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3D-ma.r.s.08, 2013, courtesy of David Zwirner, NYC
By Vladimir Gintoff, ASX NYC, April 2013
The German photographer Thomas Ruff is the anomalous schoolchild of the Dusseldorf Art Academy and Bernd and Hilla Becher’s tutelage. Breaking and reinventing the rules of photography for over three decades, his body of work remains peerless in its insight, diversity and envelope pushing tactics. Two new projects at David Zwirner, photograms and ma.r.s., extend Ruff’s flair for innovation, and his mining of photography’s past to reveal its future. Almost always working in series, Ruff frequently develops new technologies to facilitate concepts that are at the edge of visual and technical vanguards.
ma.r.s. (stands for “Mars Reconnaissance Survey”) is a series of images based on surface depictions of the fourth planet, taken by a high-resolution camera on an orbiting NASA satellite. Ruff downloads these images from the web and then performs desired alterations of color, orientation, and perspective. The results are monumental landscapes,
EXHIBITION REVIEW NYC: Thomas Ruff – “photograms and ma.r.s.” (2013)
REVIEW: Robert Frank – Valencia 1952 (2012)
By Fanny Landstrom, ASX UK, April 2013
‘”There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment”
In 1952, the Swiss born photographer Robert Frank leaves his job and his then current habitat New York to travel with his family to Europe. For many months they settled down in the small coastal village Valencia, located in a Spain suffering from a post war crisis. During that time, he made the photographs that now are comprised into this book.
Coastline, street lights, and shop window mannequins. Funerals, weddings, and parades. Children, mothers, and brothers. Celebrations and everyday struggles. Valencia 1952 is not a conceptually edited book such as HOLD STILL_keep going (2001) where text and images are happily fighting over whose getting the attention and are arranged in a (seemingly anarchic) organized chaos. In Valencia 1952, the images are sequenced in a (almost) consistent order of one photograph per page,
REVIEW: Robert Frank – “Valencia 1952″ (2012)
By Merrill Schleier. Presented at Southwest Labor Studies Conference, March 14, 1986
Dorothea Lange’s images of the Depression’s unemployed and disenfranchised victims have long been acknowledged both for their power to prompt government action and their compassion. Lange was one of several photographers employed by the Resettlement Administration, which was later subsumed under the Farm Security Administration, who used documentary photography to chronicle the impact of the dust bowl, the mechanical tractor, the economic debacle and forced migration on the nation’s rural population.
A documentary approach to photography provides the viewer with the necessary information to assess the situation (e.g. these are tenants thrown off their land) and, at the same time, appeals to his emotions. As William Stott has observed, “thirties documentary constantly addresses ‘you’ the ‘you’ who is we the audience… and begs us to identify, pity and participate.” 1 Lange’s job was to provide this visual evidence to both persuade and propagandize; the beaurocrats in Washington
DOROTHEA LANGE: “In the Face of All Odds: Dorothea Lange’s Psychological Studies of the Depression’s Disenfranchised” (1986)
Dorothea Lange (May 26, 1895 – October 11, 1965) was an influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange’s photographs humanized the consequences of the Great Depression and influenced the development of documentary photography. Lange co-founded the photographic magazine Aperture.
“It’s very hard sometimes to look at a piece by Araki just a separate entity, because his work is a whole story.” – Lou Proud, Phillips Head of Photographs in London, presents a single-owner collection of photographs by the great Japanese photographer and provocateur, Nobuyoshi Araki.
Continuing the tradition of early Japanese culture, the erotic content of Araki’s photographs has been likened to notable examples of early Japanese painting; one such reference being the emakimono paitings from the Kamakura period (1185-1333) which focus on erotic themes combined with social satire.
The commando of National Party supporters that escorted the late Dr Hendrik Verwoerd to the party’s 50th anniversary celebrations, De Wildt, 1964.
Interview conducted by Laetitia Martinez, recorded by Cedric Batifoulier in Arles Festival , France. On the occasion of the 2006 Retrospective of David Goldblatt, curated by Martin Paar.
My name is David Goldblatt, I’m South African, I always lived in South Africa, I was born there and this is my first public exhibition, major exhibition in France. I had one exhibition in a commercial gallery in Paris in 2004 but this is my first major public exhibition. It was curated by Martin Paar, the British photographer.
LM: What do you think your photographs represents, do they have any functions?
DG: When I was much younger, when I first started taking photographs, I wanted to tell the world about what s was happening in south Africa because at that time, the magazines in the world and
INTERVIEW: David Goldblatt – “Interview at Arles” (2006)
Throughout his career, Walker Evans’s goal remained unchanged: to produce photographs that are both evocative and mysterious and also an accurate record of the day. Evans came from a tradition of American photographers interested in identifying the unique character of everyday American life.
Hear Evans talk about his work during the Depression, his collaboration with the author James Agee, and his pursuit of a “bull’s-eye” photograph, in this video.
Director Gerald Fox’s documentary Leaving Home Coming Home: A Portrait of Robert Frank features intimate interviews with the filmmaker and photographer. The artist discusses his feelings about how his adopted hometown of New York City has changed over the course of his 50 years living there. The director showcases Frank’s work, including clips of some of his films including Pull My Daisy, Me and My Brother, and the little-seen Rolling Stones documentary Cocksucker Blues.
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