editorial

Contemporary Photography

Photography began as an industrial discovery. It was the evolution of tools used to capture and record the light that illuminates everything we see. Because of photography’s ability to document it was praised by some, and feared by others, as the most realistic medium. Its association with reality has placed photography ubiquitously into scientific, journalistic, and vernacular fields as well as art and design. Photography can record the way something or someone appeared at a specific moment in time, but its truthful connotation is highly debated. The digitalization of the medium has both increased its spread in our lives as well as the doubts of its assumed realism. This issue of Euro Art attempts to scratch the surface of this wide-ranging subject, and examine more deeply a few of the many important conversations surrounding photography. more...

article

Helmut Newton: Reclaiming The Female Nude Photograph From Pornography

Victoria Z. Alexander

Over the past forty years Helmut Newton (1920-2004) has come to be considered as one of the world’s leading and most influential makers of visionary images. At the time of his death the photographic medium was in his debt as it is to only a few brilliant photographers in history. He specialized in fashion images, female nudes, and portraits. His work was widely published in magazines such as Elle, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Paris Match, der Spiegel, and Stern. There have been over 100 exhibitions of his work since 1975, he was awarded the Medallion d’Or by France for his work, and a museum dedicated to that work has been opened in Berlin (2004). more...

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Touring the Ordinary: Annette Merrild's The Room

Michael Borowski

Following this proverb Annette Merrild began, in 2001, photographing her neighbor’s living rooms in a Hamburg apartment complex. Over the next four years she expanded her study to include living rooms from cities across Europe. Her series of images show unique details within homogenized apartment spaces. The residents themselves are never photographed. Instead the viewer interprets how others live through the objects and decoration of the space. As a part of a larger archive project, these photographs become associated with scientific documentation. But they equally illustrate the mediums objective limits. The Room attempts to disprove cultural stereotypes with a more intimate view into foreign peoples homes, but this over simplifies the possibilities of their message. more...

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Photography By Other Means: Gerhard Richter’s Challenge to the Real

Dr. Gerry Coulter

What has Gerhard Richter (77), perhaps the greatest living painter, been telling us about photography? Richter has long mistrusted the picture of reality conveyed to us by our senses. He has told several interviewers over the past forty years that he finds our encounter with reality to be “imperfect and circumscribed” (see, for example, “Interview with Peter Sager” [1972] 1993:73). Further, he does not believe that a photograph provides us with a picture of reality any more than a painting does – both media are merely imperfect tools used to make images which are a substitute for reality. more...

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Empathy and Engagement: The Subjective Documentary

Mark Durden

James Agee is here describing how Walker Evans takes a portrait of one of the tenant farmer families in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Evans allows his subjects the dignity of determining how they would like to be pictured. His portraits are generally celebrated for this ethical dimension, a negotiation between photographer and subject which differs from much of the other Depression photography, which instead tended to reduce the poor to a spectacle of alterity: wretched, alien, defeated and pitiable. Evans’ subjects address the camera, face on, upstanding, composed and commanding respect. more...

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Michael Fried on Why Photography Matters

Guy Lane

Once Michael Fried starts talking about photography his enthusiasm is infectious: ‘What I was seeing was people standing in front a work by Jeff Wall for twenty or twenty five minutes - and talking about it, discussing it, pointing out things. And I thought, “Man, this is great; this is just good in itself”. I’d say to my painter friends - even the ones who are still abstract painters - “Photography is on your side – just wait.” Because photography is making people look closely again, and in itself that is simply marvellous.’ more...

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Before The Gaze

Gözde Türkkan

In its early stages, photography was expected to be a perfect and precise representation of reality; thus it tended to replace painting in terms of documentation and authentication. For instance it was used as a memento in portrait and post-mortem photography since the 19th century. Currently photojournalism and vernacular photography is likely to be the most unadulterated form of photography because it is either supposed to represent facts without interference or just to keep a moment’s impression, which is judged memorable. On the other hand, each and everyone behind the camera makes decisions. Even the most naïve interference might not be that ineffective. more...

interview

Portraits Of İstanbul

An interview with Ali Taptik

Michael Borowski

"My interest in photography started very early. When I was 14, I started taking pictures. I decided to study architecture because there weren’t any photography schools; I mean good photography schools, present at that time. Architecture seemed to be a more interesting choice in its connection to art and theory, and in the end I manipulated my curriculum in a way that I didn’t take many classes in structure or building details but I took critical theory or art history." (...) "In my 2nd year I was invited to a masterclass in Stockholm, a very intensive course. Before then I wasn’t sure about being a professional photographer but with that course I decided that that’s what I wanted. I finished my studies anyway because I liked studying architecture more than being an architect. Interestingly, in Turkey, very good photographers are often architects." more...

interview

An Interview With Banu Cennetoğlu

Simge Peker

I went to visit Banu Cennetoğlu in her Artist Book Project Space; BAS… I thought I was going to interview her about ’15 Scary Asian Men’ work. She has got surprised about it. Certainly it was the time to talk about her most recent work; the Venice Biennale Project ‘The Catalog’. My aim was to discuss more about the role of photography and her style of documentation. But in the end of our talk we were at a far away point, which was much more exciting. Banu Cennetoğlu enlightened me about the actualization, materialization and monumentalization of photography. more...

art agenda

11th International Istanbul Biennial Announces Artist List

Istanbul, Turkey, 12th September – 8th November, 2009

11th International İstanbul Biennial is curated by What, How and for Whom/WHW. The exhibition is entitled 'What Keeps Mankind Alive?', the English translation of the song 'Denn wovon lebt der Mensch?' from The Threepenny Opera, written in 1928 by Bertolt Brecht, in collaboration with Elisabeth Hauptmann and Kurt Weill. The Threepenny Opera thematises the process of redistribution of ownership within bourgeois society and sheds an unforgiving light on various elements of capitalist ideology. Brecht's assertion from this play that 'a criminal is a bourgeois and a bourgeois is a criminal' is as true as ever, and the correspondences of rapid developments of liberal economy on disintegration of hitherto existing social consensus in 1928 and in present times are striking. more...

art agenda

Bauhaus: A Conceptual Model

Berlin, Germany, 22nd July – 4th October 2009

Ninety years ago, Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus in Weimar. It existed for only 14 years, but it became the most important school of modernity. With Josef Albers, Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, Lyonel Feininger, Johannes Itten, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Gerhard Marcks, Adolf Meyer, Georg Muche, László Moholy-Nagy, Hinnerk Scheper, Oskar Schlemmer, Joost Schmidt, Lothar Schreyer and Gunta Stölzl, a faculty with an international reputation worked under the direction of Walter Gropius (1919-1928), Hannes Meyer (1928-1930) and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1930-1933) at the Bauhaus. more...

art agenda

Radical Nature – Art and Architecture for a Changing Planet 1969–2009

Barbicon gallery, London, England, 19th June – 18th October 2009

The beauty and wonder of nature have provided inspiration for artists and architects for centuries. Since the 1960s, the increasingly evident degradation of the natural world and the effects of climate change have brought a new urgency to their responses. Radical Nature is the first exhibition to bring together key figures across different generations who have created utopian works and inspiring solutions for our ever-changing planet. Radical Nature draws on ideas that have emerged out of Land Art, environmental activism, experimental architecture and utopianism. The exhibition is designed as one fantastical landscape, with each piece introducing into the gallery space a dramatic portion of nature. more...

art agenda

James Ensor at MoMA

New York City, USA, 28th June – 21st September 2009

James Ensor (1860–1949) was a major figure in the Belgian avant-garde of the late nineteenth century and an important precursor to the development of Expressionism in the early twentieth. In both respects he has influenced generations of later artists. This exhibition presents approximately 120 works, examining Ensor's contribution to modernity, his innovative and allegorical use of light, his prominent use of satire, his deep interest in carnival and performance, and his own self-fashioning and use of masking, travesty, and role-playing. Examples of Ensor's paintings, prints, and drawings are installed in an overlapping network of themes and images to produce a complete picture of this daring, experiential body of work. more...

art agenda

Richard Avedon: Photographs 1946-2004

San Francisco, USA, 11th July – 29th November 2009

Whether photographing politicians, artists, writers, fashion models, or movie stars, Richard Avedon revolutionized the genre of portraiture. He rejected conventional stiff-and-staid poses and instead captured both motion and emotion in the faces of his subjects, often encapsulating their intrigue in a single charged moment. SFMOMA is proud to be the only U.S. venue for this retrospective that spans the artist's remarkable career. Featuring more than 200 photographs along with a selection of vintage magazines, the exhibition presents work spanning Avedon's entire career, from his earliest street scenes to his breakthrough 1950s Paris fashion pictures and the iconic celebrity portraits that brought him world renown. more...

art agenda

Your Bright Future: 12 Contemporary Artists from Korea

Los Angeles, USA, 28th June – 20th September 2009

LACMA and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) will present the first major museum exhibition in the United States to focus on contemporary art from South Korea. The exhibition features work by a generation of artists who have emerged since the mid-1980s—some well-known and others on the brink of recognition—working on the cutting edge of international art trends and within a distinctly Korean context. Featuring site-specific installations as well as video, computer animation, and sculpture, the exhibition represents each artist through a large-scale installation piece or substantial body of work. Curators: Lynn Zelevansky, Contemporary Art, LACMA; Christine Starkman, Curator of Asian Art, MFAH; and Kim Sunjung, Director Samuso, Seoul, South Korea. more...

art agenda

The Female Gaze: Women Look at Women

New York City, USA, 25th June – 19th September 2009.

Cheim & Read is pleased to announce a group exhibition of women artists depicting the female form. With this premise, the show seeks to present a collection of works which reclaim the traditional domination of the “male gaze” and reorient the significance of the female figure to allow for more varied interpretations. A variety of mediums will be shown —sculpture, photography, video, painting and installation— and several different women artists represented, including: Berenice Abbott, Marina Abramovic, Ghada Amer, Diane Arbus, Vanessa Beecroft, Lynda Benglis, Louise Bourgeois, Kathe Burkhart, Julia Margaret Cameron, Victoria Civera, Rineke Dijkstra, Marlene Dumas, Anh Duong, Judith Eisler, Tracey Emin, Ellen Gallagher, Nan Goldin, Katy Grannan, Jenny Holzer, Roni Horn, Chantal Joffe, Deborah Kass, Maria Lassnig, Zoe Leonard, Sally Mann, Marilyn Minter, Joan Mitchell, Alice Neel, Shirin Neshat, Collier Schorr, Joan Semmel, Cindy Sherman, Mickalene Thomas, Hannah van Bart, Hellen van Meene, Kara Walker, Francesca Woodman and Lisa Yuskavage. more...

art agenda

The Venice Biennale: 53rd International Art Exhibition: Fare Mondi / Making Worlds

Venice, Italy, 7th June – 22nd November 2009

The 53rd International Art Exhibition, titled Fare Mondi // Making Worlds // Bantin Duniyan // Weltenmachen // Construire des Mondes // Fazer Mundos, directed by Daniel Birnbaum and organized by La Biennale di Venezia chaired by Paolo Baratta, is open to the public from June 7th to November 22nd 2009 in the Giardini (50,000 sq.m.) and the Arsenale (38,000 sq.m) as well as in various other locations around the city. The Director of the 53rd Exhibition, Daniel Birnbaum, has been Rector of the Staedelschule Frankfurt/Main and its Kunsthalle Portikus since 2001. Making Worlds, presented in the renewed Palazzo delle Esposizioni in the Giardini and in the Arsenale, is a single, large exhibition that articulates different themes woven into one whole. It is not divided into sections. Considering collectives, it comprises works by over 90 artists from all over the world and includes many new works and on-site commissions in all disciplines. more...

art agenda

‘Please… just make it go away!’ – New York vs. Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon: The Centenary Exhibition at the MET

Dr. Gerry Coulter

Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective (66 paintings and 65 objects from his studio) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (MET) seeks to reevaluate the artist’s work based on new interpretations and archival materials that have emerged since his death in 1992. The exhibition was organized by Gary Tinterow of the MET (along with Chris Stephens and Matthew Gale of the Tate Britain). The main point of the show is to demonstrate that Bacon did not lose his force and vitality as a painter after the 1960’s (he lived until 1992). The show, which succeeds in this goal, has already appeared at the Tate Britain, London, and the Prado in Madrid. more...

art agenda

Gilbert & George: Jack Freak Pictures

Berlin, Germany 13th June – 18th September 2009

As the international tour of the last Gilbert & George retrospective (2007–2009) did not include Berlin, Arndt & Partner are now all the more delighted to present a solo exhibition of the celebrity artist duo in its gallery rooms behind the Hamburger Bahnhof. It is the first Gilbert & George solo show in Berlin for 14 years. The exhibition features a selection of 20 large-scale pieces from the Jack Freak Pictures, the largest Gilbert & George group of pictures to date. The thrust of the content is given by the colors and shapes of the Union Jack flag that dominate the bulk of the pictures as well as the recurring motive of medals, emblems and trees. In the Jack Freak Pictures the artist duo explores aspects of nationhood and of the sentient individual in the nets of society. more...