10 minutes with Henrique Plantikow

When did you first know that you wanted to be a photographer?

I think it happened gradually. I realized I wanted to be a photographer when I started going out and seeing things around me for the 1st time. The camera gave me a reason to go out and explore.

Henrique Plantikow

Henrique Plantikow

Henrique Plantikow

Henrique Plantikow

Who are some of the photographers that influence your work today?.

I like the work of Helmut Newton and Richard Avedon, of course, and recently I’ve discovered Melodie McDaniel’s work which is great.

Henrique Plantikow

Henrique Plantikow

Henrique Plantikow

If you could go back 10 years, what advice would you give yourself?

I would tell myself that there are no right ways of creating, you just have to go out and try what works for you. And sometimes what you are taught can actually hinder your creativity, so you have to be careful what advice to take.

Henrique Plantikow

Henrique Plantikow

Henrique Plantikow

Henrique Plantikow

Do you have any goals for the upcoming year?

Yes, but I keep it flexible. My number 1 goal is to keep shooting and keep growing. I also plan on working with video.

(Henrique is based in New Hampshire. See more of his work, here.)

Via: http://www.thisisthewhat.com

Photographs of Iconic European Architecture Reconstructed in China

Richard Rowland is a Brighton based photographer. About his series ‘Urban Fictions’ he writes:

‘Urban Fictions’ is a photographic and video project funded by Arts Council England, examining the emergence of simulated urban developments in eastern China. The work documents a series of new towns being constructed based on different European architectural models, including English, French, Dutch, German and Swedish pastiches. These idealised reconstructions appear as hyperreal utopias that seek to create rather than reflect historical reality; illusory spaces connecting to the broader national narrative of modern-day China – one of consumerism, spectacle and economic expansion. Being from the UK I am fascinated by these towns and, in particular, the questions they raise about the shifting and uncertain character of an increasingly international world in which we live.

Via: http://www.featureshoot.com

Clever Still Life Photographer Promo Contains Handmade QR Code

To promote the launch of his new website and blog, London-based photographer David Sykes decided to create a QR code out of objects such as boots, calculators, briefcases, boomboxes and champagne bottles. The QR code was then photographed and sent out as limited edition prints so that lucky recipients can scan the code with their iPhone or iPad to launch Sykes’ new website. Sykes writes:

‘I wanted to promote the relaunch of my website and my blog with a bespoke shot and a mail-out. The QR code is the perfect example of something physical that links to the digital world. Just the QR photograph; no name, no other links or information, just that.

‘I wanted to play with the juxtaposition of a physical object linking directly to the digital, so I decided to build a 3D model of the code and create the image in one shot. This is in line with the way I like to work, I try to shoot as many things ‘in camera’ as I can. This meant scaling up and then building the 8 foot square model of the code. To create another link to my previous work I used objects from around the studio to build up the shot. Over three days, I worked with the stylist, Carrie Louise, to source the props, plan out and construct the QR city.

‘To further demonstrate the ‘in camera’ feel of the code I shot on film. To give the mail-out the sense of being a sheet of 10 x 8 film I retained the full frame of the shot, including studio in the background and rebates. I even presented it in the same bags you would get the film back from the lab in.’

Via: http://www.featureshoot.com

Captain Scott and Captain Shackleton: A 100 Year Old Expedition

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If there is a land above the seas that remains a last frontier for mankind, it’s Antarctica. A recent GPS mapping conducted by the British Antarctic Survey provided a reminder of how uncharted and unknown the vast white continent still is. When Antarctica’s hulking glacial landmass—icy and inhospitable—was spotted by 18th century British Captain James Cook, he remarked: “I make bold to declare that the world will derive no benefit from it.”

That proclamation did not ward away future journeys, though. An exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery in London’s Buckingham Palace marks the centennial of one of the last great episodes of the age of exploration. “The Heart of the Great White Alone” exhibits images taken from two separate expeditions: the ill-fated attempt by Robert Falcon Scott to reach the South Pole in 1911 and the slightly less calamitous (but no less dramatic) expedition undertaken in 1915 by Ernest Shackleton, whose ship foundered in Antarctic ice and whose crew escaped a frosty end only after one daring act of courage.

Accompanying Scott was Herbert Ponting, the early 20^th century version of a footloose freelance photojournalist. The Briton’s peripatetic career had taken him from California to the naval battlefields of the 1905 Russo-Japanese war to treks across stretches of Asia. His photos retain a distinctly Victorian sensibility for landscape; Scott’s ship, Terra Nova, and members of his crew are dwarfed or eclipsed by the magnitude of the silent, icy world around them. Ponting was also captivated by Antarctica’s fauna and almost died in the maws of a pod of killer whales, which burst through sheets of ice near where the intrepid photographer had set up for a closer look. An entry in Scott’s diary records the moment: “It was possible to see the whales’ tawny head markings, their small glistening eyes and their terrible array of teeth — by far the largest and the most terrifying in the world.”

Ponting stayed behind with the main contingent of the expedition while Scott and a team of volunteers left their base camp in November 1911 to press toward the South Pole. Scott would never return, consumed by his quest to be the first to reach the Pole; he was beaten to the site by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, who unlike Scott, lived to tell the tale.

Ernest Shackleton’s grandiosely named Imperial Trans-Antarctica Expedition was remembered for the lives saved, not lost. Accompanied by the photographer Frank Hurley aboard the ship Endurance, Shackleton’s voyage hit the skids early in 1915, its main vessel unable to endure the deadly ice drifts of the Weddell Sea. The crew escaped on lifeboats to barren Elephant Island but Shackleton knew no rescue would come to them at the edge of Antarctica’s glacial waste. So, with four others, he set off in the James Caird — an open wooden boat with oars and a sail — across nearly 1,000 miles of terrifying sea, thick with ice and buffeted by storms, to whaling stations on the island of South Georgia. Improbably, Shackleton’s crew made it and within three months he returned to Elephant Island aboard a Chilean steamboat to rescue the remainder of his crew, including Hurley. Not one man who journeyed with Shackleton aboard the Endurance was lost. Not surprisingly, Hurley’s pictures capture scenes of comradeship — of men huddled together by a fire, of indomitable dogs perched in the snow. It’s friendship and trust — not simply the heroism of captain explorers — that can withstand life in the heart of the great alone.

Ishaan Tharoor is a writer-reporter for TIME and editor of Global Spin. You can find him on Twitter at ishaantharoor. 

Via: http://lightbox.time.com

Disney-Inspired Macro Photography of Insects

Nadav Bagim is a photographer from Ramat-Gan, Israel. His WonderLandimages are created by using unique but rather simple artificial lighting and household objects from vegetables to plastic bags. The photos are shot inside a miniature studio with a Canon EOS 60D Camera, and a Canon 100mm f/2.8 Macro lens and flashes. The insects were found in his apartment and on plants outside his window and were not harmed during shooting.

Via: http://www.featureshoot.com

Review: ‘the mad square: modernity in german art 1910 – 37′ at the national gallery of victoria, melbourne

Exhibition dates: 25th November 2011 – 4th March 2012

This is one of the best exhibitions this year in Melbourne bar none. Edgy and eclectic the work resonates with the viewer in these days of uncertainty: THIS should have been the Winter Masterpieces exhibition!

The title of the exhibition, The mad square (Der tolle Platz) is taken from Felix Nussbaum’s 1931 painting of the same name where “the ‘mad square’ is both a physical place – the city, represented in so many works in the exhibition, and a reference to the state of turbulence and tension that characterises the period.” The exhibition showcases how artists responded to modern life in Germany in the interwar years, years that were full of murder and mayhem, putsch, revolution, rampant inflation, starvation, the Great Depression and the rise of National Socialism. Portrayed is the dystopian, dark side of modernity (where people are the victims of a morally bankrupt society) as opposed to the utopian avant-garde (the prosperous, the wealthy), where new alliances emerge between art and politics, technology and the mass media. Featuring furniture, decorative arts, painting, sculpture, collage and photography in the sections World War 1 and the Revolution, Dada, Bauhaus, Constructivism and the Machine Aesthetic, Metropolis, New Objectivity and Power and Degenerate Art, it is the collages and photographs that are the strongest elements of the exhibition, particularly the photographs. What a joy they are to see.

There is a small 2″ x 3″ contact print portrait of Hanna Höch by Richard Kauffmann, Penetrate yourself or: I embrace myself (1922) that is an absolute knockout. Höch is portrayed as the ‘new women’ with short bobbed hair and loose modern dress, her self-image emphasised through a double exposure that fragments her face and multiplies her hands, set against a contextless background. The ‘new women’ fragmented and broken apart (still unsure of herself?). The photograph is so small and intense it takes your breath away. Similarly, there is the small, intimate photograph No title (Man on Stage) (c.1927) by Irene Bayer (see below) that captures performance as ‘total art’, a combination of visual arts, dance, music, architecture and costume design. In contrast is a large 16 x 20″ photograph of the Bauhaus balconies (1926) by László Moholy-Nagy (see below) where the whites are so creamy, the perspective so magnificent.

Irene Bayer
No title (Man on stage)
c.1927
gelatin silver photograph
printed image 10.6 h x 7.6 w cm
Purchased 1983
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

No title (Metalltanz) (c.1928-29) by T. Lux Feinenger, a photographer that I do not know well, is an exceptional photograph and print. Again small, this time dark and intense, the image features man as dancer performing gymnastics in front of reflective, metal sculptures. The metal becomes an active participant in the Metalltanz or ‘Dance in metal’ because of its reflective qualities. The print, from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles is luminous. In fact all the prints from the Getty in this exhibition are of the most outstanding quality, a highlight of the exhibition for me. Another print from the Getty that features metal and performance is Untitled (Spiral Costume, from the Triadic Ballet) by T Grill c.1926 – 27 (see below) where the spiral costume becomes an extension of the body, highlighting its form. Also highlighting form, objectivity and detachment is a wonderful 3 x 5″ photograph of the New Bauhaus Building, Dessau (1926) by Lucia Moholy from the Getty collection, the first I have ever seen in the flesh by this artist. Outstanding.

Following, we have 4 photograms by Lucia’s husband, László Moholy-Nagy which display formalist experimentation “inspired by machine aesthetic, exploring a utopian belief that Constructivism and abstract art could play a role in the process of social reform.” Complimenting these photograms is a row of six, yes six! Moholy-Nagy including Dolls (Puppen) 1926-7 (Getty), The law of the series 1925 (Getty), Lucia at the breakfast table 1926 (Getty), Spring, Berlin 1928 (George Eastman House), Berlin Radio Tower 1928 (Art Institute of Chicago) and Light space modulator 1930 (Getty). All six photographs explore the fascinating relationship between avant-garde art and photography, between they eye and perspective, all the while declaiming what Moholy-Nagy called the “new vision”; angles, shadows and geometric patterns that defy traditional perspective “removing the space from associations with the real world creating a surreal, disjointed image.” This topographic mapping flattens perspective in the case of the Berlin radio tower allowing the viewer to see the world in a new way.

Finally two groups of photographs that are simply magnificent.

First 8 photographs in a row that focus on the order and progressive nature of the modern world, the inherent beauty of technology captured in formalist studies of geometric forms. The prints range from soft pictorialist renditions to sharp clarity. The quality of the prints is amazing. Artists include the wonderful E. O. Hoppé, Albert Renger-Patzsch (an outstandingly beautiful photograph, Harbour with cranes 1927 that is my favourite photograph in the exhibition, see below), Two Towers 1937-38 byWerner Mantz and some early Wolfgang Sievers before he left Germany for Australia in 1938 (Blast furnace in the Ruhr, Germany 1933, see below). These early Sievers are particularly interesting, especially when we think of his later works produced in Australia. Lucky were many artists who survived in Germany or fled from Nazi persecution at the last moment, including John Heartfield who relocated to Czechoslovakia in 1933 and then fled to London in 1938 and August Sander whose life and work were severely curtailed under the Nazi regime and whose son died in prison in 1944 near the end of his ten year sentence (Wikipedia).

Albert Renger-Patzsch
Harbour with crane
c.1927
gelatin silver photograph
printed image 22.7 h x 16.8 w cm
Purchased 1983
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Wolfgang Sievers
Blast furnace in the Ruhr, Germany
1933
gelatin silver photograph
27.5 h x 23.0 w cm
Purchased 1988
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

August Sander. Now there is a name to conjure with. The second magnificent group are 7 photographs that are taken from Sander’s seminal work People of the 20th Century. All the photographs have soft, muted tones of greys with no strong highlights and, usually, contextless backgrounds. The emphasis is on archetypes, views of people who exist on the margins of society – circus performers, bohemians, artists, the unemployed and blind people. In all the photographs there is a certain frontality (not necessarily physical) to the portraits, a self consciousness in the sitter, a wariness of the camera and of life. This self consciousness can be seen in the two photographs that are the strongest in the group - Secretary at West German radio in Cologne, 1931 and Match seller 1927 (see below).

There is magic here. Her face wears a somewhat quizzical air – questioning, unsure, vulnerable – despite the trappings of affluence and fashionability (the smoking of the cigarette, the bobbed hair). He is wary of the camera, his face and hands isolated by Sander while the rest of his body falls into shadow. His right hand is curled under, almost deformed, his shadow falling on the stone at right, the only true brightness in this beautiful image the four boxes of matches he clutches in his left hand: as Sander titles him ironically, The Businessman.

Working as I do these days with lots of found images from the 1940s – 60s that I digitally restore to life, I wonder what happened to these people during the dark days of World War 2. Did they survive the cataclysm, the drop into the abyss? I want to know, I want to reach out to these people to send them good energy. I hope that they did but their wariness in front of the camera, so intimately ‘taken’ by Sander, makes me feel the portent of things to come. How differently we see images armed with the hindsight of history!

In conclusion, this is a fantastic exhibition that will undoubtedly be in my top ten of the year for Melbourne in 2011.

Many thankx to Michael Thorneycroft for his help and The National Gallery of Victoria for allowing me to publish the accredited photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

August Sander
Match seller
1927
from the portfolio People of the 20th century, IV Classes and Professions, 17 The Businessman

Robert Wiene, Director
German 1873 – 1938
Still from from the Cabinet of Dr Caligari
1919
5 min excerpt, 35mm transferred to DVD, Black and White, silent, German subtitles
Courtesy Transit Film GmbH
Production still courtesy of the British Film Institute and Transit Film GmbH

Felix H Man
German 1893 – 1985
Luna Park
1929
gelatin silver photograph
18.1 x 24cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased, 1987
© Felix H Man Estate

Hannah Höch
German 1889 – 1978
Love
1931
from the series Love
photomontage
21.8 x 21.0 cm
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
Purchased, 1983

Hannah Höch made some of the most interesting Dada collages and photomontages, including Love, an image of two strange composite female. Höch’s technique of pasting images together from magazine clippings and advertisements was a response to the modern era of mass media, and a way of criticising the bourgeois taste for ‘high art’. In many of her works, Höch explores the identity and changing roles of women in modern society.

“The Mad Square takes its name from Felix Nussbaum’s 1931 painting which depicts Berlin’s famous Pariser Platz as a mad and fantastic place. The ‘mad square’ is both a physical place – the city, represented in so many works in the exhibition, and a reference to the state of turbulence and tension that characterises the period. The ‘square’ can also be a modernist construct that saw artists moving away from figurative representations towards increasingly abstract forms.

The exhibition features works by Max Beckman, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Christian Schad, Kurt Schwitters and August Sander. This group represents Germany’s leading generation of interwar artists. Major works by lesser known artists including Karl Hubbuch, Rudolf Schlichter and Hannah Höch are also presented in the exhibition in addition to works by international artists who contributed to German modernism.

The Mad Square brings together a diverse and extensive range of art, created during one of the most important and turbulent periods in European history, offering new insights into the understanding of key German avant‐garde movements including – Expressionism, Dada, Bauhaus, Constructivism, and New Objectivity were linked by radical experimentation and innovation, made possible by an unprecedented freedom of expression.

World War 1 and the Revolution

The outbreak of war in 1914 was met with enthusiasm by many German artists and intellectuals who volunteered for service optimistically hoping that it would bring cultural renewal and rapid victory for Germany. The works in this section are by the generation of artists who experienced war first hand. Depictions of fear, anxiety and violence show the devastating effects of war – the disturbing subjects provide insight into tough economic conditions and social dysfunction experienced by many during the tumultuous early years of the Weimar Republic following the abdication of the Kaiser.

Dada

The philosophical and political despair experienced by poets and artists during World War 1 fuelled the Dada movement, a protest against the bourgeois conception of art. Violent, infantile and chaotic, Dada took its name from the French word for a child’s hobbyhorse or possibly from the sound of a baby’s babble. Its activities included poetry readings and avant‐garde performances, as well as creating new forms of abstract art that subverted all existing conditions in western art. Though short‐lived, in Germany the Dada movement has profoundly influenced subsequent developments in avant-garde art and culture. The impact of the Dada movement was felt throughout Europe – and most powerfully in Germany from 1917 – 21.

Bauhaus

The Bauhaus (1919‐33) is widely considered as the most important school of art and design of the 20th century, very quickly establishing a reputation as the leading and most progressive centre of the international avant‐garde. German architect Walter Gropius founded the school to do away with traditional distinctions between the fine arts and craft, and to forge an entirely new kind of creative designer skilled in both the conceptual aesthetics of art and the technical skills of handicrafts. The Bauhaus was considered to be both politically and artistically radical from its inception and was closed down by the National Socialists in 1933.

Constructivism and the Machine Aesthetic

Having emerged in Russia after World War I, Constructivism developed in Germany as a set of ideas and practices that experimented with abstract or non-representational forms and in opposition to Expressionism and Dada. Constructivists developed works and theories that fused art and with technology. They shared a utopian belief in social reform, and saw abstract art as playing a central role in this process.

Metropolis

By the 1920s Berlin has become the cultural and entertainment capital of the world and mass culture played an important role in distracting a society traumatised by World War 1, the sophisticated metropolis provided a rich source of imagery for artists, it also come to represent unprecedented sexual and personal freedom. In photography modernity was emphasised by unusual views of the metropolis or through the representation of city types. The diverse group of works in this section portray the uninhibited sense of freedom and innovation experienced by artists throughout Germany during the 1920s.

New Objectivity

By the mid 1920s, a new style emerged that came to be known as Neue Sachlichkeit or New Objectivity. After experiencing the atrocities of World War 1 and the harsh conditions of life in postwar Germany, many artists felt the need to return to the traditional modes of representation with portraiture becoming a major vehicle of this expression, with its emphasis on the realistic representation of the human figure.

Power and Degenerate Art

After the seizure of power by the National Socialists in 1933 modern artists were forbidden from working and exhibiting in Germany, with their works confiscated from leading museums and then destroyed or sold on the international art market. Many avant‐garde artists were either forced to leave Germany or retreat into a state of ‘inner immigration’.

The Degenerate art exhibition, held in Munich in 1937, represented the culmination of the National Socialists’ assault on modernism. Hundreds of works were selected for the show which aimed to illustrate the mental deficiency and moral decay that had supposedly infiltrated modern German art. The haphazard and derogatory design of the exhibition sought to ridicule and further discredit modern art. Over two million people visited the exhibition while in contrast far fewer attended the Great German art exhibition which sought to promote what the Nazis considered as ‘healthy’ art.

T Grill
Untitled (Spiral Costume, from the Triadic Ballet)
c.1926 – 27
gelatin silver print
22.5 x 16.2cm
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

August Sander
German 1876 – 1964
Secretary at West German radio in Cologne
1931, printed by August Sander in the 1950s
from the portfolio People of the 20th century, III The woman, 17 The woman in intellectual and practical occupation
gelatin silver photograph
29.0 x 22.0cm
Die Photographische Sammlung /SK Stiftung Kultur, August Sander Archiv, Cologne (DGPH1016)
© Die Photographische Sammlung /SK  Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney

Timeline

1910

• Berlin’s population doubles to two million people

1911

• Expressionists move from Dresden to Berlin

1912

• Social Democratic Party (SPD) the largest party in the Reichstag

1913

• Expressionists attain great success with their city scenes

1914

• World War I begins
• George Grosz, Oskar Schlemmer, Otto Dix, Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Beckmann and Franz Marc enlist in the army

1915

• Grosz declared unfit for service, Beckmann suffers a breakdown and Schlemmer wounded

1916

• Marc dies in combat
• Dada begins at Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich

1917

• Lenin and Trotsky form the Soviet Republic after the Tzar is overthrown

1918

• Richard Huelsenbeck writes a Dada manifesto in Berlin
• Kurt Schwitters creates Merz assemblages in Hanover
• Revolutionary uprisings in Berlin and Munich
• Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates and flees to Holland
• Social Democratic Party proclaims the Weimar Republic
• World War I ends

1919

• Freikorps assassinates the Spartacist leaders, Karl Leibknecht and Rosa Luxemburg
• Bauhaus established in Weimer by Walter Gropius
• Cologne Dada group formed
• Treaty of Versailles signed

1920

• Berlin is the world’s third largest city after New York and London
• Inflation begins in Germany
• National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) founded
• Kapp Putsch fails after right‐wing forces try to gain control over government
• First International Dada fair opens in Berlin

1921

• Hitler made chairman of the NSDAP

1922

• Schlemmer’s Triadic ballet premiers in Stuttgart
• Hyperinflation continues

1923

• Hitler sentenced to five years imprisonment for leading the Beer Hall Putsch
• Inflation decreases and a period of financial stability begins

1924

• Hitler writes Mein Kampf while in prison
• Reduction of reparations under the Dawes Plan

1925

• New Objectivity exhibition opens at the Mannheim Kunsthalle
• The Bauhaus relocates to Dessau

1926

• Germany joins the League of Nations

1927

• Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis released
• Unemployment crisis worsens
• Nazis hold their first Nuremburg party rally

1928

• Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s The threepenny opera premieres in Berlin
• Hannes Meyer becomes the second director of the Bauhaus

1929

• Street confrontations between the Nazis and communists in Berlin
• Young Plan accepted, drastically reducing reparations
• Stock market crashes on Wall Street, New York
• Thomas Mann awarded the Nobel Prize for literature

1930

• Resignation of Chancellor Hermann Müller’s cabinet ending parliamentary rule
• Minority government formed by Heinrich Brüning, leader of the Centre Party
• Nazis win 18% of the vote and gain 95 seats in the National elections
• Ludwig Miles van der Rohe becomes the third director of the Bauhaus
• John Heartfield creates photomontages for the Arbeiter‐Illustrierte Zeitung (AIZ)

1931

• Unemployment reaches five million and a state of emergency is declared in Germany

1932

• Nazis increase their representation in the Reichstag to 230 seats but are unable to form a majority coalition
• Miles van der Rohe moves the Bauhaus to Berlin
• Grosz relocates to New York in as an exile

1933

• Hindenberg names Hitler as Chancellor
• Hitler creates a dictatorship under the Nazi regime
• The first Degenerate art exhibition denouncing modern art is held in Dresden
• Miles van der Rohe announces the closure of the Bauhaus
• Nazis organise book burnings in Berlin
• Many artists including Gropius, Kandinski and Klee flee Germany
• Beckmann, Dix and Schlemmer lose their teaching positions

1934

• Fifteen concentration camps exist in Germany

1935

• The swastika becomes the flag of the Reich

1936

• Spanish civil war begins
• Germany violates the Treaty of Versailles
• Olympic Games held in Garmisch‐Partenkirchen and Berlin
• Thomas Mann deprived of his citizenship and emigrates to the United States

1937

• German bombing raids over Guernica in Spain in support of Franco
• The Nazi’s Degenerate art exhibition opens in Munich and attracts two million visitors
• Beckmann, Kirchner and Schwitters leave Germany
• Purging of ‘degenerate art’ from German museums continues 1

László Moholy-Nagy
Bauhaus Balconies
1926
Silver gelatin photograph

John Heartfield
German 1891 – 1968
Adolf, the superman: swallows gold and spouts rubbish
1932
from the Workers Illustrated Paper, vol 11, no 29, 17 July 1932, p 675
photolithograph
38.0 x 27.0 cm
John Heartfield Archiv, Akademie der Künste zu Berlin
Photo: Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Kunstsammlung, Heartfield 2261/ Roman März
© The Heartfield Community of Heirs /VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn. Licensed by Viscopy, Sydney

John Heartfield’s photomontages expose hidden agendas in German politics and economics of the 1920s and 30s. This image was published six months before the National Socialist Party came to power, and shows Hitler with a spine made of coins and his stomach filled with gold.  The caption says that he ‘swallows gold’, alluding to generous funding by right-wing industrialists, and ‘spouts rubbish’.

Max Beckmann
German 1884 – 1950
The trapeze
1923
oil on canvas
196.5 x 84.0 cm
Toledo Museum of Art
Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey
Photo: Photography Incorporated, Toledo

1. Timeline credit: Chronology compiled by Jacqueline Strecker and Victoria Tokarowski from the following sources:

Catherine Heroy ‘Chronology’ in Sabine Rewald, Glitter and Doom: German portraits from the 1920s, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, exh cat, 2006, pp. 39‐46.

Anton Kaes, Martin Jay and Edward Dimendberg, eds, ‘Political chronology’, The Weimar Republic sourcebook, Berkely 1994, pp. 765‐71.

Jonathan Petropoulos and Dagmar Lott‐Reschke ‘Chronology’ in Stephanie Barron, ‘Degenerate Art’: the fate of the avant‐garde in Nazi Germany, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, exh cat, 1991, pp. 391‐401.

NGV International
180 St Kilda Road

Opening hours
10am – 5pm. Closed Tuesdays.

Via: http://artblart.wordpress.com

Neighborly Portraits in Mexico

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A change of scenery made Russell Monk see Mexico in a new light.

Literally.

He had been living like the typical artsy expat in the center of San Miguel de Allende when he decided to uproot himself and buy a small house on the outskirts of town. There, he began doing portraits of his Mexican neighbors, starting with Isabel, the matriarch of a large family who lived on the other side of his back wall.

“People ask how you light those,” he said. “I don’t — they’re all natural light. You can’t beat that.”

The wall he shared with his neighbors is an important element of all his subsequent photographs. He had painted it a mottled gray and used it as a backdrop in an improvised open-air studio, where he does smoothly lit black-and-white portraits of his neighbors, often portraying them with tools of their trades, or whimsical talismans from his dreams.

The images are the result of a project he started on impulse last winter (which he first started showing on Facebook). He had gone to Mexico 20 years ago to do a book and subsequent documentary on the Day of the Dead festival. He fell in love with the area, and moved there a while later from Toronto.

“There is something about the light,” said Mr. Monk, who was born in London. “Mexico is a pretty surreal place, and has this macabre sense of self in a way that America or England doesn’t.”

Russell Monk Cabeza de Cerdo

His Mexican portraits – which were also honored by PDN this year — are the latest twist in a 30-year career that has taken him to war zones and advertising studios. In recent years he has done campaigns for Samsung, a hospital group and Greenpeace.

“Like a lot of photographers, I’m not doing it the same as I used to,” he said. “Everyone else is doing it, and it’s harder. I’m trying to do more of these kinds of things, which I find rewarding.”

When he moved to his house on the outskirts of San Miguel de Allende, he began to photograph his neighborhood. Though he had once traveled in the country with a tent to do portraits, à la Irving Penn’s “Worlds in a Small Room,” he found his portrait project worked better at home. The residents of his community, he said, still saw it as an honor to have their portraits done.

“It seems so old-fashioned in many ways, but I’m drawn to it,” he said. “There is an honesty to it – a subject and a wall. Of course, I add what I add to it. Sometimes I see a prop and buy it, then try it out on six different people.”

Mind you, it might take five or six appointments to connect with just one of his subjects. Other times, a friend of a previous subject would come his way, asking for a portrait. It was a rhythm he learned to accept.

The images themselves have a smooth-toned, sometimes dreamy quality: a street vendor draped with a garland of garlic bulbs, a teenage beauty queen, a bricklayer obscured by his burden, a butcher holding a pig’s head like a game-winning ball under his arm.

“I can only take these pictures because of the level of intimacy with the people in the area,” he said. “You just can’t jet into a place. Well, you could, but it wouldn’t be as good.”

Russell Monk Corazon de Nopales

Convents of India photographed by Percy Dean

Holy Cross, female dormitory

Manchester based photographer Percy Dean was born on the banks of the river Mersey in North West England. At the age of 17 he studied photographic practice at a small local college; during this time he started making pictures around his love of skateboarding and began contributing to the national/international specialist sports magazines of the time. In 2010 he received an MA in Photojournalism from Bolton University. About this series, The Seven Sisters of Siolim, Dean writes:

Seven years ago I travelled to India. As I drove a bike through a small town called Siolim, in the North of Goa, I noticed a crowd of people surrounding a small figure. I passed by and could see that the figure was clothed in a Nun’s habit and with outstretched arms was allowing the crowd to touch and hold her hands. In the mêlée, I noticed her skin was so pale it seemed almost translucent, she watched me as I passed with frail eyes. As I drove on and away from the town the visual clutter of the situation began to piece itself together slowly in my head; the lady was an Albino nun. In hindsight, what could I have done? An awkward forced encounter resulting in some sort of ‘voyeuristic portrait’ of an Albino Nun? I presume that’s why I didn’t do anything about it at the time, but then again I was a very different person back then.

As the years passed I often thought about the fleeting moment and how things could have been different or if indeed they should have been. I’d tell friends stories of the Nun and occasionally trawl the Internet for some kind of name or record. I don’t really know what I was looking for. I wanted to feel a connection that I hadn’t make at the time, I was trying to right a regret.

In January 2011, I travelled back to try and find her. I discovered there are seven convents in Siolim; I went to them all. I’d walk through the town asking the same question again and again, I’d tell my tale to anyone who’d listen. Initially I think I was still just trying to find ‘her’, but as I made my way through the wider area and the convents, the path I was following became less definite and began to revolve about my changing feelings that resulted from all these encounters and conversations. I don’t think actually finding the person in the story really mattered anymore, maybe she never did.

Shelter for women and girls in distress

The third stage of the cross, ‘Jesus falls for the first time’

The road to Siolim

Sister Sneha’s garden

The Vivan Niwas children’s refuge

Back door of orphanage

Via: http://www.burnmagazine.org

DAGUERROTYPE: “PORTRAITS”

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‘Infinitesimal residual vibration of an unknown sound’ by kaho yu

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All photographs:

Kaho Yu
Untitled
from the series Infinitesimal Residual Vibration of An Unknown Sound
2009 – 2011

I like these photographs. These is a stillness to them that is intoxicating. The wonderful quotation by  Charles Babbage (the air as a form of perpetual palimpsest) coupled with Yu’s insight that he sought to capture – through long time exposure, those infinitesimal residual movements of voice and sound trapped in the diffused movements of all the particles in the atmosphere – compliment the work. These are intelligent, emotive, quiet photographs.

Many thankx to Kaho Yu for allowing me to publish the photographs and text in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All photographs © Kaho Yu and courtesy of the artist.

“The air is one vast library, on whose pages are for ever written all that man has ever said or woman whispered. There, in their mutable but unerring characters, mixed with the earliest, as well as the latest sighs of mortality, stand for ever recorded, vows unredeemed, promises unfulfilled, perpetuating in the unified movements of each particle, the testimony of man’s changeful will.”

Charles Babbage, 1837

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“The photographs in this series were taken during a period when I was feeling existentially bored. Instead of distracting myself with activities and accumulating new sensations, I decided to “look” at boredom, to study, and perhaps to understand it. The most natural strategy was to observe the immediate environments where my daily activities take place – train stations, cubicles, copy machines room, etc. I carried a medium format camera on a tripod and spent the odd hours wandering alone through those familiar spaces.

My “study” did not lead me to any revelation or answer. Instead, I found myself spending a lot of time waiting in a long silence, between the opening and the closing of the camera shutter.

Charles Babbage, a scientist in 1837, postulated that every voice and sound, once imparted on the air particles, does not dissipate but remains in the diffused movements of all the particles in the atmosphere. Thus, there might one day come a person equipped with the right mathematical knowledge of these motions who will be able to capture the infinitesimal vibrations and to trace back to their ultimate source.

Taking a long exposure, letting the light slowly accumulate an image on the celluloid surface, to me, is not unlike a sound seeker searching in the air particles, for the tiny residual movements that have been conveyed through the history of mankind, from the beginning of time.”

Kaho Yu artist statement

Kaho Yu website

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Via: http://artblart.wordpress.com