Art and Photography

Yesterday I took a positive step to further my understanding of the art world, I bought an annual pass to the 5 major Munich art museums.  This was not overly expensive, I'll need to visit about 10 times to get value from the investment.  What it does is give me freedom to visit whenever and as often as I wish.  Munich has some of the great art collections in Europe, the 5 museums covering art from the 15th century onward, with traditional and avant garde well represented. Clearly there is a bias towards German artists, but the scope is pretty global.

http://www.pinakothek.de/en/pinakothek-der-moderne

My rationale for this is to deepen my understanding and exposure to non-photographic work with a view to letting this slowly seep into my own photographic practice.  My recent study of Andreas Gursky deepened a suspicion that much modern Art photography is influenced by all of the other visual arts.  To someone better educated in photographic art this is probably not rocket science, but for me it is pretty new ground.  To date almost all of my historical reference has been to photographers, however, it is noticeable that many of the greats of photography either worked alongside other artists or were themselves notable artists.  Man Ray was well know as a painter and Alfred Stieglitz spent the better part of his life in the company of one of America's greatest artists.

I have to admit that I am not at sure where this will take me or indeed how much value I will get out of the endeavor, but at the very least I will be able to spend many an afternoon enjoying the study of real works of art versus material in books.  I have a further motivation, photography is permitted in all of Munich's museums, making for good opportunities to study peoples interactions with art and one another - I plan to use this as a source for material in the upcoming Social Documentary course.

Yesterday I visited parts of the modern art exhibit at the Pinakothek der Moderne and the studied some late 19th century work at the Neue Pinakothek.  My interest was in the degree of realism within modern art work and in particular the use of colour.  More and more I see discussion about sharpness, colour accuracy, detail, being applied to cameras and photographs, the sense being that the technology will somehow make the photograph and that we must strive for 100% accuracy in our rendition of the world.  This applies very strongly to landscape or at least representations of the environment we live in, and yet it is all ultimately very subjective.  The correct colour is a matter of taste and even if there was an absolute standard, the prerogative of art is to interpret the world and present it shaped by the mind of the artist.  Simply reproducing a world is an act of recording not art.

From recent reading it is clear that around 100-150 years ago the art world experienced a significant change in direction and motivation.  For 100's of years painters had been seeking to reproduce the world they saw as accurately as possible, the discovery of perspective being a major step.  However, suddenly rather than becoming more detailed and more representative art became "fuzzy", artists were changing from painting what they saw to painting what they felt.  Van Gogh is possibly the best example of this, his paintings are emotional responses to the landscape, we can see what he is painting, but it is far from a literal description.  I believe that photography was a major influence in this process, perhaps an enabler of the new art.  With a photograph able to "accurately" describe a scene, what more was a painter to do to better this.  The response was a deeper study of colour and again the emotional impact of the scene.  As photographers we obsess with accuracy, perhaps we took over this mantle from the painters and struggle to let it go.

Anyway, enough of the theoretical ramblings, while walking around the galleries I used my camera to record some paintings that illustrate my feelings about this transition.

This painting from 1860 by Johann Wilhelm Schirmer is typical of art just before this transition:

When I saw this I immediately thought about landscape photography, this painting is an accurate view of stormy skies on a sunlit landscape, the kind of scene that would have us reaching for our grad filters.  It is moody, full of depth and the colour rendition is fine, he clearly got his White Balance right.  However, within 40 years all changed, the Impressionists threw away the rule book, then the neo-impressionists started to play with perception of colour through pointillism, the work of Paul Signac below showing how colour impression can be built from combinations of colour.  The scene is still recognizable, but the treatment is radically different

Another few years and the colours ramp up, the experiments of the impressionists in accurately representing colour are dropped and an expression of colour is delivered.

I included the first of these, partly because it is an example of an artist painting what he experiences, but also as it is one of the few cheerful paintings I have seen by Edvard Munch (not that I have seen very many).  The second by August Macke takes the colours much further, however, representation is still there.  This is a personal favorite, I love the interplay of colour and form in this painting.  One of Macke's contemporaries in the Blaue Reiter group (very active in Munich) was Franz Marc.

In this painting by Marc, realism is gone, expressionism is what it is all about, the colours are magnificent.  However with Marc I can still make out what is there, the following by Willem de Koonig has passed into pure abstraction, but still a very beautiful sensuous painting.

The last work that caught my attention also escaped my memory of the artist, however, here almost all form has been lost, this is an exploration of colour.

What I have tried to show here through my experience of art yesterday is the progressive movement of painted work away from a literal representation of the world into pure abstract expressionism, a movement that paralleled the increasing sophistication of photography.  As a photography student I am encouraged to search for accurate rendition of what I see, as a painting student I would expect a very different motivation.  Should photographers care about accuracy and sharpness or should we also be looking for an expression of our inner feelings and understanding of the contemporary world.  And if we did, how would that express as a photograph?  Once more food for thought.  This has been something of a brain dump of recent thoughts, I hope it made sense.

Gallery Visit: Pinakothek der Moderne

Yesterday I finally got of my backside and decided to do something with my Sunday versus the usual loafing around the house.  A new exhibition at the Pinakothek Der Moderne, "True Stories", featuring original work by Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Larry Clark, Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand, William Eggleston and Stephen Shore was more than enough encouragement.  I also wanted to take another look at their modern art collection in light of the investigation I have been doing into the influence of art on Andreas Gursky's photographs.  The clincher was the 1 Euro entry price on Sundays.

True Stories

The was photographic bliss, not only a chance to see the real work behind so many books in my library, but all together in what is also a photographic wonderland:

However, it was the photographs I went to see:

 Eggleston

Shore

Adams

Friedlander

Winogrand

This was the first time I had seen original works by many of these artists and it was also fascinating to see them alongside one another, seeing the mutual influences, but also their different takes on modern American life, well that of the 1960's in fact.  The set of images by Larry Clark, Tulsa, were in many respect the most interesting.  I do not have the book, but know it to be a deeply insightful record of a very shocking lifestyle, small town drugs, guns, and sex.  While I contemplated this display, about 18 fairly small images I watched the reaction of people getting in close, shock was the main expression.  The most terrifying shot was a pregnant women injecting heroin, adjacent to a photo of a dead baby in a small coffin.  This was documentary photography at its very best, in close, personal and very revealing - a story was told, not one we might wish to see, but perhaps one we should see.

As my internal debate rages about which course to do next, PWDP or Social Documentary, it is the work of the American photographers of the 1960's that excites me and pulls me in the direction of the latter course.  The counter issue is the seemingly strong emphasis of getting very close to the subject, Larry Clark versus Stephen Shore.  I am more with the New Topologists and their take on social documentary than that of the photographers that chose to deeply involve themselves with their subjects.  This gallery provided useful food for thought.

My other reason for the visit (in addition to the very nice 60 minute walk) was to take a look at some modern art.  I have only captured two works on camera, the first by Palermo.  Here I see structure and shape building towards such images as Rhein II, although my knowledge of this work is not yet strong enough to make much more comment, other than to say that I very much like this type of modern art, simple, yet powerful.

The other piece that caught my imagination was the following.  500 Japanese steel workers were given a foil wrapped chocolate bar and then asked to create something out of the foil wrapper.  These were then arranged on a white table against a grey backdrop.  The repetition of form contrasting the individuality of each piece, coupled with the collective creation makes this very powerful.  Again I like the geometric simplicity.

Visiting the Pinakothek der Moderne I always find something new about the building to photograph.  This time it was looking down from the Rotunda to the grey floor that sits between the entrance and the galleries, The entrance is a wide circle topped by a glass dome supported by highly geometric structural beams.  In the center of the floor is a small circular metal plate that signifies the center of the floor space.  This is the only feature visible through a 35mm focal length lens, that is until people walk into view.

This is very different from what I was working on earlier in the weekend, combining multiple people into a single frame.  Here the fascination was trying to capture different patterns created as people cross a floor space.  This is an idea for some work that could map neatly into Social Documentary, how people interact with buildings and in particular art galleries.  I have done something similar for People and Place.  What was really quite impressive this weekend, was my camera.  I set the Fuji X100 to silent shooting, wow, I really had to check that thing had taken an image it was so quiet, what a tool for the anonymous shooter, plus the high ISO capability is simply stunning.

MY final shot is one I can never resist when leaving the museum.  I have shot this building so many times, The Brandhorst Museum.  However, it was a chance to try the colour on my new X100.  Enough said I think

All in all a good day and one that will be repeated before the True Stories exhibit finishes at the end of September.  Now, should I get a copy of Tulsa or not?

Gallery Visit: Thomas Ruff

As the old saying goes it never rains but it pours. In a post a few weeks ago I lamented that I did not spend enough time looking at other photographers work, well in the past two weeks I have now been to 3 major exhibitions and seen a wide variety of stunning work.  This weekend, though, was the strange one.  At MOMA and the ICP the photography on display was both historically important and frequently aesthetically beautiful, but could always be easily described as photography.  The Thomas Ruff exhibit at the Haus der Kunst was something else entirely.  Although I am sure that Ruff would agree that he is a photographer, I think a better description would be "Digital Artist Working in the Medium of Photography".  This exhibit presented photography in entirely new ways, some wonderful, others banal, even shocking.

Thomas Ruff is yet another graduate of the Dusseldorf school and student of the Bechers, a group of photographers that seem to be becoming central to my study of photography.  Living in Germany, these are the superstars that get the wall space in the local galleries.  Ruff takes yet another direction in his work, but once again set alongside the work of Struth, Gursky and Hofer, as well as that of the Bechers, certain traits are all too familiar.  There is a visible detachment from reality in much of the work, early photographs in particular are very devoid of emotion, they are stark records of the past. And, of course, the sheer size of most of the photographs on display, I can only guess that someone in Dusseldorf was on very good terms with an industrial printer.

However, Ruff has clearly taken the medium of photography further and in more different directions than his contemporaries.  This exhibit was divided into about a dozen separately themed rooms covering his work from 1978 through to the present day.  Whilst Ruff is clearly a talented photographer, it is what he does to photographs that clearly marks his work apart.  On first entering the exhibit the first room is dominated by simply huge photographs showing details of the Martian landscape, clearly taken from orbit.  Ruff has appropriated these freely available NASA images and turned them into a mysterious art form.  He has taken a series of planar B&W images, then added perspective and colour to produce a sense of a topographical landscape.

This theme of taking a pre-existing photograph and processing in new and strange ways is a hallmark of Ruff's work.  One room was filled with strongly pornographic images downloaded from the web and then softened in software until the structure of the images is virtually obscured, maybe a comment on the overuse of such images.  In any case a special warning was preserved for this room, although it was visible from all the rooms around it.  I get the idea, but still think it is tacky.  A far more impressive use of this technology was in his series of jpegs of often famous sites or iconic images.  Each was broken down into square blocks of pixels, close up impossible to see as anything other than an abstraction, but changing as you moved further away.  The gallery was large and it was possible to get up to 100 feet from some of the images at which point they looked normal.  This I think was a fascinating study of how we see images and convert chaos into information.  It was also a good antidote to the crowd currently grumbling that the new Canon has only 22MP, not 38 like the new Nikon.  In these photos the Pixels were half a centimeter across, but still the images were wonderful.

The other aspect of his work that I came to see were the portraits, photographs that I most readily associate with Ruff:

Again they were presented at monumental size.  Asking his subjects to present themselves without any emotion, these are unusual portraits that say more about the structure of a face than the human it occupies.  I think he succeeded in his goal of making a portrait that spoke as a photograph rather than as a person. He believes that a photograph is simply a surface that it is not a capture of a person, this neutral expression reinforces that philosophy.

Throughout the exhibit the sense was of an artist looking for ways to project his own personality and way of seeing through the medium of the modern photograph, irrespective of where the photograph originated.  Each room expressed this feeling in different ways.  I can quite honestly say that I did not particularly like much of what I saw, I was impressed but not moved.  However, more than any other exhibition I have been to this one has opened my eyes to the possibilities of photography and the fact that it is not the finger on the shutter that matters it is the mind behind the final concept that defines the ultimate success or failure of the work as a piece of art.

Gallery Visit: The International Center for Photography & Weegee

I have to admit that I did not do my homework very well before arriving in New York, I came across this gallery simply by walking past it and then with great surprise found they were holding a WeeGee exhibition.  New York bliss!

This gallery contrasted sharply to MOMA, here photography was everything, .  The $10 entry was also a bargain compared to MOMA's $25, although clearly the scope was far narrower.

The gallery featured a major exhibit and several smaller ones dedicated to individual artists or themes.  In an area upstairs from the underground primary gallery space 3 photographers exhibited small collections.  Each was very much in the modern style of presentation, i.e.really BIG prints.  I suspect the Germans have much to answer for here (later today I am off to the Thomas Ruff exhibit in Munich)! This was a particular contrast for me when comparing to MOMA.  Most prints in MOMA were at best 30cm across, but offered a much more personal interaction than these huge modern prints.  These smaller prints drew me in to look at them, the larger prints pushed me away.  There is clearly an ongoing trend towards bigger is better in the art photography world.  I am not convinced this is a good thing.  I am beginning to think that my A3 prints are a good compromise between past and present practice.

Of the three photographers on display, Greg Girard's study of US military housing and base facilities caught our interest.  My wife grew up at a US base in Germany, going to school and working in and around the US military.  As a result these images were able to make a personal connection that others failed to achieve.  Much of the impact of modern photography is in the connection between viewer and artist.

However, the main event was the WeeGee exhibit.  Arthur Fellig, the Squeegee man who became one of New Yorks most celebrated photographers.  This was an excellent exhibit, combining his photographs with the sounds of the between war city and including artifacts from his life: his hat, his Speed Graphic, a reconstruction of the bed and desk he lived at in his darkroom.  Heidi chatted with one of the staff and they mentioned that the opening of the exhibit was delayed as far more material arrived for exhibit than they expected.  WeeGee was a feature of the city, people wanted to contribute to this celebration of his life and work.

WeeGee created a record of the social climate of New York, a landscape of crime, hedonism and poverty.  Although most famous for his lurid flash lit photographs of blood spattered corpses, car wrecks or fires, he also turned his camera on the people of the city capturing their reaction to these events.  Faces stretch into the frame, a mixture of excitement and terror, these photographs bring you into the crime ridden world of prohibition era New York

The above photo captures this time, kids jostle and fight at the scene of a murder, people laugh and smile.  This is an event, a catastrophe for a few, but street theater for the many.  It brings to mind the public hangings of the 17th and 18th centuries.  Supplying the tabloids it might be argued that WeeGee was an early paparazzi, I do not see him this way, he was a social documentarian, making his living capturing the horror of crime, but always turning his camera to the ordinary people of the city.  

The exhibit captured this diversity, including his shots of Coney Island holiday crowds and the theater goers of Manhatten.  This was a record of a man in love with the thrill of photography and the people of his city.

Gallery Visit: MOMA

Two of the first books I bought after joining the course, were written by John Szarkowski, "The Photographer's Eye" and "Looking at Photographs". Each was an excellent introduction to the art form and its history. Szarkoski, potentially the most influential man in the history of art photography, was the curator of the photographic collection at the New York Museum of Modern Art (MOMA).  He introduced the world to the likes of Stephan Shore and William Eggleston.

So, it was with no small amount of excitement that this morning, I got to visit the museum he worked at for so many years. After an almost endless wait in line to check my rucksack only to be told that I could not check a camera bag, we headed up to the 3rd floor to look at the photographic gallery. Probably the smallest space offered to any art form in the museum , this exhibit still managed to cram into its few rooms an amazing range of photographs: Atget, Fox Talbot, WeeGee, Shore, Eggleston, Sherman, Walker Evans, Man Ray, Brassai, Cartier-Bresson, Stieglitz, Adams (Both of them), the list goes on. A major proportion of the gallery was given over to a large number of Atget photographs, strangely beautiful records of a Paris long gone. Another hightlight, a typology created by the Becher, the photographs on display presented in the usual highly geometrical grid.

Everywhere I looked I found photographs I had seen over and over again; in books, on the TV, refered to in essays, it was quite an emotional experience. As I increasingly realize, seeing the original is far superior to reproductions in books, the level of detail and tonality simply cannot be reproduced in a mass market book.

I am not sure what I learned, however, there was simply too much material. I could not really focus on any one style or artist. Having said that it was still an experience to remember, humbling and at the same time a source of inspiration.

 If there is one thing I took away, it is the growing awareness that a photograph is a print not a collection of pixels on a computer. Only when the image meets the paper does a photograph become a document. Ink and paper is not cheap, but then neither was photographic paper and chemicals. The masters of photography whose work I witnessed today, would not have simply looked at their negatives on a light box and decided great, I'm done now.

Oh and we also got to see Van Gogh's Starry Night, a massive Jackson Pollock, and some fabulous pop art by Lichtenstein and Warhol.  OK, not quite as impressive as the tiny Fox Talbot print that simply took my breath away, but an added bonus all the same.

Georgia O'Keeffe - at the Munich Kunsthalle

In all my reading about photography, Geogia O'Keeffe's name is the most prominent of non-photographers.  Her relationship with Alfred Stieglitz and his subsequent influence on her career tie back to the origins of photography as an art form rather than a form of documentary or record.  One of Stieglitz's ambitions was to chronicle the life of a single person from birth to death, paralleling his desire to document the city of New York, O'Keefee became that person, although she outlived him by a good 40 years.  As a result I have seen very many pictures of O'Keeffe and yet had never seen any work of her own.

Yesterday I made it my goal to change that situation and spent an hour or more viewing the latest exhibit at the Kunsthalle, a rotating gallery that hosts major exhibitions.

Georgia O'Keeffe at the Kunsthalle

This retrospective look at her work encompassed here entire creative output, with paintings, drawing and photographs created over a period of 70 years.  Her longevity as an artist and the presentation in a single exhibit enabled me to see how a single artist developed over a lifetime, her work evolving in subject and technique, and yet always unmistakably O'Keeffe.  Her focus on colour versus precise depiction of form was powerful both in her abstract and more representational work.  Of particular interest to me as a photographer was the pervasive influence of photography within her work, clearly the influence of her husband, but also within the circle she moved.  Her paintings frequently cropped objects filling the canvas with a flower, the strong colours extending to the very frame edge, in much the same manner as a photographer might fill their frame with a subject.

Following my recent experiments with Tulips I found these paintings to have great beauty and harmony, the composition fitting well with my personal aesthetic.  

The exhibit contained not only her own work, but that of her husband and other photographic friends of O'Keeffe.  It was particularly thrilling to see original prints from Stieglitz's New York work alongside her paintings of the city.  One particular wall was of note, on it were hung photographs of O'Keefe taken by a variety of photographers, but most notably by Stieglitz and Ansel Adams.  What I found rather strange about these photographs was that the Adams portrait was far more sympathetic of her, it really brought out her spirit and joy in life.  This contrasted dramatically with the photos made by Stieglitz.  These seemed rather stiff, more an exercise on composition versus a husband portraying the love of his life, almost as if Stieglitz clinged to his formalism at all times, never letting down his guard and allowing any element of sentimentality to enter into his work.

I learned a lot from this exhibit, seeing a life times work by a single artist helped me to understand the process of developing a style and the changes that occur due to external influence.  Seeing the interaction of photography and fine art painting was thought provoking and suggests a need for me to continue to look at non-photographic art.

Study Visit: Thomas Struth

Completing one of my resolutions upon starting Landscape, this weekend I attended the OCA study visit to the Whitechapel Gallery to view the Thomas Struth exhibition.  Apart from the excitement of a major anti-facism demo going on just outside the doors, the event was well worth the travel for a variety of reasons. 


The primary goal was an opportunity to view a major photographers original work hung in a gallery in the format and scale that he originally intended.  However, equally important was the chance to network with other students and to meet Gareth and Clive from the OCA.This was the first time in two years that I have met anyone from the OCA and also more than 1 student.   The primary value of studying with the OCA versus simply pulling out a number of "how to" books is the ongoing tutor feedback from the assignments we complete and the peer review of photographs on flickr both by students and by tutors. Meeting some of these people that I have already been in a virtual dialog with was both fun and good for my enthusiasm.  It relieved a little of the sense of isolation of distance learning.


As I have written previously in this blog, I have an ongoing interest in the Düsseldorf school of Photography and the photographers that studied there under the tutelage of the Bechers.  I had previously obtained the book accompanying this exhibit, prior to knowing about the visit, so had some familiarity with Struth's work.

Amazon

The clear and obvious difference between looking at the images in the book and seeing them in reality was the overwhelming size of the work; and I use the word "overwhelming" deliberately, at times I felt that the images were too large, the small space of the gallery left me wanting to step further back from the work than was possible.  Conversely the size lent the images a three dimensionality, the detail within the shots almost drawing me into the photograph.  The sense I had was more of experiencing the photographs rather than looking at them, there was an element of cinema versus television about the exhibit.  This was further enhanced by an apparent luminosity to the photographs, the technique of bonding the prints to clear acrylic made them seem to glow, again more like a monitor screen than a print,  I suspect that the effect might be due to the prints being slightly transparent and that light was passing through and being reflected by the wall underneath as well as reflecting from the surface of the actual image.

What is it about German photographers that they need to print to such huge dimensions, Andreas Gursky and Thomas Ruff also pursue the bigger is better mantra.  It does change perception of the photographs, in Ruff's photographs of peoples faces the scale changes the experience from looking at a person to looking at a photograph of a person, but even so, I doubt that this Germany based photographer is going to be printing at 2x3 meters any time soon, although I have a couple at 80x80cm...

Whilst size is clearly a key feature in Struth's work, the exhibit revealed other aspects.  A key value in attending a guided visit was the insight from the museum curator and the OCA staff, helping to link what might otherwise be seen as disparate pieces of work.  What became clear was that his work follows a number of threads, to which he continues to revisit.  Whilst his style and approach have changed over the years, Struth's basic subject matter has remained remarkably constant, with Architecture, Technology, Peoples interaction with Art, and Family being consistent themes.  More recently he has also began a study of jungles, developing a series of photographs entitled Paradise.  These themes occur again and again, however, the complexity of his work is changing, images become fuller and more complex as time passes.  He seems to be moving from very carefully formally structured photographs to almost chaotic scenes in which the eye finds tremendous detail but searches in vain for an underlying symmetry or structure.

A central theme, in his work, is the management of space, whilst many photographs appear chaotic, they exist within a very tightly controlled space delineated by the frame.  He rarely allows much in the way of negative space around a subject, detail flows from the centre of the photograph all the way to the edge of the frame.  The degree to which he needs to manage the space is reflected in his occasionally hiring people to act as visitors in some of his more expansive museum shots, such as those taken at the Pergamon in Berlin. Another example are his series on families in which he arranges the space in which the people will pose, very carefully aligning the frame to objects, walls, doors, but, he does not manage the people within the space.  They can pose, stand, sit, wherever they wish, but clearly must be within this very tightly controlled frame.

So what did I learn, how can this inform my own practice:

1.     I am attracted to the idea of developing central threads to my own work.  I already have my underwater photography to which I return every year, however, I need to think about how I can develop similar continuities in my above water work.  It may be too early to really specialize, but there clearly is value in returning again and again to themes, if for no other reason than to see how I am developing.

2.     Think very carefully about the frame, not just the subject.  I do know this, but often fail to appreciate how important it is to consider what sits at the edge of the photograph rather than what sits in the middle.  For Struth the edges of the frame were what clearly differentiated his early typographies from those of the Bechers.  The Bechers almost always kept the frame edges clear, Sturth almost always runs the buildings through the edge.

3.     Typographies have been done!  It might be fun to compile one for my own interests, but no one is going to be too impressed if I submit such a thing as an assignment. 




I also had a chance on my return trip to Munich to reflect on the exhibition and to consider some ideas for future assignments:

1.     People engaged with the city.  I have a tendency to eliminate people, I need to include more people in my landscape work.

2.     Remember that architecture is about people not buildings, people add scale, movement and purpose to a building.

3.     Although not wanting to do a typography, certain key threads might work in my imagery:

1.     Places of Worship

2.     Jewish legacy in Munich - the new Synagogue complex is a great subject and one with great social and historical context for the city.

3.     A deeper look at the cities Nazi past and how modern Munich copes with this element of its' heritage. 

All in all a great weekend, the first and certainly no the last study visit I plan to attend

Gallery Visit: Bernd und Hilla Becher, Bergwerke und Hütten

The second major photography exhibition in Munich this year was the Becher exhibit at the Munich City museum, a museum well worth a visit under any circumstance, the cafe is excellent and the standing exhibition always worthy of inspection.

Exhibition

I have blogged recently about the Bechers and their impact upon the art photography world through their students at the Dusseldorf School of Photography, so it was with considerable excitement that I finally had an opportunity to see their work in the flesh, hung on the walls of a gallery.  The exhibit featured a selection from their huge opus covering industrial buildings, this time Mines and Cabins, although the cabins in question were immense factories.

Their style is at the same time very simple and very complex.  The buildings are photographed under identical grey overcast light conditions, almost always from an elevated vantage point, using a large format camera.  Achieving such consistency is difficult, they are reputed to have spent days waiting for the correct weather conditions.  The images are very carefully composed and the quality of the prints is remarkable, the detail contained is quite astonishing, a testament to the resolving power of a large format camera.

Detailed inspection reveals very high depth of field, clearly produced by long exposures, indeed the only clear flaws in some of the images is the fact that vegetation is often blurred as any wind would create movement.  People are largely absent from their photographs, although the machines that they work in are clearly occupied.  In several of the prints peoples homes intersperse the industrial landscape, sometimes in terrifying ways, the juxtaposition of domestic normality with the mines and blast furnaces points to hard lives.  The exhibit contained over a 100 large format prints, each roughly A2 in size, framed and lit identically and arranged in orderly rows along the walls of the gallery.

Commenting on any one image is a pointless exercise, even though I would be proud to create an image close in quality to any one that was presented.  There impact is as a whole, a typography of buildings.  The relentless presentation reinforces the similarity of the structures separated sometimes by continents, this is very much a case of function driving form.  The work is designed to be seen together.

The rhythmic placement of the photographs and the lighting of the gallery was interesting in its own right, learning about placement and presentation is a useful aspect of gallery visits:

When I compare a photography exhibit to the way paintings are hung, there are very distinct differences, first of all the frames do not detract from the contents, there is much greater creativity is spacing and the lighting is far better tuned to the subject matter.  This may reflect the difference between and permanent and temporary exhibit, but I do find the treatment of photography exhibits to be more expressive.

Turning back to the content, the work of the Bechers has influenced the practice of many modern art photographers, I also sense their influence, although in my small beginnings this is more in their approach than outcome.  Their craft and technical competence enable high quality final product.  I am by nature very impatient, slowing my work down always improves my image making, the Bechers are an inspiration in the systemic approach to making photographs.

Gallery Visit: Villa Stuck - " Street Life & Home Stories"

In previous courses I have spent a little time visiting and commenting on Munich's many and varied art museums, both to broaden my education, but also to use as subjects for projects and assignments.  On the whole these contain either painting, sculpture, or installation based arts, there is little in the way of dedicated photography exhibits and only occasionally are special exhibitions put on.

This was one of those cases where you wait hours for a bus and then along come 4.  The ongoing exhibition at the Villa Stuck is simply astounding, spread over 3 floors with work from over 20 photographers, ranging from August Sanders through Nan Goldin and Cindy Sherman, to contemporary work by Juergen Tillmans and Jeff Wall, to mention but a few.  The focus is on photography of the lives of real people (well mostly, guess Jeff Wall and Cindy Sherman stretch this more than a little), looking at the intimacy of personal lives and the anonymity of street photography.  If anything, the exhibition had too broad a scope making it hard to take in at one visit, suspect I will need to go back again.

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Particular highlights for me were

• August Sander and Walker Evans: Simply to see original prints from these two giants of photography was humbling, in the same way as the first time I saw an original Van Gogh or Monet.  What was also immediately apparent was the level of detail in the prints compared to reproductions in books.  These photographs are such an important record as well as windows on humanity
• William Eggleston: A series of photographs taken at Graceland after Elvis' death.  The vivid colours and the detail in these prints echoed what I had learned about Eggleston. Another case of starstruck student.
• Cindy Sherman: I cannot say I am a huge fan of her style, however, she is omnipresent in every history of photography and so interesting to see in the flesh!  What was most remarkable were her later works, huge prints, as ever photographs of Cindy as someone else, but terribly revealing, this is a women who is not afraid of growing old.  This also paralleled an overall trend towards larger photographs as the exhibits became more recent.
• Nan Goldin: These were the hardest photographs to look at, the intimacy of her portrayal of the death from AIDS of close friends was terrifying, a very powerful use of photography.
• Nobuyoshi Araki: Another artist whose work at the exhibit portrayed death and at an almost obscenely personal level.  His photographs of his dying wife almost seem too intrusive, but after all he chronicled their entire life together in every aspect.

One artist stood out for me, Tobias Zielony, with his study of Trona, California.  This town is typical of many small American towns, dependent on a single employer who fails leaving the town with literally nothing to fall back on.  Zielony's work is quite different from other German photographers such as those of the Duesseldorf school (Thomas Struth and Candida Hofer both had work in the exhibit), in that it is very much centred upon people and their struggle with the modern world.  The photographs are very reminiscent of Stephen Shore, the colours and the framing echo his style, however, he adds more edge into the imagery.  They carry a real sense of deprivation and despair.

Second to the content was the presentation.  This was the first major photographic exhibit I have attended and I was very much interested in how the prints were framed and presented.  The style was very simply, pine coloured frames with white passepartouts hung on a white wall.  The hanging was also very carefully planned, with several walls covered in huge grids of small images, in other cases, very large prints had the space to themselves.  The overall impression was that the photographs had the space in which to speak without overt influence from the gallery.  Exceptions to this existed, several sequences were projected rather than hung.  A particularly effective series was projected onto the floor allowing a look down vantage onto photographs shot from directly above their subjects, placing the viewer in the position of the photographer ( Francis Alys).  Another sequence was of 700 simple prints displayed in small free standing white frames arranged on a series of shelves.  The prints were simple in execution, but not content, the gathering of so many prints together created a strong sense of entering the world of the photographers (Elmgreen & Dragset).

Taken as a whole the exhibition was an excellent gathering of work spanning nearly a century of art photography, however, the overall sense I was left with was one of sadness and dejection.  As uplifting as it was to see these original works, by many photographers I have grown to admire, the subject was mostly gloomy, dealing with social deprivation and death, both physical and metaphorical.  The work was about the "Other", the dispossessed, the unfortunate, the interesting victims of modern society that we are drawn to, like moths to a flame.  Good news is no news, we want to learn about failure and disaster.  The exhibit did contain moments of happiness and even mundaneness, but the most powerful work dwelt on sorrow in its various forms.