Hans Aarsman (Dutch, b. 1951) 1236 sheets of negatives from the 1980s, thrown away on 19 August 2004 2004
Hans Aarsman presents From Ugly to Pretty and Back Again. The Mysterious Ways of Beauty in Photography.
In this lecture Hans Aarsman examines the myriad of questions involved in taking photographs for purposes as varied as advertising, documentation and personal mementos. How does our understanding of the beauty in these images differ depending their final resting place, be it Ebay, family album, specialist magazines or museums collections. Through his own experiences Aarsman asks if, and how, artistic ambitions, aesthetics and useful photography can coincide.
Hans Aarsman (b. 1951, NL) worked as a photojournalist until 1994. He currently works as a writer, in particular on photography, and is co-founder of the magazine Useful Photography. Aarsman displayed, and invited contributions to, his project Photography Against Consumerism here at The Photographers’ Gallery last July. He is based in Amsterdam.
£5.00/ £3.50 concessions
The Photographers Gallery 16-18 Ramillies Street London W1F 7LW
Exhibition dates: 13th January – 7th February, 2009
Opening: Tuesday 13th January, 2009
“I never work with the intention to decorate things or to make them look prettier. I try to discover the soul of an object or the essence of a photograph – I want to shape something new which appeals to me and to other people far beyond the optical appearance.”
Bettina Speckner
A very social crowd was in attendance for the opening of an exhibition by German jeweller Bettina Speckner at Gallery Funaki in Melbourne. The jewellery was certainly ravishingly made: refined, beautiful and with an elegance to most of the pieces. Interspersed between the jewellery were colour photographs of about A4 size that featured empty chairs, red benches, huts in the landscape and plants. These photographs seemed to have a very loose association to the form and imagery of the jewellery and were very minor photographs. I was not sure of their actual relevance to the pieces themselves.
Speckner uses a lot of imagery in her jewellery – tintype portraits from the Victorian era, grey etched images of gardens and vases studded with jewels and crystalline forms that have an almost solarised graphite feel to them and flowers, statues, pillars and cows etched into enamel. In these sites of intervention she seeks to make new worlds – inner/outer worlds that e-merge out of the material / worlds that are present and have ‘presence’.
The best work combines enamel, intaglio, jewels and photographic processes together. The art transcends the materials of each and coalesces in objects that transport the viewer – forming other associations, new insights into the condition of the object.
As the artist sees, this is not so much about the memories, cultural significance and semiotics embedded in the photograph but about making something new. For me this is where the problems lies.
Is it inevitable that there is a history and association present with these images or is the viewer culturally able to see them as new objects – in a postmodern sense?
It is almost as though Speckner does want these associations present between the jewellery and the images, why else put the colour photographs between the jewellery – or is this another example of her dissociative technique coming into play. Speckner seems to have purchased the memory of the object (which it still holds) but then wants to completely overwrite it – is this possible?
Personally I don’t think this is fully possible. While no ‘grand narrative’ is present in some of these images (some images seem to be so removed from their context that we will never be able to place them again) in other pieces the images overpower the art. The ‘trace’ of memory and identity, an entity for a split second before a camera, their unique state in this singular tintype, their actual presence and life not so easily destroyed!
When an artist seeks to justify work without fully understanding the cultural implications of the use of such images, even saying she seeks to find the soul of an object when the soul may already exist in another form, then in my eyes the work is unresolved, the vision uneven. Despite the beauty of the art, its refinement and great craftmanship, there is something lacking at the heart of these works – perhaps a deeper understanding that the soul can reside in optical appearance, that less may be more and that transcendence is more than skin deep.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Bettina Speckner opening crowd at Gallery Funaki, Melbourne
Bettina Speckner jewellery
Gallery Funaki
Sackville House
Apartment 33
27 Flinders Lane
Melbourne 3000
Australia
Opening hours:
Wednesday – Friday 12 – 5pm
Saturday on occasion (check our socials) or by appointment
Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973) Gloria Swanson (Vanity Fair, February 1, 1924) 1924 Gelatin silver print The Sylvio Perlstein Collection Courtesy of Condé Nast Archive, Condé Nast Publications, Inc, New York/ Paul Hawryluk, Dawn Lucas and Rachael Smalley
As part of the International Center of Photography’s 2009 Year of Fashion, the museum will host a retrospective of Edward Steichen’s fashion and celebrity portraiture. Edward Steichen: In High Fashion, The Condé Nast Years, 1923-1937, will be on view at ICP (1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street) from January 16 through May 3, 2009. It will feature 175 vintage photographs, drawn mainly from the extensive archive of original prints at Condé Nast, along with a selection of important prints from the collection of the George Eastman House Museum. This will be the first exhibition in which the full range of his fashion photography and celebrity portraiture will be shown, including many images that have never been exhibited before. Having previously traveled throughout Europe, the exhibition will be presented on its North American tour in this version only at ICP.
Edward Steichen (1879-1973) was already a famed Pictorialist photographer and painter in the United States and abroad when he was offered the position of chief photographer for Vogue and Vanity Fair by Condé Nast. Upon assuming the job, the forty-four year old artist began one of the most lucrative and controversial careers in photography. To Alfred Stieglitz and his followers, Steichen was seen as damaging the cause of photography as a fine art by agreeing to do commercial editorial work. Nevertheless, Steichen’s years at Condé Nast magazines were extraordinarily prolific and inspired. He began by applying the soft focus style he had helped create to the photography of fashion. But soon he revolutionised the field, banishing the gauzy light of the Pictorialist era and replacing it with the clean, crisp lines of Modernism. In the process he changed the presentation of the fashionable woman from that of a distant, romantic creature to that of a much more direct, appealing, independent figure. At the same time he created lasting portraits of hundreds of leading personalities in movies, theatre, literature, politics, music, and sports, including Gloria Swanson, Gary Cooper, Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, Colette, Winston Churchill, Amelia Earhart, Jack Dempsey, Noel Coward, Greta Garbo, Dorothy Parker, and Cecil B. De Mille.
From the ArtDaily.org website
Many thankx to the International Center of Photography for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973) On George Baher’s yacht 1928 Gelatin silver print Courtesy Condé Nast Archive
Edward Steichen (American, 1879-1973) Gary Cooper 1930 Gelatin silver print Courtesy Condé Nast Archive
Princess Natalia Pavlovna Paley (Russian: Наталья Павловна Палей; 5 December 1905 – 27 December 1981) was a Russian aristocrat who was a non-dynastic member of the Romanov family. A daughter of Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia, she was a first cousin of the last Russian emperor, Nicholas II. After the Russian Revolution, she emigrated first to France and later to the United States. She became a fashion model, socialite, vendeuse, and briefly pursued a career as a film actress.
Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first author from the United States (and the first from the Americas) to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded “for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humour, new types of characters.” Lewis wrote six popular novels: Main Street (1920), Babbitt (1922), Arrowsmith (1925), Elmer Gantry (1927), Dodsworth(1929), and It Can’t Happen Here (1935).
Several of his notable works were critical of American capitalism and materialism during the interwar period. Lewis is respected for his strong characterisations of modern working women.
Patricia Bowman (December 12, 1908 – March 18, 1999) was an American ballerina, ballroom dancer, musical theatre actress, television personality, and dance teacher.
Dance critic Jack Anderson described her as “the first American ballerina to win critical acclaim and wide popularity as a classical and a musical-theater dancer … Her sparkling stage personality won her many fans.” She was the first prima ballerina of the Radio City Music Hall when it opened in 1932, and is chiefly remembered for her work as a founding member of the American Ballet Theatre with whom she was a principal dancer from 1939 to 1941.
An exhibition of 175 works by Edward Steichen drawn largely from the Condé Nast archives, this is the first presentation to give serious consideration to the full range of Steichen’s fashion images. Organised by the Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, and the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, Minneapolis, in conjunction with the International Center of Photography, the exhibition will open at ICP after an extensive tour in Europe. Steichen’s approach to fashion photography was formative and over the course of his career he changed public perceptions of the American woman. An architect of American Modernism and a Pictorialist, Steichen exhibited his fashion images alongside his art photographs. Steichen’s crisp, detailed, high-key style revolutionised fashion photography, and his influence is felt in the field to this day – Richard Avedon, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Bruce Weber are among his stylistic successors.
Text from the International Centre of Photography website
Wong Liu Tsong (January 3, 1905 – February 3, 1961), known professionally as Anna May Wong, was an American actress, considered the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood, as well as the first Chinese American actress to gain international recognition. Her varied career spanned silent film, sound film, television, stage, and radio.
Sylvia Sidney (born Sophia Kosow; August 8, 1910 – July 1, 1999) was an American stage, screen, and film actress whose career spanned 70 years. She rose to prominence in dozens of leading roles in the 1930s. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams in 1973. She later gained attention for her role as Juno, a case worker in the afterlife, in Tim Burton’s 1988 film Beetlejuice, for which she won a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress.
Pola Negri (/ˈpoʊlə ˈnɛɡri/; born Barbara Apolonia Chałupiec [apɔˈlɔɲa xaˈwupʲɛt͡s]; 3 January 1897 – 1 August 1987) was a Polish stage and film actress and singer. She achieved worldwide fame during the silent and golden eras of Hollywood and European film for her tragedienne and femme fatale roles. She was also acknowledged as a sex symbol of her time.
Loretta Young (born Gretchen Michaela Young; January 6, 1913 – August 12, 2000) was an American actress. Starting as a child, she had a long and varied career in film from 1917 to 1989. She received numerous honors including an Academy Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and three Primetime Emmy Awards as well as two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her work in film and television.
“As actual space is increasingly made to resemble virtual constructions, so too does the virtual become more real. People go on about computer graphics and simulation programs achieving an ever greater degree of realism, but I think it is not because the programs are getting better at emulating the world but because the real world is increasingly based on these programs.”
Stephen Haley. ‘Place into Space’. Melbourne: Nellie Castan Gallery, 2008, p. 19. Exhibition catalogue.
William Clift (American, b. 1944) Somebody’s House, Baltimore, Maryland, 1964 1964
from the book
Certain Places Photographs and Introduction by William Clift. William Clift Editions, Santa Fe, 1987. 44 pp., twenty-two tritone illustrations.
One of the most ravishing photographic books ever produced. Sensitive photography, luminous images, wonderful reproductions on quality stock. Nothing more need be said. My favourite of so many great images is above.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
All photographs are used under fair use conditions for the purpose of education and research. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
William Clift (American, b. 1944) Apple Blossoms, Velarde, New Mexico, 1973 1973
William Clift (American, b. 1944) Desert Form No. 1, New Mexico, 1984 1984
William Clift (American, b. 1944) Untitled 1976 From the County Courthouse series Gelatin silver print 16.5 h x 13 w inches
Andreas Gursky banner at NGV International exhibition, Melbourne
A large but plain crowd assembled for the opening of the first exhibition by world renowned German photographer Andreas Gursky at the National Gallery of Victoria in St Kilda Road, Melbourne. After some lively conversation with friends and following the opening speeches we wandered into a large clean gallery space with minimal design elements. The use of space within the gallery allowed the work to speak for itself. It is a minimal hang and the exhibition works all the better for this.
As for the work itself 21 large photographs are presented ranging from landscapes to buildings, race tracks to formula 1 pits, Madonna concerts to the Tour de France. Most work successfully in building a hyperreal vision of the world. We are not sure what is ‘real’ or hyperreal, what is a straight photograph or what has been digitally manipulated and woven together. The colour and sharpness of the images is often intensified: in reproductions of the famous photograph of the 99c supermarket in America the colours seem flat but ‘in the flesh’ the colours are almost fluoro in their saturation and brightness.
Having said that the photographs are nearly always unemotional – as though seen from above in the third person, they observe with detachment. The intrigue for the viewer is in the detail, in working out what is going on, but these are not passionate photographs on the surface. It is beneath the surface that the photographs have their psychological effect: the best of the images work on the subconscious of the viewer. Like a fantastical dance the three very wide images of the Formula 1 pits feature pit crews practicing tyre changes, frozen in a choreographed ballet. People in the galleries above stare down; pit lane girls seem to have been inserted digitally into the images, standing at side or behind the pit crews in a seemingly surreal comment on these worlds. These are theatrical tableaux vivant, splashed with teams colours. Fantastic photographs.
In some of the images, such as the Madonna concert or the photograph of the Bahrain Formula 1 racetrack, space seems to have folded in on itself and the viewer is unsure of the structure of the image and of their vantage point in looking at them. Space also collapses in the photograph of the pyramid of Cheops (2006, below), where the depth of field from foreground to background of the image is negligible. Less successful are images of a Jackson Pollock painting and a green grass bank with running river (Rhein II 1996, below), intensified beyond belief so that the river seems almost to be made of liquid silver.
A wonderful exhibition in many aspects, well worth a visit to see one the worlds best photographers at work. The photographs tell detached but psychologically emotional stories about what human beings are doing to the world in which they live. These images are a commentary on the state of this relationship – images of repetition, pattern, construction, use, abuse and fantasy woven into hyperreal visions of an unnatural world.
Dr Marcus Bunyan
Many thankx to the National Gallery of Victoria for inviting me to the opening and for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.
For the first time in Australia, an exhibition by German contemporary photographer Andreas Gursky opened at the National Gallery of Victoria. From the Haus der Kunst in Munich, Andreas Gursky presents 21 major works for which the artist is internationally acclaimed. The photographs range from 1989 to 2007 and include seminal works such as Tokyo Stock Exchange and the diptych 99 cent store. Andreas Gursky is recognised as one of the world’s leading contemporary artists. On view through 22 February, 2009.
Well known for his large-scale (generally measuring an astounding four to five metres) and extraordinarily detailed photographs of contemporary life, Gursky continues the lineage of ‘new objectivity’ in German photography which was brought to contemporary attention by Bernd and Hilla Becher.
In the 1990s, Gursky became inspired by the various manifestations of global capitalism. His interest was piqued looking at a newspaper photograph of the crowded floor of the Tokyo Stock Exchange and he began to photograph its flurry of suited traders, somehow moving according to some inbuilt order.
Dr Gerard Vaughan, Director, NGV said the Andreas Gursky exhibition represented a significant coup for Melbourne: “The National Gallery of Victoria is the only Australian venue for this extraordinary show – the first major exhibition of Gursky’s work ever to be seen in this country. Generously organised by the Haus der Kunst Museum in Munich we are extremely fortunate to have had the works in this show selected for us by Andreas Gursky himself.”
Andreas Gursky was born in 1955 and grew up in Düsseldorf, Germany. In the early 1980s, he studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany’s State Art Academy. Whilst there he was heavily influenced by his teachers Bernd and Hilla Becher, who were well known for their methodical black and white photographs of industrial machinery.
In 1984 Gursky began to move away from the Becher style, choosing instead to work in colour. Since then he has travelled across the world to cities such as Tokyo, Cairo, Hong Kong, Stockholm, Singapore and Los Angeles photographing factories, hotels and office buildings – places he considered to be symbols of contemporary culture. His world-view photographs during this period are considered amongst the most original achievements in contemporary photography.
Gursky has been the subject of numerous international exhibitions including the Internationale Foto-Triennale in Esslingen, Germany in 1989 and 1995, the Venice Biennale in 1990, and the Biennale of Sydney in 1996 and 2000. In 2001, Gursky was the subject of an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Press release from the National Gallery of Victoria website
“Sciagraphy: the art of depicting an object through its shadow.”
(William Henry Fox Talbot’s private name for photography)
Schaaf, Larry. “The Paper Multiple: Talbot’s Invention and Early Photographic Books,” in Foster, S., Heiting, M. and Stuhlman, R. Imagining Paradise. Rochester NY: George Eastman House, 2007, p. 45.
Rennie Ellis (Australian, 1940-2003) Girls’ Night Out, Prahran 1980 Silver gelatin, selenium toned fibre based print
A very social and lively crowd gathered at The Ian Potter Centre: NGV Australia at Federation Square on the evening of 30th October to celebrate the life and work of the Australian social photographer Rennie Ellis.
After opening comments by the NGV Director Dr Gerard Vaughan there was a funny and erudite speech by Phillip Adams AO who had flown down from Sydney to open the exhibition. The crowd enjoyed the anecdotes about his relationship with Rennie and said he thought that dying was a good career move on Rennie’s behalf and that he would have loved the fact that he had a retrospective at the NGV. Adams observed that Ellis used to be everywhere, at every party and opening, using his astute eye to record and never to judge. Applause all round for a life well lived.
On entering the exhibition space viewers were treated to a simple but effective installation of his work, with overtones of the 1970’s-1980s interior decor with yellow and white circle graphics and hanging fabric chandelier. The curatorial staff at the NGV (notably Susan van Wyk) have chosen over 200 works from an archive of over half a million images for the exhibition in a process that has taken over two and a half years.
As an immigrant arriving in Australia in 1986 I remember 397 Club that used to be at 397 Swanston Street. After every other place had closed this club attracted people from every walk of life: pimps, prostitutes, drag queens, faggots, lesbians, straights and druggies. Rennie was probably there recording the scene. We were there just for a good time. It was fun and this is what Ellis’ photography is. Not burdened by overarching conceptual ideas Ellis recorded what he saw insightfully, balancing social commentary and spatial organisation in the construction of his images. The image Girls’ Night Out, Prahran 1980 (above) is a pearler (with the look on the woman’s face) and neatly encapsulates the magic of his image making.
“5. In a modern society, images made by cameras are the principal access to realities of which we have no direct experience. And we are expected to receive and to register an unlimited number of images of what we don’t directly experience. The camera defines for us what we allow to be “real” – and it continually pushes forward the boundary of the real. Photographers are particularly admired if they reveal hidden truths about themselves or less than fully reported social conflicts in societies both near and far from where the viewer lives.”
Sontag, Susan. “Photography: A Little Summa,” in Sontag, Susan. At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2007, p. 125.
Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive 
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