Posts Tagged ‘photography’

Photography Calling!

Posted on January 15th, 2012 • Filed under Look • No Comments

I’ve seen a number of photo exhibitions over the past few days. I might try and find time to write about Arctic Convoys, 1941-1945 which i saw at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich. In the meantime this post is going to be about some of the photo exhibitions i saw in Hannover this week. There is a solo show of Alice Springs’ work at the Kestnergesellschaft. She was Helmut Newton’s wife. The works on view are competent, a bit too Newton-esque for my taste and rigorously black and white. Mostly fashion shots, and shots of fashion designers. She did make a wonderful series of portraits of members of the Hell’s Angels though. I wish i could reproduce on the blog every single image from that series. Sadly, i cannot find any trace of it online (please, please, drop me a line if you’ve spotted them.) So i’ll leave that one aside.

Gerhard Gronefeld, Junge Stockenten auf Holzente geprägt, Seewiesen, Germany, ca. 1958

And i’ll go ahead with the two images that got stuck in my head during my trip to Germany. The first one shows Ducklings conditioned to follow a wooden duck. It’s by Gerhard Gronefel, photographer of poignant moments in the Germany of World War II. And then of course i almost had a heart attack when i saw the Cheshire cat grin of Dieter Bohlen from the Modern Talking (the Modern Talking!) was plastered on all over the bus stops i walked by. Germany, I love you!

Still, the magnet that got me to Hannover wasn’t a piece of musical (and fashion) history but Photography Calling!, an exhibition at the Sprengel Museum that explores ‘documentary style’ photography from the 1960s to the present day.

The work of 31 photographers are part of the show. You can never go wrong with the likes of Diane Arbus, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Lee Friedlander, Martin Parr, Thomas Struth Tobias Zielony, Thomas Demand, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Wolfgang Tillmans and Jeff Wall. Most of the works exhibited are jaw-dropping. However, i now have the feeling that i have seen this kind of exhibition one time too many.

Laura Bielau, Carte de visite – Lab Girls (from the series COLOR LAB CLUB), 2008

Zielony followed young people hanging around the desert city Trona outside Los Angeles.

Tobias Zielony, Lighter from the series “Trona – Armpit of America,” 2008

Tobias Zielony, Ramshackle, from the series: Trona – Armpit of America, 2008

Tobias Zielony, Dirt Field, from the series: Trona – Armpit of America, 2008

Tobias Zielony, 13 Ball, from the series Trona – Armpit of America, 2008

Thomas Struth, South Lake Street Apartments IV, Chicago, 1990

Diane Arbus, A Jewish Giant at Home With His Parents in the Bronx, NY, 1970

Diane Arbus, The King and Queen of a Senior Citizens Dance, N.Y.C.

Diane Arbus, Retired man and his wife at home in a nudist camp one morning, N.J, 1963

Diane Arbus, A Young Brooklyn Family going for a Sunday Outing, N.Y.C., 1966

William Eggleston, Untitled (Memphis-Tennessee), 1972 from 14 Pictures, 1974

Nicholas Nixon, Hyde Park Avenue, Boston, 1982, From Photographs from One Year, 1981-82

Martin Parr, St Moritz. St Moritz polo world cup on snow. Spectators at the event. 2011.

Wolfgang Tillmans, Onion, 2010

Wolfgang Tillmans, Tukan, 2008

Stephen Gill, Untitled – From Coming up for Air, 2008-09

Lee Friedlander, Philadelphia, 1965

Photography Calling! remains open through 15. January 2012 at Sprengel Museum Hannover.

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Holga iPhone Lens = awesomeness for your phone

Posted on December 23rd, 2011 • Filed under Do, Look, Play • No Comments

Holga iPhone Lens.

Photographing the Dead: The History of Postmortem Photography from The Burns Collection and Archive, Monday December 5th, Observatory

Posted on December 6th, 2011 • Filed under Learn • No Comments

Tomorrow night at Observatory! Be sure to arrive early, as this one is sure to sell out! Above are a few more of the hundreds of images that will be discussed.

Full details follow; hope to see you there!

Photographing the Dead: The History of Postmortem Photography from The Burns Collection and Archive
Illustrated Lecture and book signing with Stanley B. Burns, MD, FACS of the Burns Collection and Archive
Date: Monday, December 5th
Time: 8:00
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy
*** Books will be available for sale and signing; see bottom of this page for complete list of books available

Postmortem photography, photographing a deceased person, was a common practice in the 19th and early 20th centuries. These photographs, from the beginning of the practice until now, are special mementos that hold deep meaning for mourners through visually “embalming” the dead. Although postmortem photographs make up the largest group of nineteenth-century American genre photographs, until recent years they were largely unseen and unknown. Dr. Burns recognized the importance of this phenomenon in his early collecting when he bought his first postmortem photographs in 1976. Since that time he has amassed the most comprehensive collection of postmortem photography in the world and has curated several exhibits and published three books on the subject: the Sleeping Beauty series. Tonight, Dr. Burns will speak about the practice of postmortem photography from the 19th century until today and share hundreds of images from his collection.

About Sleeping Beauty: Dr. Burns’ first book on postmortem photography, Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography in America (1990) has been widely recognized as one of the most important photography books of all time. Sleeping Beauty has influenced an eclectic array of fields, from bereavement counseling and education to cultural anthropology, history, medicine, philosophy, religion and spirituality (not to mention pop music) and has been cited in debates on the death penalty, euthanasia and abortion. It has been the subject of numerous scholarly papers as well as seminars and exhibitions at notable institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The New Museum of Contemporary Art. A decade later the Archive published Sleeping Beauty II: Grief, Bereavement & The Family in Memorial Photography American & European Traditions in conjunction with an exhibit at the Musée d’Orsay. Sleeping Beauty III Memorial Photography: The Children, the third installment in this series was released this year to accompany a traveling exhibition.

About the Burns Collection and Archive: The Burns Collection, founded in 1975 hosts the nation’s largest collection of early medical photography and has been generally recognized as one the most important private comprehensive collections of early photography (over one million photographs). The Collection is best known for images of the dark side of life: death, disease, disaster, mayhem, crime, racism, revolution, riots and war. Dr. Burns has authored forty-three photo-historical texts and curated more than fifty photographic exhibitions. He is a founding donor of several museum photography collections, including the J. Paul Getty Museum and The Bronx Museum of the Arts. In addition to being an internationally distinguished author, curator, historian, collector, publisher, and archivist, Dr. Burns is a New York City ophthalmologist and Clinical Professor of Medicine and Psychiatry at NYU Langone Medical Center. The Burns Archive produces publications, exhibitions, and manages image licensing for the Burns Collection. To find out more, you can visit the Burns Archive Blog, website, or press website.

These Burns Archive titles will be available for sale and signing:
Sleeping Beauty III Memorial Photography: The Children $36
Sleeping Beauty II: Grief, Bereavement & The Family in Memorial Photography… $85
Shooting Soldiers: Civil War Medical Photography by R.B. Bontecou $50
News Art: Manipulated Photographs from the Burns Archive $50
Deadly Intent, Crime & Punishment: Photographs from the Burns Archive $75
Seei ng Insanity: Photography & The Depiction of Mental Illness $40

More on Observatory can be found here. To sign up for events on Facebook, join our group by clicking here. To sign up for our weekly mailer, click here. Directions to Observatory can be found here.

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Book review: The Valley of the Shadow – The Photography of Miron Zownir

Posted on February 15th, 2011 • Filed under Look • 1 Comment

The Valley of the Shadow – The Photography of Miron Zownir (available on Amazon UK and USA.)

Publisher Gestalten writes: The Valley of the Shadow is a collection of photography by Miron Zownir that documents a world of unconditional authenticity, dire ecstasy, and demonical possession that exists in the shadows of urban areas in New York, Berlin, and post-Communist Eastern Europe. As controversial as they are uncompromising and poetic, Zownir’s expressionistic black and white portraits capture the morbid dignity of society’s misfits, freaks, and the homeless.
(…)
Since the 1970s, the radical eye of photographer Miron Zownir has captured the worlds that exist in the shadows of urban areas in New York, Los Angeles, Berlin, and post-Communist Eastern Europe. His Expressionistic black and white portraits capture the morbid dignity of misfits, the homeless, freaks, and whores that exists somewhere between self-determination and self-destruction, desolation and personal obsession.

Miron Zownir, Berlin, 2007

Miron Zownir, Berlin, 2006

This book won’t cheer you up if you’re feeling disenchanted with life but it will certainly transport you to another universe.

Miron Zownir‘s b&w photos document the existence and habits of the people who live -voluntarily or not- at the margin of society. The junkie, the ageing punk, the drunk, the freak, the stray dog, the farmer in a Bulgarian city that time forgot, the aficionado of s&m parties, the cripple, the transvestite, the transexual, even the corpse. Zownir mixes these shots with images that portray his vision of religion, another parallel world made of penitents in procession, and frantic women visiting Lourdes in search of a miracle.

Everywhere he looks, the photographer encounters full on desperation and provocation. The images i found most painful to watch were those showing the shocking poverty in the streets of Moscow in the mid 90s.

No text overkill. There are almost 4 pages of introduction and off you go…

Miron Zownir, New York