| | | |  | | | | Sonya and Dombrovsky, Odessa, 2018 © Alec Soth / Magnum Photos, loan from Loock Galerie, Berlin | | | | | | | 11 September - 6 December 2020 | | | | | | | 15 September 2020, 19.00 hrs CET via Zoom | | | | | | | 11 September – 6 December 2020 | | |  | | | Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam Keizersgracht 609, 1017 DS Amsterdam
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| | | | | | | | | |  | | | | Leopold, Warsaw, 2018 © Alec Soth / Magnum Photos, loan from Loock Galerie, Berlin | | | | | | | | | | 11 September - 6 December 2020 | | | Magnum photographer Alec Soth (1969) has become known as the chronicler of life at the American margins of the United States. He made a name as a photographer with his 2004 series Sleeping by the Mississippi, encountering unusual and often overlooked places and people as he travelled along the river banks. A major retrospective in 2015 was followed by a period of seclusion and introspection, during which Soth did not travel and barely photographed. His most recent project, I Know How Furiously Your Heart is Beating, is the result of this personal search, and marks a departure from Soth’s earlier work. The photographer slowed down his work process and turned the lens inward. Foam presents the first museum exhibition of his new series, consisting of portraits of remarkable people in their habitat, and still-lifes of their personal belongings.
Starting point was a portrait Soth made in 2017 of the then 97-year-old choreographer Anna Halprin in her home in California. The interaction with this exceptional woman in her most intimate surroundings meant a breakthrough for Soth. Instead of focusing on a place, a community or demography, he concentrated on individuals and their private settings. Unlike many of Soth’s previous visual narratives, the choice of geographical location was not preconceived, but the result of a series of chance encounters. | | | | | |  | | | | Anna Kentfield California 2017 © Alec Soth / Magnum Photos, loan from Loock Galerie, Berlin | | | | | | The sometimes desperate desire for human contact, or lack thereof, is a theme that runs throughout Soth’s work. In an attempt to approach his subjects, Soth worked at the sitters’ homes with a slow large-format camera, almost exclusively using natural light. This laborious approach to photography is time-consuming and requires the subject to remain still in the presence of the photographer for extended periods. In addition to spending time, Soth used space as another way to overcome (or emphasise) the distance that inevitably exists between photographer and photographed. While windows and doors create a sense of detachment in the photographs, they simultaneously mark a point of entry from the outer to the inner world. The result is an intimate and often contemplative image; a photograph like a day dream.
Soth’s photographs have been compared with poetry. His photo series lack a clear linear narrative. Through omission and suggestion, ample room is left to the imagination. The series title I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating is derived from the 1917 poem The Gray Room by Wallace Stevens, in which subtle and superficial observations lead one to suspect fiery emotions below the surface. As in Stevens’s poem, Soth’s portraits and still-lifes suggest an inner life that is as rich as it is unreachable.
Alec Soth (1969) lives and works in his birthplace Minneapolis. His work has featured in solo exhibitions at prominent museums including Jeu de Paume in Paris, FOMU in Antwerp, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and MediaSpace in London. His photographs are part of important museum collections such as the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, MoMA in New York and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Soth has published several monographs including Looking for Love (2012), Sleeping by the Mississippi (2004), NIAGARA (2006), Dog Days, Bogotá (2007), Paris/Minnesota (2007), Last Days of W (2008), Broken Manual (2010), From Here to There (2010), La Belle Dame Sans Merci (2011), Songbook (2015) and Gathered Leaves (2015). His most recently published work is I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating (2019). In 2008 Soth launched Little Brown Mushroom: a multi-media enterprise focused on visual storytelling.
Alec Soth has received several distinctions and fellowships, including the Infinity Award of the International Center of Photography in 2011 and the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2013. He is a member of Magnum Photos and is represented by Sean Kelly in New York, Weinstein Hammons Gallery in Minneapolis, Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco and Loock Galerie in Berlin. | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | |  | | | | Renata, Bucharest, Romania, Courtesy Eidos Foundation © Alec Soth, Magnum Photos, loan from Loock Galerie, Berlin | | | Slowing Down - A conversation with Alec Soth » | | | | 15 September 2020, 19.00 hrs CET via Zoom | | | This is an online event and will take place via Zoom. Please book a free ticket to receive the link to the talk. The conversation will be followed by a Q&A and the possibility for the audience to ask questions via the chat function.
On the occasion of his solo exhibition, Foam invites the celebrated American photographer Alec Soth to introduce his new series I Know How Furiously Your Heart Is Beating (2017-2019). The series was the result of an extended period of introspection and slowing down. Soth will go into conversation with the exhibition curator Hinde Haest to give an insight into his recent personal and professional transition, his sources of inspiration and working process.
Foam is the first museum to present this new series, consisting of 35 intimate portraits of people in their private homes. The series forms a new chapter in Soth's oeuvre and marks a departure from earlier projects. It stands for a personal search for connection and deceleration of his working process. Instead of focusing on a place, a community or demography, Soth concentrated on remarkable individuals and their private settings.
Read more: foam.org/museum/programme/slowing-down-a-conversation-with-alec-soth
The exhibited works are on loan from Loock Gallery in Berlin and private lenders.
Foam is supported by the BankGiro Loterij, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek, City of Amsterdam, Foam Members, Olympus and the VandenEnde Foundation | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | |  | | | | Joris, Amsterdam 24 april 1991 © The Remsen Wolff Collection - Courtesy of Jochem Brouwer | | | | | | | | | | 11 September – 6 December 2020 | | | | The exhibition Amsterdam Girls presents more than 50 vintage portraits and contact prints from the analogue archive of the American photographer Remsen Wolff (1940-1998). From 1990 to 1992, Wolff spent one month each year at the American Hotel in Amsterdam to work on the project Special Girls - A Celebration. For this project, Wolff made a series of portraits of transgender people in New York and in Amsterdam, the city known at the time as ‘the gay capital of Europe’. These unique portraits range from the exuberant and glamorous to the subdued and vulnerable. Together, the photographs show the degree of gender fluidity in 1990s Amsterdam, beyond the spotlight of notorious nightclubs such as Club RoXY and iT. The individuals posing for Wolff’s camera vary from celebrated figures such as Jet Brandsteder (a.k.a. Francine), Hellun Zelluf and Vera Springveer (regular performers in clubs like RoXY and Mazzo), to anonymous transgender people who experimented and sometimes struggled with their gender identity. | | | | | |  | | | | Patch, Amsterdam 22 april 1992 © The Remsen Wolff Collection - Courtesy of Jochem Brouwer | | | | | | Remsen Wolff grew up in New York as the only child of the well-known painter Isabel Bishop and the neurologist and psychiatrist Harold Wolff. The photographer attended the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy boarding school and went on to study art history at Harvard University. Wolff married and had two daughters, but eventually left the family. After being mistakenly taken for a serial killer by the State of Texas, a considerable financial compensation was awarded to Wolff in the eighties. In combination with receiving an inheritance (Wolff’s mother died in 1988), this financially allowed Wolff a life devoted to photography.
Wolff never had any formal training as a photographer. The artistic approach is intuitive and thoroughly personal. Wolff experimented and struggled with sexual and gender identity and moved in a community of transgender people, crossdressers and drag kings and queens, whom Wolff photographed extensively from 1990 on. That was the year the project Special Girls - A Celebration started, which would ultimately comprise over 100,000 images. Unfortunately, the work went largely unnoticed during Wolff’s lifetime. The publication Wolff envisaged failed to materialise and exhibitions of the work were few and far between. Wolff – going by the name of Vivienne ‘Viv’ Blum towards the end of his life - died of a morphine overdose at the age of 58. The vast archive of more than 200,000 negatives spanning 40 years was left to Amsterdam studio assistant Jochem Brouwer. The Amsterdam portraits by this exceptional portrait photographer are now shown in Foam for the first time.
All works are on loan from The Remsen Wolff Collection. Courtesy of Jochem Brouwer.
Special thanks to Transgender Netwerk Nederland for their indispensable advice. | | | | | |  | | | | Hellun Zelluf, Amsterdam 14 November 1990 © The Remsen Wolff Collection - Courtesy of Jochem Brouwer | | | | | | unsubscribe here
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