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May

Exhibition: ‘Dave Heath: Dialogues with Solitudes’ at The Photographers’ Gallery, London

Categories: American, american photographers, beauty, black and white photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, intimacy, light, memory, New York, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, quotation, reality, space and street photography
Tags: Aaron Siskind, absurdities of existence, alienation, American art, American black and white photography, American culture, american photographer, American photography, American social documentary photogaphy, American social documentary photography, anti-Vietnam War movement, Bad Boy's Story, black and white photography, California 1964, Canadian photogaphy, Canadian photographer, Canadian photographer of America, Canadian photography, Canadian social documentary photographer, Canadian social documentary photography, Carl Dean Kipper Korea, Civil Rights movement, Dave Heath, Dave Heath California 1964, Dave Heath Carl Dean Kipper Korea, Dave Heath Elevated in Brooklyn, Dave Heath Erin Freed New York City, Dave Heath Janine Pommy Vega, Dave Heath New York City (Young Couple Kissing), Dave Heath New York City 1958-59, Dave Heath New York City 1960, Dave Heath Philadelphia 1952, Dave Heath Sesco Corée, Dave Heath Untitled c. 1960, Dave Heath Washington Square New York City, Dave Heath Young Couple Kissing, Dave Heath: Dialogues with Solitudes, Dialogues with Solitudes, Elevated in Brooklyn, Erin Freed New York City, fine art photography, Harry Callahan, hope, image sequence, inner landscape, isolation and vulnerability, Janine Pommy Vega, LIFE Magazine, loss, love, multimedia slide presentations, narrative and image sequence, New York City (Young Couple Kissing), New York City 1958-59, New York City 1960, North American society, opposition to the Vietnam War, pain, Philadelphia 1952, photographers of the Chicago School, photographs of American life, poetic photography, post war North American society, psychological photography, Ralph Crane, Ralph Crane Bad Boy's Story, self and the crowd, self-portrait, sense of isolation and vulnerability, Sesco Corée, solitary photographic monologue, terrain of solitude, the community of mankind, the fragility of human connection, the photographers gallery, the worship of modern life, unobtrusive witness, urban landscape, W. Eugene Smith, Washington Square New York City, Young Couple Kissing

Exhibition dates: 8th March – 2nd June 2019

Dave Heath (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
California
1964
Gelatin silver print
© Dave Heath / Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, and Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto

The master of what we see / visions of the self

In which the visions (ghosts?) in these haunting photographs live, breathe, and barely exist in a strange closed world. Where the subjects seem so vulnerable.

In which there is little sentimentality. The portraits emit a deep sense of melancholy in their re/pose, in the subjects temporal existence separated out from time. Heath photographs people as they are. He projects himself, not his ego, into this vision of vulnerable humanity.

In which this vision of truth illuminates the complex relationship between human nature and reality through emotional energy.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

“… the conundrum of the title is a reference about how to navigate the terrain of solitude one wishes to experience (to be alone), but also how to make that extend into a conversation with the subjects in front of you that will eventually become a single body of work for many to view (to be of more than one). This is of course conditional to your position within the world at large and how you view your presence within the greater universal ether. You must carry your solipsism like a rusty bucket of dirty brown well water. In Heath’s case, the solitary monologue and the ramble of the flaneur become something of a mantra – an incessant need to repeat, to be part of the cacophony of the worship of modern life in which the self and the crowd / city are forced to adjust to one another, but at safe distance with impassioned and yearning eyes.”

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Extract from Brad Feuerhelm. “David Heath: “Dialogues With Solitudes”,” on the ASX website November 23, 2018 [Online] Cited 26/05/2019

“”A Dialogue with Solitude” is a self-portrait in which the artist himself never really appears, but is revealed and interpreted by every detail. Its revolt is alive with sympathy and acceptance of man’s modern placement in the world, mated with contradictory realization and resistance which deny and combat the absurdities of existence. This is expressed with a sincere poetry which is never shocked out of countenance by reality.”

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Edwards, exh. label for A Dialogue of Solitude, 1963, on file in the Photography Department, Art Institute of Chicago quoted in Hugh Edwards. “Dave Heath,” on the Art Institute of Chicago website [Online] Cited 26/05/2019

The first major UK exhibition dedicated to the work of this hugely influential American photographer.

Predominantly self-taught, Heath was nonetheless extremely informed and versed in the craft, theory and history of photography and taught extensively throughout his life. Although greatly influenced by W. Eugene Smith and the photographers of the Chicago School, including Aaron Siskind and Harry Callahan, Heath cannot be neatly pigeonholed as either a documentary or experimental photographer. His work feels more at home within a narrative or poetic tradition, where an interior reality takes precedence.

Taking his masterwork and first publication, A Dialogue With Solitude, as a point of departure, this exhibition highlights Heath’s preoccupations with solitude and contemplation and further makes explicit the importance of sequencing in his practice. Heath was clear that “the central issue of my work is sequence” and held the belief that the relativity and rhythm of images offered a truer way of conveying a universal psychological state than a single image. He perfected a form of montage, often blending text and image to create visual poems, which captured the mood of the decade in a manner akin to a photographic protest song.

Heath’s photographs are shown in dialogue with cult American films from the 1960s similarly focused on themes of solitude and alienation. These include: Portrait of Jason by Shirley Clarke (1966); Salesman by Albert and David Maysles and Charlotte Mitchell Zwerin (1968); and The Savage Eye by Ben Maddow, Sidney Meyers and Joseph Strick (1960).

“The fact that I never had a family, a place or a story that defined me, inspired a need in me to join the community of mankind. I did so by inventing a poetic form linking this community, at least symbolically, in my imagination, through this form.” ~ Dave Heath

Curated by Diane Dufour, Director of LE BAL. Exhibition conceived by LE BAL with the support of Stephen Bulger Gallery (Toronto), Howard Greenberg Gallery (New York), Archive of Modern Conflict (London) and Les Films du Camélia (Paris).

Text from the Photographers’ Gallery website [Online] Cited 25/05/2019

Dave Heath (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
Sesco, Corée
1953-1954
Gelatin silver print
© Dave Heath / Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, and Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto

Dave Heath (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
Carl Dean Kipper, Korea
1953-1954
Gelatin silver print
© Dave Heath / Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, and Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto

Dave Heath (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
New York City
1958-1959
Gelatin silver print
© Dave Heath / Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, and Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto

Dave Heath (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
Janine Pommy Vega, Seven Arts Coffee Gallery, New York
1959
Gelatin silver print
© Dave Heath / Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, and Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto

Dave Heath (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
Washington Square, New York City
1960
Gelatin silver print
© Dave Heath / Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, and Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto

Dave Heath (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
Erin Freed, New York City
1963
Gelatin silver print
© Dave Heath / Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, and Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto

Dave Heath (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
New York City (Young Couple Kissing)
1962
Gelatin silver print
© Dave Heath / Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, and Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto

Dave Heath (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
New York City
1960
Gelatin silver print
© Dave Heath / Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, and Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto

The Photographers’ Gallery, in collaboration with LE BAL Paris, presents Dave Heath: Dialogues with Solitudes; the first major UK exhibition dedicated to the work of this hugely influential American photographer (b. 1931 USA, d. 2016 Canada).

Heath’s psychologically charged images both reflect and respond to the alienation particularly prevalent in post war North American society. He was one of the first of a new generation of artists seeking new ways to try and make sense of the increasing sense of isolation and vulnerability that typified the age. Predominantly self-taught, Heath was nonetheless extremely informed and versed in the craft, theory and history of photography and taught extensively throughout his life. Although greatly influenced by W. Eugene Smith and the photographers of the Chicago School, including Aaron Siskind and Harry Callahan, Heath cannot be neatly pigeonholed as either a documentary or experimental photographer. His work feels more at home within a narrative or poetic tradition, where an interior reality takes precedence.

Heath was born in Philadelphia in 1931 and had a turbulent childhood, abandoned by his parents at the age of four and consigned to a series of foster homes before being placed in an orphanage. He first became interested in photography as a teenager, and joined an amateur camera club. He was fascinated by the photo essays in Life Magazine and cites one in particular as having a decisive impact on his future. Bad Boy’s Story by Ralph Crane, charted the emotional landscape of a young orphan. Not only did Heath identify with the protagonist, he immediately recognised the power of photography as a means of self expression and as a way of connecting to others. In the following years he trained himself in the craft, taking courses in commercial art, working in a photo processing lab, and studying paintings at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. While stationed in Korea with the US Army, he began to photograph his fellow soldiers, eschewing the drama of the battlefield for quiet and private moments of subdued reflection.

On his return, Heath dedicated himself to photography, continuing his interest with capturing an “inner landscape” and training his lens on anonymous strangers whom he identified as similarly lost or fragile. Although he photographed in mostly public spaces, on the streets of Chicago and New York (where he moved to in 1957), his subjects seem detached from their physical context, shot in close-up, articulated by their isolation. His frames possess an intensity of concentration, showing single figures or close-knit couples entirely wrapped up in their own world. An occasional sidelong glance conveys a momentary awareness of being photographed, but for the most part Heath is an unobserved, unobtrusive witness. By concentrating on the fragility of human connection, focusing on the personal over the political, Heath gave ‘voice’ to those largely unheard and joined a growing community of artists searching for alternative forms of expression. His work was pivotal in depicting the fractured feeling of societal unease just prior to the rise of the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War and his ground-breaking approaches to narrative and image sequence, his exquisite printing techniques, handmade book maquettes, multimedia slide presentations culminated in his poetic masterwork, A Dialogue with Solitude, 1965. This sensitive exploration of loss, pain, love and hope reveals Heath as one the most original photographers of those decades.

After 1970, Dave Heath devoted much of his time to teaching (in particular at Ryerson University, Toronto) in Canada, where he later became a citizen. He died in 2016.

Press release from The Photographers’ Gallery website [Online] Cited 25/05/2019

Dave Heath (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
Philadelphia
1952
Gelatin silver print
© Dave Heath / Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, and Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto

Dave Heath (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
Untitled
c. 1960
Gelatin silver print
© Dave Heath / Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, and Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto

Dave Heath (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
Elevated in Brooklyn, New York City
1963
Gelatin silver print
© Dave Heath / Courtesy of Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York, and Stephen Bulger Gallery, Toronto

The Photographers’ Gallery
16-18 Ramillies Street
London
W1F 7LW

Opening hours:
Mon – Wed: 10.00 – 18.00
Thursday – Friday: 10.00 – 20.00
Satuday: 10.00 – 18.00
Sunday: 11.00 – 18.00

The Photographers’ Gallery website

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Mar

Exhibition: ‘Multitude, Solitude: The Photographs of Dave Heath’ at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: American, american photographers, beauty, black and white photography, colour photography, digital photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, intimacy, light, New York, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, reality, space, time and works on paper
Tags: A Dialogue with Solitude, American social documentary photography, Bad Boy's Story, Berkeley California, Beyond the Gates of Eden, black and white photography, Canadian artist, Canadian photographer, Canadian photography, Carl Dean Kipper, Carl Dean Kipper Korea, Central Park, colour street pictures, connected photography, Dave Heath, Dave Heath A Dialogue with Solitude, Dave Heath Berkeley California, Dave Heath Carl Dean Kipper Korea, Dave Heath Central Park, Dave Heath Chicago, Dave Heath Erin Freed, Dave Heath Greenwich Village, Dave Heath Greenwich Village New York City, Dave Heath Kansas City, Dave Heath New York City, Dave Heath Rochester New York, Dave Heath Santa Barbara California, Dave Heath Seven Arts Coffee Gallery, Dave Heath Vengeful Sister Chicago, Dave Heath Washington Square, Erin Freed, fine art photography, Greenwich Village, guggenheim fellowship, Kansas City Kansas, Multitude Solitude, Multitude Solitude: The Photographs of Dave Heath, New York City, Ralph Crane, Ralph Crane Bad Boy's Story, Rochester New York, Santa Barbara California, Seven Arts Coffee Gallery, social documentary photography, sympathetic vision, The Photographs of Dave Heath, the power of sympathetic vision, Vengeful Sister Chicago, Washington Square

Exhibition dates: 19th November 2016 – 19th March 2017

Curator: Keith F. Davis, Senior Curator, Photograph

Dave Heath (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
Carl Dean Kipper, Korea
1953-1954
Gelatin silver print
6 3/4 x 9 3/4 inches
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.

This will be short and sweet because of my hands… love this artist’s work.

Triumph of the spirit

Abandoned by both parents at age 4, he grew up in foster homes and an orphanage in Philadelphia.

High contrast images – burnt in backgrounds and then bleached back faces.

Raw, loneliness, love, sadness, homesick, Christ figure (Carl Dean Kipper) bringing out emotion.

Establishment of relationships contrasted with isolation and loneliness.

Sense of inner self – faces and forms. Sensitivity. Unpretentious.

A deeply humane approach to being witness to the human condition.

The condition of becoming.

Marcus

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Many thankx to the The Nelson-Atkins 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.

Heath has always, and instinctively, understood the power of sympathetic vision. His photographs of people are infused with a special emotional directness and power. They reflect a fundamental, and almost tactile, need to connect.

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Keith F. Davis, Senior Curator, Photography at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Dave Heath (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
Central Park, New York City
1957
Gelatin silver print
6 3/8 x 9 1/2 inches
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation

Dave Heath (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
Rochester, New York
1958
Gelatin silver print
6 1/2 x 9 3/4 inches
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.

Dave Heath (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
Washington Square, New York City
1958
Gelatin silver print
12 1/2 x 8 3/8 inches
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.

Dave Heath (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
Seven Arts Coffee Gallery, New York City
1958
Gelatin silver print
9 3/4 x 6 5/8 inches
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Gift of Hallmark Cards, Inc.

Dave Heath (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
New York City
c. 1960
Gelatin silver print
9 1/4 x 7 3/8 inches
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation

Dave Heath (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
New York City
1962
Gelatin silver print
11 1/16 x 8 1/2 inches
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation

Dave Heath (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
Erin Freed, New York City
1963
Gelatin silver print
7 1/4 x 8 3/4 inches
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation

A major exhibition showcasing the work of Dave Heath, one of the most original photographers of the last half of the 20th century, opened at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City on Nov. 19. Multitude, Solitude: The Photographs of Dave Heath is curated by Keith F. Davis, Senior Curator, Photography, who wrote a widely acclaimed catalogue of the same title to accompany the exhibition. The Nelson-Atkins has the largest holding of Heath’s work in the United States, and the exhibition was entirely assembled from the museum’s collection. A smaller version of the show opened at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in September 2015 to critical praise.

“Dave Heath has had one of the most important careers in modern photography,” said Julián Zugazagoitia, Menefee D. and Mary Louise Blackwell CEO and Director of the Nelson-Atkins. “With little formal training, he applied his determination and curiosity to learning about photography and the history of art. And we see the result in this exhibition: the flowering of one of the greatest talents of his generation.”

The exhibition spans the full breadth of Heath’s creative career, from the late 1940s into the 21st- century. It begins with his earliest pictures, his first book prototypes, his first audio-visual artistic work (“Beyond the Gates of Eden,” 1969), and concludes with his colour street pictures of 2001-2007. The exhibition centres on Heath’s 1965 photo-book A Dialogue with Solitude, a sequence of 82 photographs widely considered his defining achievement.

Heath’s photographs are a powerful expression of his emotional life, his concern for interpersonal contact and communion. Abandoned by both parents at age 4, he grew up in foster homes and an orphanage in Philadelphia. This experience shaped his creative vision, an expression of a profound sense of pain, loneliness, alienation, longing, joy, and hope. Guided by an entirely personal expressive need, Heath used the camera to understand himself and the society around him.

“Heath has always, and instinctively, understood the power of sympathetic vision,” said Davis. “His photographs of people are infused with a special emotional directness and power. They reflect a fundamental, and almost tactile, need to connect.”

Heath’s interest in photography was sparked in 1947, when he saw Ralph Crane’s photo-essay “Bad Boy’s Story”, about an alienated boy in an orphanage, in Life magazine. He identified with Crane’s subject and grasped the power of the photograph to transcend simple reportage. Largely self-taught, Heath studied for a year at the Philadelphia College of Art before working for a commercial photo studio in Chicago. He came to national attention after his move to New York City in 1957. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1963 and his work was included in major exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and elsewhere. He taught from 1965 to 1996, with 36 of those years spent at Ryerson University, Toronto, Ontario.

Heath died on his 85th birthday, June 27, 2016, knowing that his work had reached wider audiences and recognised for his individual and powerful voice.

Press release from The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Dave Heath (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
Vengeful Sister, Chicago
1956
Gelatin silver print
7 3/16 x 8 7/8 inches
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation

Dave Heath (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
Chicago
1956
Gelatin silver print
12 1/2 x 8 1/2 inches
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation

Dave Heath, (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
Greenwich Village, New York City
1957
Gelatin silver print
12 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation

Dave Heath, (Canadian, born United States, 1931-2016)
Santa Barbara, California
1964
Gelatin silver print
5 x 7 9/16 inches
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation

Dave Heath, (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
Berkeley, California
1964
Gelatin silver print
4 5/8 x 6 13/16 inches
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Gift of Elizabeth and Jeffrey Klotz and family

Dave Heath, (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
Kansas City, Kansas
1967
Gelatin silver print
7 3/8 x 10 3/4 inches
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation

Dave Heath, (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
New York City
September 19, 2004 (printed January 25, 2008)
Inkjet print
11 7/8 × 18 1/16 inches
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation

Dave Heath, (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
New York City
October 5, 2005 (printed January 25, 2008)
Inkjet print
11 7/8 × 18 1/16 inches
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation

Dave Heath, (Canadian born United States, 1931-2016)
Toronto
October 20, 2007
Inkjet print (printed December 18, 2007)
11 7/8 × 18 1/16 inches
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
4525 Oak Street
Kansas City, MO 64111

Opening hours:
Thursday – Monday 10am – 5pm
Closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art website

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Oct

Exhibition: ‘Yousuf Karsh: American Portraits’ at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: American, american photographers, black and white photography, colour photography, gallery website, light, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, space, time and works on paper
Tags: Albert Einstein, Britain's "roaring lion", Canadian photographer, Canadian photography, Eleanor Roosevelt, Elie Wiesel, Ernest Hemingway, Grace Kelly, Humphrey Bogart, I. M. Pei, Ingrid Bergman, Isamu Noguchi, Jacqueline Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Mackenzie King, Martha Graham, Muhammad Ali, national portrait gallery, New Deal, Paul Robeson, portrait photography, Robert Oppenheimer, Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, washington, Yousuf Karsh, Yousuf Karsh Albert Einstein, Yousuf Karsh Eleanor Roosevelt, Yousuf Karsh Elie Wiesel, Yousuf Karsh Ernest Hemingway, Yousuf Karsh Grace Kelly, Yousuf Karsh Humphrey Bogart, Yousuf Karsh I. M. Pei, Yousuf Karsh Ingrid Bergman, Yousuf Karsh Isamu Noguchi, Yousuf Karsh Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Yousuf Karsh Martha Graham, Yousuf Karsh Muhammad Ali, Yousuf Karsh Paul Robeson, Yousuf Karsh Robert Oppenheimer, Yousuf Karsh Winston Churchill, Yousuf Karsh: American Portraits

Exhibition dates: 2nd May – 2nd November 2014

Curator: National Portrait Gallery Senior Curator of Photographs Ann Shumard

Yousuf Karsh (Armenian-Canadian, 1908-2002)
Muhammad Ali
1970
Gelatin silver print
Image/Sheet: 50.2 x 40.3cm (19 3/4 x 15 7/8″)
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
© Estate of Yousuf Karsh

Decisive exposure

Whether there was, or he understood there to be, a “decisive” moment when Eugène Atget took a photograph is unknown… but I think that what he was trying to achieve was something different. In Atget there is a decisive exposure – or (seemingly extended) time – of the image. In Cartier-Bresson this perception has shrunk to a millisecond but it is still there. Not so different, just this intensity – COMPRESSED.

In Yousuf Karsh I believe that there is more an EXPANSION of time in the portraits – the decisive exposure is drawn out over the length of his engagement and dialogue with his sitters (with out seeing the caption you KNOW that is Robert Oppenheimer – I had not seen the image before but I sensed it instinctively, intuitively, it could be nobody else). He seems to ‘draw out’ some magical element in all of his sitters = they never just ‘sit’ for him, but actively engage in a dialogue that evidences some sense of being that is unique and timeless… an expansion of consciousness? an expansion of decisive exposure. Decisive – immediate; exposure – time / representation.

These are thoughts still forming in my head, a new way of looking at photography that relies less on instant gratification and more on intensities – of feeling, of thinking, of time, of representation.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

In celebration of a major gift to its collection of more than 100 portraits created by renowned photographer Yousuf Karsh (1908-2002), this exhibition features iconic photographs of Americans who have distinguished themselves in fields as diverse as business, medicine, entertainment, politics and the arts. Among the portraits included are those of artist Georgia O’Keeffe, physician and virologist Jonas Salk, singer Marian Anderson, actress Grace Kelly, businesswoman Elizabeth Arden, architect I. M. Pei and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Yousuf Karsh: American Portraits is the museum’s first exhibition devoted entirely to the work of this internationally recognised portrait photographer, and it will be presented in two installations.

Yousuf Karsh (Armenian-Canadian, 1908-2002)
Grace Kelly
1956
Gelatin silver print
Image: 24 x 19.4cm (9 7/16 x 7 5/8″)
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
© Estate of Yousuf Karsh

A luminous beauty whose film career spanned just six years (1951-56), Grace Kelly left an indelible legacy with her performances in eleven motion pictures, many of which remain Hollywood classics. After her 1951 film debut in a minor role, she received wide notice for her performance opposite Gary Cooper in High Noon (1952). A year later, Kelly garnered her first Academy Award nomination for her work in Mogambo (1953). In 1954 she starred in four major releases, including the Alfred Hitchcock thrillers Dial M for Murder and Rear Window, and the drama The Country Girl, for which she won the Best Actress Oscar. Kelly scored additional hits with To Catch a Thief (1955) and the musical High Society (1956) before ending her Hollywood career to marry Monaco’s Prince Rainier in April 1956.

When Grace Kelly posed for Karsh’s camera, she was recently engaged and about to begin her new life as Monaco’s Princess Grace.

Text from the Smithsonian website

Yousuf Karsh (Armenian-Canadian, 1908-2002)
Ernest Hemingway
1957
Gelatin silver print
Image: 24 x 19.1cm (9 7/16 x 7 1/2″ )
Sheet: 33.8 x 26.2cm (13 5/16 x 10 5/16 in.)
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
© Estate of Yousuf Karsh

In 1954, when Ernest Hemingway received the Nobel Prize in Literature, the committee cited his “mastery of the art of modern narration.” In fact, through his short stories and such novels as The Sun Also Rises (1926) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), Hemingway had, with his terse, powerful prose, in large measure invented a new literary style as he chronicled the disillusionment of the post-World War I “lost generation.” Hemingway’s own experiences – reporting foreign wars, living the bohemian life in Paris, and adventuring in Africa, Spain, and Cuba – fuelled his imagination and helped foster his larger-than-life public persona.

When Karsh traveled to Cuba in 1957 to photograph Hemingway, he “expected to meet in the author a composite of the heroes of his novels.” Instead, the photographer recalled, “I found a man of peculiar gentleness, the shyest man I ever photographed – a man cruelly battered by life but seemingly invincible.”

Text from the Smithsonian website

Yousuf Karsh (Armenian-Canadian, 1908-2002)
Albert Einstein
1948
Gelatin silver print
Image: 27.3 x 26.1cm (10 3/4 x 10 1/4″)
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
© Estate of Yousuf Karsh

Albert Einstein transformed the world of physics with his groundbreaking theory of relativity, and in 1921 he received the Nobel Prize for “his services to theoretical physics” and “his discovery of the law of photoelectric effect.” The German-born physicist was visiting the United States when Hitler and the Nazis came to power in his homeland in 1933. Einstein never returned to Germany. Instead, he accepted a position at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey – the newly established academic institution that would become a major centre for research in theoretical physics. In residence at the institute for the remainder of his life, Einstein continued to publish, work on the interpretation of quantum theory, and wrestle without success on his unified field theory. He became a U.S. citizen in 1940.

Karsh relished the opportunity to photograph Einstein, whose face, “in all its rough grandeur, invited and challenged the camera.”

Text from the Smithsonian website

Yousuf Karsh (Armenian-Canadian, 1908-2002)
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
1941
Gelatin silver print
Image/Sheet (Image/Sheet, Accurate): 34.3 x 26.8cm (13 1/2 x 10 9/16″)
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
© Estate of Yousuf Karsh

In 1941, as war raged in Europe and the Pacific, British prime minister Winston Churchill traveled to Washington for meetings with President Franklin Roosevelt before continuing on to Ottawa, where he delivered a rousing speech before the Canadian Parliament on December 30. Canada’s prime minister, Mackenzie King – an early admirer of Yousuf Karsh’s work – arranged for Karsh to attend Churchill’s address and to be in position to photograph the British leader as he later passed through the Speaker’s Chamber. Surprised to discover that he was to be photographed, Churchill grudgingly agreed to give Karsh two minutes for the shot but declined the photographer’s gentle entreaty to relinquish his freshly lit cigar. Undeterred, Karsh deftly removed the cigar from Churchill’s mouth and quickly made his exposure as Britain’s “roaring lion” glowered at the camera. The resulting image – one of the 20th century’s most iconic portraits – effectively launched Karsh’s international career.

In 1963, Churchill became the first foreign national to be granted honorary U.S. citizenship by the U.S. Congress.

Text from the Smithsonian website

Yousuf Karsh (Armenian-Canadian, 1908-2002)
I. M. Pei
1979
Gelatin silver print
Image: 28 x 21.5cm (11 x 8 7/16″)
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
© Estate of Yousuf Karsh

One of the most influential architects to emerge in the decades following World War II, I. M. Pei is recognised throughout the world for his striking, high-modernist designs. Drawn to the United States to study architecture in 1935, Pei earned his undergraduate degree from MIT and later completed graduate work at Harvard. After first directing the architectural division of a large real-estate concern, Pei founded his own architecture firm in 1955, one year after becoming a U.S. citizen. As his reputation grew, important projects – such as the 1964 commission for the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library – came his way. Pei went on to create such iconic structures as the critically acclaimed East Wing of the National Gallery of Art (1978) and the distinctive glass pyramid that forms the entrance to the Louvre (1988). He has received many major awards, including the coveted Pritzker Prize (1983).

Text from the Smithsonian website

Yousuf Karsh (Armenian-Canadian, 1908-2002)
Yousuf Karsh
c. 1946
Photo blow-up
Gelatin silver print
© Estate of Yousuf Karsh

In celebration of a major gift to its collection of more than 100 portraits created by master photographer Yousuf Karsh (1908-2002), the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery is installing a special exhibition on the first floor of the museum, Yousuf Karsh: American Portraits. This is the second of two installations and will run from May 2 through Nov. 2. Yousuf Karsh: American Portraits is the museum’s first exhibition devoted entirely to the work of this internationally recognised photographer. Each phase of the installation displays 27 photographs. The photographs were a gift to the museum by Estrellita Karsh.

“Yousuf Karsh created some of the most iconic photographic portraits of our time,” said Kim Sajet, director of the National Portrait Gallery. “He not only had the uncanny ability to amplify a person’s character, but also offered everyday people the opportunity to glimpse into the private lives of the men and women who shaped the 20th century in a way that feels both personal and real. I am thrilled to have his important work play an integral part in building the nation’s collection of portraits.”

A refugee from persecution in his native Armenia, Karsh immigrated to Canada in 1925. His uncle, a professional photographer, facilitated Karsh’s apprenticeship with the renowned Boston portrait photographer John H. Garo in 1928. By the time Karsh returned to Canada, he had “set [his] heart on photographing those men and women who leave their mark on the world.” In May 1933, he opened his portrait studio in Ottawa.

Karsh developed his distinctive portrait style by drawing inspiration from a variety of sources. Introduced to stage lighting techniques through his association with the Ottawa Drama League, he experimented with artificial lighting to achieve the dramatic effects that became the hallmark of his portraiture. Believing that “the heart and mind are the true lens of the camera,” Karsh also developed a genuine rapport with his sitters and partnered with them to fashion portraits that were both revealing and respectful.

During a distinguished career that spanned more than six decades, Karsh believed that “the heart and mind are the true lens of the camera,” and he developed a genuine rapport with his subjects to fashion evocative and revealing portraits. This installation features Americans who have distinguished themselves in fields as diverse as business, medicine, entertainment, politics and the arts. Among the portraits included are Martha Graham, Helen Keller, Jackie Kennedy, Andy Warhol, Ellie Wiesel, Muhammad Ali and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The museum has previously collected seven photographs by Karsh, including one of the most famous photographs of Winston Churchill, which became known as the “roaring lion,” and a colour photograph of the beloved creator of Peanuts, Charles Schultz. While the photographer is known for his work in black and white, the museum is also showing several works in colour.

Press release from the National Portrait Gallery website

Yousuf Karsh (Armenian-Canadian, 1908-2002)
Eleanor Roosevelt
1944
Gelatin silver print
Image: 31.5 x 25.5cm (12 3/8 x 10 1/16″)
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
© Estate of Yousuf Karsh

As the nation’s first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt rapidly expanded her role from hostess to advocate and emerged as a vital force in her husband Franklin’s administration. She took public stands on issues ranging from exploitative labor practices to civil rights, but more important, she often urged her husband toward measures he might otherwise have avoided. When the challenges of World War II drew the president’s attention from domestic affairs, she continued to be a strong voice for the New Deal’s social welfare policies. The activism that characterised Eleanor Roosevelt’s years as first lady did not end with her departure from the White House. As a U.S. delegate to the United Nations (1945-1953), she was instrumental in formulating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and securing its ratification by the General Assembly in 1948.

Eleanor Roosevelt’s hands were seldom still, and Karsh captured their expressive qualities in this portrait.

Text from the Smithsonian website

Yousuf Karsh (Armenian-Canadian, 1908-2002)
Ingrid Bergman
1946
Gelatin silver print
Image/Sheet: 33.7 x 26.3cm (13 1/4 x 10 3/8″)
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
© Estate of Yousuf Karsh

Yousuf Karsh (Armenian-Canadian, 1908-2002)
Humphrey Bogart
1946
Gelatin silver print
Image: 35.5 x 27.9cm (14 x 11″)
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
© Estate of Yousuf Karsh

Yousuf Karsh (Armenian-Canadian, 1908-2002)
Martha Graham
1948
Gelatin silver print
Image: 28 x 21.6cm (11 x 8 1/2″)
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
© Estate of Yousuf Karsh

Yousuf Karsh (Armenian-Canadian, 1908-2002)
Isamu Noguchi
1980
Gelatin silver print
Image: 28 x 21.6cm (11 x 8 1/2″)
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
© Estate of Yousuf Karsh

Yousuf Karsh (Armenian-Canadian, 1908-2002)
Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
1957
Gelatin silver print
Image: 24.1 x 19.1cm (9 1/2 x 7 1/2″)
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
© Estate of Yousuf Karsh

Yousuf Karsh (Armenian-Canadian, 1908-2002)
Robert Oppenheimer
1956
Gelatin silver print
Image: 31.6 x 25.5cm (12 7/16 x 10 1/16″)
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
© Estate of Yousuf Karsh

Yousuf Karsh (Armenian-Canadian, 1908-2002)
Paul Robeson
1941
Gelatin silver print
Image: 49.2 x 39.5cm (19 3/8 x 15 9/16″)
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
© Estate of Yousuf Karsh

Yousuf Karsh (Armenian-Canadian, 1908-2002)
Elie Wiesel
1991
Chromogenic print
Image: 34.2 x 24cm (13 7/16 x 9 7/16″)
Sheet: 35.5 x 27.9cm (14 x 11″)
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
© Estate of Yousuf Karsh

Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery
8th and F Sts NW
Washington, DC 20001

Opening hours:
11.30am – 7.00pm daily

Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery website

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Jul

Exhibition: ‘Jeff Wall: Tableaux, Pictures, Photographs, 1996-2013’ at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: American, american photographers, black and white photography, colour photography, digital photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, landscape, light, memory, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, reality, space and time
Tags: Amsterdam, Boy Falls From Tree, Canadian contemporary photography, Canadian photographer, Canadian photography, conceptual photography, Contemporary Photography, fine art photography, In Front of a Nightclub, Invisible man by Ralp Ellison, Jeff Wall, Jeff Wall Boxing, Jeff Wall Boy Falls From Tree, Jeff Wall In Front of a Nightclub, Jeff Wall Invisible man by Ralp Ellison, Jeff Wall Knife Throw, Jeff Wall Overpass, Jeff Wall Summer Afternoons, Jeff Wall Tableau, Jeff Wall Tableaux, Jeff Wall The Flooded Grave, Jeff Wall Volunteer, Jeff Wall: Tableaux Pictures Photographs, Jeff Wall: Tableaux Pictures Photographs 1996-2013, Knife Throw, lightboxes, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, The Flooded Grave

Exhibition dates: 1st March – 3rd August 2014

Curator: Hripsimé Visser

Installation views of Jeff Wall: Tableaux, Pictures, Photographs, 1996-2013 at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
Photos: Gert Jan van Rooij

What an absolutely beautiful space to show your work. Can you just imagine what you would create if you had the chance!

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
Volunteer
1996
Gelatine silver print
221.5 x 313cm
Courtesy of the artist

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
The Flooded Grave
1998-2000
Transparency in lightbox
225.5 x 282 x 25cm
Courtesy of the artist

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
Invisible man by Ralp Ellison, The Prologue
1999-2000
Transparency in lightbox
174 x 250 x 25cm
Courtesy of the artist

Jeff Wall: Tableaux, Pictures, Photographs, 1996-2013 presents recent work in colour and black and white, and features the new, previously unseen diptych Summer Afternoons (2013). It is the first major photography exhibition to be presented at the Stedelijk following its reopening in 2012.

Since the 1980s, Wall has produced critically acclaimed work in the form of colour transparencies backlit by fluorescent light strips and presented in lightboxes. He was one of the first artists to make photographs on a large scale. The standard lightbox was created for the primary purpose of outdoor advertising. In Wall’s work, this medium became a platform for his figurative tableaux, street scenes and interiors, landscapes and cityscapes. Wall explores themes such as the relationships between men and women and the boundary between metropolis and nature. He offers social commentary on violence and cultural miscommunication, and conjures seductive nightmarish fantasies and personal memories. These scenes provide the basis for photographic reconstructions of Wall’s experience. They derive their inherent suspense from a combination of extreme realism and sometimes elaborate artifice.

The exhibition hinges on the year 1996, which marked a turning point in Wall’s production: It was the first year that he produced black-and-white prints on paper. More immediately than the lightboxes, the black-and-white photographs suggest new relations of his work to documentary themes and aesthetics. But Wall also orchestrates the content of these images, employing tools borrowed from filmmaking. Wall sees photographs as autonomous, independent images and, strictly speaking, all his works are created using photographic means. At the same time, he analyses and expands the visual language of photography by adding elements from painting, cinema, theatre. In choosing his themes, Wall deconstructs common ideas and assumptions, including those relating to his own work. He has, for instance, also shot many “unstaged” images.

Curator Hripsimé Visser said: “Jeff Wall is first and foremost an ‘artist’s artist,’ he is well- known and much loved by other artists, as well as critics. With this exhibition, the Stedelijk hopes to create broader public awareness of Jeff Wall as one of the artists who uniquely and enduringly defined photography as a fine art medium. Wall’s work is classic, yet entirely contemporary at the same time. His themes are both commonplace and tension-filled. What at first seems straightforward and intelligible is also complex and enigmatic. Wall carefully selects his mode of display to be produced with an incredible eye for detail. The large scale of the images is a natural, integral feature of the work.”

Jeff Wall himself chose the title of this exhibition. It is a reference to the layers that can be found in his work. He says, “‘Tableau’ refers to the free-standing, autonomous object we look at from a distance, often when it is hanging on the wall in front of us. ‘Picture’ relates to that special and isolated image within the entire spectrum of image production available in a culture. And ‘photograph’ identifies it in the technical sense, and as medium, distinct from other ways of making tableaux or pictures.” Wall aims to present each photo as an independent, unique image, intended to be seen hanging on a wall, not as reproductions in a book. As such, Wall arranged this presentation to give each individual artwork the space it needs. The monumental scale of the work encourages viewers to experience the space that is evoked in the images. At the same time, the themes and formal and stylistic qualities of the different images prompt viewers to draw comparisons between them.

The exhibition will fan out across the Stedelijk’s former Hall of Honor, two adjacent gallery spaces in the historic building, and the Van den Ende Foundation Gallery in the new wing of the museum. Jeff Wall: Tableaux Pictures Photographs 1996-2013 was curated by Hripsimé Visser, in close collaboration with the artist and in collaboration with Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria, and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaeck, Denmark. The exhibition will travel to both museums.

Jeff Wall grew up in Vancouver and studied at the University of British Columbia and at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Since the late 1970s, he has been considered one of the art world’s most innovative contemporary photographers. His work has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich (2013), the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2007), and Tate Modern, London (2005), among others. The Stedelijk Museum first presented Wall’s work in 1985.

Press release from the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam website

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
Overpass
2001
Transparency in lightbox
214 x 273.5 x 25cm
Courtesy of the artist

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
In Front of a Nightclub
2006
Transparency in lightbox
226 x 360 x 30cm
Courtesy of the artist

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
Knife Throw
2008
Inkjet print
195 x 267cm
Courtesy of the artist

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
Boy Falls From Tree
2010
Colour photograph
234.3 x 313.7cm
Courtesy of the artist

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
Boxing
2011
Colour photograph
222.9 x 303.5cm
Courtesy of the artist

Forum: Jeff Wall – Artist Talk – 01-03-14

As part of the Public Program in conjunction with Jeff Wall: Tableaux Pictures Photographs 1996-2013 exhibition, the Stedelijk Museum is honoured to present a new stedelijk|forum afternoon with an artist talk by Jeff Wall, introduced by Hripsimé Visser (curator Photography, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam).

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam
Museumplein 10

Opening hours:
Daily 10am – 6pm
Thursday 10am – 10pm

Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam website

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Jan

Exhibition: ‘Edward Burtynsky: Water’ presented by The New Orleans Museum of Art and the Contemporary Arts Center

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: colour photography, digital photography, documentary photography, Edward Burtynsky, exhibition, existence, gallery website, landscape, photographic series, photography, space and time
Tags: aerial photography, aerial photography of the earth, Aragon, Baja, Benidorm #2 Spain, CAC, Canadian artist, Canadian photographer, Canadian photography, Cerro Prieto Geothermal Power Station, china, Contemporary Arts Center, Contemporary Arts Center (CAC), Dryland Farming #2, Dryland Farming #24, Edward Burtynsky, Edward Burtynsky Benidorm #2 Spain, Edward Burtynsky Cerro Prieto Geothermal Power Station, Edward Burtynsky Dryland Farming #2, Edward Burtynsky Dryland Farming #24, Edward Burtynsky Greenhouses Almira Peninsula, Edward Burtynsky Marine Aquaculture #1, Edward Burtynsky Navajo Reservation / Suburb, Edward Burtynsky Pivot Irrigation #11, Edward Burtynsky Pivot Irrigation / Suburb, Edward Burtynsky Rice Terraces #2, Edward Burtynsky Stepwell #4, Edward Burtynsky Thjorsá River #1, Edward Burtynsky Verona Walk, Edward Burtynsky Xiaolangdi Dam #1, Edward Burtynsky: Water, Fujian Province, Greenhouses Almira Peninsula, Henan Province, High Plains Texas Panhandle, Iceland, landscape photography, Luoyuan Bay, Marine Aquaculture #1, Mexico, Monegros County, Navajo Reservation / Suburb, New Orleans Museum of Art, NOMA, NOMA CAC, Pivot Irrigation #11, Pivot Irrigation / Suburb, Rice Terraces #2, Richard Woldendorp, Sagar Kund Baori, spain, Stepwell #4, The Earth, the land, The New Orleans Museum of Art, Thjorsá River #1, water, water and the planet, water conservation, water use, Western Yunnan Province, Xiaolangdi Dam #1, Yellow River

Exhibition dates: 5th October 2013 – 19th January 2014

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Xiaolangdi Dam #1, Yellow River, Henan Province, China
2011

“Now with the assistance of the web and being able to look at things in a bit more depth before I go there, I can actually predetermine my pictures…”

.
Edward Burtynsky

Predetermined weather music

The geometric images such as Navajo Reservation / Suburb (2011), Pivot Irrigation #11 (2011) and Pivot Irrigation / Suburb (2011) are of more interest here, with their juxtaposition of irrigation/habitation/nature. I especially like the Andreas Gursky-esque patterning of Benidorm #2 (2010) but I’m really over the abstract pattern of rivers, rice terraces and greenhouses covering the plane of view, mainly because so many photographers have done it and all in the same way. You only have to type in ‘Australian aerial landscape photographer’ into Google Images to see what I mean. Australia even has its own version in the West Australian photographer Richard Woldendorp. Bet you can’t tell the difference between the two photographers in a blind taste test!

These images are a bit like elevator music (also known as Muzak, piped music, weather music or lift music). Quite a nice analogy, weather music, as these photographs are generic, middle of the road easy listening abstraction, beauty, and formality – images with a simple melody that constantly loop back to the beginning, commonly played through speakers (in this case the institutions that laud such repetitive work).

While Burtynsky’s work seeks to explore the relationship between art and environment, “focusing on all the facets of people’s relationship with water, including ritual and leisure,” he offers evidence without argument. And there is the crux of the problem. When an artist promulgates an objective point of view without comment, they run the risk of saying very little with the work for they have nothing to say themselves.

There is nothing passionate, weak, decadent and impure here. Perhaps the artist needs to change the angle of attack for me to sit up and take notice. Otherwise the motion of the train has a somewhat soporific effect.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

.
Many thankx to The New Orleans Museum of Art and the Contemporary Arts Center for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

NOMA CAC

NOMA CAC is an ongoing exhibition and programming partnership between two of the most significant cultural institutions of New Orleans: the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Contemporary Arts Center. Edward Burtynsky: Water is the second initiative of this unique collaboration, which will draw on the strengths of both institutions to provide thought-provoking exhibitions and programming for a cross section of the community. The exhibition is presented in the second floor Lupin Foundation Gallery of the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC).

Where I Stand: A Behind the Scenes Look at Edward Burtynsky’s Photographic Essay, Water

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Cerro Prieto Geothermal Power Station, Baja, Mexico
2012

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Marine Aquaculture #1, Luoyuan Bay, Fujian Province, China
2012

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Rice Terraces #2, Western Yunnan Province, China
2012

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Verona Walk, Naples, Florida, USA
2012

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Thjorsá River #1, Iceland
2012

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Stepwell #4, Sagar Kund Baori, Bundi, Rajasthan, India
2010

NOMA CAC is proud to present Edward Burtynsky: Water, the world premiere of the latest body of work by internationally renowned photographer Edward Burtynsky, opening Saturday, October 5 in the second floor Lupin Foundation Gallery of the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC). This second initiative of the ongoing NOMA CAC programming partnership includes over 50 large-scale colour photographs that form a global portrait of humanity’s relationship to water. Burtynsky’s images address several facets of the world’s vital resource, exploring the source, collection, control, displacement, and depletion of water. The exhibition opens on October 5, 2013 and runs through January 19, 2014.

Edward Burtynsky (born 1955, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada) has long been recognised for his ability to combine vast and serious subject matter with a rigorous, formal approach to picture making. The results are images that are part abstraction, part architecture, and part raw data. In producing Water, Burtynsky has worked across the globe – from the Gulf of Mexico to the shores of the Ganges – weaving together an ambitious representation of water’s increasingly fragmented lifecycle.

“The CAC is thrilled to be able to premiere an exhibition of this scale and quality through our partnership with NOMA,” said Neil Barclay, Executive Director of the Contemporary Arts Center. “Burtynsky’s work has long served as a commentary on the relationship between art and environment, and I believe the subject of these works will be of keen interest to anyone who has experienced life in New Orleans over the past decade.”

“Five years in the making, Water is at once Burtynsky’s most detailed and expansive project to date, with images of the 2010 Gulf oil spill, step wells in India, dam construction in China, aquaculture, farming, and pivot irrigation systems,” said Susan M. Taylor, Director of the New Orleans Museum of Art. In addition Water includes some of the first pure landscapes that Burtynsky has made since the early 1980s. These archaic, almost primordial looking images of British Columbia place the structures of water control in a historical context – tracing the story of water from the ancient to the modern, and back again.

While the story of water is certainly an ecological one, Burtynsky is more interested in presenting the facts on the ground than in declaring society’s motives good or bad. In focusing on all the facets of people’s relationship with water, including ritual and leisure, Burtynsky offers evidence without an argument. “Burtynsky’s work functions as an open ended question about humanity’s past, present, and future,” said Russell Lord, Freeman Family Curator of Photographs at the New Orleans Museum of Art. “The big question is: do these pictures represent the achievement of humanity or one of its greatest faults, or both? Each visitor might find a different answer in this exhibition, depending upon what they bring to it.”

The exhibition, organised by Russell Lord, is accompanied by a catalogue published by Steidl with over 100 colour plates from Burtynsky’s water series. It includes essays by Lord and Wade Davis, renowned anthropologist and Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society.

Press release from NOMA CAC

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Navajo Reservation / Suburb, Phoenix, Arizona, USA
2011

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Pivot Irrigation #11, High Plains, Texas Panhandle, USA
2011

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Pivot Irrigation / Suburb, South of Yuma, Arizona, USA
2011

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Benidorm #2, Spain
2010

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Dryland Farming #2, Monegros County, Aragon, Spain
2010

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Dryland Farming #24, Monegros County, Aragon, Spain
2010

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Greenhouses, Almira Peninsula, Spain
2010

Contemporary Arts Center
900 Camp Street
New Orleans, LA 70130-3908

Opening hours:
Wednesday – Monday 11am – 5pm
Closed Tuesdays

Contemporary Arts Center website

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Mar

Review: ‘Jeff Wall Photographs’ at The Ian Potter Centre: NGVA, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: colour photography, digital photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, intimacy, landscape, light, Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, photographic series, photography, photorealism, portrait, psychological, reality, space, street photography and time
Tags: A sudden gust of wind (after Hokusai), A view from an apartment, Adrian Walker artist drawing from a specimen in a laboratory in the Dept. of Anatomy at the University of British Columbia, After 'Invisible Man' by Ralph Ellison, analysis of Jeff Wall's Polishing, Boy Falls From Tree, Camera/Eye blog, Canada, Canadian art, Canadian artist, Canadian contemporary photography, Canadian photographer, Canadian photography, conditions our awareness of space, dis-identification, dis-identification of the figures, Dr James McArdle, Gordian Knot, Jeff Wall, Jeff Wall A sudden gust of wind (after Hokusai), Jeff Wall A view from an apartment, Jeff Wall Adrian Walker artist, Jeff Wall Adrian Walker artist drawing from a specimen in a laboratory in the Dept. of Anatomy at the University of British Columbia, Jeff Wall After 'Invisible Man' by Ralph Ellison, Jeff Wall After 'Invisible Man' by Ralph Ellison the Prologue, Jeff Wall at the National Gallery of Victoria, Jeff Wall Boy Falls From Tree, Jeff Wall Clipped branches, Jeff Wall Diagonal Composition, Jeff Wall Double Self-Portrait, Jeff Wall Dressing poultry, Jeff Wall Knife Throw, Jeff Wall Photographs, Jeff Wall Photographs at the National Gallery of Victoria, Jeff Wall Photographs NGV, Jeff Wall Polishing, Jeff Wall reconstruction of a feeling, Jeff Wall Stressed at the Seams, Jeff Wall The Destroyed Room, Jeff Wall Untangling, Jung cave archetype, McArdle Perspective blow up, NGV Australia, Ouroboros, reconstruction is a philosophical activity, reconstruction of a feeling, Structural analysis of Jeff Wall's Polishing, symbol of the unconscious, The Destroyed Room, the eternal return, The Ian Potter Centre NGV Australia, The Well Tempered View Camera, Vancouver

Exhibition dates: 30th November 2012 – 17th March 2013

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
A view from an apartment
2004-2005
Transparency in light box 1/2
167.0 x 244.0cm
Tate, London Purchased with assistance from the American Fund for the Tate Gallery and Tate Members, 2006
© Jeff Wall

“My work is a reconstruction and reconstruction is a philosophical activity. If I can create a drama that has philosophical meaning, that’s fine, or sometimes, it is not from meaning but a reconstruction of a feeling. It is best to capture in a photograph a feeling, an emotion, a look, a memory, a perception or a relationship.”

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Jeff Wall

Stressed at the seams

The excruciating “conversation” between Jeff Wall and Thomas Demand in The Great Hall at the National Gallery of Victoria on November 28th 2012 seemed to run on interminably, yielding a couple of tiny gems but also a lot of leaden debate. I had higher hopes of the solo exhibition by Jeff Wall at NGV Australia. In some ways I was not disappointed, in other ways Wall’s calculating fields of existence certainly didn’t move my soul with any great conviction.

Initially, I was impressed perhaps even a little overwhelmed by the spacious hang, the placement of the mainly large, light box illuminated photographs and non light box photographs dotted amongst the galleries emphasising the inter-relationship between the images. The work in the exhibition includes large set-piece constructions, outdoor photographs of found environments, small, intimate conceptual works full of angles and colour and more recent ink jet print work. These “installations that happen to have photos in them” (Wall’s description) reflect the gigantism prevalent in much contemporary photography. In these large mise-en-scène you cannot fail to be impressed by the control the artist displays in the formal nature of their construction, the still-life tableaux representing the artist’s intention in a rather cold and remote way. As can be seen from the structural analysis of Polishing (1988) by Dr James McArdle and J.S.B. below, Wall is very clever in how he structures his shape-shifting photographs, how he seduces the eye into believing that everything is plausible within the formalist pictorial plane. But as McArdle observes,

“[His] formalism remains empty of connection to the subject, Wall denying any narrative representation… His distancing of the subject, his leaning on typecast (such as in the chicken plucking image) can be summed up in his method: staging, directing, controlling that sucks the real life out of the imagery and re-inflates it with bombast.”1

From his early, prissy double self-portrait to his laughing at, not with, the menial labourers in Dressing poultry (2007, below), the set-piece work does seem full of bombast (possessing a pompous and grandiloquent language; an obsolete material used for padding), but perhaps bombast is related to that standard postmodern language, irony. It certainly is a language where Wall denies any inherent narrative, where there is a “dis-identification of the figures in the pictures which becomes part of the aesthetic of the picture.”2 Wall says he is just depicting the figures, that they just become an effect of depiction (or representation, in other words). In this way Wall conditions our awareness of [this particular] space due only in part to their scale (McArdle). This grandiloquence, coupled with the luminance of the light box which creates the luminescence of the image, dazzles the eye but on closer inspection is a perhaps a psychological hall of mirrors. The shattering of this constructed illusion can be seen in the “seaminess” of the photographs. The media image of A view from an apartment (2004-2005, below) gives it away: all trace of the join that is present in most of Wall’s large transparencies has been removed, when compared to my detail photograph of the image in the actual exhibition. The join gives lie, line, to the truth that here are photographs that we can believe in. The illusion becomes stressed at the seams but again, perhaps this join is just a trope that Wall has developed to compliment his visual language. Certainly, there is no reason why such large transparencies could not be printed in one piece and at a million dollars a pop he could surely talk to the manufacturer.

Scholars have noted that the phrase ‘Emperor’s new clothes’ has become a standard metaphor for anything that smacks of pretentiousness, pomposity, social hypocrisy, or hollow ostentatiousness and this is the case here. These photographs are like the Emperor’s new clothes, so caught up are we in the brilliance of their display we fail to notice that there is not much going on in terms of the actual “life” of the image (other than subsuming the life of up to 70 digital images to make one still, cold image). Wall’s photographs as performance, his theatre of disruption where the artist seeks to upset the veneer of the ordinary to blur the boundaries between what is probable or improbable, are undone by their existential isolation. I felt little empathy for any of the people in Wall’s tableaux vivants or for their imagined, non-narrative realities as Wall would have it. Perhaps I wasn’t meant to or, to be kinder, perhaps this is the strategy.

There was one exception: Untangling (1994, below) which is a cracker of an image. All the psychological and existential meaning comes pouring out here: an underground cave (Jung’s cave archetype, symbol of the unconscious), the male sitters profound mood of introspection, the skein of tangled rope which may represent the source of the Gordian Knot, used as a metaphor for an intractable problem (disentangling an “impossible” knot) – although I prefer the analogy of the Ouroboros, the snake devouring its own tail which often represents self-reflexivity or cyclicality, especially in the sense of something constantly re-creating itself, the eternal return, which emphasises the relationship between a person’s mind and their experience of reality, how the psyche shapes the environment in which they act, and the untangling of consciousness.

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While his work was cutting edge in the late 1980s-1990s, containing something in the work that brought him to notice, today it evidences a cultural and visual aesthetic that already seems completely outdated (the Pet Shop Boys on a bad hair day). Through staring at a constructed atemporal reality – like a man dreaming, caught in a no-time – Wall has created a form of look but don’t touch voyeurism, a slightly bombastic narcissism based on the photographers’ own power. But perhaps this is the point. Perhaps the qualities that I have criticised in the artist’s work are the very qualities the he is pursuing. Wall might want a don’t touch voyeurism for example – possibly deny it even exists or give it another name – so that the work interrogates some aspect of alienation without ever naming it. This can be seen in his construction of the photograph Polishing where he represents a mundane act in a cheap hotel room, raising the performance up to the altar of high art while hiding its anomalous philosophical and physical distortions.

I think Wall is a clever person wanting to be contradictory and clever.

To some people the qualities evidenced in Wall’s photographs can be seen to be quite admirable: today we shouldn’t (always) have to seek resolution or meaning. But when Wall says in the quote at the top of this posting that his work is a “reconstruction of a feeling” then I wonder where this feeling has gone, or whether it existed in the first place, for reconstruction is a very strange word to use with regard to feelings.

While the artist can control the uniqueness of a particular image seen from the point of view of production, intention and encounter3 what he cannot control is the interpretation of his images by the viewer. With this in mind (very apt) this is what I don’t get from these images: they lack for me is the quality of being lyrical, an artist’s expression of emotion in an imaginative and beautiful way. The stress seams present in his photographs, be they physical (the actual print) or psychological (photographs like Doorpusher or A view from an apartment) don’t allow me emotional access to the work. Aiming for an investigation into the existential nature of being and the philosophical reconstruction of a feeling, Wall ends up stressed at the seams (even un/seamed, un/scene, un/seen) and leaves me spatially and emotionally unmoved.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

McArdle, James. Email to the author 22/01/2013
Wall, Jeff and Crombie, Isobel. “Jeff Wall Photographs: Knife Throw,” video on the NGV website Cited 03/03/2013
Howarth, Sophie. “Introduction,” in Singular Images: essays on Remarkable Photographs. New York: Aperture, 2006, p. 7

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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.

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
A view from an apartment (detail)
2004-2005
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
Polishing
1998
Transparency in light box, 1/2
162 x 207cm
State Art Collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia Purchased with assistance from the Art Gallery of Western Australia Foundation, 1999
© Jeff Wall

Image Dr James McArdle

Image J.S.B.

Structural analysis of Jeff Wall’s Polishing (1998)

“There is a perceptual discomfort in viewing this image on the wall that is not apparent in the desk-top experience of it. I’m referring to a weird skewing of the perspective of the room. Wall has tilted the monorail of his 8×10 camera down toward the corner of the room, making the left hand wall of the bathroom lean uncomfortably, more than does the patched join of the wall panels to the right. He has then shifted the lens left, thus positioning the one vertical (right behind the figure) to the right of centre. The bathroom door, draped with a towel, looks as if it is hanging off its hinges, at variance with the top of the entrance door which remains horizontal. Conventionally, an architectural photographer would square everything and Wall does that in Doorpusher which though shot from an extremely oblique angle employs a radical drop-front to correct the verticals.”

Dr James McArdle

“”Firstly, the floor is not straight in the image. You can see how in my edit, I have rotated the image a little to make the floor straight: (you can see how much by the break in the picture rail see red arrow). JW being tricky and skilled. Now the amount of lean in wall could almost be achieved just by a camera pointing down. No weird camera movements – this is almost familiar. But the door leans more than the wall! Next, note the degree of convergence in blue lines compared to green lines. Therefore the blue angle is emphasised – somehow. Note different hang of towel in magenta compared to blue – therefore edited ~ somehow!

The grid is good because as an initial observation it shows how much distortion we are viewing. But it makes it difficult to see that the floor is not level. When the floor is straightened the lean on the left wall is not as much as it seemed. Wait! Things do splay out when the camera is pointed down – so maybe there is no Photoshop in this at all? But there is – the angles have been emphasised a bit (I believe digitally) and there are puns in the angle of the towel (sloping at a different angle) and the buttons on the couch (not sloping out at all).

Lets play with this a bit more. So just tilt the camera to slope the floor and emphasise the lean by using the tilt to straighten the verticals on one side – and now make this a bit stronger in Photoshop. And by judicious use of the furniture placement the slope of the floor can be partly hidden. I can imagine Jeff Wall saying to a crowd that there is no Photoshop in this – it’s just camera placement (including a tilt in the whole camera) and without duplicating the scene I can’t be sure – but I think he has stressed in Photoshop some things that are already there. Digital enhancement.

Finally we can say that the formal qualities of this image are a play upon what has been initially offered by the camera. Initially: The walls are sloping! So is it just optics, or camera angle or Photoshop? It’s all three but not as much Photoshop as initially thought. The floor is not straight, the camera angle has been changed and there has been some digital emphasis.”

J.S.B. (author of The Well Tempered View Camera)

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Many thankx to Dr James McArdle for the initial gridded image from the posting “Perspective blow up,” on his Camera/Eye blog (January 21st, 2013) where he argues that the skewing is all done with tilting and shifting of an 8 x 10 image view camera and the analysis by J.S.B in which he argues that the skewing is partially done through the architecture (the set), the camera and some Photoshop tweeking.

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
Double Self-Portrait
1979
Transparency in light box AP
172 x 229cm
Collection of the artist
© Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
Untangling
1994, printed 2006
Transparency in light box, AP
189 x 223.5cm
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased NGV Foundation and with the assistance of NGV Contemporary, 2006
© Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
Dressing poultry
2007
Transparency in light box, 1/2
201.5 x 252cm
Cranford Collection, London
© Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
Adrian Walker, artist, drawing from a specimen in a laboratory in the Dept. of Anatomy at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver
1992
Transparency in light box, AP
119 x 164cm
Collection of the artist
© Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
A sudden gust of wind (after Hokusai)
1993
Transparency in light box, unique state
229 x 377cm
Tate, London Purchased with the assistance from the Patrons of New Art through the Tate Gallery Foundation and from the National Art Collections Fund, 1995
© Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
After ‘Invisible Man’ by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue
1999-2000
Transparency in light box, AP
174 x 250.5cm
Collection of the artist
© Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
Knife throw
2008
Colour photograph, AP
184 x 256cm
Collection of the artist
© Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
The Destroyed Room
1978
Transparency in light box, AP
159 x 234cm
Collection of the artist
© Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
Clipped branches, East Cordova St., Vancouver
1999
Transparency in light box, AP
72 x 89cm
Collection of the artist
© Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
Diagonal Composition
1993
Transparency in light box, AP
40 x 46cm
Collection of the artist
© Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
Boy falls from tree
2010
Colour photograph, AP
226 x 305.3cm
Collection of the artist
© Jeff Wall

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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Nov

Exhibition: ‘Jeff Wall Photographs’ at The Ian Potter Centre: National Gallery of Victoria Australia, Melbourne

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: beauty, colour photography, digital photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, intimacy, landscape, light, Melbourne, memory, National Gallery of Victoria, painting, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, reality, space, street photography, surrealism and time
Tags: A sudden gust of wind (after Hokusai), A view from an apartment, After 'Invisible Man' by Ralph Ellison the Prologue, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Canadian artist, Canadian photographer, conceptual photography, Contemporary Photography, Diagonal Composition, Doorpusher, Double Self-Portrait, Jeff Wall, Jeff Wall A view from an apartment, Jeff Wall After 'Invisible Man' by Ralph Ellison the Prologue, Jeff Wall Diagonal Composition, Jeff Wall Doorpusher, Jeff Wall Double Self-Portrait, Jeff Wall Photographs, Jeff Wall Photographs NGV, Jeff Wall Pipe Opening, Jeff Wall Polishing, Jeff Wall The Destroyed Room, light box, light box transparency, lightbox, mis en scene, performance photography, Pipe Opening, Polishing, tableaux vivant, The Destroyed Room, Transparency in light box

Exhibition dates: 30th November 2012 – 17th March 2013

Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing, at right, The Destroyed Room 1978
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation shots of the new Jeff Wall exhibition at NGV Australia. Review to follow in due course.

Many thankx to Jemma Altmeier and all the media team at NGV for all their wonderful help and congratulations to the curators, Susan van Wyk and Dr Isobel Crombie, for their restrained yet contemporary installations and for getting the exhibitions to Melbourne. They look magnificent. Well done!

Marcus

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Many thankx to the NGV 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 © National Gallery of Victoria. May not be reproduced without permission.

Jeff Wall & Thomas Demand: In Conversation, National Gallery of Victoria

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
The Destroyed Room (detail)
1978
Transparency in light box, AP
159.0 x 234.0cm
Collection of the artist
© Jeff Wall

Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing, at left, The Destroyed Room 1978, and at right, Double Self-Portrait 1979
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing, at right, Double Self-Portrait 1979
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing, at left, Doorpusher 1984, and at right, Polishing 1998
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
Polishing (detail)
1998
Transparency in light box, 1/2
162.0 x 207.0cm
State Art Collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia
Purchased with assistance from the Art Gallery of Western Australia Foundation, 1999
© Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
Doorpusher (detail)
1984
Transparency in lightbox
249 x 122cm
© Jeff Wall

Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing, at centre, Doorpusher 1984, and at right, Polishing 1998
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing, at left, Diagonal Composition 1993, and at right, Doorpusher 1984
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
Diagonal Composition
1993
Transparency in light box, AP
40.0 x 46.0cm
Collection of the artist
© Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
Pipe Opening (detail)
2002
Transparency in light box, AP
40.0 x 46.0cm
Collection of the artist
© Jeff Wall

Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing, at right, A view from an apartment 2004-2005
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing After ‘Invisible Man’ by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue 1999-2000
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
After ‘Invisible Man’ by Ralph Ellison, the Prologue (detail)
1999-2000
Transparency in light box, AP
174.0 x 250.5cm
Collection of the artist
© Jeff Wall

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
A view from an apartment (detail)
2004-2005
Transparency in light box, 1/2
167.0 x 244.0cm
Tate, London
Purchased with assistance from the American Fund for the Tate Gallery and Tate Members, 2006
© Jeff Wall

Installation view of Jeff Wall Photographs at NGV Australia showing A sudden gust of wind (after Hokusai) 1993
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

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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Apr

Exhibition: ‘Songs of the Future: Canadian Industrial Photographs, 1858 – Today’ at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: black and white photography, colour photography, digital photography, documentary photography, Edward Burtynsky, exhibition, existence, gallery website, landscape, light, memory, photographic series, photography, psychological, reality, sculpture, space and time
Tags: AGO, Alexander Henderson, Alexander Henderson Miramichi Bridges, architecture, Art Gallery of Ontario, arts, British Columbia, Canada, Canadian art, Canadian artist, Canadian contemporary photography, Canadian Industrial Photographs, Canadian Industrial Photographs 1858 - Today, Canadian photographer, Canadian photography, canadian railroad trilogy, Concrete Industries, Dofasco and Stelco steel mills, E. Haanel Cassidy, E. Haanel Cassidy Man on Tower, Edward Burtynsky, Edward Burtynsky C.N. Track, Edward Burtynsky Thompson River #002, Finishing Mill Department, gelatin silver print, George Hunter, George Hunter Dofasco and Stelco steel mills, Gordon Lightfoot, Hamilton, industrial photography, Isabelle Hayeur Jade, Isabelle Hayeur Model Homes, John Vanderpant, John Vanderpant No.2 Towers in White, Man on Tower, Miramichi Bridges Southwest Branch, Model Homes, Musée des beaux-arts de l’Ontario, No.2 Towers in White, Ontario, Ottawa, Peter MacCallum, Peter MacCallum Concrete Industries, Peter MacCallum Finishing Mill Department, Prince of Wales Bridge, Ralph Greenhill, Ralph Greenhill Prince of Wales Bridge, Songs of the Future, Songs of the Future Canadian Industrial Photographs 1858 - Today, Songs of the Future: Canadian Industrial Photographs, Toronto

Exhibition dates: 20th August 2011 – 29th April 2012

Isabelle Hayeur (Canadian, b. 1969)
Jade
2004
From the series Model Homes, 2004-2007
Chromogenic print
107 x 160cm
Gift of Paul Bain, 2008
Image courtesy the Art Gallery of Ontario / AGO Image Resources
© 2011 Art Gallery of Ontario

Another eclectic photography exhibition. I do love them for their interesting subject matter. Much as Australian photography may seem slightly obscure to the rest of the world so Canadian photography is little known in Australia. One of the important briefs of this blog is to promote all photography in its many forms, including Australian, to the four corners of the globe.

Marcus

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

“Oh the song of the future has been sung / All the battles have been won
On the mountain tops we stand / All the world at our command
We have opened up her soil / With our teardrops and our toil”

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Gordon Lightfoot, “Canadian Railroad Trilogy”

E. Haanel Cassidy (Canadian, 1903-1980)
Man on Tower
1940
From the series Canadian Industry – Grain Elevator
Gelatin silver print
23.7 x 35.3cm
Gift of Sylvia Platt, 2002
Image courtesy the Art Gallery of Ontario / AGO Image Resources
© 2011 Art Gallery of Ontario

George Hunter (Canadian, 1921-2013)
Dofasco and Stelco steel mills, Hamilton, Ontario
1954
Dye transfer print
31.2 x 42.1cm
Gift of George Hunter, R.C.A, 2010
Image courtesy the Art Gallery of Ontario / AGO Image Resources
© 2011 Art Gallery of Ontario

The practice of photography in Canada closely parallels the development of its industries. As railroad tracks were laid and bridges were built to allow access to remote forests and mineral-rich territories, photographers followed, as they did when mining and lumber interests developed. These industrial activities have undeniably shaped the Canadian landscape – for better and for worse. And photographs of these activities – whether made on commission by those eager to document their contribution to national progress, or for the photographer’s own interest – continue to feed our imaginations, shape our opinions and make us aware of what is at stake.

Songs of Future: Canadian Industrial Photographs, 1858 to Today includes more than 100 photographs – by such figures as William Notman, Alexander Henderson, Richard Maynard, J.C.M. Hayward, John Vanderpant, E. Haanel Cassidy, George Hunter, Bill Vazan, Ralph Greenhill, Geoffrey James, Edward Burtynsky, Peter MacCallum, Steven Evans, Jesse Boles, and Isabelle Hayeur – most drawn from the AGO’s permanent collection, and many of which have never been shown. Featuring sites from the west coast to the Maritimes, the exhibition showcases this other landscape tradition in Canadian art and the Canadian photographers who have described, evoked, celebrated, and cast a critical eye on our industrial landscapes for more than 150 years.

Depicting railway and bridge building, quarries and mines, and the lumber, pulp and paper, and concrete industries in Canada, Songs of the Future traces the shifting perspectives on industry and the Canadian landscape from the Industrial Revolution to today. The exhibition highlights the ways in which the photographers’ perspectives on industry have shifted along with those of society at large, as celebratory images of human domination over nature give way to more critical views of industrial impact.

The exhibition is curated by Sophie Hackett, the AGO’s assistant curator of photography, who integrates works from various periods into thematic concentrations, including images featuring: the construction of the Victoria Bridge over the St. Lawrence River in the late 1850s; the building of the Anglo-Newfoundland Development Company, a pulp-and-paper mill located in Grand Falls, Newfoundland, in 1912; and the development of the railroad in Canada.

“The exhibition explores the history of Canadian photography through the topic of industrial imagery,” says Hackett. “Featuring sites from the Maritimes to the west coast, and rooted in the fundamentally Canadian genre of landscape, the photographs bear witness to the various aesthetic techniques and styles emphasised by Canadian photographers over the past 150 years.”

Press release from the AGO website

Alexander Henderson (British-Canadian, 1831-1913)
Miramichi Bridges: Southwest Branch, View of Pier G, completed September 15, 1873
1873
Albumen print
25.3 x 30.5 cm
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Carl Berger, 2008
Image courtesy the Art Gallery of Ontario / AGO Image Resources
© 2011 Art Gallery of Ontario

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
C.N. Track, Thompson River #002, British Columbia
1985
From the series Railcuts
Chromogenic print
121.9 x 147.3cm
Gift of Harry and Ann Malcolmson, 2008
Image courtesy the Art Gallery of Ontario / AGO Image Resources
© 2011 Art Gallery of Ontario

Peter MacCallum (Canadian, b. 1947)
Finishing Mill Department, St. Marys Cement, Bowmanville, Ontario
1999
From the series Concrete Industries, 1998-2004
Gelatin silver print
50.8 x 40.6cm
Purchase, funds donated by James Lahey and Pym Buitenhuis, 2008
Image courtesy the Art Gallery of Ontario / AGO Image Resources
© 2011 Art Gallery of Ontario

Ralph Greenhill (Canadian)
Prince of Wales Bridge, Ottawa, Ontario
1977
Gelatin silver print
22.6 x 17.4cm
Gift of Av Isaacs, 2008
Image courtesy the Art Gallery of Ontario / AGO Image Resources
© 2011 Art Gallery of Ontario

John Vanderpant (Dutch-Canadian, 1884-1939)
No.2, Towers in White
c. 1934
Gelatin silver print
34.4 x 27cm
Purchase, donated funds in memory of Eric Steiner, 2002
Image courtesy the Art Gallery of Ontario / AGO Image Resources
© 2011 Art Gallery of Ontario

Art Gallery of Ontario
Musée des beaux-arts de l’Ontario
317 Dundas Street West
Toronto Ontario Canada M5T 1G4

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday 10.30am – 5.00pm
Closed Mondays

Art Gallery of Ontario website

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Dec

Exhibition: ‘After the Gold Rush: Contemporary Photographs from the Collection’ at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: American, american photographers, architecture, beauty, black and white photography, colour photography, digital photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, intimacy, landscape, light, memory, New York, painting, photographic series, photography, photorealism, portrait, psychological, reality, space, surrealism and time
Tags: 3 White (DG's Mr. Postman) Fourth Race, Adrian Piper, Adrian Piper Decide Who You Are, After the Gold Rush, American art, american artist, American flag, american photographer, American photography, Arizona, Canadian artist, Canadian photographer, Canadian photography, Christopher Williams, Christopher Williams 3 White (DG's Mr. Postman) Fourth Race, Decide Who You Are, Decide Who You Are #24: A Moving Target, dye bleach transparency, German artist, german photographer, German photography, Hans Haacke, Hans Haacke Thank You Paine Webber, James Casebere, James Casebere Landscape with Houses, Jeff Wall, Jeff Wall The Storyteller, Landscape with Houses (Dutchess County, Laurie Simmons, Laurie Simmons Walking Gun, light box, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY) #1, Oriental Pearl, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Philip-Lorca diCorcia Todd M. Brooks, phoenix, Phoenix Greyhound Park, photorealism, Robert Gober 1978 - 2000, Robert Gober Untitled, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Storyteller, Todd M. Brooks, Vancouver, Walking Gun, Wolfgang Tillmans, Wolfgang Tillmans Oriental Pearl

Exhibition dates: 22nd March, 2011 – 2nd January, 2012

Many thankx to The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Hans Haacke (German, b. 1936)
Thank You, Paine Webber
1979
Gelatin silver print and chromogenic print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Vital Projects Fund Inc. Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2010
© Hans Haacke

Since the early 1970s Haacke has taken on the intertwined political and corporate forces that use cultural patronage as a smokescreen to advance interests that are often antithetical to the vitality of free speech and expression in democracies. Haacke made this work just as the strategy of appropriation – lifting an image out of its original context and re-presenting it in critical fashion – began to make waves in the New York art world of the late 1970s. Like all effective appropriation, it exposes a prior instance of borrowing – in this case, how the investment firm Paine Webber used a documentary photograph to give its annual report the veneer of social concern. The artist then pointedly contrasted it with an image from the same annual report of a beaming trio of executives in a painting-lined gallery. As a counterpoint to the protestor’s signboard, Haacke dropped in text from a different Paine Webber ad campaign to show on whose backs the “risk management” is taking place – a biting indictment, the relevance of which has only increased since the recent economic downturn.

Wall text

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
The Storyteller
1986
Silver dye bleach transparency in light box
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Charlene and David Howe, Henry Nias Foundation Inc., Jennifer and Robert Yaffa, Harriet Ames Charitable Trust, and Gary and Sarah Wolkowitz Gifts, 2006
Image courtesy of the artist © Jeff Wall

Wall’s staged tableaux straddle the worlds of the museum and the street. His subjects are scenes of urban and suburban disarray that he witnessed firsthand – the kinds of things anyone might see while wandering around a city and its outskirts. Working like a movie director, he restages the scene using nonprofessionals as actors and presents his photographs as colour transparencies in light boxes such as those of large-scale public advertisements found at airports and bus stops. The scale and ambition of his pictures – scenes of everyday life shot through with larger intimations of political struggle – equally evoke the Salon paintings of nineteenth century French painters such as Gustave Courbet and Édouard Manet, which were themselves brazen combinations of canonical and contemporary subjects.

The Storyteller is set in a barren, leftover slice of land next to a highway overpass in Vancouver, where the artist lives. Various groupings of modern urban castaways – perhaps descendants of the Native Americans who occupied the land before the arrival of Europeans – are dispersed around the hillside, a mini-catalogue of art-historical reference. Like the upside-down, half-submerged figure of Icarus in the background of Brueghel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, the woman speaking and gesticulating to the two men listening at the lower left becomes the key to unifying the fractured and alienating environment from which Wall’s picture is constructed.

Wall text

Laurie Simmons (American, b. 1949)
Walking Gun
1991
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Anonymous Gift, 1998
© Laurie Simmons

The early 1990s marked the last moment when a wide swath of women artists responded to the sexism they saw as pervasive in the culture – from the rape trial of William Kennedy Smith to the Supreme Court nomination hearings for Clarence Thomas. A pioneer of set-up photography, Simmons dramatically expanded the scale of her constructed tableaux for a series of spotlighted puppet-like objects perched atop doll legs: revolvers, houses, cameras, and cakes. This armed and dangerous example refers to the old-movie cliché where a man carrying a gun is shown in shadow profile. Here, Simmons offers instead the death-dealing seductress – also familiar from film noir – in monumental miniature, a doll capable of turning on its master at a moment’s notice.

Wall text

Philip-Lorca diCorcia (American, b. 1953)
Todd M. Brooks, 22 Years Old, from Denver, Colorado, $40
1991
Chromogenic print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 1991
Image courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York
© Philip-Lorca diCorcia

The Metropolitan Museum of Art will present After the Gold Rush: Contemporary Photographs from the Collection from March 22, 2011, through January 2, 2012, in the Joyce and Robert Menschel Hall for Modern Photography. Drawn entirely from the Museum’s permanent collection, the exhibition features 25 photographs dating from 1979 to the present by 15 contemporary artists.

The exhibition’s title, After the Gold Rush, is taken from a classic 1970 song by Neil Young, whose verses contrast a romanticised past with a present of squandered plenty and an uncertain future. Inspired by the recent political and economic upheavals in America and abroad, this selection juxtaposes new photographs that take the long view of the world’s current condition with prescient works from the 1980s and 1990s that remain startlingly relevant today.

This is the first occasion for the Museum to present recently acquired works by: Gretchen Bender, James Casebere, Moyra Davey, Katy Grannan, Hans Haacke, An-My Lê, Curtis Mann, Trevor Paglen, and Wolfgang Tillmans. Also featured are photographs by: Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Robert Gober, Adrian Piper, Laurie Simmons, Jeff Wall, and Christopher Williams.

After the Gold Rush begins with Hans Haacke’s Thank You, Paine Webber (1979) – the first work by this legendary provocateur of Conceptual art to enter the Metropolitan’s collection. Haacke’s biting photo-diptych is so pertinent to the recent economic downturn that it seems as if it could have been made yesterday. In this work, the artist appropriated images from the investment firm’s annual report to convey his viewpoint that big business provides a veneer of social concern to mask the brutal effects of the “risk management” they offer their clients.

Other works in After the Gold Rush use varying degrees of artifice and photographic realism to reflect on marginalised and repressed voices. Measuring over 14 feet long and presented as a backlit transparency in a light box, The Storyteller (1986) is Jeff Wall’s signature image and is typical of his method. Working from memory, the artist uses nonprofessional actors and real locations to meticulously restage a scene of urban blight that he witnessed in his native Vancouver. Wall plays this photographic verisimilitude against compositions and figural poses indebted to French painters such as Gustave Courbet, Edouard Manet, and Georges Seurat. A comparison of Wall’s Storyteller with Courbet’s Young Ladies of the Village (1852), on view in the Museum’s galleries for Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century European Paintings and Sculpture, reveals parallels: in both, a keenly observed moment of telling social interaction taking place on a sloping landscape. Each artist has combined a daringly modern subject with references to earlier art.

Philip-Lorca diCorcia is another key figure in the development of staged photography. In the early 1990s, the artist created a series of works in response to the political attacks on gays and federal funding of the arts in the U.S. DiCorcia hired male hustlers to pose for their portraits out on the streets – and paid them with grant money he received from the National Endowment for the Arts. At the same moment, a wide swath of women artists addressed issues of sexism and racism: examples of this politically pointed art are represented by Laurie Simmons’ Walking Gun (1991) – a spotlighted puppet of doll legs and a revolver that seems capable of turning on its master at a moment’s notice – and Adrian Piper’s 1992 work Decide Who You Are #24 (A Moving Target), which includes a childhood image of Anita Hill as part of a blistering meditation in word and image on racial politics. Such works are missives from a time not so long ago when artists regularly commented on present-day politics and culture through their art. (Because of light sensitivity, this work by Adrian Piper will be on view through Sunday, September 26.)

Although the recently made photographs in After the Gold Rush seem at first glance to be less overtly political than their predecessors, they nevertheless address vital issues about contemporary society. James Casebere’s epic vision of America, Landscape with Houses (Dutchess County, NY) #1, (2009), is based on a tabletop model that the artist spent 18 months building. The photograph shows a suburban subdivision of the kind recently ravaged by the foreclosure crisis, and its sunny sense of “Morning in America” comments ironically on the country’s future prospects. An-My Lê’s similarly sweeping five-part photographic piece Suez Canal Transit, USS Dwight Eisenhower, Egypt (2009) will also be featured. Lê is interested in the way in which U.S. armed forces come into contact with the rest of the world. This major new work – which seems at first to be a straightforward panorama of military might overseas – subtly undercuts the viewer’s expectations to question the current position of the U.S. on the global stage.

Trevor Paglen is a young artist whose works plot the “black world” of covert military operations, from telephoto images of predator drones taken from miles away, to software that follows planes used for the extraordinary rendition of suspected terrorists. Paglen’s 2008 photograph KEYHOLE IMPROVED CRYSTAL from Glacier Point (Optical Reconnaissance Satellite; USA 186) shows the ghostly white streak of an American reconnaissance satellite bisecting star trails above Yosemite’s Half Dome, a rock formation photographed in the 1860s by artists including Carleton Watkins. To make these and other photographs, Paglen collaborated with amateur astronomers who were originally trained by the U.S. government to look out for Soviet satellites during the Cold War, but turned their attention to American surveillance in recent years.

The final piece in After the Gold Rush is a suite of five recently acquired photographs from 2007-2009 by the celebrated photographer Wolfgang Tillmans. The grouping shifts focus from macro to micro: from expansive aerial views of Shanghai and Dubai to close ups that suggest the smallest increments of sustenance and regeneration. Taken together, they evoke the interconnectedness of all things and a grounding of the political in the personal as a way for an engaged yet expressive art.

Press release from The Metropolitan Museum of Art website

Adrian Piper (American, b. 1948)
Decide Who You Are #24: A Moving Target
1992
Photo-mechanical processes on three panels
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Peter Norton Family Foundation, 1994
© Adrian Piper

Piper is an artist and a philosophy professor who works in a variety of media, including performance, video, sound pieces, photography, drawing, and writing. She often explores issues of autobiography, racism, and stereotyping. For her 1992 series Decide Who You Are, the artist used a triptych format in which a different appropriated photograph is flanked by an image of the “three wise monkeys” maxim advocating “See No Evil, Speak No Evil, Hear No Evil” at left, and at right a photograph of a young girl who, though not identified, is Anita Hill – who had recently been thrust into the spotlight for accusing then-nominee for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment. The verse in the left panel changes in each individual work in the series, while that on the right is unchanging – what the artist once described as “a comprehensive, textbook compendium of commonly invoked litanies of denial and intimidation, from the bland to the vaguely menacing” and “a must for novices and aspiring leaders in business, politics, and culture.”

Wall text

Christopher Williams (American, b. 1956)
3 White (DG’s Mr. Postman) Fourth Race, Phoenix Greyhound Park, Phoenix, Arizona, August 22, 1994
1994
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Charina Foundation Inc. and Jennifer and Joseph Duke Gifts, 2003
© Christopher Williams

Robert Gober (American, b. 1954)
Untitled (Detail from “1978-2000”)
2000
Gelatin silver print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Jennifer and Joseph Duke Gift, 2002
© Robert Gober

James Casebere (American, b. 1953)
Landscape with Houses (Dutchess County, NY) #1
2009
Chromogenic print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Alfred Stieglitz Society Gifts, 2011
© James Casebere

Wolfgang Tillmans (German, b. 1968)
Oriental Pearl
2009
Inkjet print
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Vital Projects Fund Inc. Gift, through Joyce and Robert Menschel, 2010
Image courtesy the artist and Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York
© Wolfgang Tillmans

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New York, New York 10028-0198
Phone: 212-535-7710

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Aug

Exhibition: ‘Edward Burtynsky: Australian Minescapes’ at the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney

By Dr Marcus Bunyan 1 Comment

Exhibition dates: 17th July – 22nd August 2009

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Jubilee Operations #1, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia
2007
Digital chromogenic colour photographic print
1560mm x 1260mm
Western Australian Museum

All of these incredible, environmental aerial photographs – beauty, texture, pattern, fabric, scars, desecration, destruction, de / construction – are works in the exhibition. The effects of the Anthropocene era in full swing. I will be glad when I am not here to see the fateful outcome of all of this: the death of most of the animals, and the sickness of the planet.

A travelling exhibition from the Western Australian Museum.

Marcus

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

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Otter Juan Coronet Mine #1, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia
2007
Digital chromogenic colour photographic print
1560mm x 1260mm
Western Australian Museum

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Silver Lake Operations #1, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia
2007
Digital chromogenic colour photographic print
1560mm x 1260mm
Western Australian Museum

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Silver Lake Operations #2, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia
2007
Digital chromogenic colour photographic print
1560mm x 1260mm
Western Australian Museum

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Silver Lake Operations #3, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia
2007
Digital chromogenic colour photographic print
1560mm x 1260mm
Western Australian Museum

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Silver Lake Operations #5, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia
2007
Digital chromogenic colour photographic print
1560mm x 1260mm
Western Australian Museum

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Silver Lake Operations #11, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia
2007
Digital chromogenic colour photographic print
1560mm x 1260mm
Western Australian Museum

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Silver Lake Operations #12, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia
2007
Digital chromogenic colour photographic print
1560mm x 1260mm
Western Australian Museum

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Silver Lake Operations #14, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia
2007
Digital chromogenic colour photographic print
1560mm x 1260mm
Western Australian Museum

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Silver Lake Operations #15, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia
2007
Digital chromogenic colour photographic print
1560mm x 1260mm
Western Australian Museum

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Silver Lake Operations #16, Lake Lefroy, Western Australia
2007
Digital chromogenic colour photographic print
1560mm x 1260mm
Western Australian Museum

Edward Burtynsky is one of the world’s leading contemporary landscape photographers. His ‘manufactured landscapes’ have included stark images of recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries. This series of images, taken in the eastern goldfields and the Pilbara of Western Australia, continues Edward Burtynsky’s examination of natural landscapes modified by mankind in the pursuit of the raw materials required for our modern society.

“Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times.” ~ Edward Burtynsky

Australian Minescapes is a new body of work by Burtynsky, commissioned for the FotoFreo 2008 Festival. For this exhibition a selection of images from his Shipyard images from China and Ship Breaking images from Bangladesh will be presented alongside his Australian Minescapes images.

Text from the Australian Centre for Photography website [Online] Cited 01/08/2009 no longer available online

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Super Pit #1, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia
2007
Digital chromogenic colour photographic print
1560mm x 1260mm
Western Australian Museum

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Super Pit #4, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia
2007
Digital chromogenic colour photographic print
1560mm x 1260mm
Western Australian Museum

Edward Burtynsky (Canadian, b. 1955)
Tailings #1 Kalgoorlie, Western Australia
2007
Digital chromogenic colour photographic print
1560mm x 1260mm
Western Australian Museum

Australian Centre for Photography

This gallery has now closed.

Edward Burtynsky website

Australian Centre for Photography website

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Dr Marcus Bunyan

Dr Marcus Bunyan is an Australian artist and writer. His art work explores the boundaries of identity and place. He writes Art Blart, an art and cultural memory archive, which posts mainly photography exhibitions from around the world. He holds a Doctor of Philosophy from RMIT University, Melbourne, a Master of Arts (Fine Art Photography) from RMIT University, and a Master of Art Curatorship from the University of Melbourne.