Exhibition dates: 22nd May – 7th October 2018
![Erich Salomon (German, 1886-1944) '[Portrait of Madame Vacarescu, Romanian Author and Deputy to the League of Nations, Geneva]' 1928](https://artblart.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/in-focus-expressions-1-web.jpg)
Erich Salomon (German, 1886-1944)
(Portrait of Madame Vacarescu, Romanian Author and Deputy to the League of Nations, Geneva)
1928
Gelatin silver print
29.7 × 39.7cm (11 11/16 × 15 5/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
In 1928, pioneering photojournalist, Erich Salomon photographed global leaders and delegates to a conference at the League for the German picture magazine Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung. In a typically frank image, Salomon has shown Vacarescu with her head thrown back passionately pleading before the international assembly.
Elena Văcărescu or Hélène Vacaresco (September 21, 1864 in Bucharest – February 17, 1947 in Paris) was a Romanian-French aristocrat writer, twice a laureate of the Académie française. Văcărescu was the Substitute Delegate to the League of Nations from 1922 to 1924. She was a permanent delegate from 1925 to 1926. She was again a Substitute Delegate to the League of Nations from 1926 to 1938. She was the only woman to serve with the rank of ambassador (permanent delegate) in the history of the League of Nations.
Text from the Wikipedia website
From a distance…
For such an engaging subject, this presentation looks to be a bit of a lucky dip / ho hum / filler exhibition. You can’t make a definitive judgement from a few media images but looking at the exhibition checklist gives you a good idea of the overall organisation of the exhibition and its content. Even the press release seems unsure of itself, littered as it is with words like posits, probes, perhaps (3 times) and problematic.
Elements such as physiognomy are briefly mentioned (with no mention of its link to eugenics), as is the idea of the mask – but again no mention of how the pose is an affective mask, nor how the mask is linked to the carnivalesque. Or how photographs portray us as we would like to be seen (the ideal self) rather than the real self, and how this incongruence forms part of the formation of our identity as human beings.
The investigation could have been so deep in so many areas (for example the representation of women, children and others in a patriarchal social system through facial expression; the self-portrait as an expression of inner being; the photograph as evidence of the mirror stage of identity formation; and the photographs of “hysterical” women of the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, Paris; and on and on…) but in 45 works, I think not. The subject deserved, even cried out for (as facial expressions go), a fuller, more in depth investigation.
For more reading please see my 2014 text Facile, Facies, Facticity which comments on the state of contemporary portrait photography and offers a possible way forward: a description of the states of the body and the air of the face through a subtle and constant art of the recovering of surfaces.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
.
Many thanks to the J. Paul Getty Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
The human face has been the subject of fascination for photographers since the medium’s inception. This exhibition includes posed portraits, physiognomic studies, anonymous snapshots, and unsuspecting countenances caught by the camera’s eye, offering a close-up look at the range of human stories that facial expressions – and photographs – can tell.
Nancy Burson (American, b. 1948)
Androgyny
1982
Gelatin silver print
21.6 × 27.7cm (8 1/2 × 10 7/8 in.)
© Nancy Burson
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Composite image of portraits of six men and six women
Leonard Freed (American, 1929-2006)
Demonstration, New York City
1963
Gelatin silver print
25.9 × 35.4cm (10 3/16 × 13 15/16 in.)
© Leonard Freed / Magnum Photos, Inc.
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Gift of Brigitte and Elke Susannah Freed
Weegee (Arthur Fellig) (American born Austria, 1899-1968)
Emmett Kelly, Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus
Negative May 1943; print about 1950
Gelatin silver print
26 × 34.4cm (10 1/4 × 13 9/16 in.)
© International Center of Photography
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Emmett Leo Kelly (December 9, 1898 – March 28, 1979) was an American circus performer, who created the memorable clown figure “Weary Willie”, based on the hobos of the Depression era.
Kelly began his career as a trapeze artist. By 1923, Emmett Kelly was working his trapeze act with John Robinson’s circus when he met and married Eva Moore, another circus trapeze artist. They later performed together as the “Aerial Kellys” with Emmett still performing occasionally as a whiteface clown.
He started working as a clown full-time in 1931, and it was only after years of attempting to persuade the management that he was able to switch from a white face clown to the hobo clown that he had sketched ten years earlier while working as a cartoonist.
“Weary Willie” was a tragic figure: a clown, who could usually be seen sweeping up the circus rings after the other performers. He tried but failed to sweep up the pool of light of a spotlight. His routine was revolutionary at the time: traditionally, clowns wore white face and performed slapstick stunts intended to make people laugh. Kelly did perform stunts too – one of his most famous acts was trying to crack a peanut with a sledgehammer – but as a tramp, he also appealed to the sympathy of his audience.
From 1942–1956 Kelly performed with the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, where he was a major attraction, though he took the 1956 season off to perform as the mascot for the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team. He also landed a number of Broadway and film roles, including appearing as himself in his “Willie” persona in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). He also appeared in the Bertram Mills Circus.
Text from the Wikipedia website
Hill & Adamson (David Octavius Hill, Scottish 1802-1870 and Robert Adamson, Scottish 1821-1848) (Scottish, active 1843-1848)
Mrs Grace Ramsay and four unknown women
1843
Salter paper print from Calotype negative
15.2 x 20.3cm (6 x 8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Lewis W. Hine (American, 1874-1940)
Connecticut Newsgirls
c. 1912-1913
Gelatin silver print
11.8 × 16.8cm (4 11/16 × 6 5/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
![Nadar [Gaspard Félix Tournachon] (French, 1820-1910) '[Mme Ernestine Nadar]' 1880-1883](https://artblart.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/in-focus-expressions-4-web.jpg)
Nadar (Gaspard Félix Tournachon) (French, 1820-1910)
(Mme Ernestine Nadar)
1880-1883
Albumen silver print
Image (irregular): 8.7 × 21cm (3 7/16 × 8 1/4 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
![Nadar [Gaspard Félix Tournachon] (French, 1820-1910) '[Mme Ernestine Nadar]' 1880-1883 (detail)](https://artblart.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/in-focus-expressions-4-detail.jpg)
Nadar (Gaspard Félix Tournachon) (French, 1820-1910)
(Mme Ernestine Nadar) (detail)
1880-1883
Albumen silver print
Image (irregular): 8.7 × 21cm (3 7/16 × 8 1/4 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
Ophelia
Negative 1875; print, 1900
Carbon print
35.2 x 27.6cm (13 7/8 x 19 7/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Nicholas Nixon (American, b. 1947)
W. Canfield Ave., Detroit
1982
Gelatin silver print
Image (irregular): 19.7 × 24.6cm (7 3/4 × 9 11/16 in.)
© Nicholas Nixon
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Unknown maker (German)
Close-up of Open Mouth of Male Student
c. 1927
Gelatin silver print
5.7 x 8.4cm (2 1/4 x 3 5/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Alec Soth (American, b. 1969)
Mary, Milwaukee, WI
2014
Inkjet print
40.1 × 53.5cm (15 13/16 × 21 1/16 in.)
© Alec Soth/Magnum Photos
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Gift of Richard Lovett
Garry Winogrand (American, 1928-1984)
Los Angeles
January 1960
Gelatin silver print
22.6 × 33.9cm (8 7/8 × 13 3/8 in.)
© 1984 The Estate of Garry Winogrand
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
From Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, to Edvard Munch’s The Scream, to Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, the human face has been a crucial, if often enigmatic, element of portraiture. Featuring 45 works drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection, In Focus: Expressions, on view May 22 to October 7, 2018 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, addresses the enduring fascination with the human face and the range of countenances that photographers have captured from the birth of the medium to the present day.
The exhibition begins with the most universal and ubiquitous expression: the smile. Although today it is taken for granted that we should smile when posing for the camera, smiling was not the standard photographic expression until the 1880s with the availability of faster film and hand-held cameras. Smiling subjects began to appear more frequently as the advertising industry also reinforced the image of happy customers to an ever-widening audience who would purchase the products of a growing industrial economy. The smile became “the face of the brand,” gracing magazines, billboards, and today, digital and social platforms.
As is evident in the exhibition, the smile comes in all variations – the genuine, the smirk, the polite, the ironic – expressing a full spectrum of emotions that include benevolence, sarcasm, joy, malice, and sometimes even an intersection of two or more of these. In Milton Rogovin’s (American, 1909-2011) Storefront Churches, Buffalo (1958-1961), the expression of the preacher does not immediately register as a smile because the camera has captured a moment where his features – the opened mouth, exposed teeth, and raised face – could represent a number of activities: he could be in the middle of a song, preaching, or immersed in prayer. His corporeal gestures convey the message of his spirit, imbuing the black-and-white photograph with emotional colour. Like the other works included in this exhibition, this image posits the notion that facial expressions can elicit a myriad of sentiments and denote a range of inner emotions that transcend the capacity of words.
In Focus: Expressions also probes the role of the camera in capturing un-posed moments and expressions that would otherwise go unnoticed. In Alec Soth’s (American, born 1969) Mary, Milwaukee, WI (2014), a fleeting expression of laughter is materialised in such a way – head leaning back, mouth open – that could perhaps be misconstrued as a scream. The photograph provides a frank moment, one that confronts the viewer with its candidness and calls to mind today’s proliferation and brevity of memes, a contemporary, Internet-sustained visual phenomena in which images are deliberately parodied and altered at the same rate as they are spread.
Perhaps equally radical as the introduction of candid photography is the problematic association of photography with facial expression and its adoption of physiognomy, a concept that was introduced in the 19th century. Physiognomy, the study of the link between the face and human psyche, resulted in the belief that different types of people could be classified by their visage. The exhibition includes some of the earliest uses of photography to record facial expression, as in Duchenne de Boulogne’s (French, 1806-1875) Figure 44: The Muscle of Sadness (negative, 1850s). This also resonates in the 20th-century photographs by Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975) of Allie Mae Burroughs, Hale County Alabama (negative 1936) in that the subject’s expression could be deemed as suggestive of the current state of her mind. In this frame (in others she is viewed as smiling) she stares intently at the camera slightly biting her lip, perhaps alluding to uncertainty of what is to come for her and her family.
The subject of facial expression is also resonant with current developments in facial recognition technology. Nancy Burson (American, born 1948) created works such as Androgyny (6 Men + 6 Women) (1982), in which portraits of six men and six women were morphed together to convey the work’s title. Experimental and illustrative of the medium’s technological advancement, Burson’s photograph is pertinent to several features of today’s social media platforms, including the example in which a phone’s front camera scans a user’s face and facial filters are applied upon detection. Today, mobile phones and social media applications even support portrait mode options, offering an apprehension of the human face and highlighting its countenances with exceptional quality.
In addition to photography’s engagement with human expression, In Focus: Expressions examines the literal and figurative concept of the mask. Contrary to a candid photograph, the mask is the face we choose to present to the world. Weegee’s (Arthur Fellig’s) (American, born Austria, 1899-1968) Emmett Kelly, Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus (about 1950) demonstrates this concept, projecting the character of a sad clown in place of his real identity as Emmett Kelly.
The mask also suggests guises, obscurity, and the freedom to pick and create a separate identity. W. Canfield Ave., Detroit (1982) by Nicholas Nixon (American, born 1947) demonstrates this redirection. Aware that he is being photographed, the subject seizes the opportunity to create a hardened expression that conveys him as distant, challenging, and fortified, highlighted by the opposing sentiments of the men who flank him. In return, the audience could be led to believe that this devised pose is a façade behind which a concealed and genuine identity exists.
Press release from the J. Paul Getty Museum
Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne (French, 1806-1875)
Figure 44, The Muscle of Sadness
Negative 1854-1856; print 1876
From the book Mecanisme de la Physionomie Humaine ou Analyse Electro-Physiologique de l’Expression des Passions
Albumen silver print
11 x 9cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Duchenne de Boulogne
Guillaume-Benjamin-Amand Duchenne (de Boulogne) (September 17, 1806 in Boulogne-sur-Mer – September 15, 1875 in Paris) was a French neurologist who revived Galvani’s research and greatly advanced the science of electrophysiology. The era of modern neurology developed from Duchenne’s understanding of neural pathways and his diagnostic innovations including deep tissue biopsy, nerve conduction tests (NCS), and clinical photography. This extraordinary range of activities (mostly in the Salpêtrière) was achieved against the background of a troubled personal life and a generally indifferent medical and scientific establishment.
Neurology did not exist in France before Duchenne and although many medical historians regard Jean-Martin Charcot as the father of the discipline, Charcot owed much to Duchenne, often acknowledging him as “mon maître en neurologie” (my teacher in neurology). … Duchenne’s monograph, the Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine – also illustrated prominently by his photographs – was the first study on the physiology of emotion and was highly influential on Darwin’s work on human evolution and emotional expression.
In 1835, Duchenne began experimenting with therapeutic “électropuncture” (a technique recently invented by François Magendie and Jean-Baptiste Sarlandière by which electric shock was administered beneath the skin with sharp electrodes to stimulate the muscles). After a brief and unhappy second marriage, Duchenne returned to Paris in 1842 in order to continue his medical research. Here, he did not achieve a senior hospital appointment, but supported himself with a small private medical practice, while daily visiting a number of teaching hospitals, including the Salpêtrière psychiatric centre. He developed a non-invasive technique of muscle stimulation that used faradic shock on the surface of the skin, which he called “électrisation localisée” and he published these experiments in his work, On Localized Electrization and its Application to Pathology and Therapy, first published in 1855. A pictorial supplement to the second edition, Album of Pathological Photographs (Album de Photographies Pathologiques) was published in 1862. A few months later, the first edition of his now much-discussed work, The Mechanism of Human Physiognomy, was published. Were it not for this small, but remarkable, work, his next publication, the result of nearly 20 years of study, Duchenne’s Physiology of Movements, his most important contribution to medical science, might well have gone unnoticed.
The Mechanism of Human Facial Expression
Influenced by the fashionable beliefs of physiognomy of the 19th century, Duchenne wanted to determine how the muscles in the human face produce facial expressions which he believed to be directly linked to the soul of man. He is known, in particular, for the way he triggered muscular contractions with electrical probes, recording the resulting distorted and often grotesque expressions with the recently invented camera. He published his findings in 1862, together with extraordinary photographs of the induced expressions, in the book Mecanisme de la physionomie Humaine (The Mechanism of Human Facial Expression, also known as The Mechanism of Human Physiognomy).
Duchenne believed that the human face was a kind of map, the features of which could be codified into universal taxonomies of mental states; he was convinced that the expressions of the human face were a gateway to the soul of man. Unlike Lavater and other physiognomists of the era, Duchenne was skeptical of the face’s ability to express moral character; rather he was convinced that it was through a reading of the expressions alone (known as pathognomy) which could reveal an “accurate rendering of the soul’s emotions”. He believed that he could observe and capture an “idealized naturalism” in a similar (and even improved) way to that observed in Greek art. It is these notions that he sought conclusively and scientifically to chart by his experiments and photography and it led to the publishing of The Mechanism of Human Physiognomy in 1862 (also entitled, The Electro-Physiological Analysis of the Expression of the Passions, Applicable to the Practice of the Plastic Arts. in French: Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine, ou Analyse électro-physiologique de l’expression des passions applicable à la pratique des arts plastiques), now generally rendered as The Mechanism of Human Facial Expression. The work compromises a volume of text divided into three parts:
- General Considerations,
- A Scientific Section, and
- An Aesthetic Section.
These sections were accompanied by an atlas of photographic plates. …
Duchenne defines the fundamental expressive gestures of the human face and associates each with a specific facial muscle or muscle group. He identifies thirteen primary emotions the expression of which is controlled by one or two muscles. He also isolates the precise contractions that result in each expression and separates them into two categories: partial and combined. To stimulate the facial muscles and capture these “idealized” expressions of his patients, Duchenne applied faradic shock through electrified metal probes pressed upon the surface of the various muscles of the face.
Duchenne was convinced that the “truth” of his pathognomic experiments could only be effectively rendered by photography, the subject’s expressions being too fleeting to be drawn or painted. “Only photography,” he writes, “as truthful as a mirror, could attain such desirable perfection.” He worked with a talented, young photographer, Adrien Tournachon, (the brother of Felix Nadar), and also taught himself the art in order to document his experiments. From an art-historical point of view, the Mechanism of Human Physiognomy was the first publication on the expression of human emotions to be illustrated with actual photographs. Photography had only recently been invented, and there was a widespread belief that this was a medium that could capture the “truth” of any situation in a way that other mediums were unable to do.
Duchenne used six living models in the scientific section, all but one of whom were his patients. His primary model, however, was an “old toothless man, with a thin face, whose features, without being absolutely ugly, approached ordinary triviality.” Through his experiments, Duchenne sought to capture the very “conditions that aesthetically constitute beauty.” He reiterated this in the aesthetic section of the book where he spoke of his desire to portray the “conditions of beauty: beauty of form associated with the exactness of the facial expression, pose and gesture.” Duchenne referred to these facial expressions as the “gymnastics of the soul”. He replied to criticisms of his use of the old man by arguing that “every face could become spiritually beautiful through the accurate rendering of his or her emotions”, and furthermore said that because the patient was suffering from an anesthetic condition of the face, he could experiment upon the muscles of his face without causing him pain.
Text from the Wikipedia website
Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne (French, 1806-1875)
Figure 44, The Muscle of Sadness (detail)
Negative 1854-1856; print 1876
From the book Mecanisme de la Physionomie Humaine ou Analyse Electro-Physiologique de l’Expression des Passions
Albumen silver print
11 x 9cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Duchenne and his patient, an “old toothless man, with a thin face, whose features, without being absolutely ugly, approached ordinary triviality.” Duchenne faradize’s the mimetic muscles of “The Old Man.” The farad (symbol: F) is the SI derived unit of electrical capacitance, the ability of a body to store an electrical charge. It is named after the English physicist Michael Faraday
Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne (French, 1806-1875)
Figure 27, The Muscle of Pain
Negative 1854-1856; print 1876
From the book Mecanisme de la Physionomie Humaine ou Analyse Electro-Physiologique de l’Expression des Passions
Albumen silver print
11 x 9cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne (French, 1806-1875)
Figure 27, The Muscle of Pain (detail)
Negative 1854-1856; print 1876
From the book Mecanisme de la Physionomie Humaine ou Analyse Electro-Physiologique de l’Expression des Passions
Albumen silver print
11 x 9cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Milton Rogovin (American, 1909-2011)
Storefront Churches, Buffalo, preacher head in hand, eyes closed
1958-1961
Gelatin silver print
11 × 10.5cm (4 5/16 × 4 1/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Gift of Dr. John V. and Laura M. Knaus
© Milton Rogovin
Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Allie Mae Burroughs, Hale County, Alabama
Negative 1936; print 1950s
Gelatin silver print
24.3 × 19.2cm (9 9/16 × 7 9/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Allie Mae Burroughs, Hale County, Alabama (detail)
Negative 1936; print 1950s
Gelatin silver print
24.3 × 19.2cm (9 9/16 × 7 9/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Depression-era photography
In 1935, Evans spent two months at first on a fixed-term photographic campaign for the Resettlement Administration (RA) in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. From October on, he continued to do photographic work for the RA and later the Farm Security Administration (FSA), primarily in the Southern United States.
In the summer of 1936, while on leave from the FSA, he and writer James Agee were sent by Fortune magazine on assignment to Hale County, Alabama, for a story the magazine subsequently opted not to run. In 1941, Evans’s photographs and Agee’s text detailing the duo’s stay with three white tenant families in southern Alabama during the Great Depression were published as the groundbreaking book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Its detailed account of three farming families paints a deeply moving portrait of rural poverty. The critic Janet Malcolm notes that as in the earlier Beals’ book there was a contradiction between a kind of anguished dissonance in Agee’s prose and the quiet, magisterial beauty of Evans’s photographs of sharecroppers.
The three families headed by Bud Fields, Floyd Burroughs and Frank Tingle, lived in the Hale County town of Akron, Alabama, and the owners of the land on which the families worked told them that Evans and Agee were “Soviet agents,” although Allie Mae Burroughs, Floyd’s wife, recalled during later interviews her discounting that information. Evans’s photographs of the families made them icons of Depression-Era misery and poverty. In September 2005, Fortune revisited Hale County and the descendants of the three families for its 75th anniversary issue. Charles Burroughs, who was four years old when Evans and Agee visited the family, was “still angry” at them for not even sending the family a copy of the book; the son of Floyd Burroughs was also reportedly angry because the family was “cast in a light that they couldn’t do any better, that they were doomed, ignorant.”
Text from the Wikipedia website
![Lisette Model (American, born Austria, 1901-1983) '[War Rally]' 1942](https://artblart.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/in-focus-expressions-2-web.jpg)
Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
(War Rally)
1942
Gelatin silver print
34.4 × 27.6cm (13 9/16 × 10 7/8 in.)
© Estate of Lisette Model
Courtesy Baudoin Lebon/Keitelman
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Robert Capa (American born Hungary, 1913-1954)
Second World War, Naples
October 2, 1943
Gelatin silver print
17.6 × 23.8cm (6 15/16 × 9 3/8 in.)
© International Center of Photography / Magnum Photos
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
View of a group of woman with pained expressions on their faces with several holding handkerchiefs and one holding a card photograph of a young man
![Unknown maker (American) '[Smiling Man]' 1860](https://artblart.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/unknown-maker-smiling-man-1860-web.jpg)
Unknown maker (American)
(Smiling Man)
1860
Ambrotype
8.9 x 6.5cm
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
![Baron Adolf de Meyer (American, born France, 1868-1946) '[Ruth St. Denis]' c. 1918](https://artblart.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/baron-adolf-de-meyer-ruth-st-denis-c-1918-web.jpg)
Baron Adolf de Meyer (American born France, 1868-1946)
(Ruth St. Denis)
c. 1918
Platinum print
23.3 × 18.7cm (9 3/16 × 7 3/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
![Woodbury & Page (British, active 1857-1908) '[Javanese woman seated with legs crossed, basket at side]' c. 1870](https://artblart.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/woodbury-and-page-javanese-woman-web.jpg)
Woodbury & Page (British, active 1857-1908)
(Javanese woman seated with legs crossed, basket at side)
c. 1870
Albumen silver print
8.9 × 6cm (3 1/2 × 2 3/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Photography in Australia, the Far East, Java and London
In 1851 Woodbury, who had already become a professional photographer, went to Australia and soon found work in the engineering department of the Melbourne waterworks. He photographed the construction of ducts and other waterworks as well as various buildings in Melbourne. He received a medal for his photography in 1854.
At some point in the mid-1850s Woodbury met expatriate British photographer James Page. In 1857 the two left Melbourne and moved to Batavia (now Jakarta), Dutch East Indies, arriving 18 May 1857, and established the partnership of Woodbury & Page that same year.
During most of 1858 Woodbury & Page photographed in Central and East Java, producing large views of the ruined temples near Surakarta, amongst other subjects, before 1 September of that year. After their tour of Java, by 8 December 1858 Woodbury and Page had returned to Batavia.
In 1859 Woodbury returned to England to arrange a regular supplier of photographic materials for his photographic studio and he contracted the London firm Negretti and Zambra to market Woodbury & Page photographs in England.
Woodbury returned to Java in 1860 and during most of that year travelled with Page through Central and West Java along with Walter’s brother, Henry James Woodbury (born 1836 – died 1873), who had arrived in Batavia in April 1859.
On 18 March 1861 Woodbury & Page moved to new premises, also in Batavia, and the studio was renamed Photographisch Atelier van Walter Woodbury, also known as Atelier Woodbury. The firm sold portraits, views of Java, stereographs, cameras, lenses, photographic chemicals and other photographic supplies. These premises continued to be used until 1908, when the firm was dissolved.
In his career Woodbury produced topographic, ethnographic and especially portrait photographs. He photographed in Australia, Java, Sumatra, Borneo and London. Although individual photographers were rarely identified on Woodbury & Page photographs, between 1861 and 1862 Walter B. Woodbury occasionally stamped the mounts of his photographs: “Photographed by Walter Woodbury, Java.”
Text from the Wikipedia website
Weegee (Arthur Fellig) (American, 1899-1968)
The Critic
November 1943
Gelatin silver print
25.7 x 32.9cm (10 1/8 x 12 15/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
“I go around wearing rose-colored glasses. In other words, we have beauty. We have ugliness. Everybody likes beauty. But there is an ugliness…” ~ Weegee, in a July 11, 1945 interview for WEAF radio, New York City
While Weegee’s work appeared in many American newspapers and magazines, his methods would sometimes be considered ethically questionable by today’s journalistic standards. In this image, a drunk woman confronts two High Society women who are attending the opera. Mrs. George Washington Kavanaugh and Lady Decies appear nonplussed to be in close proximity to the disheveled woman. Weegee’s flash illuminates their fur wraps and tiaras, drawing them into the foreground. The drunk woman emerges from the shadows on the right side, her mouth tense and open as if she were saying something, hair tousled, her face considerably less sharp than those of her rich counterparts.
The Critic is the second name Weegee gave this photograph. He originally called it, The Fashionable People. In an interview, Weegee’s assistant, Louie Liotta later revealed that the picture was entirely set up. Weegee had asked Liotta to bring a regular from a bar in the Bowery section of Manhattan to the season’s opening of the Metropolitan Opera. Liotta complied. After getting the woman drunk, they positioned her near the red carpet, where Weegee readied his camera to capture the moment seen here.
Anonymous text. “The Critic,” on the J. Paul Getty Museum website [Online] Cited 24/02/2022
Dorothea Lange (American, 1895-1965)
Hopi Indian, New Mexico
Negative, c. 1923; print, 1926
Gelatin silver print
18.4 x 19.7cm (7 1/4 x 7 3/4 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Oakland Museum of California, the City of Oakland
Dorothea Lange made this portrait study not as a social document but rather as a Pictorialist experiment in light and shadow, transforming a character-filled face into an art-for-art’s-sake abstraction. This image bridges the two distinct phases of Lange’s work: her early, soft-focus portraiture and her better-known documentary work of the 1930s.
Text from the J. Paul Getty Museum website
Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Street Scene, New Orleans
1936
Gelatin silver print
15.6 x 16.8cm (1 1/8 x 6 5/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Paul Strand (American, 1890-1976)
Photograph – New York
Negative 1916; print June 1917
Photogravure
22.4 × 16.7cm (8 13/16 × 6 9/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
“I remember coming across Paul Strand’s ‘Blind Woman’ when I was very young, and that really bowled me over … It’s a very powerful picture. I saw it in the New York Public Library file of Camera Work, and I remember going out of there over stimulated: That’s the stuff, that’s the thing to do. It charged me up.” ~ Walker Evans
The impact of seeing this striking image for the first time is evident in Walker Evans’s vivid recollection. At the time, most photographers were choosing “pretty” subjects and creating fanciful atmospheric effects in the style of the Impressionists. Paul Strand’s unconventional subject and direct approach challenged assumptions about the medium.
At once depicting misery and endurance, struggle and degradation, Strand’s portrait of a blind woman sets up a complex confrontation. “The whole concept of blindness,” as one historian has noted, “is aimed like a weapon at those whose privilege of sight permits them to experience the picture. …”
Anonymous text. “New York [Blind Woman],” on the J. Paul Getty Museum website [Online] Cited 24/02/2022
Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
Subway Portrait
1938-1941
Gelatin silver print
13.2 x 16cm (5 3/16 x 6 5/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
![Camille Silvy (French, 1834-1910) '[Madame Camille Silvy]' c. 1863](https://artblart.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/camille-silvy-web.jpg)
Camille Silvy (French, 1834-1910)
(Madame Camille Silvy)
c. 1863
Albumen silver print
8.9 × 6cm (3 1/2 × 2 3/8 in.)
Gift in memory of Madame Camille Silvy born Alice Monnier from the Monnier Family
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
![Mikiko Hara (Japanese, born 1967) '[Untitled (Making a Void)]' Negative 2001; print about 2007](https://artblart.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/mikiko-hara-untitled-web.jpg)
Mikiko Hara (Japanese, b. 1967)
Untitled (Making a Void)
Negative 2001; print about 2007
Chromogenic print
© Mikiko Hara
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council
Lauren Greenfield (American, b. 1966)
Sisters Violeta, 21, and Massiel, 15, at the Limited in a mall, San Francisco, California
Negative 1999; print 2008
48.9 × 32.5cm (19 1/4 × 12 13/16 in.)
© Lauren Greenfield/INSTITUTE
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Daido Moriyama (Japanese, b. 1938)
Self-portrait
1997
Gelatin silver print
13.2 x 16cm (5 3/16 x 6 5/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Purchase with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© Daido Moriyama
The J. Paul Getty Museum
1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, California 90049
Opening hours:
Daily 10am – 5.30pm
![August Sander (German, 1876-1964) [Farmer, Westerwald (Bauer, Westerwald)] 1910](https://artblart.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/sander-farmer.jpg)
Art Blart 
Exhibition: ‘After August Sander: People of the 21st Century’ at Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen
Tags: A Possible Mutation, After August Sander, After August Sander: People of the 21st Century, After Cindy Sherman, Alice Ïfergan-Rey, Angst, Antlitz der Zeit, Artur Żmijewski, Artur Żmijewski Dieter Patricia Ursula, August Sander, August Sander Bauernpaar - Zucht und Harmonie, August Sander Boxers, August Sander Bricklayer, August Sander Circus performer, August Sander Cleaning woman, August Sander Coal Delivery Man, August Sander Cretin, August Sander Der erdgebundene Mensch, August Sander Der Maler Anton Räderscheidt, August Sander Farmer on his Way to Church, August Sander Handlanger, August Sander Jungbauern, August Sander Mother and Daughter, August Sander Painter Anton Räderscheidt, August Sander Pastry Cook, August Sander Peasant Woman, August Sander People of the 20th century, August Sander Police Officer, August Sander Polizeibeamter Der Wachtmeister, August Sander Putzfrau, August Sander The earthbound human, August Sander The Industrialist, August Sander Village Band, August Sander Working-class Mother, August Sander Young Farmers, August Sander Zirkusartistin, Bauernpaar - Zucht und Harmonie, Bouchra Khalili, Bouchra Khalili The Tempest Society, Boxers Paul Röderstein and Hein Hesse, Bricklayer, Calcutta and Howrah, Circus performer, Classes and Professions, Cleaning woman, Coal Delivery Man, Collier Schorr, Collier Schorr A Possible Mutation, Collier Schorr After Cindy Sherman, Collier Schorr Swimming Pool Eyes, Collier Schorr Wes Portrait, Comizi d'amore, contemporary portrait photography, Der erdgebundene Mensch, Der Maler Anton Räderscheidt, Der Wachtmeister, Dieter Patricia Ursula, Face of Our Time, Farmer on his Way to Church, German portrait photography, German portraiture, Handlanger, Hans Eijkelboom, Hans Eijkelboom Photo Notes, Howrah Railway Station, I tell you how Mohamed Bourouissa changed unemployed people into sculpture in a truck in Marseille, Ilya Lipkin, Je vous raconte comment Mohamed Bourouissa a changé des chômeurs en sculpture dans un camion à Marseille, Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys, Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys Madame Legrand, Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys Mondo Cane, Jungbauern, Kontaminierte Landschaften, L'Utopie d'August Sander, living spaces, Love Meetings, Madame Legrand, Mohamed Bourouissa, Mohamed Bourouissa and Alice Ïfergan-Rey L'Utopie d'August Sander, Mondo Cane, Mondo Cane (The Town Crier), Mother and Daughter, Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen, Omer Fast, Omer Fast August, Painter Anton Räderscheidt, Pastry Cook, Peasant Woman, People of the 20th century, Photo Note October 21 2006, Photo Note October 23 2015, Photo Notes, Polizeibeamter Der Wachtmeister, portrait photography, Putzfrau, Ricerche one, Riga's queer underground scene, Sandra Schäfer, Sandra Schäfer Kontaminierte Landschaften, Sandra Schäfer Westerwald, Sandra Schäfer Westerwald: Eine Heimsuchung, Sharon Hayes, Sharon Hayes Ricerche one, Skandalous, social and visual codes, Soham Gupta, Soham Gupta Angst, strategies of portraiture, Swimming Pool Eyes, The Artists, The City (city dwellers), The Earthbound Human, The Farmer, The Industrialist, The Last People, The Skilled Tradesmen, The Tempest Society, The Woman, Tobias Zielony, Tobias Zielony Golden, Tobias Zielony Jay, Tobias Zielony Skandalous, Tobias Zielony Two boys, Village Band, Wes Portrait, Westerwald, Westerwald: Eine Heimsuchung, Working-class Mother, Young Farmers, Zirkusartistin
Exhibition dates: 28th January – 29th May 2022
Curator: Thomas Thiel
August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Der erdgebundene Mensch (The earthbound human) / Peasant Woman, Westerwald
1912
Gelatin silver print
Contemporary Collection, MGKSiegen
© Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln – August Sander Archiv/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2022
I am not sure any of these kinds of exhibition – supposed extrapolations on the work of an earlier famous photographer, in this case contemporary photographers responding in diverse ways to renowned German photographer August Sander (1876-1964), icon of 20th century photography – serve any kind of lasting useful purpose, other than perhaps to acknowledge the alleged and, in most cases, slight influence of the earlier photographer.
While the contemporary work is strong in its own right, too often it seems shoehorned into the concept of the exhibition, artistic positions exhibited in order to revitalise the work of August Sander both directly and indirectly. Sander does not need revitalising… nor do the contemporary artists need the prop of his fame nor his conceptualisation of German identity, family and life to succeed with their projects. Their changed views of life and new influences on the individual are cogent enough – clear, logical, and convincing – not to need a conceptual walking frame.
However, the exhibition does give us the ability to, once more, marvel at the apparent simplicity and directness of Sanders’ portraits and the monumentality of his project “People of the 20th Century”. Frontal, low depth of field, beautiful light, tightly framed photographs which portray individuals as true characters who have undeniable “presence” in the viewers eyes. When thinking about the human condition, nothing in the rest of the exhibition comes close to their insight and intensity…
Dr Marcus Bunyan
.
Many thankx to the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
At second left, August Sander’s Pastry Cook 1928; at fifth left, Coal Delivery Man c. 1915; at seventh left, Handlanger (Bricklayer / Handyman) 1928; and at eighth right, Working-class Mother 1927
At left, Mother and daughter 1912; at third left, August Sander’s Village Band 1913; and at fourth left, Farmer on his Way to Church 1925-1926; and at right, Cretin 1924
After August Sander, Exhibition view, MGKSiegen
Work by August Sander, Portraits of People of the 20th Century, 1912-1932, printed 1961-1963
Contemporary Collection MGKSiegen
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln – August Sander Archiv; VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2022
Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
With his collection of portraits, “People of the 20th Century”, August Sander (1876-1964) produced a monumental life’s work that not only made photographic history but went on to influence generations of artists. The photographer, who was born in Herdorf near Siegen, depicted professional groups and social classes for several decades. Altogether he collected more than 600 images in forty-five portfolios, organising them into seven categories: The Farmer, The Skilled Tradesmen, The Woman, Classes and Professions, The Artists, The City (city dwellers), and The Last People, who were found on the fringes of society. A selection was first assembled in the publication “Face of Our Time” (1929). By working on a portrait of society during his time, Sander not only developed archetypal images but also aimed to study the nature of man in relation to his community.
“After August Sander” combines the work of the world-famous yet regionally-based photographer with a contemporary perspective of 13 artists. At the heart of the exhibition is a group of 70 large-format photographs that Sander compiled as late as the early 1960s, also for presentations in the Siegerland. As a gift from Barbara Lambrecht-Schadeberg to mark the MGKSiegen’s 20th birthday, these are now being shown here for the first time. Starting out from this important group of works, the exhibition directs attention towards portraits of people in the 21st century and initiates further examination of images showing contemporary types.
The artistic positions exhibited revitalise the work of August Sander both directly and indirectly. The deliberate leap in time of about 100 years visualises our changed views of life and new influences on the individual. Despite the historical reference, “After August Sander” does not stick exclusively to the medium of photography, but presents video installations and sculptures in a reflection of our times.
With contributions by August Sander, Mohamed Bourouissa, Alice Ifergan-Rey, Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys, Hans Eijkelboom, Omer Fast, Soham Gupta, Sharon Hayes, Bouchra Khalili, Ilya Lipkin, Sandra Schäfer, Collier Schorr, Tobias Zielony and Artur Zmijewski.
Supported by Kunststiftung NRW
Text from the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen website
Rooms 1 and 2
August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Bauernpaar – Zucht und Harmonie
1912
Gelatin silver print
Contemporary Collection, MGKSiegen
© Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln – August Sander Archiv/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2022
August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Mother and Daughter
1912
Gelatin silver print
Contemporary Collection, MGKSiegen
© Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln – August Sander Archiv/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2022
August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Village Band
1913
Gelatin silver print
Contemporary Collection, MGKSiegen
© Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln – August Sander Archiv/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2022
August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Jungbauern (Young Farmers)
1914
Gelatin silver print
Contemporary Collection, MGKSiegen
© Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln – August Sander Archiv/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2022
August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Coal Delivery Man
c. 1915
Gelatin silver print
Contemporary Collection, MGKSiegen
© Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln – August Sander Archiv/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2022
August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Polizeibeamter. Der Wachtmeister (Police Officer)
1925
Gelatin silver print
Contemporary Collection, MGKSiegen
© Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln – August Sander Archiv/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2022
August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Der Maler Anton Räderscheidt (Painter Anton Räderscheidt)
1926
Gelatin silver print
Contemporary Collection, MGKSiegen
© Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln – August Sander Archiv/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2022
August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Zirkusartistin (Circus performer)
1926-1932
Gelatin silver print
Contemporary Collection, MGKSiegen
© Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln – August Sander Archiv/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2022
August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Handlanger (Bricklayer / Handyman)
1928
Gelatin silver print
Contemporary Collection, MGKSiegen
© Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln – August Sander Archiv/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2022
August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Pastry Cook
1928
Gelatin silver print
Contemporary Collection, MGKSiegen
© Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln – August Sander Archiv/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2022
August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Boxers. Paul Röderstein and Hein Hesse. Köln
c. 1928
Gelatin silver print
Contemporary Collection, MGKSiegen
© Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln – August Sander Archiv/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2022
August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
The selection of large-format exhibition copies of People of the 20th Century being shown for the first time in the Museum für Gegenwartskunst was compiled from various portfolios by Sander himself in 1961/63. They were intended for presentations in the Siegerland region and printed by his son Gunther Sander under his own supervision. The occasion for this was provided by, amongst others, two exhibitions entitled Antlitz der Zeit (Face of Our Time), shown in Siegen in 1964 and in the fire station close to Herdorf town hall in 1965. Beyond its international significance, for several reasons August Sander’s work also has considerable regional identification value. Sander was born in Herdorf and spent his childhood between Siegerland and the Westerwald. Siegen-based photographers Friedrich Schmeck and Carl Siebel inspired the young Sander to take up photography. Photographs dating from before 1914 were taken in or near his hometown and were subsequently included in the well-known picture atlas. He frequently spent time in the Westerwald and moved his residence to Kuchhausen due to the war in 1942. This exhibition brings a circle to a close in the MGKSiegen. Works by August Sander can now be shown permanently and as part of the collection in Siegen for the first time since the museum’s opening in 2001.
August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Cretin
1924
Gelatin silver print
Contemporary Collection, MGKSiegen
© Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln – August Sander Archiv/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2022
August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Farmer on his Way to Church
1925-1926
Gelatin silver print
Contemporary Collection, MGKSiegen
© Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln – August Sander Archiv/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2022
August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Working-class Mother
1927
Gelatin silver print
Contemporary Collection, MGKSiegen
© Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln – August Sander Archiv/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2022
August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Putzfrau (Cleaning woman)
1928
Gelatin silver print
Contemporary Collection, MGKSiegen
© Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln – August Sander Archiv/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2022
August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
The Industrialist
1929
Gelatin silver print
Contemporary Collection, MGKSiegen
© Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln – August Sander Archiv/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2022
Rooms 3 and 4
After August Sander, Exhibition view, MGKSiegen, Contemporary Collection MGKSiegen showing at left, a work by Sandra Schäfer Kontaminierte Landschaften, (2021); and at right, August Sander’s Bauernpaar – Zucht und Harmonie (1912) from “People of the 20th Century”, 1912-1932
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln – August Sander Archiv; © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2022
Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
Sandra Schäfer (German, b. 1970)
Westerwald: Eine Heimsuchung
2021
Still showing the cover of August Sander – Líchtbíldner folio Der Bauer (The farmer)
© Sandra Schäfer/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022
After August Sander, Exhibition view, MGKSiegen
Work by Sandra Schäfer, Kontaminierte Landschaften, 2021, Courtesy the artist
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022
Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
Sandra Schäfer (German, b. 1970)
Sandra Schäfer’s artistic practice is concerned with the development of urban and geopolitical space and its history. Her works are often based on long-term research that involves a re-presentation of images, documents, and narratives. In her video installation Westerwald: Eine Heimsuchung (2021), Schäfer – starting out from August Sander’s series of Westerwald farmers and rural labourers – deals with the transformation of the rural region in which she grew up, and by which she has been strongly influenced. Her great-greatgreat- aunt Katharina Horn, born Schäfer, and her husband Adam Horn, were also the famous farming couple that Sander photographed as early as 1912. The artist juxtaposes August Sander’s perspective with her own, contemporary view in the form of a double projection and two photographs. Schäfer shows how the landscape depicted and its agricultural use have changed over the course of time. She talks to relatives and farmers, as well as to photographic curators about Sander, his photos and the situation in the village of Kuchhausen. She is also interested in the value and varying attributions that the images have experienced in the art world and in private memories. The artist questions existing pictorial orders and narratives with her work, and so ventures her own personal search for home.
Sandra Schäfer (German, b. 1970)
Westerwald: Eine Heimsuchung (installation view not at Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen)
2021
© Sandra Schäfer/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022
Sandra Schäfer (German, b. 1970)
Westerwald: Eine Heimsuchung
2021
Still
© Sandra Schäfer/VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022
Room 5
After August Sander, Exhibition view, MGKSiegen
Work by Hans Eijkelboom, Photo Notes, 1994-2022, Courtesy the artist
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln – August Sander Archiv; VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2022
Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
Hans Eijkelboom (Dutch, b. 1949)
Photo Note October 21, 2006 (Camouflage)
2006
Courtesy the artist
Hans Eijkelboom (Dutch, b. 1949)
Photo Note October 21, 2006 (Camouflage) (detail)
2006
Courtesy the artist
Hans Eijkelboom (Dutch, b. 1949)
As early as 1981, Hans Eijkelboom realised an “Ode to August Sander” by asking and categorising citizens of Arnhem, where he lived at the time, on the basis of their distinguishing features and developing the results into a multi-part series of street photographs. Since the early 1990s, the artist has been taking photographs in the business districts of large cities around the world. Unnoticed, he analyses the pedestrians passing by and focuses on them according to formal criteria of their external appearance. Eijkelboom’s gaze – with a thoroughly benevolent sense of humour – falls on the people’s clothing. Fashion statements and similarities in behaviour interest him in formal terms, as uniform codes. He arranges his snapshot-like Photo Notes into groups according to the motif and date of the shot, and then presents them in wall-sized tableaus. Arranged in this way, the exclusively colour portraits direct the viewer’s attention towards the human need to distinguish oneself by means of external features and so underline one’s own identity. In Eijkelboom’s photographs, this striving for individuality is exposed as an illusion due to global trends and milieu-related codes.
Hans Eijkelboom (Dutch, b. 1949)
Photo Note October 23, 2015 (Hoed)
2015
Courtesy the artist
Hans Eijkelboom (Dutch, b. 1949)
Photo Note October 23, 2015 (Hoed) (detail)
2015
Courtesy the artist
Room 6
Omer Fast (Israeli, b. 1972)
August
2016
Still
Courtesy the artist
Photo: Stephan Ciupek/Filmgalerie 451
Omer Fast (Israeli, b. 1972)
In his films, Omer Fast frequently tells stories of trauma, war and relationships. His working method enables him to question current and historical events as well as the conventions of the cinematic narrator. The short film August (2016), shot in 3D, revolves around the life and work of August Sander, painting a fictional picture of his last days in the early 1960s. The cinematic flashbacks are oriented on biographical facts. In surreal dream sequences, Sander is haunted by memories: recalling his son Erich, who died as a victim of political persecution in a Nazi prison in 1944, as well as iconic motifs such as the Young Farmers or Workers hauling bricks. The film August shows both the visionary artist and the powerless man, scarred by personal loss and entangled in the political circumstances. Omer Fast deconstructs and at the same time contextualises the artist and man August Sander on the basis of his attitudes in an extremely difficult time politically, the late phase of the Weimar Republic and the transition to National Socialist Germany.
New Pictures: Omer Fast, Appendix exhibition video
This “New Pictures” exhibition [at the Minneapolis Institute of Art 2018] features two films by the Berlin-based Israeli artist Omer Fast (b. 1972), along with more than 20 portraits by the German photographer August Sander (1876-1964) from his series People of the Twentieth Century, selected from Mia’s and Minneapolis-based collections. Through reflections of Sander’s portraits, including Young Farmers (1914) and Bricklayer (1928), Fast’s latest film, August (2016), portrays Sander at the end of his life, tracing the photographer’s career during the transition from the Weimar Republic to Nazi Germany. Fast’s para-fictional (i.e., blending facts and fiction) film subverts the boundary between collective history and personal memory, questioning photography’s ability to tell the truth.
Text from the YouTube website
Omer Fast (Israeli, b. 1972)
August
2016
Still
Courtesy the artist
Photo: Stephan Ciupek/Filmgalerie 451
Room 7
Jos de Gruyter (Belgium, b. 1965) and Harald Thys (Belgium, b. 1966)
Mondo Cane (The Town Crier)
2019
Courtesy the artists and Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin
Photo: Nick Ash
Jos de Gruyter (Beligian, b. 1965) and Harald Thys (Belgian, b. 1966)
Jos de Gruyter’s and Harald Thys’ works are devoted to the absurdity of the everyday. Their interest in the psychological state of societies leads them to create portraits of human existence both tragic and comical. The figures assembled here were part of the exhibition Mondo Cane (eng. Dog World) produced for the Belgian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. The presentation was conceived as a kind of folkloristic museum examining the human condition and its grotesque diversity. In the shape of partly mechanised, life-sized dolls, it gathered together simple artisans as well as madmen and outcasts. The doll heads were modelled on fictional characters as well as real people. Scattered throughout the exhibition rooms in Siegen we find a ventriloquist, a town crier, a Stasi spy and a French denunciator from the World War II era. As protagonists, they occupy the museum for the duration of the exhibition and interact with the other works. As representatives, the humorous and sinister characters refer to popular stereotypes as well as to historical attitudes and relationships within Europe.
Jos de Gruyter’s and Harald Thys’ work Mondo Cane (2019) at Biennale Arte 2019 – Belgium
After August Sander, Exhibition view, MGKSiegen
Work by Jos de Gruyter and Harald Thys, Madame Legrand, 2019
Courtesy the artists and Galerie Micheline Szwajcer
Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
Room 8
Sharon Hayes (American, b. 1970)
Ricerche: one
2019
Still
Courtesy the artist and Tanya Leighton, Berlin
Sharon Hayes (American, b. 1970)
Sharon Hayes’ videos, performances and installations address the complex processes of shaping public opinion on politics, history, identity and language. Her film series Ricerche (engl. Research) began in 2013 and now consists of five parts. Her starting point was the documentary film Love Meetings (1964, ital. Comizi d’amore) by Pier Paolo Pasolini, who travelled through Italy to ask people of different ages and social backgrounds explicit questions about love, sexuality, and morality. Hayes follows the structure of the film and the conceptual idea of interviewing people outdoors and in groups. The video diptych Ricerche: one (2019) portrays two age groups: 5-8 year olds and young adults. All the participants in the video, shot in Provincetown (Massachusetts, USA), are children of queer parents. Depending on their age, they give fragmented or detailed insights into their complex family structures. The artist mirrors social understanding of gender dominated by the norm, sexuality and family constellations. She shows how present conditions shape national, religious and ethnic identities.
Biennale Arte 2013 – Sharon Hayes
After August Sander, Exhibition view, MGKSiegen
Work by Sharon Hayes, Ricerche: one, 2019, Courtesy the artist and Tanya Leighton, Berlin
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2022
Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
Room 9
Mohamed Bourouissa and Alice Ifergan-Rey
Je vous raconte comment Mohamed Bourouissa a changé des chômeurs en sculpture dans un camion à Marseille
I tell you how Mohamed Bourouissa changed unemployed people into sculpture in a truck in Marseille
2019
Still
© Mohamed Bourouissa /VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022 and Alice Ifergan-Rey
L’Utopie d’August Sander, Mohamed Bourouissa, Alice Ïfergan-Rey
After August Sander, Exhibition view, MGKSiegen
Work by Collier Schorr, Castle, 1994, Collier as Horst, 2021, Swimming Pool Eyes, 1996, A Possible Mutation, 1994, After Cindy Sherman, 1994
© the artist, Courtesy Stuart Shave/ Modern Art, London and 303 Gallery, New York
Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
Collier Schorr (American, b. 1963)
Swimming Pool Eyes
1996
Black and white photograph
Courtesy the artist and Modern Art, London and 303 Gallery, New York
Collier Schorr (American, b. 1963)
A Possible Mutation
1994
C-print
Courtesy the artist and Modern Art, London and 303 Gallery, New York
Collier Schorr (American, b. 1963)
Collier Schorr’s portraits can be positioned in the border area between documentation, staging and fiction. Her photographs explore the relationship between nationality, gender, and identity. For over 20 years, Schorr travelled to southern Germany every summer to visit the small town of Schwäbisch Gmünd. Her portraits of the town’s inhabitants taken against an authentic local backdrop reflect a fascination with a culture that was initially foreign to her. Collier Schorr places androgynous-looking teenagers in the German landscape, which she sees as pastoral. They are mostly male adolescents from her close environment, photographed in the garden, in front of and on trees, or in the forest. One of the main characters is Horst, and she adds a later self-portrait to this group: Collier as Horst (2021), wearing men’s underpants and gripping her crotch. These stagings, which dissolve gender boundaries by means of clothing, makeup and props, also include portraits of uniformed soldiers as pictorial subjects. In Matti at Attention (Durlangen) (2001), which shows a young man as a soldier in a forest clearing, the landscape takes on a symbolic charge and becomes a speculative space of remembrance. Aware of Sander’s photographic approach and the gaps in his reception, Schorr sets out to find her own Face of our Time that incorporates her Jewish origins and personal ideas of Germany.
After Horst
“I had these ideas about modern West Germany. It was silent. It was empty. The figures were small, or they were art students lined up in front of coloured squares of paper. Whatever I saw in the work of Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth and Thomas Ruff was somewhat perfect, organised, static, airless. And frozen in time that looked like the 70’s. West Germany itself, a word I might see on a watch face or an Olympic memorial to the Israeli wrestlers killed by Palestinians in Munich. Somehow, I was there and not there. Dead, memorialised, alive and dead again.
I went to Germany in 1989. And again, for 20 summers. During the third summer I started taking photographs. I was convinced the German landscape held some truth other than the one I had seen in the large-scale imports I saw at 303 Gallery and Marian Goodman Gallery. Schwäbisch Gmünd was soft and pastoral. And the local boys seemed soft and pastoral. I would have never made photos in New York. Nan Goldin, Jack Pierson and Larry Clark already made them. But in Germany, I could take a figure of my imagination and place them in the landscape memorialised by the Düsseldorf School. And I could as they say now – queer the space. So I shot my girlfriend’s nephew Horst and a fusion of myself and him, of a young girl and of a young boy of a woman who looked like a boy. I wanted to make him suffer for his luxury… as if he knew he had this luxury which I can never know. Ultimately, it’s a simple proposition. An image of queerness in an open airfield, rather than a club or a closet or a tenement New York apartment or West Side street corner. One image is called After Cindy Sherman because of how I wished I could use myself to talk about myself. But to do that I would have to find my image bearable and I did not. I saw Germany as a very romantic place and I attacked it and was seduced by it every year. I took the one category in August Sander’s work that the Düsseldorf kids didn’t touch: the Nazi’s. I thought to myself, wow, they really left those soldiers out. Don’t they realise that’s the guts and the ghosts worth tearing apart? I began to enjoy the fact that my story about Germany, my Antlitz Der Zeit, was completely ignored. Too romantic, too gay but not authored by a gay male, too Jewish but not Jewish enough, too personal.
Now I look at Horst and I think about my own body naked on the cover of Frieze magazine and dancing in a ballet I’m making. And posing with Jordan Wolfson in Fantastic Man. The same face the same hair. Over 30 years difference. Suddenly acceptable. Perhaps because the queer figure has more presence agency representation. I still find Horst, with his Levis’s and sweat socks, the tropes of Christopher Street and his teenage girl make up somewhat radical. Because he looks like a living paper doll. Dressed and pasted into a landscape to disrupt the pristine crisis of a German photograph, transmounted, with a wide white border, expansive and somewhat toeing the line.”
Collier Schorr. “After Horst,” on the Modern Art website March 2021 [Online] Cited 02/04/2022
Collier Schorr (American, b. 1963)
After Cindy Sherman
1994
C-print
Courtesy the artist and Modern Art, London and 303 Gallery, New York
Collier Schorr (American, b. 1963)
Wes Portrait
2009-2018
Black and white photograph
Courtesy the artist and Modern Art, London and 303 Gallery, New York
Room 10
Bouchra Khalili (Moroccan-French, b. 1975)
The Tempest Society
2017
Still
Courtesy mor charpentier, Paris
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022
Bouchra Khalili (Moroccan-French, b. 1975)
In her films, photographs, installations and publications, Bouchra Khalili examines the effects of colonial history on migration and political self-image. She provides a voice for social minorities, repeatedly formulating the links between individual actions and collective history. For the video work The Tempest Society (2017), which was shown for the first time at documenta 14, a group of Athenians come together on the stage of a former factory to talk about Europe and their own homeland. It is a portrait of three people from different social backgrounds who joined together to form a theatre group called The Tempest Society. The title is homage to Al Assifa (arab: The Tempest), a project by North African workers and French students who founded an ensemble in Paris in the 1970s to address issues such as racism and social inequality. The individuals in Khalili’s The Tempest Society also address similar problems in contemporary society: Ghani, Katerina and Malek talk about their experiences as people living in Europe and share their stories with each other. At the same time, it is about sharing a collective space – both on stage and in life, and about how the European continent may provide a home.
Bouchra Khalili. The Tempest Society / Twenty-Two Hours 24. August – 21. Oktober 2018
After August Sander, Exhibition view, MGKSiegen
Work by Bouchra Khalili, The Tempest Society, 2017, Courtesy the artist
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2022
Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
Room 11
Artur Żmijewski (Polish, b. 1966)
Dieter, Patricia, Ursula
2007
Still
Courtesy the artist, Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zürich, and Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warschau
Artur Żmijewski (Polish, b. 1966)
Artur Żmijewski is known for his works investigating historical as well as current social orders – often in a radical way, employing mechanisms of power and oppression. The human body is an essential means of expression in his provocative works, which are mainly interviews, documentaries or experimental settings. The trilogies Dieter, Patricia, Ursula (2007) and Katarzyna, Barbara, Zofia (2012) belong to a ten-part series, for which Żmijewski observed people in Germany, Italy, Mexico and Poland with his camera – each for over 24 hours, as they carried out a simple but often physically strenuous activity. In this case, he accompanies an excavator driver, a snack vendor, a tram driver and three cleaners in their everyday lives – from the moment they get up in the morning until they go to bed. From the footage, Żmijewski created a 15-minute portrait of each person, following the artist’s narrative structure alone, and simply showing what happens without any commentary. Routine and moments of repetition are common to all the portraits. Apparently individual, they are also representative of a group within society. The artist therefore functions, on the one hand, as a sociological catalyst of snapshots; on the other hand, the medium of documentary filming operates as an objective instance.
After August Sander, Exhibition view, MGKSiegen
From left, work by Tobias Zielony, Selection of: Curfew, 2001, Ha Neu, 2003, Quartier Nord, 2003, Big Sexyland, 2006, The Cast, 2007, Trona – Armpit of America, 2008, Manitoba, 2009-2011, Jenny Jenny, 2013, Golden, 2018, Courtesy the artist and KOW, Berlin; and at right, Artur Żmijewski’s Dieter, Patricia, Ursula, 2007 (still), © the artist, Courtesy Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Zürich and Foksal Gallery Foundation, Warschau
Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
Room 12
After August Sander, Exhibition view, MGKSiegen
Work by Ilya Lipkin, Untitled, 2019, Courtesy the artist and Lars Friedrich, Berlin
Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
Ilya Lipkin (Latvian, b. 1982)
Untitled
2019
Courtesy the artist and Lars Friedrich, Berlin
Ilya Lipkin (Latvian, b. 1982)
In his work, Ilya Lipkin breaks with the conventions of applied and artistic photography, moving playfully between fashion and art, studio and street photography. His work is characterised by a self-reflective approach incorporating contemporary trends and styles. The series Untitled (2019) assembles a number of photographs of young women, all taken in public places in various cities around the world, including on Alexanderplatz in Berlin. Photographed with a fast-focus digital camera in burst mode, the images have been retouched and edited according to the usual standards of fashion photography. In some cases, the background was removed and replaced with bright red or neutral white. This immediacy reveals a generation of girls and young women who are extremely conscious of their own image, but also influenced visually by the clichéd image conventions of social media channels. Quite intuitively, they seem to deny us any insight into their inner selves. By means of clothing, style and technology, they express their desire to please in a global society rather than in specific subcultures.
Ilya Lipkin (Latvian, b. 1982)
Untitled
2019
Courtesy the artist and Lars Friedrich, Berlin
Ilya Lipkin (Latvian, b. 1982)
Untitled
2019
Courtesy the artist and Lars Friedrich, Berlin
After August Sander, Exhibition view, MGKSiegen
Work by Tobias Zielony, Selection of: Curfew, 2001, Ha Neu, 2003, Quartier Nord, 2003, Big Sexyland, 2006, The Cast, 2007, Trona – Armpit of America, 2008, Manitoba, 2009-2011, Jenny Jenny, 2013, Golden, 2018, Courtesy the artist and KOW, Berlin
Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
Tobias Zielony (Germany, b. 1973)
Jay
2007
Courtesy the Artist and KOW, Berlin
Tobias Zielony (Germany, b. 1973)
Skandalous
2007
Courtesy the Artist and KOW, Berlin
Tobias Zielony (Germany, b. 1973)
In his photographs and videos, Tobias Zielony directs artistic attention towards youth subcultures and marginalised groups in society. His image cycles, developed over a long period of time and drawing on various means of pictorial reportage, are always characterised by a special intimacy and direct proximity. Social, media and subcultural changes provide the thematic framework for these photographs. In his work, Zielony has dealt frequently with the significance of origins, fashion, and the representation of identity. For this exhibition and with a view to August Sander’s portfolio work, he has now assembled a first selection of portraits from the last twenty years. On view are single, double, and group portraits ranging from the early series Curfew (2001), depicting youths in Bristol, to a more recent series, Golden, featuring Riga’s queer underground scene. The presentation highlights strategies of portraiture, masking as well as the increased intermingling of social and visual codes in global, mediatised cultural development. Zielony’s fascination with the people photographed reveals a fundamental human interest in the Other in the sense of experiencing foreignness and vibrancy apart from traditional social categories.
Tobias Zielony (Germany, b. 1973)
Two boys
2008
Courtesy the Artist and KOW, Berlin
Tobias Zielony (Germany, b. 1973)
From the series Golden
2018
Courtesy the Artist and KOW, Berlin
Room 13
After August Sander, Exhibition view, MGKSiegen
Work by Soham Gupta, Untitled, from the series Angst (2013-2017), Courtesy the artist
Photo: Philipp Ottendörfer
Soham Gupta (Indian, b. 1988)
Untitled
From the series Angst (2013-2017)
Collection Museum Folkwang Essen
Courtesy the artist
Soham Gupta (Indian, b. 1988)
As early as 10 years ago, Soham Gupta began photographing people he encountered in the darkness by Howrah Bridge in the Indian megacity, Calcutta. The bridge connects the two Indian cities of Calcutta and Howrah across the Hugli River. Nearby is Howrah Railway Station, one of the largest railway stations in India. His photographs in colour and black and white capture people across all age groups, who seem to belong to the lower class. The living spaces captured in the photographs leave no doubt about their poverty and their status as social outsiders, abandoned and cast out. While these snapshots – glaring flash images set against dark backdrops – have a certain fleeting character and convey the impression of spontaneous shots, they are in fact the partly staged results of a development in the relationship between the photographer and the respective sitter. These people – individuals, couples or small groups – look towards the camera, towards the artist or their bodies are angled in his direction. Sometimes, they assume poses that seem grotesque. The series Fear poses the question of the photographer’s ambivalent role between the apparent objectivity of documentary photography and the importance of a subjective perspective. In essence, Gupta’s photographs focus on the human condition and search for a connection with marginalised groups in a society.
Soham Gupta (Indian, b. 1988)
Untitled
From the series Angst (2013-2017)
Collection Museum Folkwang Essen
Courtesy the artist
Soham Gupta (Indian, b. 1988)
Untitled
From the series Angst (2013-2017)
Collection Museum Folkwang Essen
Courtesy the artist
Soham Gupta (Indian, b. 1988)
Untitled
From the series Angst (2013-2017)
Collection Museum Folkwang Essen
Courtesy the artist
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