William E. EwingArt Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

Exhibition dates: 8th November 2012 – 27th January 2013

Curator: William E. Ewing

Henri Cartier-Bresson (French, 1908-2004)
Harlem, New York, 1947
1947
Gelatin silver print / printed 1970s
Image: 29.1 x 19.6cm
Paper: 30.4 x 25.4cm
© Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos, Courtesy Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson

They may be channelling the master, but none does it like Cartier-Bresson. There is a spareness and spatial intensity to Cartier-Bresson’s work that is absolutely his own. Look at the photograph directly above (Harlem, New York, 1947). A railing leads the eye in bottom right, echoed by the bottom jamb of the window. The opening is set for the old man to perform complete with curtains, talking stage right. The jamb zig zags above a trilby-wearing, cigarette-smoking man’s head leading to a wire mesh fence that takes the eye out of the frame on the left. The two men, lower than the old man in the framed window, look in a completely different direction to him.

Counterpoise. The image pulls in two directions. Above their head a series of cantilevered staircases ascends to the heavens, thought ascending. A masterpiece.

So many of the other photographers in this posting crowd the plane with people looking in all directions, closed off foregrounds or tensionless images. Images that are too complex or too simple. There is an opposition to Cartier-Bresson’s images that is difficult for the viewer to resolve neatly, yet they appear as if in perfect balance. Look at Brooklyn, New York, 1947 towards the bottom of the posting. Nothing in this still life is out of place (from the light to the multiple, overlapping shadows and the out of focus elements of the composition) yet there is humbling agony about the whole thing. It is almost is if he is saying, “cop a load of this, this is what I can see.” And what a fabulous eye it is.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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

Ernst Haas (Austrian-American, 1921-1986)
New Orleans, USA,
1960
Chromogenic archival print
50 x 35cm
© Ernst Haas Estate, New York

Saul Leiter (American, 1923-2013)
Snow
1960
© Saul Leiter
Courtesy: Saul Leiter, Howard Greenberg Gallery, New York

Helen Levitt (American, 1913-2009)
Cat next to red car, New York,
1973
Type C prints
18 x 12 inches
© Estate of Helen Levitt

Alex Webb (American, b. 1952)
Tehuantepec, Mexico
1985
71 x 47cm
Digital Type C print
© Alex Webb

“I only know how to approach a place by walking. For what does a street photographer do but walk and watch and wait and talk, and then watch and wait some more, trying to remain confident that the unexpected, the unknown, or the secret heart of the known awaits just around the corner.”

~ Alex Webb

Jeff Mermelstein (American, b. 1957)
Untitled (Package Pile Up, New York City)
1995
Chromogenic print
© Jeff Mermelstein
Courtesy Rick Wester Fine Art, New York

Carolyn Drake (American, b. 1971)
Birthday party at Olympia, a gated community, Wellington, Florida
2005
Digital Pigment Print
© Carolyn Drake / Magnum Photos

Carolyn Drake (American, b. 1971)
Hotel room. Zhetisay, Kazakhstan. Carolyn Drake
2009
Digital Pigment Print
© Carolyn Drake/Magnum Photos

Andy Freeberg (American, b. 1958)
Sean Kelly, Art Basel Miami
2010
From the series Art Fare
Artist: Kehinde Wiley
63 x 43cm
Pigment ink print
© Andy Freeberg
Courtesy Kopeikin Gallery

Carolyn Drake (American, b. 1971)
New Kashgar. Kashgar, China
2011
30.48 x 20.32cm
Digital Light Jet print
© Carolyn Drake 2012

Positive View Foundation announces its inaugural exhibition Cartier-Bresson: A Question of Colour, to be held at Somerset House, 8 November 2012 – 27 January 2013. Curated by William A. Ewing, the exhibition will feature 10 Henri Cartier-Bresson photographs never before exhibited in the UK alongside over 75 works by 15 international contemporary photographers, including: Karl Baden (US), Carolyn Drake (US), Melanie Einzig (US), Andy Freeberg (US), Harry Gruyaert (Belgium), Ernst Haas (Austrian), Fred Herzog (Canadian), Saul Leiter (US), Helen Levitt (US), Jeff Mermelstein (US), Joel Meyerowitz (US), Trent Parke (Australian), Boris Savelev (Ukranian), Robert Walker (Canadian), and Alex Webb (US).

The extensive showcase will illustrate how photographers working in Europe and North America adopted and adapted the master’s ethos famously known as ‘the decisive moment’ to their work in colour. Though they often departed from the concept in significant ways, something of that challenge remained: how to seize something that happens and capture it in the very moment that it takes place.

It is well-known that Cartier-Bresson was disparaging towards colour photography, which in the 1950s was in its early years of development, and his reasoning was based both on the technical and aesthetic limitations of the medium at the time. Curator William E. Ewing has conceived the exhibition in terms of, as he puts it, ‘challenge and response’. “This exhibition will show how Henri Cartier-Bresson, in spite of his skeptical attitude regarding the artistic value of colour photography, nevertheless exerted a powerful influence over photographers who took up the new medium and who were determined to put a personal stamp on it. In effect, his criticisms of colour spurred on a new generation, determined to overcome the obstacles and prove him wrong. A Question of Colour simultaneously pays homage to a master who felt that black and white photography was the ideal medium, and could not be bettered, and to a group of photographers of the 20th and 21st centuries who chose the path of colour and made, and continue to make, great strides.”

Cartier-Bresson: A Question of Colour will feature a selection of photographers whose commitment to expression in colour was – or is – wholehearted and highly sophisticated, and which measured up to Cartier-Bresson’s essential requirement that content and form were in perfect balance. Some of these artists were Cartier-Bresson’s contemporaries, like Helen Levitt, or even, as with Ernst Haas, his friends; others, such as Fred Herzog in Vancouver, knew the artist’s seminal work across vast distances; others were junior colleagues, such as Harry Gruyaert, who found himself debating colour ferociously with the master; and others still, like Andy Freeberg or Carolyn Drake, never knew the man first-hand, but were deeply influenced by his example.

Press release from Somerset House website

Fred Herzog (Canadian born Germany, 1930-2019)
Man with Bandage, Vancouver, Canada
1968

Joel Meyerowitz (American, b. 1938)
Madison Avenue, New York City
1975
Archival Pigment Print
© Joel Meyerowitz 2012
Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, NYC

Joel Meyerowitz (American, b. 1938)
Camel Coats, Fifth Avenue, New York
1975
Archival Pigment Print
© Joel Meyerowitz 2012
Courtesy Howard Greenberg Gallery, NYC

Ernst Haas (American, 1921-1986)
New York City, US
1981

Fred Herzog (Canadian born Germany, 1930-2019)
Crossing Powell 2
1984
Ink jet print

Harry Gruyaert (Belgian, b. 1941)
Morocco, town of Duarzazte
1986
© 2015 Harry Gruyaert / Magnum Photos

Harry Gruyaert (Belgian, b. 1941)
Province of Brabant, Flanders region, Belgium
1988
© 2015 Harry Gruyaert / Magnum Photos

Harry Gruyaert is known for his extraordinary photographic work with color. Born in Antwerp in 1941, he originally dreamed of becoming a film director. In the late 1970s, Pop art and a trip to Morocco inspired him to become one of the first photographers in Europe to devote his work entirely to color photography. Gruyaert’s cinematographic background instilled in him an aesthetic conception of photography. Rather than telling stories or documenting the world through his lens, he searches for beauty in everyday elements. His images are simply snapshots of magical moments in which different visual aspects, primarily color, form, light and movement, spontaneously come together in front of his lens.

Text from the Magnum website

Jeff Mermelstein (American, b. 1957)
Unitled ($10 bill in mouth) New York City, 1992
1992
Chromogenic print
20 x 16 in.
© Jeff Mermelstein
Courtesy Rick Wester Fine Art, New York

“My process is linked to everyday life. Only on rare occasions do I go out specifically to ‘shoot’. My best photographs were taken going to or from work, or some other destination. Sometimes a picture appears that helps me sum up a strange mood or thought that I’ve struggled with for weeks. Other times my work is more documentary in nature.

Photographing in public keeps me awake and aware, always looking around, in awe at what we humans are up to. In a time when staged narratives and rendered images are popular, I am excited by the fact that life itself offers situations far more strange and beautiful than anything I could set up.”

~ Jeff Mermelstein

Andy Freeberg (American, b. 1958)
Nina Menocal, Armory Show
2011
From the series Art Fare
Pigment ink print
© Andy Freeberg
Courtesy Kopeikin Gallery

Henri Cartier-Bresson (French, 1908-2004)
Brooklyn, New York, 1947
1947
Gelatin silver print / printed in 2007
Image: 19.8 x 29.8cm
Paper: 22.9 x 30.4cm
© Henri Cartier-Bresson/Magnum Photos, Courtesy Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson