Hayward Gallery Reopening

Hayward Gallery Southbank Centre, London
reopens on Wednesday, 24th of January 2018 and
marks its 50th anniversary with the first major UK retrospective of the work of acclaimed German photographer Andreas Gursky ».

www.southbankcentre.co.uk

Nico Krijno » The Fluid Right Edge

Krijno, a sculptor as well as a photographer, previously presented Under Construction, a collection of digitally manipulated ‘objects’, architectural models, and sculptures. Krijno uses digital tools to push the boundaries of our understanding of what a photographic image is, especially when a photo seems to represent three-dimensional objects and spaces, and posing questions about the relationship between truthfulness and photographic representation. In his work, there is painstaking attention to materiality and ‘matter.’ Just when the viewer establishes an understanding of semblance, or of representation, this relation collapses: depth and surface exchange places, perspectives are confused, giving way to enigmatic as well as enticing aesthetic compositions.

In his studio Krijno builds installations of wood, fabrics, plants, and other materials, which he then photographs, only to cut them up digitally afterwards, ‘painting’ with the digital information of the images. Through this practice he achieves his unique and distinguished visual language that resonates with many artists working today.

Nicolas Dhervillers » Selected Works

Nicolas Dhervillers’ expansive and phenomenal photographs sit between history and modernity and illustrate small still lifes and vast landscapes. "Art history often influences my work", says Dhervillers. "Before I moved to Paris to study photography, I was inspired by the cinema and also learned a great deal about the theatre. Elements from all of these artistic genres inform my photographs today."

Amongst others, the exhibition showcases works from Dhervillers’ series, "Hommages", "My Sentimental Archive", "Nostalghia", "Behind The Future", "Transfer" and "Oculi".

Nicolas Dhervillers (b. 1981) lives and works in Paris. Following his studies in photography and multimedia at the universities of Paul-Valéry Montpellier and Paris 8, his impressive photographic series about the Centre Pompidou in Metz heralded his acclaim in the photographic and art scene. His most renowned work, Priest is held in the City of Paris art collection and Museum Helmond.

In 2012, within the context of Documenta 13 and as part of Mono Festival, Dhervillers exhib…

Jaromir Funke » Avant-Garde Photographer

Jaromír Funke started photographing at the age of twelve when his father gave him his first camera. After receiving his high school diploma in 1915 he studied medicine, law and philosophy before turning entirely to photography after World War I. Next to his early landscape images adhering to the style of romantic pictorialism, he started creating modern works from 1923: minimalistic compositions with plates, vacuum cleaner tubes and glass bottles, still lifes with glass objects, light bulbs and star fish. The shadows of objects, not the objects themselves, start to take centre-stage in his work.

Funke was inspired by the pioneers of abstract photography Alvin Langdon Coburn, Francis Bruguière or Jaroslav Rössler while he quickly developed his own unique signature style. His goal was to "highlight two objects, contrast two realities, combine different elements in a single photo", he writes in 1935. At the same time, Funke scrutinised and explored the possibilities of photography as the author and publisher of magazines and books, as a relentless organiser and as teacher of photography at institutions such as the National Academy of Art in Prague.

OPAVA SCHOOL. Close-up

Jan Brykczynski » Hana Connor / Filip Jandourek » Jan Langer » Oldrich Malachta » Daniel Poláček » Zuzana Veselá » Tereza Vlčková » ...

The exhibition "OPAVA SCHOOL. Close-up" is part of the FFF events »Photography Players«. The format focuses on current international projects and ideas about the medium as well as different, young and fresh talents. In dialogue with each other, the two exhibitions show affinities between visionaries of the Avant-garde. The exhibition "OPAVA SCHOOL. Close-up" was curated by Vladimír Birgus, who is lecturer at the Institute of creative Photography, and Celina Lunsford, Artistic Director of the Fotografie Forum Frankfurt.

Hiro »

Known for the originality of his photographs, Hiro’s photographic career began at Harper’s Bazaar in New York as a fashion, still-life and portrait photographer. Shortly after arriving in America from Japan in 1954, Hiro landed an apprenticeship in Richard Avedon’s studio. Avedon soon sent Hiro to legendary art director Alexey Brodovitch after he proved too talented not to work independently, and within a few years Hiro had risen to extraordinary fashion photography heights. Hiro began working under Brodovitch in 1956 and in 1963 he became the only photographer under contract at Harper’s Bazaar, a position he kept for the next ten years. Now in his 80’s, although no longer under contract, Hiro continues to take assignments with the magazine. Hiro has lived up to Brodovitch’s dictum, ‘If you look in your camera and see something you’ve seen before, don’t click the shutter.’ In January 1982 American Photographer magazine devoted their entire issue to Hiro, asking the question “Is this Man America’s Greatest Photographer?” Richard Avedon described Hiro as ‘a visitor all his life’, enabling Hiro, neither completely Eastern or Western to document both cultures in his work with a perception that only comes from a certain detachment.

Hiro’s work is characterised by surprises, abnormalities, unusual lighting, Surrealism, the unreal and an astounding and constant vision. Hiro sees beauty in the extraordinary, and this is evident from the selection in the present exhibition. Part of Hiro’s genius lies in his ability to transform ‘the most mundane objects or delicate features... A toenail, the pupil of an eye, a mouth or a light-switch are seen with the same concentration. Concentration is Hiro’s most obvious quality. When he takes the whole theater of fashion to the beach, he returns with a metaphysical contemplation.’ (Mark Holborn) To look at a photograph of Hiro’s is to come face to face with a picture rife with unusual lighting effects, surprising angles, juxtaposing elements and bold colours.

Hiro’s method is punctuated by his preparation and unrelenting precision. His exactitude is not, however, a hindrance to his creativity nor an unnecessary obsession, but rather the means to his creativity and innovation. Hiro’s assistants always pass the camera to his left hand when he is photographing. This meticulousness is all part of Hiro’s ritual of focusing and ‘intensifying the gaze’. His preparation is second to none; the research conducted for a fashion shoot is worthy of ‘an intelligence operation or a social science exercise. He is said to change in the studio from the affable figure to the rigorous disciplinarian.’

Hiro’s work is published in three monographs and is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, George Eastman House, New York, the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Musee Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, The J. Paul Getty Museum, LA, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and Kobe Fashion Museum, Japan, amongst others.

Giovanni Gastel » Divine Ladies

From the early 1980s to today, Gastel has worked with more than 50 Italian and international magazines, and published about 130 covers for Vogue, Vanity Fair, Glamour, Elle, Amica etc. He has produced over 500 campaigns and catalogs for several fashion houses, beauty brands, jewellers and designers. As an icon of the Italian and international photography world, he received the Oscar for photography "La Kore - Oscar della Moda" in 2002.

Robin de Puy » Randy

It doesn’t take long for the Netherlands to spot the talent of De Puy. In 2013, she receives the Dutch Photographic Portrait Prize for a portrait of fellow photographer An-Sofie Kesteleyn. The assignments keep stacking up and her career begins to take off. In 2015, she travels across America on a motorcycle. During this trip, an intimate portrait emerges in text and image of both herself as of the persons portrayed. This leads up to the exhibition ‘If This is True…’ in the Fotomuseum The Hague and a book (2016) with the same title.

On July 7th 2015 Robin de Puy was riding through Ely, Nevada. That night she found Randy. He rode past – fast – but in the split second she saw him she knew: De Puy had to know who this boy was. About that first encounter she writes: "Randy, a fragile looking boy, striking face, big ears - a puppy, a golden retriever waiting for the ball to be thrown, (too) naïve. "Can I photograph you?" I asked him. The question was met with a shrug and a look both anxious and curious, a look that seemed to say so much and so little, then he wholeheartedly said "yes". De Puy took his portrait, left town a few days later, and that was it – at least, that’s what it seemed at the time.

Back in Amsterdam Randy popped into her mind from time to time - it was impossible to know this boy and leave it at that single image. She looked him up again at the end of 2016, again in February 2017, and once more in May 2017. She turns him inside out, looks at him, stares at him and he lets her. In the Bonnefantenmuseum, Robin de Puy is presenting this portrait of Randy in the form of an installation that shows both photos and film.

Julian Faulhaber » Ideal Spaces

The exposition consists of works from the project LDPE (low density polyethylene), over which Faulhaber worked for several years starting in 2003. The name itself already manifests the artificiality of the captured spaces. The synthetic material used for the production of plastic bags becomes a reference to our time, when packaging often acquires more importance than the product itself. " It’s the lifestyle, which is determining our way of living " the author notes.

At the center of Faulbacher`s attention are the real public places in Germany, Japan and the USA: gas stations, shopping centers, cinema halls, parking lots - that which surrounds us every day. He photographs these objects at a stage when their construction is already completed, but the design has not yet been commissioned and the user has not yet broken the ideality of the newly created by his presence.

The process of work turns into research and takes quite a long time for the author. Faulbacher very carefully chooses objects for shooting - searching for locations while walking around in public spaces, scrolling through architectural and design magazines and browsing through the internet. Having chosen a place, he observes all stages of erecting the structure until its completion "this is also part of the work, always looking for the progress of the building, the progress of the surface, similar to a painting in the studio, which is changing every day."

Stephen Shore » Uncommon Places

Stephen Shore (American, b. 1947) is a pioneer of color and vernacular photography. With a small number of contemporaries, he championed the elevation of color photography as art and redefined the documentary tradition in American photography. Shore’s vision of the ordinary world in full color is now so pervasive that its monumental influences are often taken for granted as inherent properties of photography. In particular, Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth have acknowledged his work as inspiration.

First published as a monograph in 1982, the images in Uncommon Places articulate a vision of the United States unlike any preceding artistic statement. At the project’s start in 1973, Shore had just completed his first cross-country road trip and major inquiry into the contemporary American landscape. Influenced by Pop and Conceptual concepts he encountered at Andy Warhol’s studio The Factory, American Surfaces (1972) focused on completely ordinary scenes such as highway gas stations, motel beds, and diner meals and used a language hitherto unexplored in art photography: color.

Gérard Musy » l’oeil fertile

With this exhibition, the Swiss photographer, now living in Paris, offers us a journey through forty years of prints, playing with reflections and echoes between his images. We follow one photograph after another through visual links and this repetition of formal elements gives a sense of flow, an uninterrupted visual sequence. In this world of appearances, of women in finery, he makes an exhibition of beauty, a play of figurative rhythms, in a precarious balance between order and chaos.

Gerard Musy went back to his archives for this exhibition, looking for vintage prints, mostly unpublished. Large spectacular prints echo on the walls of the gallery in a shock of colours, graphic lines, shadows and lights. Beyond, Lustre, Lamées, Leaves, Lontano/ Lejano and Back to Backstage, a composition of images unfolds, random snapshots of reality, sensual light bursts, in a true photographic euphoria!

Ching Hui Chou » Theatre of Reality

Niels Ackermann & Sébastien Gobert »

Looking for Lenin

Having witnessed the protests that took place in Maidan Square, Niels Ackermann and Sébastien Gobert went on a quest for a major symbol of a country’s communist past: statues of Lenin. For two years, the duo photographed close to 70 statues and conducted as many interviews with their guardians and owners. This series unfolds in front of the viewer like a documentary-inventory, in a combination of unusual shots and accounts.

This exhibition was produced in partnership with Fotostiftung Schweiz. In 2017, it was shown at the Rencontres d’Arles and was the subject of a book published by Fuel Publishing (Editions Noir sur Blanc for the French version).

EXPERTS’ PRESENTATIONS
FRI, 26 January 2018, 19:30–21:00
The invited experts and Pro Helvetia guests introduce themselves and their work

PHOTOGRAPHERS/ARTISTS
Terje Abusdal (NO) | Eman Ali (OM/GB) | Florian Amoser (CH) | Nadim Asfar (FR/LB) | Ulf Beck (DE) | Vincen Beeckman (BE) | Yevgenia Belorusets (UA/DE) | Céline Brunko (CH) | Elena Aya Bundurakis (GR) | Jim Campers (BE) | Monika Czyzyk (PL/FI) | Julia Debus (DE) | Nicolas Delaroche (FR/CH) | Giorgio Di Noto (IT) | Susann Dietrich (DE) | Justine Emard (FR) | Viola Fátyol (HU) | Weronika Gesicka (PL) | Yann Haeberlin (CH) | Esther Hovers (NL) | Katrin Kamrau (DE) | Csilla Klenyánszki (HU/NL) | Adél Koleszár (HU/MX) | Yulia Krivich (UA/PL) | Thomas Kuijpers (NL/BE) | Marvin Leuvrey (FR) | Eva Linder (CH) | Rachele Maistrello (IT/CH) | Louis Matton (FR) | Seema Mattu (GB) | Daniel Mayrit (ES) | Anastasia Mityukova (CH) | Igor Samolet (RU) | Maxim Sarychau (BY) | Alexey Shlyk (BY/BE) | Joscha Steffens (DE/NL) | Carly Steinbrunn (FR) | Yves Suter (CH) | Diana Tamane (LV/BE/EE) | Randy Tischler (CH) | Roos van Haaften (NL) | Laura Carrascosa Vela (ES)

Artworks 2018 online: www.fotomuseum.ch