Exhibition dates: 8th May – 26th September 2021
Curators: Sarah Hermanson Meister, Curator, with Dana Ostrander, Curatorial Assistant, Robert B. Menschel Department of Photography
José Yalenti (Brazilian, 1895-1967)
Angles (Angulos)
1951
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Courtesy Fernanda Feitosa and Heitor Martins
While we can’t travel around the world physically, it’s fantastic to virtually discover these hidden gems of photographic history – this time “men and women who joined São Paulo’s Foto-Cine Clube Bandeirante (FCCB) [who] bonded over their passion for photography: the club was instrumental to their individual artistic development and their esteemed reputation across a dynamic international circuit of amateur photo salons.”
My favourite photograph in the posting is Marcel Giró’s Light and Power, for its modernist, abstract form and beauty, for the light, and for its intonation… staves of music, birds on the wire.
Marcus
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Many thankx to MoMA for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
The Museum of Modern Art announces Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography, 1946-1964, the first museum exhibition of Brazilian modernist photography outside of Brazil. On view May 8 – September 26, 2021, the exhibition will focus on the unforgettable creative achievements of São Paulo’s Foto-Cine Clube Bandeirante, a group of amateur photographers widely heralded in Brazil, but essentially unknown to European and North American audiences. Fotoclubismo is comprised of over 60 photographs drawn generously from MoMA’s collection; together, they bring forward the extraordinary range of achievements of this group, provide valuable insight into the way photographic aesthetics were framed in the 1950s, and afford opportunities to reflect on the significance of amateur status today.
The exhibition is divided into thematic categories: Simplicity, Gertrudes Altschul, Abstractions from Nature, Texture and Shape, Geraldo de Barros, Experimental Processes, Daily Life, and Solitude.
- Read a short essay about Geraldo de Barros at the MoMa Post website
- Read a short essay about Gertrudes Altschul at the MoMA Post website
- Read a short essay about the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante (FCCB) at the MoMA Post website
The exhibition not only showcases the groundbreaking experimental and aesthetic sensibilities of FCCB, but it also invites the viewer to question the status of the amateur photographer.
Meister has positioned Fotoclubismo within the history of contemporary photography. Along with their stylistic merits, FCCB’s photos allow the viewer to reflect on the ways race, gender, and status affect how photography is consumed by the public.
“I’m particularly excited not only because I know that the work is going to resonate with audiences,” she [curator Sarah Meister] said, “but because it’s this wonderful opportunity to think, ‘what else can we do as curators or as museums to reflect and recuperate other elements of our history that have been overlooked and neglected?'” she told Deutsche Welle, Germany’s international broadcaster.
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Meka Boyle. “MoMA is the First Museum Outside of Brazil to Put the Spotlight on Brazilian Modernist Photography,” on the Art Dealer Street website May 28 2021 [Online] Cited 26/08/2021
Installation view of the exhibition Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography, 1946-1964 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York
Photo: Jonathan Muzikar
FCCB members on an excursion to Paquetá Island to visit the Sociedade Fluminense de Fotografia. Boletim foto-cine 17 (September 1947): 3. Image and annotations courtesy Rubens Fernandes Junior
FCCB members on an excursion to Paquetá Island to visit the Sociedade Fluminense de Fotografia, with some of the women photographers singled out. Boletim foto-cine 17 (September 1947): 3. Image and annotations courtesy Rubens Fernandes Junior
The men and women who joined São Paulo’s Foto-Cine Clube Bandeirante (FCCB) bonded over their passion for photography: the club was instrumental to their individual artistic development and their esteemed reputation across a dynamic international circuit of amateur photo salons. The works on view in Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography, 1946-1964 highlight the achievements of more than 20 club members with unforgettable prints that traveled extensively along these networks. These are not intimate snapshots of family gatherings intended for the album page (a slightly different twist on the photographic amateur) but works of ambition and originality that had and continue to have a commanding presence on the walls of salons and museums. FCCB members’ success owes much to their distinctive blend of camaraderie and competition, nurtured in part by their frequent excursions.
Beginning in 1946 the FCCB published a small (often monthly or bimonthly) magazine, the Boletim foto-cine, which was given free to members and sold in local photo shops. Its modest scale belied its scope and seriousness: it won special awards for editorial content in the Photographic Society of America’s International Competition in 1949 and 1951. (It should be noted the Boletim was published exclusively in Portuguese, so perhaps the PSA was influenced by the fact that its own members and their writing – in translation – appeared frequently.)
The Boletim played a central role in advertising a social environment that drew people to the club, and also encouraged the competitive atmosphere within it. For many years, the Boletim published each new member’s name, birthday notices, wedding announcements, and snapshots from excursions, openings, and holiday celebrations at the club headquarters (Santa’s annual visit was a recurring feature). These personal touches served as a counter-balance to the equally prominent presence of club rankings: charts and accounts of prizes won and accolades received both domestically and around the world. One might conclude the social niceties were instrumental in fostering an environment in which critical feedback was possible, which in turn contributed to the club’s capacity for creative innovation.
Geraldo de Barros is arguably the best known member of the FCCB. He earned a living at the Banco do Brasil, but his creative spirit was not squelched by his day job. His satirical cartoons are peppered throughout the Boletim. This one betrays the anxiety of those whose work is being judged: three diminutive members, one waving a white flag, are menaced by others wielding a gun, a bomb, and a knife. He experimented with collage, montage, multiple exposures, and other interventions in his photographs, he was a founding member of the Grupo Ruptura, an inventive association of painters, and he later pursued a successful career in furniture design. The Museum of Art of São Paulo held a one-person exhibition of his photo-based work in January 1951, which was so confounding to his fellow FCCB members (some photos were rendered as sculptures on pedestals; all played fearlessly with conventions of representation) that this major accomplishment went unmentioned in the Boletim. Despite occasional moments of misunderstanding, de Barros was a principal force in the presentation of work by FCCB members in the second São Paulo Bienal in 1953-1954, by which time even the club’s leadership had embraced the spirit of innovation de Barros had championed for years.
The excursions were not merely social outings: they were opportunities to learn alongside fellow members in the field, and to attempt to capture the “best” view of a particular subject. In one view of this distinctive building, German Lorca has accentuated the contrast between the corrugated roof and the adjacent shadows; in another, José Yalenti chose to frame the angular structure against the undulating form of a nearby building; in a third (noted in the Boletim as having been submitted to the club’s internal contest), Euclides Machado offered a study of texture, tone, and form. Although the club used “scorecards” to judge the relative strengths of images such as these, many of the attributes being judged were grouped within the category “factor psicológico” (psychological factors), which are surely more challenging to rank objectively. Then and now, it can be useful to acknowledge the ways in which something as invisible and inescapable as taste influences our judgment of a work of art.
Extract from Sarah Meister. “The Ambition and Originality of Fotoclubismo’s Amateur Photographers,” on the MoMA magazine website May 7, 2021 [Online] Cited 25/08/2021.
Installation views of the exhibition Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography, 1946-1964 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York showing in the bottom image the sections Daily Life and German Lorca with third right bottom, German Lorca’s Every Day Scenes (1949, below); at second right, German Lorca’s Rascality (Malandragem) (1949, below) and at right, Lorca’s Apartments (Apartamentos) (1950-1951, below)
Photos: Jonathan Muzikar
German Lorca (Brazilian, 1922-2021)
Everyday Scenes (Cenas quotidianas)
1949
Gelatin silver print
11 × 15″ (27.9 × 38.1cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Committee on Photography Fund
© 2021 German Lorca
German Lorca (Brazilian, 1922-2021)
Rascality (Malandragem)
1949
Gelatin silver print
10 3/4 × 12 3/4″ (27.3 × 32.4cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Acquired through the generosity of Richard O. Rieger
© 2021 German Lorca
German Lorca (Brazilian, 1922-2021)
Apartments (Apartamentos)
1950-1951
Gelatin silver print
15 1/16 × 10 1/8″ (38.3 × 25.7cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Acquired through the generosity of Ernesto Poma through the Latin American and Caribbean Fund
© 2021 German Lorca
German Lorca (Brazilian, 1922-2021)
White Roofs (Telhados brancos)
1951
Gelatin silver print
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Courtesy Fernanda Feitosa and Heitor Martins
© 2021 German Lorca
Installation view of the exhibition Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography, 1946-1964 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York showing the work of German Lorca with at fourth from right, Congonhas Airport (1961, below); at third from right Open Window (1951); at second from right, Eating an Apple (1953); and at right, Solarized Portrait (c. 1953)
Photo: Jonathan Muzikar
German Lorca (Brazilian, 1922-2021)
Congonhas Airport, São Paulo
1961
Gelatin silver print
10 1/2 × 15″ (26.7 × 38.1cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Gift of the artist
© 2021 German Lorca
Installation view of the exhibition Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography, 1946-1964 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York showing Geraldo de Barros’ photographs – at top left, Untitled (1948-1950, below); at bottom left, Abstraction (1949, below); at second left, Geraldo de Barros’ Self-Portrait (Autorretrato) (c. 1949, below); and at fourth left, Fotoforma (c. 1949)
Photo: Jonathan Muzikar
Geraldo de Barros (Brazilian, 1923-1998)
Untitled
1948-1950
Gelatin silver print
9 × 14 15/16″ (22.8 × 37.9cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Latin American and Caribbean Fund through gift of Agnes Gund
© 2021 Luciana Brito Galeria
Geraldo de Barros (Brazilian, 1923-1998)
Abstraction (Abstração)
1949
Gelatin silver print
10 3/4 × 14 3/4″ (27.3 × 37.5cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Latin American and Caribbean Fund
© 2021 Luciana Brito Galeria
Geraldo de Barros (Brazilian, 1923-1998)
Self-Portrait (Autorretrato)
c. 1949
Gelatin silver print
15 7/16 × 11 1/2″ (39.2 × 29.2cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Christie Calder Salomon Fund
© 2021 Luciana Brito Galeria
Geraldo de Barros (Brazilian, 1923-1998)
Fotoforma
1952-1953
Gelatin silver print
11 13/16 × 15 1/8 in. (30 × 38.4cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Acquired through the generosity of John and Lisa Pritzker
© 2020 Arquivo Geraldo de Barros. Courtesy Luciana Brito Galeria
Geraldo de Barros (Brazilian, 1923-1998)
Fotoforma
c. 1949
Gelatin silver print
14 13/16 × 10 11/16″ (37.7 × 27.2cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Latin American and Caribbean Fund
© 2021 Luciana Brito Galeria
Geraldo de Barros (Brazilian, 1923-1998)
Geraldo de Barros (February 27, 1923 – April 17, 1998) was a Brazilian painter and photographer who also worked in engraving, graphic arts, and industrial design. He was a leader of the concrete art movement in Brazil, co-founding Grupo Ruptura and was known for his trailblazing work in experimental abstract photography and modernism. According to The Guardian, De Barros was “one of the most influential Brazilian artists of the 20th century.” De Barros is best known for his Fotoformas (1946-1952), a series of photographs that used multiple exposures, rotated images, and abstracted forms to capture a phenomenological experience of Brazil’s exponential urbanisation in the mid-twentieth century.
Text from the Wikipedia website
Installation views of the exhibition Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography, 1946-1964 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York showing the section Abstractions from Nature showing at middle top, Thomaz Farkas’s Rushing Water Number 2 (c. 1945, below); beneath that his Rushing Water Number 1 (c. 1945); at bottom left of the group Dulce Carneiro’s Oneiric (Onírica) (c. 1958); and at centre right, three sand photographs by José Yalenti (see below)
Photos: Jonathan Muzikar
Abstractions from Nature
Thomaz Farkas (Brazilian, born Hungary. 1924-2011)
Rushing Water Number 2
c. 1945
Gelatin silver print
11 7/8 × 15 3/4″ (30.2 × 40cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Gift of the artist
© 2021 Thomaz Farkas Estate
José Yalenti (Brazilian, 1895-1967)
Sand (Areia)
c. 1950
Gelatin silver print
11 7/8 × 15 3/4″ (30.1 × 40cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Committee on Photography Fund
© 2021 José Yalenti
José Yalenti (Brazilian, 1895-1967)
Sand (Areia)
c. 1950
Gelatin silver print
11 1/8 × 15 3/8″ (28.3 × 39cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Committee on Photography Fund
© 2021 José Yalenti
José Yalenti (Brazilian, 1895-1967)
Sand (Areia)
c. 1950
Gelatin silver print
15 3/4 × 11 7/8″ (40 × 30.2cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Acquired through the generosity of Patricia Phelps de Cisneros through the Latin American and Caribbean Fund
© 2021 José Yalenti
Installation views of the exhibition Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography, 1946-1964 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York showing the sections Daily Life, German Lorca and Solitude with in the bottom image at bottom right, Ademar Manarini’s Untitled [Várzea do Carmo housing complex, São Paulo] (c. 1951, below)
Photos: Jonathan Muzikar
Ademar Manarini (Brazilian, 1920-1989)
Untitled [Várzea do Carmo housing complex, São Paulo]
c. 1951
Gelatin silver print
11 11/16 × 14 9/16″ (29.7 × 37cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Acquired through the generosity of Richard O. Rieger
© 2021 Estate of Ademar Manarini
Installation view of the exhibition Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography, 1946-1964 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York showing Marcel Giró’s photograph Light and Power (c. 1950, below)
Photo: Jonathan Muzikar
Marcel Giró (Spanish, 1912-2011)
Light and Power (Luz e Força)
c. 1950
Gelatin silver print
13 1/16 × 20 3/16″ (33.1 × 51.2cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Acquired through the generosity of Richard O. Rieger
© 2021 Estate of Marcel Giró
Installation view of the exhibition Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography, 1946-1964 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York showing the sections Texture and Shape and Geraldo de Barros, with at third from left top, Maria Helena Valente da Cruz’s The Broken Glass (O vidro partido)
(c. 1952, below); at fourth from left top, Palmira Puig-Giró’s Untitled (c. 1960, below); at bottom left Marcel Giró’s Texture 2 (c. 1950, below); and at bottom centre, his Composition (Composição) (c. 1953)
Photo: Jonathan Muzikar
Texture and Shape
Maria Helena Valente da Cruz (Portuguese, b. 1927)
The Broken Glass (O vidro partido)
c. 1952
Gelatin silver print
11 7/8 × 11 1/2 in. (30.2 × 29.2cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Acquired through the generosity of Donna Redel
© 2020 Estate of Maria Helena Valente da Cruz
Palmira Puig-Giró (Spanish, 1912-197)
Untitled
c. 1960
Gelatin silver print
15 3/8 × 11 1/16 in. (39.1 × 28.1cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Agnes Rindge Claflin Fund
© 2020 Estate of Palmira Puig-Giró
Marcel Giró (Spanish, 1912-2011)
Texture 2 (Textura 2)
c. 1950
Gelatin silver print
12 1/8 × 15 3/4″ (30.8 × 40cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Committee on Photography Fund
© 2021 Estate of Marcel Giró
Installation views of the exhibition Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography, 1946-1964 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York showing the sections Simplicity and Gertrude Altschul, with at top left, Thomaz Farkas’ Ministry of Education (Ministério da Educação) [Rio de Janeiro] (c. 1945, below); and at right, Gertrudes Altschul’s Lines and Tones (Linhas e Tons) (c. 1953, below)
Photos: Jonathan Muzikar
Thomaz Farkas (Brazilian, born Hungary. 1924-2011)
Ministry of Education (Ministério da Educação) [Rio de Janeiro]
c. 1945
Gelatin silver print
12 13/16 × 11 3/4 in. (32.6 × 29.9cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Gift of the artist
Gertrude Altschul
Gertrudes Altschul (Brazilian born Germany, 1904-1962)
Lines and Tones (Linhas e Tons)
c. 1953
Gelatin silver print
14 7/8 x 11″ (37.8 x 27.9cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Acquired through the generosity of Amie Rath Nuttall
Gertrudes Altschul was born in Germany in 1904 and, like many Jews in the 1930s, she was forced to leave the country under the threat of Nazism rise. Thus, in 1939, together with her husband Leon Altschul, she went into exile in Brazil and settled in the city of São Paulo, at the end of that year. She and her husband ran a business selling handmade decorative flowers for hats in São Paulo, Brazil.
See more Gertrudes Altschul photographs on the Isabel Amado Fotografia website.
A little over a year after joining the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante (FCCB), an amateur camera club in São Paulo, Gertrude Altschul had already secured a spot for her work on the cover of its monthly bulletin. By September of 1953, her photograph Linhas e Tons (Lines and Tones) [above] was circulated to hundreds of fellow practitioners throughout Brazil. Lines and Tones reveals the urbanisation and precipitous vertical growth taking place in downtown São Paulo at midcentury; Altschul’s simple title strips away local context and persuades us to experience the image through its soaring curves and lines. This ability to reduce complex objects to their most elemental and visually striking forms would become a hallmark of her work.1
By the time Altschul joined the FCCB, the organisation had already been in operation for 13 years. During that time it succeeded in nurturing a passion for photography across a wide network of Paulistas (São Paulo residents), many of whom were recent European emigrés working as lawyers, doctors, accountants, or entrepreneurs. Altschul’s background was no different: after fleeing Nazi persecution in Germany, she settled in Brazil in 1939. With her husband, she ran a business making handmade decorative flowers for women’s hats and blouses. Her interest in botanical motifs found its way into her photographic work, resulting in dozens of lush vegetal prints.
Though Altschul belonged to a small contingent of women artists within the FCCB, her experimental ambitions rivaled those of her male peers. She photographed a diverse range of subjects, from urban landscapes to natural forms to still lifes. The resulting prints were routinely reproduced in the club’s monthly bulletin, mailed out for consideration by salons, and chosen for display in exhibitions. Between 1956 and 1962, Altschul was encouraged to submit Filigrana (Filigree) to no fewer than 18 different national and international salons, receiving an impressive eight acceptances.2 Despite its worldwide circulation, this photograph portrayed a thoroughly Brazilian subject: a papaya leaf, delicately transcribed into lattice-like veins.
Altschul fell ill in the late 1950s and, starting in 1957, her participation in the club waned. Following her death in 1962, the FCCB bulletin featured Filigree alongside her obituary, where it was praised as one of the first successful works of her brief but distinguished career.3
Dana Ostrander, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Photography, 2020
- The supporting research for this biography was provided by Abigail Lapin Dardashti, former Museum Research Consortium Fellow. For more, see Abigail Lapin Dardashti, “Gertrudes Altschul and Modernist Photography at the Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante,” on Medium, MoMA: Features and perspectives on art and culture, The Museum of Modern Art, June 7, 2017.
- Paula Kupfer, “Gertrudes Altschul: An Adopted Brazilian Photographer in São Paulo,” on post: notes on art in a global context, The Museum of Modern Art, May 2, 2018
- Ibid.
In Black and White: Photography, Race, and the Modern Impulse in Brazil at Midcentury
Live stream of the keynote panel from In Black and White: Photography, Race, and the Modern Impulse in Brazil at Midcentury (May 2, 2017, The Museum of Modern Art).
Join us for a conversation on Brazilian modernist photography, its relationship to race, and its place within a dynamic international network of images and ideas, moderated by Edward Sullivan, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.
Guest speakers: Helouise Costa, Museu de Arte Contemporânea, Universidade de São Paulo Roberto Conduru, Rio de Janeiro State University Heloísa Espada, Instituto Moreira Salles, São Paulo Sarah Hermanson Meister, The Museum of Modern Art
Installation view of the exhibition Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography, 1946-1964 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York showing the section Gertrude Altschul with at centre left Untitled (c. 1955, below); at centre right, Untitled (c. 1955, below); at fourth right her Filigree, (Filigrana) (1953, below); and at top right, Untitled (c. 1955, below)
Gertrudes Altschul (Brazilian born Germany, 1904-1962)
Untitled
c. 1955
Gelatin silver print
10 13/16 × 15 1/4″ (27.5 × 38.7cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Acquired through the generosity of David Dechman and Michel Mercure
© 2021 Estate of Gertrudes Altschul
Like almost every member of Sáo Paulo’s famed Foto Cine Clube Bandeirante (FCCB), Altschul was an amateur, meaning she pursued photographic activity without any professional affiliation or ambition. She began attending workshops with the FCCB in the late 1940s and became a member in 1952. There are no written records of her creative intent, leaving only the visual evidence of her achievement: experimentations with process and form, and inventive compositions discovered within everyday life. These large-scale prints were made for the active circuit of contemporary salons and exhibitions that traveled throughout Brazil and internationally in this period.
Gallery label from Making Space: Women Artists and Postwar Abstraction, April 19 – August 13, 2017.
Gertrudes Altschul (Brazilian born Germany, 1904-1962)
Untitled
c. 1955
Gelatin silver print
15 1/16 × 11 1/2″ (38.3 × 29.2cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
John Szarkowski Fund
© 2021 Estate of Gertrudes Altschul
Gertrudes Altschul (Brazilian born Germany, 1904-1962)
Filigree, (Filigrana)
1953
Gelatin silver print
13 5/8 × 11 5/8″ (34.6 × 29.5cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Acquired through the generosity of Amie Rath Nuttall
© 2021 Estate of Gertrudes Altschul
Gertrudes Altschul (Brazilian born Germany, 1904-1962)
Untitled
c. 1955
Gelatin silver print
11 13/16 × 15 1/2″ (30 × 39.4 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
John Szarkowski Fund
© 2021 Estate of Gertrudes Altschul
Fotoclubismo explores the unforgettable creative achievements of São Paulo’s Foto-Cine Clube Bandeirante (FCCB), a group of amateur photographers whose ambitious and innovative works embodied the abundant originality of postwar Brazilian culture. Although their work was heralded around the world in the 1950s, it subsequently faded from view. This is the first museum exhibition to present this fascinating moment in photography’s history to audiences outside of Brazil.
Photography was a hobby for most FCCB members: on weekdays, group members – many of whom were women – went to their jobs as businessmen, accountants, journalists, engineers, biologists, and bankers. On weekends, they often traveled to photograph together. They were nonetheless quite serious about their artistic ambition, not unlike millions of people on Instagram today. Their pictures assumed many forms – from inventive experiments to distillations from everyday life – and their attentiveness to abstraction evolved in dialogue with leading critical thinkers and peers in design, painting, and film.
More than 60 photographs, drawn almost exclusively from MoMA’s collection, demonstrate the group’s extraordinary range. Their absence from international histories of the medium provide a valuable opportunity to reflect on the biases that led to these exclusions, and invite us to reflect on the status of the amateur today. Organised by Sarah Hermanson Meister, Curator, with Dana Ostrander, Curatorial Assistant, Robert B. Menschel Department of Photography.
Introduction
The members of São Paulo’s Foto-Cine Clube Bandeirante (FCCB), established in 1939, were doctors and lawyers, civil servants and businessmen, accountants and students. Though they pursued photography as a hobby, their work attests to the seriousness and skill with which they approached the medium. Their innovations were advanced by camaraderie as well as a competitive spirit: submissions to monthly internal contests were judged publicly, with points awarded accordingly. This installation is structured in constellations based on the themes of these contests, punctuated by focused presentations of the work of three key figures.
Bandeirante alludes to a colonial-era group of explorers and fortune hunters based in the São Paulo region, whom the FCCB celebrated for their pioneering spirit, overlooking their role in the enslavement of Indigenous people and the expansion of territory under Portuguese control. Though its identity was thus firmly anchored in the local, the club was an integral part of a dynamic international network of amateurs: the FCCB was widely heralded and its members’ work awarded prizes in salons on six continents. The club’s position in the Global South, and a bias against the amateur and its association with pictorial clichés, begin to explain its absence from international histories of the medium.
The dates that bracket this exhibition correspond to artistic and political realities in Brazil: the FCCB first published its monthly magazine (the Boletim foto-cine) in 1946, the year a new constitution restored democracy following a repressive regime. On the other end, 1964 marked the beginning of a brutal dictatorship, which contributed to the closing of an extraordinarily fertile chapter for photography in Brazil – one that has been, until now, largely overlooked beyond the country’s borders.
Text from the MoMA website
Julio Agostinelli (Brazilian, b. 1919)
Circus (Circense)
1951
Gelatin silver print
11 7/16 × 15″ (29 × 38.1cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Acquired through the generosity of Richard O. Rieger
© 2020 Estate of Julio Agostinelli
The Museum of Modern Art opened Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography, 1946-1964, the first museum exhibition of Brazilian modernist photography outside of Brazil. On view May 8 – September 26, 2021, the exhibition focuses on the unforgettable creative achievements of São Paulo’s Foto-Cine Clube Bandeirante, a group of amateur photographers widely heralded in Brazil, but essentially unknown to European and North American audiences. Fotoclubismo is comprised of over 60 photographs drawn generously from MoMA’s collection; together, they bring forward the extraordinary range of achievements of this group, provide valuable insight into the way photographic aesthetics were framed in the 1950s, and afford opportunities to reflect on the significance of amateur status today. The exhibition is organised by Sarah Meister, Curator, with Dana Ostrander, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Photography.
The vast majority of Foto-Cine Clube Bandeirante members were amateurs, meaning they pursued photographic activity without any professional motive or affiliation. The club’s longtime president, Eduardo Salvatore, earned his living as a lawyer, and the list of professions on the membership cards includes businessmen, accountants, journalists, engineers, biologists, and bankers. While photography was an activity pursued outside their day jobs, FCCB members were nonetheless quite serious about their artistic ambition, as evidenced by the striking innovation of their photographs. Works such as Geraldo de Barros’s Fotoforma, São Paulo (1952-1953), Thomaz Farkas’s Ministry of Education and Health, Rio (c. 1945), or Gertrudes Altschul’s Filigree (Filigrana) (c. 1952), for example, represent a few of their radical experimentations with process and form and underscore the discovery of imaginative compositions within everyday life. FCCB members responded to the abundant originality of contemporary Brazilian architects, and their attentiveness to the fertility of abstraction as a creative strategy emerged alongside peers in design, painting, and literature. Considering these works together provides a compelling context through which to explore the complex status of the amateur, evolving biases of taste or judgment, and local dynamics of race and gender.
Beyond creating photographs, a critical aspect of the club’s activity was their monthly Concursos Internos (internal contests) and Seminarios, in which photographs were submitted for peer review and discussed in public and private forums.
As with most amateur photo clubs around the world, the FCCB fostered a collegial environment that tolerated a wide range of artistic approaches. Yet it was also a competitive one, where critical judgment and artistic ambition were central to the club’s identity (and contributed to the enduring quality of the work). The annual salon they hosted and Boletim, a monthly magazine published by the FCCB, both demonstrate the breadth of activity pursued under the aegis of the club and highlighted the club’s achievements to the international circuit of salons in which they participated, including Otto Steinert and his fellow “Subjective” photographers in Germany, the Groupe des XV in Paris, La Ventana in Mexico City, and the Carpeta de los Diez in Buenos Aires.
Fotoclubismo has been installed along two intertwined, complementary threads within the galleries: monographic and thematic. Of the display’s three sections, each is anchored by a focused monographic presentation of an individual member: Geraldo De Barros, German Lorca, and Gertrudes Altschul. These sections begin and end with thematic groupings that suggest the breadth of the photographic community active in São Paulo at that time and offer additional context for the individual achievements. Each theme is derived from the monthly Concursos Internos held at the FCCB, which prompted members to respond to a certain theme, often awarding the winner with full-page reproductions and cover features. Two paintings from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros gift and a generous selection of the FCCB’s monthly Boletim, recently acquired by the Museum Library, will expand the context for the photographs on view.
The exhibition is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue with 140 plates from the Museum Collection and a number of important public and private collections in São Paulo, presenting Brazilian modernist photography to an international audience for the first time. The book situates these achievements within the broader contemporary art scene in Brazil as well as within a dynamic network of photographers around the world, and offering fresh insight into the status of the amateur in the postwar era.
Press release from the MoMA website
José Medeiros (Brazilian, 1921-1990)
Pedra da Gávea, Morro Dois Irmãos and the Beaches Ipanema and Leblon, Rio de Janeiro
1952
Gelatin silver photograph
Courtesy Instituto Moreira Salles Collection
André Carneiro (Brazilian, 1922-2014)
Rails (Trilhos)
1951
Gelatin silver print
11 5/8 × 15 9/16 in. (29.6 × 39.6cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Acquired through the generosity of José Olympio da Veiga Pereira through the Latin American and Caribbean Fund
© 2020 Estate of André Carneiro
Aldo Augusto de Souza Lima (Brazilian, 1920-1971)
Vertigo (Vertigem)
1949
Gelatin silver print
11 × 14 3/4 in. (28 × 37.5cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Acquired through the generosity of James and Ysabella Gara in honor of Donald H. Elliott
© 2020 Estate of Aldo Augusto de Souza Lima
Roberto Yoshida
Skyscrapers (Arranha-céus)
1959
Gelatin silver print
14 9/16 × 11 9/16 in. (37 × 29.3cm)
Collection Fernanda Feitosa and Heitor Martins
© 2020 Estate of Roberto Yoshida
Reproduction of the photographic collection by Hélio Martins
Boletim was pivotal for showcasing FCCB’s progress and attracting new members. The club held monthly photo competitions and listed the winners in each issue. The magazine fostered a healthy competition between members and provided an incentive to capture the “best view.”
Each issue there were internal competitions where photos were judged by visual qualities as well as psychological factors. Editors would list the winners’ names along with birthday announcements, weddings, and group photos. Recording the names of the members served as a way for FCCB to seal their place in history lest the world forgot.
And for a while, the world did forget.
It wasn’t until years after the club closed their doors that Helouise Costa, professor at University of São Paulo and curator of Museum of Contemporary Art, discovered FCCB in the eighties after applying for a grant at University of São Paulo meant to encourage academics to explore Brazilian photography.
Soon into her research, Costa came across works by members of FCCB and quickly realised that the group was the most influential photo collective in its time in both scope and skill.
Costa studied the club’s magazine and reached out to all the names listed in the pages. What she discovered was an entirely forgotten archive of some of the most influential mid century Brazilian photography. Costa was the first person to look at many of these prints in decades: many former members had been sitting on these negatives since the 50’s.
This discovery catapulted FCCB into national fame, although it wasn’t until another twenty plus years before the club’s legacy started to make a buzz internationally.
Meka Boyle. “MoMA is the First Museum Outside of Brazil to Put the Spotlight on Brazilian Modernist Photography,” on the Art Dealer Street website May 28 2021 [Online] Cited 26/08/2021
Cover of the exhibition catalogue Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography and the Foto-Cine Clube Bandeirante, 1946-1964, published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2021.
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Exhibition: ‘Wolfgang Tillmans: 2017’ at Tate Modern, London
Tags: 17 Years Supply, a, abstract photography, Abstract Pictures, abstraction, activism, affection, Anders pulling splinter from his foot, architectural form, architectural form and function, Arms and Legs, astro crusto a, Atlantic Ocean, beauty, belonging, Berlin, Blushes, Book for Architects, Calle Real II, cameraless photographs, cameraless photography, CLC 800 dismantled, clubbing, Collum, Colourbox, Concorde, Concorde L433-11, Contemporary Photography, cultural attitudes, curatorial practice, destabilisation of the world, digital television, double exposure, Dusty Vehicle, Eleanor / Lutz, End of Broadcast I, Exposure, fake news, Faltenwurf (Pines) a, Fespa Car, frailty of the human body, freedom, gay, Gaza Wall, gender, German contemporary photography, german photographer, German photography, Greifbar, Greifbar 29, Headlight (f), HIV, HIV/AIDS, HM Prison Reading, homosexuality, human body, identity, Iguazu, images of the commonplace and the extraordinary, installation art, Italian Coastal Guard Flying Rescue Mission off Lampedusa, Juan Pablo & Karl Chingaza, La Palma, Lampedusa, landscape, London Olympics, Market I, medium of expression, memento mori, Munuwata sky, nape of the neck, Neue Welt, NICE HERE but ever been to KRYGYZSTAN, nightlife, nightscape, Oscar Niemeyer, paper drop, paper drop Prinzessinnenstrasse, photographic form, photographic paper, photographic processes, place, Playback Room, poetry, political marches, political marches and protests, politics, Port-au-Prince, portrait, portraiture, private and politica, queer, race, refugees, Saint Petersburg, self-consciousness, Sendeschluss, Sendeschluss / End of Broadcast I, Separate System Reading Prison, sex, sexuality, Shit buildings going up left right and centre, Simon Sebastian Street, social and political themes, soft skin of the outer ear, Still life Calle Real II, still lifes, Studio still life c, Sunset night drive, talking about society, television white noise, the abstract and the representational, The Air Between, The Blue Oyster Bar, The Blue Oyster Bar Saint Petersburg, the body politics, The Cock (Kiss), the human soul, the physicality of the photograph, the private and political, The Spectrum Dagger, The State We’re In A, the world, Tillmans Abstract Pictures., Tillmans Blushes, Tillmans Book for Architects, Tillmans La Palma, Tillmans Sendeschluss / End of Broadcast I, Tillmans The State We’re In A, time, traces light, Transient 2, truth study center, truth study center project, Tube escalator joint, visual archive, voyeurism, vulnerability, Wolfgang Tillmans, Wolfgang Tillmans 17 Years Supply, Wolfgang Tillmans Anders pulling splinter from his foot, Wolfgang Tillmans Apple tree, Wolfgang Tillmans Arms and Legs, Wolfgang Tillmans astro crusto a, Wolfgang Tillmans Book for Architects, Wolfgang Tillmans Calle Real II, Wolfgang Tillmans CLC 800, Wolfgang Tillmans CLC 800 dismantled, Wolfgang Tillmans Collum, Wolfgang Tillmans Concorde, Wolfgang Tillmans Concorde L433-11, Wolfgang Tillmans Double Exposure, Wolfgang Tillmans Dusty Vehicle, Wolfgang Tillmans Eleanor / Lutz, Wolfgang Tillmans Faltenwurf (Pines) a, Wolfgang Tillmans Fespa Car, Wolfgang Tillmans Gaza Wall, Wolfgang Tillmans Greifbar, Wolfgang Tillmans Greifbar 29, Wolfgang Tillmans Headlight (f), Wolfgang Tillmans Iguazu, Wolfgang Tillmans Italian Coastal Guard Flying Rescue Mission off Lampedusa, Wolfgang Tillmans JAL, Wolfgang Tillmans Juan Pablo & Karl Chingaza, Wolfgang Tillmans La Palma, Wolfgang Tillmans Lampedusa, Wolfgang Tillmans London Olympics, Wolfgang Tillmans Market I, Wolfgang Tillmans Munuwata sky, Wolfgang Tillmans Nackt 2, Wolfgang Tillmans Neue Welt, Wolfgang Tillmans New World, Wolfgang Tillmans NICE HERE but ever been to KRYGYZSTAN, Wolfgang Tillmans Nude 2, Wolfgang Tillmans Oscar Niemeyer, Wolfgang Tillmans paper drop, Wolfgang Tillmans paper drop Prinzessinnenstrasse, Wolfgang Tillmans Playback Room, Wolfgang Tillmans Port-au-Prince, Wolfgang Tillmans Sendeschluss / End of Broadcast I, Wolfgang Tillmans Separate System Reading Prison, Wolfgang Tillmans Shit buildings going up left right and centre, Wolfgang Tillmans Simon Sebastian Street, Wolfgang Tillmans Still life Calle Real II, Wolfgang Tillmans Studio still life c, Wolfgang Tillmans Sunset night drive, Wolfgang Tillmans Tag/Nacht II, Wolfgang Tillmans The Air Between, Wolfgang Tillmans The Blue Oyster Bar Saint Petersburg, Wolfgang Tillmans The Cock (Kiss), Wolfgang Tillmans The Spectrum Dagger, Wolfgang Tillmans The State We're In A, Wolfgang Tillmans Transient 2, Wolfgang Tillmans truth study center, Wolfgang Tillmans Tube escalator joint, Wolfgang Tillmans Tukan, Wolfgang Tillmans Weed, Wolfgang Tillmans Young Man Jeddah, Wolfgang Tillmans: 2017, Young Man Jeddah
Exhibition dates: 15th February – 11th June 2017
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
The State We’re In, A (Room 14)
2015
Ink-jet print
Dimensions variable
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
The Cock (Kiss)
2002
Ink-jet print
Dimensions variable
© Wolfgang Tillmans
If one thing matters, everything matters
(A love letter to Wolfgang Tillmans)
I believe that Wolfgang Tillmans is the number one photo-media artist working today. I know it’s a big call, but that’s how I see it.
His whole body of work is akin to a working archive – of memories, places, contexts, identities, landscapes (both physical and imagined) and people. He experiments, engages, and imagines all different possibilities in and through art. As Adrian Searle observes in his review of the exhibition, “Tillmans’ work is all a kind of evidence – a sifting through material to find meaning.” And that meaning varies depending on the point of view one comes from, or adopts, in relation to the art. The viewer is allowed to make their own mind up, to dis/assemble or deepen relationships between things as they would like, or require, or not as the case may be. Tillmans is not didactic, but guides the viewer on that journey through intersections and nodal points of existence. The nexus of life.
Much as I admire the writing of art critic John McDonald, I disagree with his assessment of the work of Wolfgang Tillmans at Tate Modern (see quotation below). Personally, I find that there are many memorable photographs in this exhibition … as valuable and as valid a way of seeing the world in a contemporary sense, as Eggleston’s photographs are in a historic visualisation. I can recall Tillmans’ images just an intimately as I can Eggleston’s. But they are of a different nature, and this is where McDonald’s analysis is like comparing apples and pears. Eggleston’s classical modernist photographs depend on the centrality of composition where his images are perfectly self-contained, whether he is photographing a woman in a blue dress sitting on a kerb or an all green bathroom. They are of their time. Times have changed, and how we view the world has changed.
For Tillmans no subject matter is trivial (If One Thing Matters, Everything Matters – the title of a 2003 exhibition at Tate Britain), and how he approaches the subject is totally different from Eggleston. As he says of his work, his images are “calls to attentiveness.” What does he mean by this? Influenced by the work of the philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti whom I have also studied, a call to attentiveness is a way of being open and responsive to the world around you, to its infinite inflections, and to not walk around as if in a dream, letting the world pass you by. To be open and receptive to the energies and connections of the world spirit by seeing clearly.
Krishnamurti insightfully observed that we do not need to make images out of every word, out of every vision and desire. We must be attentive to the clarity of not making images – of desire, of prejudice, of flattery – and then we might become aware of the world that surrounds us, just for what it is and nothing more.1 Then there would be less need for the absenting of self into the technological ether or the day dreams of foreign lands or the desire for a better life. But being aware is not enough, we must be attentive of that awareness and not make images just because we can or must. This is a very contemporary way of looking at the world. As Krishnamurti says,
“Now with that same attention I’m going to see that when you flatter me, or insult me, there is no image, because I’m tremendously attentive … I listen because the mind wants to find out if it is creating an image out of every word, out of every contact. I’m tremendously awake, therefore I find in myself a person who is inattentive, asleep, dull, who makes images and gets hurt – not an intelligent man. Have you understood it at least verbally? Now apply it. Then you are sensitive to every occasion, it brings its own right action. And if anybody says something to you, you are tremendously attentive, not to any prejudices, but you are attentive to your conditioning. Therefore you have established a relationship with him, which is entirely different from his relationship with you. Because if he is prejudiced, you are not; if he is unaware, you are aware. Therefore you will never create an image about him. You see the difference?”2
.
Then you are sensitive to every occasion, it brings its own right action. You are attentive and tremendously awake.
This is the essence of Tillmans work. He is tremendously attentive to the images he is making (“a representation of an unprivileged gaze or view” as he puts it) and to the associations that are possible between images, that we make as human beings. He is open and receptive to his conditioning and offers that gift to us through his art, if we recognise it and accept it for what it is. If you really look and understand what the artist is doing, these images are music, poetry and beauty – are time, place, belonging, voyeurism, affection, sex. They are archaic and shapeless and fluid and joy and magic and love…
They are the air between everything.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
.
Many thankx to the Tate Modern for allowing me to publish the art work in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Installation view of room 4 (detail), which includes the latest iteration of the truth study centre project, with
Image © Tate Modern showing Wolfgang Tillmans: 2017 at Tate Modern 15 February – 11 June
The Tate show includes a room full of his “truth study centres”, which comprise often contradictory newspaper cuttings as well as photographs and pamphlets that aim to show how news is manipulated according to the political loyalties of those who produce it. As activists go, though, Tillmans is defiantly centre ground. “This is about strengthening the centre. I can understand left-wing politics from a passionate, idealistic point of view, but I do not think it is the solution to where we are now. The solution is good governance, moderation, agreement. Post-Brexit, post-Trump, the voices of reason need to be heard more than ever.”
Wolfgang Tillmans quoted in Sean O’Hagan. “Wolfgang Tillmans: ‘I was hit by a realisation – all I believed in was threatened’,” on The Guardian website Monday 13 February 2017 [Online] Cited 17/12/2021
Installation view of room 13 (detail), which focuses in on Tillmans’ portraiture with Eleanor / Lutz, a (2016) at right
Image © Tate Modern showing Wolfgang Tillmans: 2017 at Tate Modern 15 February – 11 June
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Eleanor / Lutz, a
2016
Ink-jet print
Dimensions variable
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Portrait of Wolfgang Tillmans, Tate Modern Boiler House, Level 3, 14/02/2017 in front of his works, Transient 2, 2015 and Tag/Nacht II, 2010
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Tag/Nacht II
2010
Ink-jet print
Dimensions variable
© Wolfgang Tillmans
What are we to make of the world in which we find ourselves today? Contemporary artist Wolfgang Tillmans offers plenty of food for thought.
This is Wolfgang Tillmans’s first ever exhibition at Tate Modern and brings together works in an exciting variety of media – photographs, of course, but also video, digital slide projections, publications, curatorial projects and recorded music – all staged by the artist in characteristically innovative style. Alongside portraiture, landscape and intimate still lifes, Tillmans pushes the boundaries of the photographic form in abstract artworks that range from the sculptural to the immersive.
The year 2003 is the exhibition’s point of departure, representing for Tillmans the moment the world changed, with the invasion of Iraq and anti-war demonstrations. The social and political form a rich vein throughout the artist’s work. German-born, international in outlook and exhibited around the world, Tillmans spent many years in the UK and is currently based in Berlin. In 2000, he was the first photographer and first non-British artist to receive the Turner Prize.
Room one
Static interference typically appears on a television screen when an analogue signal is switched off. This can occur when a station’s official programme finishes for the night or if a broadcast is censored. In Tillmans’s Sendeschluss / End of Broadcast 2014 it represents the coexistence of two different generations of technology. The chaotic analogue static was displayed on a digital television, which allowed Tillmans’s high-resolution digital camera to record the pattern as it really appeared, something that would not have been possible with a traditional cathode ray tube television. This work shows Tillmans’s interest in questioning what we believe to be true: the seemingly black-and-white image turns out to be extremely colourful when viewed very close up.
Other works in this room reflect on digital printmaking and photography today. For example, the technical ability to photograph a nightscape from a moving vehicle without blurring, as in these images of Sunset Boulevard, is unprecedented. Itself the subject of many famous art photographs, this iconic roadway appears here littered with large format inkjet prints in the form of advertising billboards. In Double Exposure 2012-13 Tillmans juxtaposes images of two trade fairs – one for digital printers, the other for fruit and vegetables. Encounter 2014 shows a different photo-sensitive process. A pot had been left on top of a planter preventing light from reaching the sprouts underneath and leaving them white, while the surrounding growths that caught the daylight turned green.
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Sendeschluss / End of Broadcast I
2014
Pigmented inkjet print
107 1/2 × 161 1/2″ (273.1 × 410.2cm)
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Television white noise that the artist photographed while in Russia. For Tillmans, the image signifies resistance on his part to making clear images, but without the text its ostensibly radical nature would not be known.
Installation view of room 1 (detail), with Sendeschluss / End of Broadcast I, 2014, at left
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Double Exposure
2012-13
Pigmented inkjet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Room two
Tillmans spends much of his time in the studio, yet he only occasionally uses it as a set for taking portraits. Instead, it is where prints are made and exhibitions are planned in architectural models, and where he collects materials and generates ideas. Over the years this environment has become a subject for his photographs, presenting a radically different view of the artist’s studio to the more traditional depictions seen in paintings over the centuries.
These works made around the studio demonstrate Tillmans’s concern with the physical process of making photographs, from chemical darkroom processes and their potential to create abstract pictures without the camera, to digital technology that is vital to the production of contemporary images, and the paper onto which they are printed. Tillmans’s understanding of the material qualities of paper is fundamental to his work, and photographs can take on a sculptural quality in series such as Lighter, 2005-ongoing and paper drop, 2001-ongoing, seen later in the exhibition.
In CLC 800, dismantled 2011 Tillmans uses photography to record a temporary installation, the result of unfastening every single screw in his defunct colour photocopier. He prefers to photograph his three-dimensional staged scenarios rather than actually displaying them as sculptures. He has often described the core of his work as ‘translating the three dimensional world into two dimensional pictures’.
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
paper drop Prinzessinnenstrasse
2014
Pigmented inkjet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Perhaps as a continuation of his more textural photographs – depicting fabrics and still lifes so close up they become difficult to read – experiments in abstraction followed suit, many of them featuring what is perhaps his favourite motif: the fold, which, as the exhibition’s curator Chris Dercon kindly reminded us, was considered by the philosopher Leibniz as one of the most accurate ways to depict the complexities of the human soul.
Lorena Muñoz-Alonso. “Inside Wolfgang Tillmans’s Superb Tate Modern Survey,” on the artnet website February 15, 2017 [Online] Cited 17/12/2021
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
CLC 800, dismantled
2011
Pigmented inkjet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Room three
Having spent the preceding decade working largely on conceptual and abstract photographs, in 2009 Tillmans embarked on the four-year project Neue Welt. Looking at the world with fresh eyes, he aimed to depict how it has changed since he first took up the camera in 1988. He travelled to five continents to find places unknown to him and visited familiar places as if experiencing them for the first time. Interested in the surface of things as they appeared in those lucid first days of being in a new environment, he immersed himself in each location for just a brief period. Now using a high resolution digital camera, Tillmans captured images in a depth of detail that is immediately compelling, but also suggests the excess of information that is often described as a condition of contemporary life.
Communal spaces, people, animals, and still-life studies of nature or food are just some of the subjects that feature in Neue Welt. Seen together, these images offer a deliberately fragmented view. Rather than making an overarching statement about the changing character of modern life, Tillmans sought only to record, and to create a more empathetic understanding of the world. Over the course of the project, however, some shrewd observations about contemporary worldviews did emerge. One related to the changing shape of car headlights, which he noted are now very angular in shape, giving them a predatory appearance that might reflect a more competitive climate.
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
astro crusto, a
2012
Pigmented inkjet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Installation view of room 3 (detail), with Headlight (f) 2012, at left; and Munuwata sky, 2011 at right
Image © Tate Modern showing Wolfgang Tillmans: 2017 at Tate Modern 15 February – 11 June
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Headlight (f)
2012
Pigmented inkjet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Munuwata sky
2011
Pigmented inkjet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Room four
In the mid-2000s, prompted by global events, such as the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, Tillmans became interested in the assertions made by individuals, groups or organisations around the world that their viewpoint represented the absolute truth about a number of political and ethical questions.
He began his wryly-named truth study center project in 2005. Photographs, clippings from newspapers and magazines, objects, drawings, and copies of his own images are laid out in deliberate – and often provocative – juxtapositions. These arrangements reflect the presentation of information by news outlets in print and online. They also draw attention to gaps in knowledge, or areas where there is room for doubt. For each installation, the material presented in the truth study centers is selected according to its topical and geographic context. In 2017, the subject of truth and fake news is at the heart of political discourse across the world. This iteration of the project focuses in particular on how constructions of truth work on a psychological and physiological level.
The Silver 1998-ongoing prints connect to reality in a different way. Made by passing monochromatically exposed photographic paper through a dirty photo-developing machine, they collect particles and residue from the rollers and liquids. This makes them, in effect, a record of the chemical and mechanical process from which they originate.
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
truth study center
2017
Pigmented inkjet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Room five
Tillmans has described how, as a photographer, he feels increasingly less obligated to reflect solely on the outside world through documentary images. In his abstract works, he looks inwards: exploring the rudiments of photographic processes and their potential to be used as a form of self-expression.
Like the Silver works in the previous room, the abstract Greifbar 2014-15 images are made without a camera. Working in the darkroom, Tillmans traces light directly onto photographic paper. The vast swathes of colour are a record of the physical gestures involved in their construction, but also suggest aspects of the body such as hair, or pigmentation of the skin. This reference to the figurative is reflected in the title, which translates as ‘tangible’.
Tillmans has observed that even though these works are made by the artist’s hand, they look as though they could be ‘scientific’ evidence of natural processes. For him, this interpretation is important, because it disassociates the works from the traditional gestural technique of painting. That the image is read as a photographic record, and not the result of the artist’s brushstroke, is essential to its conceptual meaning.
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Greifbar 29
2014
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Room six
Tillmans is interested in social life in its broadest sense, encompassing our participation in society. His photographs of individuals and groups are underpinned by his conviction that we are all vulnerable, and that our well-being depends upon knowing that we are not alone in the world.
Tillmans has observed that although cultural attitudes towards race, gender and sexuality have become more open over the three decades since he began his artistic practice, there is also greater policing of nightlife, and urban social spaces are closing down. His photographs taken in clubs, for example, testify to the importance of places where people can go today to feel safe, included, and free.
This concern with freedom also extends to the ways in which people organise themselves to make their voices heard. Images of political marches and protests draw attention to the cause for which they are fighting. They also form part of a wider study of what Tillmans describes as the recent ‘re-emergence’ of activism.
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
The Blue Oyster Bar, Saint Petersburg
2014
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
NICE HERE but ever been to KRYGYZSTAN free Gender Expression WORLDWIDE
2006
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Room seven
Playback Room is a space designed for listening to recorded music. The project first ran at Between Bridges, the non-profit exhibition space Tillmans opened in London in 2006 and has since transferred to Berlin. In three exhibition (‘Colourbox’, ‘American Producers’ ‘Bring Your Own’) that took place between September 2014 and February 2015, he invited visitors to come and listen to music at almost the same quality at which it was originally mastered.
Whereas live music can be enjoyed in concert halls and stadiums, and visual art can be enjoyed in museums, no comparable space exists for appreciating studio music. Musicians and producers spend months recording tracks at optimal quality, yet we often listen to the results through audio equipment and personal devices that are not fit for perfect sound reproduction. Playback Room is a response to this. An example of Tillmans’s curatorial practice, he has chosen to include it here to encourage others to think about how recorded music can be given prominence within the museum setting.
The three tracks you hear in this room are by Colourbox, an English band who were active between 1982 and 1987. Tillmans, a long-term fan of the band, chose their music for Playback Room because they never performed live, thus emphasising the importance of the studio recordings.
Room eight
Tillmans began experimenting with abstraction while in high school, using the powerful enlargement function of an early digital photocopier to copy and degrade his own photographs as well as those cut from newspapers. He describes the coexistence of chance and control involved in this process as an essential ingredient in most of his work.
Ever since then, he has found ways to resist the idea that the photograph is solely a direct record of reality. In 2011, this area of his practice was compiled for the first time in his book Abstract Pictures. For a special edition of 176 copies Tillmans manipulated the printing press, for example by running it without plates or pouring ink into the wrong compartments, to create random effects and overprinted pages.
Some of his abstract photographs are made with a camera and others without, through the manipulation of chemicals, light, or the paper itself. Importantly, however, Tillmans does not distinguish between the abstract and the representational. He is more interested in what they have in common. The relationship between photography, sculpture and the body, for example, is expressed in abstract photographs made by crumpling a sheet of photographic paper, but also in close-ups of draped and wrinkled clothing such as Faltenwurf (Pines) a, 2016 in Room 9.
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Concorde L433-11
1997
Ink-jet print
Tate
© Wolfgang Tillmans, courtesy Maureen Paley, London
Room nine
Artist books, exhibition catalogues, newspaper supplements and magazine spreads, posters and leaflets are an integral part of Tillmans’s output. These various formats and the ways in which they are distributed or made visible in the public space allow him to present work and engage audiences in a completely different manner to exhibitions. For him the printed page is as valid a venue for artistic creation as the walls of a museum. Many such projects are vital platforms on which he can speak out about a political topic, or express his continued interest in subjects such as musicians, or portraiture in general.
Recently, the print layout has enabled Tillmans to share a more personal aspect of his visual archive. Originally designed as a sixty-six page spread for the Winter 2015/Spring 2016 edition of Arena Homme +, this grid of images looks back at Fragile, the name he gave as a teenager to his creative alter-ego. Spanning 1983 to 1989 – the year before he moved to England to study – the photographs and illustrations provide a sensitive insight into a formative period in Tillmans’s life, predating the time when he chose photography as his main medium of expression.
The layout is also an example of the intricate collaging technique that he has employed in printed matter since 2011, deliberately obscuring some images by overlapping others on top of them
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Faltenwurf (Pines), a
2016
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Tukan
2010
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Room ten
An acute awareness of fragility endures across Tillmans’s practice in all of its different forms. Often this is expressed in his attentiveness to textures and surfaces. Collum 2011 is taken from Central Nervous System 2008-13, a group of portraits featuring only one subject, where the focus on intimate details, such as the nape of the neck or the soft skin of the outer ear, both emphasises and celebrates the frailty of the human body.
Weed 2014, a four-metre tall photograph taken in the garden of the artist’s London home, invites us to consider the beauty and complexity of a plant usually seen as a nuisance. The dead leaf of a nearby fig tree appears as both a sculptural form and a memento mori. Dusty Vehicle 2012, photographed in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, is highly specific in its depiction of texture, yet the reasons leading to this roadside arrangement remain a mystery.
The focus on a very few works in this room serves as an example of Tillmans’s varied approaches to exhibiting his prints. Though best known for installations comprising many pictures, he always places emphasis on the strength of the individual image. By pinning and taping work to the wall, as well as using frames, Tillmans draws attention to the edges of the print, encouraging the viewer to interact with the photograph as an object, rather than a conduit for an image.
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Dusty Vehicle
2012
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Collum
2011
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Weed
2014
Photograph, inkjet print on paper
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Room eleven
In this room Tillmans highlights the coexistence of the personal, private, public, and political spheres in our lives. The simultaneity of a life lived as a sexual being as well as a political being, or in Tillmans’s case as a conceptual artist as well as a visually curious individual, plays out through the installation.
The entirely white view taken from the inside of a cloud, a word charged with multiple meanings, is presented alongside the close-up and matter-of-fact view of male buttocks and testicles. Like nackt, 2 2014, the small photograph The Air Between 2016 is the result of a lifelong interest in visually describing what it feels like to live in our bodies. Here the attention lies in photographing the air, the empty space between our skin and our clothes.
In still life, Calle Real II 2013, a severed agave chunk is placed on a German newspaper article describing the online depiction of atrocities by Islamic State. The image is as startling in its depiction of the finest green hues as it is in capturing how, simultaneously, we take in world events alongside details of our personal environment.
This room, which Tillmans considers as one work or installation in its entirety, is an example of his innovative use of different photographic prints and formats to reflect upon how we experience vastly different aspects of the world at the same time.
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
The Air Between
2016
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Still life, Calle Real II
2013
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Nackt, 2 (nude, 2)
2014
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Room twelve
Tillmans has always been sensitive to the public side of his role as an artist, acknowledging that putting images out in the public world unavoidably places himself in the picture as well. His participation in activities such as lectures and interviews has been a platform for his voice from the beginning of his career.
Since 2014 he has also allowed performance to become a more prominent strand of his practice. Filmed in a hotel room in Los Angeles and an apartment in Tehran, Instrument 2015 is the first time that Tillmans has put himself in front of the camera for a video piece. Across a split screen, we see two separate occasions on which he has filmed himself dancing. The accompanying soundtrack was created by distorting the sound of his feet hitting the floor. In the absence of any other music, his body becomes an instrument.
On one side of the screen we see his body, on the other only his shadow. Referring to the shadow, New York Times critic Roberta Smith commented that:
“Disconcertingly, this insubstantial body is slightly out of sync with the fleshly one. It is a ghost, a shade, the specter that drives us all. The ease with which we want to believe that the two images are connected, even though they were filmed separately, might also act as a reminder to question what we assume to be true.”
Room thirteen
Portraiture has been central to Tillmans’s practice for three decades. For him, it is a collaborative act that he has described as ‘a good levelling instrument’. No matter who the sitter – a stranger or someone close to him, a public figure, an unknown individual, or even the artist himself – the process is characterised by the same dynamics: of vulnerability, exposure, honesty and always, to some extent, self-consciousness. Tillmans sees every portrait as resulting from the expectations and hopes of both sitter and photographer.
The portrait’s ability to highlight the relationship between appearance and identity is a recurring point of interest. In 2016, at HM Prison Reading, Tillmans took a distorted self-portrait in a damaged mirror once used by inmates. The disfigured result is the artist’s expression of the effects on the soul wrought by physical and psychological confinement and also censorship. Whoever looked into the reflective surface would gain a completely inaccurate impression of what they looked like, and how they are perceived by others.
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Separate System, Reading Prison
2016
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Anders pulling splinter from his foot
2004
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
“The image’s reference to both Dorian Gray and Francis Bacon is evident. This catapults a new association: perhaps Bacon was painting Gray all along. Insistently, fearlessly, longingly.
As with much of Bacon’s oeuvre, and the very particular picture of Dorian Gray, a distorted, forward-facing male figure intimidates the viewer with his unmade face. However, Tillsman’s piece is not a picture, it is a photograph. Here, the artist (as was the case with Bacon/Wilde) is not the one dissembling what’s inside the frame, subjecting it with his brush. No. In Tillsman’s image, a piece of thick glass distorts the artist. Here, the artist is no longer the lens that is able to affect his surroundings. Here, the surroundings distort the artist.
The message Tillsman delivers is clear: things have changed. The world disfigures the subject while the artist is trapped, forced to stand there and watch.”
Text by Ana Maria Caballero on The Drugstore Notebook website [Online] Cited 07/06/2017. No longer available online
Room fourteen
Symbol and allegory are artistic strategies Tillmans is usually keen to avoid. The State We’re In, A 2015 is a departure from this stance: the work’s title is a direct reference to current global political tensions. Depicting the Atlantic Ocean, a vast area that crosses time zones and national frontiers, it records the sea energised by opposing forces, but not yet breaking into waves. Differing energies collide, about to erupt into conflict.
The photographs in this room deal with borders and how they seem clear-cut but are actually fluid. In these images, borders are made tangible in the vapour between clouds, the horizon itself or the folds in the two Lighter photo-objects. The shipwreck left behind by refugees on the Italian island of Lampedusa, depicted in this photograph from 2008, is a reminder that borders, represented elsewhere in more poetic delineations, can mean a question of life and death.
The text and tables sculpture Time Mirrored 3 2017 represents Tillmans’s interest in connecting the time in which we live to a broader historical context. He always understands the ‘Now’ as the history of the future. Events perceived as having happened over a vast gulf of time between us and the past, become tangible when ‘mathematically mirrored’ and connected to more recent periods of time in our living memory.
In contrast to the epic themes of sea and time, the pictures of an apple tree outside the artist’s London front door, a subject he has photographed since 2002, suggest a day-to-day positive outlook.
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Italian Coastal Guard Flying Rescue Mission off Lampedusa
2008
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Lampedusa
2008
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Installation view of room 14 (detail), featuring at left, pictures of an apple tree outside the artist’s London front door and at right, La Palma 2014
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
La Palma
2014
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Apple tree
2007
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Apple tree
Various dates
Ink-jet prints
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Book for Architects
Book for Architects 2014 is the culmination of Tillmans’s longstanding fascination with architecture. First presented at Rem Koolhaas’s 14th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice, 2013, it explores the contrast between the rationality and utopianism that inform design and the reality of how buildings and streets come to be constructed and inhabited.
In 450 images taken in 37 countries, across 5 continents, Tillmans hones in on the resourceful and ingenious ways in which people adapt their surroundings to fit their needs. These are individual and uncoordinated decisions that were not anticipated in architects’ plans, but still impact the contemporary built environment.
Across the double projection, we see examples of how buildings come to sit within a city plan, the ad-hoc ways in which they are modified, and the supposed ‘weaknesses’ of a space such as the corners where there are service doors, fire escapes, or alarm systems.
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Shit buildings going up left, right and centre
2014
Book for Architects Plate 083 2014
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Untitled
2012
Book for Architects 2014
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans has earned recognition as one of the most exciting and innovative artists working today. Tate Modern presents an exhibition concentrating on his production across different media since 2003. First rising to prominence in the 1990s for his photographs of everyday life and contemporary culture, Tillmans has gone on to work in an ever greater variety of media and has taken an increasingly innovative approach to staging exhibitions. Tate Modern brings this variety to the fore, offering a new focus on his photographs, video, digital slide projections, publications, curatorial projects and recorded music.
Social and political themes form a rich vein throughout Tillmans’s work. The destabilisation of the world has arisen as a recurring concern for the artist since 2003, an important year when he felt the world changed with the invasion of Iraq and anti-war demonstrations. In 2017, at a moment when the subject of truth and fake news is at the heart of political discourse, Tillmans presents a new configuration of his tabletop installation truth study center 2005-ongoing. This ongoing project uses an assembly of printed matter from pamphlets to newspaper cuttings to his own works on paper to highlight Tillmans’s continued interest in word events and how they are communicated in the media.
Wolfgang Tillmans: 2017 will particularly highlight the artist’s deeper engagement with abstraction, beginning with the important work Sendeschluss / End of Broadcast I 2014. Based on images the artist took of an analogue TV losing signal, this work combines two opposing technologies – the digital and the analogue. Other works such as the series Blushes 2000-ongoing, made without a camera by manipulating the effects of light directly on photographic paper, show how the artist’s work with abstraction continues to push the boundaries and definitions of the photographic form.
The exhibition includes portraiture, landscape and still lives. A nightclub scene might record the joy of a safe social space for people to be themselves, while large-scale images of the sea such as La Palma 2014 or The State We’re In, A 2015 document places where borders intersect and margins are ever shifting. At the same time, intimate portraits like Collum 2011 focus on the delicacy, fragility and beauty of the human body. In 2009, Tillmans began using digital photography and was struck by the expanded opportunities the technology offered him. He began to travel more extensively to capture images of the commonplace and the extraordinary, photographing people and places across the world for the series Neue Welt 2009 – 2012.
The importance of Tillmans’s interdisciplinary practice is showcased throughout the exhibition. His Playback Room project, first shown at his Berlin exhibition space Between Bridges, provides a space within the museum for visitors to experience popular music by Colourbox at the best possible quality. The video installation Instrument 2015 shows Tillmans dancing to a soundtrack made by manipulating the sound of his own footsteps, while in the Tanks Studio his slide projection Book for Architects 2014 is being shown for the first time in the UK. Featuring thirty-seven countries and five continents, it reveals the tension between architectural form and function. In March, Tillmans will also take over Tate Modern’s south Tank for ten days with a specially-commissioned installation featuring live music events.
Wolfgang Tillmans: 2017 is co-curated by Chris Dercon and Helen Sainsbury, Head of Programme Realisation, Tate Modern with Emma Lewis, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue from Tate Publishing designed by Wolfgang Tillmans and a programme of talks and events in the gallery.
Press release from Tate Modern
Images from the exhibition
Installation view of the exhibition Wolfgang Tillmans: 2017 with at left, Sunset night drive (2014) and at centre right, Young Man, Jeddah (2012)
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Sunset night drive
2014
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Young Man, Jeddah
2012
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Young Man, Jeddah (B)
2012
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
17 Years Supply
2014
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
“Now the camera is staring into a big cardboard box, half-filled with pharmacist’s tubs and packages, 17 years’ supply of antiretroviral and other medications to treat HIV/Aids. I imagine the sound that box would make if you shook it, what that sound might say about a human life, its vulnerability and value.”
Adrian Searle. “Wolfgang Tillmans review – a rollercoaster ride around the world,” on The Guardian website Wednesday 15 February 2017 [Online] Cited 17/12/2021
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Market I
2012
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Studio still life, c
2014
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Juan Pablo & Karl Chingaza
2012
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Iguazu
2010
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Oscar Niemeyer
2010
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Tube escalator joint
2009
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
JAL
1997
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Port-au-Prince
2010
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
London Olympics
2012
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Fespa Car
2012
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
The Spectrum Dagger
2016
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Gaza Wall
2009
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Simon, Sebastian Street
2013
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Wolfgang Tillmans (German, born 1968)
Arms and Legs
2014
Ink-jet print
© Wolfgang Tillmans
Tate Modern
Bankside
London SE1 9TG
United Kingdom
Opening hours:
Sunday – Thursday 10.00 – 18.00
Friday – Saturday 10.00 – 22.00
Tate Modern website
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