Pieter Hugo | Art Blart

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Feb

Exhibition: ‘Unseen: 35 Years of Collecting Photographs’ at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Categories: African photography, American, american photographers, beauty, black and white photography, colour photography, digital photography, documentary photography, exhibition, gallery website, intimacy, Japanese artist, landscape, light, London, memory, Paul Outerbridge, photographic series, photography, photojournalism, Polaroid photography, portrait, psychological, reality, space, street photography, surrealism, time, Walker Evans, William Eggleston and works on paper
Tags: Africanis 18, Agbogbloshie Market, Aissah Salifu, Alexander Rodchenko, Alexander Rodchenko Roll (of Film), Alison Rossiter, Alison Rossiter Eastman Kodak Azo E, American art, American artists, american photographer, American photography, André Kertész Still Life with Snake, Andre Kertesz, Andreas Feininger, Andreas Feininger Elegant Disk Clam, Anthony Hernandez, Anthony Hernandez Los Angeles #1, Aobadai (Nishi Saigoyama Park), Balance of Powers, Barbara Morgan, Barbara Morgan City Shell, Big Dummies, Botanical Specimen (Erica mutabolis), British photography, Carleton Watkins, Carleton Watkins Guadalupe Mill, Carrie Mae Weems, Carrie Mae Weems See No Evil, Catherine Opie, Catherine Opie Untitled #15, Children of Harlem, City Shell, Collage: Balance of Powers, Collecting Contemporary Photography, collecting photographs, collecting photography, Daniel Naudé, Daniel Naudé Africanis 18, Dog at the beach, Doll Repair Shop Window, Dolls on Cadillac, Early American Strawberries and Ostrich Egg, Eastman Kodak Azo E, Egg in Spotlight, Elegant Disk Clam, Emil Cadoo, Emil Cadoo Children of Harlem, Erwin Blumenfeld, Erwin Blumenfeld Hitler's Mug, Erwin Blumenfeld Hitlerfresse, Erwin Blumenfeld Maroua Motherwell, European photography, fine art photography, Guadalupe Mill, Hands Hands, Henry Holmes Smith, Henry Holmes Smith Photography Student, Hiromu Kira, Hiromu Kira The Thinker, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Hiroshi Sugimoto Botanical Specimen (Erica mutabolis), Hitler's Mug, Hitlerfresse, Hong Hao, Hong Hao My Things No. 5, Horst P. Horst, Horst P. Horst Hands Hands, Irving Penn, Irving Penn Red Apples, j. paul getty museum, Jacobus Huch, Japanese American photographers, Japanese photography, Jim Dow, Jim Dow Doll Repair Shop Window, Julia Margaret Cameron Spring, László Moholy-Nagy, László Moholy-Nagy The Law of the Series, Les Chiens du Front, Los Angeles #1, Lyle Ashton Harris, Lyle Ashton Harris Man and Woman #1, Malick Sidibé, Malick Sidibé Vues de dos, Man and Woman #1, Marinus Jacob Kjeldgaard, Marinus Jacob Kjeldgaard Balance of Powers, Markéta Luskačová, Markéta Luskačová Men around Fire, Markéta Luskačová Sclater St, Markéta Luskačová Woman with Baby and Girl, Maroua Motherwell, Martin Munkácsi, Martin Munkácsi Big Dummies, Martin Munkácsi The Goalie Gets There a Split Second Too Late, Men around Fire, Mona Kuhn, Mona Kuhn Portrait 37, My Things No. 5, Myoung Ho Lee, Myoung Ho Lee Tree #2, nan goldin, Nan Goldin Self Portrait Red, Otto Steinert, Otto Steinert Schlammweiher 2, Paul Outerbridge, Paul Outerbridge Egg in Spotlight, Paul Wolff, Paul Wolff Dog at the beach, Photography Student, Pieter Hugo, Pieter Hugo Aissah Salifu Agbogbloshie Market, Portrait 37, Portrait of a Black Couple, Prince Roland Napoleon Bonaparte, Prince Roland Napoleon Bonaparte Jacobus Huch, Red Apples, Reverend William Ellis, Reverend William Ellis Portrait of a Black Couple, Roll (of Film), Russian photography, Schlammweiher 2, Sclater St, See No Evil, Self Portrait Red, Sharon Core, Sharon Core Early American Strawberries and Ostrich Egg, Shigeichi Nagano, Shigeichi Nagano Aobadai (Nishi Saigoyama Park), South African photography, Spitalfields Market, Still Life with Snake, Succulent Screen, The Goalie Gets There a Split Second Too Late, The Law of the Series, The Thinker, Two Giraffes Circus Winter Quarters, Underwood & Underwood, Underwood & Underwood Les Chiens du Front, Unseen, Unseen J. Paul Getty Museum, Unseen: 35 Years of Collecting Photographs, Veronika Kellndorfer, Veronika Kellndorfer Succulent Screen, Vues de dos, Walker Evans, Walker Evans Two Giraffes Circus Winter Quarters, Weegee, Weegee Calypso, William Eggleston, William Eggleston Dolls on Cadillac, Woman with Baby and Girl

Exhibition dates: 17th December 2019 – 8th March 2020

Weegee (Arthur Fellig) (American born Austria, 1899-1968)
[Calypso]
about 1944; before 1946
Gelatin silver print
26.2 x 33.3cm (10 5/16 x 13 1/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© International Center of Photography

Imagine having these photographs in your collection!

My particular favourite is Hiromu Kira’s The Thinker (about 1930). For me it sums up our singular 1 thoughtful 2 imaginative 3 ephemeral 4 ether/real 5 existence.

“Aether is the fifth element in the series of classical elements thought to make up our experience of the universe… Although the Aether goes by as many names as there are cultures that have referenced it, the general meaning always transcends and includes the same four “material” elements [earth, air, water, fire]. It is sometimes more generally translated simply as “Spirit” when referring to an incorporeal living force behind all things. In Japanese, it is considered to be the void through which all other elements come into existence.” (Adam Amorastreya. “The End of the Aether,” on the Resonance website Feb 16, 2015 [Online] Cited 23/02/2020)

Dr Marcus Bunyan

.
Many thankx 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.

Carleton Watkins (American, 1829-1916)
[Guadalupe Mill]
1860
Salted paper print
Image (dome-topped): 33.8 × 41.6cm (13 5/16 × 16 3/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Martin Munkácsi (American born Hungary, 1896-1963)
The Goalie Gets There a Split Second Too Late
about 1923
Gelatin silver print
29.8 × 36.7cm (11 3/4 × 14 7/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Estate of Martin Munkácsi, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Hiromu Kira (American, 1898-1991)
The Thinker
about 1930
Gelatin silver print
27.9 × 35.1cm (11 × 13 13/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Sadamura Family Trust

Hiromu Kira (1898-1991) was one of the most successful and well-known Japanese American photographers in prewar Los Angeles. He was born in Waipahu, O’ahu, Hawai’i on April 5, 1898, but was sent to Kumamoto, Japan, for his early education. When he was eighteen years old, he returned to the United States and settled in Seattle, Washington, where he first became interested in photography. In 1923, he submitted prints to the Seattle Photography Salon which accepted two of the photographs. In 1923, his work was accepted in the Pittsburg Salon and the Annual Competition of American Photography. He found work at the camera department of a local Seattle pharmacy and began meeting other Issei, Nisei and Kibei photographers such as Kyo Koike and joined the Seattle Camera Club.

In 1926, Kira moved to Los Angeles with his wife and two young children. Although he was never a member of the Japanese Camera Pictorialists of California, a group that was active in Los Angeles at that time, he developed strong friendships with club members associated with the pictorialist movement of the 1920s and ’30s such as K. Asaishi and T. K. Shindo. In 1928, Kira was named an associate of the Royal Photography Society, and the following year he was made a full fellow and began exhibiting both nationally and internationally. In 1929 alone, Kira exhibited ninety-six works in twenty-five different shows. In the late twenties, he worked at T. Iwata’s art store. In 1931, his photograph The Thinker, made while showing a customer how to use his newly purchased camera properly, appeared on the March 1931 issue of Vanity Fair magazine.

On December 5, two days before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Kira was selected to be included in the 25th Annual International Salon of the Camera Pictorialists of Los Angeles. Within a few months, he was forced to store his camera, photography books and prints in the basement of the Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist Temple in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles for the duration of World War II. He and his family were incarcerated at Santa Anita Assembly Center and the Gila River, Arizona concentration camp from 1942-1944, leaving the latter in April 1944.

Following his release, he lived briefly in Chicago before returning to Los Angeles in 1946, where he remained for the rest of his life. In Los Angeles, he worked as a photo retoucher and printer for the Disney, RKO and Columbia Picture studios but never exhibited again as he had before the war.

Text from the Hiromu Kira page on the Densho Encyclopedia website [Online] Cited 23/02/2020

Marinus Jacob Kjeldgaard (Danish, 1884-1964, active Paris, France late 1930s – late 1940s)
[Collage: Balance of Powers]
about 1939
Gelatin silver print
28.5 × 32cm (11 1/4 × 12 5/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Estate of Marinus Jacob Kjeldgaard

Paul Outerbridge (American, 1896-1958)
[Egg in Spotlight]
1943
Gelatin silver print
26.4x 34.4cm (10 3/8 x 13 9/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© 2019 G. Ray Hawkins Gallery, Beverly Hills, CA

Emil Cadoo (American, 1926-2002)
Children of Harlem
1965
Gelatin silver print
20.3 × 25.2cm (8 × 9 15/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of Joyce Cadoo / Janos Gat Gallery
© Estate of Emil Cadoo, courtesy of Janos Gat Gallery

Anthony Hernandez (American, b. 1947)
Los Angeles #1
1969
Gelatin silver print
18.9 × 28.4cm (7 7/16 × 11 3/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Purchased in part with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© Anthony Hernandez

William Eggleston (American, b. 1939)
Dolls on Cadillac, Memphis
1972
Chromogenic print
25.4 × 38.1cm (10 × 15 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Eggleston Artistic Trust

William Wegman (American, b, 1943)
Dog and Ball
1973
Gelatin silver print
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© William Wegman

Markéta Luskačová (Czech, b. 1944)
Sclater St, Woman with Baby and Girl
1975
Gelatin silver print
21 x 31.8cm (8 1/4 x 12 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Markéta Luskačová

Markéta Luskačová (born 1944) is a Czech photographer known for her series of photographs taken in Slovakia, Britain and elsewhere. Considered one of the best Czech social photographers to date, since the 1990s she has photographed children in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and also Poland…

In the 1970s and 1980s, the communist censorship attempted to conceal her international reputation. Her works were banned in Czechoslovakia, and the catalogues for the exhibition Pilgrims in the Victoria and Albert Museum were lost on their way to Czechoslovakia.

Luskačová started photographing London’s markets in 1974. In the markets of Portobello Road, Brixton and Spitalfields, she “[found] a vivid Dickensian staging”.

In 2016 she self-published a collection of photographs of street musicians, mostly taken in the markets of east London, under the title To Remember – London Street Musicians 1975-1990, and with an introduction by John Berger.

Text from the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 23/02/2020

Markéta Luskačová (Czech, b. 1944)
Men around Fire, Spitalfields Market
Negative 1976, print 1991
Gelatin silver print
22.8 x 32.9cm (9 x 12 15/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Markéta Luskačová

Shigeichi Nagano (Japanese, 1925-2019, active Tokyo, Japan)
[Tokyo, Aobadai (Nishi Saigoyama Park), Meguro Ward]
1988
Gelatin silver print
26 × 39.4cm (10 1/4 × 15 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© Shigeichi Nagano

During the 1960s Nagano observed the period of intense economic growth in Japan, depicting the lives of Tokyo’s sarariman with some humour. The photographs of this period were only published in book form much later, as Dorīmu eiji and 1960 (1978 and 1990 respectively).

Nagano exhibited recent examples of his street photography in 1986, winning the Ina Nobuo Award. He published several books of his works since then, and won a number of awards. Nagano had a major retrospective at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in 2000.

Nagano died two months short of his 94th birthday, on January 30, 2019.

Text from the Wikipedia website

Catherine Opie (American, b. 1961)
Untitled #15
1997
Inkjet print
40.6 × 104.1cm (16 × 41 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Catherine Opie

Nan Goldin (American, b. 1953)
Self Portrait, Red, Zurich
2002
Silver-dye bleach print
Framed (outer dim): 72.4 x 104.1cm (28 1/2 x 41 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Nan Goldin, courtesy of Matthew Marks Gallery and the artist

Hong Hao (Chinese, b. 1965)
My Things No. 5 – 5,000 Pieces of Rubbish
2002
Chromogenic print
120 × 210.8cm (47 1/4 × 83 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Anonymous Gift
© Hong Hao, Courtesy of Chambers Fine Art

Veronika Kellndorfer (German, b. 1962)
Succulent Screen
2007
Silkscreen print on glass
288 × 351.5cm (113 3/8 × 138 3/8 in.)
Gift of Christopher Grimes in honour of Virginia Heckert
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Veronika Kellndorfer

A three-panel silkscreen print on glass, Succulent Screen depicts a detail view of one of the signature miter-cut windows of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Freeman House. The house was built in the Hollywood Hills in 1923, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971 as a California Historical Landmark and as Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument #247 in 1981; it was bequeathed to the USC School of Architecture in 1986.

Text from the Getty Museum website

Sharon Core (American, b. 1965)
Early American, Strawberries and Ostrich Egg
2007
Chromogenic print
42.8 x 56.8cm (16 7/8 x 22 3/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Sharon Core

The Getty Museum holds one of the largest collections of photographs in the United States, with more than 148,000 prints. However, only a small percentage of these have ever been exhibited at the Museum. To celebrate the 35th anniversary of the founding of the Department of Photographs, the Getty Museum is exhibiting 200 of these never-before-seen photographs and pull back the curtain on the work of the many professionals who care for this important collection in Unseen: 35 Years of Collecting Photographs, on view December 17, 2019 – March 8, 2020.

“Rather than showcasing again the best-known highlights of the collection, the time is right to dig deeper into our extraordinary holdings and present a selection of never-before-seen treasures. I have no doubt that visitors will be intrigued and delighted by the diversity and quality of the collection, whose riches will support exhibition and research well into the decades ahead,” says Timothy Potts, director of the J. Paul Getty Museum.

The exhibition includes photographs by dozens of artists from the birth of the medium in the mid-19th century to the present day. The selection also encompasses a variety of photographic processes, including the delicate cyanotypes of Anna Atkins (British, 1799-1871), Polaroids by Carrie Mae Weems (American, born 1953) and Mary Ellen Mark (American, 1940-2015) and an architectural photographic silkscreen on glass by Veronika Kellndorfer (German, born 1962).

Visual associations among photographs from different places and times illuminate the breadth of the Getty’s holdings and underscore a sense of continuity and change within the history of the medium. The curators have also personalised some of the labels in the central galleries to give voice to their individual insights and perspectives.

Growth of the collection

In 1984, as the J. Paul Getty Trust was in the early stages of conceiving what would eventually become the Getty Center, the Getty Museum created its Department of Photographs. It did so with the acquisition of several world-famous private collections, including those of Sam Wagstaff, André Jammes, Arnold Crane, and Volker Kahmen and Georg Heusch. These dramatic acquisitions immediately established the Museum as a leading center for photography.

While the founding collections are particularly strong in 19th and early 20th century European and American work, the department now embraces contemporary photography and, increasingly, work produced around the world. The collection continues to evolve, has been shaped by several generations of curators and benefits from the generosity of patrons and collectors.

Behind the scenes

In addition to the photographs on view, the exhibition spotlights members of Getty staff who care for, handle, and monitor these works of art.

“What the general public may not realise is that before a single photograph is hung on a wall, the object and its related data is managed by teams of professional conservators, registrars, curators, mount-makers, and many others,” says Jim Ganz, senior curator of photographs at the Getty Museum. “In addition to exposing works of art in the collection that are not well known, we wanted to shed light on the largely hidden activity that goes into caring for such a collection.”

Collecting Contemporary Photography

The department’s collecting of contemporary photography has been given strong encouragement by the Getty Museum Photographs Council, and a section of the exhibition will be dedicated to objects purchased with the Council’s funding. Established in 2005, this group supports the department’s curatorial program, especially with the acquisition of works made after 1945 by artists not yet represented or underrepresented in the collection. Since its founding, the Council has contributed over $3 million toward the purchase of nearly five hundred photographs by artists from Argentina, Australia, Canada, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, South Africa, and Taiwan, as well as Europe and the United States.

Looking ahead

The exhibition also looks towards the future of the collection, and includes a gallery of very newly-acquired works by Laura Aguilar (American, 1959-2018), Osamu Shiihara (Japanese, 1905-1974), as well as highlights of the Dennis Reed collection of photographs by Japanese American photographers. The selection represents the department’s strengthening of diversity in front of and behind the camera, the collection of works relevant to Southern California communities, and the acquisition of photographs that expand the understanding of the history of the medium.

“With this exhibition we celebrate the past 35 years of collecting, and look forward to the collection’s continued expansion, encompassing important work by artists all over the world and across three centuries,” adds Potts.

Unseen: 35 Years of Collecting Photographs is on view December 17, 2019 – March 8, 2020 at the Getty Center. The exhibition is organised by Jim Ganz, senior curator of photographs at the Getty Museum in collaboration with Getty curators Mazie Harris, Virginia Heckert, Karen Hellman, Arpad Kovacs, Amanda Maddox, and Paul Martineau.

Press release from the J. Paul Getty Museum [Online] Cited 09/20/2020

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, born 1948)
Botanical Specimen (Erica mutabolis), March 1839
2009
Toned gelatin silver print
93.7 x 74.9cm (36 7/8 x 29 1/2 in.)
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

Julia Margaret Cameron (British born India, 1815-1879)
[Spring]
1873
Albumen silver print
35.4 × 25.7cm (13 15/16 × 10 1/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Reverend William Ellis (British, 1794-1872) and Samuel Smith
[Portrait of a Black Couple]
about 1873
Albumen silver print
24.1 × 18.6cm (9 1/2 × 7 5/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Prince Roland Napoleon Bonaparte (French, 1858-1924)
Jacobus Huch, 26 ans
about 1888
Albumen silver print
15.9 × 10.9cm (6 1/4 × 4 5/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Underwood & Underwood (American, founded 1881, dissolved 1940s)
Les Chiens du Front, eux-mems, portent des masques contre les gaz
May 27, 1917
Rotogravure
22 × 20.4cm (8 11/16 × 8 1/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

László Moholy-Nagy (American born Hungary, 1895-1946)
[The Law of the Series]
1925
Gelatin silver print
21.6 × 16.2cm (8 1/2 × 6 3/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© 2019 Estate of László Moholy-Nagy / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Martin Munkácsi (American born Hungary, 1896-1963)
Big Dummies
1927-1933
Gelatin silver print
33.5 × 26.7cm (13 3/16 × 10 1/2 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Estate of Martin Munkácsi, Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Munkácsi was a newspaper writer and photographer in Hungary, specialising in sports. At the time, sports action photography could only be done in bright light outdoors. Munkácsi’s innovation was to make sport photographs as meticulously composed action photographs, which required both artistic and technical skill.

Munkácsi’s break was to happen upon a fatal brawl, which he photographed. Those photos affected the outcome of the trial of the accused killer, and gave Munkácsi considerable notoriety. That notoriety helped him get a job in Berlin in 1928, for Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, where his first published photo was a motorcycle splashing its way through a puddle. He also worked for the fashion magazine Die Dame.

More than just sports and fashion, he photographed Berliners, rich and poor, in all their activities. He traveled to Turkey, Sicily, Egypt, London, New York, and Liberia, for photo spreads in Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung.

The speed of the modern age and the excitement of new photographic viewpoints enthralled him, especially flying. There are aerial photographs; there are air-to-air photographs of a flying school for women; there are photographs from a Zeppelin, including the ones on his trip to Brazil, where he crossed over a boat whose passengers wave to the airship above.

On 21 March 1933, he photographed the fateful Day of Potsdam, when the aged President Paul von Hindenburg handed Germany over to Adolf Hitler. On assignment for Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, he photographed Hitler’s inner circle, although he was a Jewish foreigner.

Munkácsi left for New York City… Munkácsi died in poverty and controversy. Several universities and museums declined to accept his archives, and they were scattered around the world.

Text from the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 23/02/2020

Erwin Blumenfeld (American born Germany, 1897-1969)
Hitlerfresse (Hitler’s Mug)
January 30, 1933
Gelatin silver print collage with ink
29.2 × 21.3cm (11 1/2 × 8 3/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© The Estate of Erwin Blumenfeld

Blumenfeld was born in Berlin on 26 January 1897. As a young man he worked in the clothes trade and wrote poetry. In 1918 he went to Amsterdam, where he came into contact with Paul Citroen and Georg Grosz. In 1933 he made a photomontage showing Hitler as a skull with a swastika on its forehead; this image was later used in Allied propaganda material in 1943.

He married Lena Citroen, with whom he had three children, in 1921. In 1922 he started a leather goods shop, which failed in 1935. He moved to Paris, where in 1936 he set up as a photographer and did free-lance work for French Vogue. After the outbreak of the Second World War he was placed in an internment camp; in 1941 he was able to emigrate to the United States. There he soon became a successful and well-paid fashion photographer, and worked as a free-lancer for Harper’s Bazaar, Life and American Vogue. Blumenfeld died in Rome on 4 July 1969.

Text from the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 23/02/3030

Paul Wolff (German, 1887-1951) and Dr Wolff & Tritschler OHG (German, founded 1927, dissolved 1963)
[Dog at the beach]
1936
Gelatin silver print
23.4 x 17.8cm (9 3/16 x 7 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Dr Paul Wolff & Tritschler, Historisches Bildarchiv, D-77654 Offenburg, Germany

Barbara Morgan (American, 1900-1992)
City Shell
1938
Gelatin silver print
49.2 × 39.4cm (19 3/8 × 15 1/2 in.)
Reproduced courtesy of the Barbara and Willard Morgan Photographs and Papers, Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, UCLA
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
[Two Giraffes, Circus Winter Quarters, Sarasota]
1941
Gelatin silver print
15.1 × 18.3cm (5 15/16 × 7 3/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Horst P. Horst (American born Germany, 1906-1999)
Hands, Hands
1941
Platinum and palladium print
23.7 × 17cm (9 5/16 × 6 11/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of Manfred Heiting
© The Estate of Horst P. Horst and Condé Nast

Erwin Blumenfeld (American, born Germany, 1897-1969)
Maroua Motherwell, New York
1941-1943
Gelatin silver print
48.5 x 38.7cm (19 1/8 x 15 1/4 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© The Estate of Erwin Blumenfeld

Henry Holmes Smith (American, 1909-1986)
Photography Student
1947
Gelatin silver print
11.4 × 9.6cm (4 1/2 × 3 3/4 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of the Smith Family Trust
© J. Paul Getty Trust

Henry Holmes Smith (1909-1986) was an American photographer and one of the most influential fine art photography teachers of the mid 20th century. He was inspired by the work that had been done at the German Bauhaus and in 1937 was invited to teach photography at the New Bauhaus being founded by Moholy-Nagy in Chicago. After World War II, he spent many years teaching at Indiana University. His students included Jerry Uelsmann, Jack Welpott, Robert W. Fichter, Betty Hahn and Jaromir Stephany.

Smith was often involved in the cutting edge of photographic techniques: in 1931 he started experimenting with high-speed flash photography of action subjects, and started doing colour work in 1936 when few people considered it a serious artistic medium. His later images were nearly all abstract, often made directly (without a camera, i.e. like photograms), for instance images created by refracting light through splashes of water and corn syrup on a glass plate. However, although acclaimed as a photographic teacher, Holmes’ own photographs and other images did not achieve any real recognition from his peers.

Text from the Wikipedia website [Online] Cited 23/02/2020

Andreas Feininger (American born France, 1906-1999)
Elegant Disk Clam, dosinia elegans, Conrad
1948
Gelatin silver print
30.4 x 23.8cm (11 15/16 x 9 3/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Estate of Gertrud E. Feininger

Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956)
Roll (of Film)
1950
Gelatin silver print
30.5 × 24cm (12 × 9 7/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© 2019 Estate of Alexander Rodchenko / UPRAVIS, Moscow / Artists Rights Society, NY

Otto Steinert (German, 1915-1978)
Schlammweiher 2
Negative 1953, print about 1960s
Gelatin silver print
39.6 x 29.1cm (15 9/16 x 11 7/16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
Courtesy Galerie Johannes Faber

André Kertész (American born Hungary, 1894-1985)
Still Life with Snake
Negative 1960; print later
Gelatin silver print
Image: 24.8 × 19.7cm (9 3/4 × 7 3/4 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Estate of André Kertész

Malick Sidibé (Malian, 1936-2016)
Vues de dos
Nd, print 2003
Gelatin silver print, glass, paint, cardboard, tape, and string
36.5 x 27cm (14 3/8 x 10 5/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Estate of Malick Sidibé

Irving Penn (American, 1917-2009)
Red Apples
July 15, 1985
Silver-dye bleach print
25.4 × 20.3cm (10 × 8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of Nancy and Bruce Berman
© 1985 Irving Penn

Lyle Ashton Harris (American, b. 1965)
Man and Woman #1
1987-1988
Gelatin silver print
74.3 x 48.9cm (29 1/4 x 19 1/4 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Lyle Ashton Harris

Jim Dow (American, b. 1942)
Doll Repair Shop Window, Buenos Aires, Argentina
1990
Chromogenic print
51.2 × 40.6cm (20 3/16 × 16 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of Nancy and Bruce Berman
© Jim Dow

Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953)
See No Evil
1991
Dye diffusion print (Polaroid Polacolor)
61 × 50.5cm (24 × 19 7/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser
© Carrie Mae Weems

Myoung Ho Lee (South Korean, b. 1975)
[Tree #2]
2006
Inkjet print
39.8 × 32.1cm (15 11/16 × 12 5/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Purchased with funds provided by the Photographs Council
© Myoung Ho Lee, Courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York

Daniel Naudé (South African, b. 1984)
Africanis 18. Murraysburg, Western Cape, 10 May 2010
2010
60 x 60cm (23 5/8 x 23 5/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Daniel Naudé

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Aissah Salifu, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana
2010
From the Permanent Error series
Digital chromogenic print
81.3 x 81.3cm (32 x 32 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Pieter Hugo

Mona Kuhn (German born Brazil, 1969)
Portrait 37
2011
Chromogenic print
38.3 x 38.1cm (15 1/16 x 15 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Mona Kuhn

Alison Rossiter (American, b. 1953)
Eastman Kodak Azo E, expired May 1927, processed 2014
2014
Gelatin silver print
25 x 20cm (9 13/16 x 7 7/8 in.)
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
© Alison Rossiter

The J. Paul Getty Museum
1200 Getty Center Drive
Los Angeles, California 90049

Opening hours:
Daily 10am – 5.30pm

The J. Paul Getty Museum website

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Mar

Exhibition: ‘Pieter Hugo: Kin’ at Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: African photography, beauty, colour photography, digital photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, intimacy, landscape, light, memory, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, quotation, reality, space, time and works on paper
Tags: Aerial View of Diepsloot, African photography, Ann Sallies, Aperture, At a Traffic Intersection, Braamfontein, Capetown, Carletonville, contemporary portrait photography, Daniel Richards, Daniela Beukman, Darren and Tara, Gonnemanskraal, Green Point Common, Hugo's parents Lize and Gideon Hugo, In Sipho Ntsibande's Home, In the home of Meshack Molatudi, Inside Louis Matanisa's home, Inside the Bester's home, Johannesburg, Kin, Kroonstad, Louis Matanisa, Meriam 'Mary’' Tlali, Milnerton, Mimi Afrika Wheatland Farm, Outside Pretoria, Pieter and Sophia Hugo at home in Cape Town, Pieter Hugo, Pieter Hugo Aerial View of Diepsloot, Pieter Hugo Ann Sallies, Pieter Hugo At a Traffic Intersection, Pieter Hugo Daniel Richards, Pieter Hugo Daniela Beukman, Pieter Hugo Darren and Tara, Pieter Hugo Green Point Common, Pieter Hugo Hilbrow, Pieter Hugo Hugo's parents Lize and Gideon Hugo, Pieter Hugo In Sipho Ntsibande's Home, Pieter Hugo In the home of Meshack Molatudi, Pieter Hugo Inside Louis Matanisa's home, Pieter Hugo Inside the Bester's home, Pieter Hugo Kin, Pieter Hugo Louis Matanisa, Pieter Hugo Meriam 'Mary’' Tlali, Pieter Hugo Mimi Afrika Wheatland Farm, Pieter Hugo Outside Pretoria, Pieter Hugo Pieter and Sophia Hugo at home in Cape Town, Pieter Hugo Primrose Mines, Pieter Hugo Samuel Nkosomzi, Pieter Hugo Saunders Rock, Pieter Hugo Shaun Oliver, Pieter Hugo The Miners Monument, Pieter Hugo The view from ex-president Kaiser Matanzima's bedroom, Pieter Hugo Theresa Makwenya, Pieter Hugo Thoba Calvin and Tshepo Cameron Sithole-Modisane, Pieter Hugo Winston Niebuhr, Primrose Mines, Samuel Nkosomzi, Saunders Rock Cape Town, Shaun Oliver, South African artist, South African identity, South African photographer, South African photography, South African portrait photography, Soweto, The Miners Monument Braamfontein, The view from ex-president Kaiser Matanzima's bedroom, Theresa Makwenya, Thoba Calvin, Thoba Calvin and Tshepo Cameron Sithole-Modisane, Vermaaklikheid, Winston Niebuhr

Exhibition dates: 14th January – 26th April 2015

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Green Point Common, Capetown
2013
© Pieter Hugo
Courtesy Stevenson Gallery, Capetown/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York

At this moment in time, I believe that Pieter Hugo is one of the best photographers in the world.

Approaching photography with a keen awareness of the problems inherent in pointing a camera at anything, Hugo’s latest series Kin is a tour de force where concept meets clarity of vision and purpose; where a deep suspicion of photography and what it can accurately portray is used in the most incisive way to interrogate identity formation and power structures, colonisation, racial diversity and economic disparity in Hugo’s homeland of South Africa. This is intelligent, beautiful, focused art.

While there is a deep suspicion about what photography can achieve, Hugo uses that suspicion… and balances it with sensitivity, respect and dignity towards subject. An enquiring mind coupled with a wonderful eye, fantastic camera position and understanding of his colour palette complete the picture. These are beautiful, classical and yes, iconic images. Not for Hugo the interchangeability of so much contemporary photobook photography, where one image, one artist, can be replaced by another with no discernible difference in feeling or form. Where single images, whole series of work even, mean very little. The re/place ability of so much post-photography.

Just look at those eyes and face in Daniel Richards, Milnerton (2013, below), eyes that bore right through you; or the human being in At a Traffic Intersection, Johannesburg (2011, below) and tell me you’re not moved. Hugo is one of the brightest of stars in the photographic firmament.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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Many thankx to the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Loyiso Mayga, Wandise Ngcama, Lunga White, Luyanda Mzanti and Khungsile Mdolo after their initiation ceremony, Mthatha
2008
© Pieter Hugo
Courtesy Stevenson Gallery, Capetown/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Outside Pretoria
2013
© Pieter Hugo
Courtesy Stevenson Gallery, Capetown/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Thoba Calvin and Tshepo Cameron Sithole-Modisane, Pretoria
2013
© Pieter Hugo
Courtesy Stevenson Gallery, Capetown/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Hilbrow
2013
© Pieter Hugo
Courtesy Stevenson Gallery, Capetown/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York

Created over the past eight years, Pieter Hugo’s series Kin confronts complex issues of colonisation, racial diversity and economic disparity in Hugo’s homeland of South Africa. These subjects are common to the artist’s past projects in Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia and Botswana; however, this time, Hugo’s attention is focused on his conflicted relationship with the people and environs closest to home.  Hugo depicts locations and subjects of personal significance, such as cramped townships, contested farmlands, abandoned mining areas and sites of political influence, as well as psychologically charged still lives in people’s homes and portraits of drifters and the homeless. Hugo also presents intimate portraits of his pregnant wife, his daughter moments after her birth and the domestic servant who worked for three generations of Hugo’s family. Alternating between private and public spaces, with a particular emphasis on the growing disparity between rich and poor, Kin is the artist’s effort to locate himself and his young family in a country with a fraught history and an uncertain future.

Text from the Fondation Henri-Cartier Bresson website

“I have a deep suspicion of photography, to the point where I do sometimes think it cannot accurately portray anything, really. And, I particularly distrust portrait photography. I mean, do you honestly think a portrait can tell you anything about the subject? And, even if it did, would you trust what it had to say?… It sounds extreme, but for me to work at all as a photographer, I have to be conscious always of the problems inherent in what I do. I have to be conscious, if you like, of the impossibility of photography…

I matriculated at the end of apartheid and the photographs I grew up looking at were directly political in that they attempted to reveal, or change, what was happening. Back then, the lines were clear. You tried to tell the world what was going on with your photographs. It’s much more complex now. I am of a generation that approaches photography with a keen awareness of the problems inherent in pointing a camera at anything.

My homeland is Africa, but I’m white. I feel African, whatever that means, but if you ask anyone in South Africa if I’m African, they will almost certainly say no. I don’t fit into the social topography of my country and that certainly fuelled why I became a photographer.”

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Pieter Hugo quoted in Sean O’Hagan. “Africa as you’ve never seen it,” on the Guardian website 20th July 2008 [Online] Cited 24/02/2015

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
The Miners’ Monument, Braamfontein
2013
© Pieter Hugo
Courtesy Stevenson Gallery, Capetown/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York

From January 14th to April 26th, Fondation HCB is showing Kin, the last project of the south-african photographer Pieter Hugo. Through landscapes, portraits and still life photography exhibited for the first time in France, the photographer offers a personal exploration of South Africa. The exhibit, accompanied by a book published by Aperture is coproduced with Foto Colectania Foundation, Barcelone and Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town/Johannesburg.

Created over the past eight years, Pieter Hugo’s series Kin confronts complex issues of colonisation, racial diversity and economic disparity in Hugo’s homeland of South Africa. These subjects are common to the artist’s past projects in Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia and Botswana; however, this time, Hugo’s attention is focused on his conflicted relationship with the people and environs closest to home.

Hugo depicts locations and subjects of personal significance, such as cramped townships, contested farmlands, abandoned mining areas and sites of political influence, as well as psychologically charged still lives in people’s homes and portraits of drifters and the homeless. Hugo also presents intimate portraits of his pregnant wife, his daughter moments after her birth and the domestic servant who worked for three generations of Hugo’s family. Alternating between private and public spaces, with a particular emphasis on the growing disparity between rich and poor, Kin is the artist’s effort to locate himself and his young family in a country with a fraught history and an uncertain future.

“South Africa is such a fractured, schizophrenic, wounded and problematic place. It is a very violent society and the scars of colonialism and Apartheid run deep. Issues of race and cultural custodianship permeate every aspect of society here and the legacy of Apartheid casts a long shadow … How does one live in this society? How does one take responsibility for history, and to what extent does one have to? How do you raise a family in such a conflicted society? Before getting married and having children, these questions did not trouble me; now, they are more confusing. This work attempts to address these questions and to reflect on the nature of conflicting personal and collective narratives. I have deeply mixed feelings about being here. I am interested in the places where these narratives collide. ‘Kin’ is an attempt at evaluating the gap between society’s ideals and its realities.”

Biography

Born in Johannesburg in 1976, Pieter Hugo grew up in Cape Town where he currently lives. His work is held in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne; Huis Marseille, Amsterdam; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, among others. He is the winner of numerous awards, including in 2008 the KLM Paul Huf Award and the Discovery Award at Rencontres d’Arles. He won the Seydou Keita Award at the ninth Rencontres de Bamako African Photography Biennial, Mali, in 2011, and was short-listed for the 2012 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize.

Press release from the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Inside the Bester’s home, Vermaaklikheid
2013
© Pieter Hugo
Courtesy Stevenson Gallery, Capetown/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
At a Traffic Intersection, Johannesburg
2011
© Pieter Hugo
Courtesy Stevenson Gallery, Capetown/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York

Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of academic comment and criticism

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Daniel Richards, Milnerton
2013
© Pieter Hugo
Courtesy Stevenson Gallery, Capetown/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Daniela Beukman, Milnerton
2013
© Pieter Hugo
Courtesy Stevenson Gallery, Capetown/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Ann Sallies, who worked for my parents and helped raise their children, Douglas
2013
© Pieter Hugo
Courtesy Stevenson Gallery, Capetown/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York

Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson
79 rue des Archives
75003 Paris

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday
11am – 7pm
Closed on Mondays

Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson website

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Jun

Exhibition: ‘Apartheid and After’ at Huis Marseille – Museum for Photography, Amsterdam

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Exhibition dates: 15th March – 8th June 2014

Curators: Els Barents, David Goldblatt

Artists: David Goldblatt met Paul Alberts, Pieter Hugo, Santu Mofokeng, Sabelo Mlangeni, Zanele Muholi, Jo Ractliffe, Michael Subotzky, Guy Tillim, Graeme Williams and others, and the Market Photo Workshop in Johannesburg

Santu Mofokeng (South African, 1956-2020)
Sunflowers harvest, Vaalrand farm, Bloemhof
1988
From the Bloemhof Series, 1988-1989, 1994

A raft of exhibitions finishing on the 8th June 2014 means a lot of postings over the next few days. This posting continues my fascination with African photography. The two excellent photographs by David Goldblatt are the stand out here, along with the portrait by Mikhael Subotzky.

Marcus

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

Santu Mofokeng (South African, 1956-2020)
Windmill, Vaalrand
1988
From the Bloemhof Series, 1988-1989, 1994

Jo Ractliffe (South African, b. 1961 Cape Town)
Military watchtower in a domestic garden, Riemvasmaak
2013
From The Borderlands (2011-2013)

Jo Ractliffe (South African, b. 1961 Cape Town)
Playing soccer with marbles, Platfontein
2012
From The Borderlands (2011-2013)

Graeme Williams (South African, b. 1958 Johannesburg)
Kempton Park
Nd
From Previously Important Places series 1990s -2013

The Emperors Palace Casino and Chariots Entertainment World was build on the site [ in… add please date and place… ]? were the negotiations leading up to the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (CODESA) took place. Now, at the very same place a statue of the Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus greets visitors at the entrance of the afore mentioned entertainment centre.

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976 Johannesburg)
In Sipho Ntsibande’s Home, Soweto
2013
from the series Kin, 2013

Guy Tillim (South African, b. 1962 Johannesburg)
Neri James, Petros Village, Malawi
2006
from the series Petros Village, 2006

“The scars left in South Africa’s collective memory by its apartheid regime were also inscribed visually on its collective retina. There is less consensus, however, on the period of ‘truth and reconciliation’ after political apartheid came to an end in South Africa in 1990. The exhibition Apartheid and After addresses the question: where did photographers whose earlier work had opposed the apartheid regime point their cameras after 1980?

They include David Goldblatt, for instance, now an éminence grise of South African photography whose exhibition Cross Sections hung in Huis Marseille and others. Has South African democracy been given a face? Where is the real development happening? And where are the scars? Has South African national identity got stuck on a runaway merry-go-round, as the South African visual artist William Kentridge has suggested? One thing is clear: after apartheid, most South African photographers continued to make their own country their work domain, and in doing so they have gained a considerable international reputation.”

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“It is astonishing to think that until the beginning of the 1990s, merely two decades ago, modern and contemporary African photography was largely in the shadows.”

Okwui Enwezor in Events of the Self: Portraiture and Social Identity: Contemporary African Photography from the Walther Collection, Steidl, 2013, p. 23.

David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018)
Child minder, Joubert Park, Johannesburg, 1975 (no.11)
1975
From the series Particulars, 2003 (publishing date)

David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018)
Man on a beach, Joubert Park, Johannesburg, 1975 (no. 2)
1975
From the series Particulars, 2003 (publishing date)

Sabelo Mlangeni (South African, b. 1980 Driefontein)
Coming to Johannesburg I, January, 2011
2011

Daniel Naudé (South African, b. 1984 Cape Town)
Africanis 23. Richmond, Northern Cape, 298 January 2009
2009

Mikhael Subotzky (South African, b. 1981 Cape Town)
Joseph Dlamini (Eye test), Matsho Tsmombeni squatter camp
2012
From the series Retinal Shift

Graeme Williams (South African, b. 1958 Johannesburg)
Nelson Mandela speaks at CODESA, 199..?
Nd
From Previously Important Places series 1990s-2013

Zanele Muholi (South African, b. 1972 Umlazi, Durban)
Being (T)here (Amsterdam)
2009

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Paul Alberts (South African, 1946-2010)
The portraits of the applicants
1994

As the 1994 election approached in South-Africa many blacks living in small towns and rural areas had never been officially identified. In order to speed up these otherwise slow procedures, Charmaine and Paul Alberts set up an official, but temporary office and studio to process applications. The portraits of the applicants were taken before a paper back drop in the community hall of Majwemasweu. Each person held a slate with a number that corresponded to the number of the film and exposure, plus their name and place where they lived.

Huis Marseille – Museum for Photography
Keizersgracht 401
1016 EK Amsterdam

Opening hours:
Daily 10am – 6pm
Thursday 10am – 9pm

Huis Marseille – Museum for Photography website

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Jan

Text: ‘Facile, Facies, Facticity’ by Dr Marcus Bunyan; Exhibition: ‘About Face: Contemporary Portraiture’ at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: Alec Soth, American, american photographers, beauty, black and white photography, colour photography, digital photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, landscape, light, memory, photographic series, photography, portrait, reality, space and time
Tags: 12-Year Old Boy with His Father, About Face, About Face: Contemporary Portraiture, acting-out of seeing, air of a face, Alec Soth, Alec Soth Mother and daughter, American portrait photography, Anna Shteynshleyger, Anna Shteynshleyger City of Destiny (Covered), Annebelle Schreuders, blow of an eye, British portrait photography, Charcot, City of Destiny (Covered), conditions of human existence, contemporary portrait photography, Contemporary Portraiture, Coup d'oeil, Dasein, Democratic Republic of Congo, Emily 2860 Sunset Blvd, Facies, facticity of the face, factility, Georges Didi-Huberman, Georges Didi-Huberman Invention of Hysteria, Georges Didi-Huberman paradox of photographic resemblance, Geworfen, Hakkari 8, Hannah and Tim, Heidegger Geworfen, Heidegger thrownness, hysteria, Invention of Hysteria, Invention of Hysteria: Charcot and the Photographic Iconography of the Salpetriere, Jim Goldberg, Jim Goldberg Prized Possession, jocelyn lee, Jocelyn Lee Julia and Greenery, Jocelyn Lee Untitled (Julia and Greenery), Julia and Greenery, kansas city, LaToya Ruby Frazier, LaToya Ruby Frazier Momme, Lise Sarfati, Lise Sarfati Emily 2860 Sunset Blvd, Marcus Bunyan Face Facies Facticity, Michael Wolf, Michael Wolf Tokyo Compression, Michael Wolf Tokyo Compression #18, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, paradox of photographic resemblance, Paul Virilio, Paul Virilio The Work of Art in the Electronic Age, photographic resemblance, photography and the conditions of human existence, photography and the face, photography and the recovering of surfaces, Photography stages bodies, Pieter Hugo, Pieter Hugo Annebelle Schreuders, Prized Possession, Rachel Herman, Rachel Herman Hannah and Tim, Recruit/BLACK, Resembling, Richard Learoyd, Richard Learoyd Erika, Sage Sohier, Sage Sohier 12-Year Old Boy with His Father, Salpetriere, Salpetriere hospital, simulacra, the face, the paradox of photographic resemblance, the recumbence of the intelligible body, the regime of representation, The Work of Art in the Electronic Age, thrownness, to pose oneself, to resemble, Tokyo Compression #18, Tomoko Sawada, Tomoko Sawada Recruit/BLACK, Vanessa Winship, Vanessa Winship Hakkari 8, Victor Burgin, Victor Burgin Thinking Photography

Exhibition dates: 9th August 2013 – 19th January 2014

Rachel Herman (American)
Hannah and Tim
2007
Inkjet print (printed 2012)
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation

Facile, Facies, Facticity

“The structure of presentation – point-of-view and frame – is intimately implicated in the reproduction of ideology (the ‘frame of mind’ of our ‘points-of-view’). More than any other textual system, the photograph presents itself as ‘an offer you can’t refuse’.”

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Victor Burgin 1

“Facies simultaneously signifies the singular air of a face, the particularity of its aspect, as well as the genre or species under which this aspect should be subsumed. The facies would thus be a face fixed to a synthetic combination of the universal and the singular: the visage fixed to the regime of representation, in a Helgian sense.

Why the face? – Because in the face the corporeal surface makes visible something of the movements of the soul, ideally. This also holds for the Cartesian science of the expression of the passions, and perhaps also explains why, from the outset, psychiatric photography took the form of an art of the portrait.”

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Georges Didi-Huberman 2

How shallow contemporary portrait photography has become when compared to the sensual portraits of Julia Margaret Cameron, the grittiness of Gordon Parks or the in your face style of Diane Arbus. I think the word facile (from Latin facilis ‘easy’, from facers ‘do, make’) with its link to the etymologically similar word ‘face’ (Old Latin facies) is a good way to describe most of the photographs in this posting. These simplistic, nihilistic portraits, with their contextless backgrounds and head on frontally (also the name of an insipid Australian portrait photography prize), are all too common in contemporary portraiture. People with dead pan expressions stare at the camera, stare off camera. The photographs offer little insight and small engagement for the viewer. If these photographs are representative of the current ‘frame of mind’ of our ‘points-of-view’ vis a vis the construction of identity then the human race is in deep shit indeed. As we accept an offer that we can’t refuse – the reflexivity of selfies, an idealised or passive image of ourselves reflected back through the camera lens º we uncritically accept the mirror image, substituting passive receptivity for active (critical) reading. We no longer define and engage critically with something we might call ‘photographic discourse’:

“A discourse can be defined as an arena of information exchange, that is, as a system of relations between parties engaged in communicative activity. In a very important sense the notion of discourse is a notion of limits. That is, the overall discourse relation could be regarded as a limiting function, one that establishes a bounded arena of shared expectations as to meaning. It is this limiting function that determines the very possibility of meaning. To raise the issue of limits, of the closure affected from within any given discourse situation, is to situate oneself outside, in a fundamentally metacritical relation, to the criticism sanctioned by the logic of the discourse…

A discourse, then, can be defined in rather formal terms as the set of relations governing the rhetoric of related utterances. The discourse is, in the most general sense, the context of the utterance, the conditions that constrain and support its meaning, that determine its semantic target.”3

These photographs have few conditions that support their meaning. The context of their utterances is constrained by their own efficacy and passivity. Paul Virilio, speaking of contemporary images, describes them as ‘viral’. He suggests that they communicate by contamination, by infection. In our ‘media’ or ‘information’ society we now have a ‘pure seeing’; a seeing without knowing.4 A seeing without knowing… quite appropriate for these faceless images, images that contaminate how we observe humans living in the world. Of course, one can be involved in logical criticism of the discourse from within but that still gives the discourse power. By situating yourself outside the conditions that constrain the discourse, you can criticise from a different perspective, “seeing something new” as an active, temporal protension of seeing. “Such is the fundamental instability of the pleasure of seeing, of Schaulust, between memory and threat.”5 We may glance, instead of staring (as the subject of these portraits blankly stare back) – the glance becoming a blow of the eye, the acting-out of seeing.6

Here is a possible way forward for contemporary photographic portraiture: 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, an inquiry that always seeks depth – conceptual depth – in the filmy fabric or stratum of the cameras imaging of the constructed subject. In other words an inquiry into the source, the etiology and logic of the subjects own being – through the glance, not the passive gaze. Even as the object of knowledge is photographically detained for observation, fixed to objectivity, that knowledge can slip away from itself into what Georges Didi-Huberman calls the paradox of photographic resemblance.7

“Thus photography is ultimately an uncertain technique (see Barthes. Camera Lucida. p. 18), changeable and ill-famed, too. Photography stages bodies: changeability. And at one moment or another, subtly, it belies them (invents them), submitting them instead to figurative extortion. As figuration, photography always poses the enigma of the “recumbence of the intelligible body,” even as it lends itself to some understanding of this enigma, and even as this understanding is suffocated…

And when one comes to pose oneself, before a photograph, paradoxical questions: whom does this photographed face resemble? Exactly whose face is being photographed? In the end, doesn’t a photograph resemble just anyone? Well, one cannot, for all that, simply push resemblance aside like a poorly posed problem. Rather, one points a finger at Resembling as an unstable, vain, and phantasmatic temporal motion. One interrogates the drama of imaginary evidence.

For “to resemble,” or Resembling, is the name for a major concern about time in the visible. This is precisely what exposes all photographic evidence to anxiety, and beyond it, to staging, compromises, twisted meanings, and simulacra. And this is how photography circumvents itself – in its own sacrilege. It blasphemes it own evidence because evidence is diabolical. It ruins evidence, from a theater.”8

Only through slippage may we stumble upon the uncertainty of the soul in the uncertainty of the photographic technique. Only through the facticity of the face, the “thrownness” – Heidegger’s Geworfen, which denotes the arbitrary or inscrutable nature of Dasein, being there or presence, that connects the past with the present, just as photographs do – of the individual rendered in the lines of the human face can we engage with the intractable conditions of human existence. Not a bland resemblance-filled anxiety (the hair covering the face, the face in suburban ephemera, the compressed face pressed up against the condensation-filled window), but an unstable signification that has been passionately re(as)sembled in the anxiety of photographic evidence. Only then can contemporary portrait photography make visible something of the movements of the soul, ideally.

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“Into this world we’re thrown /
Like a dog without a bone”
(Jim Morrison, Riders on the Storm, 1971)

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Endnotes

Burgin, Victor (ed.,). Thinking Photography. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1982, p. 146
Didi-Huberman, Georges. Invention of Hysteria: Charcot and the Photographic Iconography of the Salpetriere (trans. Alisa Hartz). Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003, p. 49
Burgin, pp. 84-85
Virilio, Paul. “The Work of Art in the Electronic Age,” in Block No. 14, Autumn, 1988, pp. 4-7 quoted in McGrath, Roberta. “Medical Police,” in Ten.8 No. 14, 1984 quoted in Watney, Simon and Gupta, Sunil. “The Rhetoric of AIDS,” in Boffin, Tessa and Gupta, Sunil (eds.,). Ecstatic Antibodies: Resisting the AIDS Mythology. London: Rivers Osram Press, 1990, p. 143
Didi-Huberman, op. cit., pp. 27-28
Ibid., “Coup d’oeil, signifying “glance,” literally means the “blow of an eye.” Here as elsewhere, Didi-Huberman draws on the notion of the glance as a blow. He also works with the various meanings of trait, including trait, line, draught, and shaft of an arrow” – Translator
Didi-Huberman, op. cit., p. 59
Didi-Huberman, op. cit., p. 65

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Many thankx to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Anna Shteynshleyger, (Russian, b. 1977)
City of Destiny (Covered)
2007
Inkjet print
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation

Lise Sarfati (French, b. 1958)
Emily, 2860 Sunset Blvd.
2012
Chromogenic print
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation

Alec Soth (American, b. 1969)
Mother and daughter, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1999
1999

LaToya Ruby Frazier (American, b. 1982)
Momme
2008
Gelatin silver print
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation

This exhibition will explore the breadth and global diversity of contemporary photographic portraiture since 2000, highlighting recent acquisitions to the museum’s permanent collection.

About Face will include works by twenty-nine artists from the United States, England, Canada, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, Iran and South Africa. Though each of these photographers approaches portrait-making differently, certain thematic threads resonate throughout the show, including questions of racial, cultural, ethnic, class and gender identity; the relationship between individuals and typologies; the way photographic processes themselves inform meaning; the relevance of historical precedents to contemporary practice; and the impact of media stereotypes on self-presentation. Considered collectively, the works in About Face offer a provocative and engaging forum for considering the question: how do we define portraiture today?

The project will present two distinct, simultaneous exhibitions: About Face, our in-gallery exhibition at the Nelson-Atkins, and Making Pictures of People, a digital exhibition presented online for web-based audiences worldwide. Visitors will be able to access the Flak Photo exhibition via touch screens in the gallery and on mobile devices outside the museum. The goal of our collaboration is twofold: to celebrate the complementary experiences of engaging with photographs as objects and as images, and to connect museum visitors in Kansas City with an international community deeply engaged in thinking about portraiture and contemporary photographic practice.

“Contemporary photographers approach portraiture from multiple perspectives, and this show reflects that diversity,” said April M. Watson, who co-curated this exhibition with Jane L. Aspinwall (both are Associate Curators of Photography). “Some portraits emphasise the construction of identity through race, gender and class, while others question the relationship between individuality and typology, or the impact of the media on self-presentation. At the core is the relationship between the photographer and his or her subject, and how that interaction translates in the final portrait.” Adds Aspinwall: “Some of these photographers use antiquated processes such as the daguerreotype and tintype to make portraits of contemporary subjects. These historical resonances add an interesting dimension to the show.

Press release from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art website

Richard Learoyd (English, b. 1966)
Erika
2007
Ilfachrome print
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation in honour of the 75th anniversary of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

Jocelyn Lee (American, b. Italy 1962)
Untitled (Julia and Greenery)
2005
Chromogenic print
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation

Jim Goldberg (American, b.1953)
Prized Possession, Democratic Republic of Congo
2008
Gelatin silver print
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation

Vanessa Winship (British, b. 1960)
Hakkari 8
2007-2008
Inkjet print (printed 2008)
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Annebelle Schreuders (1)
2012
Inkjet print
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation

Sage Sohier (American, b. 1954)
12-Year Old Boy with His Father
2009
Inkjet print
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation

Michael Wolf (American, b. 1954)
Tokyo Compression #18
2010
Inkjet print
Gift of the Hall Family Foundation

Tomoko Sawada (Japanese, b. 1977)
Recruit/BLACK
2006
Chromogenic print
Purchase: acquired through the generosity of the Photography Society

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

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

The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art website

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Oct

Exhibition: ‘Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive Part II’ at The Walther Collection, Neu-Ulm, Germany

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: African photography, black and white photography, colour photography, digital photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, landscape, light, memory, painting, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, reality, space, time and video
Tags: A Few South Africans, A Photographic Subject, African colonial archive, After the Funeral, Amogelang Senokwane, An Anthropological Debate, Andrew Putter, Andrew Putter Secretly I Will Love You More, Beulahs, Candice Breitz, Candice Breitz Ghost Series #9, Cape Town, Carletonville, Carrie Mae Weems, Carrie Mae Weems From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried, Carrie Mae Weems You Became a Scientific Profile, colonialism, Come on Board, Contemporary Reconfigurations, David Goldblatt, David Goldblatt Mineworkers in their hostel, Distance and Desire, Distance and Desire Contemporary Reconfigurations, Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive, Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive Part 2, Durban, Embekweni, Faces and Phases, From Here I Saw What Happened And I Cried, Ghost Series #4, Ghost Series #9, Glebelands, Guy Tillim, Guy Tillim Mai Mai militia in training near Beni, Helen Joseph, Iimbali, Kudzanai Chiurai, Kudzanai Chiurai The Black President, La femme américaine libérée des années 70, Le Chef qui a vendu l'Afrique aux colons, Lwazi Mtshali, Lwazi Mtshali "Bigboy", Mai Mai militia in training near Beni, Marie van Riebeeck, Martin Machapa, Mineworkers in their hostel, Miriam Makeba, Miss D'vine II, Ms Le Sishi I, Outside King Mswati's palace, Paarl, Philip Kwame Apagya, Philip Kwame Apagya After the Funeral, Philip Kwame Apagya Come on Board, Pieter Hugo, Pieter Hugo Nandipha Mntambo, Pieter Hugo Pieter Hugo, Pieter Hugo Themba Tshabalala, Pieter Hugo There’s a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends, Pieter Hugo Yasser Booley, post-colonial art, postcolonial art, recontextualisation of the colonial archive, reimaging the African Archive, Sabelo Mlangeni, Sabelo Mlangeni Country Girls, Sabelo Mlangeni Iimbali, Sabelo Mlangeni Imbali, Sabelo Mlangeni Lwazi Mtshali "Bigboy", Sabelo Mlangeni Outside King Mswati's palace, Sabelo Mlangeni Xolani Ngayi eStanela, Sammy Baloji, Sammy Baloji Mémoires, Sammy Baloji Untitled 7, Samuel Fosso, Samuel Fosso La femme américaine libérée des années 70, Samuel Fosso Le Chef qui a vendu l'Afrique aux colons, Secretly I Will Love You More, Sishipo Ndzuzo, South African art, South African artist, South African photography, South African photography pre Apartheid, Sue Williamson, Sue Williamson A Few South Africans, Sue Williamson Helen Joseph, Sue Williamson Miriam Makeba, The Black President, The Brave Ones, The Walther Collection, Themba Tshabalala, There’s a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends, Western Deep Levels, Xolani Ngayi eStanela, Yasser Booley, You Became a Scientific Profile, Zanele Muholi, Zanele Muholi Amogelang Senokwane, Zanele Muholi Beulahs, Zanele Muholi Martin Machapa, Zanele Muholi Miss D'vine I, Zanele Muholi Ms Le Sishi I, Zanele Muholi Sishipo Ndzuzo, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Zwelethu Mthethwa The Brave Ones, Zwelethu Mthethwa Untitled

Exhibition dates: 9th June 9 2013 – 17th May 2015

Sammy Baloji (Congolese, b. 1978)
Untitled 7
2006
From Mémoires

This is the last in my trilogy of postings on exhibitions titled Distance and Desire which have featured African art from The Walther Collection, this time focusing on contemporary art.

It is quite instructive to compare this posting with the last, the exhibition My Country, I Still Call Australia Home: Contemporary Art from Black Australia at The Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA), Brisbane. I feel (a critical word) that there is a completely different atmosphere to most of this contemporary art when compared to the Australian iteration. Despite both groups surviving horrendous experiences and the ongoing memories of those acts, there seems to be a lightness of spirit to most of the contemporary African art, a delightful irony, a self deprecating humour, a less backward looking sadness than evidenced in the Australian work.

Of course there are intense moments when contemporary artists mine (and that is an appropriate word, for many Africans worked in servitude in the mines during the Apartheid period) the colonial archive, such as Carrie Mae Weems blood red tondos, You Became a Scientific Profile / An Anthropological Debate / A Negroid Type / A Photographic Subject (1995-1996, below) but what is more in evidence here is a dramatic sense of fashion and the performative and playful manner in which contemporary African identities are explored coupled with a strength in the representation of these identities. These are strong, forthright individuals not hidden off camera or dressed up in European dreamings imagin(in)g utopian “what ifs”; not the obvious crosses on black chests or deleted, delineated faces made of gum blossoms – but vital, alive, present human beings. While both groups of artists use traditional symbology to explore issues of identity and representation, the Australian version often seems dragged down by the portrayed dichotomy between past and present, traditional and contemporary / subversive, as though there must always be a reckoning, a longing, a sadness constantly reiterated in / with the past.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

.
Many thankx to The Walther Collection for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All images Courtesy of The Walther Collection.

Part II: Contemporary Reconfigurations

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Nandipha Mntambo, Cape Town
2012
From There’s a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends

Pieter Hugo’s There’s a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends is a series of close-up portraits of the artist and his friends, all of whom call South Africa home. Through a digital process of converting colour images to black and white while manipulating the colour channels, Hugo emphasises the pigment (melanin) in his sitters’ skins so they appear heavily marked by blemishes and sun damage. The resulting portraits are the antithesis of the airbrushed images that determine the canons of beauty in popular culture, and expose the contradictions of racial distinctions based on skin colour. As the critic Aaron Schuman writes, “although at first glance we may look ‘black’ or ‘white’, the components that remain ‘active’ beneath the surface consist of a much broader spectrum. What superficially appears to divide us is in fact something that we all share, and like these photographs, we are not merely black and white – we are red, yellow, brown, and so on; we are all, in fact, coloured.

Text from the Stevenson Gallery website [Online] Cited 01/10/2013 no longer available online

Sabelo Mlangeni (South African, b. 1980)
Outside King Mswati’s palace
2011
From Iimbali

Sabelo Mlangeni (South African, b. 1980)
Imbali
2011
From Iimbali

David Goldblatt (South African, 1930-2018)
Mineworkers in their hostel, Western Deep Levels, Carletonville
1970

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Yasser Booley, Cape Town
2011
From There’s a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Pieter Hugo, Cape Town
2011
From There’s a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Themba Tshabalala, Cape Town
2011
From There’s a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends

Guy Tillim (South African, b. 1962)
Mai Mai militia in training near Beni, eastern DRC, for immediate deployment with the APC (Armée Populaire du Congo), the army of the RCD-KIS-ML – Portraits I and II
December 2002

Sabelo Mlangeni (South African, b. 1980)
Lwazi Mtshali, “Bigboy”
2009
From Country Girls

Sabelo Mlangeni (South African, b. 1980)
Xolani Ngayi, eStanela
2009
From Country Girls

Zanele Muholi (South African, b. 1972)
Amogelang Senokwane, District Six, Cape Town
2009
From Faces and Phases

Zanele Muholi (South African, b. 1972)
Sishipo Ndzuzo, Embekweni, Paarl
2009
From Faces and Phases

The Walther Collection is pleased to announce Part II of Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive, a three-part exhibition series curated by Tamar Garb. “Contemporary Reconfigurations” offers new perspectives on the African photographic archive, reimagining its diverse histories and changing meanings. The exhibition centres on photography and video by African and African American artists who engage critically with the archive through parody, appropriation, and reenactment.

Carrie Mae Weems introduces the themes of “Contemporary Reconfigurations” with her powerful series From Here I Saw What Happened And I Cried, a revision of nineteenth and twentieth-century anthropometric photographs of African Americans, overlaid with texts by the artist. Sammy Baloji, Candice Breitz, Zwelethu Mthethwa, and Zanele Muholi rethink the ethnographic archive in large-scale colour prints, while Samuel Fosso and Philip Kwame Apagya create exuberant studio portraiture.

Sabelo Mlangeni’s black and white photo-essay, Imbali, documents the reed dances of KwaZulu-Natal, showing the display of virgins vying to be chosen as brides. Pieter Hugo’s series There’s a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends examines ethnicity and skin tonalities through anthropological mug shots. Working in video, Berni Searle performs as a statuesque deity engaged in domestic labor in “Snow White,” and Andrew Putter gives an indigenous voice to the effigy of Marie van Riebeeck, wife of the first Dutch settler in the area known today as Cape Town, in “Secretly I Will Love You More.”

For this group of artists, a stereotype or ethnographic vision in one era may provide material for quotation, irreverent reworking, or satirical performance in another. Illustrating how the African archive – broadly understood as an accumulation of representations, images, and objects – figures in selected contemporary lens-based practices, the exhibition stages a dialogue between the distance of the past and the desiring gaze of the present.

Press release from The Walther Collection website

Zwelethu Mthethwa (South African, b. 1960)
Untitled
2010
From The Brave Ones
Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

Samuel Fosso (Cameroonian, b. 1962)
La femme américaine libérée des années 70
1997

Samuel Fosso (Cameroonian, b. 1962)
Le Chef qui a vendu l’Afrique aux colons
1997

Zanele Muholi (South African, b. 1972)
Miss D’vine I
2007

Zanele Muholi (South African, b. 1972)
Miss D’vine II
2007

Candice Breitz (South African, b. 1972)
Ghost Series #9
1994-1996

Candice Breitz (South African, b. 1972)
Ghost Series #4
1994-1996

Carrie Mae Weems (American, b. 1953)
You Became a Scientific Profile / An Anthropological Debate / A Negroid Type / A Photographic Subject
1995-1996
From From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried
Courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery, New York

Andrew Putter (South African, b. 1965)
Secretly I Will Love You More (video still)
2007
Courtesy of the artist and Stevenson, Cape Town and Johannesburg

Sue Williamson (South African, b. 1941)
Helen Joseph
1983
from A Few South Africans

Helen Beatrice Joseph (née Fennell) (8 April 1905 – 25 December 1992) was a South African anti-apartheid activist.

Helen Joseph was born in Eastbourne near Midhurst West Sussex, England and graduated from King’s College London, in 1927. After working as a teacher in India for three years, Helen came to South Africa in 1931, where she met and married a dentist, Billie Joseph. In 1951 Helen took a job with the Garment Workers Union, led by Solly Sachs. She was a founder member of the Congress of Democrats, and one of the leaders who read out clauses of the Freedom Charter at the Congress of the People in Kliptown in 1955. Appalled by the plight of black women, she was pivotal in the formation of the Federation of South African Women and with the organisation’s leadership, spearheaded a march of 20,000 women to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to protest against pass laws on August 9, 1956. This day is still celebrated as South Africa’s Women’s Day.

She was a defendant at the 1956 Treason Trial. She was arrested on a charge of high treason in December 1956, then banned in 1957. The treason trial dragged on for four years but she was acquitted in 1961. In spite of her acquittal, in 13 October 1962, Helen became the first person to be placed under house arrest under the Sabotage Act that had just been introduced by the apartheid government. She narrowly escaped death more than once, surviving bullets shot through her bedroom and a bomb wired to her front gate. Her last banning order was lifted when she was 80 years old. Helen had no children of her own, but frequently stood in loco parentis for the children of comrades in prison or in exile. Among the children who spent time in her care were Winnie and Nelson Mandela’s daughters Zinzi and Zenani and Bram Fischer’s daughter Ilsa. Helen Joseph died on the 25 December 1992 at the age of 87.

Text from Wikipedia website

Sue Williamson (South African, b. 1941)
Miriam Makeba
1987
From A Few South Africans

Miriam Makeba (4 March 1932 – 9 November 2008), nicknamed Mama Africa, was a Grammy Award-winning South African singer and civil rights activist.

In the 1960s, she was the first artist from Africa to popularise African music around the world. She is best known for the song “Pata Pata”, first recorded in 1957 and released in the U.S. in 1967. She recorded and toured with many popular artists, such as Harry Belafonte, Paul Simon, and her former husband Hugh Masekela. Makeba campaigned against the South African system of apartheid. The South African government responded by revoking her passport in 1960 and her citizenship and right of return in 1963. As the apartheid system crumbled she returned home for the first time in 1990. Makeba died of a heart attack on 9 November 2008 after performing in a concert in Italy organised to support writer Roberto Saviano in his stand against the Camorra, a mafia-like organisation local to the region of Campania.

Text from Wikipedia website

Kudzanai Chiurai (Zimbabwean, b. 1981)
The Black President
2009

Zanele Muholi (South African, b. 1972)
Ms Le Sishi I, Glebelands, Durban
January 2010
From Beulahs (Beauties)

Zanele Muholi (South African, b. 1972)
Martin Machapa
2006
From Beulahs (Beauties)

Philip Kwame Apagya (Ghanaian, b. 1958)
Come on Board
2000

Philip Kwame Apagya (Ghanaian, b. 1958)
After the Funeral
1998

The Walther Collection
Reichenauer Strasse 21
89233 Neu-Ulm, Germany

Opening hours:
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Public tours Saturday and Sunday at 3pm by appointment only

The Walther Collection website

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Aug

Exhibition: ‘Pieter Hugo: This Must Be The Place – Selected Works 2003-2012’ at the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: black and white photography, colour photography, digital photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, landscape, light, photographic series, photography, portrait, psychological, reality, space and time
Tags: Accra, Accra Ghana, African artist, African contemporary photography, African photographer, African photography, Agbogbloshie Market, AIDS in South Africa, Aissah Salifu Agbogbloshie Market, anthropological museums, apartheid, Budapest, Chris Nkulo and Patience Umeh, end of apartheid, Johannesburg, John Kwesi Wild Honey Collector, large format camera, Looking Aside, Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, Naasra Yeti Agbogbloshie Market, Nigéria, Pieter Hugo, Pieter Hugo Aissah Salifu Agbogbloshie Market, Pieter Hugo Ashleigh McLean, Pieter Hugo Chris Nkulo and Patience Umeh, Pieter Hugo Escort Kama, Pieter Hugo John Kwesi Wild Honey Collector, Pieter Hugo Naasra Yeti Agbogbloshie Market, Pieter Hugo Permanent Error, Pieter Hugo Steven Mohapi, Pieter Hugo The Bereaved, Pieter Hugo The Honourable Justice Unity Dow, Pieter Hugo The Hyena Men of Abuja, Pieter Hugo: This must be the place, post-apartheid South Africa, post-colonial Africa, Rwandan Genocide, social landscape, South Africa, South African photography, Steven Mohapi, The Bereaved, The Honourable Justice Unity Dow, The Hyena & Other Men, The Hyena Men of Abuja, There’s a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends, This must be the place, urban landscape, Vestiges of a Genocide

Exhibition dates: 24th May – 11th August 2013

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
The Hyena Men of Abuja, Nigeria
2005
© Pieter Hugo
Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York

I have not seen enough of the other series of Pieter Hugo to make an informed decision, but work from the The Hyena & Other Men (2005-2007) and Permanent Error (2009-2010) series, the most often reproduced, is certainly strong. Whether I am fully convinced by his singular frontality is another matter…

Marcus

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

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Aissah Salifu, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana
2010
© Pieter Hugo
Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Escort Kama. Enugu, Nigeria
2008
© Pieter Hugo
Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Chris Nkulo and Patience Umeh. Enugu, Nigeria
2008
© Pieter Hugo
Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York

Pieter Hugo’s (b. Johannesburg, 1976) career is quite young, yet his photography is already so comprehensive that we can rightly speak of a consistent oeuvre. Since 2003 Hugo has photographed people and themes exclusively in sub-Saharan Africa. Daily life in post-colonial Africa, the complex conditions after the end of apartheid in his own land and the impact of global trade and commerce are themes that circulate throughout his intriguing series.

Pieter Hugo spends long periods of time photographing his extensive series in order to capture intimate and often bizarre moments. His use of a large-format camera requires patience and trust between photographer and subject, which is visible in straightforward expressions and candid interactions. There is a moment of calm and even timelessness in these works that allows the viewer to engage more fully with the subject matter.

The political diversity of a continent that is rapidly transforming – some note that Africa will be a global economic power of the future – is portrayed by Pieter Hugo with the clarity of familiar painting genres such as landscape, portraiture, group portraiture and still life. The subjects of his photography: the elderly, the poor, the blind, street artists, soap actors, close family and friends – form a social tableau that is at once personalised while also presenting a more universal image of Africa at the beginning of the twenty first century.

The initial motivation for the series The Hyena & Other Men (2005-2007) comes from a cell phone camera image Pieter Hugo discovered on the internet. The image concerns a group of performers who travel throughout Nigeria with tamed hyenas and other wild animals and collect money from their choreographed public performances. Hugo embarked on two separate trips to document this remarkable nomadic group up close. Hugo presents the complex relationship between animal and owner, capturing moments of calm and tenderness amidst situations full of drama and spectacle.

The Agbogbloshie market on the outskirts of Accra (Ghana) is the thematic of the Permanent Error series (2009-2010), which is mainly a dumping site for the technological waste of the western world. Here computers and other electronic equipment are collected and burned by inhabitants, often children, to extract precious raw materials. These machines formerly representing prosperity and progress are here transformed into only noxious and life threatening vapours. The charred ground, grey sky and scattered groups of foragers and cattle seem isolated from the world, but are in fact one of the last links in a chain of global commerce. Despite the harsh surroundings, the subjects stand tall, identified by full name and framed in the style of classical portraiture.

Nollywood (2008-2009) is the third largest film industry in the world, releasing between 500 and 1,000 movies each year. It produces movies on its own terms, telling stories that appeal to and reflect the lives of its public: it is a rare instance of self-representation on such a scale in Africa. The continent has a rich tradition of story-telling that has been expressed abundantly through oral and written fiction, but has never been conveyed through the popular media before. Stars are local actors; plots confront the public with familiar situations of romance, comedy, witchcraft, bribery, prostitution. The narrative is overdramatic, deprived of happy endings, tragic. The aesthetic is loud, violent, excessive; nothing is said, everything is shouted.

At a morgue in the township of Khayelitsha in Cape Town, Pieter Hugo turns his camera to individuals who have died of AIDS related illnesses. In The Bereaved (2005) as with many of his other series, Hugo gives first and last names of his subjects. Such a personal statement challenges the anonymity of AIDS statistics in South Africa. Ten years after the Rwandan Genocide, Pieter Hugo captures the unimaginable violence of these events through leftover fragments (Vestiges of a Genocide, 2004). The absence of human life is disturbingly present in the images. Bones are preserved with lime so as not to disintegrate. Heavy dust and dirt create an organic seal over the remains. While these substances often signify what is past and forgotten, the items in the photographs are preserved artificially and naturally for all to remember.

The series entitled Messina / Musina (2006) deals with the inhabitants of a small town on the border of Zimbabwe in South Africa’s Limpopo Province. The title reflects the correction of an earlier colonial misspelling of the town’s name (Messina), as well as the transition taking place at this geographical and social periphery.

In Pieter Hugo’s studio portraits of the elderly, the blind and people with albinism – Looking Aside, 2003-2006 – there is a direct and confrontational engagement between the viewer and the subjects. The viewer is made to feel uncomfortable and immobilised by the subject’s gaze. In There’s a Place in Hell for Me and My Friends (2011) – a recent series of portraits realised in the same spirit and adopting a stripped back, close-up and confrontationally direct approach – Hugo explores similar territory [to his earlier series Looking Aside] but from practically the opposite angle. In this case, the subjects are simply the photographer and his friends, who represent an array of ethnicities but are not particularly atypical, abnormal or ‘unusual’ in a genetic sense. Instead they are rendered unusually, portrayed in a heightened monotone with their skin transformed into a range of exaggerated black spots and dark tones.

With Kin (2011), his most autobiographical series to date, Pieter Hugo reflects on his own family and deep ambivalence towards the notion of home. Personal moments such as the pregnancy of his wife, the birth of their child and an operation of his mother are interspersed with national icons: open landscapes, anthropological museums and references to historical places and figures in South Africa. The recent and historical, private and public, rich and poor, ugly and beautiful interact closely in this series and represent the social complexities of post-apartheid South Africa.

Press release from the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art website

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Naasra Yeti, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra, Ghana
2009
© Pieter Hugo
Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
John Kwesi, Wild Honey Collector, Techiman District, Ghana
2005
© Pieter Hugo
Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
The Honourable Justice Unity Dow
2005
© Pieter Hugo
Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Steven Mohapi, Johannesburg
2003
© Pieter Hugo
Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Ashleigh McLean
2011
© Pieter Hugo
Courtesy of Stevenson, Cape Town/Johannesburg and Yossi Milo, New York

Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art
1095 Budapest Komor Marcell Street 1
Hungary 06 1 555-3444

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday: 10.00 – 18.00
Closed on Mondays

Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art website

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May

Exhibition: ‘Pieter Hugo: This must be the place’ at The Hague Museum of Photography, The Netherlands

By Dr Marcus Bunyan Leave a Comment

Categories: colour photography, digital photography, documentary photography, exhibition, existence, gallery website, intimacy, landscape, light, memory, photographic series, photography, photojournalism, portrait, psychological, reality, space, street photography and time
Tags: Abdulai Yahaya, Abuja, Accra, African contemporary photography, African photographer, African photography, African portrait photography, Agbogbloshie Market, David Akore, Dayaba Usman, Dayaba Usman with the monkey Clear, Enugu, Escort Kama, Mallam Mantari Lamal, Mallam Mantari Lamal with Mainasara, Mummy Ahmadu, Mummy Ahmadu and a snake charmer with a rock python, Nollywood, Obechukwu Nwoye, Permanent Error, Pieter Hugo, Pieter Hugo Abdulai Yahaya, Pieter Hugo David Akore, Pieter Hugo Dayaba Usman with the monkey Clear, Pieter Hugo Escort Kama, Pieter Hugo Mallam Mantari Lamal with Mainasara, Pieter Hugo Mummy Ahmadu and a snake charmer with a rock python, Pieter Hugo Obechukwu Nwoye, portrait photography, The Hyena & Other Men

Exhibition dates: 3rd March – 20th May 2012

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Mallam Mantari Lamal with Mainasara, Abuja
2005-2007
From the series The Hyena & Other Men
© Courtesy of Stevenson Gallery, Kaapstad / Yossi Milo, New York

Sexy, scary and very sad.

The hand of the monkey Clear on the thigh of Dayaba Usman (see second photograph below) – and the look on his face – makes one wonder who is really in chains.

Marcus

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

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Dayaba Usman with the monkey Clear, Abuja
2005-2007
From the series The Hyena & Other Men
© Courtesy of Stevenson Gallery, Kaapstad / Yossi Milo, New York

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Mummy Ahmadu and a snake charmer with a rock python, Abuja
2005-2007
From the series The Hyena & Other Men
© Courtesy of Stevenson Gallery, Kaapstad / Yossi Milo, New York

The South African photographer Pieter Hugo’s (1976) monumental photographs, centred around contemporary Africa, are now well known around the world. He has already won numerous awards including the KLM Paul Huf award in 2008 and was recently nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2012. The Hague Museum of Photography will be the first museum to exhibit a comprehensive survey of Hugo’s work from 2002 – 2011. Together with many previously unseen works, the exhibition will include a curated selection of his most well-known series: The Hyena & Other Men, the bizarre Nollywood and the striking Permanent Error. His impressive portraits tell personal stories about recurring themes throughout his oeuvre, namely those people who inhabit the margins of society in Sub-Saharan Africa.   The differences between the West and Africa, rich and poor, white and black are confronted in Hugo’s vivid compositions. Many of his series are prompted by newspaper articles, or radio and television pieces, which he finds compelling. He came in contact, for instance with the group of men who travel around Nigeria with hyenas and pythons, through an image sent via cell phone camera by a friend. He decided to accompany the group on their travels, and the outcome of this experience is The Hyena & Other Men (2005 – 2007), a series of portraits from a travelling group of street performers, who together with their – sometimes forcefully – tamed animals earn money to continue travelling.

In the series Permanent Error (2009-2010) he offers portraits of young men and woman who live amidst an immense waste dump of broken computers, mother boards and keyboards. To earn money these young people burn the computers dumped here as a means to extract valuable metals. The dangerous and poisonous vapours produce a hell on earth, where the quality of life is already challenging. The people who pose for Hugo stand in front of the camera with a defiant self-confidence.

From a different perspective comes his series about Nollywood (2008-2009) in Nigeria, the biggest film industry in the world after Hollywood and Bollywood. Here, stories that have for centuries been part of an oral tradition are told in dramatic films in which a central role is reserved for themes such as romance, witchcraft, bribery and prostitution. It is this world, where the everyday and the surreal exist simultaneously, that Hugo finds fascinating. In this series Hugo depicts actors and assistants posing in the role of movie characters. The result is an absurd tableau such as a photo of a half-naked woman sitting on a bed with a bloody knife stuck between her breasts. All the while she stares blankly at the camera. In another image, a woman well-dressed in Nigerian clothing sits completely unfazed by the man next to her made-up as the devil.

Press release from The Hague Museum of Photography website

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Escort Kama, Enugu
2008-2009
From the series Nollywood
© Courtesy of Stevenson Gallery, Kaapstad / Yossi Milo, New York

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Obechukwu Nwoye, Enugu
2008-2009
From the series Nollywood
© Courtesy of Stevenson Gallery, Kaapstad / Yossi Milo, New York

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
Abdulai Yahaya, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra
2009-2010
From the series Permanent Error
© Courtesy of Stevenson Gallery, Kaapstad / Yossi Milo, New York

Pieter Hugo (South African, b. 1976)
David Akore, Agbogbloshie Market, Accra
2009-2010
From the series Permanent Error
© Courtesy of Stevenson Gallery, Kaapstad / Yossi Milo, New York

The Hague Museum of Photography
Stadhouderslaan 43
2517 HV Den Haag
Phone: 31 (0)70 – 33 811 44

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday, 11am – 5pm
Closed Mondays

The Hague Museum of Photography website

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Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Contact

bunyanth@netspace.net.au

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LISTING OF ALL AUSTRALIAN ARTISTS AND EXHIBITIONS THAT HAVE APPEARED ON THE ARCHIVE AT THIS LINK

LISTING OF ALL INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS AND EXHIBITIONS THAT HAVE APPEARED ON THE ARCHIVE AT THIS LINK

Marcus Bunyan black and white archive: ‘Orphans and small groups’ 1994-96 Part 2

Marcus Bunyan black and white archive: 'Orphans and small groups' 1994-96 Part 2

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Text: "In Press" chapter from Marcus Bunyan's PhD research 'Pressing the Flesh: S**, Body Image and the Gay Male',… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 4 days ago
Text: "In Press" chapter from Marcus Bunyan's PhD research 'Pressing the Flesh: S**, Body Image and the Gay Male',… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 4 days ago
Text: "In Press" chapter from Marcus Bunyan's PhD research 'Pressing the Flesh: S**, Body Image and the Gay Male',… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 4 days ago
Exhibition: 'Peter Booth' @ TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville wp.me/pn2J2-m1J "Anima (strikethrough)"… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 week ago
Exhibition: 'Peter Booth' at TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville wp.me/pn2J2-m1J "Anima (strikethrough)"… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 week ago
Exhibition: 'Peter Booth' at TarraWarra Museum of Art, Healesville wp.me/pn2J2-m1J "Anima (strikethrough)"… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 1 week ago

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Posts Tagged ‘Pieter Hugo

Exhibition: ‘Unseen: 35 Years of Collecting Photographs’ at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Exhibition dates: 17th December 2019 – 8th March 2020

Growth of the collection

Behind the scenes

Collecting Contemporary Photography

Looking ahead

Exhibition: ‘Pieter Hugo: Kin’ at Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson, Paris

Exhibition dates: 14th January – 26th April 2015

Biography

Text: ‘Facile, Facies, Facticity’ by Dr Marcus Bunyan; Exhibition: ‘About Face: Contemporary Portraiture’ at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City

Exhibition dates: 9th August 2013 – 19th January 2014

Facile, Facies, Facticity

Endnotes

Exhibition: ‘Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive Part II’ at The Walther Collection, Neu-Ulm, Germany

Exhibition dates: 9th June 9 2013 – 17th May 2015

Part II: Contemporary Reconfigurations

Exhibition: ‘Pieter Hugo: This must be the place’ at The Hague Museum of Photography, The Netherlands

Exhibition dates: 3rd March – 20th May 2012

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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Marcus Bunyan black and white archive: ‘Orphans and small groups’ 1994-96 Part 2

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