Sunday, 20 December 2009
Monday, 19 October 2009
Hiroshi Sugimoto 400,000 volt at Frankel Gallery
© Hiroshi Sugimoto. Lightning Fields 128, 2009A photo exhibition this month at the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco showcases the work of Hiroshi Sugimoto. In his series “Lightning Fields”, Hiroshi Sugimoto uses a Van De Graaf 400,000 volt generator to apply an electrical charge directly onto the film – known as ‘Trouvelot figures’.
“The idea of observing the effects of electrical discharges on photographic dry plates reflects my desire to re-create the major discoveries of these scientific pioneers in the darkroom and verify them with my own eyes.”
- Hiroshi Sugimoto
The exhibit concludes October 31st.
Sunday, 11 October 2009
David Maisel
Abstract, otherworldly and, once your brain has processed what you are seeing, both beautiful and terrifying, David Maisel’s photographs show the impact of man and nature on the earth, seen from the air. Over the last twenty-five years he has created an ambitious series of works that show the scars and marks left on the surface of the earth, from volcanic eruptions to strip mining to the seemingly unstoppable sprawl of cities.
Photographing the landscape in Washington in the aftermath of the eruption of Mount Saint Helens in 1980, Maisel was amazed at the level of destruction he saw, especially when he and his tutor at the time chartered a light aircraft and flew over the landscape: “The destructive power of this event had altered the landscape on a scale that defied categorization or comprehension. Viewed from the air, these transformations were totemic in scale: whole forests thrown down like matchsticks; riverbeds rerouted through vast debris flows of rock, pyroclastic flow and volcanic mudslides; and countless layers of ash blanketing the flanks of the volcano and surrounding region.” It had a profound effect on him, and influence the direction of his work from then on; alongside the volcanic destruction he also witnessed the brutally transfiguring effect of the forestry industry, clearing up the thousands of felled trees in the region and adding to the carnage. This led him to examine and document other industrial practices, and to realise that destruction on this scale almost had to be shown from the air to convey it: "I first experienced the potency of the aerial view there; I became instantly attracted to its capacity to permit a kind of mapping of the terrain to take place, allowing the creation of images both literal and metaphorical.”
Subsequent projects included The Forest, a more concentrated look at industrial forest-clearance practices; The Lake Project, a huge series on the disastrous Owens Valley reclamation project in California which left thousands of acres of polluted, unliveable arid land. The Mining Project, begun in 1987, shows the deep scars and photogenic-yet-lethal ‘tailing ponds’ left by increasingly aggressive strip mining practices in Nevada, Arizona and Montana. The striking colours of the lakes and gullies captured alongside the spiralling gouges by Maisel are caused by cyanide, sulphur and mercury amongst others, the unfortunate by-products of these mining techniques.
The sheer scale of these events and the massive effect they have on the land are hard to compute on a day-to-day basis, especially when we spend much of our time at ground level. These virtually abstract, contemporary landscapes, from their removed viewpoint, are a powerful record of the constant, long-term, large scale battering the surface of the earth faces.
Clicking on the thumbnails will bring up larger scans with much better levels of detail.
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The Mining Project (Ray, AZ 5)
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The Mining Project (Inspiration, AZ 4)
The Lake Project 15
The Lake Project 3
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American Mine (Carlin, NV 23)
Terminal Mirage 17
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American Mine (Carlin, NV 6)
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Terminal Mirage 15 (Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty)
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The Mining Project (Butte MT 3)
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American Mine (Carlin, NV 1)
All images © David Maisel
Thursday, 3 September 2009
Friday, 7 August 2009
Rineke Dijkstra joins Paul Graham for AUT St Paul Street Gallery workshop
Rineke Dijkstra will be joining Paul Graham for AUT's School of Art and Design, Summer Photography Workshop at AUT's St Paul Street Gallery. Following last years workshop with John Gossage and Alec Soth, Rineke and Paul will be as good as you can get. Demand will be high for the workshop so if you're interested you can contact Neil Cameron, Registrar School of Art and Design AUT University, Auckland. The workshop runs over January 15, 16 and 17.
RINEKE DIJKSTRA
(b. 1959, Sittard, the Netherlands. Lives and works in Amsterdam.)
Rineke Dijkstra was trained at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, Amsterdam. Her first solo exhibition took place in 1984 at de Moor in Amsterdam. Dijsktra's photographs have appeared in numerous international exhibitions, including the 1997 and 2001 Venice Biennale, the 1998 Bienal de Sao Paulo, Turin's Biennale Internationale di Fotografia in 1999, and the 2003 International Center for Photography's Triennial of Photography and Video in New York. She is the recipient of a number of awards, including the Kodak Award Nederland (1987), the Art Encouragement Award Amstelveen (1993), the Werner Mantz Award (1994), and the Citibank Private Bank Photography Prize (1998).
RECENT SOLO SHOWS
2009
Park Portraits, La Fabrica, Madrid, Spain
2006
Rineke Dijkstra, Portraits, Rudolfinum, Prague, Czech Republic
2005
Rineke Dijkstra – Portraits, Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, France; Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; Fundació la Caixa d'Estalvis Pensions, Barcelona, Spain; Stedelijk Museum CS, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
RECENT GROUP SHOWS
2009
Listen Darling… The World is Yours, Ellipse Foundation, Cascais, Portugal
Video Portraits, Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Massachusetts
2008
Baby, de ideale mens verbeeld 1840-heden, Nederlands Fotomuseum, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Street & Studio: An Urban History of Photography, Tate Modern, London, United Kingdom; Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany
2007
Family Pictures, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, New York
Dateline Israel, New Photography and Video Art, The Jewish Museum, New York, New York
Saturday, 11 July 2009
Saturday, 18 April 2009
James Casebere, Yellow Hallway
James Casebere builds architectural tabletop models and then photographs them. Casebere’s intent is that his works be seen as models, but the photographs distort the unreality. To add to the confusion, some of Casebere’s models are flooded. But the photos are not simply about the deception of the eye. Casebere brings a strong sense of social history to his work and some of the themes studied range from economics of Southern plantations to the modern-day prison systems. A global variety of interiors are covered by Casebere, from Sienese palazzi to Spanish baths.
Green Staircase #3
Siena (horizontal)
Red Room #1
© James Casebere
Sunday, 25 January 2009
Fathers and sons - Bepi Ghiotti
Fathers and sons 2001/2006
As father as son, We're used to say.
The project was born due to a self-therapeutic need of a deeper understanding of the
relationship binding fathers and sons, with the goal of investigating the ancient and
unsolved love and hate conflict experienced within these two generations.
Using long exposure, compared to an instant shot, therefore having to shoot in
the dark, in order to achieve longer shooting times, allowed me to consider the deeper
meaning of being in front of a camera and brought both the photographer and the
people portrayed in a state of greater consciousness and intimacy.
I asked the couples of individuals, in the age of duty handover, to pose sitting one next
to the other, in a place which tells a story of their life together, and wait in the dark
so that they would lose any tension, any attitude or pose to then expose the photographic
slab for as long as a minute.
Leaving a son with his father, still, in a state of abandon
where I hide in the time passing by.
Silence, together, and see what's left.
Bepi Ghiotti
Tuesday, 20 January 2009
Nadav Kander
Head over to Nadav Kander´s site for some real treats but before you do here are a few images from his Yangtze, From East to West project to whet your whistle.
All images ©Nadav Kander
To best appreciate this work one really needs to see the images anywhere but on a computer screen to be honest. I recently had the opportunity to view them when they were on display at what is probably my favourite gallery for checking out contemporary photography in London, Flowers East. In fact, I´ll be there this Friday for the Edward Burtynsky opening so come along and say hello if you are out Hoxton way.
Take the time to sit back and read his artist statement for a fuller flavour of the work. Here it is:
"The Yangtze River, which forms the premise to this body of work, is the main artery that flows 4100miles across china, travelling from its furthest westerly point in Qinghai Province to Shanghai in the east. The river is embedded in the consciousness of the Chinese, even those who live thousands of miles from the river. It plays a pivotal role in both the spiritual and physical life of the people. More people live along its banks than live in the USA – one in every eighteen people on the planet.
Using the river as a metaphor for constant change, I have photographed the landscape and people along its banks from mouth to source. Importantly for me I worked intuitively, trying not to be influenced by what I already knew about the country. After several trips to different parts of the river, it became clear that what I was personally responding to, and how I felt whilst being in china, was permeating my pictures; a formalness and unease, a country that feels both at the beginning of a new era and at odds with itself. China is a nation that appears to be severing its roots by destroying its past by moving forward at such an astounding and unnatural pace. I felt a complete outsider and explained this pictorially by ‘stepping back’ and showing humans as small in their surroundings. Common man has little say in China’s progression, and this smallness of the individual is alluded to in the work.
I feel that there are strong parallels in China with the 20th Century immigrants who poured off the boats onto American soil, a new beginning without roots. Millions of domestic migrant workers are travelling from rural areas to the cities. This condition manifests itself throughout China’s social fabric and echoed my own feelings of dislocation. Further layers have been added to certain images by compositing single figures into a scene, twice removed from their natural habitat. Rather than looking to the future with hope, the photographic migrants appear in limbo, unable to observe their past at a time of uncertain future.
Although it was never my intention to make documentary pictures, the sociological context of this project is very important and ever present. The displacement of 3 million people in a 600km stretch of the River and the effect on humans when a country moves towards the future at pace are themes that will inevitably be present within the work.
A Chinese friend I made whilst working on the project reiterated what many Chinese people feel: ‘Why do we have to destroy to develop?’ He explained that in Britain, many of us can revisit where we were brought up and it will be much the same, it will remind us of our families and upbringing. In China that is virtually impossible. The scale of development has left most places unrecognisable; “Nothing is the same. We can’t revisit where we came from because it no longer exists.”
China is progressing rapidly, and the landscape – both economically and physically – is changing daily. These are photographs that can never be taken again."
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