he understood art as part of life. At this time, Ai Weiwei produced his first ready-mades and thousands of photographs documenting his life and friends in the Chinese art community in New York. After his father fell ill, he returned to Beijing in 1993. In 1997 he cofounded the China Art Archives & Warehouse (CAAW) and began from then on to deal with architecture as well. Ai Weiwei opened his own studio in 1999 in Caochangdi and set up the architecture studio FAKE Design in 2003. In the same year, he played a major role, together with the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, in the construction of the Olympic stadium, the so-called Bird’s Nest. Following its completion, it became a new symbol of Beijing. In 2007, 1001 Chinese visitors traveled, at his instigation, to Documenta 12 in Kassel (Fairytale). In 2010 the world marvelled at his large, yet formally minimal carpet of millions of hand-painted porcelain sunflower seeds at the Tate Modern.

Ai Weiwei deliberately confronts social conditions in China and in the world: Through photographically documenting the architectonic clear-cutting of Beijing in the name of progress, with provocative measurements of the world, his personal positionings in the Study of Perspective, with radical cuts in the past (made to found pieces of furniture) in order to create possibilities for the present and the future, and with his tens of thousands of blog entries, blog photographs, and cell phone photographs (along with many other artistic declarations). This first, large exhibition and book project of his photography and videos focuses on Ai Weiwei’s diversity, complexity, and connectedness, his “interlacing” and “networking” with hundreds of photographs, blogs, and explanatory essays.

The artist as network, as company, as activist, as political voice, as social container, as agent provocateur: at every moment – in the past, present, and future – every society on Earth needs outstanding unique figures like Ai Weiwei in order to stay awake, to be shaken awake, to be made to recognise their own obstinacy, and to be able to avoid tunnel vision. We are therefore deeply saddened that the completion of this book coincides with Ai Weiwei’s arrest which we deplore. We are extremely concerned about the artist. And we wish that this great thinker, designer, and fighter will remain a resistant public voice for all of us – and especially for China.

The exhibition and book were developed in close collaboration with Ai Weiwei. For reasons already mentioned, however, he was unable to be involved in completing the book. We continue to hope that he will be personally present for the installation of the exhibition.

Press release from the Fotomuseum Winterthur website [Online] Cited 06/07/2011 no longer available online

Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957)
Provisional Landscapes
2002-2008
Diptych
Inkjet prints
66 x 84cm each
© Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957)
10/29/04, Hebei Carpet Factory, China
c. 2005-2009
From Blog Photographs
© Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957)
6/1/08, Wenchuan, China
c. 2005-2009
From Blog Photographs
© Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957)
Study of Perspective – Tiananmen
1995-2010
C-print
32.5 x 43.5cm
© Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957)
Study of Perspective – The Eiffel Tower
1995-2010
C-print
32.5 x 43.5cm
© Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957)
From Bird’s Nest
2005-2008
C-print
46.5 x 60cm
© Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957)
Fairytale 1
2007
From Fairytale
Inkjet-print
92.5 x 92.5cm
© Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei (Chinese, b. 1957)
Ai Weiwei. Williamsburg, Brooklyn
1983
From New York Photographs 1983-1993
C-print
29.2 x 20cm
© Ai Weiwei

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

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday 11am – 6pm
Wednesday 11am – 8pm
Monday closed

Fotomuseum Winterthur website

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Exhibition: ‘NGV 150th Felton Bequest Gift – Living Water: Contemporary Art of the Far Western Desert’ at NGV Australia, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 24th May 2011 – 28th May 2012

Tommy Mitchell (Australian / Ngaanyatjarra, c. 1943-2013)
Kurlilypurru
2009
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
152 x 212cm
Felton Bequest, 2011
© Tommy Mitchell, courtesy Warakurna Artists Aboriginal Corporation

“This is me: this is mine. The whole lot is me. I been walking all around, I know him proper way, he is always with me…”

Weaver Jack

Someone keyed my car the other day and it sent me into a bit of a downward spiral. Who knows why people do these things – stupidity, boredom, sheer bloody mindedness. This exhibition brought me back from that space to a rejoicing in human creativity and connection. It helped me leave my troubles behind. The stories in these paintings ground you, bring you back to earth through the experience and feeling of colour, movement and stillness.

I, we, cannot understand this ancient culture for it is foreign to us. We are not of it. But we can feel the stories in our own way. While we can’t understand every nuance of symbology and traditional narrative that the paintings contain they can speak to us all as human; we all come from this earth and must return to it. I felt the place from which they emanate, an intimacy with earth, self and soul.

I might not know much about anything, about understanding the vagaries of human beings, but I do know what is honest and truthful, has feeling for the piquancy of life. These paintings let my troubles and vicissitudes drop away and uplifted my spirit. Surrounded by love, by colour, by belonging to earth, sky, water, spirit. A wonderful gift to any human being and a wonderful gift from the Felton Bequest to the National Gallery of Victoria and to all the people of Australia. Go and experience their embrace.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Yikartu Bumba (Australian / Manyjilyjarra, b. 1940s)
Jakayu Biljabu (Australian / Manyjilyjarra, 1937-2022)
Nyanjilpayi Nancy Chapman (Australian / Manyjilyjarra, born c. 1941)
May Chapman (Australian / Manyjilyjarra, b. 1940s)
Doreen Chapman (Australian / Manyjilyjarra, b. 1970s)
Linda James (Australian / Manyjilyjarra, b. 1984)
Mulyatingki Marney (Australian / Manyjilyjarra, b. 1941)
Reena Roger (Australian / Manyjilyjarra, b. 1950s)
Beatrice Simpson (Australian / Manyjilyjarra, born c. 1966)
Ronelle Simpson (Australian / Manyjilyjarra, b. 1988)
Muntararr Rosie Williams (Australian / Manyjilyjarra, born c. 1943)
Ngayarta Kujarra
2009
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
300 x 500cm
Felton Bequest, 2011

Ngayartu Kujarra

The artists who collaborated on this work (above) live at Punmu community, on the shore of a vast salt lake, (Lake Dora), which is surrounded by a scattered array of water sources.

The artists from this region are profoundly affectionate and respectful towards the salt lake and the fresh waters hat have sustained htem and their families for as long as memory can stretch.

The women have reproduced the feeling of the salt lake viscerally: their work conveys its immense scale, fine texture, extreme whiteness and shimmering light.

Ronnie Tjampitjinpa (Australian / Pintupi, b. 1943)
Water Dreaming at Malparingya
2006
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
152.2 x 182.5cm
National Gallery of Victoria
Felton bequest

Nyumitja Laidlaw (Australian / Ngaanyatjarra, born c. 1938)
Kuriella
2009
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
142.3 x 175cm
Felton Bequest, 2011
© Nyumitja Laidlaw/Licensed by VISCOPY, Australia

Johnny Yungut Tjupurrula (Australian / Tjangimanta, 1930-2016)
Tingarri Dreaming at Wanaritjarra
2009
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
152.3 × 182.5cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Felton Bequest, 2011
© Johnny Yungut Tjupurrula, courtesy Aboriginal Artists Agency, Sydney

Kalaju Alma Webou (Australian / Yulparija, c. 1920-2009)
Pinkalarta
2006
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
152 x 152cm
Felton Bequest, 2011
© Kalaju Alma Webou, courtesy Short Street Gallery/Yulparija Artists from Bidyadanga

Today, 24 May 2011, the National Gallery of Victoria celebrates its 150th birthday.

To honour this tremendous milestone, the NGV today unveiled an exceptional gift of 173 important Indigenous works of art including three by contemporary artists Vernon Ah Kee, Brook Andrew and Jonathan Jones who were commissioned to create works that pay homage to the highly celebrated Wurundjeri artist, William Barak. These pieces have been gifted by the Felton Bequest, established in 1904 by the NGV’s greatest benefactor, Alfred Felton.

The Honourable Alex Chernov, AO, QC, Governor of Victoria and Mrs Elizabeth Chernov were present at the NGV’s unveiling ceremony.

Dr Gerard Vaughan, Director, NGV said: “This is the most significant gift of Indigenous art to the NGV since the Gallery opened its doors for the first time on this date 150 years ago in country of the Kulin nation. It is appropriate on this date both to honour the memory of Alfred Felton and also celebrate the Indigenous art of our country, the world’s oldest continuous visual tradition.”

The gift of 173 works encompasses two exceptional collections: the first comprises 63 nineteenth and early twentieth century shields on display as part of the Australian Art collection, and the second 107 twenty-first century paintings from the Far Western Desert, forming the new exhibition Living Water.

Dr Vaughan said: “This outstanding gift adds tremendous strength to the NGV’s collection of Indigenous Art. Since the NGV first collected Indigenous art, the collection has grown to hold over 3,000 works representing cultures across Australia.

These exciting and dynamic acquisitions will enable the NGV to continue to educate visitors of all ages about the visual art of Indigenous Australians. This gift is a highlight of the NGV’s 150th anniversary year, reminding us of the crucial and continuing role the NGV has played in collecting and displaying the finest art works that can be acquired.

The Barak Commissions pay tribute to one of the most important figures of nineteenth century Australian Indigenous art, acknowledging Barak’s central place in the history of Victoria and the NGV,” said Dr Vaughan.

William Barak was born in country of the Wurundjeri people and became a leading Indigenous artist and figure in Melbourne during the 19th century. He is said to have witnessed John Batman ‘purchase’ Melbourne in 1835.

The multi-media installation by Vernon Ah Kee presents conversations between prominent Indigenous people as they reflect on how Barak has inspired them. Brook Andrew, renowned for his multi-disciplinary works, has created a powerful installation which adorns the entrance atrium at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia. Jonathan Jones, who works with fluid and dancing light as a metaphor of living culture, has created five light boxes that map important cultural designs belonging to Barak as a way of honouring Barak’s life.

The collection of 63 rare and stunningly beautiful 19th and early 20th century shields is largely contemporary with Barak’s life. The shields serve to remind us of the time when the plains of Southeast Australia contained carved trees bearing elegant inscriptions, with people dressed in possum-skin cloaks and carrying elaborate shields living extraordinary living in harmony with country and ancient beliefs.

The Living Water exhibition unveils the Felton Bequest gift paintings: 107 adventurous works by male and female artists from newly established art centres in the Far Western Desert, an area stretching across far flung parts of Western Australia and South Australia.

This exhibition of 21st century art highlights today’s momentous art movement which originated at Papunya in 1971 when senior men decoded their archival narratives and laws, forging a new form shared by many Indigenous peoples across the Western Desert.

Press release from the National Gallery of Victoria website

Roy Underwood (Australian / Pitjantjatjara born c. 1937-2018)
Mulaya
2008
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
197 x 135cm
Felton Bequest, 2011
© Roy Underwood, courtesy Spinifex Arts Project

Simon Hogan (Australian / Pitjantjatjara, born c. 1930)
Ilkurlka
2004
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
134.5 x 176.6cm
Felton Bequest, 2011
© Simon Hogan, courtesy Spinifex Arts Project

Spinifex People

The country of the Spinifex people, who speak a southern dialect of Pitjantjatjara language, consists of vast plains of deep red sand, salt lakes and Spinifex.

In 1998 the community produced a series of ten large paintings that were bequeathed to the people of Western Australia in a symbolic reciprocal exchange of paintings for land. Most Spinifex works, subsequently produced on infrequent painting trips back to country operate as complex maps as well as religious landscapes that detail sources of spiritual power in country belonging to individual artists.

Milatjari Pumani (Australian / Yankunytjatjara, 1928-2014)
Ngura Walytja, Antara
2010
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
168.6 x 137.4cm
Felton Bequest, 2011
© Milatjari Pumani, courtesy Mimili Maku Arts & Crafts

Living Water: Exhibition Background Information

Living Water, an exhibition showcasing 107 contemporary Indigenous paintings by 94 artists from the Felton Bequest Gift, displays works by male and female artists from the Far Western Desert, an area stretching across parts of Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory.

A modern art movement originated at Papunya in 1971, which has since transformed the way we see the land and the history of art in Australia. Almost forty years after the genesis of the Western Desert art movement, its epicentre has dramatically shifted from Papunya in the Northern Territory to the Pintupi homelands of Kintore and Kiwirrkura in the Gibson Desert, and to communities that lie hundreds of kilometres to the south and west in far-flung reaches of South Australia and Western Australia (the Far Western Desert).

During the first decade of the 21st century, Pintupi, Spinifex, Anangu, Yulparija and Martu artists have developed a dynamic and fresh expression of Western Desert Art. The male and female artists not only share close kinship, social, linguistic and ritual interconnections and lived experience of desert country built up during pujiman (nomadic, bush) days but also have parallel experiences of making art with introduced materials for the commercial market. Their paintings – bearers of sanctity – resonate with the shock of the ancient made new and tell tjukurrpa (stories) associated with special places in their ngurra (country).This dramatic new wave of acrylic painting is the focus of Living Water, comprising the NGV’s 150th anniversary gift from the Felton Bequest of 107 paintings.

Aboriginal people from across the Western Desert use the term ‘living water’ to describe water sources, including rock holes and soakage waters that are fed by underground springs. The path of these springs was created by the ancestral beings of the Tjukurrpa (Dreaming) as they themselves journeyed underground, their entry into the earth often marking the site of current day water sources. ‘Living water’ is revered also because it does not seem to be affected by the harsh conditions above the ground that the people themselves have to endure.

This exhibition has been curated by Judith Ryan, Indigenous Art Curator, NGV. The following groups of people are represented in this spectacular exhibition.

Pintupi people

Pintupi is the name of a Western Desert language spoken by Aboriginal people who belong to a large stretch of country in the Gibson Desert of Western Australia and the western edge of the Northern Territory. When the Pintupi arrived in the government settlements east of their traditional lands between the 1930s and the 1950s, they adopted the term ‘Pintupi’ to distinguish themselves amongst the surrounding Aboriginal inhabitants as the ‘people from the west’.

The Pintupi’s complex relationship to the land of their ancestors is expressed through stories, songs and ritual practice that are also depicted in the acrylic paintings of the artists from the Pintupi communities of Walungurru and Kiwirrkura.

Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjara People

The Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjara people of the tri-state region of the Western Desert constantly interact and are related by kinship, language and genealogy.

Here they specialised in making walka (drawings), batik, punu (wood carvings) and tjanpi weavings, avoiding painting on canvas for the art market until the 21st century because of their suspicion of earlier forms of Western Desert art and their reluctance to disclose sacred elements of men’s and women’s law.

Yulparija People

The Yulparija people originally come from the Great Sandy Desert of Western Australia, which runs from Telfer in the south to Walungurru in the east and close to Fitzroy Crossing in the north.

Their work contains deep threads of cultural memory and is daring in its vigour of application and iridescent palette. The Yulparija have forged a painting style that combines their cultural memory of desert birth country with the rich blues and greens of saltwater terrain.

Martu People

Martu means ‘one of us’, or ‘person’ and is the word chosen to represent a number of different language groups from country across the Great Sandy, Little Sandy and Gibson Deserts of the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

Martu are interconnected to other surrounding peoples from the Great Sandy Desert through their shared country of birth and associated Dreaming stories.

Text from the National Gallery of Victoria website

Dadda Samson (Australian / Kartujarra, 1933-2020)
Puntuwarri
2009
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
124.5 x 293.4cm
Felton Bequest, 2011
© Dadda Samson, courtesy Martumili Artists

Lawrence Pennington (Australian / Pitjantjatjara, born c. 1940)
Kurparu (Magpie)
2005
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
138.6 x 92.7cm
Felton Bequest, 2011
© Lawrence Pennington, courtesy Spinifex Arts Project

Wingu Tingima (Australian / Pitjantjatjara, c. 1917-2010)
Kungkarakalpa (Seven Sisters)
2007-2009
Synthetic polymer paint on canvas
140 x 210cm
Felton Bequest, 2011
© Wingu Tingima, courtesy Tjungu Palya

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

Opening hours:
Daily 10am – 5pm

National Gallery of Victoria website

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Exhibition: ‘Eikoh Hosoe – Theatre of Memory’ at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Exhibition dates: 12th May – 7th August 2011

Many thankx to Susanne Briggs for her help and for AGNSW for allowing me to publish the text and photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Kazuo Ohno
1980
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

“The camera is generally assumed to be unable to depict that which is not visible to the eye. And yet the photographer who wields it well can depict what lies unseen in his memory.”

Eikoh Hosoe

This exhibition brings together four seminal series by Eikoh Hosoe, a leading figure in modern Japanese photography. Taken over five decades, The butterfly dream 1960-2005, Kamaitachi 1965-1968 and Ukiyo-e projections 2002-2003 are driven by Hosoe’s longstanding fascination for the revolutionary dance movement butoh and for its charismatic founders, Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno. Together these series epitomise his unique style, which combines photography with elements of theatre, dance, film and traditional Japanese art, and uses mythology, metaphor and symbolism. Using the latest digital technology, Hosoe prints his photographs on washi paper, mounting them in the traditional Japanese manner as scrolls and folding screens, thereby suggesting a new way of ‘reading’ his series as a continuous narrative. Hosoe’s interest in examining the beauty and strength of the human body is best seen in his acclaimed series of extremely abstract nudes, Embrace 1969-1970. The models are butoh dancers associated with Hijikata.

For over fifty years, internationally acclaimed Japanese photographer Eikoh Hosoe has been producing cutting edge works demonstrating a unique mastery of the photographic medium. Early on in his career he abandoned the documentary style prevalent in the post-war years and produced photographs that breathed a sense of experimentation and freedom into photography. By calling on mythology, metaphor and symbolism he created images that broke the bounds of traditional photography. Hosoe developed a unique style situated at the crossroads of several different art forms, combining photography with elements of theatre, dance, film and traditional Japanese art.

From the early days of his career Hosoe’s destiny became linked to butoh, the revolutionary performance movement formed in post-war Japan. His close relationship to Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, the two pivotal figures of butoh dance, forms the basis for his seminal series such as Kamaitachi, Embrace, The butterfly dream and Ukiyo-e projections, included in this exhibition.

This exhibition also highlights Hosoe’s extraordinary creativity and mastery of photographic printing techniques. Having experimented with both film-based and digital techniques to develop new methods of photographic expression, in recent years, he has started to use digital printing technologies on Japanese handmade paper (washi) and mounts his works in the form of traditional Japanese scrolls and screens. These ‘photo-scrolls’ provide a fascinating new reading of Hosoe’s work and underline his commitment to push the boundaries of photographic expression.

Hosoe gained recognition in the late 1950s when he began to develop his close-ups of the human body. Embrace, a series of black-and-white, abstract nude photographs, encapsulates Hosoe’s strive for originality in this photographic genre.

Through the novelist, Yukio Mishima, Hosoe was to meet Tatsumi Hijikata, one of the founders of Butoh dance. After seeing Hijikata’s performance, adapted from the novel Kinjiki (Forbidden Colours) by Mishima in a small Tokyo theatre, Hosoe was inspired and began photographing the Butoh dancer, a collaboration which continued for many years and culminated in the series Kamaitachi (1965-1968). This series, shot on various locations in the rural Tohoku region, integrated elements of dance, theatre and documentary into a cinematic work that aimed to recreate and dramatise Hosoe’s childhood memories.

Hosoe’s association with Butoh also led him to photograph the renowned Butoh performer, Kazuo Ohno. Released in 2006 in celebration of Ohno’s 100th birthday, the series The butterfly dream is a poignant visual documentary of Ohno’s artistic development over 46 years. While they retain the drama intrinsic to Butoh, Hosoe’s photographs of Ohno focus in on details of Ohno’s body, the curve of a wrist or a facial expression caught between agony and ecstasy.

Hosoe’s latest colour work, Ukiyo-e Projections, revisits his early work by linking it into ukiyo-e and Butoh dance. This series was born when he found out that the experimental Asbestos Dance Studio, founded by Hijikata and his wife, was to close in 2003 after forty years of activity. Upon hearing about the closure, Hosoe felt the need to pay a photographic tribute “to express gratitude for all that it had produced.” Ukiyo-e Projections was completed on stage at the Studio during a series of sessions in 2002 and 2003. For this series Hosoe created what he calls a “photographic theatre,” projecting a mixture of his own photographs with ukiyo-e prints on to the white-painted bodies of young Butoh dancers. The series explores many of the themes that recur in his work: sexuality, the human form and movement.

Eikoh Hosoe: Theatre of Memory highlights Hosoe’s mastery of photography through his four seminal series, Embrace, Kamaitachi, The Butterfly Dream and Ukiyo-e Projections, showing Hosoe’s sensibility for theatre, performance and the human body. It further demonstrates his creativity and mastery of photographic printing techniques. Throughout his career Hosoe, a master printer, has experimented with both film-based and digital techniques to develop new methods of photographic expression. In recent years, he has combined new printing technologies with Japanese washi paper to present his work on traditionally made silk screens and scrolls.

This is the first solo exhibition of Hosoe’s works in Australia. Hosoe, 77, is currently completing a new series of works on the sculpture of Auguste Rodin. The exhibition Eikoh Hosoe – Theatre of memory is realised in collaboration with Studio Equis, France.

Text from the Art Gallery of New South Wales website

Photographer Eikoh Hosoe on his work and inspirations

Eikoh Hosoe – a leading figure in modern Japanese photography – came to the Art Gallery of New South Wales to launch the exhibition ‘Eikoh Hosoe: theatre of memory’. In this video he discusses his work and inspirations.

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024) 'Kazuo Ohno' 1994 from the series 'The butterfly dream' 1960-2005

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Kazuo Ohno
1994
From the series The butterfly dream 1960-2005
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Kazuo Ohno
1996
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

The Butterfly Dream

The butterfly dream – a collection of photographs taken over a period of 46 years – represents Hosoe’s homage to the charismatic butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno. It was published as a book, which was released on 27 October 2006 in celebration of Ohno’s 100th birthday.

Originally an instructor in physical education and performer of modern dance, Ohno befriended Tatsumi Hijikata in the 1950s and became a pivotal fi gure in the development of the butoh performance movement. Ohno’s poetic dance style stems from his belief in the transcendental nature of human experience, that the human body has a memory of sensations and knows no limits of self-expression.

Following closely his friend’s extremely long and successful career – Ohno continued to perform late into his 90s – Hosoe has captured some of the most poignant and magical moments in the history of butoh. In honour of Ohno’s long-held conviction in the importance of achieving freedom of body and mind, Hosoe named his photographic exploration of Ohno’s unique art after the famous Daoist allegory in which the philosopher Zhuangzi dreamt he was a butterfly, but once awake, wondered if he was a man dreaming to be a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming to be Zhuangzi.

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Kamaitachi #12
1968
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Kamaitachi #14
1965
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Kamaitachi #17
1965
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

Centered on the Japanese myth of Kamaitatchi, a mythical folkloric monster believed to have existed in rural Japan, these photographs were created collaboratively by the photographer Eikoh Hosoe and the choreographer and dancer Tatsumi Hijikata (1928-86) over several years in the late 1960s. The famed choreographer, who established the abstract dance style of Butoh, performed in front of Hosoe’s camera, enacting the movement of the monster Kamaitachi.

Hosoe captured Hijikata’s transformation into Kamaitachi as they traveled from Tokyo to a small farming village in Yamagata in the Tohoku region of Japan. Often thought to be a weasel, Kamaitachi appears in a whirlwind to cut its victims with a sickle, but his cuts neither draw blood nor cause pain. In the village, Hijikata ran around in a rice field, interacted with villagers and farmers, and played with children. The artists stated that their collaboration in the rural Tohoku region (where the both artists were born) was their symbolic departure from the increasingly modernised capital city Tokyo while they had worked professionally.

Text from the Minneapolis Institute of Art website

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Kamaitachi #23
1965
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Kamaitachi #35
1968
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Kamaitachi #37
1965
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Kamaitachi #38
1968
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

Kamaitachi

Eikoh Hosoe’s long association with the revolutionary performance movement butoh came about through his encounter in 1959 with one of its founders, Tatsumi Hijikata. Hosoe collaborated with Hijikata on several series including Kamaitachi, which is acknowledged as the finest illustration of Hosoe’s hybrid photographic style, combining performance and documentary with a dramatic, virile aesthetic that embodies the founding principles of Hijikata’s ankoku butoh or ‘dance of darkness’.

The dramatic and intense energy that Hijikata generated with his dance not only captured Hosoe’s imagination but also opened up new ways for the young photographer to approach themes such as sexuality, gender and the human body.

Driven by the desire to re-enact his childhood memories when he was evacuated from Tokyo during World War Two, Hosoe had Hijikata perform kamaitachi, the legendary weasel-like demon that haunted the rice paddies in the extremely sparse, rural landscape of the Tohoku region from where they both came. Fusing reality (Hijikata interacting with the landscape and village people) and performance, Hosoe’s ‘subjective documentary’ series opened new ground in Japanese post-war photography.

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Kamaitachi #8
1965
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

Kamaitachi: Toward a Vacuum’s Nest

Shuzo Takiguchi

“When we are photographed, our bodies and souls become the victims of sacrifice in a ritual that strips our shadows away. The Eskimo, believed that their spirits resided in their shadows and that shamans had the power to steal them. Sir James George Frazer’s Golden Bough is not the only work to recount the dazzling drama of fate, or of life and death, that unfolds between man and his shadow.

Like life, death comes and goes – perhaps for a short time, perhaps longer. Narcissus’s story will continue to dominate our lives in ways that will become increasingly complicated over time; however, the camera (or, according to villagers in Sikkim, “the evil eye in a box”) seems to have reduced us, in one fell swoop, to the physics of light and shade. The objective lens seems opened to all of Nature, where all roads lead. The fact is, however, that it turns upside down once in the darkness and then is transformed into Nature.

To what extent were Katsu Kaishu,1 Baudelaire, and other luminaries of the early modern era who posed before the camera – tenuously sustained by their recognition of Nature amid a strange confusion of affectation and narcissism – aware of the evil lurking in the lens? Whatever the case, we will eventually see that, like the naked eye, the lens exists always “in its savage state.”2 We are seldom aware of the bizarre fact (or perhaps we just accept it as a self-evident truth) that both the thieves of shadows (photographers) and the thieves’ victims (subjects) are human beings.

I find it almost impossible to believe that the camera could truly capture, for example, the desire of a bird in flight at a certain moment or at any moment. All too often, the photographer unknowingly loses sight of reality, and the reality runs or rolls away, just outside the frame. Or, surprisingly, reality may be there in a corner of the image, invisible and therefore completely unnoticed. And so here I am reminded of Man Ray’s trenchant modern maxim: “Photography is not art.”

Before we even look at the Kamaitachi images, I want to stress the importance of distinguishing them from the generic concept referred to as staged photography. They are strictly, categorically, different from posed photographs of modern narcissists. If Hosoe had not met Tatsumi Hijikata, the phenomenal butoh master, he could not have created this extraordinary series. Hijikata is a man who – metaphorically speaking – can transmogrify in an instant into a phantasmagorical bird. This is not even theatrical photography, but rather a rare instance in which the camera obscura becomes a theater. And it is the paradoxical existence of the camera – which can photograph a vast void when we mean to capture a concrete object – that proves to be a stroke of luck for Hijikata, the master of movement.

Like the lens, Hijikata is a unique dancer, always aware that the “eye exists in its savage state.”3 His “dance experience” is never a matter of leaping across a stage, pretending to be a swan: if a bird is what he has in mind, Hijikata becomes a raven. The raven plunges to the ground far below the stage. Then it runs, if it wants to run, or flies, if it wants to fly. For Hijikata, hasn’t the paradoxical vacuum dwelling in the camera become a divine machine at a certain moment? Then, voluntarily or involuntarily, we may reach the lights of purgatory, for which we have yearned, beyond the millennia of human history.

At the very least, I see here an inevitable force striving to preserve the relationship between photographer and subject. In all likelihood, no other work approaches the original meaning of the term “happening” (however simplified it may be in this case) as closely as this one. Tatsumi Hijikata uses his dance artistry to abruptly penetrate the center of the vacuum between time and space, and he descends to the ground closest to the place where we were born.

He has arrived at the vacuum’s nest, the home of kamaitachi, the “sickle-weasel.”

Today it would seem that the kamaitachi belong to legend and mythology. What are kamaitachi? Memories from my childhood flood back to me: my father was a country doctor, and several times I saw farmers, claiming to have been bitten by a kamaitachi, carried to the threshold of our house. Those were frightening moments, smelling of blood, like the first bolt of lightning streaking across a dark sky. I heard the farmers say they were attacked out of the blue, under a rice-drying rack or an ancient persimmon tree. But no one bore a grudge against that invisible weasel. In fact, a family of actual weasels made their home in the loft of the thatched shed behind our house. Every once in a while, I would see them dart across a field, always taking the shortest path and then disappearing. They lived among people but avoided them. The rumour was that the disreputable little creatures were so wary and agile that they never took the same path twice. I wonder whatever happened to them. One book defines kamaitachi as a laceration from the localised vacuum created by a dust devil. No one really knows the truth. The days of kamaitachi are long gone.

Was kamaitachi a spirit of the soil, a phantom that appeared only to farmers? If so, that invisible flying blade must have been incredibly sharp to leap through the sky and pierce flesh.

It is hard to say whether Tatsumi Hijikata is a spirit of the soil or the air; however, even before we can contemplate the question, he approaches the ground almost vertically and rushes like a gale into a farming village. This village is in a rice-growing district, where Japan’s most inconsistent and absurd social reality anomalously persists. Hijikata appears suddenly, like a hawk diving to the ground – or a kidnapper from heaven.

The god of the rice fields smiles on this scene. A faint trace of that smile is on the kagura theatrical dance mask, but it isn’t the embarrassed smile replayed endlessly on television. It is a smile that could exist among demons, a smile that was present even on a footpath between barren rice fields during a terrible famine, a startling but comical smile from the realm of the unconscious.

At a precise moment, our dancer and photographer approach a timeworn village – their footsteps only faintly audible – and they capture a brief moment in the empty village, where zinnias and other flowers bloom, coated with white soil dust. The entire village, mesmerised like a haunted house, enthrals them.

Is he a hawk that has just landed – or a leaping weasel? It is foolish to ask. It is our dancer who would be wounded. The villagers gaze at him innocently, as though he reminds them of a long-forgotten priest. They smile, without knowing why, at the arrival of the oblivious fool. Their smiles become the same smile of the footpath between rice fields. It is a smile that borders on terror.

A girl smiles like a shrine maiden whom the gods have endowed with evil and innocence in perfect balance. Were the girls born fairies? Sooner or later they will experience the orgasm of life and death. Then they will depart. Will they return to the earth or to the sky? No one knows which path they will take.

In any case, two contradictory, endless journeys await them.

Hairy vacuum! Bloody vacuum! Biting vacuum! You must continue to exist on this earth!

The desire for the heavens will inexorably lead to a desire for the bowels of the earth. Then the excrescence will head for the huge void, and vice versa. The cosmic metamorphosis that this phenomenon seeks will occur, extremely and tangibly. The vacuum theater, too, is part of the evolution.

To arrive at the source of the phantom of ecstasy, we must dig deeper and deeper, day by day.

And the witness is an instantaneous flash.”

by Shuzo Takiguchi
Translated by Connie Prener

1/ Officer credited with the modernisation of Japan’s navy (1823-1899)
2/ Allusion to Andre Breton’s Le Surréalisme et la peinture
3/ Ibid.,

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Embrace #48
1970
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

Embrace

First published as a book in 1971, Embrace represents a return to the study of the human body that Hosoe undertook in earlier series such as Man and woman (1959) or Ordeal by roses (1963). In this new body of work, however, he abandoned the strong contrast and dramatic, baroque visual aesthetic in favour of the purity of the human form. Showing abstract fragments of male and female nudes in intimate placement, the series is not merely about eroticism or the dialogue of rivalry between the opposite sexes but is also a celebration of the pure beauty of the human body.

By depersonalising the bodies of his models, Hosoe attempted to reach a universal expression of corporeality. The extreme abstraction of these images focuses the attention on the flesh, which, according to Hosoe’s belief, is the essence of human beings.

The author Yukio Mishima comments on this series: ‘The viscosity which is associated with sex – those earthly odours and temperatures of soft and indeterminately formed internal organs – has been painstakingly removed from these photographs. To me this is a series filled with a hard, athletic beauty. First and foremost, it is about form.’

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Embrace #52
1970
Gelatin silver print
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

Ukiyo-e Projections

When Hosoe heard the news that the Asbestos Dance Studio, founded by Tatsumi Hijikata and his wife Akiko Motofuji, was to close in April 2003 after 40 years of activity, he felt the need to pay tribute to the achievements of this experimental studio. With the help of Hijikata’s widow, he organised a series of performances in 2002 and 2003, in which the dancers were asked to coordinate their movements in accordance with images from his own work, as well as from 19th-century Japanese paintings and woodblock prints projected on their naked, white-painted bodies.

The result of this ‘photographic theatre’ was stunning: a mysterious four-dimensional space transcending ordinary space and time was created as the two-dimensional images were projected on the three-dimensional bodies. The idea to use shunga – the erotic woodblock prints by noted ukiyo-e artists such as Utamaro, Hokusai and others – stemmed from Hosoe’s conviction that Hijikata’s archaic, ecstatic dance style had its roots in this particular art genre of the Edo period (1603-1868).

Exploring many of the themes that recur in Hosoe’s work – sexuality, the human form, movement and the passage of time – this series epitomises his unique approach in synthesising photography with various forms of visual and performance arts.

Eikoh Hosoe (Japanese, 1933-2024)
Ukiyo-e Projections #2-36
2003
© Eikoh Hosoe/Courtesy Studio Equis

Art Gallery of New South Wales
Art Gallery Road, The Domain
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Review: ‘American Dreams: 20th century photography from George Eastman House’ at Bendigo Art Gallery, Victoria

Exhibition dates: 16th April – 10th July 2011

Gertrude Käsebier (American, 1852-1934)
The Sketch (Beatrice Baxter)
1903
Platinum print
Gift of Hermine Turner
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

This is a fabulous survey exhibition of the great artists of 20th century American photography, a rare chance in Australia to see such a large selection of vintage prints from some of the masters of photography. If you have a real interest in the history of photography you must see this exhibition, showing as it is just a short hour and a half drive (or train ride) from Melbourne at Bendigo Art Gallery.

I talked with the curator, Tansy Curtin, and asked her about the exhibition’s gestation. This is the first time an exhibition from the George Eastman House has come to Australia and the exhibition was 3-4 years in the making. Tansy went to George Eastman House in March last year to select the prints; this was achieved by going through solander box after solander box of vintage prints and seeing what was there, what was available and then making work sheets for the exhibition – what a glorious experience this would have been, undoing box after box to reveal these magical prints!

The themes for the exhibition were already in the history of photography and Tansy has chosen almost exclusively vintage prints that tell a narrative story, that make that story accessible to people who know little of the history of photography. With that information in mind the exhibition is divided into the following sections:

Photography becomes art; The photograph as social document; Photographing America’s monuments; Abstraction and experimentation; Photojournalism and war photography; Fashion and celebrity portraiture; Capturing the everyday; Photography in colour; Social and environmental conscience; and The contemporary narrative.

There are some impressive, jewel-like contact prints in the exhibition. One must remember that, for most of the photographers working after 1940, exposure, developing and printing using Ansel Adams Zone System (where the tonal range of the negative and print can be divided into 11 different ‘zones’ from 0 for absolute black and to 10 for absolute white) was the height of technical sophistication and aesthetic choice, equal to the best gaming graphics from today’s age. It was a system that I used in my black and white film development and printing. Film development using a Pyrogallol staining developer (the infamous ‘pyro’, a developer I tried to master without success in a few trial batches of film) was also technically difficult but the ability of this developer to obtain a greater dynamic range of zones in the film itself was outstanding.

“The Zone System provides photographers with a systematic method of precisely defining the relationship between the way they visualise the photographic subject and the final results… An expressive image involves the arrangement and rendering of various scene elements according to photographer’s desire. Achieving the desired image involves image management (placement of the camera, choice of lens, and possibly the use of camera movements) and control of image values. The Zone System is concerned with control of image values, ensuring that light and dark values are rendered as desired. Anticipation of the final result before making the exposure is known as visualisation.”1

Previsualisation, the ability of the photographer to see ‘in the mind’s eye’ the outcome of the photograph (the final print) before even looking through the camera lens to take the photograph, was an important skill for most of these photographers. This skill has important implications for today’s photographers, should they choose to develop this aspect of looking: not as a mechanistic system but as a meditation on the possibilities of each part of the process, the outcome being an expressive print.

A selection of the best photographs in the exhibition could include,

1/ An original 1923 Alfred Steiglitz Equivalent contact print – small (approx. 9cm x 12cm, see below), intense, the opaque brown blacks really strong, the sun shining brightly through the velvety clouds. In the Equivalents series the photograph was purely abstract, standing as a metaphor for another state of being, in this case music. A wonderful melding of the technical and the aesthetic the Equivalents “are generally recognised as the first photographs intended to free the subject matter from literal interpretation, and, as such, are some of the first completely abstract photographic works of art.”2

2/ Paul Strand Blind (1915, printed 1945) – printed so dark that you cannot see the creases in the coat of the blind woman with a Zone 3 dark skin tone.

3/ Lewis Hine [Powerhouse mechanic] see below, vintage 1920 print full of subtle tones. Usually when viewing reproductions of this image it is either cropped or the emphasis is on the body of the mechanic; in this print his skin tones are translucent, silvery and the emphasis is on the man in unison with the machine. The light is from the top right of the print and falls not on him directly, but on the machinery at upper right = this is the emotional heart of this image!

4/ Three tiny vintage Tina Modotti prints from c. 1929 – so small, such intense visions. I have never seen one original Modotti before so to see three was just sensational.

5/ Walker Evans View of Morgantown, West Virginia vintage 1935 print – a cubist dissection of space and the image plane with two-point perspective of telegraph pole with lines.

6/ An Edward S. Curtis photogravure Washo Baskets (1924, from the portfolio The North American Indian) – such a sumptuous composition and the tones…

7/ Ansel Adams 8″ x 10″ contact print of Winter Storm (1944, printed 1959, see above) where the blackness of the mountain on the left hand side of the print was almost impenetrable and, because of the large format negative, the snow on the rock in mid-distance was like a sprinkling of icing sugar on a cake it was that sharp.

8/ A most splendid print of the Chrysler Building (vintage 1930 print, approx. 48 x 34cm) by Margaret Bourke-White – tonally rich browns, smoky, hazy city at top; almost like a platinum print rather than a silver gelatin photograph. The bottom left of the print was SO dark but you could still see into the shadows just to see the buildings.

9/ An original Robert Capa 1944 photograph from the Omaha Beach D Day landings!

10/ Frontline soldier with canteen, Saipan (1944, vintage print) by W Eugene Smith where the faces of the soldiers were almost Zone 2-3 and there was nothing in the print above zone 5 (mid-grey) – no physical and metaphoric light.

11/ One of the absolute highlights: two vintage Edward Weston side by side, the form of one echoing the form of the other; Nude from the 50th Anniversary Portfolio 1902-1952 (1936, printed 1951), an 8″ x 10″ contact print side by side with an 8″ x 10″ contact print of Pepper No. 30 (vintage 1930 print). Nothing over zone 7 in the skin tones of the nude, no specular highlights; the sensuality in the pepper just stunning – one of my favourite prints of the day – look at the tones, look at the light!

12/ Three vintage Aaron Siskind (one of my favourite photographers) including two early prints from 1938 – wow. Absolutely stunning.

13/ Harry Callahan. That oh so famous image of Eleanor and Barbara, Chicago (vintage 1953 print) that reminds me of the work of Jeffrey Smart (or is it the other way around). The wonderful space around the figures, the beautiful composition, the cobblestones and the light – just ravishing.

14/ The absolute highlight: Three vintage Diane Arbus prints in a row – including a 15″ square image from the last series of work Untitled (6) (vintage 1971 print, see above) – the year in which she committed suicide. This had to be the moment of the day for me. This has always been one of my favourite photographs ever and it did not disappoint; there was a darkness to the trees behind the three figures and much darker grass (zone 3-4) than I had ever imagined with a luminous central figure. The joyousness of the figures was incredible. The present on the ground at the right hand side was a revelation – usually lost in reproductions this stood out from the grass like you wouldn’t believe in the print. Being an emotional person I am not afraid to admit it, I burst into tears…

15/ And finally another special… Two vintage Stephen Shore chromogenic colour prints from 1976 where the colours are still true and have not faded. This was incredible – seeing vintage prints from one of the early masters of colour photography; noticing that they are not full of contrast like a lot of today’s colour photographs – more like a subtle Panavision or Technicolor film from the early 1960s. Rich, subtle, beautiful hues. For a contemporary colour photographer the trip to Bendigo just to see these two prints would be worth the time and the car trip/rail ticket alone!

Not everything is sweetness and light. The print by Dorothea Lange Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California is a contemporary print from 2003, the vintage print having just been out on loan; the contemporary section, ‘The contemporary narrative’, is very light on, due mainly to the nature of the holdings of George Eastman House; and there are some major photographers missing from the line up including Minor White, Fredrick Sommer, Paul Caponigro, Wynn Bullock and William Clift to name just a few.

Of more concern are the reproductions in the catalogue, the images for reproduction supplied by George Eastman House and the catalogue signed off by them. The reproduction of Margaret Bourke-White’s Chrysler Building (1930, see below) bears no relationship to the print in the exhibition and really is a denigration to the work of that wonderful photographer. Other reproductions are massively oversized, including the Alfred Stieglitz Equivalent, Lewis Hine’s Powerhouse mechanic (see below) and Tina Modotti’s Woman Carrying Child (c. 1929). In Walter Benjamin’s terms (The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction) the aura of the original has been lost and these reproductions further erode the authenticity of the original in their infinite reproducability. Conversely, it could be argued that the reproduction auraticizes the original:

“The original artwork has become a device to sell its multiply-reproduced derivatives; reproductability turned into a ploy to auraticize the original after the decay of aura…”3

In other words, after having seen so many reproductions when you actually see the original – it is like a bolt of lightning, the aura that emanates from the original. This is so true of this exhibition but it still begs the question: why reproduce in the catalogue at a totally inappropriate size? Personally, I believe that the signification of the reproduction (in terms of size and intensity of visualisation) is so widely at variance with the original one must question the decision to reproduce at this size knowing that this variance is a misrepresentation of the artistic interpretation of the author.

In conclusion, this is a sublime exhibition well worthy of the time and energy to journey up to Bendigo to see it. A true lover of classical American black and white and colour photography would be a fool to miss it!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Anon. “Zone System,” on Wikipedia [Online] Cited 13/06/2011
2/ Anon. “Equivalents,” on Wikipedia [Online] Cited 13/06/2011
3/ Huyssen, Andreas. Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia. London: Routledge, 1995, pp. 23-24

Many thankx to Tansy Curtin, Senior Curator, Programs and Access at Bendigo Art Gallery for her time and knowledge when I visited the gallery; and to Bendigo Art Gallery for allowing me to publish the text and photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Actual size of print: 9.2 x 11.8 cm
Size of print in catalogue: 18.5 x 13.9 cm

These two photographs represent a proportionate relation between the two sizes as they appear in print and catalogue but because of monitor resolutions are not the actual size of the two prints.

Alfred Stieglitz (American, 1864-1946)
Equivalent
1923
Gelatin silver print
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Actual size of print: 16.9 x 11.8cm
Size of print in catalogue: 23.2 x 15.8cm

These two photographs represent a proportionate relation between the two sizes as they appear in print and catalogue but because of monitor resolutions are not the actual size of the two prints.

Lewis Hine (American, 1874-1940)
[Powerhouse mechanic]
1920
Gelatin silver print
Transfer from the Photo League Lewis Hine Memorial Committee, ex-collection Corydon Hine
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

As it approximately appears in the exhibition (above, from my notes, memory and comparing the print in the exhibition with the catalogue reproduction)

Below, as the reproduction appears in the catalogue (scanned)

Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904-1971)
Chrysler Building
New York City
1930
Silver gelatin photograph

An exhibition of treasures from arguably the world’s most important photographic museum, George Eastman House, has been developed by Bendigo Art Gallery. The exhibition American Dreams will bring, for the first time, eighty of some of the most iconic photographic images from the 20th Century to Australia.

The choice of works highlights the trailblazing role these American artists had on the world stage in developing and shaping the medium, and the impact these widely published images had on the greater community.

Curator Tansy Curtin, who worked closely with George Eastman House developing the exhibition commented, “Through these images we can recognise the extraordinary ability of these artists, and their pivotal role influencing the evolution of photography. Their far-reaching images helped shape American culture, and impacted on the fundamental role photography has in communications today. Even more than this we can see through these artists the burgeoning love of photography that engaged a nation.”

Through these images we can see not only the development of photography, but also as some of the most powerful social documentary photography of last century, we see extraordinary moments captured in the lives of a wide range of Americans. The works distil the dramatic transformation that affected people during the 20th century – the affluence, degradation, loss, hope and change – both personally and throughout society.

The role of photography in nation building is exemplified in Ansel Adams’ majestic portraits of Yosemite national park, Bourke-White’s Chrysler building and images of migrants and farm workers during the Depression. Tansy Curtin added, “We see the United States ‘growing up’ through photography. We see hopes raised and crushed and the inevitable striving for the American Dream.” Director of Bendigo Art Gallery Karen Quinlan said, “We are thrilled to have been given this unprecedented opportunity to work with this unrivalled photographic archive. The resulting exhibition American Dreams, represents one of the most important and comprehensive collections of American 20th Century photography to come to Australia.”

George Eastman House holds over 400,000 images from the invention of photography to the present day. George Eastman, one time owner of the home in which the archives are housed, founded Kodak and revolutionised and democratised photography around the world. Eastman is considered the grandfather of snapshot photography.

American Dreams is one of the first exhibitions from this important collection to have been curated by an outside institution. It will be the first time Australian audiences have been given the opportunity to engage with this vast archive.

Press release from the Bendigo Art Gallery

Paul Strand (American 1890-1976)
Blind woman, New York
1916
Platinum print
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Edward S. Curtis (American, 1868-1952)
Washo Baskets
1924
From the portfolio The North American Indian
Photogravure
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Tina Modotti (Italian / American / Mexican, 1896-1942)
Woman Carrying Child
c. 1929
Gelatin silver print
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Pepper No. 30
1930
Vintage silver gelatin print
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Torn Poster, Truro, Massachusetts
1930
Gelatin silver contact print
Purchased with funds from National Endowment for the Arts
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Alfred Steiglitz (American, 1864-1946)
[Georgia O’Keefe hand on back tire of Ford V8]
1933
gelatin silver print
Part purchase and part gift from Georgia O’Keefe
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
View of Morgantown, West Virginia
June, 1935
Gelatin silver print
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California
1936, printed c. 2003
Photogravure print
Gift of Sean Corcoran
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Edward Weston (American, 1886-1958)
Nude
1936, printed 1951
From the Fiftieth Anniversary Portfolio: 1902-1952, c. 1952
Vintage silver gelatin print
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Kern County California
1938
Gelatin silver print
Exchange with Roy Stryker
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Ansel Adams (American, 1902-1984)
Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park
c. 1938
Gelatin silver print
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

W. Eugene Smith (American, 1918-1978)
[Frontline Soldier with Canteen at Saipan]
June 1944
Gelatin silver print
41.1 × 32.4cm
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Eleanor and Barbara, Chicago
1953
Vintage gelatin silver print
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Diane Arbus (American, 1923-1971)
Untitled (6)
1971
Gelatin silver print
Collection of George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film

Bendigo Art Gallery
42 View Street Bendigo
Victoria Australia 3550
Phone: 03 5434 6088

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Exhibition: ‘HIJACKED 2: Australia/Germany’ at the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide

Exhibition dates: 13th May – 1st July 2011

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

Olaf Unverzart (German, b. 1972)
Untitled (from the series Fallen Kann Ich Auch Alleine)
1999
Pigment print
56 x 38cm/125 x 85cm
Courtesy of Oechsner Galerie

Ingvar Kenne (Australian born Sweden, b. 1965)
Nick Cave
2001
From the series Citizen 1997-2012
C-type print
100 x 100cm
Courtesy of the artist

Narelle Autio (Australian, b. 1969)
Untitled 8 (from the series Not of This Earth)
2001
Courtesy of the artist

Jörg Brüggemann (German, b. 1979)
Nam Song River, Vang Vieng, Laos, December 2007
2007
C-type print
69 x 57cm
Courtesy of the artist and Ostkreuz

Johanna Ahlert (German, b. 1980)
Truck and Trailer Castle, Berlin
2008
From the series CONVOI 2008
C-type print
100 x 127cm
Courtesy of the artist

Polixeni Papapetrou (Australian, 1960-2018)
The loners
2009
From the series Between worlds
Pigment ink-jet print
105 x 105cm

Ingvar Kenne (Australian born Sweden, b. 1965)
Mona Chuguna, Author, Broome, Australia
2009
From the series Citizen 1997-2012
C-type print
100 x 100cm
Courtesy of the artist

Hijacked 2: Australia/Germany builds on the very considerable success of the inaugural exhibition, Hijacked 1 – Australia and America, and its internationally celebrated and hugely successful book. This new exhibition effectively considers two socially disparate nations, Germany and Australia, through an expansive photographic anthology of fascinating works, juxtaposed to suggest connections.

Hijacked 2 has been curated by Mark McPherson and Ute Noll and showcases the diverse talents and perspectives of thirty contemporary German and Australian photographers. With a focus on the depiction of the young, the boundary-riding, and the fringe-dwelling, Hijacked 2 is evocative, confronting, dreamlike and rousing.

Featured artists from Australia are: Narelle Autio, James Brickwood, Michael Corridore, Andrew Cowen, Tamara Dean, Suzie Fox, Lee Grant, Derek Henderson, Rebecca Ann Hobbs, Ingvar Kenne, Bronek Kózka, Georgia Metaxas, Polixeni Papapetrou and Louis Porter.

From Germany the artists are: Johanna Ahlert, Natalie Bothur, Jörg Brüggemann, Thekla Ehling, Albrecht Fuchs, Jan von Holleben, Karsten Kronas, Anne Lass, Jens Liebchen, Myriam Lutz, Julian Röder, Josef Schulz, Oliver Sieber, Ivonne Thein, Olaf Unverzart and Sascha Weidner.

Hijacked 2: Australia/Germany is toured by the Australian Centre for Photography. A substantial 412-page publication accompanies the exhibition with texts by Uta Daur, Bec Dean, Alasdair Foster, Bill Kouwenhoven, Katja Melzer, Daniel Palmer and Katrina Schwarz.

Text from the Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art website

Ivon Thein (German, b. 1979)
Untitled 07 (from the series Thirty-Two Kilos)
2006
C-type print
55 x 80cm
Courtesy of Galerie Voss

Oliver Sieber (German, b. 1966)
Reita, Köln, 2007
2007
Pigment print
34 x 27cm
Courtesy Galerie Priska Pasquer, Germany

David Henderson (New Zealand, b. 1963)
Dave Omeka Kidwell and Feather, Ātiamuri
2008
From the series Mercy Mercer

Thekla Ehling (German, b. 1968)
Untitled
2011
From the series Vergiszmeinnicht (forget-me-not)

Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art
Hawke Building, City West campus
University of South Australia
55 North Terrace, Adelaide
Phone: (08) 8302 0870

Opening hours:
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Exhibition: ‘Vienna – Art & Design’ at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 18th June – 9th October 2011

Media preview for Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

A subtle pleasure

The delicate paintings are smaller with a flatness of texture and a sombreness than I had not imagined; magnificent in their subtlety. However, the real stars of this wonderful exhibition are the design pieces.

Whether silver, wood, ceramic, glass or jewellery the designs are balanced by a glorious aesthetic. Never has a tea service looked so ravishing or decadent.

This is not a wham bang show like Dali or that other King of some fame showing elsewhere. This is for a discerning audience – one that can take time (between pots of tea) to study and go ooh and aah!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the National Gallery of Victoria for inviting me and for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All photographs © Marcus Bunyan 2011 except the photographs of the full paintings which come from the NGV press CD ROM.

I just couldn’t help myself!
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of first room of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of first room of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria showing at left:

Otto Wagner (architect) (Austrian, 1841-1918)
Alexander Albert (manufacturer) Austria active c. 1904
Chair for Dr Karl Lueger
1904
Rosewood (Dalbergia sp.), mother-of-pearl, leather
98.5 x 63 x 59.5cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Estate of Karl Lueger, 1910

at right:

Wilhelm Gause (Germany 1853-1916)
Vienna Municipal Ball
1904
Watercolour and oil on cardboard
62 x 88cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Commissioned by the City of Vienna, 1904
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Wilhelm Gause (Germany 1853-1916)
Vienna Municipal Ball
1904
Watercolour and oil on cardboard
62 x 88cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Commissioned by the City of Vienna, 1904

Stylish, provocative, rebellious, and unforgettable – the world has seen nothing like Vienna in 1900. A century ago, a group of radical young artists, architects, writers, musicians, designers and thinkers overturned all the rules and created a brave new world. Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Josef Hoffmann and Adolf Loos were central to this artistic revolution which transformed Vienna into a dynamic metropolis at the forefront of ground-breaking modernism.

Vienna at the dawn of the twentieth century was opulent, elegant and daring. Casting aside outmoded social mores and moralities, private life became public spectacle. Cabarets, coffee houses, and nightclubs teemed with radical debate and artistic abandon. Gustav Klimt’s society portraits immortalise the chic women who presided over this creative ferment. Josef Hoffmann and the Vienna Workshops created the bold new interior design and the household objects with which these women furnished their elegant homes, establishing the modern ‘look’. As Sigmund Freud defined sexual fragmentation and erotic obsession for a new millennium, Egon Schiele explored human sexuality in images of unparalleled and startling frankness.

Vienna: Art & Design will explore this extraordinary period of artistic and intellectual genius, bringing together more than 250 works of art, including painting, drawing, graphic and decorative art, furniture, fashion, jewellery and photography, most never before seen in Australia. Visitors will experience the inventiveness and brilliance of a unique generation who laid the foundations for life in the twentieth century – a legacy still vividly alive today.

Text from the National Gallery of Victoria website Nd [Online] Cited 22/07/2022

Otto Wagner (Austrian, 1841-1918) (architect)
Alexander Albert (Austria active c. 1904) (manufacturer)
Chair for Dr Karl Lueger
1904
Rosewood (Dalbergia sp.), mother-of-pearl, leather
98.5 x 63 x 59.5cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Estate of Karl Lueger, 1910
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Josef Hoffmann (Austrian, 1870-1956) (designer)
J. & J. Kohn, Vienna (manufacturer)
Adjustable-back chair (Sitzmaschine)
1908
Ebonised Beech (Fagus sp.), plywood, steel
(a-b) 110.8 x 68.1 x 83.7cm (overall)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased through The Art Foundation of Victoria with the assistance of Jardine Matheson Australia, Fellow, 1983
© Estate of Josef Hoffmann

Josef Hoffmann (Austrian, 1870-1956) (designer)
Wiener Werkstätte, Vienna (commissioning workshop)
J. Soulek, Vienna (manufacturer)
Bureau, from the Gallia apartment boudoir
1913
Painted wood, gilt, glass, silk, brass
(a-m) 179.4 x 110.9 x 64.6cm (overall)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Samuel E. Wills Bequest, 1976
© Estate of Josef Hoffmann

Otto Wagner (Austria 1841-1918) (architect)
Reconstruction of facade for Die Zeit (installation view)
1902 designed, 1985 made
Iron, aluminium, nickel-plated iron, glass
450 x 332cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Commissioned by the Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, 1985
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Otto Wagner (Austria 1841-1918) (architect)
Reconstruction of facade for Die Zeit (installation detail)
1902 designed, 1985 made
Iron, aluminium, nickel-plated iron, glass
450 x 332cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Commissioned by the Historisches Museum der Stadt Wien, 1985
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Otto Wagner objects including shelving, stool, chair and hot air blower (rear) in the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Gustav Klimt (Austria 1862-1918)
The Park (installation detail)
1909
Oil on canvas
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view part of the second room of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Wilhelm Otto List
Young lady in black and white (installation detail)
1904
Oil on canvas
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Charles Robert Ashbee (designer) (British, 1863-1942)
Standing cup and cover (installation view)
1901
Silver, turqoise

Josef Hoffmann (designer) (Austria-Hungary 1870-1956)
Sports Trophy (installation view)
1902
Silver, gilt, malachite
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Josef Hoffmann (Austria-Hungary 1870-1956) (designer)
Wiener Werkstätte, Vienna (manufacturer) (Austria-Hungary 1903-1932)
Tea service (installation view)
c. 1909-1911
Silver-gilt, wood
(1.A-E) 21.5 x 29.0 x 26.8cm (overall) (kettle, stand and burner)
(2) 10.8 x 15.4 x 20.2cm (teapot)
(3.A-B) 8.7 x 8.8 x 6.8cm (overall) (sugar basin and lid)
(4) 4.8 x 8.5 x 15.6cm (milk jug)
(5) 3.4 x 36.3 x 29.9cm (tray)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased, 1985
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of room three of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria showing part of Gustave Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze: Central wall 1901-1902 (detail at top)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Max Klinger (German, 1857-1920)
Beethoven (installation view)
c. 1902
Plaster
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of room four of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria with at right, Gustav Klimt’s painting Emilie Flöge (1902)
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Gustav Klimt (Austrian, 1862-1918)
Emilie Flöge
1902
Oil on canvas
178.0 x 80.0cm
Wien Museum, Vienna

Gustav Klimt (Austrian, 1862-1918)
Emilie Flöge (installation detail)
1902
Oil on canvas
178.0 x 80.0cm
Wien Museum, Vienna
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of room five of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of first room of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria showing at right:

Koloman Moser (Austrian, 1868-1918) (designer)
Armchair (installation view)
1903
Painted beech

at second right

Josef Hoffmann (Austrian, 1870-1956) (designer)
Collapsible library steps (installation view)
1905
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Gustav Klimt (Austrian, 1862-1918)
Fritza Riedler (installation detail)
1906
Oil on canvas
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Gustav Klimt (Austrian, 1862-1918)
Fritza Riedler
1906
Oil on canvas
152.0 x 134.0cm
Belvedere, Vienna

Installation views of room six of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Josef Hoffmann (Austrian, 1870-1956)
Tea and coffee service (installation view)
1909
Silver, ivory
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of room seven of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria with, against the wall,

Adolf Loos (Austrian, 1870-1933) (designer)
Sideboard, from the Langer apartment
1903
Mahogany (Swietenia sp.), mirror, brass
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Adolf Loos (Austrian, 1870-1933) (designer)
Johann Heeg (manufacturer)
Clock
1906-1907
Brass, glass, clock mechanism, enamel paint, steel
(a-b) 42.7 x 43.0 x 32.7cm (overall) (c) 7.4 x 5.5 x 0.8cm (key)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased through The Art Foundation of Victoria with the assistance of Waltons Limited, Fellow, 1987

Installation view of room seven of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Ferdinand Andri (Austrian, 1871-1956)
The Gallia children (installation view)
1901
Oil on canvas

with Josef Hoffmann furniture in the foreground
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Ferdinand Andri (Austrian, 1871-1956)
The Gallia children
1901
Oil on canvas
100.4 × 130.8cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented by the family of Moriz and Hermine Gallia, 1976
© the artist’s estate

Gustave Klimt (Austrian, 1862-1918)
Portrait of Hermine Gallia (installation view detail)
1904
Oil on canvas
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Pieces of Josef Hoffmann and Koloman Mosser silver in the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Love the reflected light!

Installation views of room eight of the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Objects by Dagobert Peche (left, right and second right) and Josef Hoffmann in the exhibition Vienna – Art & Design at the National Gallery of Victoria
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Egon Schiele (Austrian, 1890-1918)
Portrait of a boy (Portrait of Herbert Rainer aged approximately six (installation detail)
1910
Oil on canvas
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Egon Schiele (Austrian, 1890-1918)
Portrait of a boy (Portrait of Herbert Rainer aged approximately six)
1910
Oil on canvas
101.0 x 101.5cm
Belvedere, Vienna

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