Around the world, 2025 hasn’t been a great year for photography exhibitions. As a friend of mine said on Facebook it has been a dreary year and I would tend to agree with him.
Curatorially, everything was pretty cut and dried, relying on the usual one artist show or group exhibition on a theme with nobody prepared to take a risk on anything creative, inventive even.
I found little to inspire me in terms of idiosyncratic but illuminating pairings of photographers or unusual insights into the conditions and conceptualisation of photographic production and presentation – other than a few of the exhibitions noted below: costume, gesture and expression – yes! the development of colour photography pre the ubiquitous American artists – yes! and the life in self-portraits of a photobooth operator in Melbourne, part magician, part artist – YES!
Out of the 60 postings on Art Blart in 2025 I’ve picked what I think are the 11 best exhibitions, plus a couple of honourable mentions.
I hope you enjoy the selection and a Happy New Year to you all!
Dr Marcus Bunyan
1/ Marcus Bunyan. “Past present,” on the exhibition Still Performing: Costume, Gesture, and Expression in 19th Century European Photography at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, August 2024 – January 2025
Victor Plumier (Belgian, 1820-1878) Lady in Costume About 1850 Daguerreotype, half plate 5 1/2 × 4 1/2 inches The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art Gift of the Hall Family Foundation
“The emotions and the sentiments, the gestures and the expressions. The actor and the stage, the photographer and the sitter. The staged photograph and the tableaux vivant. The Self and the Other.” ~ MB
2/ A Long Arc: Photography and the American South since 1845 at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, October 2024 – January 2025
Andrew Joseph Russell (American, 1829-1902) Slave Pen, Alexandria, Virginia 1863 Albumen silver print High Museum of Art Purchased with funds Lucinda Weill Bunnen Fund and the Donald and Marilyn Keogh Family
“Photographs are containers of, fragments of, memories of, histories of, events – remembrances of events – brought from past into present, informing the future, showing only snippets of the stories of both past and present lives. Parallel to the usual thought that photographs are about death, they are also memory containers for (still) living people.” ~ MB
3/ Marcus Bunyan. “Out in the midday sun,” on the exhibition Martin Parr. Early Works at Fotografie Forum Frankfurt (FFF), September 2024 – February 2025
“I am always fascinated with the early work of an artist. In essence, the photographs tell you what are the primary concerns for the artist and these themes usually remain with them for the rest of their career. These early black and white photographs provide a window into that ongoing investigation, that golden path. They are more subtle in their modulation of British life than in the later colour work – it’s as though the artist had to change gears with the use of colour developing a more ironic way of seeing British life through a different spatial relationship to his subjects – but in these photographs there is still that deprecating humour that is often missing in the work of his contemporaries…” ~ MB
“There are the things that are out in the open, and there are the things that are hidden, and life has more to do, the real world has more to do with what is hidden.” ~ Saul Leiter
5/ True Colors: Color in Photography from 1849 to 1955 at Albertina Modern, Vienna, January – April, 2025
Léon Vidal (French, 1833-1906) Oriental Onyx Sardonyx Cup (16th century) 1876 Photomechanical proof (photochromy using the Léon Vidal process) mounted on cardboard H. 20.8 ; L. 26.2 cm. Don Fondation Kodak-Pathé, 1983
“What a wonderful exhibition. It’s so exciting to see the history and development of colour photography pre the ubiquitous, American artists William Eggleston and Stephen Shore, much as I like both artists.” ~ MB
6/ The basement: photography from Prahran College (1968-1981) at the Museum of Australian Photography, Wheelers Hill, Melbourne, March – May 2025
Julie Millowick (Australian, b. 1948) Mother and child from 46 Blanche Street, St Kilda 1977 Gelatin silver print 15.9 x 23.7cm Museum of Australian Photography, City of Monash Collection donated by Julie Millowick 2024
“Prahran College itself played a critical role in the legitimisation of photography as an art form within Australia. It spearheaded the integration of art photography into tertiary education curricula, fostering an environment where young artists … could experiment formally and conceptually.”
James McArdle. “Epoch,” on the On This Date in Photography website, 25th April, 2025 [Online] Cited 28/04/2025
“The wit, the humour (pigeons sitting outside the racing pigeon shop), the stiff upper lip, the carry on regardless, the working class pantomime of life and death – the public commission flats where people formed caring communities that were destroyed through redevelopment – the integrity of an existence that has largely come and gone pictured with warmth and empathy.” ~ MB
8/ Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June – August 2025
Installation view of the exhibition Auto-Photo: A Life in Portraits at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, June – August, 2025 Photo: Marcus Bunyan
“Through the strip self-portraits Adler took while servicing and then testing the photobooths that he operated in Melbourne, Australia we become immersed in an archive of his world, the exhibition becoming a joyous ode to a man who devoted his life to photography (not in the traditional sense): in turns humorous and historical, a travelogue, his travelogue, through time and space.’ ~ MB
“Rodríguez’s moody, high contrast photographs of humanity and street scenes pictured from behind the wheel of his taxi in New York proffer an intuitive, empathetic and subjective view of the city and its people at a time of great economic and social upheaval…
Uncertain times, uncertain angles and perspectives, uncertain light give rise to a powerful body of work made certain by the talent of an impressive photographer. Glorious work.” ~ MB
10/ Marcus Bunyan. “Myths of the American West,” on the exhibition Richard Avedon ‘In the American West’ 1979-1984 at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris, April – October 2025
“Avedon, while undercutting the myth of the American West through his storytelling, doesn’t seek to document, exploit or misrepresent his subjects, but to subjectively present them as on a theatrical set devoid of scenery – where their very appearance becomes scene / seen. As he himself said, “My concern is… the human predicament; only what I consider the human predicament may simply be my own.”” ~ MB
“The Bechers’ typologies and grids, their topographic state, their same same photographs and perspectives of industrial sculptures and landscapes are anything but objective. Their pictorial grammar, underlaid by a conceptual approach to subject matter, continuously reflected in the systematics of capture and display (the juxtaposition of works together), is constantly undermined by the ghost in the machine – those viral codes of mutation and difference which cannot be controlled.” ~ MB
“Weems blends the poetic and conceptual in photographs and bodies of work which investigate history, identity, racism, executive and patriarchal power from the perspectives of female / Black American.
What a fabulous artist, a guide into circumstances seldom seen, now revealed.” ~ MB
Co-curators: Hripsimé Visser, former curator at Stedelijk Museum, Foam curator Claartje van Dijk, and exhibition designer Jeroen de Vries, in collaboration with NIOD Institute
Marius Meijboom (Dutch, 1911-1998) Hunger Winter February 1945 Marius Meijboom / Niod
Iconic photo of Henkie Holvast from the Jordaan, 9 years old
Resist!
The photograph of Henkie Holvast (February 1945, above) is an example of the famine the Nazis inflicted on the general population of the Netherlands during the last year of the Second World War.
I’ll leave you to make the correlation between these historical events and what is happening in Gaza today … and to understand the hypocrisy and evil of contemporary acts.
Like the photojournalists that are being targeted and killed for reporting the truth of the situation in Gaza, so these photographers would have been killed by the Nazis for photographing the occupation of the Netherlands if they had been caught.
“Verzet! Verzet!” (Resist! Resist!)
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Foam, Amsterdam for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“The exhibition The Underground Camera captures the hunger and hardship in Amsterdam during the final year of World War II, but also sheds light on the untold stories behind the images, offering fresh perspectives.”
“Verzet! Verzet!” (Resist! Resist!) is spray painted boldly on a public wall, confronting the public in Cas Oorthuys’s Verzetsleuzen op een schuilbunker Kwakersplein (Resistance slogans on a bunker at Kwakersplein), taken in Amsterdam between 1944-1945. In many ways this image serves as a visual manifesto for The Underground Camera, the new exhibition at Foam Amsterdam, articulating the collective’s commitment to resistance, subversion, and the political potential of the photographic image.
The Underground Camera, a group of Amsterdam based photographers, made the life-threatening and courageous decision to photograph the Nazi occupation of Holland, specifically the famine of 1944-45 in Amsterdam as a result of the Nazis blocking food transport. The photographers, recruited by members of the Dutch resistance, were tasked with making the unseen visible. The intention was to inform the Dutch government working in exile in London to advocate for food drops on their behalf while also documenting the conditions of the occupation, creating evidence in the event the Nazis would be held accountable. A general ban on photography was implemented in 1944 by the occupation, so The Underground Camera followed through with illegal acts carried out discreetly, often hiding the cameras under their garments.
Not only was participating in illegal acts under the Nazi occupation dangerous, but being associated with the resistance otten carried dire consequences. By highlighting the potential fatality of the mission, its dangerous conditions, and the equipment that was difficult to obtain at the time and often poor quality, Foam’s exhibit allows the audience to witness a quiet rebellion. A rebellion that is often overlooked not only in the history of photography, but in history as a whole.
With this exhibit, the courageous and inspiring group finally gets their time of recognition.
The Underground Camera, initially known as the more unassuming ‘Nederland Archief’ (Netherlands Archive), significantly contributed to the retelling of history regarding Germany’s occupation during the war, viewing the camera as both a witness and a weapon. The idea of the camera as a weapon is underscored by many academic discourses surrounding documentary war photography. A camera has the potential to become a tool of war whose target is completely dependent on the intention of the one shooting, but in this case of the camera has actively deconstructed propaganda while also holding the occupiers accountable.
There are many unknowns when it comes to this group. Who were the participating photographers, were any were caught, how were they organised, how did they operate, etc. This exhibition is giving them deserved institutional and academic recognition and advocates for their story to be told. The Underground Camera is an incredible show not only because it offers rare glimpses into the realities of war, but because the photographs are a product of courageous resilience.
Foam presents The Underground Camera, an exhibition that features work from Dutch photographers who captured the consequences of the German occupation during the 1944-45 ‘famine winter’ in Amsterdam.
The exhibition The Underground Camera is inspired by the celebrations of Amsterdam’s 750th anniversary and 80 years of liberation.
With their photographs, The Underground Camera group made a significant contribution to the image of the Second World War. The photographers were recruited by members of the resistance, with the aim of informing the Dutch government in London. They worked independently and under the dangerous conditions of an occupied city, with hard-to-obtain, often poor-quality equipment. The exhibition provides an impressive picture of the consequences of hunger and cold in the dismantled Amsterdam at the end of the war.
The group of photographers included Cas Oorthuys, Emmy Andriesse, Charles Breijer, Kryn Taconis, and Ad Windig, among others.
Charles Breijer (Dutch, 1914-2011) Charles Breijer photographs a German-requisitioned building near Vondelpark from his bicycle bag. He inadvertently captures his own shadow Spring 1945 Charles Breijer / Netherlands Photo Museum (NFM)
German guard post in front of the Kriegsmarine building at Emmaplein in Amsterdam. Visible in the foreground is the shadow of photographer Charles Breijer, operating his Rolleiflex camera from his pannier.
Charles Breijer (Dutch, 1914-2011) Andrea Domburg distracts bystanders while Margreet Meijboom-Van Konijnenburg takes the photo from her bag Nd Charles Breijer / Netherlands Photo Museum
Charles Breijer (Dutch, 1914-2011) Margreet Meijboom-van Konijnenbrug (right) demonstrates photographing from a shopping bag. Andrea Domburg, in a nurse’s uniform, accompanies her to keep an eye on the surroundings Nd Charles Breijer / Netherlands Photo Museum
In honour of Amsterdam’s 750th jubilee and the 80th remembrance of the Netherlands’ liberation, Foam presents The Underground Camera (De Ondergedoken Camera). The exhibition showcases images captured by the group of photographers who came to be known by the same name. They photographed the harsh realities of Amsterdam during the ‘Hunger Winter’ of 1944-1945, offering a rare glimpse into the courageous missions of the resistance group and their role in documenting the Nazi occupation. The exhibition features work by renowned Dutch photographers such as Cas Oorthuys, Charles Breijer and Emmy Andriesse.
The resistance group was led by Fritz Kahlenberg and Tonny van Renterghem. In November 1944, when the German administration banned public photography, they – alongside a network of fourteen photographers – worked in secrecy to document the occupation and the resistance. Their efforts, carried out at great personal risk, preserved a crucial visual record of this era. Kahlenberg, a German Jewish filmmaker who had migrated to Amsterdam in 1933, was involved in the forgery of identity cards for the resistance. Van Renterghem had a military background and was also actively involved in resistance work. Although he was not a photographer himself, he played a crucial role in the coordination between The Underground Camera and other resistance groups. The images taken by the photographers of The Underground Camera were intended to be smuggled to London to convince the Dutch government in exile of the need for Allied food droppings in the Netherlands. Today, the photos provide a realistic perspective of daily life in Amsterdam during the last months of the German occupation.
The historical material of the group was stored in various Dutch collections in the form of negatives, original photo prints, albums and picture books. The exhibition sheds light on topics such as the Hunger Winter, the resistance, the illegal press, instances of sabotage, the transport of weapons and the liberation by the Allied Forces.
The Underground Camera is the result of a close collaboration with the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. A publication by the same name, written by NIOD-researchers René Kok and Erik Somers, will be released in March 2025. The exhibition has been co-curated by Hripsimé Visser, former curator of photography at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, in collaboration with exhibition designer Jeroen de Vries.
The Mayor of Amsterdam, Femke Halsema, will open the exhibition at Foam.
The exhibition The Underground Camera is part of a research trajectory within Foam’s artistic programme, launched in early 2024 under the title The Camera as a Weapon, which included a pop-up exhibition of the same name and a symposium. In a time marked by conflict, Foam poses the question: what can photography do? Through this research line – which also includes the exhibition Sakir Khader – Yawm al-Firak – the museum responds to current events by presenting artistic practices in which the camera is used as a weapon. In light of the national observance of Remembrance Day on 4 May and the national celebration of Liberation Day on 5 May, het Amsterdams 4 en 5 mei comité, in collaboration with Foam en NIOD, will also present an exhibition. This public exhibition will be shown from 29th of April until the 6th of May on the Museumplein.
About The Underground Camera
Kahlenberg and Van Renterghem, the driving forces behind the operation, instructed a group of photographers from their main location at the Michelangelostraat 36 in Amsterdam South from where they oversaw their resistance activities. Many of the The Underground Camera photographers would later become internationally renowned. They concealed their cameras in handbags and jackets in order for them to take the pictures unnoticed. Many used Rolleiflex cameras which had a viewfinder on top, making it easier to take pictures from hip height. Given the danger of being involved in organised resistance, the photographers did not know who else was part of the collective and worked under neutral names such as ‘Netherlands Archive’ (‘Nederlands Archief’) and ‘Central Imagery Archive’ (‘Centraal Beeldarchief’). Just a few weeks after the liberation, in early June 1945, a selection of work was showcased in the exhibition The Underground Camera located in the studio of the photographer Marius Meijboom at the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam. The exhibition brought national recognition for The Underground Camera’s work, leading the group to officially adopt this name. Now, 80 years later, their legacy returns in a new exhibition along the same canal.
UNESCO included The Underground Camera in its Dutch Memory of the World Register, making it the first photographic legacy ever to receive this prestigious distinction.
The Underground Camera consisted of Tonny van Renterghem (1919-2009), Fritz Kahlenberg (1916-1996), Emmy Andriesse (1914-1953), Carel Blazer (1911-1980), Charles Breijer (1914-2011), Cornelis Holtzapffel (1916-1984), Ingeborg Kahlenberg-Wallheimer (1920-1996), Boris Kowadlo (1912-1959), Frits Lemaire (1921-2005), Marius Meijboom (1911-1998), Margreet Meijboom-van Konijnenburg (1910-onbekend), Cas Oorthuys (1908-1975), Hans Sibbelee (1915-2003), Ben Steenkamp (1917-1967), Ad Windig (1912-1996) and Krijn Taconis (1918-1979). Taconis was the first Dutch person to become a member of renowned international photography collective Magnum.
Press release from Foam
Margaretha van Konijnenburg (1910 – d.) Bicycle raid on the Weteringplantsoen in Amsterdam Autumn 1944
Hans Sibbelee (Dutch, 1915-2003) Children on Sarphatistraat remove the impregnated wooden blocks from between the tram rails, for the stove March 1945
The photographer took the photo from under his jacket
Krijn Taconis (Dutch, 1918-1979) Police officers guarding food supplies in the Amsterdam harbour to prevent looting will receive an extra meal Nd Krijn Taconis / Niod
Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953) On the way to the soup kitchen Nd BBWO2 / Leiden University Library
Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953) A man and a woman find some coal remains at the Weesperpoort station in Amsterdam Spring 1945
Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953) A boy eats a meal from a soup kitchen Nd
H.R. Kettner (Dutch, 1916 – d.) The distribution of groceries became increasingly difficult, resulting in long lines in front of, among other places, the Wijnbergh & Co. store on Middenweg Nd
Other photographs by The Underground Camera photographers
Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953) Amsterdam tijdens de hongerwinter (Amsterdam during the hunger winter) [1944-1945] Published 1947 Bound volume Closed: 29.21 x 22.86cm (11 1/2 x 9 in.) Open: 29.21 x 44.45cm (11 1/2 x 17 1/2 in.) National Gallery of Art Library, David K.E. Bruce Fund
Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953)
Emmy Eugenie Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953) was a Dutch photographer best known for her work with the Underground Camera group (De Ondergedoken Camera [nl]) during World War II. …
War years and the ‘Underground Camera’
In June 1941 Andriesse married graphic designer and visual artist Dick Elffers (a gentile with whom she had two sons, one who died young), but as a Jew during the Nazi occupation Andriesse was no longer able to publish and she was forced into hiding. At the end of 1944, with the assistance of the anthropologist Arie de Froe [nl] she forged an identity card and re-engaged in everyday life, joining a group of photographers, including Cas Oorthuys and Charles Breijer, working clandestinely as De Ondergedoken Camera. The photos that Andriesse made under very difficult conditions of famine in Amsterdam, include Boy with pan, The Gravedigger and Kattenburg Children are documents of hunger, poverty and misery during the occupation in the “winter of hunger” of 1944-1945.
Post-war
After the war, she became a fashion photographer and was an associate and mentor of Ed van der Elsken. She participated in the group show Photo ’48 and in 1952, together with Carel Blazer [nl], Eva Besnyö and Cas Oorthuys, the exhibition Photographie, both in Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum. Edward Steichen chose her 1947 portrait of a staid and elderly Dutch couple for the section ‘we two form a multitude’ in the Museum of Modern Art world-touring The Family of Man that was seen by an audience of 9 million. More recently (October 2006 – January 2007) she was included in a display of Twentieth Century European photography at the Barbican Art Gallery, London.
Andriesse’s last commission, the book The World of Van Gogh – published posthumously in 1953 – was not yet complete when she became ill and after a long battle with cancer, died at the age of 39.
Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953) Amsterdam tijdens de hongerwinter (Amsterdam during the hunger winter) (detail) 1947 Bound volume Closed: 29.21 x 22.86cm (11 1/2 x 9 in.) Open: 29.21 x 44.45cm (11 1/2 x 17 1/2 in.) National Gallery of Art Library, David K.E. Bruce Fund
Steeds grauwer werd het beeld de steden. Schoeisel en kleding raakten totaal versleten.
The image of the cities became increasingly grey. Footwear and clothing became totally worn out.
Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953) Amsterdam tijdens de hongerwinter (Amsterdam during the hunger winter) (detail) 1947 Bound volume Closed: 29.21 x 22.86cm (11 1/2 x 9 in.) Open: 29.21 x 44.45cm (11 1/2 x 17 1/2 in.) National Gallery of Art Library, David K.E. Bruce Fund
De etalages waren leeg of toonden alleen vervangingsmiddelen.
The shop windows were empty or only showed substitutes.
So many words, so much verbiage about the work of American artist Saul Leiter (1923-2013).
I’d rather not add to that noise.
It is well to reinforce the meaning of an image with text but it is not necessary.
Just be aware …. of the beauty of the image and your feelings towards it.
Lucidly, appreciate the integrity of the image.
Nothing more but certainly nothing less.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
PS. It’s wonderful to see the earlier black and white work, breadcrumb trail of the colour work to come.
Many thankx to Foam for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
“Photographs are often treated as important moments, but really they are fragments and souvenirs of an unfinished world.”
Saul Leiter
“I may be old-fashioned. But I believe there is such a thing as a search for beauty – a delight in the nice things in the world. And I don’t think one should have to apologise for it.”
Saul Leiter, In No Great Hurry, 2013
“His photos feel – as Akiko Atake puts it – like “quiet stolen glimpses”; moments plucked from the everyday and preserved in the eye of Leiter’s camera.”
“I’ve always felt a closeness to Japan in Leiter’s work; the photographs in the snow; the women under their umbrellas; the improbable perspectives and revolutionary compositions reminiscent of Japanese woodblocks, ukiyo-e; the presence of the seasons and the verticality of the compositions evoking Japanese scroll paintings, kakajiku; the beauty he found in cracks and broken surfaces, in the unfinished, the worn out, the imperfect – the endurance of the elements and the effects of time. There is a “mono no aware”* beauty to his photographs, in the color work especially – an acute awareness of the beauty of the transient, of the ephemeral, which might explain, in part, their magical and poetic essence.”
“Leiter was destined to become a rabbi like his father, but moved to New York to be a painter, then choosing photography – which appalled his father. Beginning in 1948, Leiter using an Argus C3 camera, then a Leica and a Rolleiflex
In the 2012 documentary, In No Great Hurry, Saul Leiter said: “There are the things that are out in the open, and there are the things that are hidden, and life has more to do, the real world has more to do with what is hidden.” These tender and graceful depictions of “the things that are hidden” – images that Leiter rarely showed – retain their essential mystery, defying interpretation.”
* mono no aware = a Japanese concept that describes a poignant awareness of the transient nature of existence, a sensitivity to the beauty of things that are fleeting, and a gentle sadness at their passing
Leiter’s love of beauty, Bonnard, Japan, Buddhism, Ukiyo-e prints, Japanese scroll paintings, “ma” (space), kyūdō, haiku.
“The unorthodox and seemingly disproportionate compositions… the emphasis on shapes; the presence of calligraphy; unusual viewpoints and perspectives, everyday subject matter; the ubiquity of women; and a fondness for the ordinary and the ephemeral”
~ Leiter’s complex and impressionistic photographs are as much about evoking an atmosphere as nailing the decisive moment.
~ Leiter was a keen observer as life unfolded before him, somehow finding a way to reliably pluck a sublime split-second out of a mundane moment. ‘I like to take things that are very common and to find something in them,’ he once said.
~ Photographs are often considered important moments, but according to Leiter they are tiny fragments of an unfinished world. Such is his own world: little fragments of images juxtaposed and conjoined, amassing and forming vast, ever-expanding fields.
~ He photographed that which obstructs, hides, encloses, and thus reveals new depths of reality.
~ Everything is a matter of balance, exactitude and humility in the works of this man, who nonetheless accorded great importance to imperfection.
Foam is proud to present a major retrospective exhibition of the celebrated American artist Saul Leiter (1923-2013). Leiter is seen as one of the most important photographers of the 1950’s in the United States and a pioneer of colour photography. This exhibition brings together over 200 works, consisting of photography, both black-and-white and colour, as well as his abstract paintings. His eclectic oeuvre reveals a practice using shadow, light, and reflections to craft layered compositions.
About the artist
Saul Leiter (1923-2013) began painting and photographing in his teenage years, gaining an early recognition for his paintings. After moving to New York in 1946, he turned to photography as a profession while continuing to paint. His abstract forms and groundbreaking compositions possess a painterly quality that distinguishes them from the works of other photographers of that era. His work significantly contributed to the emergence of what is now known as the New York School of photography.
In 1957, he began working for major publications like Esquire and Harper’s Bazaar, balancing his commercial success with his personal passion for street photography in his Manhattan neighbourhood. Leiter’s groundbreaking work in colour photography gained widespread acclaim with the release of his first book, Early Colour (2006). By the time of his death in 2013, Leiter had achieved international recognition, with his work featured in numerous museum exhibitions and publications worldwide.
Text from the Foam website
Installation views of the exhibition Saul Leiter – An Unfinished World at Foam, Amsterdam
Saul Leiter remained dedicated to painting throughout his career, producing many gouaches (opaque watercolours), which were essential to his artistic expression. While most of his works are abstract, with large areas of colour, some feature playful lines that suggest landscapes or figures. His expressive use of colour is distinctive, often favouring muted tones like soft violets, mauves, and faded ochres or yellows. Although Leiter is best known for his photography, his paintings reflect a similarly poetic and intimate vision of the world.
Text from the Foam Facebook page
Installation view of the exhibition Saul Leiter – An Unfinished World at Foam, Amsterdam showing Leiter’s photograph The Pull (c. 1960, below)
Leiter was a keen observer as life unfolded before him, somehow finding a way to reliably pluck a sublime split-second out of a mundane moment. ‘I like to take things that are very common and to find something in them,’ he once said.
Installation view of the exhibition Saul Leiter – An Unfinished World at Foam, Amsterdam showing Leiter’s photograph
Foam is proud to present a major retrospective exhibition of the celebrated American artist Saul Leiter (1923-2013). Leiter is seen as one of the most important photographers of the 1950’s in the United States, and a pioneer of colour photography. This exhibition brings together over 200 works, consisting of photography, both black-and-white and colour, as well as his abstract paintings. His eclectic oeuvre reveals a practice using shadow, light, and reflections to craft layered compositions. For nearly sixty years, Leiter photographed daily, capturing everyday moments of New York City life. With various techniques and mediums, and the use of telephoto lenses, Leiter would enhance the painterly quality of his images and transform seemingly mundane street scenes into visual poetry. New York, a symbol of modernity in the 1950s, became the backdrop for Leiter’s aesthetic discoveries.
By shooting in the rain and snow, and using windows and other reflective surfaces, he created abstract images. A red umbrella, a green traffic light, or the yellow flash of a passing taxi add an unexpected play of colour to his photographs. In the 1940s and 1950s, Leiter was virtually the only non-commercial photographer to work in colour. The use of aged or damaged film allowed him to include surprising compositions with shifts in light and colour. Once lost to obscurity, his work was rediscovered in the mid 2010s for its ground-breaking role in the emergence of colour photography.
By shooting in the rain and snow, and using windows and other reflective surfaces, he created abstract images. A red umbrella, a green traffic light, or the yellow flash of a passing taxi add an unexpected play of colour to his photographs. In the 1940s and 1950s, Leiter was virtually the only non-commercial photographer to work in colour. The use of aged or damaged film allowed him to include surprising compositions with shifts in light and colour. Once lost to obscurity, his work was rediscovered in the mid 2010s for its ground-breaking role in the emergence of colour photography.
Leiter was a self-taught photographer whose strong sense of curiosity made him a lifelong student. He maintained his experimental and spontaneous approach throughout his career, which is evident in both his street photography and fashion work.
Upon his death in 2013, Leiter left behind a remarkable collection of approximately 15,000 black-and-white prints, at least 40,000 colour slides, a similar number of black-and-white negatives and over 4000 paintings, only a handful of which have been seen publicly. The exhibition An Unfinished World offers visitors the chance to admire the endless poetry of Saul Leiter’s artistic practice through his paintings, photography and unique view on the world around him.
“This ambidextrous painter and photographer recognised no limits. If, in the silence of his studio, his movement inscribed on paper imperceptible little rhythmic abbreviations, like an everyday exercise, his gaze penetrated the tumult of the city, challenging what draws the eye and scrutinising what is not seen.”
“If only we give them just a little more attention, these voices also tell us that the images are fragments containing enigmas, and that they journey through time and endure, intact, despite the darkness that may prevail in the world.”
“For nearly sixty years, Leiter photographed daily, capturing everyday moments of New York City life. With various techniques and mediums, and the use of telephoto lenses, Leiter would enhance the painterly quality of his images and transform seemingly mundane street scenes into visual poetry. New York, a symbol of modernity in the 1950s, became the backdrop for Leiter’s aesthetic discoveries. By shooting in the rain and snow, and using windows and other reflective surfaces, he created abstract images. A red umbrella, a green traffic light, or the yellow flash of a passing taxi add an unexpected play of color to his photographs. In the 1940s and 1950s, Leiter was virtually the only non-commercial photographer to work in color. The use of aged or damaged film allowed him to include surprising compositions with shifts in light and color.”
Varvara Stepanova (Russian, 1894-1958) Red Army Men 1930 Photomontage for Abroad magazine
A bumper posting on a fascinating subject. The portrait of Tolstoy is incredible; more poignant are the photographs pre-World War I (the last days of the Tsarist dynasty), and pre-World War 2 (Portrait of Yury Rypalov, below). People stare into the camera with no idea of the maelstrom about to descend…
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to Foam for allowing me to publish the text and photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Boris Mikhailov (Ukranian, b. 1938) Untitled 1971-1985 From the series Luriki
The exhibition Primrose – Russian Colour Photography takes place as part of Netherlands-Russia 2013. The title refers to the primrose flower, used metaphorically here to represent the many colours in which it appears during early spring. Primrose – Russian Colour Photography presents a retrospective of the various attempts in Russia to produce coloured photographic images. This process began in the early 1850s, almost simultaneously with the discovery of the new medium itself. The colouring technique, based on the traditional methods of craftsmen who added colour into a certain contour design, has determined a whole independent trend in the history of photography in Russia, from ‘postcard’ landscapes and portraits to Soviet propaganda and reportage photography.
The use of colour in Russia stems from the early 1850s and practically coincides with the invention of the medium itself. The term colour photography is slightly disingenuous, since at first it referred to a toning technique in which black and white photographs were painted by hand. Traditionally this technique was used by specialised tradesmen who added colour to the photographs according to certain methods and within the contours of the image. This technique became so popular that it started a trend in and of itself and to a large extent determined the appearance and aesthetics of colour photography in Russia. Initially used especially for portraits, Pictorialist landscapes and nudes, it later also found favour with avant-garde artists. Interestingly enough these aesthetics also formed the starting point for Soviet propaganda and for portraits, political leaders and reportage.
Primrose – Russian Colour Photography can be viewed as a journey through various techniques and genres, meanings and messages, mass practices and individual experiments. The exhibition contains works by renowned photographers and artists such as Sergey Produkin-Gorsky, Ivan Shagin, Dmitry Baltermants and Robert Diament. But is also shows unique photos of Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stephanova, and recent works from the famous Luriki series by Boris Mikhailov, in which he mocked the visual culture of the Soviet propaganda.
Press release from the Foam website [Online] Cited 24/03/2020. No longer available online
Installation photographs of the exhibition Primrose – Russian Colour Photography at Foam, Amsterdam showing in the bottom image at second left, Dmitry Baltermants’s Men’s talk (1950, above); and at second right, Dmitry Baltermants’s Rain (1960s, above)
Installation photographs of the exhibition Primrose – Russian Colour Photography at Foam, Amsterdam showing at left, Elena Mrozovskaya’s Portrait of girl in Little Russia costume. Saint Petersburg (1900s, below)
Primrose
This exhibition with the metaphorical title Primrose demonstrates the appearance and development of colour in Russian photography from the 1860s to 1970s, and at the same time reveals the history of Russia in photography. With examples of works from classics of Russian photography such as P. Pavlov, K. Bergamasko, A. Eikhenvald, A. Rodchenko, V. Mikoshi, G. Petrusov, D. Baltermants and B. Mikhailov, as well as unknown photographers, we can see how life in Russia changed in the course of a century as it endured historical and socio-political catastrophes, also the diverse roles that photography played during this period.
Colour became widespread in Russian photography at approximately the same time as in Europe – in the 1860s. This was dependent on the manual tinting of photographic prints with watercolour and oil paints, either by the photographers themselves or by artists working with them. Above all this applies to solo or family portraits commissioned as a keepsake. The photographic studios of Nechayev, Ushakov & Eriks and Eikhenvald produced thousands of tinted portraits that became an important part of the domestic interior.
People were eager to see their own image in colour, and moreover in a picturesque form. The colouring of early photographic shots could also hide imperfections in the prints, including those introduced on albumenised paper. With time this paper turned yellow. To conceal this, the paper was tinted green, pink and other colours and coloured with watercolours, gouache, oils, or later aniline dyes. Sometimes the photograph was partially redrawn during the process of tinting, and foliate embellishments or different items of interior decoration appeared in the background.
By the end of the 19th century, by the 1880s and 1890s, colour photography was extended to architectural, landscape and industrial subject matter. For instance, the photographic studio of the Trinity and St. Sergius Monastery (photographic studios attached to Russian monasteries became a very common phenomenon) produced numerous coloured architectural images of Orthodox churches.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries Russia was on the one hand undergoing active europeanisation, as reflected in the style of architectural structures, interiors, costume and way of life, but meanwhile there was also a search for national identity, and new interest in the national particularities of inhabitants in the Russian Empire. Entire series of tinted photographs appeared, depicting people in national costumes – Russian, Tatar, Caucasian, Ukrainian, and so on.
With the industrial boom of the late 19th and early 20th centuries people began to decorate their walls not only with tinted landscapes, but also photographs of industrial structures (eg Dmitri Yezuchevsky’s photograph Building the Bridge). In the early 20th century, in the 1910s, coloured photographs of Russian military officers, an important social class before the outbreak of the First World War, were particularly popular.
The photographic documentation of life in the Russian Empire in the early 20th century acquired the status of a State objective, largely because Tsar Nicholas II and his family were enthusiastic amateur photographers. In May 1909 Emperor Nicholas II gave an audience to the photographer Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky. In 1902 Prokudin-Gorsky had first announced a technique for creating colour photographs, and in 1903 he published a brochure entitled ‘Isochromatic Photography with Manual Cameras’. Prokudin-Gorsky used black-and-white plates sensitised according to his own formulae, and a camera of his own construction. Three rapid shots were taken successively through light filters coloured blue, green and red (the photographer managed to reduce the exposure time to an absolute minimum). From this triple negative a triple positive was prepared. A projector with three lenses in front of three frames on the photographic plate was used to view the shots. Each frame was projected through a colour filter of the same colour as that through which it had been photographed. A full-colour image appeared on the screen as the three images combined. Prokudin-Gorsky succeeded in making polygraphic reproductions of his shots, printed in the form of photo cards, and also as inserts for illustrated magazines.
Delighted with this invention, Emperor Nicholas II asked the photographer to take colour photographs of every aspect of life in the various regions that then constituted the Russian Empire. For this the photographer was issued with a specially equipped railway car. The government provided him with a small manned steamship able to traverse the shallows for his work on waterways, and a motorboat for the River Chusova. A Ford automobile was dispatched to Yekaterinburg for his shots of the Urals and the Ural mountain range. Prokudin-Gorsky was presented with official imperial documents that gave him access to all parts of the Empire, and government officials were ordered to assist Prokudin-Gorsky on his travels.
Meanwhile autochrome pictures by the Lumière brothers, with whom Prokudin-Gorsky worked after emigrating from Soviet Russia, became very popular in early 20th-century Russia. Autochromes, colour transparencies on a glass backing, were first produced on an industrial scale in 1907. Granules of potato starch tinted red, yellow and blue were applied to a glass plate. The granules worked as colour filters. Addition of a second layer of granules provided orange, violet and green hues. After that a light-sensitive emulsion was applied. The plate was exposed and developed. Autochromes could be viewed against the light, or projected with the aid of special apparatus, which at that time was manufactured by the Lumière brothers’ own company (diascopes, chromodiascopes, mirrored stereoscopes, etc.). The Lumière brothers’ autochromes were used, for example, by Pyotr Vedenisov, a prosperous nobleman and graduate of the Moscow Conservatoire, who settled in Yalta, in the Crimea, in the late 1880s. As was the case with the Lumière brothers’ autochromes, Vedenisov’s favoured subject matter was the photographer’s own family life. However, what was at first sight very private and personal photography later provided an excellent description of the typical lifestyle enjoyed by educated Russian noblemen in the early 20th century.
The onset of the First World War in 1914 and October Revolution in 1917 annihilated the Russia whose memory is preserved in the tinted photographs and autochromes of the second half of the 19th to early 20th centuries.
Vladimir Lenin and the new Soviet government actively supported photography in the early post-revolutionary years, seeing it as an important propaganda weapon for a country where 70% of the population were unable to read or write. At first there was emphasis on photo reportage, but very soon it became clear real change in a country where hunger and devastation ruled after the Revolution and Civil War was as insubstantial as the utopian dreams of ardent revolutionaries. From the mid-1920s photomontage was widespread in the Soviet Union, enthusiastically encouraged by the Bolsheviks. Photomontage allowed for a combination of documentary veracity and the new Soviet myths. In the 1920s it was practised by such highly talented modernists as A. Rodchenko, G. Klutsis, El Lissitzky, V. Stepanova and others. Photomontage embraced colour and became an ideological ‘visual weapon’.
From the mid-1920s A. Rodchenko regenerated the forgotten technique of hand colouring his own photographs. His use of tinting profited from his experience with photomontage (Mosselprom House Advertising Wall, Dynamo Running Stadium, etc.), and he also applied it to develop experiments with positive-negative printing (scenes from the film Albidum) and for very personal and even intimate portraits of his muse Regina Lemberg – Girl with Watering Can. In 1937, at the height of Stalin’s repression, A. Rodchenko began photographing classical ballet and opera, using the arsenal of his aesthetic opponents, the Russian Pictorialists, who by that time were subject to even harsher repression in the Soviet Union than modernist photographers. For Alexander Rodchenko soft focus, classical subject matter and toning typical of pictorial photography were a mediated way of expressing his internal escapism and tragic disillusionment with the Soviet utopia.
In 1932 general rules for socialist realism were published in the USSR, as the only creative method for all forms of art, including photographic. Soviet art had to reflect Soviet myths about the happiest people in the happiest country, not real life and real people. On this Procrustean bed it was hard not only for modernism with its constructivist aesthetics, but even Pictorialism, to fit into the aesthetics of Socialist realism.
Pictorialism was one of the most important tendencies of early 20th-century Russian photography, and Russian Pictorialist photographers were awarded gold and silver medals at international exhibitions. Pictorial photography differed not only by the method of shooting and complex printing techniques intended to bring photography closer to painting, but also by the selection of traditional themes. Romantic landscapes and architectural ruins or nude studies were from the point of view of socialist realism dangerous remnants from the past. Some of the Pictorialist photographers ended up in Stalin’s prison camps, and were forbidden from practising their profession or settling in the capital or other large cities. Those who remained at liberty – for example, Vasily Ulitin, a participant in major international photo exhibitions and recipient of medals and diplomas in Paris, London, Berlin, Los Angeles, Toronto, Tokyo and Rome – tried with difficulty to adapt to the new reality and attempted to depict revolutionary subjects (Flames of Paris, Red Army Soldier), thereby gaining indulgence and the right to work from the Bolsheviks.
Almost simultaneously, in 1936 the German company Agfa and American company Kodak introduced colour film. Broad distribution and introduction to the amateur photography market were delayed by the outbreak of the Second World War. In the USSR colour photography only appeared at the end of the war. Production of Soviet-made colour film in the USSR was facilitated by German trophy equipment in 1946. From that year onwards Ivan Shagin and several other photographers began to relay their colour news chronicle to the country.
Before 1946 colour photographs of Soviet Russia were made only in isolated cases, on German or American film. Until the mid-1970s, in the USSR negative film for printing colour photographs was a luxury only available to a few official photographers who worked for major Soviet publications. It was used by such classics of Soviet photography as V. Mikosha, G. Petrusov, D. Baltermants, V. Tarasevich, and others. All of them were in one way or another obliged to follow the canons of socialist realism and practise staged reportage. In those days even still life studies of fruit bore an ideological message, being photographed for cookery books in which the Soviet people could see produce that remained absent in a hungry postwar country, where the ration-card system of food distribution was still functioning (Ivan Shagin, Lemons and Fruit, 1949).
From the late 1950s, in the Khrushchev Thaw after the debunking of Stalin’s cult of personality, the canons of socialist realism softened and permitted a certain freedom in aesthetics, allowing photography to move closer to reality (Dmitri Baltermants’ series Arbat Square). In the postwar period, during the 1950s to 1960s life gradually improved and coloured souvenir photo portraits again appeared on the mass market. They were usually produced by unknown and ‘unofficial’ photographers, since private photo studios that had carried out such commissions since the mid-19th century were now forbidden, and the State exercised a total monopoly on photography by the 1930s. Boris Mikhailov copied and enlarged such kitsch colour photographs as souvenirs to supplement his income at his photo laboratory in Kharkov in the early 1970s. He began collecting them. They form the basis for a new aesthetics he developed in the Lyrics series from the early 1980s. By tinting these naïve photographs he revealed and deconstructed the nature of Soviet myths.
Colour transparency film appeared on the Soviet mass market in the 1960s and 1970s. As opposed to colour negative film that requires a complicated and expensive development process for subsequent printing, colour slide film could be developed even in domestic surroundings. Above all it was widely used by amateurs, who created transparencies that could be viewed at home with a slide projector. An unofficial art form emerging in the USSR at this time developed the aesthetics and means for a new artistic conceptualisation of reality, quite different from the socialist realism that still prevailed, although somewhat modified. Photography took a significant role in this unofficial art. It was in the late 1960s and early 1970s that Boris Mikhailov began photographing his series Suzi Et Cetera on colour slide film.
More than half a century of Soviet power after the 1917 Revolution radically altered Russia. The surrounding reality has fallen into decline, and people brought up on Soviet slogans never thought to pay attention. But this was the only reality offered by our perception, and Boris Mikhailov tries to develop its colour, humanise it with his attention and give it the right of existence. Photography textbooks of that period were made up of one-third technical formulae and two-thirds description of what to photograph, and how. The photographer was certainly not required or even allowed to take nude studies. Corporeality and sexuality are inherent signs of an independent individual, of selfhood. The Soviet system specifically tried to level out any sense of selfhood, smothering it and challenging such ideas with the collective community and the impersonal ‘we’ of the Soviet nation. In photographing Suzi Et CeteraBoris Mikhailov disrupts the norms and reveals characters, his own and that of his subjects. It was impossible to show these shots in public, but slides could be projected at home, in the workshops of his artist friends or the small, often semi-underground clubs of the scientific and technical intelligentsia, who began to revive during Khrushchev’s Thaw after the Stalinist repression. Boris Mikhailov’s slide projections are now analogous to the apartment exhibitions of unofficial art. By means of colour he displayed the dismal standardisation and squalor of surrounding life, and his slide performances helped to unite people whose consciousness and life in those years began to escape from the dogmatic network of Soviet ideology, which permitted only one colour – red.
Curator Olga Sviblova Director, Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow
Boris Mikhailov (Ukranian, b. 1938) Untitled 1971-1985 From the series Luriki
Vladislav Mikosha (Russian, 1909-2004) Portrait of Yury Rypalov 1938-1939
The scenes in Vedenisov’s autochromes take place in Yalta or in the Simbirsk Government, where the Kozakov family, the photographer’s relations, resided. Piotr Vedenisov chooses his models among the members of this single large family. Vedenisov’s photos are mostly staged portraits. Other subjects include everyday life and travelling, feasts, pets, interiors and landscapes. Vedenisov’s autochromes are shot over a relatively short period of time, roughly from 1909 to 1914.
About the photographer
Piotr Ivanovich Vedenisov (1866-1937) was a Russian nobleman living in Yalta, who graduated at the Moscow Conservatorium in 1888. Beside his ultimate passion for music, he was enthusiastic about the history of Crimea and photography. In the early 20th century, Vedenisov masters a technical innovation: he could make colour autochromes on glass. It was a technique of creating works in colour, based on three stages of consecutive shooting through colour filters. It was further developed by the Lumière brothers who succeeded in placing all the filters on a single plate.
Text from the Foam website Nd [Online] Cited 19/09/2022
Exhibition dates: 16th December 2011 – 14th March 2012
Foam Curator Colette Olof on Joel Sternfeld
In mid-December Foam will present the first major retrospective exhibition in the Netherlands of the work of Joel Sternfeld (1944, New York), one of the pioneers of colour photography. Foam will be showing more than one hundred photos from ten different series in an exhibition spanning two floors. A highlight is Sternfeld’s early work from the 1970s, which has never been previously exhibited. A large selection from famed series such as AmericanProspects, the result of his legendary journey through the United States, and Stranger Passing will also be on show. A constant factor in his work is his native land America, its inhabitants and the traces left by people on the landscape. With a subtle feeling for irony and an exceptional feeling for colour, Sternfeld offers us an image of daily life in America over the last three decades.
New Color Photography
Along with William Eggleston and Stephen Shore, Sternfeld saw to it that colour photography became a respected artistic medium in the 1970s. Until that time, colour was used widely in advertising and amateur photography, but was rarely seen in museums and galleries. Sternfeld was influenced by the colour theory of the Bauhaus and by the work of William Eggleston, whose exhibition in MoMA in 1976 marked the official acceptance of colour photography in the art world.
Early Work
A typical ‘street photographer’ style can be recognised in Sternfeld’s early and as yet unknown work, using a 35mm camera, to record everyday life in America. This work already contained the characteristics that made his later work so successful. In 1978, Joel Sternfeld began a long journey through the United States. For eight years he crisscrossed his homeland and recorded everything he encountered with his large-format camera. His investigation into the landscape and people moving within it resulted in the American Prospects series (1979-1983). In Stranger Passing (1987-2000) Sternfeld concentrated on people. He photographed them in an unambiguous way: from the same distance and looking directly into the camera. This series is a portrait of a society, comparable to the magnum opus of August Sander in the early twentieth century. Just as in American Prospect, there is evidence of a light absurdism as well as sympathy for those being portrayed.
The American Landscape
For the On This Site series (1993-1996), Sternfeld photographed urban and rural locations which were at first glance unremarkable. In the accompanying text, however, it becomes clear that these were the locations of ‘crime passionnels’, racial violence and stabbings. The photos thus acquire an entirely different connotation. In Sweet Earth (1993-2005) Sternfeld shows alternative lifestyles and communities which have arisen in America over the past two centuries. He travelled to the homes and communities of people that do not fit into conventional lifestyles and instead pursue another way of life. In Oxbow Archive (2005-2007) Sternfeld depicts the effects of the changing seasons on the landscape and how human behaviour influences nature.”
![Heinrich Riebesehl (German, 1938-2010) 'Menschen Im Fahrstuhl, 20.11.1969' [People in the Elevator, 20.11.1969] 1969](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2-typologien_heinrich-riebesehl_siae_sm.jpg "Heinrich Riebesehl (German, 1938-2010) 'Menschen Im Fahrstuhl, 20.11.1969' [People in the Elevator, 20.11.1969] 1969")
![Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953) 'Amsterdam tijdens de hongerwinter' (Amsterdam during the hunger winter) [1944-1945] book published 1947](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/5280-082-small.jpg "Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953) 'Amsterdam tijdens de hongerwinter' (Amsterdam during the hunger winter) [1944-1945] book published 1947")
![Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953) 'Amsterdam tijdens de hongerwinter' (Amsterdam during the hunger winter) [1944-1945] book published 1947 (detail)](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/5280-082-detail1.jpg "Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953) 'Amsterdam tijdens de hongerwinter' (Amsterdam during the hunger winter) [1944-1945] book published 1947 (detail)")
![Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953) 'Amsterdam tijdens de hongerwinter' (Amsterdam during the hunger winter) [1944-1945] book published 1947 (detail)](https://artblart.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/5280-082-detail2.jpg "Emmy Andriesse (Dutch, 1914-1953) 'Amsterdam tijdens de hongerwinter' (Amsterdam during the hunger winter) [1944-1945] book published 1947 (detail)")
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